september's coming soon

There are things I have watched or read because they're considered classics. There those I got into because I've liked some other work by the same creator. Finally, there are those that somehow made a name for themselves in spite of the seeming absurdity of the concept. Mawara Penguindrum technically goes under all three, but mostly the last one. "Penguindrum", come on.

That said, google tells me that popular reception is mixed. Is it a brilliant work of astounding philosophical depth that conveys its ideas through a veil of symbolism and a visual product unmatched by anything ever, or is it a pretentious narrative turd which tries to mask its clichés and incoherent plot by vomiting colour and J-pop all over the audience?

The internet jury is still out, but I loved it.

( More on the anime that changed my life at least a tiny bit because yes, THAT GOOD )

I've been playing the Ace Attorney games, and it turns out that it wasn't just my imagination: I just love the hell out of the entire fourth game in ways I don't love the first three. I love the first three games too, but there is something about Apollo Justice and Trucy Ema Wocky Klavier his friends and foes that just hooked me a lot harder.

It was a downer that AA5 starred Phoenix in the lead, so the important question was always WELL FINE BUT WILL THE GAME AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT APOLLO EXISTED.

It turns out that it does, and how.

( Lengthy babbling about the games, specifically the relative anonymity of Phoenix and Apollo )


( and speculation about what kind of 'central enough to warrant a new design' role Apollo is to play now )

The first anime I ever saw was probably something eighties shoujo on Swedish television - because it WAS in Swedish and it was only by the time I got into anime ten years later that I could recognise the style of a faint childhood memory that I never forgot.

But the first anime I was conscious of as anime was Pokémon. And Clamp School Detectives debuted a month later. So there's your nostalgia factor: late nineties children's anime, with all the animation conventions and trends of that once upon a time. Speed lines! Funky watercolour backgrounds! Kappei Yamaguchi! They don't make them like that any longer.

( This got horrendously long )

Summary: It's cute but it's nineties children's anime and there's nothing remarkable to it except that the main characters show up in a certain later Clamp manga. Cardcaptor Sakura does the same thing and does it better. Bonus ew: Clamp's disturbing philosophies on love.

BUT TRY TO TELL ME THAT YOU CAN RESIST THIS OPENING THEME. BECAUSE THIS IS THE CLAMP SCHOOL DETECTIVES, ALL 26 EPISODES OF IT, IN A NUTSHELL.

I know that I bought this one because it was somehow mentioned in the same sentence as Digimon Tamers over at TVtropes. And lo: We got Jeri, Ryo and Lopmon in fairly central parts, and Henry as a periphery character that was at least important enough to be followed even when the plot strictly speaking was happening everywhere but around him. And Yamaki, and Janyuu as a one-episode wonder! And Kouichi as central as central gets without being the actual title character. I feel that that should count even though he's from Frontier.

We also got Yuri in almost every episode, with Wolfram and Günter as Ryo's loyal teammates. And Anissina, Adalbert, Conrad and Celie.

The sad part is how that for most of the minor parts among these, I mentally kept referring to them by their voices. Seriously. Every time the bard showed his face, I was all "Hi Conrad!"

It could've been worse. It could've been "Hi TK!"

( so about other things than how it is made of 80% voice actors from other anime I've spent too much of my life on watching )

So: Romeo x Juliet, in which Shakespeare becomes an anime and won't let us forget it. We might drift off for a while, then WHAM: BITCH, THIS IS JAPAN. For my part, that moment was Tybalt's entrance.

( My love of this anime made me go on about it for longer than anyone probably cares to read )