Airhead cat lover with a yakuza fetish?  Sadistic childhood friend?  Reverse Trap high school yakuza boss?  Animators and writers who must be on acid?

You had me at acid.

Sense – this makes none

The plot this week introduces a new character, and again I have a new favorite.  Ichinose, to spoil the fairly obvious reveal of this episode, is the newest unintentional love interest for Kousaka.  I refer to her as a reverse trap – rather than the guy who looks like a girl, she is a girl who looks like a guy.  The method of the reveal is also pretty obvious.

The Japanese are a very clumsy people

Even the inflection in her voice changes depending on the situation.  Nothing like a bi-polar yakuza member to add to the fun.

The rest of the story has plot points that include the cliche

How many episodes will this go on?

The unexpected

This is not how you react to finding yourself in a Yakuza stronghold

To the WTF?

No.  God No.

The visual style of this show lands it firmly in the area of gag anime, with bizzare visual twists and turns like those below.

You can’t resist my Geass!

An important ecological message.

Also, I am convinced all Japanese people are muppets

There is a felt shortage in the Far East

Nyan Koi sounds like a goofy concept, and it is – guy who is allergic to cats gets cursed so that he can understand cats, and must help them or turn into a cat himself. It’s a bit of a gag show, has some harem elements, nothing too fantastic overall. And yet I’m loving it so far. It took me a bit to figure out why, given there is nothing that stands out. But I think I finally hit on its appeal.

No panties.

OMG she is wearing PANTS!

I can’t remember the last show I watched that didn’t have some ecchi component.  We’re three episodes in, and so far no one has fallen on top of anyone, no ones skirt has flipped up at random, no camera shots come from below waist level, it’s amazing!

This is as bad as it gets

The story is progressing into harem territory, but that’s just alright by me.  It’s the good kind of harem, where the members are strong, individual characters there to support the main goal of the protagonist, in this case, helping cats. And the tone so far has been a silly comedic tone, not too dumb, and no serious social commentary.  I was afraid we were going to see the seedy underbelly of animal cruelty and abandonment in Japan, but so far the worst task was retrieving a collar from a mean dog.

My favorite character so far, watch Episode 2 to explain the hair

I’d also like to point out an odd bit of casting for the voices, which is one of the reasons this show garnered so much attention at the onset.  The two cats on the right are regulars.  The black one is voiced by Atsuko Tanaka , who does Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, while the white one is voiced by Jun Fukuyama, voice of Lelouch from Code Geass.  That is a fairly badass pair of cats.

You know what they call cat food in France?  A Royal with Cheese…

I stopped blogging about Bakemonogatari after episode 7, because I was quickly loosing interest.  We finished with the Monkey, went on to a Snake, and touched on a Cat, all without the interest and fire I felt for the first half of the series.  It took me a bit to realize why, but it was simple.  No Senjōgahara.  She appears briefly to wrap up the Monkey story line, but is completely absent for the Snake and barely mentioned for the Cat.  It was clear that the back and forth between Senjōgahara and Araragi was what drew me into this show, and characters like Kanburu, Sengoku or Hanekawa (Monkey, Snake and Cat) just don’t cut it.

That is why Episode 12 is the most perfect episode of anime ever created, period.

SQUEEEEEEEE!

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Anime has had it’s share of slightly off female characters. They are assasins, seductresses, sadistic murderers, psycho killers, possessed school girls, you name it. And to all of them, I would like to say…meet your God:

Rena…ain’t got nothing..on ME!

Yuno is the co-star of Mirai Nikki, loosely translated as Future Diary. She joins Yukki, who one day is given a cell phone diary that predicts the future thanks to his imaginary friend turning out to actually be a god. God needs a replacement, so he has peppered the land with 12 Future Diaries, each slightly unique. The last surviving diary holder will be his replacement. Oh yes, there will be blood.
Yuno comes on the scene first with an unrequited love for Yukki, and has a diary that tells her everything that is going to happen to Yukki. This elevates her from “crush” to “stalker”.  She even calls her diary the Stalker Diary. Probably should be some alarm bells going off now. She pops up to save him from another diary holder who is a serial killer that records his kills in his diary, thus he has the Murder Diary, which tells him how his next kill will go down. But with two diary holders against one, they learn they have the power to change fate if they work together. With that, they become the number one guns in the Diary game.

Good to know

I’ll add some more spoilerific prose after the break, but needless to say Yuno quickly establishes herself as Yukki’s companion and protector. Yukki is naturally wary of her motives, as it becomes clear most of the other diary holders are trying to kill each other one by one. Is Yuno really on his side, considering the source of her fascination with him is one time he said hi to her? Or is this a set up for a future plan? More spoilers after the jump.

Good deal

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I am convinced that every frame of this show is planned to have maximum symbolic effect within the story.  The settings, background signs, jump cuts and every single character of dialog seems planned to drive home with maximum effect the theme of the scene.  Problem is, I’m way to dumb to catch any of that.  Throughout this post, we will take some side trips to look at the symbolism that is blatant enough to wack me over the head, and try to speculate on what I’m probably missing.

Try to keep your excitement to Senjōgahara levels, please.

What do you want to do tonight, Brain?

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We wrap up the Snail arc this week as Araragi looks for a way to get Hachikuji home.  Now, one of the genres of anime character that I try to ignore is the loli, referring either to younger than high school girls, or the older guys who are a tad too into them.  Hachikuji would be a prime example of a loli if they played up her (lack of) sexuality.  This show would never stoop so low, would they?

I guess they would

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The problem with blogging this show is you can’t really do the story justice with screen shots and summaries.  For example, if I was to simply summarize this episode, it would be:

• 0:00 – 16:24 – Araragi and Senjōgahara verbal flirting
• 16:24 – 22:24 – Beating up then befriending a school girl
• 22:24 – 34:04 – Looking for a house
• 34:22 – 45:02 – Planning for next episode

And you may see where the title of this blog post comes from.  And yet these are a riviting 45 minutes that trumps any action packed anime of this or any season.  And it all starts in a primary colored wonderland of a playground that forms the setting for most of these episodes.

They don’t have anything like this in the US

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Bakemonogatari continues to deliver on amazing visuals and deep character development that makes me giddy with joy.  Experimental junk like this doesn’t always work on me, but this show hits a hole in one for some reason.  This episode mixes some excellent verbal sparring with a mix of religion, horror and redemption.  The scariest part actually comes at the end…

That’s just not natural

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Anime is

story                        visuals

.         plot             images                                                  character

sound                                     life wonder

.               voice

…and sometime watching them is like trying to read the above.

In the tradition of Ef, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, and the last few episodes of Evangelion comes Bakemonogarari.  Random images, mixed media, lots of text, all mixing together in what promises to be a pretty bizarre story.  Just look at their opening inspiration:

Isn’t this the opening of Eco?

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I didn’t blog about episode 2 of the new season because it didn’t seem like there was much there. Summer memories, slice of life, all pretty cliche stuff before the new school year. I have had my faith restored in Haruhi, however, as we again see nothing is as it seems. As Kyon observes:

First clue – you’re in this anime

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