Loose Odds and Ends
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Edit: Thanks for all the messages of support – it really means a lot to me.
In the comments of Jaalin’s Queen’s Blade post, a number of people were wondering how the other channels would censor the show since AT-X was going to be the only one airing the uncensored version. Well, the first episode aired on Chiba TV today, and the answer is that they made good use of cropping, bright glow, and fog, as you can see in the images above. A poster on 2chan even made some comparison images (NSFW). It was kind of amusing just to see how much censoring had to be done for this show, but I can’t say I’m surprised. To answer my own question though, I guess the series still has a very strong voice cast, and if you can’t watch the uncensored version on AT-X, then this might be better than nothing. As for me, I could care less about the plot or the nudity, but what I am curious about is what the absolute limit that AT-X will let them show is. I suspect that it might be even more hentai-ish than just what was in the first episode given how the promo videos had tentacle monsters.
Here’s a cool video Patrik just showed me: Pre-Parade as done in Kinetic Typography. Some of you may remember that this guy did a video in the same style about two months ago for Suzumiya Haruhi’s introduction monologue, and this is even more impressive than that. Kinetic Typography, and YouTube videos depicting stuff done this way, have been around for a while, but it’s still great to see it being applied to an anime context and done in such a cool way.
Those of you who have been following WHITE ALBUM and have been reading my weekly writeups probably know that I haven’t been the biggest fan of the show – partly because of its style, but largely because I don’t care for most of the cast of characters. You may also have heard the announcement that WHITE ALBUM is going to be two seasons long, with the second half airing this fall. Many people saw this news and felt better about the series because it seemed to explain the deliberate pacing, and it meant that they probably weren’t going to rush an ending. For someone like myself, however, whose interest level in the show has dropped as it went on, instead of it being “Well there’s only a few more episodes, I can stick with it for that long just to see the ending,” I’m now faced with 16 more episodes of a series I’m not particularly excited about or even fond of. So I decided there wasn’t any point in me continuing with it and that my time was better spent elsewhere (like catching up with Rideback). My apologies to anyone who was following those posts and does enjoy the show – I hate dropping series, but I just can’t motivate myself to continue with this one.
On this day of Barack Obama’s inauguration (I had to stop myself from titling this post “State of the Union”), here are some notes on myself and the series I’m blogging:
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Just a few meta items to mention before I go to bed:
Image at left courtesy of ,on pixiv (account needed to access). |
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If you are watching or are planning on watching the J-drama Zettai Kareshi, be sure to bring a big box of tissues for the finale. In fact, even though I knew pretty much exactly what was going to happen in the end thanks to having read the manga, I still cried when I watched it. It’s a testament to how much emotion was in the finale and how much you connect with the characters after having followed their stories for so long (which I realize you can say for a lot of series, but it was especially powerful in this instance).
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Zettai Kareshi, it’s about a girl who gets a robot as her ideal boyfriend, and the problems and love triangle that this leads to. As I noted when I first wrote about it a few weeks ago, the series quite a lot of fun to watch. It can get a bit cheesy at times – which is hard to avoid in these kinds of drama series – but those moments were rare, and I thought they did a great job pacing the story with plot twists and cliffhangers. In retrospect, I wish I had started watching this earlier and perhaps made an attempt to blog it. Come to think of it, I really should pay more attention to drama series based on shoujo manga titles in general – I haven’t had a great record with anime adaptations, but I usually like the drama versions.
In any case, I’m glad I took the time to watch this series because, as you can see, I ended up loving it. I’d highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys a good light-hearted romance. Now I’m going to go back to listening to the theme song on repeat…
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