Inescapable Anime Fandom

I consider myself a man of broad tastes, though if you ask me what I’m into, I will invariably answer “anime.” Because clearly, I’m more into anime than anything else—I run an anime blog, not a music or film or game or book blog. Yet there’s an extent to which I think my anime fandom isn’t so much more massive than my other fandoms as it is more inescapable and easy to be a fan of. This is caused by my social life, really.

Whereas I know a shitload of anime fans, a million sites and places where I can go to talk about whatever anime related subject I want, and easily locate fanworks, I can’t do that for anything else. I don’t know where to talk about movies or games or music, etc.

It’s not that those are hard to find, it’s that I’m picky. There are only a handful of anime-related sites I actually read and only a certain number of friends I have that are anime fans. But I love reading/talking to all of them, and they weren’t easy to find. I’ve been a member of the anime fan community for some ten years now. I’ve graduated up from being a forumite to being a blogger and social interactor to narrowing down my social circle into just people whom I like.

I can’t go and join some forum for some fandom, because I will hate it. I hate forums. I wouldn’t even want to go back to reading blogs, really. Because in the end, what I really like isn’t talking about anime so much as talking to people whom I like, and anime is just what I talk to them about… the consequence is making my fandom expand even more.

I’ve ended up limiting myself to discussing my other interests with anime fan friends who happen to share those interests. I can talk music and movies to otou-san to an extent. I have friends with whom I can talk video games. But I couldn’t do something like run a blog and have a readership from the ground level of those things. If I started, say, a My Little Pony blog right now, only my little brother would be reading it until I established a new readership, then spent years thinning it into people that I like.

All of this is why my side blogs never survive or thrive. There’s no reason my manga and music blogs coudln’t have been updated with as much frequency as this one, but it was never as fun because hardly anyone was reading them.

But maybe I’m about ready to undergo the process again. After all, I’m getting pretty bored with the anime fandom, and some of these fandoms are just dying to be expanded. (Just as likely, I’m too lazy to try.)

Smile Precure Rules, Black Rock Shooter Drools

I was only watching Nichibros and Nisemonogatari. I hoped Black Rock Shooter would be good so I could watch that. It disappointed me.

I hadn’t realized that Smile Precure! was also about to start. I watched it with excitement. It was awesome.

And that’s really all there is to say on the matter.

Revisiting That Vampire Loli In the Crazy Bathroom (Nise 4 Redux)

Omo and ghosty are right, Nisemonogatari is porn, but you know my corner of the blogosphere isn’t going to let the discussion end there. Whereas my first post on episode four chronicled the chaotic confusion that came over me when I watched it, today I’ll be examining what it is I really saw, and determining how I want to see it from now on. It will be uber-kimoi—I’m not fucking kidding.

A lot was going on when I watched episode four the other day. Before I started, ghostlightning had hyped me up like crazy on how badly I needed to watch and post about it. From the start of the Shinobu scene, I was already thinking about how I was going to post about it, while also being overwhelmed both by what I was seeing and by the facts of what I was seeing—one of the most relentless onslaughts of fanservice which I’ve ever witnessed. I quickly lost track of the subtitles and didn’t know what the characters were talking about anymore, so I started messaging ghostlightning to share my incredulity. The result of everything was exactly what you saw days ago.

Now that I’ve rewatched and really taken in the scene, I can react to everything and figure out how I feel—and there’s a lot to figure out. The sheer density of happenings in this scene is more than enough to make it the most memorable scene in anime I’ve watched since… well, Bakemonogatari.

Oh Anime And Your Mysteries

You’ve probably encountered this situation: finding out about an anime, manga, or other part of the culture, and having no way of accessing or understanding it. These are situations that lead some people to learn Japanese or go to Comiket or figure out how to use IRC. I feel a sense of desperation when I know about something like the manga Kesson Shoujo, which no one anywhere can get their hands on; or, to a lesser extent, see a show I like with only one translated episode and know that I can’t comprehend it raw.

These situations are part of why I’m not a completionist. When I got into anime, everything was mysterious this way, because at that time I could only either watch anime on TV (which may or may not have a new episode each week and might abruptly stop airing), or on DVD (when I didn’t have any money to complete shows). I got used to anime being a strange and mysterious entity which I could spend years catching glimpses of before ever seeing in full. Some people have an easy time of getting into things and finishing those things, with only a few pieces that tease them. (For instance, a Gundam fan who easily watches all the shows, only to be irked when they realize that the coolest-looking video game hasn’t been released in their country.) But me, I get into so much that half of all the shit I’m interested in is unavailable or out of reach.

I recently encountered one such example in the form of Kirarin Revolution. I happened to be on Manga Fox, it happened to have just been updated, and I randomly started reading it, surprised to find that I really enjoyed it. For one volume. Then I was snowed out.

According to Manga-Updates, there are no scanslated chapters of Kirarin. This is obviously not true. The first seven chapters on MangaFox are a nice solo effort whose origins seem untraceable. After that, it shifts over to possibly the worst scan job that I’ve ever witnessed. Here’s a page from chapter eight.

Besides the obvious terrors, it's also flipped. And this is the actual size.

There’s no way in hell I’m reading this, so I gave up. Then find out that Kirarin Revolution had a whopping 153-episode anime adaption, so I looked for that. A sub group called Twilight-Paradise had subbed 100 or so episodes before they folded and later re-emerged as a J-drama sub group that no longer hosts their episodes of Kirarin Revolution anywhere. Moreover, all of the torrents that I found were dead. (I have now, however, found that Bakabt has a living torrent of the episodes. Don’t know why I didn’t think to look there before). While searching, I found stream sites that had the show, except the videos don’t exist, most likely as a result of Megaupload’s demise.

Finding the 100 subbed episodes on bakabt proves that it always pays to keep looking for something if you know that it exists in some form, but I can’t get my hopes up that the rest of the episodes will be subbed, nor the rest of the manga scanned in a way that’s readable. There’s also a chance that the anime isn’t as good as the manga. It could end up that I got a one-volume glimpse of something I liked, while the other fifteen volumes remain a mystery to me for years to come.

NISE 4 – I DIED. (CLICK THE IMAGES)

Wow, Hanekawa looks way cuter with short—

One Thousand God Damn Anime

I have reached 1000 total entries on MAL, and since I only have one thing listed as “plan to watch” due to the site’s incorrect episode counts and airdates regarding Thermae Romae, this means that I’ve effectively “seen 1000 anime.” What a fun thing to be able to say! In the conventional sense of “seen” meaning “completed,” I’d only have 467 shows, but in any case I’ve seen at least *some amount* of 1000 anime. Pretty rockin’.

I was lucky enough to realize with two entries left to go that I was coming up on this benchmark and thought, why not make the last two something special? That’s not as easy to do as if I were reaching a benchmark number of completed shows—in this case, the last two entries had to be things which I’ve never seen before, so I couldn’t know as much about their quality, unless they were tie-in movies or something. Which one of them is.

For my first choice, I headed over to the Top Anime list on MAL and decided I’d watch the first thing that wouldn’t require me to watch something else first (i.e. no Clannad After Story when I haven’t finished Clannad). This brought me to One Piece: Strong World which I’ve conveniently had on-hand for over a year now. So I watched that, and it was pretty bitchin’. Funny thing about One Piece is that I’ve only scratched the surface of the TV show and manga, but I’ve seen almost all of the movies. It’s a franchise that I’d love to get into, but I can’t get past the shitty animation of the show nor the shitty scans of the early chapters of the manga. One day.

Then to cap off the grand, I thought I’d watch Video Girl Ai, in honor of 2DT leaving the blogosphere (also because I saw his avatar while I was trying to think of a show). So I watched the first episode of this rom-com about girl Ranma having been mysteriously separated from normal Ranma and sent to help some poor guy with his girl problems. After that… I put the show on hold!!! Hahahahaha!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Random Notes On Nisemonogatari 3

I promise I’m not going to blog this whole show (nor, apparently, anything at all), but here’s some thoughts that might’ve been tweets if I felt like typing that many tweets.

1. I see people bringing up the lack of Karen for the most part, despite this being the Karen Bee book adaptation. I think the titles beyond the original Bakemonogatari arc titles are largely meaningless. Kabukimonogatari, for instance, is the “Mayoi Jiang Shi” arc, and Mayoi never appears in it at all.

2. I haven’t read the novels, but I think it’s interesting to look at the times that they came out. The original two Bakemonogatari novels came out in 2006, and then Nisioisin took 2007 to write all twelve Katanagatari books. Once that was through, he came back to the other -monogatari and has been steadily releasing an asston of novels since. Unlike the original Bakemonogatari, all of the other books only contain one arc. Those arcs still always contain a character’s name, but I strongly get the feeling that this doesn’t necessarily mean the arc is all about them—though knowing Nisioisin, the arc will probably tie into their ultimate fate somehow. By the way, there are like twelve damn books in this series. Between all of the stuff being adapted right now, it only covers the first five. There’s still so much to learn!

3. God I loved this episode. It brought back the horror element of the show, the dark and strange feeling of not knowing what’s going on behind the scenes, feeling that the characters may be in genuine danger, and not knowing what to expect. I feel that Nisioisin’s specialty is setting up a feeling with his long sections of conversation and hijinks, then subverting that feeling with action and twists. What will come of all this? Right now, I feel the one who’s the most dangerous is Hanekawa and the one in most danger is Senjougahara. But it could be anything.

Predictions are meaningless, but the uneasiness is the point.

Go To A SOPAland!

There aren’t many things that I give a shit about enough to get riled up over. This is the rare time that I have.

I’ve protested SOPA, and I hope that you will too. Because, why not? You can only help yourself.

PROTEST HERE.

Sadly I can’t black out my site, so I’ll just repost this shit everywhere. Gotta reach *everyone.*

The Courage To Watch Nisemonogatari 2

If I ever felt like a show as going to give me heart problems, I certainly felt it watching this. The -monogatari franchise still feels to me like the “old friend” that I described in my Finish or Fail post on the show two years ago, but like an old friend, our relationship has only grown in inside jokes, collective laziness to get anything done, and perversion. This has become the anime equivalent of watching porn with a friend.

Pick the Next 5 Shows I Watch And I’ll Do Some Shit

I’m not feeling Winter 2012. I like Nichibro and Kill Me Baby, along with some 3-minute shows, but comedy just isn’t a genre that grabs me by the balls when it isn’t Gintama (much as Nichibro thinks it is). Symphogear and Lagrange are fun action and fanservice shows respectively, but I don’t give a damn really. “Another” just reminds me that PA Works is an offshoot from Bee Train. So that leaves me with Nisemonogatari which I may or may not watch weekly.

To make up for this season that I probably won’t keep up with anyway, I wanna watch some backlog shows. I have an assload of them taking up literally all of my harddrive space and I’m an indecisive fuck, so I want you guys to vote on them. I’ll watch the top 5 voted shows and I guess post on them or tweet about them or something. I probably won’t drop any of them since I actually planned to watch them already.

POLL CLOSED: I can’t figure out how to actually close a poll so here’s just the results at the time that I closed it.

Anyamaru Tantei Kiruminzoo 0.4%

Aria the Natural 4.45%

Astarotte no Omocha 3.64%

Crest of the Stars 6.07%

Darker Than Black Ryuusei no Gemini 5.26%

Eat-Man 0.81%

Figure 17 3.24%

Fushigiboshi no Futago-hime 0.81%

Great Teacher Onizuka 9.31%

Hayate no Gotoku 4.05%

Heartcatch Precure 3.24%

Hidamari Sketch x Hoshimittsu 2.43%

Hime-chan no Ribbon 0%

House of 5 Leaves 3.64%

Idolm@ster 5.67%

Idolm@ster Xenoglossia 1.62%

Index S2 4.05%

Key the Metal Idol 1.21%

Kodomo no Jikan 3.24%

Letter Bee Reverse 0.81%

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Strikers 3.24%

Mouryou no Hako 4.45%

Natsume Yuujinchou San 2.83%

Planetes 8.1%

Princess Tutu 6.48%

Star Driver 6.88%

Suite Precure 1.62%

Vampire Princess Miyu OVA 0.4%

Yu-Gi-Oh! 2.02%

 

Tempting though it is to follow Omo’s advice and watch Hime-chan no Ribbon just because it got no votes, I’ll just stick to the rules and watch the following: Great Teacher Onizuka, Planetes, Crest of the Stars, Princess Tutu, and Star Driver.