Does this make me unpatriotic?
The only reason I picked this up was because of Stan Lee’s involvement, which I guess is funny because I’m not a huge fan of anything credited to the man. And most of the things credited to Stan Lee were made awesome by other people anyway. But it still felt obligatory. Maybe it’s because I’m graduating with a degree in comics and no one in comics ignores Stan Lee, as senile as people are calling him these days. Regardless, I wasn’t expecting much out of Heroman, which is why I don’t feel bad about dropping it at episode two.
Hell, I almost went ahead and dropped it at episode one.
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So I haven’t updated this poor blog for the past two months because classes and conventions and other obligations have been keeping me thoroughly occupied. I’ve avoided writing any sort of hiatus announcement because I hate the word hiatus. It implies that you can’t update while you’re on hiatus because posting implies that you’re “back,” which implies you’ll be returning to whatever the update schedule was prior to the hiatus. As it is, I don’t really anticipate being able to post much until mid-December and then, probably only for about three or four weeks before things get crazy again, but screw any kind of official hiatus. Mid-December is what I anticipate, but if I can and feel like posting in the interim, then I will.
And hence this post. Kimi ni Todoke has annoyed me enough to make me post about how I’m dropkicking its ass despite the delighted and downright fawning reception the rest of the blogosphere has given it.
I’ve said before that shoujo isn’t really my cup of tea. Though there have certainly been exceptions (Lovely Complex, Ouran High School Host Club), I think I’m generally disinterested in the genre because I just don’t care for what I perceive to be its stereotypical qualities: idealistic and naive characters, contrived romance, and related drama. And Kimi ni Todoke has all of those in spades.
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I kind of saw this coming considering what I thought of Higurashi, but it’s still a bit disappointing, I guess.
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It’s really no surprise, I guess. I think this is one of those shows that everyone checks out for an episode or two then promptly dumps because the laughs don’t last that long. I hadn’t been interested in picking it up at all (then again, half the series I’ve picked up this season I hadn’t planned on) but my brother got it and a few bloggers were yammering about it (yuri threesome ending, what), so I figured why not, I’ll check out an episode for the lulz.
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Took me long enough, right? Seriously, who else is still actually watching this crap?
I really hope this doesn’t become some kind of annoying trend. Aside from this season’s two big remakes (FMA and DBK), Shangri-La was the only series I picked up. And like last season’s Kurokami, it’s now getting its lame ass dropped for pretty much all the same reasons.
When I read over all the summaries of the series set to debut for spring, Shangri-La was the only thing that really caught my eye. It’s premise sounded really interesting, and you can’t say the idea of using a country’s carbon emissions as a currency isn’t awesome. Unfortunately, that’s this series one and only merit. The premise doesn’t even translate into a plot because I watched seven, long and arduous episodes, and I still don’t know what the plot is. That’s the only reason I stuck with it so long — I really, really wanted to know what the plot was, but I guess if I can’t find it in seven episodes, then the whole thing’s just a waste of time.
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Maybe it’s just because today was a pretty shitty day, but I couldn’t sit through all of episode 5 of Kurokami, so I’m dropping it. I suppose it was only a matter of time. I hated the first episode. It was boring and predictable; all I really wanted to do was punch the protagonist in the face, and I get the feeling I shouldn’t have been laughing my head off when that little girl got flattened by a bus. I considered dropping it then, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least watch a few more. The second episode was markedly better, but the third episode tanked again. By the fourth episode, I was quite ready to drop it again, and the beginning of the fifth episode sealed the deal.
It’s a shame, I guess, because the animation is pretty damn slick and the music is interesting. The fight scenes are pretty from a distance, but they’re painfully boring to me. It’s because I feel utterly detatched from all of the characters involved so I don’t care about the outcomes. I don’t care about Keita because he’s whiny and generic and I just couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for his sobstory. It’s just too convenient. I don’t care about Kuro because she tries too hard to be cute and there’s nothing about her personality that’s interesting at all. I don’t care about her desire to kill her brother, and I don’t even care enough to want to find out more about whatever the hell she is.
The premise was all right enough. The idea of dopplegangers sounded neat enough, but the series has been moving too slow on that front for me to care. The cleverly disguised (or not) antagonists are sneaking around in the background with those snatches of plot, but it isn’t prominent enough to be meaningful. It’s a damn shame. I might continue with the manga since it’s so vastly different from the anime — I don’t doubt that I would have had an easier time sympathizing with Keita if he had been a good-natured computer programmer instead of an emo high school student, and being able to sympathize with the protagonist is pretty key for me. Unfortunately, it’s harder for me to sit down and read manga than it is for me to pop in an episode of an anime.
It’s further disappointing because Kurokami was the only new series I picked up this season. Now that I’m dropping it, the only current series I’m following are Soul Eater and Gundam 00 S2, both of which will be ending soon (well, for the latter, I guess it’s kind of a relief). I have no idea how well the Kurokami dub’s been doing on IATV, but it seems to me that they could have picked a much better series to be groundbreaking with. Then again, they never did announce any kind of official online stream, so maybe it was all irrelevant after all. Not enough people get IATV for it to matter.
Man, today’s been quite the lame day. :\
Usually, I’m very much against spoilers, so maybe it can be considered significant that I just let my brother explain the rest of this to me in lieu of actually watching it. For a series that seems to be universally heralded as being awesome, I was kind of surprised at just how much I didn’t care for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (+Kai). The art style and animation was a huge turn off. The characters weren’t engaging, and the setup of everything just reminded me of all the things I don’t like in anime. Even the violence and gore wasn’t very entertaining. :\ And the repeating scenarios just… struck that short attention span of mine, I guess. I wanted the explanation to be more obvious. It’s a mystery; I wanted the clues to be more there. I did not want to sit through 26+ episodes of mindfuckery stuck on repeat before knowing what the hell was going on.
There is merit in being sneaky and unexpected, and honestly, I’d say Higurashi’s story and plot is pretty unique, but it really failed at getting me to care. Because I felt nothing towards any of the characters, I wasn’t really even inclined to try and solve the mystery myself, especially when it wasn’t even obvious that it was a mystery at first. It was just, lol retcon! Is it just me? Am I just too stupid to figure things out myself or too stupidly impatient to not wait and see? Maybe, but I have a hard time imagining that anyone was really drawn to the cast. It was a generic assortment of moe girls and your usual loser guy. Who cares? Why should anyone care?
Maybe I’m just too used to characters driving the story and not the other way around.
I’m really curious though, did anyone else start Higurashi and not feel like finishing it at all?