DonKangolJones’ Images of the Week: May 1st (it has been a rough week)

Well it hasn’t been a rough week for me personally, more like for the anime characters I’ve seen this week.  Given the fact that I watched some good old  80’s and 90’s mecha, I got some decent gore.  And then when I thought my week was gonna be all nice and smooth with only a minimal amount of blood and violence I run into the buzz saw that is Shiki episode 14.  The good news is that I got to read a little manga this week, and I still have the Pervy Images of the Week.  So let’s get a move on.  I wanna watch some more Shiki when I finish hammering out this blog post.

Anime Images of the Week

I’m pretty impressed by the amount of new and classic (I say classic so as not to offend the more “seasoned” anime series out there, anime DO have feelings you know) series I’ve been able to watch this week.  I always strive for diversity, and this week I think I deserve a gold star for it.  First of all, let me make this clear.  As much of a mecha fan as I am, and as much as I enjoyed Macross: Do You Remember Love; episode 14 of Shiki was hands down the best piece of material I watched this week.  I was already enjoying the series up until that point, but that episode took me to some dark territory.  And I won’t spoil you, so just watch it for yourself.  Grade A stuff.

The second best thing I watched was the Macross: Do You Remember Love movie, which I from now on will shorten to DYRL.  It is probably my favorite thing that I’ve watched from the Macross metaverse.  Now I have only seen a total of four properties from that franchise in total, but they’ve all been high quality.  SDF Macross was well done and emotional, but it came with some characters and plot points that I found infuriating.  The Macross Frontier movie, The False Songstress/Diva was a hell of a lot of fun to watch, but wasn’t nearly as emotional as the original Macross TV series or DYRL.  I love it for what it did with most of the series plot in a very short movie format, and I love that classic but still beautiful animation.  Plus I’ll be very grateful to it for doing (what I think) is a better job with the love triangle and the romance.  Kick me now.  The movie is a step up for me in many respects.

For the currently airing series, I still love Gosick.  That’s no surprise so for the second week in a row I won’t give it much coverage since I already talk enough about it.  I’ve finally gotten into watch The World God Only Knows‘ second season and knocked out the first three episodes.  It was nice seeing Haqua animated, and I greatly enjoyed Keima’s demonstrations of the concept of loose soul catching in episode 3.  It’s not every day that you see  Super Mario style Boo used as a prop.  Nor do you usually see a dakimakura used so gracefully as one either.

Tiger and Bunny continues to consistently deliver good “feel good” episodes.  And it was interesting to find out that Blue Rose was a somewhat selfish but relatively normal high school girl, who didn’t have “heroing” as I career goal, or as something terribly desirable for that matter.  The same kinda applies to Ao no Exorcist‘s main protagonist.  I didn’t find Rin a particularly interesting shounen-style protagonist, but the first two episodes were rather well done.  And his adoptive father was a rather awesome guy.  I wonder if that show is going to be a replacement for the more focused story driven shounen anime, much like Fullmetal Alchemist was for quite a time.  I guess I’ll learn quickly how appealing this show really is once I see its real setting, the exorcist school he’ll be visiting in episode 3.

And I finally got around to watching the increasingly popular Hanasaku Iroha.  It’s very well animated and surprisingly appealing to me despite me finding most of the cast initially reprehensible.  I’m quite a few episodes behind, so I’m looking forward to watching this in spurts if possible.  I don’t doubt that I’ll quickly find out if it’s worth continuing after that.

For some reason that axe and those tiger features make her very hot.

I did mention I watched quite a bit of “classic” material.  And One Pound Gospel is something in that category.  I use “classic” in quotation marks (or dick fingers as a old colleague of mine used to call them) for the aforementioned reason a few paragraphs above and because I’m not really sure if this little OVA qualifies as a classic.  It was a decent watch for sure, I just don’t think a show based primarily on weight management is the most engrossing thing in the world for an action hungry shounen veteran like me.  That said, the story had decent emotion behind it and some intentional and unintentional comedy behind it.  And while the boxer this show so pitifully focused on got on my nerves a bit, I did feel a little sorry for him.  All that is balanced out however by how much fun the nun (or nun in waiting) had been through most of the production.  She was the heart and soul of that production and I just had fun seeing her on screen.  So cute!

And now for the bad part.  Two shows disappointed me to varying degrees this week.  Mobile Suit Gundam F91 and Softenni gave me a wallop of failure in the past and present.  I hate to sound predictable for any experienced mecha or Gundam fan who has seen the F91 movie, but it fell right in line with what I had read and heard.  You should never try to squeeze a Gundam storyline into two hours of plot.  Gundam stories are generally extremely simplistic, and often are only made complicated by the soap opera like f*ckery that Tomino and everyone after him has peppered the series with since then.  This type of forced complexity only seems to be acceptable when it’s given a chance to build, become familiar to the viewer  and then is allowed to close in the natural “cockpit debate” scenario that my friend Ghost hates so much (and I don’t really blame him).  F91 doesn’t allow any of that to happen naturally.  It just does that stuff and hopes you catch up before the movie ends.  I accept a lot of crap from Gundam just to enjoy the super hero/ shounen battle manga style fights and drama.  I accept copious amounts of plot armor.; unexplained dips in piloting skill in order to hold off decisive battles until the late parts of seasons.  I accept the fact that almost everyone usually knows each other some way, some how despite these stories often encompassing many nations and hundreds of thousands of miles of travel.  I will not accept a Gundam product that merely throws the name and popular plot points and tropes of Gundam at me and expects me to enjoy it merely based on those things.

There, I’m done with my unexpected rant… except for one thing.  And FUCK that ugly ass mobile armor that looked like some sort of evil diseased flower, and that lame villain in the iron mask!  Lame!  Not as lame as ZZ Gundam, but fucking lame!

Damn.  All that time wasted and I didn’t even touch on Softenni.  Well that’s alright because this should be quick.

I watched one episode of Softenni and it was horrible.  It was K-ON meets some tennis sports anime/manga.  Light Music Club = Soft Tennis Club?  No!  Not even!  The copious amounts of panty shots weren’t enough to save it either.  I have mixed feelings about Nichijou, but while watching this show I desperately wished I had Nichijou’s pointless ridiculous randomness to spice things up.  Softenni was random, but not funny or engrossing at all.  I ban you Softenni!  I ban you to the Hall of One Episode Failures!  Kanamemo is still my least enjoyed slice of life moefest behind Lucky Star, Ichigo Mashimaro, K-ON!(!!) and Azumanga Daioh because I actually completed all those episodes.  Softenni, you don’t even get that much.  I’m sorry, that too went on too long, but when a show disappoints me I really like to talk crap & bully it.  “Kick it while it’s down” has always been my policy.  HA!

Manga Images of the Week

OK, it’s only one image, but I did read a bit of manga this week.  Caught up on some of the Big 3 and had a little fun.  One Piece has a very interesting Fisher Tiger flashback right now, which given Oda’s recent, or even overall, track record will have a tragic end.  It’s not like everyone reading doesn’t already know the Fisher Tiger and one other big character is gonna die.  This is a flashback arc afterall.  Naruto continues its possibly final arc which is a big ninja war (not a bad idea though I could do without the WAY overdone zombie aspect of it).  And now that Naruto, Bee and Madara/Tobi have all come out of their caves (literally) we can look forward to some true insanity.  Because let’s face it, Naruto stopped being about actual ninjas long ago.  Everyone that matters at this point is approaching godhood and is either a monster or some sort of all powerful wizard.

And finally Bleach, a series whose popularity I underestimate all too often.  Seriously, when I make a comment about Bleach on Twitter it seems that someone is always listening.  Which can be a good or bad thing.  Let me tell you, if Kubo read some of the things I’ve said about Bleach and somehow recognized me on the street… ouch.  Regardless I’ve taken an impromptu and unannounced hiatus from the Big 3 and especially Bleach for no apparent reason other than I’ve been very busy and the manga usually suffers in those situations.  Bleach hasn’t made that much progress in that time, but it has remained entertaining and engrossing, though still vague and confusing.  I really can’t tell where any of the (I almost said Bount, yeeesh) Fullbring are coming from.  It is Fullbring right?  See I told you I’d taken a hiatus.  Anyway, when I figure out what they really want I’ll be satisfied right now there’s a Maverick running about fueling all the conflict.  And he may be the one thing right now that is keeping this arc from being too subdued.

Pervy Images of the Week

Like those boobs, huh?  I put them front and center.  Well guess what?  They’re cold dead boobs and what’s attached to them will kill you in a heartbeat.  So take that!  Not so sexy now, huh?  What?  That doesn’t matter to you?!  Never underestimate the tenacity and versatility of the perviness of a anime fan.  Anyway, the mega boobs belong to a harpy from Shiki.  I thought she might as well get a little bit of credit for such a ridiculous outfit and set of mounds.

Other than that bit of Giga boobage, I actually got some good material from DYRL.  Oh the 80’s, how I love your liberal use of women, boobage and shower scenes.  Plus anime isn’t anime without accidental boob grabbage (I’m pretty sure grabbage isn’t a word, but it is in my world of perviness).  Thank you Hikaru.  We would’ve never seen all that if not for you breaking down her barriers.  To tell you the truth, we got to see more than Hikaru ever did.

And of course, I saved an accidental public bath nudity scene from Dog Days because that’s another anime staple.  And I also used one of the MANY pervy shots from Softenni, which was about all that show was good for (see, I’m STILL kicking that show, several paragraphs later).  Oh yeah, I almost never use captions, I’m personally against them in most situations but…

What the f*ck is this?!

It’s wrong and backwards!  I’m just gonna run away from this pic now.  I suggest you do, too.

Well that’s it for this week.  As always I strive for diversity in my anime and manga, and do my best to provide quality perviness in all of my posts.  Somehow I forgot to knock out more episodes from Shippuuden‘s Five Kage Summit arc, and from Nichijou (I kept randomly getting interrupted, how ironic).  And I’m gonna try and make it a priority to read some of my often neglected non shounen manga (this is becoming a habit), like Good Ending, Girl Friends, Yuria 100 Shiki and that weird ghost love manga, My Lovely Ghost Kana.  Have a good week, expect some more Check-in Stations from me soon, and today is my son’s third birthday so I suggest you celebrate my son’s birthday by eating some birthday cake or birthday party ice cream (there is such a flavor and I LOVE it).  Take it easy!

Further Reading:

• My favorite post on my favorite episode of anime this week.  OK, maybe favorite isn’t the best word for episode 14 of Shiki.  I don’t really want to ever watch that episode again.
• MAHQ, my mecha bible on Mobile Suit Gundam F91.  Our opinions are similar, but I think they’re a bit more analytical and nicer to the movie than I was.
• Cinco Bajeena tried to warn me about Softenni, but I really had to find out for myself.  Oh the pain.
• UPDATE: if I hadn’t read her blog post on One Pound Gospel I never would’ve touched the OVA.  So it really is a shame that I forgot to link to it until now.  Check it out.