Hirano nosebleeds: check.

My predictive powers are second to none! More after the jump.

So episode 06 was the mega-fanservice orgy we all expected. Is it out of your system now, High School of the Dead? Can we move on? I hope so.

Not that I’m philosophically against fanservice; I’m just against the blatant, unjustified, unrefined kind, like Nurse Marikawa’s antics. And while we’re at it, why is everyone hating on Pedo-sensei but not the Amazingly Busty Nurse? The worse Pedo-sensei has done is gently caress a school girl’s face to comfort her, and his nasty reputation could be the product of some harsh grading methods. Meanwhile, Nurse Marikawa struts around in a towel, fondling underage boys’s crotches and behaving like the world’s biggest cocktease. So Pedo-sensei’s a monster, but the Amazingly Busty Nurse is… ditzy? Yay for feminist double standards.

And yet, even as it seeks to assault our senses with exposed flesh and titillating camera angles, High School of the Dead still manages to do quite a few things right:

• Saeko has just skyrocketed to the top of my list after her refusal to join Komuro’s harem. And for wearing nothing but an apron and a thong while cooking. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!
• Even as the gang enjoys a light evening of fanservice and adding to their arsenal, the rest of the world is slowly going mad. What’s the difference between a truck full of dead babies and a truck full of bowling balls? The bowling balls don’t rip their mother’s throat out.
• Takagi doesn’t get much screen time, but she’s starting a trend of knocking down the fourth wall, which seems to continue in the next episode.
• Komuro and Rei have this aborted attempt at making out, near the end, that’s uncannily realistic in its awkwardness. They don’t even reach the kissing stage: they just start rubbing on each other and slowly slide down to the floor. Yet that awkwardness, and the belabored breathing, make it an incredibly sweet and sexy scene.

Hopefully, this brief layover in Fanservice Land will now be followed by more zombie-killing, excruciating moral dilemnas, courageous puppies and lolis in distress. You wait and see, I’m fairly sure I’ll still be batting 1.000 next week.

Step 1, The Liftoff:

Step 2, The Drop-off:

Step 3, The Handoff:

Step 4, The Show-off:

Step 5, Your Reward:



It looks like next episode will be the infamous bath episode. Expect cleverly censored boobage (Jesus Jumping Christ on a pogo stick) and Hirano nosebleeds.

Okay, so Hartmann #2 is a well-spoken, responsible, glasses-wearing sister, but still. How delightfully random.

More after the jump.

High School of the Dead‘s episode 04 has a strong Mad Max vibe going in its favour. After recapping the earlier episodes, it focuses on Rei and Komuro’s motorcycle journey after they were separated from the rest of the group, whom we see little of this week… Except for a certain someone’s creepy side coming out. If Rei’s dislike of Mr. Shido wasn’t enough for you, well, there ya go.

I beg to differ.

Daijooooooooooooobu. But hang on, this post isn’t about Pedo-Sensei.

Komuro is, on one level, just a teenager who acts like a badass, but in a delightful twist we’re privy to his inner monologue at several points during the series thus far, so that we can discern that his bravado is often a facade to mask his own fears – which is how real people behave, after all. I always harken back to Now and Then, Here and There as an example of the opposite, delirious fantasy in which anime protagonists (including children!) are all possessed of an indomitable spirit and peerless courage that eventually triumphs over evil. Of course, it can work if you’re shooting for a fantastical fantasy universe in the first place, but in a realistic drama like High School of the Dead? Shu would have been zombie chow three and a half episodes ago. Watching protagonists who are prey to doubt, fear, self-pity and so on humanizes them to a degree that anime rarely capitalizes on.

And there’s something else going on with Komuro that I haven’t nailed down yet, but if you recall episode 03 and the random blonde dude’s rant, it seems like the high schoolers outside the main group don’t hold him in high esteem. For what reason? Maybe it’s nothing special, just stress or internal dissent… then again, he had to have a reason for moping around as episode 01 began.

But no one watched episode 04 for the riveting characterization or oppressive atmosphere. No, you watched because you wanted to see Rei get molested by some crazed gangster who sneaks up on her after she and Komuro stop at a gas station to fill up. Unfortunately, I like Rei. She’s frank and always cuts to the chase – which are qualities that may or may not help in the post-Z-Day world, but are still admirable. Seeing her descend to the level of damsel in distress was, well, distressing. I hope she doesn’t catch a bout of Princess Toadstool Syndrome. I want my sniper school girl, damnit!

Oh wacky pants-less hijincks. Will you ever get old?

More crotch action after the jump. He said with a shudder.

Here’s a summary of the second season of Strike Witches so far:

1. I’m a peace-loving, animal-healing school girl. I don’t want to fight aliens! No wait I do.
2. HAI GANG
3. The broom episode.

What? “Broom episode”? Pfff, doesn’t sound too scary. Until you remember that these here be witches we’re talking about. Witches who don’t wear pants. And what do witches do with brooms? That’s right, they ride them. Can you imagine an inconvenient side-effect of having a young girl in her panties stick a long, hard, throbbing I mean wooden handle between her legs?

Ugh.

On the positive side (there’s always one, goddamnit, always) the old lady who provides training with the aforementioned brooms is a no-nonsense grandma who yells at everyone and who even made Major Sakamoto cry back in the day. A breath of fresh air, really, when the rest of the cast consists of vapid teenage girls who haven’t yet figured a use for pants, skirts, dresses, and the like.

The one exception to this above characterization is the delightful Hartmann, who I’ve already mentioned before, the sole reason I’m still sitting here and subjecting my frontal cortex to a weekly Strike Witches torture session.

Two of the German witches, Trude and Hartmann. COME BAAAAAACK

For one, Hartmann takes no prisoners and makes no compromises: in a show where the girls’s personality vacillates between boob-obsessed maniac and super-serious soldier full of genuine pathos, Hartmann has firmly picked her camp and is established as the squadron’s space cadet. She had all the best jokes of the first season: the wake-up routine with Trude in episode 07 (titled “Nice ‘n Breezy”; I’ll let you imagine the ramifications), the deliriously funny hitchiking attempt in episode 11… She’s like an oasis of unadulterated, colorful spazziness in a sea of half-and-half milksops. It helps that she’s based on the most badass World War II flying ace and that her breasts are a reasonable size for a sixteen-year-old girl. Not that I’ve gone out and conducted a survey.

Oh well. I still chuckle when I go back in the archives and read that I’d picked Strike Witches as an early favorite when its first season started airing. You live, you learn, and you have your crotch violated by sadistic brooms, I suppose.

AHOY MATEY!

Seriously, leg fanservice? That’s… uhm… totally wrong. But lemme stare for a couple minutes to make sure. Oh, and more… after… jump…

Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi

Or, for the Westerner in you, Ookami-san and her Seven Companions. Yep, it’s a fairy tale reference, didn’t you notice Little Red Riding Hood in the picture above?

The face of tsundere.

Not exactly the type of show with an incisive take on human psychology and the meaning of life. The heroine, Ookami-san, portrayed above, works for an agency at school that offers its services to students in exchange for various favors. Her job so far involves mostly beating up delinquents with her Neko-Neko Knuckles. The rest of the cast support her in various ways, including a mad scientist chick, whose every appearance makes me giggle in glee, and a guy who’s in love with Ookami-san but suffers from scopophobia (i.e. the fear of being seen).

So yes, if you’ve ever seen Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, this is the same brand of “out there” anime that delights in wacky characters, except with a little more restraint. And another Ginka. The fanservice has been dialed down since the first episode, too, which is most welcome as I felt dirty lusting after Ookami-san’s legs when she looks so much like an older version of Taiga from Toradora! (but with a ton more style).

Speaking of Ookami-san, she’s the front-runner for 2010′s Tsundere of the Year Award, having already demonstrated that she’s a hardass with a heart of gold.

K-On!!

I admit it: I’m a huge K-On dork. I don’t have a body pillow yet, but I’ve watched every episode thus far, and even have a favorite. I could tell you who, but then I’d have to kill you. By dropping her drum set on you.

Not quite loli, not quite badass, but a little bit of both.

I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy K-on on my own, away from the blogosphere, which seems polarized between gooey adoration and venomous dislike, so that my appreciation of the show is an unadulterated and unabashedly personal experience. In short: can you possibly imagine yourself being entertained by the story of five high school girls trying to start their own band? That’s pretty much it. No explosions, a minimalistic over-arching storyline (Budokan?!?), and wacky weekly adventures. K-On won’t save the world, for sure, but it’s helped me stay sane, and the second season that’s been airing since spring is more of the same so far.

One of the bigger complaints about K-On is that it’s barely about music at all. Fortunately, the latest episode (#14) introduces a new ED theme, just to show you how much K-On can rock: do yourself a favor and check it out.

(I strongly advise starting with the first season if you’re titillated.)

Occult Academy

Given my love of leggy heroines, as professed above, this one should be a shoe-in. (Ho ho ho.)

However, as I’ve discovered before with the dreadful CHAOS;HEAD, the Japanese and I have vastly different ideas of what “horror” should be. Occult Academy starts out on a decent note, with dire forebodings in the middle of the night, and holds this tone as Maya (legs picture above) arrives at the Occult Academy the next day, just in time for her father’s funeral. He was the school principal, and the vice-principal plays a tape he left behind, a message addressed to the students from beyond the grave, so to speak.

Except the bastard recorded a spell to raise his own corpse at the end of the tape.

This setup could have been marvelously scary except Occult Academy is unable to build an oppressive atmosphere. For one, the principal’s corpse looks way too cartoony – compare and contrast with HOTD‘s zombies for good measure. To add insult to injury, at the end of the episode, the ubiquitous Teenage Male Lead literally materializes out of thin air in front of Maya, naked as the day he was born.

Does the deus ex machina have to clank that loudly? Resourceful and aloof Maya could have made a compelling heroine on her own. No need to graft a burgeoning testosterone-laden one-dimensional tumor to the show’s cast just to prove a point.

I like Maya. I like the animation (cartoon zombies aside). I like that there might be more to the Occult Academy than what meets the eye. The rest makes me uneasy.

High School of the Dead

SUMIMASEN DESHITA. But I still want to talk about this show. Its second episode, more precisely.

A tender moment shared over a baseball bat bloodied with their best friend's brains. Awwwww.

Yep, HOTD is still going on strong, as I’d foretold, and the Fanservice Fairy has been (somewhat) held in check, making its presence quite bearable. Episode #2 focuses on Hirano (aka Chubby Nerd) and Takagi (Pink-Haired Bimbo). Despite my parenthetical labelling for easy reference, both of them come across as much more than stereotypes, just like Takashi (Teenage Male Lead) and Rei (Teenage Girl Lead). Gah, I’m doing it again!

Hirano is a bit closer to a caricature: a flabby, desperate loser who somehow tags along Takagi, doing nothing but slowing her down until they find themselves cornered in the workshop classroom. Then, his inner nerd takes over, and he fabricates… well, you have to see it. Let’s just say MacGyver would be proud. I’m sure it’s not his last time pulling someone else’s chestnuts out of the fire.

Takagi is fascinating. On the one hand, as she repeatedly claims, she’s a genius who’s able to intuitively navigate the subtleties of a post-Zombiegeddon high school, more than once saving Hirano’s love handles from becoming the pièce de résistance at the zombie buffet. She’s also the first to experiment with the zombies to try to discover their strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, she turns out to be a condescending, prissy bitch who’s such a perfectionist she can’t stand second place (she throws a tantrum when Hirano looks at another girl!) and who has a mental breakdown after she has to resort to a drill to save her own life, in what is one of the goriest, juiciest, bestest scenes thus far, complete with grinding sound effect and gallons of gushing blood. Methinks her jealousy spells trouble down the road.

We’re also introduced to Saeko, from the kendo club, who’s naturally a no-nonsense, stick-wielding kind of gal, and the oldest among the students. You have to appreciate a woman who, with minimal prompting, is willing to crack a guy’s skull to save him from becoming a zombie.

Protecting a man's pride is the style of a true woman!

Then there’s the Amazingly Busty Nurse, whose every movement is punctuated with bouncing noises and cooing I’d normally rather not put up with, but hey, for the sake of the rest of the compelling cast, I’ll try not to her gargantuan zombie-attracting udders smother my interest to death.

And then the rest…

New Sekirei: started watching first episode, fell asleep before the boobs showed up. Maybe I’ll give it a second look. Don’t hold your breath.

New Strike Witches: watched first episode. Same as first season. At this point, I’ll do anything for my Hartmann fix, so… buckle up. I hate myself.

The Tatami Galaxy: watched the first episode on YouTube a short while ago. Should probably continue, since it was fucked up in a funny way. The show technically just ended, but the timeline be damned!

Other shows not mentioned: they all suck. Trust me.

]]> http://korasoff.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/other-shows-to-watch-summer-2010/feed/ 0 Korasoff ookami_01 ookami_02 Kon_01 occult_01 hotd_02_01 hotd_02_03 http://korasoff.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/high-school-of-the-dead-episode-01-paging-dr-frankenstein/ http://korasoff.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/high-school-of-the-dead-episode-01-paging-dr-frankenstein/#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:53:37 +0000 Korasoff http://korasoff.wordpress.com/?p=1591 ]]> After such a prolonged absence, I told myself it probably would be best to let this place die a noble, forgotten death as a written testament to the vivacious times of the 2008 anime season. What’s that saying again? Let sleeping blogs lie? Something like that.

How ironic that a new show about zombies would motivate me to bring this blog back to life!

Don't underestimate the spear martial arts club!

And here I’d been, not expecting much from the new anime season. Yay for lowered expectations! And for more after the jump.

I love High School of the Dead for a single reason: it tries harder. Oh, it’s got average character design, and the fanservice is ladled over everything like a thick, panties-scented sauce, but every aspect of the show has been labored over to make it shine and sparkle. It could have been another Strike Witches panties-fest with no story or respect for perennial articles of clothing. Or another brainless Koihime Musou hack-and-slash twat parade. And yet it avoided those pitfalls. In fact, so far, it looks like the best show of this summer season.

Animation: top-drawer, mate. It’s still the first episode, so who knows, maybe the rest of the series will be delegated to a third-world studio in Zimbabwe that consists of one dude with a shoebox of Crayola crayons. For the moment characters are crisp and colorful, animations are fluid, backgrounds are detailed, and gore is pleeeeeeeeeentiful. CG is used seamlessly during action sequences to make them look more realistic. All in all, HOTD has a distinct cinematographic feel; perhaps it’s an attempt to channel Romero, but at any rate, it sets it apart from the rest.

Character design: as I said above, it’s average at best. The leads are the standard brown-haired, high-school teen fare. The supporting cast borrows from such classics as:

• Chubby Nerd
• Pink-Haired Bimbo
• Purple-Haired Sword Chick
• Amazingly Busty Nurse (she uses her own breasts as pillows when napping at her desk – no kidding)
• Plus a loli somewhere

It wouldn’t bother me much if I weren’t watching Ookami-san at the same time, which puts HOTD to shame in this department, but since HOTD‘s characters are oozing personality I’ll give it a passing grade here.

Voice acting: prepare to excrete in your trousers. The teenage male lead sounds like a young adult instead of a loli with a sore throat. Shocking!

Music: rock fanfare all the way. Both the OP and ED are toe-tappingly good rock n’ roll tracks that bring back memories of Kurozuka. The OP plays over a slick CG montage of the characters, while the ED rocks out while showing us a missing persons board with pictures of the characters. Nice touches.

Story and characters: there’s more meat in this first episode than in some entire series I’ve seen. In 23 minutes or so we’re introduced to a love triangle, then watch their interactions as they take stock of the situation and try to fend for themselves; meanwhile, the high school (and the rest of the world, probably) breaks down and goes mad around them. Throughout this ordeal the characters behave like real human beings who are shocked, disgusted, scared, and vindictive, instead of sticking to “ganbare stoicism” and playing to the anime stereotypes we’ve seen a zillion times before that we all know by heart.

And the zombies are… well, just zombies. Simple, mindless, and effective. I hate to draw the comparison, but could HOTD turn out to be Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 with corpses and panties? And would that be a plus? Time will tell.

Boink.

Having praised HOTD so much, I must come clean and admit, O reader, that it is far from flawless. For one, the amount of fanservice is dangerously close to my limit, although it doesn’t seem to be the point of the show (yet). It’s just jarring to see a good action scene interrupted by the above-pictured shot of some rotund, rubbery buttocks. And it happens more than once. It’s not enough to turn me off for now, especially since I just watched the first season of Strike Witches in preparation for the new one, but I’m keeping an eye on my Panties-O-Meter in case the needle enters the danger zone. There’s so much potential for gut-busting wholesome kitsch fun, I’d hate to see it smothered in white cotton.

Check it out. Like, now.

]]> http://korasoff.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/high-school-of-the-dead-episode-01-paging-dr-frankenstein/feed/ 1 Korasoff hsotd_01_01 http://korasoff.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/it-lives/ http://korasoff.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/it-lives/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 23:26:50 +0000 Korasoff http://korasoff.wordpress.com/?p=1585 ]]> Losing Internet for a few months is a painful experience. Specifically, the kind of painful that makes you want to crucify the company that changed the contract on you, and then the other company that claims it provides great DSL service, but forgets to mention that it loves to disconnect clients every five minutes for no reason.

At any rate. I’m alive. I have 150 gigs of recently downloaded anime (plus the Azumanga Daioh! boxset taunting me from its royal spot on the living room coffee table). It could be worse.

Please feel free to call me any names you want, I need all the goading I can get to start writing again.

• Toradora! – An anime that can be both humorous and touching thanks in large part to its duo of outcast protagonists who find themselves reluctant partners in their romantic crusade; having been an outcast myself in high school I can’t help but sympathize with their plight. Will they stay friends? Will they become more? I’ll just have to continue watching to find out! Also features the homeliest bird in the history of anime. Behold!

Yikes!

• Rosario to Vampire CAPU2 – Let’s get one fact straight: this ain’t a good show, but it’s so bad at times that it becomes remotely enjoyable, all part of the Trainwreck Appeal. On the plus side Rosario has one of the top three OP themes of the season with the sassy Discotheque. It’s toe-tappingly good and, yes, absolute gratuitous fanservice, but it reminds me of last season’s Koihime Musou and its hilarious ED. It’s enough to get me to look forward to my weekly dose of white cotton. (And Mizore is cool.)

Wait, where's the Twister mat?

• To Aru Majutsu no Index — Another show whose OP is in the top three best of the season. Unlike Rosario, however, TAMNI is far from a train wreck, what with its compelling star-crossed protagonist and a gallerie of (thus far) spiffy characters, first amongst them the poor Index. And is that a hint of GARRR! sprinkled here and there? Why yes it is. (Plus that chick who wears one-legged jeans rocks my world. For some reason she reminds me of a mix of the Natsume sisters from Tenjo Tenge.)

Rood: "a crucifix, esp. a large one at the entrance to the choir or chancel of a medieval church, often supported on a rood beam or rood screen."

Animes that I’ll be watching but blogging occasionally, if at all:

• Kurozuka — After my gooey outpouring of fan love in my last post you were probably figuring Kurozuka was going to replace Code Geass in my blogging lineup. But the truth is, it might not make a very compelling blogging show, the same way I wasn’t able to discuss Kaiba or Antique Bakery weekly no matter how much they entertained me. And that’s despite Kurozuka boasting some of the most lovingly crafted shots in recent memory, along with yet another excellent OP (speed metal FTW), unbelievable premise potential, and so much blood gushing out of so many arteries you’d think the Red Cross had animated this show. I’ll watch it religiously the second the sub comes out and if I feel I can communicate anything meaningful about the experience, then I’ll write a post about it.
• Casshern SINS – Depending on how the violence and story ramp up it may become a worthwhile blogging endeavor. I have no clue, though, because I’ve only had the time to watch the first episode so far.
• Shikabane Hime: Aka — Everything that applies to Casshern applies to this one too. But it’s Gainax. Come on.
• The rest — I might still give a shot to the slew of other average shows, like CHAOS;HEAD and Tytania. Or I may use that time to catch up on series I haven’t finished yet. Or maybe I’ll hunt down everyone who stopped subbing Real Drive after fifteen episodes. Bastards.

-Mr. K