Every year during Saimoe time I end up finding one anime out of the previous year that I missed and grab and download and watch, and usually end up liking. Last year it was Saki, which was unique in making the game of mahjong rather interesting, as in everything is better when you throw in implied lesbians. This year I noticed a couple I missed from the beginning of the year, Kanamemo, and Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou. Having finished Kanamemo, a review is in order:
“Slice of Life” has gained popularity over the last few years because apparently anime fans aren’t into serious business lately. In many ways I can’t blame them, as the world economy is still slumped somewhat, among many other concerns for nations and people, I think people find the little things in life animated with cute girls to be distracting and entertaining from the woes of the real world.
Kanamemo doesn’t do anything special other than set forth 13 episodes starring Kana, a girl whose grandmother passed away, leaving her all alone. She sets forth to find a job when she gets sucked in to a local newspaper distributor who happens to be hiring, and offers room and board. After a series of strange events, she joins the all female team which includes a little girl known as “The Chief” (Saki), a woman who drinks a lot, fondles Kana, and lusts after little girls (Haruka), a continued-failing-from-entering-college girl (Hinata), and two lesbians-for-each-other (Yume and Yuuki) Together they embark on the fortunes and misfortunes of living life delivering newspapers twice a day, in any condition, under the tough-as-nails Chief Saki who only shows her nice side to win more subscriptions.
I’ve seen a lot of SoL shows, and this is one of the better constructed ones. It’s one thing to make a series about something like everyday lives of newspaper girls, but the idea is, that’s all it is, a show about newspaper girls. Toss in jokes, humor, real-life situations, but don’t overstep your boundaries, and don’t cram in the final few episodes, just let it end gracefully and if you get picked up for a second season, make your stand there. Some of the newer titles could stand to learn from that formula, and it’d make for much better anime.
All in all, if you are a fan of SoL series, it’s worth your watch. It’s funny, it’s cute, and fuck you, I liked it.
Title: Kanamemo
Sub Group I Watched: polished
Episodes: 13
Rating (1-10): 8
So in browsing danbooru and wallbase this morning for graphics for Saimoe I came across a wallpaper that mimicked a fighter selection screen and feature Lucky Star characters on it. The design was simple and with a few tweaks, I came up with a template for the next round of Saimoe 2010.
Here is an example (and note this isn’t an actual match, I just used two of the finalists to build the template)
I like the 8-bit font I was using for the TMNT-style match posters that I applied it to this one and was fairly pleased with the result. The only thing that got to me was PSP9’s anti-aliasing, I used it for everything except the VS and the [1P] and [2P] because I didn’t like how no anti-alias looked for the other text elements at 8-10pt. I may play with that some more, but I’m pretty pleased with how this came out for about an hour and a half of work this morning. I think sometimes I try just a little too hard to cram a bunch of elements into the picture while trying to keep the primary focus on the character pictures themselves.
Now the question is, do I use this for the Semifinals or go with something new? Decisions.