A Taste of Animethon (ATOA) took place this here in Edmonton this weekend and I took this opportunity to try out some event photography. From the last Animethon, I learned that I needed a good flash and a wide-angle lens to better deal with the conditions at Grant MacEwan (the place where Animethon and ATOA is held). I have neither and I didn’t want to spend $500 on them so I borrowed some equipment instead. I used a Canon T2i with a 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens and 430EX flash. It was my first time using this set-up so it took a while to get used to and some pictures didn’t turn out as well as I wanted, but some of them still worked out. Anyone who is here just for cosplay pictures can scroll to the bottom.

In case you didn’t already know, ATOA is a mini-convention with almost everything that a regular anime convention has, but toned down.

Despite being a mini-con, the registration desk was still pretty big, which is great since no one likes waiting in line.

The Community Corner was set up in the cafeteria of MacEwan. It’s basically a big gathering place for people.

A lot of people go to anime conventions to buy stuff, so vendor halls/rooms are always popular.

The usual stuff like manga, DVDs, plushies, and posters were on sale. There was also some artwork and buttons being sold at some booths. There was nothing I wanted that I didn’t already have so I left empty-handed (all because of online shopping).

The card gaming and video gaming rooms are always jam-packed with people so it was great that they got such big rooms this year.

I went to a few panels, such as “Name That Tune” and found them entertaining. They generally seemed to get one or two dozen people coming to see them. I also sat through a bit of the showing of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. It was interesting to see all the anime start playing by itself in all the rooms without anyone having to look after it.

The cosplay contest was probably one of the bigger, if not the biggest, event at ATOA. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the number of contestants. I believe there were more cosplayers in the audience than in the contest. I was also frustrated with the lighting in the room where the contest was held. Behind the cosplayers was a bright white light, there was no light above or in front of them, and there was a dim yellow light over the back of the room. That resulted in some pictures where the subject was almost black on a white background. The obvious solution is to get some light on the cosplayers (ie: flash), but having heard that using flash during a performance or presentation is poor etiquette, I was hesitant about turning it on.

I managed to play around with the settings to get something visible.

But changing the camera settings wasn’t enough

I eventually decided to just turn on the flash, but I’m still  not happy with how these pictures turned out. I had the light pointing up, but because of the slant in the ceiling, it was bouncing more back at me than the cosplayers and I didn’t want to point it directly at them.

I still enjoyed the contest though. We got to see the bouncer strangle the MC at the end.

Now for what most people are probably looking for: cosplayers in and around the halls of MacEwan. These are just some random cosplayers that I found throughout the day.

Madoka from Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

I didn’t even notice this girl was using a bubble gun when I took this picture.

This isn’t cosplay, but these two asked me to take their picture, so I did. They look like a cute couple.

I think there were a few other Pokemon around, but I couldn’t find them.

I was half expecting there to be a Charlotte cosplayer to go with any Mami cosplay, but I didn’t see one.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone cosplay as Astroboy, which is awesome.

This guy has the best cosplay ever. I love Prinnies and you’ve got to respect anyone willing to wear one of those full body costumes knowing how hot they get inside.

I was surprised to find a Mirai cosplayer here. Danny Choo has gained enormous popularity since 2006, but last I remember, his fanbase was largely based in Asia and the U.S. west coast.

That wraps up all that I did at ATOA. It was fun for the most part, with the only real disappointment being the lack of participants in the cosplay contest. I was happy to see that they had done away with the trouble of having people play DVD’s in each viewing room by having it all done automatically, and that large rooms were set aside for gaming. Looking at my pictures, it seems I still need to learn how to take them under artificial lighting and take a lesson or two on composition. Hopefully I can improve my photography before the big convention in August.

Related posts:

1. A Taste of Animethon 2011
2. Animethon 15
3. Animethon 18

WARNING: Spoilers below.

One of the anime I would’ve liked to have seen rewritten is Chaos;Head. It’s the prequel to the currently airing series, Steins;Gate, and is about a delusional hikikomori, Takumi, that believes everyone is  out to get him. From the start, Takumi is presented as an unreliable narrator. His views and descriptions are inconsistent with those shown during the third person and even conflict with some of his own experiences, leading to some very confusing moments for him. At first I thought Chaos;Head was going to be a very in-depth story about the fall of a teenage boy into the depths of insanity where he would be lost forever, or realize the extent of his illness and wake up one day in a mental asylum. Oh how wrong I was.

Chaos;Head is about a guy (Takumi) with a harem of very beautiful girls (one of which is an anime character) who all wield cool weapons and fight some bad organization from taking over the world. Let’s also not forget that all of those girls have a thing for Takumi. Now before you say that that could have just been all Takumi’s imagination, there’s plenty of scenes showing that’s impossible. A lot of the side scenes with the girls are clearly taking place far away from Takumi so he would have no idea what’s going on. That means everything the viewer thought was a delusion at the start of the anime was actually real, making Chaos;Head a harem/fantasy anime rather than one about mental disorder. If I could have things my way, Takumi would have ended up in a mental asylum and none of the girls would have existed (at least not in the way he imagined them). I think that would have made for a more intriguing anime.

Next is Code Geass R2, but first off, I’d just like to say that Code Geass (season 1) was magnificent. The setting, character designs, comedy, and action scenes were all good points, but by far the most impressive aspect of the anime was the mastermind, Lelouch. A cold-hearted villain bent on revenge, Lelouch would do whatever it takes to reach his goals. He was aided by C.C. and the power of geass, which let him order anyone to do anything he wanted, but the greatest aspect about him was that he was able to manipulate people without the use of his geass. As Baron Acton once said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Code Geass was certainly going down this path, and after the cliffhanger at the end of the first season, I couldn’t wait for the next one to see what happens.

When R2 came around, I was sorely disappointed. They didn’t resolve what happened between Lelouch and Suzaku at the end of the first season, but even worse, it was almost as if someone decided to take a 180 on the plot development. Lelouch started to lose sight of his goals, he started caring for people, and worst of all, he was no longer an evil mastermind. Heck, his plans didn’t even seem very well thought-out either. Lelouch was no longer the great villain that I had admired, but a confused boy questioning his very own decisions. When he “saved the world” in the final episode, that was the last nail in the coffin for me. They had killed Lelouch both figuratively and literally. So if I could rewrite Code Geass R2, I would make it very close to the first season, with Lelouch continuing down his path of destruction, eventually losing all of his loved ones, including Nunally, who would die by his own hands. At the very least, I would’ve made it clear the cart driver was Lelouch.

The last anime I would like rewritten is Venus Versus Virus. It was so good that I can’t remember the characters’ names. I do remember that the plot was something along the lines of semi-yuri, girls fighting something using special guns, and 1 useless guy somewhere in there. Honestly, the only reason I watched Venus Versus Virus in the first place was because I really liked the ending song and I was waiting for some yuri action.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rynqQ4HJ4RY

What really disappointed me about this anime was the way it ended. When I was in elementary school, we were always asked to write stories and were given a minimum number of pages. I hated writing (which is ironic now that I have my own blog), so once I reached the minimum page count, I always ended the story with “…and they all died.” That’s exactly what happened in Venus Versus Virus, everyone died in one big explosion. If I could rewrite this anime, I would have given it a real ending, perhaps only one of the girls die, maybe they both live on, or even have one of the side characters survive, having everyone die is just plain laziness on the part of the writers.

While these three anime titles are by no means the worst anime out there (except maybe Venus Versus Virus), they were the most disappointing in my eyes. Each one had so much potential and seemed like they were going to lead up to an epic ending, only to have this viewer asking himself what he just wasted his time on. The way a series ends can make or break it, and these three definitely didn’t make it for me.

Related posts:

1. Penguin Musume Heart ep. 15 & Code Geass Ending
2. Schneizel Nukes Toronto, or not
3. Overthinking Anime

In response to Yi’s fun project idea, I’ve gone back through all of my old anime posts and put together a collection of the times when I’ve overthought something and was wrong. Since I’m on the topic of overthinking, I’ve also included some posts where I’ve just completely taken things out of context. These posts go back to when I first started blogging in 2008, so most of the series I cover are complete. If you haven’t seen them and plan on watching them later, be warned that there are spoilers below.

When I Overthought and was Wrong:

Chaos;Head ep. 1

I had predicted that Takumi either imagined everything that he saw, or that he was actually a murderer. It turns out both were wrong, and Chaos;Head is an anime about some supernatural stuff and not mental illness. On the bright side, I was spot on about Yua having ulterior motives.

Toradora ep. 9

I predicted that Kitamura was some kind of masochist; I was wrong, he’s an exhibitionist. On the bright side, I was right about Minori hiding something (she’s bisexual).

K-ON! ep. 1

I thought Mio’s hat defied gravity. After seeing people wearing them in Japan, I now know that there’s actually a strap attached to the hat that you tie around your head.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica ep. 8 – The Obvious and Not So Obvious

So I may be way off with this one, but hey, there’s still 2 more episodes and we’ve seen how easily Madoka can twist things around (c’mon Urobochi, don’t let me down!).

When I Just Overthought:

To Aru Majutsu no Index ep. 05 & Perfect Memory

This is a perfect example of a time I really over-thought things. I went semi-in-depth into how the human brain is theorized to store memory in order to compare the anime with real life. Why can’t I just enjoy a series for what it is…

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun Espers – How Do They Work?

Many people have pointed out how I was wrong about the mechanics of esper powers, but I guess they didn’t read the part where I said I was taking it out of the context of anime physics and applying real-world science. Others have pointed out alternatives to what I suggested. There is one correction I’d like to point out though, “an involuntary movement” is an actual scientific term, but it’s far from what the anime explains it as.

Natsu no Arashi ep. 9 – Time Paradoxes

The title speaks for itself.

When I was Right:

Not all of my overthinking leads to wrong conclusions or a brain ache. Below are some examples of when I was thinking about anime and got some things right.

Toradora ep. 1

Accurately predicting that Ryuji and Taiga will hook up. OK, that’s a give me, but it still counts.

Toradora ep. 19 & 20

“I predict that the next episode will involve some people getting trapped on the mountain during a snow storm since that’s what usually happens.” Well, you just have to watch episode 21 to see that I was right.

Clannad After Story ep. 21

I mentioned the likelihood of Ushio suddenly coming back to life and we all know what happened.

Related posts:

1. Spring 2009 Anime Watchlist
2. Spring 2010 Anime Round-up
3. Upcoming Spring 2010 Anime

Animethon is an annual anime convention held in Edmonton, Alberta. It’s marketed as the longest-running anime convention in Canada and usually takes place in August. For those who can’t wait a whole 12 months between Animethons, there’s also a sort of mini-convention called A Taste of Animethon (ATOA). This is held halfway between Animethons and is a scaled-down 1 day version of the actual event. As regular attendees will know, Animethon always takes place at Grant MacEwan University (formerly College, formerly Community College), and this year it was held yesterday, February 12.

I’d never been to a mini-con before, so I didn’t know what to expect. According to the schedule, the event was set up just like the regular convention, but with much fewer activities. I got there shortly after it opened and headed to the marketplace after paying $12 for the day pass. Since ATOA is so small (I think there were only a few hundred people there), there were only a handful of stores at the marketplace and a few artists selling some of their work.

I was tempted to buy a Reimu plushie, but I literally have no room left at home for more merchandise right now. The manga and DVDs seemed to be really popular; one store had whole tables stacked with them and lots of people were swarming around. Other things for sale were vintage video games, posters, figures and model kits, drawings, trinkets, key chains, buttons, stickers, cosplay accessories, and art supplies.

These keychains were some of the more interesting items at the marketplace. They have tofu keychains, face bun key chains, turd key chains, and sheep key chains. Unfortunately, the same store was selling fake nendoroids. I’m not sure whether the sellers knew the nendoroids were fake or not, but they were easy for me to spot considering I have a small army of them. I didn’t take a look at any of the figures, so I don’t know whether they were fake too. It’s disappointing that there’s no one to watch out for this kind of stuff.

After browsing the marketplace for a while, I watched some AMVs and stuck my head in some of the viewing rooms and panels. It seems a few of the volunteers weren’t familiar with the audio/visual equipment so some rooms got off to a late start. This happens every year at the main convention and seeing it happen at this mini-con makes me wonder how much training the volunteers are getting (if any Animethon organizers are reading this, maybe you guys could try adding in more training).

The gaming room was separated from everything else for some reason and when I stopped by there weren’t many people in there. The games being played were rhythm games and it was too early on a Saturday morning for me to be staring at brightly coloured arrows/dots speeding across a screen.

I had something to do in the afternoon, so before I left I did a quick run around the place and snapped a few photos of some cosplayers. If anyone wants their picture removed, just drop me an email.

ATOA is basically what I imagine Animethon was like back in the 90′s: a few events, no crowds, and a small group of people that enjoy anime. It’s a nice place to bring someone who’s new to anime or someone who you want to share your hobby with. Hardcore anime fans would probably enjoy the full convention more than a mini-con though.

Other than training people to set up the audio/visual equipment, the only other thing I’d really like to see is some advertising. ATOA was completely ad-free and the same can be said about the main Animethon conventions. While some people like it this way, I think it has a negative impact on the convention. With no ad revenue, that means that most of the operating costs are paid for by the attendees, and increasing admission fees are driving away some would-be convention goers. Actively seeking out sponsors and letting them advertise on posters, banners, the website (which should stay up for more than half a year), doors, and even before every event/showing would help. They could even ask companies to supply lanyards and badges in return for letting them place the company name/logo on them. In short, while ATOA and Animethon are fun events, there’s still room for improvement.

Related posts:

1. Animethon 15
2. Animethon 16
3. AT17 in 9 Days

At the start of the spring 2010 season, Mayoi Neko Overrun was one of the anime that I was on the fence about so I decided to watch a few more episodes. Well, a few more episodes ended up being more than I thought and I am now up to episode 6 of the anime, which is halfway through the series. In case you haven’t heard of Mayoi Neko Overrun before, here’s the synopsis from MyAnimeList:

A heart warming love comedy. Tsuzuki Takumi is a high school boy, who is running a confectionery “Stray Cats” with his sister-in-law Otome. Otome is an extremely good-natured person and is always running around to help people. One day she brings home a runaway girl Kiriya Nozomi. Nozomi’s closed mind gradually opens to them as she works as a pâtissière at Stray Cats.

When you’ve watched anime for as long as I have, you’ll learn that “a heart warming love comedy” is actually a secret code meaning “an ecchi harem anime.” That was one of the things that initially put me off; I’ve seen enough ecchi anime in my younger days to last a very long time. On the other hand, there are some very entertaining characters in the anime. Takumi is your typical guy, but Otome is pretty cool. She travels the world doing charity work and you can kind her almost anywhere, from the deserts of Egypt to the top of Mt. Everest. Otome also has a huge bust and carefree attitude which really reminds me of Mutsumi from Love Hina. Nozomi is a quiet girl, but also very talented and says “nyaa” every once in a while. The synopsis fails to mention Serizawa Fumino and Umenomori Chise, my two favourite characters in the series. Fumino is Takumi’s childhood friend who also works at the confectionery with him. She’s special in that she always says the opposite of what she means and she’ll tell you to “die twice” if you manage to piss her off. My other favourite, Chise, is a super-rich girl of small stature who also happens to be an otaku. In the first episode she even tries to get Nozomi to cosplay as a certain character from a certain anime. Chise is also very impulsive, usually dragging the rest of the cast into some wild adventure.

Other notable characters are Chikumaen Kaho, Kikuchi Ieyasu, and Kouya Daigorou. Kaho, like Chise, is a super-rich girl, but is significantly more mature. She doesn’t play as prominent a role in the series as the other characters, but when she does appear, she always seems to have a handle on the situation, sometimes even controlling it. Ieyasu is your typical perverted otaku who says that 2D is better than 3D, but still ogles at Fumino, Chise, and Nozomi’s panties. Daigorou is a down-to-earth kind of guy that doesn’t seem to talk much. It’s implied that Ieyasu and Daigorou actually have a gay relationship with Ieyasu being the uke and Daigorou being the seme, making for some hilarious moments.

While I do enjoy all of the characters in the anime, that’s not enough for me to like it. A good anime needs a good plot (or lots of humour), and Mayoi Neko Overrun has failed to deliver in that department so far. As with any “love comedy,” there’s the usual bonding between friends and getting along with each other, but nothing carries over to the next episode. That was my main gripe with this anime, it follows most other anime in the genre and starts with a clean slate every episode. What made anime like Love Hina stand out compared to anime like Mayoi Neko Overrun was how the relationship between Keitaro and Naru develop over time. We see none of that happening here, it’s all just random events that get settled before the episodes’ end. The reason for adding cats into the anime also completely eludes me. The only role that the cats get are sitting around Nozomi while she pets them. My belief is that the writer simply added a bunch of cats to Mayoi Neko Overrun because he’s a cat lover (also note that neko = cat).

The animation and music were good, but it’s not anything impressive. One thing I did like, however, was that although this is an ecchi anime, they actually keep it at a pretty low level. Yes, there are panty shots, and some cleavage showing, but there are no bare breasts or anything extreme like what we’re seeing in anime nowadays.

So, after watching half of the series, I’d have to say that Mayoi Neko Overrun is an average anime. It’s not something you’ll remember in a few years, but it has a good set of characters and is perfect for passing the time.

Related posts:

1. Spring 2010 Anime Round-up
2. Spice and Wolf II Review

In this episode, Otonashi befriends Kanade and treats her to Mapo Tofu during class, for which they both get locked up in a sort of prison cell by the new student council president. While the two of them are locked up, Yuri discovers that Ayato Naoi is a human and he has launched an all-out assault on the SSS using the NPCs as his pawns. I bet no one saw that one coming.

After Kanade’s fall, I thought we’d finally get to see God’s true representative in this world, but instead we get Ayato, who is a Nazi-like character that actually reminds me a lot of Lelouch from Code Geass. Ayato even has a special power in which he can hypnotize people (including NPCs) and order them around. That’s how he was able to build a small army against the SSS.

With the SSS defeated, Ayato was ready to claim victory and send the SSS members out of that world by hypnotizing them to feel no more regret about what happened during their lives, but then Otonashi and Kanade show up, having just broken out of their prison cell. Here I was hoping for some big show-down between Ayato and Kanade, but I was very disappointed with what ensued. I don’t know what it is about anime, but the bad guys seem to like to talk a lot and Ayato is no exception. He starts blabbing on about being God and so on up until it looks like he’s going to rape Yuri or something and decides to hypnotize her instead. (Note: Yuri’s voice actress, Harumi Sakurai, voiced some characters in 18+ anime before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they put her skills to good use -.^)

Preoccupied with hypnotizing Yuri, Ayato lets his guard down, allowing Otonashi to approach him and land a good punch. I guess all those NPCs standing around with pistols forgot that they were supposed to stop anyone from approaching Ayato. After that, we go into this long flashback about Ayato’s life and how he couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations and so on. Then the episode ends.

At this point I was just angry at this episode. Not only do we not get to see Kanade face off with anyone, the new enemy has already been defeated and subdued. It wasn’t even in a grand manner; Otonashi just walked up and punched him in the face, we don’t even get to see the punch, just a hat flying off. I know Key isn’t known for having much action in their stories, but to build up the viewers’ hopes that there’ll be a big fight scene and just end it with a punch and a long flashback is just cruel.

It also seems that the SSS are back to where they were near the end of episode 5, with no more enemies to fight and no way to get their revenge on God. I’m hoping that Ayato’s past is supposed to be some clue as to how this world came to be and why everyone is in it, otherwise it feels like I’ve been wasting my time watching the SSS fight with someone that doesn’t have anything to do with the story. One thing I am happy about with Angel Beats is how Key has put some weird food in it like all of its other anime titles. Kanon had Akiko’s jam, AIR had Misuzu’s really thick juice, Clannad had Sanae’s bread, and Angel Beats has Kanade’s tofu dish.

No related posts.

Live long and prosper! Yes, right now Azu-nyan is the only thing that’s keeping me from dropping K-ON!! At first it was Mio, then I just grew tired of her and became fascinated by Mugi’s eyebrows, and now it seems I’m drawn to Azu-nyan’s cuteness. Really, it’s hard not to adore such a cute face. She even has twintails, which is a double bonus, though she also looks nice with her hair straight down:

Doesn’t anyone else feel the urge to just hug her all day? I’m sure that Yui does.

I don’t know how long it’ll take until Azu-nyan’s cuteness wears off, but it looks like I’ll continue to be addicted to K-ON until it does. It wouldn’t be so bad if the show were a little more interesting or maybe had some real humour in it.

No related posts.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like yours truly made it onto the list of 96, but you should still check it out. There’s a lot of interesting blogs there and I’m sure any anime fan/otaku will find at least one that they like.

No related posts.

Angel Beats

I think it’s safe to say that Angel Beats was either the most or second-most (after K-ON) anticipated anime of the season. The main reason is probably because one of the collaborators was Key, which also wrote Kanon, AIR, and Clannad (all of which were very successful). There are three other companies working with Key on Angel Beats, but it manages to retain a common theme with Key’s previous works which is life and death. In case you forgot where this theme showed up in Key’s previous works, they were most prominent in: Ayu’s arc in Kanon, the Summer arc in AIR, and Ushiro’s arc in Clannad. The humour usually found at the beginning of Key’s stories was also in Angel Beats with all of the traps that the SSS fell for in the second episode. Some people have complained that the animation quality is poor, character designs were plagiarized, or that the music band was just an attempt at gaining more music fans. I won’t argue that these things aren’t true, but the main selling point of any good anime should be its story. With the way Angel Beats has started out, it looks like it’s following the same pattern as Kanon/AIR/Clannad with the exception that there’s no harem. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series and hoping it’ll stand up to its predecessors.

Arakawa Under the Bridge

I’m not really sure what to make of Arakawa Under the Bridge. The characters are so weird that sometimes you can’t understand their train of thought. With that being said, they all appear to be homeless except for the main guy, so that might explain their mental health. I’m sure anyone living in a big city and who has spoken to some “bums” will know that a lot of them live in their own little fantasy world. That’s exactly what Arakawa Under the Bridge seems like to me, a depiction of the world from the point of view of some bums. Then again, this is an anime, and the girl could really be a Venutian, and the guy in the green suit could really be a kappa. I’m really interested in seeing where this anime will go, it looks like it has a lot of potential.

B Gata H Kei

The plot summary for B Gata H Kei is probably one of the most messed up ones I’ve heard of. Seriously, what kind of female high schooler just decides that she wants to do 100 guys? Anyways, I gave this anime a shot and I’ll admit that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. Despite what the summary says, the main character is actually a virgin and it looks like she’ll stay that way for the remainder of the series (thank god). The anime is actually a romantic comedy wrapped up with some ecchi and topped off with one crazy sex-starved girl. Some of the scenes were pretty funny, but I found the ecchi just overwhelmed the comedy and makes B Gata H Kei look even more fanservice-focused than Love Hina, but not as funny. In my opinion, it doesn’t seem like an anime worth waiting around for.

Giant Killing

Focusing on Football (a.k.a. Soccer), Giant Killing looks like your standard team sports anime. A new guy joins an underdog team and helps them to reform and win against the best. It’s not really my kind of anime, but I guess if you really like Football or sports anime in general, this would be a decent choice.

Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan

For the first ten minutes of Hakuouki, I was extremely confused as to what gender the main character was. Luckily I wasn’t the only one, since most of the other characters couldn’t tell either. I’m glad that she turned out to be a girl though, or else this anime would  freak me out even more. It’s basically a reverse-harem (one girl, lots of guys) anime where all of the guys are bishounen and carry swords. There looks to be some action in the form of swordfights, but those are just minor scenes. I won’t be watching this since it’s obviously targeted at a female audience and lacks comedy, which would be the only thing that would make me reconsider.

Heroman

A mix of anime and American comics, Heroman looks like something I would have really enjoyed as a kid. Sadly, I’m in my 20s now and superheroes saving damsels in distress just isn’t as appealing as it once was. If you’re curious though, the anime is most like a fusion between Spiderman, Medabots, and aliens. The situation with the poor nerdy kid and hot babe is just like Peter and Mary-Jane, there’s a robot that the main character can control, and there are evil aliens thrown in for good measure.

House of Five Leaves

House of Five Leaves has horrible character designs, but the animation is beautiful and the plot seems decent. The anime is about a shy, cowardly samurai that agrees to work for a stranger before discovering that his new employer is actually a criminal involved with kidnapping. It looks like the series will mainly focus on character development and debate ethical issues like whether it is wrong to help someone by committing a crime. The plot may sound kinda boring, but the first episode went by a lot faster than I thought it would. I haven’t seen anyone write about this series yet, but it could turn out to be very good.

Ichiban Ushiro no Dai Maou

This is one of the more disappointing anime of the season. Ichiban Ushiro no Dai Maoh is essentially a harem anime with magic involved. There’s a lot of panty flashing, clothes being blasted off, and tons of “oops” scenes. It wouldn’t be so bad if they had been a little bit more creative with this anime, but it seems like everything has already been done before. In these kinds of anime, everyone knows that whenever there’s an explosion at least one girl has to be naked afterwards, and whenever the main character goes into a private room, 90% of the time there will be a girl with her panties down or shirt unbuttoned. The main female character also hates the main male character, which seems to be common nowadays after Love Hina. With the lack of anything new or creative, you’d at least expect the animation to be good, but it was just utter crap. I definitely don’t recommend this anime to anyone.

K-ON Season 2

The best way to describe K-ON is that it’s like crack. You know it sucks and is bad for you, but you just can’t get enough of it. There’s absolutely no continuous plot, the humour is only mildly funny, and the characters are basically just blobs (hence the term moe-blob). Seriously, I really don’t know why I can’t stop watching this. Maybe Mio’s “moe moe kyun”, or Azu-nyan, or Mugi’s eyebrows have something to do with it, but I just can’t pry myself away from this epic waste of time.

Kaichou wa Maid-sama

I was a bit skeptical at first, since the summary made Kaichou wa Maid-sama sound like a reverse harem, but it’s actually a good anime. While right now it seems to be focusing on the comedy, it looks like it’ll turn into a romantic comedy. The main character is very gun ho and anti-boy so it’s funny to see her dress up as a maid and serve a guy from school at a maid cafe. Overall, the anime is cute (in a personality sort of way, not character designs) and funny. It’s definitely worth the watch if you like light-hearted shows.

Kiss x Sis

I’ve written about the Kiss x Sis OVAs before, but this is my first time writing about the anime. While I was expecting the anime to be along the same lines as the OVAs (ie: tentacle rape and incest), it was actually watered down a bit. The incest portion of the story is still there, but scenes aren’t as suggestive as they were in the OVA. I think the most extreme scene in the first episode was when the sisters flashed their bras, which is a lot tamer than a giant octopus wrapping its tentacles around some sensitive areas. Although the anime isn’t as extreme, it’s still a fanservice anime and really only aimed at people that wanna see some panties and brother x sister action. Not recommended for the average anime watcher.

Mayoi Neko Overrun

I’m on the fence on this one. Mayoi Neko Overrun looks like it should be funny, and while I admit some scenes were amusing, it didn’t have me actually laughing. It does have some unique characters; one of them is an orphan that says the opposite of what she means, one guy seems to always be making comparisons between the 2D world and 3D world, another girl is a rich otaku, and there’s a giant cat that looks like a hot girl. As of the first episode, there doesn’t seem to be much of a plot yet since they spent most of the time introducing characters and chasing the giant cat around. Ecchi content is present here, but not a big component of the anime. I’ll keep watching it for the time being just to see where it goes.

Rainbow

This is probably the darkest anime of the season. Prisons in the past really were horrible places, and Rainbow does a good job of depicting just how bad it can get. The main characters are imprisoned for stuff like petty crimes and standing up against abuse, but they’re treated like the lowest of the low, being subjected to torture and physical abuse. One thing to note is that this is a “bro” anime, so if you’re looking for pretty anime girls, this isn’t the place. If you like anime about sacrifice, overcoming hardships, and standing up for one another, then this is a good one to look into.

Senkou no Night Raid

Set in China in the 1930′s, Senkou no Night Raid isn’t what you think it is. Japan and China don’t have the best of relations, so I think a lot of people may have dismissed this anime as Japanese propaganda and not given it the chance it deserves. While it’s  true that the “good guys” are Japanese, keep in mind that this is fictional and should be enjoyed as just that, fiction. The main characters even have special abilities like x-ray vision, deflection, and teleportation, which takes away the realism from the anime. All of the special operatives have some sort of special ability, which helps to add a lot more action into the anime (and yes, this is an action anime). Since the first episode was mostly action, not too many details regarding the plot were given other than the fact that the group of main characters are secret Japanese operatives in China. Like some of the other anime this season, it can turn out to be good or bad, but it’s hard to tell with only one episode.

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitte Iru

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitte Iru has hot guys everywhere you look. It’s really not my cup of tea so I’ll be passing on this one.

Working

Cute and funny, Working seems to stem from what I call the Lucky Star class of anime. It feels like there should be some sort of plot, but there just isn’t one (at least not one that I could tell). This is something that you would get and just leave on the shelf until a dull Sunday morning when you’ve got nothing better to do except watch anime.

Final Thoughts

I thought this season was very impressive in terms of the quality of anime being aired. Whereas last season I was struggling to find something decent to watch, I find myself trying to decide which ones not to watch right now in order to fit them into my schedule. It looks like the moe boom is also finally coming to an end, with K-ON and maybe Working being the only two anime that you could really classify as moe. As much as I enjoyed the boom, it was killing the industry, and I swear that too much moe kills brain cells. I’ve still got to take care of stuff in my life so this will probably be my only post for another week or so, but I’m not dead so I’ll be back.

Related posts:

1. Upcoming Spring 2010 Anime
2. Spring 2009 Anime Watchlist
3. My Thoughts on Winter 2010 Anime

Despite how much I like anime, I’ve never been a big fan of incredible events with no viable scientific explanation. This includes things like flying through the air with no apparent form of propulsion, creating vast quantities of energy from nothing, and penetrating the armour of a vehicle using a weaker material by using shear willpower. This is one of the reasons why Martian Successor Nadesico was and still is one of my favourite anime: it used the latest theories of quantum mechanics and newest technological advancements of the 90s to explain how things like instant transport and the terraforming of Mars was possible. When there was no way to explain something (like the generation of particles to perform a gravity blast), the topic was simply avoided rather than trying to make up something fake and untrue.

With that said, one of the things that have been bothering me this season are the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun), and the general use of the term “esper” in anime. The word “esper” was derived from the acronym ESP, which stands for “extra-sensory perception.” As the name implies, someone with ESP has an extra (or 6th) sense that the rest of us don’t have, and are generally known as psychics. An esper, in this sense, does not refer to someone that can shoot lightning bolts out of their body since that’s not a sense but an an ability. To be fair though, words often change meaning when they’re introduced through a different culture or language, so the definition of an esper in Japan might be different from the rest of the world.

Now to get to the main point of my post: how do esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun work? The explanation that they gave in the anime was that espers have an AIM (An Involuntary Movement) Dispersion Field around them that allows them to use their powers. This is obviously a made-up term which doesn’t help us understand how esper powers work, so I’ve thought about how some of the esper abilities (mainly Mikoto and Kuroko’s) would be possible and explained them below:

Mikoto Misaka:

Before I try to explain how Mikoto’s powers might work, lets list all of the things that we know she can do. First off, she can deliver an electric shock to someone by touching them; secondly, she is able to shoot lightning bolts from her body; third, she can control iron sand as she wishes; and fourth, she can fire a coin like a railgun. As stated in the anime, Mikoto is also called Academy City’s “electromaster,” indicating that she is able to do all these things through electromagnetism.

The way I see it, Mikoto’s body would have to be made out of a different type of material so that she can supply electrons to run a current through herself. One type of material would be metals, but since Mikoto isn’t a robot (or at least I don’t think so), she probably has some kind of ceramic in her body where she somehow induces the electrons to move from the valence band to the conduction band. This way, she would be able to run a current through her body without too much resistance. To be able to shoot bolts of lightning from her body, Mikoto would have to be able to create a charge difference between her and her surroundings. I figure to do this, she would need to have two materials in her body rub against each other like when you rub a balloon against your hair. The next part of Mikoto’s powers, which I can’t explain, is how she as able to control the direction of her lightning bolts. When an object is discharging electrons, it’s not like the electrons will just follow someone’s orders and go in a certain direction. Instead, the electrons will always take the shortest path to neutralize the object. This is why lightning tends to strike tall towers, the electrons in the clouds only have to move the distance between the cloud and the tower rather than the cloud and the ground.

The inability to control the movement of electrons also pokes a hole into Mikoto’s other abilities: moving iron sand and firing a coin like a railgun. Moving iron sand the way Mikoto does in the anime would be possible if you could make a complicated magnetic field, but since there’s no way for Mikoto to control electrons, then there’s no way for her to use them to make several magnetic fields to control the movement of iron sand. Mikoto’s patented “railgun” move would technically be possible if her body was made out of different materials, but not in the way that they’ve shown in the anime. In simple terms, a railgun works by accelerating a ferromagnetic object through a tube by generating a magnetic field in front of it. If Mikoto’s body were vastly different from a normal human, it would be possible for her to extend her arm out, place a coin on her shoulder and shoot it wherever she’s pointing her arm because then she would be able to generated a magnetic field in front of the coin, pulling it along her arm. It would not be possible to flip a coin out and fire it once it falls back to her hand.

Kuroko Shirai:

Kuroko is my favourite character in the anime because of her hilarious Mikoto-rape moments, crazy ideas, and cute character design. Unlike Mikoto, her powers only allow her to perform one action, and that is teleportation. I’m sure all of you have been exposed to the idea since it’s so widely used in science fiction. The two most popular ways in how teleportation is explained to work is through data transfer and bending space. Kuroko obviously doesn’t use any type of device to teleport, so recording her body on a computer, then destroying it and rebuilding it someplace else obviously isn’t how she teleports, so that leaves bending space.

If you imagine that the universe is 2-dimensional like a piece of paper rather than 3-dimensional, then if you fold that piece of paper, it’s possible for something on one end of the paper to move to the other end without crossing the middle. This analogy is commonly used to explain how you can teleport someone or something from one place to another. The problem with this method is that it would require insanely huge amounts of energy to bend the universe, so how does Kuroko do it?

The only way that I could think of that would allow Kuroko to teleport from one place to another is if 4-dimensional beings existed. If they do exist, it could be possible that one of them has taken a liking to Kuroko and is bending space for her. Lets imagine for a moment that 2-dimensional beings in the shape of squares lived on a piece of paper in your hand. You would be able to see inside a square since you’re looking at it above, but the squares on the piece of paper would not be able to see inside each other since they can’t move into the 3rd dimension (above) the piece of paper. It would then be possible for you to see a set of instructions within a square explaining where it wants to go and all you would have to do is fold the piece of paper to line up the square with its destination so it can just move over. Kuroko might be like that square, where a 4-dimensional being is able to read her thoughts by watching the electrical signals in her brain. This could explain why Kuroko can only move things she’s in contact with because she would have to push it to the other side once space is bent.

So to sum things up, Mikoto would have to be some kind of monster do be able to do the things in the anime, and even then she wouldn’t be able to perform some of her moves. Four dimensional beings would also have to exist for Kuroko to be able to teleport the way she does without an energy source. Basically, the esper powers in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun do not work except under very extreme assumptions, and even then some of them still don’t work. I guess it’s a good thing that the target audience is too caught up fantasizing about biribiri to care if she could technically exist or not.

If you have other ideas on how esper powers might work, feel free to share. Any nerds reading this can also point out any mistakes I’ve made since this is mostly stuff I remember from school.

Related posts:

1. To Aru Majutsu no Index ep. 05 & Perfect Memory