The Trouble with Watching Too Much Anime and Having Japanese Teachers

Despite what it seems, this is going to be a gimmick post :P

So our weekly class schedules have more or less been fixed, and though I'm pretty free to blog on Mondays since I only have class till 12, the rest of the days classes go on till 4, 5, or 6 *shudders*. And 90 minute periods of classes aren't the most conducive when you're as sleep deprived as I am (okay, so maybe we shouldn't have gone for karaoke till 5 in the morning the other day... -_-").


Every day starts out with 3 hours of Japanese SP ('Sentence Patterns') classes where I get to catch up with that boatload of grammar I neglected god knows how long ago, and on Tuesdays we get back to back Japanese Culture and Conversation classes. Ironically, the Conversation class is the only one so far where our sensei speaks to us mostly in English -_-" Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays we have our other 'compulsory subjects' that we need to enter uni. For us Science majors that's Physics, Maths and Chemistry *groans* while Arts majors do Politics and Economics, History and Mathematics (for Business and Economics majors). Future doctors and those doing anything Bio related are probably studying in Tokyo right now (not that I'm jealous of their higher living expenses proximity to Shinjuku and Akihabara or anything... We have Umeda and Den Den Town here=P).

Anyways, point of this post? (Besides making up for the probably lack of substantial posts over the coming days) You know how sometimes when you hear a name you automatically associate it with a fictional character you've seen/read somewhere or perhaps some famous celebrity? (I've not met any Britneys but I do know an Elvis, :P) Take for example, Mickey, or Donald. Okay maybe they're not as common names nowadays post-Disney. What about anime characters then? Of course back home where I seldom met anyone with a Japanese name, it's never been a 'problem', but now...


Today we got our class placement results for Chemistry. Till now, I'm not exactly sure how they're splitting the Iries from the Kotokos and I'll probably not know till those classes start. What concerned me more, was the name of the teacher for our class. What would those who've watched Moyashimon think if they found out that their Chemistry (or Microbiology XD) class was going to be taught by one Hasegawa-sensei? My first thoughts...

OH SHI- (I think most have seen the rest of this infamous (one of many XD) scene in Moyashimon :P If not, do yoursef a favour and go watch it NOW)

Uh-oh... Not looking forward to those lab lessons...

It turns out of course that I need not worry. This Hasegawa sensei's a guy. *phew?* (An Itsuki sensei would've been awesome though :P)



I'll ignore Physics for now since it's not my favourite subject (far from it really) and it seems devoid of anything for my anime addled mind to chew on right now. As for Mathematics, we've not gotten our placements yet since they're still busy giving us bloody placement tests for 3 weeks. WTH, it's like they're more concerned about testing us instead of teaching us when we've not even started classes! Gah.

I took a look at the list possible teachers for Maths though, and I've got to say, I'd be more miffed about all the drawn out testing - if I wasn't too busy being amused at the prospect of ending up in a class thought by a certain Hosaka-sensei...

Talk about 気持ち悪い... (For the full picture...)

DO NOT WANT(?)

Fortunately (or not? XD), after seeing Hosaka sensei first hand, I'm 'glad' to report that he's light years away from what we've seen in Minami-ke. Though, now that I think of it, if you put some glasses on Hosaka senpai, ruffled up his hair more, buttoned up his shirt, and age him a bit, the resemblance is sort of there... OH SHI-

Please don't hurt me 'cos my kanji sucks >.<

And while I'm at it, I might as well mention that we get a different teacher for our S.A. SP classes each day (why? Maybe they're overstaffed *shrugs*). Mondays we're taught by Abe-sensei, lolz. No prize for guessing who popped in my mind instantly. Though our Abe sensei's really quite a funny guy, he's a bit nit picky about how we write our kanji (in fact, the only one of our 5 teachers that is, when they're not marking our kanji tests of course). At least he doesn't fly into rages over my misproportioned characters, thankfully, but then again I've not given him the "Please don't hurt me" look every time I'm asked to go up on the mound board to write something... yet.



Last but not least, each of us foreign students gets a student tutor (usually a local student who's actually studying in Osaka University) to help us with our language and university life here on campus. While I've not met mine yet, (our first meeting is scheduled for Thursday) our class adviser has given us details concerning our tutors in class today, and the one thing I do know about the guy is his name:

_____ Youhei
(I can't just give out a person's family name when I've not even met him, can I?)

Err... Needless to say, I can't wait for our meeting this Thursday... OTL


(Names used in this post been changed to protect their privacy. Oh wait, they haven't. But I guess it's okay when I only reveal half their names? Anyways the rest of it is mostly products of my delusional mind anyhow ;P)

In other news, nominations for The Anime Blog Awards are closing... today? Okay, so I'm rather slow on the uptake. If anyone with an anime blog who hasn't nominated and wants to, you better do it quick since every vote nomination counts/your one vote nomination could tip things in your favourite blogger's favour, etc (or just because it's your obligation as a citizenblogger of the community and that's how democracy works!). If my own nominations didn't turn out to mirror the common denominators of just about every category (except in the 'Most Influential' category where I just tossed in my then personal favourite blogs :P), I'd probably do one of those "why I nominated so-and-so" posts. But instead, you got this :P

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Clearing up the AIR between KANON and CLANNAD

My reaction to Clannad overall. Minus the true tears.

(Pardon the rather lousy title, am brain-drained after yet another post of content of possibly pretentious worth... Gah. Also spoilers for Air, Kanon and Clannad lurk within...)


So CLANNAD has recently reached its conclusion with some summer omake to come afterwards. Will that turn out to be like Air in Summer, I wonder? Cos that would be a good thing to someone like me who actually liked Air in Summer but disliked Air itself as a whole, and found CLANNAD not much better.

Kanon of course is another story (so-to-speak) where I actually liked both incarnations (TOEI's rather dated-looking one and Kyoto Animation's snowy eye-candy spectacle). What set Kanon apart from the Air and Clannad though, for me, turned out to be something rather superficial - 'twas the snow.

Yes, that's right, in my shallow mind's eye, Kyoto Animation has succeeded in mesmerizing me with their glorious snowy eye candy (Toei couldn't, but then again I watched Kanon 2002 while watching Kanon 2006 so that I could glimpse ahead in the story. 2006 obviously had the edge with the gorgeous art and better pacing - minus the dragged out Makoto arc - while 2002 served up more Nayuki in the ending, so they're both good in my books :P) , giving me a very favourable impression of Kanon, whereas the sunny beach of Air and the spring blossoms(?) of Clannad did absolutely nothing for me.

To a certain extent, it's rather true :P I'm a sucker for snow, as only someone who's grown up in a tropical country and has never had to shovel a sidewalk or got stuck on a long train journey to meet someone can be. But here's the thing, all that snow in Kanon was part of a larger aspect of the visual novel adaptation experience - the atmosphere.

The whole wintry snow element in Kanon worked well with the whole melancholy of the events and story, hence the whole sad girls in snow ploy. Even the supernatural elements seem pretty much at home in the snowy scape and scope of the story. From Last Regrets to Ayu running in the snow at the end of an episode, together with the music box-like soundtrack, everything fit well in the snowy setting of the Kanon-verse, all actually seemed right for fox girls to be running about and girls to be slaying their 'inner' demons.

Air's sunny summer though gave a totally different atmosphere - that of summer fantasy, dreams and hope. The irony is that Kanon's melancholy ended happily for all the so-called 'sad' girls (happily enough considering only one girl gets the guy, but still) while in Air, I expected at the start that the guy would succeed in finding the girl with the wings and free her from her curse blah blah blah... Only things don't end happily ever after at all. Which made things rather inconclusive and just plain sad for the sake of being sad. Boo.

As for Clannad? Well the lack of a seasonal attachment made it slightly less obvious as to what atmosphere the series is supposed to convey. To me at least, the atmosphere in Clannad came across as rather typical high school romance drama, what with all the supposedly funny high school hijinx thrown in. This setup suddenly becomes less remarkable than say, sad girls in snow/summer , and so to add in the KEY signature, there are the surprise elements like astral-projection (hmm... where have we seen that before...) and the whole girl and robot in the imaginary world thing (which in the end, didn't tie in well with any particular element in the story or I just didn't get).

However, I found CLANNAD's ultimate failing to be that Kyoto Animation was once again trying to adapt a visual novel in the way that they did with Kanon and Air - where every girl gets their portion of the story and it ends with the 'main heroine' snagging the guy. CLANNAD started with this formula with Fuko and Kotomi, but then had to toss Kyou, Ryou, Tomoyo and even Sunohara in our faces at a go before ending with Nagisa.

But the main reason why it didn't work out smoothly is because, from start to finish, CLANNAD the anime was meant to be Nagisa's story - with everyone else ended up being window dressing (hence why only her name I bolded :P). But instead of keeping them as window dressing or even allowing all the girls a fair chance, KyoAni establishes Nagisa as the central heroine at the start, making her nearly inseparable from the Tomoya, and then tried to recreate what they did in Kanon by fleshing out some of the girls' stories, but failed halfway because of the conflicting storylines presented with each girl in the game (this I gather from rants by Hinano and others who've played through the game), thus tossing us a salad conclusion to the remaining of the girls' stories before rounding their focus back to Nagisa and Tomoya sitting in a tree... So we get the Nagisa start, Nagisa middle and Nagisa end, but with a lot of in between that ends up feeling rather unwanted. Air had a similar 'problem' regarding Misuzu, but since there were only 2 other girls to dispense with, and they were dispensed with neatly in their own short arcs, it's not so apparent as in Clannad where only half the girls got that treatment.

Whereas with Kanon, though it was obvious Ayu would figure as the end girl (the OP says it all basically with these adaptations), every other girl got their individual arc, and though you still see Ayu and Nayuki around during Makoto or Mai's arc for example, they're not permanently tagging along with Yuuichi in his quest to liberate the sad girls in snow of their individual sadness. In Clannad, Tomoya had started with Nagisa first before Fuko came along, and since then we see Nagisa there with Tomoya helping Fuko, Nagisa with Tomoya weeding Kotomi's garden, Nagisa at the totally necessary basketball game cheering "Okazaki-san!!" (and nullifying everyone else's presence in Tomoya's heart *groans*)... It goes on until the end where Nagisa's own story comes to fore finally and the series concludes serviceably. Ho-hum. Nagisa and Tomoya live happily ever after. Nyeh.

As a whole, I view Clannad as an average attempt at romance at best, with too many strings attached for its own good. It probably won't matter to its legions of fans who find the redeeming qualities of the side characters' thighs, the bullying humour, the dangos, or the deeper meanings in the familial themes... But for me, as far as KyoAni'+KEY shows go, it's still Kanon > Air in Summer (short, simple, unpretentious) > Clannad > Air

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So far in... CLANNAD

"Et tu, Kotomi?"

I'll just state this right off the bat... The CLANNAD so far *and ohbtw spoilers for the first 18episodes coming up* have left me mostly... underwhelmed. And by the looks of it, I seriously doubt the final 6 episodes will do much in changing my opinion on the series. Not to say it's a bad series mind you, many fans out there will be telling you otherwise - but their reasons will range from just Kyou to... Kyou's thighs. Oh, I kid. There's also dangos to consider! Besides that, there are KEY's trademark tearjerker moments and the recurring theme of family to appreciate - unless of course, you're like grumpy old me who's got not a funny bone in his body and cannot stand KyoAni injecting its attempts at high humour into the story. Then we've got a problem.


So it looks like I'm one of the few who doesn't think CLANNAD's brand of 'bully the ridiculously retarded characters' brand of humour as absolutely brilliant... Don't get me wrong, humour's a big part that drives my enjoyment of many shows... unfortunately CLANNAD is not one of them. Oh sure, characters such as Sunohara and Fuko act so retarded they're just asking to be made fun of over and over again, but come on, not only does it get old, but is it even necessary to the story??? Yet, I'm pretty sure there've been many series before this where I actually laugh everytime they use an old rehashed gag irrelevant to the central plotline, but the 'problem' here for me is how KyoAni seems to be force-feeding us the laughs before choking us with tears... (IT'S A GIRL WHO LOVES STARFISH, LAUGH LAUGH!!! ... STARFISH GIRL IS BEING FORGOTTEN BY EVERYONE, CRY CRY!!!) Only the end result feels utterly forced and contrived (and for a lack of better word, you'll be seeing this one a lot in the rest of the post) so I do neither.

Still, the show has its moments. Oddly enough, this particular scene of particular contrivance in the recent episode 18 is probably one of the few scenes which I found to be naturally amusing... Mostly because the scriptwriters seemed to be having fun by poking fun at the whole harem aspect of the show and actually pitting some of the girls against one another (despite the clear winner practically announced since the start of the show. Ironically said winner was not present during this current proceeding). And speaking of this scene...

Fuko appears (again?)!! Why? Why not, seems to be KyoAni's answer. Yes, Fuko can be annoyingly retarded and her continued presence in the show serves no purpose except as a further contrivance to get you to laugh. To me, it doesn't matter anymore since I've accepted her character as such. My main gripe with Fuko's arc really was how there was next to no subtlety in the way they employed the "everyone forgets about the starfish-girl" plot device. Honestly would've preferred it if everyone did just that - forget about Fuko, and move on! But instead every single character introduced at that point had to go through the moment where they figure out loud "HMM, WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE I'VE FORGOTTEN SOMETHING????" Yes, yes, we get it already, doesn't change the fact that you'll miraculously remember to come to the wedding later anyways. And how exactly does giving out wooden starfish equal "DOZO, Please come to my sister's wedding!" again?

While I'm at it, let's mention the other girl who got a full arc to herself to develop in, Kotomi, the the resident genius girl who is severely challenged in the human interaction department... Oh, and she also has a tragic past concerning the death of her genius parents which results in her not being able to play the violin on a humanly acceptable frequency... Or perhaps that last bit was just added in to be funny... Gripe for the girl: If the travelling suitcase montage was supposed to make the story extra touching... it failed, bad. Also unbelievable is how Tomoya spent days nonchalantly weeding her garden, while the then emotionally unstable Kotomi cooped herself up in her house alone, with hardly a sign of life to be seen from within said house the entire time... What if she got Myself;Yourself inspired ideas??
Still Kotomi is many tiers higher than Fuuko, no less for her cooking ability and how well she uses Botan as a 'lovely item' (Thumbs up for the Ouran tip!). It's funny that I'm only now appreciating her character when she no longer has an actual bearing to the story.

For a while the only girl I found to be actually tolerable and mostly contrivance-free was Kyou. The classic authorative tsundere archetype, her character was both familiar and thankfully intelligent enough not to need Tomoya's intervention in improving the state of her life. Doesn't stop her from ending up in some unnecesarily contrived moments though (Ironically, both her basketball and by now infamous sports shed moments have garnered her much fame). Then again, KyoAni's forte seems to be doing Kyous/Haruhis/Kagamis anyways, so here was a field there were bound to score with. Too bad her part in the story was to tag team with her sister in a losing battle against just about everyone else.

Ryou... you never stood a chance. Having no segment devoted solely to her in the OP should've been a hint. Be happy you had the chance to give Tomoya that fortune spew and contributing to the show's supposed depth before you crashed and burned with your sister.

Tomoyo... thanks for being a good sport that you were. Despite the utter contrivances of your scenes with Sunohara for the pure sake of humour, you played your part well, had your go at Tomoya, held your ground against the twins, scored student council presidency (through the contrivance of playing every sport in school and amassing fangirl supporters, but that's beside the point) and still managed to spill your sappy touching tale of family all (I almost forgot you had one by obligation), all in less time than it took Tomoya to weed the garden! Bravo! Compare this to the 5 episodes apiece that Fuko and Kotomi got, and you have here an underused haremette. A pity really.

Last, but definitely not(?) least... Nagisa, she's special because she's not really... special in any sort of way. Hmm. Wish here was more to say about her. Perhaps there's something to being equal parts passive and equal parts determined and having parents who could easily be hired actors to make your life seem that much more interesting? Well whatever the reason, good game to the rest of the girls, but looks like we have a winner here!

So I just spent a posts worth ranting girl by girl and coming to the conclusion that, really there's not one of the main girls that endeared to me, which would probably account for part of the reason why CLANNAD is getting just a 'nyeh' from me even this far in the series. Unlike in Kanon where Nayuki made all the difference :P I would like to say I tried to like CLANNAD, but for a show that turns me cynical at just about every scene, not hating it is all I'll give it for now.

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