FunBlog

If you’re an anime fan who loves horror shows, you’re probably pretty happy right now. If you don’t like horror then…maybe not so much.

So far Occult Academy is my favorite of the new season: a spooky, tongue-in-cheek show somewhat reminiscent of The X-Files. It features a time-traveler who is a washed-up psychic teaming up with an angry girl who hates everything about the occult. If they can defeat an evil conspiracy they may find the key to preventing the scheduled destruction of the world.

There is nothing tongue-in-cheek about the stylish vampire thriller Shiki. These aren’t funny vampires or tormented romantic vampires. These are old-fashioned scary vampires. A good choice if you really want to be frightened.

Few shows have attracted as much attention as High School of the Dead. Given that it is from Madhouse, it is only natural that it has high-quality animation and a witty script. However most of the attention is due to the way it combines gory zombie-fighting with massive fan service.

Lots of people like fan service. That’s why they call it “fan service.” And there are plenty of people who like bloody zombie action. However I find the combination of the two distasteful enough that I don’t intend to watch any more of it, regardless of how well-made it is.

Also it seems likely that there won’t be a satisfactory ending. Probably there will be 12 or 13 episodes of girls fighting zombies, with blood splashing and skirts flipping, leading up to an ending that is totally inconclusive. The manga certainly hasn’t gone anywhere and the whole zombie premise doesn’t really lend itself to a satisfactory conclusion. The only logical ending is “eventually everyone gets eaten by the zombies” and anything else would probably feel like a cheat.

I suppose I should mention Kuroshitsuji II for completeness. It certainly fits in with the horror theme but I don’t intend to watch it, given that I never got past the first episode of the original series.

I’m not sure whether Nurarihyon no Mago counts as horror or not. The first episode seems like routine shounen wish-fulfillment. A seemingly normal human boy is actually part youkai, and is destined to become the leader of all the youkai clans. Lame comedy ensues when he tries to keep his human classmates from encountering his family’s youkai retainers. However subsequent episodes seem to be getting darker. It’s still possible that this might turn into something interesting.

Among the non-horror shows the pickings are pretty slim. Ookami-san and the Seven Companions is from J.C Staff, and thus combines high-quality animation, cute character designs and a somewhat twisted outlook. The premise seems trite: a high-school club that exists to help out other students, but demands a return favor from them Godfather-style. The gimmick is that most of the characters are based on characters from fairy tales.

Ryouko Ookami is a hot-tempered girl who punches out her opponents with boxing gloves with kitten faces. Her best friend Ringo Akai is a loli who wears a red cloak. Ookami has a stalker, a pathologically shy boy who carries a powerful slingshot.

Now “ookami” means “wolf” and “Akazukin-chan” is “Little Red Riding Hood,” so the outline of the original story is there, but in a very twisted form. The wolf and Red Riding Hood are not supposed to be friends and the hunter is supposed to want to kill the wolf, not make her his girlfriend. I can’t help thinking of the Tex Avery cartoons of the 1940s which depicted Red Riding Hood as a nubile maiden pursued by a lustful male wolf. This show manages to twist everything around.

So far the fractured fairy tales have been rather uneven. The most consistently funny part is the narrator, whose droll remarks seem a constant source of annoyance to Ookami.

The premise of Mitsudomoe is pretty much identical to last winter’s Hanamaru Kindergarten: a young man starts his first job as a schoolteacher, is attracted to a pretty coworker, and is discomfited by some of his female students. However while Hanamaru featured adorable innocent kindergarteners, Mitsudomoe has nasty violent perverted sixth-graders. This is occasionally funny in a kind of gross sort of way, but all too often they take a gross joke and repeat it again and again until I want to scream.

Strike Witches 2 has…Oh forget it.

This is so wrong!

source (via)

After reviewing the key scenes, I think I have figured out the most confusing issues in Angel Beats!. Those who have seen the show may want to read my Spoiler Notes and decide whether you agree with my interpretations.

Ars Technica links to some demo footage of Ni no Kuni: The Another World, a video game being developed by Level 5 and Studio Ghibli.

There’s only so much you can tell from a 2-minute promo clip. The gameplay itself doesn’t look like a breakthrough–sort of Pokemonish in fact. The graphics on the other hand do indeed look amazing. It’s obviously computer-generated, but it looks surprisingly like a Studio Ghibli hand-drawn anime.

On closer examination, the quality isn’t really at a Studio Ghibli level. Maybe more like a second-tier studio’s imitation of Studio Ghibli. Nevertheless it looks vastly better than what we have come to expect from computer generated animation.

Could this approach become good enough to revolutionize CG animation? Possibly. Could it become good enough to kill off hand-drawn animation? Regrettably that’s also possible. We shall see.

Well THAT was controversial! Some people like it and some people really hate it. (All these links are full of spoilers of course.)

I don’t hate it. I still feel this was one of the best shows of the Spring season (but the competition isn’t fierce.) Still, I was originally hoping for something more, something on the level of the other anime adaptations of Jun Maeda stories that I have seen: Air, Kanon and Clannad. All of these were better executed and have far more emotional impact.

Angel Beats seems more like an intriguing first draft that COULD have been truly great with a rewrite and a demanding editor. This is the first time Jun Maeda has actually written an anime series. The other stories were written as visual novels, and adapted into anime by someone else. Writing VNs probably doesn’t teach you everything that you need to know about pacing and character development in a television series.

Steven claims that the ending is totally illogical. I don’t really see a problem.

Show ▼

All in all, an interesting story, even if the execution is flawed. If Kyoto Animation could remake (and greatly improve) Kanon four years after Toei’s original version, perhaps in another four years…?

There are some anime series that seem fun at first, but have flaws that become increasingly obvious as you spend more time with them. On the other hand there are some series that just seem to get better and better the more often I rewatch them.

Figure 17 is in the latter category. I just finished watching it again and I am even more impressed with it.

This time there was something that struck me about the OP and ED that I hadn’t noticed before. This is pretty spoilerish so I added it at the end of my spoiler notes. (Don’t read it if you haven’t seen the show; it’s not that interesting.)

Jonathan Clements, a professional translator, reveals the deliberations that go into bringing an anime series to British television.

“Can you translate it?” Bigwig asked me, all of a sudden.

“Not translate-translate,” added Fiona. “He means: translate it so it’s good.”

“I can translate what people are saying…” I began.

“Yeah, I don’t want to know what they are saying. I want you to write a script that’s better than that.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer,” I ventured, “to know what they are saying first? Then you would know if you wanted to change it.”

Bigwig, Fiona and Gothboy exchanged sidelong glances.

“We want it to be good,” affirmed Gothboy.

“I’m pretty sure,” I said, “that a million Japanese viewers tell you it’s good already, without any interference.”

“We’ll make it better,” said Bigwig.

“But still faithful to the original,” added Fiona hastily.

“Faithful to the original,” continued Bigwig, “but with more Zhzhh.”

“And change the names,” said Gothboy. “So they sound less… Japanese.”

“And we’ll put some music on it from Cradle of Filth,” said Bigwig.

“Or my mate Dave’s band, if they’re cheaper…” said Gothboy, carefully.

I stared at them open-mouthed.

more here.

…apparently. The new OVA xxxHolic Rou seems to wrap up the series pretty neatly, although I suppose they could use it as a launchpad for a new series of stories based on the new situation.

via Don.

X what you’ve seen
O what you saw some but not all of
Bold what you particularly liked
Strike-through what you hated
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I wrote a capsule movie review of Ponyo back when it was released in American movie theaters. Now that I have had a chance to examine the DVD version I am going to write an updated review.

A movie review necessarily gives my first impression after viewing it once. Having a DVD allows me to examine the work in detail, which often changes my impression of it–sometime for the better and sometimes for the worse.
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So far I see one show that looks really interesting and a few more that are innovative enough that they may be worth a look.

Angel Beats is far and away the most interesting of the new shows. I’ve already written two posts about it so I won’t bother to add more here.

Kaichou wa Maid-sama is a new twist on some old tropes. It’s a shoujo anime featuring a tsundere maid. Both tsundere and maids are overused in shounen anime and manga, but they are pretty rare in shoujo stories. Presumably girls don’t like to think of themselves as tsundere, and they certainly don’t fantasize about being maids.

The shoujo approach is working out rather well. The heroine, a tyrannical student council president who is forced by poverty to work part-time in a maid café, is sympathetic and fairly smart. Her nemesis is a good-looking boy who is too cool for words and seems to enjoy teasing her. The outcome is inevitable.
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Whether or not you like Angel Beats, you’ve got to admit that it is pretty audacious to present an anime that looks like a cross between Haruhi Suzumiya and Haibane Renmei. With guns.

After only two episodes, everybody seems to be speculating about what is really going on and how it is going to end, so I’m going to put in my two cents. This is necessarily spoilerish, so it goes below the fold.
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Angel Beats is a new anime series written by Jun Maeda, the writer who created Air, Kanon and Clannad. This one however is not being done by Kyoto Animation. It comes from an obscure studio called P.A. Works, which has previous mostly done in-between work for more established studios.

Fans of the earlier shows may well wish that Kyoto Animation were doing this one. The animation would certainly be better (though more moe-ified.) However if this were a Kyo-Ani production we would probably need to call it something like Haruhi Suzumiya Goes to Purgatory. (High School of the Dead might also be a good title, but that one’s already taken.)
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Probably Inuyasha the Final Act would not be very enjoyable for those who have not seen the original series, but it does provide fans of the original series with a satisfactory ending to the story.

While I thought that the original series was quite good in many respects, I felt that the lack of a decent ending was unacceptable. Since they have now given us the ending, I have gone back and revised my original review and increased the rating to reflect this.

Some random spoiler-ish thoughts about the ending are below. If you haven’t seen the series, you are advised to stop reading now.
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For a 50-episode series, Cross Game went by surprisingly fast. At first glance it doesn’t seem all that special–yet another sports anime with a predictable story arc leading up to the big game.

However this one is unusually well-written. It’s witty and fun to watch, and it keeps its priorities straight. The game is ultimately just a game; what really matters are the characters. This story features some particularly likable characters (including what is probably the most sympathetic tsundere character that I have ever seen.)

I’m going to miss them.

Apparently we are only at the half-way point. But honestly, didn’t Episode 12 feel like the ending? First Kimi ni Todoke and now this. What is it with these series that reach a natural ending point, and just keep going?

This is not another CardCaptor Sakura. (Few things are.) It’s much less ambitious, a simple story that might have been better if told in fewer episodes.

Nevertheless it’s a winner. It’s pleasant and engaging and the ending is beautiful.

…what do you suppose the odds are that Gainax is planning a Gainax Ending for the upcoming final episode of Hanamaru Kindergarten? Based on previous examples it might go something like this:

Anzu-chan finally realizes that Tsuchi is never going to marry her. She goes berserk and brings an AK-47 to kindergarten. Tsuchida-sensei happens to be absent that day, but it doesn’t save him–a jealous Hinagiku has already ordered her father’s henchmen to whack him. Meanwhile Hiiragi, who has figured out how to build a miniature version of the Large Hadron Collider in her father’s basement, accidentally creates a mini black hole which swallows up the Earth. That should just about do it.

I confidently predict that this will prove to be just as accurate as most of my other predictions.

The series wraps up with an ending that is sort of sweet, but mainly is ludicrously dumb. Dumb on so many levels that there really is no point in complaining about it.

I should have seen it coming of course. When a series starts out by introducing a military unit that is mostly made up of Brownie Scouts, and it isn’t a comedy, there are really only two possibilities: the Gainax ending and the schmaltzy ending. Guess which one they picked.

And what does the title mean anyway? Everyone knows that you can’t make words using the wo character. And it’s written in katakana (SORANOWOTO) so it ought to be some sort of foreign phrase, but nothing comes to mind. Actually it turns out to be a goofy way to write Sora no Oto (Sound of the Sky.)

“Author” is puzzled by a Japanese graduate student at an American university who lets his children watch American cartoons, but not anime. I don’t think that’s very surprising.

Assuming that the kids are under 10, then the vast majority of the anime available here is not appropriate for them. Unlike the American cartoons, they are just not intended for that age group.

Japan actually makes a lot of kodomo anime which is aimed at young children, but it is rarely licensed in America, mainly because it is of no better quality than the stuff you see on Saturday mornings on American TV. It does tend to have a distinctly Japanese flavor though.

Example: Zenryoku Usagi (The “Give it All You’ve Got” Rabbits.) The rabbits are construction workers. They have great company spirit. They work very hard. They should have the rest of the country paved over in a matter of months.

Have you ever wondered what X-Men would be like if it were a shoujo manga? Me neither, but I think we have the answer here anyway. It would still be about young people with mutant powers, but it would be cute and whimsical, and just a little dark.
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Fans of xxxHolic will want to check out episode 17 of Kobato. for an interesting 30-second cameo. What follows is sort of spoilerish, so I am putting it below the fold:
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Here’s an off-the-wall idea. I can’t help wondering whether the floppy hats that Kobato always wears conceal the fact that she actually has puppy-dog ears. (Sort of like Holo in Spice and Wolf.) That would go a long way toward explaining her puppy-like personality.

The sequel continues the story begun by the first season of Clannad, adding a lot of depth to what started out as a fairly lightweight story. That does not mean that everyone who liked the first season will like the second. Some fans of the first season will really love it, and some may not.

As the characters leave high school behind and encounter the joys and sorrows of adult life, the tone of the story changes. The emotional highs of the second season are very high, and the emotional lows are very low. There is ultimately a happy ending but it is one that not everyone finds satisfactory, for reasons that I discuss in my spoiler notes.
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The recession has hit the anime industry pretty hard. There are only about 20 new shows, so according to Sturgeon’s Law we only have the right to hope for 2 good ones. It’s too soon to say whether any of the new shows will really turn out to be good. Many a show has had a promising start and a train-wreck ending. Still I’ve noticed 4 or 5 that seem to have potential.

Durarara seems the most promising of the new crop. It’s a dark but funny crime drama involving some high school students who like to hang out after dark in a crowded Tokyo shopping district, and some of the district’s odder inhabitants. Many of the latter have violent tendencies and some seem to have supernatural powers. So far the show has mostly focused on introducing the large cast of characters, but it has been quite entertaining.

SORANOWOTO is hard to pin down. It might turn out to be really good, or it might be one of the aforementioned train-wrecks. It is an oddly cheerful show with a strange and rather dark setting: an alternate version of Europe that after decades of war has regressed to an early 20th century level of technology. (This version of Europe seems to have had a large number of Japanese immigrants in the past. The local language seems to be French, but more than half the characters have Japanese names and some of them have retained significant elements of Japanese culture.)

The story involves a girl who joins the army hoping to learn how to play the trumpet. She is issued a bugle and sent with little or no training to join an all-female platoon in a frontier outpost. Their main weapon is a broken mecha that they don’t know how to repair. Frankly they don’t look like they could withstand an attack by 5 drunken rugby players, let alone a professional army.

This show has been compared to K-ON, Aria, and Strike Witches. The comparison with K-ON seems very misleading. The character designs are very similar but this seems a totally different kind of story. It also seems different from Strike Witches in that it is not over-the-top ecchi nonsense, and the animation quality is much better.

Strangely, the comparison with Aria seems more apt. The show so far has a sweet, gentle slice-of-life feel to it, though oddly juxtaposed with the rather grim setting.

However I can’t help similarities to Simoun. So far we have a bunch of girl soldiers left in an exposed position by a high command that is either unwilling or unable to give them the support they need. This could easily turn into an overwrought anti-war fable with a sad ending. It wouldn’t even have Simoun‘s tragic virtues, since the warriors of that story were at least capable and well-trained.

If you liked Nodame Cantabile and Nodame Cantabile Paris Chapter then you will want to check out Nodame Cantabile Finale. Personally I loved the first season but didn’t see the point of the second. The first season told a satisfying story; the second season didn’t really add much to it. Probably the final season will be more of the same. Still it’s a quality production, and a must-see for anyone who can’t get enough of the characters.

Hanamaru Kindergarten is the cutest and funniest of the new shows. The first episode unnerved many viewers with the little girl who insists that she is going to marry her kindergarten teacher, but the whole thing seems basically pretty innocent. (The girl’s mother is nuts to encourage her though. And does she dye the kid’s hair? What’s with that?)

Akiyuki Shinbou is a talented director. Anything he does is probably worth checking out and I really liked last year’s Bakemonogatari. Unfortunately I don’t think Dance in the Vampire Bund is in the same league. The basic premise is that Mina Tepes the queen of the vampires buys an island in Tokyo harbor to serve as a homeland for her people. The loli vampire queen is certainly a disturbing character, but a reasonable one for a vampire story. Unfortunately the other characters, including the werewolf-boy hero, just seem boring. Once I look past Shinbou’s unique visual style, the show seems like a collection of tired old shounen cliches.

The usual caveats apply: I haven’t sampled everything and my tastes are not yours. Series that are continuing into the Spring are not generally eligible, though I am making an exception for one that has no overall story.

The anime industry is clearly suffering from the bad economy. Fewer series were produced. Fan service shows (a mainstay of the second-tier studios) have gotten raunchier. Even if you think that’s a good thing, it has to be a sign of desperation.

Still, the year has to be judged by the best that is produces (remember Sturgeon’s Law.) By that measure 2009 actually wasn’t all that bad.

Outstanding Anime Series of 2009

Amazingly there were 3 series this year that really stood out, each with its own unique visual style.

Bakemonogatari (Ghoststory) Finally a series from Shaft that I can wholeheartedly endorse. Macabre, funny, twisted and solidly entertaining.

Higashi no Eden (Eden of the East) OK, the ending feels a little abrupt, but the show as a whole is brilliant, like nothing I’ve ever seen. A dark story, but funny and clever, consistently surprising and fascinating.

Kemono no Souja Erin (Erin the Beast Player) A great fantasy story, quite long but carefully written with no waste or filler. Warning: the drawings may remind you of a children’s book, but this is not for little kids.

Special Honorable Mention

Ponyo was actually released in Japan in 2008, but Americans had to wait until 2009 to see it. The bottom line: Hayao Miyazaki is back and near the top of his form, at least if you like things like Totoro.

Noteworthy Anime Series of 2009

Aoi Bungaku (Fresh Literature). This selection of stories by noted twentieth century Japanese writers is not for everyone, but I rather liked it. The stories are fairly dark; in an earlier post I half-jokingly said that contemporary serious Japanese literature is mostly about suicide in one way or another. This series did nothing to refute my thesis.

Clannad After Story People who had played the game seemed to like the ending more than those who hadn’t. Still, if you like this sort of thing, this is another solid adaptation of a Key visual novel by Kyoto Animation. Get out your handkerchiefs.

Kimi ni Todake is indeed an angsty shoujo romance, but this one is special. The heroine, who has more than a trace of ASD wonders wonders why she has no friends and tries to reason out logically what she needs to do to get some. The results are a bit strange, but surprisingly successful.

Mainichi Kaasan (Everyday Mom/Mom’s Life) Sure the character designs are horrifying, but this adaptation of the gag manga about a manga artist and her family is the most consistently funny show of the year. However you may need to have kids of your own to appreciate the humor.

Summer Wars. It’s cyberpunk vs. Japanese tradition in this movie. As science fiction it has a few refrigerator moments, but the depiction of the quarrelsome but supportive traditional extended family is priceless.

Toradora Finally–a harem comedy with a decent ending!

Interesting, but Not to My Taste

There were several shows that were worthy efforts, but which for various reasons I found unwatchable.

Genji Monogatari Sennenki OK, let’s get real. The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, is not the world’s first novel. Perhaps it’s the first novel written by a woman, or the first example of chick lit. In any case The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius sometime in the 2nd century, reads much more like a modern novel.

This anime adaptation of Gengi is beautifully drawn, and the convoluted writing has been cleaned up to make it comprehensible to a modern audience. Unfortunately I can’t make myself care about the endless love affairs of a beautiful but narcissistic prince.

Kuuchuu Buranko (Trapeze) A daring, innovative visual style. I couldn’t make it through even one episode.

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun) There are many people who really like this, and it clearly has a lot going for it, including fine animation and interesting characters. Unfortunately I find the character of Kuroko so revolting that I just can’t watch the show.

Kyoto Animation Jumps the Shark

Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Second Season). There was plenty of reason to fear that the sequel would be a disappointment, given that the writers had cherry-picked the best of the source material for the first season, but nobody expected something as bad as this. Stretching what was at most 5 episodes worth of material to 14 episodes had the fans dumbfounded and furious.

Haruhi illustrates the sort of mistake that talented people can make when they get too arrogant, but Sora o Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai (Munto) is a work of total mediocrity: an uninspired story, flat uninteresting characters and bad animation with obtrusive CGI.

You may not feel that K-ON belongs in this category. It was a tremendous hit, pretty to look at, funny and fun to watch. However compared to Lucky Star, the same studio’s earlier adaptation of another gag manga about high school girls, K-ON falls short. Lucky Star is just as plotless, but it is funnier with much better developed characters. The main innovation in K-ON consists of cranking the moe factor up to 11. This is no substitute for good writing.

Still Watching

Cross Game. There’s nothing obviously special about this sports/romance anime, except the fact that it is well-drawn, well-written and has lovable characters. It is a long, slow-moving series, but consistently enjoyable.

Kobato. I’m still not sure whether this is going to turn out to be brilliant or a disappointment, but it is rather cute and charming. Charm can only take you so far though. They need to prove that there is a real story here.

Inuyasha Final Chapter. It’s very simple. If you were a fan of the original series, you will want to see the ending. If you didn’t see the original series, the sequel has nothing to offer you.

Millennium Actress is something of an overlooked gem. The movie won all sorts of awards in Japan and was widely praised by critics, but its American release sank without a ripple. This supports the general rule that an animated film that doesn’t even pretend to be for kids has no chance in America. For anime fans it is worth a second look.

The movie is reminiscent of Citizen Kane, though it is less political and more romantic. The basic structure is the same: an investigator explores the life story of a public figure, seeking some key insight that will explain the life and give it meaning.
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This is a bit unusual–an anime based on ballet. The story draws heavily from Swan Lake and the The Nutcracker, with individual episodes inspired by various other ballets, operas and pieces of classical music.

This gives the series the singular advantage of having some of the world’s most beautiful music for its soundtrack. It also features clever and thoughtful writing. However the animation is, overall, only mediocre. It’s regrettable that this was not produced by one of the top-ranked animation studios (I’m thinking of Madhouse in particular.) If it had been this would surely have deserved a full five stars.
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“Robert X Cringely” (Mark Stephens) offers his own design for a “space garbage scow” to clean up all the space junk. It sounds a bit more practical than the approach used in Planetes.

By now I’ve had time to sample everything that looks interesting, and to write individual posts about some of them. Here’s a rundown of my current impressions.

Possibly worthwhile (depending on your tastes)

Kobato.. So far this is my favorite new series, cute and funny but with some dark undertones. The interplay between the impossibly sweet and optimistic heroine and her nasty, violent plush toy constantly cracks me up.

Aoi Bungaku. Dark, serious drama in a very high-quality production.

Kimi ni Todoke. Angst-haters beware! But if you like shoujo romance, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better example.

Inuyasha the Final Act. This has improved since the frenetic first episode, but it is still very fast-paced. If you were a fan of the first series there is a good chance you will enjoy this. However if you are not familiar with the story of the first series the new series will make no sense, and you are better off skipping it.
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This is an interesting and unusual anime series: an anthology of six stories by highly-regarded modern Japanese writers. Each story has a different director, which may lead to an uneven viewing experience. So far it looks very good. The writing is excellent (as one would expect) as is the animation by Madhouse.

Now this is probably not going to be to everyone’s taste. Contemporary serious Japanese fiction tends to be on the dark side. You encounter a lot of alienated people who think about killing themselves to make some sort of obscure political point. Or people who are bummed because their friends or family members killed themselves. Or intriguing fantasy stories whose background is never clearly explained, and which, on closer examination, seem to be a metaphor for how you feel when your friends kill themselves.

OK, I’m exaggerating just a little. But my main point is that most anime is based on manga or light novels, escapist literature about people who hardly ever think about killing themselves. So it’s possible that the typical anime fan won’t find this appealing.

Incidentally, “aoi” can mean “blue”, or “green” (like a leaf), or “unripe.” So does the title mean “Blue Literature”, “Green Literature” or “Unripe Literature?”

The latest fad among anime bloggers seems to be to list your top 5 anime, then try to draw conclusions from the list.

I’m willing to play along, but I’m puzzled by the question: “top 5 according to what criteria?” Should I list the anime I’ve enjoyed most, based on my initial reaction and number of rewatches? Or should I list the ones I admire most, based on overall artistic quality? These are not at all the same thing.

So I’m going to shrug and give both lists:

Most Fun

1. Cardcaptor Sakura
2. Spirited Away
3. Shakugan no Shana
4. Kanon (2006)
5. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (original broadcast order)

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Highest Quality

1. Spirited Away
2. Grave of the Fireflies
3. Cardcaptor Sakura
4. Haibane Renmei
5. Dennou Coil

There would be more overlap if I were doing a Top 10 list. Still, note that in one case I can’t link to a review since I haven’t been able to force myself to watch it again.

So what does it signify? I can’t say. You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

Angsty shoujo romance is usually something I tune out very quickly (unless it’s played for laughs as in Itazura na Kiss.) Kimi ni Todoke (Reaching You) plays it totally straight, but it still has me watching after three episodes. Maybe it’s true that the genre doesn’t matter as long as it’s done well enough.

Sawako Kuronuma is a girl who is shy, book-smart and overly earnest. She has no friends because her classmates are afraid of her. They call her “Sadako” after the character in The Ring, whom she rather resembles. When she is nervous, which is most of the time, she looks angry and speaks in shaky voice that sounds like something out of a nightmare.

When a cheerful, popular boy shows an interest in her she gradually begins to relax, lighten up and start to make friends. However given the nature of the genre we know that things are not going to be that easy for her.

The OVA turns out to be better than I had feared. It’s a lightweight filler story (which is true of just about every OVA released for a television series, except for those that are total-ripoff clip shows.) However it is entertaining and perhaps gives us some insight into the characters. Fans of the TV show will probably like it. People who hate the show…have probably stopped reading by now, so we won’t worry about them.

The story apparently takes place in the interval between the first and second seasons of the TV series. Show ▼

Yuuji and Shana are rooting around in Friagne’s storeroom. Of course fooling around with unknown hougu is inherently dangerous; a mishap occurs and hilarity ensues. Everything works out all right in the end. Nothing really important happens but there are some nice scenes.

Presumably Yuuji and Shana were looking for something to use against the Balle Masque, which is a nice touch. The second season manages to give the impression that the heroes just waited passively for the inevitable attack, without making any preparations. This story suggests that they did look for possible countermeasures, but failed to come up with anything effective.

Though the story seems to wrap itself up neatly, AniDB says that this is just the first part of a 4-episode OVA series to be released between now and next August.

So far Kobato. (with a period) is my favorite series of an admittedly weak fall anime season. It’s cute, it’s funny and it’s charming. Maybe there’s more to it than that, or maybe not.

Almost 15 years ago there was another anime series created by CLAMP and animated by Madhouse. It was called Cardcaptor Sakura. It was cute and funny and charming. When I saw the first few episodes, I thought that was all there was to it–fun but lightweight. Gradually it became clear that this was a masterpiece, a great classic of animation and perhaps the best example of long-form television writing ever. (It’s not the best-written series ever, but the better ones are all much shorter.)

Since then both CLAMP and Madhouse have gone on to make many other series, none quite as good and some much worse.

This new collaboration is quite different from CCS, but there’s something about it that feels similar. That certainly doesn’t prove that it’s another masterpiece. In fact the odds are that it’s not. But I’m willing to stick around to make sure. At worst, it probably will be a pleasant diversion.
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Perhaps it’s an indication of the overall quality of the Fall 2009 anime season that the show that seems to be attracting the most attention is one that irritates the heck out of me.

Seitokai no Ichizon (It’s Up To the Student Council) is rather reminiscent of Lucky Star with its cute high school girls, fast-paced anime in-jokes, and general lack of an overall story. On the other hand Lucky Star had much better artwork, bigger laughs and much more believable characters.
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I just watched the first episode of Inuyasha–The Final Act on Hulu.

First the good news: the subtitle translation seems noticeably better than the one on the VIZ DVDs for the original series–although they still translate “youkai” as “demon”, a pet peeve of mine.

The bad news is that they apparently intend to cover the final 21 volumes of the manga in 26 episodes or less. Thus, while the original series was arguably too padded and drawn out, the new series is far too rushed.

Anyone who did not watch the original series should forget about watching this one. Even fans of the original series whose memories have faded in the intervening years may have trouble following the action.

Worse, the proper pacing and rhythm of the story is lost. The first episode rushes through several minor story arcs and at least 4 major climactic moments:
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Each of these deserves at least an episode of its own, to allow us to experience the full emotional impact. Instead each is rushed through in a few seconds and is over almost before we know it.

So far it looks like this potentially great but overly-ambitious epic will have a botched ending.

What happens to a high-quality anime series that doesn’t fit the current model for R1 licensing? Specifically one that is more than 26 episodes long, but doesn’t feature named magical attacks and fan service in every episode?

Increasingly the answer is that it ends up on Crunchyroll.com. The latest news is that they are picking up Kemono no Souja Erin (The Beast Player Erin).

If you haven’t seen this, it’s worth checking out. It has a leisurely pace but it’s a great story.

is everything Miyazaki makes is now an instant classc? How about Howl’s Moving Castle?

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And BTW, 20 miles is a big deal now? What a whiner. Just move somewhere where they built freeways or something. And be happy it was shown 20 miles away. Tokikake was only shown in LA and NY, 2000 miles away for me.

Ani-Nooto

I’ve never seen Howl’s Moving Castle, so I can’t say whether it’s a classic. All I know is that everyone seems to hate it, which doesn’t encourage me to watch it.

As for Ponyo, I think it does qualify as a classic in the category of children’s movies. Or if it’s too early to say that, I predict that it will come to be considered a classic. The obvious comparison is to Totoro, which most people consider a classic. The two are similar in many ways, including the fact that the endings are too low-key for some adults, but are appropriate to the story and the intended audience.

As for the 20 miles, there are about 10 theaters in that driving radius and only one was showing Ponyo, which I think is a good indication of Disney’s level of commitment to the film. They could have done a lot worse, but they also could have done better.

The sad thing is, I think this is an anime that mainstream Americans could really appreciate, since it’s a really good movie for children. Most Americans can’t accept an animated movie like Princess Mononoke, but they probably would have no problem with this one.