Author Archives: sdshamshel

Oh Happy Day

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As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, kransom managed to obtain for me my long sought-after Genshiken manga volume 6 special edition with school swimsuit Ogiue cover and official doujinshi.

Yesterday, that package arrived. And it is wonderful.

Pictures are on the way, but you should be able to find them easy enough. If you have the Del Rey version, all you’re really missing is the school swimsuit cover and the extras at the end have been shrunk down to fit into the manga, rather than being a separate book.

I’ll probably also give a review of volume 6 just because I can. Maybe this time my rereading of it will reveal new information!

Actually, this is just an excuse to read one of my favorite volumes again.

Yes! Pretty Cure 5 Go Go! appears to have a higher budget

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Seriously, I’m watching this first episode and the animation during the transformation sequence is ridiculously good. It blows last season’s out of the water. Did the producers find a few dozen sacks of money? The youtube video doesn’t quite do it justice.

PS: If anyone can help me figure out how to get higher quality youtube videos, that’d really be great.

Persepolis and Japanese Animation

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I saw the french animated film Persepolis today. Based off a comic book of the same name, Persepolis is the tale of a young girl named Marjane living in war-torn Iran and its religious transformation during the 1980s. We as the audience get to see Marjane grow from girl into woman, making mistakes along the way, and constantly re-evaluating what’s important in her life. It’s a really powerful film and I recommend anyone who has the opportunity to watch it to do so.

I came out of Persepolis with one prominent thought in my mind: It’s been a long long time since I’ve seen a Japanese animation like it.

Stylistically, there’s no anime like Persepolis, but that’s not what I’m focusing on (though I might in a later time. It’s really quite powerful visually). What I’m talking about is how Persepolis addresses the small scale issues regarding relationships and emotions, as well the large scale issues with the backdrop of warfare. Recent anime, when it’s good, tends to be very good at one or the other, but not both. On the occasions that it does manage to address both, it tends to add a certain fantastic element to it which pushes the whole animation slightly to the left of reality, as in the case of Gundam 00.

Now this is hardly the case for the history of anime. Japanese animation and manga rose out of World War II, and many people have tackled and re-tackled the setting. Grave of the Fireflies, Barefoot Gen, even more romantic series such as Rose of Versailles all manage to portray the large and small stuff with a great deal of poignancy.

So what’s happened? Has anime become too much of a comfort zone, perhaps?

Now, I realize that I’m comparing a ton of Japanese animation to just one French animation, and that Persepolis may very well be an exception to the rule even in French animation, but this is the feeling I got from seeing this movie as it pertains to the thing I love called anime.

What the Fu: Fujoshi Deka

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This show is weird.

It’s about fujoshi detectives who solve crimes by using their fujoshi logic and going to a butler cafe.   The fujoshi are simply caricatures, characters whose only purposes are dropping fujoshi-centric words and gasping a whole lot.  It is far stranger than any anime I’ve ever seen.

For the sake of my Fujoshi Files, I may watch more of it, just to get a more accurate profile, but I don’t know man.

5cm Per Second and Summer Days with Coo showing at the NY International Children’s Film Festival

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On March 1st and March 8th respectively.  In Japanese. With subtitles. So I don’t want to hear any complaints about them being dubbed.

Check http://www.gkids.com for more information and to order tickets. If you’re going, I recommend you order now because when it came to The Girl Who Leapt Through Time the tickets sold out FAST.

I, of course, will be there.

And bouncing off my previous post about animation in general, they’re showing stuff from Korea, Spain, and other countries.

It is an international film festival, after all.

205 Days Left Until Earth’s Destruction: Space Battleship Yamato Episodes 9-14

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“Why it was just different lighting all along!”

Another 6 episodes of Space Battleship Yamato and man, those slow episodes from early on seem like a thing of the past. The biggest step forward by far though is the introduction of Lord Desslar. I mean, he was introduced before in around episode 3 or 4, but at that point he was just Some Guy, and it’s not until episode 11 that I began to see why Desslar is so beloved, and why many consider him to be such a tremendously good villain. His plans to destroy the Yamato amount to more than just “totally shoot it until it blows up.” He has multiple contingencies and works to create situations where you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Also, watching him open up a trap door underneath an uncouth soldier with no respect for the enemy and saying, “We don’t need such barbaric thinking in the Gamilus Empire” defines his character so very well. Highly intelligent and ruthless, but with a sense of honor befitting his title as ruler of Gamilus.

Desslar is just smooth.

But this isn’t the Desslar fan club. This is a Yamato review. And there’s plenty of characters to talk about. Kodai and Okita in particular get some powerful development. The revelation of Okita’s (space) radiation sickness and the quiet loneliness of his existence begins to show the real depth of the Yamato captain. Knowing that Kodai used to hate fighting shows how much the death of his family at the hands of Gamilus has driven him to take revenge. Just seeing every character say good bye to their families before leaving the Solar System, and all of them feeling that the 5 minutes allotted to each person was simply not enough time, that episode was probably the one that affected me the most so far.

Keep at it Yamato. You are deserving your reputation.

PS: Why is Yuki the only girl on board. They did not think this through very well, aside from the possibility that they need to keep the women at home to give birth and raise children for the sake of humanity’s future.

Clarification on the Genshiken Novel title

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There have been many translations and transliterations of the title, and it’s all been a bit confusing, so I’m going to clear this up.

The title is “Shoron Genshiken: Hairu Ranto no Yabou”

Hairu Ranto is the name of a character in the novel.  He is a young CEO who has transferred into Shiiou University for whatever reason.  He has a sister, Hairu Anna.

So the actual title is  “Genshiken the Light Novel: The Ambition of Hairu Ranto”

Got it?  Good.

I have begun work on an Ogiue “image collection”

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Let’s just say it’ll be something.

Different shows for different mindsets

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I’ve found that my mood and mental state affect how well I receive an anime.  I don’t just mean that I like certain shows when I’m happy, and other shows more when I’m sad.  What I mean is that I will sometimes notice flaws in animation or design that wouldn’t bother me at other times, or I will feel like something is terribly off about a show, like the pieces (characters, backgrounds, writing, music, etc) just aren’t fitting together properly.  But then I will rewatch them, and the visuals will bother me less, and something may or may not click.  For me, the most prominent example is Godannar, where upon watching the first episode for the first time, something about the animation was bothering me.  It’s as if somehow I was unconsciously focusing on all the moments used to save money instead of concentrating on the high quality action parts.  Thankfully, I watched it again and it’s become one of my favorite series.

If only I could figure out what conditions are best for which anime, I could devise some way to get the most of watching.  Or I could do the opposite and purposely sabotage myself so I would hate anime forever.

Oh, and no matter the mood, I still think Rosario + Vampire is a bad show.  But don’t let me stop you from enjoying it.

Genshiken Novel is probably an alternate universe

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The setting is very unusual in regards to it not making complete sense given what we know of Genshiken.

Madarame is still chairman of Genshiken, so this story would be occurring prior to Ogiue arriving, except… Kuchiki is a member!

How can Kuchiki be a member of Genshiken during Madarame’s period as Chairman when he only joined officially after Madarame passed the position over to Sasahara?  Unless this takes place in that brief period where Kuchiki tried to become a member but didn’t, I think we can safely say that this story does not take place in the manga or anime timelines.