So, Tuesday night was time to watch The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, episode 11. After a slump through episodes 6-9, the last two have definately been on target again with the insanity, Kyon’s sarcasm, and the totally unpredictable madness of Haruhi.
Even though it was predictable that the Computer Society would cheat and that Yuki would hack their cheat codes, it was just a riot to watch.
So Jason, over at Anime on My Mind decided a month ago to challenge his viewers to put together their very own animé harem. Just in case you’re not familiar with the genre, an anime harem involves 2 or more girls (usually 3-5) all chasing after the same guy. Often he’s hapless and hopless, and he usually can’t (or won’t) make up his mind between them, or something prevents him from doing so. Competition between the girls is often fierce, and provides about half the entertainment; the other half being the frequency with which the girls lose articles of clothing.
For the selection, the rules were: six girls, plus one maid to kind of keep the place in order. No two girls could be from the same series, unless they were twins/triplets, in which case the sisters would count as a single “girl.” Pretty simple, and quite generous. The thread is still going, so I chimed in with my contribution. Just for fun, I decided to cross-post here, since I can add the pictures and show my choices, not to mention discuss my reasons at greater length.
Many of the posters developed “themes” with their choices, and as I sifted through my collection mentally, I found one developing with my picks. Once I identified it, I ran with the idea, although it did change my choices slightly. I chose to restrict myself to anime that I owned or had seen on TV; if I’m picking my favorites, I can’t claim a girl as a favorite if I haven’t seen her series. So a lot of worthy candidates got eliminated from the outset: CBD Kei, CBD May, the original Nuku Nuku, Lum, and so on.
The theme I ran with was flexibility.
Well, I’ve managed to go more than long enough without an anime post, so I thought I’d drop one in today. Sadly, I don’t have a lot of cheesecake to tickle your eyeballs with, because this series is based more on its whacked-out premise and implausible plots. Yes, although the title is taken from Ghostbusters, I’m discussing the hijinks of the SOS Brigade, and everyone’s favorite unconcious goddess, Haruhi Suzumiya. If you’re thinking about watching this show in the near future, don’t go below the fold, because I’m speculating about the metastory here and there’s huge spoilers as a result.
Why no, I don’t think fans are getting completely obsessed with a show that hasn’t even been officially translated and marketed in Region 1. By the way, I should be downloading ep. 8 tonight.
Comment by wontaek | 2006/04/21 at 04:58:07
revised forcast. Over/under for the date when someone starts the Church of Haruhi: May 1st.
It was over.
Edit: thanks to YouTube, here’s the show’s, ah, energetic ending, with translations. Whomever recorded this has the same aspect problems I once did, so it’s distorted.
Update: Ok, now I’ve watched the episode, and even if it’s not as insanely funny as many of the others — Kyon’s sarcasm is definately lacking here — the series continues to intrigue because of all the mysteries. What happened in the cave? Did Haruhi make a change? And what’s with the mole on Kyon’s neck? I dont’ believe that’s just a red herring. Of course, with this bunch, you never know. And when is that talking cat from the first episode going to show up? From what I’m reading on the web, the studio only committed to 14 episodes. I don’t think they expected it to be such a runaway hit in the otakusphere.
DearS (that’s “Dear S”, not “dearz”), is one of those guilty pleasures that come along once in a while. It makes me wish I were still young enough to enjoy the ridiculously over-sexed humor, without thinking about what’s being “said” here. It’s not as braindead as Girls’ High, nor as pretentious as Chobits, and those are good things. The writers clearly set out to have fun by creating a piece of sexy fluff, but there are two problems: first they thought it would be funny to have an oversexed teacher and a gratuitous Don Juan running around. Second, there’s a few gaps in logic; this is not a show with “refrigerator moments” because it expects you to crank up the suspension of disbelief to somewhere near “ludicrous speed;” the illogic isn’t going to wait on a trip to the refrigerator.
While the second problem is merely eye-rolling, the first one makes the show uncomfortable at times. The writers barrelled right across delicate ground at full throttle with the clear attitude that “if it bothers you, go watch something else.”
One year ago, a spaceship with (supposedly) 150 aliens crashed into Tokyo bay. The passengers, called “DearS” (translated as “beloved friend”), were mostly female, human-looking and very beautiful — and almost all teenagers. Apparently, we’re just supposed to accept that the alien society that they come from is populated by people just as human as we are. (And judging from the, er, compatible plumbing, they have the same urges.) They quickly learned the Japanese language and customs, and were granted citizenship. At the opening of the story, many are being sponsored for home-stay in various households. The male lead is Takeya Ikuhara, who is probably the only guy in his school who isn’t DearS crazy — especially given that one is coming to their school soon. Takeya lives alone (it’s explained why later), and the closest he’s got to a girlfriend is the meganekko/childhood friend/landlord’s daughter, Nenneko. As much as he bothers thinking about the DearS, he doesn’t trust them; he thinks they’re probably really lizards here to enslave humanity (again, it’s explained why later). In general, Takeya is pretty rough around the edges. He works at a video store, where he sneaks out the adult vids for his friends — and gets decked for it by the manager.
In passing, I’ve touched on the issue of perversity in animé before. In hentai (animé porn), you expect a lot of it, but too many times, non-hentai shows will step over the line into treating pre-teens as sexual objects. In part, this is a cultural difference in Japan, which is facinated with youth; an unmarried female of 26 would be called “Christmas cake” (as in, no one wants to eat the leftovers after Christmas) and considered over the hill. It’s not uncommon for adult women to dress and act like teenagers; it’s considered sexy there.
(I mean, you can buy a high school girl’s used underwear from vending machines in Japan. No, I’m not making that up. A part of me wishes we’d had that when I was in high school; it was about the only way I was going to get into any of those stuck-up . . . . Ahem. Never mind.)
But just like our television reflects American society and mores, only exaggerated, Japanese TV does the same thing for theirs. So, with that kind of fixation, it’s not surprising that there are a number of series that suddenly start treating pre-teen kids as sex objects, just out of the blue. It’s not an integral part of the plot, it’s just there. Usually the character is a foil for the hero (although s/he is not necessarily the villian) and it’s played for laughs, but to American sensibilities, such can be painful to get through. Examples: Yumeria, Kiddie Grade, and Azumanga Daioh
There’s even one series where it is a major story element, involving a female teacher marrying her student in order to keep it a secret that she’s a space alien (Please Teacher!, although now we’re stepping into the realm of teenagers). Seems like that’s complicating the hell out of things. But while the actual loli’s are played for laughs in some series (like Yumeria), I’m just finding it less and less funny. Why? Because it’s hard to laugh at the reality:
Teacher accused of sexually assaulting 14-year-old student
This is “old” news locally, but I’m doing a bit of catching up, and this caught my eye.
A substitute teacher is facing charges of sexual assault of a child. Police say the man assaulted a 14-year-old Milby High School student on three separate occasions.
Thing is, she didn’t report it, but some other girls stepped forward to complain about how he acted towards them. KTRK never quite explains how the case got from “pervert” to “statutory rapist” but one can assume that one or more of the other girls was aware of what was going on.
Another group of girls came forward to high school administrators saying that the teacher had been rude to them. They released a tirade of complaints against him.
“To (a student) it seemed that this teacher would confront her in private, or confront her in the halls, trying to groom her, basically, and to get into a sexual relationship,” explained Jeanette Perales with the HPD Juvenile Sex Crimes unit. “Many of the students came forward and stated that this teacher, in their words, was a pervert.”
Then there’s another story out of Fort Bend.
Investigators say a former teacher’s aide in Fort Bend County crossed the line. They say he had sex with two students at his high school. Regardless of their age or whether or not anyone consented, police say the former teacher’s aide broke the law by having sex with students.
Mike Harvey with the Fort Bend ISD police said, “I think Mr. Martin took advantage of a situation that he shouldn’t have.” Harvey says he can prove Martin had sex three times with two girls. One girl was 17 years old and the other was 18 years old. “None of the incidents occurred on campus,” Harvey said. “We don’t have any allegations that that’s the case. But they did occur in a neighborhood that’s nearby.”
Ok, I have to roll my eyes at that one. It’s obviously aggravated circumstances that there was a school in the neighborhood where he was screwing a student. To be thorough (I don’t want to say “fair”), teenagers aren’t pre-teens, and at 17 or 18, now we’re getting to the point where people are more likely to shrug and go, “oh, come on, 18 is an adult, and 17 is damn near.”
“Grass on field! Play ball!” (Now that’s ecchi.)
Somehow, I don’t think the parents of the girls involved would say that. And they’d be right not to.
Authorities say Martin used his position of authority to seduce the young women. Under the law, that’s an allegation of an improper relationship between an educator and a student. Martin faces three such charges.
“This seems to be happening so often now that we’ve almost become numb to it,” said parent Darrell Robertson.
That’s something to remember the next time you’re tempted to laugh at someone yelling “ecchi!” in animé. (He says, just before popping in DVD2 of DearS, which has a very inappropriate relationship going on that doesn’t even have anything to do with the main plot. Edit: finally watched all the way through. Turns out the guy is an upperclassman, not a teacher.)
Teaching is harder than it used to be. It’s more politicized, more bureaucratic, and more difficult. The result is that teachers tend to burn out within a few years, and move on. When I was in high-school, teachers tended to be old wrinkled old women and bald men–except for the coaches. Nowadays, the teachers are highly likely to be MILF’s. (Warning: link NSFW!) Worse, now the “old-timers” with 30+ years of experience are not around to ride herd on younger ones they think might be about to make a mistake.
Something else to think on is this. Recently, I had a conversation with several co-workers, ranging in age from 23 to 50. Of six people at the table, four had teachers in either their own or their kids’ high school or junior high either arrested or suddenly transferred due to “inappropriate relationships.” And in a fifth case, everyone suspected, but there was never enough evidence to make an open accusation. (That teacher’s contract was not renewed for the next year, however.)
Those are disturbing odds, and the time span suggests that it’s not a recent problem, by any means. Sometime after I get through playing with the page setup, I’m going to do a full review of DearS–and it will have more cheesecake of that very inappropriate teacher. (Not like I’m fourteen, after all….)
Update 6/5/06: Once more, with feeling.
Random pet peeve of the moment: CyberLink’s Power DVD has a strange feature when interacting with Geneon’s release of DearS: Individual episodes are not treated as such in the progress bar. The entire disk (well, the episodes, not the extras) is treated as one show. This makes it extremely hard to reach a specific time index by clicking on the bar. I suspect it’s Geneon’s fault, since no other DVD’s I have exhibit this behavior.
As for DearS itself, I’ll have more to say later. I found it more tolerable than Chobits, although it shared a couple of the same flaws. But I was really creeped out by that teacher. Sorry, I don’t care how stupid the principal is, no one is going to tolerate a teacher that rolls around on the desk in lingeré and has her students read lurid novels in class.
No, the resemblance to the picture on the book isn’t an accident. Apparently she moonlights as a nude model and porn star. Given that, I’m surprised that neither Takeya nor Oihiko have seen her in any of the porno vids or magazines. I’m also surprised that there’s enough text in such a book for it to be used in English lessons, but I guess it’s the kind without pictures. I’ve heard they still make those….
I have a related post (much more serious) already scheduled for tomorrow.
Last night I dreamed that Belldandy showed up with a citizen complaint. She looks awfully cute when she’s distressed, but I really hope we were able to solve her complaint before Urd and Skuld showed up to “help.” The dream didn’t get that far, alas.
Edit: the nature of the complaint would give away my exact office, almost to the desk, or I’d tell it here. All I can say is that it’s hilarious, given that she’s a Norse goddess that is supposed to go around dispensing wishes for the big guy. (And no, I don’t mean Odin!)
Steven DenBeste writes a serious and lengthy (for Chizumatic) two-page post on the perils of being a science fiction author, and trying to predict the future inasmuch as you are using the technology to establish the setting. He compared the bleeding edge of the past to the present; it is a weighty epistle, probably one of the more serious I’ve seen him post on Chizumatic. (“I thought he gave up serious posts there?” I said to myself.)
I should have seen it coming. (20060511.1310 post.)
(remainder of post removed by request.)
Celebrating the most hyper-inflated breasts since Benny Hill, Steven DenBeste has been discussing Divergence Eve a lot lately and posting plenty of captures. Well, this prompted a letter from a female fan named Kacie, who wrote:
1. Ouch! Don’t those things HURT?
2. Ewww… and they bounce like jello, too. That’s so disgusting.
3. Do men really like that sort of thing? The male characters on the show look like they could DROWN in those things! Look, hers are bigger than his HEAD!
Well, I figured there should be a male response forthcoming, and since I had nothing better to do….
1. I repeat my last comment I appended to an earlier post: “At least we know that in the future, chiropracters are miracle workers. None of these girls ever complain of backaches.”
2. Speaking as a male, I find the fact that they bounce far more attractive than the ones that don’t move AT ALL. I mean, big is nice to look at, but if the San Andreas could rip the big one, and you could hang onto her set for safety because you know they ain’t moving at all, then they’re definately over-inflated rocks.
3. No, no, that’s not really what you saw; it’s just the light from Venus reflecting off some swamp gas . . . . (This is how we know the writer really was female. . . . I mean she looked at something else!)
Still, gratuitous bounces and huge breasts can detract. Watching the fansub of Witchblade, ep.1, there’s a scene where Masane, the new wielder, has been drugged and is crawling along on her hands and knees, slowly changing back to normal. Supposed to be tense and dramatic… and then her boobs make this little jump. Not swaying natually, like they should if they were real; they just sort of…. jump. Horizontally bounce. Utterly gratuitous.
Sigh. Definately breaks the tension.
Continue reading
“Fact is, there are no women like this here in the real world.”
(And there are no permalinks at that site; it’s the 20060507.2130 entry. Also see 20060507.1330)
I guess this is what I get for expressing my fandom of the U.S. Army.
Continuing with the anime fansubs I’ve been watching lately:
Karin: This is the second series that I am not sure why I watch(ed) it. Another manga adaptation, which happens far more frequently in Japan than it does here. You don’t need to take your shoes off (well, not more than one) to count the comic-to-movie or TV show adapations over the last quarter-century here, but in Japan, that many at once on TV isn’t unusual. Since the manga has just been imported to the US, it’s entirely possible that the show will be too far behind. Unlike Melancholy, I won’t be lining up to buy this one, even if I did watch 22 episodes of fansubs. Continue reading
I’m bumping Karin into its own part, and continuing with just one show for today’s post.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: This show will be licensed for Region 1, make no mistake. And I will be buying every DVD the moment it hits the shelves, even though I’ll have seen the show already through fansubs. How can I describe it without giving spoilers? It’s just too good to give the jokes away…. Sigh.
It is, hands down, the funniest show I have seen in ages. I haven’t seen writing this hilarious since the very first episode of South Park. And they do it without scatological humor and kids using locker-room language. One poster on the Anime News Network forums compared the snappy humor to an American sitcom, but that’s an insult to Melancholy. American sitcoms are potty humor by comparison. The dialog and narration are so “tightâ€? that there’s hardly a wasted word or scene. You almost don’t even notice that there’s some seriously weird stuff going on. Haruhi, as the female lead, is a maniacal tyrant, bullying the others in the SOS Brigade to get her way. She’s not mean, she’s just incredibly focused, and others are just objects to her. Kyon is a cynical-but-amiable slacker who makes the mistake of accidentally befriending her. And the others were dragged in by Haruhi… or were they? Continue reading
Lately, my appetite for anime has completely outstripped my wallet’s ability to pay for it. Fortunately, there’s always a solution as long as there’s the internet: fansubs. So recently, I decided to investigate the world of fansubing, and was surprised at some of the things I learned.
For those not familiar with the world of anime, fansubs are copies of the original Japanese program, subtitled by groups of bilingual fans. The various clubs doing this work are highly competitive, resulting in work that is often better than the professionally subbed versions you buy on DVD. Several innovations in subtitling came out of the fansub community, such as the use of yellow or outlined letters; these were later picked up by the companies which license the programs for international distribution.
Although it is legally pirating, fansubs occupy a strange semi-tolerated niche in the anime industry, as potential importers can watch the fan “buzz� and get an idea over what series might be profitable to license. In return for freedom from hassles, most groups voluntarily withdraw distribution of their files after a series or movie is licensed, or sometimes when distribution begins. (Of course, there’s also the usual scofflaws. Some people are just that way.)
Since last Friday night, I have used BlogTorrent (acquired through J.Greely’s site) to download about 30 episodes of various shows. I’d tried to install and use other BitTorrent clients before, only to fail miserably; I didn’t understand the whole seeding process (and still don’t) but BlogTorrent has worked great without me having to understand much of anything. I go find a website with a link to a torrent, I click on it, save it, and BlogTorrent handles all the rest.
None of the programs I’ve downloaded have yet been licensed in Region 1 (North America) to my knowledge. In fact, two of them are brand new, having just premiered on Japanese TV. I have one thing to say about HDTV there: “awesome!� In fact, it wasn’t until I started to write this that I remembered, “Hey, that’s not taken from a DVD, that was broadcast!� It sucks that American TV is so far behind, technically.
So, for anyone who might be interested in doing their own acquisition, here’s what I’ve downloaded, with my reviews. I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but it’s not entirely possible.
Girl’s High has enough fanservice to make Najica Panty Blitz look tame. However, after being challenged by Pixy Misa’s Cutey Honey link over on Shamus Young’s’ site, causing an instant 601 error in my brain (think Andromeda Strain: “too much data, the system can’t handle it all”), I realized that I was going to have to do some serious captures to get my point across. So rather than hold up this entire post, I’ll just leave you with these two and come back later for a fanservice special.
Ok, I admit it. I spent too much time staring at her and I can’t finish this post tonight.
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| It just needs a little adjustment, Eriko…. | Ah, oops…. |
Based on the writer’s own high-school experiences (but I suspect very loosely) this is the story of six first-year students at an all-girls school. How bad is the fanservice? Well, you don’t need a two-foot tall cameraman to see the panties after these girls get through with their scissors! The dialog is as suggestive, if not more, and the situations are tailor made for girls to be running around in way too little clothing. Somehow, I doubt any high school really makes its students spend a whole day running around in nothing but panties and open smocks while getting medical exams (episode 2). Still, the characters are surprisingly fun to watch, especially the rivals Kouda and Eriko, and the dialogue is over the top. After only two episodes though, I have no idea if there will be any semblance of a plot. I’m not going to spend a lot of time discussing the characters in this post. I just haven’t found much else to describe. Or maybe I was just distracted by the panties.
There are two series that I just don’t have any idea why I watch them, but I do (or did).
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Ah! My Goddess (season 2) is the first. I downloaded two episodes, and watched about ten minutes of each to get a sense of how the first season is going to end and what the second will be like. I have to say I love the new opening. The music is bagpipe-oriented and the visuals show scenes of Heaven, which I believe is strongly influenced by the designs of the AMG movie. (I’m going to have to get that soon. . .) The closing is made up of pans over a scrapbook with pictures of the characters, and the music is a romantic ballad, similar to country at times, but not as strongly as the first season’s original EP.
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The plot is still sticking closely to the manga (comics), although there’s at least one element of a story that has been expanded, and another dropped; additionally the sequence continues to be scrambled compared to the original. It works very well though. The same sweet, light tone continues, although it’s obvious that there was a spot of trouble at the end of the first series, because Yggsdrasil is offline and the goddesses have no “power feed� from Heaven. My original guess (discussed with Steven DenBeste via email) as to what will happen at the end of the first season appears to be close, but wrong; they’re drawing from an arc a little further along. I suspect that the reason is that the segment I expected season one to end with will be the ending to season two or three, because it’s much more epic, and fits better with the opening sequence of episode 1 of season 1.
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Every time I watch an episode of this series, I have to ask myself, “why?â€? There’s not a lot of super-dramatic conflicts, few battles, no dire “save the worldâ€? emergencies, no belly-laughs, and rarely any fanservice worth mentioning. The real story is the slow-paced romance between Keiichi, a mortal, and Belldandy, a goddesses sent to grant him one wish, only she turned out to be the wish–something she is very happy with. But the only answer I can come up with is that it’s a very sweet, warm show, with characters you can enjoy spending time with. It just doesn’t have a bad bone it’s body. Even Sayoko, arguably the second-leading villain in the show, is a sympathetic character whose pain you can feel. If I had a significant other, this would be my first pick for an evening of cuddling on the couch while watching TV, also my second, third, and fourth.
Edit: And finally, Fireball20xl is back, so I can post this link to the fan manga TRG, showing the occasional drawback to Skuld’s mode of transport, which teleports her from one body of water to another. No, that’s not really Belldandy she’s arguing with. Let’s just say that another Urd potion went haywire…
Tomorrow, I will continue with part 2, reviewing Karin and my favorite, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Over at Chizumatic, SDB wrote:
on Saturday I put in an order for more DVDs with Robert. My order was filled and shipped yesterday. (I don’t know if everyone gets service that good, or if I’m attracting special attention because of this site. I really hope it’s that everyone gets the same service, because otherwise I’m party to a deception.)
Well, we’re about to see if it’s just Steven DenBeste getting special service. Back on the 6th, I ordered three anime DVD’s from DVD Empire. Their price was enough better than Robert’s on just 3 CD’s, that I could pay for the shipping with the difference. One of the DVD’s was a pre-release order, due out on the 11th, so I thought I’d have it by this weekend.
Well, it didn’t quite work as well as I expected. Yesterday, the order still showed as open and unchanged. Today I look and for the second time, DVD Empire has gone straight from “pre-ordered” to “out of stock” on an item. If they’d had the courtesy to tell me a few days in advance that they’d ordered too few and needed a couple of more days, I could have changed my order. Instead, I was not even notified of the change. Last time it was Ah My Goddess, this time it’s Mars Daybreak, but the 2nd DVD was AMG vol. 4, so it gets caught up in the delay anyway. Screw that.
So I canceled the order with DVD Empire and re-issued (with additions) over at Roberts.
Daphne vol. 4-5
Ah My Goddess vol.4
Mars Daybreak vol.5
Full Metal Panic (boxed set).
The Empire has fallen. Long live Robert’s Corner Anime Store!
Meanwhile, SDB and I had a discussion of Scrapped Princess, and both concluded that the ending didn’t exactly suck but it was incredibly sub-par. It was much less than it could have been and that hurt the whole series. I thought his description of Pacifica as a MacGuffin was particularly apt; we were both disappointed in her development (or lack thereof) in the series. She never stepped up to meet her destiny. (In real life, that’s a criticism I have often had of Prince Charles, another person who seemed to be much smaller than the role awaiting him.)
I was looking for an ending similar to Varley’s Gaean series, and it didn’t even come close. Scrapped Princess was a great series in so many ways, compromised by a mediocre ending.
I’d like to do a review sometime soon, but it looks like things are heating up for me on several levels, so I probably won’t have time.
Update: And Dr. Heinous objects to the resolution of the Cz subplot: “And after all that, Cz just gets zapped (after all the buildup of her following Shannon around, you just expected something more than a quick kill).”
However, I categorically reject his assertation that I am in need of a Mr. Soupy costume.