Chihayafuru 7, Bakuman II 7-8, iDOLM@STER 20, Guilty Crown 6, Horizon 8

Chihayafuru 7 brings us a new player, Tsutomu, or “Desktomu” as they say, because he never leaves his.

You know the type.

One of those diligent people, “shaped like a jelly bean,” who harbours resentment toward everyone because they’re stupider than he is, but prettier. Sort of like Kohta, but without the zombies to take out his rage on. We’re supposed to feel sorry for him; even before we learn about him we’ve seen his type, or have been his type in one social group or another. But there are some bad vibes around this guy, in spite of his cat-smile. It looks like without some kind of acceptance he’s going to grow up nasty. Good thing that there are other strange, blindingly bright people around him, and they’re interested.

Skills of persuasion.

Well, Chihaya is, anyway. Tsukomu is the second-smartest person in their grade. Definitely a plus. But Tsutomu has been so burned by so-called friends in the past that he doesn’t react at all to fact that now the best-looking girl in the school is interested in his brain. Trouble is, he thinks he’s a little too smart. Bah! A game! How will this help his studies. It’s stupid. But, points out Chihaya, it requires memorization. If they’re really so smart, play the game with the cards face down, says Tsutomu, whom I’m disliking more and more in spite of myself. And so they do. The result is not what I expected.

It makes me wonder if there is a popular variation of this game. It seems so obvious. Hardcore Karuta! Beyond that, we learn more about Chihaya and Taichi’s abilities. Chihaya, invincible before, too much so, in fact, works from instinct and blinding speed. She hasn’t had to learn to memorize. Taichi, the best student in their grade, pounces upon this chance to turns the tables on her, and wins. It’s a good study of both their characters. And it all nearly backfires on them. Tsutomu is already resentful of Taichi, smarter than him, better-looking, popular. To see him win drives Tsutomu away, and it takes a lame speech to bring him back. You know, the past two episodes have been nothing but side-character recruitment stories, but the show adds so many little touches to it that they feel like more.

Bakuman II 7-8 continues the ludicrious story where Saiko, working himself into a sickness so bad he needs part of his liver removed, insists on drawing anyway. The chief editor, quite rightly, says the manga will be on hiatus until he’s discharged from the hospital. BUT, it will continue that way until the boys graduate. Look at it from his perspective. It was a controversial decision to even let high school kids undertake the pressures of weekly serialization to begin with. Now that one of their three artists that age has gotten sick, it’s quite right to re-think the policy. I certainly think he has a point. But the show decides to make him the bad guy here, with all the other artists we follow boycotting until Saiko and Takagi’s manga is reinstated.

This decision comes out of the blue. I know they’re all loyal to each other, but to risk your own careers on what is, really, a reasonable decision done out of concern for a fellow artist, is doesn’t make sense. It does bring up some interesting questions, however. How will these artists pay the rent? Will this behavior lead to future ill feelings, and a possible blacklist among the manga industry? Is their fanbase big enough that they can survive being kicked out of the biggest magazine in the industry? And what about Jack? Can it survive losing some of its most popular talent? How soon before the readers simply go elsewhere? We’ll never get an answer, as Miura manages to turn the tide by showing that Saiko can draw even while nearly dying … I said it last time. This series drives me crazy sometimes.

Putting Chihaya's younger self on stage with her was a nice touch. *sniff*

I keep missing episodes of iDOLM@STER, and apparently 961′s been at it again, and now Chihaya can’t sing. Little brother tragedy and broken home, all that stuff, comes out in the tabloids. Even Jupiter’s pissed off now. Naturally the episode is mostly Chihaya saying she’ll quit and moping about, while Haruka can’t convince her to come outside her apartment. Until she does, thanks to an old sketchbook and a hastily-written song. It sounds trite, and it is. This is a trite show. But in spite of the dull angst everyone undergoes for most of the episode the final scene, where she gets help in regaining her voice, was done well enough that even I got into it, and I didn’t even see episode 19.

Guilty Crown 6′s maddeningly stupid moments: they were able to get into the satellite controller base with hardly any troubles, just your average gun battle where the good guys are never hit and the bad guys always are. This Daryl guy, a sadistic madman killer type who is unleashed to defeat the good guys once and for all, is, for the second time, defeated rather easily. Really, those mecha don’t have armor in the back and rear of the cockpit, so you can just climb up and shoot them in the head? The whole Gai-is-just-human thing was overplayed. Though it was nice to see him reveal some remorse and self-doubt. On to the good things: the climax of the battle, shooting down the wayward satellite, was well-done and had me going, though I wondered why Gai chose himself to be the sacrificial lamb when he didn’t have to be. … Yeah, that’s about it. More bad than good.

Notes won't help you, Toori. Take it from me.

Finally, on Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon 8, the show with more exposition than plot, Seijun starts to argue with Toori about what to do about Horizon. Save her and they get a country, don’t save her, and well, I guess they don’t. Then it’s on to the casualties of peace and just cause, until a black blob in a water bucket gives her a pep talk. There’s talk of absorbing Mikawa into Musashi to save it, but I’m not sure, because people keep talking over the exposition. Then the pope shows up to intellectually outwit her using arcane arguments from the Catholic Church’s long history until the other side says “enough, already!” (That’s how it was explained in the episode, but again, people were talking around it, so I’m not sure). When that doesn’t work, he tells everyone that Horizon OS includes “Encompassed Yearning,” which is part of the Envy Sin Armament, or maybe it was the other way around, and why should Mushashi/Mikawa have WMDs anyway, especially with Seijun being untrustworthy because of her incomplete sex change operation. Toori springs into action–and pulls down her pants. This fills Seiju with resolve, not to mention embarrassment, and she declares that Horizon has a right to her own emotions, even if they ARE WMDs, and so the country will fight according to school rules. So Galileo attacks them. End of episode. To quote Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up, you know.”

Episode dump: Guilty Crown, UN-GO, Kimi to Boku, etc etc etc

Guilty Crown 4-5 brings us Shu’s indecision between following a repressive regime who thinks it’s saving the world from evil viruses, and the rebels headed by a megamaniacal handsome guy who everyone claims is wonderful. He wonders if he’s just jealous because of Gai’s charisma and the fact that everyone follows him blindly and tells Shu to shut up whenever he asks why, jealous because Inori seems to be shacking up with him, pissed off because Inori lied to him about her feelings (in fact, the lie is a lie, as she broke orders during to raid to rescue Shu). And he has that little pen which could bring the regime down on him. Meanwhile he is training with the Funeral Parlor, so we get all the “newbie in over his head scenes.” Shu is a wuss and maybe a turncoat (he hasn’t decided), but I share most of his suspicions. I don’t like either side. At least the show makes it clear that we’re not supposed to. And now that they’ve apparently blown Gai up, who knows what will happen next. It’s done in a ham-fisted way, but once again, the action scenes are great.

Now THAT'S how you introduce your corpses.

With UN-GO 5 the pattern is pretty much set. Shinjurou will try to find a murderer, while the crime’s circumstances lead to the exploration of more philosophical issues. With this one it’s the concept of sacrificing your life for others. Cynical Shinjurou doesn’t believe it’s possible; people are too cowardly and venal to do it of their own free will. He’s wrong, and meets his first humiliation of the series because of it. However, it only leads himm to refine his view. People can die for others, and it’s beautiful, and it makes the people who survive because of it even scummier. Or something like that. To prove it, we get the gold bricks denouement, which really doesn’t prove anything except that Shimada was a scummy guy. On the other hand, that was a terrific way to introduce the murder: have the corpses roll out of a sculpture during a public unveiling. Excellent bit. Oh, and I’m glad that Kazamori is going to be a regular in the series from now on.

I’m thinking of dropping Kimi to Boku, and I’m rather sad about it. I liked the first episode very much, the deadpan delivery, the slow, lazy nature of the whole thing, but after episode 2 it became clear that that was all it had. Yuta and Yuuki will continue to antagonize Kaname no matter what, the blond kid will remain forever clueless … It’s a wonder they’ve remained friends all this time. If they don’t throw in a new wrinkle soon I’m going to lose my patience completely. As for episode 6, it’s mostly flashback about when Kaname started to wear glasses, with the usual cat metaphors.

It's hard for me to drop a series that looks like this.

C3‘s latest story arc has left such an impression on me that I thought I had skipped an episode, because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was going on. Konoha was injured or something? All I remember was Sovereignity and dolls. Not that it really matters. With Horizon I watch because it’s more fun not to know what’s going on. With C3 I watch because of the endless visual treats it gives me. Who cares about Fear’s curses, or the curse of Savernity, or whatever. Give us more moments like the above.

Tamayura – Hitotose has found its groove. Episode 5 is cute and sweet and gentle without being dull or cloying or annoying. The fact that it begins with Fuu meeting a biker gang certainly helped. That was the last thing I expected to see in this series. Even after it had settled down and reintroduced the teary Chihiro, it floated along smoothly in that way these type of shows are supposed to do. At one point the girls are admiring the view, the music is fading out, and I expected a new scene to start. Instead, the scene continued, the silence now making its own statement. The episode’s main point, that shy Chihiro was glad that Fuu had new friends but was lonely herself, was understood throughout but so understated that no one bothered to bring it up untl the very end, when the girls all pronounced themselves new friends of hers. I hope this show can keep it up.

Working’!! has been in a groove for a while; episode 6 just keeps it going. Having the manager’s minions come in to botch things up work, was a good enough story. “I fell in love with the way she beat up my brother,” is one of the show’s better lines. The second half was more affecting. Part of it was some satisfaction I felt when Takanashi finally snapped. I can’t say his answer to Kyoko’s question was any better than hers, but he’s put up with way more shit than anyone else in that restaurant. It’s about time he let some frustration loose. The resolution was sweet, and the inevitable gag was perfectly timed.

Hey, I’m sorta kinda getting caught up! Only 12 more episodes in my queue!

Ben-to 3, Guilty Crown 3, Working’!! 5 (whoops), C3 5

First, it’s time catch up (by one episode) on the two shows I’m watching that have backlogs. The thing is with shows like these is that they’re usually the ones I’m enjoying the most. I’ll be about to click on one, but think “I think I’ll save it for when I need to watch something I know is good.” And a day passes, and another … And now I’m thinking I’ll just watch one of each, because I want to save one for when I need to …

Ben-To 3 brings us new contestants in the battle brawls. Geez, is there anyone out there who DOESN’T fight for bento?

This is after a bizarre opening involving You running around in his underwear, for reasons we’ll learn soon enough, in fact, quickly after the credits, when Ume decides to punish him because Oshiroi hangs out with him too much. You know, the usual. Meanwhile, Oshiroi is proving herself to be the most entertaining character of the lot. Even if she’s really not involved in the scene, furtively looking at You in his underwear, she steals the scene. Anyway, You is invited to join the Hounds, yet another batch of people after the bento. In their spare time they’re the schools kendo club. And they have strategies which make it relatively easy for them. Easy food! So tempting!

You makes his decision

But the show makes it clear that something’s wrong with this. First, they’re “hounds,” like in dog, and You is striving to be a wolf. And You is not satisfied with the food he wins with them. We know why, and the show, alas, doesn’t do a great job of making him realize. He just reminisces about a game he used to play, pauses, and Sen smiles. And while the next battle is fun to watch, well, they all are, I don’t quite like how You makes his decision to leave the Hounds. They gave him an invitation and allowed him to get a taste, so to speak, with no pressure and the utmost respect, but he turns on them in the middle of a brawl. Not very classy, even if the kendo instructor does not disapprove. Other than that, it was another fun as hell episode.

The other trouble with having multiple episodes around is every now and then I get sloppy and click on the wrong one. Which is why I’m talking about Working’!! 5 today, not 4. But with this show, does it really matter what order I watch it in?

It's a long story.

The little events are as follows. Everyone grumbles because Kyoko’s lazy and spoiled and eats too much of the restaurant’s food. Yamada decides she wants to be spoiled, too, more parfaits are eaten, to the point where Kyoko isn’t allowed any more food, and they find a lost little girl, and SHE gets spoiled. The gags mostly work. The show lets the characters drive them home. You can imagine Takanashi’s reaction when he finds the cute little girl, and the other characters’ reaction to his reaction. And the show has gotten good at using beats before gags, or tossing the gag out in different ways, such as an inaudible conversation between Yamada and Takanashi. What’s more, Inami didn’t hit anyone! Not once! Yeah, this show has taken a step up in quality since last season.

Yup, it gets worse.

At the end of Guilty Crown 2, a noitaminA show, for chrissakes, the sexy thing Inori who has all these weird powers, did that standard anime thing and transferred into Shu’s school. Maybe it was just an aberration. Nope. The next thing you know, Shu goes home and finds Inori has moved in. To “protect” Shu, because he had been spotted in the raid by a schoolmate. The rest of the episode mixes wacky high school hijinks, poorly done, with a more serious issue of what to do with the witness when they find him/her. The morality issues were handled well, in fact, much better than expected, with a surprise ending that made me think this might be a better show than I expected. But there are a hell of a lot of flaws in this thing. Inori, supposedly sent to protect Shu, did a piss-poor job of it. The boss of the Undertakers, or Funeral Parlor, whatever, having shown his visage on TV, walks around the city like he’s no terrorist at all. Maybe it’s that Void thing he has. As for those voids, they’re not a bad invention, at least in how they manifest, but right now they just work as a gimmick to drape this show around, like many other anime SF shows, and certainly not like a noitaminA show. The disappointment continues.

Just one of many great images of Whats-her-name.

I guess C3 is like too many other shows that tries to do several types of shows at once and makes a mess of it. Which is not to say that it’s all bad. As I’ve said before, some of the visuals are fantastic. When it decides to do dark and bloody, it does it with panache. This week we saw the end of the battle with ,,, er … I can’t remember her name, so, in honor of her favorite word, I’ll just call her “Bitch.” A fitting name for such a twisted girl, and the show loves to show every sneering pose of hers in every combination of angles and colors and art styles they can think of. I got the impression that the animators really loved this character. It’s like a labor of love. I thought she was a one-trick pony myself; you note how I can’t even remember her name. But they did such a great effort with her defeat, a montage that made me actually pity her, that I feel kind of bad that I forgot it.

Fear gets some good imagery too. I could see 'EF' doing this.

The show’s concept isn’t all that new. Fear has to learn to control herself in order to free herself from her past as an instrument of torture, i.e., she is a potential time bomb sent to live with your typical harem lead male, with (so far) two buxom girls vying for attention. Laying on thick slabs of cult-babble doesn’t add to the originality, either. Let’s see, Ueno, the class president, who had been patiently waiting at the door since last episode for the Bitch to take her hostage and slice her up, turns out to be Not Dead Yet because of her cursed bondage underwear, called Ginstrang’s Love, and also has the River of Black Strings as a weapon. She’s an ancester of Chia, but is not a member of the Knights of the Rear Guard but instead an unwilling helper of a research institute called Nightcrawlers. Hmm. The Index franchise does names better. The Bitch’s sword (Dance Time!) notwithstanding.

Pretty much my reaction to the show's backstory.

I don’t mind a mash-up of bloody supernatural combat with cursed weapons with silly harem hijinks, but C3 just doesn’t do it well. The fake sex business near the end was tiresome, not titillating, and nothing really comes together well. But it looks so good that I’ll keep watching.

Guilty Crown 2, Kimi to Boku 3, iDOLM@STER 16

After the second episode I’m still of two minds about Guilty Crown. There’s nothing that really sets it apart from any other SF anime out there. All the gear and the standard plot bits are there. But they’re oddly put together and I am not sure whether the creators are being inept or have something up their sleeve.

We start with Shu dragging his magic sword around, still wreaking havoc on the bad buy forces, known as “Antibodies” because they have the legal ability to declare people “infected” and dispatch them without trial, in other words, they’re another ruthless army with yet another justification for their cruelty. This is demonstrated by a group execution scene complete with pleading mother and child, but we’ll get to that. After the Antibodies withdraw, well after we meet Daryl, your typical prissy/mad killer bad guy, Shu meets up with the rebel leader Gai, who’s not much fun himself. He’s pissed at Shu for using the Void Genome meant for him, so he grabs Shu by the coller and tosses out some “You’re in it or you’re not” lines. Everyone else in his army (named The Funeral Parlor, for reasons either hard to translate or inane to begin with) hangs on his every word. He might be right, and his actions justified, but he’s such a dick that I personally would have trouble following him.

In real life, when a commander says something like this, it's time to get a new commander.

He plans to get some people rescued from an underground parking lot, and without any explanation Shu is crawling through conduits staring at Inori’s ass in front of him. We get that execution scene, THEN their attack is launched. Which is actually a nice touch. FP just wasn’t in position yet, and so some innocent people died. The battle is good fun to watch, as are all the action scenes in this show, but really nothing more than a staredown between the two field leaders.

Thinking about it all too closely won’t help your opinion. What about all the poison gas bombs the Antibodies rigged? Why did it suddenly become Gai vs. that bald guy? How did timid Shu suddenly find himself in the fight? I imagine Inori gave him some type of courage-enhancement when she transformed, but what about before? How could he just go back to school the next day? And that’s the oddest thing about the episode. The last few minutes looks like a series finale, with rescued citizens blinking in the sunlight of freedom, etc. And Shu’s back at school. And to cap it off, we get that old anime cliché: Inori enters his class as a transfer student. Hey, this is a noitaminA show! Even the failed recent series didn’t go that far. It makes me think that there’s more to this, like the show is going to turn into a commentary of SF anime clichés. … Well, probably not. But I’ll say it again, the show looks great.

In Kimi to Boku 3 we meet chizuru, the straw-haired boy who we see in all the credits. He’s pretty much as expected, an excitable guy. And he seems to remember Yuki from childhood. This gives the four guys all sorts of chances for puzzled, nonchalant dialogue. While there’s a mystery as to how he knows Yuki (turns out he met both twins, and let me just say here, that it’s not fair when they both wear the beige blazer. How am I to tell them apart?), I was waiting for the moment when he meets Shun and realizes he’s actually a guy. His initial confusion brought out the best lines of the episode from Yuta and Kaname.

The IDOLM@STER 16 brings us the return of Kuroi and the evil 961 company, this time set out to sabotage and Hibiki’s animal show and discredit her in the process. And she doesn’t help matters by having a fight with her star dog before the filming. It’s all ridiculous. Animals and people travel great distances to reach one another, Hibiki slides down a cliff and doesn’t injure herself. I could mention the fact that Hibiki can communicate to her pets, but that feels like a natural thing for this show. Oh, there’s a bit with Chihaya having a bad dream at the show’s start, but we don’t get any more than that.

noitaminA premieres: Guilty Crown, UN-GO

NoitaminA has given us some wonderful shows in the past, like Trapeze, Kuragehime, Shiki, to name a few. But one thing they have not done well for some time is create a SF show that lives up to its standards of something different, for adults. Fractale and No.6 started well but fell victim to overused tropes and cliches. C was a complete mess. So, even though it’s a noitaminA show, I wasn’t really looking forward to watching Guilty Crown. After watching episode one, I’m still dubious, but I admit that parts of it are skillfully done.

Let’s see … Japan has fallen prey to the Apocalypse Virus, which apparently devastated the country and forced others to take over. Now they’re under what is pretty much a military dictatorship. We learn this from our young, dull lead character, Shu, but after a thrilling chase scene where a girl and her little bot are being chased by big nasty mechanized things. The scene looks great and is exciting to watch, Inori fleeing amid explosions and a bittersweet ballad (sung by her), so getting Shu after it was over came as a letdown. But it doesn’t take long for him to encounter the girl (Inori, apparently an idol singer), and, a minute later, the bad guys, who threaten him and drag Inori away. Shu spends the next couple minutes hating himself. But why? If some guys with weapons came up and threatened to kill me and drag off a girl I don’t even know, I think I would be “Uh, be my guest.”

"... welcome to rock n'roll fight ..."

Here, I’m afraid, it lapses not into stale SF concepts like those other noitaminA shows, but into typical action/fantasy anime. The little bot, in true R2-D2 fashion, guides Shu to a guy named Gai, and all of a sudden the bad guys decide to invade that part of the city and kill everything that moves. Shu, you see, has the stolen Void Genome that Inori was transporting. Shu, in a ludicrious attempt to rescue Inori (who has escaped and just happens to be on the same street), gets the vial shot away, transporting him to … well, it looked like Penguindrum for a moment. Inori is there too, natch, and she tells him that she is power, there’s one of those sticking-an-arm-into-a-chest bits, and suddenly he’s kicking ass with a huge sword. We’ve seen it all before.

But I must say again: it looks great. Both action scenes are exciting, well directed and scored, and had me going. I’ll keep watching if they can keep that up.

UN-GO, on the other hand, is more in the spirit of noitaminA. It’s fast-paced, witty, and at times bizarre.

It looks like a detective series based on the works of Ango Sakaguchi, the original creator of the Aoi Bungaku story with the cherry blossoms, colorful death, and song and dance numbers. This first episode isn’t as out-and-out strange as that one, but it’s strange enough. With no preparation and a lot of characters introduced by captions (I hate that) we are at a party in some futuristic Tokyo where president Kanou is probably going to get arrested. Rie, the daughter of genius Kaishou, is unwillingly there. So is Sinjurou, “the defeated detective.” And a boatload of other suspects, for Kanou is murdered just before his big speech.

In spite of all the weirdness much of the episode falls into Murder Mystery genre, lots of “Where were you when the lights went out?” And while the show pulls out some tricks, the culprit is exposed even before Sinjurou’s little sidekick Inga transforms into a … whatever she is, and uses her magic powers. Which is good. You don’t want a good mystery ruined just because one character can pull the truth out of someone. A promising start. I hope we see more of Rie. She’s a fun character. And I’m glad to see noitaminA again delivering us something different.