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silverthunder) wrote2006-11-28 10:11 am
silverthunder) wrote2006-11-28 10:11 am
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So, even though I'm insanely busy and don't have time for lots of stuff, I've managed to squeeze in time for anime. Mostly at work when there's no one else here, on YouTube.
I took a couple of recommendations from Cody to expand my anime viewing experience. Normally I prefer shounen or shoujo anime, with a couple of gothic series here and there. I also like wistful stories, moderate humor, and romance. I'll go with the occasional harem anime as long as it's one girl and lots of boys (yes, I'm a little one-sided in my choice of fanservice). I don't generally like them as a rule, though, and pretty well tend to hate them when it's one boy and lots of girls. It's an unreasoning prejudice of mine. For this reason, I avoid most hentai and ecchi series because they're usually aimed at guys, and guys like the idea of the many beautiful girls with one man to enjoy it. I particularly avoid them if they were made out of an adult game designed for men.
Recently, though, I watched not one but TWO series made from adult games designed for men. They were short series, so I watched all the way through. And this is what I thought.
Kimi ga Nozumo Eien
Brief summary: Girl likes Boy. Girl's Best Friend, who is more outgoing than Girl, makes friends with Boy so that Girl can get closer to him. Girl asks Boy out, and they form a tentative but meaningful relationship. Best Friend decides she likes Boy too. She makes Boy late for a date with Girl, and as a result, Girl is hit by an out-of-control car and put into a hospital. Three years later, Boy is dating Best Friend. They are considering moving in together, despite the many issues in their relationship which was initially formed for comfort reasons. Girl wakes up, and does not realize it has been three years. Tragedy ensues.
Despite the fact that the female characters outnumber the male in this series, it is not a harem - nor is it a comedy. This is a serious drama about the problems in the relationships between the characters. The best friend, Mitsuki, is uncertain about her boyfriend's true feelings and consequently gets defensive about her relationship, often becoming downright irrational (although that's pretty understandable). Takayuki, the boy in question, tends towards indecisive and has obviously not completely recovered from his emotional scars that came out of the accident, when he had a near-total breakdown. And Haruka, the girl in the hospital, is probably the most stable of them all despite being professed to have a delicate psyche. The characters make completely understandable mistakes that lead them deeper into tragedy. There is much angst and you feel very sorry for everybody. It's obvious that both of Takayuki's relationships with the girls have serious and possibly irrecoverable flaws, but the characters push on in their search for connections.
I wouldn't call this series genius, but it was very good. I would never watch it again, because it depressed me so much I cried for an hour one night before I could fall asleep. I didn't care for Mitsuki, but that's more of a prejudice than anything, because I'd never forgive her if she was my best friend and did that to me. Her motives are completely understandable - I just can't get over that feeling.
One of the things I felt could've been given more attention was the friendship between the two girls, which was obviously lost and could never have been recovered. There wasn't much focus put on that aspect of the show, which I think is a shame, because I thought it was one of the saddest things about the situation.
Other than that, the show was very well done. Like I said, I'll never watch it again, though. Too much tragedy for me.
Green Green
Brief summary: Man and Woman fall in love. For some reason, they can't be together. They vow to be reborn and get married. Flash forward hundreds of years (or maybe just two or three, who knows). An all-boys school out in the wilderness is considering becoming co-ed. The all-girls school which will potentially merge with them is bringing a bus full of girls for a month-long trial integration. There are three very perverted boys and a normal boy who is nothing special but looks good by comparison to the others. And lots of pretty girls. Oh, yeah, and something to do with that plot about the Man and Woman who were reborn. Right.
Okay. I watched this series because the boys vs girls aspect appealed to me, and I thought it might be interesting. There were some okay and occasionally humorous parts, but a lot of it was the same old, same old when it comes to ecchi anime. The characters were all thinly developed, the humor and the fanservice tried to carry the story, and the sad little background plot which probably could've been interesting in a better show got about a tenth of the attention it needed.
I had a short discussion with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
insaneneko about why harem anime is unappealing to me and to a lot of other people, and we kind of agreed that a major factor was the fact that since the main character's affections are generally split between a whole bunch of different girls, it really cheapens the romance. I prefer to see singular passion between two people who gradually grow to care deeply about each other. Here, the main character really only had two girls (the rest being the focus of his perverted friends), but that was made up for with bad plot pacing and piss-poor characterization. If I was a boy, or if it were a bunch of hot guys instead of girls, I'd probably care less. But as it was, I didn't like this series.
The fact that in the OAV (which was a full-out hentai, btw), the main character has sex with one girl and then confesses his love to another and hops in the sack with her less than 24 hours later really nailed the lid on the coffin for Green Green in my opinion.
I don't think I'll be watching any more of these types of series any time in the near future. They're just not for me.
I took a couple of recommendations from Cody to expand my anime viewing experience. Normally I prefer shounen or shoujo anime, with a couple of gothic series here and there. I also like wistful stories, moderate humor, and romance. I'll go with the occasional harem anime as long as it's one girl and lots of boys (yes, I'm a little one-sided in my choice of fanservice). I don't generally like them as a rule, though, and pretty well tend to hate them when it's one boy and lots of girls. It's an unreasoning prejudice of mine. For this reason, I avoid most hentai and ecchi series because they're usually aimed at guys, and guys like the idea of the many beautiful girls with one man to enjoy it. I particularly avoid them if they were made out of an adult game designed for men.
Recently, though, I watched not one but TWO series made from adult games designed for men. They were short series, so I watched all the way through. And this is what I thought.
Kimi ga Nozumo Eien
Brief summary: Girl likes Boy. Girl's Best Friend, who is more outgoing than Girl, makes friends with Boy so that Girl can get closer to him. Girl asks Boy out, and they form a tentative but meaningful relationship. Best Friend decides she likes Boy too. She makes Boy late for a date with Girl, and as a result, Girl is hit by an out-of-control car and put into a hospital. Three years later, Boy is dating Best Friend. They are considering moving in together, despite the many issues in their relationship which was initially formed for comfort reasons. Girl wakes up, and does not realize it has been three years. Tragedy ensues.
Despite the fact that the female characters outnumber the male in this series, it is not a harem - nor is it a comedy. This is a serious drama about the problems in the relationships between the characters. The best friend, Mitsuki, is uncertain about her boyfriend's true feelings and consequently gets defensive about her relationship, often becoming downright irrational (although that's pretty understandable). Takayuki, the boy in question, tends towards indecisive and has obviously not completely recovered from his emotional scars that came out of the accident, when he had a near-total breakdown. And Haruka, the girl in the hospital, is probably the most stable of them all despite being professed to have a delicate psyche. The characters make completely understandable mistakes that lead them deeper into tragedy. There is much angst and you feel very sorry for everybody. It's obvious that both of Takayuki's relationships with the girls have serious and possibly irrecoverable flaws, but the characters push on in their search for connections.
I wouldn't call this series genius, but it was very good. I would never watch it again, because it depressed me so much I cried for an hour one night before I could fall asleep. I didn't care for Mitsuki, but that's more of a prejudice than anything, because I'd never forgive her if she was my best friend and did that to me. Her motives are completely understandable - I just can't get over that feeling.
One of the things I felt could've been given more attention was the friendship between the two girls, which was obviously lost and could never have been recovered. There wasn't much focus put on that aspect of the show, which I think is a shame, because I thought it was one of the saddest things about the situation.
Other than that, the show was very well done. Like I said, I'll never watch it again, though. Too much tragedy for me.
Green Green
Brief summary: Man and Woman fall in love. For some reason, they can't be together. They vow to be reborn and get married. Flash forward hundreds of years (or maybe just two or three, who knows). An all-boys school out in the wilderness is considering becoming co-ed. The all-girls school which will potentially merge with them is bringing a bus full of girls for a month-long trial integration. There are three very perverted boys and a normal boy who is nothing special but looks good by comparison to the others. And lots of pretty girls. Oh, yeah, and something to do with that plot about the Man and Woman who were reborn. Right.
Okay. I watched this series because the boys vs girls aspect appealed to me, and I thought it might be interesting. There were some okay and occasionally humorous parts, but a lot of it was the same old, same old when it comes to ecchi anime. The characters were all thinly developed, the humor and the fanservice tried to carry the story, and the sad little background plot which probably could've been interesting in a better show got about a tenth of the attention it needed.
I had a short discussion with
insaneneko about why harem anime is unappealing to me and to a lot of other people, and we kind of agreed that a major factor was the fact that since the main character's affections are generally split between a whole bunch of different girls, it really cheapens the romance. I prefer to see singular passion between two people who gradually grow to care deeply about each other. Here, the main character really only had two girls (the rest being the focus of his perverted friends), but that was made up for with bad plot pacing and piss-poor characterization. If I was a boy, or if it were a bunch of hot guys instead of girls, I'd probably care less. But as it was, I didn't like this series.The fact that in the OAV (which was a full-out hentai, btw), the main character has sex with one girl and then confesses his love to another and hops in the sack with her less than 24 hours later really nailed the lid on the coffin for Green Green in my opinion.
I don't think I'll be watching any more of these types of series any time in the near future. They're just not for me.