big bad birtha's suggestion box 2: secret passions unveiled

[Talon87]

Sometimes anime can be educational. (Spoilers for Pokémon XY Episode 014.) (Whoops, new page. See here for previous post on the episode.)

Spoiler: show

I was looking for a good animated .gif of Espurr to use for a signature picture or an avatar. One thing led to another and I wound up on Pixiv looking for fanart that fans had drawn of the Espurr from Episode 014. In one fan's gallery, I found this:



It says:

紫のアネモネの花言葉：
「貴方を信じて待っています」

Translation:

The meaning of a purple anemone:
"Believing in you, I'll be waiting."

Well damn. ;_; I didn't quite get the importance of the flower while watching, but thanks to the Internet, now I do!

I decided to look further into it and found this:

Anemones have a large assortment of symbolism tied to them. They are thought to represent anticipation and unfading love, good luck and protection against evil. As a gift, these flowers may be meaningful in a number of ways, from presenting them to someone stepping into a new stage of life, to telling the recipient that you will always love them.

;_____;

Can we just hire whoever wrote the script for XY014 to write the script for all of the remaining filler episodes of Kalos? Pleaaaaaaaaaaase?

I guess while I'm at it, I should circle back around and mention a few other things that I left out of my post above. (Spoilers for Pokémon XY Episode 014.)

Spoiler: show

This episode stood out for having some pretty top-notch animation. (Just by the Pokémon anime's standards, of course.) It was very fluid, very colorful, and even the smallest details got surprising attention. A part where James' hair swishes back to and fro when Team Rocket is turning on Ash & Co. stood out in particular. (It happens from 18m04s to 18m06s.) When Team Rocket is blasting off again, his hair is again animated rather than being static, as is Jessie's hair and Pumpkaboo's stalk. Minor motion is usually one of the signs of a big budget; another is when the characters' faces look well-animated even when they're far away from the viewer and the focus isn't heavily on them. That was the case for a number of scenes in XY014: when Ash & Co. were far away from us, they still looked like themselves (just far away) rather than looking like complete strangers wearing Ash & Co.'s clothes. Not all of the time, unfortunately, but that's typical of animation. The fact that they looked good far away even some of the time was a nice effort by the animators.

The music in this episode stood out as well. A fan favorite from the video game -- Laverre City's theme song -- made its television debut in this episode, surfacing at 19m19s and playing until 20m58s. It was pretty great, although not quite what I imagined the song would sound like when rearranged for television. (I think Petalburg City's theme song is still my favorite anime adaptation of a Pokémon video game song of all time.) Another song that pops up, this one during Espurr's flashback, is ... well, I don't know exactly. ^^; Someone claims it's the Emotion song from Black and White, but it doesn't sound anything like Unwavering Emotions to me, and I can't seem to find any other BW song with "Emotion" in the title. *shrug* Whatever it is, it's a nice song that sets the mood for the flashback.

The grandmother, Lisa, is voiced by an older woman I'm not familiar with but who appears to have been in the business since the 1950s and has done voice-over work for many Hollywood films brought to Japan. The granddaughter, on the other hand, is Kotobuki Minako, who you may recognize as the voice of Rikka from DokiDoki! PreCure or Tsumugi from K-On!. I didn't recognize her, but maybe one of you did.

[big bad birtha]

I watched Pokemon XY episode 14 myself. Minor details in the magic spoiler box.

Spoiler: show

Honestly until Nyasper appeared, it was kind of annoying, with them reusing the same gags over and over. Once it appeared though, the episode took a huge step into heartwarming/breaking territory. Nice episode.

Also the song you're talking about is called "Terrible Past" from XY. I loved that damn song in the game. Here's a link.

[Talon87]

Yeah, I didn't think it was a BW song but with that MAL commenter so positive it was from BW I figured it might've been one I forgot and that they recycled. (I mean hell: the video games did! ) Now that you link it, it's so obvious which song it is.

While I was looking for pictures on Tumblr, I couldn't help myself: I read people's comments to see what they were saying about the episode.

Spoiler: show

So, so many people saying things like "OMG I LOVE U ESPURR ;_;" or "So ... I just fucking cried my eyes out. Pokémon. A Pokémon episode made me cry." Stuff like that. It's nice to see that the episode was well-received. I took the fandom's "OMG ESPURR WHY U SO SCARY DAYUM" jests with many grains of salt and didn't let it bother me too much, but as someone who's always thought the creature was adorable, I was ... I dunno, I was kinda annoyed just a little bit by how the fandom was so unilaterally jumping onto the Creepy Espurr bandwagon. It's good to see that this episode pulled a lot of people off of that wagon and back into Espurr Is Adorable territory.

[Talon87]

Hmm ... I'll decide against bumping the Another thread for this, but I came across this upload and it reminded me of the desk in Another.

Man, I miss having a murder mystery anime to watch with my pals. I need to catch up on Fall 2013 shows so I can then get started on Winter 2014 and see what you guys are all so excited over with this Hamatora series. Especially now that someone name dropped Psycho Pass outside a spoiler box.

[lilboocorsola]

Originally Posted by Talon87

Hmm ... I'll decide against bumping the Another thread for this, but I came across this upload and it reminded me of the desk in Another.

Man, I miss having a murder mystery anime to watch with my pals. I need to catch up on Fall 2013 shows so I can then get started on Winter 2014 and see what you guys are all so excited over with this Hamatora series. Especially now that someone name dropped Psycho Pass outside a spoiler box.

Hamatora is probably not your cup of tea, as I'd liken it more to Baccano! than Psycho-Pass in terms of seriousness.

[big bad birtha]

Yeah I always thought Hamatora was more like Durarara, or DURRR.

[The Morg]

Oh, this latest episode gets us excited all right ;o

[lilboocorsola]

Originally Posted by big bad birtha

Yeah I always thought Hamatora was more like Durarara, or DURRR.

That too, especially considering the modern setting. I just prefer saying Baccano! since I liked it a bit better.

[Talon87]

Considering everyone and his mother is posting in that thread, I don't think this is a party you can shut me out of.

[Doppleganger]

I wouldn't have dropped the PSYCHO-PASS comparison until Episode 3, because the series really wasn't like that until then. I mean the similarities are pretty darn clear by now, all it's missing is the exceptional rookie character, and I disagree with BBB that it's like DURR. Beyond the hip youth scene in a trendy part of a large Japanese city, I can't say I see much relation. BBB hasn't see PP so he doesn't know what we're talking about either.

Spoiler: show

-sociopathic manipulator (Moral) with a mancrush on the main character (Nice) wants to cause social upheaval, and proceeds to do so through a series of brutal murders
-main group consists of investigators who solve mysteries/crimes, and most of the crimes involve the bad dude somehow
-main guy Nice has an errant philosophy on various subjects compared to his companions
-human beans

Something Morg and I picked up on too, the red overlay, which is now pretty obviously intentional and not a quirk of the encoding process.

For some reason too, I'm seeing a lot of vague Muv-Luv Alternative references. Beyond the human beans scene, someone name dropped "Shirogane" and the place is set in Yokohama, of which Hiiragi Town is a suburb. I'll keep an eye open for something way more obvious...like a fully capitalized spelling of a greek alphabet letter.

[lilboocorsola]

Oh wow, CM#3 is actually Kido. Not bad.

[Doppleganger]

Where did everybody GO? It's been like a ghost town these past two days.

Well, anyway, I don't have a lot to talk about, but I've been reading something quite pleasant to say the least.

Yandere Kanojou

This is a manga with weird origins. The author was reading a BBS and someone proposed the idea, so he drew some 4koma. Without much idea he added a bunch of SOL stereotypes to the mix. It was a hit, so he took the concept to Shounen Magazine and it got published as a full story (with 4koma omake). Since then, he's been developing the characters and a lot of people hold it in high esteem because of that.

Plot? Ordinary honour student and delinquent girl boss fall for each other, and start going out. "Yandere" in this case is "dere" plus the yan from "yankee", a term for delinquents. It's pretty fun!

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

Yandere Kanojou

This is a manga with weird origins. The author was reading a BBS and someone proposed the idea, so he drew some 4koma. Without much idea he added a bunch of SOL stereotypes to the mix. It was a hit, so he took the concept to Shounen Magazine and it got published as a full story (with 4koma omake). Since then, he's been developing the characters and a lot of people hold it in high esteem because of that.

Plot? Ordinary honour student and delinquent girl boss fall for each other, and start going out. "Yandere" in this case is "dere" plus the yan from "yankee", a term for delinquents. It's pretty fun!

This is one of my favorite kinds of love stories. The genders can go either way, but it's always fun to see the school delinquent falling in love. Speak of the devil, I'm in the middle of reading a 4koma about a yankee girl and an honor roll boy right now! Though the first part (not linked here) wasn't quite as entertaining, seeing as it portrayed the guy as being less interested in the girl romantically and more interested in using her to discover whether he was asexual or heterosexual. But the sequel strip (linked above) has been cute so far, despite the guy's almost cruel bluntness.

Googling for Yandere Kanojo, the samples I'm seeing in Google Images don't suggest much in the way of a delinquent girl. ^^; I mean, I can see that if anyone's the delinquent, it's her and not him, but like ... she seems like a pretty ordinary girl. ^^; Maybe if I assume that her blonde hair isn't anime blonde but is in fact dyed blonde then that helps, but she still looks pretty normal.

But my criticisms can't stand in the way of the series' success! For it seems like the author's done well enough with the comics that Volume 12 is coming out tomorrow/Wednesday (February 12 in Japan). So that's something. Not even the original Genshiken was that many volumes long. And heck, even Love Hina was 14 volumes long when it finished -- with its final four volumes being the forced final story arc. So apparently the series is as popular as you suggest. That's cool. Good for the author.

I wonder if that popularity would translate to a long-running television series though. I wonder how much of this series' popularity is fans feeling attached to the two fictional lovebirds and how much of it is the quality of the storytelling. If it's more the former than the latter, then it may not be conducive to a 26+ episode television adaptation.

[Doppleganger]

Dyed blonde, but the girl hasn't really done a lot of delinquent things lately except beating up people. She was more into that very early in the strip when her minions were around more frequently. I'd say the most delinquent thing she's doing is the "bad at school" motif.

It's funny, but the guy-girl are still assuming that their relationship is a secret but apparently the whole school knows now and is pretending they don't notice.

The miscommunication part is great. One of my favourite of the 4koms is where they're going on this date. Girl doesn't know what to wear. The mother (also a former delinquent) goes nuts and picks out a nice dress. She meets the boy but doesn't recognize him at first because he's dressed up as a banchou complete with a flag and slicked back hair.

[Talon87]

Pokémon: Watched XY015.

Spoiler: show

No way does this episode get the red carpet treatment that Episode 014 got.

I mean, it was okay, but it was 25% forgettable filler 75% a lesser Oshawott training episode. Don't get me wrong! Oshawott training episodes were good! But this was simply a lesser one. If I'd give the average Oshawott training episode a B+, this episode with Chespin I'd give a B to -- or at least the parts that were focused on Chespin's character development and training. The episode overall probably gets a B- on a good day and a C+ on a bad day.

There were several little things in this episode that I quite liked though. Things like Serena's further character development (didn't bring a camping bag, was a bit anxious about camping with Ash, ended up enjoying the girl time with Bonnie even though that's a bit of a hard sell since Bonnie's like nine to four years younger than her and you know how kids are with kids that much younger than themselves ^^;) ... things like Citron's pride as a gym leader ("Harimaron, you are a gym leader's Pokémon ... that means we can't be having you lose to the likes of some Japanese kid's Froakie ") ... things like the Shellder tentWAIT WHAAAAAAAT!?

So the girls are sleeping in a Shellder tent.

Shellder.

You know, a clam.

A euphemism for a girl's--

...

Nah, in all seriousness, I thought the tent was cute. Still trying to figure out what Pokémon the boys' tent is supposed to be though. Is it a Clauncher / Clawitzer tail?

The star of next week's episode looks absolutely adorable. I wonder if, given her relation to Eureka, she'll end up being voiced by another Precure voice actress. I couldn't help but to notice that the animation in the sneak peek looks phenomenal (strictly by Pokémon's standards), just like XY014's, so here's hoping that that's a very good sign of things to come. After all, the higher quality the animation, the more the staff cares; the more the staff cares, the more promising the episode's prospects.

[Doppleganger]

Hey LBC that reminds me, you finished Little Busters and Refrain, right?

What did you think of...uh.

Spoiler: show

That one scene in Haruka's path.

"That night...I was held by two men."

I was looking up my logs and I told BBB I screamed out loud during that scene.

[lilboocorsola]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

Hey LBC that reminds me, you finished Little Busters and Refrain, right?

What did you think of...uh.

Spoiler: show

That one scene in Haruka's path.

"That night...I was held by two men."

I was looking up my logs and I told BBB I screamed out loud during that scene.

It's been a while since I saw the first season, so I don't really remember that scene. I heard something about the novel though:

Spoiler: show

Haruka lived with her estranged father?[/notsure]

[Doppleganger]

Looks like Legend of the Galactic Heroes is getting a remake a la HxH style, although that fills be with a lot of trepidation. While HxH's adaption has been superior to the original, the original was also not a Masterpiece, and was certainly not as influential as say the first FMA anime series was (and why that series continues to dominate against Brotherhood in "best of" decade lists).

I'll probably finish the series proper before the remake starts, and that should be for the best!

[Adamant]

Originally Posted by Talon87

The star of next week's episode looks absolutely adorable. I wonder if, given her relation to Eureka, she'll end up being voiced by another Precure voice actress.

Nope. It was

Spoiler: show

Hatsune Miku

[big bad birtha]

OH SHIT! Stephen Hawking! Awesome! I can hear it now. "I am a little girl. Yay. Yay. Yay. *in an emotionless voice*"

I watched XY 15 myself. Thoughts on 15:

Spoiler: show

It was an okay episode. No Team Rocket, so that was a plus of sorts. It might just be baseless optimism on my part, but Citron's quick assumption that Harimaron hated him was interesting to me. Not because of what happened this episode, but because of what he might do in a future episode with it. Citron might do something really cruel later on down the line because of his lack of self-esteem....maybe?

Also it seems they're not jamming the thing with Eureka asking girls out for Citron down our throats, which is nice. We got pretty girls the previous two weeks, and unlike Takeshi's annoying "I LOVE YOU! MARRY ME!", Eureka showed some restraint and isn't doing it ALL THE GOD DAMN TIME. Speaking of Eureka, next week's episode looks really cute.

Oh yeah, this week's Toaru blah blah blah (Pilot anime) also sucked, so Hamatora wasn't the only thing to suffer this week.

[Doppleganger]

Lying Mii-kun and Broken Maa-chan

Perhaps this is a change? I had logged this series several years ago but was too chicken to read through it fearing rape/torture. Not saying what I found, but I was able to muscle through this pretty easily. Gives me confidence I can take on the VNs/Kurosawa this weekend.

A bit predictable series without a lot of resolution. I'd give it a 6. I really like the artist, though!

[lilboocorsola]

Konoha's PV is out!

I think Mamoru Miyano actually pulls him off pretty well.

[Talon87]

Galilei Donna: After finishing Gingitsune, I watched Episode 07 of this last night. While I'm more interested in continuing Nagi no Asukara, this one is so short and I am so close to finishing it that I figured, "Oh what the hey." It was late, and I really didn't want to start up Nagi no Asukara so late at night.

Since I hadn't seen this show in so long, I decided to watch the final five or seven minutes of Episode 06 first, then Episode 07. In hindsight, this was a good decision since it spared me the nagging doubt about whether the "Well that escalated quickly! " feelings Episode 07 left me with were the show's fault or my memory's. (Nope! It was the show's alright! ) And in what sense did things escalate quickly? Well ...!

Spoiler: show

For starters, the Galileo has been destroyed. So there's that. It will be interesting to see whether Episode 08 magically handwaves away the fact that they're in the middle of nowhere and should have no reasonable means of fixing their aircraft or not. Will the sky pirates show up and give them a lift? That's what I'd probably have happen if I were writing this. Will Hozuki and the others instead repair the Galileo? I could see that happening knowing this show.

Second, the bad guys were given Galileo's Treasure that we only just had confirmed for us in the previous two episodes was Hozuki's goldfish hourglass pendant.

Third, it's revealed to the viewers that not only does Anna know Roberto (revealed in the previous episode) but that she is in love with him and owes her current life to him; and it's revealed to the Ferrari sisters that Anna is more than likely in the employ of Adnimoon. Well ... sort of. They deduce correctly that Anna knew about Hozuki's pendant being Galileo's treasure all along and that she's some sort of spy or operative or something ... but they never come out and say verbatim that Anna works for Adnimoon. I guess future episodes will make clearer whether the girls deduced this much in Episode 07 or not.

Now comes the fun part: Galilei Jingoism!

Spoiler: show

Yeah, Episode 07 is where Glorious Nipponism rears its ugly head once again. I mean, we already had to deal with this from the very start of the program:

• that Galileo Galilei's then-last remaining descendant would marry some crackpot Japanese scientist
• that the three youngest descendants of Galileo Galilei are her daughters and thus are half-Japanese

But aside from little things like these, it wasn't exactly like the writers had come out and said, "Europe? Ass. Japan? Heaven," or "Europeans? Baboons. Japanese? Geniuses. " But Episode 07 just has to go and state that one of Galileo Galileo's scrolls is located in Japan. What does this mean?

1. It means that either:
   1. Galileo Galilei, in his lifetime, magically made the trip to Japan and deposited a scroll there
   2. one of Galileo's descendants or admirers did this for him
   The problem with B though is that the scrolls' locations are all triangulated by using information on the other scrolls currently in your possession. Meaning that unless several of the scrolls were written by future parties, the scroll in Japan and the scroll(s) that pointed to the scroll in Japan had to have all been written by Galileo himself. Dumb. Just how in the blue blazes are we supposed to believe that Galileo made a trip to Japan in the 16th/17th century and somehow it didn't make the history books? Pretty sure the poor bastard was under house arrest. Pretty sure Oda Nobunaga would have been all over that shit if he had learned that Galileo Galilei were in Japan. Or that Tokugawa Ieyasu would have had the country on 100% lockdown against foreign entry. Anyway ...
2. It means that it's up to GLORIOUS NIPPON to save the world from Adnimoon's immoral actions! Leave it to NIPPON to have the key to reinventing Galileo's treasure from scratch.

So we'll see what happens from here. With only four episodes to go, I think I can hang in there even if the show goes completely to shit.

[Doppleganger]

That's some mild jingoism. Japanese-centric, perhaps. But I've read some stuff lately that would blow your mind in that department!

Baka ga Zenra de Yattekuru

Part Molester Man, part Hentai Kamen...I think.

Nerdy college guy wants to be a writer. Gets rejected a bunch of times, gets depressed. A loli-looking celebrity writer goes to his school and has this haughty attitude toward all other would-be writers and that makes him depressed.

He goes to a bar, and a naked guy shows up. Naked dude then starts living with him. Totally naked. The woman next door thinks they're a homosexual couple. Naked guy reads nerd's novels, doesn't actually say he's good but says he'll be a novelist (IMV, this tells me he doesn't think the novels are that great, but wants to give his bro confidence).

Expectations: nerd seduces the celebrity loli writer. I was expecting him to try it at the start, but no he went all conventional Japanese on her!

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

That's some mild jingoism. Japanese-centric, perhaps. But I've read some stuff lately that would blow your mind in that department!

Oh, it is, don't get me wrong. But if we're going to see who can outdo the other as far as jingoist anime or manga he's seen or read, I'm going to have to play the Uchuu Kyoudai card, and I think bbb will back me up that that's got to be at least a straight flush if not a royal flush.