Because I can’t think of six things to comment on this week.

To get the preface out of the way, I’m still strangely luke-warm about the show, and I’m still not entirely sure why – Omo seemed to report similar feelings coming out of the opening episodes, so I’m not the only one in that position, but I’m not really sharing the same love for the show a lot of people on the Twitters seem to have.

Again, though, I’m not really sure why. To a certain degree, it might just be that I’m over-thinking it, and a lot of the criticism I think to lay at the show strikes me as maybe coming from a weird hypocritical place of defending my iM@S fandom in the light of supposed competition. I mean, the main thing what strikes me about Love Live is that it’s all perhaps a little too calculated in it’s execution – in parts, it comes across as a peculiar composite of popular things from popular shows, and outside of that dance sequence at the end of the first episode it hasn’t really displayed enough of it’s own character yet. That’s hardly a complaint that can be pointed at Love Live exclusively, though, being that it’s true to a significant degree of a lot of anime these days, but Love Live is all just a little too smooth – it’s been lacking a bit of the rough edge or conceptual weirdness or just something that gives these shows some actual flavour.

Not that I don’t like the show or anything – it’s fun, and there’s a lot that’s legitimately great about it, but I just don’t love it as much as I was expecting. It’s still early days yet, though.
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At least I’m assuming there’s a mikan box in the actual show – in perhaps the laziest Mikan Watch post ever, I’ve not actually watched the show at all, rather this was spotted within the Crunchyroll news stories whilst I was looking to see if there was anything new streaming this afternoon. Of course, this means I’ve got absolutely nothing further to say about the show at all.

(P.S – Woooooo! AKB0048!)

Love Live! (School Idol Project) is the new idol show from Sunrise, specifically Sunrise Studio 8. I gather that these two facts put it entirely within the wheelhouse of things I’m supposed to post about here.

Which is pretty much the main reason why I’m posting about it – honestly, I’m kind of luke-warm on the show as of the first episode. There’s a lot of things I appreciate about it – I think the music is pretty catchy, and whilst I don’t think the writing is particularly sharp, I do think there’s at least a degree of intelligent direction going on. There’s some degree cleverness to the way some sequences cut together at the very least. I’ll probably end up watching the whole show anyway, though, mostly because there’s precious little else that’s caught my attention thus far this season. Infact, there’s been a few shows I’ve not even managed to survive half an episode of.

Anyway, just a few quick thoughts about the shows first episode…

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Now that this is the third year that I’m doing this, I guess it actually is becoming the Token End of Year Post. Well, more traditional than Token, where I to be pedantic, but given that I’ve not really posted much this year gone, I suppose I need to make up for that somewhat by spamming a few thousand words about cartoons.

Not that I’d actually managed to watch as much as I’d have liked over the last year. Not to moan too much, but the ol’ bad back did put paid to me watching great chunks of anime through the middle third of the year, and resulted in me not finishing off a bunch of shows that I probably should have (I’ve still not got around to seeing the conclusion of Kids on the Slope, for example). TV re-runs of Star Trek:TGN and Futurama ended up consuming way more of my evening media viewing than I should probably have let them, too – and I didn’t even get around to making a blog post about Star Treks Ambojistu either (tl;dr – there’s lots of old anime references in the arena in which it takes place).

In terms of post-related house-keeping, I’m going to have to confess that, for the third year running, I’ve still not gotten around to starting on those Gundam Unicorn BDs I’ve been collecting. I’m sure the punchline to this is that I’m going to absolutely loathe it, but at this point, waiting until the whole series is done and watching it in bulk is looking increasingly preferable.

Okay, so on to the usual specifics with the Beta-Waffle Entirely-Pointless Awards for 2012 Anime Existence, AKA me making up reasons to write about things I want to write about.
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From episode 11 of the show whose full title I’m refusing to regurgitate on this occasion, because these unwieldy light-novel titles are a pox upon the world which really must be cleansed. I’m pretty sure there was another mikan box – or at least a fraction of one – in one of the earlier episodes during the school festival preparations, but I neglected to grab a screendump on that occasion.

That being said, I’m pretty sure this is a fake – I mean, look at that large, cartoony writing scrawled over the front of it. I’m pretty sure Rikka just realised the amazing cult powers of the tangerine box and fabricated one to install in the Far Eastern Magic Nap Society of Summer club room.

I only just got around to finishing Chuunibyou today, having delayed on the last couple of episode for various reasons (mostly just waiting for Anime on Demand to get them posted, but also because it’s been a busy few weeks). It’s a cute enough show, I guess. I do appreciate the fact that they realise that a little of the shows main gimmick goes a long way, and don’t overplay the chuunibyou-ness anywhere near as much as they could have, but it’s hard not to think that the show doesn’t really have all that much else going for it. The first few episodes of the series, where they really layered on the more surreal elements the thickest, were the most entertaining, but it really couldn’t have continued on the same path without outstaying its welcome. The shows attempts at serious (melo)drama ended up ringing a bit hollow with me, though, and I came out of it feeling that it’d been strangely empty an experience, and probably not something that’s going to stick with me. I can’t really imagine how thin an experience the original novels were without Dekomori and Kumin to pad things out.