Blogging Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 45

The way I see it Hosinger is continuing the series' fine tradition of combining strategy meetings with heavy consumption of alcohol.

The 45th episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes focuses largely on the reaction to the news from Phezzan on Heinessen, and what the Alliance government plans to do about it. While there is disappointment at the public statements coming from the government, behind-the-scenes, the government and military seem to finally getting their acts together.

Blogging Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 44

Mittermeyer is about to make a few men experience the full wrath of "The Gale Wolf."

The 44th episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes takes place almost entirely on Phezzan. This episode features an assassination attempt and further insight into the independent spirit that has guided Phezzan throughout its century of autonomy with the usual Julian heroics thrown in at the same time.

Blogging Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 43

Schenkopp returns after failing to change history, and you know there is no way that is his blood on his armor.

The 43rd episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes primarily focuses on the battle between Yang and Reuenthal at Iserlohn. Predictably, the battle turns out to be highly tactical while both commanders realize the whole exercise is serving as a diversion.

Blogging Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 42

Part of me wishes that those girls want some of Mashengo or imagining Julian as a harem lead.

The 42nd episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes serves as an introduction to life on Phezzan to Julian as well as a look at the final preparations for the upcoming battles between the Alliance and the Empire. Politics behind the scenes on Phezzan are the order of the day. Preparations go seamlessly for the Imperial forces, while Bucock and Yang have to fight their own governments complacency.

Watching Anime With Extreme Prejudice Part 3

Sakurai Tomoki or whatever passes for a male lead these days.

Trying to look at groups of people based solely on TV ratings and DVD sales can be a frustrating exercise indeed. For example I could say that the general public in Japan likes animation that is nostalgic and/or child friendly based on rankings like this, or I could say those who actually buy the product like samurai and moe anime based on this. However, that would be as much of a logical fallacy as saying American men who buy beer like football and objectifying women based on a bunch of adverts. That doesn’t stop them from being made, though.

In a brief conversation with Twitter, the topic of Japan’s efforts to promote anime in an attempt to expand its “soft power” came up and this response got me thinking. Could this be the answer I was looking for in all of this?

The otaku making stuff for other otaku point could make sense logically. The idea of members of a niche subculture making something that caters to other members which reinforces the subculture and sets it further away from mainstream seems reasonable. I happen to be further separated from this by being part of a separate mainstream culture in another country thousands of miles away, which is just a really elaborate way of saying the material is becoming more inpenetrable because it is made for a selected group.

There’s really no way I can see this trend reversing anytime soon, and I am completely powerless to do something about it. There’s really no point in raging over the fact I can’t get an ever increasing percentage of what I am watching anyway. So I remain pretty much limited to asking myself why I like or dislike something constantly or trying to come up with ideas on why something gets made or if something like Saimoe is indicative of the future of character design?

Is it a pointless exercise? Most likely, but I can still have a go at criticizing the passive wish fulfillment in Sora no Otoshimono even if I do laugh at some of the silliness and it is well executed overall. I might not give the highly academic analysis of what I am watching (apart from my few years old idea of a look at snow removal in anime based on Kanon) but I can at least continue the constant introspection that has become a part of my experience watching anime.

It appears I have come from this at the wrong angle in asking why I decide not to finish 30-ish% of what I initially start. Maybe I should just start with why I like to watch anime in the first place over a lot of other activities I could be enjoying?

Watching Anime With Extreme Prejudice Part 2

Seitokai no Ichizon is in the top half of the MAL ratings for this season, but does the concept show a lack of ambition?

A few months before I started this blog, I decided to take a trip back in time and find out if I had in fact been living a lie, or if anime really was better back in the day. Ten years seemed a decent enough cutoff, so I watched all of the Summer 1998 new shows , all three of them.

This number wasn’t all together too surprising to me, as the explosion in number of new shows had a clear starting point, so watching all 3 should have been easy enough. Turns out it didn’t quite work out like that.

Serial Experiments Lain was something I had always intended to go back and watch at some point anyway. I definitely wasn’t disappointed, but as the best of these shows it looked worryingly dated. A symptom of trying to use technology as the defining plot element in all likelihood.

NightWalker ended up simply being an episodic rehashing of various Western monster cliches packaged into a short series. The ending is also shockingly ruined in the final minutes while hilarious alluding to a second season that never happens.

Shadow Skill seemed a pretty average fantasy/action series with an animation budget that seemed to approach zero with each passing episode. I ended up dropping this before I got to the supposedly awful ending.

So 1 out of 3 dropped, which is about on line with how I am in general, but I don’t think it really means anything here. It could mean I could not want to watch anything longer than 13 episodes (Shadow Skill being 26). More likely, it means I simple watch for the purpose of being entertained and nothing more than that. Instead there was something else that struck me about these three shows. There didn’t seem to be any catering toward a niche audience.

While the steam may be opaque the attempt to drive DVD sales is as transparent as ever

The hallmarks of a lot of more modern anime that I watch like token onsen episodes, blatent attempts to sell more DVDs, casts of characters with no depth so they are easy to write for. Instead it seemed like was about trying to put out the best product possible within whatever meager constraints they had and hoping the quality would sell the show. Essentially all three showed ambition even if 2 of the 3 utterly failed to make a mark on me.

The conclusion I ultimately reached was that in 10 years anime had slowly gone from something desperately trying to reach mass appeal to something that was just content with the safety of a niche audience in 90% of the cases, but lacks confidence in selling itself to that niche. What does the new product say about its intended niche audience though?

Watching Anime With Extreme Prejudice Part 1

I've gone from liking stuff with explosions to thinking Sasameki Koto might be the best show of the season. Evidence of change I guess.

I didn’t always be like this. I would gladly finish whatever series I had decided to watch, then something changed. I bring this up because MAL (or rather should I say whatever I have put in) says I’m on 199 drops or 32.9% of anything I have started watching.

This raises a variety of questions such as:

• Do I even like anime?
• Why don’t I just stick to genres that I know I like?
• Is there a brutality to my style of watching?

To answer those 3 simple questions; I keep watching it don’t I?, it is hard to stick to certain genres when hardly anything of quality gets made in those anymore and sticking to specific genres is a little narrow-minded in my opinion, and it’s not really brutal since I doubt any of the creators care what this blogger with a microscopic readership thinks.

Instead I think it has something to do with the my own perceived cost of media consumption. Not to get sentimental again, but I remember having to download anime over a dial up connection. So at that point it made sense to me continue watching since I had invested more time than anything in getting just 20 minutes of entertainment. That also led me to buy DVDs back in the expensive days since $30 in the place of 4-6 days worth of effort made sense. On reflection a lot of errors were made there (glances at Love Hina boxset on shelf).

Over time, it has become incredibly easy to just grab pretty much anything in a short amount of time. Within a couple of hours I can decided to download the first episode of Tatakau Shisho to deciding that it isn’t worth my time. It was like anime viewership had changed from experimenting with recipes I was trying to cook myself to just trying new items off a fast food menu. The emotional investment in new series was practically gone. In addition, the explosion in new series at about the same time suddenly introduced a fierce urgency to plow through shows I may not necessarily want to continue. So I started dropping a lot.

That was about five years ago now, so here’s how I did from memory:

In a world where this is good enough to finish...

Completed: Kakyuusei 2, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (3 years later), ToHeart ~Remember My Memories~, Final Approach, W~Wish, Moon Phase, School Rumble, Futakoi, Zipang (2 years later), Genshiken (6 months later), Rozen Maiden, Grenadier, Air, Legend of Duo (only to write this)

and this doesn't last beyond episode 1.

Dropped: Windy Tales, My-HiME, Beet the Vandal Buster, Kannazuki no Miko, Viewtiful Joe, Uta~Kata, Desert Punk, Fantastic Children, Bleach (after about a year), BECK, Gundam Seed Destiny, Yakitate!! Japan, Gakuen Alice, Major

With the emotional investment removed, I was suddenly dropping a Gundam series which would have been unthinkable at the time (though many would argue I dropped the right one) and I was loading up on shows that mostly were not ever going to be classics. Should I try to get the emotional investment back or was I living a lie from the beginning?

Blogging Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 41

Reinhard certainly has the nation behind him

The 41st episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes focuses on two elements for the upcoming resumption of conflict between the Empire and the Alliance. The first is the continuing breakdown of structures in the Alliance, which sees the country at what is definitely a low ebb. The second is Reinhard’s strategy for dealing with Phezzan politically and Yang militarily. Already it appears that it will take a miracle for the Alliance to survive the coming battle.

Blogging Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 40

Do these people realize what they've done and should I be more worried about pre-Imperial fashion?

The 40th episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes takes Julian and the viewer on a journey through the history of humanity in space. Through primary and secondary sources of the timeline, Julian learns just a little bit about what has driven Yang over years of historical study. In addition, just a little more insight is given into the founding figures of the Empire and the Alliance and how each began to take a turn for the worse. An exposition filled journey awaits…

Blogging Legend of the Galactic Heroes Episode 39

Call it what you will; fatherly-lecture, another case of lengthy exposition, or just talking with a beer in hand, it's all good.

The 39th episode of Legend of the Galactic Heroes focuses on the beginning of a journey for one Julian Minci. The episode serves largely to view how other character feel about Julian, but it also shows just how much faith Yang has in the boy he has lived with for the past 4 years.