So I just watched the first episode of the alleged sequel to Code-E.

It seems Lina missed us too. Unfortunately, now she has a chance to aim.

There is nothing else I can say about the much-awaited fourth season of Slayers that has not been said before, whether by myself or by other more worthy luminaries. I don’t think I can give a fair and unbiased view of the matter through the impenetrable haze of sheer, undiluted nostalgia.

It was, as Arudoc mentioned, fitting that Lina made her debut by blowing up bandits, this time of the seagoing kind led by Captain Jack Sparrow. It is an ancient tradition as hallowed as the sun rising in the east, the ubiquity of hydrogen and stupidity, and Amelia giving a Justice Speech.

Things became something of a blur from there. A squee-ful blur, to butcher the language.

I must also admit to surprise at New Character Pokota’s entrance. I wonder what the Dark Lord Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo thinks of his signature spell being cast by a Pokemon muppet.

I wonder if it says something about me that the only reason I’m playing Pokemon Diamond at all is because I think Dawn (or Hikari, if you want the Japanese name) is very, very cute.

It’s the hat, I think. I don’t know what she’s like in the actual anime, being that I don’t have a source for it, but just looking at the fanart makes her seem so adorable.

Of course, I tend to treat games as a significant collection of plot and dialogue interspersed with irritating but sadly unavoidable gameplay, so this is not unusual. I suppose what I’m really looking for when I buy a game is an interactive CG movie, preferably anime-style with cute girls.

One thing which I’ve noticed since I started actually being a part of fandom, identifying myself as an anime fan, is that I appear to have a higher than usual tolerance of the more saccharine parts of anime. Reading reviews which slam a series for being “too cutesy” or “too sweet”, I have to stare in confusion and bemusement, since I often enjoyed the parts which they do not like.

As for originality, it is a commendable ideal, but when all is said and done, it is not that essential to me. I can happily watch twenty six episodes of regurgitated cliches, assuming these cliches are something which are Relevant To My Tastes. It is as though I am presented with a portion of my favourite food, with the option of getting more of it as I please. I don’t really see a downside to this.

Then again, seeing as how I’m used to grinding in games, online or otherwise, I’m perfectly happy with repetition.

Nanatsuiro Drops is, from the first episode (and technically the second, but that’s skipping ahead), a rather unoriginal series. Based on an eroge, the show nevertheless feels as though it is aimed towards the same sort of audience Card Captor Sakura was, in all sorts of ways: there is that veneer of Bishoujo Harem Comedy, but thus far the primary focus is on a more pure interpretation of the magical girl genre than we’ve seen in a while. (”Pure”, in this case, meaning Not Ecchi, rather than anything about faithful adaptations.)

In this, I’d say that anything it does (so far), Card Captor Sakura does better, and this might not even be all that biased. CCS has more likeable characters, and overall better story progression and direction. Nanatsuiro Drops just doesn’t have anything eye-catching that would make it stand out against the “deeper” shows this season.

But yanno, with all the new “dark” and “edgy” types of magical girls, not even counting the more ecchi variations, it’s kind of refreshing to have something that’s simple and sweet. Something with bright colours and designs, with laughter rather than tears. Something happy.

Which is why I’m hoping, oh so very much hoping, that this trend will continue. If it turns out to lean more towards the Bishoujo Harem Comedy side of the spectrum, I’d be disappointed, but not too badly. If it turns out to be Dark and Angsty, I will feel very, very betrayed.

You had to have seen this coming. I mean, you had to. Have I not been completely open and clear about what this blog is about? Have I not made my tastes known to all who ask? And has anything that this show has advertised as being about been in any way contrary to these tastes?

Before I go into the episode proper, I should perhaps mention that contrary to popular belief, the Moetan books are not Engrish-y. In fact, the phrases are (at least for the revised editions and the later books) mostly grammatically correct. What makes them unintentionally hilarious is that despite being grammatically correct, it may still make little sense. Or, in Moetan’s case, the meaning is apparent only to the hardcore fan of anime and assorted pop culture (I’m trying not to use the word “otaku” due to the confused definitions for it).

For example, something from the second book which strikes rather close, the sentence for the word “will” goes “The alien, and the woman from the future and the guy with supernatural powers all exist because of the girl’s will.” (Seriously, it’s on page 20.) Apart from the first “and” and the lack of a serial comma (yes, I know that the latter is controversial), this is better than many forum posts by native English speakers that I’ve seen.

In other words, if you’re planning on watching this anime for the Engrish, you’re likely to be disappointed. The anime doesn’t even have that much English in it, apart from two sentences. In fact, if you’re looking for anything other than what looks like a standard non-action magical girl show featuring lots of loli fanservice, this is not for you. (So far.)

As should be obvious, I loved this episode.

Moe~

Moe~ moe~ moe~ moe~ moe~

Moe~

For an anime blog, I don’t really review a lot of anime.

So once again I’ve obtained another eroge, this time Nursery Rhyme by Lump of Sugar. I first heard about this game from the now-infamous Code Geass parody, and felt that the opening theme was the sort of indicator of exactly the sort of moe sugary-sweet romantic comedy story I have a weakness for. You know, bright colours, happy school days, predictable and yet amusing situations, one nice guy being dragged around by lots of cute girls, the like. I suppose what I’m really looking for is a cute love story without the angst, but still interesting enough to watch.

The primary problem I have with playing this game is that it’s not translated. My Japanese is obtained entirely from watching anime and what horrible grades in Chinese I managed to get, which helps slightly in kanji recognition, but hardly matters when the characters start ranting in a torrent of complicated kanji. Therefore, I’ve really only been clicking through the text boxes and listening to the characters speak, in an effort to glean some understanding of the situations based on context.

I haven’t finished (or am even near finishing) the game yet, and so I can’t really give a proper full review. (Not that I can do that anyway.) Still, thus far I haven’t gotten to even one outright H scene (just the way I like it), and there were a few bits which made me chuckle, if only because it’s the sort of humour I’m partial to.

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.

<rankendrake> Don’t worry, according to what I read… Izen multiplies like bacteria, so there’s unlimited of her to go around

Most people will probably have heard of Gadget Trial by now. If not, then some explanation might be in order: Gadget Trial is a bishoujo game that plays something like Advance Wars. (For those who have no idea what AW is, it’s a sort of turn-based military strategy game, with units moving around a square-based map, and attacking each other via short cutscenes. There’s quite a bit more, but then it gets into irrelevant details.) The demo (in Japanese) can be obtained here, as well as the rather amusing demo video trailer. An unofficial English patch, for the demo and the full game, can be found here.

The game is very clean, at least up to Mission 6 (which is where I’ve played until). I didn’t see anything that would even be considered remotely risque, although I’d hesitate to say that little kids can play this game, simply because this is a game about blowing things up, albeit cartoon violence (no blood or gore). There’s a few bits of dialogue which goes into great detail about being “murderers” and “weapons of mass destruction”, played up for laughs. So it’s safe in terms of sex, safe in terms of the depiction of violence, but maybe not so safe in terms of violent words.

The premise is that this is some time in the future, after the last world war of unspecified number. The ETU has developed the E-series robots, which look like cute girls entirely because this would raise troop morale. I defecate you not: that’s the actual reason given. Of course, being that the E-series is supposed to replace generic human soldiers, I’m not sure whose morale is supposed to be raised. Anyway, of these robots, there’s the White version (ie yours, the player’s), and the Black version (ie the computer opponent). The White version has emotions and personalities and such (can think for themselves, but are more difficult to control), while the Black version are more like typical emotionless robots (completely obedient to commands and has slightly better processing power, but incapable of improvisation). Now, the military has decided to pit these two versions against each other in practical trials, in order to decide which version will be mass-produced.

In short: White team vs. Black team. Both attempt to blow each other up. Kill everyone that’s not on your team or capture your opponent’s buildings for the win.

Usually I don’t like to play turn-based strategy games, since I lose incredibly easily. This is largely because I have problems sacrificing my lesser units for temporary gain, as is essential in basic strategy and tactics. It took most of my meagre gaming ability to get to as far as I am, and I believe there are about 20 or so missions in total (no tutorials as such; it’s mostly on-the-job training). The thought of seeing all the bishoujo game scenes between actual missions was more or less the only thing keeping me going at times; the power of moe compelled me.

The Grand List of Console Role-Playing Game Cliches, number 40. Zelda’s Axiom:

Whenever somebody tells you about “the five ancient talismans” or “the nine legendary crystals” or whatever, you can be quite confident that Saving the World will require you to go out and find every last one of them.