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1: Death Note/Code Geass (R1):

The appeal of these shows may well be multifaceted, but doesn’t in either case seem to be massively complex. The obvious themes are, well, obvious, and well documented. Not that that has ever stopped me from pointing stuff out about anime. Thing is, much as I enjoyed them (especially the good bits), they don’t fascinate me. I’d struggle to make a case for Naruto being any better than these – but there’s a show which has a sort of subversive appeal which creeps into my mind, and leaks out again in the form of bullshit.

I’d have reviewed Death Note, only the respective quality levels of the various arcs is fairly undeniable. It seems a bit much to crank out a post going through common knowledge only for the sake of stating my position on the only real area of contention there is, the last episode. So: it’s a brilliant ending, it’s worth grinding through the bad bits for. Crazy guy = crazy. There. Now I’m done.

2: Samurai Champloo:

I have absolutely no problem talking about Cowboy Bebop, which is just about superior, but not overwhelmingly so. That cousin to Champloo does speak more to my cultural interests, and does have a slightly larger (sci-fi gorged) scope for playing at whatever the hell it wants. But at the same time I think the cast of Champloo are far more appealing, and thought that the main (serious) plotline was better. And it’s not that I abstractly recognise this as a good show, I really enjoyed it a great deal.

Like a lot of people who started anime with that show, I’m forever trapped in the extended moment of Bebop’s impact. The words just never come for this counterpart. Really a blog like this is a means for putting individual obsession into words, and obsessions are unreliable.

3: Spirited Away/Princess Mononoke:

My introduction to anime. Spirited Away I’ve certainly just seen too often. I’ve virtually burned out through repeat DVD viewings. It’s one of the only films I’ve seen twice at a cinema. I can’t even read about it anymore, so I’ve decided to wait until I forget all about it.

Mononoke didn’t suffer from such a short term repeat viewing mistake. I may pick it up again in a year or so. I’ll probably have a great time, like always. So why the lack of words? In some way when I watch it my mind switches off, and I’m just in for the ride. I guess I’ve just learned to feel the flow and the style abstractly. It’s like trying to critique a book I read as a child. That sounds ridiculous, but what I’m aiming at is not that a couple of years of increased anime-watching has made me a more mature individual (heh), but that those first experiences become somehow sacrosanct.

4: Millennium Actress/Only Yesterday:

Emotionally transcendent. Everything I could say about these two great tear jerkers is contained in the films themselves, and in such upfront ways. Given the gorgeous way these shows make their point, it seems poor form for me to clumsily intrude.

5: Paprika:

Not nearly so stupidly wonderful as Millennium Actress. But this Kon guy seems to rob me of words in a different way to Miyazaki. Is it just that his expression is so visual? In this case it’s more that the story doesn’t really develop the themes so much as dance around them. I’d have no problem screencapping for this. I could fill page after page with lovely stills and never feel the need to mull them over.

Maybe I just need to watch it a second time? Where Miyazaki’s best beckoned me back, allowed me to switch off and dive in, I don’t want to relive Paprika so much. When I think about it those thoughts don’t go anywhere so I feel no need to review the source material. I’ll probably give it another try next time I feel like something pretty. Maybe it’ll inspire some actual thinking once I’ve got over the surreal eyecandy.

6: Martian Successor Nadesico:

Here my lazy attempts to explain my own lack of words can only fail. There was a lot going on in this show. Somehow in all the mess I seem to have left my mind behind.

7: Hellsing/Escaflowne/Fruits Basket:

I sometimes feel that this blog lacks invective. Here are three shows I tried to push on with, against all my better instincts (respectively got to eps 6/9/10). Fruits Basket was fairly tedious, the other two were painful. This will hopefully be the only time I have to use the word faggotry.

8: Fullmetal Alchemist:

I have had the draft for a post on this hanging around for months. Every now and again I go back to it. I read it over, realise I’m saying nothing much, and slightly change the wording in the noxious rant concerning the Conqueror of Shambala. I do not like that film. I have decided that it doesn’t count as writing when every other word is a abortion.

Like the two Miyazaki films and Death Note, this is something I saw rather early in my anime career – at a period during which considerably less time per week was dropped into the hobby. For better or for worse, more time watching creates a sort of mental apparatus. It’s difficult to speak of a thing which precede one’s fully developed way of thinking about anime without simply describing it in terms of impact, as a step on the road rather than something to be judged in its own right.