Nisemonogatari Episode 4: Fantastic Fanservice in Spades

At Shinde Iie, I put the utmost effort into providing strikingly original, thought provoking content that you’re sure not to find elsewhere. That’s why I’m going to clasp my hands over my ears, close my eyes, and sing a repetitious song to myself while I pretend that nobody else has written about fanservice in Nisemonogatari, especially in this week’s episode. So yeah, nobody else has written about the fanservice from this week’s episode of Nisemonogatari, so I feel obligated to fill that completely present void in the aniblogosphere.

Fanservice and ecchi as concepts, much like horror and comedy, are hard to grasp and vary in effectiveness from person to person. What gets one gent’s rocks off will inevitably repulse at least one other. And that’s why I’m going to throw up a disclaimer here that no matter how much I say that Nisemonogatari has some of the most optimally implemented fanservice out there, I fully acknowledge that it will put as many people off as it will resonate with. I’ll also say here and now that I’m going to delve a bit into what I fancy and how many boxes on my theoretical checklist Nisemono checks off, so if that kind of talk makes you squeamish for whatever reason, it’s safe to back out now. I’ll just tell myself that contextualizing it doesn’t make me a bigger pervert than I really am.

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Saikano Review: The Last Poorly Sung Love Song on This Little Planet

 

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve cried watching anime. The end of the first Gunslinger Girl series made me tear up a little bit, the realization of the last story in Kino’s Journey wrung a few half-formed tears from my eye sockets, and each episode of Aria and nearly every one of Natsume Yuujinchou left me a blubbering mess unable to function. I’m far from an impenetrable, emotionless stone wall. Now with all that said, Saikano didn’t come close to making me cry. There are several reasons for this, which I’ll get to shortly.

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Shinde Iie Anime Blog & Review Celebratory 200th Post Extravaganza

Yeah, that video was about as close to a celebration jam as I could think of. Anyway, as of this post, Shinde Iie Anime Blog & Review will officially be over the 200 post mark. It seems like only yesterday I finished writing my very first episodic, and it was actually only yesterday that I wrote the 199th post. So instead of making this something dedicated to Ano Natsu like I planned on doing, I decided to delay that terrible idea in favor of a much worse one to celebrate being much more prolific than I ever expected to be.

This is the first third of a memoir of this past summer, completely fictionalized, that describes striking detail a story that involves Madoka Magica and Skittles. Aside from a few well-placed swears that I added in and the little note at the end, it’s virtually unchanged from when I first wrote it on Wednesday out of boredom. To anybody who wants to turn back now, there will be no hurt feelings; I certainly felt a lot of shame writing this. And considering my writing history, that’s saying a lot. However, for those willing to press on, I hope you enjoy enough to comment… or at least not turn away in revulsion. 

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Mirai Nikki Episode 15: I Can’t Think of Any Good Criticism; Back to the Same Ol’ Same Ol’

The best news Yuno's heard all day.

It’s rather difficult to write a post on this show right now, if only because I can’t be terribly critical toward it, and I can’t write much when I’m not being terribly critical. But there was something that Mirai Nikki had been lacking over the past several episodes that I just couldn’t for the life of me place my finger on. Yes, it was still gleefully violent overkill encrusted with profuse amounts of flaking dried blood, and yes it was still undeniably and unabashedly camp, but something was noticeably lacking that had been so damn pervasive for the first several arcs of the show’s run.

Not that it was bad, of course. After all, it did develop Yuuki and Yuno’s horribly acidic relationship and give their crew of friends a chance to not be boring horror movie fodder. A failed chance, mind you, but a chance nonetheless.

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Another Episode 3: Revelations and Umbrella Impalings

For the past three episodes, Another has been trundling along a fine line. While I can’t deny that I’ve enjoyed it so far, there’s still a definite sense that it doesn’t know what it wants to make of itself. It has that all important atmosphere that all horror must have, putting it together in an excellent melding of above average animation and wonderfully chilling yet unobtrusive discordant sounds. However, its story and characters have still been rather lacking from what’s been presented. The elements are still there to make it good, but it doesn’t know how to put them together properly and it seems to just be biding its time until it does. This episode dispelled some of that unease, but I’m still a touch wary of what the remainder of the series has in store because of the slapdash pacing.

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Nisemonogatari Episode 3: An In-Episode Glance at Senjougahara & Araragi’s Relationship

Holy shit, Nisemonogatari actually had a plot with an actual conflict, not just orally dancing around the issue of sex? Apparently it does, according to the ominous red glow that silhouettes the gnarled trees outside Kanbaru’s estate and Senjougahara’s own expository confession! Oh, and the plot synopsis was probably a dead giveaway, the catalyst of this plot being none other than Deishu Kaiki, the swindler who’s finally made his appearance after two episodes of nothing but Shaft-style conversation. Before anybody adjusts their hopes accordingly though, I assure you that, much like in the past few episodes, there are only a few minutes of actual plot; the rest is the overindulgent dialoguing that we’ve grown to know and love, mostly battling wits between Koyomi and Senjougahara as is par for the course.

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Amagami SS Review: Slightly Worse Than The Sum Of Its Parts

With the start of the new season, there was one looming blind spot in my once again packed anime watching schedule; the second season of Amagami SS, the series pretty much touted as the un-harem for its unique way of storytelling. I’m avoiding this sequel like the plague for a few notable reasons:

1. After finishing the first series, I can comfortably say that I don’t know where they can go from here. Admittedly I haven’t even given the second season a glimpse, but I thought it ended on a conclusive enough note to end then and there, occasional OAVs for the less important plot threads aside.

2. I didn’t like the first series much at all, again for quite a few notable reasons.

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Mirai Nikki Episode 14: A Tale of Skewed Perception & Creepy Cartoonish Women

Part of Mirai Nikki’s appeal is its continued molding of seemingly innocuous actions perpetrated by seemingly upstanding people into a depraved, quivering mass of bloody violence bordering on the uncomfortable and fetishistic. It constantly shapes our perception to fit its own demented universe, where the surface always belies the real personality underneath, and absolutely nothing is as it seems at first glance.

Even if the events are so laughably over the top and grotesque that they can’t possibly elicit anything but a barely-stifled laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the situations presented (Robotic hounds, I’m looking at you), the series does well at changing our expectations to fit what it gives us. The biggest strength of this is the ability to suspend disbelief on its own terms, changing the audience’s thought process from a slightly jaded “Pfft, that could never happen,” to “That actually doesn’t seem too implausible given what we’ve seen so far.” It succeeds a good portion of the time at making me think that most of what goes on could reasonably happen in this universe, as far as both the events and the general level of stupidity are concerned. And even when I’m not convinced, (Like at one point in this episode, but I’ll get to that later) it’s still a damn good time that’s hard to replicate elsewhere.

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Ano Natsu de Matteru Episode 2: Needs More Remon & Two Other Ways to Improve

If what I said in my previous Ano Natsu post is true and it’s nothing but the festering corpse of Onegai Teacher with an Ano Hana skin graft, then they’ve sure as hell done a good job of dressing it up and making it presentable for show time. Sure, the occasional whiff of decaying mass remind us that this isn’t quite as fresh as it could be, but there’s no denying that with a skilled puppet master pulling the strings/sticking their hand in unsanitary recesses for the purpose exercising of control, it’s surprisingly well done. There are three points that I’ll cover here, since I can’t for the life of me flesh any of them into full-fledged ideas and still want to get them across.

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Another Episode 2: Dead Eyes and Dolls

And the dead eyes of dolls

Despite going to tremendous efforts to seem scary, sometimes backfiring, I really can’t argue with the results. What I said in my first impressions for Another still hold true here, that it creates a startlingly effective atmosphere by sacrificing every other element aside from plot and the aesthetics. And by that, I mean just the characters and that one annoying Ali Project song that mucks up otherwise good opening animation. Also, it continues to use the creepy discordant music when it shouldn’t, overdoing things a bit.

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