It must be their demonic panache

because otherwise I can't possibly explain why I gave up on Mitsudomoe after 2 episodes and finished Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san in two days. Both of these seinen comedies border on gross for comedic relief, but somehow where middle-school triplet girls couldn't make me stay a bunch of perverted chibi monsters from hell did. Okay, one of them had Izaya's voice, but that sure isn't all of it! Maybe I prefer my butt jokes without kids, thank you.

What I liked about Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san is probably how they managed to serve some spot-on observations on human nature in a purposefully gross nature, and made fun of both characters and the audience. For example, there is this Belzeebub demon, supposedly a prince of hell who looks like a penguin (and talks in Izaya's voice, yes). In the beginning he mostly grosses you out, then you get used to him, then he shows some amazing princely potential (of the twisted kind, obviously - at his best moments he reminded me of fic!Dracos of the realistic kind) skyrocketing to some tragic levels and then he plunges back into a - quite literally - pile of shit. It's like the storytellers are making fun of you and your expectations and stereotypes in the first place while pretending to toy around with the characters.

Belzeebub in his penguin and princely forms. I like it how he essentially looks the same *giggle*

And somehow many characters managed to have some character growth withing 13 half-sized episodes. Sakuma, who starts of as a sensible yet naive college girl working part-time as a detective assisstant by the end of the series is halfway to the crazy and dark that all other cast are. She's turning (or revealing herself to be) quite greedy, manipulative, better at summoning and considerably less green behind the ears. The only one who doesn't change from minute one is Akutabe the detective. He is one helluva grim-looking expert on the demonic stuff, and looks like he just came from hell more that all the demons togethers. At one point I thought he might harbour something for Sakuma, but it seems that no, he was still mostly just the grim short-tempered boss he seemed to be.

Don't try to read too much into either the anime or my musings on it, and you might enjoy it. Just keep the kids away from it:)

Seinen heartbreak, AGAIN

Oh god. Oh seinen. Oh the gods of seinen.

I thought a seinen mecha comedy would take it easy, being, you know, comedy. Riiiight.

I'm on episode 15 of Tiger&Bunny, and a heartbreak in the middle of otherwise satiric action series came as a kick in the shin.

It's not even the protagonist, you know. Just the corniest of the superhero bunch unknowingly falling in love with a malfuctioning android, getting emotional help from her and then just as unknowingly ripping her to pieces as a part of his job. And then looking for her all over the city to say thank you for restoring his self-confidence, y'all.

Hate you, seinen. Love you, seinen. Aren't you the best?

My Lows, or How I Don't Really Mind Harems

For the purposes of this discussion, let me emphasize that I by harems I mean classic ones, a group of girls centered around a boy for various, often romantic, plot purposes. Not to be confused with reverse harems of one girl around a bunch of boys because my feelings on those are quite different (and those are a subject for a different post), and those curious can refer to this regularly updated blog on reverse harem.

As I get it, many girls have little patience for harem stories. It may be due to the fact that often they are shounen romance in genre, and are often really stingy in character depth department for female characters, and even more often heavily ecchi. I might be generalizing here, but hardly too much.

Given like that, the whole genre looks like something I'd never voluntarily watch and happily troll in my free time. Mysteriously, that doesn't happen.

I believe the answer lies in the order of movies that introduced me to Japanese-style entertainment.  I've seen Speedy Racer and Sailor Moon and Transformers (and a mecha series I can't remember the name for and it PAINS me because I was crazy about it so HELP ME) as a kid, but those are firmly rooted in the bulk of the-story-of-my-childhood rather than anything else and thus I don't think of them as animanga much. What really counts starts from my university years, and that makes Love Hina one of the first anime I've seen.

If you don't know the plot, you might easily guess it from the picture above - an average nerdy boy and a set of girl including but not limited to a shy violet, tsundere ninja, tomboy and many more. If you're curious, it also involves corny childhood promises to enter Tokyo University one day (hence the paranoid cramming look on Keitaro's face), a managing job in a female dorm by the hot springs and lots of compromising situations that inevitably lead to the main hero sent flying by Narusegawa's mightly kicks.

(the caption is not something from the anime, I wrote it to make a upic out of screenshot)
It was precisely those kicks that got me so happy about the series. It's hardly a secret now that I strongly associated the poor protagonist of the story with my ex-boyfriend (and not without a reason), therefore each time he went flying and disappeared as a sparlky spec on the horizon I was enjoying my evil glee moment. Hardly something to be proud of, but here you have it:) That's why I took all other things that came with it rather calmly, being pacified by Keitaro's misfortunes already. I was entertained and had little desire to judge anything too much, the same way you don't really lecture yourself on the lameness of junkfood when you've just happily wolfed down a cheeseburger you'd craved for.

The reason I'm saying all that (except to remember the sheer pleasure of seeing Keitaro fly)?

I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a new series, even though for all it's worth it looks like yet another harem in the making. I'm talking about Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, whose first episode aired recently.

The harem vibe it gives off is as subtle as a truck, but I think I will give it a chance to win me over because - underdogs, DUH. I'm willing to cheer for the third parties and unlucky ones and left-outs and outcasts and most importantly underdogs in any fiction at all, and the premise of this series is you're-an-outcast-too-let's-be-friends-yay, so you see where my enthusiasm comes from. I'll let you know if it leaves to my expectations or not:)