Oh, knee knee.

I did a marathon sprint with Amagami SS and finished the whole series last night. I thought I should write up my thoughts about the show while it’s still fresh in my head.

Amagami SS is a typical bishojou game to anime conversion in many ways, but in others it is quite unique. Most galge conversions (at least all that I’ve seen) only cover one girl’s arc (and maybe a second girl’s in an OVA). Or they take some time off the main route to focus on another girl for maybe 3-4 episodes. Amagami SS takes the unusual approach of having a 4 episode arc for a girl in its entirety, then doing a reset so Junichi can get with another girl.

Don't you wish your girlfriend was narcoleptic like me?

I think this forces the anime to be a little bit more self aware as it needs to concede to the fact that alternate realities are going to pop up. In a pseudo Back to the Future / Groundhog Day way, we see how Junichi’s actions (and inactions) affect those around him. In a way, it’s really sad to see alternate futures, because Junichi seems a pretty integral part of some of the girls’ lives.

Too soon?

For example, Junichi coaches Sae from being painfully shy to becoming a waitress at a popular cafe. In another arc, Junichi tutors Ai so she can avoid after school classes and remain on the swim team. In Rihoko’s arc, Junichi saves the Tea Club. In the final arc, Junichi exposes Tsukasa so she can be confident revealing her true self to others. This only happens in each girl’s respective arc, though. I think the series tried to mitigate this by showing scenes where the other girls were obviously not lonely, but I kind of wish they had played up the essentialness of Junichi. “Oh, you didn’t hear? Ai dropped out of school and became a prostitute.”

I saw you with five other girls!

Another thing that bothered me was how Junichi could be right for all of those girls. Obviously this guy is a man whore himself. I never noticed him saying anything like, “you’re the only one for me,” since that would have set off the fourth wall alarm.

Junichi and... Umehara!?

The final episode pokes fun at the causality of Junichi daing all the girls by having a final girl who meddles with his relationships. He just goes from Morishima to Kaoru to Sae to Ai to Rihoko to Tsukasa, just like the series progressed!

All analysis aside, I really enjoyed Amagami SS. There were a slow arcs, but towards the end I couldn’t stop watching. The Tsukasa arc finally brought what the series what it needed all along: some actual drama. There was finally a character who you didn’t quite understand, who had surprisingly more to her than first glance, and who might’ve been a bit dangerous.

I suppose it was the series quick 4 episode arcs that enabled me to finish, but I also enjoyed the characters and the humor in the how. The arcs themselves could have been done better. There were too many untied loose ends, like Ai’s little brother and Tsukasa’s book (and secret?). Overall, it was a fun show that was easy to take in small chunks and had a really interesting few final episodes. These days I hardly finish any anime, so it’s a pretty good indicator that I got all the way through this one.

Well, that takes care of Angel Beats! After getting rid of the smoke monsters, Yuri wakes up and everyone has already moved on. Way to thank your fearless leader, guys! The only ones left are Otonashi, Hinata, Fake Potter Guy, Yuri and Kanade. They have a fake graduation ceremony and then “move on,” one by one. I have a feeling the ceremony would have had a greater effect on me, had I graduated from a Japanese high school. They really sing school theme songs and that one universal Japanese graduation song?

The last two to go are Otonashi and Kanade, obviously. Otonashi decides to get cold feet and proposes that he and Kanade just chill in the purgatory world. He uses the excuse of wanting to help other poor souls, but we all know he just wants to take advantage of alone time with Kanade! Oh, and then Kanade tells him she already has his heart. Which is not a euphemism. His donor heart went to Kanade. She just went to the high school for the dead to say thanks. Hopefully the reason she died as a highschooler was not because Otonashi’s heart turned out to be a dud. “Thank a whole bunch for giving me a heart that just failed after a few years!”

It seems like fate is nice in this series, and everyone gets reincarnated and gets to live a happier life the next time around, as shown in the epilogue. All’s well that ends well, I guess (which is hard to determine with reincarnation).

Angel Beats kind of reminds me of a Japanese film called “After Life.” It also features a pretty mundane afterlife, though with a twist on “moving on.” You should check it out if you liked Angel Beats!

Overall, Angel Beats was pretty darn good. It’s the first anime that I’ve followed on a per week basis regularly and actually finished. I feel it could’ve worked well as a longer series though, since many of the characters had no backstory at all, and so their personalities just seemed forced with no reasoning behind them. And what was up with TK? I guess we’ll never know. Unless there’s a spinoff.

A while back, I reviewed a movie called “Big Dreams Little Tokyo.” The director just released another film, “White on Rice,” and sent me a review copy.

White on Rice is another story about Asians in America, though this one is not centered on an Anglo protagonist. Jimmy is a man-child who lives with his sister and her husband and child. He was recently divorced, and apparently is planning on moving out once he gets remarried. The problem is that Jimmy isn’t exactly marriage-material. He goes on a ton of dates, focusing on women in the office he works. First observation: Jimmy – you’re doing it wrong! Never go for the office romance! Things get more complicated when his sister’s friend(?) Ramona moves in for college. Jimmy decides to go after her, causing scene after scene of awkwardness.

There are also a few subplots involving Jimmy’s sister and her much older husband and their nerdy little kid. The kid, Bob, does not speak Japanese like the rest of the family. As a first (or second, depending on how you classify it) generation Asian American, I totally see this kid in most of my cousins who were also born in America. Bob is studious at school, has numerous part time jobs and pretty much fades into the background when his parents are around. He’s probably the most entertaining character since he’s so dead-on stereotype but also very real.

Jimmy, on the other hand, is sort of less believable. How did he get married in the first place? What led up to his divorce? He’s about one step away from being Pee-Wee Herman in his man-child behavior. I can’t decide whether to like him or whether to think he’s extremely creepy. He’s kinda mean to his super tall date, and he also totally ignores a girl in a banana costume who really likes him. He also stalks Ramona while she’s dating someone else. Granted, the guy she’s dating is a douchebag Asian (note to women, this is the wrong kind of Asian man to date), but still. I think Hiroshi Watanabe really shows his skill in acting, since he can play this socially inappropriate dude and get away with it simply because he looks so innocent when he flashes that smile.

Some of the acting is a big rough. I can’t tell if Hiroshi Watanabe is speaking broken English on purpose for his character, or because he’s really not that good at English. It’s kind of like how it seems like Jackie Chan doesn’t really know any English at all in his movies and basically speaks the syllables he needs to in order to fake it. I had to rewind a few times to understand what people were saying. This is bad, because I should technically be pretty good at deciphering Asian accents (my parents have strong accents). Besides the language barrier, I thought the movie was really funny most of the time. The thing is that the actors all seemed sincere in what they were doing, even if what they were doing seemed just plain wrong.

I also had a few issues with the pacing of the movie, especially towards the end. Some random character appears out of nowhere and saves the day with his car. I don’t recall seeing him earlier in the movie. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention? There were also random plot holes here and there, but that’s to be expected when you have a bunch of overarching plotlines and a short amount of time to tie them all in. A fun easter egg that I noticed was in a funeral home scene. Bob goes to play the piano by a dead guy. The dead guy looks like Boyd from Big Dreams Little Tokyo. In the credits, the young corpse is listed as being played by “Boyd Wilson,” who is the character that Dave Boyle played. So he got a small cameo in his movie. It’s kind of sad to see that Boyd died so young. Hopefully the sumo guy realized his dreams.

One detail that I appreciated was that the native speakers spoke to each other in Japanese. It always confuses me when two people who can communicate with each other in their native language, when it’s just the two of them, decide to speak in broken English. Tim (the douchebag Asian guy) even makes a note that Bob doesn’t speak to his parents in Japanese, though he can understand them when they speak to him. It’s a small touch, but makes a difference when it’s something that is culturally obvious.

I don’t think that anyone would argue that there are too many movies on Asian American culture. Any addition to the genre is quite welcome, and when it turns out to be funny and genuine, that’s a major bonus. I originally thought the storyline was going to be about an Asian guy going after a white woman because of the title. “White on Rice?” I think it would’ve been a more interesting story that could’ve highlighted culture clashes and brought up more about Asian American self-identity. Jimmy could’ve totally used this book. While I think it plays it a bit too safe, White on Rice still serves as a voice for the underrepresented minority of Asian Americans. I think it’s an important step in showing that Asians can star in movies that don’t have the word “ninja” or “kung-fu” in them. Overall it’s a solid Asian American indie movie that’s fun, uplifting, quirky and charming in its little imperfections.

White on Rice hasn’t had a wide theatrical release yet, but it has shown up in some film festivals. Apparently you can buy the movie already for a “sneak peek.” Hopefully it gets a wider release at some point. You can get more info at the official website.

I heard about Solanin twice in the course of a week or so (once at a staff pick section in Barnes & Noble and another from a Twitter feed) so I figured I would get it from the library.

Blurb:

College graduates struggle to cope with the real world. Music offers refuge in this modern manga with an American attitude.

Meiko Inoue is a recent college grad working as an office lady in a job she hates. Her boyfriend Shigeo is permanently crashing at her apartment because his job as a freelance illustrator doesn’t pay enough for rent. And her parents in the country keep sending her boxes of veggies that just rot in her fridge. Straddling the line between her years as a student and the rest of her life, Meiko struggles with the feeling that she’s just not cut out to be a part of the real world.

Review:
I think Solanin (ソラニン？）sets really high expectations and ultimately fails to deliver on them. There are lots of characters, all with unique backstories, but the interesting ones (non main characters) get pushed aside for the main plotline which I found kinda dull.

Temporally, the manga is really confusing. Manga typically signify a flashback via black borders around the edges. I couldn’t tell what was a dream, what was a flashback and what was happening in “real-time.” I’m still not really sure what happened in the story. Maybe that’s intentional?

This book is definitely relevant to my interests as a mid 20-something going through a quarter life crisis. I have a feeling it would be more relevant if I was living in Japan. There are a number of cultural references and it’s hard to pick up on them if you don’t know about Japanese culture. For example, the job of Office Lady (OL) doesn’t really exist in Western culture. Meiko is fighting against that culture of working at an office to find a hard working husband so she can quit. From a Western perspective, I think Japanese feel more “trapped” in their system than many of their Western counterparts do.

I think this is a first attempt from the author. In that case, it’s good, but the amateurishness of it definitely shows as well. Solanin shows promise, and it isn’t bad, but I feel it could have been a lot better.

Okay, so it’s been a while since I posted on this blog. I finally graduated and I have some free time to read stuff, including manga. So I finally read the second volume of Kashimashi, only about three years after I read the first one… At least the complete series is already out!

In this chapter, Tomari really starts to understand her feelings for Hazumu. Which is that she wants to bone him/her… Or at least keep Yasuna from getting with her. This makes Tomari kind of a bitch. But she’s also Hazumu’s childhood friend, which wins her points. Conflict! Hazumu also shows that she is less decisive than Hamlet. Which is to say she can’t even pick which kind of cotton candy to eat (they all just taste like sugar anyway, kid!).

Ayuki steals every scene she is in. But maybe that’s just because I have an obsession with Ayuki. She should really be one of the potential girls for Hazumu. And Hazumu’s best friend who is a dude is pretty hilarious. First he denies having a crush on his (prior) bro. Then he gives up and has lots of fantasies that are really wrong.

Kashimashi is pretty formulaic and situational, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be entertaining as well. The characters all mingle well with each other and a sort of equilibrium is achieved. It also doesn’t hurt that the manga is really well drawn and visually appealing (minimum of dudes per panel). I might pick up the Kashimashi Omnibus(es), which are apparently the entire series, halved. So you get vol 1-2.5 in the first one and 2.5-5 in the second one, which is due out in December. For like $10 each. Sounds good to me!

Disclosure (because I guess the FCC requires it now? But I did it before anyway): Seven Seas Entertainment provided a review copy of Kashimashi Vol. 2 to me for free. Thanks guys!

Sky Crawlers doesn’t really sound like a aerial dogfight-y kinda title to me. It makes me think of flying spiders or something. But what’s in a name, anyway?

From the beginning of Sky Crawlers, it’s apparent there is something weird going on with the world. There are pilots in the sky shooting down enemies, being shot down, and being replaced. But the pilots don’t seem as though they’re really that into the war. There’s not a crazy lengthy backstory to which side is which (one of the reasons I can’t watch Gundam, too much backstory). Instead, it’s nameless side versus also nameless side.

The pacing of Sky Crawlers is really slow. Some parts of the film were excruciatingly slow. I fast forwarded the beginning credits and there were parts of the movie I seriously could’ve watched in 1.5x speed. I’m convinced it has to do with the aesthetics of Japanese cinema.

It would be deceptive to label this with the genre “action” or “war.” It’s more about the characters. At its core is a drama with war and aerial dog fighting as the setting. As the story progresses (slowly), we learn more about the world the characters are living in, their own circumstances, and the world view that is quite different from our own, though not completely foreign. I wouldn’t want to give too much away, but I think the story is definitely affected by post-war Japan’s pacifist movement and is a criticism of war and its modern day television production values. In other words, a criticism of war television as entertainment.

I must’ve read this or heard this idea somewhere, that while Western cinema really focuses on “the good guy won in the end” kind of story, Japanese cinema goes for “the protagonist accomplished something, or grew, or something.” In other words, it’s about winning the war (Western) versus character growth (Japanese). Not that these two are mutually exclusive, but you’ll see a lot more dead protagonists and “bad endings” in Japanese movies. Ummm… don’t consider that a spoiler or anything…

Overall, I liked Sky Crawlers. I think it suffered from a really slow pace (again, aesthetics), incredibly generic character designs (except for the hookers) and sloppy visual coordination (I still hate CG paired with hand-drawn cels + painted backgrounds? And the hand-drawn animation seemed really low-framerate for a feature film). I think the story could’ve used a bit more tact too (some parts seemed super preachy but were necessary for exposition). Despite all these shortcomings, I enjoyed the movie and it made me think, at the very least. At least they try to turn the thing into a Hollywood action film or anything.

One more thing. At the very beginning, I groaned because the CG elements made the film look more like the cutscenes to a video game. Later on in the movie, a character refers to their situation as a sort of game. I wonder, then, if the comparison I made about the similarity of the fight scenes and the “war as a game” theme were not a coincidence, but an intended juxtaposition. Probably not; I think the Japanese just have a thing for crappy CG in their anime.

Thanks to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for sending me an advance review copy of The Sky Crawlers（スカイ・クロラ）. It’s out on May 26th.

Evangelion Calendar

This one’s kind of interesting. It’s an app that will generate an image that you can use as your iPhone’s wallpaper. It basically takes one of 12 images and you can overlay a calendar on it. It’s pretty limited because you can’t add more images. The images are not really that interesting. Have I mentioned I’ve never seen Evangelion? Anyway, if you’re a fan I guess it’s cool. The app makes the calendar based on the month and year, though it only goes up to December 2013 (which is one year longer than it needs to be, apparently). Pretty cool if you don’t already have a calendar makin’ app and you like the images (though rotating through them might ultimately become kinda stale).

Evangelion Puzzle

This is just the slidey puzzle game that I’m not very good at, times 9. But you have to unlock the current puzzle to get the next image. I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of algorithm for going through these puzzles if you know which square goes where. But I’m too lazy to figure it out because solving the puzzle is ultimately not very fun. You can choose between easy, medium and hard difficulty (probably determines how effed up the computer scrambles your puzzle) and 3×3, 4×4 and 5×5 grids. It’s pretty easy to get through them all on easy 3×3 mode!

So that’s about it! As an iPhone developer, I can say that the apps work pretty well. They don’t crash randomly, which is hard to accomplish in Objective-C! The premise of all these Evangelion-themed apps is kinda funny. They could literally make anything based on the franchise. I kind of expect to see an Evangelion Farts app next. Anyway, thanks to Appliya for sending me the apps. Go to their website for more info on the first 5 apps they’ve made so far.

This 6th volume of Love Com was a bit dissapointing, for the fact that very few names were called. Sure, there was plenty of “shrimp” thrown out there, but that’s Risa’s main attack. Otani threw a “Gigantosaurus” out there, but that was mainly it.

So let’s see… What happened in this volume? Oh, that’s right. Otani accidentally kissed Risa, then forgot about the whole thing because he was sick. It’s funny because they even mention this as “The Blackout Defense!” Then Risa steals a kiss from Otani, but immediately quits him. This comes off as only slightly implausible (because women are naturally illogical).

Enter Mighty-sensei. I was actually kind of surprised that Risa was loyal to Otani for a little while after Mighty showed up. It’s only after Otani told Risa about the whole grain of rice thing that Risa went over the edge. The whole Mighty arc for me is a bit boring. Mighty is sort of the voice of reason during the whole episode. He realizes that Otani likes Risa and he knowingly messes with the kids to get them together. I could imagine his plan backfiring pretty badly though, getting him into a tough teacher/student situation (isn’t that what doujinshi is for?).

At the end of the volume, Otani’s Mighty jealousy finally takes over and he grabs Risa from the ero-teacher. Good job! Now what? Oh, that’s what the next volume is for. For the sake of continuing the series, probably more hesitation from both parties.

Thoughts? This volume was also a bit too emo. At least they kissed though. Twice! Does that mean Risa’s going to make a baby!? There was also distressingly little Chiharu-chan. So disappointing.

I got the second volume of Honey and Clover (along with some Love*Com) at the library a few weeks ago and I finally read the H&C. So here’s a quick review (mostly to remind me of what happened once I decide to read volume 3).

This volume was mostly a character-building one. We learn about Takemoto’s mom and his stepdad. And how he hates going back home because of him. There’s not much in the way of Morita backstory. He stays a mystery for a while. Mayama is outed in this volume as a stalker of sorts. But he gets a good job away from Rika. Oh, and we learn about how Hagu moved away from the country to experience cool stuff so she can paint it.

This volume is notable because it contains a lot of the quintessential Honey & Clover scenes. Like the one where Hagu looks at the giraffe and sorta memorizes it so she can paint it later. Actually, I dunno if that’s a really famous scene. But I liked it. Also, the part where Mayama carries Yamada and she confesses her love to him is in this volume. So sweet. Oh and the part where all the kids look for the four leaf clover to give to Shuu is here, too. Natsukashii!

I like reading Honey & Clover. It’s pretty dramatic and I enjoy that. It makes me want to make my life more dramatic as well! Maybe I should just settle for reading about it though. My feeling is that the narrative is a bit random. Like there’s no driving plot behind anything. Just a pair of love triangles. But I suppose that’s good enough for now.

Um. Thanks, AADL for letting me borrow Honey & Clover Volume 2.

Mao-chan is the other, other Akamatsu Ken property that sort of comes after the popularity of Love Hina and Negima. And I think there’s a reason it’s not as popular…

Book Blurb:
Japan has been invaded by aliens–but this is no ordinary assault. These extraterrestrials are cute and extremely dangerous. Their mind-blowing powers are way too much for the military. Enter Mao-chan, the daughter of a great general, and her charming best friends–Japan’s only hope against this massive attack of the adorables!

Review:
Mao-chan basically consists of one joke: cute aliens are stealing Japanese so cute girls are needed to fight them, cutely. Because if Japan was to use a nuke against a cute alien, it’d be totally uncool. Mao and friends fight against the alien threat and seem to endure mostly on luck. Their super complicated weapons never really do the job; Mao is too clumsy to make the triangle of destruction work. Rather, bonking the aliens on the head (cutely) is the preferred method of neutralizing the threat.

Throughout the manga, there are some fairly cute and sentimental moments. Unfortunately they’re all incredibly cliche by now. Perhaps they weren’t when the manga was originally released in 2003. Stories about girls becoming BFF or klutzy girls running away from the school athletic festival or girls without moms celebrating Christmas feel really manufactured. Maybe it’s just my own familiarity of the source material, but it just doesn’t feel like there’s any substance to the stories. Even when something interesting happens, it’s within the narrow confines of the restrictive “something cute happens, aliens appear, Mao screws up but saves the day anyway” plot.

The last two chapters kinda made up for the rest of the book with an epic Freudian moment of a girl resuscitating her alien pal by blowing air into him. The money line is “Am I seeing things are is he starting to plump up?” You cannot make this stuff up.

Along with the “All grown up” bonus chapter at the end, I guess Mao-chan can be interesting. But for the most part it’s really formulaic.

It also seems as though many of the side characters aren’t getting the exposure they should to make the story actually interesting. The three kids get too much spotlight. Plus they’re kind of boring once you get past their token traits. I kinda got confused when they threw other generic kids into the mix because I couldn’t tell Mao apart from them.

Overall, I guess I’d only recommend Mao-chan if you really liked the anime. I think the stories in the manga are original. Even if you like Akamatsu Ken, it’s his work only in character design.

Thanks to Del Rey Manga for sending me a review copy of Mao-Chan Volume 1!