The first spot of the new anime season, it’s the Mikan box so orangey they deemed to label it twice – that is, they’re Mikan Mikan boxes. They’re all over the boys club room, too.

There’s not really a ton to say about Cute High Earth Defense Force LOVE, aside from the fact that the shows title is a wee bit of a mouthful. This is largely because it’s very much the kind of show that you’d expect the folks involved in it’s production to produce – the shows director, Takamatsu Shinji, made an awful lot of Gintama. The shows lead writer, Yokote Michiko, made an awful lot of Gintama. The episode director working on this opener, Miyawaki Chizuru, worked on Wandering Son. Also, made an awful lot of Gintama.

This probably all sounds like me being awfully reductive here, but in CHEDFL, it’s a little difficult not to stress that they’ve made a show that very much sports the same kind of sardonic tone, and the same kind of dialogue and directorial cadence, as what is arguably the most significant of their previous works. Right from the opening, it just noticeably has that feeling to it.

Which is, you know, fine – Gintama is a good show, but they’ve, well, made an awful lot of it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking the lessons learned whilst adapting such a long running manga and applying them to an original show with new characters and a completely different setting.

(Not that this is the first time these folks have done such a thing – also see Ixion Saga DT, though what I watched of that one was a wee bit hit-or-miss. Will be curious to see if CHEDFL is more consistent, though I’ll probably forget to watch it from the second episode onward anyway…)

This is an obligation post, to a degree. I figure that people would think it would be weird for a new iM@S cartoon (or just a new late night otaku idol anime) to air without me passing some kind of comment on it, but, as I’ve previously mentioned, I don’t really DereM@S. This isn’t really my territory, and I can’t really tell anyone anything that they couldn’t pick up just as quickly by skimming the fan wikis instead. I mean, whilst I’m the kind of guy who knows about most of the surreal Uedo Suzuho cards purely by cultural osmosis, I’m really not equipped to pick up the apparent use of Nation Blue, instrumental or otherwise, in the soundtrack.
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No matter what you thought of the first episode of the Kantai Collection (or KanColle) anime, I’m sure there was one thing we can all agree on – Mutsuki’s hair is nowhere near as fluffy as it should be. I mean, let’s take a look at her game illustration by means of comparison…
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2014 was a year in which the country of Japan continued to exist, and continued to invest in the production of cartoons. Some of them were made available outside Japan, and occasionally – just occasionally – I watched some of them.

The following is a collection of nonsense words about some of those cartoons I watched. Not necessarily the best ones I watched, or even necessarily good ones, but most certainly ones I watched. Also maybe some I didn’t in passing.

Speaking of things I didn’t actually watch, keeping up the usual tradition, I’ve still not got around to watching Gundam Unicorn, though I guess I’ve now got the entire series sitting around on Blu-Ray. I also didn’t get around to watching the new episode of Code Geass:Akito the Exiled, but that’s mostly a result of it not actually existing yet.

I should probably also point out that, for the first time in years, I didn’t watch either of this last years Precure movies. I guess that’s what DokiDoki will do for you, but it did rather give me a gap in terms of things to write about this year.
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Leaving this a little late by UK standards (and certainly by Japanese ones!), but whatever, it’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, not that any of that is particularly worth going into. Just forgive the hastiness of this post is all.

Anyway, have yourselves a happy holiday season, folks, and maybe I’ll actually get around to writing something for the Token End Of Year Post on the first of the year.