a post on my blog

So what have you been up to lately? EVIDENTLY NOT BEST OF 2011 POSTS

Uh, yeah. Hmm.

Fine just talk about the anime you’ve been watching I know that’s what you’re gonna do

Alright, I will!

Hyouka

We’re three episodes into this now so maybe the 3-episode rule will kick in and I’ll stop having to see this beautiful show trolled on /a/ ;_;

If I had to describe this show in one word it would be “rich”. And that’s not just YET ANOTHER reference to the truly godly sums that must be being spent on this show. I mean rich like decadent, like lobster or that dark chocolate chocolate milk that I wish would go on sale again. It feels like an instant classic, like, I feel the same feeling as when I’m recommended some old classic book that I haven’t read. It feels new, but also feels incredibly well established, like, uh, this is hard to put into words, but when I watch it I feel like I’m seeing something that has already been loved exhaustively. Like think about reading something like the Jungle Book for the first time. Or listening to old Beatles stuff. It’s so well established in a cultural identity that it feels very intimately familiar even if you haven’t heard it before. You could make the argument that that’s because there’s so much inspired by it that you have experienced it, but I’d argue that there’s a separate aesthetic of “classicness” that’s somehow evoked. The difference between the familiar feeling of meeting a friend’s parents for the first time vs. the familiar feeling of someone you just know has to be a parent.

Do you get me?

In fact, I’d argue that a lot of what we consider “classics” feel “classic” not because they are enduring, but are enduring because they’ve always felt classic.

And Hyouka is like this, which makes a lot of sense! Because they’re the classics club!

And if you’re the type that “hates classics” (this is a type) you probably find them extremely boring and you probably find Hyouka extremely boring as well! My one friend (former roommate) (now on exchange in Japanese and the target of all my jelly) says that Hyouka “is the most boring show of all time”.

So what is the “classic” aesthetic?

Is it always boring to people who find stuff boring?

Is the great animation a “reward” for the (probably still pretty large) subset of the population who can “endure” the classic aesthetic?

Is great prose the “reward” for people who can “endure” the classic aesthetic in books?

Is Hyouka really more boring than straight slice of life like some people seem to imply?

Is a failed attempt at drama more boring than no attempt whatsoever?

Was “question spam” invented by Hipster Runoff?

Is it possible to read HRO for over an hour and not feel incredibly compelled to write like it?

Hopefully there will be answers to these questions when I get back from the bathroom and write them, I have to brush my teeth again because I accidentally chewed gum, I have a pack of gum that I hate the flavor of and I want to get it used up ASAP so sometimes I chew some without thinking.

The flavor was especially bad because of the previous teeth brushing.

Anyways hopefully I’ll have retained interest in this subject and if not I’ll probably just post this as is.

Ah screw it the classic aesthetic is too complicated and only tangentially related to what I actually wanted to talk about.

Okay yeah so let’s look at people’s beefs with Hyouka and how they’re at best tofu

Yeah let’s do that

The big one that I’ve seen misarticulated a bunch is that it’s “forced atmosphere”. This is usually tied to the “plot” of the show, which looks more and more like it’s more the “forgotten premise” than actual plot, i.e. running around solving little mysteries. So Kyoani seems to like exposition scenes, actually they seem to be in complete and utter love with them. Hyouka is little more than exposition scenes. The mystery is explained, the thought process is explained, the answer is explained. Remarkably little banter occurs outside of this. I usually hate overwrought exposition, and since as one /a/non wonderfully put it (I paraphrase) the mysteries are “Christmas cracker riddle tier”, the five-minute elaborations seem a bit much, ON PAPER. On thousands of gorgeously illustrated pieces of paper, however, they’re THE BEST. Kyoani knows it can do anything with an exposition scene, so they do everything. This is animation porn in the classiest degree. The little infographic shots, the varying artstyles for story scenes, even – or especially – in the scenes that forgo any “gimmick” and just show off their impeccable direction for colour, placement, movement, detail... And let’s not forget the soundtrack, I mean, OH, WOW.

But as I hinted at before, people take offense to this stuff being busted out for such mundanely. When covering the sort of dramatic climax that wouldn’t seem out of place in a 4-girls 4-koma, they’re building atmospheric tension that would support Spike vs. Vicious. THIS IS A PRETTY WEIRD ARGUMENT, basically they’re saying the show is too good for it’s content, which is just crazy, and at the same time I understand completely. Compare these sort of expositions to Haruhi stuff. Even though Haruhi has a much more complex plot, the exposition – specifically the dramatics of the exposition – are much lower key. Which is saying a lot, because Haruhi is extremely dramatic when it wants to be. And it’s genre parody when it wants to be, too, and simultaneously builds atmospheric tension in both the parodied genre and in the parody-mode and in the original slice-of-life comedy thing and oh wow isn’t that amazing but this post isn’t about Haruhi. Although this show really does feel like the best attempt at Haruhi since Haruhi.

So yeah, the problem with this idea of forced atmosphere and overwrought dramatics and all that is that it operates in this idea that some ideas have some sort of inherent drama to them. And it feels like they should, right? Like, a man proclaiming himself king of his bed vs. a man proclaiming himself king of the universe, the latter is more dramatic, right? Well, not necessarily. There’s an argument of context, sure, but more than that there’s just the idea that drama emerges from the atmosphere of the scene, not some inherent drama of the scene facilitates the proper level of drama. Oh like here’s a good example: attempted suicide vs. success in suicide, which is more dramatic? Neither! ‘Cause like, look at Luke Wilson’s attempt in The Royal Tenenbaums vs Tommy Wiseau’s success in The Room. Extreme example, yes, but think about it, what made the drama of the scene? How about... Tommy Wiseau killing himself in The Room vs. the mere approaching of a building in Citizen Kane. Is it really the content context of the latter that makes it dramatic, or is it all the cinematography?

I think this point was either painfully obvious from the start and just not expressed clearly or it’s just outright untrue.

I think all I’m trying to say is that dramatics are created from cinematography and have actually very little to do with the perceived “impact” of the plot event and that plot events shouldn’t be thought of with inherent “impact” when it comes to the “art of it”.

So uh...

Hyouka can make anything it wants as dramatic as it wants because nothing has an inherent “drama standard” and people shouldn’t judge the cinematographic success of a scene on whether the “drama was appropriate”.

But what about the whole thing of dramatic atmosphere being a signifier of plot significance, i.e. “pay attention here this is important”

So the idea here is that if Hyouka is making “much ado about nothing” (pull as many puns as you want from that – or this! - they all work!) (boy I feel like this is en route to being one of my most pretentious blog posts of all time – this isn’t helping! - it is one of those “almost late nights” where I feel “far more clever than I actually am” (this is probably due to scanning manga for six hours today and having a lot of thoughts just festering))

So the idea here is that if Hyouka is making “much ado about nothing” then when they have something to say we won’t realize it. This is plot-atmosphere conflation aka “THE THING THAT MAKES STORIES WORK AT ALL, YA DINGUS”.

So let’s begin another paragraph with “so” and take a look at the plot itself, ‘cause that’s really what people dislike and probably what I should have focused on at the beginning instead of jumping into this tangential rant about “appropriate drama”. If I’m arguing that things shouldn’t be thought of with “appropriate drama” why am I now seemingly trying to argue that the drama is actually “appropriate” by defending the plot? Yr guess, good as mine, etc. But it does seem sort of pointless if you don’t care about what’s actually happening, and this show deserves better than the standard “who cares about X, watch it for Y” handwave.

The show has four main plot threads

-The mystery of Chitanda’s uncle/the history of the classics club

-Houtaro’s “coming out of his shell” / “kicking shell under the tutelage of Master Splinter”

-Romance? Probably none explicitly but there’s gonna be some intercharacter development for sure

-And there’s usually at least one little school mystery in the foreground

That’s not bad! Think of Haruhi, there’s basically four equivalents:

-Overarching: What the heck is up with Haruhi being God?

-MC: Kyon’s a spoil sport or maybe he isn’t.

-Intercharacter: Kyon x who?

-Foregrounded episodic adventure

It seems like Haruhi like full-on out partyrocks Hyouka in all four categories and uh I can’t really argue with that. But I do think Hyouka is structured well enough, it isn’t “overly simple”. And I do think each of these threads are still really dang good and can be defended.

Foregrounded Mysteries

Are these too obvious, nowhere near solvable or not even interesting enough to think about either way? The hater jury is still out, but the conclusion seems to be they suck. NOT SO! Why is that we tolerate slice of life plots with double the mundanely if they have half the dramatics? Well it’s because of this dramatic entitlement thing I was talking about I think. Also probably because this hypothetical “we” can’t be assumed to be the sort of person who watches SoL moeshit. These plots are fine, like, really. They’re all fairly compelling if you let yourself get into them and not just jump straight to the conclusion that the resolution will be underwhelming. ‘Cause if you do that you’ll miss out on the fact that the resolution being underwhelming is the major thematic drive of the show, Houtaro’s semi-orchestration to make stuff easy, Chitanda’s misplaced enthusiasm, Satoshi’s need for flourishes in drab things, etc, etc. I mean let them have their fun c’mon, it’ll be fun for you too.

Intercharacter

Pairing is pretty early established but the actual nature of everyone’s feelings for each other are pretty ambiguous and fairly interesting. None of them are “sustainable”, like, all of them are headed for some climax, even Houtaro and Satoshi – Satoshi convincing him more and more he’s changing, Houtaro eventually acknowledging this? Speaking of this:

MC Development

This is an interesting one. Houtaro is a dang interesting character I think. Very likable and interesting without being too unbelievably strange. Although he isn’t as funny as Kyon, he has more of an identifiable presence in the school, and is still wildly familiar while retaining “mysteries” - sister, actual intelligence, reputation in school, etc. Kyon had mysteries too like LOL his real name but they either felt irrelevant or really out of line with our familiarity with him. Here they’re like, synthesized. And his character is en route to develop too! And I can’t wait to see how! And neither should you! Not that you should look up spoilers, I am working very hard to avoid spoilers.

Overarching Plot

This is my favorite, though, still. I mean to start with I have a personal fetishism about plots containing such things as: people who go somewhere like India mysteriously, clubs with a mysterious past, looking for old art that solves a riddle, controversy on perspectives of an action, remembering an emotional reaction to something without remembering the thing... basically every component of this plot. And they left it open that many of the episodic mysteries could easily tie in with the main plot – the “Golden Web” comes to mind immediately – remember, Satoshi said originally it was the first mystery, before Houtaro interjected, it may be real! - so that’s cool. There’s like a million directions they can go with this but at the same time I don’t know where they could actually go! The big reveal can’t be too tragic, that wouldn’t fit the show at all. But it has to have some sort of tragic element. Supernatural? I have no idea, maybe?? It could also be something really mundane, ‘cause even if they escalate the atmospheric drama to unprecedented levels, by my own half-baked theorizing that doesn’t mean the content has to suddenly jump scale from locked doors to murder. And I’d be fine with it not – an atmospheric climax is more important than a plot climax. Still, though, I think it’ll be something pretty crazy. But what could it be? I’m so curious! I can’t stop thinking about it!!

Unabashed hyperbolic praise time

Chitanda is straight miracle of the universe tier and the best girl we’ll see this year until Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb. Satoshi is the most moe male character I’ve ever seen maybe and almost a whole new archetype. Mayaka shows GREAT PROMISE, very entertaining and such, can’t wait to see more. Houtaro I’ve already praised but he seriously feels like the best male MC since Kyon and perhaps even better than Kyon in some regards.

The atmosphere of this show is straight bananas and the plot is much more well crafted and compelling than people give it credit for. The soundtrack is better than it needs to be, and if it was anything less than fantastic it would seem jarringly out of pace.

The animation is bar-none the best I’ve seen on weekly TV.

Yes, it is REALLY THAT GOOD. Haters can doze off. Three episodes in and I’m hooked. This is the first show since Madoka where my roommate and I, after watching an episode, have to convince each other that, yeah, that’s what just happened and yeah it was really good and no it’s not just you. I grin like the WHOLE way through, the whole 22 minutes, and I rewatched some episodes and I grinned the whole way through those as well.

Other stuff

Parks and Recreation

I watched the first season of this, was pretty impressed. Pretty likable characters, good premise, lots o laughs. Something feels a bit off, though. I think it’s like, they do this documentary style with “confessionals” that was all the rage at the time, but it’s so obviously not actually real that it just gets a bit jarring. I don’t know what particularly made it unreal, but there’s just this weird sense that they’re almost trying to get away with something by doing “documentary style” without limiting themselves in the way that those shows have to limit themselves if they want to be “valid”.

Anyways the “pit to park” plot seems like it’ll get sidelined more and more for episodic adventures as the series goes on, this is pretty standard and I’m okay with it. What I’m more worried about is all the “who is dating who” business ‘cause there’s really only four eligible characters, maybe only three, and I also just don’t care at all. I just generally don’t like when sitcoms do this shipping bait sorta stuff, Community handles it alright but still has too much for my taste, I think stuff I don’t watch like The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother is plagued with it. What happened to the Seinfeld school of revolving door relationships? The British Office did this right but it seems like the current school of thought derives from Friends, which is probably the show I am least likely to watch of all time. The other thing I’m expecting Parks and Rec to do that I’m sort of apprehensive of is that they’ll start developing a bunch of other characters. I think the American Office did this, The Simpsons and Family Guy did this with vastly varying levels of success, but pretty much when you write in a character for one joke and then three seasons later there’s an episode devoted to them, that is sending off warning bells for me hardcore. But I am reassured by my friend that Parks and Rec gets better and better and I am inclined to believe him. As long as I get more Tom and Ron action I can believe it, those characters were very hyped up for me and they have still exceeded expectations.

ITG Update

I feel like I have “levelled up” lately or perhaps even “evolved”. Here are my thoughts on some charts to facilitate nostalgia later:

Recently slain boss charts:

Monotone (Flash’s 13 couples chart) – I love doing the couples version of this, singles is pretty fun too, nice and simple, but oh wow exhausting. It took me many tries to pass this and I don’t have much inclination to play it again for awhile.

Light Emitting Diode M – I can’t remember whose chart this is, Mute’s? Hella intimidating. I was actually doing it faster than it should be, though, I was like, in the mindset that I had to go faster than on Destiny etc for some reason. Middle slowdown is way too hype, way too fun.

Gravity Blast – Rynker’s chart? Streams at like 185 wuzawaza ahh. But there’s a lot of breaks and really fun parts in the middle, only the last stream is really long enough to kill you but oh boy it will do that faily easily. Catchy as hell, I like when it sounds like it’s “charging up”.

Delirium – ITG 12. This is pretty tough, if you aren’t on the ball random hands and hold switches can kill you before the really long streams even get a chance to. I still don’t know how I passed this to be honest.

Cirno’s Perfect Math Class – Mandodo’s chart. Finally a good Touhou chart in the 11-13 range, as expected from Mandodo! Very fun, quite fast like 185 I think, baka baka, etc.

Upcoming boss charts:

Light Emitting Diode X – From some tournament pack? Like LED M but faster, with 24^th notes sometimes, and a bit longer streams. It’s also really short though so that’s good.

Infernoplex – Everyone seems to know this chart, I dunno where it’s from. Pretty simple but it just goes on and on, endless streams at like 175 I think. Major endurance challenge for sure.

Euphoria – ITG 12. Pretty simple outside of the slowdown, which just hurts my brain physically. I like a lot of aspects of this, though, and I think I want to pass it more than the rest of the ITG 12s.

Possession – DDR X2. I don’t know what I think of this chart, honestly. Some parts are cool, like the beginning and the jumpstreams, but some parts I hate hate hate, like... everything else. Not sure if I really care to pass this or not.

I dunno which of these I’m actually likely to pass next or if I’m still overlooking some other good targets.

Other charts I really like:

Beyond the Earth – Mootz chart, I think. This is probably my favorite chart right now. Streams are at like a perfect speed for me, very natural, very fun. It’s still exciting ‘cause the purple note stream can and will kill me if I’m not on point, so it’s never close to being boring, and the section right after it oh man so triumphant. It doesn’t hurt that I love the song itself to death. I think my best is 85-86ish so far.

Heavy Rotation – DDR X3. Really simple easy fun chart that I am trying to get high scores on, best so far is a 97. The jumping part is actually TOO MUCH FUN. Song is catchy too but AKB creeps me out on an intellectual level.

SigSig – DDR X3. The classic kors k song, surprised there wasn’t a chart of this already. Also easy but also tons of fun.

Mandodo Superset – This is playing Crazy Loop, Joanna and Lucky back to back to back. Very tiring but very simple and fun.

Buns of Steel – BrotherMojo’s chart. This has it all! Crossover holds, hold switches, little streams, stepjumps all at a very satisfying comfortable speed.

There were a bunch more but my roommate deleted all the weeaboo songs.

Okay that’s it for this blog post.