Not pictured: Medaka's box.

Honestly, I don't think there are that many examples of people equating Medaka with Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu's titular character, even if I did say this season's Medaka reminded me of 2006's small god. However, enough people have made the comparison to invite disagreement among those opposed to simplistic conflation of the two. But is Medaka like Haruhi or not?

It's best to keep small gods appeased.

On the surface, it seems the comparisons arise from similarities between Medaka's preternatural prowess at practically everything and Haruhi's, well, omnipotence [P.S. Spoilers], but perhaps the ease at which viewers draw these comparisons is indicative of something else entirely: There is a dearth of capable, confident, assertive female anime characters in leadership roles. This is not to say there aren't any, and I'd venture anime in general contains more of such heroines than other media or genres, but I'll also claim the "moé-ification" of anime has forced female characters to have at least one "adorable" weakness, like Ouran Host Club's Haruhi's fear of thunder. Even Perfect Girls are not immune: School Rumble's Yakumo is afraid of dogs and Amagami SS's Tsukasa is, well, kinda crazy.

Not pictured: The Sea of Galilee.

Comparisons are also natural because Medaka and Haruhi can both seemingly do anything they want, and do it extraordinarily well. As NovaJinx (supra) notes, Medaka is seemingly perfect, while even Haruhi had faults. But faults aren't necessarily weaknesses, are they? That's the key, there: Neither appear to have weaknesses, let alone "cute" moé ones. I submit that capable, confident, assertive female anime characters lacking silly weaknesses are so rare that when two of them appear in the same decade it's inevitable they'll get lumped together.

You're better off making a contract with Rias than with Kyubey.

Okay, what about Rias Gremory? Two problems: (1) I don't think anyone took High School DxD seriously (I sure didn't), and (2) Rias did not impose her will on others indiscriminately. Haruhi, on the other hand, is one pushy broad. A sweetheart nonetheless, but yeah, kinda pushy. And Medaka? Oh, you will submit to Medaka's benevolence. Just lie back.

(I think I received the majority of the last 250 votes though.)

I've been eliminated from this year's Aniblog Tourney. Although the contest was not as lopsided as my first Aniblog Tourney loss, a contributing factor to both defeats was likely my staunch refusal to self-promote for it or for the blog in general. I have been updating this blog alone since approximately 1999. I have never included any advertising (except for the compulsory Geocities ones before I started paying for hosting. And despite moving the blog to WordPress in 2006, I've never enabled comments, an omission that perplexes some readers. As Ani-nouto can attest, some readers find blogs with disabled comments hostile and anti-social. However, I've nearly always posted contact information, and there's even a Twitter button available. Nobody ever uses the Twitter button, but I do get viewer mail on occasion.

The most recent letter comes from from Doomguin who writes:

I don't know if you've seen [Princess Princess] or heard of it or not, but the show is by Studio Deen, and it's about a boy, Toru Kouno, transfers to an all-boys high school, and after some odd treatment, is convinced to become one of the school's, now three, "Princesses". It turns out that because it is an all-boys school, it has become a tradition to select the students who are bishonen, and have them dress up a girls to keep the female-starved student body's morale up.

It has all the makings of a BL, but isn't and has a lot of fun with that fact. I recommend it if you have not seen it before, and I think it also falls into that little niche of shows that people don't generally think of (or have heard of, for that matter), and didn't get a lot of attention, but still good and enjoyable.

I have, in fact, heard of Princess Princess, but despite Doomguin's recommendation, I don't think I'll be watching it. Miracle Train aside, it doesn't sound like the sort of show I usually watch.

[Update: Yes, I'm messing with the CSS. Yes, it looks like ass. Yes, I'll probably lose interest before actually fixing anything, leaving the entire site in a terrible state, just as I've all but abandoned efforts to integrate the pre-2006 reviews on the left column into the WordPress categories on the right. No, I can't believe people still maximize browsers in this day and age. No, I haven't tested this at all in any version of Internet Explorer.]

Still miss Pioneer. Still bitter about Viz.

In observance of the 10-year anniversaries of their first airing, I've started re-watching Ai Yori Aoshi and Full Moon wo Sagashite this season as well, rationing myself to a single episode of each per week to roughly approximate the original broadcasts. I have all the available (R1) DVDs of each series, but I'm going to run out of Full Moon wo Sagashite once I reach the end of its seventh volume, as Viz never released the second half of the show. All the episodes are available in streaming format, but it's not the same. Pioneer, on the other hand, did an exceptional job with its Ai Yori Aoshi DVDs and collector box—arguably better than the series deserves, considering how far the anime falls once the setting relocates from Kaoru's little apartment to Aoi's massive mansion and a bunch of cockblockers move in. It also occurs to me that I've been blogging about anime now for more than 10 years, although the very early posts were honestly more sporadic than regular. I should dig up and incorporate those old archives to see just exactly how many anime blog posts I wrote back during the Geocities days.

Torrid fan service!

Tasogare Otome x Amnesia made a good first impression because Yuuko, this season's resident ghost girlfriend, is remarkably charming. It also helps that the male lead is not another potato. Ironically, I can't remember my first exposure to Amnesia. At some point, maybe a year ago, I added the RSS feed for its manga releases to my aggregator and downloaded many of the early chapters. However, I read none of them and cannot remember how I came to hear about Dusk Maiden of Amnesia in the first place. After a couple amusing episodes, curiosity got the better of me and I did something I never do: I read the source material past the available anime. (The manga benefits from numerous sight gags and extras currently absent from the anime, possibly biasing my overall opinion of the show more favorably than other viewers.)

Awesome reception!

I'm caught up with the current manga releases of Tasogare Otome x Amnesia, and while its male lead does suffer later from some of the unassertive, indecisive behavior compelled by the Otaku Virtues, his relationship with his ghost girlfriend remains acceptably free from tiresome problems that plague most school comedies. I say comedy, but Amnesia is a drama as well, and arguably a drama first. The mystery surrounding Yuuko's death (and life) drives the serious portions of Amnesia while Yuuko's flirting and mischievous irreverence keep the comedic aspects engaging. Through 33 chapters, the character count for Tasogare Otome x Amnesia remains small, assuring large doses of the extremely fetching Yuuko in each installment. Is "fetching" too old fashioned to say anymore? Hopefully it's okay to use the term to describe a Girl of the Year candidate who has been dead for over half a century. (Let's be honest, though, nobody is defeating Mine Fujiko for Girl of the Year honors barring a huge upset.)