First impression? False impressions – A tanuki's confession

26Apr/0719

First impression? False impressions – A tanuki's confession

Go...gomenasai!

In the tanuki's school of Japanese visual arts, besides cultivating an appreciation of high siscon drama, alternative gothloli fashion and stolen taiyakis, there is also great emphasis on developing pure/honourable tanukis who are able to sift the wheat from the chaff in anime. I thought I had since graduated until the recent dull of my Stripey-sense. My pimping of anime duds (usually born of false first impressions) have increased alarmingly over the last 3 seasons. Gripped by bad conscience, I have decided to confess these wrongdoings in a bid to regain some credibility and bring balance to several over-inflated debut impressions.

Listed are some recent anime I have gushed about only to have them fail my expectations (some more spectacularly than others). Do note that not all are hell-bound series per se. Some have merely scorned my initial lofty assessment of their potential with severe mediocrity, uninspiration and in one extreme case, animation from Picasso-styled kindergarteners.

In no particular order of unmerit, I present: Stripey's 4 shamed anime promotions

Venus vs virus

My supposed moe-fix for Winter. (Yes, the winter offering was THAT thin.) I still maintain that Lucia is love. Her characterisation is consistent and her eye-patch moelicious. Twin-tailed, heterochromatic and in that sin-inducing eyecatch outfit, she's the sole reason I stuck with the series longer than I should. Unlike most one-dimensional tsunderes, her tsundereness is but a small part of her personality and such healthy dosages serve to accentuate her charm (much like how a dash of chilli can better bring out the flavour of most Singaporean hawker fare). Alas, Lucia has to be the co-heroine of one of the most generic and poorly conceived character I've seen in 2006, Sumire; a 16(?) yr old trapped with the mentality of a 6 yr old. It was such a pain/bore to see her grapple with juvenile issues and cause problems for the cast and disrupt the plot. It really didn't help when the story chose to focus a lot more on her. This was compounded by unimaginative virus designs and oft poorly animated battle which completed its self-assisted shove into my recycle bin.

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou

My shameful plug. Years ago, I saw a TV program which invited participants to create the perfect face by using facial features of existing superstars. Andy Lau's nose, Aaron Kwok's eyes, Shingo Katori's lips were all fair game. However, despite fans' best efforts, the outcome was always a horrifying abomination of a chimera. In addition, the participants had an uncanny knack for raising this bar of horror with subsequent weekly attempts. Tokyo Majin is not sooo bad but close. It's a series where the sum of its parts is an complex number. It's not bad per se (hence not a negative integer) but it's just incomprehensible how so many excellent elements (action, character design, premise) can come together to give such a flat experience. I blame it on poor execution. In the attempt to compress too much, the story lost its flavour and our attention. In retrospect, I thought the story to be pretty good. If only they put more effort in stringing a more coherent tale and allowing more dwell-time for cultivating character endearment. I hope they'd do better with their 2nd season come July.

Yoakena ~~~Cabbage~~ Crescent Love

I seek the pardon of all who were hyped up by my pre-anime rants of Yoakena. I have no excuse and can only hope that my own indelible scarring would be a mitigating factor when you are considering meting out your righteous wrath on this tanuki. For those who has not seen this anime, PLS! For the love of tanukis, do not approach this evil-incarnate of an anime. Allow me to refer you to a fellow FFF (flee flee! Feena!) brother who is still recovering from its dehabilating effects. You have been warned.

Tokimeki Memorial ~ Only Love

It was Tokimeki Memorial ~ Mainly Love for me not long ago. Now it's Mainly Lament. Tokimeki Memorial started out fantastic. The girls were wonderfully set up, having great personalities and character designs. There was also plenty of meaningful character interaction and growth. The series captured the euphoria of 17 yr old boys and girls in love accurately through the masterful meld of music, artwork and intuitive dialogue, creating an ambience of innocent love I seldom see in this genre. So I was really enjoying this ride until the anime lost its way. I understand the importance of maintaining romantic tensions in such series but it need to be ushered in credibly (ie consistent with the level of character liaison and congruent with the girls' personality/motivations). By about mid-series, TokiMemo turned into a full-fledged harem series. (I had earlier considered it a bishoujo series). Viewers were left out of the whole process by which the TokiMemo girls came to adore Riku so much, generating much discrepancies between our preceived levels of their relationships and the girls' senseless harem-esque rivalry. The vacuum created by this mismatch pretty much sucked out any empathy for the characters since we were unable to connect or identify their causes. And so sadly, our wonderfully crafted bishoujos suddenly found themselves forced into the mold of mindless harem girls bringing much distaste to those of us when enjoy an intelligent love story with thinking bishoujos.

Like Peter Parker in Spiderman 2, I suspect the failure of my Stripey-sense lies in my siscon undernournishment. Hoping Aono jumps Yorito in Sola soon. XD And hoping this would be the last post of such on Hontouni Taihendesu.

Posted by Stripey

Filed under: Random Rants Leave a comment

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TedFox
April 26th, 2007 - 00:49

One would think you doom all series that you promote

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Skane
April 26th, 2007 - 02:42

^ @ TedFox

Harsh. ^^;
~~~~ ~~~~

Well, if it is of any consolation, this was how I approached those four series.

Venus Versus Virus
I dropped this series even before you started promoting it. My “Mediocrity Sensor” was quite adamant on this one, so I was spared from further damage.

Stripey-Blameage Rating: 0%

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou
I have not watched this series yet, because the summaries from various sources were not very encouraging (including the positive reviews). I have very limited diskspace, so I cannot afford to just watch anything and everything.

Simply put, there is no hook in this one to attract me. It would take someone of Jeff Lawson’s calibre to persuade me to watch this series at this point (as his likes are largely similar to mine, give or take some differences (like Simoun and Idolmaster Xenoglossia)).

Stripey-Blameage Rating: 0%

Yoakena ~Cabbage Love~
Oh Aiur! I still remember the days when I was so mesmerised by your enthusiastic gushing and eye-catching CGs. It got me so hyped up and upon watching the first episode, I thought I had a winner. I was initially going to skip this, but your entries persuaded me to put it on the watch-list.

The nightmares! The nightmares!

*claws at throat*

USO DA! USO DA!

Stripey-Blameage Rating: 100%

Tokimeki Memorial ~ Only Love
My interest in this came about from the “infamous” Tokimeki “Tree of Confession”. So many “harem” animes referenced to this iconic series that it was enough to make me want to watch it.

I am going to have to disagree with you and say that I actually like this series. The romantic interactions are by no means stellar, but the rest of the show is comedy gold (in my opinion, your mileage will vary). The psycho Canteen-lady, the mad Science-teacher, the overly-GAR baseball captain, etc…

Tokimeki satires a lot of harem clich

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Ashram
April 26th, 2007 - 05:10

Ugh, I can’t believe I suffered through Venus Versus Virus too. Must have been some been some masochistic desire to see things through to the end in case there was some neat plot twist…but to no avail. Was true crap all the way through the end, with so many things left unexplained the story made little sense by the 12th ep.

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Kabitzin
April 26th, 2007 - 06:59

Haha, good to see you can admit when you are wrong. I’ve never developed this skill, as I am never wrong (j/k). Don’t be too hard on yourself, that batch of anime came in a weak weak season. We were all desperate and did things we’re not proud of. I even sacrificed some animals to ensure the next season would be better.

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aoki.
April 26th, 2007 - 09:14

Have you read the Venus Versus Virus manga? It’s much better,IMHO. 4 volumes out in Japan so far.

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Xellos-_^
April 26th, 2007 - 10:36

Venus vs Cirus: I watch this before you made your post so no blame there. I keep the op as that was actually pretty nice.

Tokyo Majin: Like the first ep drop by the 3rd. Blame 100% as i never heard of it till you pimp it.

Cabbage Love – My Radar were in full warning moe even before it air. So i never even watch the first ep much less the cabbage. Althought I did catch a some screen caps form you and Kurogane.

Tokimeki: I didn’t like the oav when it was release in the late 90s. Figure i won’t like the TV anyway so never watch.

Sola: I been meaning to watch this for some time now. Even before your gushing, so if it turns into a cabbage you are blameless for this one.

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Vexx
April 26th, 2007 - 10:56

I had most of the same feelings about Tokimeki … it started off so well as a nice little quadrangle with lots of bizarre humor as background. But then about 1/2 way in, it seemed like it lost its way (“the dog ate my story plot”). Too much “plot-progress interruptus”. Then the ending which was seriously unsatisfying (if I understood the raws — it didn’t help that the subs have stalled out). Actually, there are several series for which the subs have effectively stalled/dropped off radar. I don’t know if this means there was a serious springtime flunk out or whether the motivation to finish particular series just died. No one has admitted they’ve dropped them yet.

I’m loving sola for the premise and atmosphere, crossing my fingers because of its heritage (Kanon/petopetosan/etc), but as always — these things tend to fail in the latter half so I’m already gritting my teeth.

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Ashram
April 26th, 2007 - 12:14

Are there any groups scanlating the Venus VS Virus manga? I got the first chapter via torrent some time ago, but never saw anything past that. My reading skills are too subpar to really enjoy raw manga, compared to anime.

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suguru
April 26th, 2007 - 15:05

Cabbage Love…aargh…just the thought of CG Feena-hime deformed into that cross-eyed monstrosity makes me want to bang my head against the wall…if there’s an Anime Hell everyone who worked on that belongs down on B9F, forced to re-watch episode 3 while being kicked in the balls for all eternity.

Venus Versus Virus looked promising to me too, but it seems like there’s always one series I start out really liking but then falls flat down the road. I still like Tokimeki, but I’m a sucker for bishoujo and Hiyoko is made of pure awesome. So far this season things are looking good, though, although I admit with so many good series out, I’ve lost interest in Kami-chama Karin.

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Crusader
April 26th, 2007 - 15:59

So you finally decided to apologize most publicly for all the suffering you have caused. Well suffice to say taking responsibility is the first step to forgiveness. Now all that is left is for you to make some good predictions to restore our faith in Stripey-sense. As a token of respect for your admission of failure and guilt I will spare you the venom I have for cabbage love.

So get to it and restore the credibility of your sis-con senses. Good hunting.

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crimson
April 26th, 2007 - 17:39

I’ve been watching Tokyo Majin a bit. Contact with that anime unleashed a skilled call “Skimming” in me. Nowadays, I just skim thru certain animes. I think Tokyo Majin gives a Tengo Tenje feel. But, I think I read it being a game that tried to mimick the megami tensai (however u spell it) series but the response wasnt that good anyway.

I guess TenTen and TMajin has that “loudmouthed hero kind heroine” feel. Well, I did enjoy myself in TenTen becosofmayasawesomebodandsomecrazyinitiallimitbreak. However, I cannot find the same enjoyment in TMajin as episodes gone by. I guess The fat-spider-with-taiji-eyeballs disgusted me somewhat. What eventually made me see it in a even lower light is when a supposedly overpoweredbigbadass started screaming about mother. It is a shame. They have cool combat monks and chants and a bit of group dynamics (like in those 2 old monks in the first few episode). But in the end, it just didn’t appeal to me mainly because of the type of hero and heroine setup they chose to use.

Soooo, meanwhile, I take this chance to advertise 4~~~~~~
In no order:
1. Code Geass (awaiting season 2)
2. Reideen – 2007 (feelings of granduer)
3. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (wild and fun)
4. Heroic Age (I quote my friend “Hakuoro in Space Age”..or from me, its “Hakuoro’s ancestor!”..mwahaha)
Damn, this sem has a number of interesting mecha….(andfyppresentationisnextweek 2papersbeforeitthatrequireslotsofrevision)

( REPLY )
maglor
April 26th, 2007 - 17:44

Many of us here, including I, should share the blame if ‘Sola’ goes bad. The next episode. ep.4, will be a crucial one, since that would be about the third way mark, thus at a point to decide upon its identity, whether as Harem anime, serious investigation into human psyche, or a bland ‘moe-overload’ promotion for upcoming Pretty girl dating simulation game. The key to the whole thing seems to be with Aono, as she is the most likely girl to turn up the mental tension in everyone. Finally, did I say Koyori is cute?

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FlameStrike
April 26th, 2007 - 20:15

What the heck? I thought Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou was pretty awesome. I’m still on ep 11 (lack of subs) but it’s kept my intrest throught the show. I don’t see what’s so bad about it

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Stripey
April 26th, 2007 - 22:48

Tedfox: Haha! Hopefully I’m not want of those blogs where folks drop by to see what not to watch by what I’m watching Then again, that’s being rather useful too…

Skane: LOL! Gomen gomen! We need to bring our celebration of Watanagashi onto the Yoakena crew instead of ourselves. I was clawing my eyes out too. As for TokiMemo, heh, yeah I guess we had very different expectations of the series. ? I saw great potential for a good romantic tale since the animators were not only good w details but bringing right atmosphere. Maybe I

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Icteridae
April 27th, 2007 - 09:05

This has become a pretty good season for mecha. Though I’d have to say Reideen is the worst of the lot (though still watchable). It’d be fine if you could ignore all the lame scenes where Junki shouts “Fade IN” and all the other moves in English with an awful accent. But really, this season packs in so much fun (I’ve checked out almost every series).

For each genre represented this season, I’ve ranked them in order of my preference:

Comedy (Romantic)
1) Nagasarete Airantou (Loving it)
2) Seto no Hanayome (A personal aversion to the whole kabuki theater presentation style but still good)
3) Hayate no Gotoku (Feels like somewhat of a disappointment compared to the manga, can’t really put a finger on why though)
4) Lovely Complex (Manga didn’t really entertain me, trying out the anime)

Mecha
1) Idolmaster Xenoglossia (No complaints)
2) Gurren Lagann (A little cartoonish, but fun)
3) Gigantic Formula (Not bad from what I’ve seen so far)
4) Bokurano (I’ll reserve a decision on this until more episodes get subbed)
5) Reideen (See comments above)

Adventure
1) Heroic Age (Awesome)
2) Claymore (Huge sword-carrying female demon hunter)
3) Seirei no Moribito (Spear-wielding female bodyguard)
4) El Cazador (Gun-toting female bounty hunter)
5) Toward the terra (Dystopian society, sorta “Brave New World”-ish, good but slow plot development)
6) Kiss Dum – Engage Planet (I’ll reserve a decision on this until more episodes get subbed)
7) Sisters of Wellber (Like El Cazador but worse, though still watchable) Shining Tears x Wind (This goes in the barely watchable category for now, hopefully will improve)

Others
1) Sola (Looking good so far)
2) Romeo x Juliet (It’s great as long as you don’t compare it to the original play)
3) Hitohira (Looks very promising, only 1 ep subbed though)
4) Darker than Black (Another interesting series)
5) Kaze no Stigma (Reminiscent of Shakugan no Shana)
6) Kaibutsu Oujo (Chainsaw-wielding monster princess)
7) Overdrive (Lame guy turns cycling superstar? Waiting to be surprised) Touka Gettan (I *still* haven’t figured out what this is about after 4 eps, coming close to dropping it)

Dropped
-Koutetsu Sangokushi (I’m really disappointed in Kyuuketsuki replacing Busou Renkin/Kiba with this and shining tears)

Not yet subbed that I plan on checking out
1) Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku wo
2) Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica

Wow, I think that’s all of them…

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Xellos-_^
April 30th, 2007 - 09:05

what it is monday and nothing about the Fate and Nanoha’s transformation sequence

You are losing your touch stripey.

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vexx
April 30th, 2007 - 19:00

Here’s what I’m watching at the moment (not including stalled stuff from last season):

Lucky*Star (my favorite form of intrinsic comedy, now with motion!)
Nagasarete Airantou (its silly.. yes its very silly with much parody but it seems to have a good heart)

Lovely Complex (the art says Bokura ga Ita … but the plot seems closer to REC — classical romantic comedy in the Grant/Hepburn style)

Gurren Lagann (I am not a fan of mecha….. but this little outlandish piece of sci-fi epic swashbuckling shades-of-Frazetta has been quite fun to watch… … … yes, its all about the Yoko but Kamina is such a glorious idiot.)

sola (swaths of Lamune, bits of Canvas 2, dribbles of petopetosan, and some very nice somber atmospheric music and soundscape … we’ll see if it holds up)

Nanoha StrykerS (simply because I must…. this third season has been a bit plodding but it has the sense of that “umpteenth John Wayne movie with all your favorite character actors back for another ride against E-Vil”. … except that grownup transformation are fun to watch to…)

There’s a few others but mostly on probation or no subs yet.

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crimson
May 1st, 2007 - 04:39

yoko~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Stripey
May 1st, 2007 - 09:55

Icteridae: Thanks once again for your comprehensive list! I just picked up Hayate actually and I’m quite enjoying the Zero no Tsukaima vibes Will definitely take a look at heroic age and seirei no moribito.

Xellos-_^: LOL! I just saw StrikerS ep 5 actually and I really don’t know what to think of the henshin sequence. On one hand, I’m glad I don’t have to feel guilty about seeing underaged nekkid henshin sequences (mostly anyway), I’m rather disturbed by the intentional focus on erogenous portions of their, well yes, very feminine physiques. Is StrikerS finally losing its mahou shoujo mission statement? Would there be REAL villains and REAL deaths in StrikerS? Would they then kill Amy and inject some siscon in an otherwise non-existent Fate/Chrono relationship? I feel a little loss now. Let me go ask ALter Fate what she thinks…. XD

vexx: Ah, I like how you put it for N.Airantou. A good heart indeed! Despite the sillies and overused comic bgm It looks like I MUST check out Lovely complex now. StrikerS henshin sequence was both exhilarating and disturbing for me XD

crimson: unyaa?

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