Courage in Tamako Market 3
[MUSHYHIJACK: I have rescheduled this post to clear January 13th – February 15th of any posts. The original posting date was January 25th.]
Imagine for a moment that the simple things in life become the most difficult. Everything is turned upside down. What if it were easier to be cold and distant than to be warm and friendly? What if saying “thank you” felt unnatural and impossible?
2012 Summer Anime Preview
You know how our season previews go. There’s a basic formula to all of them. First, a summary, then a picture, then a disclaimer talking about how I stole all this information from other blogs, and then the actual post, written by me, Mushyrulez, all by myself.
WELL GUESS WHAT?! WE’RE SWITCHING THINGS UP A BIT THIS YEAR. How?
Firstly, there WON’T BE A PICTURE after a summary which is this summary which is this sentence and the sentences immediately before and after this. In fact, THERE MAY NOT BE ANY PICTURES AT ALL!!!
Secondly, there WON’T BE A DISCLAIMER after a picture because, wow, we’ve actually done NO research this time!! That means no embedded chart, no witty quips, no snide references to MAL, no NOTHING AT ALL. Since there’s something. You can’t have nothing if you have something, which is why we don’t have nothing. In fact, this new preview is so much worse than older previews that we recommend you just read the older ones instead!!
Thirdly, there WON’T BE ANY TRAILER LINKS because we’re too lazy to go search them up for you!! I know, simply horrible, right? WRONG, because it takes you lazy ducks all of ten seconds to go search ‘generic fanservice shit anime #101 trailer’ on YouTube while it takes us thirty to embed said trailer onto our page. No, we’re not being hypocritical, we’re being hyper-critical. Of your laziness.
Finally, we’re not going to spend thirty million hours writing this post and adding stupid ‘potential’ ratings so that we can publish it before we’re ten weeks into the season. Thirty hours is enough.
Fetish Fanservice
I never fully understood fanservice until I watched Mysterious Girlfriend X episode nine.
Mysterious Girlfriend X has a persistent theme of fetish. The show starts with a fetish for saliva, as everyone knows by now. It doesn’t stop there, though. The show explores exhibitionism, secret love, clothes fetishes, some light BDSM themes, sweat, and tan lines. Episode 9 is about hair. That’s what finally got me.
Hypocrisy in Sankarea
A guest post by @redball of shinda akachan, reprinted on O-New with his permission.
Sankarea has two recurring themes. The first, on the surface, is the theme of zombie obsession, and thus an obsession with death. The second is easily overlooked, but the theme of hypocrisy is pervasive.
Now I have to give credit to twitter. I think it was Captain L.B.C. who first pointed out the hypocrisy in Sankarea, noting that the main villain in the series is guilty of the same crime as the series itself. Both Rea’s father and the viewer ogle and objectify Rea via his risque photographs of her. He goes to the utmost extremes, with a shrine to his daughter’s nude form and later bath scenes with the photos strewn about. Yet, the viewer is presented with many of these same images. What, if not fanservice is the purpose of this?
At first I did not notice this hypocrisy. I figured the series was trying, without much tact, to show the depths of the father’s depravity. I won’t claim to be above fanservice, but I didn’t take that as a presentation thereof. However, once this alternative view was presented I watched with a more critical eye and realized that it is correct. The series is quite hypocritical in this regard and it does objectify and sexualize Rea much the same as her father.
O-New 