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october 2012 anime
12 Oct 2012 01:14 amAfter Gundam 00 honourably turned me off anime for 3.5 solid years (yes! Really! It was back in 2009! ...Feels old Orz) I finally summoned up the attention span courage to watch the new season of franchise hopefuls.
Project K
Thanks to my temperamental internet, I only managed to watch half the episode. This anime is SEIYUU GALORE. It has every popular voice actor of the day. There is a paucity of details about this drama, except that it is "sci-fi" and "fantasy" involving teenagers, and that it is co-written by a group of 7 (or other random number) writers who have chosen to remain anonymous.
The whole anime is extremely stylistic. It feels like an art experiment, in a good way. It is flush with psychedelically hyper-saturated colours, tuned to uneven guitar chords that's more hip-hop than anything else, which matches perfectly its bizarre stop-and-go motion, full of long dramatic slow-pans and slow-motion sword drawing.
By the time it approaches the closing credits, one can't help but wonder if the sneaky group of writers is CLAMP in one of their variations. The bold experimentation aside, it puts style and personality before story and plausibility. Oh, and also there are distinct BL undertones.
Like anything to do with CLAMP (now I'm practically assuming it's from CLAMP though I have no evidence of it), it is a very pretty thing to watch, but probably makes you go WTF more often than you really should.
Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun
I have long ago given up on watching shoujo anime, but I heard this was funny, and I have, once upon a few very apart times, liked a few shoujo anime.
The premise is a mix of, say, KareKano and say, maybe, KimiTodo, with a hint of Kaichou wa Maid-sama, Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu, and probably every other high school shoujo title you can think of except, possibly, Fruits Basket.
It's a story about an introverted heartless anti-social study nerd who meets an extroverted reckless sociopath who inexplicably gets better marks without studying, and sparks fly.
The manga is better than the anime, as I expected, which is low budget and it is always a poor effort when the audience can see how budget is being saved with bizarre frame cuts and pointless panning shots of furniture.
As with most shoujo that become special, the characters are distinct enough to rise from the masses of pretty faces that plague the genre. There's something likeable about Shizuku's cold rationality and Haru's frank idiocy is always adorable. That said, Haru is not much of a character as an inconsistent jigsaw of characteristics, and while their best friends are very sweet there's not much to entice the readers to continue.
I'd love a return to the days when shoujo were no longer than 10 volumes, and dark angsty pasts are dug up and aired before the sickly romance settles in, pretending to be plot.
Shin Sekai Yori
Adapted from the critically acclaimed novel of the same name, and frequently referencing Dvorak's eponymous symphony, this anime is the creepypasta of the season.
Sporting deceptively wide-eyed moe-style characters, the story instead tells of a disturbing future set 1000 years from our time where children with superpowers are brought up in a seemingly utopian setting. And yet, sometimes the children disappear and are never remembered again. And there is a barrier they must never cross...and if they do, they are taught they should sacrifice themselves to protect everyone else. There is a liar cat that takes away children. There is a graveyard behind Harmony school. And there was a time, when children had stepped out onto the street and turned people into bloody pulps, just by thinking. It is an interesting comment on prejudice, fear, propaganda and identity...no doubt taking at least some influence from X-Men.
The anime itself is very sleek, with appropriately creepy music; and by hiring a number of lesser-known voice actors, they're able to spend a good amount of budget on the other features. The jarring thing about it is the abrupt weaving between flashback and the "current" timeline, which I assume arises from its novel origin. Otherwise, this anime is a must-watch for anyone who wants something different and thoughtful...at least until I get too creeped out.
Project K
Thanks to my temperamental internet, I only managed to watch half the episode. This anime is SEIYUU GALORE. It has every popular voice actor of the day. There is a paucity of details about this drama, except that it is "sci-fi" and "fantasy" involving teenagers, and that it is co-written by a group of 7 (or other random number) writers who have chosen to remain anonymous.
The whole anime is extremely stylistic. It feels like an art experiment, in a good way. It is flush with psychedelically hyper-saturated colours, tuned to uneven guitar chords that's more hip-hop than anything else, which matches perfectly its bizarre stop-and-go motion, full of long dramatic slow-pans and slow-motion sword drawing.
By the time it approaches the closing credits, one can't help but wonder if the sneaky group of writers is CLAMP in one of their variations. The bold experimentation aside, it puts style and personality before story and plausibility. Oh, and also there are distinct BL undertones.
Like anything to do with CLAMP (now I'm practically assuming it's from CLAMP though I have no evidence of it), it is a very pretty thing to watch, but probably makes you go WTF more often than you really should.
Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun
I have long ago given up on watching shoujo anime, but I heard this was funny, and I have, once upon a few very apart times, liked a few shoujo anime.
The premise is a mix of, say, KareKano and say, maybe, KimiTodo, with a hint of Kaichou wa Maid-sama, Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu, and probably every other high school shoujo title you can think of except, possibly, Fruits Basket.
It's a story about an introverted heartless anti-social study nerd who meets an extroverted reckless sociopath who inexplicably gets better marks without studying, and sparks fly.
The manga is better than the anime, as I expected, which is low budget and it is always a poor effort when the audience can see how budget is being saved with bizarre frame cuts and pointless panning shots of furniture.
As with most shoujo that become special, the characters are distinct enough to rise from the masses of pretty faces that plague the genre. There's something likeable about Shizuku's cold rationality and Haru's frank idiocy is always adorable. That said, Haru is not much of a character as an inconsistent jigsaw of characteristics, and while their best friends are very sweet there's not much to entice the readers to continue.
I'd love a return to the days when shoujo were no longer than 10 volumes, and dark angsty pasts are dug up and aired before the sickly romance settles in, pretending to be plot.
Shin Sekai Yori
Adapted from the critically acclaimed novel of the same name, and frequently referencing Dvorak's eponymous symphony, this anime is the creepypasta of the season.
Sporting deceptively wide-eyed moe-style characters, the story instead tells of a disturbing future set 1000 years from our time where children with superpowers are brought up in a seemingly utopian setting. And yet, sometimes the children disappear and are never remembered again. And there is a barrier they must never cross...and if they do, they are taught they should sacrifice themselves to protect everyone else. There is a liar cat that takes away children. There is a graveyard behind Harmony school. And there was a time, when children had stepped out onto the street and turned people into bloody pulps, just by thinking. It is an interesting comment on prejudice, fear, propaganda and identity...no doubt taking at least some influence from X-Men.
The anime itself is very sleek, with appropriately creepy music; and by hiring a number of lesser-known voice actors, they're able to spend a good amount of budget on the other features. The jarring thing about it is the abrupt weaving between flashback and the "current" timeline, which I assume arises from its novel origin. Otherwise, this anime is a must-watch for anyone who wants something different and thoughtful...at least until I get too creeped out.
