Author Archives: Bobduh

White Album 2 and the Futility of Everything

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“My bridge is burned, and perhaps we’ll shortly learn/That it was arson all along/Can we just get home, sleep this off/Throw some ‘sorry’s’ and then/Do it all again.” – Frightened Rabbit, Late March, Death March

So, I just watched White Album 2, and holy shit you guys. Holy shit. Don’t even know what to say, but I gotta say it anyway. Let’s get through this one together.

White Album 2 has a very dim view of human nature. Not even Evangelion dim, where cruel things happen to broken people pretty much continuously. Evangelion is optimistic – it features plenty of hardship, but the message it puts forth about its characters is fundamentally a positive one. White Album 2 is, like, School Days dark. Everyone’s awful and selfish and wrong. Nobody learns, everyone suffers, the moral is sadness. It’s a hard show for me to square any real intention on, much less enough of a point to actually write a coherent essay. In the end, nobody really wins, and the only question you’re left with is the one the characters ask themselves – where did it all go wrong?

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Sekai Seifuku – Episode 1

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Alright. It’s all up to you, Sekai Seifuku. Space Dandy is too silly, Chuunibyou’s just Chuunibyou, and Hoozuki turned out to be like Lucky Star except somehow even more dull. If any show is going to end up this season’s dark horse candidate, it’s gonna have to be you. Don’t let me down!

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Kill la Kill – Episode 13

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TIME FOR KILL LA KILL YOU SHITHEADS. Aw man, it has been a while. Maybe it’s actually out of kindness that Trigger left us not with a cliffhanger, but with a kind of underwhelming plot-resolver – that certainly made the vacation break somewhat more bearable. Then again, my permanent neural link to twitter has informed me this episode has some serious holy shit moments in store, so I guess I shouldn’t be taking anything for granted.

Anyway. Hope you all enjoyed your new year/holidays/satanic gatherings, and it’s good to see your cold, anonymous handles again. Let’s ring in the new year with some KILL LA KILL.

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Chuunibyou S2 – Episode 1

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Hey guys. Bobduh here, maybe talking about the best show of the season. Or maybe talking about nothing at all. Who knows! Anyway, I have a secret.

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Winter 2014 – First Impressions, Part One (Space Dandy, Noragami, Nobunagun, D-Frag!, SoniAni, The Pilot’s Love Song)

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New season! Action and excitement and maybe a handful of new shows worth watching. I’m actually doing distressingly well relative to my own preview – every show I was anticipating has proven watchable so far, and we’re not even a third of the way through the shows I listed. Let’s run down the new highlights.

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Monogatari and the Monster Inside

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The real world is a scary place.

Not because it’s full of monsters, though we’ll get to that. It’s scary because it’s full of other people. Because it’s full of risks, and setbacks, and harsh truths. It’s scary because to truly look at it, you have to first look at yourself, and acknowledge what you see. Engaging with the real world means acknowledging and embracing every ugly, selfish thing that makes you You, and being honest with yourself is the hardest, scariest thing of all.

Monogatari is a story about liars.

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End of the Year Podcast Part Two

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More rambling about the year in review, this time covering our favorites from the Summer and Fall seasons, including Monogatari, Uchouten Kazoku, Kyousogiga, and whatever everybody else cared about. Also Kill la Kill, Gatchaman, White Album 2, Samurai Flamenco, etc.

Once again, you can find a list of all our many participants and a timestamp breakdown over at Deadlight’s blog.

Fall 2013 – Week 13 in Review

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Only a few shows actually aired this week, but they were all finales, so it managed to be a pretty heavy week all the same. Let’s run down some sad, sad endings.

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Kyousogiga, a Home Like Any Other

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It was likely a practical, scheduling-minded choice to air Kyousogiga in the fall, but it certainly made for an appropriate ending. As the show drew to a close, so too did the year itself, the season’s promise of family and renewal mirroring Kyousogiga’s own humble themes. It’s a rare show – though it mirrors this summer’s Uchouten Kazoku in a number of interesting ways, perhaps the most review-relevant parallel is that it’s one more of those occasional glimpses of how good anime can actually be. It’s a world unto itself and a message both personal and universal. I’m sure I could ramble on it at length, but the show demonstrates its own strengths freely, so I’ll try to keep this concise.

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End of the Year Podcast

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On another podcast! This time we’re discussing the year in review, including bits on basically any show that managed to sneak onto anyone’s top 10 list. Meaning everything from my actual list gets rambled about, along with Crime Edge, Hataraku Maou-sama, and almost everything else I watched. This first video covers up through the Spring season!

You can see more info/show timestamps over at Deadlight’s blog.