Day two of my painful anime excursion

I gotta keep blogging, don’t I? The problem is that I need to write regularly to make it a habit. Otherwise, I’ll just become lazy and drop off the face of the planet again. And for some strange reason, I really wanna keep Moe Sucks going. I’ve no clue why either! Well, that’s not true. I kinda do. The blog reminds me of better days. I sometimes wish I could turn back the clock four or five years and do certain things over. It’s too late for that, but I can always cling to Moe Sucks. Well, that got a bit… personal. Whatever. So here’s a quick roundup of today’s shows. This is cutting into my precious Tactics Ogre time, so I won’t be too long-winded (relatively speaking).

Tsukipro the Animation – Lasted 2:46

Normally, I automatically refuse to watch anything that involves idols. It doesn’t matter if they’re male or female idols. I just don’t care about idols. Well, I wanted to see how long I’d last here, but as you can see, I didn’t get very far.

Having said that, I’m now going to digress a bit and offer a bit of shallow analysis. Nothing that follows should be misconstrued as expert knowledge. I don’t know shit about idols or Asian pop music. With that little disclaimer out of the way, have you ever heard of the concept “premium mediocre?” This excellent blog goes quite in-depth on the idea and what it entails. The reason I’m bringing this up is because the author posits that K-pop is one of the many examples of a “premium mediocre” commodity. I agree. I can admit that certain K-pop music videos are thoroughly entertaining (the first time I see them, anyway), but at the end of the day, I’m still listening to something incredibly mediocre in both spirit and ambition.

Now onto J-pop. Doesn’t it just feel neutered by comparison? If it can’t even be “premium mediocre,” then what is it? Alright, if there are any J-pop defenders out there, tell me how wrong I am and give me examples of entertaining J-pop. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. It’s also okay if it’s “premium mediocre.” Just give me something that isn’t as generic sounding as Tsukipro’s shitastic OP. Because that’s one of my primary problems with idol shows. They’re boring, and I don’t give a shit about their cookie-cutter personal dramas, but most of all, the music is just ass, my dudes. Straight-up ass. But maybe there are actual gems out there that just doesn’t make its way into anime. So if they exist, what are they?

Konohana Kitan – Lasted 2:31

Slice of life shit. Hard swerve. Usually, an OP will do a good job at setting the tone. I saw nothing but cute, smiling girls doing boring nonsense. Yes, I’m being dismissive. Being dismissive lets me save a lot of time and get back to playing video games.

URAHARA – Lasted 3:15

The animation’s ass, my dudes. Also, more cute girl trash. Sigh.

Juuni Taisen – I finally watched the entire episode

But it was pretty boring. I paused at one point to check ESPN.com. More preseason NBA games to scope out! I paused again to check my bank account. Shrug, gotta budget for the weekend. I paused a third and final time to pet my cat. Sometimes baby girl just needs some attention. I eventually pressed myself to finish the episode, but I got nothing out of it. The basic gist is that twelve warriors — based on the Chinese zodiac — have twelve hours to compete in a winner-takes-all battle royale. The winner “will be granted any one wish of their choosing.” Any? But for real though, any wish? Don’t think too hard about it. There’s no point. The show seems pretty dumb right from the get-go. If it has some deeper meaning to convey, it certainly didn’t have the foresight to hint at it in the first episode.

Instead, we get an uninspired vignette about how Boar came to participate in the tournament. Typical psycho girl is psycho. I’m not even going to bother deconstructing her motivations, ’cause it’s threadbare. Plus, I’m supposed to believe that she’s spent her whole life training to kill, but she couldn’t even detect a reanimated corpse sneaking up on her? Blame it on hubris, if you want. But everything about the anime strikes me as cheap and trashy. The character designs, the setup, the violence, the action, so on and so forth. Boar is a nasty, brutish character, and she died a nasty, brutish death. And now we have 10 more people to kill. I might check out a couple more episodes just to see if the characters are at least interesting now that I don’t have to listen to Boar anymore (fingers crossed), but I’m not going to get my hopes up.

Alright, guys, I do think that about does it. I’ve checked out seven shows thus far, and it’s looking pretty damn bleak. But then again, I guess we saw that coming, didn’t we.