wickedfighting

I've moved to wordpress - see latest post

[wickedfighting]

Goodbye Tumblr

For anyone who still reads this, I’VE DECIDED TO MOVE TO WORDPRESS: 

https://wickedfighting.wordpress.com/

My reasons for doing so include:

Tumblr’s stupid insistence on showing me posts I’m not interested in on my home page

My Tumblr theme’s inability to stop re-scaling my pictures in my posts, which makes them ugly and unpublishable. Considering that anime is such a visual medium, this is really intolerable.

Tumblr’s really shitty ‘comment’ system is just not conducive for any discussion

It’s been a good 5 years. I’ll leave this Tumblr as it is for archival reasons.

[wickedfighting]

Resolutions for 2018

Unsurprisingly, I did okay on my rather unambitious resolutions for 2017. I fulfilled all of my resolutions except numbers 1, 5, 8. That’s alright, though admittedly 1 and 5 were some of the harder ones. I actually tried writing some prose on the night of the 31st in a last-minute attempt to fulfill the resolution, but while it was well-written (so I thought, but writing it was agonizingly slow) it was only a couple of paragraphs and I know that’s not really in the spirit of the resolution.

Consequently, I will recycle the three of them for my resolutions this year. I am particularly determined to fulfill the first. I reserve the right to add more stuff to this list if and when I think of it.

1) Exercise prudence more often to do the right thing, especially when it’s difficult to do so.

2) Learn a new skill / pick up a new hobby.

3) Write at least a (complete) short piece of prose / or a satisfactory equivalent.

4) Get a First - I actually debated for the longest time whether I should put this on the list. I don’t feel like I need a first, I don’t feel like I have anything left to prove, and most importantly I don’t feel the urge to work for a first. Maybe time will change that, but as of now I’m really not feeling it.

5) Get a job - always a good thing to have ...

6) Strongly resist the urge to read any Trump piece of media beyond a basic news report. There’s very little gain in examining someone else’s overly examined and incredibly simple mind. It’s just wasting my time and making me dumber.

7) Continue to take better care of my general health. Examples include exercising.

8) Complete my Japanese textbook and finish reading two more Japanese works.

9) To never lose sight of what’s important.

[wickedfighting]

Review: Doki Doki Literature Club

If you don’t speak Japanese, statistically speaking this is probably the only visual novel you’ve heard of, or even played. With more than a million downloads (the game is free), this is the latest thing that has taken the Anglophone gaming world by storm.

I didn’t like DDLC. My emotions when playing it, in order: impressed, bemused, annoyed. Most of my interest in the game centers around the impact it’ll have on the way that mainstream society views Japanese media - even though DDLC is not at all a Japanese game, like Katawa Shoujo (which was also developed entirely by Anglophones). My take so far is that DDLC probably has a tiny positive impact in general, and I guess that’s fine.

I’ll briefly review DDLC, state my insights into the game (there are few), and yeah, there are spoilers, but in many ways DDLC’s marketing is pretty spoilerish in the same way that Madoka’s present social marketing is spoilerish. And given that I don’t think this visual novel is any good anyway, I don’t personally think there’s anything wrong with just reading my review instead.

From the title, you can probably guess the kind of dating-sim aesthetic DDLC is trying to parody (’Doki doki’ is a onomatopoeia that roughly translates to *excited beating of the heart*). DDLC’s selling point however is that it’s supposed to be a ‘surprisingly’ dark game with lots of twists like breaking the fourth wall, depression, suicide, and murder. ‘Surprising’ is in quotes because it’s really not a surprise at all, considering the game requires you to clear this disingenuous triple disclaimer about how the game might be traumatizing and unsuitable for children. It’s disingenuous because if it weren’t for the shock value, DDLC would be a really forgettable game by even Western standards.

DDLC is ostensibly about this protagonist who joins a literature club with four pretty girls and the player has some degree of freedom as to whom he will romantically pursue, but the first route inevitably ends with his childhood friend committing suicide from depression. There are some not-terribly-subtle hints that one of the girls, Monika, isn’t entirely innocent. Indeed, when the game starts again, the protagonist has forgotten about his childhood friend and she has been completely ‘deleted’ from the game. 

Everything starts spiraling out of control when we realise Monika is ‘sentient’ in that she understands she is in a game and the player and the protagonist are distinct entities. The game itself becomes increasingly unstable with ‘glitches’ and garbled text spewing everywhere. Monika is essentially a yandere with a hard-on for the player and modifies the character ‘parameters’ of the other girls to make them seem unstable and consequently unattractive, and eventually kills off the rest of them as well. Eventually she suspends the player and herself in time and space for all eternity, until the player deletes her character file in the game installation folder.

I’ve not played a lot of games, but this struck me as really similar to Undertale. The difference of course was that Undertale was able to link its ‘not just a game’ mechanic to a strong theme of, well, ‘games aren’t just games’, and the idea that ‘what is not real may not necessarily be untrue’. I’m not entirely sure what DDLC does with this breaking of the fourth wall that isn’t a surface-plot reason. I have a theory, and it ties in to a big mystery for me - why on earth is Monika obsessed with the player?

Monika calls the other characters in the game flat and two-dimensional, as products of a cliched game. Meanwhile, the player is obviously a ‘real’ human being, which is somehow different? Is this really a good enough reason? I know plenty of ‘real’ human beings but I don’t romantically love them. I have a theory, but at the same time I’m not entirely sure if I can give the writer of the game credit per se, since it’s not really hinted at. My theory is that Monika’s love for the player is presumably as unreasonable as the love the player presumably had for one of the other characters. Thus the end-game scene where the player is trapped with her in a pocket of space-time for all eternity, listening to her banal and occasionally cruel remarks is supposed to mimic what it’s like to be a literal object of someone else’s affection, i.e. a typical character in this sort of dating-sim-esque game, if they had any agency.

Aside from a failure to say anything profound, DDLC also suffers from sub-par writing and bad poetry. Regarding sub-par writing, Dan Salvato claims that he deliberately mimicked the style of bad writing typical of a poorly made and poorly translated eroge, but that just sounds like a weak excuse. I can understand why certain parts of the game, particularly the innocent-seeming beginning could do well with that style, but certainly not the latter half, where the writing failed to improve by any noticeable extent. I could imagine a visual novel where a dark twist suddenly transforms the naive and shitty narrative voice into something serious and powerful, but DDLC is not that visual novel. I wish I wasn’t so quick to delete the game after I was done, but I recall a fair amount of awkward sentences and very questionable and repetitive adjectives, and it made me wonder whether English was even the writer’s first language.

As for bad poetry, I honestly found some of the first few poems surprisingly decent, but the later poetry got increasingly worse, to the point where it would be difficult to consider some of the pieces ‘poetry’ as opposed to ‘prose with too many linebreaks’.

Now for something much more interesting: Why is DDLC so popular?

Personally, I think DDLC’s popularity stems from two reasons, neither of which are mutually exclusive. The first is that the player really connected with the characters, and the second is that the player was thrilled by how meta everything was and the game’s sudden shift to the horror genre.

Let’s discuss the second first. I think the meta stuff was alright. I liked how the player’s save files were nuked, effectively raising the stakes super high, which is always a good way to conjure narrative tension. I liked the glitchy trippy stuff like feigning Windows errors and bad video and eerie sound loops and forced multiple choices a lot less. That stuff occurred way too often to have any impact, and while I appreciate the notion of an escalating horror it tried to capture, after a while it quickly felt gimmicky. On the whole, I’m sorry to say that the effort was rather infantile.

Can I also highlight how much I fucking hated the long mandatory pauses in that end-game dialogue with Monika? I was already feeling annoyed with the game at that point for a generally disappointing execution of a disappointing reveal, and I just wanted to get the game over and done with at the point, and fucking Monika wouldn’t let me.

The first reason for DDLC’s popularity is what really tickles me. 

A player that really connected with deliberately-badly-written characters of DDLC? 

Keeping in mind that most of the fanbase that are actually impressed by DDLC are first-time visual novel players, a good number of them probably thought prior to playing DDLC that visual novels were disgusting games for perverts with anime-girl-fetishes to get their kicks. To think that such skeptics would then develop a meaningful connection with some of the worst-written characters (at least of the canon accessible to the West) is just the sweetest irony. Pretty easy to mock something until you fall prey to it, eh?

I just want to clarify that I personally think the first reason is actually the better reason for liking DDLC. The second reason is just weak, especially if you’ve played Undertale or experienced other media with strong twists or meta-elements. I think the shock and horror elements only truly work if you’re able to empathise with the characters anyway, if not they feel rather devoid of strength.

I’m the last person on earth that gets to ridicule anyone for getting overly attached to fictional characters - all I’m mocking above is the hypocrisy, and the fact that those characters just aren’t very well written, objectively speaking. I think it’s wonderful that many people have experienced an epiphany of sorts with respect to DDLC. Some claim that they can divide their lives into two segments - pre-DDLC and post-DDLC - and it’s probably not an exaggeration. It’s always nice to have a particularly enlightening piece of media change your life. 

These feelings are real and powerful and unsurprisingly not altogether an alien experience for those who read visual novels. I myself recall sitting in a polyclinic thinking about Katawa Shoujo until I spontaneously burst into tears. In fact, just two weeks ago I was lying in bed thinking about Kemono Friends and started crying as well. Personally I’m hoping that Subahibi will do for me what DDLC does for them, but I’ll have to wait a couple of months for that ...

[wickedfighting]

Review: Kemono Friends

The universal reaction to Kemono Friends is disbelief. But disbelief quickly gives way to joy and wonder. Kemono Friends is, thus far, my top anime of 2017. While it’s true that I’ve yet to watch some of the strong contenders like Made in Abyss, the fact that this cultural phenomena has made it thus far is nothing short of a minor miracle. As I’ll explain later on, Kemono Friends is a low budget kids show. And yet everyone simply wants to know: HOW IS IT SO FUCKING GOOD?

When I went to Nagoya over the summer break, every single Japanese otaku (ranging from middle schoolers to a mimikaki hostess) I met only had one anime to recommend: Kemono Friends.

Another cool fact: the first episode of Kemono Friends is the most streamed anime in the history of Nico Nico Douga, Japan’s largest streaming platform.

My reviews normally tend to be filled with spoilers and rather long, but this time it will be neither, so feel free to read on and decide if you want to watch it after all. 

This is not to imply that you can’t be spoiled for Kemono Friends - there are some twists that you do want to experience firsthand - but my review won’t really be about the plot, so there’s no need to divulge spoilers.

This is the synopsis of Kemono Friends I took from MyAnimeList:

Japari Park is an untamed paradise where many humanoid animals, known as "Friends," live their everyday lives in all corners of the natural environmental park.

One lazy afternoon in the savannah area, the energetic Serval encounters a peculiar new Friend. Curious, she swiftly takes down the Friend, named Kaban, to try and discover what species she is. To Serval's disappointment, not even Kaban herself knows the answer.

The two become friends and set out on a grand adventure through the many habitats, landmarks, and attractions of Japari Park. Their destination is the park library, where they hope to shed some light on Kaban’s identity. Along the way, they meet many other Friends, looking into their lives and helping them out. However, they soon begin to uncover the sinister reality behind the park and their own existence.

Like everyone else, I simply have to talk about Kemono Friend’s production. 

If you were to Google Image ‘Kemono Friends’, you would not be remotely impressed. This is unsurprising. If you’ve ever seen ‘Shirobako’, you’ll know that an anime is generally created by hundreds of animators. It’s true that key frames tend to be done by a tiny group in comparison, but someone has got to draw the in-betweens. 

Kemono Friends had ten animators, working for five hundred days. They didn’t even have enough budget to make the fucking tires on the bus spin. Sometimes, I noticed that the characters weren’t even lip-synced right. They couldn’t animate the characters by hand since that would be impossible, and so they made all the characters computer-animated instead. You might not know this about me, but after more than a decade of hard training, I’ve developed the skill to instantly tell the difference between hand-drawn and computer animation. In ‘Your Lie in April’, Kaori’s violin-playing is entirely hand-drawn. Kousei’s piano-playing on the other hand, is entirely CG animation. (I’ve also the ability to detect when anime has been interpolated to 60fps, but that’s a story for another day.) I also tend to fucking hate CG animation, because if I wanted that crap I’d go watch a Pixar movie.

But I wouldn’t change a thing in Kemono Friends. A reviewer described the production of Kemono Friends as a bit like your child doing some macaroni art and bringing it home to show you. It looks clumsy as hell, but assuming your child has some real artistic talent, you can tell what he’s trying to do and it’s incredibly charming in its own way. Kemono Friends is an absolute labour of love, and I am unbelievably happy for its success, not only because the team deserves it, but because I never would have given it a chance if not for the rave reviews.

On its surface, Kemono Friends is a kids show through and through. It has a cute-looking anthropomorphic cast, the characters speak using relatively simple words, everyone is nice and kind to each other, there’s a cute bus that the characters ride in, its commercial breaks feature random animal specialists talking about the special characteristics of the introduced animal Friends, the OP is obviously a child-singalong, the title is a huge duh ...

Upon deeper analysis though, Kemono Friends is still a kids show. Some people raised the fact that it aired in the wee hours after midnight, so there’s no way it could be a kids show. But surely that had more to do with the show having neither pedigree nor clout nor budget to secure the advertisement-heavy Saturday/Sunday morning timing slots? Given Kemono Friends’ immense success, now it’s actually airing during popular children’s hours.

And there’s nothing wrong with being a kids show.

If I had to outline why people love Kemono Friends, it’s because it manages to capture and evoke two key emotions: wonder and kinship. It does so through the vehicle of innocence: the production as I’ve mentioned bears absolutely no trace of deceit. It is raw, simple, and overwhelmingly honest (the Crested Ibis’ song is literally ‘I am Crested Ibis; I am searching for friends; where are you, friends?’). The characters themselves are wonderfully innocent. There’s not a hint of malice in the entire speaking cast. Our protagonist has no name, so they call her Kaban-chan (Kaban means ‘bag’) because she carries a bag around. She and Serval are always happy to visit new places and meet new Friends. The Friends themselves are always so genuine, wearing their hearts on their sleeves, and feel fundamentally incapable of deceit. Even when they act difficult, even a child watching the show can tell, ‘ah, deep down, they’re really nice people after all.’

Incidentally, the animals being so genuine also really helps in making their personalities incredibly distinct. I also find it cute that the Crested Ibis has no idea how bad her singing is, presumably because no Friend has the heart to tell her. Kemono Friends paints an incredibly supportive and loving community.

There’s something to be said about a show which presents such a fundamentally optimistic outlook on humanity AND animals. Shirobako did it for the anime industry, but Kemono Friends seems to be the manifestation of good-will towards all humans and animals alike. You can’t help but feel an incredible bond with the Friends on the show, particularly after witnessing the beautiful bond that Kaban and Serval have.

As for wonder, the Friends are constantly in awe of human technology, proclaiming it amazing. But they’re also constantly in awe of each others’ animal abilities, and how unique and wonderful and ingenious the natural world is, and their awe is infectious. As a viewer, there are plenty of things for us to gawk at, especially since most of us know terribly little about the animal kingdom, and I am definitely guilty of pausing Kemono Friends multiple times to Youtube certain species because their character designs seemed really cute in the anime ...

If I were to translate wonder into the show’s expressions, it would be ‘sugoi’ (amazing!) and ‘tanoshii’ (fun!) [two of the show’s top phrases which have taken on lives of their own as memes]. Kemono Friends is sugoi and tanoshii. Some scenes in movies are memorable because they’re epic and momentous, like the famous Apple Strudel scene in Inglorious Basterds. Kemono Friends has such scenes as well, but what truly stands out to me are the scenes where animals are simply having fun. Animation, unlike film, is strange in the sense that sometimes just watching characters do really mundane things can be utterly mesmerizing. There’s a certain joy in that movement, and Kemono Friends is able to capture that joy effortlessly, like that scene with the small-clawed otter sliding into the water over and over again. It’s probably the same logic as to why people are content to watch cats do stupid shit for hours on end, except that in Kemono Friends it’s more like watching half-children-half-animals at play.

Outside of the show’s ostensibly episodic progression, there’s also a greater mystery at work. What is Japari Park? Why is all this abandoned technology just lying around? Why do the Friends exist? Who is Kaban really? What happened to all the humans? What are the Ceruleans? How does this adventure end? These are questions that are slowly answered over the course of the series, and I can certify that the answers are satisfactory.

I now turn to the show’s directing. Kemono Friends was directed and written by ‘Tatsuki’, a man who has unfortunately been recently fired by Kadokawa, causing an outrage so huge it actually sunk their stock. In my eyes, Tatsuki is probably a better director than Miyazaki. I’ve seen Spirited Away a couple of times - it’s a great film. I think highly of My Neighbour Totoro as well. But Tatsuki not only has great comic timing, but is also a maestro of the camera that made me cry 4 times in one fucking episode.

In some of my favourite pieces of art there’s a wonderful sense of narrative symmetry (Three Days of Happiness; Madoka Magica) and Kemono Friends is no different. The final few episodes are masterpieces of pure emotion guided by Tatsuki’s learned hand. Tatsuki knows all the tricks in the Anime Trope Playbook and has brought a few of his own original creations as well. I cannot say more out of fear of spoiling you, but suffice to say if you reach the end of Kemono Friends you’ll know exactly what I mean.

And he didn’t do it alone. The seiyuu and music direction was stellar as well, and were testament to how much sound design matters in an anime. I’ve talked about how Oregairu Zoku was especially phenomenal because of the superb voice acting, and it is true for Kemono Friends as well. It’s really amazing how a voice can so accurately convey wonder and joy, as well as desperation and heartbreak, especially when you consider that a good number of the seiyuu were complete newcomers, such as Serval’s and Kaban’s seiyuus.

The last thing I want to mention again is the relationship that Serval and Kaban have with each other. I cannot stress enough how important this relationship is in Kemono Friends. The two are the equivalent of Ash and Pikachu - it’s just impossible to conceive of one without the other. They are simply inseparable. The innocence and joy of their friendship is mirrored throughout Kemono Friends - the Crested Ibis and the Alpaca, the Beaver and the Prairie Dog, Friends who never knew each other coming together because of the circumstances and bring such joy into each other’s lives. This sense of kinship between friends and Friends is supposed to be bog standard stuff for a kids show, but few demonstrate the amazing chemistry that Kemono Friends is capable of evoking. Kemono Friends gave me Hope in what has really been a pretty dark year for humanity, and I feel has genuinely changed me (slightly) for the better. I guess it is unsurprising that Kemono Friends, as the ultimate labour of love, is so jam-packed with love for humans and animals. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Amen.

[wickedfighting]

'They’

I was walking back to college when I spotted a homeless person by the left side of the road. I wasn’t particularly in a hurry and I recalled that morning that my wallet had too many coins in it for my liking, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to literally spare some change.

As I was about to hand him my handful of coins, he looked me in the eye and started saying something, the start of the sentence I couldn’t catch properly, but I heard something about how someone else had promised him that they would come back later and give him the 16 pounds he needed to get to a homeless shelter in Ipswich - but they hadn’t yet returned.

I couldn’t quite understand why exactly he was telling me that, but I assumed it was that he couldn’t rely on their promise for much longer, and really needed the money badly to get to a homeless shelter (as he told me later on, there were none in Cambridge). I tried to tell him, multiple times, that I was really sorry that I couldn’t really give anymore than the handful I picked out (which in all honesty, wasn’t really true), and that I didn’t have a car that I could drive him there in.

(Not that I know how to drive.)

He seemed to refute what I was saying and reiterated him needing to save up to 16 pounds to get to the homeless shelter, which only led me to reiterate my position. Eventually, sensing that we were utterly at some sort of communication deadlock, I asked in the best neutral tone I could muster, ‘Well, what would you like me to do?’

And he said that he understood that I was a student and all, and that he was more than grateful for the amount that I was donating, and wasn’t asking for anything more. I guess in the end I was the one who misunderstood - he was just looking for someone to talk to, to share his goals with, and not necessarily seek assistance from them. I had misunderstood that the encounter would merely be transactional, as is usually the case. But charity is clearly something more.

Even if one leans liberal, it’s easy to believe that their problems can be easily solved with just money. But while money is necessary, this encounter proves it insufficient. The homeless may not be physically all that separated from society, but the stigma and shame attached to their position just robs them of their humanity, on top of everything else they’ve lost. It’s easy to tar the homeless with a large brush, and even if we correctly assume that they’re desperately in need of financial aid, sometimes it’s the warmth of others and the recognition that they’re still human and part of the society we’re in that they seek most.

[wickedfighting]

I'm standing in the middle of the desert Waiting for my ship to come in But now no joker, no jack, no king Can take this loser hand And make it win

Sheryl Crow, Leaving Las Vegas

[wickedfighting]

Fear and loafing

I’m sleeping early, I’m eating breakfast, I’m going to the gym, I’m brushing my teeth twice a fucking day, I’m treating my skin, I’m buying new clothes, I’m socialising more, I’m dropping my dissertation and picking up Jurisprudence, I’m going out of my way to meet people. And I’m doing all of this at once.

There are two ways of looking at it.

The first: I am aware that there’s not much time left. I want to leave university a different person compared to when I started. I believe that I need to change to learn, and learn to change. I think that there remains a brief period whereby I can experience something completely new and pretty amazing, but in doing so, I will need to dramatically change certain parts of who I am, and how I live. And when it’s all done, I’ll decide where to go from here.

This view is that the cause of my efforts is fundamentally rooted in optimism and intentional deliberation.

The second: I am aware that there’s not much time left. I have a year or so left of an unbelievable amount of freedom and opportunity. I’ve not really made the best of it over the two years I’ve spent here - I really doubt that academically I would have performed much differently if I had simply attended more talks, more plays, more socials, went to more movies or nights out. I just shunned that risk-taking and am now trying to compensate for it by taking on all the risks at once. I probably have unreasonable expectations as to the allegedly rose-coloured life of a final year student at Cambridge, and feel like at least a partial failure until I partake in the grand illusion. One could argue that most of the changes I’ve instituted in myself show superficial progress, but reflect a deeper regression born of blind panic, and the inability to accept myself.

This view is a lot more pessimistic, and it’s certainly the view I’m more partial to at the moment. My mood is depressed from a thousand and one depressing things, but I know I’m just impatiently waiting on (hopefully) good news from Slaughter and May and for my other efforts to pay off.

While the truth is, as usual, a likely mix of the two. I think there’s truth to the accusation that I’m fed up with being happy with the lower-lying fruit for too long. Many of my interests and pursuits and joys are pretty much loss-adverse and low-risk - see for instance, cooking my own food. Can’t fuck that up; it’s guaranteed happiness on a plate (or in my case, in a bowl). If I don’t like a book I can just stop reading; the same goes for anime. Low commitment items - though I’m hardly saying the reward is similarly low.

I never had really high expectations for Cambridge, so it’s really odd that the longer I stay here the higher my expectations get. I have an inkling as to why. Perhaps I’m tired of meeting new people and telling them, in no uncertain terms that I believed to be completely honest, that I came to Cambridge just to get a decent first every year which accurately reflected my academic ability. Over one-too-many retellings, I suppose the truth became too unfair on myself to bear. At some point, I started to believe I wasn’t only deserving of more, but that I was capable of it. However it may turn out, I think this will be an academic year to remember.

[wickedfighting]

'If a person is allowed to remain in possession of property which it is against conscience for him to retain, his conscience will be oppressed; and the court, out of tenderness for his conscience, will deprive him, notwithstanding his resistance, of what is so heavy a burden upon it.'

Ashburner’s Principles of Equity (1st edition), Chapter 2

[wickedfighting]

Class struggle

This post contains a few spoilers for Rick and Morty.

There is a bit of a disconnect between the kind of current affair news I consume and the kind of media I tend to watch. A lot of what I read about nowadays is usually about The Culture Wars, such as race, economic disparity, gender, sexuality, etc. while most of the books I read or shows I watch tend to be about intensely personal themes and struggles.

Rick and Morty is usually about personal themes like existential despair and human connection. Sure there are usually a couple of jokes thrown in about the culture wars, but by and large the series tends to explore what-ifs through the episode’s callously scientific premise to discover some sort of new form of cosmic despair. In one of its best episodes, the question of the morality of creating pocket universes populated with unsuspecting lifeforms for the sole purpose of phasing out labour is explored, deliciously mixing a cosmic dread of the meaningless of existence with the banality of labour.

By and large, Rick and Morty thrives on them shocking the viewer with an absolutely mindblowing premise of the sort that we’d never dare dream of, and exploring it to (sometimes literal) death. The show usually excels when the audience is convinced they’ve never seen anything like this before.

In a very stark contrast, episode 7 of season 3 (’The Ricklantis Mixup’) shocks the viewer precisely because we’ve all seen this before. Everything hits way too close to home, in this post-Obama age of Trump. The episode’s four narratives are tightly woven together with some amazing storyboarding, and it delivers climax after climax that leaves us only wanting more.

Only the wilfully blind could fail to see The Citadel as America, and the countless Ricks and Mortys representing the white/black divide. Although it may seem odd to use (mildly differing) clones of a person as a symbol for race, it does flesh out an issue in the series which has been raised before - the dynamic of abuse between the much cleverer and egotistic Rick and the unassuming, nervous Morty - while placing it in the context of race.

The primary narrative follows a Candidate Morty running for the newly established seat of President. It seems a bit of a long shot, since no one, not even the Mortys, believes that a Morty has the ability to assume the highest office. Much like Obama, Candidate Morty appears to rise ‘above’ politics by tapping into a message of hope and unity, calling for racial equality while at the same time claiming to fight for the downtrodden working class. Through a combination of superior oratory prowess and embodying the zeitgeist, Candidate Morty is eventually elected President.

The first subnarrative I want to talk about involves the Rick slaving away in the factory. Early on we’re given a glimpse of the unfairness of society - a bunch of Ricks taking the bus to work, while a rich Rick speeds by in a private car. But more subtly, the degree to which the Ricks fucking hate each other - arguably more than they hate the Mortys. The reason for this is simple: they don’t perceive the Mortys as a threat, because they consider themselves racially superior. No Mortys are even allowed to work in the factory, so effective is the racial segregation. With the Mortys out of the way, the remaining targets of resentment are naturally each other. 

The fact that they are all technically the same person only makes it worse. It’s an aphorism to note that the more similar we are, the more we search for and create differences to set ourselves apart. In the Citadel, the Ricks achieve this through class and wealth. The Rick newsreaders, the Rick factory workers and their management all fucking hate the people one social strata below and above them, because their superior social position is premised on despising the class directly below, and their social position is shortchanged because of the class directly above. Their shortsightedness only serves to entrench the entire zero-sum socio-economic structure.

If this sounds familiar it should, since this perfectly mirrors the white resentment that allegedly got Trump elected - there was nothing the white working class hated more than the professionals and the managers that worked right above them, while apparently being totally okay with self-proclaimed billionaires. And that’s why Factory Worker Rick murders his prick ex-boss, because that cunt of a manager was the one demeaning him every day. And yet the same Factory Worker Rick smoothly gets conned by the literal Owner of the factory conglomerate, believing in his lies even though there was no literal way the Owner could possibly believe in worker’s rights. Manager Rick was a mere cog in the wheel compared to Owner Rick. Even the audience is conned to a large degree, because the Owner is saying all the right things we strongly believe in, and in our hearts of hearts we want it to be true. We want a happy ending for Factory Worker Rick (which, in a twisted way, can only come about through the personal charity of a capitalist oligarch). And because we believe him for a duration, however short, the betrayal at the end is as bitter as they come. And yet this is precisely the kind of con that Trump pulled, and I for one, in the context of this episode, fell for it.

The entire premise of the factory is inherently sick: a man who innocently loves his daughter is converted into a brain-in-a-vat and his brain fluids are used, Matrix-style, to flavour a wafer. Not only is this sick and perverse mechanism not kept a secret, it’s actually advertised as a primary selling point in a remarkably duplicitous fashion. You’re branded a ‘Simple’ Rick if you have these desires (because hey why not kick a man while he’s a fucking brain in a vat?), but apparently we don’t mind shelling out to superficially partake in the experience. Capitalism is castigated as deplorable, arrogant, and tone-deaf, a system that would sell out human dignity and irony for a quick buck.

The fact that our disgruntled Factory Worker Rick is eventually the replacement brain-in-the-vat is nothing but a dagger through the heart. What’s even more sick is that the ‘sweet memory’ now used is the false liberation of a worker. In a factory with Ricks slaving away, physically slathering that ‘sweet memory’ onto a product. And consumers are just as eager to consume ‘the false liberation of a worker’. If this is not some perverse capitalist joke of arbeit macht frei I don’t know what is.

I’m also sure there’s some snide comment on ‘working for working’s sake’, which helps to keep the working class in place, because there’s no fucking way a society with portal guns and shit requires an actual person to be there to operate a machine that shoots out liquid on a biscuit on an assembly line.

The other two narratives are not quite as deep, but are equally as powerful. The partnership of Cop Rick and Cop Morty highlights the internal racial struggle of policing your own race. Cop Morty’s actions are brutal, almost genocidal, and in comparison to Cop Rick, he seems to be extremely racially prejudiced against other Mortys. But he evidently considers himself special, as evidenced by his violent reaction to being told by the hoodlums that he was in some way subservient to his partner Cop Rick. Cop Morty was a walking bundle of repressed self-loathing who took it out on his own race, and whose very actions seemed to propagate a self-fulfilling prophecy of delegitimisation and violence.

Meanwhile, the narrative of the ragtag bunch of Mortys going on a small adventure may seem out of place with the other narratives, but it plays its part well. Fundamentally, the Mortys were in despair about their future. A lifetime of meaningless ‘education’ meant to brainwash them into accepting an inherently subservient role defined by their master has left them without an inherent sense of identity. None of them wanted to pair off with a Rick in the capacity of a near-slave, and so the four of them run off in a journey of self-exploration, searching for hope. Of course, their actions have no impact on what actually brings about their actual salvation (the election of Candidate Morty) but sometimes when one’s future holds nothing but despair, running away is its own salvation.

The episode ends on a strong note in more ways than one, and by that I mean musical notes. The song that rounds off the episode is ‘For the Damaged Coda’, and to say that it was perfect would be an understatement. There’s no doubt in my mind that the final scenes were deliberately crafted around this piece of music. The song starts with a piano playing some repetitive chords, with a chord progression starting from C, ascending to a short peak, then returning, not unlike a pyramid. There are some variations along the way, but nothing too fancy. Nothing that leads us to believe in any form of change, just an emotionless tune playing itself out.

But just as the progression is a note away from returning back to C, there is an audible pause, and then the drums and bass kicks in, and what was meant to be a soft musical landing transforms into a hard one. The vocal melody arrives, but it’s no Wagnerian triumph. Quite the opposite - it’s a lamentation, it’s a Lacrimosa, it’s pure catharsis for the countless tragedies in the episode that we were never given the time to grieve.

Until now. 

The opening half of the song underscores a monologue from newly elected President Morty, and gives us a brief glimpse in the new, scary direction the Citadel is now headed towards. The musical pause marks a transition from inside the Citadel -

- to a scene of carnage outside the Citadel filled with the carcasses of those killed in the episode alone, the camera zooming out slowly to let the scale of the massacre sink in, with the expressions of despair frozen on the dead for all eternity.

It was a great episode.

[wickedfighting]

You’re doing it wrong

Slate used to run these columns called ‘you’re doing it wrong’. People loved those - by which I really mean they fucking hated them. Invariably the top comment would be some smarmy remark about how Slate was actually the one doing it wrong by virtue of a lack of proof-reading, editorial oversight, or decades of a single person’s experience.

Slate has since dropped the column, which is a real surprise considering that in every age controversy done right only ever means more ad revenue - which ironically suggests that Slate was, in fact, doing it wrong.

Recently, I tried to find out what I long suspected I was doing wrong. My suspicions turned out to be right, in the sense that I was doing everything very wrong. 

In the field of exercise, where I felt reasonably confident in what I was doing, it turns out that I was doing push-ups wrong (elbows can’t bend to the side too much), bicep curls completely wrong (don’t grip the centre of the dumb bell, lift higher, don’t take 3 sets of 12 literally, let the dumb bell down slowly), leg raises mysteriously wrong (why does my lower back hurt so?). I was evidently also wrong about not doing posture exercises/stretches ...

As for skincare, I was doing literally every conceivable thing wrong. Perhaps most egregiously, my habit of touching my face constantly throughout the day, but also my non-usage of sunscreen, moisturizer, toner, exfoliator, my failure to cleanse twice a day and to pick the correct products to properly do all of the above. Hell, I didn’t even know what a fucking T-Zone was, or the difference between AM/PM cleanser, much less whether or not my cleanser contained Beta Hydroxy Acid. At some point, I believe I used hand moisturizer on my face and tried to utilize camphor oil to cure acne. The latter could have killed me, but luckily I survived my DIY attempts.

Regarding my hair, till now I’m still not sure if I’m doing anything wrong, since my current shampoo/conditioner are Japanese brands and consequently I can’t be bothered to look through the ingredient list to see if they they indeed sulfate-free. I’ll just make my purchase in the UK more responsibly. I’ve experimented with not shampooing my hair every day and the results are less than pleasing. I don’t know how to style my hair at all - but to be honest I can’t be arsed since the difference feels so marginal ...

These are things that I do wish I had been taught when I was much younger. It’s a lot harder to start practicing these things at the old, old age of 23 (though the old adage about the second-best time to start something good being today rings true). It’s even harder to do all these things properly at once, which is what I’m attempting to do. In many ways, having the internet is a tremendous resource, particularly the expertise-based subreddits which are only too happy to share their knowledge. 

But a side-effect of their expertise is that it gets to be quite overwhelming. Particularly skin-care, where the divide between Western and Eastern approaches to skin-care is fairly stark with no clear answers as to which is superior. As a neophyte, all one really wants are some definite answers and a simple guide to follow - but skincare offers no such thing, everything boiling down to some elaborate trial-and-error, which is not only expensive but time and energy consuming. It’s hardly the primrose path. 

If anything, it’s the opposite.

Privately, I do wonder if I really have the time to go through with proper skincare and exercising and whatnot, especially when term starts and all. But seeing that most girls are capable of it (not to mention makeup, which sounds like a whole other nightmare I’m glad to have no part of), I suppose I don’t really have any excuse.

[wickedfighting]

Analysing the harem genre through a comparative of 俺ガイル・俺修羅・冴えカノ

Spoilers for four anime in this post: School Days, Oregairu (and Zoku), SaeKano (both seasons), and OreShura.

The problem with the harem genre - besides its obvious misogynistic and objectifying tendencies - was that the harem, as the Japanese anime community understood it, was an oddly chaste affair. The protagonist behaved much like the Sun in our solar system, and all the girls would revolve around him like planets, with some taking irregular and elliptical orbits that sometimes brought them closer and sometimes further - but quite crucially, never quite touching.

This essentially spells doom for any foreseeable plot development in the romantic department. The story is about the harem, and therefore must end once the harem ends (usually when a particular girl wins out). Nisekoi learnt this the hard way - most of the readers were hardcore fans of one girl or another as opposed to the chaste harem set-up itself (which honestly, only the strangest/weirdest person could come to love) - and therefore hated the story for endlessly leading them on without bringing about any strong sense of development or conclusion. It is possible for the harem set-up to extend its longevity by somehow making all the female leads equally attractive, but this merely prolongs the inevitable.

There is one particularly famous harem anime that decided to breach the code of chastity by having the protagonist sleep with every female lead and non-lead. But School Days is still predominantly known for its ending - where the adoration turns murderously possessive. Evidently harem anime is about having it all - but not really.

But if the harem premise is doomed to failure, why does it persist? 

One major reason must surely be that it is ultimately a rewarding set-up from a financial perspective. More girls means more cute character designs, more spots for famous seiyuus, more opportunities for dedicated character songs and other merchandise, which in turn exponentially increases the hype around a particular show and the chance that any random viewer will find a character they adore. Even at the light novel stage, it’s already a cliche for the latest love interest to adorn every new volume until the author has finished introducing them all. And in terms of a narrative - I suppose it’s fairly self-evident that everyone would rather the semi-self-insert-protagonist be popular?

But even considering the matter less cynically, I’m afraid the reasons still come across as a little depressing.

Romance was a convenient vehicle for character development, but somewhere along the way it seemed to evolve into the default vehicle for character development in plenty of shows. Characters seemed to be incapable of developing unless they were potential or existing love interests. At some point I’m sure the horse and the cart gave up on walking single-file and started waltzing, because after consuming so much media from this subculture I’m no longer sure if the romance makes character development viable, or if it’s the other way around.

I have complained before that it’s the girls that get the best character development, the best lines, the best animation - but that’s just how Japan carries out its brand of consumeristic sexism: If the girls aren’t developed, engrossing, and fascinating characters, why would you as a viewer be interested in them? But the problem with earnestly combining romance with character development every single time is that it limits how the story can develop. Now narrative has to resolve both the romance and the unique character development. Of course, it is often the case that the two often present a lovely combined solution (’if you’d just trust and love me, everything will be alright!’), but not only is the old cliche of ‘love conquers all’ far easier to state rather than actually execute, it is also generally the case that whether the two characters end up or not is presented as a pretty boring yet unrealistic binary choice.

So, how does a harem anime become good?

In a world filled with shitty harem anime, OreGairu stands at the peak for a multitude of reasons ranging from superb character animation to top-notch voice acting work, but the most important reason is surely that despite a larger-than-life premise, the characters in OreGairu make sense, and Hachiman in particular is not just the protagonist but fascinating and relatable. No one else in the series is explored quite as thoroughly as he is. Bonus points for the series featuring Hayato - another male character who serves as Hachiman’s foil and is also given significant depth.

OreGairu doesn’t mind giving screentime to characters that have absolutely no romantic interest in Hachiman, such as the fujoshi Ebina, whose arc serves as a harbinger for how romance may come to destroy the precious circle of friends Hachiman has found, and that characters and feelings develop whether we like it or not.

OreGairu uses romance organically, slowly developing the relationships between the characters over two whole cours. While there is undeniably romance in OreGairu, it’s not used as a primary plot driver until the final arc - which we haven’t even seen animated or written. Yui threw down the romantic gauntlet, and as if to deliberately tantalise the audience, season two came to a fucking end. Despite its Japanese title, you would be wrong to describe OreGairu as a romantic comedy - it never set its sights so low. OreGairu is contemporary discourse on social relations within the microcosm of a school, of which romance is but a part. And even when romance is explored in the final arc, I’m guessing that thematically, romance will at least partially be portrayed as a destructive, changing force not unlike the movements of tectonic plates, forever reshaping the comfortable and nostalgic environment that Hachiman has grown familiar with over the series. Romance represents re-opening an old wound for Hachiman, and getting him to take that step would require immense character development on his part. That’s right: here, Hachiman almost seems to step into the role of the traditional heroine.

OreShura is quite similar to OreGairu in a few aspects. Much like OreGairu, the central premise of the story also involves two loners that eventually involve themselves with others. But the scope of OreShura is quite a fair bit narrower - the protagonist and the main heroine are adamantly opposed only to love itself, viewing it as shallow, self-serving, and annoying. Of course, as the story develops, we discover that the protagonist’s grudge against love was always pretty shallow - and thus in terms of how well written his character is, the protagonist of OreShura is light-years away from Hachiman.

Luckily, the main heroine is portrayed consistently, and with much more depth. It wouldn’t really be a stretch to say that Natsukawa is one of my favourite characters ever, given how strong her portrayal has been in OreShura. Owing to her awfully selfish personality, Natsukawa may despise love but equally despises the idea of others being more romantically successful than she is. Natsukawa therefore delights in tormenting Chiwa (who, as Eita’s childhood friend, is the her rival love interest) by publicly flaunting her relationship with Eita. Natsukawa goes so far as to set-up a troll club with a troll name so that she can troll everyone into entertaining her, and her cynicism is so great that she believes she’s the true Master of Love because she’s seen through all its superficial tricks and artificial forms, despite not having ever been in love herself.

The delicious thing about Natsukawa’s actions is that even though she repeatedly insists that she is a ‘bitch’ and that their relationship is completely ‘fake’, it’s obvious that beneath all her acting there is yet more: a twisted and sick form of attraction, compounded by her huge ego and tiny sense of self-worth.

The anime’s strength comes from its willingness to tackle the heavy issues that naturally result from such strained relationships. The title states that the conflict between the characters is akin to a ‘scene of carnage’ - though most would think that the exaggeration was played for dramatic irony, it really isn’t. Generally, a love rival’s physical possession of the protagonist is played for laughs, but in OreShura there’s a certain hushed silence that falls over the cast whenever Natsukawa is feeling frisky. Chiwa in particular is visibly hurt because of how earnest she is, and the scenes of her despairing over her losing Eita to Natsukawa are genuinely some of the best the show has to offer. If we accept the premise that Natsukawa is acting purely out of sadism and schadenfreude, Natsukawa is truly evil. However, if Natsukawa kisses Eita out of genuine affection, that muddies the waters significantly. With Natsukawa, it’s genuinely impossible to tell where her spite ends and affection begins. Although OreShura is marred by two other rather unnecessary side heroines, Natsukawa’s exciting twistedness (there really isn’t a suitable English equivalent for 歪んで) is strong enough to carry the show, especially with Chiwa for juxtaposition. 

But unlike OreGairu, which touches on romance as a ‘natural’ development in the broader lives of the characters, OreShura claims to focus on romance - and that’s where it’s probably most disappointing. Despite taking a few cheap shots at the idea of romance, OreShura’s core message seems to boil down to ‘love and friendship is about sincerity and earnestness’, which while sweet and emotional, is not particularly deep or meaningful. OreShura doesn’t really live up to its potential - romance is ultimately just a vehicle to develop Natsukawa and Chiwa as characters, which is basically a harem played straight (albeit well). 

There is, however, a startling bit of counter-evidence. I’m not entirely sure how everyone else interpreted the ending scene in the final episode where Natsukawa and Chiwa stare each other down on the balcony, but to me that’s pretty much an explicit rather than implicit declaration of war. Eita’s actions prior to that point indicate that he himself is incredibly confused over who he truly likes. In a traditional harem the planets stay in orbit, and if I ever get around to reading the light novels I guess I’ll find out if OreShura is inclined to continue orbiting.

The last series worth highlighting is Saekano. Strangely enough, despite sharing the same director and studio as OreShura, Saekano’s first season was pretty crappy. It started off well enough, with an in media res pilot episode with loads of knowingly meta fanservice (wink wink), but as the series progressed it became clear not only that the character animation was relatively weak, backgrounds boring, and its use of CGI was especially jarring. 

I’ve little doubt that the author of the light novel had a real story he wanted to tell - it’s just a pity that the relatively poor animation seemed to undercut everything he intended to say. What really served as the coup de grace however, was that despite setting up in the first episode that the series would probably be really clever and mocking of common tropes, it seemed more than happy to slip back into cliche in episode two. Character archetypes that were toyed with and defied in episode one were flaunted gaudily in place of actual character development. Despite the fact that by the time the season ended, we had gained a much better idea of Utaha and Eriri than the average shitty romantic comedy, Saekano felt like a show incessantly reliant on backstory and Tomoya being an unbelievably dense dick.

And yet despite all that, Saekano managed to find itself a second season, and with much better character animation at that. The key animation in the scene where Eriri recuperates with Tomoya in her villa is exceptionally sweet, beautiful, and peaceful. But even that can’t save the second season. Utaha is up to her old tricks again. Tragic as it may seem, it would appear she’s so lovestruck that she tries to appeal to Tomoya’s odd sense of righteousness. 

Once, she tried to get a feel for (again, it’s annoying not having a term for 察する) his feelings, only for him to miss the fucking point, implicitly claiming that he only saw and loved her as an author and nothing more. But, if as a reviewer, he refuses to give her an indirect answer to her confession, surely he would do so as a producer of the game they’re both working on... until he chooses both routes she wrote (one symbolising herself, the other Megumi), and fucking writes a third one on his own (the harem end) and everyone lives happily ever after.

And that’s really not a bad thing in itself. One of the more interesting things that Saekano does is to discuss the rather unhealthy tension that results when there’s unrequited love between an artist and her patron. It’s best embodied by Eriri of course, whose eternal dilemma is that while on the one hand, she wants to be valued by Tomoya as an artist, she also wants to be valued by Tomoya as a love interest. There are things you can demand of a professional that you can’t of a lover, and in the end Eriri does choose one over another.

The greatest mystery of the Saekano series is Megumi, or if I may be slightly meta, what the fuck the audience is supposed to see in Megumi. It is true that Megumi represents a nice change from the usual heroine’s antics, but that’s only because, well, the author wrote them that way. Megumi is generally honest with her feelings, in possession of common sense, and behaves similarly to how real people placed in such a situation would behave. Alright, so she’s the sane person in an insane world - but so what? Thanking the author for creating Megumi is like forgetting that he created the shitty insane world that serves to juxtapose her into sharper relief. Megumi goes through the motions (and by the way, these are more like the motions of close friendship rather than romance), and the audience squeals, proving that reality is truly stranger than fiction. And don’t get me started on Tomoya, who is not just dense, but seemingly incapable of character development, and an absolute burden on the show. I have difficulty thinking of a more insufferable anime protagonist. I wince in dislike whenever he appears on-screen.

In many ways, people tune in to this harem anime nonsense because they want a distraction from life by someone who is larger than life. Here too it is unclear what Saekano brings to the table, especially when the story is strongest when discussing the pain and hardship suffered by artists and writers as opposed to romance per se, where it’s just shitty and unnecessarily complicated (see any of Utaha’s arcs). And for all that talk about meta-critique and genre-saviness, it’s only really touched on in Utaha and Megumi’s arc, and not in any worthwhile depth.

It should be clear from what I’ve said so far that ironically enough, discussing and even portraying romance is certainly the weakest aspect of harem anime. Much of it is due to narrative constraints, but a last unexplored reason could be just a general lack of screen time for anything proper. Romance requires words, silence, actions, and time. Tsuki ga Kirei is a spectacular example of this - but that’s a topic for another time.

[wickedfighting]

Rewrite

Last night - or this morning - I finished Rewrite, a visual novel with a fairly monstrous 101372 total lines. This took me slightly under a week, reading about 10 hours a day.

Judging from the blurb, promotional art, and title screen, you might think that Rewrite is about environmentalism and nature.

And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. But if you expect Tanaka Romeo to craft sustainable development policy through the medium of a visual novel you’re sorely mistaken. Rewrite, like most visual novels, is another tale of human weakness and companionship, and (radical) environmentalism is merely the means through which other themes are explored.

The purpose of this review isn’t really to convince anyone to read it - if anything it’s for me to lay out and organise my conclusions on the visual novel. If anyone was new to visual novels I wouldn’t recommend Rewrite to start, and anyone interested in visual novels would read Rewrite without my prompting anyway. It goes without saying that there will be spoilers past this point.

The route structure of Rewrite is quite important. The game demands you finish reading all five heroine routes (located at the end of the common route) before ‘Moon’ and ‘Terra’ are unlocked, and the two combined represent the ‘true’ route of the game, Kagari being the hidden heroine.

I’ll be blunt: I found the common route pointlessly long. Rewrite is perhaps most representative of a common problem that plagues visual novels - weak but copious writing. It’s true that the narrative structure of the common route generally demands an introduction to all the characters involved, and shows their ‘everyday’ life. But it can’t afford to be this boring.

Rewrite doesn’t do this badly all the time - for instance, the opening scene featuring Kotarou’s monologue, his interaction (and lack thereof) with Yoshino, and introduction to Kotori/Akane are all interesting and amusing. But I have no doubt that Tanaka Romeo wrote these parts, and everything else featuring Tonokawa Yuuto’s writing is significantly weaker and frankly full of excess. There were whole scenes which felt cliche and added nothing to my understanding of the story and the characters. 

I understand that the goal is to portray a rambunctious, comedic, and even pointless everyday that the protagonist can justifiably feel nostalgia towards. But that’s how life works, not visual novels, and visual novels are not going to succeed by shallowly imitating life in that respect.

The heroine routes differed greatly in quality and consistency. All of them (except Lucia’s) properly begin following a confrontation in Kazamatsuri’s forest, where the Occult Research Club runs into a patrol by the secret terrorist organisation Gaia, and the Occult Research Club is revealed to be comprised of members of the warring organisations of Gaia and Guardian, as well as seemingly innocent parties.

Chihaya’s route is by far the weakest, with incredibly poor character writing for the very heroine the route is supposedly centred around, and is really only saved by that powerful scene of her kneeling in front of the sakura tree, begging for salvation. Her route might as well have been Sakuya’s, and frankly I think that’s what the writers really had in mind.

Shizuru’s route is also fairly weak, and suffered from many of the same problems of Chihaya’s route - which makes sense given that they shared an author.

Lucia’s route was interesting. For one, Chihaya is way more interesting in Lucia’s route, and seems to have completely abandoned her archetype to become the symbol of Lucia’s isolation from society - which shows how little Ryuukishi07 cared for Chihaya’s original characterization. Lucia’s route was fairly ambitious - starting off with a horror-genre mystery, defusing the tension with romance, which laid the groundwork for some climatic fight scenes.

I was a bit annoyed that the mystery portion of Lucia’s route employed a rather unfair trick on the reader, leading them to believe that Lucia and Asahi Haruka were different people as they were conversing. Only in retrospect is it obvious that the so-called ‘confrontation’ between the two was really more of a figurative battle within Lucia’s psyche for control of her thoughts and actions. But other than this relatively minor point, and that Lucia’s character writing (insofar as romance was concerned) was relatively weak, this was actually a pretty strong and simple route, centred around the fragility of the self and the desperation with which we look for a place to belong. I thought that the portrayal of Lucia’s curse, particularly that scene in the sunflower field, was hauntingly beautiful.

Tanaka Romeo wrote Kotori’s and Akane’s routes, and unsurprisingly they feature the two strongest heroine routes. Most people I know prefer Akane’s route to Kotori’s, but I think Kotori’s is not only the most emotionally powerful, but features better-written characterization.

Akane’s route is really about one central theme - having the strength to abandon one’s evil ways, and to do the right thing. The route pits Kotarou as a foil to Akane - both of them sacrifice themselves, kill innumerable people, all in service of some goals that turn out to be very dubious indeed. But Kotarou has the strength to seek repentance what he has done, and spends the final arc persuading Akane to do the same.

Of course, Kotarou has the baggage of one life, whereas Akane is burdened with the hundreds of sins of generations of Holy Women. Whether in Akane’s route or elsewhere, her characterization has remained true and strong - despite knowing that her actions are evil at worst and pointless at best, she can’t help but cling on to the path she feel she’s been destined to walk, naively hoping that the (capital S) Salvation she seeks to bring about will make it all ‘worth it’. Contrast Senri Akane with Kashima Sakura. Kashima is a genuinely evil fanatic in that she genuinely sees the destruction of humanity as a noble end in itself (radical environmentalism being a means to that end), while Akane is just a coward who sees the destruction of humanity as a convenient way of masking her own weakness.

Despite being saddled with Kashima’s memories and personality, Akane could never really bring herself to hate humanity enough to wish for its destruction. Her misanthropic nature is in fact within reasonably ordinary bounds (as evidenced by her enjoyment of her everyday life with the Occult Club) - but she plays it up just so that no one will discover the real reason why she attempts to end the world.

Of course, Akane only changes her mind at the very end when Kotarou decides to publicly atone for his sins by inviting criminal prosecution. Presumably, the fact that she’ll be suffering together with her loved one suddenly gave her the courage needed to claim responsibility for what she had done. I especially liked how the trial sought to portray the two sides to their actions, and how a genocide of more than a billion people is punished by nothing more than lovey-dovey exile. Tanaka Romeo is very much an idealist.

On the other hand, Kotori’s route reminded me a little of Angelic Howl - Kotori’s weariness and desperation during the siege was touching and powerful stuff. But what cemented Kotori’s route for me as the best route was the way in which Kotori’s mysterious character was slowly unravelled.

Even in the common route, it was quite clear that Kotori and Kotarou had some history together. For all of Kotori’s seeming cheerfulness, there was always some wall between herself and Kotarou, and exploring that in her route was nothing short of fascinating. Eventually we learn that Kotarou and Kotori were both insufferable, gloomy children, and that the comedic facade that Kotarou puts up in school was always matched in turn by Kotori’s cutesy image.

Indeed, Kotori is revealed to be a far colder character than originally thought - mainly because she had to survive a loneliness which would have crushed most others. As the story develops and touches on her past as a deadly game of cat-and-mouse unfurls, only the most hard-hearted of readers can maintain composure. The climatic scene where Kotori drags a wounded Kotarou across the countryside to a hospital is meant to portray Kotori at her most desperate and honest - a shrieking, sobbing child fighting to prevent every last thing she loves from being taken away from her.

I’ve never seen a route quite like Moon before. 

Moon acts as a set-up for the events in Terra, and is ostensibly meant to develop the relationship between Kotarou and Kagari. Specifically, it’s meant to convince us that one man’s love for an otherworldly entity is able to open a path to the future for humanity where there was not one before. I thought the writing, especially in the opening scenes, was particularly beautiful and restrained. The use of a softly glowing field of daisies under the moon is ephemeral and enchanting - which explains why it’s also been used in that long, foreshadowing scene in Madoka Magica: Rebellion. It was also lovely to see the whole cast together again and messing about.

It is also in Moon that a sort of meta-analysis of the other routes is performed, partly because Kotarou has a literal eternity to carry out his introspection. Thus, the key driving force of Rewrite is highlighted: a fearsome loneliness that drives one into the arms of another - even if they might be an otherworldly deity.

Everything comes together in Terra. 

Terra draws on everything you’ve learnt and experienced in the five heroine routes to give us Tanaka Romeo’s answer to the conundrum posed by Rewrite. It is in Terra that Rewrite truly becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

The eternal question posed by the plot of Rewrite is rather simple: How do we ensure the long-term survival of humanity? Kagari tells us that we have to give the Earth ‘good memories’ - a term that turns out to be much more alluring than its actual content, and it’s admittedly a bit difficult not to resent Tanaka Romeo for this. But the actual answer makes sense. And to the best of my knowledge, the answer is as follows:

While conflict is likely to be ever-present insofar as humanity exists, a meaningless cycle of violence is antithetical to its survival. By playing through the five character routes, it should be fairly obvious that the seemingly inevitable conflict between Gaia and Guardian is responsible for the majority of the suffering that takes place. As we slowly learn about the true nature of the factions within Gaia and Guardian, we learn not only that the conflict is superficially meaningless, but the greatest villains are the radicals who adhere to the their tribe/organisation blindly. If humanity can’t stop these meaningless and pitiful fights, what hope have they of saving the planet?

Kotarou decides to stop the fighting. Firstly by crushing the capacity of both organisations to fight (namely by slaughtering their members and defeating their most powerful combatants - the Earth Dragon and Esaka), and secondly by divulging and disseminating Gaia’s technological secrets such that Gaia could no longer sustain its status as a secret organisation.

But quite crucially, Kotarou fails. He does succeed in providing ‘good memories’, but he was a little too late. In the end he’s left with little choice but to kill Kagari by his own hand. Some might wonder why he does that, and I think the answer is that despite what he says throughout Terra - namely that he doesn’t really care about the fate of humanity and is really just doing this for Kagari - he does indeed care about humanity, or at least the specific people he meets: Kotori, Akane, Tsukuno, Jasmine, Nishikujou ...

There are two additional reasons why it’s important that he kills Kagari. The first is that Kotarou’s narrative arc is supposed to imitate Sakuya’s, who similarly failed to protect his first master, and was only released from his karmic cycle after not only protecting Chihaya, but successfully passing the torch to his spiritual successor, Kotarou. Kotarou fails to protect Kagari despite also being ‘The Strongest Familiar’, and like Sakuya he also transforms into a tree in atonement for his failure.

The second reason is that Kotarou has sinned. When I read that Kotarou would bring the conflict between Guardian and Gaia to an end, I quixotically believed that he would do so amicably and peacefully. This quickly proved not to be the case. Kotarou is a killer, and Rewrite is quite firm on how killing is not truly a solution to anything. It’s not even the case that Kotarou kills needlessly - if anything he kills as an absolute last resort. Killing Kagari fell into this category as well.

Still, Kotarou’s failure doesn’t inherently mean that humanity is done for. If anything, it postpones the question of its survival by kicking the can down the road for the next generation to deal with - the next generation being the five innocent heroines who re-summon Kotarou to join them on their adorable adventures. His sacrifice was necessary but insufficient for humanity’s true salvation, and it’s likely that until the human race reaches a stage of enlightenment with respect to radical violence, environmental pollution, and the like, such noble sacrifices will continually be needed to sustain the brief flickering flame that is humanity.

If it’s not clear at this point, I loved the resolution of Terra and think that the narrative is near perfect. The icing on the cake was when the heroines whimsically ask Kotarou to ‘take them somewhere’ and he responded by choosing to head to the Moon, responding to his longing to see Kagari once more, to the tune of ‘CANOE’ - a song that strikes me as so technically difficult (because of how many goddamn syllabus Tanaka Romeo crammed into the lyrics) it could only have been sung by a virtuoso.

There is another interpretation of Moon and Terra which complements the above. This interpretation places emphasis on the fragment of a soul embedded within Kotarou as the reason why humanity can be saved. If you recall the scene featuring ‘love’ as a cosmic and intelligent phenomena, powerful and significant enough to be observed even by beings of a much higher intelligence, then everything starts to make sense. Unlike Gaia who merely sees the Key as a means of bringing about Salvation, or Guardian who views the Key as a little more than a threat to humanity, Kotarou sees Key for who she is - Kagari, the sixth heroine and his true love in Terra, as guided by the destiny crafted in Moon. Cliche as it may be, love does guide Kotarou and the world to a better end. The Key is at pains to emphasize that she is but phenomena, but not only does the Key have a human name, body, and curiosity, but Kagari is literally Kotarou’s fate, and even after reincarnation he remains a slave to fate. Amor fati.

Rewrite was marred by its slightly boring OST - although the insert songs/OPs/EDs were all lovely, and some key instrumental tracks like Radiance, Daisy, and Scattered Blossoms were exquisite, I’m starting to seriously question if half of all visual novels don’t in fact sound the same. In addition, it also suffered from occasionally extremely poorly drawn CGI (the scene of Kotori carrying Kotarou immediately comes to mind). Most importantly, the fact that three authors of varying quality and styles had a hand in this work made it wildly inconsistent, and there’s no doubt Rewrite is worse off for lacking a steady hand.

Nevertheless, Rewrite does excel in one key aspect: in terms of constructing an intelligent, coherent, and compelling grand narrative which fulfils what it set out to accomplish on its own terms, Rewrite is a success.

[wickedfighting]

You can’t take these things for granted

In the usual classroom

My parents, teacher, and I

Gloomily discuss my future.

Should I go to university?

Is there something I want to do?

And is that something that I have to decide right now?

制服と太陽 by 欅坂46 (per my translation)

Wasting time is a bit of a paradox for me. On the one hand, it is wasting time, but on the other hand if it’s something you have to do for your overall well-being (sort of, sort of?), it seems a little odd to call it wasting time, any more than calling getting 7 hours of sleep every day a waste of time.

In any case, I wasted about half a month on DOTA2 (watching, playing) and am not keen on wasting anymore.

Lately I’ve been thinking about writing - both the act and the texts that I’ve read. I’m a little familiar with criticism, at least, of the amateurish sort, in that I frequently think critically about texts. I’ve become more than a little interested in editorship and what it entails. When we think of great books we think of the authors, but reading through notes of authors, it’s undeniable that editors generally play a central role in their final works.

There’s also no denying that editing is an incredibly valuable skill. Recently I linked an article here, which strongly suggested that Shinkai Makoto’s strength is really his editing skills - though that’s video/animation editing rather than writing.

Editing aside, I’ve thought about the various plots that I’ve entertained over the years about turning into novellas, and I’ve found that they generally just don’t work for me anymore. Many of them were driven by vague sentiments of ‘this will be popular’ or ‘this is cool’ but that’s just too weak of a motivation for me to embark or anything worthwhile or serious. Cliche as it may sound - and it should, because I’m now taking my cues from Eromanga Sensei - the story I want to write is the story only I can write.

I suppose it’s egocentric, but maybe egocentricity is an undeniable part of myself that I’ve little choice but to embrace at this point. I want to write a story that screams to the world who I am, what I love, what I abhor, what I think, how I feel ... and however well or badly it does, it was only ever what it could be. It’s not just about writing a story that’s genuine though - no, it goes much further than that. I want to write a story that reflects the experiences I’ve had, that frankly no one else will or should care about otherwise.

The problem with the ‘self-insert’ story was never that the reader could empathise with the protagonist to the point where he felt he could take his place. The problem was always that these stories tended to have particularly useless or questionable goals. I think that humans tend to generally have particularly useless or questionable goals, but the narrative of life flows quite differently from stories, and thankfully deposits us elsewhere.

[wickedfighting]

Something overdue

Before my list gets any more unbearable:

ACCA 13-ku Kansatsu-ka

7/10

ACCA brings little that is new to the table outside of cool shoujo-style visuals. The concept, if generalized more broadly, could have been promising – a previously unified state balkanized into 13 Districts that are culturally and ethnically heterogenous struggling for peace and power. It could have been a political thriller but they chose to go for the relatively mundane personal drama element instead – and didn’t even do it well.

Sweetness and Lightning

7.5/10

In the wake of his wife’s death, a father struggles between work and raising his daughter. Specifically, he needs to learn how to cook. While most of the episodes are really recipe guides mixed in with his daughter’s antics, fans of the … ‘single parent genre’ will like it? While nowhere near as strong as Usagi Drop I imagine the more emotional aspects will hit people hard.

Eromanga Sensei

9/10

I liked this show quite a fair bit, and I say this with only the tiniest amount of irony. While Eromanga Sensei inspired the ‘This show is trash and so am I’ meme, I do think many of its ironic fans just do the anime a real disservice. Its plot is admittedly an absolute light novel cliché, but in many ways so is my favourite anime (Oregairu Zoku). An anime is the sum of its parts, and its other parts are excellent. The OP and ED alone are excellent – ClariS’ ひとりごと (because of course ClariS would sing this OP) and TrySail’s adrenaline!!! are catchy as fuck. The unsubtle attempts to sexualize the characters, especially Sagiri are, well, a lesson in character animation, and I mean it literally: they brought in a key animator just to make Sagiri cute. And clearly it worked, because I’m sure they’re a huge part in why the show is such a big hit – because the animation is just so good. And in that penultimate episode, the cameo of the OreImo characters literally took my breath away. OreImo wasn’t a great anime by any means, but it meant so much to see those characters again just because the author owns the copyright for both series. If all that wasn’t enough, Eromanga Sensei is at its heart a romantic comedy, and the comedy is hilarious, thanks largely to three things: top-notch voice acting, fantastic character animation and timing, and an irreverent attitude regarding sexual propriety.

Eromanga Sensei flags a little in the second half where the story doesn’t feel quite as tight or forthcoming with new developments, but more importantly some people just really don’t like the idea of sexualising extremely young fictional characters. If these aren’t barriers to you though, I’d highly recommend it.

Fune wo Amu

7.5/10

Fune wo Amu is a fairly disappointing series, because it felt like it had a lot of potential but didn’t quite live up to it. The series follows a newly appointed dictionary editor in his attempts to create a new dictionary, which will literally be his life’s work. Fortunately or otherwise, the anime really is another character drama – but compares unfavourably against a series like Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu (which I will be reviewing later).

Kastel, in his review of Fune wo Amu (albeit the novel, rather than the anime) notes that if one is looking for some deep exploration of ‘words’ or ‘dictionary’ and the relationship between them, one would be sorely disappointed, and I sort of agree. He disparages also the character drama, and that’s where I would have to disagree slightly. Maybe it’s because the anime chose to diverge from the novel, but the character drama wasn’t all that bad. It was realistic – just not very deep or exciting.

Gabriel Dropout

7.5/10

Another slice-of-life by Doga Kobo. I actually sort of regret not watching this series during the Twitch partnership with Crunchyroll – it just feels like that sort of show which is nothing great on its own, but pretty amazing to watch with an irreverent crowd. The Twitch memes did not disappoint, especially the House Blend meme.

I would recommend this if you really like slice-of-life, but not otherwise.

Getsuyoubi no Tawawa

???/10

The most fascinating thing about Getsuyoubi no Tawawa has got to be its title. I’ve struggled for a long time as to how to translate it, but it’s just … impossible. Getsuyoubi is easy enough – it means ‘Monday’. But Tawawa means ‘drooping, bending’ (of a branch heavily laden with fruit, etc.)

If this confuses you, allow me to explain: Getsuyoubi no Tawawa began as a series of illustrations by an artist called Strangestone featuring girls with giant boobs. He would upload these on Monday, because people go back to work/school on Monday and it would be a pretty shit day otherwise (in his opinion at least). Someone somewhere somehow thought it would be a good idea to make this into an anime. If you still haven’t guessed, ‘Tawawa’ refers to their chest which is so enormous it droops and bounces like a ‘branch heavily laden with fruit’ …

So how would you translate it? ‘Bouncing Boobs Monday’ is probably the most accurate representation of the series, but ‘Tawawa’ is a lot subtler than that. ‘The Fruit of Monday’ is probably better, and though it doesn’t capture ‘Tawawa’ properly it really was a doomed effort to start with.

If it surprises and shocks you that such trash exists, there is some solace in the fact that each episode’s content is only two or three minutes anyway.

Girlish Number

7/10

Girlish Number was always doomed to failure. With Wataru Watari unwilling or unable to finish the Oregairu Volume 12, fans were always going to be making the comparison with Oregairu, and moan about how unfavourably Girlish Number comes off, and how WW should just stop fucking around and concentrate on his magnum opus.

Well the fans aren’t wrong. Girlish Number is even weaker than Oregairu’s first season – though I must note that Bobduh is quite the fan of the series, stating that the anime’s strength is in highlighting concerns of working professionals whose work is more of the ‘freelance’ nature, such as writers, actors, musicians, and so on. Personally, I get what Girlish Number is trying to say, and that what it’s saying is worthwhile, but it takes way too long to get around to saying it and the character suffered from mundane execution.

Haikyuu!! Karasuno High School vs. Shiratorizawa Academy

9.5/10

The series is as the title describes. Haikyuu!! continues to be the best sports anime there is.

Hibike! Euphonium S2

9 – 9.5/10

I won’t lie and say that I fully understand this anime. Between the complexity of the novel’s character drama and the intricate character animation from KyoAni, there is a world of subtle detail that I can’t possibly comment on without at least a second viewing, which I plan to do someday for quite a few KyoAni works (I rewatched the entirety of Hyouka a while back).

What I can say is this: some people think that the Hibike! series is better than Oregairu – and they might well be right. And if that isn’t the highest praise I don’t know what is.

Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls

7/10

I still abhor the plot of Idolm@ster. In many ways, I still can’t understand how they managed to make the job of being an idol that boring. I feel like even I could do a better job at writing a plot.

To make things worse, Megumi Kouno’s work isn’t quite as strong in Cinderella Girls compared to the first series. Idolm@ster’s strength was always the fact that it refrained from using CGI to animate its dance sequences, which are nothing short of a visual masterpiece. But Megumi Kouno was an essential part of making the dances look great, and I must confess her work this time felt like it fell short.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

8/10

At its heart Jojo is a pretty formulaic anime. While Diamond is Unbreakable wasn’t as bad and boring as Stardust Crusaders, I think it’s pretty revealing that my favourite Jojo series is still the first. I’ve little confidence at this point that the series will get better over time.

Keijo!!!!!!!!

8/10

This anime was exactly as stupid and as entertaining as I expected it to be. Bonus points for the absolutely inspired translation decisions, like ‘Shoryuucans’ and the like.

Knights of Sidonia

9.5/10

I’m certain that Knights of Sidonia is the best space opera I’ve seen. It has incredibly realistic sci-fi elements – my favourite example is how simply turning the mothership causes huge internal damage because of the additional G-force that the artificial gravity is just unable to handle. The central plot is a war effort shrouded in mystery of both a political and biological nature, and contains the usual dramatic elements of love, death and betrayal, which the story executes realistically and powerfully.

To top things off, the OP is an uplifting call-to-arms reminiscent of Shingeki no Kyojin and Muv Luv Alternative’s own. This series is nothing less than a must-watch.

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon

9/10

People unfamiliar with the manga might have gone into the series thinking it was going to be some incredibly well-animated light-hearted family comedy. They would be largely right. But what makes Maid Dragon special – besides the fact that KyoAni is animating it – is its willingness to tackle heavy existential issues, such as the transience of life of our loved ones, and the loneliness of existence. Maid Dragon’s solution is by no means novel – the series advocates living in the moment and appreciating what we have, but it features marvellous character acting and despite being a dragon Tohru’s concerns come off as relatable so I think it succeeded really well at being a meaningfully heart-warming yet funny series.

K-ON!

8/10

The impact of K-ON! can’t really be overstated. Hardly any anime fan can believe that K-ON! was made in 2009, but it was. As Yamada’s breakout directorial work, I think K-ON! really launched KyoAni into the spotlight as the studio for top notch animation. Sure, the studio has had hits before like Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, but the attention was always on the memes (like the Hare Hare Yukai dance) as well as the story/light novel itself. But K-ON! featured not just marvellous directing, but subtle and detailed character animation which was unimaginable for most television series in that period.

With all that being said, I didn’t enjoy it that much. Maybe it’s because I just couldn’t really relate to the characters, most importantly Yui. I also found it pretty boring and it was a real struggle to finish it. There aren’t many series that I understand are objectively great without liking them, but this is certainly one of them.

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2

8/10

Season 2 wasn’t as funny as the first. I’m not sure if it’s because the jokes are no longer as fresh, or if the writing got worse, but I suspect it’s the former.

Koutetsujou no Kabaneri

7/10

A Shingeki no Kyojin with a much shittier plot.

Kuzu no Honkai

7.5/10

Great visuals and an absolutely lovely OP/ED. The plot was much less inspired, but it wasn’t bad. If you want an angsty fuckfest (yeah the characters keep sleeping around) where almost everyone experiences an inordinate amount of self-loathing and suffers from a general inability to make the best choices for themselves, this is the one for you.

Love Lab

8.5/10

Megumi Kouno puts her character animation talents on full display in this greatly entertaining comedy. Absolutely recommended for anyone who just wants something light-hearted and funny.

Masamune-kun no Revenge

6.5/10

The character designs by Tiv are literally the only thing the series has going for it. It’s occasionally funny at the start when the protagonist enjoys the fruits of his handsomeness a little too much, but it’s not enough to elevate the series above trash.

Mayoiga

7.5/10

Mayoiga is a comedic mystery – two genres that at first glance, really don’t go well together. Bobduh actually really likes this series, stating that Mayoiga is a masterclass in self-aware and multi-layered comedy. I wouldn’t go so far, but I think it’s safe to say that Mayoiga is indeed pretty hilarious and entertaining. It’s a show with a really shitty plot, but Mayoiga exhibits enough self-awareness to know that.

Mob Psycho

8/10

Mob Psycho’s undeniable strength lies in its avant garde animation. Everyone can agree that it’s super cool and an absolute must-watch for anyone interested in sakuga (key frame animation), and the characters are interesting but the plot turns out to be average at best. I definitely enjoyed the series, but it isn’t the second coming or anything.

New Game!

9/10

New Game! just made me really happy. While it’s no Shirobako, New Game! still features endlessly cute and funny characters and the working life of a game developer. Absolutely recommended if you love slice-of-life.

Orange

2/10

I’ve reviewed this before, but here is my quick summary: like stepping in dogshit, but worse.

Qualidea Code

3/10

Watari Wataru teams up with two other writers worse than he is to write an anime even worse than Girlish Number. A-1 Pictures chips in too, by giving it absolutely crap animation. This show has no redeeming value whatsoever – I literally only watched it because Wataru Watari was involved.

Quan Zhi Gao Shou

8/10

Quan Zhi Gao Shou is a Chinese anime. It’s produced by a Chinese studio, features Chinese voice actors, and is set in China. And it’s pretty great. Although the plot worried me a little at the start – out of the fear that our main character might turn out to be another Gary Stu, my concerns were alleviated by the story’s execution. Not only is the protagonist given a good reason to be that good (he was a top player, now stripped of his account and seeking to regain former glory), but he’s also reasonably self-deprecating. And he should be, because however great he is in-game, in real life he’s now just a net café worker.

Between the cast of colourful characters, the hilarious Chinese net-slang and surprisingly good CGI animation, Quan Zhi Gao Shou delivers everything you thought it would and more.

Re: Zero

8.5/10

I’ve reviewed this before.

ReLIFE

8.5/10

ReLIFE tells us the story of a newly unemployed salaryman who is given the chance to start over in quite a literal way – he’s given a pill that de-ages him temporarily to his final year in high school. The story could have pandered a lot harder, but I’m really glad it didn’t.

Who was it that lamented that youth is wasted on the young? ReLIFE affirms that it is true, but not all is lost. Most of the show’s charm comes from the fascinating interaction between the (disguised) old and the young.

This is a show that I’m desperately waiting on for a season two.

Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records

4/10

I’m ashamed to say that I watched this.

Sabagebu!

7/10

A slightly below average comedy.

She and Her Cat: Everything Flows

8/10

Since when were cats that well-behaved?

Shokugeki no Souma S2

9.5/10

Everything that made season one great was carried on faithfully in season two. This is one of the best shounen animes out there.

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

10/10

Rakugo – the art of Japanese storytelling – is employed as both medium and message. This rich period drama addresses the interplay between tradition, a fading cultural irrelevance, brotherhood, romantic love, artistic pursuit, and the masculine/feminine. The genius of Rakugo Shinjuu is compounded by the fact that this story told in retrospect, so, basically, like rakugo itself …

It goes without saying that the writing and character animation was top notch. Of special note would be the director, who is actually pretty famous amongst those in-the-know, and proves that the studio isn’t always determinative of the quality of anime.

Excluding Kimi no na Wa, this was likely the best anime of 2016.

Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka Isogashii desu ka Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka

7.5/10

This anime made me feel quite nostalgic for Zero no Tsukaima, not only because the plot struck me as rather similar, but also because the character animation seemed … a bit dated. It wasn’t bad, but the rather bland colour palette reminded me of a time long past.

Many are deeply fond of this anime and shed tears over its ending, but it just didn’t work for me. The attempts at characterization were there but, for me at least, they didn’t seem to go beyond the mundane. Combined with an almost frustratingly slow plot, to say nothing of it being incomplete (though it ends on a strong note, I’ll give it that), and I’m afraid I have to say this anime while not bad, was not excellent. If I were newer to anime I might be more forgiving and far more likely to be moved, but alongside the greats SukaSuka just doesn’t measure up.

I’m tempted to blame Satelight – a rather weak studio. If it was studio feel. or A-1 Pictures’ A-team, I’m sure they could have done the series much more justice. It could have been the hit of the season, but sadly it was not to be. This does not detract from the featured songs in the series though – ‘always in my heart’ and ‘Scarborough Fair’ are incredibly powerful and worth a listen on their own.

Shuumatsu no Izetta

7.5/10

This anime got a bit Orange-esque when they started to advance the plot through characters making completely irrational and bad decisions, but on the whole the series was exciting, even moving. Similar to SukaSuka, it might be great for some but not for me.

Youjo Senki

8/10

If-Mitch-McConnell-woke-up-one-day-as-a-magical-loli-in-Nazi Germany-the-anime

Yuri on Ice

9/10

From the brilliant sound design to the breath-taking choreography, Yuri on Ice is homosexual fun for the whole family. Also, an incredibly cosmopolitan anime – probably the most cosmopolitan I’ve ever seen.

Yuru Yuri S2

5/10

More boring than the first season.

OVAs:

GIRLS und PANZER der FILM OVA

9/10

This series is just endless fun.

Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru. Zoku OVA

10/10

Who doesn’t want to see Iroha go on a date with Hachiman?

Kyoukai no Kanata 00 OVA

8/10

I don’t think I’m being especially generous to Kyoukai no Kanata. I don’t think it’s a weak KyoAni work at all. It’s beautiful, it has a decent plot, its character designs are fantastic, and its ‘filler episode’ is literally the best filler episode I’ve ever watched. Sure it’s no Hibike Euphonium or Hyouka, but I wouldn’t bat an eye if you said it was in KyoAni’s top five works.

[wickedfighting]

Two: Skadden and London

My internship started less than a week following the end of my final paper. The packing up and moving out was a really hectic business I’ll definitely not miss again next year. If it wasn’t for Oskar’s physical help there was a good chance I would have had to throw away half my belongings. John’s policy on summer storage needs some serious re-evaluation. And one of the porters should have been fired years ago.

I can’t actually talk that much about my internship. The exact details of what I worked on are obviously confidential. Neither do I think it’s wise to describe the firm in detail. But I can say that the internship was helpful, I learned a fair bit and got quite a good idea as to what my seats (Corporate, and Litigation & Arbitration) involved.

But legal matters aside, I also learned that longer commutes are actually totally fine as long as you read on the train. And that living alone for work in London must feel like absolute shit. Also, never rent an AirBnB that looks sketchy again, regardless of how good the location is.

After my internship I had a few days in London to tour around. I never knew that Greenwich was actually in London, nor that matinee tickets were that cheap. Watching Wicked was such a good idea - though I very nearly missed the start by going to the wrong Apollo Theatre ... who knew there were two of them?!

I’m not actually sure why I tried so hard to tour London given that I plan to live there in the near future. Probably has to do with my AirBnB being pretty shit and depressing to stay in for most of the day.

[wickedfighting]

One: Tripos

It doesn’t feel good to leave such a large backlog. Since I’ve nothing better to do anyway, I might as well start clearing it.

Now that I think properly about it, there’s not much to complain about Tripos specifically per se. Yeah, I did alright by most metrics. I still got a First, and getting a higher one wouldn’t have changed my position on the room ballot. I didn’t get a Wright Prize but neither do most people who get Firsts in College. It feels wrong to complain about it in some ways, especially when I consider that people like Andrea got a 2:1 despite being so close to a First, and for frankly unbelievable (and probably unreasonable) reasons.

But it would be a lie to say that whenever I think of my results, I feel anything but a strong sense of dissatisfaction. I didn’t barely clear the criteria to get a First, but for two of my papers especially - Contract and Administrative Law - I felt, based on what I wrote in the exam itself, deserved a much higher score. It’s not so much the fact that I ranked 21st that pisses me off, but the fact that the marks on the papers are wildly off what I thought they would be. Not only do I feel shortchanged, but I’m worried that there’s something about the very paper’s content that I still fail to understand. Or Tripos’ marking itself. Neither prospect is a particularly happy one.

The Law Tripos might not be entirely valueless in assessing a candidate’s ability to recall information and play a little guessing game with the examiner as to what they really want under timed conditions. But that’s faint and damning praise for an examination that a cohort pours hundreds of thousands of hours into, and an examination that has the capacity to grant or crush hopes and dreams. The policy of no physical marking on our papers is a rather perverse way of protecting examiners from the Freedom of Information Act, and comes at very real cost of allowing candidates to understand exactly what went wrong, and giving them a sense of closure.

Cambridge has forsaken continuous assessment in favour of a final exam at the end of every year which decides everything. So be it. Would it then be too much to ask that the final exam didn’t feel like an absolute fucking crapshoot?

[wickedfighting]

mitsuhaaa

There’s not a person alive who can read this: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2017/07/28/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-production-notes/ and not watch the film