If you’re familiar with my MAL (my MyAnimeList? There has to be a better way to say that), you know I’m reluctant to hand out scores of 9 and 10, and I’m even thrifty with my 8s. I don’t bestow my highest favor upon just any show or movie. To enshrine itself within my hall of legends, a work of animated film must demonstrate all-around solid art, music, and acting, achieve my basic requirements of good characterization, and meet one of three conditions:

1. It must serve as a damned fine example of storytelling, consisting of equal parts top-notch structure and downright cleverness.

2. It must somehow engage my worldview, whether by exploring or challenging it.

3. All of the above.

That’s not too much to ask, right? I didn’t think so, but shows that actually meet these requirements have thus far been few and far between, and tend to hit me from somewhere deep in left field. Case in point: Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight!, a show described to me time and again as Lucky Star in the future, a show I watched specifically because of this description as a way of seeing if I’m just not capable of enjoying what Lucky Star and its ilk have to offer. Much to my surprise, Manabi Straight! proved to be everything Lucky Star should have been, plus so much more that even mentioning the two shows in the same sentence does such grave injustice to the former that I should be sentenced to death by hot iron poker (I’ll leave the specifics to your imagination).

If my stance on Lucky Star makes you rage, you may not appreciate the following fangasm or the lovely comparisons I have in store. But if you couldn’t care less about such things, join me as I shower entirely subjective (and entirely deserved) praise upon one of the finest specimens of anime Japan has to offer. Forward, GO!

Over at Yukan, newgeekphilosopher decided to do the round robin thing, asking whether anime fans are more likely to suffer from depression than other folks. Now, I’m out of my element here. I don’t know much about psychology; I took an AP psych class back in high school, but, at the venerable old age of 21, the springtime of my youth is but a distant dream, a bittersweet memory. More recently, I dated a psychology major for a while, but all I learned about psychology from her is that psych majors are themselves in need of professional help, more often than not.

But I’m in a bit of a bind here; my next article was supposed to be about Haruhi and Manabi Straight!, but I haven’t finished Manabi yet because Odin Sphere keeps distracting me with its overwhelming awesome. And as if the previous sentence didn’t contain enough italics for an entire paragraph, I haven’t started my next Chrono article yet, either, and those can take a while, even when I have screenshots covered until halfway through Zeal. Thus, in the interest of maintaining my one-article-per-week minimum average, and because it is a topic with which I might have some relevant experience, let’s talk about the relationship between anime and depression.

Last time on “Breaking the Chrono Trigger,” I managed to ramble without actually saying much. But, having taken care of all precursory notices in Post #1, I’m free to get right on down to business. Let’s roll through this godsend of a game and see what we come up with.

Our story begins in the kingdom of Guardia, whose citizens celebrate the coming of the year 1000 A.D. (Kingdom Year 1000 in the Japanese, which makes more sense, since there’s no Lord in this world for it to be the Year of) by converting the local plaza into a rollicking international party. We pan north over the ocean, where seagulls fly with birdlike abandon, and into the town of Truce, whose Millennial Fair looses balloons into the sky. Zoom in, now, to the home of Crono (the silent H is for pansies), our protagonist…who is woken up by his mom.

Now that’s heroic.

Hello everyone! I am Kaiserpingvin, new blood here at the Super Fanicom. Pleased to make your acquaintance, and I hope to bring about many a useful contributions to the discourse of this strata of the bloggosphere. And a big thanks to Pontifus, for giving me this opportunity! If perchance you find me fascinating, I will direct you to the About page to dispel such temporary (yet comprehendable) delusions.

I should really just have trailed off into something fun and entertaining now. It’s my first post after all, and first appearances count. Yet I’ll have to disappoint you - hereafter follows no such thing, but a theoretical foundation for my writings – when my writings follow my theoretical foundations, that is, which is seldomly the case (I prefer writing something entertaining – brainservicewise - than actually writing something I think might be true, as that’s often more boring). Stay till the end for bewbs.

A friend of mine alerted me to Blogging Ultima when the project was still in its infancy. If you’re not familiar with Blogging Ultima, the premise is thus: computer-savvy veteran gamer Ophidian Dragon resolved to play through all the old Ultima computer games and keep an online record of his experience. The blog can be reckoned a success, as such things go; the author completed the daunting task of revisiting nearly the entire Ultima franchise, earning the commendation of Ultima creator and nigh-legendary game designer Richard Garriott, who eventually sent Ophidian a medieval-style crossbow for his troubles. What’s more, the blog spawned imitators who sought to blog their ways through more popular series, such as Dragon Quest and Zelda (though said imitators gave up before accomplishing much, as far as I know).

I always liked the idea of Blogging Ultima, with its contemporary perspective on old games that broke new ground when released, its amusing commentary on the evolution of story in computer role-playing games as seen through the lens of Ultima, and its comment threads dripping with nostalgia. But, as much as I think Ultima Online as it existed prior to late 2000 remains the best MMORPG experience there has ever been, none of the single-player Ultima games have ever held a place among my all-time favorites. I was a Nintendo kid, after all. What if, I wondered, someone blogged a path through the games I remember most fondly — games like Chrono Trigger, which stands unchallenged at the top of my personal list? Better yet, what if someone with my story-centrism, my character-worship, and my inane use of vocabulary were to undertake such a project?

Let’s find out.

Lately I’ve been lacking in fiery fanboy passion of the sort that burns with the fury of a thousand suns. That is, with one exception, the anime to which I’ve subjected myself this summer has largely failed to invoke within me more than a lukewarm stirring. Rather than put the stuff aside altogether, I decided to revisit some of the shows that kept my ass glued to the chair from scene one until the final credit of the final episode, starting with Full Metal Panic.

Why FMP? Because Lieutenant Commander Andrei Sergeiovich Kalinin has the manliest goatee ever, and I’m trying to grow one just like it (and failing). But more importantly, what does this mean for good ol’ SF.c? It means I’ll have plenty of time to write about shows of yore without having to decide which newly-watched shows to cover and which to ignore. I may even devote some time to explaining exactly why I like Elfen Lied so much.

But, in honor of its impending third season (July 6th, baby), let’s start with Zero no Tsukaima. Now here is one goofy show, certainly more comedy than anything, that somehow manages to win some story points during the latter part of each season by broadsiding you with plot. Given that I watched Zero in the middle of writing two critical essays on Ulysses precisely because I didn’t want to have to think about what I was seeing, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. (Truly magical spoilers after the break.)

The Lucky Star as slice-of-life debate continues to rage with all the wrath of roiling Charybdis, and, trust me, the more the community responds to the questions raised, the more convinced I become that holding out with the small and battle-worn anti-Lucky Star camp is truly a feat of Odyssean courage. Melodramatic? Yes, but I am nothing if not melodramatic. The point is, I’ve grown weary of negativity (not that I didn’t play a negative note or two myself, I suppose…), so let’s take a look at a manga series that I feel does the whole otaku slice-of-life thing right.

What do I mean by right? Well, one of my complaints about Lucky Star’s Konata is that she doesn’t have to give anything up to retain her meta-nerdiness; this strikes me as unrealistic, and therefore Konata doesn’t accurately reflect the life of a human being in her conception, thoughts, and actions, and therefore the show falters in the slice-of-life department (for me, at least). Anyone who’s done the whole nerd thing for a year or two knows that concessions must be made; nerdiness is inversely correlated with physical fitness, human relationships, and your bank account (in my case, with human relationships suffering least and my bank account suffering most, but I suppose this varies).

Genshiken, on the other hand, doesn’t beat around the bush where suffering is concerned. Its cast of nerds and the non-nerds who associate with them ends up in many an awkward situation — awkward as all hell for me, anyway, as I’ve been in such situations before. The Genshiken’s painful, delightful suffering is worth savoring, provided you can relate. If you’ve ever tried to give up anime for a significant other and failed, if you’ve ever visited Baltimore’s Inner Harbor accompanied by Rozen Maiden’s Shinku and a hairy dude in a skirt with a yuri paddle, if you’ve ever referenced Roland Barthes or Italo Calvino or Homer in a blog post about Japanese media, Genshiken is for you (also, your life is remarkably similar to mine, and I pity you).

I’ve touched on this one before, but now that I’ve finished it, I can give it a proper review. I’ve been doing mostly features lately anyway, and I decided in the beginning that Super Fanicom would maintain a strong reviews element, so I suppose it’s time to put away the moe microscope for a while, get Lucky Star out of my crosshair, and run through a few things you might want to think about watching.

The first such thing would be ∀ Gundam, which, like (too) many other things, brings to my mind a passage from a novel. The novel in question here is Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler (I won’t link to an informative site, as literally anything you might read about it is a spoiler [though I highly recommend it, particularly to novel-lovers]), and the relevant quotation is thus: “The novel I would most like to read at this moment…should have as its driving force only the desire to narrate, to pile stories upon stories, without trying to impose a philosophy of life on you, simply allowing you to observe its own growth, like a tree, an entangling, as if of branches and leaves…” (Harcourt translation, p. 92). Here and elsewhere, Calvino seems to propose a set of guidelines that define what a “pure” novel should be, and though ∀ isn’t a novel, it seems to come as close to these guidelines as a Gundam series can while still retaining that trademark “war: that’s no good” message.

Before I continue, let me reiterate that I am not a mecha fan. As much as I try to keep genre bias out of my opinion-forming, it’s probably safe to say that I begin a mecha series by preparing myself to disapprove. But somehow it never occurred to me to disapprove of ∀ while it was shamelessly pleasing me.

Owen of Cruel Angel Theses swung by my MAL profile recently. If you’re not familiar with Cruel Angel Theses, the writing is entertaining, informative, and fairly diverse, and I can in good conscience recommend that you check it out — provided, that is, that you aren’t easily offended by having your opinions picked apart and trodden upon (and if you are, you probably shouldn’t be reading SF.c, either). Such an approach is employed by Owen’s latest article on Lucky Star and its reception, an article that takes great pains to discredit a portion (a large portion?) of the anti-Lucky Star camp.

I don’t mean to bash the article. For one thing, I absolutely agree that Lucky Star should be judged on merits beyond its humor (or lack thereof) and its passing resemblance to Azumanga Daioh. For another, I think the irreverent pick-apart/trod-upon approach is a valid one, considering the medium; it makes for an entertaining read, and, hell, if blogs allow for certain writing tactics that more academic media do not, why not use them? Have you ever read an article from a literary journal? I know at least one or two of you have, and for the rest of you, trust me when I say that, while (sometimes) informative, they tend to fall short in the raucous fun department. Besides, I’m not easily offended anyway, especially where entertainment value is concerned. I’m a long-time fan of Maddox, for example. Call me a dumbass, by all means, as long as you make me laugh in the process.

But, as usual, I digress. Owen’s Lucky Star defense is rock-solid in the areas it covers. It does not, however, cover the enclave of Lucky Star antagonism with which I identify myself, that clandestine sect of naysayers who disapprove of the show for reasons other than “it isn’t as good as Azumanga Daioh or Haruhi.” Deeper issues keep the slice-of-life comedy from even approaching the levels of awesome promised by the ravening internet hordes, and public enemy number one, in this case, is Konata Izumi.

Eight episodes into ∀ Gundam (”called Turn ‘A’ Gundam,” the title kindly informs us), and already I have plenty to say about it (minor spoilers included). Now, this isn’t an unusual state of affairs, but I don’t like episodic blogging; I’d rather talk about things when I’ve finished them and given them a bit of thought. I have this tendency to jump the gun and say stupid things, you see, and I try to minimize the possibility of that happening by taking my time. It’s part of why I’m such a slow writer. But the turn of events I’m about to unfurl before you like a white flag of concession warrants my keyboard’s attentions, I think.

In short, I am not a mecha fan. A few specimens of the genre have pleasantly surprised me, usually because they do things differently than other mecha shows, but I shun the field of shounen mecha action by and large. Lately, though, I’ve gotten tired of anime that tries to impress with novelty and clever concepts; after five episodes, I couldn’t stomach any more of Red Garden’s armchair psychology and ultimately pretty funny take on the spirit of New York. Thus, in my search for shows that keep it simple, I turned to mecha — and when it comes to mecha, I reasoned, it doesn’t get much more basic than Gundam.