It’ll make you happy like an old-time movie.

One of the problems I face writing on a blog of ever-increasing age is that I almost always forget whether I’ve written on a topic before or not. This one has been bouncing around in my mind for a while, awaiting some sort of suitable catalyst to be revealed, but I have no idea if this has already come to pass. I may be repeating myself, which should be of no surprise to anyone.

Crisu asked what it is about the Magical Girl/Mahou Shoujo genre which makes us fans, in an attempt to trawl the seas of said fandom for useful opinions to create a presentation thereof aimed at the masses. Taking a quick once-over on my own rough ideas, I doubt this will be of much help to him, but so it goes.

Boiled down to the bare essentials, the reason I like Mahou Shoujo is because it’s fun. Rather, I don’t watch mahou shoujo because it’s fun, but I watch shows that are fun, and these happen to be, for a suspicious majority, mahou shoujo shows. I do not pretend to understand why, especially with such a vague qualifier as “fun”.

If I were to be uncharitable towards viewpoints I deem alien to my own, I would make a comment that for some reason, being a gentleman is frowned upon among many anime watchers.

For example, I remember the comments about Kyon’s reactions in the first chronological episode of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Haruhi gropes Mikuru (comedically), and then invites Kyon to do the same. Kyon refuses, in a straightforward and casual tone of voice. Almost immediately, speculation abounded that Kyon was gay. The idea that he was trying to act in a civilized manner, by not molesting a girl he’d just met for all of five minutes, had apparently not occured to the viewers in question.

Along those lines, I can understand the dislike of the average male harem comedy lead as being too indecisive, leading to a sort of treadmill plot, running in place. (We shall put aside the argument about being unrealistic for now.) It is a point well made, and I concede it. However, I do not, as yet, find much merit in the claim that the best course of action for this male lead is to start boinking all comers (pun very much unintended). It just seems a bit rude to do so when one has not actually made a final decision yet.

Now, I can see how people might be irritated by Kouta’s actions in Kanokon; if he doesn’t want Chizuru to go that far, that quickly, he should have just said so. But to say that he is less of a person for not taking the initiative, or taking advantage of the situation, strikes me as missing the target by an astonishing measure. I have nothing against the calls for him to make a decision, but this decision involves more than one valid course of action.

Anyway. For the most part, romantic comedies in anime, when featuring a very willing participant, tend to involve some sort of barrier to a full consummation of a relationship. This could be parental disapproval, especially parental disapproval backed by credible threats of grievous bodily violence. I don’t think I’ve seen a barrier of the “wait until we’re married” variety, but I could just be missing out.

I find myself wondering what the barrier in Kanokon is. Chizuru has made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t care what taboos are set between humans and spirits, and Kouta seems too passive to protest. Unless the series relies on constant interruptions of decreasing plausibility, perhaps engineered by some deus ex machina, one would expect that Kouta would have Become A Man by the end of the first episode. Which, to be fair, the ending heavily implies.

I think I need to come up with some more unusual euphemisms. I mean, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha fandom has “befriending” to indicate “you will soon be hit by a high-powered magical doomsday blast”, while all I have for this is “boink”. Not that I remember where I picked it up, strangely.

One reason I haven’t been as enthusiastic about updating my blog recently is because I have once again been bitten by the fanfiction bug, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Common Plot Bunny, thus creating a sort of horrific entomological lagomorph, otherwise known as Bugs Bunny.

Bear with me, I’ll get to the point soon enough.

In the long, rambling thread in the Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha subforum about Original Characters, which has long since mutated into something only barely recognizable as a sounding board for said fanfic original characters set in the universe and is now mostly a Random Discussion area, there were three Youtube videos posted, which were supposed to be the 2ch-voted Best 300 Anime Songs (OP, ED, Insert, Image, whatever) of all time. (If you’re wondering, number one is “Cruel Angel’s Thesis”, the OP from Neon Genesis Evangelion, at over 1600 votes. I’ll get to this later.) If you have a Nico Nico Douga account, the videos are here, here, and here.

Somewhat coincidentally, I came across a post by 0rion over at Epic Win which discusses something very relevant, which is: what makes a good anime OP?

Now, I’ll take a cue from him and narrow the focus down to OPs only, since if we open it up to EDs and Inserts and Image Songs and such, my brain will explode. Even then, I’m nowhere near an expert in something like this, since not only am I relatively ignorant when it comes to the huge amount of anime that has ever been released, but I also have a very bad memory, and I’m sure that after I post this, someone will comment with an example which makes me go “WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT” and then I have to go on a training death course to redeem myself.