John Zeitler

Insert half-hearted apology for being busy here. Enough debasement, let’s get to the shows:

Slayers Try: (TV Tokyo 1997, Central Park Media 2001/Funimation 2008)
I’d heard that this third season of the venerable show had some issues, but so far the show is delivering on both the comedy and the action fronts. The plot this time around revolves around a heretofore unmentioned barrier being lifted from around the region that the past two seasons were set in, allowing access to the rest of the world by boat. Phil naturally decides that an expedition is in order. Meanwhile, Lina and Gourry meet up with the mysterious dragonkin Filia. Basically, it’s your usual barely-restrained madness that will ultimately coalesce into an engaging story around Episode 18. Maybe later.

Haibane Renmei: (Radix 2002, Pioneer 2003)
Standing in sharp contrast to Slayers is this show. Women with strange wings and halos are usually a sign of good fortune, but in the case of Reki and Rakka, I’m beginning to think they’re no angels. The setting reminds me a lot of Angel Beats, but whether or not that’s due to having had a bit of the backstory spoiled for me a long time ago is unclear yet; I’d be willing to bet that Haibane Renmei handles it with far more subtlety, if it’s going where I think it is. The problem is, though, where I think it’s going includes the words “downhill” and “fast”.

xxxHolic: (Production IG 2006, Funimation 2008)
This series isn’t unknown to me– it’s linked to its CLAMP-mate Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, and I managed to catch its theatrical side story at Tekko a few years ago. I have to admit to not having read up that much on it, tho– HOLY CRAP, THEY ARE NOODLE PEOPLE. Okay, seriously, this is CLAMP basically taking the piss with their stereotypical lanky character designs… Previous works aren’t nearly this pasta-like. Yuuko is a magnificent trickster, and seeing her yank Watanuki around really makes up for the incredibly jarring character designs. I’m also impressed that the first episode didn’t tie into Tsubasa. This has some promise.

Squid Girl: (Diomedea 2010, Media Blasters 2011)
I pretty much hit the nail on the head when I said this was Sgt. Frog played only slightly less ludicrously. But only just slightly. And with dramatically less rampant sexism. The subtitles are riddled with ocean puns that not even I would touch, and the English voices are similarly awful. Also Squid Girl herself is as dumb as a box of rocks. But ultimately it’s still charming, silly, and well-played. Being in the three-short format helps it out a lot, as it can grate after a while. Going to have to take this in small doses, though the ink gag is probably not going to get old for a while.

Shattered Angels (Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora): (AT-X 2007, Funimation 2008)
I honestly couldn’t tell you why I picked this one up. Maybe because it looked a little like Escaflowne on the cover, but it started out like a knockoff of an Esca high school universe fan fiction. It’s hard to get over the very generic character designs… Especially because, honestly, I get the feeling I’ve seen everyone in the school in another series before. Around the time the phrase “it’s a miracle of love!!” came up, I started to realize that literally everything in this series is recycled from somewhere else. That includes my reaction to it, recycled from Strike Witches: no. Just no.

So, to sum up, it turns out my brain had a violent revolt against two of the series I’d bought before, four of them were duds, and the last four captured my interest rather well. Not a bad catch. Thursday I’m planning on some extra credit– I’ll be going over five series that I started long ago, but dropped off of. Once we’re done there, I’m thinking I may go back and see about Slayers or GaoGaiGar. Later, folks.

For the record, “hi no saiketsu” should mean “Judgment Day”, but I may have the wrong noun there at the end. Anyway, here we are– let’s get this trainwreck a-rollin’.

Key, The Metal Idol: (Studio Pierrot, 1994-1997; Viz Video/Pioneer, 2000)
Ah, nothing like a cryptic conspiracy to start things off. Despite being an early dub, the work is remarkably smooth, without a lot of the common problems that plagued releases of that sort. The only real technical problem is that the DVDs aren’t in anamorphic widescreen– they’re locked to 4:3 with reverse-letterboxing. Key herself is remarkably flat as a character, and most of what she does is just reacting to the circumstances around her. Fortunately, the show makes a distinction between “naive” and “too stupid to live” in her case, though she straddles that line. The bigger problem is that this style of show makes it really, really difficult to get a bead on things after just one episode. Its job was to get people to want to watch more, and in that regard, it’s succeeded… but it’s not terribly strong after just the one.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: (J.C. Staff, 1997; Nozomi Entertainment, 2011)
From what I can tell, this is a series entirely about getting more than you bargained for, and whether or not that’s exactly a good thing. Again, like Key, it’s locked to 4:3, but that’s again excusable considering the age of the show. However, Utena’s cast characterization is far stronger in this first episode than Key’s was, making the show immediately more interesting. I read a few spoilers here and there already, but not much could prepare me for the fact that there’s more here going on than is apparent on the surface. I have to wonder, though, about a school that could be so cavalier as to ignore gender differences in both the dress code and the sports teams… and about a heroine who plays basketball. Really, Utena has more class than to play basketball; she strikes me more as a rugby kind of girl.

Strike Witches: (Gonzo, 2007; Funimation, 2010)
I understand that the first episode usually means “give the people what they want”, but…. No. Just no. Not interested.

Nerima Daikon Brothers: (Aniplex, 2006; ADV, 2008)
The show has the subtitle “The Freshly Grated Musical”, but from the opening theme, “grating” is more like it. I can’t fathom what possessed ADV to continually cast people who can’t sing in musical roles. On the plus side, at least nobody here has any inclination to take this show seriously. Including me. And apparently this was made after Chris Patton decided to give up voice acting, ’cause he sure as hell ain’t doing it here. I can’t be entirely certain how much of this insanity is ADV’s fault, because at the bottom of this is Shinichi Watanabe. I’ll at least give it credit for not going for the panty-shot madness of Strike Witches.

GaoGaiGar: (Sunrise, 1997; Media Blasters, 2008)
If Evangelion was a deconstruction of the kind of old-school giant robot show I watched when I was very, very little, then GaoGaiGar is a loving restoration of that kind of show. It may be that having watched through most of a recent Super Sentai series (Gokaiger) has given me a renewed appreciation for the tropes that GGG relies entirely on, but there’s a real sense of honesty in how hard they’re playing literally every aspect of them. In terms of plot, it’s your bog-standard “alien invaders want Earth for nebulously defined reasons, and a secret organization is working to protect us”, but again, when your cover is blown, you play it all the harder to get by. GGG is shameless, unabashed, unafraid… and completely awesome for it.

That’s it for today; three winners so far, one dud, and one thing to cash in at The Exchange. Tomorrow’s set should be less varied, with pretty much all of them coming highly recommended.

No big long intro this time– just going to get into the anime caplets and leave the discussion for later. So…

The Story of Saiunkoku: (Madhouse, 2006; Geneon/Funimation 2007-2009)
If He Is My Master is pure fanservice, then Saiunkoku is “brain service”. There is absolutely nothing sexy, nothing action-packed, and nothing palpitation-inducing about the first episode of this series. That, of course, does not preclude it from being enthralling, fascinating, and just the slightest bit funny. While the concept of a period drama is not exactly unknown among live-action Japanese television, it’s exceedingly rare for anime, especially anime that gets any sort of English-language release. I can see why Madhouse did it, though, and it lies in the simple yet deceptively descriptive phrase, “scenery porn”. This is a gorgeous series. Shuurei herself, the main character, is interesting as well: she’s far from the stereotypical shrinking-violet type. At first I found her to be a little too perfect to be believable, but it was about that time that I caught on that her good-girl act was merely the social facade she was expected to wear, and that she’s written more or less realistically underneath that. I can dig this series.

Kaleido Star (Gonzo, 2004; ADV, 2005-2008)
Around the time Sora started blazing her way through the generic American city after the thief, I started to realize what kind of character she was, as well as what kind of series KS could have been. I was getting a decidedly Excel Saga vibe, until she hit the audition and got shut down. I understand it was an establishing moment for Layla’s character, but the whiplash was just a little too much to reasonably take. It got completely turned around just before the commercial break, to the point where the whole series is completely unpredictable. The floor show worked out to be as awesome as it’s been hyped up to be, and it’s one of those things where I think Gonzo just likes making things great only to crush the characters and the audience as well. And then it got really weird when Fool showed up. I wish I had confidence in the fact that it would end well, but this one episode casts all that in doubt– normally compelling, but here… irritating. Either due to Kalos’ seeming omniscience, Layla’s obsessive bitchiness, or Sora’s crippling underconfidence, it just grates for some reason. As a direct result, I’m uncertain on if I’m going to move it up on the list at some point. This leads me into a side tangent I’ve been thinking about… later. Much later.

When They Cry (Studio Deen, 2006; Geneon/Funimation 2006-2009)
Here’s my problem with spoilers. They can make enjoying a series like this one extremely difficult. I know where the series is going, so this first episode where things are relatively silly is almost impossible to take at the face value that it’s being presented in. Funny thing is, though, When They Cry opens with probably the single bloodiest two minutes of screen time that I’ve seen since Elfen Lied. Nominally, not a problem. I can handle a little guts an’ gore. The problem is that, because I’ve read the manga, I know that that intro is just the tip of the iceberg. Given the fact that I don’t deal well with horror, and especially not psychological/paranoia stuff, I’m probably gonna have to double-bill this with something far, far further up the “light and fluffy” scale. Oh, and for some reason, Keiichi’s English-language voice actor doesn’t really sound right to me. I always thought his normal voice was a little less overstimulated while reading it, and this just doesn’t seem to fit his established character, let alone my preconceptions.

Princess Tutu (Hal Film Maker, 2002; ADV, 2005-2006)
Okay. I stand corrected. THIS has the Excel Saga nature. I have to admit, though, that hearing Chris Patton’s voice coming out of Fakir was pretty much the point at which I started to really enjoy it. When it happened the second time I knew there was more to this than what it appeared to be. The story is steeped greatly in fantasy, to the point where having a cat for a ballet instructor is only a minor and temporary astonishment. Like Kaleido Star it’s a series about performance arts, meaning the animation is going to be gorgeous (when it’s not cracked-out), but the writing here drew me in and got me far more excited to let it go forward. And the fact that the English dub cast works perfectly is just an added bonus.

The Slayers Next (TV Tokyo, 1996; Central Park Media/Funimation, 1998/2007)
So this is where one of my favorite opening themes comes from! It’s been about a year since I finished up watching Slayers, and the thing is that the characters are among the best-loved in anime for a very good reason. While the DVDs are based off the original VHS masters, the whole thing still radiates the kind of charm that’s still rare to find. In terms of the story, it’s presented as being a matter of an irresistible force (in this case, Lina and the gang) meeting an immovable object (Martina). The gleeful, uninhibited ridiculousness was a great change of pace after, well, everything up there. It’s high on the list now, too.

Ah! My Goddess Flights Of Fancy (AIC, 2006; Media Blasters/ADV/Funimation 2007)
First off, explain to me what a Norse goddess is doing playing Scottish bagpipes. I’m not complaining, I’m just trying to figure out the connection. Anyway, if it was a long time since seeing Lina last, it’s been even longer since I sat down with the first season of Ah! My Goddess. I had collected the whole set during the Cleveland occupation (and subsequently lost it…) and watched it then, but I just never got around to season two until now. It’s probably weird, then, that the only thing I can seem to think of while watching is Tales of Vesperia. Seriously, I can see elements of the same character designs in everybody (no surprise, as the Tales series regularly employs Kousuke Fujishima as an illustrator– again, totally not complaining). As for the story, well, it starts with the Father of all “where’s my daughter” calls and just goes from there. Again, it’s one of the most classic manga tales, and its animated adaptation here is very deserving of its praise.

In the end, despite the fact that it was designed to narrow down the list of what I wanted to watch, the Rush to Judgment only wound up getting me to simply reorganize the list. Nothing really got eliminated, just pushed back. That was one of the outcomes I was sort of expecting, though: I know my tastes, and very seldom will I pick something absolutely wretched. It has been known to happen, of course, but those times are exceedingly rare. Anyway, the bottom line is that I’ve managed to get a pretty good queue set up, and barring any must-see shows popping up between now and August (if I’m lucky), I think I’m about set.

So: the mafia, some mages, a wolf, a Western, one graceful duck, four odd ducks, a maiden’s tale, a tale of maids, a fire drill, a girl of fire, a trip to the skies, a trip to much friendlier (ahem) skies, fear and loathing, and a well-earned happy ending. What a list…

Rush to Judgment is a feature I do every so often when I find that my stack has got to be way too big for me to find out what to start next. The last time I did this, I played through the first thirty minutes of ten games in order to see which one grabbed my attention… and, ironically, none of them did. Today I picked six anime series out of the ten I haven’t seen a single frame of yet, and this week I’ll go through the other four. For now, though, enjoy my impressions of the first episodes of the series below.

In retrospect, this was a really, really bad idea. But not for the reasons you think. I detailed the format of this little experiment above, but one thing I wanted to mention was that it was really hard to stick to that format. I forced myself to watch only one episode, in its entirety, to gauge how the series was going. In some cases, one episode was enough… and in others, it was woefully inadequate. Enough preamble: let’s do this.

He Is My Master: (Gainax/Shaft, 2005; Sentai Filmworks, 2009, sub-only)
Remember when you could say “it’s a Gainax series” and have people know exactly what you meant by that? It used to mean stacked girls and the flimsiest excuses. Nowadays it means pseudo-intellectual deconstructionism that threatens what it means to be an anime fan. Funny thing is, Master matches both of those descriptions. The series revolves around Izumi and Mitsuki, middle-school runaways who are looking for work. Luck (of the bad sort) leads them to the mansion of Yoshitaka, a similarly-aged heir who happens to be looking for a live-in maid or two. Yeah, you can guess how this will go. It veers sharply off the pandering formula around the time the nebulously-drawn crocodile starts chewing on Yoshitaka. The thing is, Master looks like it has the potential to deconstruct the whole “lonely otaku suddenly has gorgeous maids” fantasy fanservice type of show, but that largely depends on if the characters get some sort of development, Yoshitaka in particular. And yeah, despite the fact that I know she’s schmuck bait and specifically made to be a likeable character, I am kind of interested in seeing where Izumi’s characterization is going. But we’ll see. This is about exactly what I thought it was going to be… whether or not that’s a good thing is an exercise left up to the reader.

Baccano!: (Aniplex, 2007; Funimation, 2009, dubbed)
Okay, first, I have to ask this. “Jacuzzi Splot”? Really? You were doing so well with “Clare Stanfield”, and then you go and drop Jacuzzi Splot. Y’know what? I can forgive that. I pretty much have to, when the first episode of the series is pretty much a metafictional discussion of the concept of a “main character”, to say nothing of the concept of a story beginning or ending. The series literally defies description, but the short version is that it answers the unasked question, “How would the American 1930s Prohibition-era gangster wars be different if some of those gangsters were, in fact, imbued with the alchemical Elixir of Immortality?”. And it answers it thusly: “It would be awesome.” I made a note to the effect of this being my next series to watch through (helps that it’s only 13 episodes).

Negima!: (Xebec, 2005; Funimation, 2006, dubbed/switched to subtitles)
I realized about halfway through this one that I had actually seen this a couple of years ago. Just the first episode, of course, but that was on a fansub, and as it turns out that was probably for the best. Greg Ayres plays the decidedly British Negi Springfield, and does so with the single most atrocious fake accent I have ever heard. Hell, I could do better than that. I jumped to the subtitles and quickly realized that the dub script took a few more liberties with the text, too… so no real loss. Problem is, it was at that halfway point which I realized why I hadn’t gone further with this one: it’s… well, it’s just not that good. Okay, it has some good moments, and there’s bound to be at least one character I’ll like here (I still have yet to read through more of the manga) because the opening credits is basically a checklist of stock “cute girl” characters. It’s not that it’s bad. It just has to have one of the slowest starts to the actual plot that I have ever seen… was it really necessary to stretch it out this long? The first episode ended on a really lame hook. Think I’ll let this slide until after I’ve read more of the manga (which is just as slowly-paced, but I can read the obnoxious parts faster than they can be acted).

Spice And Wolf: (Imagin, 2008; Funimation, 2009, dubbed)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a series set in a medieval time period– at least, one which was played straight. The Slayers is about the closest, and beyond that you’d have to go back to Scrapped Princess (subversion-o-rama), or Record of Lodoss War (which is pretty much ten years ago since I’ve seen it even most of the way through). I’m not big on swords-and-sorcery, but it looks like Spice has, in point of fact, neither. Lawrence is a traveling merchant, who somehow comes across the ambiguously-divine wolf “god” Holo (the coming of monotheism to the almost-western-European setting, including disdainful mentions of “pagans”, is also a seemingly-major plot point). She basically tricks him into taking her with him, but it’s done in such a genuinely charming way that you can’t help but like her. Holo really acts more like a fox than a wolf, as she’s somewhat untrustworthy and devious; on the other hand, Lawrence isn’t some easily-duped rube himself. Both of them have pasts, and probably most importantly, both of them have pasts that are presented such that I want to find out more about them.

Simoun: (Studio Deen, 2006; Media Blasters, 2007, sub-only)
Okay, yeah, there’s not really any getting around the fact that this is a series about magical flying lesbians. Now that I have your attention… it’s still about magical flying lesbians. Pretty much an instant-sell for a lot of people, but I’m trying to figure out where exactly I heard all the really positive impressions of this series, and how long it takes for me to find any of the overtly redeeming qualities. Judging from the first episode alone, this is going to be twenty-six episodes which alternate between showing cute girls kissing and wrecking them emotionally. There’s simply no way for Simoun to not end in a horribly depressing manner. It’s going on the back burner.

El Cazador De La Bruja: (Bee Train, 2007; Funimation, 2009, dubbed)
Fun fact: I switched these last two from their original lineup when I was changing discs after Baccano!, and I’m kind of glad I did. Cazador is a third-generation successor to Bee Train’s previous hit Noir, and in some respects, it shows: Ellis is appropriately wispy and enigmatic, there’s a shadowy conspiracy calling the shots from far away, and Nadie is a tall, confident gunslinging girl. That’s about where the similarities end. Cazador is talkative– compared to Noir, Cazador just plain never shuts up– and is a bit more humorous at times, particularly in how Ellis and Nadie interact. Their relationship is a bit more normal than Mirielle and Kirika’s was, in that they’re not actively planning to kill each other; more than that, it seems like there’s a cast of supporting characters here that promises to make the whole thing work so much more fluidly than Noir did (it was great, but it had its pacing problems). Despite the packaging and general assumptions, it should be noted that the series is set in the present day, and it’s also set in Mexico, which coincidentally explains the gratuitous Spanish being spoken by the dub cast.

Trailer Impressions
Two of the series I watched were prefaced with trailers of sufficient note to make me comment on them in my notes. I was already interested in Soul Eater, having read the beginnings of the manga in Yen Plus, but having seen the series in action, I’m probably going to have to pick it up at some point. Looking forward to that, especially if the dub work is of a fairly decent quality. On the other hand, we have Dragonaut. Initially, I had placed He Is My Master as the series with the most fanservice I’d seen tonight. When the trailer shows a girl to whom puberty has been particularly generous jump-roping, you kind of get a pretty good feeling for where the series is headed. In this case, it’s headed absolutely nowhere near my shelf.

I’d said that this was a bad idea, and unfortunately that’s for a very good reason: I now have no idea which of the three best series I’m going to watch first. That, in case you’re wondering, completely defeats the purpose of running the Rush to Judgment to begin with. I’m not going to complain too much, mind: it’s probably the best kind of problem to have, but it’s still a little frustrating. In the end, though, I think I’m going to go with Baccano!, followed quickly by Spice and Wolf.

Tomorrow, I’ll preview the last four “new” series on my stack; I may also manage to get some models sprayed up properly.