My favourite Katawa Shoujo.

It’s very rare for the collective response to an anime as widely viewed as Guilty Crown to be so unified and even rarer when that response skews so strongly to the negative, but that’s where we are after 15 episodes. Right from its debut the show was compared incessantly with Code Geass, propelled by a similar setting and premise and the fact that the two shows share the brains of the writing crew. Those comparisons died down a bit when the differences became clear and very quickly it was apparent that Guilty Crown simply wasn’t going to be anywhere near as fun, let alone as good as Code Geass. The question of what makes Code Geass more entertaining than Guilty Crown has been considered, but generally quickly dismissed with references to Lelouch’s naturally magnetic leadership. I think it’s worth considering at a (slightly) deeper level. (Major spoilers for both titles within.)

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Copyright © 2012 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Guilty Crown

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When the Noitamina time-slot started back in 2005, its intention was to be a place where unconventional, “unusual” anime could air. Starting with Honey and Clover (these days considered a masterpiece by a not-insignificant number of fans), Noitamina’s ambition to showcase anime that reached beyond the typical demographics targeted by most anime has been a worthy one that, despite some up-and-downs, it generally made a good fist of achieving. While Noitamina’s expansion to a two-series slot has only been recent, when we get two shows that seem to be unremarkable genre pieces, it stands out.

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Copyright © 2011 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai, C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control, Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Fractale, Guilty Crown, Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica, Mawaru PenguinDrum, No. 6, Steins;Gate, Un-Go

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One of my favourite Japanese movies is a film by former comedian, now actor/director, Kitano Takeshi, entitled Hana-bi. Hana-bi is a gritty, minimalist cop drama about a broken down detective who takes revenge on the yakuza while his wife dies from leukemia. Hana-bi is, in my opinion, the best of Kitano’s minimalist crime dramas that he made in the ’90s, and the difference in tone between them and the manzai comedy he did at the beginning of his career, when he performed with the stage name “Beat Takeshi”, is the size of a chasm. I find Kitano an absolutely fascinating and creative human being: many of the ideas in Hana-bi‘s script were inspired by a near fatal motorcycle accident Kitano was involved in, and his subsequent rehabilitation. In his career, he’s done slapstick comedy, morose yakuza thrillers, sex comedies, sword fighting historical set pieces, romance fantasies, coming-of-age stories, cop movies, etc. The range in incredible. He once said in an interview that he never wants to be pigeonholed. I daresay he’s on track. (This post contains major spoilers for the tagged titles.)

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Copyright © 2011 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Claymore, Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Hana-bi, Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni

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When omo, writing for his site Omonomono, gave his final impression of Angel Beats, he talked about seeing it fall under its own weight, and likened it to what a “failed” attempt to make ef – a tale of memories might look like. It got me thinking about the concept of ambition in anime, and the role it plays in the creative process. I’ve spent much of my time online in the post-Angel Beats week defending my ultimately positive impression of the series. Several bloggers have come to the conclusion that Angel Beats is a poorly executed work (which I won’t disagree with) that needed more episodes (this I’m not so convinced about). In one of the rare instances, this is a case where I think, to oversimplify to the point of being insulting, it needed less stuff… ie, less substance. But, more important than anything else, it needed direction. (Above image found on moe.imouto, NSFW.)

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Angel Beats!, Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, ef -a tale of memories, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi

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Like I mentioned earlier, I (sadly) have more than a passing interest in these types of awards. The 2008 Tokyo Anime Fair Awards were just announced to, as far as I can see, reasonable disinterest. I can see the logic behind the choices behind these awards, even if I don’t particularly agree with all of them (in all honesty, I surprisingly haven’t seen most of the winners, so it’s hard for me to have an opinion either way). But as Kaioshin Sama from When Anime Past Meets Present puts it, if you don’t like the results of a given set of awards, why not make your own. But it’s not like I’m taking his advice (I’m starting to sound like a tsundere now), I’ve been playing with this idea for months.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Aria The Animation, Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Detroit Metal City, ef -a tale of memories, Kaiba, Kaiji, Kannagi, Kara no Kyoukai, KimiKiss pure rouge, Kurenai, Mouryou no Hako, Natsume Yuujinchou, Nodame Cantabile, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Shigofumi, Spicy Wolf, true tears, Yakushiji Ryouko no Kaiki Jikenbo - Ryoko’s Case File

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Not even the art is all that good.

An exaggerated, sensational post title? Yes. I don’t really think Tytania is crap, but I do think after fifteen episodes, it’s been a major disappointment. There was a lot of hype around this title because it’s source came from the original creator of the almost universally acclaimed Legend of the Galactic Heroes. To echo and paraphrase something Shadowmage said (when and where, I can’t remember), everyone who’s seen it says Legend of the Galactic Heroes is epic, and when I have fifty hours to spare, I intend to find out if they’re right. The 110 OVAs that comprise LotGH is an intimidating prospect to face, and a lot of people, myself included, saw Tytania as a chance to test the waters and get a general flavour of Tanaka Yoshiki‘s writing before committing to the anime adaptation of his more renowned behemoth. Unfortunately, that flavour was bland, dull and, at times, occasionally silly. This post contains minor to moderate spoilers for Tytania up to ep 15.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Tytania

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I’ll admit it, I do have more than just a passing interest in these types of awards. Obviously one affords as much credibility to a set of awards like these as one agrees with the results, and it always surprises me just how much people RAGE when they don’t, c.f. SaiMoe and its multiple incarnations. Then again, there’s more emotions involved in SaiMoe than there are in these.

This year’s list of nominations is a little more “credible” than last year’s, where, for whatever reason, titles like 5cm/s and Baccano! were snubbed in categories that they could have possibly won had they made it past the nomination round. There are a few titles here and there that I would have liked to have seen given nods, but for the most part they’ve captured the likely winners, which isn’t an all-too-easy thing to do in something that’s determined by an open popular vote. Anyway, this post is an attempt to predict the winners, which is much more challenging than just telling you who I think should win (but I’ll tell you that too ). Particularly with the AnimeSuki Forums, which is a real mix of varying tastes. I haven’t done any counting of the current votes, but I have flipped through the thread, so I have a (highly) vague idea of what people have been voting for at this stage.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 23 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Allison to Lillia, AnimeSuki Choice Awards, Aria The Animation, BAMBOO BLADE, Clannad, Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Detroit Metal City, ef -a tale of memories, Gundam (all), Itazura na Kiss, Kaiba, Kaiji, Kannagi, Kanokon, Kara no Kyoukai, Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de, KimiKiss pure rouge, Kurenai, Macross Frontier, Mnemosyune Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi, Mouryou no Hako, Natsume Yuujinchou, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rosario + Vampire, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Shigofumi, Shion no Oh, Spicy Wolf, Strike Witches, To Love-Ru, true tears, Tsubasa Chronicle, Zero no Tsukaima

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We touched on it a bit in our Year in Review article, but 2008 did have a lot of sequels and 2009 so far seems to be following that trend. Is it more sequels than usual? Well, I haven’t bothered sorting through the data, but it sure feels that way. The difference between last year and years before isn’t so much that there have been a crapload of second seasons, but that these second seasons have cropped up in places where one wouldn’t initially expect them, and there have also been a rise in prominence of third seasons. We’re currently into a third season of Minami-ke and a fourth season of Marimite. Last year we had a third season of Zero no Tsukaima and the third season of ARIA. Later this year we’ll have a third season of Nodame Cantabile. I’m not going to bother with the question “has there been more sequels of late” because I’m not prepared to do the number crunching to answer that question… at this point in time anyway. My question is, is the proliferation of sequels a good or bad thing for anime as medium for creative storytelling.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Aria The Animation, Clannad, Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, ef -a tale of memories, Full Metal Panic, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Minami-ke, Nodame Cantabile, Zero no Tsukaima

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This post is basically a reply to a response to a comment I made on a blog post on When Anime Past Meets Present. Kaoishin Sama (whose reputation precedes him) basically made a troll post that I fell for (as he put it) “hook, line and sinker”. We, I guess, share a lengthy history and my own response towards his writings seems to fluctuate, at times resembling a sense of indifferent bemusement to, more recently, a vexing disdain, which, ironically, is pretty much how it started out. Kaoishin Sama has a reputation as Sunrise‘s rottweiler, and has always been a major player in the petty genre/studio wars that have plagued fandom, and seemingly reached their height during the airing of Code Geass R2, which is coincidentally about when his discourse was at its most intolerable. Everyone, according to Kaoishin Sama, seemed to be against him, and he continually maintained that the show had no major flaws, damn what anyone else has to say. Fine. I know what I’ve seen, and he knows what he’s seen. It’s one’s own right to hold onto their opinion. There were extremes on either side of the spectrum of reactions to Code Geass R2, he sat towards the pro- side, while I was more towards the middle. But when he began second guessing the opinions of those who disagreed with him, culminating in a post which strongly suggested that people who thought Code Geass R2 wasn’t well written were trolls (ironically, this post has now been password protected, so I can’t hotlink it), that’s pretty much the point where I decided he lost his credibility as an anime writer.

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Copyright © 2008 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Koi Kaze, Minami-ke, Mushishi, Natsume Yuujinchou, Now and Then Here and There

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Here at The Nihon Review, we’re all civil enough to have the occasional respectful disagreement on anime (although it doesn’t actually happen all that often, arguably to do with the fact that the site possibly attracts like-minded people). Just yesterday we uploaded a review written by Kavik Ryx in which he panned Gasaraki, one of my personal favourite mecha anime. But, that’s fine, we’re both entitled to different opinions and he justified his in his review, which is all that’s necessary in a good review. In this business, we have opinions, we express them and then we either try to justify why we think about a given title in a certain way, or explain our reactions. But I’m not going to point out exactly why I have a difference of opinion over Gasaraki with Kavik Ryx in this post. Instead, I’m going to point out two recent reviews that are little less incongruous with my own views, but I still slightly disagree with. This post has spoilers, but it almost goes without saying on this blog…

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Copyright © 2008 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto

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