Why are most of the customers in the Maid-ish Cafe female? Fushigi mystery.

Contrary to what Kaede and apparently most of the NPC cast says, I don't really think Natsuru's Special Maid Outfit is all that attractive. It's too showy, and makes her look like she's Trying Too Hard to be sexy. Well, okay, she's not really; presumably it's the fault of the class rep and her cronies.

Thanks to the opening and ending animations, the identity of this New Kampfer is no surprise. What I did find refreshing was that the Obvious Questions asked in the usual fan-speculation manner are, if not answered, then at least acknowledged: where do Kampfers come from? Why are the Messengers all from the same toyline that apparently only Kaede likes? Is Kaede involved in this somehow?

I'm not actually expecting much by way of revelations in this season. If Kampfer gets extended for another season it would be nice, but for now I'll just enjoy this guilty pleasure without guilt, of cute girls in cute costumes, despite one of them only doing it part-time.

I'm not sure that I would have done better if I had been in Natsuru's place. On the one hand, girls seem to get a lot more cosplay opportunities. On the other hand, having to keep in shape has to be a lot more difficult. Presumably part of the advantage of Kampfer-ism is the ability to keep a svelte figure no matter what the circumstances.

Gender-benders with the character in question switching back and forth have that extra risk involved of embarrassment when the transformation wears off somehow with the male character now in female clothes. This doesn't often apply the other way, apart from the character shrinking a few sizes, and the Clothes A Few Sizes Too Large thing can be pulled off as a fashion statement anyway.

So far Kampfer has not gone down that route, but I find it interesting that I seem to have this reluctance to see such a thing happening anyway. It's the equivalent in embarrassment quotient of those cliched dreams (which I've never had myself, although it must be a matter of time) where one is not wearing any pants. It's a level of schadenfreude that is quite beyond my tolerance.

This, even though I am perfectly happy to see a man (be he transformed into a pretty lady) caught between several women, and the dispute is not laced with Drama and Angst, but instead Wacky Comedy Hijinks. It's not serious, the show tells us. It's okay to laugh.

Hearing Yuko Goto as the perverted assistant class rep, especially using her Mikuru-voice, probably helps in that.

Kampfer has been getting… well, not rave reviews. It is, in fact, getting slammed pretty hard, in the way just about every show I like has been slammed at one point or another (the sole exception is Card Captor Sakura, which appears unslammable). The difference is that after all that slamming, if the slammer is still around, the disclaimer invariably appears: "it's bad, but I can't stop watching it."

There are apocryphal stories of Ranma 1/2, often cited to be the most popular gender-bender anime series among Anglophone audiences, being a sort of gateway to the realization of gender dysphoria among some viewers. Occasionally I suspect that the reason I keep playing as female characters in games is due to Ranma 1/2 being my very first anime. I don't think I have Gender Identity Disorder, because despite my interests and what I have been told is a disturbing lack of Internet Testosterone, I do still like looking at cute girls. Then again, you never know.

In all the male-to-female gender-bender stories that I have viewed, read, or otherwise experienced since then, assuming the story was made for popular consumption and not, say, a deliberate subversion (which to my view is good only for a one-shot gag, and quite unsustainable through an entire series), one truth appears to be unquestioned: the former male is certainly going to turn into an attractive female. It is a convention as established as drawing characters with the usual number of limbs and appendages.

Being that Kampfer is not the sort of show to troll viewers with a subversion in this, Natsuru appears to follow this trend. In fact, she (changing pronouns as appropriate) follows it too well, and I half-expect some sort of psuedo-scientific explanation of why she seems so popular among the female students. Perhaps Girl-Natsuru is seen to be more manly than Guy-Natsuru? It is a mystery.

And then there is the tradition of giving the genderbent-into-female character even larger cup-sizes than most of the rest of the cast, for no conceivable reason. (Well, other than the meta-reason of fanservice, which is always a good reason.) Presumably back problems are avoided by turning into girl-form only occasionally, but having those assets without any real need for them seems a little odd. Not unwelcome, just… odd.

In my darker moments, I often wonder if the joke about breasts being good flotation devices would preclude the existence of the Jusenkyo Spring of Drowned Girl, unless she was not as well-endowed as her spiritual descendants turned out to be.

City of Heroes has a number of dance emotes, for a given value of "dance". This is because the animator who first manipulated the game model frames for this purpose based the moves off his own flailing attempts, and I use these less-than-flattering words because I am quoting to the best of my knowledge the man himself.

One of these dances, known among players as the Hyperactive Monkey, requires such great movements of the abdomen that when I introduced a friend to the game, she noted that doing that dance in real life would likely rupture something important.

Watching the ending animation for Kampfer, I cannot help but think of that phrase.

Kampfer has been billed as a "guilty pleasure", if it has been billed positively at all. While I am certainly going to be following this show, assuming it does not deviate too far from the source, I cannot quite call it a "guilty pleasure", as I feel refreshingly free of guilt.

We'll keep on trying. We'll tread that fine line. We'll keep on trying, until the end of time.

I admit that I didn't expect Marina Inoue to voice both versions of Natsuru. When I read the manga, Guy!Natsuru seemed like he'd be voiced by a Standard Harem Comedy Protagonist Voice Actor. I shouldn't be surprised, considering some small plot points hinged on Girl!Natsuru sounding a lot like Guy!Natsuru.

Speaking of which, the fourth-wall-breaking voice actress jokes in this episode fall just short of excessive. Yukari Tamura got the longest mention, which is a little brain-breaking in her role as a foul-mouthed plush bunny post-ritual disembowelment. Yui Horie and "the original Shizuka" (Michiko Nomura; reference to Doraemon) were also mentioned. One gets the feeling that the writers felt like being a little too clever.

This can also be seen in the vast amount of double- and single-entendres which pass for much of the comedy. I cannot find fault in this, seeing as I usually do much the same thing anyway. Clearly this is not a show to be taken seriously.

Gender-bender premises, especially aimed at the male demographics, are a fascinating source of observation for the reactions. We've seen it in action with Mizuho in Otoboku and Jun in Happiness, as well as unofficially with Kyonko. Anime, already a commonly-used art style for good-looking characters in general, is able to sidestep all the messy biology inherent in the problem.

And so we end up admiring what is, to all intents and purposes, a cute girl, while still knowing that there is still a technical male presence in that picture, be their magical transformation sequence ever so pretty and sparkly.

Kuroko is not the first teleporter who gets that onomatopoeia stuck in my head. Chances are I've used this reference before, and I will use it again.

My primary familiarity with A Certain Scientific Railgun is from the manga version. Well, obviously, since the anime just started airing. Despite the title, I have the impression that this show will not exactly be a shining pinnacle of accuracy in physics.

I'm not as familiar with the original source of A Certain Magical Index, having read the first few bits of the manga until what I think could be counted as the end of the (relatively long) prologue, but my impression of the male protagonist, Touma, is that while he has a special power, it is nowhere near as powerful as pretty much everyone else in the show. Touma gets to be the main character through a combination of luck, some skilful use of his abilities, and the sheer bloody-mindedness that is available to every male shounen series protagonist.

However, in Railgun, he's Mikoto's kinda-sorta rival, in that no matter what Mikoto wants to do, he can one-up her without even breaking a sweat, largely because his Imagine Breaker power is a great deal more general-purpose than her electromagnetism.

Same character, two different viewpoints. It's not a huge revelation. I just found the plot quirks interesting.

As for the actual episode itself, this is probably one of those series I'll be following if I remember to, since a) I already know the story, and b) I know there will be some measure of faux-philosophical angsting in store.

I wonder if it says something about me that the yuri-ness of Kuroko is amusing, but not especially titillating. Is this a special case, or have I changed my tastes?

I've never liked Neon Genesis Evangelion. This isn't to say that I hated it or anything, but more that it failed to fully elicit any sort of severe response in any direction. I didn't hate it, and I didn't like it; I was just not interested in it.

Which, I suppose, is sort of the problem, and worse than active dislike of the series: Evangelion failed to interest me, and so the only emotion I drew from the series itself (distinct from the emotions I have towards the fandom, which ranges from polite attention to eye-twitching irritation) was boredom. The series failed to engage me at any level. I've been classified as a hater of the series because of this, which I think kind of misses the issue: I don't have the passion to hate Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's just there. You may as well ask me what I think about the cultivation of yams.

From conversations with people who are fans of the series, it appears that a common thread (but by no means universal) is the ability to identify with the main characters, most often Shinji. (Occasionally Asuka is held to be the identifiable character; sometimes Misato.) They see themselves in Shinji, and they can empathize heavily with what he is going through.

Or maybe not, and I am completely misunderstanding the situation. I can kind of see it academically, but I cannot quite grok it to the fullness of understanding. This is because the three main characters, Shinji, Asuka, and Rei, are thoroughly unidentifiable for me. About the closest character I can empathize with is Rei, since she's quiet and unassuming, but I hear that she's not supposed to be empathizable, so I apparently have been suckered in or something.

I'm pretty sure I was never like Shinji or Asuka. This is not a boast, since it's entirely likely that I was in some way worse. But I didn't have parental issues, and I grew up in a happy home environment. There is just nothing connecting me with people who went through what Shinji and co. did. It's kind of like a cultural gap, except not exactly cultural, but more circumstantial. I recognize that it is a valid personality type; it's just not mine.

I think the character who would have the same sort of reactions I would might be Maya Ibuki. Her actions seem kind of natural, at least.

And since I can't empathize with the main characters, my other option was to watch them from the outside, seeing how they act from the viewpoint of an invisible observer. Considering my usual tastes in comedy and lighthearted fun, however, Evangelion held no joy for me.

I can understand that it is significant to the culture of anime, as well as its enormous influence. But I just don't like it. This has no bearing on its quality or its importance; just my personal tastes.

I should probably be spending more time on this topic, but not only do I not have the time or inclination to do so, I also don't think there is anything more that has not already been said by many others far more eloquent than I am.

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I stopped watching Bakemonogatari after the second episode or so (I think I got through about half of number three), mainly through finding all sorts of excuses not to continue watching. Too little time, too many other anime I prefer watching… to be honest, it's really the latter reason which indirectly points to why I never got into the buzz for the show: it's not quite that I want to watch other anime more, it's that I don't want to watch Bakemonogatari as much.

The reasons are fairly petty, as can be seen from the fact that I never got past the first few episodes. It's not SHAFT's weirdness in art direction, although I'd be happier if they went without. After all, my candidate for third-favourite series of all time is Hidamari Sketch. It's SHAFT's tendencies in mood direction which bother me: Bakemonogatari, at least in the first few episodes, is not a happy show. It's dark and gothic and edgy. And SHAFT has a tendency, in edgy works, to brutally subvert audience expectations and audience demographic stereotypes (cf. Pani Poni Dash).

The comments about "moe characters" in the first episode made me feel immediately defensive: is it making fun of me? Saying "oh, it's just a general stab, you'll feel offended only if it doesn't apply to you" is a rhetorical tactic on par with the ad hominem. Why shouldn't I feel offended if it doesn't apply to me? If it does, and I am rightly offended, then why can't I be offended? Being in the fanfiction-writing contingent of fandom in general has made me conscious of the important parts of Constructive Criticism, which simple insults, however friendly, are not. (Criticism is Constructive only if it mentions how to improve and why, in much more detail than "don't do that" or "don't be like that".)

So as it stands, the humour itself is clearly not aimed at me and my ilk. Since this is SHAFT, plot is probably a side consideration. Already, my interest in this anime is limited to watching cute girls.

There are some, of course. But the greatest gut reaction was to Senjougahara.

From other accounts of Bakemonogatari on the blogosphere, she's a popular character. I'm well aware that I don't have to like characters that most other people do (Miyuki from Lucky Star, Tsumugi from K-On), but I cannot bring myself to see Senjougahara as anything other than an unpleasant character.

In the first portion of the very first episode, she threatens and physically assaults, in cold blood (which is somehow worse than if she had another, more emotional reason), a guy whose only crime was curiosity, and according to a friend who has watched most of the series, she has failed to apologize for that specific action. Whatever her reasons for it, no matter how justified in her viewpoint, I don't think there's anything she can do to redeem herself in my eyes.

"What about Haruhi?", I hear the accusatory cries. How can I like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya when Haruhi also treats Mikuru like dirt? The answer is that I don't like Haruhi as a character, but the rest of the show makes up for that.

The first few episodes of Bakemonogatari do not have that advantage. I'm giving it another go because it would only be fair to see if the rest of it does.

(Yes, I know the ANN article already says as much.)