“I’m betting the aforementioned stab will cost Kadowaki a lot in the way of mental stability, so his next clash with Arata should be prime-time viewing. Bonus points if he butts in in the middle of a face-off between Arata and Yorunami.”
-Me, 6 days ago
Just wanted to point out that I got a prediction right for once. Added some enjoyment to an episode that was already good for other reasons.
I really wish Fuji and her giant boobs were out of the cast. They represent one very weak link on an otherwise strong chain of comedy. A jealous female friend isn’t out of the question in a comedic cast, but it kind of feels like she’s just an excuse for the show to not be worksafe.
The MOB continues with great theatrical flair! Another round of articles has been poasted and can be voted on here: http://mangaweekend.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/manga-olympics-for-bloggers-poll-round-1part-2/
Our own articles can be found on the page above and are linked to below:
Shojo/Josei: Beating Back the Bullies – Adversity in Manga With a Female Audience
Shonen/Seinen: Shonen Manga Up and Comers – Part 2 (Sakamoto Desu Ga?)
Shonen/Seinen: Oneshots, Hand-Holding-Dance-Fighting, and Punching Failure in the Solar Plexus – The Evolution of Komi Naoshi
The reason this episode post took so long is that there was so much brilliance in this episode I legitimately had to watch the episode a good 4 more times, take my reaction notes from different runs, organize them, and edit in some shot-for-shot analysis for the past two days. There was too much stuff both important and sublimely executed that I couldn’t not talk about all of it. Short version: It takes some effort to parlay one character’s death flags into development for another who’s never met her before. This is one episode I’ll be coming back to along with Dear Hibito and Brian as go-tos for why Space Brothers is the best anime of the decade to date, easily the best episode of anime to air since I started this blog, and probably one of my all-time favorites. Like its main character, this show has no ceiling.
I believe that 20 minutes of time is valuable because I could use that time trying out any number of known amazing anime or manga I have yet to get to. Why persevere when Space Adventure Cobra is waiting right there with an arm cannon, fine wine, and sexy bodies that save the universe? Consequentially, I’m not too attached to the idea that I need to finish any particular anime. If I’m 99% sure I’m not getting anything desirable out of the remaining episodes of the show, that’s grounds for a drop. This is a post about the Spring 2013 anime which showed potential at one point, but didn’t make it past the finish line. This is not a post about first-episode drops, which I covered earlier this season, or didn’t-watch shows.
I’m a tremendous fan of battle series that play with creative power systems. So I was ecstatic when, some 5 years ago now, a new fantasy adventure manga about a couple who needed to hold hands constantly or perish called Double Arts arrived on the scene. I was equally devastated when, half a year later, Weekly Shonen Jump’s ruthless management killed the series dead immediately after some of the best introductory chapters of manga I’d ever read. I was younger then and didn’t realize that there were thousands of amazing manga I’d never even be able to read in my lifetime, so I was all kinds of devastated.
This whole affair was my introduction to one Komi Naoshi, a multiclass genius of a manga author who handily survived Double Arts’ cancellation and is currently set to break the anime barrier with an adaptation of two-years-young Weekly Shonen Jump (hereafter WSJ) manga Nisekoi. He’s also one of the few personalities in manga or anime who gets exponentially cooler the more I read about him. If you don’t currently have the afternoon’s worth of time to check out his entire mangaography (something I wholly endorse), then you might as well read this column.
We at Animetics believe that ordinary anime seasonal blog previews are kind of boring. Thus, we made Spring’s preview into a wager-based game. Now, the winner of Spring’s game coolly makes odds for summer while the losers set themselves up for failure while chasing back wine and rum. Unless you’ve been reading us for a while, you’ve never read a preview quite like this. We’re taking mad bets on the Summer 2013 Anime Season, Vegas-style.
Early on in this episode, it seemed like Hibiki was inching a bit closer towards the position of “win by default” protagonist – one whose ideals are upheld because he happens to be the one not to die off. Systematically killing off the supporting cast (even more of them this week) has served to increase his chances of winning without him doing anything. Kind of like how Russel Westbrook’s season-ending injury cleared the Western Conference field for the Spurs this year. However, it’d be a lie to say that Hibiki’s done nothing, and that’s not the only narrative surrounding him heading into the finale.
Last week for the shonen/seinen bracket, I wrote about how shonen manga cleverly taught kids a variety of fairly useful life lessons. I originally wanted to start the shojo/josei series the same way, but the “shonen/seinen/shojo/josei is not a genre” frustration stuck me at the right time and before I knew it I had an article. But there’s plenty of juice left in this battery, and 2 weeks left in the first round of competition. Let’s get to it.
There’s one theme I’ve noticed which shows up a lot in shojo manga (and still quite often in josei manga). Call it peer adversity, bullying, social stress, or whatever, but it’s fairly common for the lead character in manga targeted towards women to be on the receiving end of nasty treatment by her peers. They way different characters respond is a study in variety, and while my experience with shojo manga is by no means exhaustive, what I see shows me a medium with a mission of teaching women young and old how to cope and fight back.
I’ve talked about Ace of the Diamond before. It’s my second-favorite baseball manga of all time*, and it is so because it a) is not about a team of scrappy underdogs, which allows for b) one of the most interesting dynamics in any sports manga – 4 highly skilled pitchers with alpha dog personalities competing for one starting spot on an elite baseball team. When that dynamic gets folded into competitive baseball matches, the result is a fantastic two-level narrative. This week, we were reminded who was alpha dog prime, and why. Before I go any further into how amazingly unique Tanba is as a character, here’s his “I logged a K against the other team’s ace with the tying run on third and two outs” face.**
Which might as well be the rest of my column, but I like to write
Animetics 