Weekly Anime Roundup – #3 (Part 2: Suckage)

by Moonlily on Jun.10, 2009, under Anime

One post isn’t enough to contain all of this information, so here’s part 2 as usual and now I know why episodic bloggers burn out so fast. This’ll teach me a lesson for the summer season not to take on so huge of a workload. Anyhow, let’s just proceed onwards and sideways. Keep in mind that the sarcasm factor may be high and that all shows that are mocked deserve it. On the flip side, shows that earn my praise are also very deserving, so let’s have at it!

Guin Saga

What happened: The Mongaul troops are on the move to hunt down Guin and the Parros twins who have gone into the desolate badlands of Nosferatu to evade capture accompanied by the spellsword Istavan. Amnelis remains undeterred and continues to advance by crossing the river Kes, only to meet up with another Big Mouth that almost gets her until one of her father’s reinforcements, Marus, comes in to save the day. The two meet in council where the discussion over Guin and the twins comes up and Marus is sent after the group. Guin and Marus meet in combat and fight to a draw, but Marus’s lieutenants were able to capture the twins, forcing Guin to surrender and brought before a Mongaul camp. Istavan, who had been keeping tabs on Guin since his capture, manage to lure a sand worm into the Mongaul camp, allowing Guin and the twins to make their escape.

What I thought: You can’t fault the storytelling, that’s for sure, especially in the way this tale unfolds like a heroic Greek epic with all sorts of heroes and famous names all converging onto the screen, each with their distinctive personality traits. Some of the characters, like Amnelis’s underling, are immediately dislikable, but Marus is pretty badass, considering that he’s a 50+ year old guy who wields a Cloud Strife-length sword and manages to duel Guin to a draw. The choreography during that fight scene is awesome to watch and Istavan’s method of allowing the party to escape was clever and resourceful, making him just slightly more interesting than Guin. Next episode is harder to gauge though since it’ll all be about meeting those ape-men. We can hope that I won’t be facepalming hard (if at all) throughout that episode.

K-ON!

What happened: Azusa finally makes a prospective gesture at joining the Keionbu and already demonstrates quite a bit of talent with her electric guitar skills. To her shock and horror, she finds out that the Keionbu is made up of a bunch of slackers who would rather be drinking tea and eating snacks rather than practicing for the concerts to come and already, a lot of tension erupts between her and the other members. It also doesn’t help that the club members (well, except for Mio) attempt to forcibly socialize her and fail miserably. Yui acts like an idiot, Ritsu continues her spree of annoying ADHD tendencies, and Mugi is the silent facilitator to all this. Needless to say, Azusa is less than pleased… yet, she can’t help but feel that the club has a source of untapped greatness which lies behind their brilliant concert performance. By talking with Mio, she comes to learn that this unbridled fun is what contributes to the club’s success and with that promise of forming a deeper friendship with the others, Azusa officially joins the club.

What I thought: This. Episode. Sucks. Hard.

There have been a few times when I become extremely irritated while watching anime and this is one of those times. Up until this point, the show vacillated between being somewhat tolerable (at worst) to mildly amusing at best, but it never had any clincher moments where you can declare the series to be an excellent one. It’s a brainless moe show and doesn’t aspire to be any more than that.

However, episode 9 was a new low for this series and I acutely empathized with Azusa’s frustrations regarding the slacker qualities of the Keionbu. Yes, rage was the order of the day as it was made apparent that the producers were more interested in subjecting her to as much abuse as possible to draw out the moe-ness of her character, with the result being that I knew that they were trying to pander to otaku, and that it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Everything is indicative of the fact that Azusa’s execution character-wise is rather half-assed and that the series aims to tell, not show, which is a huge no-no in my book. As such, the quality within this series just nose-dived.

Saki

What happened and what I thought: There’s no need to use my usual format with this episode of Saki. It’s pretty cut and dry anyways. Besides, with bondage and lesbian undertones, what else do you need, really?

As Week 2’s post indicated, this last episode was nothing short of a throwaway episode as it focused entirely on showing some group bonding. Saki, Nodoka, and Co. end up making small talk and reminiscing over old times (more flashbacks, good god…), Touka and her team are trying to figure just how to get Koromo up in time for the Finals while gelling with the mix of personalities, and Kazeyoshi talks about the leader of theirs (who is voiced by Horie Yui), and as a result, it feels like I’m seeing another Minorin (Toradora) moving around. The feeling one gets from this episode is a sort of heartwarming blandness and really, nothing important happens, so you can safely skip this one.

Valkyria Chronicles

What happened: The standoff between Alicia, Welkin, and Faldio on one side and Selvaria and Maximilian on the other finally ends with an exchange of words and a display of badassness by Selvaria as she uses her sword skills to slice a bullet mid-flight, scaring the bejeezus out of Faldio. The Gallians are clearly outmatched, and the two Imperials take this opportunity to make an exit, only to bring in their super-powered tank, which then fires upon the ruins, reducing it to rubble. Welkin is separated from Alicia and Faldio, who use this time to talk about Welkin. Faldio in particular reminisces over Welkin’s history as a university student and Alicia takes delight in the stories of Welkin’s oddities. By this time, Isara and Faldio’s second-in-command was able to locate Welkin, and through Welkin’s knowledge of lizard behavior, are able to locate Faldio and Alicia. Upon reaching the camp, they learn that the mining center of Fouzen has been captured, which gives the Imperials a massive resource advantage.

What I thought: This episode is nothing more than an opportunity for Alicia (and by extension, the audience) to understand how Welkin’s scattered mind works, and the tale that Faldio tells is certainly heartwarming in its own way. The same can’t be said towards Selvaria and Maximilian though, since the love between them seems pretty one-sided. But hopefully, we’ll get some backstory revolving around why Selvaria is so loyal to Maximilian. So no action this episode, but the character development was decent. There’s not much more to say aside from that.

That’s pretty much it for this week. For those of you who want to discuss this further in-depth, let me know which shows you want me to create a thread for in the forums so we can get some honest-to-goodness discussion going on. I’ve been missing out on that.

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