Adorable weasels!
GIANT WEASEL GIFS, IN UR INTERNETS, TAKIN' YOUR BANDWIDTHS
Rio Rainbow Gate is great; there’s a weasel in it!
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Category Archives: Animu
I just watched “Aoi Hana” and I have one major gripe
But first some background information.
It’s the day after the New Year so I had all the time in the world to pursue my various recreational interests. I was in a shoujo-ai type of mood today, so I first finished watching Sasameki Koto, which I had began watching again yesterday after stalling on it since I watched the first few episodes when it was initially airing. It was all right. In fact, it was pretty decent.
When I was a little kid and we had two kittens, I always had this fear that I would kill one or both of them by hugging it too hard and breaking its neck or spine or something. You know the feeling: that one where something is cute to the extent that you need to squeeze it harder than you really ought to and its brains come out through the eye sockets, which are empty because the eyes already popped because of the immense pressure caused by the hug? Well, that’s what’s going on with that Kazama Ushio character. The achievement of that effect on the viewer means the art directors, casting people for voice actors, writers and, of course, Takamoto Megumi, the voice actor herself, did a real bang-up job there. Cheers to pushing the envelope on cutesy, huggable characters. Who knows how far we can go?
I did find myself growing bored occasionally. I liked Akemiya the trap though.
So I went ahead and watched Aoi Hana, expecting more or less a similarly structured deal. That is, a yuri harem type of setting with generic high school girl archetypes (i.e. sporty girl, bungaku girl, miko, etc…). That’s more or less what I got, so I have no complaints there.
The problem, and maybe I’m crazy here, is that I thought that the main voice actor who played Manjoume Fumi could not possibly have been a worse fit for the role.
She sounded more like one of those meek, princessy type characters. The tall partner in these yuri deals are supposed to have a much, much deeper and even-toned voice. Everybody knows that. Like Utena. The short one is supposed to be the more timid one. Granted, the Fumi character was hella meek, but she never once appears like a character with such a high and whiny voice. Tall characters are simply not supposed to sound like that.
There have been plenty of successful meek, tall characters who have not had squeaky, whiny voices in anime history. Just look at Sakaki.
Much less do meganekko have voices like that! Every time she spoke I cringed. And not so much because I thought the CV was doing a bad job or anything, it’s just that the voice so completely clashed with the character and the body language assigned to her.
This really ruined my day. Thanks a lot, Mr. Casting Director for stealing away my smile. Now how will I get it back?
It’s perfectly natural to have a crush on a fictional character
…but there’s a very fundamental problem with such one-sided love affairs that never occurred to me before today: unless you’re in love with HAL 9000, there’s a real human voice actor somehow entangled in your sick crush.
I came to the conclusion somewhere around the end of season 1 of Arakawa Under the Bridge that I was, like, majorly in love with P-ko. I’d only seen two shows that I knew of at the time in which Chiaki Omigawa had played a prominent character, P-ko from Arakawa Under the Bridge being one of them and the other being what’s-her-face from Seitokai Yakuindomo. At that point, I didn’t see the conflict, since I don’t go for sporty-types; I mainly like klutzy-types.
But watching Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru forced me to realise a strikingly basic flaw in my thinking; how do I know whether I am in love with the klutzy characters or the voice itself? Or is it a combination of the two factors? I don’t like the idea of being in love with a voice. On the other hand, I don’t have any strong objections to being in love with a fictional character. As I said, that, at least, is perfectly normal.
In order for that to work though, I need to ignore the rather glaring coincidence that the two characters this season whose klutziness continues to prove irresistibly alluring are both played by none other than Chiaki Omigawa.
It’s troubling to think that the voice actor plays any part in this sad inequality, since for all I know, Chiaki Omigawa could be a cannibal, or even worse: not clumsy. To the viewer, she’s just a name and I don’t like the idea of being in love with a living actor.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the coincidence. Maybe she should play some unappealing class representative-type characters soon so that I can prove to myself that it’s the clumsy characters I like, not the actor(s) who play them.
Also, I hit 4.0MB/s upload speed briefly the other day. Fibre optics is great.
The Tale of Genji just got an anime adaption…
01.16.08
I love The Tale of Genji, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t see how it would work as an anime. Half of that entire novel consists of courtesy poems and people avoiding coming into contact with each other. Oh…wait…I guess that’s what most school drama anime are about anyway. To be honest, I’ve forgotten almost everything about the novel. The only important bit that I remember is that Genji dies several hundred pages before the novel ends. Considering the fact that it’s only an 11 episode series, Genji would have to die around episode 9 or so for this to work. That’d be suicide for the series, though. You can’t put the name `Genji` in the title and then force us to follow the lives of his idiot son Yugiri and his cousins or nephews or whoever those guys are who take the spotlight after Genji’s death.
The first episode has actually already aired, apparently. I’m really behind the times these days. Moreover, some fansub groups have picked it up. Still, I haven’t watched it yet. I imagine I will at some point soon, but I don’t see how it will manage to hold my attention without MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF BL RAPE. I mean, that’s the appeal of the novel, right? From the title picture, however, it doesn’t look like the anime adaptation will place much attention on Genji’s shota tendencies, nor will they likely bring up the issue of the wild pot parties that Genji and his cronies always seem to throw:
