Random Curiosity

Remember to do some facial stretching before watching this show, or you’ll pull a cheek muscle from smiling too much.

From some deep, dark corner in the back of jaalin’s mind…

Anime girls are the best. Unlike those found in 3d-land, anime girls were created for the sole purpose of entertaining me – decades in the making, the science of creating an anime girl has been perfected down to the little personality quirks, the glimmer in their eyes, and the nuances in their voice (Aisia lisp, anyone?) I thank these artists from the bottom of my heart, cuz man oh man do they do their job well.

While we still have a few weeks before the summer shows roll around, I thought I’d take this time to backtrack on some of the spring shows that might have gone under the radar, or just plain ignored by us at Random Curiosity. If you’re not already watching them, I’m hoping I can convince you to at least give the first episode a chance – the spring season had quite an extensive list and it would be a shame to let these shows slip by.

So Euphie finally proved to everyone she’s no Lacus clone, Light-o got his evil eye back, Chiaki got every woman in the audience fantasizing about his baton, and psychokaede hit her limit break and came one “USO DA” short of psychorena status. Not to mention Mayumi went full-blown Haruhi on a school…of fish. Sure, a lot of stuff happened these past two weeks, but it’s not doing it for me anymore. You know when you’re at a theme park on one of the less popular rollercoaster rides with no line, after the ride is over you ask the operator if you can just sit there and go again, rather than getting off, walking all the way around through the banisters, just to get back in the same seat? It’s kinda like that with the current season…it had its high points and low points, but now that it’s coming to an end, I don’t want to get back out and wait for it to start again – the next ride needs to start already!

So, thanks to Omni once again, we have an extensive list of the wannabes, the gonnabes, and the otherwise uninspired anime of the new season. So, which one is which? In yet another pointless and drunkenly conceived FreezeFrame, here’s my extremely biased and borderline prejudiced preview of the Spring shows that will surely dominate my life for the next several months.

Hitohira http://www.hitohira.tv/ Premieres March 28th, 2007 A girl with self-confidence issues and chronic stage fright…in the drama club. Fans of the perpetual blush need look no further. At first glance, this show looks like crap, but that’s what I thought La Corda would be, and that actually turned out to be quite effective at igniting the shoujo flames that burn strong within me. She even looks like she could be Hino’s younger sister…moeee Odds I’ll never tell anybody I enjoyed this: Good

sola http://www.sola-project.com/ Premieres April 6th, 2007 Well, it definitely looks promising, but so did a certain other show that seemed mainly focused on animating the wind blowing through long wavy blonde hair. Lucky that the characters in sola have rather small chins. As long as this doesn’t turn into some girl showcasing shampoo commercial and sticks to a solid storyline with good pacing, I think this show may turn out to be a dark horse for one of the best anime of the season. Odds of me flaming this (multiple times): Good

I think it’s a total waste of ability and resources.

FALSE SPOILER ALERT: Experts (me) speculate that somewhere around episode 137, Lelouch will mistakenly attempt to re-Geass Orange-kun, resulting in a prompt bullet to the head.

Ever crave something, then get exactly what you wanted?

No music. No zoom-in slow-motion replay. Sometimes, the unbiased reality is more painful than any dramatic interpretation. In what could have been a recording from a security camera, we’re exposed to a brutal scene in which the mother we’ve come to love as our own is plowed over by two tons of drunken SUV, with nothing but a smashed strawberry cake as a final punch line.

My heart is in pieces, laying somewhere between the shards of windshield and makeshift Smucker’s. Kind of gives a new meaning to “Akiko Jam,” doesn’t it?

If you’re like me, you waited the whole year for the NBA All Star Weekend to come around – and while Friday and Saturday’s festivities were quite entertaining, were left a bit disappointed at the actual All Star game. There were moments – just a few brief moments – of excitement, but otherwise, the pace and excitement fell back as quickly as it had picked up. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, no problem, you didn’t miss anything besides LeBron embarrass himself with a failed off-the-backboard dunk attempt.

Anyways, I was bored to the point where I started thinking about the all stars in the current anime season. Yeah, the game was that bad.

Four years ago, I was into stuff like the South Park, Futurama, maybe some Friends and Seinfeld once in a while. Sure, I knew about anime – I grew up watching Ranma and Kimagure Orange Road - but if you told me that four years later I’d be speaking Japanese and saying stuff like “fight-o! da yo” or “sonna koto iu hito kirai desu!” I’d probably think you’re crazy and go back to watching Yu-Gi-Oh reruns on the WB.

Ara ara, how people change.

I’ve always liked Shrek for its approach on the “family movie” genre – Shrek seemed to be the first major piece of American animation that had elements catering exclusively to the PG-13 and up crowd. Say what you will about Aladdin and his phallus-palace, but Shrek was the first to have no qualms about dishing out the adult jokes. Similarly, Japanese anime studios are very keen on their audiences – as far as the past-midnight shows go, it’s not a concern of age group, but rather one of… “moe preference.”

Since Manabi Straight is an anime about grade-schoolers, that means it’s a kid’s show, right?

Heh.

And so OtoBoku ended without much fanfare – nothing really happened besides a dance and some more blushed sighs of ecstasy – but it was consistently entertaining to the point that it left me satisfied, ending up in my “burn” pile rather than a reluctant trip to the recycle bin. As one that’s seen his fair share of hgame based animes, I knew I wasn’t in for much, but c’mon! It was the dazzling debut of the ultimate trap character! Couldn’t there have been some spectacular wardrobe malfunction in front of the whole school? Couldn’t Takako have abused her position of power to get…something extra? Since they’ve already contrived this crazy scenario with some estrogen-enhanced athletically-gifted academically-superior Pantene commercial-worthy guy reaching the upper echelon of an elite girl’s school worthy of Lobelia’s ranks (whew), why not take it all the way instead of just settling back into another typical sappy romance blushfest? Well, it didn’t turn out all that bad so I won’t complain – luckily we have another show to shift our focus to, one with no qualms about finishing what they started.