Revival of the anime post.

[elwen]

I haven't done an anime post in ages, and I'm obviously not going to go through everything I've been watching since the last one, but I wanted to highlight a few series from recent seasons.

First, the three most highly recommended, which don't seem to have gotten the attention they deserve:

• Shounen Onmyouji
  ["Boy Exorcist" (?) -- it doesn't translate very well, which is why no one tries.]
  The best series of the fall season, based on novels by Yuuki Hikaru. Set in feudal Japan, it's about a boy named Masahiro whose trying to surpass his grandfather Seimei, the greatest onmyouji alive. He's joined by a small fox-like spirit that he names Mokkun, and together they do their best to keep the capitol free of evil spirits.
  
  I'd classify it as shounen, but it's got great character development, and a good mix of humor and drama. Seimei is really quirky and likes to tease Masahiro a lot, so rather than your stereotypical "I'm aiming to be the best!" kind of plotline, it's more like, "I'm going to show that stupid old man!" ^o^ In addition to Masahiro, Mokkun, and Seimei, the major characters are Seimei's spirit summons, who have really bad-ass character designs and appear poised to contribute lots of complicated backstory. I won't deny that I started watching because some of the summons are pretty boys, but they run the gamut, including a cute little girl, a pretty priestess-like woman, a kick-your-ass-with-a-fan type lady, several kick-your-ass-in-general guys, and one or two old men. In addition, I'm guessing eventually there will be some cute kiddie romance between Masahiro and Akiko, the daughter of a government official who also has the ability to see spirits. [Masahiro's 13, I believe, so yeah.] The art always reminds me of reverse-harem shows like Harukanaru Toki no Naka de and Angelique, which I think might scare people away, but it's really not like that at all. Especially since, well, the main character's a boy.
  
  Oh, and since this seems to matter to some people on the flist: there's Chiyo dad as an evil gryphon demon thing. XD


• Saiunkoku Monogatari
  ["Tale of Saiunkoku (Kingdom of Rainbow Clouds)"]
  One of the best series of the spring season, based on novels by Yukino Sai. Set in a land modeled after feudal China, it's about a poor noblewoman named Shuurei who hates poverty. She rashly agrees to help a government minister for a large sum of money, only finding out afterwards that what she's agreed to is to join the royal harem in an effort to reform their slacker of an emperor.
  
  As much as I tried to make it sound like Fushigi Yuugi (or even Twelve Kingdoms), and however much it may seem like a clone first blush, this series is quite distinct. Superficially, you don't have any of that "came from another world" dynamic, which is actually rather refreshing. There is a fair amount of focus on politics and sort of the workings of the capitol, which is reminiscent of Twelve Kingdoms, but overall it takes itself less seriously, and you don't have any cataclysms or rebellions going on. The story moves in arcs that connect to each other and continue to develop the characters, but make a concise summary hard if you want to be more specific than "It's about people doing stuff in Saiunkoku." So I guess the major difference between this and FY or 12K is that it's much more slice-of-life. I mean, Shuurei only agrees to join the harem for a limited time, and things quickly move beyond that premise. As with shoujo series of this type, there are a lot of pretty boys, and a lot of them inevitably fall in love with Shuurei, but there's enough other stuff going on that it never gets bogged down in the love polygon -- actually, it barely comes up most of the time; there are just one or two shippable moments every episode -- so I don't think that should limit the audience.


• Ouran High School Host Club
  The other best show of the spring season, based on manga by Bisco Hatori. Ouran High School is for the children of the super-rich, but Fujioka Haruhi is there as a scholarship student and is actually quite poor. When she breaks an expensive vase, she becomes indentured to the Host Club, a group of boys who make a business out of entertaining female students who have time to spare.
  
  Perhaps I am just pathetically out of touch with prevalent social mores, but I don't understand why apparently male audiences find this show disturbing. Is it the concept of a host club? [They do exist in Japan, with separate ones catering to men and women.] Is it that they have Haruhi pretend to be a boy because she brings in business? Is it just too crazy in a shoujo way? For some reason I feel like this show would have general appeal kind of the way Azumanga Daioh does. There's just so much silliness. But in the end it seems like it's just for fangirls to squee over the different Host Club members and/or to ship Haruhi with any or all of them. Bah.

Hm, and I just realized that apparently none of the summer shows particularly caught my attention. There were lots of them, but they all just seemed kind of generic and/or not my genre. So next are some shows I actually finished watching:

• Juuousei
  ["Beast King Planet" -- and you wonder why people don't translate these things.]
  Twin boys, the sons of a government scientist, are kidnapped after their parents are murdered and are dumped on Chimera, a planet for criminals sentenced to death. [Think sci-fi Australia?] The inhabitants are organized into groups called Rings, and the one who can defeat the leaders of all the Rings becomes recognized as the Beast King, who is allowed to leave the planet.
  
  I really liked this series. 11 episodes was too short to deal with everything in as much depth as I would have liked, but none of the time crunch issues were too egregious -- the skipping of several years was only disorienting for a few minutes, and the exposition at the end was reasonably well done. The beginning had a definite Ender's Game vibe: you've got a little kid who has to use his smarts to defeat people much bigger than him, in a setting where it's all about survival of the fittest. And throughout, despite the sheer physicality of Chimera, there's always this cerebral undertone of scheming and strategizing and politics. Also, some of the wild nature backgrounds on Chimera were gorgeous.


• Utawarerumono
  [Shadow Warrior Chronicles "Ones Being Sung"]
  A man wakes up in a little farming village with no memory and an unremovable mask on his face. He ends up helping the villagers solve problems like a malevolent spirit living in the forest and an oppressive king.
  
  This series started out as just what I like: politics in a feudalistic fantasy world. Things got more and more crazy as things went on, but overall I would still recommend it. [I won't rant about how much I hate it when a good fantasy series goes and throws in a sci-fi explanation to everything at the end. Both Dragonriders of Pern and Scrapped Princess are guilty of this.] The series' strength was probably its characters. The masked man was a bit too goody-goody, but he surrounded himself with very interesting and varied supporters. Sometimes, though, it did start to feel a bit too black and white with how utterly evil their enemies were and how good at heart the protagonists all were -- once they came around, in some cases. The biggest flaw was the animation. In scenes with a lot of soldiers, the CG was painfully obvious and poorly done. They looked like misformed clay figures stumping around. I wonder if ADV has any thoughts about fixing that in the DVD releases...


• Princess Princess
  Tooru transfers in the middle of the year to an all-boys school with a strange system: effeminate boys are selected to be "Princesses" who cross-dress and keep up students' spirits with [generally non-erotic] fanservice. Attracted by the perks, such as free school supplies, he decides to join the other two Princesses.
  
  I know. Isn't that the most screwed up, disturbing premise ever? And they made a live action out of it, too. ._. But in the end, it's just a light shoujo series with its share of humor and heartwarming drama. There's actually not a lot of BL, and most of it is self-deprecating. More than anything else, the Princess system just sets up the situations they can find themselves in; the character focus isn't any different from other shoujo high school comedies. I wish they'd make a sequel.


• Soul Link
  A resort space station gets hijacked by terrorists. Most guests are evacuated, but a couple military students who were there on a training retreat get left behind.
  
  Utterly unmemorable series. It kept seeming like it would go somewhere, and there was so much suspense I had to finish watching it, but I just never felt attached enough to any of the characters to care.

Yeah, I think I finish only a ridiculously low fraction of the shows I start watching. On that note, some of the shows I'm still following:

• The Third ~Aoi Hitomi no Shoujo~ - ...I don't know how to summarize this show. There's a girl with a sword who takes random jobs. It's set on a desert-ified Earth (?) that's controlled evolved humans known as The Third who have a third eye that lets them interface with technology. That's pretty much what it's about, but I don't know how to describe what it's like. There's action and introspection; I don't even know if it's shoujo or shounen. It's not dark or depressing, but it's definitely not comedy either. Whatever it is, it's good, and I think everyone should give it a try.


• ARIA the NATURAL - I finished the first season (ARIA the ANIMATION)! ^^;; Everyone in the anime club thought the manga was boring and sleep-inducing, and the anime is probably that way, too, but it's just so peaceful and soothing, and there are times when I need a series like that, so.


• D.Gray-man - Actually, this show is almost in the "on hold" pile. At first it was really cool to see things animated, but after 5 episodes they're still on the Matel arc, and I just don't remember the manga moving that slowly.


• KIBA - I think I can see why people think (thought?) this is the next-in-line of long-running shounen series like Bleach and Naruto. It's got a mix of magic and technology, and people fight with swords but also have something like guardian spirits that fight each other. Very generic, I know, but I don't know how to go into more detail without going into too much detail.


• xxxHOLiC - I couldn't get into the manga, but I like the anime. Basically, it's an episodic series featuring good ol' CLAMP cynicism, with a supernatural twist. There are enough summaries outthere that that's all I'll add. :P

...well, now it feels like I did end up talking about all the recent shows. Just to prove that I didn't, here are some series I started watching, and have momentarily dropped but want to finish eventually: Fate/stay night, Shakugan no Shana, Cluster Edge, Kage Kara Mamoru, Samurai Champloo, Mushishi. Maybe it's all just wishful thinking. T_T

Comments

[azabaro.livejournal.com]

Shounen Onmyouji (which I'd tend to translate as "Onmyouji Boy" - I don't think Onmyouji restricted themselves to exorcisms, after all) was one of the shows I planned to watch after we finished other samplers for this season. I still have a few shows that I'd already downloaded to go through first, but now that I know this features Chiyo-dad I suppose I'll have to give it a try.

I remember us sampling Saiunkoku last year, and it didn't catch my attention enough to make any sort of impression. I might give it another try at some point, but if it can't catch my interest in the first few episodes, well...most series don't even get one episode to sell me on themselves, never mind two. This means that I miss shows like 12 Kingdoms unless we watch them in club, but that's how it goes.

As for Ouran, I get the impression most guys dislike the shoujo wackiness. The only part I had a problem with was the classist attitude from some of the hosts, and I don't recall if it was just one or two of them being idiots or the whole group...either way, that's the sort of thing that sets my teeth on edge. I'm hoping that sort of thing isn't an ongoing part of the series (or if it is, that's it's treated like Tomo's behavior, i.e. depicted as obnoxious). Ouran probably isn't helped by having a main character named Haruhi in the same season that a more popular show has a main character with the same name...

Utawarerumono looked like a fine show, but I'd rather not watch it in club while I'm making posters - I'd have to spell that name right 5 weeks in a row! ^_^

Princess Princess isn't helped by the way its setup feels like a setup - the whole premise is so artificial that it creates a barrier to the show itself. Who knows, maybe the series gets better somewhere down the line, but as I said on Saiunkoku I don't have the time or patience to give many series several chances to sell themselves to me.

The Third - another show that might be great sometime in episode 2, but I'll probably never know because episode 1 didn't grab me.

ARIA - I guess I can't disagree with using this series as a sleep aid (I have Cosplay Encyclopedia for that). I still think that it's the sort of show that makes Mushishi look positively manic.

D.Gray-man - I actually put the manga on hold after volume 2. The idea that the anime might be even slower is a little disappointing.

(I know nothing about KIBA).

xxxHolic - Based on the episode I saw, I don't think that animation or voice acting added to this series nearly as much as color did; CLAMP sometimes comes up with drawings that are a lot easier to understand with color than without (at least IME). I also think that a lot of CLAMP's humor is better when animated, though if pressed I'm not sure I could explain why I think so.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Yeah, originally I translated "onmyouji" as "spellcaster". I just wanted a word that gave some indication of what it was about, without having to go into a Wikipedia explanation. While I prefer cultural terms left untranslated in subs, I recognize that it can be utterly unhelpful to the non-initiated. Kind of like the levels of translating "Saiunkoku Monogatari". We Suck fansubs uses "Tale of Saiunkoku", and ANN uses something like "Tale of the Country of Saiun".

A warning on Shounen Onmyouji since the theme of your comment is only watching one or two episodes: Chiyo dad doesn't show up until episode 5 or so. So far, the best line is in episode 6, when he's like, "Go out and gather sacrifices for me; I'm going to go to sleep." :o I think I need to rewatch the Wolf's Rain episodes with the owl...

The rich/poor contrast is definitely an integral part of Ouran, so people annoyed/offended by that wouldn't like it, I guess. (Cf. reinforcement of stereotypes by shows like Beauty and the Geek.) It's generally meant to be humorous, and I think most people would sympathize with Haruhi's perspective, which is that everyone else is being silly and spoiled.

I just couldn't get into Suzumiya Haruhi. The first episode was great, but the next two just seemed to drag. My litmus test is always how many times in the episode I have to wonder how many minutes are left or whether I've made it past the eyecatch yet, and Suzumiya failed pretty miserably. Then again, there are episodes of Cromartie that I can barely sit through, but I'm still watching...

Utawarerumono is a mouthful. One of the groups subbing it got it wrong ("Utawaremono") on the title screen. -_-;; I usually have to think through the conjugation -- "-rareru" is passive tense -- to get it right. But it's not as bad as Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto. :P