JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: And What a Fabulous Adventure It Is

Recently Alice convinced me to watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure with her- and what a Bizarre Adventure it was!  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this show certainly delivered...something!

Code Geass: We Tried

So we finally got around to watching Code Geass, which has been touted as an excellent military/political drama/mindgame-type show.

So let's get a few things straight.  We liked the show, we really did.  But...probably not for the reasons we should.

The Ravages of Time (undignified fangirling time)

This is me.

Alas! I find myself in danger of disappearing off the face of this blog (not that I update much anyway). You can blame this almost entirely on the Three Kingdoms 2010 drama, which is a ridiculous 95 episodes long, each episode being twice that of your typical anime episode. Goodbye, life. 

Speaking of which, before I turned into a horrible anime/manga obsessed freak, I was a Romance of the Three Kingdoms obsessed freak first. Chinese history, awesome battles, battles of wits etc, what is there not to love? I'd like to think I'm a lot less obsessed now than I was, but every now and then (like now), I'm hit with this utter, uncontrollable fit of Three Kingdoms fanaticism that basically destroys my patience for anything else until I somehow find something more interesting to distract myself away from it. 

There are Three Kingdoms adaptations all over the place, and they vary unbelievably widely in interpretation and quality. The 2010 drama is really quite enjoyable, lengthy though it is, but by far my favorite adaption is the Hong Kong manhua Ravages of Time.

Katanagatari: A Pleasant Surprise

So it was recently recommended that I watch Katanagatari, which aired once a month starting in 2010 (and is going to be re-aired during the spring 2013 season - in only a few days, actually, yay for my timing?).  I was quite hesitant to start watching it.  Fifty-minute long episodes?  What is this, white people TV?  After much inner debate, I decided to just suck it up and watch the first episode.

Kekkaishi

Ghost doggies!

Ok, that's a gif from the anime, which I haven't actually watched, but it's cute and relatively representative of how much I liked this series? Really, Kekkaishi kind of blew me away in how good it was, which really shouldn't be a surprise since it's been on my to-read list for a good two or three years now as an excellent shounen manga written by a woman with good character depth and plot development etc (ie something to fill the void in my heart left by completing FMA).

It starts out episodic and really really slow, which is why it took me a while to get into it. Actually, I'm pretty sure this has been the third time I started reading Kekkaishi, but I've only finished it for the first time just now. So yes, the pacing is a bit wonky at first. But the plot builds up more and more as you go further down the story arcs, and from chapter ~150 onwards I was basically finding myself marathoning reading this manga until 2am until I was done with it.

Awesome weird monsters!

And yes, Kekkaishi is completely completed, which is probably the best thing you can say about a long-running shounen series. Unlike a lot of shounen, it doesn't drag near the end-- if anything it gets more and more interesting. It also avoids that annoying shounen pitfall where you know the story ends with the main character beating the Big Bad in some kind of epic showdown, something that even the great FMA had. So yes, I loved the ending-- it didn't all tie up in some cheap fight; it was very positive and satisfying and hopeful; there was still a twinge of sadness/melancholy to make it kind of hit home a bit harder.

Also have I mentioned how much I love reading shounen stuff written by women? It is orders of magnitude less disgusting than most of the usual stuff. There is very little fanservice, except for one part when the main character accidentally peeks on his crush when she's bathing. He then spends the entire next chapter beating himself up over it for invading her privacy-- a far cry from, say, One Piece, where purposefully peeking on women is trivialized into nothing but a joke, reinforcing the idea that that kind of behavior is acceptable and normal. Also there's this ridiculously funny boob joke in there that shows no cleavage whatsoever but had me giggling for a good two minutes. That's impressive!

Kekkaishi has an anime, but it's 50+ episodes long and only covers up to the end of the first major story arc, around chapter 120. Which is a shame, because things get so much more interesting and cool afterwards! The whole manga is 345 chapters, meaning Kathryn will never read it and she will never get to all the cool fun parts of the story. Shame, shame. My dear friend, you are missing out.

Saiunkoku Monogatari

My appetite for animated Chinese-inspired period dramas has been whetted by Twelve Kingdoms. Hence I'm dragging my roommates into (re)watching Saiungoku Monogatari, which roommate C dragged me into watching back during freshman year of college. But that was years ago, so I've basically forgotten everything except:

1. Very pretty fake China!
2. The girl wants to be a government official
3. Emporer Tamaki (from Ouran)
4. Pretty boys (see above image) whose names I can't remember
5. Political intrigue (???)

It turns out that is a pretty good summation for a hefty portion of Saiunkoku, but it's still an extremely fun anime to watch. It is extremely girly shit, yes, but as with every type of genre, girly shit can be really awesome sometimes.

Bokurano

Next up is Bokurano, an anime which aired in 2007 (before I actually started watching anime properly) and came highly recommended. 

You know, this picture kind of makes it look like it is a show about a bunch of kids being kidnapped by sentient chairs

Sword Art Online, Please Go Die In A Hole

So I have finally (FINALLY) finished this damn show, after having forced myself to watch it once a week since it started airing in July (good god have I really wasted this much of my life on this travesty).

Shiki

It's winter break time, so Kathryn and I can properly marathon anime in decent company! We recently barreled through Shiki, this horror anime from 2010 that various Things have been yelling at us to watch for a while now, so here is a nice dual post.

Shiki is the best horror series I've seen in a long a time, and easily the best vampire anything I've ever seen, ever. As a general principle, I really really detest vampire stuff, considering what our Modern Generation tends to do with them, etc etc. No, not only the Twilight bullshit; I think my loathing began somewhere with the Interview with a Vampire series? I don't really care at all about vampires and their vampire society bullshit and in general it just pisses me off. But I liked Bram Stoker's original novel well enough, and the really old traditional horror/superstition stuff is pretty nice. Shiki is more like that kind of stuff-- weird shit going on, mysterious deaths unexplained by conventional reasoning, things that go bump in the night, increasing body counts, and so on.

Post-Mawaru Penguindrum: a.k.a. My Brain Hurts, Help

You must play this while reading this post.  It is a requirement.  Carry on.

Stuck in your head FOREVER

So I just finished Mawaru Penguindrum a few days ago and....phew.  That was sure...something.  I'm not certain that my brain has quite managed to process it yet.  For the record, I am more comfortable with rants than proper reviews, so...bear with me.

SPOILERS.  JUST FYI.