I finally got around to watching Steins;Gate during Thanksgiving. And then rewatching it this Christmas season with my sister. I thought it was a fantastic show. And it gets better the second time through. Actually, I thought even the pacing seemed quicker the second time around, maybe because I was noticing things I’d missed the first time. Even though the time travel to change fate storyline has been done, and quite well actually with Higurashi and Madoka Magica, Steins; Gate still felt fresh, smart, engaging and interestingly enough, lovable.

I always feel a little sad, a little down after finishing a great show. I’d always had an inkling why, but I think it was after Steins;Gate that I realized that the feeling was similar to saying goodbye to a good friend. The great shows, the really great shows, they pull you into the cast like you’re one of their own. You laugh with them, you cry with them, and even though you’re not really there, you fight with them. And when it comes to the end, you hate to say goodbye. You don’t want to let go. You just want one more go around, one more episode, one more victory to achieve. Part of it is the quality of the storytelling. Mysteries, dramas and tragedies have the benefit of putting you on an emotional rollercoaster. It’s easier to become invested in characters when you’re pulling for them and when you share the same “enemies.” Steins;Gate, Higurashi, Madoka Magica, Gurren Lagann, Code Geass all do this brilliantly – pulling you through the topsy turvy ride of fighting to change fate, save lives or save the world.

But a dramatic storyline itself isn’t enough. You need to have a cast that you like, one that you can empathize with, one in which you can imagine hanging out with. The major difference between a show like Steins;Gate and a show like Fate/Stay Zero was that one show had characters that I fell in love with. If I didn’t have to save the world with the cast of Steins;Gate, I’d still want to join the mad scientist brigade. The Fate/Stay cast? Rider aside, eh… not so much. They’re interesting characters, but feel too one-dimensional, too far from what I am for me to connect with. And sometimes all you really need is the cast. I think the quintessential anime that I hated saying goodbye to was Aria. And not that the content was mundane. Far from it. Aria featured a fantastic world and while the stories didn’t have the same world-ending gravitas, each story was a perfect depiction of a slice of life, so to speak. But what made Aria so hard to say goodbye to were the characters, and the bond that I, as a viewer, had with them. It’s why I waited months to get around to watching the 3rd and final season. If I held off, I didn’t have to say goodbye. And I hate saying goodbye. I felt similarly about Natsume Yuujinchou (although that show apparently may never end), The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Mushishi and more.

Source: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=7825492

I feel the same about anime blogging and the community. I know I haven’t been as active in the blogging front or Twitter for several months now. And to be honest, in between balancing school and some personal stuff I have going on, it’ll probably be a while before I can get back to any sort of regularity. This sporadic-ness will likely continue. And admittedly, I don’t know if it’ll ever be like the first three years. But like the characters and episodes of shows I love, I can’t bring myself to walk away from this game. I want to go through one more heart-tugging show, one more sense-overloading convention, one more grand trip to Japan.  Even if the names and the community have changed, even if it’s not as familiar to me today, it’s something that’s been dear to me for four years now. So to that effect, my thoughts for the future of this blog is that it’ll continue, and the content will always exist as long as I think it’s relevant. And for as long as there’s enough money to pay the bills.

Sorry this update was a long time coming.

Only went for the Gintama machine and got a Kagura… Shinpachi might not be happy to know he’s not even available

I’ve been MIA for a couple months… well, clearly. Figured it would be nice to provide an update so you know I haven’t gone the way of the dodo yet. So I’ve been abroad in Asia this whole summer working at an internship. Not in Japan sadly, but not too far. Unfortunately because of the work, I didn’t really have time to watch too much anime, much less blog about it. Well… to be fair, I wasn’t that impressed nor motivated by the summer choices anyway. With that said, I have now gotten a chance to visit Japan for a third time. Unfortunately I’m only here for a week, in Tokyo for a couple days before going to the Hokkaido area for a  few days, but as always it’s always very cool coming back here.

I do expect to be back blogging to a more prominent degree in the fall, but I’ll provide an update as well as a “state of the blog” thoughts in more depth within a couple weeks. I have another week in Asia before heading back to the US, so I’ll have some time to think about where I want to take the direction of Rabbit Poets in the future. Hopefully, the fall season will provide a little more excitement as far as shows goes too. Until then… mata ashita ne?

Can’t say I loved the 8 year time skip, but how cool was it seeing Sentarou and Kaoru jamming again?

Not quite the school festival, but…

And the final scene where Ritsuko meets up with the two – is it a super hammy, unrealistic ending? Sure… but seeing the three together again was a brilliant final bow to their friendship which I thought fell flat way back when Ano Hana gave us its melodramatic best effort.

I am really, really going to miss watching this show weekly. *sniffle* And although a sequel was never an ideal fit, Kids on the Slope is one of the rare few shows that I really wish would’ve kept the door open for it.

*snrrk* Can I c-c-cry now? ;__;

This love triangle is like the Power Glove. It looks cool, but it’s SO BAD!

First of all, my apologies for a long, looooong layoff of six months since I last posted here. That was in large part due to inspiration simply not striking for me over that span of time. But now, thanks to an anime awesomely trainwrecking, intensely invigorated inspiration has struck anew! And since this triangular trainwreck is mainly due to a love triangle gone horribly awry, I feel inspired to talk a bit on the topic of love triangles.

Love triangles (and other various love shapes, even ones that would make The Pentagon proud) are a frequent staple of anime, and so I think that how well they’re written can go a long way to determining how good (or bad!) many anime shows will be. So without further ado, let’s delve into the topic of love triangles! I’ll start by referencing one of my most memorable meetings with an anime-style love triangle.

A long time ago, on the old outstanding original PlayStation (outstanding for its time, in any event), I played a game called The Granstream Saga. It was both one of the first JRPG-style games I’ve ever played, as well as a game that gave me a clearer glimpse into the style of anime, due to its anime-style cutscenes and plot.

The Granstream Saga was a rather good game for its time, and even now, well over a decade after I first played it, I have many good and vivid memories of it. Perhaps none of those memories are clearer than a key choice you, as the player character, have to make near the very end of the game. (Spoilers ahead, so you have been warned!)

Near the end of the game, you are faced with a situation where one of your two female companions (both of which have been given some nice romantic and/or sexually charged moments with the player character) will have to sacrifice herself in order to defeat the Final Boss. And it’s made clear that your character will likely end up in a romance with whichever girl doesn’t sacrifice herself. And you, the player, have to choose which girl sacrifices herself!

This ended up being a truly agonizing decision for me (until it dawned on me that I could simply make “both” choices due to save points and restarts – yes, I had a breathtakingly bad braincramp moment). But until this dawned on me, I had a hard time choosing between the cool, tall, bluish-hair tomboy and the shorter, sweet, shy purple-haired girl. Both had their distinct charms, which contrasted nicely with each other, and both had been carefully built up to be good, viable romantic options for the player character. And so this made the choice feel very raw, real, riveting.

It wasn’t an easy choice, because both girls were likable (albeit for very different reasons), and both girls had been well-developed characters.

And as I think back to this old PS game, it dawns on me what the key element to a good love triangle is.

“It’s romance, isn’t it?!” some readers may say.

While romance is very important in a love triangle, that’s not actually the key element. The key element is…

… Conflict

True Tears probably has the best anime love triangle of all-time. And the reason is because it involves a fierce and pretty evenly matched conflict between the two girls who are competing over the same guy. The love triangle in True Tears is unpredictable right up through the 11th hour of the 11th episode. It’s only in the final episode of True Tears that the victor of this conflict is made clear.

What I think some anime writers (and manga/LN/VN writers as well) forget is that the rules that govern good love triangle conflicts are not that much different than the rules that govern good conflict in general.

What are these rules? Well, here’s some of them…

1) The occasional curbstomp can be fun, but usually only if short, fast, and flashy (you see some of this done very effectively in Fate/Zero). Conflicts between evenly matched combatants tend to be the better conflicts because they have more “give-and-take” and unpredictability to them. But there is an exception to this…

2) People, by nature, like underdogs. This is why overpowered antagonists (like Gilgamesh) tend to work better than overpowered protagonists. People tend to instinctively feel sympathy for underdogs, particular when they’re not a villain (and even them, viewer sympathy can abound – see Team Rocket).

3) It helps if the strengths and weaknesses of all the key combatants are carefully explored and utilized.

Now, this applies to Hiromi vs. Noe (for Shinichiro’s love) just as much as it applies to Ichigo vs. Aizen. So if a love triangle is going to be a core aspect of your show, then it’s probably a good idea to leave it at least a bit unpredictable with the combatants within it being ‘evenly matched’.

And here is where Aquarion EVOL has resulted in a tremendously tumultuous trainwreck.

Zessica (the green-haired girl) is thrust into the underdog role in this love triangle, due to how Mikono (the purple-haired girl) got off to a great relationship with Amata (the male lead) before Zessica even entered the picture. Couple this with how the reincarnation focus of the show makes Amata and Mikono seem literally fated to be, and it makes Zessica’s confession seem like a hopeless cause.

Now, remember what I said about how curbstomps work best if they’re short, fast, and flashy? Well, that’s sadly not the case here in Aquarion EVOL, as Zessica’s defeat (as obvious as it is – so obvious that I can confidently speak about it like this even when Aquarion EVOL has one episode left to go) is focused on, lingered on, even obsessed over. We see scenes of her in heartache and angst, much moreso than we see scenes of Amata/Mikono looking cute as a couple together.

This is frankly disastrous romance triangle handling.

But do you know what makes this even worse, good reader?

The same person who wrote True Tears – the incredibly indelibly (in)famous Mari Okada – is now the person writing Aquarion EVOL!

This would be comparable to watching Saki Miyanaga all of a sudden not be able to win a single hand at mahjong (although, if that was against her sister, it might be understandable ).

I can only hope that Okada’s talent for writing compelling love triangles hasn’t disappeared to that extent.

But there is one other problem with the Mikono/Amata/Zessica love triangle. One that goes beyond too much predictability and kicking an underdog while she’s down. The problem is that “the strengths and weaknesses of all the key combatants” are not carefully explored and utilized. No, even though she’s “winning” the love triangle effortlessly, Mikono’s strengths (when it comes to ‘why does Amata love her?’) have never been properly developed or utilized.

So the final picture looks like this: A proud highly-talented sports team uses an unappealing defensive system to trap the plucky and tireless underdog into defeat, she hangs back doing next-to-nothing and just wins by sheer fortune.

Now, does that sound like a great sports narrative to you? If not, why would it make a good narrative for a romance conflict?

It would be better if Mikono and Zessica were like these two…

Okabe, of Steins;Gate fame, expresses plenty of love, caring, camaraderie, and friendship for both of these two lovely young women. Hence, both sets of shippers (one for Kurisu and one for Mayuri) have something to hang their hats on. Okabe works tirelessly to thwart the seeming Catch/22 of at least one of these girls being fated to die. He refuses to let either of them die, and that takes this love triangle even beyond where it was in Granstream Saga.

So if you want a love triangle to succeed, here’s the three keys of the triangle:

1. Have real even-handed conflict between the two corners of the triangle that are in competition with each other.

2. Have the character at the middle of the love triangle show strong feelings for both of the characters that love him or her.

3. Let the strengths of both competitors come out, and don’t make it seem like an easy choice for the character at the middle of the love triangle.

These three keys made the tears shed in the wake of True Tears, true tears indeed. And these three keys are also ones that Aquarion should have EVOLved to, before it was too late. Unfortunately, now it probably is too late for that show, but I hope other anime writers will learn from the experience.

So what do my readers think? What do you think constitutes a good love triangle?

I’d love to hear from you.

One of the things that has confounded me for years now, ever since I first watched Fate/Stay Night and now revived during Fate/Zero, was why there’s so much love for Saber. Is it the moe factor?

Hai-ya!

Now to be fair, I don’t know much about the Fate/Zero, Fate/Stay Night VN universe. I know it’s pretty intense and labyrinth. I’ve also heard it’s much darker. So it’s possible a lot of the love for Saber comes from her VN character which could be more dynamic, nuanced and interesting than what we’ve seen from anime Saber. But having only experienced Saber through anime, the first couple words that come to mind when I think of her are: stoic and martyr. I suppose there’s a bit of a role reversal thing going on, because those are typically characteristics you’d see in male characters. But unfortunately, what’s missing is: interestingness. There’s nothing about Saber that’s particularly interesting to me. She’s single-minded. There’s no dynamicism to her, nor any sense of personality or attitude. She seems to be the one heroic spirit that exists simply to achieve the grail. Every spirit has something else going for them. Rider and his father-like wisdom. Gilgamesh’s arrogance and disdain for anyone else around him. Berserker’s torment. Lancer’s philandering past demons. Caster’s psychoticness. Meanwhile, Saber seems like a blank slate, simply doing her master’s bidding. Is that why she’s so popular? Because she’s tough yet submissive to some degree? I don’t know, but I would love to know.

Although I know who wins this grail war, here’s who I’d like to see win (of the remaining) [SPOILERS BELOW]:

1. Rider – honestly, you could probably call the 2nd season of Fate/Zero the Kiritsugu and Rider show, because I think we’ve learned most about these two characters. What’s not to like about him? Having been king, he’s arrogant, but not condescending. Loyal and likeable. I’ve completely forgotten what Waver’s motivation for winning the Grail was, but there’s no one else I’d rather see win than Rider. Plus, his Noble Phantasm is probably the most epic of Phantasms.
2. Gilgamesh – sure his winning would mean a horrendous future for the human world, not to mention, literal backstabber Kotomine Kirei is the least likeable of all the remaining masters, but Gilgamesh’s immense arrogance is just too entertaining.  His Noble Phantasm is pretty rad too.
3. Berserker – it would’ve been nice to learn more about him, but I suppose the mystery factor works to his advantage. Somehow I was spoiled of his true identity, so because of that I’d really love to know how winning the Grail would impact him. Too bad is Phantasm is fairly blasé.
4. Saber – Kiritsugu’s motives are probably the best among the remaining masters, but Saber is boring. Plus, when you’re the key character of the sequel, there’s something not very entertaining about having to sit through the inevitability of her victory. Plus, if she doesn’t win, they can rewrite Fate/Stay Night, and we don’t have to put up with Emiya.

I’ve been thinking of the best way to write this post for a while now. Kids on the Slope is one of the best animes I’ve seen so far, and so far, perhaps my favorite romance anime to date. In retrospect, I wish I’d blogged about it episodically, but I was late to the ball.

When in doubt, act first, apologize later

One of the aspects that I’ve enjoyed most about KOTS is how fast the romance has moved. Unlike most other romances, the romance in KOTS has moved really quickly. Kaoru acting upon his feelings for Ritsuko, Ritsuko rejecting him, Sentarou expressing his feelings for Yurika, and Yurika trying to make a move on Junichi. Sure, the love pentagon isn’t particularly novel, but I’ve really enjoyed the fact that we haven’t encountered the typical forced misunderstandings because one party is afraid to reveal their feelings. The only character who’s fallen to that trap has been Ritsuko, but the Kaoru x Ritsuko developments have been so fast-paced that I don’t think she’s held anyone back.

Super GAR confession, even if ultimately rejected

For a high-school romance I’ve also been really impressed at the maturity levels of all the characters. They know what they want. And while they don’t always react in the best way (Kaoru’s childish rejection of Sentarou after finding out that he’s going to be playing with fang-tan stands out as particularly ill-fitting), I’m amazed at how level-headed everyone is. You don’t see this level of clarity in shows that feature older characters like Nodame Cantabile and Honey & Clover.

Like William and Harry after a night of drinking?

Oh and the music, oh my God, the music. Call me superficial, call me what you want. But I’ll readily admit that anime has opened musical doors to me that I never really walked through before. If Nodame Cantabile made classical music more accessible for me, Kids on the Slope has done the same for jazz. It should be no surprise that Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack, she of Cowboy Bebop fame, has really shined throughout the show. But it’s not only the music, but the feeling behind the music itself that’s come through – the free-flowing looseness and spontaneity of jazz, it’s a reflection of how each of the characters has developed throughout the show and culminates (so far) in the amazing culture fair performance. It’s something we’ve seen a hundred times before, and even though there was something a bit staged about how the whole school piled into the auditorium to listen to the two play, I didn’t mind, because the performance itself, it was brilliant. And particularly poignant considering the two weren’t even on speaking terms at the time and used music to bridge the awkward silence between each other.

I also have to give a lot of credit to the animation – the performance scenes look amazing. The drumming in particularly is incredibly fluid. If K-ON’s failing was there was no music, and Nodame Cantabile’s failing was the animation was often shoddy, KOTS hits upon everything perfectly, the music, the feeling and the animation.

A question I've thought about a lot over the past several months

Finally, I think I have a particular heart for KOTS because I think there’s a continuous thread of redemption that’s pervasive throughout the show, and finding bonds that are strong enough to endure the mistakes you make. The Kaoru and Sentarou split hits particularly close to home, because sometimes you close doors without intending to and realize far too late the damage you’ve done. A bond like Sentarou and Kaoru’s is such that I think they would’ve been able to pick up where they left off whether they stopped talking for a day, a week or a lifetime, because of the ties that bind the two.

Like both Sentarou and Kaoru, I think I’ve found that sometimes you intend the whole time to admit your mistake; you realize the stupidity of your actions, but for whatever reason, the words never come out: “I made a mistake, forgive me, can we get it all back?” But I personally want to believe that there are certain doors that never close, even if it seems like there is no light that shines through and there’s no hope. And that at any point in the future, two people could pick up where they left off. It’s a rather foolishly romantic thought and admittedly one more suited for anime than real life, but I suppose that’s the foolishly romantic side of me. Still, I’ll hold onto that hope in the event that I have a chance to “get the band back together” one day, someday, so to speak. On a related note, I am really going to miss AnimeNext this year, it was an incredible experience the last time I went. Has it been a year yet? Time really flies.

Despite being one of the admins for the aniblog tourney I’ve been pretty hands off. Most of the credit for the work goes to Scamp, Mefloraine and Renn. But as someone who also helped kick off the first aniblog tourney, I’ll give you a little insight into the thinking behind the tourney.

The goals of the aniblog tourney:

1. It’s intended to be fun. I think most people are pretty level-headed about this. Winning the tourney doesn’t get you anything. And “best” is subjective anyway.  There’s “winners” and “losers” because you need some level of competition to keep it interesting. But the competition is in a friendly sense. The tourney was meant to be fun not srs biz. And I think for the most part, people have embraced the spirit of it.
2. It’s meant to introduce people to new blogs. The first tourney was rather successful in this regards. Anecdotally, visits and subscribes went up for many blogs. Were they sustained increases? In some cases yes, in some cases no. But the tourney can only do so much. To take a metaphor, the tourney merely leads the readers to the water, it’s up to the individual blogs to get their readers to continue to drink.
3. It’s meant to build a stronger tie within the aniblog community. One of the main criticisms of the tourney was that it’s a “circle jerk” and to some degree it is. But in essence, it’s necessary to engage the community. But the hope was that through the “inside crowd”, the casual reader would stumble onto the tourney and find new blogs. A casual aniblog reader isn’t going to find the aniblog tourney on his own. The jerk must be initiated by one of the participating jerkers. Did we succeed with this? It’s hard to tell for sure. Sadly, WordPress stats are limited and we have no idea how many percent of visitors are new visitors. One of my thoughts for the next tourney is to give it its own URL and host so we can use GA to track those stats better. But roughly, we do know that if the tourney receives 2,500 visits a day, it’ll drive 700-900 links to participating blogs. Based on the typical new/repeat visitor rate, logically, a substantial percentage of these clicks should be from non-circle-jerking, regular readers and not from other participating bloggers.

Admittedly, the tourney isn’t perfect.

• We debated various voting methods. Shorter matches. Longer matches. 4 blog faceoffs with 2 winners. Etc. Ultimately, we went with the method we did because we thought it was the best balance between speed (the tourney is probably already too large and too long-running) and not making people feel bad about losing (although, you can debate whether or not the 4 separate vs. matches are better in that regard vs. doing a 4-blog match with 2 winners and 2 losers.
• We debated qualifications, again trying to find the right balance between being inclusive (and we wanted to include as many new blogs as possible) and not running too long.
• Seeding is always a conundrum. How much should longetivity play in it? Activity? Traffic? Comment counts? Prior performance? I mean, except for the handful of superblogs like Random C, Psgels or Sea Slugs, you could move blogs all over the bracket and be fine with it. However, the concept of playing up seniority and past performance was the idea that if you’ve been around, if you’ve been in the tourney before, then you’re probably fairly well known. The first couple rounds were intended to give smaller, newer blogs their chance in the sun.
• Poll gaming is always a difficult issue. If we make the aniblog tourney self-hosted in the future, we’ll look at non-PollDaddy options. But even IP tracking isn’t foolproof as it’s pretty easy to game via proxy. Honestly though, our best defense is to rely on the voters to play fair. Our options from a technical standpoint are limited.

There are probably other areas where we’ve been deficient and can improve upon. But I think we’ve tried to take what we’ve learned in the first tourney and improved upon it for this version. And based on the feedback we hear and the things we observe, we’ll try to improve upon it in v3.

With all that said, let’s talk about the match up. I’m matched up with Avvesione’s Anime blog, which was a new blog to me. You should vote for Avvesione, because at this stage of our blogging life, he/she is a much more harder-working blogger than I am. Plus, he/she puts a nice spin on the typical episodic style. Basically Avv has taken what I’ve wanted to do with episodics and actually done it consistently and effectively.

It’s not just a slice-of-life any more, it’s literally real life. No, I don’t mean that in a good way.

True in most cases.

To be honest, out of all the shows that are airing this season, I had the highest hopes for Hyouka, because it was one of the few that I didn’t know what the plot would be about. In addition, the trailer poster for Hyouka was simple gorgeous and on top of that, it would be produced by KyoAni. Thus, it seemed to be worthwhile to place all my hopes on this show.

However, that’s all out of the window as of today.

Yes, I salute those who have the energy to watch this show.

No, I’m not actually bashing Hyouka *yet*, but rather, I have to say, the first impressions seemed rather boring. I love the art, I love the characters, and I love the music. However, I just couldn’t bring myself to be engaged with the plot. I’m literally sitting at my desk at 8:00PM PST falling asleep, unable to believe at how…”un-attractive” the plot is. It’s not that I don’t like mystery anime, but rather, this one didn’t have any “dramatic” cases to solve or anything that gave me an incentive to think about what’s happening in the show.

On top of that, the whole first episode made me feel like I was right back at school…even though I just came home from it. In an odd way, it was both amazing that Hyouka could replicate high school to such a detailed degree, but also annoying, because I’m trying to watch this anime to get away from school. Not to feel like I’m right back in it, doing extracurricular activities.

Baby, you're cute, but just being cute doesn't do much for me.

I’m not sure what’s going on with Hyouka because of this lackluster episode. Is it because it literally wants to replicate “average life” in high school? Is it because it wanted to have an excessive amount of potentially irrelevant dialogue to make the show seem sophisticated and scholarly? Is it because  the plot actually sucks?

Who knows, but to be honest,  Hyouka doesn’t seem like a “mystery” show that I would anticipate for every week, and in fact, I’ll most likely turn out to be marathon-ing this show. As much as it disappoints me to say this, but I’m definitely not going to pick up Hyouka until it has finished. Just because this show has jaw-droppingly gorgeous art, doesn’t mean it’ll be an amazing show.

Trippy stuff.

So with my decision to hold-off Hyouka until later, that means I won’t be covering any shows this season. I already turned down potential shows that I would watch (ie Sankarea or Medaka Box), but I already know what will happen, so there’s no point in posting episodics about shows when I know their whole story.

However, I was truly disappointed in Hyouka because I had such high expectations for it. It wasn’t that it was “bad” to the point where I hated the show, it was just a whole lot less dramatic and interesting than I thought it would be.

See y’all next season~

Correction: I don't watch anything I don't have to watch.

Between Fate/Zero’s continuation, Tsuritama, Acchi Kocci, Sankarea and probably Hyouka (once I get around to it) I’ve been pretty pleased by the quality of the summer season. Traditionally not a very strong season. spring season (Thanks Kim. I apparently have no idea what month we’re in >_<). With that said, it’s looking increasingly like I’m probably not going to pick up a show on a weekly basis, and will probably swoop in and write about different shows randomly. Figured it’d be good for a change of pace.

Not a fishing fan? No problem.

What am I doing watching Tsuritama? Is fishing fun? Fishing is boring. I hate fishing. Although it’s not necessarily a bad topic from an anime standpoint, because the actual act of catching the fish is a lot of fun. It’s the 99% of waiting in between that’s boring. But wait, I’m not watching Tsuritama for the fishing. And honestly, Tsuritama is as much about fishing as Full Metal Alchemist was about the ins and outs of alchemy. If you’re cynical, I suppose you could call it Director, Kenji Nakamura’s take on cute boys doing cute things. Except there’s only one cute boy I suppose, and by cute things we actually meant random things like going fishing, getting squirted by mystical water guns and meeting your well-endowed alien sister. Does that not sound appealing enough? Perhaps you’re not convinced.

In search of one missing Kusuriuri

Well then, why am I watching Tsuritama. Well, I’ve referenced Nakamura a couple times already so I might as well provide some background. Kenji Nakamura, director of the Bakeneko Arc in Ayakashi, Mononoke, Kuchuu Buranko, and his most recent work, [C] has been one of the ambitious and interesting directors in the industry. Not everything is a hit, I wasn’t a big fan of Kuchuu Buranko and while I really liked [C] it had it’s up and down moments. But his design sense is very unique. And unlike another director with unique style like Shinbou, Nakamura’s style varies drastically from show to show, both visually as well as how he tells the story. So with that in mind, I decided I’d give Tsuritama a shot, even with my lack of interest in fishing (funny how I don’t give other sports animes a chance… although I do want to watch Hajime no Ippo, but that’s an aside).

Bullying reaches another level

So what makes Tsuritama worth watching? Well, it’s got the quirkiness I expected, but at the same time, the show’s humor is pretty accessible. It’s not a show that’s going to draw a love/hate response like Kuchuu Buranko was. If you’re generally a fan of laid back, slice of life-like shows that focus on personal growth then you’ll probably enjoy Tsuritama. But for those who prefer a little extra “something something” in their anime and hate predictability, there should also be plenty of interesting subplots to follow. Are Haru and Coco aliens? What’s up with Haru’s magical water gun? Why the duck?

Mark Tsuritama down as one of the more intriguing shows for the summer.

Watch Tsuritama on Crunchyroll!

That is, if you were to describe “nostalgia” as the year 2007 and the show, Lucky Star.

It’s hard for me to explain exactly why Acchi Kocchi gives me Lucky Star vibes. It’s certainly not the first 4-koma mimicking the laid-back, Seinfeldian observations of life humor that Lucky Star seemed to do so well. And it’s not just because nekomimi Tsumiki looks like a bizarro version of Konata, nor because Hime is basically Tsukasa’s spiritual twin sister (with Tsukasa’s seiyuu Kaori Fukuhara reprising her role to boot). I mean if you just look at the casting of the show – the fact that there’s non-Shiraishi guys playing significant roles, and the everpresent romantic subplot between Tsumiki and Io would seem to make Acchi Kocchi an unlikely comparison to Lucky Star. Yet, two episodes in, each episode has felt like I’ve transported myself back a couple years to watch a Lucky Star spin-off. I think the biggest reason is that both Acchi Kocchi and Lucky Star have a unique way of setting up their jokes in that, they lead into it, the joke happens, and then a character will comment on it nonchalantly, as if it were a normal part of the universe.

I’m not a huge fan of Tsumiki, but being that Tsukasa was my favorite Lucky Star character, I’m thrilled to have Tsukasa 2 reborn. Actually, Hime reminds me of a mix between Tsukasa and a grown up version of Hanamaru Kindergarten’s Koume. They look basically the same too. I’m also thrilled to hear Kaori Fukuhara do more roles – loved her as Tsukasa and as Astrea in Sora no Otoshimono. She needs more roles. It’s also nice to hear Nobuhiko Okamoto be subdued. He has a unique voice, but he’s been typecasted into the screaming, whiny shounen lead a bit too often recently.

I used to love 4-koma/slice of lifes, but have been bored by them recently. Acchi Kocchi is the first one in a long while I find myself interested in, definitely worth a watch.