mDuo13

Well, this first post of the new year is long overdue, but I've finally gotten around to writing it. (I did, however, make a rare post to my anime music blog, Nekomimi Music in the meantime.) And, though I have some other interesting thoughts to post, I'll be saving those for a while. Right now, it's time to talk about the new anime starting this season.

I'm trying something entirely new to me this season: watching only raws. I've been studying Japanese for a while now, and I've been watching subtitled anime for roughly a decade, so I thought it was high time I stopped depending on fansubbers as a go-between between me and my shows. I decided a few months ago that I could probably do it, and I had a lot of things that I could say were the impetus for the decision. I've watched some things primarly in raw before - large parts of El Cazador de la Bruja and all of ARIA The ORIGINATION (excepting the last episode, which I have been putting off a la Gekigangar 3), so I knew I could follow at least most of the dialogue in any particular episode. I'm starting to feel like subtitles are a crutch on my Japanese learning, because I usually read a line first and then know what to listen for when I hear it - so I'm not developing the all-important skill of figuring out what someone says without knowing in advance. And I've gotten almost too good at finding flaws in subtitled translations. Even the official localization of Xam'd: Lost Memories has things that bother me. (Actually, Xam'd makes choices that even a novice will question, as this blog's header image should demonstrate.) Perhaps most importantly, I find often enough that I don't need the subtitles, and they're cluttering up an image I want to see unblemished.

The transition hasn't been totally cold turkey. I'm still following fansubs for a few things that I started last season like ToraDora and Clannad ~After Story~, and a couple shows that started this season, I watched with others including subtitles... but I'm still going to go through with it and see how hard the transition is. If nothing else, what I can't understand will give me more direction in my learning. So, without further ado, the start of a new Winter season:

• Akikan - The Akikan (empty can) was just garbage, but then it was recycled. Now its time has come, and it transforms into a pretty girl! That's my translation of the tagline from this series, as I read it on the official website www.melomelomelon.com. With a plot like that, I knew this series would be hilarious, and it still surpassed my expectations. Don't expect quality - the animation is cheap, the OP and ED are laughable, the characters are paper-thin, and the plot's only saving grace is its absurdity - but it reaches such heights of absurdity that I've come to conclude that the series just might take "so bad it's good" to the point where it becomes legitimately good.
• Asu no Yoichi! - Here, I'll summarize this series for you in two sentences: Yoichi is a samurai who lacks 'experience', so he gets sent to the city, where he has never been, to learn at a dojo with four girls. Fanservice ensues. That's it. This show looks like it will be characterized by generic girls, generic sheltered character gags, and improbable physics. Worst of all, it seems to think that the main character is really cool just because he can flagrantly defy the laws of physics. The series at least has slightly more animation budget than some even more awful shows.
• Maria†Holic - Second-year high-schooler Kanako enrolls in an all-girls school seeking to find her lesbian true love, and immediately falls for an elegant girl named Maria. Unfortunately, it turns out that Maria is a crossdressing boy with a bad attitude. This series is produced by SHAFT, so it has their typical zany stylizing. There are lots of things that don't make a lot of sense, nor are they meant to. The series looks like it'll be pretty entertaining though, and the animation quality is - at least so far - quite nice. This is, however, probably going to be the most difficult series to keep up with minus subtitles, because the characters (Kanako especially) tend to ramble in rapid-fire Japanese making references and bizarre comments left and right. If I hadn't seen the first episode subtitled by a group named [Hey_youroshiku_minna_onegaii_ureshii_hai_iie_sayonara_konnbawa_dunno_more_japanese_words_also_hey_everyone_i_like_this_anime_oh_wait_this_is_the_tag] , I probably wouldn't have any idea what was going on for half of the episode. By the way, I highly approve of any subtitles that use "Man-faye" as a synonym for "crossdresser".
• The last of the series I've started so far this season is White Album, which is the story of a guy dating an up-and-coming idol singer, based on the Leaf game of the same name. For better or for worse, the series has a lot of instantly recognizable voices including Hirano Aya, Mizuki Nana, and Sakaguchi Daisuke (whom I list because he sounds just like he does as Clannad's Sunohara). The pacing of the first episode was a little strange - it's not entirely clear what the main conflict in the plot is yet, though it's certain that something is wrong. That said, it showed some promise, and I'm definitely inclined to keep watching.

That's not by any means the complete list of things I'll be watching this season - there are at least 5 other things that have already aired which I'm going to check out (not least of which are Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou, which I'm almost certain to follow after how good the first season was, and Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai, aka Munto TV, aka the new KyoAni series). And after that, I guess the past season might warrant a post-mortem - though a surprisingly large proportion of the shows I ended up watching were longer than 13 episodes, in contrast to usual.