Welcome to th :| (Anime, Mother Series, Touhou, Game Dev)
The Standing Committee for the Coordination of Simultaneous Anime Viewing (SCCSAV) was a gathering of friends from all around the world to watch anime together. It was started primarily by @vuc_ and exploded over the past year. Because of all the fun times we’ve had together, I choose SCCSAV as my most memorable anime moment of 2011.
Continue reading ‘[12 days] Day 12: SCCSAV – My “other” anime club.’
A year ago, I wrote about the Tamayura OVA, wishing for a longer series. Our wishes were granted with Tamayura ~hitotose~, with most of the staff and even most of the voice actors from ARIA working on the new Fall 2011 anime. Tamayura joins the prestigious ranks of my ARIA and Sketchbook ~full colors~ as top tier iyashikei anime.
Continue reading ‘[12 days] Day 11: Tamayura ~hitotose~ is ARIA’s successor’
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a four episode OVA that we watched with the SCCSAV Iyashikei Viewing group. A lot like ARIA, it’s devoid of a central plot line.
What stands out the most about YKK is the unique world that the characters live in. Post-apocalyptic settings are typically ones of despair and a struggle to survive. In YKK, despite the ecological disaster that has wiped out most of the world, life continues peacefully. Alpha is a robot who runs a small cafe and there are little stories like meeting another robot from a neighboring town and taking a long trip far away from home. All of it is surrounded by a peaceful, easy lifestyle of everyone we meet.
It’s sad that YKK was only a four episode OVA. I read through the manga a few years back, and through all the 140 chapters, we really got to know the characters. The two kids especially who make a brief appearance in the OVA are characters that we see grow up throughout the many years that elapse in the manga.
One wish I have for the future is that we’ll get a complete length YKK anime. It’s a world I would really love to visit again.
Ka---- Mi---- Chu~!
Early this year, we had just launched Iyashikei Mondays with SCCSAV. We had been watching Sketchbook ~Full Colors~ and ARIA the Animation when @vuc_ joined us and suggested that we watched Kamichu!. I have to thank him for introducing it to us, because it was something I missed back when it was airing in 2005 and I really loved it.
Continue reading ‘[12 days] Day 9: A girl becomes a god and life goes on.’
In the spirit of Steam sales... (Source)
I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started watching Idolm@ster. All I knew about it was that it was ridiculously popular as a game and the music was great. In my usual manner of “Hey, this looks cute, let’s check it out,” I dove right in. Oh yeah. This post contains spoilers.
Continue reading ‘[12 days] Day 8: Idolm@ster is just a lot of fun and Chihaya is the best idol.’
Nekogami Yaoyorozu was an anime that flew under the radar for most. It was airing at the same time as Steins;Gate and Nichijou, so it’s not surprising that it didn’t get as much attention as it deserved. What attracted me to it was that this was an adaptation of an original manga by FLIPFLOPs, the Touhou doujin artist that I wrote about earlier this month.
Continue reading ‘[12 Days] Day 7: Nekogami Yaoyorozu needs more love.’
The whole post-a-week thing for Kino fell through, so here’s my end of the series retrospective.
We watched Kino no Tabi as part of the first group on SCCSAV that I started that didn’t spawn out of Iyashikei Mondays. I’m going to do a full post with my experiences with the SCCSAV group since that was one of the highlights of my year, but for now let’s focus on Kino no Tabi.
Kino no Tabi is a highly episodic series that follows the journey of Kino and her talking motorcycle Hermes. Each episode was an exciting visit to a new location. It excels at taking things that we’re familiar with in our lives and putting a strange otherworldly twist on them. A few examples come to mind. Episode 8 is called “The Land of Wizards” is an uplifting story where Kino helps a girl to build a flying machine against the opposition of the townspeople who believe that she’s better off doing something more productive. Episode 5 contains the story about what happens when mob rule is allowed to run amok, resulting in everyone in the country being killed over disagreements until there’s only one person left. Episode 12 is probably the most memorable. In every episode leading up to this point, Kino has demonstrated that her skills with her guns can get her out of any situation, but in this episode she’s can’t do anything as she watches two countries carry out a genocidal action. Kino no Tabi invoked every emotion from happiness and a longing for adventure to fear and hopelessness.
By telling stories filled with the entire spectrum of emotions of the human experience, Kino no Tabi succeeds in capturing its central message:
The world is not beautiful; and that, in a way, lends it a sort of beauty
Last Exile’s first series was something that I watched and thought was kind of neat because it was the first anime that I watched that had a huge focus on airships. I’ve been enjoying Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing which started airing this Fall. I’m still not sure how I feel about the shift away from the large-scale airship battles that made the first season so much fun to watch, but I think having the story center on Fam makes it seem like she’s a more important and influential player in the grand story. Claus and Lavie seemed to me to be small compared to all that was going on around them.
Also Dio is definitely the best character in the series. He’s got a certain air of mystery and fun around him. But that’s not what I want to talk about today…
Continue reading ‘[12 days] Day 4: We need more things with airships.’
This post is kind of something I’ve been wanting to write during the Fall but never got around to sitting down and doing it.
It was… 2005-ish when I got into Touhou. My first exposure to the world in a serious manner was through the doujin “Spring of the Residents of a Touhou Town” by FLIPFLOPs. I’ve since observed, especially now that it’s been over five years since I discovered Touhou, that this is one of those things where my first impression of the world colors how I continue to view it. FLIPFLOPs is one of my favorite doujin circles, and during this year I finally got around to catching up on their entire works for Touhou. I want to explore the two of the many faces of Gensokyo through two of the doujins that FLIPFLOPs has made. The first is “Spring of the Residents of a Touhou Town” and the second is “Two Scarlet Sacrements Under the Starry Sky”.
This post marks the start of our Kino no Tabi viewing, an event that I’m organizing through SCCSAV. Details for the event are over in the SCCSAV Page. Kino no Tabi follows Kino, a traveler, as she goes through various cities and stays for three days to observe their culture. Throughout the course of the story, a central theme is explored: The world is not beautiful, therefore it is. What is good in the world is only seen in contrast to the darker moments of Kino’s adventure.
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