But I can’t.
I haven’t published anything in a while. It has been hard for me to motivate myself to write. It’s been summer. I’ve been out enjoying the weather and casually playing Pokemon Go. I hope to get back to getting some content out again soon.
Be well everyone.
Today is my birthday. This is not to get well wishes, but to provide context.
My older, the “Youtaite”, recorded another song for my birthday.
Last year he had done the T.V. size version of Bakemonogatari’s ED: “Kimino Shiranai Monogatari” by Supercell ( Nagi Yanagi).
This year he did the full song.
He knows it’s one of my favorites.
It’s pretty great.
I then showed him why I loved it so much.
Go watch Bakemonogatari.
Thank you son.
Here is less of a review than a tale of well intentions gone awry.
It is the story (less of a story more a brief anecdote) of myself, younger son, and two anime.
The shows:
Mawaru Penguindrum (image from Wikipedia)
and,
Kuma Miko- Girl Meets Bear. (image from Funimation)
As past readers of my blog will know, I am often “vetting” shows for my younger son. Seeing what is appropriate, what is not, what his mother may yell at me for letting him watch, etc.
Readers will also know that I am human and fail at this sometimes. These are my two most recent examples.
Mawaru Penguindrum.
This show is a favorite of mine. It’s weird. Perplexing. Stylish. All the things I could want. I even have a figurine from this show. And part of me really wants Himari’s penguin hat so I could start out my days by putting it on and yelling: “IMAGINE!”. But, I start my days at 3:30 in the morning so my neighbors might not be amused.
So, I had seen news that HULU was removing a bunch of it’s anime catalog due to low viewership and just keeping the more popular shows. I decided to see if Penguindrum was on the chopping block. It was.
It had been a couple of years since I watched it and I had only remembered a few bits why I didn’t let my son watch it at the time. But, I figured: “He’s older. And he sees as bad on One Piece, it should be fine.”
So with only a couple of days of availability left I figured I’d let him watch it. I watched some of it.
The funny thing is: you can’t trust your memory. Memory is faulty.
So I’m watching it with my son. First couple of episodes, mostly fine. And then we come to Ringo’s storyline…poor deluded, psycho-stalker, Ringo. Ringo stalks her teacher and wants to make him fall in love with her. Ringo camps out under the crawl space of teacher’s house and eavesdrops on him. My son was watching this girl with shock, saying: “Oh my god! She’s nuts! She’s a crazy stalker!”
I cringed at this and proceeded to make my next mistake. I thought to myself:”Yeah…I think that’s as bad as it gets. This little Ringo arc should be over soon.”
I thought. Like I said memory can’t be trusted.
However, I did tell my son: “Wait, and watch this with me so I can monitor it.”
My son had other ideas. He was on a mission to finish it before HULU took it off their service. So he proceeded to watch it at his mother’s house without me there.
I, then, get the following texts from his older brother:
“Father there is a lot of sexual harassment in this show what the fuck are you even thinking letting him watch this”
“TWO PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ROOFIED”
At this point I was thinking to myself:” Oh, shit. I had forgotten so much.” and I get more texts:
“the sensei’s wife drugged Ringo cause she’s like ‘omg become Momoka'”
“and the clothes come off.”
“Oh dear god I think the dad is going to rape her or try to kill her wtf”
” Okay the father only stabbed her or something and mentally abused her telling her she was ugly but still wtf”
At this I replied and told him to have his younger brother Facetime me. He did. And I told him to stop watching the show and explained that the themes were too adult and not appropriate for him. He agreed and thought everyone on the show was nuts.
This is where memory failed me… I needed to remember all the reasons why I didn’t let him watch it in the fist place, but I (obviously) didn’t. My parenting fail…Oops.
Kuma Miko- Girl Meets Bear.
A failure of trust.
One evening, younger son and I were looking through some of the more recent shows out on Funimation and was seeing if there was something new he could watch without much vetting.
I came across this one.
I figured: “Oh. It’s a cute show about a country shrine maiden who wants to move to the city and her talking bear friend. Sounds cute. What could go wrong?”
And I’ve watched a bit of it and it is mostly fine. But the first episode I watched with my son.
Dammit anime…I trusted you. But you had to go there.
In the first episode there is an explanation by the village officer to the younger children about why the villagers and the bears in the area co-exist so peacefully. He tells a tale about how a villager (long ago) and a bear fell in love. But they couldn’t leave it there. They made the sexual part clear. Bear-on-human cunnilingus is directly implied, and almost shown (not to mention the kids imagining the Miko having this kind of relationship currently).
It was over in a moment, but all I could think at the time was:”Damn it! Why did it have to go there?!”
After that episode I told my son, no more of that show until it was fully “vetted”.
This was a failure of trust.
As a parent you try. You try and sometimes you fail. These were two such failures. A failure of memory and trust. Live and learn.
Until next time: Happy viewing!
*images contained on this post are not owned by this blog*
Literally…
I found the dub of this show on Funimation. It is enjoyable, although not what I’d call a perfect show by any means.
Set in the future, humanity has found another dimension (which they obviously refer to as Dimension W) and they have found a way to harness limitless energy using an invention called “coils”.
The story follows Kyouma Mabuchi, an ex-military special ops soldier, who now shuns this new technology and hunts illegal coils for money. On a job, he encounters an android, Mira Yurizaki, who happened to be the android to the father of the coil technology. And from there the story develops.
Overall, it’s an enjoyable ride. I did find the finer details towards the end dealing with what Dimension W actually is, and what happened to the protagonist there in the past, a little convoluted and found myself hoping for more (and clearer) explanations. Also, another reviewer pointed out the fight scenes with Mabuchi throwing his darts with the wires attached could get a bit perplexing (where were those long wires??!!).
I liked the animation style overall. It was well done.
What I did find irritating (and this is a “me” thing) was the fan service with Yurizaki. It wasn’t extreme, and I know they do it so all the young otakus will buy her figurine later, but I found it pointless and distracting.
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I know, I know…It’s just what you find in anime, but it’s not always necessary.
I watched the dub of this, and it was very good. Christopher Sabat voiced Mabuchi and Jad Saxton voiced Yurizaki. The complete dub is available on Funimation’s streaming service.
Attention Parents: Overall the show isn’t too bad. There is some violence, but not excessive or bloody in particular. The fan service is mostly a half naked Yurizaki, which isn’t horrible, but I found it distracting and annoying more than anything. It does have a few disturbing ideas towards the end of what happened to survivors of an experiment gone wrong that might not be good for a young viewer.
Aside from some minor points, I enjoyed this show. The story is interesting, characters enjoyable, and the voice acting and animation were well done. A good watch over all.
Until next time, Happy viewing!
*the images used in this post are not owned by the blog*
As many who have read this blog before know that my son is a “You-Taite” (see Son Hacks Dad’s Blog Pt 1: Utaite/Youtaite – Basic Cover Stuff, I Guess) .
He just did a pretty good cover of the Kiznaiver OP! Check it out!
I’m a proud dad.
There is something wrong with me… I accept and know this.
I got this idea last year that it would be really funny if I cosplayed as a magical girl, but didn’t even try to pass as female.
So who did I choose as my cosplay? Mami Tomoe!
Now, don’t get me wrong. This is no instance of disrespect. I love Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It is one of my favorites.
So much to both of my son’s horror and my delight, I went through with it. I have the whole outfit now and I will be wearing it next week in Chicago at Anime Central for the first time.
There are a lot of people who have been wanting to see this so, not knowing if I’ll remember to take pictures of myself while I’m at ACEN, I took a few today.
So Enjoy! and if you’re at ACEN, say “hi”.
Grimagar Of Fantasy And Ash.
Based off a light novel, the story follows a bunch of people who awaken in a RPG like world without any real knowledge of how they got there or where they came from.
All they know is that they need to earn money and to do this you become recruits in a volunteer army and kill monsters.
The show focuses on their day to day life and how they learn to work and grow together as a fighting party. It is very reminiscent of guild game play in an MMO.
The story is good, but often feels slow paced. The character design is good, but nothing outstanding. The background art is what truly stood out for me in this show. It has a very watercolor style feel to it and is quite pretty to look at.
If you are a fan of fantasy and monster killing shows it could go either way about whether you’d like it or not. There is some good action without a doubt, but much of that is overshadowed by the pacing that seems slow at times largely because it is narrated though the main character’s, Haruhiro’s, thoughts.
I watched the English dub and found it to be quite good.
Attention Parents: Grimgar is violent. There is blood and killing, albeit monster’s blood and deaths, but it is there nonetheless if that is a concern. There is a little fan service, but it isn’t overbearing.
Give Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash a look. While not my favorite of the season, it was an entertaining and interesting watch with some real beautiful animation.
Until next time: Happy Viewing!
*all images in this post are not owned by this site.*
Ojisan To Marshmallow
Ojisan To Marshmallow is a short form anime following Iori Wakabayashi as she tries to get the romantic attention of her coworker, Habahiro Hige. Hige, being older, doesn’t think of Wakabayashi this way. He mostly thinks of marshmallows. The man is obsessed with his marshmallows.
The show is cute, sometimes kind of ecchi, and short with each episode being around 3 minutes long.
I found the show enjoyable. It was, in fact, one of my favorites of the winter season along with Erased.
The show overall is high on the sweet and cute factor, but could stray into ecchi territory at times.
And even though I let my younger son watch it, there were times I was cringing, wondering whether I’d made the wrong choice… Though much of the time many things seemed to go over his head.
Attention Parents: The show is sweet and cute, but it does get racy at times and has some adult humor thrown in. Is it really bad? No. Is it completely innocent? Absolutely not.
I liked the show. The animation is good, but nothing out of the ordinary. I just found it cute and amusing.
Erased (Boku Dake ga Inai Machi)
It has been a while since I’ve posted due to life and time constraints. Due to the nature of this show and what can I say about it without giving away too much, I’ll keep my review brief.
Erased was probably my favorite anime of the winter season. Well written, animated, and paced. Erased is what I want out of a show: enjoyable to watch and leaving me looking forward to the next week’s episode.
In short the show follows Satoru Fujinuma. We meet Satoru as adult who has a strange ability (or perhaps affliction?): He goes back in time a few minutes to prevent potentially tragic events from happening. After an accident that involves one of these episodes that leaves Satoru in the hospital, a series of events causes his ability to kick him back to his past in elementary school to prevent a series of child abductions and murders.
What follows is an engaging murder mystery/ thriller. We follow Satoru desperately trying to save his fellow classmates as a young child. We see him trying have the knowledge of an adult while re-living his past as a child. All of this made for a fun watch.
Attention Parents: While there is not a ton of violence shown or fan service, it is a disturbing subject matter. It is about child abduction and murder: that’s heavy stuff and I would suggest vetting it if you are considering letting your child watch it.
It is really worth a view. And very nice to look at to boot!
Happy viewing!
-no images in this post are owned by this site.
Alright, so I’m bored and have my dad’s laptop again yayy! I haven’t posted stuff on here since the first time back in June, sooo yeah. I’m gonna explain some things about the youtaite community that I meant to in my original post, so read that and come back to this!
Alright, now that you’re caught up, I’ll explain a huge part of the Youtaite lifestyle;
Masochism.
Er, what was that? I meant to say; “Chorus Battles” hahaha oh wait there’s no difference.
Let me explain;
Chorus battles are organized by a group of youtaites, who are normally fairly experienced, so they can judge entries. But what are these entries, you ask?
To enter in a chorus battle, you have to first register yourself with a group. The group must have at least 4 roles fulfilled:
Most CBs give about a month or more for all the groups to work on their entries. They also normally have a theme for each round, and your group has to write an interpretation of the theme, relating it to the song choice.
Once entries are submitted and graded by the judges, the elimination process starts.
All CBs work differently, but generally larger CBs will cut about one half of all the groups in the first round, and then either cut more or less in the next (depending on the CB). Most go to round 3 or 4, ending afterwards.
Why did I call it masochistic? Because chorus battles are super stressful (especially for animators). Everyone’s rushing to fit within the deadlines, and when things aren’t going as planned, and it’s only a few hours before the deadline to submit entries, people start freaking out (I can tell you this from personal experience).
So, why do we do it? It’s fun. Though stressful, it’s super rewarding to see the project you worked so hard on finally get its spotlight on YouTube (or wherever else you upload it to avoid bullshit YT copyright).
Until recently, I’d never gotten past round 1 of a chorus battle. A lot of them ended with drama or lack of preparation (which made the final product not so good). But now, I have a very solid group I’m in, all of us work together well, and actually render our video on time (more or less).
I’ll leave a link to our R2 entry in case anyone’s interested;
We haven’t heard back from the judges yet, and though I believe we have a solid entry, it’s hard to know if we’ll advance to R3. Since this particular CB is a Battle Royale, teams were pooled into groups of 3 or 4 for round 2, with only one team advancing to round 3. Round 1 had 2 teams going at it 1-1. We were pooled with one of the top groups from round 1, and their round 2 entry was really solid as well, so it’s anyone’s guess who advances haha.
Anyways, I hope this was interesting, I didn’t really have any pics so I know I’d get bored with this post, but if you’re still reading, good for you and also why.
~ Glace (the 16-year-old son)
Japan . Travel . Food
Reflecting on Mecha Anime, myself, the fandom, and other Anime
A Relocation from Hollywood to the Japanese Countryside
Rewatching Pokemon
Introvert - Dreamer - Libra
Reaching For 1,000 Anime Reviews.
Scribbles on Cocktail Napkins
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A gateway to the anime world
Everything about animation, comics, and games on Purdue University campus
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