Mekakucity Actors Episode 7 Notes – For The Slain, for Future Pain

(Note: Episodic notes are still mostly to be found on the Episodics Notes’ page, but up to a couple every week will have their write-up appear on the main page, when I think they warrant it. For those who don’t know, I take the notes as I watch the episode, and merely re-order them afterwards.)

So, last episode not only had been a solid first episode, it was a pretty good episode. I even cared for Ene’s emotional state at the end of it! Now we need to see how we got from episode 6 to episode 1, and Ene had left Haruka alone, Haruka who has health issues. This will likely be a sore point.

Another thing we need to see is how and why Ayano died exactly, because it feels as if that is the event everything revolves around.

I took 41 screenshots this episode. I’m not going to embed them all, so here is the album.

Thoughts and Notes:

1) Talking of Ourselves…

Spring 2014 Anime Midseason Overview (Part 2/2: Non-Action)

Mid-season of the anime season of Spring 2014 is upon us, so time to round up how I feel about the shows I’m current on. Due to the length of the list, I split it in half. The first part covered action shows. This part covers all the rest of the shows.

Shows are listed in order of enjoyment. Numbers are order on the list, and in parenthesis the order in the joint list, comprised of 13 shows. The first three shows in this section are my favourite three shows of the season, and they’re all at basically the same spot. They’re all winners.

1 (1) Ping Pong the Animation

This show isn’t all that interested in telling us a story we hadn’t heard before. That’s fine, because there aren’t many such stories. This series is interesting in not merely a well-constructed story, but also in one that is well-told. The acting is solid, and the characters are believable. You can understand what is at stake when every conflict is had, or what its purpose is – such as when they use a conflict in the first episode for a third character to look at it and explain to us what is really going on, which in retrospect shows that the “stake-free conflict”, due to how it’s the same conflict that had been ongoing for a while is merely a character’s never-ending capitulation.

Mekakucity Actors Episode 5 Notes – Tying The Plot-Fate Threads Together.

(Note: Episodic notes are still mostly to be found on the Episodics Notes’ page, but up to a couple every week will have their write-up appear on the main page, when I think they warrant it. For those who don’t know, I take the notes as I watch the episode, and merely re-order them afterwards.)

Somehow, the vignettes don’t stick with me, but the group episode (episode 3) was solid. What I wanted to watch now is late, so let’s give it a shot. Less/no notes? Let’s try.

Thoughts and Notes:

1) Don’t Forget, My Endless Hero, My Forever Friend:

1) First scene, we’re back at the clockwork tower. They meet, and meet again. Scarf-girl tells Shintaro he’s the only one who can see her, but didn’t she speak to Hibiya last episode? Is it perhaps Moorcock’s “The Hero with the Thousand Faces”, and there’s one “hero spirit” that reincarnates in various people? Perhaps she lies, or there are alternate realities? Or perhaps only he can see her outside of this place?

Mekakucity Actors Episode 4 Notes – Life Is Too Short

(Note: Episodic notes are still mostly to be found on the Episodics Notes’ page, but up to a couple every week will have their write-up appear on the main page, when I think they warrant it. For those who don’t know, I take the notes as I watch the episode, and merely re-order them afterwards.)

Well, last episode wasn’t too shabby! It gave us multiple characters, so the chatter wasn’t as wasteful, as it introduced them, and it finally gave us not just context, but a situation. Now it remains to be seen what they do with it.

Oh yes, this episode is reportedly going to be “Heat Haze Daze”, so it’s back to episodic, but this is the story I’m the most fond of from the songs, so let’s go.

Thoughts and Notes:

1) Speaking of Heroes and Reincarnation – Cryptically:

1) “Wow, so you ended up being yourself, huh?” – That has to rank up there with the most crypto-bullshit sentences I’ve seen, and I’ve watched RahXephon ;-) That’s actually not a value-judgment, just a commentary on how… obtuse it is.

Yes, I thought the place where he is with all the wires reminds one of an intersection, and of Steins;Gate. And the first episode opened with something about time-travel or reincarnations, so it sort of fits. But still, crypto-nonsense levels are off the charts.

Mekakucity Actors Episode 3 Notes – In the Land of the Blind, Keep Your Eyes Open

(Note: Episodic notes are still mostly to be found on the Episodics Notes’ page, but up to a couple every week will have their write-up appear on the main page, when I think they warrant it. For those who don’t know, I take the notes as I watch the episode, and merely re-order them afterwards.)

So first we had a NEET getting too much attention from his genki-girl AI, and then we had his sister(?) who is sort of an airhead, who gets too much attention, and is an idol, even though she doesn’t wish to be, in order to support her family. The episodes of this series have too much dead time, too much dead chatter. I talked about it at length in my weekly overview for last week, but hey, we should finally get some tied plot with the “Colour Hood Gang” (that’s my name, not official), so let’s see where we’re going with this. I sure hope we’re getting somewhere.

Thoughts and Notes:

1) Attention is Everything:

1) Hm, with all those ridiculous poses and lines, Mekakucity Actors has more than its semblance of resemblance to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure! More to the point, huzzah! Continuity! Picking up where last episode ended!

Mekakucity Actors Episode 2 Notes – “You’re All Style and No Substance!” – Akiyuki Shinbou

(Note: Episodic notes are still mostly to be found on the Episodics Notes’ page, but up to a couple every week will have their write-up appear on the main page, when I think they warrant it. For those who don’t know, I take the notes as I watch the episode, and merely re-order them afterwards.)

Real talk. Last episode had been pretty, and interesting, but also self-indulgent as all hell. However much you wanted to get us to understand Ene, this was just giving her more time than was necessary, for fun. Or perhaps because you didn’t have enough material, so you wanted to drag it along. As a result, regardless of whether Ene was loveable or annoying, very little actually happened last week.

And although that episode was filled with nearly non-stop chatter, very little of consequence was actually said.

We’ve got a big cast, and I suspect each episode will be quite different tonally. Well, an episode without Ene is bound to feel different, so let’s see what we’ve got on our hands.

Thoughts and Notes:

1) Meet Momo. Silly and Loveable. Our Idol!:

Mekakucity Actors Episode 1 Notes – Shinbo Presents: Clippy! Wait, What?!

(Note: Episodic notes are still mostly to be found on the Episodics Notes’ page, but up to a couple every week will have their write-up appear on the main page, when I think they warrant it. For those who don’t know, I take the notes as I watch the episode, and merely re-order them afterwards.)

This is an interesting show for me, one of the shows I’m most interested and intrigued by, but have the least “hype” for, just because I have no idea what to expect, so I have nothing concrete to hope for. I don’t even know “genre”. I’m just going to watch it and see what it is.

Took 20 screenshots this episode. Mostly starring Ene-blue and Shinbo-Sky-Mustard.

Thoughts and Notes:

1) Shinbo being Shinbo (Shaft being Shaft):

1) Boy’s hair fluttering makes me think of Araragi from Monogatari. Gears of a clock as we talk of time-travel or repeating time-loops (I’m guessing) is an easy motif.

Spring 2014 Season Expectations.

Another season is upon us (this week!), so it’s time to look at what I’m going to watch, and what I’m expecting. Quite interesting to look at my expectations for Winter 2014 and how they panned out (poor Mahou Sensou and Nobunaga the Fool…). Most of the information about the shows can be had from RandomCuriosity’s page, the helpful Neregate Chart, and what I’ve happened to see on various sites, such as The Cart Driver.

As always, organized by days of the week, because I might pick a show on an empty day or cut shows I enjoy on days already overfilled with other shows. Order is by expectation within that day. Originally I’ve listed every show I had some interest in, but that ended with 30 shows. After cutting some out, still had 22. Even if I don’t write anything about the shows, and even if I drop half by the time we’re 3 weeks in (which I never succeed at doing), that’s too much. There are quite a few shounen popcorn and RomComs shows this season, and most will likely be interchangeable, so need to pick 1-2 of each type, or wait for a few weeks in and hear which ones are better.

Descriptions will be short, more on why I find them interesting. “Didn’t make it in” could also be seen as shows I might pick up after dropping others based on buzz.

Sunday:

Break Blade – A drama about vying realms, with the monarchs having studied together as youth. Love and treachery, gallantry. A setting with fantasy mechs. I think this sounds very interesting. A version of 6 films adapting the same source material exists and had been on my plan to watch list for a while. Hadn’t watched it yet, so will try these.
Interest Rating: 2/3. Quite intrigued, and if it turns out badly, can turn to the films.
Write-ups: Could happen. Intrigue and drama, after all.

Gokukoku no Brynhildr / Brynhildr in the Darkness – Made by the people behind Elfen Lied, both the manga author and the anime team, and that’s what most people decide whether to watch the show by. I thought Elfen Lied was “fine”, somewhere just ahead of mediocre. I didn’t hate it, and the premise seems interesting to me – a girl is supposed to be dead and comes back, played for drama and mystery. Yes, in the end premise is only the hook, and it’s all about execution, but it is what it is.
Interest Rating: 1.5/3. Very cautious. But Sunday is still quite enough to permit it.
Write-ups: Nope.