Why is "The World God Only Knows" struggling so much?

The most hardcore anime fans, such as many regular posters on Anime Suki, usually have a pretty good idea of which animes will be successful, in the sense of ratings, DVD/Blu-Ray sales, and related merchandise sales. They keep persistent track of which animes will be coming up in the following season, which animation studios will be handling each of them, how popular the source material (if there is one) for the various animes are, and the overall vibe surrounding each of them. They tend to have their finger consistently on the pulse of the anime industry, the anime fandom, and key related fandoms (manga fans, light novel fans, eroge fans, etc...). I myself follow anime somewhat closely, but I don't keep tabs on this wondrously wider world of the modern otaku with quite the admirable thoroughness and zeal as these folks do.

So... when an anime does significantly worse than initially expected or hoped for by these hardcore anime fans, it becomes an intensely intriguing intellectual curiosity for me. This was true when the heavily hyped Umineko anime bombed, and it's also true now with TWGON (which is the acronym I will use through out the rest of this post to refer to The World God Only Knows) likely suffering a similar fate.

K-On!! Review Part 2 of 2

 

First off, apologies to long-time readers for not getting to this sooner. I know that I scrounge up regular readers about as well as Afternoon Tea Time scrounges up new members for the Light Music Club, but still, Ritsu would not have left you hanging for almost two months, and I should not have either. 

That out of the way, I'm going to pick up this series review where I left off at the end of Part 1. Just to remind everyone, Part 1 of my series review dealt with the first 13 episodes of K-On!!, while Part 2 will deal with the second half of the anime. And also to further refresh memories, Part 1 of my review dauntlessly delved deeply into the inner conflict and workings of this anime's leading group: Azusa, Mio, Mugi, Ritsu, and Yui

There I spoke at length of the ideological conflicts pitting the lighthearted procrastinators Ritsu and Yui against the relatively stern and serious Azusa and Mio, with Mugi caught inbetween. I perhaps exaggerated the severity of that conflict, as the second half of this anime quickly resolves it, and is mostly free of it.

Does Anime Lack Wit?

I recently watched the first episode of the new Iron Man anime.

Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and felt that it did justice to the character of Tony Stark/Iron Man. I also felt that its characterization and plot did a superb job of mixing a very western Americanized superhero character into a very eastern Anime-esque setting. Iron Man isn't quite a stranger in a strange land here, but the contrasts between his personality and the Japanese culture that he's coming in contact with where nicely played upon, in my opinion.

However, not all felt the way I did here, and one particular comment to that effect stood out to me.

K-On!! Review Part 1 of 2

Yui against the World...

I recently decided to start watching K-On!!, the artist formally known as K-On! In anime, you see, exclamation marks are always in style, and this particular anime show even uses them in place of Roman numerals. A friend joked to me that a hypothetical fifteenth season of K-On! would be called K-On!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, to which I quipped that only one man could ever pronounce that name correctly...

"K-On!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Anime: Nostalgia Entertainment?

There was one scene in Angel Beats! that I didn't touch on much, even though some of the ideas conveyed by it were potentially powerfully poignant, and likely very telling. I didn't touch on it much because it was suggesting a general truism of sorts about anime today which transcends Angel Beats! itself, and hence I didn't want to spend much time on it in an actual Angel Beats! review. That truism is that modern anime intermittently intensely idealizes school life. 

Ga-rei Zero Review

Before I begin this review, two key heads-up:

1. This review will be highly spoilerrific. I don't think that I can do justice while delving into the key strengths of this anime, without spoiling a lot of it.

2. I came into this show in large part due to its moe appeal. In other words, I didn't come into it mainly for the action, which I think will give this blog a very different (if not contrary) flavor when compared to some of the other Ga-rei Zero blog reviews that I've read. This anime was recommended to me on Anime Suki by 0utf0xZer0 when I asked for suggestions for a "moe character designs with dramatic storyline" anime. After watching the Higurashi animes, the Nanoha animes, Clannad, and Mai HiME, I've come to feel that moe actually blends very well with serious sophisticated suspenseful drama, as I think that the two compliment one another nicely while providing crisp contrasts between look and feel that can give the final work an added 'oomph!'. However, notice that Clannad is on the list there, so fighting action scenes were not a prerequisite for what I was looking for here, but they certainly can help. And it helps a lot for why I enjoyed Ga-rei Zero a lot.

In the Shadows of Clannad

I recently watched Amagami SS Episode 9.

It had slick artwork and solid animation, it showcased mostly good character designs, and it was rather benign. Few people who are already very familiar with anime would find it disturbing in the least, and the only scene that would even possibly raise the eyebrows of even a total newcomer to anime is the flashback scene of one girl giddily gleefully rubbing another girl's breasts.

Junichi may be a bit of a pervert, in the very broadest sense of the term, but he's the most innocent type of one. He gets aroused by even the slightest of physical contact with an attractive girl, even through layers of clothing. There's nothing in Junichi's approaches and reactions to girls that even a shy choir boy at the age of twelve would find alarming, or hard to appreciate. There's also nothing even coming close to the degrees of slapstick violence found in Love Hina!, Negima!, or even your typical Jun Maeda produced comedy bit. So Amagami is incredibly inoffensively innocuous.