The war against the Neuroi intensified. Underwear was stolen and returned. And my brother and I made a slight miscalculation in our viewing of the seventh episode that resulted in the violent end of our innocence.
We are no longer fit for marriage.
(Pontifus = gray; Otouto-kun = blue.)
And so it was that your humble hosts forged onward into the very heart of Strike Witches, that paragon of Japanese cultural excellence that inspires so much musing upon the structural function of fanservice and the emotive impact of shoujo-ai insinuations given particular cultural contexts. Though perhaps we phrased such things differently in our discussions.
On a related note: you know you’ve seen too much Gundam in too little time when “it’s about time somebody hit somebody.” What have you done to me, Zeta!?
You know the drill — I’m in gray; Otouto-kun’s in blue.
The record of our grand adventure continues. With the first episode out of the way, and the lack of pants becoming less of a novelty than a common element of setting, my honorable sibling and I dove into the meat of Strike Witches. Though whether said meat was flavored more with action or with slice of life, we could not tell.
Same as before: my comments are gray, and Otouto-kun’s are blue.
My brother and I decided to watch Strike Witches. For some reason.
And we’ve decided, also, to subject you all to our experience. Because we’re demonstrably bad at audio, we’ve transcribed and abbreviated our conversations, adding screencaps and links for context.
Thus, for your reading pleasure, here’s our adventure through Strike Witches episode one, with my comments in the usual gray, and Otouto-kun’s in lovely #3f35a1 (i.e. blue). We’re giving you this episode by itself, as the transcription ended up at almost a thousand words; toward the middle of the show, we’ll start doing two episodes per post. We may seem inclined toward complaint here, but, lest you think future posts will sound much like this one, we came to admit, perhaps a third of the way in, that we were buying what Strike Witches was selling.
Well. Most of it, anyway. But we’ll get to all that.
Let’s continue.
I’m aware there’s another episode of Durarara!! out, but I haven’t seen it yet; it may show up in my next bout of catchup posts, after my next post-schoolwork marathon. Or maybe that won’t be necessary — spring break is coming up, and it’s not as if I have any plans.
School has kept me busy lately — you may have inferred this. My recent Super Fanicom activity amounts to 97% administrative, 2% writerly, and 1% other. And I certainly haven’t had time to keep up with anime in the past week or two. Until yesterday, that is, and during this rare breather I’ll do my best to catch you up with me. Or something like that. At any rate there will be a few of these, in the interest of keeping post length down.
Never has a show so thoroughly become exactly what I wanted it to be — which puts Sora no Woto in an interesting position. It didn’t surpass my expectations, which is more usual; I had high expectations to begin with (for whatever reason), and Sora no Woto met them with a vengeance. Is the latter preferable to the former? Well — I’ll get back to you on that.
So let’s talk about episodes six and seven. I hear the seventh episode has the internet all abuzz, but I thought the sixth was very good, too — and maybe it’s a necessary precursor to what follows.
By “lots of things” I mean war and soldiering; mixed technology; “Amazing Grace,” music, and sound; art and the making thereof; and slice of life group dynamics. Each episode might revolve around the delivery of some sentimental idea — hey, it’s slice of life — but Sora no Woto is shaping up to be something more complex than I would have guessed.
Here’s something that occurred to me the other day when I was stumbling as usual through the fiction-writing process: speculative slice of life anime and manga, even those with some emphasis on festivals, rarely include an event analogous to Christmas as manifest in the United States. This is not to say that gifts aren’t given and received in fantastical and science-fictional slice of life franchises — they are, and pretty commonly — but few such franchises seem to present a holiday whose focus or impetus is the giving and receiving of gifts.
I’m twelve episodes into Zeta Gundam (which is in turn the fifth series in my project to acquaint myself, finally, with UC Gundam), and I suppose it’s about time that I started collecting my thoughts. I’d probably misplace them otherwise, and that wouldn’t do.
What strikes me (lolpun) about Zeta is the willingness of its characters to slap the hell out of each other. As in 0079, much of the non-mecha physical violence we see in Zeta occurs between people on the same side — and, as in 0079, it serves as a reminder that people on the same side don’t always or even typically get along, that “sides” are deceptively arbitrary. But Zeta takes it to the limit. Here, physical violence between allies is an institution.
