Editorial #7 I Knew You'd Come Crawling Back

I have no commitment. That's exactly what it is. I come and go; tread mud into the house; leave salacious relics of previous seedy liaisons on the coffee table; never feed the dog.

But I always come back. Rarely a day goes by when I haven't logged into Typepad and checked for any new comments, or momentary festered over my lack of updating, formulating countless good-intentioned check lists on what I should review next.

There's a simple answer: I'm a creature of warped, inconsistent habit. I post in small, intense bursts; thinking every time that yeah, I can keep this up. One flashy light or shiny thing later and it's been a month of nothing and a mounting backlog.

I feel bad, though. The fact that maybe four of these editorials have been apologies for my lack of activity is suggestive of my guilt, and it's founded in a genuine enjoyment of writing for the site. I'm not entirely sure what the resolution is, however. Personally I'm okay with spotty activity, but in something as community-driven as anime blogging it's not as satisfying to just act on impulse. I know as a reader how easy it is to forget about a site you love when nothing happens on it for a protracted amount of time. Not to suggest I have anything like that, but it's less likely to even happen when there's no consistency.

Anyhow, that's my long-winded apology out the way. Now let's systemically deconstruct my current watchings in the swiftest way possible.

Darker than Black. Episode nine was just weak, and not in the acceptable 'better than most' weakness that DtB occasionally demonstrates. The episode ten's continuation of the arc made up for nine's overt shortcomings, but still. My expectations for Masaki's back-story were quite high, and having them not met made me lose some faith in the show. It remains my favourite the season, regardless, but there have been a few examples of this kind of stilted character development and I'm worried it’s a shortcoming of the story telling rather than an isolated case. I'm finding it hard to ignore other shows that have taken the same approach (flashbacks to childhood and so on) and accomplished much more.

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. This show, however, demonstrates the opposite. Its approach to character development isn't especially original or sophisticated, with Gainax relying on a formula they've been perfecting for years now, but it works fantastically and keeps me coming back for more. And the undeniable energy and humour do nothing but make it all the more entertaining. It still feels quite disposable in comparison to Darker than Black, but that's hardly a bad thing. These two shows are perfect compliments to each other and I hold them in almost-equal regard for different reasons. A couple of real gems.

Bokurano. This one, however, is failed potential personified for me. A few alarm bells rung from the very beginning: both the music and visuals felt too whimsical and saccharine for the subject matter. Part of me thought it was all apart of the headfuck that was on its way, but so far I've felt pretty dissatisfied with what's been presented. I'm not disappointed to the extent of wanting to drop it or anything, but I had pretty high expectations for it (in that annoying 'loved the manga' way) and it's yet to really meet them.

Claymore. Dropped. No specific reason why, but similarly to how my interest in NHK just petered out the same happened with Claymore. I'm likely to download it all when the show finishes, marathon it and reassess my apathy . . . but right now it's not holding my interest enough to warrant the effort of downloading. Unreasonably brutal, probably, by my attention span/spare time can only accommodate a certain amount.

Comments

[CH]

Not to worry. That's what RSS feeds are for : ) Update whenever you can, it's always interesting.

[Sasa]

Personally I am glad to see you alive after all ^^ I mainly check blogs from Antenna and Animenano, so there should be no problem with me too.

About Bokurano: Did you know about the "the director of Bokurano hates the original manga" issue? That should be a rather good explanation for most manga readers why the anime is such a disappointment. (To me, at least, it is.)

And a little note about Claymore: I've read the manga and so far, I don't feel like watching the anime at all. So maybe you might want to take a look at it and see if you like the series more when you can proceed at your own pace? (And flip over the overly brutal, uninteresting pages?)

[Karura]

Yay, you're still alive- I knew you would post something if I marked your blog as on hiatus on my blogroll ;)

So anyway, here are my thoughts-

Darker than Black: I actually loved episodes 9-10; I can see why you would be frustrated at the lack of explanations but I'm still hopeful all that will come later.

Bokurano: Dropped after episode 4- as Sasa said, the director actually admitted he hated the manga and that fans of the original shouldn't watch because he was going to change things a lot.

Claymore: My enthusiasm for the anime slowly drained so I switched over to the manga and it's still not all that marvellous. The action scenes are really dull in the manga, first you get some posing with giant swords and then the enemy is magically all sliced to pieces.

[Hige]

GH: Cheers! God bless Web 2.0~

Sasa: Yeah, I read about that on Bateszi's site. It's quite surprising he'd shoot himself in the foot like that (though from what I read it was more a matter of poor written communication than outright dislike for the manga). Still, and as I mentioned in a comment to Batezi's article, I'm flexible to reinterpretations of source material as long as they honour fundamental 'sense' of the original. I used examples of Mushishi and H&C, but I think the Samurai X OAV is another good example. If I wasn't unimpressed by the Bokurano's choice of direction so far I'd be more curious to see what the man does.

Karura: Heheh, sorry about that! And it's not so much DtB's mysteriousness that frustrates me - it's how uninvolving I found that section of character development. I started critiquing the methods of how the story was told rather than suspending my disbelief and becoming wrapped up in it. I also really like Misaki as a character, which made the disappointment seem more acute. Still, this is a bit melodramatic. It's more a slip than a fall in terms of my love for the show, so I'm still as addicted as ever.

[bateszi]

Welcome back! I wanted to add a bit more weight to this comment, but all I can think of to say right now is that Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann == Awesome :D

[Lupus]

I really enjoy reading your posts, especially your Naruto reviews, and I still occasionally go back to read your old posts, both because I love reading your writing and I could learn a lot from them.

IF YOU REALLY FEEL GUILTY YOU WILL COMPENSATE US POOR READERS! =P

Seriously, I miss your regular updates. Come back to us~

[Impz]

Yes, write more. It's always good to read something nice and it's fun to because I quietly lurk in the blogs until it is required for me to come out of the shadows.

Cheers!

[Michael]

HERRO ONCE AGAIN.

It's good to see you back. I'm hoping for more incisive posts from you. :)