Leekspin meets The Idolmaster!

The following video uses various clips from The Idolmaster and Dolly Song, an arranged version of Loituma’s Ievan Polkka featured in the leekspin flash, as background music.

I find the song very catchy and I can’t stop listening to it. The clips used in the video are quite funny as well.

Disapproval of Critisism and Negative Opinions

Lately, I’ve often heard that people, who don’t like certain animes, should just watch something else instead of complaining about these animes they don’t like. For some reason, I’ve never understood this way of thinking. So, if I don’t like something, I should just keep quiet and not bother the people who like it? In that case, can I demand fans of shows I don’t like to quit hyping their favourite shows? Neither of these demands sound reasonable at all.

There’s lots of flaming among anime fans. My opinion on flaming and such is that there’s no more childish thing to do than flaming something you don’t like. However, hyping what you like and flaming those who don’t like the same shows as you do, is just as foolish behaviour.

I’m in this kind of situation with Lucky Star. I don’t exactly like or dislike it. I watch every episode and my opinions regarding them are usually not so positive. Now, should I not be allowed to watch Lucky Star because I’m not fan of that show and I’m usually criticizing it a lot? If that’s so, why don’t we tell the whole world that negative opinions and critisism have been banned, because the fans are bothered when someone doesn’t like their favourite shows as much as they do.

I believe in freedom to think whatever you want and no opinions should be disaprroved of just because someone else doesn’t think the same way. Everyone is allowed to like and dislike whatever one wants to and I think flaming someone because of their opinions is really immature.

Golden Boy

Watching older animes every now and then is a lot of fun. Golden Boy is a fanservice and comedy anime from 1995. Fanservice has changed a lot in ten years but the humour in this anime hasn’t gotten old.

The main character is Kintaro Oe, 25-years old travelling student, who’s bicycling around Japan to try out different jobs and meet new people. In every episode, he meets different women and is somehow able to change their lives with his actions. He’s a pervert, but he has a kind heart and he’s an honest person with no bad intentions.

The humour in this anime is your typical fanservice anime humour that need no explanations. It was quite fun actually because Kintaro’s reactions are always so exaggerated. The humour depends on this a lot and there was only few gags that didn’t rely on fanservice.

Another highlight I definitely have to point out was the last episode, where Kintaro worked in an anime studio. They explained a lot about how the cels are made and what everyone in the studio is doing. Nowadays, cels are rarely used because CG is so much more convenient. I personally think that older animes look much nicer than the newer ones, but I don’t have anything against newer animes either.

What always catches my attention in older animes are the character designs and Golden Boy was no exception. Instead of being crazily flashy, the characters were plain and realistic. In modern anime, characters look much smoother and pudgy and I have to admit that I’ve gotten far too used to it. The characters in Golden Boy looked pretty weird because they actually looked like real people with realistic anatomy and normal clothes and looks.

You can also say that moe hadn’t become mainstream by the time Golden Boy was made. None of the characters followed the unwritten code of moe aesthetics, but there were a couple of characters I’d consider more moe than absolutely un-moe. It’s quite funny that nowadays all the characters from mother to child are designed to look moe. We’re definitely living in the era where moe and cuteness are the keywords of designing female characters. Even characters, like Yoko for example, that are supposedly sexy, somehow still look undeniably cute. Real women have become a rarity in modern animes, nowadays there’s just children with very well developed bodies.

And the little children in Golden Boy looked like real children as they should. In modern anime, even the 4-year old girls are designed to be attractive. It’s really a crazy and scary era of anime we’re living in. I bet lolicon didn’t exist back then or at least it was less acceptable. Take a look at modern animes like Moetan and you’ll know that the people making animes consider lolicons a good audience.

Watching this anime sure was an interesting experience in various ways. Because there are dozens mayby hundreds of new anime series broadcasted every year, finding time to enjoy the good old classics has become difficult. But I do recommend that people who are into fanservice and moe check this anime out to see how things were more than ten years ago.

Moetan – Episodes 7 & 8

Episode six wasn’t aired. It’ll be on the DVD instead.

There’s a school festival and Shiratori Alice is performing. Her song hypnotizes everyone except Ink, Sumi and their helpers. Alice has set up various traps for them inside the school. They finally confront her, but after hearing Ah-kun’s words, she retreats once again.

There was some really funny scenes in this episode, mostly involving the Akiba otaku, whom Ah-kun now refers to as his master. I like the way they’re making totally meaningless character look like one of the main characters and actually important.

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Eight episode begins with the staff discussing what they should be doing with the show. They decide to make it as perverted as possible. This episode had significantly more fanservice than usual, but since some of it would’ve been too graphic, the naughty bits were censored with badges that have a picture of Ah-kun in his human form on them. The Akiba otaku’s naughty bits were censored with Pastel Ink and Temperal Sumi badges. I hope the badges are removed in the DVD version, except those that covered the Akiba otaku’s naughty bits.

As for the story of 8th episode… Lots of bathing and peeking, various panty shot situations like wind blowing up your skirt and shoujo ai-ish scene between Rina and Remi. So there wasn’t any real story, but I didn’t mind ’cause there was a lot of fanservice. Though they should start doing more than just panty shots or nude scenes because every character has already been showed naked and there’s been plenty of panty shots already. They’ve already started doing cameos and references to other anime such as Jigoku Shoujo and magical girl animes always have some costume service, but they could always have the characters wear more different types of costumes like gothic lolita, uniforms and such.

I’m not even considering that they should do an actually interesting story. Instead, I’d rather see the staff focus on quality fanservice because they’ve proved that they’re pretty good at it.

Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan 2 – Episodes 1 & 2

Dokuro-chan is back for more extreme slapstick and toilet humour completed with dirty jokes. Some people loved the original show for it’s ridiculous violence made comedy, while some considered it disgusting and unfunny. I’m one of those who considered Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan one the funniest animes ever.

The opening theme has been re-recorded. While some say it just doesn’t have the mood the original one had, I liked the new version. It might be due to listening to so much doujin music, but the new version, which sounds like it was sung amateurishly on purpose, sounds actually very good to me.

In the first episode, Sakura’s class goes to draw outdoors. He wants to draw together with Shizuki, but Dokuro and Minami, a friend of Shizuki, are not going to let them enjoy private time together. Sakura notices that he lost his lunch when he tried to startle Dokuro who was standing near a waterfall’s summit, but ended up falling through Dokuro’s hologram instead, and has to ask the others for food. Dokuro forces him to eat Sensitive Salaryman sausage that makes his body really sensitive. Sakura tries to ask Shizuki to go to art gallery with him, but he mistakes Minami for her and hilarity ensues as Minami tells Dokuro that he wanted to lick the cap she used in elementary school and that makes Dokuro throw Excalibolg through Sakura’s stomach.

Zakuro, Dokuro’s little sister who appeared in the last episode of first season, is now living together with Sakura and Dokuro. She is reading stories about youkai and after sharing them with Dokuro, they’re both too scared to go to bath without Sakura. Being a healthy young man, Sakura is having hard time trying to behave himself while bathing with two beautiful girls. Not only Dokuro has big breast compared to rest of her body, but Zakuro is actually only nine years old, thus she has the mind of an innocent child in the body of a sexy woman. Dokuro and Zakuro notice something creeping behing the window, but it turns out to be Sabato, who came to return Dokuro’s lacrosse racket. She joins them in bath, but things get so tight that Dokuro must make room to move by smashing Sakura into tiny bits with her Excalibolg.

This anime sure is different, but the problem is that they haven’t came up with many new ideas so far. Although Dokuro’s ways to kill Sakura are creative, but the whole “kill Sakura and resurrect him to kill him again”-thingie already got old in the first season. The first half was quite plain as this ain’t the first time Dokuro has prevented Sakura from being alone with Shizuki. The second half was better since they hadn’t done anything about Sakura bathing together with Dokuro and Zakuro yet and fanservice is always good.

The bottom line is that the second season does have potential just like the first season did. But if they can’t come up with good stories and instead base all the humour on Dokuro killing Sakura over and over again with some fanservice on the side, that potential is going to be completely wasted.

Lucky Star – Episode 21

Tsukasa is having trouble waking up, so she tries various methods with no result. Hiyori comes up with a good idea for her manga, but because she’s in bath, she can’t write it down and has already forgotten it when she gets the chance to write it down. The same pattern is repeated a couple of times with some variations. Minami, the girl who seemingly only thinks of Yutaka and getting bigger breast, meets Yui and thinks that at least Yutaka has some hope to get bigger breast once she grows up. Poor girl, there are lots of men this world that would love her because she has small breast.

The third year students are going to Kyoto. As usual Tsukasa’s clumsiness is totally cute, but Konata’s otaku-ish behaviour has already expired. But if you looked closely enough, you probably noticed that the shop Konata visited was Animate which belongs to the same retail chain with the anime store where Konata never buys anything. Kagami even pointed this out by asking if Konata really had to buy the stuff she got in Kyoto. Kagami gets a mysterious letter from some guy asking her to meet him at the front of hotel.

In Lucky Channel, Minoru returns from his trip to fetch water from Mt. Fuji for Akira. Akira isn’t pleased with the warm water and Minoru finally snaps trashing up the studio.

This episode was pretty good. The trip to Kyoto was fun and it was nice that instead of going through dozens of different topics in short time, the focus was on the trip and all the things related to it. It also had a semi-continual storyline which I prefer over chit chat with no connection between the scenes. Lucky Channel was particularly funny as well. Minoru has always been treated badly, but I always thought he was one of those persons who would just shrug everything off, so I was quite surprised when he went mad.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Episode 22 (spoilers)

The episode begins with an epic battle between Gurren Dan and the Mugans. Just as everything seems to be going well, two huge Mugans attack Gurren-Lagann and Arc-Gurren. In order to defeat them, Gurren-Lagann unifies with Arc-Gurren creating Arc Gurren-Lagann. With Arc Gurren-Lagann’s power, the Mugans are knocked out of a hole in the space-time. Honestly, Gurren Lagann has to be the only anime that could ever get away with doing something that ridiculous and absurd.

Now that the Mugans are gone, the Moon must be stopped. Something that big is unstopable just by force, but it turns out that the Moon is another Ganmen build by Lord Genome, Cathedral Terra. Gurren Lagann must use the Core Drill in order to gain control of it. However, Nia intends to stop them, but Simon’s words make her regain a part of her own personality and she lets them stop the Moon from colliding with the Earth.

The Earth has been saved, but Nia has been taken away and the Anti-Spirals will now enter all-out war mode against Simon. With the power of Cathedral Terra and Arc Gurren-Lagann by side, Simon is ready to challenge the Anti-Spiral.

I didn’t think it would even be possible to do such epic stuff as seen in this episode. Gurren Lagann is truly the one anime that is always surpassing all the expectations and has already gained the highest levels of epicness, but nevertheless, it will still continue to surpass itself again and again. After seeing this, I can’t even begin to imagine how epic the ending could possibly be. I sure as heck hope that Gainax can deliver an ending worthy of Gurren Lagann.

Potemayo – Episode 8

Today we meet another new character, Tomari Seki. He is chasing Guchuko because she stole his chesnuts. They bump into Potemayo, while she was on her way to store, and she joins the chase. The chase scene looked really great, but since it was so long, almost half of this episode, I’m not going upload it to YouTube so see the sceenshots below instead.

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The winter theme was already used in third episode, but it’s used once again. Compared to the action packed first half, the second is quite slow but focuses more on humour.

Yasumi, are you one of them as well?

Mudo tries to pet Potemayo once again.

A bunch of snow has piled up and everyone is having snowball fight together.

I probably should explain what’s going on, but it’s a lot more fun if you just believe whatever comes to your mind first.

Le Chevalier d’Eon – vol. 1

When is saw this manga in a book store, I was captivated by it’s cover. The cover features a beautiful woman in magnificent blue dress with a sword and determined gaze. The drawing style for the cover is very realistic and detailed, something you rarely see to this extent in manga covers. I try to avoid buying mangas just because they have nice covers, but I allowed myself to make an exception this time.

As the title suggests, the story is set on France in 18th century. A mysterious cult is sacrifising virgin girls to write poetry with their blood. D’Eon de Beaumont, the main character, is an agent to the king of France, Louis XV. His sister, Lia de Beaumont, was murdered by the poets and she is now possessing his younger brothers body to have her revenge on the poets.

The story is loosely based on a historical figure Chevalier d’Eon. I have to say that Tou Ubukata, the author, has done great work to give the story the air of 18th century France. The buildings, the clothes etc. all look really authentic.

Since I bought this manga for it’s beautiful art, let’s take a closer look at it. Kiriko Yumeji’s artwork is well drawn and I love the extremely detailed work she has done for Lia’s clothing, the backgrounds and everything you see on the pages of this manga. I also have to give her credit for being able to make both male and female characters attractive. Many artists can either draw bishounen or bishoujo, but there are only few who can draw them both well and thus have characters that are pleasant to gaze upon for both male and female readers.

The story didn’t make much progress in the first volume, but it manages to do what is most important for a good story: to make the reader want to know what happens next and thus read more and more. And the brilliance of artwork was not only limited to the cover, but it was detailed work all the way from the beginning to the end. It’s been a while I made an impulse buy this great and I’m definitely looking for the following volumes.

Lucky Star – Episode 20

Rather boring episode considering that last few episodes were quite nice. It seems like Yukata and company are no longer getting their own half. The whole gang goes to see fireworks together, but, to my great disappointment, they didn’t interact with each other at all. Haruhi advertisements make their come back after a short absence and Akira’s guest in Lucky Channel is Daisuke Ono.

Sigh… I was hoping that Lucky Star would finally start getting better for good, but this episode most certainly wasn’t as good as the previous ones. Just four episodes left and I’m not expecting much. Then again, a lot of people say that Lucky Star’s humour is so closely tied to Japanese culture and behaviour that Western people won’t understand most of it and thus we should blame ourselves, not the show. However, lot of things are criticized and shunned just because they’re hard to understand. Why would anyone want to watch something they just can’t understand at all? I can’t really blame anyone for that.