June 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Arakawa Under The Bridge and hiding from the "real...
Akiyuki Shinbou’s latest project, Arakawa Under The Bridge, has nearly drawn to a close, with its thirteenth and final episode airing next week. The show has so far, in true Shinbou style, played its thematic ideas close to the chest, slowly building up characters and grand ideas via his trademark comedic pacing and eccentric visual delivery. In episode 12, we see the most explicit...
5 tags
Tatami Galaxy's haunting ending theme
Mr. Avisch at The Fool wrote a great article on Tatami Galaxy a couple weeks back, ending with a note about the ending theme, calling it “haunting” and “morose” and noting how its mood seems to conflict with the tone of the series itself. That had me thinking a bit more about the song than I usually think about ending themes when I noticed that the strange, conflicting...
5 tags
B Gata H Kei and the appeal of incompetence
Episode 10 of B Gata H Kei was uncharacteristically fast-paced, given the tone the last few episodes have set. It hearkened back to the frantic pacing of the first episode, in more ways than one.
In particular, the final scene of the episode brought with it the culmination of a subtle secondary idea the show has been building up to in Kanejou. From her first appearance at the school festival, and...
4 tags
The enigmatic intentions of Ichiban Ushiro no...
Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou was, I think, this season’s biggest long shot - though it teased viewers from the beginning with the groundwork of a brilliant dramatic premise, the first handful of episodes seemed to ground it firmly as a harem anime, while the ED did its best convincing us that that was the intent. Despite this, between episodes 05 and 10 the show has certainly cemented its...
5 tags
Affection and inauthenticity in The Tatami Galaxy
2DT mentioned at the end of a great post on Tatami Galaxy a couple weeks back that he noticed some similarities between Tatami’s Akashi and Bakemonogatari’s Senjougahara. This made a few things click for me, as I hadn’t yet been able to get a grasp on what fascinated me so about Akashi.
The clearest and most obvious comparison is, as 2DT noted, their...
