One of the front-running candidates for the third spot of my Favourite Anime listing (behind Card Captor Sakura and Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) is Hidamari Sketch, and the main reason it hasn't been shunted into the position yet is because I'm not entirely sure why. This isn't exactly a reason in itself to deny greatness, but I felt that I needed to know if it was the show itself which I liked, or just the general style such shows in the genre lend themselves to.

I've not seen Sketchbook yet, and other series involving art students don't come to mind as yet, so I don't know if the general concept of Slice Of Life involving Art naturally leads to a more Artistic sort of anime style. Of course, I know just about nothing about True Art, so I can't tell if this is actually Artistic, or merely pretentious. Whichever it is, at least it's entertaining, which is far more important to me than Art.

And of course, it is difficult to separate the Art of an anime about art students from the Art of SHAFT, when watching Hidamari Sketch. Maybe there is no such separation, and the two build on each other like cheese on pizza.

Geijustuka Art Design Class, or GA for short (regardless of any possible confusion with similarly-initialed series), is not quite up to HidaSketch standards in my pantheon of Favourite Anime. I place the source of the difference squarely on the soundtrack: I love the HidaSketch soundtrack to bits, while GA has some good tracks, but the majority appear to be there merely to give some texture to the background, and could have been replaced with a dial tone. On the upside, I like the opening theme ("Osaki ni sil vous plait", possibly translated from both Japanese and French as "Go ahead first, if you please"), and the ending theme ("Colouring palettes", Tomokane/Miyuki Sawashiro version) is very catchy.

Speaking of voice actors, GA gets points for being very surprising: all the names are familiar, but the voices are different. Haruka Tomatsu (Shiho Sannomiya in Zettai Karen Children, off the top of my head) sounds so much like Mamiko Noto (one million million light-and-airy-voice characters, like Nodoka Miyazaki in Negima, Aoi Futaba in Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel, Kotomi Ichinose in Clannad… so on and so forth) that I had to double-check the credits. Miyuki Sawashiro is no longer Puchiko from Di Gi Charat, but a loud hyperactive tomboy character. And Yui Horie abandons her genki-cheerful voice for a lower oneesan role in this one.

Since I've only had time to watch the first episode (the second is waiting for another unbroken chunk of an hour or so to watch and jot down my impressions thereof), I'm obviously not going to make a judgement one way or another yet. Maybe the really awesome parts of the soundtrack will turn up in later episodes, or maybe even a later season.

Until then, I suspect I'll be subconsciously and constantly pushing my spectacles up in sympathy with Kisaragi.

Why do so many bishoujo games have a token cute animal (for varying degrees of "cute")? The Key anime adaptations featured theirs, with Piro in Kanon, Potato in Air, and Botan in Clannad. Nursery Rhyme has Azu, and Heart de Roommate had Toshibo. I first noticed this during the fake opening for the last Haruhi-chan episode, where apparently Muu-chan (a Haruhi-chan original) and Shamisen double-team this role.

I've not had much time to play Coming x Humming, and I swear that this is actually the name of the visual novel. I have no idea what it's about, except apparently some sort of local goddess from the shrine taking human form to… I don't know. Boink the player character, maybe. Characters in visual novels seem to have a surprisingly blase attitude towards plainly supernatural phenomena; it's hard to tell if this is something generally Japanese, or if it's just easier to tell a bishoujo game story like this, without having to explain all the plot contortions.

I wonder what the first bishoujo game to utilize all these conventions was. Probably something relatively old and familiar, since when I encountered them in Coming x Humming, they had this comfortingly familiar feel. Token cute pet, token childhood friend, token MAGIC… all is well with the world.

A bit later than the curve would suggest, but I've started on Spice and Wolf. Note that I said started, as in "watched about five minutes of the first episode before I had to go". I have heard tell that this anime concerns itself with being informative and educational rather than entertainment, which I admit would probably not have lured me in if there hadn't been the much-fanarted Horo. I learn better when a cute anime girl is involved; I am a simple man.

Most of my knowledge about the history of currency is from Neal Stephenson's unwieldy Baroque Cycle. For those who have never read it before (and believe me, if you've read it you'd know, considering its possible usage as a 1d6 bludgeoning weapon), it deals with the political and cultural upheavals of the late 17th and early 18th century, with an immense focus, as only Stephenson can do and still get published under Fiction, on modern finance and banking. I am hoping, with the sort of desperate optimism a college student the day before his finals may possess while looking for Cliff's Notes in the bookstore, that Spice and Wolf may provide a less depressing context for the history lesson.

(And while I like Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, Making Money isn't really all that informative. Entertaining, but not informative.)

The idea of economics is pretty fascinating, although I should mention that I'd rather not do all the heavy lifting of actually studying the subject. The basic principles, from the concept of barter, is simple: I have A Thing which you want. You may have Another Thing which I want. We then trade our Things as far as we see the transaction to be viable. Except that the Real World doesn't work that neatly, and so lots of complications arise, and lots more complications arise from the attempted solutions to these complications, a state of affairs familiar to experienced gamers.

Along the way someone came up with the idea of representing, say, a given amount of apples or spices or cow with a shaped bulk sample of precious metals, and then someone else thought of keeping the general shape but reducing the amount of precious metal in that sample, and then we have things Written Down which promised to Pay The Bearer One Dollar I Say One Dollar Upon Presentation Of This Note. The piece of paper alone is worth about as much as a regular piece of paper plus some ink, but the information recorded on that paper, and the reputation of the person or organization encoding that information, made it worth as much as a given amount of precious metals, or a given amount of cow, if it comes to that. The jump to that information without the paper seems trivial in comparison.

Along the way, the world became more and more connected, and lines of communications became more and more secure, and very intelligent people thought up of ways to use this to their advantage, or their nation's advantage, or their culture's advantage. Or politics, which is never very far behind. (I include religious beliefs of that time inside politics, since that's what it boiled down to anyway.) Thus, given that it is fairly safe to assume that a message sent to someone will reach that person, these intelligent people are able to shuffle around money that they have, or don't have, or will possibly have in the future provided various things come to pass, or other people's money which they are keeping in yet other people's pockets, and still settle accounts, through some sort of financial voodoo.

We have come from trading Things, to what is essentially Magic. And the essential part of magic is in knowing just that bit more than everyone else.

Reposting after dealing with technical difficulties.

Up until now, my only experience with Mahjong has been with the version known occasionally as Shanghai, as befits my preference to solo in MMORPGs. I've always been meaning to learn, however, partly because learning new things is invariably useful, and partly because people keep talking about it and I feel a little left out.

I actually spent a couple of hours in the #AnimeBlogger IRC channel spectating a couple of matches between four of the channel denizens. Lupus took out a hefty chunk of that time to teach me the basics of Mahjong, Hong Kong rules style. It apparently bears a faint resemblance to the basics of poker, except in groups of three (or four): if I remember correctly, a "chow" is a three-straight, a "pung" is a three-of-a-kind, and a "kong" is four-of-a-kind. In play, someone draws a tile from the "wall", which apparently serves the same purpose as the common deck of cards, and discards another tile (whether the one just drawn or otherwise) from their hand, which is the row of tiles directly in front of them. Someone else can pick up that discard as their draw, or not; if the discarded tile is left alone, it is arranged neatly at the centre of the table, presumably to let everyone see what tiles have been played. Presumably there is no special tile that lets you summon something from the graveyard at the cost of all your mana.

The first episode of Saki confirmed my belief that I still have a long, long way to go. What are these people talking about? Where is the glossary for all this terminology? Have I somehow switched to watching the more jargon-filled scenes of Asura Cryin? When my friend told me that I needed to at least have a handle on the vocabulary of Mahjong, he meant every word.

But it's all right; I'm here for the cute girls. Nodoka's insistence on Saki joining the club and her reputation of being the champion makes me think that there's some Angst in store for her, either in the backstory or plot, but she does seem to be designed to attract attention anyway, what with her pink hair and huge tracts of land talent bounce. Yuuki is perky comic relief, and Saki herself is… well, I suppose she'll display some more personality in future episodes.

The intense background music and arcs of lightning that appear whenever the characters dramatically draw and discard tiles is… well, if I were less experienced in anime, I'd say that it's overdone, but after Yakitate Japan I don't think that's really possible anymore. I half expect that along with the electronic scoring system, each Mahjong tile is actually intended to give off dramatic sparks and gusts of wind, individually powered by tiny nuclear reactors.

Best not to slam those tiles down.

A strange thing is that I've generally figured Mahjong to be a social game, like Bridge. While playing competitively, everything is all Serious Business, but among friends, I'd anticipate at least some chatter. The Mahjong Club in Saki doesn't exactly play in silence, but there's still a lot less conversation than I expected.

Kurogane compared the main characters of K-On to those of Lucky Star, which does rather fit, but to be honest the first comparison I thought of was Hidamari Sketch:

• Yui – Yuno
• Ritsu – Miyako
• Mio – Sae
• Tsumugi – Hiro

To be fair, the interactions don't exactly break down exactly as compared: Ritsu hangs out with Mio instead of Yui, Mio is a lot more honest to herself than Sae was, and Tsumugi is a bit more out-there compared to Hiro (in fact, she probably fits the least closely). I wouldn't say air-headed, but perhaps naive is a better word. (Or not.) "Inexperienced with the ways of the world" would probably be more accurate if it weren't too unwieldy a phrase, and if my brain ever emigrated from the gutter.

It's also telling that Tsumugi is invariably the last name mentioned in the listing of the four girls. We have Main Character Yui, and the boke-and-tsukkomi routine of Ritsu and Mio, which all leap to mind more readily than the Rich Talented Girl that is Tsumugi, whom one can't really feel jealous of, since she's so amazingly nice. (Of course, with my luck, she'll turn out to have some hidden nasty side or something. So it goes.)

It's also also telling that I've latched onto Tsumugi as my Favourite Character So Far, just as I did for Miyuki in Lucky Star. There Is Something Wrong With Me.

As for the actual episode itself, there is little to say. It does take an oddly long time for Yui to join the Light Music Club; I say "oddly" because I could be biased by knowing what the series is supposed to be about. We know that Yui's going to join up, and taking most of the episode for her to do so just feels like teasing the audience. Still, I enjoyed it, which is all I ask for in my entertainment. (Why did I enjoy it, you may ask? Please note the title of this blog.)

Finally, I have been accused of being a KyoAni fanboy. This is like accusing a beer-lover of being a Guinness fanboy; from an extremely stretched definition it is true, but it fails to address the main point: I am a moe fanboy, and it doesn't matter who draws the cute girls, as long as the cute girls are present. Thus, it is more proper to say that I am also a lolicon a KyoAni fanboy.

Also on my to-watch list, which is by no means the same as my to-follow list, are Asura Cryin (ghost in the mecha, or some strange bizarreness in that general direction), as well as the much-mocked Queen's Blade (containing copious amounts of breasts bosoms melons milk factories busts funbags knockers boobies jugs jubblies stonking great tits).

It has been several weeks since I've had the chance to sit down and watch anime, or even to keep up with anime news of any sort. I have been collecting episodes, much as that figurine you thought was such a bargain before you realized that you had no more space to put it collects dust. I am dimly aware, through the random osmosis of the anime blogging community and its associated aggregators, that various series (Clannad After Story, Toradora) have ended, and some (K-On) will be starting. The details will have to be left to others paying more attention than I have.

I have, however, managed to sneak in glimpses, furtively seen, of bits and pieces of episodes; never enough for a full digestion of the events therein, but sufficient to abate the hunger. Some Sora Kake here; a taste of Zettai Karen Children there. Occasionally I may dip into the gumbo of Maria Holic, steeped in strangeness and substances only legal by technicality. Haruhi-chan already comes in handy bite-sized chunks, and although it is enjoyably fluffy, it is correspondingly not quite filling.

As for Chrome Shelled Regios, what samplings I have partaken of have made me curious about the nature of this dish: on the one hand, it has the heavy hints of angsty backstories and circumstances that may border upon the bitterness of emo, along with a sour frisson of convoluted conspiracy plots. And yet, Regios also features liberal servings of comedy, super-deformed moments, and even moe. I am unsure if I can help myself to the funny bits, while carefully setting aside the emo bits like unwanted asparagus. I've always been a picky eater.

The show also has little to do, as such, with the preparation and consumption of food. I'm just overusing the culinary metaphors because I haven't had a proper meal all day, and so now I go to raid the kitchen.

Like most sci-fi anime which deals with Adventures In Space!, Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo is set towards the softer side of the science, while still retaining a healthy dosage of technobabble, such that I am unable to follow more than the absolute basics without some sort of Cliff's Notes. There are lengthy expositions on how the Great Big Cannon (possibly needing spheres of metal to function) is symbolically Large and Powerful, while not one line is uttered regarding sound in space.

And that's all right, since Hard Science Fiction is often too unyielding for my squishy brain to process, made much squishier by the inevitable fatigue state I am in when I get around to watching my anime. I'm not looking for hard science; I just want entertainment. Later I may wax sesquipedalian about the holes in the theories, especially if the series interests me enough to write fanfic about it, but that's another blog post.

Of course, I'm watching this only because I gravitate towards any anime with a healthy dosage of humour and cute girls. The sci-fi genre is a nice bonus, as I let my brain skim over any new concepts the anime sees fit to implement. Most of these serve little functional purpose, save to advance the plot, or provide a means for character development of some sort.

Having said all that, I'm almost certain that Leopard's campy antics and all the phallic imagery is at least somewhat intentional. Trying to find a suitable title for this post proved more difficult than I expected, due to a surfeit of options, none of which are remotely suitable for a PG-rated blog.

There is, apparently, a saying that Comedy is Tragedy plus Time. I first heard it among my friends in the US, and it seemed like some sort of quote or well-known aphorism which I had not hitherto encountered. Like all generalizations there are exceptions, but it does explain the accusation of "too soon".

Personal observation, however, has more or less convinced me of a more accurate version: Comedy is Tragedy happening to someone else.

I'm not entirely sure what to think about Maria Holic. The entire premise appears to be an invitation for the audience to witness all the myriad ways in which Kanako is tormented psychologically and occasionally physically by Maria (or Mariya, as some romanizations have it). And this is okay, because of Kanako's reactions: she goes on extended rants and whines about how Maria is being such a meanie, as well as pretty much everything else that pops into her mind at the moment. These rants are delivered rapid-fire, replete with metaphors and similes that don't quite end up as they're supposed to. And then Maria does the pretty-sparklies thing, and Kanako is instantly won over again.

With so many comedy aspects, it's hard to honestly feel bad for the character being thusly abused. One gets the feeling that the victim is not being serious, and that it's okay to laugh along.

I fear a later mood crash, and the subsequent feeling that I am a horrible, horrible person for even thinking that another person's misfortune (however fictional) is in any way amusing.

On a tangent, there's an odd bit of background music in episode two, before the (maid guitar) opening animation, where the dorm leader girl is talking about food. The music in that scene reminds me so much of "Korobeiniki" (aka The Tetris Type A Song) that I suspect it is a pastiche or homage of some sort. For, and this is Studio SHAFT we're talking about, no discernable reason.

I have a great many things I could say about this anime, such as my anticipation of it based on the manga, as well as my expectation that it's not going to be a good anime, but it's going to be fun.

I could mention that it's effectively a vehicle for wacky romantic fanservice hijinks. I could mention that so far I'm happy with what I see, with the caveat that I'm easily satisfied when it comes to cute girls in anime. I could even mention that Kagome seems to be rather younger than I remember, especially since I think she's supposed to be… well, minor spoilers.

But for now, all I can think about is the moment when Chihaya (the green-haired one) opened her mouth, and I instantly recognized her voice actress. Yukari Tamura really has a distinctive voice, and I love it.

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

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