X Never Marks the Spot

gnine is here for the moment, so we've been trying out some new shows! We've seen the first four eps of Sense8 (fascinating, can't wait to see more) and Syfy's Killjoys (want it to be better than it is, sigh) and a bunch of recent anime, two of which I have to recommend for anyone who's into that, or would like to be.

The first is Ore Monogatari!! aka My Love Story!! aka the cutest cute that has ever cutely cuted. This anime should come with a sugar warning for diabetics. It's a shoujo about a high school boy who is the polar opposite of the attractive shoujo hero, both in his colossal manly body and face, and his straightforward personality. Due to his looks, he's never had a girlfriend; they all fall for his bishounen best friend. Then one day he helps out a girl, and you can guess where the story goes from there. Except whatever you're imagining, it's cuter than that. It's a fun, sappy, quietly silly show focusing equally on Takeo, his best friend, and his girlfriend, and the relationship developing between them (don't worry, it's not a love triangle; not a threesome either, but equally about friendship as romance), and most of the stories are basically about which one of the three can be the sweetest (spoilers: it's all of them.)

Also the brother (who not-so-secretly enjoys school shoujo comedies) was honestly wondering about the gender of the mangaka - the writer is female, it turns out, but we guess she might have teenagers, because she captures a particular sort of low-key teen boy friendship in a way that felt very true to him.

If you like Ore Monogatari, I'd also recommend last year's Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun/Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, which has similar character dynamics, though is a lot goofier, more a straight comedy, bordering on parody - of the gentle and loving sort; if you're a shoujo fan I wouldn't miss it. Both are up on Crunchyroll.


The second is Ansatsu Kyoushitsu/Assassination Classroom, which has to be seen to be believed, but I'll try to explain why (and the summary is going to sound more spoilery than it really is - the basic idea is laid out in the first five minutes of the show - but if you want to watch it cold, go ahead, do it, you won't regret it. Provided you have a tolerance for certain shounen tropes, crack, and crack played straight(ish). And a basic grasp of Japanese schooling would help. But seriously, this show is amazing, I fell for it so much harder than I was prepared for.)

So Assassination Classroom is yet another take on that educational classic, the class of troubled teens getting an unusual new teacher who turns their lives around, à la GTO, Gokusen, etc. The twist - and it's a doozy - is that this teacher is a super-powered tentacle monster who blew up most of the moon and is going to do the same to the Earth in a year...unless this class of plucky young junior high students can assassinate him first.

This is quite the challenge, as he can move at Mach 20 (and the brother is thrilled by how cleverly and accurately his superspeed works), he's immune to most weapons, and also he's the best teacher the kids have ever had.

On the other hand, if they can kill him, they get a ten-billion yen reward from the grateful nations of the world. And (hopefully?) save the planet.

And if you're thinking this sounds completely absurd - absolutely yes! and yet the series makes it work. It's crack played straight - not realistically, and it's not a dark series; half the time it's a comedy and it keeps hitting the expected hopeful and triumphant chords of kids overcoming adversity with the help of a few adults who really care. But the emotional tension is all over the place and off-kilter from the tropes it's deploying, and that's deliberately and effectively done, often hilariously, occasionally disturbing. The kids are all the standard types of failures and delinquents, but they're well-sketched and lovable and you can't help but cheer them on...even when you're not quite sure you should.

(As a bonus Sugita Tomokazu is playing the PE teacher/special forces agent teaching the kids assassination skills and becoming way more attached to his students than he should be, considering the stakes. I apparently have a thing for Sugita-voiced characters who should never in a million years be mentors for kids and yet end up mentoring the hell out of them, though otherwise Karasuma-sensei is a 180 from Gintoki.)

The end of the season falls down a bit in how it goes more overtly action-shounen; but there's another season coming next year and I can't wait for it. Not the least of which because there are so many questions about the whole scenario, and it's offered enough hints to imply answers may come. In the meantime you can watch the first season on Hulu. And then come here and talk to me about it, because yes, so many questions!! (I'm debating whether or not to read the manga or be patient...)

In order of viewing:

Having just rewatched the Ouran High School Host Club anime for the *mumbleth* time, I then went and reread the manga, and oh man if only they would animate the second half of the story! because it's just like the first half only ten times as good. One of my favorite shoujo, that series - the art slides some in the later volumes, but it makes up for it in story and character and comedy and just, all of it. I was initially unsure about reading the manga, because I love the anime but it ends with certain plot threads incomplete and unsettling and I wasn't sure any of them could be tied off in ways that wouldn't break my heart at least a little - and then the manga goes and deals with all of them SO SO SATISFYINGLY! The romance is silly and ridiculous, and the friendship and family stuff is adorable and affecting, and just, awww that is what I want my comedy to be like. (Also there is one chapter that made me cry both times I read it, and it's not even really that sad - there's no death or anything like that; but it just - it's the part where Kaoru tries to break away from Hikaru, so Hikaru can be happy and then in the end - Hikaru pulls big brother rank and dyes his hair and says that they're twins no matter what and so they can grow up and grow apart without ever breaking apart - and just - oh oh oh my heart...) ...And yeah, Kyouya is still my favorite because, megane-type, and that's the whole joke - the brilliant thing about Ouran is that even knowing that they are parody, that they are the ultimate classic stereotypes of moe chars - those types still work.


Then, one of my fellow wranglers forced me to watch recommended the j-drama SPEC (aka Keizoku 2: SPEC though apparently Keizoku 1 is mostly unrelated) and OMG CRAAAAAACK. Even for a j-drama. SPEC is basically Japan doing X-files-meets-Heroes. With vuvuzelas. And starring a woman who I swear is what you'd get if Nodame (from Nodame Cantabile) and Sherlock (from Sherlock) had a daughter. And then died in a tragic plane-crash so she was raised by Fox Mulder. Touma is VERY VERY VERY SPECIAL, is what I am saying. (And kind of spectacular for it; can't recall offhand any other female characters with her particular blend of weird socially maladjusted borderline-unbalanced obsessive genius.) It's also fascinating for being maybe the only show I've ever seen (Japanese, American, UK, whatever) starring twenty-something male and female leads in which the sexuality of BOTH leads is 100% up in the air. They could be straight, gay, bi, or ace - there are hints for several things but no actual confirmation in the show itself. And Touma and her partner Sebumi have this intense but bizarre bond that is entirely up for interpretive grabs.

I cannot recommend this one wholeheartedly - if you don't know Asian drama, you might want to try something else first to warm up, else you might risk spraining your brain; and if you do know it...I am totally not joking about the vuvuzelas. (Also warning that Touma and Sebumi are kind of a manzai couple so can come across as mutually abusive if you don't know your classic tsukkomi & boke play...) That being said, it's definitely an experience! And there's a movie that just came out (that maybe will finish the story?) - very interested in seeing it!

(Also there is Ninomae! +<3333PSYCHOHEARTS)


And last, what everyone's been waiting for - YES I saw Avengers, YES I loved it, YES Joss Whedon should only do superhero movies from now on, YES every word out of Tony Stark's mouth is comic gold, YES the Black Widow is awesome, and YES I love Loki way too much. A few miscellaneous possibly spoilery observations below the cut - I don't have anything in particular to say that hasn't been said before. ( bit of spoilers! all squee all the time! )

Shounen Jump just announced that the Gintama anime is ending - not going on hiatus again but actually ending. Now, this could be trolling the fans (wouldn't be the first time) but the wording is...awfully final. And the show did get in trouble a few times this year for pushing the envelope of offensiveness that much further...

...But why now? Right before it got to the Kintoki arc that I desperately wanted to see - and it's not going to adapt the current manga arc either (which I had been avoiding since I prefer to watch anime unspoiled, but had to check it out and oh my god it's got Joui flashbacks and backstory with Shouyou-sensei - that is to say, it's in the full-out shounen action mood that it does so very well, and the anime does even better...) The thing is, if the One Piece anime was canceled, I'd be unhappy, and I'd miss the seiyuu dreadfully - but we'd still have the manga, and the anime has never reached the original's quality, in art or pacing or anything else. But Gintama is one of the only series where I outright prefer the anime to the manga - it's such a loyal adaption, but the jokes are funnier animated and the art is far prettier (Sorachi's art has improved somewhat over time, but writing is still where his talents lie). Not to mention Gintoki without Sugita's voice is like...chocolate without peanutbutter! Fries without ketchup! Metaphors without food! (hmm, maybe I should go get lunch...) (Plus, it's really hard to find raws of the manga, and I can barely understand them as it is. The official manga translation was discontinued, and while there is a group scanlating it, the level of translation is about at my own - no offense to the translators; the series is a nightmare, but comparing to the raws I've found multiple lines that even I know are wrong, elementary Japanese mistakes like mistaking an emphatic 'ja nai' for a negative. The fansubs for Gintama aren't fantastic but better than the scanlators, so without the anime I'm going to be lost...)

There is always the hope of movies, of course, or endless OAVs like Hunter x Hunter. And yeah, until I know for sure otherwise I'm still going to keep a little hope we're being trolled. But all the same...sigh.

Also my silly cartoon Generator Rex has apparently ended; haven't watched the last eps yet, but I don't see how they could tie up the whole arc in the few they have left. Plus it means we'll never get the Rex-goes-to-Ben-10's verse x-over I craved, with Rex flirting with Gwen and Kevin flipping out and Ben & Rex making out... ;_;

In better animation news, am about halfway through Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and loving it! Such an incredibly creative and unique story, and it's so much more satisfying than the first anime; the plot actually hangs together and is going somewhere. Plus Roy Mustang is 100x more badass, gaaaah Roy. (Also there is a particular character of whom I hadn't realized how fond I'd become, until suddenly that character wasn't that character anymore and I realized how very upsetting I found it. I do so enjoy it when a series can do that to me, sneak up and make me fall in love before I even realize it's happening (though man I am hoping said char is restored somehow, and being FMA I have no guarantee...!))

Have seen the first 6 eps of Tiger & Bunny with the bro - mucho enjoyment but then we're both weak to superheroes. It's not really a superhero parody so much as a straight superhero show that happens to fall on the sillier end of the spectrum, though it seems to be slowly sliding to the more serious side, as they do. And may answer the age-old question: if Bruce Wayne and Darkwing Duck were forced by their corporate sponsors to become partners, who would snap and kill the other first? Seiyuu bonus: +30 in sexiness for Hirata Hiroaki (mmmm) and +42 in brain breakage for my beloved Tsuda Kenjirou as the flaming-in-every-meaning-of-the-word Fire Emblem (?!!?!?!?111!!?!)

In other superhero news, Peter David wrote the last ep of Ben 10, which was a not-really-disguised-at-all anti-Gitmo ep. No really. (Apparently it was mostly Dwayne McDuffie's idea, though he wasn't the writer. Not at all surprising, but damn, it makes his loss hurt that much more.) (Also it aired on Friday 4/29, interesting timing to say the least). Torn between OMGLOLWHUT at political soapboxing on a ridiculous kid's cartoon and crying honest tears of rage because seriously, if you can reduce the moral complexity of a situation to the black&white ethics of a superhero world in 20 minutes, it's not that fucking complex.

Am up to Skypiea in One Piece reread (or not re- in this case because for various reasons I've never read or watched about half of Skypiea) and love this series so, so much. I think my only real criticism of it (other than the lack of nakama-hugs, siiigh) is that the shounen fights sometimes get a little long - which is an aberration for me because I love fight shounen battles (though more animated than in manga, where sometimes I have trouble following the action), but with OP I'm always so anxious to get back to the plots and characters that sometimes I'll start tapping my foot. Still is my favorite manga ever.

Also I've said it before but I love Odacchi's female chars THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIxa million-IIIS much. ( squeeing about the lovely ladies of OP, a little spoilery through Arabasta )


In non-animated news, regarding the latest ep of NCIS (8x23) - haven't been watching most of this season but gnine recced this ep to me for a specific reason, namely OT4 FOREVER AND ALWAYS ZOMG: a 4-way hug!!!! <3333 That's it, the show could end now and I'd be happy~... (also in the previous ep, Ziva calling McGee "not just any partner" AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Also, mostly for my own reference, I have still been watching SPN (AHAHAHAHAH the only thing right about this show is HOW WRONG IN EVERY WAY it is. Not content with having killed off almost every recurring female char they've ever had, now they're going back and rekilling women they've killed before, and bringing back cool one-shot female chars to kill - oh, Amber Benson, whyyyyy?)

...That being said, I would so watch the Castiel &Crowley show. It's like the Odd Couple! With more blood and sex! (Okay, that last might be wishful thinking, but then again, with this show's crack count, who knows?)

And gnine & I will be watching SV's finale this Friday...Lex is back, we have no choice. Pity us!

Having caught up with the manga, I have to say that while it goes off course now & again (in the standard fight shounen way of occasionally losing track of plot threads and hopping haphazardly between char arcs), the latest chapter (84) makes up for it by having Stein fighting a temporarily insane Soul while being glomped by two teenage girls. Stein's face!! XDXDXDXD (that there's kind of plot reasons just makes it as ridiculous as it is crazy adorable. ^^)(Also must love Kim's "this way I get to hug the professor!)

Just finished watching Durarara!! and quite enjoyed it! And we watched Baccano! before that and I quite loved that one, too. One of the nice things about not being into anime for a few years is when you come back to it, there's a lot of great series to watch!

I'll probably have a bit more to squee about both of these; for now I 'll just say that I highly recommend them both (especially to those on my flist who have seen a bit of anime and are looking for more to watch.) They're basically unrelated series but they kind of come as a set, both being based on light novel series by the same author, and with thematic elements in common - massive casts of fantastic and crazy (some inhuman, and some with superpowers, though not necessarily the same) characters whose lives intersect in intriguing and often unexpected ways. And they're both wildly fun and compelling entertainment.

Baccano! is the anime you would get if you crossed The Sting with Fullmetal Alchemist and then had it directed by the bastard lovechild of Quentin Tarantino & Guy Ritchie. There's 1930s gangsters (complete with some of the most ridiculous Engrish names you will ever see - there's a character named Jacuzzi Splot. And a train called the Flying Pussyfoot) and ultraviolence and immortality. And awesome. Lots & lots & lots of awesome. It's also notable for having one of the more chronologically complex narratives I've ever watched (the story unspools simultaneously along three different timelines, with flashbacks and changing POVs on all) - once you get into the rhythm of it it's not as hard to follow as it sounds, but the first four episodes are a lot of HUH WAIT WHO'S THAT AGAIN WHEN ARE WE NOW??

A few spoilery, squeeful, & entirely nonsensical comments below ( the cut - DO NOT READ if you haven't seen the show; seriously, this one you don't want spoiled )


Durarara!! is somewhat less off-the-walls cracktastic than Baccano!, slower paced and with less clear direction in plot, but the chars are just as compelling and the animation is gorgeous. (I'm so curious to read the books it's based on because I am trying to figure out how it works in print; much of the series is so astonishingly visual...) DRRR is also easier to follow than Baccano is at first (it helps that the char designs are more distinctive; with Baccano we kept mixing up chars. Well, makes sense - in Baccano nearly all the chars are Caucasian, and so they all look somewhat alike; while as in DRRR they're nearly all Japanese, so...) It's set in modern-day Ikebukuro in Tokyo, and the chars are an eclectic mix of schoolkids and gang members and amnesiac motorcycle-riding headless horsewomen.

(Plus it's got Shizuo & Izaya, who are kind of Ikebukuro's Ban & Ginji. That is, if Ban & Ginji's IQs were switched and Ginji didn't have electric powers but was EVIL with a capital EEEEEEEE~~~ and Ban spent most of his time genuinely wanting to kill Ginji for Very Good Reasons (mostly that capital-E-Evil thing).

But they'd understand each other! ...Well, no, they wouldn't, and they'd probably all hate each other, but the point is that I want to see Shizu-chan and Ban-chan meet. ...and likely try to kill each other. But then they could all go and kill Izaya! And go out for Russian sushi afterwards :P)

(My biggest problem with DRRR!! is that there was Not Enough Heiwajima Shizuo.)

A few more spoilery comments ( below this cut - and yeah, again DO NOT READ if you haven't seen; you don't want this one spoiled, either! )


...Wait, I seem to have said a lot here after all. Heh. My point is - SQUEE~!

(Belated Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans! Hope you had good turkey-days, we had a pleasant time ourselves with friends!)

In the last two weeks or so the brother and I plowed through all of Hikaru no Go (anime version, now I gotta look up the manga to read the end!). It's as awesome a series as anyone ever says, and every bit as slashy. Possibly more so. Shindou/Touya joins BanGin as one of those slash pairings that the brother can only sigh and admit is pretty much canon (heck, by the end the brother was just advising Touya to sex the Sai conundrum out of Shindou. He also suggested that they would be playing Go to determine who'd be on top. And then rolled his eyes when I mentioned that gnine has been telling me the exact same thing.)

He enjoyed the heck out of the series all the same, especially since it actually got me interested enough to try to play Go - the brother is a great strategy game aficionado , and even owns a nice Go set, but has never really had much chance to play for lack of opponents. We've been playing for the past week or so and now I can just about eke out a victory out of him when he gives me a six stone handicap...uh, yeah, I am not what you'd call any kind of game aficianado. (Also we are both the world's worst losers and get incredibly sulky when a game goes badly. Sometimes both of us at the same time, because we'll both have screwed up badly and then we start arguing over who's further behind ^^;;;)

But really, even if you have no interest in Go it's a great, cute series. Has the sports-shounen sort of feel in that there's antagonists but no real villains (even if Ogata deserves some kind of reward for being the Creepiest Glasses-Wearing Biseinen to Never Actually Do Anything Evil Despite Appearing As If He's Plotting Wicked Perverted Things All the Time to appear in an anime. I kind of love him for it.) And even putting aside the slashiness, Hikaru and Akira have to be the most dedicatedly mutual rivals I've ever seen in a shounen ( mildly spoilery )

So...and I hesitate to say it because it's been a while since I've felt like this and it's a fragile unsure thing, but...I may be falling for a new anime series. (Or an old series, rather, but one new to me.) A shounen series, a fight shounen series, with all the ridiculous completely OTT badassery and nakamaship and epic inspirational speeches and dramatic flashbacks and CRACK CRACK CRACK ZOMFG DID I MENTION CRACK that that implies.

The series, as referenced in my last post, is Gintama; I'm a little more than a hundred eps in (it's (only ;_;) 200 eps. It's a Shounen Jump series; that's not especially long. Right? RIGHT? ^^;) and...if my soul isn't devoured yet, it's definitely being gnawed on.

(Rather like this:


Both pic and joke taken from naye's marvelous intro post here. I swipe without shame because this is at least 70% her fault for pimping the series to me to begin with XP)

Which is slightly embarrassing, because...it's Gintama. This is the series which the author mentions in the second volume that readers are ashamed to ask for by name in the bookstore. Because its name is Gin Tama - "銀魂", "Silver Soul", a perfectly reasonable shounen title, except that it just happens to sound an awful lot like "Kin Tama" - "金玉" - "Golden Balls". In Japanese, "golden balls" is slang for exactly what you think it should be slang for.

And that right there gives you a good idea of what kind of series Gintama is. ( and I go on for some time explaining how there's a soul in these balls after all; mostly spoiler-free pimping minus a few references to specific gags )

( And a couple of the openings, to give you a taste: )

A few years back I got into the manga Eyeshield 21, which was unexpected because I've never been into sports of any kind, much less American football, and I'd never read a sports manga (to this day I've managed to miss Prince of Tennis). But ES21 has Hiruma, you see, and once you know Hiruma there's no going back.

The series finished last year, but I wasn't reading manga then, so missed the end. Recently, however, I watched Oofuri (anime based on an award-winning seinen manga about high school baseball. If you like ADORABLE high school boys being ADORABLE (and teamy and slashy and sweet and learning how to make friends and believe in themselves and did I mention ADORABLE?) I highly recommend it. Even if you don't give a fig about baseball) and that got me back in the sports manga mood (if by sports one means intense and ridiculous and cute team stories that just happen to revolve around playing a game rather than saving the world, but same difference, really.)

So I went back to Eyeshield 21, and not remembering the story well I went and read it from the beginning. And ended up falling in love all over again - unlike Oofuri's beautifully low-key, realistic characters and games, ES21 is totally OTT and zany and absurd and so much fun. It's got fantastically lovable characters and great art, and really, what more do you want out of a series? Even if it is about football...

( bit more nattering, some spoilers )

Now I've found some GetBackers scanlations, so am going to be actually reading the bug arc for the first time, rather than just skimming it and enjoying the aaaaangst (I have it in Japanese, but GetBackers is ha~rd to read, between the slang and the pseudoscience...) BanGin forever! *_*

(and a quick personal note, am leaving tomorrow to visit gnine in England for a couple of weeks (\o/\o/\o/), so if I'm slow to comment or reply, that's why!)

First off - just heard from naye that Madhouse anime studio is going to be making a Supernatural anime. ZOMGWTFBBQ THIS IS GOING TO BE LEGEN - waitforit - DARY. On the one hand, SPN is wildly popular among Japanese fangirls (hawt incesty brothers ftw!) so how can they go wrong; otoh SPN is so very very American, how can they go right? I can't wait to see. Also crossing my fingers that the seiyuu casting will break my brain.

In related news, have been feeling adrift of late, not really having a fandom. And in my drifting I floated back to past affections, and after happily paddling in Clex for a bit, I, um, somehow seem to have gotten back into Yu-Gi-Oh. Yeah, don't ask. I have no excuse - I've seen and read dozens of better anime and manga (like, most of them...) before and since, and I originally got into it before YGO: The Abridged Series even existed. Yet somehow Kaiba Seto and his little brother manage to maintain a target lock on my fangirl heart. (I can't help it. Kaiba manages to hit nearly every favorite character button I have - bad-ass arrogant asshole cum reluctant redemption character codependently loyal to his sibling/only family. Also manga!Mokuba is as awesome as he is adorable. Also also Tsuda Kenjirou's voice is still the sex.)

So I've been flipping through my YGO manga and watching my HK bootleg DVDs (and fixing up the subtitles of some of my favorite bits, good translation practice since the "English" on a lot of them is somewhat less than comprehensible.) and fastforwarding through all the %$*@(% card games, naturally. And then ficcing - I've at long last finished my not-really-dead-Mokuba WIP "Safeguard," am posting the final chapters now. And maybe a bit more after that, if gnine has her way.

Have also rediscovered an old trouble writing anime-based fic - while my Japanese isn't anywhere near good enough that I could write fic in Japanese, I can mentally compose dialogue. When I fic I often try to "hear" the character's voices speaking the lines, and it's no different with anime fic, except that since I never watch dubs, the voices are in Japanese. Which means that on occasion I find myself sitting before a story trying to figure out how to best render kudaranai in English, and writing "Of course" when the char is really saying Touzen da.