I guess the show finally found a good use for Ayase. And no, it’s not “resident yandere”.
Ayase, along with Manami, is one of the few characters in Oreimo who isn’t an otaku. While Manami treats the subject of otaku hobbies with a polite air of “they’re weird, but I guess it’s just not for me”, Ayase is outright disgusted at them. She’s the contrarian, the unbeliever in this show.
Labor: a robot specifically designed for construction work. Labors allow dramatic advances in construction, but also in crime. To combat these new Labor crimes, the police created a special unit: The Patrol Labor. And thus, the birth of the Patlabor.
What’s Patlabor?
It’s a multi-media franchise consisting of anime, manga, and games in the late 80s and early 90s. By far, the anime is the most visible and popular facet of it, spanning a couple of movies, OVAs, and a 47-episode TV series. It was conceived by a core group of creators called Headgear, composed of people like Mamoru Oshii and Yutaka Izubuchi.
It’s about the misadventures of a police Labor unit called the SV2 (Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2). They tend to be surprisingly competent at their job, except for the odd city block they have to wreck to get it done. Depending on the show you’re watching, it’s a comedy, action, mystery, or a combination of all three. There’s a lot to love, and we’ll get to that.
There are many things to write about Sasami-san@Ganbaranai. But I don’t have the mindset, the acumen, or the background to tackle the more salient parts of it, especially the Shintoist bits and stuff. You could read omo’s posts on it, though!
But to me, Sasami-san is unique in its way of hooking me in from start to finish every week. Even the ED. I skip through most EDs, because they’re not much–the OP is where the money usually goes–but not this one.
I had gone into Hen Zemi expecting lewd otaku commentary and nothing else. I got a lot more, surprisingly.
Hen Zemi is the story of a normal university student, Nanako, who enrolls in an “Abnormal Physiology Seminar” because of a crush on one of its students, Komugi. It turns out that the seminar is a playground for people with demented sexual fetishes who are generally screwed in the head. While the main content of the show is devoted to discuss and illustrate the weird squicky things that people get off on, Hen Zemi devotes a surprising amount of depth to its characters.
It’s easy to write the characters off as walking fetish machines or mouthpieces. But the rest of the characters (remember, Nanako has to be normal because she’s the viewpoint character) are more than that. If anything, the relationships between them are nuanced and adult in a manner that befits their age as university students.
In my opinion, the biggest reason why Girls und Panzer was such a hit is that because it’s fun. You can feel how much fun the staff had with making the show. I realize that this is quite difficult to back up. But look at how well the show was written, or how it respected its characters enough to make them believable and relatable, or the tankery matches. They did not certainly skimp on either side of the coin, girls or panzers. They love their girls and tanks a lot, and they made sure the audience could feel it, too.
Initial D as an anime has changed a lot since its first season. It’s made the switch from cel to digital animation, updated its character designs with every Stage, and most importantly, mature as a sports anime.
There are two distinct parts in Initial D.
If the first OP of Magi is about setting off on an adventure, then the second OP is about basking in the wonders of the world you’ve charted.
