Seasonal Recaps – Part 1 « The Silent Room

Seasonal Recaps – Part 1

October 30th, 2007

Throughout the previous Winter, Spring and Summer anime seasons, I have somehow managed to retain significant amounts of sanity and a good grip on reality by feeding on a healthy dose of anime every week. Art courses, extravagant as it may sound with all of its grandeur, is actually quite stressful – especially when your hours of labor and large sums of money go down the drain because a lecturer said your horrid excuse for an artwork reminded him of his pet goat which gave him fantastic blowjobs every Tuesday nights.

Now that the results are out and I was relieved to see that I didn’t have to redo any of the courses from last trimester, I can breathe a sigh of relief and continue talking freely about anime once more. After a [not so] lengthy review of some well-known classic titles, it’s time for me to recap some of the better shows from the last few kurs. Once again, since there’ll be quite a number of titles, this might take more than one blog post :D

Naruto Shippuuden
For all its shonen crap’s worth, I gotta admit – I love watching Naruto. I just don’t go around recommending it to people. Still, I have quite a lot of things to say about this show.

I kinda gave up watching Naruto after the 1024th filler arc [that lump you see inside my cheek is actually my tongue]. I did something better – I read the scanlated manga, only to realize that Kreko, a local manga magazine that has been translating and compiling various manga series into weekly publications [a la Shonen JUMP], is WAYYYYYY ahead of the scanlations floating around the ‘Net. I read through one of the volumes a couple of months back, and I found that the translations were brilliantly done. Unlike other previous tankobon translations here in Malaysia, where the translations to Malay were done using Chinese scripts from HK editions, Kreko makes translations directly from Japanese to Malay [or so I'd like to believe].

Still, I only read until a certain arc of the manga, and I decided to stop because evidently, Kishimoto-sensei had laid out a great story for this piece of work, and I resisted the urge to spoil myself. I came to learn quite a lot of things from following the scanlated manga for a couple of weeks, but then I figured that I’d rather take my time and leisurely enjoy the rest of story through its anime incarnation in Naruto Shippuuden – which came pretty damn late, I must say.

Not only did it came late, some episodes featured CRAP animation. Not lazy animations… CRAP ASS PUKE SHITTY animations [Ep.24 comes to mind]. Still, I noticed that the animations have an odd tendency to become exceptionally good at important plot points [go watch Ep. 27 for example].

One thing, I noticed, has greatly improved. Naruto used to have background music laced with rock themes riddled with classical Japanese instruments. In Shippuuden, however, I’m surprised to hear epic orchestral music scores thundering behind the battles, a pleasant shift – or perhaps a growth?

No matter how it looks like on TV nowadays, Naruto, being Naruto, is still a pretty impressive cashcow. Those who know the deal, they will know. Those who don’t can just kick back and enjoy the show.

Lovely Complex
Remember I said how much I seriously LOVE Osaka? The girl, not the place. Ever since AzuDai, the Kansai-ben dialect has always taken a special seat in my heart. My knowledge of spoken Japanese is limited to simple daily conversations, but it helps to emphasize the entertainment value of Japanese language jokes. Especially more so when a character speaks in dialects.

It’s like how only a Malay can truly get lost in a furious fit of laughter when someone tells a ridiculous joke in thick Kelantanese accent.

Lovely Complex radiates this effect, to a certain extent, because almost all the characters speak in Kansai dialect. The real humor is when the characters get into a fuss and bicker and throw hissy fits that all the dialect suddenly amplifies the humor value by at least twice its original value.

On a side note, LoveCon is one of those stories that are easy to follow and can easily entertain you. In fact, it almost feels like watching Honey and Clover, albeit with extra amounts of humour and a lot less drama. This probably stems from the fact that it’s not much of a stranger in the high-school romance genre, whereas HnC is more towards adult romance.

LoveCon, I think, stands at a unique position if I’m going to recommend it. If you’re new to anime, I would suggest you to watch something else first. You know, so you can get familiar with Kansai-ben and be able to tell it apart from standard Japanese. If you’re well past that stage however, and can instantly catch a phrase like “nanishitoru” by ear, then LoveCon is a must watch. It’ll leave you clutching your stomach at the end of every episode.

Claymore
I think it was almost 2 years ago [I think] when I started to appreciate the vocal talent behind anime. I started to pay attention to voices and I found myself recognizing the voices and putting names to them. After a while, I developed a strong sense of respect for certain seiyuu [voice actor/actress], having done a little bit of vocal work myself [hitz.fm GameMaster, anybody?].

One of the earliest seiyuu I admired was Kuwashima Houko, after learning that she played two distinctively different characters in Gundam SEED. Like many talented seiyuu, Kuwashima has the uncanny ability to perform a wide range of voices ranging from bold, stoic women like Lt. Badgiruel to pompous pampered princesses like Fllay Allster to a childlike psychopath assassin like Stellar. Of course, her talents have been in more than just the Gundam SEED line, but I’m just naming some obvious examples here – showcases of her talent.

In Claymore, she played a Clare, quiet, brooding warrior who goes around killing monsters by swinging a giant sword around. But I don’t wanna just talk about Kuwashima, because Claymore also featured a brilliant cast of other vocal talents, including a familiar colleague of Kuwashima’s – Kotono Mitsuishi. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, think Murrue Ramius [Gundam SEED] and Katsuragi Misato [Evangelion]. Like Kuwashima, Mitsuishi also played a warrior with a rather downcast and much more serious nature compared to the bright personalities of two roles I mentioned earlier.

I shall disregard whatever the fans have to say about how the story in the anime version got butchered because I kinda realised that after some point, Claymore ended up just like any other shonen anime – it’s going down a path similar to the one that Bleach went on.

The awakening/half-awakening powers sickeningly resembles the yawn-inducing bankai attacks. I got tired after having seeing enough of it. It falls back to that general flow where the protagonist can only beat the arch-nemesis by being faster, stronger AND smarter. No matter what plot twists the story has to offer, there isn’t much left that would convince me if Claymore would turn out any better than a typical shonen anime.

Still, I decided to give Claymore a little bit of credit for lots of pretty animation (less speed lines please, kthxbai) and smooth story, but more than anything, it was brilliantly produced with a wonderful line of vocal talents, and that is something that doesn’t happen very often. I can recommend it if you’re looking for something fun to watch but I would have you expect nothing more than that; just plain old shonen fun. I shall be looking forward to what they’re gonna cook up for Season 2.