Manufactured Feels

Been awhile since I spoke about the weekly animes, been busy with other things and just not caring too much, but I figured I’d hit some of the good ones here real quick before the weekend is over. If you haven’t seen my Spring 2013 chart and preview for what I’m looking into watching next month, check that out.

The last few episodes of Tomodachi haven’t been particularly that memorable, the gang’s movie and all, but this one took a dive into Rika’s world, and the fairly obvious sign that our perverted mecha goddess is falling for the halfling in the worst way possible, he doesn’t really acknowledge it, likely on purpose. There is a lot of underpinnings introduced earlier, like he and Sena’s engagement as children and Yozora’s jelly over that and the fact they are also childhood friends. Truth be told, I liked this show back when all of that stuff didn’t matter, when it was just the Neighbor’s Club having a good time. Ain’t nobody got time for this.

Frankly, if I were still ranking shows weekly, Robotics;Notes is a strong contender for the top. We’ve come around full-circle to the scenes from the first episode, as the team finishes Super GunPro-1 to square off against Misa and the plot to kill everyone. Most of this episode really put that on the backseat and finally put out Kai and Aki’s relationship, that it is more than a friendship, and for once, the man was the first confess, much to Frau and the others dismay. There was also concerns of the device that trigger’s Kai’s seizures potentially killing him, but he decides to go forth with possibly using it anyway, because he thinks it will be the only way to predict Misa’s moves and defeat her. I’d still say Steins;Gate was the better presented anime, but fuck man, this is still gold.

Whoops. Seems the cat is out of the bag now in Vividred Operation, Rei’s arrow shots have been tracked by Himawari and the inevitable confrontation between “Bad Guy” Rei and “Good Guy” Akane in her suit was had, only unfortunately it did not go well for Akane because they had only 24 hours earlier really bonded as friends, not knowing who each other’s real identities were. Naturally Rei assumed Akane and the others knew and they strung her along, calling the fake friendship lying before being arrested. I can only imagine a Nanoha gets pulled here and they make her the fifth Power Ranger and they form the Megazord to combat the evil Rita Repulsa bird and fight interdimensional beings and save the Earth. Shit, that sounds like fuckwin right there.

I actually enjoyed this week’s Sasami-san moreso than recently, it just seemed like a cheeky idea in every way. Use Tama as Sasami and hold one big telepathic IRC party. I’m not sure who or what Edogawa is suddenly doing, or why she is a futa, but I assume this will culminate in another wacky adventure for Sasami-san and the gang. That is the nature of the show after all.

The thing about Sakurasou that annoys me is that it is both a good and terrible show at the same time. It’s terrible in the sense that all of the characters are so shoddily written with such hamfisted actions and feelings that some of the interactions are just plain dumb. I had a short chat session saved from the other day with a co-worker about it that pretty much summarized the show for me:

Me: it’s not a bad show, it’s just the characters get god-awful annoying sometimes with stupid shit they’ve had twenty episodes to figure out
Him: HERP DERP WAT IS RELASHUNSHIP HURRRRRRR
Him: OH MAH GAWD IM IN SAME ROOM INDIRECT KISSUUUU
Me: that and WAH IM A SHITTY PROGRAMMER/VOICE ACTOR/ARTIST/HUMAN BEING

Actually, when I thought about it, the characters in this show emulate these people somewhat well. Programmers always think they’re gods-among-men because they can forge something from nothing, artists have so much self-loathing and hate their work despite it being better than 99% of the rest of anyone, voice actors believe the world ends when they fail once, and script writers and animators are just batshit insane and go on strike a lot. The only character who maintained face and had a justifiable story and role was Rita. She acknowledges her jealousy towards Mashiro, moves on, and tries to get into Ryuunosuke’s pants. But despite all that, Sakurasou winds up being such a fun show to watch with moments that really do invoke the feels you get when you’ve been in that position before, when you’ve beaten yourself up time after time for losing to everyone else, for not trying hard enough, and for lacking faith in your friends. I know it’s just anime, and that it’s fucking stupid to equate it to real life, but there was a time when I thought I was the king of the fucking world, I had a girlfriend, I had friends, we went places, did things, enjoyed our post-high school lives, and then it crashed, hard. We went out separate ways, I lost my job, and rather than pick myself up and move on, I filled that void with sorrow and World of Warcraft. It took someone else to pull me out of that and tell me I’m not a worthless pile of shit, and that was my fiancee. I’m still pretty worthless, especially towards the people I work with, but I take life one step at a time moving forward. That’s the TL;DR of this show. Gasp, animation that isn’t mindless that evokes thought and contemplation? In my daily life? Shut the front door.

I was going to say that episode wasn’t particularly interesting, save for MORI-MORI-MORI and some other spittakes, but then the shit started rolling deep towards the end, until finally, Club Prez was about to be whacked and then BAM– ending credits? NOOOOOOOO~ FUCK YOU NEXT WEEK Yeah, anime is a cruel bitch. Bitter and cruel.

Anyway, that’s all I’m going to hit this week. I know I missed a few shows, but it’s late and I’m tired. I’ll try to catch up on those later. Toodles~