PinkuBentoBox

There was nothing new that was worthwhile on Friday night, thus I have skipped to Saturday. Once again I failed to get this entry written while it’s actually current - I spent most of Sunday running the Rat Maze at IKEA with my sister and then being forced to assemble her stuff. I swear, IKEA is proof that Sweden has a grudge against the rest of the world. Anyway, four new shows this time. Shugo Chara, Gundam 00, Kimikiss and ef ~ a tale of memories.

Shugo Chara

At a glance: girl gains the ability to change her personality via tiny fairy-like beings that hatch out of eggs. Yeah, seriously.

I have a terrible admission to make: I like girly animu. Anything from Cardcaptor Sakura to Full Moon o Shagashite to Ayashi no Ceres, I’m more than happy to watch. All that I care about is something approaching a decent plot, good characters, and nice art. Shugo Chara appears to have all these going for it at this point - especially the art, which in style reminds me a lot of Ultra Maniac, which I really found visually appealing. As such I’ll happily make it my guilty pleasure of the season. It even has lots of KAWAII PINKU ^_________________________^.

“All kid holds an egg in their soul. The egg of our hearts… our would-be selves. Yet, unseen.” HOORAY FOR ENGRISH. Amusingly the chick that delivers this line sounds like she might be in the same horrifying position as Donna Burke was in Nanoha - fluent in English, yet given lines to say written by someone who uses babelfish to get the english translation. Because this shit makes no sense at all. Except it does tell us about the eggs. Eggs are a recurring theme in this show. Maybe it’s some sort of deep euphamism, commentary on the girly condition that I’m not picking up on owing to the fact that I am not a girl. Or gay. Aaaaanyway…

Our heroine is Amu. Which sounds so much like Omu (as in omurice) that given the whole egg theme I assumed that was her name for a minute. OmuAmu is totally badass. Everyone who sees her or talks to her mentions how cool she is. BUT IS SHE? In actual fact, she’s actually really shy and awkward and she just acts angry and badass to hide her real personality from people. (She doesn’t know it, but she’s also extremely cute) Her internal thoughts reveal the truth. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen… a show written from a Tsundere girl’s perspective! One night she makes a wish, that she could have the courage to act with her real personality instead of the cool persona she’s built. The following morning she wakes up and looks down on the sheet in horror, because right between her thighs…

… are eggs. MAGICAL EGGS. RGB EGGS. All the primary colours of a MAGICAL RAINBOW. I can’t be fucked summarising the rest of this. Essentially the red egg hatches and out comes RAN who has the ability to make Amu’s Tsun-tsun into dere-dere. She’s a GUARDIAN CHARACTER. And makes Amu CHARACTER CHANGE into a kawaii pinku flying magical girl. So she can defeat the EVIL CAT-EARED BISHOUNEN. Of course she doesn’t actually do that - instead she is rescued by the KING who is amazingly a member of a group of the top four students from her school.

The other three are of course the QUEEN, the JACK and the ACE. And at the risk of sounding creepier than usual, the Queen (Nadeshiko) is rather hot. And has Saeko Chiba voicing her as an added bonus. Heart. Overall I really like this. I also am realistic: even though it has really, really nice character art and appears to have somewhat less of a formulaic plot than, say, Precure, it’s probably never going to get subbed properly.

ef ~ a tale of mammariesmemories

At a glance: moe animu with nice musics, artistic shot composition, pretty backdrops and generic moeblob characters

My initial thoughts on starting this were pretty emphatic. OH DEAR FUCKING LORD NO. There is a character voiced by the simpering, pathetic retard responsible for making Claymore’s Raki into even more of a cowardly, useless, pathetic pile of pig shit than he already was. This right here is probably a dealbreaker for me, my mind rebels at the very thought of having to hear him whine like a fucking three year old again. Luckily he doesn’t seem to be the lead character. Or maybe he is. I have no fucking idea.

Apparently the actual main character draws shoujo manga for a living. He also has a strange desire to enter churches in the middle of the night and speak to strange women who wear odd clothes and sit on statues. Maybe he has a nun fetish or something. I bet you he would tell you he is conducting ‘research’ for his shitty manga. Anyway, he has a FATED ENCOUNTER with a girl who nicks his bike. Fucking bitch. Just as well this isn’t an eroge or he’d hunt you down and stick it in repeatedly until you realise you like it.

Anyway, his bitch of a ’sister’ (who is not actually his sister) rings him up and blasts him for being late to her christmas party. And by party I mean two chicks in a tiny room. Not that that’s not necessarily a party if you know what I mean and I think you do. However, being a fucking MORON (harem animu protagonists always are) he doesn’t apologize and explain that some whore stole his bike, he just says he’s BUSY. Incidentally the other chick is playing a bizzaro ripoff of a touhou game. Can we get a touhou anime please? It would be about cute girls sitting around drinking tea and throwing explosive magic at each other in complicated and beautiful patterns. Much better than this show seems to be.

I can’t be bothered writing an in-depth summary, so I should just say that it seems average, but it has some really interesting shot composition and has quite an artistic feel to it. Reminds me a bit of the way that Akiyuki Shinbo used to put stuff together back before he started to hit a more consistent style with stuff like Tsukuyomi and PPD. It’s also a bit hard to follow at this point as there seem to be three different stories that are intertwined, so I suspect it might have a bit of depth to the plot for once. I’ll probably pick it up when it finishes.

Incidentally, speculation about what’s under her eyepatch? I’m guessing it’s another, smaller eyepatch.

Kimikiss

At a glance: girls girls girls

I am a firm believer in the idea that the trick to making harem ‘love comedy’ animu remotely enjoyable is to craft a good set of teh girlz. The typical sad, pathetic animu watcher (like myself) will happily watch their way through piles of boring plot provided that they like the characters. It is important to decide early which of them you prefer, so I have prepared a pros / cons list for the girls featured in the show so far. You’re welcome.

Mao Mizusawa

Pros:
- Hot
- Outgoing personality
- Is happy to wander around the house wearing nothing but a towel
- Is actually Yoshino from Marimite in a not-so-clever disguise. Should have lost the braids. We all know that the whole ‘living in France’ thing is code for ‘going to lesbian girls school’. No point in denying it, I am on to you.

Cons:
- Appears to like people her own age
- Sucks at video games
- Is not real

Yuumi Hoshino

Pros:
- Hot
- No personality. This is a con if you dislike quiet, boring girls.

Cons:
- No personality. This is a pro if you like quiet, boring girls.
- Is not real

Asuka Sakino

Pros:
- Hot
- Appears to have an interesting personality. This is a con if you like quiet, boring girls.

Cons:
- Something about her makes me suspicious. Keep her away from sharp implements and do. not. cheat.
- Is not real

Eriko Futami

Pros:
- Hot
- Talented at making paper planes
- Appears willing snog any male that bothers to talk to her

Cons:
- Probably already been with half the local rugby team and most of the male population of her school.
- Is not real

Nana Aihara

Pros:
- Little sister archetype

Cons:
- Jail time.

This list may be updated at some point as more intelligence is gathered. In the meantime, I choose YoshinoMao. There may even be a vector involved at some point in the future.

Gundam 00

At a glance: killing people with giant space robots for the sake of world peace.

Gundam Seed Destiny was like a train full of napalm that derailed at 200 mph, smashing through a backyard abortion clinic before running into another train carrying orphans. After the smoke and fire and dead children cleared, we realised that somehow Fukuda, by allowing his wife to essentially turn the plot into something approaching shitty fanfiction, had managed to achieve something previously unthinkable: A Gundam TV show that is worse than Gundam Wing. At least Wing didn’t take a existing, perfectly legitimate setting and proceed to utterly destroy everything good and wholesome about it. Anyway, I’m not at all surprised to see that Sunrise have decided that the Cosmic Era was a dead end as settings go, and to try again.

The surprising success of Code Geass coupled with the historical staying power of Gundam Wing has unfortunately given Sunrise ideas. I don’t claim to be privy to their boardroom meetings, but I imagine that it would have happened in a room with a big black glass table in the middle and them all sitting around it. Think of that conference in Star Wars, you know the one. Grand Moff Mizushima would be sort of sitting there while General Watanabe and Admiral Fukuda are arguing with each other. Watanabe would be like “Until we have another Gundam show, we are vulnerable. Gainax are too well equipped. If they have obtained full power of the super robot genre then it is possible, however unlikely, that they may find a weakness.” And Fukuda would be like “Any attack against Gundam would be a useless gesture. This franchise is now the ultimate power in anime. I suggest we use it.” Then Darth Tomino would have been like “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you have constructed. The universe you have constructed is insignificant compared to the power of the UC” and Fukuda would be like “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Tomino. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion hasn’t helped you conjure up the ratings for Turn-A, not has it given you clairvoyance–” and then Tomino would do the whole choking deal and be like “I find your hate of Turn-A disturbing”.

Anyway, they decided that to make a successful Gundam show you need to do what Code Geass did: A quality plot with nicely designed mecha, solid animation and character designs by someone who knows how to do more than just recycle the same head with different hair styles. Additionally, there needs to be pretty boys so that all those fucking scary fat yaoi fangirls can squee over how ‘cute they look together’ and get hung up on the most retarded, implausible pairings so that they can describe gay buttsex and gentle manly loving in exquisite detail to each other over the internet and generally freak people out at cons. And you know what? It looks like they’ve succeeded on all counts!

Seriously, check these guys out. First off is the main character - a dark, seemingly angry young man. His name is Japanese but apparently he’s a Kurdish muslim with a dark, violent past involving Battletech ripoffs and floating energy-wing Gundams (apparently someone at Sunrise watched Evangelion). He pilots the Eczema Gundam (should really get some cream for that) and as a result of some unfortunate casting decisions he sounds a heck of a lot more like he’s going to start writing opponent’s names down in his little black notebook while epic tension music plays and making long-winded soliloquies about how incredibly smart and calculating he is.

Next up is this guy. Lockon Stratos. It’s like Sunrise didn’t want to waste any time and get right into telling you that this guy is made of awesome and win. Lockon? More like Rockon. He likes to take them from long range. Unfortunately he also is the poor fucker that gets saddled with a Haro, possibly the most irritating use for modern robotics ever conceived. Fuck you, Tomino. Thanks to you we’re saddled with utterly retarded shit like that. Anyway, Rockon pilots the Gundam Dynamites.

The third of the Gundam ‘Meisters’ is also the guy with the most amusingly shitty name of them all. At least so far. Allelujah Haptsim gives Seed Ashtray’s Prayer Reverie a run for his money in the Sunrise-can’t-name-characters-for-shit stakes. I think the idea is that he’s a christian or something. It would be pretty awesome if they gave him a southern baptist accent in the dub. PURAISE JESUSA. Anyway, he pilots Gundam Curious. As in Curiously looks a hell of a lot like an orange version of Zeta.

Finally, we have the most gender-ambiguous guy ever. I’m assuming that Tieria Erde is totally, absolutely, completely, irreversibly gay. Why? He wears fucking pink cardigans. PINK FUCKING CARDIGANS. And with those glasses and that haircut he almost looks like a butch chick. Until you hear him talk and he has like a man voice and unfortunately all chances of him actually being a chick are thrown out the window. At least they should be consistent with it, unlike Gundam Seed’s Nichol who I swear no one is completely sure about, even now. He pilots the Stay Puft Marshmallow Gundam. Seriously, someone put that thing on a fucking diet. Morbidly obese Gundams are not cool.

And for those of us who really aren’t that interested in the idea of beautiful young men loving each other, there’s even some girls. Most people seem to be fixed on the cute Chinese chick with the huge boobs, but I’m pledging myself to the acting captain of the Ptolemaios, Sumeragi ri Noriega. Hawt spacechicks > Boobs in tight dresses. Though I am not necessarily opposed to the concept.