Mahou Meido Meganekko

Why no, I don’t think fans are getting completely obsessed with a show that hasn’t even been officially translated and marketed in Region 1. By the way, I should be downloading ep. 8 tonight.

Comment by wontaek | 2006/04/21 at 04:58:07
revised forcast. Over/under for the date when someone starts the Church of Haruhi: May 1st.

It was over.

Edit: thanks to YouTube, here’s the show’s, ah, energetic ending, with translations. Whomever recorded this has the same aspect problems I once did, so it’s distorted.

Update: Ok, now I’ve watched the episode, and even if it’s not as insanely funny as many of the others — Kyon’s sarcasm is definately lacking here — the series continues to intrigue because of all the mysteries. What happened in the cave? Did Haruhi make a change? And what’s with the mole on Kyon’s neck? I dont’ believe that’s just a red herring. Of course, with this bunch, you never know. And when is that talking cat from the first episode going to show up? From what I’m reading on the web, the studio only committed to 14 episodes. I don’t think they expected it to be such a runaway hit in the otakusphere.

DearS (that’s “Dear S”, not “dearz”), is one of those guilty pleasures that come along once in a while. It makes me wish I were still young enough to enjoy the ridiculously over-sexed humor, without thinking about what’s being “said” here. It’s not as braindead as Girls’ High, nor as pretentious as Chobits, and those are good things. The writers clearly set out to have fun by creating a piece of sexy fluff, but there are two problems: first they thought it would be funny to have an oversexed teacher and a gratuitous Don Juan running around. Second, there’s a few gaps in logic; this is not a show with “refrigerator moments” because it expects you to crank up the suspension of disbelief to somewhere near “ludicrous speed;” the illogic isn’t going to wait on a trip to the refrigerator.

While the second problem is merely eye-rolling, the first one makes the show uncomfortable at times. The writers barrelled right across delicate ground at full throttle with the clear attitude that “if it bothers you, go watch something else.”

One year ago, a spaceship with (supposedly) 150 aliens crashed into Tokyo bay. The passengers, called “DearS” (translated as “beloved friend”), were mostly female, human-looking and very beautiful — and almost all teenagers. Apparently, we’re just supposed to accept that the alien society that they come from is populated by people just as human as we are. (And judging from the, er, compatible plumbing, they have the same urges.) They quickly learned the Japanese language and customs, and were granted citizenship. At the opening of the story, many are being sponsored for home-stay in various households. The male lead is Takeya Ikuhara, who is probably the only guy in his school who isn’t DearS crazy — especially given that one is coming to their school soon. Takeya lives alone (it’s explained why later), and the closest he’s got to a girlfriend is the meganekko/childhood friend/landlord’s daughter, Nenneko. As much as he bothers thinking about the DearS, he doesn’t trust them; he thinks they’re probably really lizards here to enslave humanity (again, it’s explained why later). In general, Takeya is pretty rough around the edges. He works at a video store, where he sneaks out the adult vids for his friends — and gets decked for it by the manager.

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Random pet peeve of the moment: CyberLink’s Power DVD has a strange feature when interacting with Geneon’s release of DearS: Individual episodes are not treated as such in the progress bar. The entire disk (well, the episodes, not the extras) is treated as one show. This makes it extremely hard to reach a specific time index by clicking on the bar. I suspect it’s Geneon’s fault, since no other DVD’s I have exhibit this behavior.

As for DearS itself, I’ll have more to say later. I found it more tolerable than Chobits, although it shared a couple of the same flaws. But I was really creeped out by that teacher. Sorry, I don’t care how stupid the principal is, no one is going to tolerate a teacher that rolls around on the desk in lingeré and has her students read lurid novels in class.

No, the resemblance to the picture on the book isn’t an accident. Apparently she moonlights as a nude model and porn star. Given that, I’m surprised that neither Takeya nor Oihiko have seen her in any of the porno vids or magazines. I’m also surprised that there’s enough text in such a book for it to be used in English lessons, but I guess it’s the kind without pictures. I’ve heard they still make those….

I have a related post (much more serious) already scheduled for tomorrow.

Akismet now installed. Let’s see how much crap gets through it I’ve had 529 spam comments in the last few days. Moderation duties were bad enough, but deleting the damned notice e-mails was driving me nuts.

Update 5/22: It’s rocking so far. Caught about 300 spam comments with about 5% false negatives and no false positives. The negatives land in the usual moderation queue and I delete them from there.

Steven DenBeste writes a serious and lengthy (for Chizumatic) two-page post on the perils of being a science fiction author, and trying to predict the future inasmuch as you are using the technology to establish the setting. He compared the bleeding edge of the past to the present; it is a weighty epistle, probably one of the more serious I’ve seen him post on Chizumatic. (”I thought he gave up serious posts there?” I said to myself.)

I should have seen it coming. (20060511.1310 post.)

(remainder of post removed by request.)

Celebrating the most hyper-inflated breasts since Benny Hill, Steven DenBeste has been discussing Divergence Eve a lot lately and posting plenty of captures. Well, this prompted a letter from a female fan named Kacie, who wrote:

1. Ouch! Don’t those things HURT?
2. Ewww… and they bounce like jello, too. That’s so disgusting.
3. Do men really like that sort of thing? The male characters on the show look like they could DROWN in those things! Look, hers are bigger than his HEAD!

Well, I figured there should be a male response forthcoming, and since I had nothing better to do….

1. I repeat my last comment I appended to an earlier post: “At least we know that in the future, chiropracters are miracle workers. None of these girls ever complain of backaches.”

2. Speaking as a male, I find the fact that they bounce far more attractive than the ones that don’t move AT ALL. I mean, big is nice to look at, but if the San Andreas could rip the big one, and you could hang onto her set for safety because you know they ain’t moving at all, then they’re definately over-inflated rocks.

3. No, no, that’s not really what you saw; it’s just the light from Venus reflecting off some swamp gas . . . . (This is how we know the writer really was female. . . . I mean she looked at something else!)

Still, gratuitous bounces and huge breasts can detract. Watching the fansub of Witchblade, ep.1, there’s a scene where Masane, the new wielder, has been drugged and is crawling along on her hands and knees, slowly changing back to normal. Supposed to be tense and dramatic… and then her boobs make this little jump. Not swaying natually, like they should if they were real; they just sort of…. jump. Horizontally bounce. Utterly gratuitous.

Sigh. Definately breaks the tension.
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Continuing with the anime fansubs I’ve been watching lately:

Karin: This is the second series that I am not sure why I watch(ed) it. Another manga adaptation, which happens far more frequently in Japan than it does here. You don’t need to take your shoes off (well, not more than one) to count the comic-to-movie or TV show adapations over the last quarter-century here, but in Japan, that many at once on TV isn’t unusual. Since the manga has just been imported to the US, it’s entirely possible that the show will be too far behind. Unlike Melancholy, I won’t be lining up to buy this one, even if I did watch 22 episodes of fansubs. (more…)