Version 5.4 ~ Haruhi gave rock and roll to you.
karmaburn.com karmaburn.com
  • HOME

Dated 3 February 2013: I started watching Kotoura-san

Some teacher and Haruka
Good ol' rock. Nothin' beats that!

First of all, is it strange to find it unusual that the show is simply called Kotoura-san and not something Moll Flanders-ish like Kotoura-san Whose Life was Rotten until She Made a Friend and Now It's Better? I guess it is only an anime adaptation of a manga (a 4-koma, no less) and not an anime adaptation of a manga adaptation of a light novel. Anyway, yeah, that's what happens. At least that's what's happened so far.

Haruka
Doughnut of shunning.

Kotoura Haruka's life does start out pretty rotten. She develops psychic powers as a small child, but instead of being viewed as a medical and scientific marvel, she is shunned and despised and alienated by people who somehow don't realize this little girl HAS PSYCHIC POWERS. It's established later on that at least one other person with similar powers existed at one time, so I keep waiting for Professor X or some other psychic mentor to show up and teach her how to use her powers for good instead of using them to unintentionally antagonize everyone around her.

Manabe and Haruka
This counts as a meet-cute, right?

I'm mostly okay with the melodrama about Haruka's suffering. Between Kotoura-san and Oreshura, it's a good season for wanton cruelty. I'm not sure what direction Kotoura-san plans to take, though, since the arc about Haruka's horrid life seems about over, and the preview for episode five suggests the show will be about wacky good times from now on. It makes the tone of the show a little uneven, and I am still waiting for more psychics to show up. Maybe since Male Protagonist is not a potato, Kotoura-san figures there are already enough freaks in the show.

Haruka and Manabe
It's because he's a teenage boy, Haruka.

Manabe is a decent fellow who sort of reminds me of Nenji from Nanaka 6/17 in how he watches over Haruka. It's a sad comment on the state of the contemporary anime male protagonist that someone as self-assured and direct as Manabe is so unusual. Hopefully, random-ass convenient cockblocking won't prevent Manabe and Haruka from initiating a romantic relationship until the final episode. I say "hopefully," but let's be realistic here: He likes her and she likes him, but it's only been four episodes. Of course there's going to be random-ass cockblocking.

Dated 13 February 2013: Notes taken with a voice recorder

Rei
To be honest, Rei is taking this relatively well.

With apologies to ani-nouto for stealing its shtick, let's give this a try.

Makoto
I'm going to start calling her Cure Sam Spade and hope it catches on.

In re Dokidoki! Precure episode two:

  • What are you doing? She'll be fine. I'm pretty sure Cure Sam Spade could survive a fall from orbit.
  • Cure White Lie.
  • I'm pretty sure introducing gold and spreading it around a closed mercantilist economy with no external trading partners will only produce inflation. And apparently it also kills swallows.

Rei
Vividred Operation should just frame an entire episode
with the POV centered between Rei's thighs.

In re Vividred Operation episode five:

  • When this baby gets to 200%, you're going to see some serious shit.
  • Why didn't you take her to a hospital?
  • I'm pretty sure Akane is just using this as an excuse to continue stripping her naked.
  • Rei's life doesn't suck enough. It should be more like...Kotoura's life. Well, like Kotoura's life before it got better.
  • I'm also pretty sure that bird is Lieutenant Hayase. [P.S. Spoilers.]

Masuzu and Eita
Does that mean they're not pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend anymore?

In re Oreshura episode six:

  • Oreshura, adding a new girl is almost never a good idea.
  • This must be the episode where they couldn't spend any money.
  • This girl kinda sucks.
  • Fight the power.
  • This is a pretty lackluster episode.
  • Chiwa still sucks.
  • I'm going to be really disappointed if there isn't more bullying this episode.
  • This girl actually sucks more than Chiwa.
  • It's kinda comical how little effort the bodyguard has to expend to keep Eita away.
  • Does this mean that everyone is now aware of Eita's chuuni past? I'm not exactly clear as to how that all played out, and I'm not familiar with the corresponding sequence of the original light novel.

Dated 18 February 2013: Haruka's life continues to improve

Manabe and Haruka
Tiny pictures are the way of love.

People have mostly stopped trying to make Haruka miserable. I guess that's good, but with the show only at the halfway mark I wonder if it's on the path towards a non-ending ending, or if there will be some sort of phony melodrama that escalates out of control just out of nowhere? Seeing as how the show started out with a broken home and a dead mom, it's going to take more than a little bullying to pull off the Big Finish. Maybe Sentinels?

Dated 31 March 2013: Winter 2013 shows I dropped

Female Knight
Yes, Female Knight, these shows were aggravating.

Since I'm less likely now to start something I'm not certain I'll enjoy, I drop fewer shows these days. However, this trend apparently gets offset by my decreasing patience with shows in general, so I still dropped four shows winter 2013. Moreover, all four were fairly well-regarded by fans who aren't even disreputable. That is, the shows didn't suck; they just didn't appeal to me.

Kotori and Niko
Making faces won't help you.

The "best" show I dropped was Love Live! School Idol Project which I stopped watching after episode five. I can see why other people enjoy it, but I never cared about the characters or the plight of their school. Some of the characters have interesting traits, but I didn't find them to be interesting people. I understand that schools closing due to Japan's declining birthrates is a genuine phenomenon, but it's not a problem that resonates with me personally. Also, I may have exceeded safe school-closure dosage levels after exposure to so many shows invoking that particular plot device.

Manabe and Kotoura
Haruka is vexed by Manabe's enthusiasm again.

I dropped Kotoura-san at episode nine. This is unusual for two reasons: First, Kotoura-san is a really good show sometimes. Or at least it really has its moments. Second, after watching nine episodes of a single-cour series, I was so close to the end anyway it seems sticking it out and hoping for the best would have been a reasonable proposition. On problem with that though: Kotoura-san also annoyed the Bejesus out of me pretty frequently. Pointless cockblocking, idiotic one-note gags, and some really shitty writing offset the show's good qualities. I guess on average it's still at least okay as a whole, but it just wasn't worth it to me.

Demon King and Hero
Potato-kun in a place that that didn't even have potatoes.
Huge tracts of land, though.

It seems so long ago now, but I dropped Maoyuu Maou Yuusha at episode three. It was frankly kinda boring, and the lengths it went to in order to prevent its lead characters from becoming romantically involved were kinda ridiculous. When the season's starchiest Potato-kun isn't the high school kid in the harem comedy, but rather the skillful warrior in the fantasy epic about economics and logistics, there's a problem.

Kyouya and Shion
Go on, mister. Brush the shit out of her.

I had no interest in starting GJ-bu until maybe a couple weeks ago when its vocal fans and their adoration reached critical mass. Something about brushing girls' hair? I dunno, couldn't be that bad. The most passionate fans were particularly enamored of a character named Shion and episode five—the one where she gets her hair brushed. Okay, I guess I can watch five episodes of this thing. Well, it turns out it's not a bad show at all, but it did not appeal to me in the slightest. I guess it's because I prefer "cool," confident, and capable female characters doing things adeptly or with aplomb. Conversely, I dislike "cute" girls who are deliberately broken or inept in some fashion to appear more attractive. As a rule of thumb, I think I should just avoid anything described by other anime fans as "adorable." That seems to be a politically correct code word for "loli" or "mentally deficient" depending on whether the character in question is a small child or an adolescent. (E.g., Rikka from Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!) You may remember that I railed against K-On! for its aggravating Retard Moé shtick.

Kirara
I never did figure out why she's a cat.

However, GJ-bu wasn't so much Retard Moé as it was Autism Moé. This is not a term I coined or attached to the show, and I can't remember who said it first, but I certainly agree it is apt. These are not normal girls by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not suggesting solidly average boring girls would have been an improvement, but I'm increasingly put off by the "cute girls doing cute things" trope being extended ever further away from merely eccentric (or even neurotic) behavior towards an ideal where anime girls are basically pets or small children. This is not a new or unique criticism of moé to be sure, and I don't even have any opposition towards moé in general. I just can't enjoy the glamorization of these hopeless girl-shaped caricatures, even if they do have flaxen hair. Snow White had that too, but let's face it, she wouldn't have lasted two days alone in that forest without her benevolent animal friends.