blog好き

Jul 26 2010

Categories: episodic review, minami-ke
Tagged: minami-ke, mitsudomoe

12 Comments »

Welcome back.

All this recent talk about towels, Haruka, broken, Marui family, zettai ryouiki, and bad animation… why not go back to the source? My goal? Finish up Minami-ke slowly over the years (or weeks) with the OVA as my final post for this blog. I think it’s only fitting way to quit.

(Quick recap of this vintage 2009 episode… Touma takes a bath, gets stuck wearing a towel, tries to de-costume rape Chiaki for clothes before Fujioka shows up… Uchida being useless… Touma and Fujioka gets too comfy over soccer causing Chiaki to be jealous… Natsuki utterly failing at flirting with Haruka. Notably, there’s no Hosaka and no hair clip Mako-cakes.)

Chiaki barking? Adorable. I couldn’t stop laughing at her barking and Natsuki’s well-meaning but entirely wrong response to it. Comedy at it’s 2D finest. See, Mitsudomoe, there’s ways to be funny without resorting to boob, nipple, Johnny, urine, pedophile, and eroge jokes. It’s hard, but there’s a way. And that’s why Mitsudomoe won’t be anything other than a poor man’s Minami-ke. Nonetheless, being a poor man’s Minami-ke is much better than being a poor man’s Heroic Age.

(And how dare Natsuki flirt with Haruka? She’s meant for either Chiaki, Azu-nyan, Kogarashi, Landon Donovon, or Hosaka. I’m fine with any of the above. Sadly, I think Natsuki has gotten farther than any of them… I mean… Hosaka has yet to talk to her, right?)

Let’s not forget Chiaki getting soccer advice from Mako-cakes. So much funnier post-Vuvuzela World Cup 2010 than in 2009. Cracks me up for some reason picturing Mako-cakes doing color commentary for the Vuvuzela World Cup. And, honestly Mako-cakes would have been a severe upgrade over some of the announcers that ESPN had.

That’s me in a few hours with Continuum Shift. Even have my wireless joystick charged and ready to go. Which would be awesome except I’ll probably be looking for tower defense maps for StarCraft II. Can’t wait for the obligatory Plants vs. Zombie remake via StarCraft II. You just know it’s going to happen.

“Ignore what Kana has to say.”

And, of course, he does, except Kana provides some sagely advice. You just knew that was going to happen.

(I went to get a passport photo today, and I went to Office Max first. The two guys behind the counter wouldn’t do it because they don’t know how to use the passport photo machine, and the guy who does supposedly is out. WTF? How hard is to take a passport photo? I should have made a, “No wonder you’re 30 and still working for Office Max on a Sunday” comment, but I bit my tongue on that one. Next, I went to FedEx Kinkos where their fancy digital camera (looks like one of those old Sony cameras that used a floppy disk for storage) died and needed new batteries. Of course, the two salesladies argued over which direction to insert the batteries, and they ended up dropping the camera. Fan-fucking-tastic. So I drove to this place named “INS PHOTO” behind a few taquerias, and the guy wouldn’t stop speaking excitedly in Spanish when I asked about passport photos. I ended up going grocery shopping and decided to check out the Walgreens next door to see if they did passport photos. They did! Except there’s an Indian couple ahead of me… and the husband kept requesting the guy to retake his wife’s photo because she looked fat in them. Of course, his wife looked like she weighs 250 pounds, and she looked happy eating ice cream from the store’s freezer, so I’m not sure if it matters at that point. Yes, it’s one thing to be fat, it’s another to cannot wait to pay for the food before consuming it. Needless to say, it took me two hours to complete the epic passport photo quest. And, with my luck, my passport photo will probably be rejected, and I have to go through this process again. I feel like a hopeless classmate in Minami-ke the whole time.)

But that’s Chiaki’s seat! There’s one layer of hilarity that Chiaki would actually get jealous of Fujioka and Touma over their mutual love of soccer. There’s another layer of hilarity considering that her real nemesis is Kana, whom Fujioka so dearly wishes to kiss on the back of her knee, except Kana is as clueless as a barnacle. There’s yet another layer hilarity that Chiaki deals with her romantic rival by convincing Fujioka that Touma has a penis. Well done, Chiaki.

(Between Chiaki’s jealousy of Haruka and Fujioka, I wonder what would happen if Haruka and Fujioka ever fell in love. Would it cause Chiaki to go Phantom of the Opera on us?)

“Please don’t rent out the space between my legs!”

Mitsudomoe is definitely a poor man’s Minami-ke. Sure, it’s funny, but the humor isn’t as brilliantly understated as Minami-ke. But it’s not bad too… I enjoy the breaking of others genre, so Mitsudomoe fits into that nicely. Except lack of Haruka is amazing, lack of Hosaka, and lack of Mako-cakes. And that’s why it’ll just be the poor man’s Minami-ke. Watch… episode six is going to be about Satou going to the dark side and crossdressing. You just know Mitsudomoe is going to shove those words back at me. And I hope it does!

The whole soccer analogy… genius. You could 100% guess how it would end. A header, of course. We can have Touma at forward, Satou on defense, and “I can play all positions” Fujioka as a mid-fielder. We’re 3/11th of the way there to an all-broken soccer club!

(I liked how no matter how they kicked “the ball”, the bear print would always be visible.)

A circuit diagram that somehow became breasts? Swiftly approved. But no matter how hard I try, all my circuit schematics just end up oscillating.

(Isn’t this a bit advanced for elementary school? I didn’t learn about resistors and capacitors until high school. Which, coincidentally, was about when I learned about paying attention to breasts.)

“Stop drawing in the area between my legs!”

Futaba’s epic sketches of Yabe-sensei? They should be hanging in the Guggenheim Museum.

Spit it out! Spit it out! So useless. I enjoyed how everything Chiaki said to Uchida horrified Uchida yet she was so sweet to Fujioka. Good, classic comedy. Ah, Minami-ke… do I ever have hope that a competent anime studio would remake you? Or at least continue your stories?

@blogsuki: I know _exactly_ what Satou would pick for his totem. Futaba would supply the goods. #mitsudomoe #inception

@Haesslich: @blogsuki Wouldn’t they be Mitsuba’s?

Futaba acquires the goods. She’s only the dealer, not the producer. And once you get one… well… you can’t stop at one.

(And, yes, I’m fully rooting for an Inception parody featuring Hosaka’s dreamworld. In fact, Hosaka might already have spent several lifetimes in limbo with Dream World Haruka and their two Dream World Kids. Oh gosh, maybe Chris Nolan got the idea for Inception after seeing Hosaka! It all makes sense now! I feel like I deserve a critic vote on Rotten Tomatoes just for this kind of insightful analysis.)

The animation drop-of in Okaeri… annoyed the hell out of me. But, Haruka was still amazing, even in spite of said crappy animation. Really crappy animation. Sigh.

Maybe that shirt is a clue: they are too busy playing FFXI or WoW to properly animate. Sigh. What ever happened to Kana’s “I AM BOSS” shirt? I want a shirt like that.

So lovey-dovey… just like Junichi and Haruka in Amagami.

And, yes, I started unbuttoning my shirt during Amagami… must be developing an unhealthy Pavlovian reflex for Harukas. If I ever meet a Haruka armed with a vuvuzela in real life, I am so screwed.

Decel: Want amazing daughters, call them Haruka. But then you’ll have to fight off the urge of incest and the hordes of guys showing up once they’ll hit puberty. The wife won’t like the first part.

Yep… these are my readers.

Until next time.

(D-D-A.)