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The Spring 2010 Anime Preview Guide

I would bet my soul on the fact that they are "very" well aware of the current market situation over there in the US.

Anime is a dieing market here in europe and ecchis sure as ell would be able to spice things up a lil bit but nay its not popular in the US so its not going to do well here either right???

And you'd lose that soul, as considerable evidence has stacked up over the past few years indicating that most Japanese studios have a very poor understanding of the American market - if they even care at all, which many don't. The Bandai Visual "experiment," and how poorly it fared, alone should be sufficient proof of that.

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Late to the party, but I have to chime in on this point. It seems to me that the running standard on these reviews is that every show in which a positively portrayed character shows a large degree of sexual desire gets points taken away, and any show that features characters getting into strife or difficulties gets points added. There is almost universal love for Rainbow, where the characters suffer in prison, and for House of 5 Leaves, where the protagonist must take on a difficult job with heavy moral implications. Conversely, there is almost universal dislike for B Gata H Kei, about a promiscuous girl, and for the Ikkitousen series, about hot girls kicking butt. Perhaps the show that puts it in sharpest relief is Arakawa under the bridge, which is also a romance, but one in which the fellow gives up his status to go live a homeless life for his girlfriend. If the premise were changed so that she went to live with him, and was obsessed with him the way Ako and Riko are in Kissxsis, would the reviews have been less laudatory? I think so. This is not a hard and fast rule, so there are exceptions, but it is a trend.

Point being: there's an old saw that says drama is "Throw your hero down a well. Throw rocks at him. Get him out of the well." The shows that seem to get positive reviews follow that. But there's another view which says that normality is the well and real life is the rocks, and that a show that gets the hero out of the well ought to have something extraordinary happen to him or her. That's what I'm looking for, and I find that kind of show better than the first kind.

Steroid wrote:

[ Late to the party, but I have to chime in on this point. It seems to me that the running standard on these reviews is that every show in which a positively portrayed character shows a large degree of sexual desire gets points taken away, and any show that features characters getting into strife or difficulties gets points added. There is almost universal love for Rainbow, where the characters suffer in prison, and for House of 5 Leaves, where the protagonist must take on a difficult job with heavy moral implications. Conversely, there is almost universal dislike for B Gata H Kei, about a promiscuous girl, and for the Ikkitousen series, about hot girls kicking butt. Perhaps the show that puts it in sharpest relief is Arakawa under the bridge, which is also a romance, but one in which the fellow gives up his status to go live a homeless life for his girlfriend. If the premise were changed so that she went to live with him, and was obsessed with him the way Ako and Riko are in Kissxsis, would the reviews have been less laudatory? I think so. This is not a hard and fast rule, so there are exceptions, but it is a trend. Point being: there's an old saw that says drama is "Throw your hero down a well. Throw rocks at him. Get him out of the well." The shows that seem to get positive reviews follow that. But there's another view which says that normality is the well and real life is the rocks, and that a show that gets the hero out of the well ought to have something extraordinary happen to him or her. That's what I'm looking for, and I find that kind of show better than the first kind.

Ah Steroid! How I've missed your misogynistic, loli/moe lusting laments at the global resentment of your way of looking at the female gender. You related to Dave Sim in any way mate? I know what you want; you want a plot where two busty 12 year old girls in bikinis are thrown down at the hero where they all get very wet and slick from whatever sexual perversion is performed whilst trying to come out of the well (no pun intended). I'm sure that would fit the order of "to have something extraordinary happen to him or her" for you.

Look, I have a half-dozen ero games on the computer I'm typing this up on. I regularly play an online flash game called Sim Brothel, in which you build a successful Japanese-style brothel from the ground up using anime characters for your "girls." (Actually it's a remarkably involved game, albeit with some pics that are definitely NSFW.) I have several volumes of Bible Black on my shelves, along with Sexfriend. I actually liked To Love-Ru, which past the first episode is a much superior ecchi-dedicated show than anything that has been shown so far this season.

Look, I have a half-dozen ero games on the computer I'm typing this up on.

I think we ought to have a rule that nobody can criticise the critics and their reviews (instead of the shows in question) until they have posted a credible review of the show in question themself.

Criticism of our writing goes with the territory and is more than welcome. More often than not it's really dumb criticism that we just ignore, and on other occasions our critics (the ones criticizing us) actually have a point and we learn from it.

Criticize away. As long as people are polite, and have the decency to stop once they've made their point, we won't ban anyone.

-t

Well, all in all I think I can say this season was a very successful one. I would have been happy with just one or two shows of high quality, but we've gotten a lot more than that.