As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Out of the onslaught of moe comedies this season, Seitokai no Ichizon definitely stands out as the best and funniest. Nevertheless, I see no potential in blogging it weekly.
– Kuroko’s lesbian siscon fantasies in Railgun were just painful to watch. Even Index was better than this!
– For a while I thought that it would be fun to blog Blacksmith, with Manglobe behind the animation and an excellent soundtrack and all. But in the end, it’s just too much generic fantasy in which a band of teenagers has to go face an evil army of demons and evil adults. I want series that take risks instead of playing it as safe as possible.
Which brings us to White Album: love it or hate it, but you can’t deny that it was one of the most unique romance and eroge adaptations of the past years. While it has moe, it never tries to present the characters as such. Instead, it wants the viewer to hate its characters. Not through crappy scriptwriting as in School Days, but instead because of the characters’ actions, while still keeping a very solid script.
I mean, when you ignore the melodrama, the writing and direction is incredibly solid. The dialogue is meaningful and deep, the drama is often incredibly subtle and the creators really have an eye for detail. Just take a look at how Touya played with the condensation on the windows, or how incredibly well animated Mana was when she met Haruka on her bike. Choosing a generic fantasy like Blacksmith, in which the characters all act like caricatures and wounds magically disappear, over this one would just not sit right.
I really expect that this is going to be my hate/love series of this season, but I’d much rather have this series to rage over, rather than some badly written and lazy show that just feels stereotypical. I think the biggest problem with the first season was that it left an incredibly bad taste: it solved absolutely nothing, even for a show that’s supposed to be continued. Is it bad? No. Did it cause me to hate this series for six months? Yes.
As I watched this episode though, I was reminded more and more of why I started blogging this series in the first place. FINALLY Touya and Yuki get the chance to talk to each other for a good while, and it’s completely the opposite of the stereotypical way that I expected. They just hang out, albeit a bit uncomfortably with Yayoi being near, and then they say goodbye again.
2009 has been an excellent year for romance, so I might as well see and check out how this unique series is going to play out.
Rating: * (Good)
I think I’ll wait for your final review of the second season to consider whether to watch it.
The first season was a painful experience for me.
still hoping for a school days ending!
The underwear business in Railgun ep2 was rather cringeworthy, but it’s not a bad show
I gave up on White Album for really too many reasons to list. It was pure torture and incredibly frustrating. Blacksmith seems to have lost it’s energy from last week. It was a terribly slow episode but I’m hoping things will improve. Fully expect it to be a generic fantasy but that’s OK if done well.