Hey faggots from Stumbleupon, get the fuck out of my blog. I don’t want you here.
The end of the Winter 2008 season is finally at hand and it’s time for me to share a bit of thoughts and feelings about it. While I do think it was somewhat better than the Autumn 2007, this season was plagued by a few disturbing failures. Since writing about each show is so troublesome and I’m a lazy bastard, I shall now express my true and honest feelings by the means of graphical material.
For Clannad, I think a gaijin 4koma will suffice.
I find it hard to form an exact opinion on this season as a whole, so I will cease trying. Despite showing some serious potential, much of the series in the season have fell more or less flat, the most apparent examples being Shakugan no Shana Second and downright disastrous Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino. SnS II did terrible in the previous season and did not manage to improve much at all during its latter half. I wish the lame animation was the only problem, but the show also lacks efficient pacing of the events and their presentation – I could count the times at which I actually could feel some tension in atmosphere with one hand. It’s as if JC Staff had a week long staff meeting on mapping all the weaknesses of the SnS franchise and cram as much of them in 26 TV-anime episodes as possible. Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino took this even further and I honestly cannot recommend this show to anyone. Do not waste a good story by watching it as a ten-penny animation, just get the manga instead. I never expected much of the H2O, so I can’t really say that I’d be disappointed in it. The animation is very poor, rivaling even the two previously mentioned, and the plot gives me the feeling of trying to combine a textbook eroge with Higurashi no Naku Koro ni without even trying to do anything actually original. Spice and Wolf never was on my wishlist either and did not manage to spark any notable interest in me. Make no mistake, I do not wish to imply that the show is bad, but it just isn’t anything to call home about either.
But even the darkest of clouds have a silver lining. From the mud and dirt of the eroge adaptations and harem shows emerges True Tears, which I’ve already written about on one occasion, and to repeat myself once again: True Tears is brilliant and has well deserved its popularity. Just look at all the ranting, raving and bitching online that you can find about the show – nerds cry out when Shin doesn’t do exactly like they would to get their girl of fantasy in such proportions that I take it as a clear sign of something out of the usual. The time and effort people take to whine about the show alone is a clear sign of something worth checking out what all the fuss is about. Bamboo Blade and Clannad, which both started their run in Autumn 2007, have also been among the good stuff. The former was indeed a surprise – instead of a typical sports anime I was expecting to see, the show was much more like a slice of life-series with a twist of kendo in the mix. As a person who generally prefers this kind of entertainment, I hardly can complain. Clannad has been a very mixed bag and I do find the pacing of the storylines weird. KyoAni spent quite a lot of episodes on Kotomi and Fuuko while most people seem to have been expecting a heavy focus on Nagisa and the Fujibayashi twins. Thus the nerd rage is on now that the show is approaching the conclusion but I didn’t find myself even the least bit angry for some reason beyond me. Clannad has been a very entertaining show and done its job as a fanservice/advertisement for the monster of a visual novel it’s based on.
And then there’s Persona 3. I honestly have no idea. Either I have missed something essential, or I was supposed to play the games first.