The path to becoming a Manga-ka is one of sweat, tears, malnutrition, and lack of sleep

As we approach the Autumn 2012 anime season I found myself with the dreaded question once again. ‘What am i watching this season?’. As you can see from next season’s Animuchart we have quite a few new shows to look forward to as well as a few continuations. Upon seeing that Bakuman season 3 was being released I finally decided to get around to watching the previous two seasons and over the course of the last week I have been constantly doing so. Well, enough of my boring introduction here we go!

Upon doing initial research the first thing I noticed about Bakuman was that it’s created by the awesome team of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. For those who aren’t familiar with the names, they are the ones who created Death Note. Yes, the guys who were behind my all time favorite anime created another masterpiece and I am only now watching it. Sad huh? Also, while one may say that because of that fact I am biased towards the show i’d like to point out that since I came to expect so much from them, I was even tougher on it than I would be with the average anime.

The story revolves around two boys in their teens and their dream to be mangaka (manga artists). Seasons one and two highlights a chronological timeline of their journey beginning at the final year of Junior High and ends at the first year of university. There is a quote ‘The path to becoming a Manga-ka is one of sweat, tears, malnutrition, and lack of sleep’ and throughout Bakuman we are shown exactly that. From day one where they decide to follow their dreams, to the creation of their first ‘hit’ manga. Everything done in their life is portrayed in those two seasons. (more…)

Sometimes you follow a show and you have no reason as to why you did, but you did. This show did that for me. Maybe I was lazy or maybe I was between stuff. Maybe it was the cat (that odd basketball in the lower left box). But I will assure you that I found out much later that it was actually a dating game, and I will bet you that Keima Katsuragi from “The World God Only Knows” probably blitzed through the thing in a couple of hours. Or potentially the title drew me in: “Mashiro-Iro: Symphony: The Color or Lovers” (also known as “Love is Pure White”).

The traditional girls-only Yuihime Private Academy is considering the possibility of starting to accept both genders and has thus made an agreement with a neighboring school (Kagamidai Academy) to receive some of its students as an experiment to see the reaction to this adaptation. Shingo Iryu (the brown-haired guy, lower center and to the left) is one of the many students transferred for a ten month experimental phase at Yuihime Academy. He, his sister, and his fellow relocated colleagues are impressed by the sophisticated campus, but even more by the resistance of many students who don’t want the boys over there.

The resistance is lead by Airi Sena (that loud-mouthed number in the lower right) who just happens to be the principal’s daughter. Well, you can bet the friction is going to be long and loud on this one. Adding to the consternation is that Shingo has this amazing knack of walking in on the girls while they are in various stages of undress, furthering the assumption that all men are perverts (Psst! All men ARE perverts. That’s a given). But he is able to marshall the guys to be courteous and act well-mannered and be gentlemen, which starts to soften opposition to the merger. (more…)

Five Questions for the Aniblogger Interrogation Game!
Super late in the game but I hadn’t even noticed this post until I read Façade’s article. I was tagged so here it goes.

1. What is it that led you to become an aniblogger?
I’m already a creative writing major and a huge anime fan so it seemed like common sense to smash the two together. Also, as I continued watching anime/reading manga I realized I had a lot of strong opinions (former debate team member lol) and wanted to share them. Thus, my blog.

2. How many times can you recall where an anime or anime scene made you think “WTF”?
Um, this question could be an entire blog of its own. There are so many WTF anime moments. It’s sort of a…culture shock thing I guess. Off the top of my head? The first scene in Elfen Lied. I had no idea what that show was about and was not warned in advance. Also, in Elfen Lied where they paired off the cousins. That was my first introduction to incest in anime…which I would later learn there is a lot of.

Yeah, this is so totally me…

3. If you could be an anime/manga character, who would it be?
Ah, that’s a tough one! Kallen from Code Geass is awesome and her life is pretty exciting. I also want to say Tohru Honda (without the tragic my mother died occurrence) because she spends all day surrounded by pretty boys who like her ;). Then again, I’d like to be Princess Euphemia (without the part where *spoiler* I go on a killing spree and then die myself) because I am in love with Suzaku and her clothes are pretty. There are so many awesome female characters but so many tragic stories. Lol. Do I have to pick just one? If I had to I’d say a female Pokemon Trainer. Who can’t say their dream is to have a Pokemon journey?

4. Which means of viewing do you prefer, subbed anime or dubbed anime or do you speak Japanese? I so wish I could speak Japanese and watch the original anime! But I only know really basic phrases. I like both, but prefer dubs (gasp!). Because watching subs makes me feel left out of the loop, like I’m in on the program but not really there. Also when I have to stare at the captions the entire time I can’t focus on what’s going on. But honestly, I’ve watched and enjoyed both.

5. Finally, which anime/manga do you consider to be worth someone’s time?
I’m going to completely bypass Code Geass and Death Note so that I don’t sound like a broken record and go ahead and say Yosuga no Sora (which is what I plan to blog about next). It’s a really beautiful, controversial story about siblings who fall in love. It seems trashy from just reading summaries and reviews but if you actually watch the show I don’t think it disappoints. As for manga I’d say Neon Genesis Evangelion. It’s better than the anime.
Since the game was considered closed I won’t tag or write up new questions.

Sometimes life can be such a lonely existence

By some miracle I woke up early today and thus have some time to write my response. But as the date has passed I won’t be tagging anyone else. For those who have no idea what i’m talking about you can check out Cely’s original post here.
Now the answers to the 5 questions.

1. What is it that lead you to become an aniblogger?
Thats an easy one, It was summer and I reeeeeally wanted something to do besides watch anime all day and sleep. So I decided to create a blog. And what better thing to blog about than my obsession?

2.  How many times can you recall where an anime or anime scene made you think “WTF”?
Hmmmmm, Currently I can only think of two instances. That would be at the ending of school days where those two crazy, gruesome murders happen and then seeing the girl at the end with Makoto’s head on the boat. The second would be Junjou Romantica, while it wasn’t as WTFesque as the first instance somehow I thought the show would simply be a romance anime but halfway through episode one I noticed….. OMG!! This is… this is… (go watch it to find out :P)… After pouring concentrated Hydrochloric acid on my eyes to get the image out I instantly dropped the show and live my life now forever scarred.

3.  If you could be an anime/manga character, who would it be?
Gin from Mushishi, somehow I can relate to him. Always by himself, travelling around helping others and the ability to see and resolve what other’s cannot. While at some point during the show you stop and think that he must live a very lonely life, I still found it captivating somehow.

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Certainly in the Halls of Anime, Romance Wing, Kaichō wa Maid-sama! (The President is a Maid!) garners high marks for the tale it tells, and what a tale it is.

Seika High School, once an all-boys school notorious for its wild students and for generally being a terrifying place for girls, has recently become a co-ed school. With the female population still a minority and living in fear of the over-the-top antics of the males, Misaki Ayuzawa (the fair one at the left) takes it into her own hands to reform the school and allow the girls to feel safe in the rough environment.

As the first female president, she has to take a very harsh stand against the boys to allow the girls to feel safe enough that they can thrive. This has, however, earned her the enmity of the boys for her dictator-like stance on things. But this façade is threatened when Takumi Usui (the fair one on the right) discovers her secret: she works at a maid café one town over to make ends meet.

But Takumi never spills the beans on her little secret, but this acts as a kind of ‘obligation’ that she owes him and she never wants to be in the debt of a man for any reason (partly derived from the circumstances that forced her to work at the made café). (more…)

Many times I have found myself starting an anime and thinking ‘hey this show is great!’ but then it drags on… and on… and on….. until it just becomes boring, repetitive and flat out sucks. Well this is exactly what happened with this season’s Accel World.

Accel World deals with the  rare MMORPG/virtual reality genre and had a ‘unique’ protagonist. At the start, I couldn’t wait for the following week to see the next episode, everything was just new fresh and exciting, at episode 12 (the perfect time for a conclusion) I was starting to get a little tired of the characters and now.. episode 22 I’m sick and tired of pretty much everything. The VR game which is the foundation for the show makes no more logical sense at this point. The majority of the characters are overly shallow, fickle and just plain stupid.

The only character who is even remotely worth giving any credit to is Kuroyukihime. (Xtra pic @ bottom of post *wink*), while she has extremely bad taste in guys (ie. liking Haru), she is intelligent, levelheaded and popular (not blonde popular but… ‘irie’ popular) all while still maintaining a certain level of complexity. If they spent anywhere as much of an effort on the other characters as they did on her, I personally think the show would be much better than the compilation of sniveling, estrogen overdosed buffoons that we have currently.

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This is one seriously off-kilter show. It follows the everyday life of Takashi Kamiyama (the guy dead center and not the robot dude) and his odd classmates at Cromartie High School, an infamous school for delinquents.

To start off with, EVERYONE is 16! Each person is identified with their name slug and age, but no one looks 16 or acts 16 or is potentially 16. In fact we don’t even know what they did to be sent to this school and, if they are delinquents, they do not act in a delinquent manner. I mean, they come to class (even though you never see a teacher or any other faculty member present) and stay the whole day, then go home. OK, they do nothing in between (no homework assignments, no lessons on the blackboard, no oral presentations; nothing like that), but we do not see them engaged in ‘standard’ delinquent activities (whatever that really means).

We see them on class outings and they even try to start a sports team, but they all lose interest pretty fast. Even when one of their mates is kidnapped and they go to their aid, they never seem to actually have a rumble. And Kamiyama is the most normal one about!

Of the team we have up there, left to right:

Takeshi Hokuto. He is the son of a chairman and uses his influence to take over and rule all the schools he goes to. Sadly, Cromartie is a municipal school and cannot take it over. He is, in fact, so clueless, he comes to school wearing the wrong uniform. This does not stop him from plotting how to take this school over, to no real success. (more…)

There are a variety of shows that tell a story, but don’t really go anywhere with it. I call them “Pointless Shows”. They aren’t really pointless (not like “Piano”, which was an exquisite waste of time), but go nowhere. “Pani Poni Dash” and “Lucky Star” are two, but rarely do you see one with boys.

“The Daily Lives of High School Boys” really is about (left to right) Hidenori Tabata, Yoshitake Tanaka and Tadakuni (the fourth guy up there is Motoharu, but more on him later) and their regular lives. The episodes are really disjointed, in that they don’t honestly need to be seen in order and they are presented in ‘skits’ (for want of a better term) and run between two and seven minutes.

You come to learn that they are just as perplexed about things (especially girls) as anyone else is. The cast is actually much larger and we don’t always focus on those three, but the results are more or less the same as they muddle from day to day.

Now, there is nothing wrong with the aimless story approach, as it does free one to chase down any angle they see fit and you know as they grow older, they will grow apart, but the journey getting there is fun to watch. You also see a lot of the malarkey and over-thinking that guys do in relationship to absolutely everything they do. It’s a wonder they can get out of bed in the morning, as they are sometimes rather conflicted. (more…)