Slice of
life, particularly comedy ones, often suffer because writing funny characters
is actually rather hard, without making them overblown, unlikeable or really in
need of help. This series falls into these traps a lot. And I mean a lot. But…I
still love it.
KHR (written by author Akira Amano) is one of those stories
that tried to go from light hearted goofiness to serious fighting, and failed.
Well, mostly.
First
Impressions is a series where I'll be writing about my first impressions of
the anime airing in the new season.
Ben's Week 2: Psycho-Pass, Teekyu, Magi, Robotics;Notes, Wooser's Hand-To-Mouth Life, Little Busters!, Girls und Panzer
So here I go into the new shows I'm trying out this week. I didn't list all the shows I'm continuing from last week above, because I won't be giving more opinions on those until we're a bit later into the season and I give a review of what I kept on with and what I didn't in the end. I didn't have the time to watch all this week's anime this week, so the rest will be coming up when I've watched it.
For reference (again), here's the chart showing all this season's anime.
“Don’t you think this
world is better than you expected?”
When the committee were trying to decide what anime to show
this term, we decided that we wanted to show a plot based action show and a
more episodic slice of life show, and Usagi Drop (or Bunny Drop) was one of the
first anime we looked at. We rejected it for reasons that aren’t actually
related to the anime itself, but rather the manga’s reputation, in particular,
the ending. And…you may see why.
First
Impressions is a series where I'll be writing about myfirst impressions of
the anime airing in the new season.
My Week 1: From the New World,
My Little Monster, Kami-sama Hajimemashita, Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!,
Blast of Tempest, Busou Shinki, BTOOOM! Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, K
I'm going to at least try the first
episode of every show of the season, except sequels (I haven't watched the
original series for anything that's getting a sequel this season), unsubbed
shows (I don't know Japanese), and that one show about incest (because ewwwwww).I’m setting the cut-off point for each "week" of
anime I cover as when I get back from work on a Saturday, so if I haven’t written about
something that interested you and aired or was subbed over the weekend that’s why.
If you want to see a list of all this season's shows, check out this chart.
Around...five years ago now, my brother began to try to convince
me to read a certain series about pirates. I was already into some manga, and
in particular it was around the height of my enjoyment of Bleach, so it wasn't
that big a leap, but I will admit, I just couldn't get into it. While it was
sort of fun at the beginning, the pacing of the arcs was pretty slapshod, the
art style was pretty dull and all the fights ended with the main character
Luffy curbstomping the villain. After about thirty chapters, I gave up on it
and didn't read it again for about six months.
Classically, it turns out I quit right at the wrong time.
I'm a third year physics student who also serves as the society's president. This means I delegate all the actual work to the rest of the committee, take the credit for anything that goes well, and avoids responsibility for anything that goes wrong*.
My taste in manga and anime, although I read more than I watch, tends towards over the top shonen such as One Piece and Fairy Tail alongside slice of life works such as Yotsuba&! and Sketchbook, although I will generally read whatever ends up in my hands.
My favourite anime opening currently** is the ninth opening of the anime "Keroro Gunso", called "Sgt Frog" over here, "Hello Darwin". Aside from the incredible catchy song itself, it is a song about curiosity, studying mysteries and always looking for something new, themes I really appreciate and wish were stated like this more often...even if the examples given are slightly odd. But that's to be expected, given the show it is the opening to.
*Does not accurately represent job of president. I do actually work. Honest.
**I change my mind on things like this. A lot.
Ewan
'Sup nerds. I'm the Vice-president, the president of vice if you will (The vice being anime).
I am not entirely sure what my official job description is, but in reality I run around making sure that everything that needs to be done is getting done.
When not being the vice-president I am a 4th year Mathematics student (i.e. not a physicist).
I am a keen tabletop rpg player and I also play jazz guitar...but you don't care about that so let's proceed to all the tasty animes.
My taste in anime is...I don't know what the word would be.
Imagine crazy moe harem mecha fighting high school, then think the opposite of that.
I'm more of a fan of the likes of; Haibane Renmei, Mushishi, Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiment lain, Paranoia Agent. Stuff like that.
I also like the Ghibli movies but I feel that statement is somewhat unnecessary in an anime blog.
SEINEN! That's the word...at least the closest word I can think of.
It's still not the best word, I mean K-on! is technically seinen.
How do I say I like grown up stuff without sounding like a condescending ba...
But I digress.
Manga I am more new to. I've only read a few volumes of stuff and I'm trying to catch up as much as I can.
I am a fan of the stuff by Naoki Urasawa (Monster, 20th Century Boys), Junji Ito is also fun for pure "nope" factor. Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko is a series that I'm making my way through at the moment and loving it.
It's a slice of life manga about a robot who runs a cafe...in the future where the sea levels are rising and humanity is in it's twilight years.
Some people say it's boring, some people complain that nothing happens.
I call those people uncultured swines.
Favourite opening? Easy.
COWBOY! FUCKIN'! BEBOP!
It is the coolest thing ever.
Miles Davis may have been responsible for the Birth of Cool, but Yoko Kanno perfected it with this bombastic jazz orchestra opening!
It makes the Fonz look like John Major in comparison.
It's so cool it has been used by physicists to make Bose-Einsein condensate.
It's so cool it's coolness rating can only be expressed in transfinite arithmetic.
It's cool...is the idea here.
...I need to go take a cold shower. (A cool shower if you will)
See you later,
Space cowboy.
Corwin
Hi everyone, I'm a second year Medical Science student and the committee secretary which means I help out the president and other members of the committee just to make things run a little bit smoother (hopefully).
My tastes in anime and manga are as pretty irregular, sometimes I am fine with just watching the generic harem/moe/parody shows just for some laughs (e.g Setokai no Ichizon, Seto no Hanayome...), and sometimes I will only settle for darker/sci-fi orientated anime (e.g Gunslinger Girl, Zaion...) so it's kinda like two sides of my otaku persona. But I enjoy a bit of Mecha/Slice of life/Shounen as well =)
Let's see... favourite anime openings, well I will mention Gunslinger Girl S1 Opening theme "The light before we land" just because it's one of those opening that managed to use an English song by a UK band and turn it into something quite beautiful.
Another opening that I'll have to mention would none other than Sousei no Aquarion's opening. Be it just for the super catchy song or the cheesy '12000year' bit in the lyrics XD.
I have really grown to like anisong (anime songs) hopefully you guys will enjoy it too. Look forward to more posts from us, don't forget to comment below! (/・ω・)/
Ben
I'm a third-year philosophy student, as well as the Committee Sidekick... Sorry, I mean Treasurer. My job is basically "Don't embezzle society funds to buy expensive anime toys, don't let the rest of the comittee embezzle either", along with some stuff about actually legitimately using the money or something.
I suppose my tastes in anime and manga can be summed up with two words: Giant Robots. It's certainly not the only stuff I like, but good mecha shows and manga are the thing I enjoy most in their medium, whether they're super robot shows (I adore Gunbuster and Diebuster and there's no such thing as too much Getter Robo), real robot shows (Xabungle's an obscure favourite of mine, and obviously there's plenty of great Gundam) or anything really that features mecha as long as it's good. I'm also a big fan of tokusatsu live-action shows like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, which aren't technically anime or manga but close enough for me to mention it here.
Now, my favourite anime opening is a pretty hard question and even if I just go on current gut instinct rather than trying to choose an all-time favourite, I can't narrow it down to just one because there's two big components to what makes an opening awesome and I can't happily choose over the other.
From the point of view of animation, my current favourite OP is Metal Armour Dragonar's first opening, Yume Iro Chaser ("Dream-Coloured Chaser"). It's an excellent example of Masami Obari's animation at its finest - beautiful to watch with lots of impact - and the design and shading really scream "This is what's great about 80s anime." Yume Iro Chaser is a really catchy song too.
If I take a more musical focus, there are a lot of competitors - like anything by JAM Project - but right now I'd give the honour to Macross 7's opening, Seventh Moon. I love all of the music that Fire Bomber - the fictional band who are the focus of the show - has produced, and Seventh Moon is no exception. It's an excellent song, and since Fire Bomber's music is so important to Macross 7, having such a good example of it as the opening is really the most fitting thing they could do. The animation is nice too, which is good to see since the actual episodes suffer on that front with a lot of stock footage.
Really, I think my inability to pick one favourite because these are so good for such different reasons sums up a lot of my feelings about anime and manga - as much as I love mecha, I can't say that one genre or one series is "the best" because different series do different things in different ways for different reasons, and that variety is just great.
Hello fellow anime and manga lovers, we'd like to welcome you all to our Anime and Manga society for 2012. You've probably seen our plans for the next week on our flyer, the Facebook group, or the mailing list, but if you've somehow missed all those and still ended up here:
On Monday the 24th, we're going to the pub to get to know each other, have a drink, all that good stuff. We're meeting at the Guild of Students at 7pm. Weather providing we'll be outside by the fountain, otherwise we'll be indoors by reception, either way we'll make sure we're obvious and easy to spot.
On Wednesday the 26th, we're going on a walkabout, together with the Sci-Fi Society and Tabletop Gaming Society, to show where in Birmingham you can buy nerdy things like anime and manga.
So now that's out of the way, time to talk about this blog. The whole point of this is to provide a place for us to write reviews of series we've watched/read recently, recommend series that not everyone will have heard of, write about our opinions of anime and manga as a whole, rant about the things that annoy us, and generally blog about anime and manga.
And by "we", I don't just mean the committee - I mean everyone in the society. If you'd like to write a review of something - be it a whole series or just one anime episode or volume of manga - or an article about anything to do with anime and/or manga, email it to us at uobanime@gmail.com, and if it passes The Deadly Trials of Committee Approval™ we'll put it up on here.
Also, we sent out an email on Sunday - if you haven't received it, please email us with your email address so we can add you to the mailing list.
