Monster: A Treatise on Screaming

After hearing such good things about it, Alice and I finally got up the courage to tackle this monster of an anime (ha...ha...ha...), which comes in at 74 episodes.  Below are our reactions and feelings toward this masterpiece.

Pokemon Origins

Last Friday I made a very poor life decision. I sat down and watched all four episodes of Pokemon Origin, and now I've sank myself back into the pit of Pokemon-obsessed nerdiness that overwhelms all reason and completely eats one's consciousness, because that is what happens with me and Pokemon. Oh, and also I just stared playing Pokemon X, so that Soul Eater summary thing is going to have to wait a bit longer >___<

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.

Swimming Anime - A treatise on double standards

If you pay much attention to anime blogs/tumblrs/various social media outlets, it is likely that you have come across the phrase "Swimming Anime" at some point in the last three months or so.  Here is a brief summary of the events that sparked this strange set of circumstances.

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.

Amnesia: I kind of wish I had it after watching this

So somehow I started watching Amnesia, a currently-airing show based on an Otome dating sim.  This is completely unlike anything I would normally watch, so I'm going to blame Tumblr for throwing screenshots at me and luring me into it.  I blame the special eyes.  (MY BRAND)

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day! As we all know, Japan is seriously like, ridiculously sexist in many ways, and this is often reflected in the culture that it produces! Despite this, there are still a lot of really awesome women in the anime/manga industry and they make really really fantastic things.

So in the spirit of things, here's short list of cool things that you should read/watch that were created by women and with awesome female characters:

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.

Mononoke: sans Princess

I finally got around to watching Mononoke (which I mistakenly believed was related to Princess Mononoke for far too long - this incidentally also makes gif hunting very difficult).  This is one of those shows that is visually stunning, complete with bright, opalescent colors, but is simultaneously so utterly terrifying.

Based on the three-episode Bakeneko story arc from the horror anthology Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, Mononoke follows the travels (and inevitable exorcisms) of the mysterious Medicine Seller.

Twelve Kingdoms --- damn you, Tangorin!

I started watching Twelve Kingdoms not long ago-- it's based on a series of light novels by Fuyumi Ono, who wrote Shiki as well. Since I enjoyed Shiki so much, and I've heard lots and lots of good things about Twelve Kingdoms re: worldbuilding, character development, female characters, etc, I decided to go ahead and start watching the anime because I decided that I needed a break from all of this science fiction and/or depressing mecha shit Kathryn keeps shoving down my throat.

I'm not very far into the series yet, but it's quite enjoyable. It's mostly set in a ancient Chinese-inspired fantasy world with interesting looking youma and unicorns and shit, but it's not very over the top and it's very visually coherent. Also has a pretty soundtrack. 

Anyway, yesterday this happened:

Here is one of those aforementioned unicorns. Kirins are these cool unicorns who can also turn into people and have cool chimera-ish things as their mommies. Each of the twelve kingdoms has a kirin that is responsible for choosing the king for that kingdom. Both king and kirin are immortal, but if the king starts being a shitty king, the kirin gets ill with a disease called shitsudou and dies, and the king dies afterwards too.

This kid is supposed to be the kirin of the kingdom of Tai, but as an, um, unborn fruit on a tree (look dont ask it gets complicated) he got reverse-spirited-away and ended up growing up as a kid in Japan while that kingdom when to hell. He's back now, but he didn't really grow up knowing he was a magical unicorn from a fantasy world, and is now a bit confused as to what he is, etc. 

As am I. It's a language thing. Giraffe? What do giraffes have to do with anything? We were talking about East Asian mythological creatures. Why bring up giraffes? I do not understand. Let's look it up!

Oh ok it all makes sense now. The word for giraffe in Japanese is also "kirin". I get it now.

Wait.

Wait a minute.....

THAT IS TOTALLY A SENTENCE FROM TWELVE KINGDOMS.

DAMN YOU DICTIONARY

YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I'M WATCHING RIGHT NOW

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

Outlaw Star

I've been rather terribly remiss in posting to this blog, my apologies. orz

Back in last October or so, one of my poor-anime-buddy roommates (henceforth "R") talking me into watching Outlaw Star, a show she remembered watching when she was a child, which to her had the same kind of nostalgia as something like Sailor Moon has for me. At the time, I was desperately trying to negotiate with her to get her to finish watching Baccano with me in her rare willing-to-watch-anime moods (a poor anime buddy indeed!) so of course I agreed, despite space opera really not being my cup of tea at all. And, well, 90s art and dubbing etc.

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).

Utena Reaction Post

So I finished Revolutionary Girl Utena last night.  And the movie.  And I just.  Can't.  Process.  So here is my short reaction blurb.  But mostly just an excuse for some terrible gifs.

Princess Tutu (the least helpful I-just-finished-an-anime post ever)

So, I went to the beach for a week, which was about as exciting as one would expect for going to the beach in the middle of winter. But during this time I did manage to finish Princess Tutu, a really rather good albeit girly and cutesy magical girl series featuring ballet and fairy tales.

Now, I could talk about the usage of fairy tale structure and contrast it with those in Utena, or describe the variously clever frame stories in it, or try to extrapolate various take away lessons from the stance this show takes on stories/fate/roles/etc, or simply gush about its pretty art and fantastic ballet and classical music soundtrack.

But I'm super lazy, so I won't. Instead, I shall just leave these skeletons dancing ballet here just so that Kathryn can rage at the anatomical inaccuracies:

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.

Alice finishes Penguindrum

(Kathryn wouldn't let me read her last post until I finished anyway, so it's probably mostly her fault)

Ok, so I've already seen Utena, so it's not like I wasn't expecting total mindfuckery and weird shit and symbolism and what-the-fuck-is-going-on. Not that I'm fully clear on all of that too. That's ok, really; it is what makes this show so special. I will leave to others to fixate on and overanalyze over and drive themselves crazy with. But there's a few things I am still stuck on. Namely:

PENGUIN KNITTING

Nerdrage Problems: Kathryn Style

And now it is time to showcase my special nerdrage problems, in a segment I like to call "I took way too many anatomy classes in college and this is what I have to show for it."

Zetsuen no Tempest (spoilers) is a show about this girl who dies and her brother who is creepily way too attached to her and his friend who was secretly dating that other dude's sister and some sort of apocalyptic death tree and a guy that dresses like Inspector Gadget with a trident and a mage on an island whose breast to waist to hip ratio is a little disturbing and who may or may not be dead already.  And Shakespeare quotes.  Yeah.  So what we have in episodes 7-9 is, for all intents and purposes, Hakaze Kusaribe's skeleton, which we examine while the characters are talking to her from some sort of inter-dimensional wooden voodoo doll.

Hakaze Kusaribe's magical size-changing breasts, meet inter-dimensional wooden voodoo doll.

This episode, while being dreadfully boring, gave me a chance to concentrate more on the actual skeleton.  Part of the story hinges on the fact that this is definitely Hakaze Kusaribe's skeleton.  Now, it is fairly easy to determine the sex of a skeleton given the right information, i.e. landmarks on the pelvis and skull, so in my obsessiveness, I started screencapping pictures of the skeleton in order to do just that.

So, determination of the sex of a skeleton from the pelvis alone involves:
1) width of the greater sciatic notch
2) subpubic concavity (basically how wide/narrow the angle at the front of the pelvis is, underneath the pubic symphysis)
3) ventral arc
4) pelvic inlet (how large or small the hole through the pelvis is - i.e. baby head size or no)
5) size/shape of sacrum (shorter and blunter in females, you know, so it doesn't get in the way of the baby's head)

Kinda like this, but drawn better and less exaggerated 

The detail on the skeleton in Zetsuen no Tempest is very inconsistent.  The ribs are drawn very well, and surprisingly, the correct number are present (12 total, with 11 and 12 as "floating ribs" not attached to the sternum).  From a distance the appendicular skeleton (limbs) appear to be well drawn.  But in the skull and the pelvis, the only two areas that are consistently reliable in sexing a skeleton, the detail is severely lacking!  Coincidence?  ...Yeah, probably.

WHERE IS THE DETAIL ON THE SACRUM!?  I SEE NO SACRAL FORAMINA!

Look at this gloriously detailed (male) pelvis!  WHY CAN'T YOU DRAW IT LIKE THAT

However, it does appear from the screencap that the subpubic concavity is fairly wide, an indicator of a female skeleton.  Off to a good start!  

Wish all you want, those sacral foramina won't just draw themselves...

From here we seem to have a decent view of the greater sciatic notch, which is very wide (notably female). and the ventral arc, which also appears female.  Most of the landmarks indicate that the sex of the pelvis is female, except for the unusually long sacrum, which narrows the pelvic inlet considerably.  It would be difficult for a baby's head to get out of that hole without breaking her coccyx, let me tell you.  All in all, though, even with the lack of detail, the pelvis does appear to be on the female side of the spectrum.  Bravo, anime.  You have validated my nerdiness.

WHY CAN'T YOU SEE MY SPHENOID BONE.  AND CHINS DO NOT DO THAT.  DON'T LIE TO ME.

HOWEVER.  The skull is just dreadful.  Beyond dreadful.  There aren't the proper words to describe how dreadful that skull looks.  The skeletal landmarks are all wrong and/or completely missing (WHERE IS THE MASTOID PROCESS).  It would look so much better with a little more detail!  ALSO.  Why does everyone draw skulls with completely black holes for eye sockets and the nasal aperture?!  They are not black sockets!  In fact, the orbit is backed almost entirely by the sphenoid bone, save for the passage for the optic nerve!  And the nasal aperture almost always has a line of bone down the center (vomer) and sinuses can clearly be seen on either side!  No more black pits!

Yes this is a replica but it is a DAMN GOOD REPLICA

And then this happened.  Close up of the hand, what?  What even is this? What are those distal phalanges!  It looks like a doll's hand!   UNACCEPTABLE.

No.  Just NO.  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE. THEY LOOKED FINE BEFORE.  LOOK AT THOSE CARPALS AUGH

Really.  I can't.  

But in the end, everyone knows the absolute best way to tell the sex of a skeleton... from the boobs!

Skele-boobs.

The next one will be an actual review.  I promise.  Maybe.  We'll see.

~Kathryn

The Perils of Reading Forums: Shinsekai Yori

Why do I keep reading anime forum posts, when I know full well that they will only make me angry?

Case in point: MAL posts on Episode 8 of Shinsekai Yori.

Yes, yes, I am aware that Episode 8 aired two weeks ago, but when I checked the forums two weeks ago this post did not exist, so I am retroactively going into rage mode.

I have been following Shinksekai Yori weekly since it started airing in September, and it has definitely kept me interested enough to keep watching.  The soundtrack features the second movement of Dvořák's New World Symphony (which also showed up in Mawaru Penguindrum, one of the seven other shows I am simultaneously watching, thus breaking my brain), and good music is always a selling point for me.  The art style is interesting, if a bit inconsistent at times, and the plot is bizarre enough that I want to know what happens next.  But this is all beside the point.  Episode 8 of Shinksekai Yori in particular featured numerous same-sex couples, and both a yaoi and yuri scene - that were not even remotely explicit, unless you are dreadfully offended by kissing.  (Cue the inevitable jokes about Shinsekai Yaoi / Shinsekai Yuri, hurr hurr)

And the thing about it is, even for people who haven't read the novel or manga, this has been evident since early in the show when they went into detail about their "bonobo-like" society.  This should not have come as a surprise if you have been paying any attention at all.

I have a bad habit of visiting the MAL forums after I watch episodes of shows.   I noticed today that someone had made a post entitled "How many of you dropp(ed) the anime after finishing episode 8?"  I should have known better.  I should have stayed away.  But no.  I had to sate my curiosity, and I ventured into what I knew would be rage inducing territory.

Here are some of the lovely responses found in the MAL forums:

Hey dude, your homophobia is showing. 

The homo?  Really?  

Clearly these are forum posts from the cream of humanity.  The most frustrating thing about all of this is the absurd hypocrisy of it all.  So you like the yuri, but the yaoi is disgusting?  It's only okay if the yuri cancels it out?  Bad news, fuckfaces, they're all "homo".   But I'm glad that you feel the need to justify your masculinity through your ignorance on a public forum.   You know what?   Here you go.  You can watch this gif over and over and over again until the inevitable gay-pocalypse when society collapses and everyone catches homosexuality and FUCK YOU.

That said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions.  Even if those opinions make them fucking assholes.

Of course, I am well aware of the futility of arguing with the Hive-mind of Internet Morons that hide behind their laptops and troll forums.  But that in no way precludes me from calling them out on their dickery.  To those people: you can all go fuck yourselves with something hard and sandpapery.  Good day to you!

There.  Now that I am done ranting, have a nice special Madoka Magica crossover wtf picture.

But where is Kyubey?!

~Kathryn