#JUST IMAGINE HIM CALLING ICHIGO HIGH BUT INSTEAD OF A BAD TRIP OR A POTENTIAL MURDERER IT'S ICHIGO IN HIS HOUSE SLDKFJ

[white--moon]

That statement comes out of nowhere. "Yeah, I know, but what'd I do that's got you sayin' so?" They were talking about a hypothetical book, one in which Ichigo is teasing about painting fictional him as being pretty pathetic. If anyone has seen him embarrassed and read him well enough to recognize it, it's Ichigo, so he knows Ichigo's telling the truth about having seen him embarrassed. He's not going to argue that, but he narrows his eyes. "Twice in the last hour? That's not even possible. I was drunk and you were sleepin'."

He doesn't even know what to say. They're both sounding like broken records. He knows if it were that easy, it would have already happened. Nothing can ever be simple between them. "But I didn't." He hates this part of the Grimmjow topic. "I had no control over that and you know it, and you still let him believe that. You know I didn't want that to happen." They talked about it. Ichigo truely seemed to understand the situation. But what he wants doesn't seem to mean much these days. He does know that Grimmjow's stubborn as fuck, though and that getting anything other than prickly tough guy exterior isn't easy. "My friends aren't problems." He mutters. He doesn't think he's a very good friend, and he doesn't make friends easily. Most people, he couldn't care less about, let alone call them friends. But he does care about the few people he does call a friend.

He glances over at Ichigo after they're both parked and out of their respective cars. A bell chimes when he pushes the door open. A bored looking employee looks up, then back down at their phone. Shiro gestures Ichigo down a narrow isle between racks of clothing. "Go nuts. You gotta do some digging sometimes, but I guarantee you'll find something you like."

At first it was kind of difficult to imagine Ichigo sitting at a desk, writing into the early hours of the morning, hours he's usually out roaming the streets or working a very different kind of job. But the more they talk about it, the more easily the image comes to him. He never really saw Ichigo bent over his studies when they were together, but he knows that's because he was too much of a distraction. Without himself in the picture, it's a lot easier to imagine.

He scoffs, "I never do anything embarrassing." Very very not true. Ichigo makes himself so punchable sometimes. Shiro struggles not to roll his eyes, and plays along instead. "Oh, don't downplay that. It'll be the most interesting part of the whole story. Who doesn't love a doomed romantic subplot attached to the misunderstood character? Most of the criminal population probably doesn't read anyway."

Ichigo's not wrong, but damn that's kind of harsh. "Yeah but I'd say no to all of them real fuckin' fast to say yes to you instead." He'd drop everything and everyone for Ichigo. Obsessed, like Ichigo's going to write in his book. And he's glad for the confirmation that he's the hottest guy Ichigo knows, but he didn't really want to hear about whatever complicated thing is going on between Grimmjow and Ichigo. Except it shifts gears into something. Shiro blinks, then heaves an exasperated sigh. "I understand he's mad at me, but I'm literally so loaded I don't know what to do with it. All he has to do is say something. Hell he could'a just sent me his rent bill or something." What an asshole. He doubts Grimmjow wants handouts from him, "Or I could find work for him. Doesn't even have to be illegal shit. I have a lot of connections."

That scowl makes Shiro's hackles raise, but the words take most of the fight out of him. He's so twisted up about Ichigo. He sighs. "I do. I do wanna be friends." The problem is that he doesn't know how to be just friends with Ichigo. He's going to settle for it, because it's all he's going to get, but it's going to hurt.

He shrugs. "Not all of it. I move the important stuff. Politicians, celebrities. People who think they're being discrete. Only reason I never moved my own product before was because I didn't trust myself around it often." He offers up a sort of self deprecating smile. "That's not an issue anymore. But it's a lot of product, a lot of money and a lot of networking to trust to someone else, so it works out."

He watches Ichigo check his own vehicle from the driver seat, and starts rolling down the drive when he sees Ichigo climb into the car and start it. He takes them into the city, to a hole in the wall alt fashion shop that has too many items crammed into a too small of a space. It's his favorite place for clothes though.

[deltaengineering]

summer anime 2017 part 3: welcome to die

Well guess what, I ended up putting posts off for a week.

Again.

So don’t expect a lot of detail here, but do expect a lot of shows.

See also:

• part 1: we can rebuild it

• part 2: bunch of fools

18if

18if is a really weird show about a guy who hangs around people’s dreams and fixes their personal problems - sort of like Persona 4 meets Madoka’s witch mazes. This might have some visual potential if nothing else, and it tries, but what mostly sticks in the mind is that it’s very cheap and also extremely clunkily directed, with a lot of spinning camera tricks that end up looking more desperate than cool. While that does lend it a certain nightmarish weirdness, I doubt it’s entirely intentional and more importantly it makes the show not very entertaining.

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits

So someone made a Love Live clone only with solo tokusatsu performance (?) instead of idols and saving the town instead of saving the school. And the main character is Kotori. Well, silly things happen all the time, but what I didn’t expect is that an anime called Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is actually pretty damn good. Shows of this type aren’t very complicated, but Cheer Fruits nails it where it counts: The characters are likeable, their misadventures are amusing, and the writing is good enough to make me care more about what happens to this town than Sakura Quest managed in half its two-season run. It’s a bit on the cheaper side, but I don’t mind if the fundamentals are this convincing. It also helps that this is written by Naruhisa Arakawa, who previously failed to convince me with active raid but definitely knows a thing or two about tokusatu. Charming and with an appropriately light touch on its silly conceit, this is the surprise of the season.

Ballroom e Youkoso 

It’s a sports shounen! About ballroom dancing...? Well, the manga is fairly well known so the shock factor wasn’t that high here, but I have to say that Ballroom e Youkoso nails the formula, the unusual sport in question makes it less boring than said formula would normally end up being, and it looks pretty amazing. I’m willing to take that chance, if everything goes right this might end up delivering on what Yuri on Ice promised for its first three episodes. Minus the gay of course, but I’m willing to give that up for a show that’s actually consistently entertaining instead. Fingers crossed.

Centaur no Nayami

Yay, it’s another monstergirl manga. This particular one ends up splitting the difference between Monster Musume and Demi-chan, meaning that it only has weird fetish undertones some of the time. Apart from that it ends up mostly boring, because the monster stuff doesn’t really matter, yet the show spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the specific evolutionary circumstances that made this universe possible. Uh, at this point I think I can just accept monstergirls at face value, thanks. The most interesting parts are some hints of this society being not as innocent as it seems, but the other 99% of time it doesn’t seem overly concerned with that: The actual content is just rather boring slice-of-life scenarios of the kind you can get elsewhere easily. I do have to say that opening with girls actually kissing for real is a new one, even if that doesn’t really go anywhere. And that’s really the long and short of it: This seems like a show that doesn’t even really aim to go anywhere, and just isn’t good or interesting enough to make the here and now worthwhile. 

Clione no Akari

This is a 1/3 length short that mostly seems like an anti-bullying PSA. The most tragic girl in the world (sick, orphan, shy, prone to tripping over obvious buckets in the middle of hallways, etc.) gets bullied on top of everything and some other guys feel bad about not helping her. The opening makes it look like everyone will learn a lesson about tomodachiship eventually. I will be nice and say that its heart is in the right place and it’s not actually bad (only extremely hamfisted), but it’s just neither well made nor unusual enough to earn back the time spent watching it; Koe no Katachi has me covered for life on anything this could possibly do.

Dive!!

Do you like ripped dudes glistening in the sun? Sure you do, that’s why you all watched Free! and that’s why we now get another show about pool sports with too many exclamation marks in the name. High diving seems to be a pretty poor choice though, because a single dive takes seconds and this show doesn’t pretend otherwise. The filler around it isn’t very promising either; main dude mostly memorable for being a dick to his girlfriend and admiring his cool senpai instead, no homo. Oh yeah, Yuri on Ice is a thing too, you know. Otherwise you learn more than you’d care to know about the spectacularly uninteresting financial structure of the high diving club, and get to watch the water surface reflecting the sun on to toned abs. Too bad that this particular effect just ends up looking like an unfortunate skin condition. All in all Dive!! is just a poor man’s version of other homoerotic sports anime for fujoshi, and I wasn’t too fond of those to begin with.

Hitorijime My Hero

Speaking of manlove, this one starts out as a fairly engaging character study of a highschooler who hangs out with street thugs because his mother is a prostitute, until the brother of his BFF beats them all up. But then the OP happens and after that it’s pretty much just straight up yaoi tropes because now the dude’s in high school and the cool guy is a teacher, I wonder where this is going. There’s a lot of unfunny komedy and so on. Yeah nah, even a toned down Super Lovers is not what I’m looking for, and laudable opening aside this brings nothing new to the table.

Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni.

I’ve been very mad at smugly ironic genre shows that wallow in the cheapest clichees while “deconstructing” them (i.e., just pointing them out as if that’s an excuse). But the alternative is, of course, just not doing that and playing it all straight without a hint of irony, and it turns out that that is significantly worse. So here’s your 24 minutes of isekai light novel: dude dies, goes to JRPG world and gets to keep his smartphone in complete working condition. Ha ha, I too wish my completely ordinary household item would make me the coolest dude in the universe. But this show goes the extra mile, because while a smartphone might get you some chicks in fantasy land, to get all the chicks you also have to have:

• literal god mode stat boosts

• ability to use all magical elements, an exceedingly rare feat

• access to an even rarer additional magic element on top of that

• the ability to create the irresistible potion “ice cream”

So yeah, this is the isekai power fantasy at its most naked, and apart from making our shitter in chief the most hax guy ever and dropping a huge instaharem on him, he goes beat up trash mobs because that’s what you do. Again, all of this without the slightest hint of self-awareness. Absolute garbage for garbage people from top to bottom, and completely fails to make said garbage fun.

Jikan no Shihaisha

This one at least has the looks down: When it’s an action show, the visuals are really, really cool. Honestly. However, upon further inspection it becomes apparent that this  “Chronos Ruler” here is so poorly written that it cannot be ignored. You guessed it, a lot of exposition and poorly conceived comedy ruin the eyecandy pretty quickly, and it’s all so dumb and dull that I barely remember anything but a vague stink of disappointment. It’s two guys that fight monsters, only not very well? Something about trying to turn back time but that turning out to be a bad idea? It’s all just slush. There's a twist in here that's kind of funny (probably unintentionally) so I won’t spoil it, but it’s by no means worth it.

Konbini Kareshi

Konbini Kareshi is an anime about some highschoolers that have relationship problems and hang out in a konbini, and that’s pretty much it. It’s extraordinarily slow, but somehow I did not end up finding it completely dull - possibly because “nothing happens” also means that nobody talks in this case. A lot of the episode is just awkward, silent situations, with information imparted visually (body language, expressions, etc) instead. Imagine that. Now I don’t want to praise it too much because nothing pays off and, well, nothing happens - but it is actually something markedly different from what you usually see in anime and that’s got to be worth something. I am not sure if I want to give this more chances, but that’s better than being quite sure I never want to see it again, right?

Made in Abyss

If you want to have a master class in how to start a fantasy adventure anime, check out Made in Abyss 01. It just drops you into an utterly beautiful world, sets up a couple of endearing characters and their general situation without boring you with the details, and the explains just enough about the world to answer a few pressing questions that can’t be ignored at the end. It’s beautiful too, great design, great animation, lush backgrounds, the whole shebang. Now it’s essentially a story about a bunch of very young orphans that go spelunking, and the character designs remind me of Ichigo Mashimaro of all things, but I detect no sketchiness here. Obviously it now has a tough act to follow over a whole season, but for the type of show it is you couldn’t ask for a better layup.

Nana Maru San Batsu

Also known as “Fastest Finger First”, this show asks the question: How do you make watching a trivia quiz interesting? Well, the answer is that you don’t. It seems to be a very basic school club show and the topic of the school club is buzzer quizzes. And somehow this fictional story manages to be less engaging than your average actual TV quiz show. Buzzer quizzes don’t have a lot of strategy involved (the show tries to pretend otherwise, but mostly fails), just watching people in quiz-o-vision trying to answer fairly mundane questions is hardly riveting, and besides that it’s just a decidedly subpar comedy. This could have worked if it went full ham like Kakegurui, but it neither has the means nor even much of an inclination to try that. 

Netsuzou TRap - NTR

So here’s the long-dreaded adaptation of the yuri manga that’s so full of bullshit drama that even actual fans of bullshit yuri drama hate it to the point where it became a running joke. And yeah, this sure is bullshit yuri drama about two girls who casually make out while boyfriends aren’t looking too closely. One feels bad about it, the other is a troll. All in all it’s reminiscent of Kuzu no Honkai, except that KnH at least was fully aware that its entire cast was awful people; I can’t even make out what I’m supposed to think about these shenanigans. Now I could say that episode 1 shows potential if it develops properly, but the manga is such a known quantity of bad writing that that’s not a smart idea. It will probably just be Girl A feeling conflicted and Girl B trolling her forever.

Princess Principal

Steampunk is pretty much a laughingstock these days, but I will say that Princess Principal nails the aesthetic if nothing else. It is made of steam and punk; you get your top hats, you get your gears, you get your airships. It’s all pretty cool looking and it also has some nice action. What it’s actually about is some sort of Cold War in divided London, and our protagonists are a crew of schoolgirls that talk about being spies a lot. This is where it becomes apparent that the writer of this was previously convicted of having committed Code Geass (yeah, that guy again), so a certain degree of schlock is to be expected. And really, who else could come up with Steampunk Cold War Berlondon featuring murderous gothlolis? So overall, it’s quite a bit more trashy than I would like but it could be able to pull it off reasonably well on production value alone, and hopefully the writing won’t shit the bed too hard.

Saiyuki Reload Blast

Saiyuki is an old shounen property that adapts Journey to the West. Not to be confused with Dragonball, because this is spaghetti western instead of wuxia. Or so it seems, I’ve never watched one of the anime adaptations that keep getting made every decade or so before. But hey, Reload Blast being a sequel to an anime last made when the ostensible target audience wasn’t even born yet at least has the benefit of not having to deal with tiresome origin stories, we just get to watch the characters do their thing and it’s reasonably easy to figure out anyway. It’s just that it’s not actually all that good; fans of a time when shounen heroes generated a lot of blood spray may get something out of it since it’s pretty violent, but otherwise this iteration of the JttW party are just a bunch of dicks that are trying hard to be cool but aren’t. It’s probably alright for fans of the source material and people hankering for throwback anime, but I don’t think it’s for me.

Shoukoku no Altair

As far as fantasy settings go, a Ottoman-themed one isn’t the most common. So the hero of Shoukoku no Altair hails from fantasy Turkey, which is embroiled in some sort of diplomatic brouhaha with fantasy Germafrance. And that’s really where I start tuning out because this is one of these fantasy epics that start by introducing a million characters that surely will become important eventually, but give me little reason to care about anything otherwise. Exotic locales aside, Altair seems to be mostly setup and the rest of it, the characters, the intrigue, the politics, everything, just don’t motivate me to find out more. It’s possibly not a bad show, but it’s a barely memorable show in a genre I am not particularly fond of.

Tenshi no 3P!

Sometimes it really helps going into random new anime without any previous knowledge. Like here: Tenshi no 3P starts out with a moderately well thought out character sketch of a hikkikomori that spends his day making music and uploading it to the internet. More than a bit tired, but not bad. He then gets a message by “a guy” that wants to work with him. Well, surely nothing bad can come of this. The “guy” turns out to be a primary schooler (girl) from an orphan primary schooler (girl) band that is actually super good but nevertheless needs the services of a music otaku schlub for vague reasons. And then in the end the primary schoolers offer sexual favors in exchange, possibly as a joke but I wouldn't count on that. See, I had been making Ro-Kyu-Bu (i.e., ”Rock-Yu-Bu”) jokes way before that, but as it turns out 3P is by the same author and oh boy can you tell. So it’s this season’s Eromanga-sensei, only somehow worse. I have to admit that I am not even above watching something like this if it’s legitimately great, but thankfully Tenshi no 3P is not even close to being legitimately great. Dodged a bullet there, for sure.

But hey, maybe we will at least get another very embarrassing T-shirt out of it.

Vatican Kiseki Chousakan

And finally, we have a show about some priests from the Vatican that travel the world to examine miracles. Well, one miracle at least, in Guatemala. The concept is somewhat intriguing and could make for a nice horror/detective hybrid with a twist, but I wouldn’t trust anime to pull this off properly, and so it’s no surprise that it doesn’t. For starters we get a pair of very pretty leads that seem primarily intended to bait yaoi doujins, and while it admirably tries for an off-kilter (literally, hope you like dutch angles) horror atmosphere, it is more concerned with out main character’s angst. Yeah I don’t know, the intrigue doesn’t seem particularly intriguing either and the horror just doesn’t quite click - it’s trying for gothick ostentatiousness, but doesn’t quite pull that off. I’d be willing to give this a chance if it was a miracle-of-the-week kind of thing, but considering the amount of characters they introduced for this first case that doesn’t seem to be how this show operates. Or at least I’ll wait until more information becomes available.