2009: My Fourth Quarter in Anime
Dec. 31st, 2009 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerOnce again I'm trying to set down a few words about all the anime I watched in the three months just gone by, however nonspecific those thoughts always seem to turn out. I suppose I'm also conscious that at this time, other people are thinking back on and summing up a full ten years in a wide variety of things. That seems a bit much for me, but I am able to remember that ten years ago, I was facing (among other things) a "break from anime," having moved to a new job and away from any chance of visiting my university and staying with friends while I went to the anime club shows there, but not making enough money to buy what then seemed rather pricy videocassettes found only in comics shops. Many things have changed a lot since then, but I do still find myself thinking both "nope, not 'burned out' yet" but also "well, I'm still buying big quantities, faster than I can watch it." (Two big orders arrived just lately, one on either side of Christmas.) Beyond those paired constants of the present moment, I suppose there was also something of a change to my viewing habits in the past convenient block of time. Having been put on shift work again, I wondered how I would take days when there weren't hours left to watch anything, but wound up thinking they heightened my appetite so that during days off, I was fine watching several episodes. With that so, I may indeed be getting through a little more each week than when it could be tricky to find time in many weekday evenings to watch two episodes.
I suppose I will have to give up one specific strategy, of going back to a series and watching one episode of it every day until I've seen all of it. (Of course, that always did somewhat interfere with trying to see new series...) It may have been somewhat fitting, therefore, that I finished off my year-long project of going back to the different anime series that got combined into Robotech by rewatching Genesis Climber Mospeada. With that done, though, I lived dangerously and watched Robotech: Shadow Chronicles again, aware of the comments of others grown unimpressed about that sort of anime-like project as time has worn by. Thinking back to my own reactions the first time I saw it, it's tempting to say something along the lines of "how it was done was completely overshadowed by it having been done at all"... and yet, again I found myself slow to take offence. This time around, the one explanation I can seem to offer was that I thought of it not as "the continuation," but just "a continuation." With that complete, I was then tempted to really push my luck with respect to certain other opinions encountered of late and rewatch Macross: Do You Remember Love, but never quite got around to it.
Sometimes splitting things into quarterly periods doesn't go quite as neatly: while I was rewatching Mospeada, I was also trying to finish the last few episodes of several series I had been concentrating on in the three months before, and didn't seem to have any last-minute swings of opinion about them. With that done, I was able to move on to following up on some series I had been watching in parts. Starting into the "second season" of Code Geass, I was unfortunately conscious of unspecified complaints about it. However, the negative opinions didn't seem quite as monolithic as with certain other unfortunate series, and I couldn't just leave off and conclude myself satisfied after the cliffhanger at the end of the first run of the series... It was a little tempting to wonder if some "reset button" had been pushed in the first few episodes of Code Geass R2, and yet not quite. Too, it didn't seem to take long at all before the series was back to its cat-and-mouse twists. At the halfway point, I suppose it's at least possible I might yet conclude some recent moments were where things started running down and I just didn't have the courage to admit it as they happened, but for now things have left off on another staggering pause. In continuing Gundam 00, though, in that case I might have lapsed back into waiting with some impatience for things which I've already seen to happen; the second set of DVDs leaving off one episode before the single greatest cliffhanger of that series in my own estimation might have something to do with that.
In between getting back to things, I did manage to open a few series that had been sitting on my shelves for quite a while. Having already seen "fansubs" of the Dirty Pair TV series, I started into the follow-up, officially licensed "OVAs," and found them just about as enjoyable. On a completionist whim, I then managed to buy used DVDs of the last two extended-length Dirty Pair OVAs; they were somewhat of a change in tone, but weren't necessarily bad for that. However, in finishing off with the OVA I had seen over a decade before at university, I realised I'd forgotten that this one had ended with everyone in the city the interstellar troubleshooters had been sent to investigate being killed, not quite the fault of the Dirty Pair themselves, which was how I'd once worried every Dirty Pair adventure would end... After watching the extended-length Lucky Star OVA and finishing that series off, I at last felt free to open a series I had heard compared to it in vague ways. I had managed to get my hands on the original plush "singles" release of Azumanga Daioh qute a while before, having heard they had extras omitted from subsequent collections, and yet perhaps I had kept thinking that the opinions I'd heard about it were so positive that I had to somehow "save" it. At the same time, of course, there have certainly been times when I've reacted to an excess of positive opinions with an excessively critical attitude of my own... although in Azumanga Daioh's case, there didn't seem to be any shadow of excessive demands about how you "had" to watch it in a certain way, or how it showed up other similar series, and that did help a good deal. I've heard the anime is based on four-panel manga (as was Lucky Star), and perhaps it does feel a bit like an adaptation of a comic strip, its episodes composed of vignettes on a theme, its cast of high school girls (it being an anime series) equipped with personalities seemingly simple to sum up but quite sufficient to build interesting comedy around (with some characters, not quite so endowed that way, fading back into the background and others being introduced as the series develops). I suppose I'm not quite the sort to break out into loud laughter, but the series does seem remarkably pleasant to watch.
I've kept pushing on through some series seen one episode a week. The new Fullmetal Alchemist series has pushed quite far into territory established by the manga after the previous anime was finished, and that seems to help keep up my interest in it. As for a series I'm following through more ambiguous means, the baseball anime Cross Game, changes to its opening and end credits did leave me wondering and perhaps even worrying if there was to be some bizarre plot twist involving how the series had begun, but instead of it being "missing due to amnesia!" or something similar, it was just a case of a "lookalike." I suppose that Cross Game appeals to me in part because it would seem very hard for anyone to say that any element of it is "grotesque, just like some sticky part of every anime always is..." So far a a different "fansub" went, one that comment just made doesn't seem to apply to, I pushed myself as the year wound down and managed to finish off Macross 7. When I first heard about that part of the franchise (possibly even when it was still airing in Japan, and it seemed inconceivable I would ever manage to ingratiate myself with "those people" well enough to get fansubs of my own), people were complaining about how it involved "transformable fighters flown with guitar strings!"; when at last opportunities coincided and I started watching the whole thing, I had been exposed to someone else criticising the state characters returning from the original series had been brought to... and after all of it, I still don't quite know what to make of the series, whether it's not to be taken seriously or it's just a matter of absurd situations and characters presented to be taken with utter seriousness. Still, I did find myself wondering if the very slow build of more than a few of the first episodes, with the impulsive and uncommunicative rock star Nekki Basara jumping into the middle of every battle in a customised mecha he just happens to have to sing with no effect other than annoying both sides, somehow helps to establish that music isn't "magical," an overpowering oversimplification of the original which might have crept into Macross II and the Robotech novels alike. Unable to answer the big questions, including an old accusation that trying to "like" Macross 7 was somehow really just a demonstration that you were turning on Robotech, I might have wound up fixating on how I didn't care for a lot of the costume designs and I kept finding the "mechanical designs" a mixture of "the unappealing, the made unappealing, and the underused." (When finishing my endeavour off with the short OVA series Macross Dynamite 7, I found myself wondering if, indeed, I could imagine more of it than of its parent series fitting into my personal perspective, and then asking myself if that was just a matter of liking its costume and mechanical designs better.) Perhaps, in the end, one of my favourite distractions while watching Macross 7 was recognising the tracks taken from Macross Plus and Macross II whenever a piece of "music playing in the background" was needed that wasn't from "Fire Bomber"; at other times, I might have reflected on background music is an unfair advantage of "movie war" when influencing "actual war." I suppose that after everything, I don't begrudge the effort or the experience. However, I am looking forward to watching other things.
I suppose I will have to give up one specific strategy, of going back to a series and watching one episode of it every day until I've seen all of it. (Of course, that always did somewhat interfere with trying to see new series...) It may have been somewhat fitting, therefore, that I finished off my year-long project of going back to the different anime series that got combined into Robotech by rewatching Genesis Climber Mospeada. With that done, though, I lived dangerously and watched Robotech: Shadow Chronicles again, aware of the comments of others grown unimpressed about that sort of anime-like project as time has worn by. Thinking back to my own reactions the first time I saw it, it's tempting to say something along the lines of "how it was done was completely overshadowed by it having been done at all"... and yet, again I found myself slow to take offence. This time around, the one explanation I can seem to offer was that I thought of it not as "the continuation," but just "a continuation." With that complete, I was then tempted to really push my luck with respect to certain other opinions encountered of late and rewatch Macross: Do You Remember Love, but never quite got around to it.
Sometimes splitting things into quarterly periods doesn't go quite as neatly: while I was rewatching Mospeada, I was also trying to finish the last few episodes of several series I had been concentrating on in the three months before, and didn't seem to have any last-minute swings of opinion about them. With that done, I was able to move on to following up on some series I had been watching in parts. Starting into the "second season" of Code Geass, I was unfortunately conscious of unspecified complaints about it. However, the negative opinions didn't seem quite as monolithic as with certain other unfortunate series, and I couldn't just leave off and conclude myself satisfied after the cliffhanger at the end of the first run of the series... It was a little tempting to wonder if some "reset button" had been pushed in the first few episodes of Code Geass R2, and yet not quite. Too, it didn't seem to take long at all before the series was back to its cat-and-mouse twists. At the halfway point, I suppose it's at least possible I might yet conclude some recent moments were where things started running down and I just didn't have the courage to admit it as they happened, but for now things have left off on another staggering pause. In continuing Gundam 00, though, in that case I might have lapsed back into waiting with some impatience for things which I've already seen to happen; the second set of DVDs leaving off one episode before the single greatest cliffhanger of that series in my own estimation might have something to do with that.
In between getting back to things, I did manage to open a few series that had been sitting on my shelves for quite a while. Having already seen "fansubs" of the Dirty Pair TV series, I started into the follow-up, officially licensed "OVAs," and found them just about as enjoyable. On a completionist whim, I then managed to buy used DVDs of the last two extended-length Dirty Pair OVAs; they were somewhat of a change in tone, but weren't necessarily bad for that. However, in finishing off with the OVA I had seen over a decade before at university, I realised I'd forgotten that this one had ended with everyone in the city the interstellar troubleshooters had been sent to investigate being killed, not quite the fault of the Dirty Pair themselves, which was how I'd once worried every Dirty Pair adventure would end... After watching the extended-length Lucky Star OVA and finishing that series off, I at last felt free to open a series I had heard compared to it in vague ways. I had managed to get my hands on the original plush "singles" release of Azumanga Daioh qute a while before, having heard they had extras omitted from subsequent collections, and yet perhaps I had kept thinking that the opinions I'd heard about it were so positive that I had to somehow "save" it. At the same time, of course, there have certainly been times when I've reacted to an excess of positive opinions with an excessively critical attitude of my own... although in Azumanga Daioh's case, there didn't seem to be any shadow of excessive demands about how you "had" to watch it in a certain way, or how it showed up other similar series, and that did help a good deal. I've heard the anime is based on four-panel manga (as was Lucky Star), and perhaps it does feel a bit like an adaptation of a comic strip, its episodes composed of vignettes on a theme, its cast of high school girls (it being an anime series) equipped with personalities seemingly simple to sum up but quite sufficient to build interesting comedy around (with some characters, not quite so endowed that way, fading back into the background and others being introduced as the series develops). I suppose I'm not quite the sort to break out into loud laughter, but the series does seem remarkably pleasant to watch.
I've kept pushing on through some series seen one episode a week. The new Fullmetal Alchemist series has pushed quite far into territory established by the manga after the previous anime was finished, and that seems to help keep up my interest in it. As for a series I'm following through more ambiguous means, the baseball anime Cross Game, changes to its opening and end credits did leave me wondering and perhaps even worrying if there was to be some bizarre plot twist involving how the series had begun, but instead of it being "missing due to amnesia!" or something similar, it was just a case of a "lookalike." I suppose that Cross Game appeals to me in part because it would seem very hard for anyone to say that any element of it is "grotesque, just like some sticky part of every anime always is..." So far a a different "fansub" went, one that comment just made doesn't seem to apply to, I pushed myself as the year wound down and managed to finish off Macross 7. When I first heard about that part of the franchise (possibly even when it was still airing in Japan, and it seemed inconceivable I would ever manage to ingratiate myself with "those people" well enough to get fansubs of my own), people were complaining about how it involved "transformable fighters flown with guitar strings!"; when at last opportunities coincided and I started watching the whole thing, I had been exposed to someone else criticising the state characters returning from the original series had been brought to... and after all of it, I still don't quite know what to make of the series, whether it's not to be taken seriously or it's just a matter of absurd situations and characters presented to be taken with utter seriousness. Still, I did find myself wondering if the very slow build of more than a few of the first episodes, with the impulsive and uncommunicative rock star Nekki Basara jumping into the middle of every battle in a customised mecha he just happens to have to sing with no effect other than annoying both sides, somehow helps to establish that music isn't "magical," an overpowering oversimplification of the original which might have crept into Macross II and the Robotech novels alike. Unable to answer the big questions, including an old accusation that trying to "like" Macross 7 was somehow really just a demonstration that you were turning on Robotech, I might have wound up fixating on how I didn't care for a lot of the costume designs and I kept finding the "mechanical designs" a mixture of "the unappealing, the made unappealing, and the underused." (When finishing my endeavour off with the short OVA series Macross Dynamite 7, I found myself wondering if, indeed, I could imagine more of it than of its parent series fitting into my personal perspective, and then asking myself if that was just a matter of liking its costume and mechanical designs better.) Perhaps, in the end, one of my favourite distractions while watching Macross 7 was recognising the tracks taken from Macross Plus and Macross II whenever a piece of "music playing in the background" was needed that wasn't from "Fire Bomber"; at other times, I might have reflected on background music is an unfair advantage of "movie war" when influencing "actual war." I suppose that after everything, I don't begrudge the effort or the experience. However, I am looking forward to watching other things.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-31 08:27 pm (UTC)(I feel reluctant to call them that, though, since it implies a sense of dignity and importance to the characters that I feel they overall lack, except possibly for Max.)
Do you have an opinion on their portrayal? I resent it a lot, but at the end of the day, it's just another series, so you can say anything, even that Neo-Exsedol is a better character. :P
I have to say, though, that I've never seen Dynamite 7, nor all of the M7 OVAs. I stopped after "The Galaxy is Calling Me!" (which might have been theatrical release, I forget) "Which One Do You Love?" and "Fleet of the Strongest Women", because I was exhausted with Macross 7, and really only wanted to deal with the "old guard", though hearing of Emilia Jenius made me want to see if she was any different from the other female Zentraedi/half Zentraedi characters out there.
I think later episodes of the series firmly establish the existence of "song magic" even if the early ones might belie that notion...and in the process, make Basara into a blatant Canon Stu.
Nothing to say about much of the other anime here. I appreciate the quality of AzuDaioh, but I never got into it, and Lucky Star I tried, but it just seemed like an odd kind of "fanservice", with cute anime girls rambling about otaku subjects and other minutae, though the suggestion some have made that such girls weren't created to show female nerddom itself but to just "service" the male viewers by having cute girls talk about stuff they liked that no GUHRL actually would turned me off even more.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-31 11:55 pm (UTC)Probably, you're not missing very much by having skipped the remaining bits of Macross 7. Now, in the later episodes of the series I kept telling myself "it's the add-on technology that actually makes his 'song' mean something" and "maybe 'song' is just convenient shorthand for 'inner resolve towards a non-extermination resolution' or something"... although I wasn't exactly fond of what seemed a trace of "get behind or get out of the way" in the storytelling. "Success at last through never changing one's approach" might not bother me quite as much, but I'm still not quite fond of that either.
(I suppose I did think on getting through the series that I could now seek out your detailed criticism of the "Protodevlin" at last, and to at least some degree want to see it...)
All things considered, I do find myself liking Azumanga Daioh more than Lucky Star... I may have heard almost the same suggestion about the latter that displeased you, although I suppose it didn't have the same impact on me.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-01 11:45 pm (UTC)What, really, is the point of even temporarily undermining the fairy-tale romance of the first series?
And in spite of myself, I still find the older Milia to be a very annoying character, partially because of her slips into "nagging fishwife" mode, and the simple fact that many times she's treated as a punchline for simply being an older women who is sexual.
I think if I were to sum up my issues with the older characters as a whole, it's that it's highly questionable for them to be there at all, save to attract older fans (well, you could only say that about Max and Milia), because much of the time, the trio's roles seem like they could be filled by other characters cast in the same generic mould. Even Exsedol's "wisdom" doesn't come much into play at all, and Max's "genius" often seem like they could have been performed by another skilled captain, though of all the old guard, I say that Max comes off the best in various ways. He's not as aggravating as Milia or as uncrecognizable as Exsedol, though still seems a little too stiff and wooden.
What I just wonder is, how can fans be satisfied with these characters, when they seem to do so little that is truly *them*, and not in a way that feels like realistic ageing changing their traits.
I actually did watch the complete "solid" run of the series' 49 episodes, and found that a lot of material dragged or seemed wasted, with the "climax" being something that felt like it came out of nowhere. Sometimes I wonder if it was planned at 49 episodes to be 7*7, adding to the "7" motif which justifies the series' title.