Not Dead, Current Season, Watched Umineko, etc.

Holy fuuuck, talk about blinking off the map! It occurred to me that besides the people I talk to through AIM and emails or the occasional comment I left here and there, my internet presence has been non-existent, which is pretty impressively the opposite of what it’s ever been.

Edit: By the way, I never said anything about it, but apparently I made honey-bunny worried, so I’ll take this chance to say that I’ve been on a twitter sabbatical, which is why I haven’t been posting there. (Why I never mentioned this should be obvious lol.)

Art by Ayakashi

So anyway, I’m sure some people (namely the contributors) are concerned about the fate of the Acadime Awards that were supposed to go through this month. I haven’t decided how I’m going to release them yet. Obviously, I hadn’t finished them at the start of the month, and between my becoming violently sick and figuring out how much work the posts would take, I decided to push the whole thing back. Thankfully, the series isn’t really time-sensitive, since it’s not like 2010 is going anywhere, so the posts will all come out at some time. I love the contributions I’ve gotten and will definitely make sure they all get seen (especially those of Taka, who’s managed to put thoughts into words about seiyuu that I’ve always wished I could.)

Which reminds me! Taka, who will be known as Thoughtcannon from now on I guess (aka @denpapopcorn), is now a member of this site! What he’ll post on or whether he’ll post at all is his choice, but he has no site of his own, and the way he looks at anime seems to me very similar to the way I do, so I begged him to join, and hopefully he seizes the opportunity~~

Now that those important site announcements are out of the way, let’s talk anime, which I honestly haven’t watched much of in the last couple of weeks for the same reason I haven’t posted (violent illness giving way to rampant laziness—also, I started working on my novel again). For starters, current season shows.

Oh lord...

According to Anime Calendar, the shows I’m still “watching” are as follows:

Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (3 seen): It’s alright. The second episode was pretty lame, but it picked up again in the third, so I’ll just keep watching until I get consistently bored enough to drop it. So far, the pantsless masou-shoujo is my biggest reason for continuing.

Hourou Musuko (2 seen): Even though I’m now way behind on this, it’s the show I’m most actively intending to follow. Hourou Musuko was a treasure of a manga, and the anime is every bit as amazing, if not more so by virtue of being anime.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica (3 seen): Already talked about the eps I’ve seen here, but this show continues to be a very important cultural phenomenon (in that it’s somehow already like the highest-selling anime of all time, and the manga is apparently sold out everywhere in a matter of days). I’m not sure if I’ll keep watching this while everyone else is because of my usual fear of watching anything that gets a lot of attention until it’s over. That said, this will probably be in my “god tier” of favorites.

Yumekui Merry (4 seen): I’m supposedly episodically blogging this on SOS or whatever. Episode 4 had pissed me off, but I heard 5 makes up for it, so I’ll get on that.

I need to catch up on Star Driver also. And Suite Precure just started, but the first ep was very nice, so I’ll continue that.

The shows I’ve got on-hold until they end are: Level-E, possibly Fractale (I haven’t started it), Index 2, Letter Bee Reverse, Mitsudomoe 2, and I’m not sure if I’ll continue watching Beelzebub with my brother or if he’ll get fed up with me and watch the rest by himself.

Everything else I dropped, so let’s talk about disappointments.

yep.

Freezing (4 seen): God damn it, this show was so disappointing. The first episode promised a plot-heavy, brutal series that would be full of surprises. It established an interesting world and had the right mix of tits and blood. And then what do we get? Real Bout fucking High School/Tenjou Tenge bullshit. Tired bullying sub-plots, boring characters, bad directing, and the whole 4:3 thing drives me nuts (I just force it into 16:9, I can’t handle it). I wanted this show to rule, but it was a big flop.

Gosick (2 seen): I couldn’t get through the second episode. The main guy was fucking insufferable (not to mention still ugly). I know that this guy was much cooler in the novel, and his relationship with Victorique much more meaningful. Good thing I’ve got the amazing Star Driver to constantly re-assure me that Bones is still awesome.

All others were dropped for convenience.

Oh Cobra, where were you when we needed you most?

Also, because my friends wouldn’t shut up about it, and then my brother finally watched it, I decided to watch Umineko no Naku Koro ni.

The first two arcs were boring, the third one was amazing, and the fourth made my brain hurt. The thing about this series is that I can tell exactly how it failed the source material, because it created an obvious problem in the plot; the whole point was that Battler had to prove that the events could be performed without magic, but in no way did the anime make that seem probable. And it was just confusing with all the skipping around towards the end, not to mention having no resolution.

I hope that now, since the games are finished, DEEN goes ahead and makes a second season. (Before anyone screams “why would you do that?!,” know that I appreciate how terrible DEEN is, but I think they had more than enough fun with Umineko to make up for it.) I just want to know the rest of the story. When I watched Higurashi, the first series was fun and all, but it was only after learning everything in the second series that the experience became fulfilling. I want that experience with Umineko, because I do find the universe fascinating and love some of the characters. (Plus I’ve heard Bernkastel and Lambdadelta are more important in the next game, so yes please!)

Spoken like a man after Baka-Raptor's heart. But seriously, I so shipped BattlerXMaria.

You may be wondering, if I care so much, why not play the games, most of which have been translated into English? Well, I went ahead and downloaded Witch-Hunt’s translation of the first game and played it for about five minutes before I got really tired of it. For one thing, the prose isn’t very exciting (don’t know if this is Ryukishi07’s fault or the translators’), and for another, the character designs are ugly as sin. It just doesn’t mean as much if I don’t wanna boff half the cast. (And seriously, the Higurashi game had better art than this—what happened?)

So there you have it. I’m alive or something.