Anime of the Week (4/28 – 5/4)

Anime of the Week – Suisei no Gargantia
	No matter how much training and discipline the most hardened soldier may have, at the end of the day he’s still human and something humans never truly forget how to do is relax.

April 28	OreImo 2 Ep. 4 Ugh. The premises this second season keeps rolling out are getting more and more ridiculous. I expected better than this.
	Valvrave Ep. 2 I get it. Unrequited love is a common trope, but no half-assed confession has made me want to upturn my desk more than this.

April 29	HenNeko Ep. 3 Why does society accept that all men are perverts, but if a man wore his desires on his sleeve nobody would trust him?
	Yuyushiki Ep. 2 I always enjoy these natural-thought-process moe anime with wandering ideas that make you feel smarter for watching it.
	Gargantia Ep. 4 It’s a good thing that morality is a malleable concept that can be molded to fit whatever circumstances face humanity.

April 30

Attack on Titan Ep. 4 It’s important to develop the setting and characters, but there’s no reason it can’t be done while telling the story.

May 1	Leviathan Ep. 2 Sometimes complexity is overrated and this series is doing great keeping things simple yet still telling a fun story.
	Leviathan Ep. 3 Like the heroine, I also love barley tea, but using it to defeat monsters never occurred to me. This series has me hooked.

May 2

Leviathan Ep. 4 This series celebrates the unique traits that men and women possess and by working together we can make each other stronger.

May 3

Maou-sama Ep. 5 Even if it’s not intentional, once you’ve invested a considerable amount of time into something, it becomes more precious.

May 4	Date A Live Ep. 5 What has been seen cannot be unseen, but sometimes what has been done most certainly can be undone.
	Railgun S Ep. 4 I think we forget that if a clone of ourselves existed, it would almost certainly be a separate person and not a slave.
	Crime Edge Ep. 5 It’s still kind of sad, but it’s nice to see a role reversal where the girl is clueless about the guy in love with her.
	Samurai Bride Ep. 4 Women worry far too much about changing themselves when the man who will love them thinks they’re already perfect.
	Samurai Bride Ep. 5 The problem with unnecessary sequels—all the best ideas were in season one and season two is just a spectacle.
	Devil Survivor 2 Ep. 4 Everything is proceeding out of line with the game. Time will tell if that was the correct way to tell the story.
	Devil Survivor 2 Ep. 5 I’ve played the game, so I know the backstory and context and I’m still lost. Is there any hope for the uninitiated?

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Anime of the Week (4/21 – 4/27)

Anime of the Week – Suisei no Gargantia
	Although different civilizations the…universe…over may have different degrees of right and wrong, there are some basic rules of morality that all societies must adhere to in order to function. It would be difficult to imagine a successful world where everyone constantly stole from and killed one another. We can attain greater accomplishments by working together and building trust.

April 21	HenNeko Ep. 2 Though their actions are by no means delicate or sophisticated, there’s more to these characters than I’d initially expected.
	Date a Live Ep. 3 Is the moral of the story how if we all focused on loving each other instead of hurting, the world would be peaceful?

April 22

Gargantia Ep. 3 It’s good to know that telling the good guys from the bad guys by their social constructs transcends language and culture.

April 23	Attack on Titan Ep. 3 There’s no greater confidence booster than realizing you no longer need to rely on others to accomplish your dream.
	OreImo 2 Ep. 3 This is the kind of dull backstory for a side character I’d expect to see as a bonus episode in the BD extras.
	Devil Survivor 2 Ep. 3 The events aren’t adding up and I’m not sure if the anime is mixing stories from the game or making a new one.
	Crime Edge Ep. 2 Like in C^3, I find the concept of two curses which are individually harmful, but together balance out to be very poetic.

April 24	Crime Edge Ep. 3 To be so dependent on someone else’s existence that you couldn’t live without that person…isn’t love a kind of sickness?
	Muromi-san Ep. 1 Why Yukari Tamura, why? Why do you lend your wonderful vocal talents to weird anime and compel me to watch them?

April 25	Mushibugyo Ep. 1 Every anime season sees one or two new shonen action series for kids that I’m comfortable dismissing as, “not for me.”
	Leviathan Ep. 1 Anime with cat girls, bunny girls and every animal in between are per the norm, but rarely do I see one with dragon girls.

April 26

Samurai Bride Ep. 3 This series always had a harem bent, so I guess season two is just finishing up the roster. I can live with that.

April 27	Maou-sama Ep. 4 When we fail to understand others’ circumstances, we end up making unfounded assumptions to the detriment of all involved.
	Railgun S Ep. 3 I wish they weren’t telling the sisters story because we already know the ending from Index and that takes away suspense.
	Crime Edge Ep. 4 I love how there’s a poetic symmetry of relationships for every character—a black and a white like the keys of a piano.
	Date A Live Ep. 4 Stories that twist dating-sim logic into reality aren’t always silly. Sometimes they highlight what the games get right.

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Anime of the Week (4/7 – 4/13)

Anime of the Week – Attack on Titan & Suisei no Gargantia
	Right away this series is doing a great job delivering on the themes of freedom and avoiding living a life of complacency. But it’s hard to design a creepier enemy than a soulless, humanoid monster with an innocent baby face.
	I know an anime is onto something awesome when I can watch the first two episodes ten times over and over and still get goosebumps. There’s a unique kind of culture shock between Led and the people of the Gargantia fleet that comes about from the extreme differences in their levels of technology. This kind of disparity can get overexplained to a story’s detriment, but Gargantia weaves the exposition of the setting into the plot naturally and seamlessly.

April 7	OreImo 2 Ep. 1 I always thought this franchise needed a second season, but I hate it when sequels regress from where the series left off.
	Little Busters Ep. 26 I’ve not played the visual novel, but what I do know did not suggest to me that this series would have an after-story.

April 9

Date A Live Ep. 1 I’ve seen worse premises executed better, but I like the characters and there’s enough open-endedness to keep my interest.

April 10

Date A Live Ep. 2 Although cliché with its romantically clueless protagonist, the situations he gets into are hilariously ridiculous.

April 12	Karneval Ep. 1 Mystery…check. Secret government organization…check. Interesting and complex antagonist…check. Pretty boys…ehhh.
	Attack on Titan Ep. 1 I haven’t seen this kind of epic with grim, gritty, merciless violence and a fresh art style in quite some time.
	Devil Survivor 2 Ep. 2 Same route as P4: The Animation—loosely following the game plot and composing terrifically tone-setting op/ed themes.

April 13	Maou-sama Ep. 2 That moment when you realize the mortal enemy that you’ve demonized for your entire life is human, too.
	Railgun S Ep. 1 I’ve always loved Misaka’s character design. Maybe it’s because she’s an elite, but isn’t stuck up about her position.
	Samurai Bride Ep. 2 Sadly, this appears to be a rather lazy sequel. Even the fanservice and character tropes feel rather halfhearted.
	Gargantia Ep. 1 With battles on a grand scale, a complex setting and interesting characters, this is the mecha anime we’ve been waiting for.
	Gargantia Ep. 2 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and nothing makes war more impersonal than technology.

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Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai (review)

Final impression – prone to hyperbole, but respectably expressive (8/10)

Autumn 2010 (12 episodes + 3 OVAs) (title literal translation – My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute)

Kyousuke Kousaka finds an anime DVD case lying around the house one day and is surprised to find an h-game disc inside.  Nobody in his family matches the image of the sort of person who would own this item.  Intent on discovering its owner, Kousaka brings up the topic of anime during dinner where his parents firmly rebuke the idea of anyone in their household watching anime.  But this elicits a very different reaction from his little sister Kirino whose shocked expression is enough to set off alarm bells for his suspicions.  Later that night, she confronts him and reveals her secret that she’s a closet otaku (and a pretty hardcore one at that).  Surprised at this frank honesty, Kousaka doesn’t try to belittle his sister for her unusual tastes. Instead, he begins to encourage her to be more honest and to pursue a happiness she had been unable to attain by hiding her true self.

Ore no Imouto tries to be a social discourse about the acceptance of otaku in today’s culture, but ultimately does a poor job by representing otaku as their stereotypes rather than real people.  Not all otaku play h-games.  Not all otaku cosplay on a daily basis in full view of the general public.  Not all otaku dress like creepy shut-ins who fear light and fresh air.  It probably wouldn’t have made for a good story, but most people who watch anime are not as passionate as Kirino, Kuroneko or Saori.  The fact that Oreimo depicts otaku coming from a variety of very unassuming backgrounds (including fashion models, ordinary high school students and upper-class) does do some good in legitimizing the culture and showing that it’s not limited to just one particular unsocial group.  What’s most telling about this anime is not the kinds of people otaku might be, but how the self-loathing of some can lead to the idea that it’s impossible for friends and loved ones to accept them for who they really are.  But none of this should be taken to mean that Oreimo is a failure—far from it.  It may have a few issues, but it’s funny, ironic and deals with the problems that some otaku face when their hobby is discovered by people they didn’t want finding out.