Yesterday watched my literally third movie of the year – Grease. Considering that I love musicals it’s a shame that I’ve missed so many of classic ones. From another perspective, though, I’m a lucky guy who has the vast unexplored part of culture ahead of him. Need to start catching up =)

The movie itself is good, but only if its musical nature is taken into account, without songs it would’ve been a complete mess. Travolta’s performance (yep, I know a couple of actors) was sort of surprising – I hadn’t had even a slightest idea that he knows how to sing and dance.

Animelog: Kino No Tabi, Blend S, A Sister’s All You Need

Kino No Tabi

I had high expectations of this show, mostly based on vague but pretty warm memories left but the original Kino No Tabi. Unfortunately, this remake/sequel didn’t live up to my hopes. Too bright, too dull, too simple — I mean, the first season wasn’t the most complicated anime in the world but the second one lowered the simplicity bar much more. It requires some efforts to remember even three or four good stories we saw this time: the country where murder isn’t a crime, the remake of the episode dedicated to Kino’s childhood and… that’s mostly it?

Blend S

A surprisingly good “Working!” clone. It’s not even a clone but more like “inspired by”. I didn’t enjoy Working! much, not even sure that I finished it, but Blend S didn’t cause any troubles and didn’t make me shake my fists and exclaim in Itoshiki-sensei style that “anime leaves me in despair!”

5 “girls” types, two otaku chefs (one of them is the manager of the, um, establishment) and a dog — everything you need to make up harmless jokes and funny moments. This definitely isn’t a must-watch show but something that can be devoured when you want an anime on the background.

A Sister’s All You Need

Life of a novelist is full of troubles and upsetting moments. No one knows this better than Itsuki, who’s devotion to little sisters have no boundaries and who writes novels dedicated to (you’re not going to believe me) little sisters. Talented rivals, shitty anime adaptations, deadlines — everything can get in the way. However, Itsuki and his friends are fearlessly move forward! (I feel absolutely pathetic writing that)

This anime delivers a fairly good amount of vulgar but funny jokes and turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises of this season.

P.S. Nayuta Kani is a great (though pervy) character and I really liked her straight-out and positive attitude towards everything.

Animelog: Toradora

And once again – it took two attempts to finish this series. When I tried to watch Toradora for the first time I dropped it after the first episode — it looked to me that it’d be impossible to observe Taiga and her annoying behaviour for 26 episodes.

Don’t remember exactly why I decided to give this anime a second chance but this time I found enough patience to continue watching further than that hapless first episode (even though I was on the verge of saying “fuckit” one more time). Toradora turned out to be not that irritating, thanks to the supporting characters (Minorin, Kitamura and Ami). I’d been honestly rooting for Ryuji and Minori until the very end and it was a huge disappointment that we ended up with a stereotypical two-main-characters couple.

Need to put a few good words first, before I start grumbling as I always do. Wild Kitamura’s behaviour is definitely a valuable asset (Minorin is slightly different but she’s also on fire for a half of the show). Also Toradora can boast about its shift from the template all school comedy anime are based on. There are some family troubles (not NGE but still), the writers were impudent enough to even put in some characters’ development and we have a final of the story, even though it’s weak (in my taste).

As main minuses I’d write just two names: Taiga and Inko-chan. And if the owner of the  second one is just a parrot and luckily it doesn’t have much time on the screen — Taiga has plenty of it. I don’t like her character design. I don’t like her behaviour. I don’t want to put up with the situation that Ryuji has preferred her to Minori. Honestly, it’s difficult for me to conjure up a single good scene with her from this series. I understand that without her it would’ve been a completely different anime and it, probably, would’ve been worse but I can’t do anything about my negative attitude towards her. Even my endless love to tsundere can’t help here.

Finished the 21st season of South Park yesterday. First of all, it’s much better than the previous one. Cartman and Heidi’s plot line didn’t look so unnatural this time (although, the finish of their relationships was a bit sudden), Randy was acting like Randy during the first half of the season and Ike again proved that he’s a true Canadian.

As a downside — unfortunately, I have to admit that Stone and Parker kind of gave up their traditional political neutrality. By the end of the season jokes and puns inclining that “we should get rid of Trump Mr. Garrison as soon as possible” were becoming more and more tiresome. However, as I already said, the season is better than I expected, so I’m not going to miss the next, 22nd, one.

Oh, those unexpected plot twists!

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“A Sister’s All You Need” is actually exceeding my expectations and continues keeping up the pace — I bet that a lot of people dropped it after the first 5 minutes but on practise it turned out to be a vulgar (I’m not going to deny that) yet quite funny anime.

Have no idea what’s going on in this trailer but this is P.A. Works so I’m looking forward to it, no doubts!

Other good news — Steins; Gate 0 was announced and will be broadcasted during the spring season 2018. The reason to finish the game before as soon as possible =)

This week the winter has finally come to Ontario! The most surprising thing was that it happened during one night.

Coco

The latest Pixar movie, Coco, is (as always) wonderful visually and good in general… but made of all possible cliches we can imagine, which we’ve seen million times. I’m pretty sure that if someone has had a chance to view any other Disney/Pixar cartoon then after the first 20 minutes they will be able to figure our literally everything that’s going to happen, including every small detail. Luckily the plot takes place in Mexico, a relatively rarely used setting, and this gives Coco some charm and novelty. Songs (oh man, I’m a huge fan of songs in movies cartoons – Disney ones mostly) are making a good accompaniment to the story but unlikely I’ll want to listen to any of them later.

P.S. The scene where the main villain is revealing himself is such a facepalm.

P.P.S. All the characters speak with a Mexican accent, which looks a bit odd considering that as a language they still use English (just adding “ola!” of “amigo”). Yeah, I really like complaining about everything =)

Animelog: Recovery of an MMO Junkie

Despite everything — the plot full of coincidences possible only in anime, visual that became noticeably more doubtful in last episodes, characters that were introduced without any reason and happily forgotten, despite all that this series left me satisfied.

This was probably the first anime about MMO that I finished and didn’t want to rumble about stupidity I’d had to put up with for (very long) 3 months. Very simple characters and their primitive motivation couldn’t override the fact that those characters came to some logical conclusion in their relationships (oh, Takhisis, modern anime leaves me in despair with its ability to provide us with shows that will never have any “happily ever after” episode). And instead of recalling how awkward the conversations between two main characters were I’d prefer to remember this anime by Morioka-san’s beautiful one-line dialog with a dryer in the last episode (“Hai! Onegaishimasu!”)

P.S. by that dialog and the opening – it was really nice

Just returned from Mexico where we spent a few days full of food, sun and doing nothing (horrible lifestyle, I know). Before the trip I’d had a couple of really intense weeks at work so as my closest goal I’m going to catch up with everything I missed during that time.

The photos are waiting to be sorted, the useless and boring report about the trip is also going to be a little later — just a lonely coati today