Eve no Jikan act01: AKIKO is the first in a six part series by Yasuhiro Yoshiura which seems to explore the implications of robots who look and behave exactly like humans - androids - becoming an integral part of society.
Very little can be said without spoiling too much, so I will limit myself to discussion on the execution here. The flow and pacing of the story was excellent. Every scene transitioned well and the characters themselves were full of life and expression. Yasuhiro Yoshiura truly loves his twists at the end, however this time it wasn’t too big a surprise but was exciting nonetheless (Rikuo’s expression was priceless).
Many thanks to pireze for ripping this show from Yahoo’s video stream service and subtitling it!
Major spoilers after the jump:
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In an artificial world colored in faded tones of grays and browns, the past has long been obscured - forgotten even.
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I didn’t catch this until I saw some screen captures, but the music piece in the background here is Beethoven’s Fur Elise.
Figure 1.0: Quite a bit of attention to detail.
I was surprised that they went through the trouble of putting in an actual score, although I guess with the shift to digital rendering of anime, this probably wasn’t too hard.
One thing I’d like to see in this anime is more piano pieces - since they seem to portray Haruka as more or less a virtuoso, I thought we’d get to hear more classical music.
Edit: The scene is from episode 3, around 27 seconds in.
This time I vectored an image from some SnS product (think its a cushion or a mousepad?), so the source was an annoyingly sparse 500×500.
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Fumina Konoe Strikes Back was definitely one of (if not) the best Shana-tans I’ve seen.
Figure 1.0: Shana-tan mulls.
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For some reason I was quite surprised that they mentioned some actual literature in the anime.
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I am not certain as to the stimulus behind the comparisons between two distinct media, and while not even outright (literature spans the full spectrum of creative and uncreative output of humanity so I guess such complete inspection would be unnecessary and tiresome), it is quite true that fiscal impetus is a primary driving force on televised works. Thinking of literature meant primarily to be entertaining (and thus might cater to even the lowest common denominator - which isn’t always the case as my friend touched on in his Honey and Clover article Mike so graciously linked), many cases come up which are, in a way, just as intellectually uninspiring as anime: The Da Vinci Code, many science fiction works, I would like to mention more but it had been too long since I read a non-academic work. In contrast, writing and publishing a book with a very small intended audience is quite possible, however I do not believe that animated shows easily lend themselves to such solitary efforts, Makoto Shinkai being an anomaly - it simply costs too much and distribution used to be a problem. Although with increased computing power (efficiency) and with the internet, anime might see an increase in independent, thought-provoking works whose primary objective is to show something to the audience for the sake of making them think (see Yasuhiro Yoshiura). (more…)
J.C. Staff <3
I thought that the Shinra Banshou ought to be quite convenient, one possibility shown in Figure 1.0 (comic).
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Here’s the second post on the series “Your Anime Sucks“, where I, someone who is unfamiliar with anime, casually share my opinion on a series recommended by Hikago or Eien.
The Twelve Kingdoms is adapted from a series of fantasy novels set in a mythical (and very symmetrical) world that lies on an alternate plane of existence somewhere west of Japan. This world is evenly divided into twelve kingdoms and is closely watched by its creators. The ruler of each kingdom is chosen by twelve holy unicorns (Yes. I said unicorns…), and the ruler rules the kingdom by the will of the heavens.
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This will be the first post of a new series titled ‘Your Anime Sucks’ where I will critique an anime that I just happened to have seen from Hikago’s collection. Sounds just like millions of other blogs out there? Well, here’s the twist - I’m not actually a fan of anime. I never watch anime, much less associate myself with them. It also doesn’t help that my impression of anime comes from Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, and Naruto. The only decent series I’ve seen so far is Basilisk (because ninjas are freaking cool), and even that lost a lot of momentum towards the end.
For those who are not familiar with Honey and Clover, it’s about a group of college students, mostly in arts, and how they deal with romance, friendship, and misfortune. It seems like a promising premise with something that actually has something to say, and not, as hikago might put it, cater to the lowest common dominator.
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