Re: My prediction for this season: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Posted by Ray on 22 Sep 2007 at 5:30 pm | Categories: Editorials
For my short prediction of this season, see here.
Dear Raymond:
Back in post #440, you wrote about what you thought was the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of this season. Well, the summer season has pretty much ended or is drawing to an end, and I must say that you were wrong. Wrong, sir, wrong!
Take the Ugly – Moetan – for example, not only it’s not dull and bland, but the staff actually packed enough drama, action, and humor in each 22-minute episode! There was enough drama that it spilled over into real life production difficulties and episode switches! As for action, what’s better than 3 moe-moe-moe girls transforming into magical girls but don’t have to fight cliched yoma? Looking through each episode closely, you should’ve realized that each episode is a perfect self-mockery of the whole situation of the genre of magical girl and the things that loli-con enjoy so much. Moetan does all that and yet still delivers enough mouth watering action for the loli-con in you. Admit, you’re loving it and that’s why you download every episode as soon as it came out on Chinese fansubs.
Clearing away the mouth-water fall, let’s talk about your choice of the Bad – Zombie Loan. Now, anime is made in Japan, and the Japanese don’t use English as their national language, do they? So it’s expected that their use of English is different. I’m saying different because linguists have in recent years, qualified a lot of different ways of expressing English as “dialects, accents, and all that”. I’m not saying Japanglish is perfect or even good English, but it sure makes strong impression on people. In the case of “Zombie Loan”, well, that actually expresses perfectly essentially what the main plot in the show is about – borrowing time but live as zombies. “Zombie Loan”, like “car loan” or other names for loans, is a great name for what it represents. You don’t make fun of “car loans” do you? Do you actually give a bad joke like: “I lost my car, can you lend me yours?” But you did joke: “I lost my zombie, can you lend me yours?” Har, har, har.
Zombie loan discusses the interesting aspect about living, namely, what counts as living for me? Do I feel alive? Sure it’s only 11 episodes and it doesn’t explore the concept completely, but that’s what the manga is for. Anime is entertainment, so no, it doesn’t have to be deep all the time. This show certainly isn’t your standard fare, I mean magical shonen that send souls into heaven with swords and guns? That’s not done that often.
Last, I’m seriously going to disagree with you on Zetsubo Sensei. It’s not “siiiick”; it’s a cynical person’s morbid humor on acid trip. That’s why you can laugh out aloud watching this show. It fits your American-style destructive cynicism. To whet the appetite of men like you, it’s even got strong fan service in the OP sequence and it serves up a harem! Admit it, Mr. Raymond, you have been longing for the blond girl to show her lush and lovely strawberry panties, her innocence pure white panties and her provocative dreamy lacey panties every time you…Ah hem. Anyway, to quote Lord of the Ring: “…there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.” This show as a whole, denies that there’s some good in this world despite the fact it tries so hard to present that good can be done. But every episode always ends up without the light at the end of the tunnel. It always ends up with a even more cynical look of the world through darkened lenses. Yes, anime is entertainment, but it should be positive entertainment that gets people off depression/permanent cynicism/whatever (to use your way to summarizing terms).
And don’t be drinking when watching anime, jeez. That makes all your reviews cynical, critical, sarcastic, and downright negative.
Anyway, thanks for reading this letter and I hope to see more positive reviews from you next.
Sincerely,
The darkest recesses of your Dark Side.
Tags: action anime, drama anime, harem, loli, magical, Moetan, prediction season, shonene, strawberry panties, Zombie Loan
3 Responses to “Re: My prediction for this season: the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
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Until I read this post it hadn’t occurred to me that people would find something wrong with the name ‘Zombie Loan’, it seemed like a decent name to me. :/ That being said, I didn’t really get on with the series, the only thing going for it in my opinion were the character designs from Peach-Pit.
As for Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, it’s by far my favourite of the season (it’s a shame the subs are so far behind too), but really, it’s still a bit of a let down. Mostly because Shaft made it into something of a harem anime…
Still, I really hope it comes out on DVD sometime, I’d snap it up in a second, fancy art box and all. I think it’d probably need a booklet to go with it to explain things though. :D With DVD subs as they are, the screen would get sooo crowded it’d destroy the aesthetics of the anime if they translated everything as they went along (blackboard notes anyone?).
I’d love to read the original manga, but I doubt any company out there would be willing to translate something so full of puns, I imagine it might be quite a mess in English. Correct me if I’m wrong on this though.
P.S. There’s a typo in the link at the top of the page (the one going to your previous prediction post) that sends you to the wrong website altogether. Ah, what a missing colon can do.
Visitor – thank you for pointing the typo out. It’s now corrected.
I really like Zetsubo Sensei, even with the harem elements. But I just thought I tackle it from another angle. It’s sarcasm is exactly up my alley. Yes, it’ll definitely need a perhaps not so thin booklet that comes with it.
Zombie Loan is medicore. The episodes with Chica’s best friend from middle school days are probably the best out of the whole show.