Monday, July 11, 2011

TV and such


A-Channel

So the last episode of A-Channel aired a few weeks ago, and since, the show did surprisingly poorly wrt sales etc - as far as I can tell – that will be probably be the last time we see the comical and moe adventures of four high school girls. I'm joking, of course. There's plenty of shows starting next season that are, essentially, the same show as A-Channel. I can think of three off the top of my head. Next season there will likely be even more. I think at a certain point pandering becomes unethical. I have strong moral beef with heroin dealers, for example. Moe dealers are a strange beast, though. The money spent on is not usually money that would go to food or other responsibilities because the typical fan has no responsibilities and is also nutritionally sustained by watching moe anime. This is money that's going to be thrown away somewhere, and it really just comes down to where. And, really, I think it could be going to a lot worse places than anime. Like heroin. People say moe crowds out other, more creative and generally quality anime, robbing them of the money they were likely to make and forcing them into a beat-em or join-em type ultimatum, usually opting for the latter. This might be true. But really, if more money is flowing into the industry, I can't see that as a bad thing. Kyoani mad serious bank on K-On!, probably the most moe show of all time, not to even mention their earlier megahit Clannad, and used that to fuel some real masterpieces – Endless Eight, the Disappearance, and, most recently, throwing just absurd amounts of money at 26 episodes of something that no one could accurately predict if anyone would want to watch. I mean Nichijou, of course. Did you guys see episode 14? Probably the best one yet!! The new opening is completely bananas!!! Like, I refuse to believe that moe anime is really being generated by some heartless conglomerated giant profit-analysis robot, even if I make jokes about it and feel I could probably actually write a script to generate A-Channel episodes. Really, it's all just animators, voice actors, writers, sculptors, doujin artists, etc, and, at the very core, usually some mangaka with a 4-panel gag strip or someone who wrote some light novels for a lark. These are the people who do well when moe does well, and I'm really happy for them.

On the other hand, or perhaps just the other side of the same hand, shows like A-Channel have basically no worth outside of the fact that they're fun to watch. Not that they need to. It's just that I can totally empathize when someone laments the abundance of moe. Before I managed to pretty much just enjoy everything all the time, I was bothered by things like the amount of rap music on the radio! Seriously! Weird times. There was a good post I saw the other day about how people are more prone to get confirmation bias towards something they hate, though, like, you're more likely to notice and internally overestimate the presence of a trend you dislike over one you dislike. I'm too lazy to find the post and sort of worried I might have just dreamed it or something but anyways I definitely feel like that's the case here. I mean there isn't that much moe anime!

A lot of Moe Anime Reviews:

A-Channel Finale

So they were actually a bit more reserved than I thought they'd be with this one in some ways. I mean, sure, there was the whole cat + tree + leaves in the hair etc scene, that was pretty out there. But the second half of the episode takes place in a fast food restaurant, not a beach or a gym class pool or anything. Didn't expect that! Anyways yeah this was, I dunno, pleasant. No resolution to anything that could be considered an overarching plotline – they started friends with Tooru worrying about losing touch, and that's how they ended, Nagi still is worried about diets etc and the other characters didn't have anything going on to begin with. I guess if I could summarize A-Channel in a word it would be “efficient”. Earlier I described it as a “moe force of nature”, I still think that's pretty accurate. The effectiveness of it may suggest some complicated internal design, but really it's all motivated by very simple desires and minimal evolution. It had many failures, many shortcomings. The plotlines rarely made sense and were never interesting enough to motivate the plot. Most of the jokes fell flat. It was in questionable taste on many occasions. On the other hand, the production was excellent – music, voice acting and animation was all on point consistently, aside from maybe a few lazy things like the insert song pans. And really, good production alone is enough to save something like this. Like some genres of music, once enough money is thrown at it, it pretty much has to sound catchy and such. It's exploitative and manipulative but it works if you let it and as a result you enjoy yourself. There's no illusions with A-Channel, no attempt to make it seem any more meaningful than it is, and that's a refreshing level of honesty. There seems to be a level of trust between moe otaku and producers of shows like this, maybe similar to the trust between an addict and drug dealer. You're both aware and aware that the other is aware that the product is simple, derivative and possibly dangerous to your health or financial health. Who has moral obligations? I don't really know and the analogy is a bit too stretched for me to care. Really, all it is, and this is really really all it is: A-Channel is an enjoyable show to watch. And that's why I'm watching these shows this season:

The Idolmaster

I've never played the games or anything but pretty much anyone in my line of interests has some base cultural awareness of Idolmaster. Mine comes primarily from Miura, author of blood and guts masterpiece Berserk, who loves to ramble on about the series instead of his own in interviews, which I consider about the funniest thing in the world. Anyways I figure I should check out the anime. Production value is through the roof on this one, which I guess is appropriate. The character designs are all very refined by this point and you can tell they've spent like half a decade or whatever figuring out how to make them as likable as possible. What I found hilarious was that they seemed to actually work through the episode to make the characters more one-dimensional. Like, when you meet the energetic girl or whatever, you think “alright yeah energetic girl, I know this character, this character is interesting” but no, it turns out to actually be “animal character”, whose personality is “excited about animals” and every scene with her is about animals. It makes sense in the context of a game, I guess, but I'm curious about how they're planning on trying to do full episodes with such narrow characters. Like, how will they get animals to tie into every episode or whatever? I dunno not much else to do when you have THIRTEEN CHARACTERS what's that yes THIRTEEN CHARACTERS, over THREE TIMES AS MANY as a typical show in this genre. Crazy. Almost completely overwhelming, especially in scenes where they're all on screen. The scene at the end of the first episode where they're swarming the camera was legitimately frightening. I don't know what sort of impression it was supposed to give but they might have gone a bit too far and looped into some reptile-brain instinctive terror reflex.

YuruYuri

I was skeptical about this one but at the same time I knew I'd either enjoy it legitimately or in some weird metasense over its absurdity, so I wasn't too worried or anything. It was surprisingly a lot of the former; the show has a level of self-awareness and faith in the viewer rare in this genre, and they're ready to actually play with the conventions a bit with actual hilarity ensuing. It succeeds at the fundamentals too, of course: character designs are great, production's good, etc. It's not gonna rival Nichijou or anything but it is pretty dang funny.

Double J

This one I wanted to watch 'cause it was an adaptation of a comic the guy who did Cromartie High School. Really funny stuff but like what is with these three minute shows? I watched another one and it was confusing. When do they air? Between other shows? I have no idea. Anyways this one was good enough that I really wish it was longer or more frequent or something. I love the characters and premise and art style and all that. I'd just read the manga but I really like the voice acting too. Oh well.

Morita-san wa Mukuchi

This is the other 3-minuteish long one. I liked the premise – another 4girl mSoL show but one of them is “socially awkward”! Haha! Recipe4laffs! But I dunno this was kinda fun but mainly just strange. Like, they were trying so hard to get this socially awkward premise across that it just became ridiculously unrealistic.

Usagi Drop

This one I was really interested in 'cause it looked like it was gonna be Yotsuba but bleak. I like when I assume something will be something impossible, and “bleak Yotsuba” is like a completely analytic oxymoron. And I like it even more when it somehow succeeds!! This was a very moving episode. The art style was fantastic, the atmosphere a sincerely beautiful melancholy, the premise promising... it basically succeeded on all counts. I have a hard time picturing how future episodes will go but I look forward to them.

Sitcom News

Party Down

Started watching this one a bit ago and I'm pretty impressed. My only real beef is one that I have with a lot of sitcoms these days, where the characters are sorta asymmetric in regards to quirkiness/wackiness. Like you have caricature types bumping up with “real folks” types. The caricature types are more fleshed out than typical caricature types but the “real folks” types are also deeper and you still get a sort of jarring dissonance. Oh well. The premise is genius, allows them a lot of freedom with new characters and settings and all that good stuff. I like all the characters, the style of humour is great, and it hints at being genuinely moving without getting too mushy. Hooray!

Workaholics

This is like “Trailer Park Boys with jobs”, another analytically oxymoronic miracle of execution. Or maybe it's more like an Adult Swim cartoon with a “realistic premise”? I dunno what it is is funny. Not every episode premise goes off as smoothly as it should but even the ones that don't have lots of good laughs. And the ones that do? My goodness. I feel like the show's biggest shortcoming is their desire to really plot it up, to have like, a resolution that follows from the previous actions, and sometimes that makes it get really clunky or rushed in the latter acts, but sometimes, when it doesn't have to get very contrived, it's near magical.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8

Ohhh boy. Excited for this. I'm among the radical group believing that Curb will someday surpass Seinfeld, both in longevity and quality. It's only one season behind (although many, many episodes less) in the former metric, and I gotta say, I'm expecting it to eventually outdo its godlike predecessor on the latter as well. Larry David just has way more freedom here than he ever has before – he can make as many episodes as he likes whenever he wants to make them, his budget and length is whatever he wants, he can pull in practically any celebrity... plus, the plot itself gives him so much freedom. Larry David the character has no obligations, can do pretty much anything he wants, can go anywhere and have whoever he wants show up – and it's all completely believable! I really do think it's been generally improving over every season, and this latest episode makes me believe we'll see him surpass himself again. He's out on the street with Leon?? Ricky Gervais is going to show up in an episode later? He's divorced and back on the dating scene maybe? What more do you want?


I guess that's about it.  

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