One problem with starting an anime blog with a marked dislike of going through an episode taking and formatting screenshots is that I don’t actually have a ready-made source of blog post inspiration with the Brand New anime season, only obtainable through raws, or some such. There’s been a few waves of introspection among other anime bloggers (before the merest hint of a twinkle of the existence of this blog, full disclosure requires me to admit) about the very large number of anime blogs doing episode summaries, and the relatively scarce number of blogs doing primarily editorials and thoughts. The problem with doing editorials for me, though, is that I don’t exactly have a lot to say about a great many things. Sooner or later, I’m going to run out of opinions, and be reduced to “um, it’s nice” or “um, it’s not that nice”.

But I don’t like to do episode summaries. The thought of going through an entire episode and picking which screencaps are good to use and actually screencapping the exact moment for best framing and resizing everything and renaming everything and uploading everything and placing them strategically throughout the post and thinking up of good ALT and TITLE attribute captions and making sure that the entire thing retains a modicum of user readability and doing this all with only a basic understanding of Notepad++ and GIMP because I’m a cheap bastard… it all begins to sap my will to blog. I want to just get on with it and be able to get straight to “OMG anime is so cool” and “moe! hanyaa~n” and all that.

Therefore, full episode summaries only when absolutely necessary. I really respect those who take the trouble to screencap everything, and I can never understand the occasional lament that “everyone’s doing episode summaries”. For me, episode summaries are hard; random ramblings that can be passed off as “editorials” are easy.

To compound this difficulty, this anime season, I haven’t really found a lot of shows that not only catch my interest, but that I can also find things to talk about. For the most part, I end up with Thoughts And Impressions that pretty much read “stuff happened, was interesting”. I don’t have the same passion for the current season’s shows that I had for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Zero no Tsukaima or Card Captor Sakura.

This isn’t to say that I have burnout on new anime or something, or a call for “the good old days”. If anything, I love the current trend towards moe shows (obviously) and harem comedies, and I like many of the newer shows compared to older ones. And it’s not that I dislike the current season of shows, as much as I simply can’t think of anything to say about them, from episode to episode. I’m watching them, but I may not be blogging them.

I still haven’t decided whether I want to blog any of the new season or not on a consistent basis. While I’m trying to decide, I’ll just give a very quick run-through of my initial impressions of a few of the shows.

1. Deltora Quest

Deltora Quest just feels so generic. It’s not bad to be generic, as such, but it does limit the number of things I can say about it, since I can see most of the plot points coming three episodes away. The show is in that limbo zone where I don’t like it enough to rave on and on about it, but I still do like it enough not to want to bash it to bits. It’s just there, and I watch it when I don’t really want to think about much and just enjoy the very competent quality and style.

It’s a plot-coupon fantasy quest. There’s far worse out there.

Offtopic: If I remember correctly, in D&D 3.5e, between the Ranger and Rogue classes, apart from the multitude of Knowledge skills, every skill is considered a class skill for one or the other. This is mainly due to the insane number of Rogue class skills. If Deltora Quest gets consistently subbed, I may well blog it just to count how many times Jasmine uses Tumble or Sleight Of Hand or Bluff. Natural 20, yo.

2. Hidamari Sketch

It’s a slice-of-life anime. It’s Akiyuki Shinbou taking some Pani Poni Dash skillz and applying them to Azumanga Daioh. To really fully appreciate this anime, I’m going to need a lot more random otaku knowledge and the ability to recognize obscure references in a single frame, just as is the case in Pani Poni Dash and Negima!?. Without it, this is pretty much a slow, peaceful slice-of-life anime about a group of friends in an art school. Episode summaries and thoughts will consist mostly of me going “moe~ moe~ moe~ moe~ moe~” for three hundred words. While this may convey the extent of my feelings towards the show, it doesn’t make for very interesting reading.

The full version of the OP has, somewhere near the end, the lyrics “moe moe moe“. While the actual kanji is the “to burn” definition (about explosions and such), I can’t help but giggle every time I hear it. Moe indeed.

3. Manabi Straight

I expressed interest in #AnimeBlogger@irchighway.net about choosing this show to blog, only to be told that pretty much every other blogger even remotely interested in moe shows was already blogging it. I may well blog it anyway, since it is fairly moe. Mika’s permanent :3 face has me going “hanyaa~n” every time.

Manabi Straight also provides for the most opportunity for me to actually say something about the show, since the characters are at least slightly intriguing. I’m finding myself drawn towards Momoha, with her ever-present video camera. Maybe I’m just hoping that she’ll turn out to be a sort of more equal-opportunity, more mischievous Tomoyo Daidouji, without the meanness of Tamami Chanohata.

4. Venus Versus Virus

So much potential, and yet, as of episode three, it’s kind of disappointingly bland. Sumire is awesome to watch, particularly with her attempts to control her berserker side, as well as her little dojikko moments, but the other characters are still fairly one-dimensional. Even Luchia feels as though her entire purpose in life is to be gothic and emo and angsty, while being occasionally badass on the side. I’m hoping that future episodes will ease up on the Life Sucks message, but that may just be my biases talking. I don’t deal well with angst, after all. Also, eyepatches aren’t really my thing, heterochromia iridium or otherwise.

The monster designs are very generic. I was kind of hoping for something more, well, original, rather than humans with odd skin tone and really long tongues and synth-distorted voices. I’m almost convinced that there’s maybe two algorithms at most out there in the anime industry for distorting voices to sound more “monstrous”.

I haven’t been actively following any of the other shows this season, like Nodame Cantabile or Saint October. This is mostly due to lack of time, rather than lack of interest. Well, okay, for shows like Shuffle Memories and Master of Epic: Animation Age, it’s lack of interest. Something may change my mind between now and the end of the season, but as it is, I’ll have to limit myself to shows I’m actually watching.

I may blog none, any, or all of these shows at my whim. Right now it’s likely that I’ll be seeing where Manabi Straight and Venus Versus Virus go before making a decision on them. Deltora Quest may be blogged entirely for the D&D-esque aspect of it, and Hidamari Sketch will probably not be blogged at all, but still followed to the best of my ability.

Or I could just give up and hammer out five hundred words of random ramblings every time I need to post an entry. The choice is in my hands; I feel all giddy now.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 5:40 pm and is filed under deltora quest, first impressions, hidamari sketch, manabi straight, venus versus virus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.