This Week In Anime (July 18th 2008)

How about this for news: I’m officially declaring “This Week In Anime” a regular feature on this blog! Every Friday or Saturday, I’ll recap and discuss the happenings in that week’s TV series. Can’t promise I’ll be able to fit every show I watch in every weekly post, but if your favorite didn’t make the cut, check back the week after and chances are it’ll be on the menu then.

For now, how ’bout making the rounds together with me, dear reader? Let’s see what bounty this week’s anime provided us! (As usual, spoilers ahead; check the tags and tread carefully.)

Sekirei (episode 02)

Pictured above: one retard and two towels working overtime.

The tits parade continues.

In a testament to its vapidity, Sekirei finds time this episode for our shapely heroine Musubi to go through three changes of clothes, one shower scene, and one bath scene. I shouldn’t expect much from the show when it has already established that Musubi can activate her true powers by letting Minato rub her breasts and get her horny, but oh well, hope springs eternal and all that jazz.

At least we got our first glimpse of ICE GIRL and if you hadn’t already realized how awesome she is, listen to that kickass rock music when she comes onscreen! Hell yes. I doubt she’ll be any more interesting than the rest of the characters, to be honest, and yet I require a favorite, so why not the Saber look-alike with a skirt so short it might as well be a hat?

(By the way, why is it that every time Musubi falls cleavage-first on top of Minato, he shoves her away as if she’s a leper with bad breath? Aren’t teenage boys supposed to find girls in revealing attire attractive? When did this law of anime, the one that stipulates that hot girls are kryptonite to teenage boys, come into effect? Don’t get me wrong, a stickler for realism I ain’t, but relating to a male character is a tad difficult when bizarro-testosterone flows through his veins.)

Not sure why I continue to watch. I just do. Don’t read too much into it.

Code Geass (episode 14)

OMG OMG OMG HI

Now that’s the kind of episode that reminds me how entertaining Code Geass can be when it focuses on the story at hand and doesn’t waste its time with side-plots involving pizza or school girls. This episode had Rolo admitting with a shit-eating grin that he killed Shirley in cold-blood, V.V. behaving like a jackass only to have Lelouch make him regret his smugness with help from Cornelia, and Karen reappearing safe and sound. For now.

Which leads me to my next topic: Suzaku can go fuck himself sideways with a rake. (See explanatory rant.)

But anyway. Plotlines are chugging along. Cornelia managed to duct-tape a dozen rifles to her Knightmare. The Emperor blabbering about the Sword of Arararara or whatever it’s called. Only good stuff from beginning to end! Although I don’t care much for the new opening and ending themes they introduced in episode 13. The ending theme sounds like the last one, but the opening one is a clear step backwards, to my ears. Plus the previous opening credits had Lelouch riding a white horse. Heh.

Is Code Geass stepping on the gas now that the season is more than halfway through? Possibly. It may mean that the show will rush towards its conclusion and leave us with a half-baked ending… Or maybe the remaining episodes will share this episode’s focus and energy, turning the show into a concentrated laser beam of anime entertainment aimed straight at your brain. One can only hope.

World Destruction (episode 02)

With an upbeat, cheery name like "Morte", who would have thought she was hiding a dark past?

I can’t bring myself to call World Destruction anything else than average entertainment. The animation’s average, the music’s average, and the characters do seem like they’ll be right at home in a RPG. Yet it’s entertainment all right: for chrissakes, this episode had a half-human half-demon girl with six-shooters holstered in her garters. How can such a marvel of characterization do any wrong?!?

This week we followed our trio of unlikely protagonists – Morte the destroyer, Kirie the bumbling idiot, and Toppy the teddy bear adventurer – as they fled from the World Salvation Committee into the sea of sand. There they met another video game-cool character whose name has already vacated my memory, some sort of medieval Han Solo who rescued them, took their money, then immediately dropped them off on the luxurious pleasure ship Jifuniru, a ginormous casino with sails. While onboard the Jifuniru they faced off against the World Salvation Committee’s top agents: the aforementioned demon-girlslinger Lia and her superior, the tremendously effeminate Naja. Yada yada, fighting, Destruct Code, you get the drift. Besides that… situation nominal, I guess you could say.

Watching World Destruction is far from painless, but it’s not particularly pleasant either. Can’t muster much enthusiasm for the experience.

Strike Witches (episode 03)

Before you die, you see... THE CROTCH.

I was kidding last time when I said Strike Witches had the potential to turn into lesbian loli porn, but damn, Gonzo took my jesting seriously: in this week’s episode the girls can’t keep their hands off one another, and we’re assaulted (along with them!) by boob grabs and crotch shots. Heck, the French chick even has an obvious lesbo crush on the Major, so… I mean… Where the hell do you go from there?

Gonzo started out with a setting beyond weird and a likable heroine, but their unhealthy fascination with their underage female protagonists’ breasts and underwear is quickly eroding what good will the show had fostered in this poor reviewer. After the first episode I figured, hey, here’s a series that does things differently, how can I not follow and see where it takes me? But now that I have seen the direction Strike Witches wants to take, I’m a little afraid to follow it into Foxgirl Carpet-Munching Paradise. The next couple of episodes will settle whether or not I flee in horror from the show and never look back.

Someday’s Dreamers (episode 02)

The power of a riveting storyline compels you!

I could rave about this series for paragraphs and paragraphs, but it’s been a long day and I’m exhausted, so let me sum it up: I wish there was a surgical procedure that would let me graft additional thumbs on my hands so I could give Someday’s Dreamers a dozen thumbs up.

In a rather counterintuitive artistic decision, the show has no background music. But, along with the photorealistic environments, this draws you into Sora’s world with an immersive grip so strong I caught myself huffing and puffing after walking alongside Sora all day as she tried to get her bearings in Tokyo’s intricate maze of streets and subways. When there is music, it’s relevant, as when we’re in a shopping district and Sora walks by a street musician performing for tips.

This episode saw Sora arrive not-so-fashionably late at the Magic Academy for introductory testing. And rather than throw the secondary characters at your screen and force you to sort out the stereotypes, Someday’s Dreamers lets you deduce the characters’ personalities by observing how they approached their first practical magic test, turning a tank of water into ice.

Among Sora’s new classmates is Midorikawa, a young man with a Terry Bogard baseball cap whom Sora had met earlier in her wanderings when she… But nay, I shan’t reveal any more about the story. Do yourself a favor and watch it now before it’s too late. I’ll be the guy over here saying “I told you so”.

-Mr. K

Today’s Karen is: TIRED