2012 Winter Anime First Impressions Part Two

Are you ready for a pun? Yes, you are.

See that sunset? Yes, you do.

When does the sun set? In the evening.

What time is the evening? Very late.

So. What’s this enormously late post going to be about?

The title says it’s going to be about ‘2012 Winter Anime First Impressions Part Two’. OK, so what does that mean? It means that this post is going to be about my first impressions of the anime airing in the winter of 2012. And this is part two.

Read part one here.

Whereas part one’s shows all sucked, part two’s shows… well, half of them suck. The other half are decent. And then there’s one awesome show. But it’d be too disjointed if I just hopped around from one anime to another in this post, without any main thread in between. So this post is going to be about anime, and first impressions, and 2012 Winter. But it’s also going to be about Anime Club. That’s right, Anime Club.

So now you know what this post is going to be about.

Let’s begin.

Black★Rock Shooter (TV)

Sorry, guys. It’s not that Black★Rock Shooter (TV) sucks (remember, this is the top half of my first impressions), but just that it sucks more than anything else in this post. Sorry, because that still means it sucks. You can read my post about Black★Rock Shooter (TV) Episode 1 if you want, but it doesn’t actually talk about Black★Rock Shooter (TV) Episode 1. It talks about a contest I created that nobody wanted to take part in. :(

Black★Rock Shooter (TV) Cover Rating: 4/10 (Good) – Blogging

“You didn’t even tell us why you thought Black★Rock Shooter (TV) sucked!”, you may shout at your computer monitor incessantly, “And what you said has nothing to do with Anime Club, either! In fact, that paragraph had nothing to do with anime, exclamation mark!”

Yeahahaha. I guess I was lying with that introduction. At least now you know what the rest of this post will look like.

Gokujo.

Before you start complaining about the quality of these images – Gokujo. is a stream-only 360p webrip. It didn’t have a trailer because each episode is six minutes long. Yes, the period at the end of Gokujo. is intentional. Never end a sentence with Gokujo.., or you’ll sound like a person who’s indecisive about his use of indecision.

There are two things Gokujo. and Black★Rock Shooter (TV) have in common. We watched neither of them in anime club, and both of them suck.

Or at least, I thought Gokujo. would suck judging from my Season Preview. Turns out it’s actually, somehow, funny. Yes, I’m as shocked as you are. Gokujo. is about a slut who came from Slutmerica back to Japan and tries to slut up the slutty school she sluts at. The problem is, not only does she slut at sucking (all sluts slut at sucking), but she also sucks at slutting, and the sluts at her slutty school are sluttier than she is, making her slutty attempts to slut up her slutty school stupid. Y’know how after you repeat a word too many times, it stops looking like a word? Slut.

The episode is just as you’d expect an episode about sluts to be – slutty. But the sheer ridiculousness of it all just made me burst out in laughter. I haven’t done that since I watched the Gun-dou Musashi OP and BROKE YOUR FACE!!!

To be honest, Gokujo.’s one of the purer anime this year. There’s no focus on girls being sweet shy kawaii moe cute things; they’re just slutty. Any fanservice is purely for the sake of ridiculousness. It’s like Nichijou, but with less stylized art. It’s so ridiculously stupid that I really have no idea what to do now. I sat for four hours in bemused consternation after watching this episode. It’s just so… stupid. It’s like somebody purposefully TRIED to make a terribad anime… and SUCCEEDED, to boot! Wow. Besides, it’s not like watching this will have a large impact on your leisure time – each episode is six minutes long, for the love of Madoka.

tl;dr: episode 3 was pulled off for being too stupid. SOUNDS LIKE MY KIND OF ANIME

Gokujo. Cover Rating: 4/10 (Stupid) – Watching

P.S. (for those interested in reading up more about just how stupid Gokujo. is, Joojoobees has written up a nice post. Granted, it’s not about the show itself, but it does talk about the interesting… circumstances the show was aired in.)

Right. Just to let you know, yes, American girls do look like that.

Next, I’ll start talking about shows that I actually watched in Anime Club. There are two reasons I delayed this post all the way until this week! Firstly, I had to wait until at least three episodes of Black★Rock Shooter (TV) aired, because… uh… yeah. Secondly, I wanted to see how many episodes of anime I could see in Anime Club, as part of my New Year’s Resolution. Since the Anime Club’s Anime Club projector just broke this week… I guess I’ll spend this week summarizing what I watched.

Without further ado: Part Two of Part Two of 2012 Winter Anime First Impressions.

Brave 10

Brave 10 is like Hyouge Mono – it’s a historical anime about historical figures doing historical things, including but not limited to:

• Not cutting hair
• Cosplaying as ninjas
• Exposing female breasts
• Disguising trees as themselves
• Training owls to fly around and look cool
• Slicing shurikens in half with magical swords that glow in the dark
• Burning shrines down and shooting the head priest who throws a girl down a bottomless well
• Creating primordial black holes with magical hairpins that destroy everything in a 30-metre vicinity… except for clothes

As you can see, Brave 10 is a very historically accurate show.

Other than the history, there’s a lot of BADASSERY. For example, the main character is the most BADASS character this season. Anime Club agrees. Here, I’ll reconstruct what I remember happened in Anime Club while we watched this show… (warning: may not be an accurate reconstruction of history)

“WOW THIS GUY’S DEAD AND NOBODY NOTICES.”

“A butterfly just landed on his mouth, how gay…”

“WHAT THE FUCK, a girl just FALLS into his ARMS.”

“He kills the ninjas so easily and just walks away and doesn’t even care about the girl and he killed the ninjas!”

“BOOBS!”

“WOW THIS GUY IS BADASS.”

“Nothing happens in these battles, how gay…”

“WHAT THE FUCK, this girl just WALKS into the battle and PUSHES LEGENDARY WARRIORS away from each other. Why isn’t she DEAD yet? ANNOYING BITCH.”

“She’s crying and banging his chest and…

…uh…

..what’s she doing?”

“JUST A BIT MORE!”

“What girl would do this sort of thing…? How gay.”

“Suddenly, the principal walks in.”

“WOW SHE’S GIVING HIM A BLOWJOB.”

As you can see, these reactions are strange. But they’re not strange because the Anime Club is strange; they’re strange because WE’RE strange. We’ve become desensitised to Japan’s weirdness and contrived storytelling. What we don’t realize is that anime is WEIRD.

Who CRIES while RHYTHMICALLY POUNDING a man’s chest? Who TALKS and SHOUTS OUT their SECRET techniques while fighting a battle, and who DRAGS ON a battle for OVER FIVE MINUTES? Who acts so happy when she’s being chased by murderers? Who doesn’t notice that her FACE is covered in BLOOD? Who JOKES about NOODLES after KILLING dozens of men? Men with lives, men with families, men with children and a future. Men who have trained for dozens of years just to become a ninja, only to be killed without doing anything at all. Men who’ve dedicated their WHOLE LIVES… to nothing. Nothing at all.

What the fuck, Japan? What the fuck, anime?

Anime Club has enlightened me.

Anime is stupid.

Then again, it’s not like other forms of entertainment aren’t stupid. Chinese live-action television is even worse (their special effects are more terribad than the worst in anime, with the possible exception of Gun-dou Musashi’s fight scenes). Everything that isn’t real is unrealistic; we’ve just acclimatized to their fakeness, we’ve permanently suspended our disbelief and thrown it far, far away. Now, we need to get that disbelief back. We need to reassess what’s happening. We need to stop watching anime and start working on my socials project that’s due next Monday.

tl;dr: The funny thing is that at the end, Sanada died, while Ieyasu became the SHOGUN OF JAPAN. He symbolizes the RISING SUN except Ieyasu has been dead for four centuries so I guess he symbolizes the FALLING SUN here, sunset part two

P.S. Brave 10’s OP reminds me of Trigun’s OP. But there’s one key difference: Trigun’s OP was BADASS, whereas this OP is merely CHEESY. Why doesn’t everybody use guns instead of all specializing in one weapon? At least they have guns, though… and don’t even let me get started about this horrible autotuned ED… and I don’t even know what autotune is!

Brave 10 Cover Rating: 5/10 (Great) – Two-Episode Test

I never said that Brave 10 was stupid. I said that anime was stupid. Brave 10 seems like a great anime – but that doesn’t mean much, since anime is stupid. Y’know, my realization that anime is stupid isn’t going to change anything. I’m still going to watch anime, I’m still going to blog anime, and I’m still going to comment on anime. If I were smarter, I’d realize that since anime is stupid, watching anime, blogging anime, and commenting on anime are all stupid. But I’m not smart. Why?

Because I’m stupid.

So I do stupid things.

Like watching anime.

Mouretsu Pirates

Ah, Mouretsu Pirates. The problem with writing this ‘First Impressions’ post so late is that seven episodes of Mouretsu Pirates have already passed, and right now, I think it’s much more awesome than it was seven episodes ago. But truth be told, seven episodes ago, Mouretsu Pirates wasn’t anything special. It was so not special that not even the Anime Club President deigned to watch it in Anime Club. That Anime Club President. He thinks he’s so cool, naming his Swampert ‘Suwako’ and his creepy black flying thing ‘Flandre’. I DON’T EVEN HAVE POKÉMON, but if I did, I’d name my BULBASAUR ‘Suwako’ and my IVYSAUR ‘Flandre’. Doesn’t that make so much more SNES?!

I meant ‘sense’.

Anyways, read my first impressions post (which isn’t actually about Mouretsu Pirates), and let’s speed off to the next anime that I didn’t watch in anime club…

Mouretsu Pirates Cover Rating: 5/10 (Great) – Blogging

It seemed like I watched a lot of anime in Anime Club! But it’s ‘only’ been six weeks since the start of the season, which means that I could’ve only watched six shows in Anime Club. One of those weeks was a week when the Yearbook Club decided to take a photo of the Anime Club. For some strange reason, the Anime Club President, instead of watching Despicable Me (which was playing when I walked in), decided to watch the iDOLM@STER Episode 8. I walked out immediately after that shocking realization, so that I would not be associated as being a creeper by the Yearbook Club, but it turns out that the Yearbook Club never arrived.

:(

Area no Kishi

For the record, Eyeshield 21 is AWESOME. It’s the only actual team sport manga I’ve ever read, because Light Wing is too horrible to be a manga. So, I came into this show quite biased that it would be great.

And holy H.G. Wells was I right!

This anime is great.

Granted, these Japanese people look more white than Japanese (the only reason they were playing against BR BR BR VUVUZELA was because it’d be harder to distinguish between Japanese and Americans), but this is an obviously Japanese show. I’m not sure what that comment has to do with anything, but immediately, Area no Kishi establishes a connection with Chihayafuru with all this sibling rivalry/jealousy/support. I haven’t watched Chihayafuru (nor any other Fall anime besides Ben-To/Horizon/Majikoi), but I’ve heard much praise of its awesomeness, and so everything that establishes a connection with Chihayafuru must be great.

Maybe I’m watching too much camp anime lately, what with Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, Gokujo., and Mouretsu Pirates, because I sat through this entire episode expecting something campy to happen. The only thing remotely campy was the alien scene, but somehow, they managed to play that completely straight. How do you keep a straight face under something as ridiculous as ALIENS?

So, I might just watch this anime as my token straight anime this season. All the shows I watched in Fall were ironic satire comedies, and I’m really starting to forget what ‘normal’ anime is like. Just like how my Anime Club may seem ‘weird’ to you hardcore anime fans, eventually, normal anime may seem weird to me. And that’s bad, because the last thing I’d like to do is babble on about anime that nobody understands.

Still, keeping a SOCCER DIARY is pretty lame. So is creating a SOCCER PLAY. And not sleeping so that you can play SOCCER outside. In the dark. At midnight. WITHOUT ANYBODY NOTICING

tl;dr: Area no Kishi is ALIENS.

Area no Kishi Cover Rating: 5/10 (Great) – Three-Episode Test

I did say Area no Kishi was great, right? It’s not any better than great. It’s just ~great~. Nothing less, nothing more.

I wrote this post within the span of one five-hour typing sprint-marathon. It’s like a marathon, but you sprint while marathoning – in other words, it’s tiring as wells off the coast of Finland, especially when I have to scroll through hundreds of lines of notes just to find something to write about. Next season, I’m actually going to, y’know, write this post section-by-section so that my eyes don’t bleed to death from staring at a computer screen for five hours non-stop.

(She’s just very tall for her age.)

MOVING ON – imagine my surprise when I found the next section already halfway written! It was quite ~SPANISH~, if you’ll excuse my injection.

Ano Natsu de Matteru

I’ve watched the rest of these (with the exception of Thermae Romae, which was TOO CLASSY for the Anime Club President) at Anime Club, and so, of course, I’ll show you a selection of the many intellectual and thoughtful responses each anime evoked in the hearts and minds of the Anime Club. Do keep in mind that my recollections may not be factually accurate, as I was mainly the one shouting things out and not listening to anybody else in particular or in general.

What I mean to say is to prove my hypothesis that Area no Kishi is ALIENS. But SCIENCE has already proved that! So I’ll extend this theory to include ALL ANIME being ALIENS.

I had already started working on this theory two weeks ago, when it was suddenly brought to my attention that anime IS aliens. I have two proofs, and shall replicate the first one:

anime -> aimen -> amien -> alien

This is by itself confident proof that anime IS aliens, as I discovered a week ago. However, now, more conclusive evidence has arrived to irrefutably prove that animes ARE indeed, aliens.

animes -> amnies -> amiens -> aliens

Observe my face: it is not fat and I am not Hirano Kouta.

Obviously, such SCIENCE is not what you ignorant plebeians are looking for as you journey to my blog. So, let us move on to the next topic.

I’ve always wanted to link to METANORN in one of my posts, for whatever reason or another. Unfortunately, I’m not going to link to METANORN for their post on Whatever Reason nor their post on Another; I’m going to link to METANORN for their post on Ano Natsu de Matteru. Which is quite similar to another, in that they both contain ‘ano’, just like ‘anohana’, ‘piano’, ‘hanoiro’, and ‘anime nano’. Whatever reason I want to link to METANORN is because they’re NORNs that talk about NORNs. They’re METANORNs, if you will. Well, not really. Anyways, I will now present what you’ve all always been waiting for: O-New ~the Recollections of Anime Club~

“WOW THIS GUY IS DEAD.”

“He talks to himself about cameras, how gay…”

“WHAT THE FUCK, why does this girl have RED HAIR?”

“WOW THIS LEMON GIRL IS SCARY.”

“What kind of name is Lemon, anyways? Who would name their daughter ‘Lemon’? I’d ‘eat’ Lemon if I we-”

“Shut up.”

“This guy knows all about this girl and he seduces teachers and the ‘girls will go wild over him’ and he’s super creepy and Japan is creepy!”

“So, there was this anime called Onegai Teacher, and blah blah blah I’m spouting out pretentious shit because I can blah blah blah…”

“WHY THE FUCK do they suddenly start talking about SWIMSUITS?

“These boys are all naked, how gay…”

“SWIMSUITS!”

“This main character is too creepy and this girl keeps on saying ‘ping-pong’, and the main character wants to teach her how to do ‘this and that’ and that’s sexual and creepy!”

“So, there was this anime called AnoHana, and blah blah blah I’m still spouting out pretentious nonsense blah blah blah…”

“WHAT THE FUCK, this GIRL just STAYS over at the house of a boy she DOESN’T EVEN KNOW.”

“SHOWER SCENE!”

“WOW THE GIRL IS AN ALIEN.”

“She comes out of the shower half-naked and hugs the boy and then kisses him while still half-naked and this is just porn!”

“She kisses him while naked… how gay.”

“WHAT THE FUCK, THIS IS JUST FULL-ON PORNOGRAPHY!”

“WOW THIS ANIME IS AWESOME!”

“I liked the part with the naked cartoon girls.”

“Suddenly, the principal walks in.”

tl;dr: Anime Club provides the BEST background music. Whereas there’s NO MUSIC AT ALL in the original, the backdrops of ridiculous laughter, ridicule, and shock at the creepiness of Japan blends in ~perfectly~ with the scenery

Ano Natsu de Matteru Cover Rating: 6/10 (Amazing) – Watching

Yes, I realize that segment had NOTHING to do with Ano(Ha)na-tsu but neither does the next section. Nor the next. Nor the one after that. Really, this season does suck, at least at the beginning; the fourth-best show of the season is a 6/10?! Maybe I’m just missing out by not watching any of the sequels this season. Maybe anime does suck – even to anime fans.

Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou

WHOOPS. I WAS LYING ABOUT THAT.

BECAUSE DANSHI KOUKOUSEI NO NICHIJOU IS AWESOME.

The next three anime just completely blow any other anime airing this season clean out of the water. These shows are GUARANTEED to be the BEST shows this season, NO MATTER WHAT. SEE THOSE FUCKING RANKINGS?! THEY’RE LYING TO YOU and also they’re not the episode 1 rankings which are here AND ALSO LYING TO YOU.

The Anime Club actually received Nichibros (TL Note: Nichibros means Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou in twitterspeak) quite normally, which proves again Rule #49 of Anime: “Good comedy anime will be universally well-received.” They laughed when they were supposed to laugh, and didn’t laugh when they weren’t supposed to laugh. Meanwhile, Rule #49b) of Anime states: “Mediocre comedy anime will be received differently by different people,” – for example, Nichijou, Mitsudomoe, and Gun-dou Musashi.

So, instead of talking about how everybody laughed (which would be quite boring, imo), I’m going to talk about my DAILY LIFE of a HIGH SCHOOL BOY (which is even more boring than Anime Club). It’s not funny at all. If you actually read this, you are the most bored person I ever (don’t) know

1. Wake up in the morning, eat my breakfast, brush my teeth.
2. That’s in the wrong order, but you all know what I mean.
3. Spam my ads on twitter, finding writers for O-New,
4. Then realizing that I just missed the bus and also fuck you.
5. Reach school on time anyways, nobody really cares.
6. Go to French class looking bored while sleeping on my hair.
7. (Since I spent last night writing this post, I’m pretty tired.)
8. Go to Art class with a sword, though I’m a frequent liar.
9. I hate the imperative mood, don’t you? Also I suck at rhythm.
10. Break for lunch and hang out with the ‘bros,
11. Surfing ’round the web on Google Chrome.
12. EXCEPT THIS ABSOLUTEZERO255 LOSER doesn’t even USE Google Chrome. That’s why he’s a LOSER. :(
13. Watch eighth graders play a game of Stratego,
14. I don’t even know what Stratego is but I think it’s pretty lame.



15. Go to Math class looking bored while sleeping
16. zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzz
17. this is now a POSTMODERNIST poem
18. the ‘po’ in ‘postmodernist’ sounds like the ‘poe’ in ‘poem’
19. also Edgar Allan Poe
20. zzz was a nice ED
21. I didn’t actually sleep though
22. Go to Science class looking like a high school boy,
23. Come out of Science class looking like a soy.
24. Just shut up guys I’m bad at anything beginning with ‘rhy’ and including but not limited to ‘rhythm’, ‘rhyming’, drinking from ‘rhyta’, digging ‘rhynes’, and mining ‘rhyolite’
25. you guys try to dig a rhyne
26. it’s really…
27. …
28. …
29. down to earth
30. DAMN I MISSED THE BUS
31. BY THE HOLY LOVE OF ALL CHEESE THAT IS POROUS WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS, MS. CIENCE?!
32. Running down to the bus stop at the SPEED OF FLYING MUSHROOMS.
33. Running down to the bus stop when suddenly, THE BUS IS NOW DIAMONDS.
34. Miss the first bus for being late, miss the second bus for being full,
35. What can do? Get on the third bus,
36. BUT THE EXPRESS BUS BEFORE IT OVERTAKES US
37. AND THE NON-EXPRESS BUS BEFORE THE EXPRESS BUS OVERTAKES US TOO

And now you know why this post was late.

You also know what the TRUE daily lives of a high school boy is like. It’s not that exciting. We don’t dig rhynes, we don’t mine rhyolite, and we don’t drink from rhyta. Nichibros is fun, it’s funny; it’s just not realistic. Sure, it’s more realistic than, say, Nichijou; but high school boys don’t do that shit. We shit and we eat and we shit again and we continue eating. That’s life. Daily life.

Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou Cover Rating: 7/10 (Hilarious) – Watching

I was reading Brave New World. The author put in the preface that (observe my eloquent <blockquote> skills):

I have been told by an eminent academic critic that I am a sad symptom of the failure of an intellectual class in time of crisis. The implication being, I suppose, that the professor and his collegues are hilarious symptoms of success.

>mfw ‘hilarious symptoms of success’

oh right, this is an anime post :x

Another

Time for ANOTHER segment of DAILY LIFE! There hasn’t been this much attention to horrible puns since the squidilicious (!?) adventures of Squid Girl last season, and the sad part is, THEY’RE NOT EVEN PUNS! I’m looking at you, Yi.

So, I’m not going to be ANOTHER person to use ANOTHER one of these stupid puns. You guys know me! I’m not that type of guy! Right?

The sad part about Another is that I can’t talk about the plot when I’m not blogging it. It makes no sense, since half of the fun of watching a horror anime is conjecturing stupid unbased theories with pretentious drunk twitterers. Seeing as, uh, I’ve watched one episode of another, I can hardly do that; and so, it’s not as fun as I would’ve liked watching it to be. It is the second-best show that I’m ‘watching’ this season, though; but that says something more about this season than about this show. Observe: a satisfied viewer of ANOTHER show. Satisfied, but not blown away. Normally, each season has a show that blows you away; apparently, not this. Thanks, trzr23, for writing that post, so that I seem more sophisticated and connected in the aniblogosphere than I did before you wrote that post. Now I can link to somebody on ANOTHER section of my post and sound knowledgeable about anime I haven’t even watched!

(This is my math teacher, except my math teacher is a) dark b) AWESOME c) bald d) AWESOME. Notice a pattern?)

HOWEVER, thankfully, I have a WHOLE OTHER GROUP of woefully innocent, unpretentious classmates to talk to Another about – the ANIME CLUB! Let’s see what the Anime Club thinks of ANOTHER show…

“WOW THIS ANIME IS CREEPY!”

“Man look at my SUPERIOR lunch which is SUPERIOR to your lunch.”

“I’m talking about things that DON’T EVEN HAVE TO DO WITH ANIME!!”

“Be quite guys!”

“But I’m a girl!”

“Man, none of us actually even SAID these things during anime club!”

“This Mushyrulez guy is such a loser.”

“Be quiet guys! There is an anime and we are watching anime.”

“WOW PEOPLE ARE DYING!”

“WHY THE FUCK does this person’s AUNT, who graduated from high school TWENTY years ago, so young?!”

“This main character is suffering from a disease and these people visit him and these people are creepy and they elbow each other because they’re creepy and this anime is creepy and it’s even better than MIRAI NIKKI!”

“Aw yeah, MIRAI NIKKI, that was the best anime I’ve ever watched! I wish more anime were like Mirai Nikki. That shit was intense!”

“So, there was this anime called Shiki, and blah blah blah vampires blah blah sparkles blah blah twilight blah blah blah…”

“WOW THIS GUY’S DAD IS REALLY COOL! AND HE’S IN INDIA!”

“Why is he going down to the morgue? How gay.”

“This girl tries to do a long jump and jumps and longs and fails and she’s a stupid girl and girls are stupid!”

“WOW THIS GIRL’S NAME IS MISAKI. SO SHE’S DEAD! THIS IS JUST LIKE MIRAI NIKKI!”

“Suddenly, the principal comes in.”

“Nobody would even CARE if the principal came in because the anime’s OVER.”

The end.

Stay tuned for the ADVENTURES OF ANIME CLUB, chapter TWO, available online starting from next season. Was that too short? Wanted me to talk more about Another anime? Fuck you, write for O-New or go away-ew.

Another Cover Rating: 7/10 (Brilliant) – Watching

Thermae Romae

Man, this show is awesome!

Too bad it’s already over.

As you may not know, I just whittled over four hours of my possible blogging time watching Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged. Why? Because by Madoka Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged is AWESOME. It makes fun of itself, nothing’s serious, and it just strikes all the right nerves. If I could nominate something for Anime Power Rankings, I’d nominate Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged every week – it just blows everything clean out of the water.

Yes, I know that each episode is only five minutes long. But within that five minutes, what happens? Characters are developed, stories are told, and jokes are to be had. What about a corresponding five minutes in anime? Within those five minutes, what happens? Lame music plays through, scene transitions are made, characters talk about nothing at all, and everything’s dull and boring.

Yes, I know that I just said that in Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, ‘characters are developed’. They are! They’re like how characters are developed in Charles Dickens’s novels (ugh, English class) – each character rigidly conforms to their each quirks and eccentricities. Whether this reflects reality is debatable, but it firmly entrenches our ideas and perceptions of those characters into our very skulls. You know immediately who’s speaking in Dickens’s novels just from their diction, even if it’s not mentioned; and similarly, you’d know immediately who’s who in Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, even if their faces and voices were mixed randomly. Well, maybe not the voices part, the voices are a main part of the show.

Yes, I know that Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged’s voices are amateur and sound horrible. But I love it! They don’t try to hide anything, they don’t try to make the show more realistic. It’s impossible to make an anime realistic; by Rule #19 of Anime, “All anime strive to portray reality; but to create a realistic anime is heresy.” Any animator that dares make a realistic anime is not a true animator. Since it’s impossible to make anime realistic, there’s really no point in bothering with realism at all; but unfortunately, Rule #19 also restricts that, as ‘all anime strive to portray reality’. Thus, the only good anime are not anime.

Who cares if Thermae Romae is short? Who cares if the art style is horrible (I personally think it radiates style FROM ITS ARMPITS)? Who cares if the music is anachronistic (not even violins existed back then), and if Liszt’s orchestral Liebestraum and Debussy’s Clair de Lune (hey, I played this!) were the best uses of Romantic music in an anime this year? Who cares if this year hasn’t even started in earnest?!

As long as it’s fun, it’s awesome.

And that’s what Thermae Romae is. It’s Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, but it’s an anime.

So, of course, it’s not actually an anime. It’s going to be a live-action film soon, though – starring ABE HIROSHI! This MATTERS because apparently, ABE HIROSHI is some COOL DUDE. When I grow up, I want to be a COOL DUDE, but that’ll have to wait until I grow up. But Thermae Romae is better than anime. It transcends anime. It’s animation.

Thermae Romae Cover Rating: 9/10 (Legendary) – Watching

Let’s sum this shit up. 12 + 18 = 30, 30 + 19 = 49, 49 – 23 = 37, 37 + 18 – 2 = 19, 32 = 49, 107 – 26 = 24, 0 = 8, et cetera.

I think I’ve covered most half-decent non-sequel shows in this post, except for Koi-Ken! (which hasn’t aired). RE: Sequels, I’ve heard interesting things about Amagami SS+ being somewhat decent, but the popularity of Nisemonogatari (in English, two Nicean video game company fences) dwarfs EVERYTHING so far. I think it’s more because of its controversial tooth-brushing than because it’s considered excellent by everybody. Anime Club-wise, I doubt they’ll watch Amagami SS+ (though they did watch the iDOLM@STER, so who knows?), and if they watch Two Nicean Video Game Company Fences, I shall fucking beat that Anime Club President up so hard that he’ll switch his jacket from blue to red. Meanwhile, a random kid I don’t know decided to watch some mecha show with an orange-haired, purple-eyed main character; I’ll assume that’s Aquarion EVOL, and it looked pretty stupid. By stupid, I mean it looked like Gundam AGE but with older protagonists – that is to say, it looked like normal Gundam. But I haven’t watched normal Gundam, so I can’t make that comparison.

What was this post really about, anyways? It was about anime, sure. It was about me, sure. But most importantly: it was about Anime Club.

Time to reuse this image! (If I didn’t, it’d be a waste, considering the COUNTLESS HOURS I spent on its creation.)

tl;dr: pretentiousness