Anime reviews
Dunno why I keep doing these. Well, they're sorta fun to write and really easy to write and after I write easy stuff like this for awhile I'm usually in the mood to write more interesting things. Also it's cool to go back and have access to your old opinions, even if they're sorta uninteresting opinions. I'm not really sure who I expect is reading these but whatever.
Idolmaster episode 4
Yeah basically what I said last week still applies. They have a few characters whose quirks do not mesh with the idol lifestyle and they have to do something about it. This was “only wants to sing shy reserved girl” episode. I like her. At first I sort of thought she'd just be the Sakaki-type reserved character but this episode revealed that she's more of a passionate but uncompromising type that has difficulty stepping outside her boundaries etc. Almost a unique archetype! And the way they built this character up was actually quite reserved instead of the more “here is a list of qualities of the character (the list has one item on it)” style of character development they'd been doing before. So yeah, actually turning into something here! Cooking episode was a lot of fun. They also made a big play by having a bunch of characters not appear at all. This is a pretty bold move but I'd say they really do a better job when they don't have to worry about shoving in every character at some point. Even though I miss some characters sure I'd rather actually feel some connection to the ones that do show up than have everyone pushed onscreen for a gag. So yeah, impressive. Character development without just being like “oh problem solved”, move on. I was honestly not expecting that. Looks like this character will get another episode at least somewhat focused on her, which I'm fine with. Mysterious girl had some good gags but not much development. Animal girl had a bit too many gags focused on her hamster but generally was expanded. Main character girl actually seemed to become simpler as she appears more and more to just be clumsy girl. So yeah, not too great outside of singing girl, but bun. They had a character have a realization, step outside of her boundaries while still having boundaries, recognize a good lesson, etc, etc. That's good. That's about the best you can hope from such a show. Good job.
Usagi Drop episode 4
Seems like this show might step up to the plate as like a phenomenon or something. All sorts of young Japanese men usually content to munch grass, defiant to their selfish genes and eager to nurture and spread memes - incidentally I finally got around to reading The Selfish Gene this weekend and it's like an if you've only got a hammer, or I guess more like if you just got a really cool new hammer, everything starts to look like it has an interesting explanation in gene theory. Of course I still have some semi-conflicting philomystical beliefs but yeah I dunno get to that later wait what was this supposed to be about? Usagi Drop is awakening people's parental instincts. In other people it is scaring away plans of having children as it certainly seems pretty tough to do. I don't think anyone could argue that it's especially unrealistic, though. Probably more realistic than Yotsuba? I dunno. Certainly more mixed with regards to parenting being good times vs. hard times. But actually yeah I wouldn't say the ability to awaken parental instincts is even the high point of this anime and is really more a comment on its general quality than a specific quality of it. The high point is, still, the emotional atmosphere, and I gotta say, they're doing a simply excellent job. I gotta say I'm a bit confused about how aggressively they seem to be pursuing what I'd expect to be the ultimate plot arc – tracking down the girl's mother – it makes me wonder what they're planning on doing to top it afterward and I'm skeptical that they can stretch it out for the rest of the series. Especially with that cliffhanger. Daaang.
Yuruyuri episode 5
The setup for the first half of this show was absolutely flawless in stylistic execution. The premise for this plotline was also fairly novel and well foreshadowed and not holey or anything. The execution was great, lots of variety in the gags and good pacing for them. So yeah. First half excellent. Second half: first scene was good! It's cool to see that even the secondary characters are developed enough that they can support a scene like this on their own. Yeah they have basically the most oldschool two-way tsundere relationship possible but whatever it's fun. Super bonus points for the scene with the younger sister, that was completely unexpected and hilarious and adorable. The whole conversation about Akarin and the subsequent fantasy was really funny, making the effort to go all out on these stylistic departure instead of settling on just putting the minimum required to show it as a parody. Actually, anime does this pretty well, it's western shows that I have beef with getting lazy mainly. Anyways. The meme of Akarin being forgotten/overlooked/obscured whatever I still find really funny, and they're evolving it quite nicely, letting it hydra off into more elaborate jokes of the same “she has little presence” premise and also jokes about her being “invisible” but like, literally invisible. So yeah, p hilarious. Okay moving on. Final scene. Okay. I watch a lot of strange things, yes. I like Nichijou. That's too easy. I like Paul Robertson. Basically surface after Scott Pilgrim's game, though. I like surreal art films about cars stuck in snow. Easy. I dunno. I feel like I can't say I like strange things after watching this. Now, what this final scene was wasn't actually too strange, I guess, in the same way that those other things are strange. It was just strange in the most important sense of strange, in that my mind simply could not process what my eyes were taking in. I have spent a lot of good time with the thought most loudly echoing in my head being “what am I watching” but I don't think I have ever “what am I watching”ed harder than this. Definitely not for anime, at least. End of Evangelion has nothing on this. Not even A-Channel's cooking scene to shower scene can hold a candle to this. This was like, a joke taken really far. Yeah, I like that sort of humour, one of my favorites. But here the joke wasn't taken far, it was like, just, what. Like, what? Did I actually just watch that? Did they actually animate that and record it? That was actually on TV? I think I have massively misunderstood this show. I don't think I will ever understand this show. It's good but like what the hell what the actual hell what the Ulro. I cannot possibly say anything more about this.
Nichijou episode 18
I feel like I can't say much about this either. The way they're bringing back a lot of old plot lines makes me think this is like, almost some sort of retrospective sort of thing since the series is ending? Oh man I don't even want to consider that. I want this to go on forever. The first Helvetica Standard was one of the best things they've done. It's really just Nichijou at it's prime, a concept presented so sincerely and so openly and the fact that you know it'll end with some sort of gag isn't enough to stop you from getting actually caught up in whatever the plot is. Along those lines, the sequel to the airship plotline was an amazing treat. The intricacy of that subuniverse is getting pretty amazing and again, I was just caught up in what a crazy plot that was, even though it was in the sort of gag-mood as the rest of the show, and I honestly didn't see the ending coming. In retrospect I have no idea how I didn't see it coming but I didn't and as soon as it happened the satisfaction was just way too much. But yeah what can I possibly say here? These last few episodes of Nichijou are really doing something that hasn't been done before. They're transcending slice of life so much that it's almost looped around and when they do something like the “This is a crow” or “love-like” it's just, it's the purest slice of life I've ever seen. And then they also have like, alternate world slice of life down pat, see like, Mai and Yuuko going trick or treating. And then they have stuff like Helvetica Standard, both of this week's editions. It has it all. Superb. Oh man and Biscuit 2. How could I have forgotten to mention Biscuit 2? So tragic!
Sitcom reviews
Party Down season 2
So finished this, hmm. Sorta disappointed with the ending, I gotta say. The last episode was funny enough but like the ending ending was just a bit too saccharine. Okay Ron gets a happy ending, sure, he deserves one, his character's actually developed and changed, I'm happy to see him happy, I like his character, sure. But... I mean, that's nice and all, and it's like, they earned their right to play that card, but it's still far from the funniest card to play. When it comes down to it, these characters aren't real people, and although I might get some sort of relief from seeing them do well, I'd still rather them just do the most interesting option. So what I really think they ought to do is just set it up in a way that the happy ending is the most interesting one, like, see The Office. Here, not so much. Roman's sorta happy ending is okay but sort of sudden and it's not like he's actually changed as a person in some way that makes him earn this. He'd like, learn lessons every week, but then just sorta forget them again immediately and his core character was acting pretty much the same at the beginning and the end. Sure, I liked the character, but I had no reason to want him to do well. If anything, I should just want him to stay the same if I liked him. Pretty much all of this goes for Kyle, too. Lydia is a bit different, as is Constance, but their happy endings are more like Ron's – earned through sympathy to the character – and they weren't as gag-inducingly cheerful. Okay so this brings us to the two main and more ambiguous endings, Casey's and Henry's. These were pretty well done. Casey wants to give up and Henry can't tell her not to without being hypocritical, so he gets back in the game. This was what was foreshadowed throughout and basically the only thing that could have happened. And yeah that's fine! So obviously the question is what now? I mean the rest of the characters are set up to go into like vague success or stasis whereas these guys are just now starting the more dramatic arc. Will Henry succeed? Will Casey? What will happen if one does and the other doesn't? I'm not like, calling them out on not answering these. In fact, I feel like this was the most compelling part of the ending because of the questions it suggests. I don't think they're doing another season and I gotta say I'm glad, the show was pretty great throughout but when you have all your characters being goal-oriented there's only so many times you can yank away the carrot. It just isn't the sort of thing that works for a long time. So yeah, that's it. Good times. It'd call it a high tier sitcom.
Curb Your Enthusiasm season 8 episode 4
Whereas this is still top tier yeah. Not as strong as last week but sheesh, what could top that? The storylines where a bit more disconnected and Larry was acting a little unreasonably unreasonable, but there were a few really good moments where you get that sympathy/repulsion duality that really makes for the best parts of the show. This really upped the cringe factor, which was lacking a bit previously as things moved a bit too fast for that in the last few episodes. The war with Big Dog was very Seinfeldy, is this going to be the season-long arc? I'd be okay with that. It seems like they just kept trying to up the stakes with those arcs, so to go for something silly like this would be funny and refreshing. Oh yeah and biggest beef though is that they were like, okay, Suzie's mad, the audiences know how that goes down, so they'll laugh at picturing what that's like. And yeah that works but seriously my imagination is not as good as Larry David's at coming up with hilarious vulgarities for her to scream. I wanna see her get mad! What a let down. Oh well.
RELAX NEWS
MICHAEL JACKSON
A MILLION DOLLARS
HOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Okay for a few seconds I briefly considered not listening to any singles from this so I could experience the whole thing at once. Also that when I listened to it, I could listen to it all equally and not have heard one of the songs a million times before. But nope, major nope. See I just needed some sort of fix any sort of fix. I thought, okay, Watch the Throne will be out soon. I'm getting more and more hyped for it. I think that with the amount of money they're planning to throw and how much they want to prove (I mean Jay-Z drops "I invented swag", what? WHAT? You're gonna start making these sorta claims?), it might just be the pinnacle of what mainstream hip hop can do. It'll be a nice contrast with Relax. The last and best effort of humans. But Heems drops "Hakuna matata Pumba/Por que esta es la rumba/Yeah, I'm fucking great at rapping". No human can compete with those boasts.
Man Heems is MAD RASPY these days. Is this a permanent thing? He was even raspier on his New York City Cops cover. I like it okay. I wouldn't like it in every song but it goes well in songs like this. What sort of song is this? This is an amazing song. Okay so we'll go up with the elements of this song from worst to best:
Two pretty good verses
Not the best verses they've ever done but some pretty good lines. "Medulla create the moolah/And Me, I just do the rumba/por que esta es la rumba" is pretty huge. Actually Heems' frantic raspy flow is pretty next level in general. Kool AD's is more standard I guess but he gets really buttery near the end and "I'm a daikon radish" is pretty smooth.
The discussion verse at the end is crazy swagger
This is pretty unprecedented, I think? Heems at peak raspy and Victor at peak Victor. Move the static to Staten? Whenever they get the like, inquisitive flow or almost morose flow e.g. "I don't even think that that's true..." it's just some crazy next level stuff that only they can do. Everyone else is rapping to rap but these guys are rapping like we breathe. The starting point is that they're just naturally rapping. And they just go beyond from there.
The hook is the triumphant realization of a project several years in development
So as far as I know the first recorded utterance of “Michael Jackson/A million dollars/You feel me?/Holler.” is on Kool AD's “I Zimbra”, which has a lot of Das Racist origin stories tied up in it. It appears on “Nutmeg” on Shut Up, Dude, I think that's the next time. And then on the Pitchfork freestyle, that was the real huge debut. Anyways Das Racist fans should be pretty familiar with the idea, and most of them realized that it was finally emerging, butterflyesque, when they saw “Michael Jackson” on the track list. We all knew it was coming. But when it did! When it actually did! Nothing could prepare me for it! It's so triumphant! So confident! So bold! So anthemic! It's the sort of thing where you feel like it's twenty times louder than it is. It resonates within your soul. It makes you go crazy. You can't help it. You just have to do every hype thing your body can do at once. It will probably lead to some sort of internal combustion. That is okay. The beat will revive you.
So I knew I really really needed a Relax fix when I went back again to the live video for “Power” to listen to the first few seconds so I could get a taste of the beat and actually fired up a program with which I could record and loop those ten seconds. But luckily I realized this single would be out soon and figured it'd have a pretty good beat too. Yeah pretty good yeah I dunno it might not actually measure up to “Power” in the studio but geez this beat is something else. Really something beyond explanation. They're getting all these electro producers and just running them ragged and getting things just crazy spicy. Absolutely nuts. I didn't think beats this new and this good could be made anymore. This is, much more than the crazy hook, the thing that makes you just go crazy. It's like those Cyclopean structures that make people feel unbalanced or wallpaper that starts communicating with people, like, Lovecraftian levels of mindbending. Insane. Definitely the result of some sort of voodoo ritual. RELAX.
Manga news
So I used to write about manga I was reading a lot and hey well I still read it I just don't feel like writing about it so much? Here's a few opinion updates, though:
Bleach
Pretty much everything post-Aizen has been horrible and made no sense. Wait that was true of a lot of the pre-Aizen stuff so uh. That's really the biggest compliment I have for it, that the quality didn't completely plummet in the big arc transition, it just got a bit worse. Before I speculated that this was because it couldn't get much worse, but the last few chapters proved that wrong. This is the biggest trainwreck I've seen in a long time, and it's immensely entertaining for it. Like, like, Ichigo getting so mad that he is more like a parody of anger at someone who just screwed up his friends memories and maybe hospitalized another one when just like, a few years ago or whatever, he was face to face with Aizen, who killed like everyone twice and was responsible for every bad thing in his life and he gave him a big ol' Squall whatever, that's hilarious. And now he's just lost his powers – again. And Rukia gives him some again? And like has Kubo still forgotten he had a whole other battle going on a few chapters ago that he just sort of abandoned? Are all the other people fighting dead or were they just like, alright well we'll just head off then looks like you have other things to do? I can't wait to see how they get under this.
Naruto
This war is the stupidest thing I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of stupid things out of this manga. I mean the enemy is reanimated characters whose bodies are moving on their own so they don't want to actually fight their former friends so they shout out stuff like “I'm using my x jutsu do this 'cause it does this” and like “do this to defeat me!” and this is actually the stupidest thing I have ever read. Is the point that it's supposed to be very very unninjalike? And that we're supposed to have fond memories for those halcyon days of ninja battles being about secrets and surprise and not just asspulls and explaining everything for longer than the thing itself? 'Cause yeah I am nostalgic for that, that stuff from like, up to Sasuke's first rescue arc. That was actually fun to read and suspenseful. I have no idea what this should be. Everything is so arbitrary and pointless. There's like a million little mini-arcs that are way too slow to capture the feel of a chaotic battlefield but way too fast to actually have any sort of uh emotional connection or coherent plot or suspense or exciting climax or uh anything really. While Bleach is at least still pretty brisk and sort of pleasant to look like, which makes for a fun time watching it derail. Here, Kishimoto's art has been becoming grotesque in how he gets lazy but still needs to draw all these details. Plus he just clutters everything with terrible dialogue, most of it explaining things that don't make any sense and are way too convoluted and just ugh, so yeah, not even enjoyable to see how bad it will get, just like, frustrating.
Fairy Tail
This has also been getting terrible, but in a third way. Here he seems to be losing his grasp on how to make a good shonen, but instead of just giving up and doing whatever he wants and getting down whatever crazy plot and scenes he has in his head, no matter what the cost, he seems like he's trying really, really hard to please his fans and go back to what people seem to want. This is sort of admirable, but at the same time it's almost guaranteed to never produce actually good manga, just manga that will make the fans happy. This sort of thinking is what made Naruto start going really downhill, but honestly, and it hurts me to admit this, if Naruto was still just a Sasuke buffet for the fangirls, it probably would be a bit better than what it is now, and at least a lot of people – granted, people who are really really not me – would be enjoying it. This is essentially where Fairy Tail is right now. He figures people want fanservice and Natsu powering up and fighting people and big explosions and such. And he's probably right because it's selling pretty well. Dedicated fans of the series' old days would probably tell him to cram those sales up his ass, and well since he seems to run out of asspulls now he's just translating that money directly into comics. Pretty sad, yeah. But hey! It's still entertaining, even if it's like an absurd parody of shonen cliches. Yeah I miss when this seemed sort of fresh and had some new ideas but whatever. I also want to see what big explosions Natsu will create next chapter.
Bakuman
The last few arcs have been up and down but generally alright. Eiji ending Crow was a pretty exciting one, and it was nice to see them get so determined. However uh it seems like practically every arc is about “hey let's get the kids motivated!” “hey yeah now they're motivated!” “okay cool wait the series is still just in 4th and it'll never get an anime and uh wait why did we need to get them motivated when we acknowledge that this is about as good as they'll ever do?” “well hey let's try to get them motivated!” so uh. But whatever they're talking about their new series now, so that might be pretty good. Hiramaru's antics are – gasp! - almost getting stale since they crop up so often and are basically the same joke over and over now. Things need to get a bit crazier there again. Oh well though.
Berserk
Hm I dunno. Kinda seasick now har har har. More like I'm just really hyped for Fairy Island, actually. I'm not entirely sure what's going on like what Guts is fighting or why again or what's happening with the ship and now mermaids out of everywhere? Oh well. Where'd that pirate dude go he was kinda funny. The art is still getting even more jaw-dropping though and crazy things still seem right over the horizon.
One Piece
You may recall that I had a bit of beef with this arc. It just seemed a bit... off. Well, it's redeeming itself very quickly now. A few kinda lame plot points have been rectified in a satisfying way, and the Straw Hats have made one of their best entrances since, well, maybe their all-time best since Eines Lobby. Someone on AP pointed this out and I have to agree: the difference in attitudes of Kishimoto's lame and unbelievable christ-avatar Naruto and Oda's Luffy, who doesn't want to be seen as a hero because he associates that with sharing, is a perfect little example of how the two see their manga. Kishimoto just seems so desperate for everything he does to be approved by everyone, and as a result packs his manga with ridiculous flashbacks, obtuse explanations, just stupid, stupid junk. It's not pandering, it's sub-pandering. It's pandering done by someone too lazy to remember what his fans like. No why am I talking about Naruto, I'm supposed to be happy about what One Piece was doing so well! Okay yeah well I guess I explained that enough, I guess, I mean it's pretty simple. The plot is good and cohesive and now everyone's shown up and there's gonna be some really great fight scenes. Well first they have to do the round of fodder destruction, and then break off into your 1 on 1s. I have no doubt that he'll do each phase extremely well. I mean, he has more freedom here than he did on Eines Lobby in a lot of ways, and his technique has improved since then too, so I have no reason to be skeptical that it'll be on that tier. I hope. What I'm worried about is the really clutch thing, which is the transition between the two phases of the fight. This, more than anything, is what Eines Lobby really nailed. And I dunno I guess he doesn't have quite as much freedom as he did in Eines Lobby in other ways so hm. I'm really looking forward to it, though. SO OF COURSE JUMP HAS TO BE ON BREAK NEXT WEEK, argh.
Objective: Lifestyle experiments
So awhile ago it occurred to me that, while I was pretty happy with my lifestyle and my “persona” or whatever, there's no reason to think that this was the happiest I could be. I couldn't even know that it was the easiest way. In curiosity about this I've started doing some month-long like, challenges, just to get a taste of what that would be like if it was my life.
No meat
Last month was vegetarian. I started this after I realized sometime in June that I just happened to not have eaten meat for quite a while. I kept it up until the end of July with maybe one relapse I can think of, oh and I ate fish too, and still milk and eggs and all that, so pretty low tier vegetarianism. But yeah I'd say in general I didn't really miss it too much, and I felt the same, or maybe even a bit better. Plus, I saved some money and time, so I dunno, I can see the appeal. Plus yeah the greater environmental benefits are appealing. At the same time, though, it was inconvenient and often a hassle. I think maybe my policy will be that I'll be a vegetarian up until the point where I have to tell someone I'm a vegetarian to like, avoid eating meat, in which case I'd just eat meat. This is a pretty dang soft stance I know but whatever I think it'll go smoothly. I'm not claiming to be some champion of earth or whatever so I don't feel particularly guilty about that. The idea of identifying as a vegetarian, like, making that part of my image, doesn't really matter to me one way or the other.
Exercise
So last weekend I was pretty sick, mainly just for the Saturday but it kinda lingered on, I figure it was some sort of food poisoning. Anyways Tuesday morning though I woke up and had such a dramatic recovery that it was almost surreal. I felt so good that I went outside and just started running around. Bizarre. Anyways I figure maybe this month I should try to do exercise every day. I don't think I can really argue that this isn't a good thing but I dunno there are aspects I didn't like. Like obviously I felt tired and sore afterward because I don't go running much and am way out of that shape, and that was pretty lame. But later I felt pretty decent. At the same time though I felt like, too energetic later, like, too physically energetic, and that was sort of uncomfortable because I couldn't sit still. I guess I'll get used to that though. So yeah this could be fun.
Beard
I figure I've been shaving for about half a decade now and honestly I'm not sure if I ever knew why. Just seemed like thing to do. I don't really like having “stubble” since it itches etc but I realized I really had no way of saying that I didn't like having a beard. So I don't think I'm gonna shave this month and see how that goes. Probably poorly but whatever you have to try these things, right?
Book
So funnily enough there's this no-shave November, right? But I rarely did that because around then I usually have a lot of concerts and I figure I can't look too hobo-y when I'm singing and I figure my first try at a beard might look pretty hobo-y. Anyways since I'm doing that November thing in August I might as well do the other one, the novel writing one. Should be fun. I don't really want to try writing any of the ideas I have already in a month so I might just try starting to write a story with absolutely no idea where the plot is going. It will probably be a trainwreck but since this is more just an exercise in getting that many words down quickly I don't really care and it'll probably be fun. So yeah.
I guess that's about it.
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