For real, this time: This Week In Anime (August 24th, 2008)

Whew! I’m feeling a lot better today. Well enough, as a matter of fact, to make up for yesterday and spend some time discussing this week’s happenings, the blistering heat be damned. I’m also cooking up a preview post for the fall season, which is only a couple of weeks away. It’s a great time to be alive and a lover of huge animated tits.

Wait, what the fuck?

Let's play a game of "Spot The Anatomical Inaccuracies". I'm up to nineteen.

I, uh… Woooow. I’m torn between primordial terror and unwilling arousal. Thanks a lot, Sekirei. More below.

Macross Frontier (episode 19)

GANBARE!

Aside from showcasing a nightmarish cyclopean version of Michel (as spotted by Otou-san) the episode also set the stage for next week’s romantic showdown between Ranka and Sheryl over Alto. Though it pretends to have a plot involving the Vajra and a conspiracy, when you get down to it, Frontier’s story could be cast as a rivalry between two high school girls pining for the same oblivious boy. If you’re willing to ignore the aforementioned aliens, the giant transforming fighters/robots, and Carbuncle from Final Fantasy, who Ranka calls Ai-kun. But come on. You have to admit they bear more than a passing resemblance to each other.

Let’s get a few things straight. I like Ozma. I like Cathy. I like Klan. I even like Luca, because every time he speaks, I try to imagine Lelouch in his Zero costume speaking in Luca’s voice and it never ceases to amuse me. But spending half an episode observing all those people on inter-connected dates with one another… yeesh. I thought we were back to the fast-paced sci-fi series with Valkyries kicking Vajra ass and cybernetic Grace cackling madly.

Which brings me to Sheryl. There’s an amazing moment where Alto walks in on her putting on a kimono and he mistakes her for his mother. For one it caused Freud to spin in his grave, no doubt, but it also hinted that Alto’s attraction to Sheryl may be more visceral than his simple affection for Ranka, which I’m afraid will crush the latter’s heart. Getting dumped by your half-boyfriend right before you need to summon the motivation to protect billions of lives from an alien threat should never be construed as good timing.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki (episode 14)

Not the latest episode, but damnit, I have a backlog to work through and this show hurts my brain after ten minutes! It’s the good kind of pain, mind you, but it still hurts, kind of like when a girl uses her pinky to — no, no, hang on, not gonna pursue that metaphor any further. I intend to keep this blog PG-13.

Another uber-vilain appears. And she’s voiced by Yuko Goto, no less. Great. But the FLCL reference in the above picture totally blew my mind, and it’s the only reason I’m even talking about KKN today. Never seen FLCL? GO DO IT NOW.

Code Geass (episode 19)

I r sad puppy :(

I wonder if I’m particularly excitable and fanboyish among bloggers. I mean, if I’d been blogging TTGL as it aired, would I discuss it every bloody week the way I do Code Geass?

Oh well. The possibility of jackassery aside, episode 19 is a masterful stroke of genius that managed to get rid of yet another main character (sayonara, nii-san) and wipe out everything Lelouch had accomplished since, oh, THE START OF THE SERIES. And it came by way of Schneizel, that devious bastard, and Ohgi. The chestful of knives has still not been explained. I am tapping my foot.

But… wait a minute. The Emperor knew pretty much from the start that Lelouch was Zero and had a Geass. You mean he never confided that tiny snippet of rather crucial information to his most trusted son and military commander? I know this is a speculative long shot, but could it be that, maybe, the Emperor didn’t want Lelouch to be found out? That he wanted him to rise up and challenge him? After all, the Emperor believes in the value of conflict and struggle as catalysts for evolution. Hmmmm.

Last but not least, a list of all the super-weapons mentioned thus far but which have yet to appear:

• Ragnarok: Space battle station glanced in the OP sequence that cancels all Geasses worldwide. Or gives everyone on Earth a Geass. Or turns everyone into catgirls. We’ll know soon enough. Considering it’s the Norse word for “apocalypse”, and that in the Norse version of that delightful event, everyone (and I do mean everyone, gods included) dies a horrible death, I’m sure it’ll be the trigger for an ending full of rainbows and lollipops.
• Damocles. Maybe another name for Ragnarok? Though we do see Toudou in the OP sequence flying up at some sort of flying citadel. I remember Schneizel mentioning it in passing.
• The Sword of Aragagrbagra. Whazzit do eggsactly? Curse my obsessive-compulsive disorder, which prevents me from going back and re-watching episodes until a series is over!

Sekirei (episode 08)

Uuuuuuuuuuuuh... Riiight. Let's forget about that time she walked in naked, the five times you intruded on her while she changed, the three times her clothes were destroyed in a fight...

Yaaaawn. If Sekirei didn’t slap me awake with a pair of bouncy boobs every two minutes I’d fall in a coma while watching it.

Unfortunately, the other device that always scares me into a wide-awake and fretful state is lil’ Kuu-chan. Okay, we get it. She’s the cute young ‘un. Fine. What’s less acceptable is that Sekirei feels forced to include her in the battle to be the alpha female of Minato’s nipply harem. This leads to incredibly awkward moments where Musubi and Water Girl brandish their upper-body assets (aside: christ I’m running out of synonyms for “huge breasts”) in an effort to woo Minato, only to have innocent Kuu-chan follow suit. Has Strike Witches innoculated me against this type of blatant loli pandering? Is there something wrong with me? And why is this show not about Minato’s hilarious sister and her equally entertaining effeminate bishounen Sekirei?

-Mr. K