Summer 2010

So, anime has reached a new season entering the Summer releases (Winter for me) and I thought I'd try something a little different. Normally I sit down and choose two or three animes from the new season and follow them, dropping them behind a bit if they aren't great. This time, all for the sake of you, I'll be following a large majority of the new animes being released. I won't be following sequels, nor shows that look outrageously bad (I'm looking at you Mitsudomoe).

To give you a run down of the Summer 2010 seasons, the guys over at Chart Fag are gracious enough to always put together season charts for the new releases. The one pertaining to this challenge is this one. Out of a possible 21 animes, I will be watching 11 of them. 7 of the 10 I'm missing are sequels and the other 3 really look terrible, either in art, plot, or both.

After I've seen the first episode of the 11 I'm following, I'll give my first impressions on each and leave it alone until episode 5 of each. At that point I'll decide which shows I'll continue following until their conclusions and which ones I'll be abandoning with all haste. Hopefully this will help you guys choose which animes you want to check out after the season is over, or catch up on while they're still running.

Anime Review - Working!!

Director: Yoshimasa Hiraike
Length: 13 episodes
Year: 2010

Well, I should start the review ball back rolling with one of the few animes I've watched in the 2010 seasons and enjoyed. Working!! is based off the original 4 panel manga written by Karino Takatsu and is still currently being printed in Young Gangan in Japan. I hadn't heard of this series before seeing it pop up in comments on a few forums and being intrigued by the setting and genres it promised, I started watching it.

Working!! is a mix between comedy, romance, and slice of life. It follows the working days of the staff at the family restaurant Wagnaria. When the main character, Takanashi Souta, is recruited into the team, to say that wacky hijinks ensue is an understatement. All the characters have wonderfully unique (if unbelievable) personalities to them and the interaction between them becomes like that of a family. Even with such unbelievable personalities, you begin to fall in love with each one of the restaurants staff, learning to accept their little quirks (although some are far from little). While the main characters all receive a good chunk of exposition, there are a few characters that don't really appear for more than one episode. Somehow both these characters don't feel forced or rushed in their introduction and execution, but I would have liked to see just a little more of them. There's also room for an excellent spin of series to be found in the Takanashi family home. All of his sisters are introduced in the anime but they all feature very minor roles bar one who features for one episode. A short 13 episode series of their home life would be great fun to watch and I hope it's in the works. There is a slight overarching plot mainly concerning two of the characters while others look on, but it doesn't kick in properly until the final few episodes where it starts to become the spotlight of the show. In this sense it's a slice of life, but it doesn't quite have the same feeling as shows like Lucky Star or Quiet Country Cafe since it isn't focusing on the characters in different environments so much as focussing on the environment itself and how the characters change within it.

There's nothing special about the animation of Working!!, a thoroughly standard affair throughout until the final episode in which one or two scenes have noticeably had much more time put into them, being extremely fluid and graceful in movements. Clearly some animation budget was left over. The contrasting styles throughout the anime were a nice change of pace, keeping the somewhat Moe style of normal events but using fully chibi comical interludes. Quite a common thing in these sorts of shows, but done very well here. It also helps accentuate the fairly common visual gags that pop up throughout.

The Working!! opening credits takes it's spot in the limited set of anime openings I refuse to skip since the song is so good, earning a position next to both Haibane Renmei and Moyashimon. It's a fast paced rock song that refuses to let you feel anything but happy while listening to it, the perfect song to start the show off with. The ending theme is quite a bit more mellow, but still upbeat, ending the episodes nicely but not as well as the opening. Background music throughout is average, nothing jumping out to be amazing or worth getting the soundtrack for, although I did find myself tapping my foot along to the songs occasionally. The voice work was very good overall, all the characters had very fitting voices but once again there wasn't anything that jumped out and said PERFECT! to me.

Working!! is definitely an enjoyable watch for a lot of people. The strange characters will probably put some people off, as will the genre in general. Until I see Azumanga Diaoh, this is my recommendation as a more accessible Lucky Star as it doesn't have the specific knowledge gags and is set in a more open environment. Working!! is great for a lot of laughs, big grins, and plenty of chuckles, but also has some sweeter 'awww' moments as well. I'd advise watching this not only for the fun you'll have whilst doing so, but to see some of the more ridiculous character personalities you'll come across on TV.

Scores
Plot 8/10
Animation 8/10
Sound 8/10
Enjoyment 9/10
Overall 33/40
Grade B+

Pros
- Unique and loveable characters
- Great use of location for the show
Cons
- Characters maybe a little too out there for some

Slight redesign

As you can see, there's been a bit of a visual change. I thought that my previous column sizes were far too small so I made them much, much larger. I'll also be adding some more banners around the place and getting some links going (hopefully) to make the post easier to find and navigate. Give me your opinion on what the site looks like now (especially if it scrolls sideways, I don't wish that upon anyone) so I can improve it some more. It's all a work in progress.

On the review front, I'm currently slogging through Heroes of Might and Magic V (and enjoying it) and Overlord. I've also got quite a few animes and mangas that I can conjure to review. First however comes a lot of band practice, so you won't be seeing these reviews until Monday at the earliest.

My opinions on Nintendo at E3 (with trailers)

This is just a quick show of my opinion on the Nintendo E3 conference. It’s very opinionated so feel free to disagree with everything I say (:

Ok, for the most part, I’m hating the way Nintendo are taking the Wii in terms of art design. By far my largest gripe is with the new Zelda game. While the controls look unintuitive (I'm willing to give that it may be decent), Skyward Sword has the most hideous art of any game I've ever seen. Why they would choose to make a blend of Wind Waker (WW) and Twilight Princess (TP) I will never know. WW was the most beautiful game on the GC. It had such a brilliant charm to it and everything was a perfect fit for the cel shading style. TP is the most beautiful game on the Wii to date. It pushes the Wii's hardware to its limit and gives a sense of realism (aside from all that bloom). Skyward Sword (horrible name by the way) fuses the scenery of WW and the characters of TP which just makes for an extremely jarring composition. The background seems to simple compared to the characters, like they've just not bothered to make good textures, while the characters look like they've just been dumbed down from TP, given brighter palettes and simplified textures, but they still want to seem realistic. The contrast just leaves you wondering why the hell your semi realistic link is running around in an animes.

They then use this same sort of simplified style in Metroid Other M. Why they didn't just use the Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’s (MP3:C) engine again I won't know. That's probably the best looking sci-fi game on the Wii. Other M Samus looks over the top (more so than normal) but with such simple textures and shading that it's just painful to look at. They've also simplified the scenery down, leaving it looking somewhat barren compared to MP3:C. At least they can't screw up the controls since they can just work of MP3:C which has the best controls of any FPS on the Wii. Seriously, if they change them they're the stupidest company ever.

Now Kirby...I'm really, really excited to get a chance to play this. The game mechanics look great, but one again the art style is just horrible. See through characters rarely make for good gameplay. Whenever second player was on the screen I had a lot of trouble seeing his character and it generally makes it a lot harder to tell what's going on. It seems a lot like a simplified Paper Mario but with less good.

I'm sort of concerned for Donkey Kong Country Returns as the general consensus is that platforming with the wiimote is kind of crap. I honestly think that putting it on the 3DS may have been a better decision. However, it's on the Wii so nothing we can do. The art style looks very similar to Super Mario Galaxy but a tad simplier (I think I'm seeing a trend here), but it definitely works well with the game. This is probably my most anticipated Wii title that was announced if nostalgia doesn't factor into the decision.

Now, for the best news anyone has ever heard ever. GoldenEye on the wii. This will be so reliant on the controls being good that it's just sad. Their best bet (and what I hope they do) is take a page from MP3:C and use a control scheme similar to that. If they go the way of Red Steel millions of N64 veterans will cry out in pain. I would also like to see Classic Controller support so you can get a proper console FPS experience, but I doubt that will happen. Sure, the graphics look pretty horrible, even for a Wii game, but there’ll finally be a good FPS on the Wii that has great multiplayer support.

Now onto the beast that will be the 3DS. I think this is Nintendo's masterpiece so far. The thing looks absolutely amazing. I don't normally buy consoles or handhelds close to launch date, normally waiting a year or so, but this thing looks so worth getting a pre-order that it just hurts my wallet. The game list is impressive beyond all belief, rivalling my love for PS2 diversity.

The games/franchises I'm most looking forward to are: Resident Evil, Contra, Bomberman, MGS, Super Robot, Kid Icarus, Mario Kart (so long as they go back to the N64 roots and not the Wii version), Pilot Wings, Star Fox (Lylatt Wars, god yes), FF, KH.

Now, I'm not sure how many of these games will actually benefit from 3D, but the fact that the graphical outcome will be on par with the PS2 at least (judging by the Kid Icarus trailer) is impressive enough on its own. The controls are interesting, and it seems that Nintendo are taking a page out of Sony’s book and adding both a joystick and movie playability to the 3DS. Both are very welcome features and even if the movies won’t be very important, the joystick is a move in the right direction for getting more serious games onto the Nintendo handhelds.

I feel that Nintendo may be running out of fresh ideas and that's why they're rebooting so many of their franchises, but I'm not one to complain about classics coming back. I'm just sad to see the poor art direction on the Wii compared to the sheer magnitude of the power in the 3DS and what they're bound to do well with it. I feel that Nintendo are gearing their art direction more towards a casual market with the simplified graphics of the new games, but leaving the gamers who are most interested in these new titles in obscurity by taking away the rich detail that they're used to from the games. Overall, Nintendo have had by far the best conference of E3 and will probably have the best response from all their new software and hardware.

Not yet dead, Animelol, and update status

Ok, so, this blog may seem dead. It's not. Really, I swear! Uni has gotten the better of me and non-essential activities got put on the backburner, this is one of those things.

I've been slowly putting together more Animelol discussions with Tom Clift of Plus Trailers and posting them on youtube. The entire playlist can be found here, and more should be coming in the next few weeks after both Tom and I finish exams and can watch more anime together.

On that note, after exams I should start getting some more reviews up and even trying to build a backlog so I can post while I'm actually doing uni work without too much hassle. Don't expect wonders from me, but I will be trying for one update a week at least. Don't expect any book or music reviews for a long time though, they take too long to go through the material meaningfully and write the review. I may post some impressions of things though, mostly music. Just advising some bands that I think are worth checking out. Game reviews and anime reviews are the most likely things to come since I have huge backlogs of them to watch or play, and write about.

Anyway, the short of it is that this blog is still alive and will start updating again soon.