2009: My Third Quarter in Anime
Oct. 2nd, 2009 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWith another three months gone by, once again I'm looking back at the anime I managed to watch in them. Despite lamentations over threadbare releases on message boards I follow and still more series piling up on my shelves as I seem to get closer to and yet never quite complete picking up every back-catalog title I have at least some slight interest in, my interest seems to hold steady.
I started off rewatching the series that got turned into the middle of Robotech, Southern Cross, pondering along the way my interest in it as compared to what it might be "supposed" to be. At the same time, I was finishing off the "giant robot" anime GaoGaiGar, aware of the comments of others about it escalating to ever-greater levels of impressiveness. I was certainly entertained, if without wanting to wind up the way I sometimes can't help but suspect some of those comments seem to turn out, with the compliments one breath ahead of saying how jaded they are with everything else. Finishing off the last anime episodes of Black Lagoon seemed a suitable companion to the series, but so too, and somewhat to my surprise, were rewatching the first episodes of Gundam 00; for some reason, I was able to see just a little more in them than I had before, while still anticipating the stuff in later episodes my interest had picked up on the first time around.
There seemed general surprise among anime watchers when the announced repeat broadcast in Japan of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya started including new episodes. I took some interest in that too, but perhaps in wondering about whether to join the crowd this time and start watching the episodes right away I started dwelling on "the tyranny of choice," sure that lots of different groups would jump to "fansub" the episodes yet just not sure what group would manage a careful translation, not too much in the way of an overelaborate presentation, and reasonable speed in releases. Then, some genuine official subtitled translations were placed (if for brief periods) on YouTube. I managed to watch both of them and found them entertaining in the way I'd more or less liked the first series in the end, also aware of how the old episodes and the new ones were arranged in an "enhanced chronological order" and how certain people who seemed to have held a hard line on how the non-linear order of the original broadcast was the only way the series could ever be seen were now saying "that was then; this is now"... but while waiting and waiting to see if any more official translations would appear, I managed to pick up that the last episode shown that way, where Haruhi Suzumiya drags her reluctant followers and/or secret observers through a collection of stereotypical summer activities, kept being remade over and over, presenting the same events in different ways with the characters "trapped in a time loop" they didn't know how to escape. Vast numbers of people got worked up over this, and then over the remaining new episodes not getting to what they seemed to really want to see, but any temptation to the dark glee of the outsider seemed to vanish in my case; I was aware of how I've had my own brushes with disagreeing with "general opinions"... of course, I'm still wondering how and if I'll ever see those new episodes. As far as other "official streams" go, I've kept watching the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime. The brisk pace it kept up to get through the parts of the manga adapted in the previous series seemed in the end to have seriously depressed interest in it, but now that it's got through to the stuff not adapted before that interest may have picked up a little again. In any case, having stopped reading the manga in a fit of over a few panels being edited right around the "point of divergence," I'm still in kind of a "what else can I do?" mood.
I got around to starting into the second series of Maria Watches Over Us, thinking of it as a change of pace. Once again, I wound up with the strong temptation to "riff" everything into joking double entendres as great quantities of melodrama are mined from situations that wind up resolved if not by the end of the episode than by the end of the plot arc, but I still don't get the feeling there's anything truly "sensationalistic" (or wrong in any fashion) about the senior-junior bonds at the series' Catholic girl's school; for all that several "I love you" declarations are made towards the close of the series, when a pair of characters wind up with an uneasy secret, it's because they both happen to have connections to Buddhism. I also opened up a series not a change of pace (at least in that way) a little uncertain about how much I would get out of it; I had ordered Aquarion perhaps most of all to try and support what was then a new strategy of releasing more of a series at once so as to perhaps compete a little better with the vital statistics of "domestic" releases and maybe even sell a little better, and only after that because of a general interest in "mecha" series, but I seemed most aware of casually dismissive comments about the series itself. Both halves of it sat on a shelf for a while before I at last resolved to open them... and the funny thing was, I found myself enjoying the series in some significant part because I could acknowledge the absurdities in it. When dealing with a "giant robot system" that can be assembled from three different machines in three different ways (I noticed in the DVD extras that it was prototyped using Lego, which somehow encourages positive feelings from me), the assembly of which is an orgasmic experience for its threesome of pilots (varying with different episodes), and with reincarnation, psychic powers, and just a touch of vampirism tossed in, "absurdity" seems obvious and yet entertaining. At times, though, I find myself thinking back to a few different mecha series that were more "reasonable" and seemed to have better reputations, but which I just couldn't seem to "connect" quite as well to. I also suppose I did wonder at the very start if the whole thing would be a matter of the lead character showing up to keep pushing his way into action and outdoing those characters actually trained to do the things he's "a natural" at, something unfortunately reminiscent of a few too many MSTings I've read in the past, but the series managed to move away from that danger. I also started into the second series of Victorian Romance Emma, which picks up where the first left off with an expanded cast, many of who seem much more comfortable going their own way through late Victorian society with what they've been dealt than the main characters are; a few of them did prompt initial "should we have heard about them before now?" reactions from me, but I managed to cope.
I'm still managing to plug my way through Macross 7. A good while back, I recall one person trying to talk up his interest in the series on a Robotech mailing list making one of those familiar "get past this point, and the real story will get moving" declarations (and another person whose distaste in the general idea of the series was already established responded that he now had a precise number of episodes he knew he wouldn't bother to watch on the mere hope that those set up by them would pick up); I believe I've passed that point, and at it things just got more ridiculous. At the same time, though, I keep wondering if I've heard others say the series "has the courage of its own convictions," and if there's something to that even as I know I can't articulate it. In any case, while this is a small matter next to disliking what's happened to returning characters or even the venerable getting worked up over "piloting a mecha with guitar strings," I have started thinking, and keep thinking, that a lot of the outfits in the series look unappealing to me. My other pure "fansub" experiences seem to have been more rewarding, though. While working my way through Cross Game, I heard that the group I was acquiring the work of would go on a brief hiatus. Instead of just taking that break as it came, I happened to pick up on a message board signature comment to seek out a different baseball anime, one set in the mid-1920s. From the reign name of the emperor of Japan at the time, it's called Taisho Baseball Girls (my own possibly too-simple translation of the Japanese words everyone else just uses untranslated), the rest of the title coming from some high school girls joining up to try and challenge not just the boys but the time they're in. With that said, the series may be more of a confection than that capsule summary; I've noticed comments that it really seems to be "about" its high-powered Japanese voice acting cast, something that more or less goes right over my head. Still, I seem to be extracting enough enjoyment out of it anyway. As well, I had ordered a different baseball anime again that actually got licensed while wondering if it would seem "too different" in character design and general themes from Cross Game, which was based on a manga by the person who had also created the manga for the previous baseball anime I had watched, but it seems that Taisho Baseball Girls managed to defuse that general uncertainty.
To round off the past three months, I managed to get to the special almost-one-time-only screening of the first of the series of Evangelion movies now licensed for North America. I had wondered how many other people in the area would even know about this, but there seemed a fair crowd there. There were some technical difficulties starting off, with the sound channels the dialogue was actually carried on almost swallowed (when the first few minutes were repeated, I managed to listen to the "dub" without freaking out even if I wondered about some of the voices as compared to my own ideas of how they "ought" to sound) and an odd swimmy look to the sideways pan shots before the screen ratio got fiddled with, but if the showing really was just a Blu-Ray blown up to fill a theatre screen it looked awfully good. (Still, I believe that one of the people sitting right behind me managed to fall asleep during the showing.) As for the movie itself, I've got to admit that I managed to find a fansub of it before it got licensed, perhaps smoothing out any reactions whatsoever I might have had. While I've pondered if Evangelion is now "familiar" to the point where it's all too easy to dismiss any new project whatsoever as "domesticated," remembering too all those MSTings of various fanfics that went to absurd lengths to try and "save the characters from themselves"... at the same time, too, I can say "the whole thing is still interesting."
I started off rewatching the series that got turned into the middle of Robotech, Southern Cross, pondering along the way my interest in it as compared to what it might be "supposed" to be. At the same time, I was finishing off the "giant robot" anime GaoGaiGar, aware of the comments of others about it escalating to ever-greater levels of impressiveness. I was certainly entertained, if without wanting to wind up the way I sometimes can't help but suspect some of those comments seem to turn out, with the compliments one breath ahead of saying how jaded they are with everything else. Finishing off the last anime episodes of Black Lagoon seemed a suitable companion to the series, but so too, and somewhat to my surprise, were rewatching the first episodes of Gundam 00; for some reason, I was able to see just a little more in them than I had before, while still anticipating the stuff in later episodes my interest had picked up on the first time around.
There seemed general surprise among anime watchers when the announced repeat broadcast in Japan of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya started including new episodes. I took some interest in that too, but perhaps in wondering about whether to join the crowd this time and start watching the episodes right away I started dwelling on "the tyranny of choice," sure that lots of different groups would jump to "fansub" the episodes yet just not sure what group would manage a careful translation, not too much in the way of an overelaborate presentation, and reasonable speed in releases. Then, some genuine official subtitled translations were placed (if for brief periods) on YouTube. I managed to watch both of them and found them entertaining in the way I'd more or less liked the first series in the end, also aware of how the old episodes and the new ones were arranged in an "enhanced chronological order" and how certain people who seemed to have held a hard line on how the non-linear order of the original broadcast was the only way the series could ever be seen were now saying "that was then; this is now"... but while waiting and waiting to see if any more official translations would appear, I managed to pick up that the last episode shown that way, where Haruhi Suzumiya drags her reluctant followers and/or secret observers through a collection of stereotypical summer activities, kept being remade over and over, presenting the same events in different ways with the characters "trapped in a time loop" they didn't know how to escape. Vast numbers of people got worked up over this, and then over the remaining new episodes not getting to what they seemed to really want to see, but any temptation to the dark glee of the outsider seemed to vanish in my case; I was aware of how I've had my own brushes with disagreeing with "general opinions"... of course, I'm still wondering how and if I'll ever see those new episodes. As far as other "official streams" go, I've kept watching the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime. The brisk pace it kept up to get through the parts of the manga adapted in the previous series seemed in the end to have seriously depressed interest in it, but now that it's got through to the stuff not adapted before that interest may have picked up a little again. In any case, having stopped reading the manga in a fit of over a few panels being edited right around the "point of divergence," I'm still in kind of a "what else can I do?" mood.
I got around to starting into the second series of Maria Watches Over Us, thinking of it as a change of pace. Once again, I wound up with the strong temptation to "riff" everything into joking double entendres as great quantities of melodrama are mined from situations that wind up resolved if not by the end of the episode than by the end of the plot arc, but I still don't get the feeling there's anything truly "sensationalistic" (or wrong in any fashion) about the senior-junior bonds at the series' Catholic girl's school; for all that several "I love you" declarations are made towards the close of the series, when a pair of characters wind up with an uneasy secret, it's because they both happen to have connections to Buddhism. I also opened up a series not a change of pace (at least in that way) a little uncertain about how much I would get out of it; I had ordered Aquarion perhaps most of all to try and support what was then a new strategy of releasing more of a series at once so as to perhaps compete a little better with the vital statistics of "domestic" releases and maybe even sell a little better, and only after that because of a general interest in "mecha" series, but I seemed most aware of casually dismissive comments about the series itself. Both halves of it sat on a shelf for a while before I at last resolved to open them... and the funny thing was, I found myself enjoying the series in some significant part because I could acknowledge the absurdities in it. When dealing with a "giant robot system" that can be assembled from three different machines in three different ways (I noticed in the DVD extras that it was prototyped using Lego, which somehow encourages positive feelings from me), the assembly of which is an orgasmic experience for its threesome of pilots (varying with different episodes), and with reincarnation, psychic powers, and just a touch of vampirism tossed in, "absurdity" seems obvious and yet entertaining. At times, though, I find myself thinking back to a few different mecha series that were more "reasonable" and seemed to have better reputations, but which I just couldn't seem to "connect" quite as well to. I also suppose I did wonder at the very start if the whole thing would be a matter of the lead character showing up to keep pushing his way into action and outdoing those characters actually trained to do the things he's "a natural" at, something unfortunately reminiscent of a few too many MSTings I've read in the past, but the series managed to move away from that danger. I also started into the second series of Victorian Romance Emma, which picks up where the first left off with an expanded cast, many of who seem much more comfortable going their own way through late Victorian society with what they've been dealt than the main characters are; a few of them did prompt initial "should we have heard about them before now?" reactions from me, but I managed to cope.
I'm still managing to plug my way through Macross 7. A good while back, I recall one person trying to talk up his interest in the series on a Robotech mailing list making one of those familiar "get past this point, and the real story will get moving" declarations (and another person whose distaste in the general idea of the series was already established responded that he now had a precise number of episodes he knew he wouldn't bother to watch on the mere hope that those set up by them would pick up); I believe I've passed that point, and at it things just got more ridiculous. At the same time, though, I keep wondering if I've heard others say the series "has the courage of its own convictions," and if there's something to that even as I know I can't articulate it. In any case, while this is a small matter next to disliking what's happened to returning characters or even the venerable getting worked up over "piloting a mecha with guitar strings," I have started thinking, and keep thinking, that a lot of the outfits in the series look unappealing to me. My other pure "fansub" experiences seem to have been more rewarding, though. While working my way through Cross Game, I heard that the group I was acquiring the work of would go on a brief hiatus. Instead of just taking that break as it came, I happened to pick up on a message board signature comment to seek out a different baseball anime, one set in the mid-1920s. From the reign name of the emperor of Japan at the time, it's called Taisho Baseball Girls (my own possibly too-simple translation of the Japanese words everyone else just uses untranslated), the rest of the title coming from some high school girls joining up to try and challenge not just the boys but the time they're in. With that said, the series may be more of a confection than that capsule summary; I've noticed comments that it really seems to be "about" its high-powered Japanese voice acting cast, something that more or less goes right over my head. Still, I seem to be extracting enough enjoyment out of it anyway. As well, I had ordered a different baseball anime again that actually got licensed while wondering if it would seem "too different" in character design and general themes from Cross Game, which was based on a manga by the person who had also created the manga for the previous baseball anime I had watched, but it seems that Taisho Baseball Girls managed to defuse that general uncertainty.
To round off the past three months, I managed to get to the special almost-one-time-only screening of the first of the series of Evangelion movies now licensed for North America. I had wondered how many other people in the area would even know about this, but there seemed a fair crowd there. There were some technical difficulties starting off, with the sound channels the dialogue was actually carried on almost swallowed (when the first few minutes were repeated, I managed to listen to the "dub" without freaking out even if I wondered about some of the voices as compared to my own ideas of how they "ought" to sound) and an odd swimmy look to the sideways pan shots before the screen ratio got fiddled with, but if the showing really was just a Blu-Ray blown up to fill a theatre screen it looked awfully good. (Still, I believe that one of the people sitting right behind me managed to fall asleep during the showing.) As for the movie itself, I've got to admit that I managed to find a fansub of it before it got licensed, perhaps smoothing out any reactions whatsoever I might have had. While I've pondered if Evangelion is now "familiar" to the point where it's all too easy to dismiss any new project whatsoever as "domesticated," remembering too all those MSTings of various fanfics that went to absurd lengths to try and "save the characters from themselves"... at the same time, too, I can say "the whole thing is still interesting."