I guess there wasn’t anything particularly special about these episodes. Of course, there was the date episode at the end, but as is often the case with series based off of 4koma, there really wasn’t any sort of real resolution. I was at least hoping that Inami would progress on her punching, though. I realize it’s a running gag in the show, but at least have her hold hands with Souta. Poplar, meanwhile, is once again largely relegated to the sideline, other than her crushing on cross-dressing Souta.
Also, no progress on Yachiyo and Jun, even though I thought there might be. The only real progress that went on in the last four episodes is that Souta finally realized that he maybe, possible, might see Inami in a different way, though he clearly didn’t realize it as it was. Again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the characters largely remained static through the series (except, perhaps Inami, in regards to her feeling towards Souta) but it’d been nice to see something different.
The one character I did like through the series was Nazuna, as, not only was the best developed of the secondary characters, I think she might have been even more developed than some of the main characters like Aoi and Hiroomi, and I’m glad that we saw more of her in these episodes. I also had to laugh in the last episode, that anonymous glasses waitress that we’ve seen around finally get some air time, and repeatedly makes her point and attempts to be “normal” and in the end, her desperate attempts to be and appear normal make the others think she’s weird.
For the series overall, I think it started out good, and it had quite a few laughs, but it really seemed like it stagnated towards the end. They created a few new situations like tying Inami up and the date that put the running gags to use in ways they hadn’t before, but in the end, the show was still about Inami punching people and Poplar being small, with very deviation away from those plot points.
Again, I guess that’s not unusual for a series like this. After all, how often did a series like Azumanga Daioh take advantage of the fact that Chiyo was a child genius and that Osaka was dense? But I think in Azumanga’s case, there were so many characters with their own quirks, and the show took advantage of all of them, so none of them got that old. And it was just done in a fresh way. The problem in Working is that only Inami and Poplar had traits that they could really use repeatedly, and after a while, the freshness really ran out. This wasn’t necessary a bad series, and if a second season came out, I’d consider watching it, but I think they could have done so much more with it than they did.
This finally finishes off one of two series I was blogging from the Spring season.
Series: Angel Beats Media: Mazui Fan Sub (Episodes 11 – 13)
These final three episodes dealt with the mystery behind the “shadows” that was hinted at in episode 10. Perhaps not surprisingly, Yuri was well aware of what Otonashi was up in regarding trying to relieve the Battlefront’s member’s regrets, but was perhaps surprising is that she was supportive of the idea of members going that route if they wanted to, as opposed to being turned into NPCs by the shadows.
As for the programmer of the “shadows,” I wonder if the whole point of it was because they knew someone like Yuri would arrive someday, and eventually she would need a mortal enemy to “defeat” in order to finally disappear. However, I felt kind of jipped that most of the people just decided that they wanted to leave, and so they left. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with so many people and so few episodes to work with, especially since two of the three episodes dealt with the shadow things.
I guess my main question is…if Kanade got Otonashi’s heart in real life, what was she doing there before he was? Of course, it’s always possible that “time” in this afterlife and “time” in the real life have no relation. Though given that we didn’t see any characters that looked like they were out of place in that timeframe, if there is some variance on when they arrive in the timeline of this place and when they die, it’s not a very big one. Maybe only a few years, perhaps.
At the very end, I’m assuming Kanade and Otonashi are reincarnated in the real world some time down the road, where they meet again. So I guess instead of this being a show where long-lost lovers meet in some reincarnated future, and then we learn about their past, in this show, we see their past, and then see the start of their future.
Overall, I’d say Angel Beats was a pretty decent show. I think it could have been better in many aspects. I’m not really sure the shadow thing was necessary or even vitally important (other than getting Yuri to accept her regrets) yet it took up 2 of the final 3 episodes. I think this is definitely a series with re-watch value, even if it could have been better.
(I’ll probably add some preliminary thoughts to series I haven’t seen before on the first post)
I’m a little hesitant about heading into Gurren Lagann, because most everything about it says that I probably won’t like it. Whether that’s because it’s GAINAX, it’s one of those “OMGWTFBBQ THIS IS THE BEST SERIES EVAR!!” series, or because I’ve heard some rather…questionable…things about it’s fan service (bolstered by the art and clips I’ve seen).
Nevertheless, since this is one of the more recent “Big Things,” I thought I’d give it a try.
Well I guess so far this show isn’t as bad as I thought. It seems to be staying more on the funny side rather than the stupid side (though not by much). Though hopefully Shinji Simon will stop complaining sometime soon because it’s getting kind of old. Kamina is probably the best character so far, even if he is a bit crazy. Yuko, meanwhile, seems to exist to fire her pretty useless gun, go provide bouncing boobs, and to have absolutely no modesty about shoving her boobs into the guy’s (especially Simon’s) faces (or vice versa).
So far there isn’t much of a central point, really, other than the trio fighting off the Gunmen (hur hur). Perhaps the most disturbing part so far was their pig thing tearing off it’s ass to give Simon and Kamina a bite to eat cause their machines weren’t working due to them starving. Throw in a foursome of siblings who ride around on dogs…backwards, and many things on this show are downright weird so far.
Also, I’m not sure what was up with the animation in episode 4, but it seemed kind of…off.
Alright, I’m once again taking this blog back off life support (or, is it putting it back on life support after it flat-lined…again), this time with hopefully a somewhat new strategy as far as blogging.
Instead of doing lengthy episode reviews with several paragraphs and a big gallery of pictures, I think I’ll do reviews of…well…pretty much everything – episodes, DVDs, online episodes, whatever. However, I plan on having these reviews be more of the shorter nature – instead of 24 pictures and 6 or 8 paragraphs or whatever it was before, I’m going to try to make them 1 picture and maybe only 2 or 3 paragraph, depending on the length of item I’m reviewing.
I’m also “clearing the slate” if you will, as far as old series. What I mean by that is that I’m going to allow myself to talk about/review/whatever series I have already reviewed in the past. I’ll keep all my old reviews and posts up as a sort of archive, but just because I’ve already reviewed, say, Kanon, doesn’t mean I might not go through and review it disk by disk as I rewatch it in the future.
That kind of brings me back to: what am I reviewing. I kind of said what above, but to be more specific, I’m restarting my Netflix subscription so I can get DVDs that way again. DVDs I get through there is one source I will write reviews from. If I stream episodes online from Netflix (or Funimation or Crunchyroll for that matter), that is another source. DVDs I own will be another, and then on top of this, new anime episodes currently airing in Japan.
With the exception of newly aired episodes (probably, though there might be exceptions, especially if I get behind), I’ll probably review episodes 4 to 6 at a time, whether that’s because that’s how many are on a DVD or just because I’m just taking them as such a group when watching them online.
This will let me do a few things
1) Actually write about series I’m currently watching without waiting until the very end. One problem I had before with some series is that I’d watch it, but by the time I was done, I had forgotten half of what went on when trying to write a review of the series
2) It opens up the anime library that I own as a source of material for the blog
3) This still allows me to blog certain series that are airing. Some series I might do an episode at a time, while others I may still do in groups of 2, 3, or 4 episodes, depending on the series. That will give me some flexibility there as well.
Regarding other non-episode blogging portions of the site, such as anime dvd/manga releases and the anime credits…I don’t know. The anime credits I’ll probably keep, if for no other reason than I like scouring YouTube for anime credit sequences I wouldn’t normally have seen otherwise. For the new releases…It’s sort of useful for me I guess, but if no one else cares about it, it might be more trouble than it’s worth.
Ultimately, my goal is to post somewhere around 3 posts a week (hopefully at a minimum). Of course, if there are any editorial topics I randomly feel like writing about, or news stories I see that I want to chime in on, I’ll write about those as I always have.
I had planned on renaming my blog with a new URL and everything, and while I guess I could have done it at the same time as this restart, I thought I’d do one thing at a time for now.
This blog has been kind of going through some hiccups recently with me going on hiatus, coming back for a while, going on hiatus again, me coming back, and so on, and it seems to hit another hiatus point now.
I don’t necessarily want to give up anime blogging, but it seems episode blogging is just not giving me the motivation to keep doing it it seems. I’m able to go at it for a while, but eventually I either just get bored of the series I’m blogging, or don’t have the motivation/time/whatever to actually do write-ups of the episodes. And once I get behind on those, everything else seems to go downhill with it.
So I guess I’m going to do a bit of soul searching as far as my blogging is concerned. I’ll keep this blog up (as in online) for the time being but I’m going to reassess how/how often/what I blog to see if I can come up with something that works for me better. I hate to post less often, so I don’t know about doing some sort of omnibus type posts, and I just don’t know if I watch anime enough to effectively keep up the blog via editorials only. But I’ll try to come up with something.
Working: Episodes 10 – 13
This finishes the second series I had been blogging from the spring 2010 season.
Series: Working!!
Media: Yus-m.3.3.w. Fansub (episodes 10 – 13)
I guess there wasn’t anything particularly special about these episodes. Of course, there was the date episode at the end, but as is often the case with series based off of 4koma, there really wasn’t any sort of real resolution. I was at least hoping that Inami would progress on her punching, though. I realize it’s a running gag in the show, but at least have her hold hands with Souta. Poplar, meanwhile, is once again largely relegated to the sideline, other than her crushing on cross-dressing Souta.
Also, no progress on Yachiyo and Jun, even though I thought there might be. The only real progress that went on in the last four episodes is that Souta finally realized that he maybe, possible, might see Inami in a different way, though he clearly didn’t realize it as it was. Again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the characters largely remained static through the series (except, perhaps Inami, in regards to her feeling towards Souta) but it’d been nice to see something different.
The one character I did like through the series was Nazuna, as, not only was the best developed of the secondary characters, I think she might have been even more developed than some of the main characters like Aoi and Hiroomi, and I’m glad that we saw more of her in these episodes. I also had to laugh in the last episode, that anonymous glasses waitress that we’ve seen around finally get some air time, and repeatedly makes her point and attempts to be “normal” and in the end, her desperate attempts to be and appear normal make the others think she’s weird.
For the series overall, I think it started out good, and it had quite a few laughs, but it really seemed like it stagnated towards the end. They created a few new situations like tying Inami up and the date that put the running gags to use in ways they hadn’t before, but in the end, the show was still about Inami punching people and Poplar being small, with very deviation away from those plot points.
Again, I guess that’s not unusual for a series like this. After all, how often did a series like Azumanga Daioh take advantage of the fact that Chiyo was a child genius and that Osaka was dense? But I think in Azumanga’s case, there were so many characters with their own quirks, and the show took advantage of all of them, so none of them got that old. And it was just done in a fresh way. The problem in Working is that only Inami and Poplar had traits that they could really use repeatedly, and after a while, the freshness really ran out. This wasn’t necessary a bad series, and if a second season came out, I’d consider watching it, but I think they could have done so much more with it than they did.