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.)

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.

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.

That Voice

Adding new aspects, such as voice and dialog, to an existing character is a big fucking deal, especially when you’re talking about how otaku will react to changes in characters that they might like specifically for the formula of their existence. Back when the Black Rock Shooter OVA came out, I theorized that the reason BRS had had almost no dialog, nor indeed done anything besides fight, was that it would be dangerous to try and give a definite personality to a character that had accumulated so many fans who’d filled in the gaps using their imaginations over the years. It could be horribly damaging if the character turned out to have a personality which their original fanbase didn’t like. (I’ll be interested to see if the new BRS anime starting tomorrow continues to play it safe.)

Shinobu was originally voiced by Hirano Aya, but never had any dialog. The Shinobu that I loved in Bakemonogatari therefore essentially had no voice, and since I really don’t care for Hirano Aya, I was pretty content with this. When Shinobu suddenly started talking for ten straight minutes, I was mortified. As it would happen, Shinobu’s seiyuu was switched out with Sakamoto Maaya, whom I love, but that doesn’t mean that I love this performance. Sakamoto’s take on a haughty loli persona is a lot like Hirano’s, which is to say that it comes across as really forced and annoying; albeit I’ll take Sakamoto’s Shinobu over Hirano’s Katja from Seikon no Qwaser any day.

Besides the performance itself, I really enjoyed Shinobu’s dialog. I’m able to tolerate a minimal level of haughtiness and domination from a character that I like, and I think Shinobu coasted along that level. I don’t know how Shinobu reads in Nisioisin’s original text, but here, I feel I can thank the team who brought me the similarly tolerable Mina Tepes of Dance in the Vampire Bund.

Shinobu is Cute

These things are both true: I am a lolicon, and I think lolis are cute. It’s easy to get these things confused, especially from an outside perspective, but the reason that I read loli doujins and the reason that I watch magical girl shows aren’t the same thing. To make things more complicated, Shinobu is a “paleololi,” another thing that I find both cute and attractive, but not for the same reasons necessarily as regular lolis.

But let’s not be mistaken here: Shinobu is supposed to look like a little girl (Araragi claims that she looks about eight years-old). I’ve made the case before that a lot of characters who are older but tiny (say, Konata from Lucky Star) can realistically look the way they do. Shinobu is not one such case. Shinbo (and yes, I’m sure it’s him, because I’ve seen Le Portrait de Petit Cossette) has gone out of his way to make Shinobu’s body lack curvature and appear childlike. On one hand, this makes the scene even more creepy if you’re looking at it sexually, but on the other hand, it also creates, for me, a scene that can, at times, be cute with no sexual feelings. I can imagine a familial kind of relationship between Shinobu and Araragi, and this is supported by something else I’ll talk about in a bit, which makes a cute, hartwarming scene. But of course, that’s far from all there is to it.

Shinobu is Hot

More obviously, and without argument. I could argue ’till the cows come home that Murasaki’s bathing scenes in Kure-nai weren’t sexualized at all, but this scene is completely on the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s not enough to have Shinobu naked for ten straight minutes in a room with a naked guy, whom she eventually gets in the tub with. She strikes a ton of sexy poses with staggering attention to detail. Included are parts where her hair is up in a towel, dozens of close-ups of her feet, cuts of her washing pretty much her entire body, dashing and dancing about, and in the penultimate moment of perversion, being covered in shampoo that clearly is meant to look like she’s been jizzed all over.

This is overwhelming. It’s like they knew the character wouldn’t be showing up much, so they gave her twelve episodes worth of fanservice in one scene. There’s nothing else like this. Even in porn anime, you never see a sex scene that lasts a full ten minutes. Seikon no Qwaser was, until now, the farthest that I’ve ever seen fanservice taken in TV anime, with scenes of characters literally engaging in sexual activities, fully nude, for minutes on end. I don’t want to say that Nisemonogatari has surpassed that level of service, since the sexual situations are nowhere near as extreme, but in terms of sheer length, it beets everything.

So yeah, I find Shinobu hot in this scene. How could I not? The only way to reject this level of fanservice is by finding it unappealing to begin with. Shinobu isn’t my ideal loli or anything. I don’t really like how Shinbo has gone out of his way to make her look young. The appeal of a “paleololi” for me is that they are an adult. It’s both a matter of personality and a matter of my preferring developed bodies (just ones which happened to complete development and still be under five feet tall with no chest). But I still like Shinobu. I think Nadeko and even Mayoi are hotter, but I also like Shinobu more than them as a character, and that in itself makes me enjoy getting fanservice for her even more.

Araragi is Cool

Araragi has always been my favorite character in this franchise. I love the way in which he thinks about his relationships with the other characters (largely because the way I think about and fret over my own friends is exactly like the way he does.) At the start of this scene, Araragi’s facial expressions convey a deep level of relief and happiness over Shinobu’s sudden outburst of speech. He’s excited to have a chance at bonding with Shinobu, and throughout the scene seems to be so glad that she’s talking, he hardly ever objects to what she says. Even better, when Shinobu finally threatens him with a serious proposition, he is stern with her and lets her know exactly how their relationship should be.

Shinboooooooo!

I’ve been watching this motherfucker’s shit for half a decade now—a bathroom shaped like a church, complete with stained-glass windows, doesn’t make me bat an eye. Hell, that room is the most standard Shinboism in the show so far. I might not have even noticed it were it not for the fact that it is, indeed, a bathroom.

This will sound weird, but I’m in love with bathrooms. It’s an obsession which mostly grew in the past two years, as I’ve had my own bathroom, and I’ve spent a lot of time in there. I’ve even made a music video about my bathroom (called “The Sentimental Bathroom“). More than bathrooms in general, I’m in love with baths and showers, especially big-ass tubs like the one seen in Nise 4. The use of these bathtubs in Seikon no Qwaser was one of my favorite aspects of the show (and especially my alltime favorite ED). You give me a whole scene centered around one such bathtub, along with naked Shinobu, and you get the sensory overload that was my original post.

Anyway, there’s a grand and a half of words you didn’t want to read.

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.

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!!!

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.

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 porn starts with HOLY SHIT 1080p?! When did this become a thing that occurs with current anime?! Holy balls! Face-melting gorgeousness. And what occurs in this glorious 1080p episode? Almost constant sexual tension, nudity, service, my god, I honestly felt like I was watching porn. This goes beyond the impossible with animated fanservice to a level tread only by the likes of Seikon no Qwaser, and it achieves this without even showing any tits. You see, in a show like High School DxD, which we would all call a “fanservice show,” the service amounts to cuts of boobs or someone faceplanting into some girl’s panties, etc. Hardcore fanservice shows might sometimes entertain longer stretches of perversion, like a “perverted scene,” such as what occurred sometimes in the more service-heavy episodes of Ben-to (which sucked).

But here’s the thing: Nisemonogatari has these shows beat on so many levels. This is a FUBU otaku show with gorgeous character art and designs, directed by a guy who once took two years off from his career to make a bunch of trippy porn OVAs, now handling what must be the highest budget he’s ever even come close to having. This episode contains not sexual moments, but sexual situations, which are long, and which are as gorgeous as they can be, plus as perverse as they can be without a bunch of gross moaning (which lesser shows would have to resort to) and people actually having sex (porn).

What else do we get from this episode?

1. The super-nicely-animated Araragi Karen. Yes, her selling point right now is actually that almost everything she does is something that makes my eyes cum (without having to involve my dick). That and already having a Kitamura Eri performance than I like more than any other I’ve heard from her. (Did anyone else think she sounded strangely like Tamura Yukari?) Being as Karen is already A. always fun to look at, B. fun to listen to, and C. says fun things, she’s already a solid Fun Character.

2. Kanbaru! I forgot how much I loved you!!! Here’s something that doesn’t feel true: I haven’t watched Bakemonogatari all the way through in two years. Because I rewatched bits and pieces since then, I forgot about this, but I remembered it harder than ever by realizing that Kanbaru is so awesome and I didn’t even remember it. Additionally, wow, it somehow feels like I haven’t heard Sawashiro Miyuki in a while. I think I’ve been dropping all her shows or she hasn’t been playing characters I was interested in. She was my favorite seiyuu for quite a while, and now I remember why.

3. Speaking of my favorite seiyuu, Hanazawa Kana is still playing some *ludicrously* hot loli in this show whose sexual lust factor went skyrocketing through the roof. Wait a minute, was that a porn version of Renai Circulation playing while she was trying to rape Araragi on the twister board? Yes, yes it was.

Yes. It. Was.

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%