Digiboy’s Character Database of Love – 27. Shaoran Li & 28. Sakurano Kurimu

This is the fourteenth post in Digiboy’s Character Database of Love. It took so long to release because I forgot about it >.<

27. Shaoran Li – Cardcaptor Sakura

The Theme of “Going Against Type” Runs Deep In Hourou Musuko

Hourou Musuko is the story of a boy who wishes he were a girl and a girl who wishes she were a boy and the cascade of drama and gender confusion surrounding themselves and their friends. It’s safe to say that I’ve never seen a gender-bender nearly as good, nor as effective and in many ways relatable. Knowing all that, this should’ve been obvious.

Horie Yui...?!

The Bakemonogatari/Durarara Kamiya Sister Phenomenon

Just a quick post on another funny seiyuu connection I noticed.

Kamiya Hiroshi plays the voices of Araragi Koyomi in Bakemonogatari and Orihara Izaya in Durarara!!

Araragi Karen

Throughout Bakemonogatari, Araragi’s two middle-school sisters make several appearances, though they don’t end up doing much (being major characters in the later novels).

Araragi Tsukihi

The new Durarara!! OVA introduced Izaya’s twin younger sisters who likewise haven’t had much screentime yet, but are also major characters later in the novels.

Orihara Mairu

I thought it was interesting that both Kamiya Hiroshi characters had two younger sisters. Doesn’t seem like a strong connection? In both shows, the more energetic sister is played by Kitamura Eri and wears a hooded yellow jacket, while the younger/introverted sister wears green.

Orihara Kururi

Do Your Avatars/Banners/Headers Have Special Meanings?

Even though I talk to anime fans about many other things, it’s hard to divide those conversations from anime as a whole because more often than not, anime fans use anime avatars. On Twitter, I used to distinguish my spam followers from real ones simply because all the followers with human images were spam, with the exception of famous people (not my followers, people I follow).

One of my occasional variants. Actually my Tumblr account avatar fwr.

I know that a lot of people use images from their favorite shows or of their favorite characters. Some stick with the same avatar forever (ghostlightning since settling on the skull leader toy; chii’s had the same one on every site as long as I’ve known her). Others change their avatars every season to whatever their favorite character of the season is (Fall ’10 seemed like mostly Ikamusume, and Spring ’11 seems like mostly Kyuubei).

No matter the case, these images aren’t chosen at random. It could be that they’re simply the best-looking image a person found of whatever character, but I think more often people chose images to represent a certain aspect of the character that they appreciate most, or one that represents their favorite moment featuring that character. (My co-blogger Thoughtcannon chooses his Twitter avatars from memorable scenes in current shows.) There’s a reason that GL is using a blurry picture of a dusty action figure for his avatar rather than just a piece of series art. (I suspect it’s the same reason he has a twinkling space background on his site.)

I’m definitely one to dramatically overthink my choices of header, avatar, etc. (big surprise there). I don’t want to talk about it all day, so I’ll stick with the avatars and site header that I currently use.

Art by Mizuki Makoto

1. Tsukuyomi Komoe-sensei with a cigarette and a beer.

Used as: Facebook avatar, MAL avatar, Image on this blog’s intro page, Twitter background

A few months ago I decided that Tsukuyomi Komoe would become my “mascot character,” because she’s the perfect representation of my bias. Komoe is one of my alltime-favorite anime characters in spite of being a decidedly minor cast member in To Aru Majutsu no Index. (Just so happens that her big moment in episode three is one of my favorite scenes ever.) I’ve already explained exactly what my bias constitutes in my post about her, and this image shows everything I love about her at once, which, combined with being from a great artist, makes it my favorite Komoe-sensei image.

2. Tsukuyomi Komoe moeblob version

Used as: Twitter avatar

Another part of using Komoe-sensei as my mascot character has to do with changing my theme colors from darks to lights—more specifically from red to pink. Red has been my theme color for a long time because I feel all of the emotions derived from red perfectly describe my personality, especially in writing. However, I’ve calmed down a lot and become less intense and more chill about things, so I want to lighten up my image. Because of this, I’ve shifted focus to cute, brightly-colored images. This image was chosen for being very pink and for being recognizable even at minimum size.

3. Remilia Scarlet over the bay of blood

Used as: Gravatar, Scarlet Monochrome header

This is my oldest avatar currently in use, and I’m unwilling to change it on Gravatar simply because Gravatar effects such a large number of sites. Remilia Scarlet is my favorite character (no matter what I may say otherwise), and while she has an infinitely vast wealth of spectacular fanart, this was one of the first pieces that I saw and first used as a desktop background on my old piece-of-shit mac. It was some time later when I came up with the phrase “scarlet monochrome” that this image took on a special meaning.

Scarlet monochrome is a vision I have of the world as “black, white, and red.” (I realize that “scarlet monochrome” inappropriately describes such a concept, though black and white will exist within the spectrum of scarlet monochrome). I’ve totally latched onto that phrase and use it like a sort of genre title for my work (like Guitar Wolf calling their music “jet rock and roll,” or Static X calling theirs “evil disco”). Because the term is so important to me, it became the title of my personal tumblr; the image followed. I find it captivating, and of course, besides Remilia, the whole thing is literally set in scarlet monochrome. I also used this image as my custom badge for Otakon 2010, since I always use a symbolic image. (Accordingly, the Komoe-sensei image will be my badge for Otakon 2011.)

Art by petenshi

4. Konpaku Youmu examining her sword while naked for some reason

Used as: Header for this site

If you never visited the intro page before I put Komoe-sensei up, then I bet you didn’t know Youmu was naked in this pic! There’s a fun story behind this one: I went to gelbooru and searched the tags “loli sword absurdres,” which turned up two pages of images, not one of which was worksafe. Not even the official Shana art. I needed an image that showed the character’s face and their sword close enough together, but without having to include any naughty bits. I also didn’t want the image to take itself too seriously, since the aim of this site design was more relaxed. That I happened to find a cute picture of a character I like examining her sword at eye level was a tiny miracle. I can imagine her saying to herself “my sword is unbelievably dull!”

That about covers my active images—I try to be consistent so it’s easy to tell who I am wherever you go. Do your image choices have any personal significance?

How My Tastes Stand Up To The Common Fan’s

The blogosphere is funny in that if viewed exclusively, it gives a skewed perspective of public opinion. Even though there are a hell of a lot of blogs, and between them the full spectrum of opinions on a show is covered, the percentages of people holding those opinions may be opposed to real public opinion. For instance, a number of bloggers may love To Aru Majutsu no Index, but even more dislike it—in spite of the fact that in general, Index is a well-liked series, and if every anime fan was voicing their thoughts, it’d have more of a positive presence in the ‘sphere.

Art by kiriu

Individual perspective doesn’t help. I’m going to break out the statistics in a moment, but first I’ll state that none of my favorite anime are generally considered bad. The only show on my list that has a score below 7.5 on MAL is Le Portrait de Petit Cossette, which is the show I care least about insofar as feeling defensive of its quality.

But because I’m a super-big fan of a show like Canaan, its negative press in the blogosphere makes me feel like I’m part of a small minority who likes the show, when in reality, while it’s not the most popular show on my list, it’s still generally liked overall.

When You See It, You’ll Shit Bricks – Look-Alike Roles

One of my most memorable moments as a fan came last October while watching Beyblade: Metal Fusion dubbed on Cartoon Network early one morning. The character whose image you see above, named Daidouji, was on the screen, and I joked that “he looks like he’d be played by Koyasu Takehito in the Japanese version.” Realizing that Koyasu is in everything and it might not be such a stretch, I then researched the matter and was stunned to find that he was, in fact, voiced by Koyasu.

The only thing I had to go on with this guess was the character’s appearance. Koyasu just happens to have an assload of characters that look exactly alike. Check out a few of these to see the image I had in my head when I pinned him as the voice of Daidouji.

I’m Making “Seiyuu Cards”

Ridiculously attentive readers may have noticed the “Seiyuu Cards” page I put up a few days ago. This idea bubbled up out of my desire to easily compile the roles that I care about from different creators without having to wade through ANN or MAL pages. Originally this plan was to include all creators, and may yet still, but for now I’m focused on seiyuu.

Making these seiyuu cards is fun for me because I lack the words to talk about seiyuu regularly. It’s not easy to put into words why, for instance, I love Hanazawa Kana’s performance as Nessa in Fractale so much, beyond “she’s so adorable!” Any other aspect of the series I could break down intricately, and I feel like my inability to talk about seiyuu betrays the depth at which I care about them. These days, seiyuu alone can be my reason for watching a series (see Fractale again).

Click to enlarge

I’ve Finally, Truly, Honestly Given Up On Ranked Favorites Lists

About fucking time, right? I’ve been obsessing over how to make a ranked favorites list for years, and I’ve done it a lot of different ways. At the end of 2010 I did a Top 100 and said I’d update it once a month from then on. I didn’t update it at the end of January because I hardly watched any anime that month, but come the end of February, I’d have to edit it to include Cardcaptor Sakura.

Before I even looked at my list, I asked myself a simple question: can I honestly decide whether I like Cardcaptor Sakura more or less than FullMetal Alchemist Brotherhood? The answer is no. If I were in the process of making a list, I’d probably just arbitrarily list them next to one-another, but I don’t care to do that.

Rejoice! Art by harepore

The Top 100 was a magnum opus. It was the last ranked list I ever needed to make, and I’m satisfied with that. I really don’t want to go through the process anymore. I’ve almost completely stopped making favorites lists, actually, just because it’s finally reached the saturation point of repetitiveness for me, and at this point, I’m very, very confident in what shows I like most, not needing to list them that way.

The biggest reason I was obsessed with ranked lists was that I always feared that if the shows weren’t in a proper order, then people wouldn’t understand that I liked one show more than another. These days, I honestly like all of my favorites about the same. I can’t even say that I’ve got a “favorite anime”—now, I just focus on obsessing over one show at a time (you can tell when I’m doing it because my site banner changes again lol).

Accordingly, I changed my favorites page to an alphabetized list (with writing again!), though I’ll leave the image version of the Top 100 at the bottom for memory’s sake (and for Chii).

What Do Cardcaptor Sakura and Elfen Lied Have In Common?

</bait title>. The answer is Kanbe Mamoru, who directed Elfen Lied and was an episode director and storyboarder on 14 episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura. I’ve got a number of posts planned regarding Kanbe because his career fascinates me, but for now I want to talk about his influence on those episodes.

Kanbe worked as episode director on episodes 5, 9, 12, 16, 19, 21, 25, 28, 30, 33, 37, 41, 44, and 48, and he storyboarded all of those except for forty-eight. He performed those two jobs on more episodes than any of the other episode directors (of which there are 24) or storyboarders (of which there are 23) across the 70-episode series.