Monday, December 19, 2005
	| First| Prev | Next |Last | Love Situations #11 "Su-Cool 11" (Story Arc: Su-Cool) | First| Prev | Next |Last | "Su-Cool 11" by Akira (2005-12-19) "Su-Cool" characters are quite rare compared to "Tsun Dere" characters. "Tsun-Dere" characters are all over the place. You can find only a handful of "Su-Cool" in manga/anime/game. And that's understandable because it's very difficult to come up with an interesting story with "Su-Cool" characters. If I were to make a story with "Su-Cool", I might choose settings like: Your little sister (not blood related, of course) is su cool character. She is honest and makes moves on you streightforwardly, but you deny her because she's your sister -_-; You are allergic to women. If women touches you, you'll faint. She is a male and you are normal. She is a daughter of a boss of the mafia. If you touch her, your will be killed by the guards. I'm just making variations on a same idea. I'm not so creative... ^_^; Please write your comment to this strip at pOnju forum

	Tuesday, December 20, 2005
	"Anime of the Year" by Konstantin (2005-12-20) With the year almost over and the new anime season past its halfway point, I think it's safe to declare my pick for Anime of the Year, which is Honey and Clover, hands-down. While there were quite a number of excellent shows this year, such as Air TV and Mushishi, I think that in the end H&C is both the most enjoyable and the most significant of this year's offerings. Produced as a launch title for Fuji TV's Noitamina (try reading it backwards) programming block, whose purpose was to appeal to an older female demographic with anime whose complexity and characterization was closer to live action dorama serials rather than the typical shounen and shoujo anime fare, H&C has managed to define the new niche nicely, and raised the bar for both anime and dorama in the process. The show is a romantic dramedy about a group of friends at an art college coping with school, employment search, romantic convolutions, and survival on a college student's income. Its greatest strength lies in the fact that it avoids the typical anime character templates and the usual contrivances of misjudgement and misunderstanding. Instead each of the characters has their own issues, hangups, and ways of dealing with the world, and the conflicts that drive the H&C stem from the way these combine and interact. The characters may not always be acting rationally, but at the same time their behavior is instantly understandable and recognizeable by anyone who's lived through similar situations before. It did not surprize me in the least when I found out that Ken'ichi Kasai, the show's director, was staff on KareKano, another one of my all-time favorites. The direction, especially in its use of visual symbolism, feels like a subtler and smoother version of Anno's approach on that show, though the director does not rely quite as much on exhaustive introspective monologues and refrains from interpreting the manga literally. Instead, the director tends to convey what the characters are experiencing by showing as well as telling, often through brief musical interludes where the only words heard are the lyrics of the song being played. Hopefully, the success of Honey & Clover will lead to more shows being produced with similar character complexity. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Kasai's future projects. At the very least I've got an addition to my all-time classics list, and that doesn't happen every year. Please write your comment to this strip at pOnju forum