#sorry for the moe-ass anime style… its all I got…

[superimpulsive]

Samantha and Dean or whatever

[pesterloglog]

Meenah Peixes, Rufioh Nitram

Act 6, page 5398

MEENAH: i probubbly shouldnt even ask this since youre not as brave as people make out with you to be

MEENAH: i mean make you out to be

#wait #what did i say? #nm

MEENAH: but would you want to come away with me to...

RUFIOH: whoa, man... not you too!!! ahaha...

MEENAH: wut

RUFIOH: 1t's f1ne... 1t's alr1ght that you d1g me, 1'm flattered... you were just the last person who hadn't h1t on me yet... and 1 k1nda dug that about you, you know?

MEENAH: i wasnt asking you out dope

RUFIOH: oh... wow... sh*t! sorry, guess 1 got the wrong 1dea...

RUFIOH: 1t's just k1nd of a reflex, doll... you know? everybody h1ts on me all the t1me, and 1 don't know why... sh*t 1s crazy...

RUFIOH: just the other day, get th1s... some orange guy 1n a green sh1rt jumped out of some bushes and tr1ed to k1ss me... and 1'm l1ke whaaat... step off jolly man, haha...

MEENAH: maybe its cause youre a bishie ass glubberfucker with a kickin hawk

RUFIOH: yo, that's cool of you to say... you've got k1nda th1s otenba b1shojo th1ng go1ng on yourself, g1rl... your style rocks, 1 always thought you looked pretty slamm1n...

#1 could g1ve you mohawk dy1ng t1ps... #you'd rock the sh*t out of that look!!!

MEENAH: for what its worth

MEENAH: i would be your moe dere dere waifu in the beat of a pump biscuit

MEENAH: if i was remotely attracted to you or found your personality more appealing

MEENAH: and also if i shared your dumb passion for troll anime and didnt think it clogged massive blowhole

RUFIOH: ahaha, bangarang! that's a scenar1o 1'd be alr1ght w1th...

RUFIOH: no one really to talk to anymore about my stor1es, yo... s1nce th1ngs got so ch1lly w1th my ex...

MEENAH: goddamn witch

RUFIOH: seriously... she crazy...

RUFIOH: so what were you go1ng to ask me... uh, 1f not on a date?

#and 1f not what brand of mohawk dye 1 use?

MEENAH: never mind

MEENAH: youre not even gonna agree anyway cause this team suuuuucks

MEENAH: later ruf

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 2: My Fedora Weighs A Ton

Smash that hate-reblog button, because today I’m calling out another penily* challenged isekai copypasta. But first...

Dororo

What: Baby gets most vital organs stolen by demons due to his father’s dickishness, is now all grown up and back for revenge. He also picks up a spunky petty thief so this doesn’t get too depressing.

✅ Shounen manga in the 60s sure was some shit huh. Thankfully this is a Tezuka original, so it’s surprisingly lighthearted for how ultragrim the setup is. That doesn’t mean it actually is lighthearted on an absolute scale, of course, just matter of fact instead of unbearably miserable. I like it.

✅✅ This looks dope, yo. It starts with the character designs, which are nicely updated but still noticeably Tezuka-ish. Then there’s the animation, which is deluxe and super deluxe during fights. And the backgrounds are real pretty too.

✅✅ Bonus points for a fantastic OP as well. I would already crown this as the OP of the season (sorry, Boogiepop), but we’ve still got another Mappa show to come and it’s Kakegurui, which has a track record in that regard. Dare I hope we get something even better?

♎ Ah, yes, Mappa. Great openings and great first episodes is what they do. I dearly hope they don’t donk it again, or, failing that, only donk it in the very last minute like Zombieland Saga.

✅ This is absolutely not my thing subject-wise, but the evidence suggests that it’s just too good to pass up. Hot damn.

Pastel Memories

What: Akiba has become normal and a bunch of girls are just sort of wandering around in it looking for manga.

❌❌ Okay seriously, what is with this new trend of making the first episode of your anime boring, seemingly on purpose? The preview promises some action (note: more on that later), but this first episode is largely content-free and tedious as hell.

❌❌ I suppose they’re banking on their large amount of kawaii characters, but a character-focused show needs, you know, character. These girls are extremely bland and samey and the one memorable one is the one that says nya a lot. Gimmicks are not the pinnacle of effort, yes, but simply not doing anything is hardly more effort.

❌❌ It also looks like ass, which is why I’m not enthusiastic about this show attempting action in the future. It’s somehow consistently off-model, with all the characters having sightline problems that makes everyone have a constant vacant stare. It’s barely worth mentioning with problems like that, but the animation’s not much either. The whole thing exudes a distinct bootleg ambiance.

♎ The plot they’re hinting at at the very end (all these girls are dimension-hoppers going through different worlds) admittedly has potential to be at least mildly entertaining. But potential is nothing without execution, which this show anti-excels at.

Mob Psycho 100 S2

What: Quit frontin, you know what MP100 is.

✅ At this point I’m basically only in it for the glorious visuals, so S2 better not be a step down. It’s not, so that’s good.

✅ I was not at all impressed by Mob Psycho’s writing overall, but the aspect I liked the most was Mob’s awkward daily life. This episode mostly focused on that, so no complaints here either. Komedy with Reigen and what amounts to a grunge rock cover of Bleach will surely follow, but this is about episode 1. 

❌ One of S1's strongest points was the amazing opening. The new one is a much inferior clone of that one, both musically and visually.

♎ I won’t complain at length about MP100′s content again, but yeah, I don’t have high hopes. I’ll watch it no matter what because it’s still worth it, and the most I hope for is that the glue between the kabooms isn’t too annoying on average. This is starting out on the right foot if nothing else.

Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan

What: A sort of experimental adaptation of an 4koma about an easygoing woman. The trick is that every episode will be done by entirely different staff and studios.

❌❌ You know, I don’t mind weird, not conventionally beautiful arthouse shorts. However, packing your 3 minute short with 20 minutes of staff interviews explaining why it’s good may be a bit too modern art even for me. Especially when done in a Japanese daytime TV style.

❌ Even on its own terms, the short itself is on the bad side of whatever. #relatable to some, maybe, but not to me. And well, it’s not a looker, not even unconventionally so.

❌ The idea here is intriguing, but it spectacularly doesn’t work out in the first episode. I suppose if this produces something amazing down the line (which, admittedly, it might), I’ll hear about it.

Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari / The Rising of the Shield Hero

What: 💩

💩💩 Features a complete catalogue of isekai tropes, including pointing them out because the writer is extremely intelligent. If I have called it shit before, it’s probably in here somewhere.

💩💩 Is a whiny nerd’s manifesto on the topic of how he doesn’t get respected even though he’s so nice and how women are gold-digging whores that accuse him of rape. Basically, this is the /r/incels to Goblin Slayer’s /r/the_donald.

💩💩 Fucking double length because just saying “isekai” is not enough, you have to really make sure everyone knows what that means.

💩💩 Oh yeah, Shield Hero seems to pick up a slave catgirl at the end, as you do. I hope she also gives him a swirly and steals his lunch money, but considering he can magically order her to stay in the kitchen, I don’t think that’s likely.

♎ Looks alright, if thoroughly uninspired. Kinema Citrus can do better, but thankfully don’t.

Ueno-san wa Bukiyou / How clumsy you are, Miss Ueno.

What: Ueno-san is a genius inventor, crush-haver and terminal-stage boke. Oh dear.

❌❌ Loud and obnoxious comedy short. But still not short enough (12m).

❌❌ The two jokes in this episode are 1. Ueno wants to make her crush/straight man drink her piss and 2. Ueno wants to make her crush/straight man look up her skirt while not wearing panties.

❌❌ In other words, it’s a more stylistically generic Asobi Asobase that also pulls its punches with magical piss-purifying/pussy-hiding technology.

❌❌ No.

Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita! / Wataten!: An Angel Flew Down to Me

What: Useless neet girl pervs on her little sister’s best friend. “Cute or pedo? Why not both!”, says Doga Kobo, establishing a pattern in the process.

♎ Shockingly, that pattern is not a tremendously annoying character for once. Our lead here is annoying, just not outrageously so. So it’s no Uzamaid, and one might even consider this watchable and cute if you don’t think about it too hard, or preferably at all.

♎ It also looks plush and agreeable, as usual. 

❌❌ What is exactly like Uzamaid is the loliyuri though, and no amount of Doga Kobo gloss will make that go away. Why not, like, pick one of the thousands of cutesy 4koma without that? It’s just creepy. Less creepy than Uzamaid, yes, but that might as well have been the most pastel colored horror TV show ever so that’s not an accomplishment. 

❌ Even if it weren’t extremely questionable content-wise, what’s left would still just be a good-looking but utterly unexceptional moe show. Sort of like Sansha Sanyou or in fact the majority of Doga Kobo productions at this point. What a waste of talent.

* Yes, that’s a word. I looked it up.

[kohakuneko]

The Best Anime You’re Not Watching: Princess Principal

If you follow me over on my main blog, you’ve probably seen me gushing/screaming/crying about this show for the past month or so (you’re probably tired of it by now and I’m not sorry). I knew from the premise that I was going to like this anime at least a little bit, but I really wasn’t expecting the huge emotional reaction I ended up having towards it and from what I can tell a lot of other people who watched this show feel the same way. Anyways, I love this show to death and more people need to watch it, which is exactly what the point of this blog is. And I really want to post more often here, so this seems like the perfect opportunity to talk about Princess Principal. (also I have a lot of thoughts about this show and absolutely nobody to talk about it with because none of my friends have seen it yet WHICH IS REALLY FRUSTRATING DAMMIT)

Princess Principal is set in Albion, an alternate steampunk version of late-19th/early-20th century England. Ten years following a civil war known as the “London Revolution”, a great wall separates the country into two opposing nations: the Commonwealth and the Kingdom. Though officially at peace, conflict is still high between both factions as each side sends spies to duke it out in the shadows. Our story follows a team of five undercover Commonwealth agents: Ange, a pathological liar and self-proclaimed alien, Dorothy, the team’s leader, getaway driver, and token sex appeal, Beatrice, a sweet sweet cinnamon roll with the ability to mimic people’s voices, Chise, a skilled samurai experiencing massive amounts of culture shock, and Princess Charlotte, a member of the Kingdom’s royal family who is totally Ange’s girlfriend. Every night for these spies is girl’s night out as they crash parties, take names, and navigate the mysterious underworld of espionage.

First thing we have to get on the same page about is the opening. Because it’s absolutely EPIC.

(i thought tumblr let you embed videos but i guess not? or maybe i screwed up? anyways there’s a link up there go watch it)

Moving on, let’s start praising Princess Principal (holy wow ALLITERATION) by talking about the setting. This show has literally everything I could ever want to see: steampunk, action, spies, and a kickass all-female lead cast… and lesbians, but more on that later. Probably my favorite things about the universe of Princess Principal are all the little gadgets the characters use, most notably Ange’s C-Ball that lets her float.

There’s also other things like the huge machinery we see in an underground scene, the cars that the team drives, the Kingdom’s airships… whatever the heck Beatrice made in episode 8…

(seriously we never get any kind of explanation for this thing and it never comes back again but this one little part is so frickin funny)

There’s also concept art/blueprints somewhere of some of the different vehicles and mechanical devices seen in the show. I can’t find them now (I wanna say they’re on twitter?), but I remember they were pretty detailed and it’s clear a lot of thought was put into the inner workings of everything no matter how big or small. And yes, there’s blueprints for Beatrice’s thingamajig too. 

On the subject of detail and thought, a lot of that definitely went into the writing as well. There are a lot of mysteries and plot twists to unravel throughout the series that are very well executed. Most of it is based around sprinkling in little hints throughout an episode that come together within the final minutes and though they’re not completely obvious at first, they’re always right there in front of you in plain sight; you just have to pay close attention. Being able to pick up on all these things kind of makes you feel like a spy yourself, in a way.

The music for Princess Principal was done by Yuki Kajiura, which automatically gives pretty much every anime fan very high expectations going in. I think Kajiura really delivers in this series; in fact, this might be one of my favorite soundtracks of hers to date. There’s a lot of her signature style that we all know and love, complete with the epic vocals in the background, but in this OST she also adds a lot of jazzy pieces into the mix as well. It kinda gives it a bit of a “James Bond” type of feel, perfect for spies running around in jolly old England Albion, especially when the saxophone kicks in. Even the opening, while not composed by her, still gives off the same sort of vibe with the bass around the middle of the track along with, of course, some awesome sax. (oh boy don’t read that bit out loud haha if you know what I mean)

And now, finally, we get to the bit I’ve been most itching to talk about. The thing that is, in my opinion, the biggest strength of Princess Principal: its characters.

At first glance, we have a very typical action team setup. You’ve got the leader (Dorothy), the cool prodigious main character (Ange), the muscle (Chise), the sweet smart one (Princess), and of course, the lil’ cute one who supplies the moe (Beatrice). But as you watch the show, you find out very quickly that all five of them are developed much much further than those basic concepts and that none of them are what they seem to be on the surface, which is pretty fitting since they’re all spies. (yeah, I know I called Dorothy the “token sex appeal” earlier, but that was just for comedic purposes; don’t get mad at me plz XD) And as you just saw in the above image, they’ve all got really cool designs, too. (where can i get me Ange’s hat and cape i really want them)

Of course, this is a show about a team of spies, so it wouldn’t matter how cool they all were individually if they didn’t work together well as a cast. And they do.  Ange, as the main character, is not surprisingly exceptionally skilled all around and in any other show she’d probably just be soloing every mission. But as good as she is, she isn’t at all invincible or OP; she needs the specialized abilities that all her teammates possess. Each of them has a very important role to play and none of them are at any point just dead weight. The other four team members don’t just exist to support Ange either; all five of them support each other as a single unit. 

They also play off one another very well outside of missions and their team dynamic has clear development over the course of the show. And that development is not derived from the overdone “You’re getting a partner” “But I don’t want a partner” “Actually come to think of it you’re not so bad partner” schtick you see in all the buddy cop movies; they don’t do that at all THANK GOD. Instead, it’s a bit more on the internal and subtle side. At the start, while everyone clearly works together well and missions go very smoothly for the most part, you still get the sense that they have a very thin layer of trust towards one another and they may not all be on the same side, which, again, is very befitting of spies. Sure they’re teammates and they all work for the same people, but individually they each have their own goals and motivations, some more obvious than others. Because of that, they each occasionally withhold information from each other and sometimes even the audience (again, some more than others). But as time goes on and they figure out more about each other, they start to bond and form a genuine friendship. They begin to channel their individual goals into their work as a team and either open up about or put to rest whatever secrets they’re keeping. And again, all of this is very subtle, which is as it should be; we don’t need all this stated, we can clearly see their chemistry.

And SPEAKING of clearly seeing chemistry…. Ange and Princess are gay. Like, REALLY FUCKIN GAY. Like, I have no idea how they’re so good at stealth missions cuz they’re setting off ALL the gaydar alarms with how gay they are.

If you’ve been on either of my blogs for a while, you probably know that the only anime I watch have lesbians or at the very least a ton of yuri subtext. (okay that’s a lie I watch other things too… kind of…) So yeah, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that most of the reason I kept watching this show was because I ship these two XD. But in all seriousness, they are perfect together; their relationship is very well-developed both casually and romantically and easily one of the show’s highlights.

And what makes this pairing even better is that IT’S BASICALLY CONFIRMED TO BE CANON IN EVERY DAMN CAPACITY. I won’t spoil the show here of course, but they make it pretty clear that the two of them are in love. Also, if you’ve watched some of the livestream events with the main voice actors because you’re running away from responsibilities and don’t want to sleep (help me), then you’ll see that they all pretty much ship them too (especially Ange’s and Princess’s VAs). They’re all such cute lovable dorks and it’s clear they care about the show as much as the rest of us do, which is always great.

And lastly, good god, have you SEEN the promo art???

yep. das pretty gay.

So what have we learned today from this long-ass post? Princess Principal is a marvelous anime with an intriguing setting, awesome music, brilliant characters, and adorable lesbian spies. What more could you possibly need in a show? Please go give this anime the love it deserves; you won’t regret it.

[void-official]

don’t get me wrong. I’d say about 75% of anime being produced right now is trash and a waste of the overworked animator’s time probably. And I feel very strongly about that like I think anime is over-produced, animators are worked too hard to produce too much mediocre anime that appeals only to its niche otaku fanbase. But that one post that is like, anime girls always looked better/more realistic in the past is such a stretch because there is still a huge variety of style and experimentation going on in modern anime but the person making the post used like. The worst examples of character design and frankly even outdated ones (Deen’s adaptation of Higurashi came out 10 years ago, at least. And it is based on a visual novel where the artists skills were clearly very limited to begin with, hence the character design is simple. Haruhi Suzumiya too.) Like I totally agree over-inflated boobs on skinny high school characters has become a disturbing fad but its also kinda. always been there. And has just gotten worse for that 75% of anime that is trash, while there have certainly been some really excellent and interesting-looking anime that came out more recently with amazing character design. And this got kind of lengthy so I’m putting it under a break; im sorry mobile users if it doesn’t break properly. And I dont mean this as offense to the original post or people who have reblogged it I just want to add some of my own observations about ‘modern’ anime

Here is one of my favorite anime ever, which came out 6 years ago. Kyousougiga is a very lively and interesting anime, and with the exception of  the father and daughter who are identical (for plot valid reasons being direct reincarnations of each other) the entire family looks different and interesting and they’re all fun and reasonably designed. In fact I think part of the appeal of it is how cartoonish and fun it is compared to a lot of recent anime.

psycho pass; meant to eventually be translatable to live adaptation so the characters were more realistically designed. Two of the characters are baby-faced but still clearly meant to be adults. The ‘moe’ factor is very limited, they look like they could be real people.

I don’t really need to explain why PSG is such an interesting choice of animation style but I would like to note that despite being utter fanservice nonsense neither of them are that ridiculously proportioned. Like. Stocking has big boobs but they dont look like literal watermelons taped to her chest, you know? (well, sometimes. Mostly used in ridiculous scenes meant to parody bad fanservice and its Funny)

literally every character in mob psycho 100 looks like. This. And the style shifts during serious moments to give people ridiculously over-rendered realistic faces which it does equally with male and female characters.

Red Garden came out around the same time as Higurashi and Haruhi. Every single character has their own unique facial shape, body type, and style. its also an incredible feminist anime and the first half of it is like. Amazing. if you can stomach the kinda. terrible audio frequencies of the dub.

Like I can cherry-pick anime all day and I would definitely say Most anime being produced now is trash and most styles have diluted down to a very boring and baby-faced generic. But there is so much good stuff being produced now/in the past ten years and so much of it is like, the type of stuff we Never would have gotten back in the 80s/90s. The animation quality improved bc of increased knowledge of the media and how to create shortcuts that save animators on time and budget. Like I honestly just wish there wasn’t. So -much- anime produced, that animators could focus on the materials they like instead of being forced to mass output generic ass light novel adaptations. But using things like Haruhi and Higurashi which are 10 years old and like, discounting all the things between then and now that are really amazing quality and interesting character design choices...e

Studios like SHAFT, Ufotable and Kyoani are still adding so much to the table since then. (all 3 studios that tend to default to sameface syndrome but only due to the same-faced character designs in the light novels they tend to adapt; as you can see each studio actually has a huge variety of styles they can execute) Studios like Trigger that broke off from Gainax are still amazing; there are individual animators and character designers that have come about recently that I admire SO much

[the character designer of the katanagatari light novels is amazing and the style is so cool and different]

keep in mind what tends to happen here is the original story or light novel either had an artist who was not...that great (The first adaptions of Higurashi and F/SN were stiff and awkward and terrible) so what the animation studio has to work with is very limited. Most of them still manage to do a commendable job bringing life to these things though!! When a more talented character designer is brought in it’s usually because the anime is an original adaptation and the artist was paid specifically to design the cast of that show. What happens most of the time is, a visual novel or a light novel author gets a close friend to do the art, and the writing carries the art, not the other way around. When those things get adapted it becomes a sort of...interesting challenge, I think, for animators to interpret that generic and bland style into something lively.

[pictured: aku no hana actually trolled its moe fanbase with a rotoscoped realistic adaptation. And I fucking love it]

long story short: most anime is. bland. OK. whatever. in any decade. But since there is So Much anime being produced now. I’d actually say its improved. You’d never have gotten shit like Aku no Hana back in the 80s. The style and quality of mob psycho 100 is unparalleled. There are good and bad design choices in every decade, but you need to take the source material into account too