Day Two Hundred and Thirty-two - Moon Phase: Episode 1, "A little creepy, but maaaaan... those are some gorgeous backgrounds!"

If there's one thing about Japan, they're a little more... shall we say, liberal, about exploring their paraphillias than we are. One such fetish is the Gothic Lolita style where girls dress up like Victorian Dolls complete with frills, lace, and minimized secondary sexual characteristics (see: flat-chested).

It's safe to say that Moon Phase is very firmly rooted in its Goth Loli persuasions... along with several other archetypal otaku fantasies like the cute, chibi-vampire and imouto/onii-san (little sister/big brother) complex. It's wacky and a bit creepy, but sells... a lot.

Playing the role of the Goth Loli Vampire Queen is Hazuki, who has apparently been mystically imprisoned in a massive European castle for hundreds of years, yearning for an escape... which she seems to be going to find in the form of Kouhei, a Japanese ghost photographer who is visiting the castle on assignment from an occult magazine. He finds her irresistibly attractive and she...? Well, it's sort of hard to tell what Hazuki feels as she's supposed to be the mysterious outsider, an impossibly old soul trapped in a child's body.

The majority of the episode is just the initial setup to get the two of them in the same room together. Kouhei takes photos of the castle from a distance while Hazuki lounges about her gilded prison. There's a gratuitous bath scene (a standard for most anime) as well as plot hammers such as a sneaky exorcist and a magical golem guardian.

What is interesting about the title, despite its pervy, fan-service tendencies, is the massive amount of production value when it comes to the animation, particularly the setting and props. I mean, serious amounts of effort were put into these backgrounds, I am not kidding. They're just gorgeous.

It's such an odd combination of stereotyped ecchi and quality horror/fantasy art that I can't quite decide whether to despise or adore it... and, maybe, that's the point. That, in order to serve as contrast to the obvious perversions of the Goth Loli pairing, tremendous work was put into the sundries to raise the value of the series.

Granted, their character animations could be a bit better, but man... those backgrounds! Yum!

Either way, I feel both extremely uncomfortable and oddly transfixed by the opener... which is, I think, an apt feeling to have when it comes to vampire tales. So often, nowadays, we're given vamps that are nothing more than the Greek Gods reborn... sparkly, lustful Adonises who are nothing more than expressions of the desire for sexual domination, no longer the creatures of horror. While I cannot say that's the case here, as Hazuki is definitely a sex object of a different persuasion, the artifacts and creatures that they have surrounding her are much more suited to the horror of her monster mythology roots... at least, in the pilot episode. Much more Castlevania as opposed to Twilight.

I just wish that they weren't so pervy and blatant about Hazuki, herself.

One good thing about it, though, it's yet another anime title that features both the English and Japanese (with English subs) vocal tracks. Netflix has been getting pretty good about that lately and I'm always very happy to listen to a title in its original language than suffer what could possibly be a bad dub. It's just safer for me, in my opinion, to watch it subtitled.

I can't say that Moon Phase is appropriate for anyone younger than their teens and it definitely has some sketchy fetish action going on, but I also cannot say that I'm not intrigued. Just, remember, Caveat Emptor and don't say I didn't warn you.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Twenty-seven - Fairy Tail: Pilot, "SHONEN FIGHTO!"

Much like GIJOE, Transformers, and the like, Japan has it's own staples of kid's anime aimed at the elementary set but finding fans of all ages. Naruto, One Piece, and Fairy Tail are all examples of such. They're light on depth, big on action and fan service, and seem to stretch on into infinity as the adventure never ends.

While I've seen (and grown bored with) both Naruto and One Piece, Fairy Tail was one of the few manga/anime titles that I never even tried. Not that I think I was missing all that much as the pilot doesn't impress, really, but it's a rarity to find a title make it over the Pacific that I haven't seen or read a little of... cause, trust me, I read A LOT of manga.

A LOT.

Anyways, Fairy Tail's opening episode follows a similar rubric as many anime (and that we've seen here on Couchbound before), a one-off intro episode that introduces several of the main characters without really plumbing their depths but definitely establishing their street-cred when it comes to powers and combat skills... as well as providing a small amount of background data on the fantasy world that they inhabit.

The more I think about it, the more Fairy Tail feels like a cross between One Piece and the Dragon Quest series of video games... and I don't just say that because the lead character Natsu seems to be on a quest to find an actual dragon. There's something about the art and character design that really reminds me of Dragon Quest 8. It definitely has a vibe similar to that universe, but with a few over the top characters that are vaguely similar to One Piece.

Being a Shonen Fight-o anime, though, it has quite a few annoying tropes that it studiously follows. There's the annoying talking animal sidekick, the über-powerful hero who initially presents himself as weak, and the easily influenced female lead (Lucy) who, despite seeming competency, quickly falls into a position where she needs to be rescued.

Take THAT, feminism!

Sadly, there's a lot of endemic misogyny in anime, and Fairy Tail is no exception. One of the other side characters (who you don't meet in the episode) is shown off as a bikini centerfold, so kudos to progress there... Lucy tries to ply her feminine wiles on a shopkeeper for a discount (and is angry that her antics only shave off a small percentage)... and, hell, the eventual plot of the episode revolves around slavers kidnapping dozens of buxom women from the town to sell off and, no doubt, ravish... though, it's never really said, just heavily implied by the date rape spell the main villain tries on Lucy.

There's not much to like about Fairy Tail aside from its generic boy's action anime tropes and devices. If you're a fan of shows like The Slayers, you'll probably find something to enjoy here, but it's all so much overpowered fluff to me. The character motivations seem a bit more grounded than the utterly ridiculous plots of One Piece, but not by much.

That said, shows like this are often immensely popular... One Piece being a prime example of extremely wide reaching in terms of its audience and fanbase. I guess I'm just an anime snob, though, as neither One Piece nor Fairy Tail are doing much for me.

At the very least, it's a plus that the series is presented with its original Japanese Dub, even if some of the jokes are lost in the English subtitles' translation (like the fireworks Tamaya shout).

My final verdict is that it's probably fun (and fine) for the older elementary and younger teen set, but don't look for depths to plumb, complex action, or witty dialogue. Fairy Tail is upper tier LCD... but still just LCD.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Forty-three - Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Episode 1, "Okay, hold on... did that woman just attach a chain to-OHMYGAWD!!"

I felt it was time to try another Netflix anime of a series that I'd never watched before. Initial impressions were somewhat promising, as the title card was suitably fan-service friendly, but it was yet another one without dual audio.

Well, they can't all have terrible dubs, so I gave it a try.

Really, the dub wasn't the problem, as it was actually somewhat decent... and neither was the plot or the art style all that troubling (well, I do have one or two needling issues there). It was the brutality gimmick that really bothered me.

See, Rin:DoM centers on a buxom private detective type who has the uncanny ability of resurrection. In the cold opener of the episode, we are treated to her very violent and certainly unhappy death as she's tagged several times by a shotgun and plummets quite a few stories from the rooftops to street level.

Granted, in the very next scene we're shown that she's perfectly fine the following morning, but still... it was hard to watch.

After the cold opener, the majority of the episode revolves around a man who feels his memory, his very life, isn't his own. Rin takes it upon herself to investigate and stumbles onto professional hitmen, secret cloning and organ harvesting operations, and a very disturbing sadist doctor-lady... oh, and zombies.

Weak storytelling and the horror gimmicks randomly popping up aside, what is truly disturbing are the lengths of brutal domination and torture that the author forces Rin to endure for the sake of... well, what? Gratuity is all I can come up with.

Literally the sadist doctor pierces every fleshy bit of Rin's body, going so far as to attach a long length of chain to what is implied to be her genitals... a chain that the evil doctor yanks just for the heck of it.

Ick.

Also, ugh.

It's those moments that are just completely unnecessary and over the top. Not that I'm a fan of censorship, I just can't call the anime quality when it resorts to this level of on-screen torture to fill some time.

Then, there's the zombie horde that just comes out of nowhere.

I mean, I could swallow the evil sadist doc-lady cloning people to harvest their organs... I could also live with the hand-wavey way she macguffined a "chemical memory transfer" so that the clones retain the original's personality... but random zombies?

What the hell?

The little trouble I had with the art is that a lot of the featured style swings way too liberally back and forth between flat and boring and overly extravagant. Like everything is dull and solid colored until you get to that one frame where Rin is putting on nylons and THEN there's deep texture.

Meh.

I'll probably stick around an episode or two more, despite the red flags, just to give the series a chance to redeem itself... but, anime really doesn't work that way. It's stories are generally already written and approved long before anything gets animated. I don't hold much hope for improvement, but we'll see.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Nine - High School of the Dead: Episode 9, "Mmm... Saeko. I love you."

It's been a while since I watched any High School of the Dead, so I figured I'd head back and take a few in. The episodes are short on time and long on fanservice and, sometimes, that's just what you need.

Episode 9, "The Sword and The Dead" teams up the group's nominal male lead, Takashi, and the ever deadly and beautiful Saeko as they are separated from the rest of the group. The meat of the story revolves around the two of them bonding as they are generally cut off by the horde at just about every opportunity and are forced to improvise and spend the night rough in a shrine temple.

I really love this particular episode because it highlights my favorite shippage in the series. There's just something about Saeko's character archetype that pushes all the right buttons for me. She's vicious, but not evil. Refined, but also primal. Sexy, but demure.

Granted, the series makes no qualms about showing her in a few states of undress, giving her a dousing in river water to force an impromtu wet t-shirt contest (in which she is the only contestant), a sequence where she's braless in a tanktop, and so on, but this is High School of the Dead.

It has two modes... Zombie Violence and Fan Service... and the series is REALLY heavy on the latter. If you're at all surprised with what you get at this point, I have no respect for your powers of observation.

In addition to all the service, we also get to see the weaker side of Saeko (probably just to ramp her moe factor, but still). Despite her deadly ways, she balks when confronted with zombie children and is almost bitten until Takashi intervenes. We are also treated to a bit of her backstory as she relays her fears concerning her possible status as a psychopath who loves to kill and maim.

It's weird how much I love how beautiful her darkness is... and it obviously rubs off a little on Takashi, BUT that last bit is kind of my problem with the series.

HSotD is an obvious harem anime... where the main male lead is the object of both attention and affection for all the female leads. That means that it's all super cheesy, super convenient, and the shippage that I may particularly root for is only around for a few key episodes before it falls into the background in favor of the main romance.

Or, at least, what is HINTED to be the main romance... and, based on the clues, I'm guessing it won't be Saeko.

Unless, you know, the party manages to form a comfortable trois or quart.

Or pentacle.

So many of these buxom girls are just gaga over Takashi, of course, that it annoys the hell out of me. Maybe because I, personally, am more like the chubby otaku character Kohta Hirano whose own love interest is, of course, head over heels for Takashi.

Ah, jealousy... over fictional anime characters.

I wish there was more HSotD. The anime ends on a cliffhanger in a few episodes and its source material, the manga, has been on hiatus for quite some time (over a year) and has only recently started back up again.

For what is there, though, it works on just about every primal caveman/reptile brain tendency. If that's your thing (like it is mine) enjoy with my blessing!

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Fifty-nine - High School of the Dead: Episode 6, or "You wanted Fan Service? Well... YOU GOT IT!"

Time for more gratuitous sex and violence... though, this episode is mostly about the sex.

Upon finding a safehouse at the end of episode 5, Takashi and company take a moment of respite for the first time since the Zombie Apocalypse began, availing themselves both to the supplies and, perhaps more importantly, the very spacious bath that Nurse Marikawa's friend has in her apartment... said friend being the government sniper Rika Minami whom we occasionally see at the locked down airport providing fire support for the government beachhead there.

Really, this whole episode is about the tits.

All the girls disrobe and hop in the bathtub, showering Japanese style (which means they wash up first sitting on a stool outside the bath, then soak in the heat in the tub, itself, after they're already clean). It is a stereotype of anime to have a bathhouse episode where are the femmes get nekkid and kibitz while the guys get overheated outside... sometimes attempting to find peepholes and the like.

It's sort of a tension breaker after the struggle that they've all had to endure first with the outbreak at the high school, then separating from the bus and Shido's brainwashing. Mostly, though, it's just an excuse to see some titties.

This is one of the few times that I'm actually against portraying sex in media... mainly because the main bath scene is simply too gratuitous. It's not satire at that point, just sex for sex's sake.

The rest of the episode's lasciviousness had a point... whether it was Mari-chan or Rei's drunkenness lowering their inhibitions in contrast to the chaos outside or Saeko and her "Naked Apron" look which is both a manga trope and a commentary on her demonstrating domesticity versus her regular nature as the stoic warrior woman.

Those, I can get behind, as they're reflections on culture.

While the bath scene could have had a similar excuse, the lengths they go to when it comes to nudity and fan service here push the boundaries far more than necessary. Of course, that's not to say that I didn't react like a typical single male with a wagging wolf's tongue, but my critical mind was sighing the whole time.

I mean, c'mon!

I think the standout for me in episode six was Takashi and Rei's fight towards the end. I really dug how he finally got fed up with Rei moping over Hishashi, her dead boyfriend, whom she always chose over Takashi and has constantly brought up since he died at the end of episode one. It's a nice ultimatum moment for their relationship and ends in a rather similar fashion as the argument at the end of that first episode, with her realizing just how she's pushing him away.

Personally, I'd rather they didn't waffle and just finish it as friends so that the Takashi/Saeko shippage could run full course, but it's kind of a harem anime anyway as all the gals seem to love Takashi no matter what's going on.

Meh.

Back to the mundane... or, rather, not so mundane, but back to the horror scenes... since, you know, this is actually a ZOMBIE series.

I love how things are playing out down at the bridge. Communication has broken down and all the weight and responsibility has fallen to the field commanders who are already overstressed and on their last good nerves... and, wouldn't you know it, "the people" are organizing a protest in spite of the danger and death all around that is stalking them, to blame the easiest target, the folks in authority they can access. Guess who? The police.

Powderkeg, meet Match.

I really enjoy the series... it's just that this episode is one of my favorite (for pervy reasons) and one of the worst (when my conscience kicks in). Next episode, though, we get the final members of the team to join up, the humanity redeeming Alice and Zeke/Zero.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Fifty-four - High School of the Dead: Episode 1 - Spring of the Dead, or "Sex, Violence, and Despair... ain't it great?"

Let's face it... we're still in the Zombie Renaissance. For almost a decade now, and perhaps beyond, Zombie films have been chic. Most recently it was Warm Bodies and, coming soon, Max Brooks' World War Z is getting the A-list treatment courtesy of Brad Pitt.

I think, maybe, it all started with Zack Snyder's remake of the classic cult horror flick Dawn of Dead, changing the social satire of consumerism of the original into a bleak survival scenario with a simple alteration. The slow, plodding zombies just weren't scary enough... he made them fast, running and devouring with the force of madmen.

But maybe it wasn't Zack Snyder who started the Renaissance... maybe we could trace it back two years before his remake to Danny Boyle and Cillian Murphy with 28 Days Later... the zombie movie that wasn't a zombie movie, where a "Rage" virus turned everyone infected into brutal murderers who didn't care about brains or consuming the flesh of living, just vicious homicide by their own hands, snuffing out all non-"Rage" life.

Hmm. Something to think about, but not really why I'm blogging today.

I was in the mood for some anime when I woke up this morning. Unfortunately, the catalog on Netflix is kind of light. There are actually quite a few quality series that I'll no doubt be watching over the year, but they're all Americanized and dubbed. What I wouldn't give for an agreement between Netflix and TVTokyo or AT-X to get the hundreds of shows the studios produce on a yearly basis, quality or no, subbed and streamed.

I long for Hyouka to make it to these shores.

Still, I was in the mood for something anime but not in the mood for the likes of Full Metal Alchemist or Darker Than Black. I needed some fluff and while, at times, both of those could fit the bill, I also wanted some fan service that didn't really pull punches when it came to content.

For that, I chose High School of the Dead.

Basically, it's a zombie survival series set in Japan where a group of high school students and teachers, the grand majority of them voluptuous babes, with cup sizes to make even Americans blush, and all of them with the will to survive at any cost.

Of course, it makes sense for the lucky few who manage to make it through the zombie apocalypse to be the ones with the physical and mental fortitude to live by any means, but it does stretch credulity that they would mostly happen to be peak specimens of the female form.

It's pandering, and I cannot deny it.

I mean, you get bouncy breasts on the order of a Dead or Alive game from the start, and it doesn't take long for the low angle panty shots to dominate the frame, be it on the lead survivors or the nameless lolitas who are doomed to be eaten by the exponentially growing horde of the undead.

Yes, it's crass and gratuitous, but... it fits, somehow. It's sex appeal meant to draw in the base male brain and it works. It also serves to contrast the death and destruction as society breaks down immediately and bosom buddies betray each other during the moment of truth.

I especially liked those opening minutes when the outbreak spreads to the school. What could've been a protected area with high walls and a reinforcable gate, possibly with enough supplies and blunt instrument weapons to beat back the horde, falls to the simple arrogance of a staffer who abuses a walker trying to get in. The PE teacher gets bit and that's all it takes.

There's also the matter of language. Thanks to all the sex appeal and violence, there was no way HSotD was going to get a G or PG rating. It's TV-M at the very least, so the dubbing team decided to preserve the language. High schoolers actually sound like high schoolers again, cursing as much as I did when I was their age. Yay!

I also love how they lampshade the fact that they're in a zombie film/series by referencing that their situation really is like the movies (bites kill you and turn you, blows to the head are the only way to stop the walking dead, etc.). It's hilarious and a bit on the nose (I'm looking at you, Gomez), but worth it to have the nod. One of the tropes I hate in most zombie media is how long it takes for survivors to fight past their disbelief and experiment with the cultural myths to find a movie monster's weakness. Doesn't take long here and that's a boon!

Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of progress in this series. This single episode only covers the outbreak and lingers quite a bit on running around the campus trying to find a safe place only to have one of the first trio get bitten. There's too much drama surrounding the love triangle and not enough time and effort given to the other characters who will eventually form the main party with the two who are up on the roof living out their own version of Twilight.

Heh, I kid, this trio shows MUCH more acting talent (and facial movement) than those other teen horror movie folks.

Still, it's sex, violence, and the existential angst of surviving in the zombie apocalypse. What more could a guy ask for when it comes to fluff? Maybe a little less death and a little more sex, but, oh well.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~