You know, I said in my Umineko post that I’d be blogging Bakemonogatari… but its second episode was so underwhelming that I’ve nearly lost interest… I mean, the awesome OP was gone and instead we have a random J-Pop song about staplers, the entire first half of that episode was filled with pointless fanservice and the eventual conclusion was just… shallow. Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes. Hitagi’s story was so easily solved that they needed to waste the entire first half with Hitagi getting dressed and embarrassing that lead character. I’m not sure whether I want to cover this series every week. I’m still going to watch it, and it still can become very enjoyable, but at the moment it just feels like an inferior version of Shikabane Hime, and I’m just going to casually enjoy it instead of having to blog about it every week.
For now I’m just going to continue with a story that I’m much more certain of that it will turn out awesome: Aoi Hana. It’s really been ages since I’ve seen a good yuri-series. Its only flaw at the moment is its so called “everyone is lesbian” syndrome, but that’s just a first impression I got from it, and there are plenty of episodes to fix this one. What really stands out in this episode is the colourful characters. There are lots of emotions and creative yet realistic situations that can really get the best out of the characters, and take a look at that director: Kenichi Kasai, the director of the first seasons of Nodame Cantabile and Honey and Clover (yeah, yeah: some day I will watch that one). Sure, he also did Major and Kimikiss, but with the supposedly excellent source material, I see little that he can do wrong.
What I’m expecting of Aoi Hana is that it’s going to continue being such an excellent character-study, on top of the shoujo ai. The characters all feel like they’re living their own life, and they’re already incredibly colourful. The Noise time-slot has a limited amount of episodes, and this show will probably like Ristorante Paradiso only last for eleven episodes, and in that time-span it’s going to have to be able to pull off some believable character-development and make at least Fumi and Akira a couple of well-rounded characters.
This episode was mostly about the new clubs that the two of them joined: Akira went for the drama club (it would be nice if we could see her perform in the end. Stage performances in anime have always rocked), while Fumi whimsically entered the basketball club because its captain impressed her. Her running away from her past relationship with Chizu has been influencing her nearly non-stop, from trying to stay around other strong people, to simply hiding from Chizu herself as much as possible.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Subtle and charming episode. Aoi Hana definitely is among the top shows of the Summer Season.
I don’t think bakemonogatari is anything like shikabane hime. I don’t even understand how you can compare the two.
The only thing they’ve had in common so far is shinto creed. What you’re saying is pretty much that a car and a bicycle is the same thing just because they both got wheels.
The first 10 minutes wasn’t really just about fanservice either. It was a funny and quirky conversation where you got to learn about of how Senjougahara thinks and acts. This is also starkly contrasted later in the end of the episode when she gets her body weight and “feelings” back and apologizes to Araragi for how she acted before.
I can’t really argue with there being fanservice there, but it’s done in a pretty classy way with some funny and interesting dialogue thrown in. The visuals in this show are pretty damn good to.
well,glad to see you (finally) talk about Kenichi Kasai,since he’s one of J.C. Staff’s best director (the other one is Tatsuo Sato – Cat Soup,Stellvia,and Nadesico)
I’m one of his fellow fans,actually…Honey and Clover is an amazing series,with one of the best male lead character ever.
Sad to hear you didn’t like the second episode of Bakemonogatari, but aegd posting makes me hope that I will.
Aegd, how are you liking the overarching story? I haven’t seen the second episode yet, but with psgels complaining about the story (and a sub for the second episode probably not happening any time soon), I’m a little worried.
Aegd: true. Shikabane Hime was the first thing that came to my mind, but there indeed are lots of differences. The thing with this episode for me is, that while the two of them indeed got to know each other better… they just feel flat and I didn’t really like how such deep wounds as rape attempts and having survived such a cult were solved so seemingly easy as in this episode.
Bakemonogatari: Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes
Maybe it was this i sensed when i watched Bakemonogatari’s first episode. It’s a fancy colored box with nohing inside.
Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig
@ Solaris: You should read the discussion we had on “old anime being better than new anime” in the shoutbox a couple of days ago.
“Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig”
Lol @ this being applied to Bakemonogatari, NisiOisin isn’t considered the god of light novels for nothing.
@Tealovertoma. The shoubox is something like a chat and it doens’t keep track forever.
I remember joining that discussion as well with a couple shouts myself.
We’d rather need a forum to keep track of the discussion by topic.
@westlo.
I judge for what i watch to. Anime and novel are related only by topic. One could be utter crap while the other could be plain art.
My first impression on Bakemonogatari anime was negative, as they wanted to keep our interest with that flashing graphics, but that there wasn’t that much of a story to begin with.
The full discussion is still there though, just click “[older messages]”
Solaris: nah. Bakemonogatari may be one example of a soulless series (which if we were to believe Westlo, doesn’t even seem to be true), but there are plenty of series with a soul this season (Aoi Hana, GA, Umineko, Tokyo Magnitude, Spice and Wolf and Umi Monogatari, not to mention the series from previous seasons).
I agree that the seventies and eighties had some wonderful series, but even those days had their share of disasters, which in most cases were even worse than the crap we see today. Glass Mask, for example, was a really bad series, and there are probably plenty more of those series back then.
Well, anime has always been a media for the crowd. Anime production surely grew up since 60’s both in graphic quality and in number of products. It eventually became well known worldwide too. Now after 50 years of anime we are reaching saturation. Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately? Maybe is just a matter of quantity. We have little formats for anime and a huge amount of products now. We have too many products that resemble each other. We’re loosing originality. Soeone just told this before: now it’s no more a matter of creating new stories, but how well you can manage to tell them and how good you let them appear. So, focus is being biased from contenent to appearance. So it’s no more the matter of telling a story that it looks so generic, like in bakemonogatari. The matter is to capture the audience with good graphics, or moe char or whatever mean, but good storytelling. That’s the real issue.
With “the amount of bad series has increased”, do you mean the total amount of bad series produced each year, or the amount of bad series in relation to the amount of good series? There are of course more bad series out there than twenty years ago, simply because much more anime are produced these days. Today however, there are still plenty of series with good storytelling IMO, also with a bigger quantity.
The main appeal of Bakemonogatari is the dialogue and conversations between characters which is never wasted… which is what you expect from light novels.. Hardly something I would classify as a pretty anime with no substance.
“Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately?”
I’ll tell you why, can you name another show that aired in the same season as Evangelion did? You’ve had the best titles cherry picked from the 80-90’s without seeing the amount of crap that aired during the same time.
It’s pointless to say “Anime was consistently better back in the day” when you don’t even know the majority of shit that aired back than.
Here’s a list of what aired in 95
http://www.animenfo.com/animebyyear.php?pagenumber=1&action=Go&perpage=30&year=1995
Don’t tell me that’s better than 2006 or 2007 or you’re overdosing on nostaglia. Eva and GITS Movie are the only real notable shows from that year. Majority of 95 ranges from mediocre to crap if you look at it without rose tinted glasses.
I’m not saying that I like the old show better. but i do agree with solaris to some extent, almost everything get animeted now, the standard sure is low.
Psgels i didn’t say that. I just say the amount of series overall increased, thus implied the bad series also increased. The question is, did the proportion between good and bad remained stable or not? I think it decreased a lot. That is to say you will find more bad series nowadays with respect to the good ones.
Westlo, if we take that is the real amount of anime produced in that whole year 1995, then notice that that’s average the number of series nowadays produced in a single season.
The question is, are there many more good series now with respect to back then? I think we have less, but luckily that’s my IMHO ;).
Of course whan we speak of good and bad we should make clear what we intend for. “good” is such a subjective matter. But this would generate another full thread, so let us it be by now.
I watched anime since 70’s. I could tell you a lot of what happened back then. The situation of 80’s was very interesting, as it resembled what it’s happening today. Back then the most popular format were Big Robots anime stile (not mecha) and magical girls show. After 10 years they exploited such genres there were a big lack of new ideas. So with the start of the new decade they searched new ideas and format to make anime. The market succeeded in renewing itself back them. New genres were made and the anime “maturity” also evolved. As anime public grew, there was the need of much mature series. It wasn’t anymore just a matter of kids show. Series like Sailor Moon or Evangelion also renewed the old magical girl and robot formats. Lodoss introduced western fantasy style and Tenchi Muyo invented the new harem genre. Now also these formats are coming to exaustion. Will the anime market be able to create new contents genres and stories in the future? From what i see now, the market is closing itself to those genres that are still popular and they know it will sell. There isn’t search for newa, just to wrap up something with a good container and sell that.
That last paragraph is interesting, but at the time of the invention of these new genres, there also was a lot of bad stuff going on. Based on my impressions, if you look at 1995 the ratio of good to bad shows is about 11:27. Based on the same standard, the ratio of good to bad shows of the past spring season is for me 19:17, which is much higher. So I don’t agree that today’s anime lacks sould.
However, if you meant to say that today’s anime lacks originality, then okay, I can see more in that. The only series that really attempted to go beyond genres of the past spring season was Marie&Gali (Eden of the East, though impressive, was just another mystery-series in the end, although it did try). 1995 had Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, the beginning of CG, Memories and in a way also the Ping Pong Club (raunchiest fanservice ever in a TV-series at least) and Romeo’s Blue Skies (combining WMT with action). I agree that today’s anime should be more experimental, and daring to try out new stuff, but that’s not the same as today’s anime having lost its soul.
Okay, I created a post on the matter, continue your discussion there:
http://psgels.net/2009/07/11/anime-nowadays-is-at-a-standstill-true-or-not/
“Lodoss introduced western fantasy style and Tenchi Muyo invented the new harem genre. Now also these formats are coming to exaustion.”
I think you are wrong as far as “western fantasy” is concerned. A majority of the series produced are more like J-RPG’s. The only exceptions I can think of are Berserk, Lodoss Wars and Guin Saga. They are more like western fantasy, but they are still orginally written/drawn by Japanese and even if the style is somewhat western inspired it’s still far from classic fantasy like the works of Tad Williams, George R.R martin, Raymond e fiest, J.R.R Tolkien… among others.
In bakemonogatari the characters are the story. The story is about average people, the supernatural events parallel their lives in someoneway. I mean its not suppose to be taken in as a an anime with some deep supernatural plot or over dramaticized characters. Its the dialogue that makes the show, and how they discuss the events surrounding them. I suggest you give it another shot because its now moving into the next arc which introduce some interesting characters. In the next arc you learn why the main character is such a nice guy, its not for the sake of it but because of a psychological complex that he has developed. Hitagi also becomes fleshed out and deeper to the point that she eventually *spoilers* lets hers guard down and establish a sane relationship with another person. Their dysfunctions are fully explored and then its revealed how they complement each other. I would say the characters later on are not so stereotypical but rather complement the next mystery arcs that follow. I think the fanservice in the beginning might have been a way for Hitagi to show her scars from the surgery to koyomi.
Finally I get to be on-topic: what a great episode! This anime’s so gonna be up there with other great romance anime! It’s subtle and the characters are lovely. Props for the soundtrack too, very nice. I actually wouldn’t mind if this turns out to be 26 episodes.
At the risk of sounding cranky, I do regret the slightly irritating voice of Aa-chan. Perhaps it will improve as she grows up?