- Needles has joined the team! http://ryanime.com/2010/10/02/needles-here/ #
- I half .6 GB of anime screenshots on my drive. Getting pretty sad. #
- Fail! Only God Knows This World copied Eden's Opening! #
- The new Youtube iframe player is really nice. #
Author: Ryanime
The result of mixing Ryan and Anime. I brought the slightly technical background knowledge to create and run this blog. I like slice of life, supernatural and grim horror anime series. I love the jokes hidden throughout anime and even my posts.
The World God Only Knows – Eden Theft
I was again slightly bored so I decided to try out one of the new series premieres. This time it was The World God Only Knows.
The premise isn’t bad; the main character, Keima, is an otaku who has conquered just about ten thousand girls in dating simulations. He calls himself the God of Conquest because of that and offers his advice to people playing games he has conquered. He’s also very eger to prove himself as when he receives an invitation or a challenge in his mind to conquer a girl, things start going crazy. A girl falls from the sky who also happens to be a demon. She must capture loose souls that have escaped hell but in order to do that, the hate in the hearts of the host girls (where the loose souls infiltrate) must be replaced with love, which is where Keima comes in.
The Case In Point
Since I hadn’t looked at the series before hand, the OP is what made me want to comment on this. It blatantly ripped off Eden of the East. I understand that kinetic type is popular these days, but Eden seriously pioneered it for the OPs in the anime and both movies.
Those are the two major instances of theft. Compare that to the original anime OP of Eden of the East.
You can see some very similar imagery there. The faded bars breaking imagery a part, the overlaid images; dynamic and static images and so on. To a lesser extent, the movies use this type of graphics too, but less and less.
Side Notes
While I don’t think I’ll cover anymore of this series, the girls deserve some attention.
This is of course the new lovable demon that Keima must associate with because he was being stupid. She isn’t really an air head, but her personality is pushing me to think of her as one.
Each episode features a girl for Keima to conquer. This one happened to a track girl. He says, “Track girls must wear their hair up in a ponytail.” Well, since I’m a sucker for ponytails, they really should. The climax of this episode hinges on the fact that Keima can notice these fine details about people. I’m not going to spoil it since it’s so new, I don’t think many people have seen it yet.
That’s all I have. Really, I just wanted to rant about Eden of the East since it’s awesome.
One-time Commit.
Amagami SS – Intermission
How about a big appluase for my new brainwashed zombie slave co-blogger, Needles! He was one of those surprises I mentioned last week.
Anyway, on with the news. Apparently Amagami SS is taking a break this week. According to the episode list, episode 13 was aired on September 24th and episode 14 will be aired on October 8th! That means they skipped October 1st.
Since I don’t have anything new to add, I thought I’d introduce you to my new favorite ED, Koi wa Mizu-iro by Yukana.
Due to some silly idealistic copyright system some country has, apparently constructive critiques and criticisms aren’t allowed. Stay classy, Tokyo Broadcasting. Stay classy.
The ending of Ai’s arc is fantastic. Those questions, what are you doing? and what are you looking at? are made up of win-sauce. The reference to poker face is interesting. I’ve commented heavily that I think Ai is mysterious. Right after saying poker face, they cut to Ai with her mouth periced and then she has the grin of mystery. After that, there is a cut to Ai in a field surrounded by trees in the wind on a partly cloudy day. Certainly her entire atmosphere is cloudy. The way she is colored in this scene though is mysterious. Her hair covers her eyes, and it’s darker than normal too. Her body is partly covered in shadows as well. Finally, she has her hands behind her back. Next Junichi is walking away on the city side walk while Ai stares after him, which seems normal until we see her shocked face. The rest isn’t as novel, a scene of her swimsuit and her in outer-space walking around. The ED ends with the final smile of Ai as she turns around.
Hopefully that can abate the Amagami addiction for four days. Good luck!
Mysteriously Committed.
No Summaries (From Me)
If you’ve read any of my latest posts, you may have noticed that I really don’t like writing summaries. I give them a lot of grief. Way too much. So I thought I’d take a moment to enlighten everyone as to why I have a serious grudge against summaries (of anime).
The Summary of Why Summaries Are Terrible (To Write)
You have to waste time writing what anime did with sound and visualizations. Honestly, what is worse than spending seven minutes writing a longer than expected paragraph of something you know your audience has probably already seen? Not much else is worse than that.
Take a look at how my favorite anime blogs write their summaries: THAT and Slugs. In each case, there are a good number of paragraphs committed to each episode. I write about the same amount but with less information. They’re professional bloggers, you know, I’m not. That said, I take a different approach to my posts than THAT and Slugs, they’re doing episodic recaps and analysis and I’m simply just making jokes.
Essentially, if I was making fancy podcasts like TWiT does, I would too make much more of an effort to describe the episode’s events in detail. It’s a massive time sink. One I’m not dealing with.
Some may do their summaries differently than I do, but I will continue to live on with my summary hate scheme.
Committed.
Amagami SS – Episode 13 – Ai’s Beginning
Ai Nanasaki. She’s mysterious to me. She looks cold and broken. Her eyes in the OP aren’t dead, but they aren’t full of energy. They’re full of mystery. Or at least, that’s how I’m seeing Ai so far. The first scene though does something strange with Ai’s character that has been subtly built up so far (the mystery character), it displays her in snow as a bright and cute girl.
No Summary
On my no summary scheme, here are some excellent summaries from elsewhere. THAT’s summary isn’t much of a summary. Random Curiosity’s summary is detailed though. Update: About ten minutes after I wrote this, Slugs published their summary. Lovely.
Bonus Summary: Junichi meets Ai one day in the park when he wants to use the bathroom. The he meets her the next day while in the lunch line unable to choose his dish. Ai’s about to take a practice swim when she hears the alleged black cat nyaaing outside. She finds Junichi snooping around the bottom of the steps – she accuses him of planning of being perverted again like at the park. She proceeds to tease him by asking if he wants to see under her skirt. She lifts it up revealing nothing more than her swimsuit – although Junichi nearly has a heart attack. The next day, Ai laughs at Junichi when she sees Miya’s red pen on his forehead. Since she’s short handed at the moment, she brings him to the grocery store to carry her household goods. She gives him some tickets and they win 500 yen. They spend it on some pancakes. They talk about some stuff and then the episode concludes with Ai smiling on the beach.
aI Don’t Know
Let’s get this out of the way. Miya’s up to her clever remarks. The allusion to a black cat of course brings back major memories from not too long ago.
I’m sure Miya is silky smooth. Absolutely sure. Now, on with the show.
Essentially, I’m cutting out a bunch of relatively boring stuff. The first arc brought us the fetish late, and the second was almost instant. The third toned it down by delivering the fetish through third party fish. In the first half of the first episode of Ai’s arc, we find the initial hints of a fetish: swimsuits under school uniforms.
Junichi thinks it’s bad to look – that’s Junichi4 for you. Ai is really direct with perversion though. Haruka and Kaoru took their innuedno to new heights in the end game. Ai’s starting early.
Ai comments that it’s too bad it was just a swimsuit. And then she goes on to say, while Junichi is trying to hide his shame in thinking it was too bad that she won’t allow any groping. That’s almost admitting it’s okay to look!
Haruka of course, being close to Hibiki, shows up. I don’t really like Harkua anymore. Maybe I’ve been away too long?
The beach scene was nice. Here’s what we learned: Ai is in the swim club, enter a tournament soon, does after school community work, does all the house work for her working parents and is probably decent in school. Did I mention she was in the same class as Miya, again?
Finally
Ai is mysterious. Her eyes are alluring but all scary at the same time. I don’t know what spin Junichi will be putting in on this arc, where the first was roleplaying, the second was being there and the there was oh-sensi-you’re-the-best.
The ED of this arc is excellent too. It’s very fitting. It showcases her swimming club obsession first and shows off her mysterious grin, her eyes darkened by her hair and a shocked scene and and odd space scene. Her mystery is timeless?
I look forward to more. (I’ve said she’s a mystery too many times now.)
Committed.
Fall Season 2010
It’s getting incredibly close to the beginning of the fall season. I haven’t been keeping up with the end of the current series conclusions but I will watch it all in one go soon.
I have been watching the remake of Full Metal Alchemist, Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I remember commenting to myself last year that I hated the animation. It turns out, I don’t even notice it now, whatever the problem was. The story is much better now to say the least; fleshing out so many details and answering unanswered questions. I have yet to finish, but with less than fifteen episodes to go, I’ll probably get it done before Friday.
This fall season, I intend to make a return covering two lovely series.
The first being a carryover, Amagami SS. As one of the few anime series remaining from the summer season and as one of my favorites, I’ll happily cover it. There’s plenty of commentary to go through, after all. I am certainly looking forward to the remaining arcs, especially the class president’s, Tsukasa Ayatsuji.
The second series I will cover is Index 2. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun (which bizarrely doesn’t have an entry on Wikipedia) was favorite series from last year. I remember watching Index 1 but it wasn’t as complete as Railgun was. Actually, I like Misaka much more than I actually like Index. Index is annoying, Misaka isn’t.
I also have some surprises planned for this season here on the blog. They’re not ready yet, but look for a post concerning each of those surprises soon.
Awaiting commit.
Amagami SS – Episode 12 – Sae as a Penguin
While I haven’t been blogging at all these past weeks since school started, I have been keeping up though always a few days late. Anyway, I saw Sae as a penguin tonight. I was shocked by the ending they chose for this arc’s conclusion. You died from an overdose of moé too, actually.
No Summaries
No summaries while not blogging anime – Random Curiosity has a lovely summary though. THAT has one now too, but it’s in lyrical poetic form.
Blue Penguin + Black Kitty = Mega Win
There is no coverage of the actual events since I’m not blogging honestly again until the fall season starts. No worries there. But I am covering the cutest thing ever. Here’s penguin girl!
Sae as a penguin is impossibly cute. But then, we add the to fun!
We were given a bonus. Since there is no Miya arc and we needed a final glimpse of her before this arc ends, they gave us Kuro Neko Miya! Together, Sae and Miya clearly fill Junichi’s new fetish – cute animal costumes with moe girls inside. One might say that fish feet kissing scene was fetishy, but it’s not – it’s fishy.
Finally
That concludes my short post on the cutest thing ever.
Committed.