Though the premise of each episode thus far has been fairly similar, I’d never accuse this show of being on cruise control. It’s simply too well-handled. Muromi-san a roller coaster ride that has as much fun making fun of its own ideas as it does playing them straight up.
It’s time to welcome back one of the best anime currently airing from a 3-week recap break. This break was entirely forgivable in my book for 3 reasons:
1. The series had not had a recap previously.
2. The move to a new timeslot means there are a lot of people just tuning in who have no clue what’s going on. Recaps serve to fill them in so that they keep watching.
3. Spring 2013 has brough with it pretty crowded Saturdays (Attack on Titan, Muromi-san, Hentai Ouji), so Space Bros’ being on break made it easier to blog those intros.
If it had gone for a fourth week, though, it would’ve started to count for something. It came back not a moment too soon, really.
Ever wonder how much it costs to license anime? Well, thanks to this article on ADV’s bankruptcy proceedings, we now have some idea of what the costs are.
A more interesting question is this: where do those costs come from? Is there some factor that predicts how much companies are willing to shell out?
Using this page to compare with per-volume Japanese sales (22 of the 29 titles are listed there), we can get some idea of whether American and Japanese anime markets actually overlap.
So Photo Kano ended up being a study as to why scriptwriters are necessary even for skilled directors. The visual sense in that show is excellent, and fits the main character’s story very well, but the script is a bunch of torrid rust. I’m willing to bet Akitoshi Yokoyama had full control over the situation to the extent that nobody with veto power could come up to him and told him some of his story ideas were really, really bad. Even Masaki Yuasa’s name in a cutaway bit can’t save that script. I would watch another thing of his, provided his next producer keeps him 10 kilometers away from the script.
Moving on to shows that actually have me interested, I really like where Devil Survivor 2 is going. After a mediocre first episode, it’s been picking up the pace by laying down a layer of intrigue, setting up fast-moving, area-conscious fight scenes, and pumping up on drama. Thus, I’m making my hop right back on the ol’ rock-steady Kishi Seiji bandwagon.
I like the characters of Arata Kangatari a lot more than I probably should. If I had to say why, it’s how believable they are. Arata, especially, but Kotoha’s had her moments. Too, the cast is adding members in this prison arc, hinting at their futures (or lack thereof) in all the right ways.
This week’s Muromi-san episode felt a lot like a deliberate homage, taking themes from a number of older, well-established comedies and building them into a fun episode about irrational specism.
Different anime and manga, and really all works of entertainment, have different ways of captivating their audiences. Some of them create mental mementos so strong that they last forever whether you want them to or not, and others leave light footprints that disappear with the first snowfall, but are no less beautiful.
Photo Kano is more on notice than it was last week. There is a very definite difference between capturing the beauty of the female form on film (at the very least, I’ve known a number of seriously legit cosplay photographers who are very above board) and shooting non-consensual gravure pics. I’m still fairly firm on the opinion that Photo Kano’s protagonist is aiming at the former, which is why I’m still watching it. Even so, given that there are two characters very much in the latter category prominently featured in the show, it really wouldn’t hurt for it to keep convincing me. Especially after that one exceptionally dumb slow-motion scene in the second half.
One of the many controversial features of sites like myanimelist and aniDB that allow users to list their anime is their inclusion of toplists. What’s the proper way to weight scores? Should sequels (which have an intrinsic advantage in 10-point averages) be counted normally? Is there a point to having one at all when it invites as much vitriol as it sometimes does?
Though actual discussions over topics like these tend to descend into unglorified hoopla fairly quickly, these toplists and rankings can be very interesting subjects for study. Especially if you dig a layer below the top and start to look at what they really measure.
One statement I find almost as irritating as the ubiquitous “well, in the manga…” in anime discussions is the assertion that “_ gets better in the second season!” Now, sometimes this is actually true, but it’s important to understand that the act of making this statement implies a hefty bias.
Animetics 