A brief survey of anime series.

Not much to say about showings tonight, I guess. Hunter x Hunter did get more interesting, although I still don't think any of the characters are particularly appealing. I'm pretty sure I know Killua's character pattern, and I'm not in a phase where I like that sort of thing. Leorio became a bit more interesting, and Kurapica is okay, I suppose, although his thinking aloud is not very effective and is still too blatant a means of exposition. The story is starting to move along, at least. Oh, and Hisoka is pretty cool, if not a particularly deconstructable character, but I don't know how long he'll stick around.

I like KareKano the more I watch. It perfectly suits the repressed romantic in me. Every turn, nothing happens the way I expect them to, but it's always lovely the way they play out. Definitely something I should get for Christmas, and then hope the subtitles work properly on at least one of the various DVD playing machines I have.

We had a bit of discussion about what's been shown and what we want to show and such again. I guess I don't sort the series I'm interested in enough. So there are series I want to watch, and series I want to show, and I tend to think that anything I want to watch would be convenient to show, like killing two birds with one stone in a way. There are strange series like King of Bandit[s] Jing, which I didn't like enough to watch through on my own, but which I think would be nice to watch in a group with others. With a larger, easily amused audience, as opposed to just my sister, who had already seen it and fell asleep in the middle most of the time when we watched it "together". But we really should show some CLAMP sometime. [Although we did show Angelic Layer last year.] Apparently they didn't like Magic Knight Rayearth, which I can understand, I guess. We did consider CCS this year, which might be worth bringing up again. And then there's always X, which isn't that bad, but maybe that's just because I'm not remembering it very well at the moment. And among the series I need to watch are Yu Yu Hakusho, Saiyuki, Ayashi no Ceres. Ah well, we shall see.

So then I came back and watched the first episode of Gilgamesh, which I've had for a few days. It was okay, I think. Kind of slow-moving and confusing, but that might just be because I'm operating on very little sleep, so I wasn't able to process information very well. I didn't figure out what the first part had to do with the second part, separated by the explanation of Twin X. [Very funny the line about being like something out of an anime. Ha.] And I have totally forgotten all the names.

The very end seemed kind of intriguing, with that cult-like group. Based on just the initial episodes, I can see why Live-evil compared it to Wolf's Rain. I don't really like the art style, though, and no one seems to talk with any sort of emotion, which gets kind of old. So I think I'll give it another episode or two, but I'm not betting too much on it.

I kind of glanced through other new releases at AnimeSuki, and it doesn't seem like any other series this season interest me either. Tsukihime looks vaguely interesting, maybe, but I don't think I'd watch it until I knew more about where the story is headed. Mermaid Forest sounded cool, too, but the fact that it's horror, and because of "Delicious", it makes me think it's something like PetShop of Horrors, which isn't really my thing. [I mean, I like PSH, but I'm cowardly and should probably avoid animated horror stuff.]

Of course, I don't really need more series to watch. Considering I have Hikaru no Go, Slayers, half of Angelic Layer, Wolf's Rain, Jubei-chan, and plenty of other series to watch. And that's not counting the series I want to rewatch, like Matantei Loki Ragnarok. So yeah, I should really just stay away from the BitTorrents.

More Gilgamesh, and Sailor Moon.

So I watched the second episode of Gilgamesh, and I know enough to stop. I mean, there are all these mysteries, and they purposely have conversations like, "Do you think...?" "No, it can't be," leaving out any informing details. So I wonder -- they basically force you to -- but I haven't been given a reason to care. I mean, I like the darkness of the storyline, but it feels rather cliche, and I'm annoyed that no one shows any emotion, and I don't like the art. The supernatural powers are kind of intriguing, but it's just not enough.

Also, after reading Anime Blog Muyo! I want to take a look at Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and Planetes. I didn't know there were so many series based on video games until I searched the titles, but apparently both Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and Tsukihime are based on games, and I hear Tsukihime is rather inaccessible to those not familiar with it, at least initially, so I don't think I'll go for that. But if Kimi ga Nozomu Eien follows the game storyline, then I'd rather not know, you know, so I can be surprised, so to speak. As long as they treat the story well. And Planetes, well, anything that can be compared to Cowboy Bebop I'm going to take a look at.

So no more Gilgamesh for me. I liked the OP, though, which was used for ED in the first episode. Very stylish, but doesn't suit the series at all.

The other thing I watched this afternoon was the first episode of the live action Sailor Moon. It is a sentai show, so the fighting is cheesy and the props are fakey, and it's just generally somewhat disturbing and embarrassing, but it's interesting, I suppose. Human Jadeite is hot. ^o^ But when he goes villain he looks like he's trying too hard to narrow his eyes all the time. And what's with the orange hair? He looked so much better blond. Luna as animated plushie is scary. CG youma are bad. Tuxedo Kamen was awesome for about thirty seconds, when he did the super-cool act in front of Sailor Moon. *swoon...* And then he introduced himself and tossed his cape and returned to being a dork. *...not* Ami is pretty, and so is Naru. Queen Beryl was great.

A lot of things that were fine animated are really weird live-action, though. Like, you start to think, "Are schoolgirls really like that?" How realistic did they try to make it? Haruna-sensei was freaky. And Usagi cowering from the youma felt wrong. There is a lot of over- or bad acting, I think, but I can't tell whether it's intentional. I don't know, I guess I expected it to become more like a TV drama, like the Chinese martial arts shows I used to watch oh so long ago. Maybe like the live action "Journey to the West", which had a lot of bad special effects and such, but was still kick-ass.

Of course I'll keep watching, but it's kind of more unsettling than enjoyable at the moment.