This ending wasn’t exactly the stuff of legends, as it packed in a sequel hook and cut things a bit short. Still, it was a microcosm of the show and an enjoyable watch.
I’ve mentioned before how I often I see misconceptions about shojo manga in my group of anime-fan friends. The most common misconception that pops up is that shojo is a one-note genre (rather than a demographic, which it is by definition), but a close second is the assumption that female fans are a small minority among those that follow anime. While that’s somewhat true in Japan, it couldn’t be further from the truth in America. Indeed, female fans may make up the majority of manga buyers in the United States. So why so few shojo anime? I’ve got a take on that.
Since declaring bankruptcy, Studio Gonzo’s spent years in the proverbial doghouse. What better way to celebrate that status than to produce an anime about dogs and sadism?
Smarter people than myself have pointed out that anime marketing usually gives a fairly accurate picture of that core product. That goes double when the salesman is an actual episode of the show. Fantasista Doll and Sunday Without God made the bold first steps into July with a pair of early-air episodes, and I’m definitely excited to meet them at the doorstep.
This episode had everything I liked about the show stuffed inside. What a great way to go out for what’s definitely been my favorite show of Spring 2013.
Last week’s episode was an utterly amazing display of great body language and visualism on display, coupled with some great human drama. This week’s wasn’t a big step down, as we got a lot of characterization for Serika and Sharon in addition to the titular brothers.
You know the old saying; “Stats don’t lie, except when they do.” Using stats to argue point son anime is kind of tough, as any individual figure, be it Japanese sales, TV Ratings, merchandising fees paid, or online ranking site figures, only reveals a small part of the overall picture. Since I compiled a rather large database containing multiple stat lines for 95% of the anime to air over the past 8 years, I might as well use it to numerically classify true-blue-chippers.
Allow me to introduce a very exclusive society, the Hit-L-Double-Double (HLDD) Club. It’s the list of anime that have accomplished 4 feats, 3 of which are very difficult individually. Specifically, it’s the list of anime that have sold 10,000+ units per volume in Japan (megahit sales territory), been licensed overseas (international sales viability), and have myanimelist rankings and popularities in the top 100/double digits (esteem and popularity overseas).
This is a list of the unequivocal successes, the things that have amassed not only megahit status in Japan, but also a significant English-speaking fanbase and critical praise. These are numerically irrefutable successes, at least in theory. You could call it the “talk to anyone” list, because you could talk to anyone in the industry and they would agree with you that it was a rock-solid commodity. From 2005-2012, anyway (that’s the era I have all the data for). All the members from that period are listed below, along with their statlines. Sequels are excluded to keep it tidy, and because they’re rarely much different from s1 stats-wise.
This list is not meant to be very surprising. It’s just a slightly different way of thinking about blue-chip anime.
Yoshida Matoi’s Natsu no Zenjitsu is a fantastic work about artists and art with the best actual artstyle I’ve ever seen. Unlike a lot of artists with exceptionally good art, though, Matoi also knows storyboarding and the finer points of manga. The result is a consistent barrage of scenes that convey emotions and sensations as only manga can. This chapter, featuring a main character feeling what’s best described as “complex distress” is full of such scenes.
Scenes that, I’m sure, left the Good! Afternoon guy in charge of ink crying his eyes out
Well, Devil Survivor 2 is over now. That was a very standard cookbook ending, and only a few things happened that were really worth commenting on.
I’ve been writing about shonen for the past 2 weeks of this competition, and Keima only knows if I’ll make it out of the first round, so I might as well use the freedom I’ve got to coin a term that’s been percolating in my head for a while and talk about seinen (and some shonen, as well) while people are listening. I’ve taken to calling some manga Mid-Major because they’re great in a way that screams “improbable” and “unsustainable”, but because of that are even more fun to watch than consistently great ones. Clearly not top-tier, but clearly blessed with enough potential to make a little legend, like Dunk City FGCU demolishing Georgetown in this year’s NCAA Tourney.* There’s an appeal to watching the little engine that could suddenly transform into a giant robot and dropkick a galaxy, and nowhere (other than sports) does this phenomenon happen more often than in the world of monthly manga.
Animetics 