2013: My Third Quarter in Anime
Oct. 2nd, 2013 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWith another three months gone by, once again I'm taking a look back at the anime I watched in them. I seemed to keep up a pretty brisk pace of viewing, but even a brisk pace just chips away a little faster at the DVDs and now Blu-Rays I've accumulated over time. When thinking of that, though, I can at least contemplate with a little more equanimity the end of an era where I made regular orders from the online store Right Stuf because everyone else on the anime message board I follow the closest seemed to order from it too and manage to get free shipping just by putting together pre-orders, regardless of whether I had a strong interest or just sort of an idle curiosity in each title. In waiting for a sufficient number of series to buy at once, though, I might be worrying about my buying intentions corroding in the face of regular crises on the board over "domestic" releases fallen from the audiovisual excellence of the Japanese originals. I've known for a while now that some of the most vocal figures there just buy the Japanese originals, but for just as long now I'm stuck with the reluctance to spend that much money for those releases that do have English subtitles, not to mention the reluctance to go to lengths to become fluent in Japanese and then spend that much more money on untranslated releases, to proclaim some measure of moral superiority. Even with all of that, though, I did manage to put one order together recently, in advance of the end-of-year sales no less.
I started off three months ago by opening up the second series of K-ON! With the first series about a rock band of high school girls with a certain reluctance to actually get around to practicing music, I did sort of wind up wondering if I'd only thought I'd "got it." For the second series, twice the length of the first, I did start thinking about halfway through that I was indeed "getting it, and then by the end I was sort of wondering again. It might have helped in this case that there didn't seem to have been the same indignation over proclaimed inadequacies in the domestic release as there'd been with the first series, and anyway it had been longer between the release and when I'd opened it too. There's still a movie to go; I'm just waiting for a chance to order it.
At the same time, I was getting well into the DVDs of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. That was one of the first series I'd seen through official streaming, but it did take a while until I had all the DVDs of it, and right around then I thought I also ought to rewatch the original anime, the one that had adapted about as much of the manga as had been around back then and then developed its own ideas and own conclusion. On getting back to the series that adapted all of the manga, I was conscious of how it had begun by moving at a considerable pace through that part of the manga adapted and wound up with an extended final battle, something that just might have also contributed to feelings of it being "lighter-weight." I realised the stuff in between the beginning and the end, though, did have its own pauses for reflection, and continued to appreciate the series managing to go really all-out with the animation at certain points too. With it over, though, I'd happened to overhear that a later release of the manga didn't have the drawn-over panels I'd thrown something of a genteel fit over and stopped buying years ago, and now I'm trying to buy those releases for some day in the foreseeable future.
During the "spring season," I had wound up not watching any new series through online streaming at all, stuck with the gloomy feeling that the titles that most interested me were in a genre what seems everyone else is ready to dismiss recent works in on general principles these days. In these three months, though, I wound up following what seemed an unusual number of titles, for me at least. It does seem an anime series can attract attention just for having characters some years out of high school; with Servant x Service, though, it also got my attention that its production involved people who'd worked on Working! Among the quirks in the workplace comedy early on, I took note of how, as if to reassure those most likely to buy discs that the civil servant characters in a government office aren't that different from them, one of the characters sews "cosplay" outfits in her spare time. Before too long, though, the comedy had become a comedy romance as with Working! That was as acceptable as before for me, but I did have the perpetual impression the series looked sort of bland for me, and the feeling it was the one I was still watching just because I'd started.
Although I suppose myself to have got into anime because of Robotech (although it took longer for me to move into that much larger world than the people who built the fandom I entered after a full decade's apprenticeship), years before that I'd gone over to the kids next door to watch Battle of the Planets. Eventually, I figured out that superhero series had been generated from the anime Gatchaman (taking what seem to me to be somewhat greater liberties than were taken in Robotech's origin), and watched that original series in Japanese when I at last had the chance. It took quite a while, though, before I got to the second and more clearly remembered of the two moments that had stuck in my mind from Battle of the Planets. That did make the new series Gatchaman Crowds catch my attention. As I watched the first episode, though, I wasn't sure my reactions were positive. The style of the animation didn't seem to appeal to me (I was unfamiliar with the other works of its creators), and something about the new superheroine Hajime seemed reminiscent in an uncomfortable way of the days when I had read MSTings of stories with overpowered "new characters" (although we usually used "author avatars" or even "self insertions") who knew everything about the stories they were dropping into and could brush off any problem. To give up on a series after just one episode did seem a little extreme, though, and when I looked at the reaction of others they didn't seem negative. In the next episode, my impression improved a bit, and so on with the one after that, until I began to agree with the comments of others and think that Hajime didn't "understand" everything to the point of subverting it so much as "question" the certainties of a superhero story. A subplot about a smartphone social media platform being used for heroic crowdsourcing purposes also got my attention, and I began thinking of what I've at least heard about up-to-the-minute superhero comics that take a reinterpreting yet cheerful, respectfully nostalgic yet modern take on the genre.
Right after that first episode, though, I did want to watch something that would just be light and fluffy, and added one more series on the absolute spur of the last moment to my already crowded slate. These days, people do seem more likely to complain about a series being from Gainax than anything else, it being pointed out how the people there during its glory days or even a few years ago have all gone to other studios if not other things. I might not have been that concerned about demanding too much from Stella Women's Academy, High School Division Class C3 Club, though. A series featuring high school girls shooting "Airsoft" pellet guns at each other seemed fluffy enough, but as it went along the new girl in the group Yura began to lose track of the fun in her attempts to win. That, I gather, chewed away at the fan base; fault might also have been found with the resolution not having proper weight and abasement, even if it managed to put together some of the odder elements from earlier on. I'm at least willing to be interested in characters who take wrong steps, though, although maybe that also amounts to giving points just for effort.
Two new series I started watching I knew to be based on manga. One of them followed the modern trend of having an absurdly long name that gets shortened to some catchy Japanese syllables, in this case boiling the equivalent of "No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular" to "Watamote." The tale of a gloomy girl convinced from all the other high school series out there that she's about to be popular at last seemed a black comedy, one that might even provoke "at least I was better than that"; too black for some, it seemed, from the hopes in the discussion that Tomoko would at last have things turn around for her one way or another. For my own part, I'd like to hope I recognized the series "for what it was, not what I wanted it to be," but there was of course that dark tone to what it might be. Having long been a fan of the manga about a college club of fans Genshiken, I took note of the news that its new manga series was to be adapted into an anime, but I was also conscious that in having become a fan of at least one manga series the comments about things getting watered down in adaptation had come to mind with the original Genshiken anime. For me, at least, the second anime adapting more of the original manga had been better that way, even if it hadn't quite adapted all of it, leaving a gap between it and the new series with its new cast exploring new areas. In the end, though, the adaptation seemed brisk yet capable, especially given all the references to other series. Genshiken has perhaps always been less about mere "fandom" and more about endearing characters who just happen to be fans.
Space Brothers keeps chugging along; as actual astronauts are in constant training just as candidates are in evaluation; it perhaps didn't change that much from its known quantity. Even with all of those series I'm watching through streaming, I still managed to fit in one back-catalog title with the second AKB0048 series. I suppose I was still inclined to think that with the science fiction idol singers, I enjoyed their "combat concerts" more than all the earnest discussion of just who among their trainees was truly qualified to join the main group and inherit the name of an appropriate predecessor, discussion that I'm sure was easier on the budget. By the time this series was complete, though, I was able to think the disparate elements had been brought a little closer together.
With K-ON!! finished, I moved on to other "sequel series." Dirty Pair Flash was the last Dirty Pair series I still had to watch, but I was aware that the term "sequel" isn't quite as accurate there. For this extended series of OVAs made in the 1990s, I had the impression other fans of the earlier anime didn't like it as much, in some part for the familiar reason of it "not being the same any more." At first glance, it's obvious the interstellar troubleshooters Kei and Yuri aren't "1980s anime characters" any more and have been extensively redesigned to now be "1990s anime characters," although on second thought I wondered if that really said as much as it seemed to; it might be said they look more "stylized." With that impression alone, it was easy to try and "accept what it was," but as I started I had the uneasy impression this series's version of Yuri was complaining a lot. When a fictional character is accused by other fans of "whining," I always seem to resist that harsh verdict, but when even a similar thought comes to me unprompted it's sort of troubling. The first episodes did form a genuine "plot arc," though, and there was at least a measure of character development in it. For the second plot arc" (corresponding to the second disc in the collection), the Pair winds up on a world simulating 1990s Japan, and that did catch my attention, if only because it reminded me of a certain infamous fanfic where the original Dirty Pair appeared in 1990s America to become the significant others of characters with a distinct identification to the authors, a fanfic that just happened to have been written before Dirty Pair Flash was made. I'm certain there was no connection between the two, of course, but I could imagine the authors being among those fans who disliked the final Dirty Pair series on general principles.
After that, I opened up the second Hidamari Sketch series, Hidamari Sketch x365. I'd wound up enjoying the first, and this time around I was that much readier to see the differences in animation style between its stylization and the rich lighting of K-ON! As with the first series, it took parts of the "four-panel manga" and mixed them up chronologically to be interpolated among its predecessor (this time, it included the actual "origin stories"); I was reminded of how I hadn't ever quite got around to writing down the dates in the titles of each episode to see what it felt like reordered. It always felt like a thoroughly pleasant experience.
Before the three months were quite up, I managed to open up my DVDs of The Rose of Versailles. As much as it makes me face once more the ambiguities having watched a series through "fansubs" with the casual expectation it's unlikely to be licensed over here only for it to be licensed after all, there are still amusing qualities to it. I keep thinking how someone who'd started to watch Revolutionary Girl Utena with a historical perspective would know just where a lot of its inspiration was inspiration was coming from. Even so, I'm amused that Marie Antoinette as an anime character manages at the beginning of the series to overshadow even Oscar François de Jarjayes, a woman raised as a man casually and openly gender-bending in pre-revolutionary France.
I started off three months ago by opening up the second series of K-ON! With the first series about a rock band of high school girls with a certain reluctance to actually get around to practicing music, I did sort of wind up wondering if I'd only thought I'd "got it." For the second series, twice the length of the first, I did start thinking about halfway through that I was indeed "getting it, and then by the end I was sort of wondering again. It might have helped in this case that there didn't seem to have been the same indignation over proclaimed inadequacies in the domestic release as there'd been with the first series, and anyway it had been longer between the release and when I'd opened it too. There's still a movie to go; I'm just waiting for a chance to order it.
At the same time, I was getting well into the DVDs of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. That was one of the first series I'd seen through official streaming, but it did take a while until I had all the DVDs of it, and right around then I thought I also ought to rewatch the original anime, the one that had adapted about as much of the manga as had been around back then and then developed its own ideas and own conclusion. On getting back to the series that adapted all of the manga, I was conscious of how it had begun by moving at a considerable pace through that part of the manga adapted and wound up with an extended final battle, something that just might have also contributed to feelings of it being "lighter-weight." I realised the stuff in between the beginning and the end, though, did have its own pauses for reflection, and continued to appreciate the series managing to go really all-out with the animation at certain points too. With it over, though, I'd happened to overhear that a later release of the manga didn't have the drawn-over panels I'd thrown something of a genteel fit over and stopped buying years ago, and now I'm trying to buy those releases for some day in the foreseeable future.
During the "spring season," I had wound up not watching any new series through online streaming at all, stuck with the gloomy feeling that the titles that most interested me were in a genre what seems everyone else is ready to dismiss recent works in on general principles these days. In these three months, though, I wound up following what seemed an unusual number of titles, for me at least. It does seem an anime series can attract attention just for having characters some years out of high school; with Servant x Service, though, it also got my attention that its production involved people who'd worked on Working! Among the quirks in the workplace comedy early on, I took note of how, as if to reassure those most likely to buy discs that the civil servant characters in a government office aren't that different from them, one of the characters sews "cosplay" outfits in her spare time. Before too long, though, the comedy had become a comedy romance as with Working! That was as acceptable as before for me, but I did have the perpetual impression the series looked sort of bland for me, and the feeling it was the one I was still watching just because I'd started.
Although I suppose myself to have got into anime because of Robotech (although it took longer for me to move into that much larger world than the people who built the fandom I entered after a full decade's apprenticeship), years before that I'd gone over to the kids next door to watch Battle of the Planets. Eventually, I figured out that superhero series had been generated from the anime Gatchaman (taking what seem to me to be somewhat greater liberties than were taken in Robotech's origin), and watched that original series in Japanese when I at last had the chance. It took quite a while, though, before I got to the second and more clearly remembered of the two moments that had stuck in my mind from Battle of the Planets. That did make the new series Gatchaman Crowds catch my attention. As I watched the first episode, though, I wasn't sure my reactions were positive. The style of the animation didn't seem to appeal to me (I was unfamiliar with the other works of its creators), and something about the new superheroine Hajime seemed reminiscent in an uncomfortable way of the days when I had read MSTings of stories with overpowered "new characters" (although we usually used "author avatars" or even "self insertions") who knew everything about the stories they were dropping into and could brush off any problem. To give up on a series after just one episode did seem a little extreme, though, and when I looked at the reaction of others they didn't seem negative. In the next episode, my impression improved a bit, and so on with the one after that, until I began to agree with the comments of others and think that Hajime didn't "understand" everything to the point of subverting it so much as "question" the certainties of a superhero story. A subplot about a smartphone social media platform being used for heroic crowdsourcing purposes also got my attention, and I began thinking of what I've at least heard about up-to-the-minute superhero comics that take a reinterpreting yet cheerful, respectfully nostalgic yet modern take on the genre.
Right after that first episode, though, I did want to watch something that would just be light and fluffy, and added one more series on the absolute spur of the last moment to my already crowded slate. These days, people do seem more likely to complain about a series being from Gainax than anything else, it being pointed out how the people there during its glory days or even a few years ago have all gone to other studios if not other things. I might not have been that concerned about demanding too much from Stella Women's Academy, High School Division Class C3 Club, though. A series featuring high school girls shooting "Airsoft" pellet guns at each other seemed fluffy enough, but as it went along the new girl in the group Yura began to lose track of the fun in her attempts to win. That, I gather, chewed away at the fan base; fault might also have been found with the resolution not having proper weight and abasement, even if it managed to put together some of the odder elements from earlier on. I'm at least willing to be interested in characters who take wrong steps, though, although maybe that also amounts to giving points just for effort.
Two new series I started watching I knew to be based on manga. One of them followed the modern trend of having an absurdly long name that gets shortened to some catchy Japanese syllables, in this case boiling the equivalent of "No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular" to "Watamote." The tale of a gloomy girl convinced from all the other high school series out there that she's about to be popular at last seemed a black comedy, one that might even provoke "at least I was better than that"; too black for some, it seemed, from the hopes in the discussion that Tomoko would at last have things turn around for her one way or another. For my own part, I'd like to hope I recognized the series "for what it was, not what I wanted it to be," but there was of course that dark tone to what it might be. Having long been a fan of the manga about a college club of fans Genshiken, I took note of the news that its new manga series was to be adapted into an anime, but I was also conscious that in having become a fan of at least one manga series the comments about things getting watered down in adaptation had come to mind with the original Genshiken anime. For me, at least, the second anime adapting more of the original manga had been better that way, even if it hadn't quite adapted all of it, leaving a gap between it and the new series with its new cast exploring new areas. In the end, though, the adaptation seemed brisk yet capable, especially given all the references to other series. Genshiken has perhaps always been less about mere "fandom" and more about endearing characters who just happen to be fans.
Space Brothers keeps chugging along; as actual astronauts are in constant training just as candidates are in evaluation; it perhaps didn't change that much from its known quantity. Even with all of those series I'm watching through streaming, I still managed to fit in one back-catalog title with the second AKB0048 series. I suppose I was still inclined to think that with the science fiction idol singers, I enjoyed their "combat concerts" more than all the earnest discussion of just who among their trainees was truly qualified to join the main group and inherit the name of an appropriate predecessor, discussion that I'm sure was easier on the budget. By the time this series was complete, though, I was able to think the disparate elements had been brought a little closer together.
With K-ON!! finished, I moved on to other "sequel series." Dirty Pair Flash was the last Dirty Pair series I still had to watch, but I was aware that the term "sequel" isn't quite as accurate there. For this extended series of OVAs made in the 1990s, I had the impression other fans of the earlier anime didn't like it as much, in some part for the familiar reason of it "not being the same any more." At first glance, it's obvious the interstellar troubleshooters Kei and Yuri aren't "1980s anime characters" any more and have been extensively redesigned to now be "1990s anime characters," although on second thought I wondered if that really said as much as it seemed to; it might be said they look more "stylized." With that impression alone, it was easy to try and "accept what it was," but as I started I had the uneasy impression this series's version of Yuri was complaining a lot. When a fictional character is accused by other fans of "whining," I always seem to resist that harsh verdict, but when even a similar thought comes to me unprompted it's sort of troubling. The first episodes did form a genuine "plot arc," though, and there was at least a measure of character development in it. For the second plot arc" (corresponding to the second disc in the collection), the Pair winds up on a world simulating 1990s Japan, and that did catch my attention, if only because it reminded me of a certain infamous fanfic where the original Dirty Pair appeared in 1990s America to become the significant others of characters with a distinct identification to the authors, a fanfic that just happened to have been written before Dirty Pair Flash was made. I'm certain there was no connection between the two, of course, but I could imagine the authors being among those fans who disliked the final Dirty Pair series on general principles.
After that, I opened up the second Hidamari Sketch series, Hidamari Sketch x365. I'd wound up enjoying the first, and this time around I was that much readier to see the differences in animation style between its stylization and the rich lighting of K-ON! As with the first series, it took parts of the "four-panel manga" and mixed them up chronologically to be interpolated among its predecessor (this time, it included the actual "origin stories"); I was reminded of how I hadn't ever quite got around to writing down the dates in the titles of each episode to see what it felt like reordered. It always felt like a thoroughly pleasant experience.
Before the three months were quite up, I managed to open up my DVDs of The Rose of Versailles. As much as it makes me face once more the ambiguities having watched a series through "fansubs" with the casual expectation it's unlikely to be licensed over here only for it to be licensed after all, there are still amusing qualities to it. I keep thinking how someone who'd started to watch Revolutionary Girl Utena with a historical perspective would know just where a lot of its inspiration was inspiration was coming from. Even so, I'm amused that Marie Antoinette as an anime character manages at the beginning of the series to overshadow even Oscar François de Jarjayes, a woman raised as a man casually and openly gender-bending in pre-revolutionary France.