私がモテないのはどう考えてもお前らが悪い! Watashi ga Motenai no wa dou Kangaetemo Omaera no Warui! / No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Unpopular! / WataMote

The last of the series from the excellent last season that I picked up before it ended - and like *Magi, one that I started watching because of advertisement I saw in Japan, as well as an episode that aired as we happened to have the television on late one night - I like most others I know found WataMote hilarious and deeply sad. 

A strange little gag comic, it has quite a pleasant success story, from being effectively a webcomic for Shounen Gangan's site to appearing in print in Gangan Joker, and then finally becoming a short anime series, I'm sure it has gone further than anybody involved in its making expected. And as a short, 12-episode gag series, its limited premise is very watchable and difficult to dislike because it does not outstay its welcome.

The bittersweet premise here is that the short, plain fifteen-year-old Tomoko starts at her new high school full of hopes of becoming popular and finding others like her, who love otome games and enjoy her rather grim and often perverted sense of humour. However, her contempt for popular girls, crippling social anxiety and somewhat creepy appearance - with dark messy hair covering half of her face and heavy bags under her eyes - mean that she is largely ignored or feared. She comes up with a series of schemes to make herself more well-liked, but they are mostly either based on anime and thus not applicable to her life - like being the expressionless character - or utterly delusional, like when she thinks that she is attractive and lucky because she has sprayed a can of Coke Zero on her face, when in fact she just has ants crawling in her hair. Most of the humour comes from just how far poor Tomoko falls, how much she ends up making us cringe, like when she buys fancy panties to fit in, misplaces them, then ends up thinking she is fanning herself with her handkerchief when in fact she is waving her panties at her teacher.

Tomoko doesn't really interact with others and is cripplingly shy around her peers. She has a little brother who used to dote on her but now is a surly yet popular teen who is sadly only driven further into a kind of dull horror by his sister's attempts to be affectionate. She also has a best friend who attends another school, who has blossomed into a pretty and popular young woman, exactly the sort that Tomoko wants to be, and though their friendship remains strong, Tomoko's attempts to imitate her usually end in disaster and humiliation for her. Even the little cousin who used to dote on her, upon meeting her again, starts instead to understand her lies and her affection turns, rather more tragically than if she had been repulsed, to pity.

Of course, Tomoko's design isn't that repulsive. She is cute in her way, and towards the end, random acts of kindness by strangers towards her, especially the popular student council member, are rather lovely moments. When she gets enough rest (thanks to the sexual gratification of an otome game) she even looks cute for a while, much to her own pleasure. It's no secret that this is an anime made for the male otaku who see themselves in Tomoko and can fantasise about finding a girl like her, with such similar intersts, and helping them with their self-esteem issues, while finding their clutzy antics sweet and amusing. It's also part of the increasing number of depictions of fujoshi culture in anime - which perhaps started to boom with Lucky Star, through Chuunibyou and became dominant in Genshiken Nidaime, a pleasant melding of affectionate mockery and glorification that can appeal to male otaku and the subjects themselves.

The main criticism I've seen of WataMote is that it's just too much. The poor girl has to suffer too much humiliation, to the extent that it's painful to watch. For my money, though, despite the fact that I admittedly watched slowly, there's a decent balance, especially towards the end, between the abject misery of her existence and the rays of light that come into her daily life thanks to others.

If there's another series, I think I will watch, in hopes that things start to perk up for young Tomoko. I'd like to see more of her attempts to date boys, even if she fails spectacularly, and it would be good to see her open up to someone apart from her friend Yuu-chan. Silver Link obviously had a lot of fun here in the same vein as their work on Baka to Test, pitching their tone as something akin to a less abrasive and frenetic Shaft, utilising the same shifts in art style, pastiche and references to other anime, but with less obscurity, randomness and in-jokes - something I find to be quite well-judged here.

WataMote was perhaps too sour to appeal to everybody, and too short to truly make an impact, especially in a season of such big-hitters as Shingeki no Kyojin and Danganronpa, but for me it had just enough light and shade by the end for me to very much enjoy what it had to offer.

First Impressions: C³ / シーキューブ

I’m not sure why I expected this anime to be serious and ambitious. Judging by the first episode, it’s the lowest of lowbrow ecchi, with little going for it but cuteness and nice music-video visuals. I will probably keep watching it as something light and insignificant, and to see how Silver Link do in their second project after Baka to Testo, but if it’s going to take a turn for the dark and serious, as the very last minutes of the episode hinted it might, it’ll have to be a big change.

The plot reminded me of Rizelmine: a boy living alone named Haruaki receives a package from his collector father – a strange cube. When he’s alone, the cube transforms into a naked little loli. After giving him an eyeful, she puts on a little shirt so that she looks as well as acts very much like Angelia from Arcana Heart. She introduces herself as Fear and claims she is a device to collect the negative feelings of all around her. Of course soon after a childhood friend called Konoha who has always had a crush on Haruaki but doesn’t start making it obvious until there’s competition. Cue the same tired ‘flat chested’ vs ‘milk udders’ jibes from Kanokon and its ilk…and panty shots. In the second half of the episode, Fear goes to town and her tsun-tsun arrogance somehow endears her to everyone, presumably just because she looks cute and childish and unthreatening.

The only things I liked about the episode were the very end, where the characters were a little more serious and it became more obvious just how pretty their designs are, and the overly pretty art style, which is distinctive and nice to look at – especially as this is the first time I’ve had to set up 10-bit colour depth for my video programs. Otherwise, I’ll be expecting C³ to trundle along with the same tired formula and anything better than that will be a pleasant surprise.

バカとテストと召喚獣/ Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu / Idiots, Tests and Summoned Beasts / Baka and Test (seasons 1&2)

Baka to Test has carved itself out a strange little niche. I never would have expected it to be one of the most successful comedy series of the last decade, but it’s struck a chord with an Internet audience, spawned a huge fandom and numerous derivative works and is likely to continue beyond these two seasons (+OVA). And really, it’s a great example of a series not having a great premise, but surviving and thriving on the strength of its cast.

In Fumizuki Academy, academic prowess is directly linked to rewards. Class A, the high achievers, live with all the amenities the school can lavish upon them, from free laptops to a complimentary snack bar, while Class F make do with cardboard boxes. It is possible to improve your class’s facilities by taking part in battles using virtual avatars, essentially cutesy holograms representing each student, their strength proportional to their prowess in their exams. Thus, while higher classes will have better scores in general, one who is in a low class but excels in one particular area may be very strong in battle.

It’s not an elegant set-up, nor is it particularly important, but it provides a hook to early episodes. The extremely intelligent and sweet-natured Himeji falls ill in her first exam, and thus gets placed in Class F. There, she meets the simpleminded Akihisa, a good-hearted but idiotic boy whose ‘summon’ has been chosen by the faculty to be unique in that it has a physical presence – but will transmit any physical sensation to Aki himself. Along with Aki’s friend Yuuji, a one-time prodigy, the perverted voyeur nicknamed Muttsuriini, the oddly androgynous Hideyoshi and the classic tsundere Minami, they set out to defeat Class A.

The set-up is convoluted, even more so than can be expected from an anime based on light novels, but it soon becomes apparent it’s only an excuse for fun character interaction. Aki is an idiot, but attracts those around him, and a shy love triangle soon forms when both Himeji and Minami develop feelings for him. This is overlaid by joke homoeroticism, as Aki and Yuuji often find themselves in situations that make them look like lovers, and every male openly finds Hideyoshi incredibly attractive, being what seems to be a perfect ‘trap’. Muttsuriini, meanwhile, can’t get enough of taking secret shots of girls undressing – and of the boys when they end up cross-dressing, which is remarkably often. Other minor characters help spice things up, from the tomboyish tease Kudou to the over-dramatic Kubo, a serious male student who develops a crush on Aki - from Yuuji’s psychotic ‘fiancée’ Shouko to Shimizu, the slightly terrifying drill-haired girl who worships Minami.

All these exist to make the character interactions fun and compelling, and all can carry their own storylines. The first season attempts to put the battle system centre-stage, but episodes mostly consisted of ways to have Aki in a lot of pain, either because he got on the wrong side of teachers or because he made one of his many admirers jealous. The second season, Ni! (meaning ‘two’ and nothing to do with any knights), starts out with what seem like very typical OVA plotlines (a beach episode; bathhouse episodes), but then focuses on relationship drama and some clever strategies to abuse the school’s combat system.

This seems to be studio Silver Link’s first stab at a full series of their own, but it has definitely been a success. The director, Ounuma Shin, came to the project having worked at Shaft, and there is much of their aesthetic here, including some brilliant repeated style changes and pastiches. I loved the experiments of the credits sequences, and the full-episode pastiche based on Yuuji and Shouko’s backstory was a real highlight.

The series may well be remembered for all the porn of Hideyoshi it spawned and for the cutesy little avatars, but there really is something here for just about any anime fan, and some extremely clever writing too. Well worth watching – and I hope there’s more to come, too.