I spent most of this weekend involved with Magic: The Gathering tournements (and doing terribly), so I’ve had only a little time for anime. Mostly, I’ve been rewatching Martian Successor Nadesico and picking up the odd fansub here and there. Finally found a batch download for Zero no Tsukaima, and that’s still running (and probably will be for another day or two), but I grabbed Red Garden, Pumpkin Scissors (ep. 2), Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, Kanon (ep.2), and Crescent Love (ep.2).Of the above, I was able to stand about five minutes of Red Garden before the confusing plot and hideous character designs drove me away. If I wanted to watch Pinnochio, I’d watch Pinnochio, dammit. As for Pumpkin Scissors, I need to get ep.1 before I view it.
| Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru looks to be good dirty fun, with a fair amount of fanservice. The premise is absolutely preposterous (Mizuho, a rich heir, has to attend the same catholic girl’s school his mom did, thanks to grandma’s will), but Jason had a lot more to say on this, and plenty of screenshots, so I’ll let him carry it. Except to note that there’s no way this boy’s got ANY testosterone, or he’d have been found out by the end of the first episode. |  |
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I mean, really. | |
| There’s not enough tape in the world to keep a dead man’s woodie down under this kind of provocation, let alone a teenager’s! (Edit: Mizuho is the one on the bottom.) |  |
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And whose bright idea was this? Letting the kouhai get this close to Mizuho? | |
| Oh yeah, Mariya, the childhood friend and co-conspiritor, with a malicious sense of humor. The one with the prize-winning cleavage. Pseudo-yuri for the win? Oh well, just don’t think too hard and enjoy the fanservice. Only time will tell if they actually manage some character development, but I’m not betting on it. |  |
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Then there’s Kanon. (Sigh.)
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I am seriously conflicted about this show. Excellent character design (even if a little derivative of Melancholy at times), beautiful art, and Kyo-Ani’s incredible touch. They can make something as boring as wandering around a school into something interesting, and yet… there is absolutely nothing hapening in this story! |
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Then, for some insane reason, there was Crescent Love’s episode 2. It’s not that the show is bad. It doesn’t aspire to that much, unlike, for instance, Coyote Ragtime. No, Crescent Love is just lame beyond belief. The (don’t call me Princess) Feena has her first day at school, Mia the Meido rebels against Feena’s orders and follows her to school, where Feena hits it off well with everyone, Tatsuya is hounded by the guys once they realize he’s living under the same roof with a moon princess babe, Natsuki’s cooking gets insulted again — by Tatsuya this time…..the goth loli puts in another cameo (demonstrating she knows how to walk, instead of fly), Tatsuya declares his facination with the Moon, Feena declares her intent to surpass her mother in bringing the Moon and Earth closer together (use a big winch, wench), and I declare the two of them need to just cut to the chase and shag in the bushes nearby to rescue this show from utter, total, absolute, lameness.
| Unfortunately, the bushes in question are already occupied; Takano-sensei the annoying photographer pops out and decides that he likes Tatsuya, who deserves a present. It’s a nice photo of Feena….while she was changing for PE. Look quick, because the half-second it’s on screen is your fanservice quotient for this episode. (I had to re-run the scene in slo-mo 3 times before I was sure…Feena does grab it out of Tatsuya’s hand.) Talk about tolerance for lese-majeste. She even gets nose-pinched again, and still doesn’t have everyone executed or start another war. |  |
On the other hand, Tatsuya starts looking at the moon and sighing a lot when Feena’s not around, so Takano starts giving Tatsuya advice on How To Get the Babe in Ten Easy Lessons (Without Letting On That’s What I’m Teaching You). Next episode: Yet another cliché. It’s Feena vs. Natsuki in a very special episode of Iron Chef Babes.
The OP confuses me more and more, as I watch it. From it, you’d think that this is actually Feena’s story, but the setup and execution so far has made it clear that it’s Tatsuya’s harem story. And since it’s so obvious from the OP that Feena is the chosen haremette (the rest of the girls don’t even appear in it until the end), what’s the point of the show? Where’s the conflict? Who’s going to grow and develop as a character? Either Tatsuya needs to bang Feena in the bushes so her dad can threaten war for the despoiling of his precious daughter, or the loli needs to make bloody with the knives to spice this show up — and damn quick. Otome may be stupider and more ridiculous, but at least it’s got much better fanservice, while Kanon’s got better art and the Kyo-Ani touch.
I hate browser differences. Sigh. You IE folks sit tight, I’ll fix it this evening.
 10/17/06: WTF??? I fixed it yesterday and it displayed fine! Now it’s back to screwed up?
 I am getting seriously pissed with WP 2.0.4. It takes control AWAY from the user and that is never a good thing.
What’s the point in taking an X-rated (or at least hard R) game and turning it into a PG-rated TV show?
Kanon and similar H-games don’t work very well as straight-up pornography, mainly because all the H-scenes come at the end of the game, after many hours of reading dialogue and making choices. If you want to see a different girl’s ending, you have to play through her story arc. Not many people are willing to go through all that just to see a comparatively short H-scene, and even fewer are willing to pay upwards of 5000 yen (when a title first comes out) for the privilege. Never mind that during said scenes, there’s usually a mosaic effect over the characters’ naughty bits. Kanon is popular not for its H-scenes (though they certainly help), but for its plot and character designs. And outside of those scenes, the content is PG-13 at the worst. Some successful H-games (including Kanon) have been rereleased in all-age versions with the X-rated parts cut; the plot remains intact.
I gather that Kanon is more the exception than the norm in its genre; most H-games have a lot less talking and a lot more… well, you get the idea. Kanon’s not like that, though, and neither are most H-games adapted into TV anime. Instead of limiting their audience by including the decidedly superfluous pornographic content of the original, the producers are more inclined to leave it out in favor of making an anime that can be shown on TV.
Hm. Despite my parody in the Zero no Tsukaima review, I’ve never actually played an H-game. So I wasn’t aware of how they were structured. I really figured there’d be more sex spread throughout the story, and you’d have some ability to “play the field.” I guess it makes more sense that way, but I was being somewhat rhetorical with my question though, because I know they’re going to want to maximise their audience (and therefore, profits) by toning down the sex to broadcast standards. On the other hand, once it gets to video….
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