Analysis

White Witch, Black Witch – The ‘Magic’ of Umineko no Naku Koro ni

[ayko]

Ryukishi07’s Umineko no Naku Koro ni has been the talk of the internet for at least a year. With spoilers flying left right and center, there aren’t many anime fans who haven’t at least heard of Battler Ushiromiya’s series of chess games against the witch named Beatrice. I wrote about the first episode when I read it, but having finally completed and digested the first complete game, I think it’s time to revisit my old theories and provide a new assessment of what the story is about and where it’s headed. Brace yourselves; Rokkenjima does not follow the laws of the rest of the world.

(This post contains spoilers from episodes 1-4 of the visual novel)

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Review

The World God Only Knows and the Art of Love

Love is War, as they say. Fighting on the battlefield of love requires not only the guts and courage of a shounen hero, but also the level-headed tactical prowess of a military commander. Keima Katsuragi is one such warrior who, having distanced himself from the frailty of human emotion, fights with his life on the line against impossible odds. Armed only with his wit and intellect, he stands proudly as a one-man army against thousands of escaped spirits from Hell who hide within human hosts and absorb their energy. His dramatic tale of love and loss is one that has won the hearts of countless fans, including my own. It comes as no surprise that he will one day become the protagonist of his own anime series.

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Analysis

Crying Your True Tears

In a word, True Tears is spectacular. It’s a well-crafted love story that doesn’t succumb to the common failings of its kind. Be it visual novel or shoujo manga adaptation, romance anime are often hit-or-miss, falling apart at the lack of realism or the unnecessary angst or the uninspired telling of a straightforward plot. It’s rare to find a story that, despite being fairly ordinary, hits every note with such eloquent accuracy. Rather than being a tear-jerker or a personal favourite for various subjective reasons, this is one of the first shows on my favourites list to earn its spot based on sheer competence.

Most bloggers have already written about True Tears and most fans have already settled into their opinions of it, but my second viewing gave me the insight I needed to understand why the show received the praise that it did. This is my attempt at examining the anime that made me remember that, from the viewer’s perspective, there is such thing as the perfect story.

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Analysis

A Journey Through Gensokyo, Part One: Listen to my Song!

[kibushi]

Touhou fandom is a vast, vast entity. A while ago I jotted down some tips for beginners who fear the difficulty of the game series, but as important as bullet dodging is, the franchise extends far beyond the gameplay. I’ve learned a lot about Touhou over the last few months, dedicating countless hours to filling up my doujin music library and saving new fanart. I spent some time on the ever-helpful wiki, too, trying to piece together some of the more obscure tidbits of storyline information.

As my travels through Gensokyo continued, I stumbled upon something quite interesting: Touhou sheet music. With a bit of help (thanks, Matthew), I was able to track down the sheet music of some of my favourite songs in the series. I’m no expert on music theory, but with a visual transcription of the songs to help me, I think I can dig up some interesting facts. Maybe you can to.

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Review

Plot and Pacing in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

There has always been something about the shounen genre that pushed me away from it. This is partly due to some complicated gateway experiences, but for the most part it’s thanks to the tradition itself. Quite frankly, action is not something that I would normally go for, and it would take a masterfully animated fight scene from Kara no Kyoukai for me to justify watching a show solely for the action.

While my problem with the genre is an issue of personal taste rather than an objective complaint, I’ve been consistently amazed by Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood over the past year. I’ve delayed shows like To Aru Kagaku no Railgun and Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu to make room for FMA – a series that, theoretically, shouldn’t appeal to me in the first place. After almost 50 episodes of pondering, it occurred to me that Brotherhood strikes the most important element of the shounen genre with perfect precision, and that there’s a good reason behind my ability to watch a shounen without any stylish swordfights.

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Review

Self-Insertion in Sasameki Koto

Sasameki Koto didn’t seem to attract much attention when it aired in the winter, although it ended up on my watchlist by virtue of being a new yuri show. It departs quite a bit from the “walking slowly is preferred here” image of Marimite and the subtlety of Aoi Hana, going so far as to set its characters in a coed school and making one of them allegedly not a lesbian. It’s hard to say where it would fit on BakaRaptor’s real lesbian/super lesbian scale, but it’s certainly more grounded in reality than many of its kind.

Ironically, my enjoyment of Sasameki Koto has almost nothing to do with its yuri tropes and clichés. Instead, an interesting phenomenon occurred with regards to Sumika’s character: she began to feel less like the heroine and more like the male self-insert. I went into the show expecting a full serving of voyeuristic bliss derived from the idealized romances portrayed in shoujo-ai, but it wasn’t long before my experience changed from third-person to first-person.

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