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  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

    Image Anime 3458

    This has been a crazy season for new anime. There are so many new shows out there (as I mentioned in an earlier post). Now, after a few weeks, the real winners are starting to make themselves clear. Two in particular that stand out to me are Suzumiya Haruhi no Yutsu and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I’ll post more about Haruhi later, since I just got done watching and episode of Higurashi and it is more fresh in my head.

    I’m only three episodes in (and about to watch a fourth) and this show has completely sucked me in. Keiichi has recently moved to a small town and started school. At this point the show was seeming a little silly, lots of typical school hi-jinx. After school Keiichi goes off with one of his school friends, Rena, and she shows him a junkyard where she goes to collect things. She runs off to explore and he waits for her. While waiting he runs into a photographer who tells him about a murder that took place right around there a few years ago.

    The most striking thing about the show is how it shifts gears. One moment things seem all happy and cute, only to turn around and become quite dark and ominous. Keiichi begins to think someone is out to get him, and I’ve started to wonder who to trust in all this. Currently Keiichi looks like he’s about to snap. I hope he gets some answers soon.

    This show also ended up surprising me a lot. For the first fifteen minutes or so I wasn’t that impressed. It felt kind of mindless and cutesy. Something which changed just enough by the end of the episode to pull me back to watch the second. And it is going to be a 26 episode series, which means we’re still only barely scratching the surface of the story. Here’s hoping the rest of the ride is as interesting as the first bit.

    (Cross-posted to the anime blog)

  • Anime Watching

    It’s that time of year where there are lots of new shows starting up in Japan. Here’s a quick rundown of my thoughts on a few of them.

    • Aria – The Natural – I know this isn’t technically a new show, but the second season has started out quite nicely and by the second episode they’ve already done one of my favorite stories from the manga.

    • Simoun – After one episode I rate this interesting w/potential. So far we’ve just got the slightest introduction to the story. But the animation is quite nice. The music is wonderful (includes some Bach I’ve heard). Yuri content. I can’t wait to see more story.

    • xxxHolic – One of my favorite CLAMP mangas finally gets its own series. So far I dig it, but will still wait to see how other characters are portrayed and stories are presented. Hopefully will be better than Reservoir Chronicle was

    • Disgaea – Based on a PS2 game of the same name. This looks to be a fairly kid-centric telling of the story. Art and Voices seem to match the game. I’ll have to look and see if the voices are the same. Not sure if I’ll keep watching for long, but seems decent enough

    • Strawberry Panic – Imagine Marimite, now suck out everything that was good about it. I always got a warm happy feeling when I watched it (well, except when it made me cry like a baby). This feels like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of it. There are high school girls, there is a yuri vibe, there is no heart. Next!

    • Air Gear – Feels like a typical shounen series. Though I found myself drawn into it quite a bit as I watched. Kids with motorized inline skates who compete against each other for status. A fun looking series. I’ll keep checking it out for an episode or two more.

    That’s it for now. Next time up I’ll talk about Ouran High School Host Club, NANA, KIBA, Zegapain, Soul Link, and Utawarerumono.

  • Voltron

    In some ways he’s just arriving. This fall Voltron will be released uncut on DVD starting with the lion episodes (later on the vehicle ones will come out). This and Robotech were the two shows that originally made me notice anime way back when. I’m curious how much of the original was cut/rewritten.

  • Maids in Japan

    CNN has an article on “Maid Cafes” in Japan, a popular place for some otaku.

    Maids rule in Japan’s nerd nirvana

    TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — “Welcome home, Master,” says the maid as she bows deeply, hands clasped in front of a starched pinafore worn over a short pink dress.

    This maid serves not some aristocrat but a string of pop-culture-mad customers at a “Maid Cafe” in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, long known as a Mecca for electronics buffs but now also the center of the capital’s “nerd culture”.

    “When they address you as ‘Master’, the feeling you get is like a high,” says Koji Abei, a 20-year-old student having coffee with a friend at the Royal Milk Cafe and Aromacare.

    “I’ve never felt that way before.” [CNN]

    I’ve been aware of the whole maid thing in Japan for a while just due to the amount of anime shows about maids. They are a whole genre in and of themselves. Everything from victorian romance type stories to action shows with robot maids to catgirl maids. But for some reason the idea of going to a maid cafe just sounds… wrong. It just sounds like too much of a bad joke. I especially like the line in the article about being able to get your ears cleaned (WHAT?). It actually is probably mostly an extremly focused version of what I’ve heard of called cosplay cafes, where the waitresses are dressed like characters from various anime shows.

  • Anime in the News

    Yesterday, the New York Times had an article about some of the anime that is currently showing in the US. It’s pretty good, though a little bit simplistic. The one thing I liked about it was that it was explaining a little of how these shows are different than the stereotype of what many people think anime is (Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh). The point where I feel the article falls a little flat is in its examples. While I enjoy Naruto, I think Fullmetal Alchemst might have been a better one to go into detail with. My guess is they were went with a show that was on at a watchable time.

    It is nice to see some mainstream media coverage of anime that helps to show a bit of why I enjoy the method of storytelling so much.

  • Initial Views: ARIA the Animation

    Aria-1

    Aria-2

    ARIA is the story of Akari Mizunashi and her day to day life on Aqua as a Undine (gondolier). This is slice-of-life anime at its best. The series started out as a manga and has been translated into animated form beautifully. The stories tend to be fairly simple glimpses into Akari’s life. Wether it is giving a free ride to a young girl and showing her what is special about Aqua or practicing her rowing with her friend Aika. You always find a relaxing bit of story. So far, one I’ll be watching.

  • Turner Classic Movies and Miyazaki

    ICv2 has posted information about a marathon of Miyazaki films on TCM in January 2006.

    ICv2 has learned that in January 2006, Turner Classic Movies, a prominent cable and satellite network, will run nine animated features by the great Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki.  Miyazaki’s movies have received scant exposure on American TV so the showings on Turner Classic Movies should expose a wide audience to these masterworks.

    A complete list of the films (and airdates) will be released next week, but ICv2 has learned that TCM will show such Miyazaki-directed classics as: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, and Porco Rosso, as well as Whisper of the Heart, which was directed by Yoshifumi Kondou, though Miyazaki wrote the screenplay, drew the storyboards and produced the film. [ICv2]

    I’m pretty psyched. I’ve wanted to see Whisper of the Heart for a while. I’m also hoping for Kiki’s and The Castle of Cagliostro.

  • Anime on the iPod

    Ipod Ipod

    More and more content for the video iPod keeps showing up. This time it’s anime from Central Park Media. Their initial offering is a show called Votoms. While I don’t have a video iPod it’s still stuff I can watch on my computer. But people are already putting out content.

    [Via The Unofficial Apple Website]

  • Naruto on Cartoon Network. Thumbs up?

    Last saturday Naruto started airing on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block of programming. For those of you who aren’t anime fans, Naruto is one of the most popular shows to come out of Japan in the last couple of years. Cartoon Network has a really random reputation when it comes to treatment of anime. Sometimes deserved, sometimes not.

    Given the above, I was kind nervous tuning in to check it out. I tend not to be a fan of dubbing, but realize that it is the only way that most shows will make it onto TV. In the end, Cartoon Network did a pretty good job. My biggest complaint was ‘why bother changing the opening and ending?’. The ones for the show are pretty good as it is (and some of the later ones are great). The voices themselves were okay, I think the VAs may have to grow into them a little, but hopefully that won’t take long. Very little editing. One minor thing that bugged me a little was that they edited out nosebleeds. Nosebleeds? They’re an anime thing. When a character sees something naughty or has perverted thoughts they tend to get nosebleeds. No, I don’t get it either, but I’m used to it.

    I’ve got it programmed into my TiVo as a season pass for now.

  • Living with Apple

    Dave Winer just got a mac and has been commenting about things he likes and doesn’t like about it. For example, he really doesn’t like Safari. Though he is happy with his Airport Express.

    He’s also been getting a bit of advice about software to use:

    This is the kind of advice…
    This is the kind of advice I’ve been getting from Mac users. Good stuff. You know, based on the rah-rah’s from developers who are probably too scared of Apple to say what they really think, I thought everyone else thought Apple was the perfect company and the perfect computer. That’s the downside of people being too scared to speak up, we get shitty information. How can we change this system, so that people aren’t so scared? Or can we get Apple to thicken up their skin a bit, and learn to not punish people who have the nerve to criticize them. Blogs were supposed to fix all this. Frankly I think it hurts Apple to just have rah-rah public discourse and commentary. [via Scripting News]

    Most people I know who have macs are more than willing to criticize them. The thing is, I find that the positives for me greatly outweigh the negatives. I’ve had no real problems with Safari. I think most of their software is designed for the casual computer user. It does the basics and tends not to get too fancy.

    So in my case I tend to praise Apple a lot since in general it’s been much less of a hassle than my experiences with Windows in its various forms. It’s definitely not perfect, but I’ve yet to find an OS that is.