Azumanga BADASS

Well I had just finished watching Steins;gate for the first time recently (it's excellent by the way). Lo and behold I was wondering what to watch next, I felt like watching something funny and one of the programmes that kept on cropping up in my search for "funny animes" (out of the ones I haven't watched) was School Rumble. Looked it up on Anime News Network and at the bottom of the review it was comparing the show's sketch approach to Azumanga Daioh, which I had seen already, and an anime which I'd never heard of before called Cromartie High School. I thought I'd check out and see what School rumble was like by looking up a few videos on youtube, a lot of it seemed pretty funny (I've still yet to watch it properly), so then I went to check and see what Cromartie High School was like and my was I pleasantly surprised.

Cromartie High School...Don't mess with these badasses

Cromartie High School is like a testosterone fueled version of Azumanga Daioh...well maybe not totally since Azumanga Daioh is more sincere in it's themes but I still get a sense of the two being polar opposites on the same "what the fuck" magnet. I say that because Cromartie High School can really get you wondering "just what the hell am I watching" just as much as Azumanga Daioh does, if not even more.

Takashi Kamiyama the main character. check out the sketch lines as well, the animation is bad but it adds to the show's humour

 CHS is about a school called Cromartie High School that consists of nothing but "Badass" delinquents, and 16 year old "not so delinquent" Takashi Kamiyama has just enrolled there. The series is pretty much a sort of slice-of-life anime that parodies something called "yankii" according to wikipedia which is "juvenile delinquent" manga apparently, though I don't know anything about that. The first thing you'll notice when watching this is the art style which has the characters drawn in a more realistic manner (in the same way to that found in yankii manga) in comparison to other large-eyed, massive head anime (that'll be 99.99999% of anime then) which is immensely refreshing. To add to this refreshment is a serving of really bad animation, but you've got to bear in mind that that's sort of the point and it makes it all the more hilarious.

Whilst my knowledge about Japanese perception of delinquent youths is limited to that shown on Japanorama and the film Battle Royale, I think it's still pretty easy to at least vaguely understand that the show is making fun of certain tough guy stereotypes and it does so brilliant by having all the characters being portrayed in a straight manner giving it a fantastic deadpan humour style that got me laughing my ass off. Whilst I may not get the more specific references (I would give an example but I don't know what they are) there's definitely enough to draw me into the show (I would say I'm averagely knowledgeable about anime). The Humour is really random and definitely not for everyone, to put it into perspective this show could easily be put onto adult swim, it's really difficult to describe in words. I guess you just have to go and see it for yourself to really understand what I'm talking about but the opening gives a pretty good gist of the show, as it should:

Azumanga Daioh: Not what I first thought it was

 So lets go back to Azumanga Daioh which I first saw 2 or 3 years ago, it's a show which, initially, I was really apprehensive about watching due to the amount of cuteness it apparently had, but after watching the series I loved it. One of these reasons is the random hilarious content it has, the other reason being as mentioned before it is sincere in it's themes, to put it in another more melodramatic way it's got "heart". I tried to watch Lucky Star once and I just couldn't finish the first episode, it gave off this feeling of being cute for the sake of it, it's just "boring fan-service that doesn't appeal to me" and nothing else. Azumanga Daioh on the other hand inevitably has fan-service peppered throughout but it doesn't let that take anything away from the substance of the characters and what they're going through

So Cromartie lacks this "heart" but again it probably wouldn't work if it did have it, especially as A: it's a parody of something, and B: it could be said that the whole point of displaying delinquency is to not display "heart". In fact Azumanga and Cromartie are completely opposite in every way yet they both remind me of each other so much when watching them. I think that this has to do with two things: 1: they're both set in a school, and 2: they share a similar comedic form with their randomness, slice-of-life feel to them both.

Also both have certain characters that steal whatever scene they're in:

Freddie

Kimura

More on Video Games as Art

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but I aim to do so more often from now on. Anyway:

There's an article on the new york times website talking about the art of video games, I'm mentioning this because it puts forward something that I've been thinking about lately and that's video games enable you, the player, to explore/interact with a world instead of watching someone else explore which is what we do when watching a film. I think it makes it more of an emotional if you provide input to the experience. It's an obvious point but I don't think I really put this forward much on my video games page.

Here's a link to the article

The New York Times: Game Theory: A Playwright on the Art of Video Games

Lelouch can see the light, Light can't

I watched Code Geass for the first time a few days ago and it's brilliant. But after watching I also realised that the lead character Lelouch Lamperouge is what I wanted Light from Death Note to be. Light at the beginning of Death Note is a nice school student who's good at everything he does. However once he gets the Death he practically goes insane with power almost immediately. Later on there's no inner conflict with himself, once he goes over the edge he doesn't even bother trying to get back up. Granted once he disowns the death note he goes back to his old self hinting that there's still good in him. However once he gets his memories of the death note back he goes back to his insane self. It feels like the good exists in a completely separate personality to the bad.

Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass

Light Yagami from Death Note

Lelouch on the other hand is constantly presenting inner conflicts where his good and bad "personalities" exist as one throughout the whole of the series. This means I can understand him more easily and it makes him more real as a character. Because of this I wish Light was more like Lelouch who despite doing "questionable" deeds is someone that I can constantly root for

You will say that Lelouch has won against light

Let me see you grit those teeth

I just finished watching Gurren Lagann again and man is it an anime that gets you going. Do you have at least one person who puts up/links motivational images like this up on facebook:

I'm not too fond of them myself because life isn't so simple and it's stuff like this that can delude others. Plus there's also the fact that personally I'm not a fan of pretentious preaching.

Gurren Lagann however instead of simply saying "believe in yourself" gives a flying kick smashing through images like those above and kicks the living shit out of you then stands up and says "believe in yourself or I'll kick your ass" well I suppose it would be more accurate to say it says "believe in the you that believes in you or I'll kick your ass"...something like that I dunno but that's besides the point. It's a series that delivers a message similar to that of the above image but does it without preaching, instead delivering in an awesome non-serious manner  and that's why it's so good. There's probably no better coming of age story out there and it succeeds in focusing not about it's message (which it still very much successfully delivers), but about being fun.

If you haven't seen Gurren Lagann then I'm pretty sure you don't yet know the definition of epic

Vlogs

I'm thinking about starting some vlogs soon, I've got a vague plan of what to do. Trouble is I'm not really that confident I mean it was pretty hard for me to start doing this blog so putting myself up on screen and talking about random shit seems a little daunting, But I think I'll give it a go and see what happens. I'll try to expand on stuff that I've put on this blog since vlogs have the advantage of being able to show moving pictures and sounds it might be easier to put some points across. I feel that I wanna cover the topics that I cover in this blog; anime, video games, films and Japanese culture, I dunno how long they're gonna be I guess I'll have to see. I'm going to need to do some more planning though before I start so it might not happen for a while yet, maybe I should do one soon that acts as an introduction about me rather than wait for a topic to talk about I dunno really. I've made the channel and I'll notify on this blog every time I make a video, I'll try not to talk about exactly the same things as in this blog for variety. I think I'll aim to make at least one video within the next two weeks to get started.

Cheerio

Edit:
Er well I did do a first vlog and left it up publically on youtube for a month but now I've decided "no just no, not yet" watching it again made me feel like a right bellend so I've put it on private for now and once I'm feeling more confident and have a few more vlogs I'll start putting them up on youtube. Don't know when that'll be though

Some of my feelings/opinions about The melancholy of Haruhi suzumiya

I love the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, (I'm talking about the anime only by the way). There are some things about it though that kind of made me wonder if I "got it" or not. It could be that what I point out are aspects that are open to interpretation rather than something I missed I don't know really hence why I'm writing this post. There are also some spoilers here by the way so don't read this if you haven't seen both seasons of the anime series and the film "The disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya".

The members of the SOS brigade

 Ok so the first thing I want to talk about is Haruhi herself, I'm not majorly fond of her.

Haruhi: Am I missing something that should help me like her more, I don't think I have a massive amount of empathy for her either

I don't hate her it's just that she doesn't interest me as much as the other members of the brigade. Really I'm interested in their reactions to what Haruhi does rather than Haruhi's actions themselves. Especially those reactions of the real star of the show, the cynical Kyon, that is pretty much a given so I won't talk about him at all. In the series I didn't think much of Haruhi other than as a catalyst for the creation of a plot. I just feel that the creators wanted me to be more intrigued with her than I actually am. I did like her in the film though but I think I'll talk about that more later on.

Next I'm going to talk about "fan-favourite" Nagato

Nagato being kickass in her witch costume

She interests me because you just don't know how she's feeling, you can only guess. She's the stereotypical quiet female, shutting herself up in a way rei clones often do. Whenever she's on-screen I'm dying to know what she's feeling, she endures a lot throughout the series which I guess is a cue for me to start talking about the film.

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

The movie has a really different tone to the TV series which makes me love it all the more and helps provide a different perspective of the characters. I reckon this can be applied mostly to Nagato, especially as she's the one who is responsible for the events that occur in the film. In the changed universe I still don't understand why Nagato herself changed so much on the outside, I mean I thought that only the events changed and not the characters' personalities. I do believe that the alternate Nagato represents what the usual Nagato is feeling deep inside herself but it's just...I...well. I dunno I guess I'll have to watch the film and the series over and over again to understand it. Anyway I felt that Nagato's character in the film is fantastic both the alternate one and the usual one, though as I said before I personally feel that inside there may not be that much difference between the two in terms of what they're feeling. The Interactions between her and Kyon were heartbreaking in my opinion. I felt really sorry for her and partly felt that I didn't want Kyon to push that button because of Nagato's feelings towards him.

This scene from the film on the rooftop was particularly emotional

But what about Haruhi in the film? Well I liked her a lot more than in the series, trouble is I don't know why. If you agree with me could you say why in the comments or on the anime uk forum (more on this later). Hmm I said earlier that I'd talk about it more but I haven't have I

Anyway lets move onto a different character in the series: Koizume

Itsuki Koizumi

I like him he's a chilled out dude with paranormal esper powers...awesome. He's the one who explains what's going on in the crazy world of Haruhi with regard her powers so we rely on him quite a bit from that perspective. However I find he's not really that interesting from an emotional perspective, well I guess. I mean I do get a sense that a lot of what he puts forward on the outside is just for show but it doesn't grab my curiosity in the same way that Nagato's does. That might be because Nagato's situation is more tragic and affects her more than Koizumi's affects his own. However one thing that the alternate Koizumi mentioned in the movie was that he was very fond of Haruhi, this kind of makes me wonder if the usual Koizume is in love with her too. I knew from the series that he found her charming but the film hinted that there might be something more.

Now a brief mention of Mikuru Asahina

Mikuru Asahina: the least interesting of the SOS brigade

Well to be honest the only good thing about her is that she makes Kyon say some funny things and that's it. Her role in the movie gave her more of a purpose but I wouldn't say it made her more interesting.

If I want to sum up my questions so far I'd say they'd be A: Why don't I like Haruhi as much as should? B: Why does Nagato change into a normal human being in the alternative universe in the film? C: does the alternate Nagato's personality reflect what the usual Nagato is feeling inside, actually I want to see if that's true for all the characters? D: why do I prefer the alternate Haruhi to the usual one? I mean they have the same personality so why I prefer one to the other is a mystery to me. There's probably some other stuff that I want to ask too but not thinking about when I'm writing this so I'll probably put forward some more questions later.

One final thing I want to point out that I mentioned at the beginning of this post is that everything I've talked about is in regards to the anime only, not the manga. I have no intention of reading the manga until the anime series has finished and there's nothing more coming out. Some of these questions I've put forward are probably due to me not paying attention when watching, however if there's a question that can only be answered by reading the manga I ask you not to spoil it just in case it's answered in future anime series/films.

I'm going to put forward my questions on the anime uk forum, it's fairly new so it's a small community but that's why I joined it. It's got potential for growth so I advise you join it too to help make it become the forum it deserves to be. It'll also be easier to discuss what I've put forward on there as well so here's the link to the website:

anime uk

more specifically here's the thread in question:

anime uk Haruhi Suzumiya thread

Well I guess that's all I have to say for now, I hope my ramblings haven't been too incoherent.

My AMVs

I love Anime Music Videos; brilliant to watch and more importantly brilliant to make. It's a shame that copyright makes it difficult to distribute them but that's the way it goes. I'm not an editing master so I'm not the best but still it's good fun making them. Here are my favourite ones that I've done so far:

This one is more of a fan trailer than an AMV but hey what the hell. I did it because the leona lewis trailer was just so shit and overtly melodramatic

Bike Chase Muse AMV
This one was one of my firsts, what surprised me is that I basically did no editing yet it still went together pretty well. All I did was slap Muse's Knights of Cydonia over the bike chase scene from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and just left it at that.

Cowboy Bebop AMV
This one might have been the first time I've ever used some sort of editing software, not much going on just a little kill bill then some linkin park. I guess I just like it for it's nostalgic value

I'll probably post some stand out AMVs that I find on youtube in the future, maybe do my own AMV of the month. I'll see