And so comes an end to CCY’s 12 Days of Anime project… Merry Christmas… with blood!

I feel like I blew my load way too early. I shouldn’t have put up that post on Shiki a couple weeks ago. I’ve already said what I wanted about my #1 moment of the year, which would be Toshio revealing the double cross on Chizuru the Shiki and leading opening the gates for the Shiki massacre. I guess what continues to impress me is what’s happened since then. The show hasn’t held back one bit. It’s brutal, it’s graphic. If you’ve ever seen vampires dying on TV or the movies, they tend to have this video game death property of just vanishing after being killed. *POOF* as if they were made of pixie dust. But the Shiki vampires. They die, they leave a carbon footprint. It’s been amazing to see how much blood has been spilt. I love the “realism.” And it’s been harrowing watching the townspeople come to grips with having to “kill” their former family and friends to the point where now it’s just like they’re just putting up flypaper and setting the mosquito traps.

Sunako. Ruining the rep of moe characters since 1679.

I, for one, am quite content to see the Shiki die out like the soulless vermin they are, especially Sunako and her lolicon lackey, Seishin. Sunako’s pleas of survival ring hollow to me. It’s not about survival. It’s about dominance. She has no qualms about killing to stay alive. It’s a natural order of life for her. Well then, she should be the first to see that it applies for the humans too. I think a lot of the sympathy she’s getting is because of her moe appearance. I doubt blue ears or Masao the vampire gets a fraction of that sympathy. (Ironically, Masao the vampire has been much more tolerable than Masao the human.) There’s a comment in the MAL forums  that sums up my feelings pretty well:

If Sunako & Co would have wanted just to live happily, they should have been keeping the shiki population on the very low levels. Say, just only Kirishikis themselves. No laying hands on the villagers. They attack people from the city – so they have enough food to survive. that way no one would give a damn about Kanemasa and they could live there as long as they please.
Yet Sunako decided to turn the whole village into shikis. They got what they deserved.

I’m not going to condone the townspeople’s killing of their own. I understand where they’re coming from, but I don’t approve of it. It’s the result of a desperate people that have become far too defensive and frightened. (Pretty good allegory for the new “everyone’s a terrorist unless proven innocent after we toss you in a secret prison for a few years” world we live in now.) But the townspeople being wrong, doesn’t mean the shiki aren’t getting what they deserve. The shiki don’t have any right to live. They are dead. “The dead do not suffer the living to pass.” Well, that goes both ways.

I think the big reason why I have Shiki at #1 and I had the FMA moments at #4 is that, I always knew that Ed and Al were going to win. For all the action in that show, very few good guys actually die. There was no question they’ll win, the question was how. But with Shiki, I have no idea. I’m completely dreading the episode next week, anything could happen. I think the Shiki have laid enough traps and brainwashed enough people that someone major’s going to get hit. And with a fair amount of loose ends still, I know I won’t be completely happy.

What’s a good ending?

• Toshio, Natsuno and Beard Man survive
• Blue ears gets killed by Seishirou
• Seishin and Sunako die in spectacular fashion
• Kaori and Akira are alive
• Megumi gets killed by Natsuno

What do I think will happen?

• Toshio and Beard Man die
• Natsuno lives
• Seishin dies
• Blue ears and Sunako live
• Megumi lives and becomes the new Chizuru

I don’t think the Shiki win, but I don’t think they’ll lose either. Same way, I think the people will win the battle and reclaim their town, but at a great cost. But I don’t know. I’m totally nervous. But that’s the mark of a great show, it keeps you on your toes.

The 12 Days of Anime project is CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve moe-chwan~ days of Christmas!

Have I posted about this before? I swear I did, but maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was just in my head. Or maybe I left a comment out there somewhere on that poor little tourney site that people have already forgotten.

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This is what I would’ve done:

a.) First of all, I would’ve made a vow with my co-conspirators , Scamp and Mefloraine, as well as our ninja admins to not comment, tweet, backlink, co-blog, email or chat with each other until we accomplished our dreams

b.) I would recruited several artists to participate

c.) I would’ve had them Wikipe-tan’d the aniblog tourney, because moe mascots are beyond reproach unless you’re Hitler

d.) Then I would’ve had them moe-chwan-ify every blog in the tourney into a cute, chibi representation of itself

e.) And then I would’ve let out the hounds voters, and watched with glee at all the moe-haters go into apoplectic tsuntsun/deredere shock about their newfound and undeniable  self-hnnnngggh-ness. There’d be more self-hate than an emo brigade at a Twilight convention.

f.) As tempers flare and jealousy rages, I would’ve created a threadless t-shirt line, and a loosely based-on-reality doujinshi that eventually gets turned into an anime

g.) PROFIT

Thankfully, there’s always 2012, and we’ll be able to do all of the above (and more!) by incorporating all the new advances in moe-technology that will be sure to rock our world in the coming future.

The 12 Days of Anime project is CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve moe days of Christmas!

Aria the Origination was a show I held off on watching as long as I could, because I didn’t want to say goodbye to the perfect world of Neo-Venezia and all its wonderful residents – from the undine, to the mailman, to the weather moles, to the saucy cats.

Aria the Origination is another one of those shows with a lot of great moments in it. And unlike the previous Aria’s, where the pace of the show doesn’t lend itself to incredible highlights, seeing Alice, Aika and Akari come of age are things I’ll always remember. Ok, maybe not Aika’s. They sort of skimped on her moment, unfortunately. Anyway, stop raining on my parade!

But of all the moments, what struck me most, was a goodbye. As Akari takes the role of an undine, the joy is quickly followed by a bittersweetness as Alicia reveals that she’ll retire, to get married and start a family. Which admittedly, was a little odd, considering we’ve never even seen her in the same room with a man without incapacitating his ability to speak without turning into a blabbering mess. But I think what struck me most was when Akari finds herself confused about something routine and calls out for Alicia’s help, only to realize that she’s all alone for a few moments, and then Alicia walks through the door, and Akari’s strong façade breaks down, and she realizes she can’t hold her tears back. There’s something about that moment that was felt so… real and genuine. It’s easier to keep a strong face during the big moments – when you’re standing in an airport saying goodbye, when you’re saying goodbye during a graduation ceremony, or when you say goodbye to a loved one at a funeral. But when you’re alone, trying to regain normalcy, you look around and realize there’s a big hole where there used to be something, and that’s when it hits you – the gravity of the change. That things are no longer the same.

I didn’t want to say goodbye to Aria, because I love everything about the world, I love everything about the people. I love the sense of discovery, it’s more magical and wonderful than the second version of the iPad. If I were to dream up a perfect world, it would fall well short of Aria’s world. And how could I possibly ever want to say goodbye to something beyond my standards of perfection?

The 12 Days of Anime project is CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve moe days of Christmas!

In this moment, I’m giving Brotherhood the shaft.

But it’s not because I want to. Honestly, the number of jaw-dropping, memorable moments in the show should rank it #1 or 2 in my list. But because there were so many fantastic moments, it’s hard for me to distinguish them in my head and they ended up splitting the votes. I mean, how about:

• Wrath’s multi-episode fight against Fu, Buccaneer, Greed/Ling, a blind Mustang and then Scar
• Kimblee getting devoured by Pride only to come back in soul shouts form to destroy Pride from within
• Alex, Olivier, Izumi and Sig taking out the immovable object, Sloth
• A blind Mustang vengefully obliterating Envy to avenge Maes’ murder
• Al sacrificing himself to give Ed his arm back and a fighting chance to defeat Father
• Greed realizing he’d gotten what he’d always wanted and rebelling against Father to turn the tide of battle for Ed
• The long awaited return of Al

Just thinking about half these scenes chokes me up. The second half of Brotherhood was pretty much non-stop thrills. But of all those moments, I think Mustang’s evisceration of Envy was the most poignant moment.

It’s funny, I had Mustang’s massacre of Lust as one of my favorite moments in 2009. But this was different. Taking out Lust was cool, a spectacle. But this was more personal. This was revenge for the murder of one of my favorite characters in the show. Seeing Mustang cut loose, vengeful, wrathful to take revenge for his fallen friend, it was like he carried the banner of all the ones who loved Maes Huges. And seeing him go off on Envy – very easily the most obnoxious homunculus and quite possibly the most  patronizing one of them all was just the cherry on top. I wanted Mustang to lose it. I wanted him to not only destroy Envy, but to humiliate him along the way. To take all Envy’s condescension and turn it back on him by burning his eyes out and bathing him in flames. I wanted Riza to step back. I didn’t want Ed to interfere. If Envy was going to go out, he was going to go  outon his own. No cowardly way out. No rescue at the last minute. Of course, in the end Edward got his way. And the good guys took the good guy route. And I was a little bummed about that. Because it’s always more fun to see the anti-hero dance across the line between black and white. But still… there was resolution, a sense of relief, of deliverance. Like the good guy getting his comeuppance in an old spaghetti western. No one crosses Roy Mustang and comes out unscathed.

The 12 Days of Anime project is CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve chibis of Christmas!

Great Teacher Onizuka – home of the psycho females.

I don’t know if the original creator, Tohru Fujisawa, had issues with women growing up, but GTO is home to some of the most cruel and psychotic women I’ve ever seen. Sure, some of the guys give Great Teacher Onizuka issues, but they’re more in the vein of hijinks and pranks, whereas the girls are guilty of mental and physical torture. Chief among them is Urumi Kanzaki, who no doubt would be a stunner, if GTO didn’t look like it was drawn back in the 70s.

Combine sociopathic tendencies with a genius intellect, and an extreme hatred of teachers and authority figures, and you wonder how Onizuka would eventually turn her. Actually, that’s half the fun in the show, trying to see how Onizuka uses his street smarts to flip the script against these miniature criminals to turn them away from a life of cartoonish villainy. Whether it’s stripping girls down to their underwear and spanking them or leaving them to face the wrath from a band of thugs, somehow he finds a way to get one step ahead.

But flipping the script on Kanzaki was probably his most daring and exciting event, with him deciding to play chicken with his bike and a half bridge built to nowhere. Kanzaki dares him to drive straight off the bridge, absolutely damn sure that he wouldn’t. But this is Onizuka, the Evil Knievil of schoolteachers. So when he goes off and the two start falling to their death, Kanzaki finally realizes that if you’re not busy living, you’re busy dying. And actually what’s most striking about this scene is the difference between the Japanese and English voiceover. Kotono Mitsuishi gives a tremendous performance and her blood curdling scream just sends shivers down your spine. But Michelle Ruff makes it sound like Kanzaki is slowly falling down the stairs. It’s just so underwhelming that I can’t imagine what direction she was given, because I’ve heard her in other roles, and I think she’s not bad. But if you were watching the dubbed vs. subbed version, I think the impact of this scene would’ve been dramatically different on you. And that’s the most disappointing part about it all. A lot of times, the dub voices don’t seem to fit the characters well, but I can live with it sounding different than what I picture in my head. But the performance? The performance has to be there. It has to hit the mark. It’s when it doesn’t that you lose so much in translation.

But still, Kanzaki falling off a bridge, in Japanese. Spine tingling stuff.

The 12 Days of Anime project is CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve chibis of Christmas!

As evidenced by the best show of the fall season: Shinruaky! Ika Musume

The fall season has been sort of a bust. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Oreimo, but it’s tailed off a bit. Bakuman has been ploddingly average. Star Driver was a train wreck and a three episode drop. So even though Shinryaku Ika Musume has tailed off as well in recent weeks, I still think it’s the best show of the season. It also doesn’t hurt that it featured, what’s easily the best segment of the season, a 6 minute short with almost no dialogue, good direction, fantastic music, and more emotion than most shows conjure up in a whole season. But the segment wouldn’t have had the same impact without the ridiculous amounts of moe and cuteness. The dynamic and contrast between the moe and the drama is what makes the ending that much more powerful. This is the kind of short that wins Oscars. Unfortunately, I think Ika Musume has been so far under the radar even among the ani-fans.

The 12 Days of Anime project is CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve chibis of Christmas!

Now we’re getting to the area where I have a hard time ranking and distinguishing between moments.

The girl you’re going out with, and somewhat serious about (let’s just say it’s complicated), rolls out of bed and randomly asks you to marry her right as you’re planning to leave the country for a big concert. She’s always been flaky and frankly, quite weird. It’s hard to tell when she’s serious and when she’s being her quirky self. This comes after a night of odd behavior. You’re getting the sense that she’s not being serious and just reacting to certain events… maybe jealously, and certainly irrationally. What do you do? Do you let it slide? Do you pretend it never happened? Do you brush her off? What if she’s joking? Or for that matter, drunk? What if she’s serious? Would you hurt her feelings? What if you said yes? Would it count? Would it matter? Would she remember? What if you said no? Would she leave? Would she change? Would she care? Would she remember?

And you react by going *ploink* and you pluck her on the forehead and walk away.

In a season of topsy, turvy moments, Nodame’s spontaneous marriage proposal to Chikai was the craziest of them all. If not because of its total randomness, then as an opening to her following Stresseman to the dark side.

2010 is the year Nodame Cantabile ended. But I still don’t want to say goodbye.

The 12 Days of Anime project is CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve chibis of Christmas!

I gave Sora no Otoshimono much praise last year for the outrageously hilarious pantsu flying south scene. This time I’m giving its sequel props based on its storytelling merits. Egads!

If Sora no Oto was just about fanservice, I would’ve lost interest by now. It’s why I barely made it through the first season of To Love Ru, and why I couldn’t make it through the OVAs, much less the second season. It’s why I ended up dropping the second season of Strike Witches. But Sora no Oto’s different. It succeeds where Strike Witches fails in that, there’s actually a really interesting story behind the fanservice. It’s really striking when the show flips from ridiculous over the top ecchi to its serious side, because it does both really well. The sci-fi backstory about the angeloids and the world above is genuinely compelling. Tomoki is convincing when he flips from oppai loving perv to drama lead, but it’s Sugata who really shines in that role. Even the Angeloids go beyond inflated dakimakuras and play the role of the tragic hero quite well, particularly Nymph, the most mentally well-rounded of the bunch. But even Ikaros, who’s increasing humanism has made her a more interesting character, shines through.

This was probably best evidenced in the battle between Chaos, a second generation angeloid, voiced convincingly creepily by Aki Toyosaki and the first generation angeloids: Nympth, Astraea and Ikaros. As Chaos tortures a powerless Nymph, and fends off a game, but limited Astraea, it’s Ikaros who matches up with Chaos and takes her down – all while struggling herself to answer Chaos’ neverending question: what is love (baby don’t hurt me). Ok, so the premise sounds a little cheesy when I write it out like that. But when you combine a good, shounen-esque fight scene with gorgeous animation and terrific music, you end up with one of the most exciting and moving action scenes I’ve seen this past year outside of anything in FMA: Brotherhood.

Chaos eventually returns and they fight again, but the second fight is somewhat anticlimactic, and I hold this first fight as the pinnacle of the series so far.

This is… exactly what it looks like. Whatever you think that is.

What more can I say about Saeko’s bullet time boobs that hasn’t been mentioned by CCY or Scamp, or myself already? Just like how I was enthralled by Sora no Otoshimono’s flying pantsu last year, and Strike Witches pants-less witches the year before that, I’ve come to appreciate innovation. And yes, as Highschool of the Dead showed, even fanservice can continue to innovate. As Scamp put it:

You can’t just trot out the same tired and lame crap. You can’t have someone fall into another char­ac­ters breasts and call it a day.

Or as CCY put it:

It’s not enough to throw a few panties and jiggles in there and call it a day. It’s far better to lose all sense of sanity and normalcy.

Highschool of the Dead just goes to show that – if you try, you can put a new spin on anything. Don’t give me your tired, lame harem bullshit. I want fresh scenarios for why the guy keeps falling and landing on the girl’s crotch! I don’t care if it requires involving a jackhammer, an angry koala and Padme Amidala. I demand something new! I can’t wait to see what 2011′s fanservice breakthrough looks like.

Welcome to the 12 Days of Anime, or the 12 Moments of the Year, or whatever the heck it’s supposed to be called. But this is actually CCY’s brainchild and the only way to celebrate the twelve chibis of Christmas!

Drama is easy. Melodorama is hard.

It’s funny that looking back that I poo poo’d the Otonashi x Kanade scene, because I thought Key actually undersold the dorama. Which is like saying that Michael Jackson went too light on the whole plastic surgery bit. Totally hard to fathom. The whole reason I hated Key doramas before was because they focused too much on the dorama and trying to suffocate the viewer. But then Angel Beats comes around, it’s funny, it’s hip, it’s fast paced, and I actually like it a lot, even though the story gets a little too Matrix Reloaded. But then we get to the big climax, the big heartstring pull scene, and it falls flat to me. The master of going over the top falls flat in my eyes.

So it got me thinking. Dorama is hard. Drama is easy. But dorama, specifically melodramatic romantic drama is hard to pull off. Which is really interesting, because anime thrives on drama. I look back at my favorite series, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Gurren Lagann, Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, Code Geass, Baccano, etc. and all those shows are chock full of drama. But there’s very little dorama in those shows. It’s a lot easier to create a non-romantic drama, because the plot helps take away some of the weight that the characters and their chemistry need to carry. But in a romantic melodrama, the plot is mostly pointless. It’s all about the characters and their chemistry.  And maybe that’s where Otonashi and Kanade lost me. I liked their characters individually. I liked them as friends and partners in crime. But as a couple? I didn’t see them on that level. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought Otonashi was supposed to be the Kyon to Yuri’s Haruhi. Or maybe they just lacked the right chemistry I like to see in these pairings.

It’s funny, when I think of Kanade, and all I can think of is Kuroneko now.

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