12・１７

<div align='center' style='font-size: 250%;'>\ **１２・１７** </div> <div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/9n5E7b5.jpg" alt="Humbug" align="center"> </div/>\ <div align='center' style='font-size: 120%;'>\ [[I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]</div> \ </div>

12) //[[Heybot!]]:// Or, blooming & growing 11) //[[Call Me Tonight]]//: Or, everything was always shit forever 10) //[[Kemono Friends]]//: Or, Everything you love will betray you eventually 9) //[[High Speed! -Free! Starting Days-]]//: Or, trying not to use the D word 8) //[[THE iDOLM@STER: SideM]]//: Or, attempting self-reflection 7) //[[A Centaur's Life]]//: Or, why 6) //[[Strawberry Marshmallow]]//: Or, time and yearning 5) //[[Osomatsu-san]]//: Or, sometimes it's just nice to have your favourite cartoon back 4) //[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable]]//: Or, JoJo anime cured my JoJo cynicism 3) //[[Macross]]//: Or, remembering to remember love 2) [[//Eccentric Family 2// and //The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl//|Morimi 1]]: Or, longing 1) //[[Kizumonogatari III: Reiketsu-hen]]//: Or, the end

There's a genre of whingey internet article where parents complain vociferously about how terrible the media their (generally under-5) children are obsessed with. Not being a parent myself, it strikes me as kind of bizarre given that parents have control over what their progeny watches, and the very young will watch most anything you put in front of them. Then again I imagine there's a strong impetus to just put anything on to entertain them whilst you, I don't know, do the dishes, which is how they end up obsessed with some [[nonsense you can't stand.|Heybot 1]]

I imagine there's a number of young parents who hate //Heybot!// with a deep and undying passion for this reason, which is a shame because //Heybot!// is fucking spectacular. Yes, it's loud and annoying and gross, and it moves way too fast, even for a generation who cut their teeth on online culture. All of which is part of its charm. It revels, shamelessly, in being pointless nonsense that's mainly about farts. Honestly it's so very refreshing to watch a cartoon unabashedly made for a child's logic and attention span that [[doesn't particularly care about cohesion. ]]

But honestly the thing I like about //Heybot!// the most is that it feels like its important. Not just because it's gross and annoying, though I like that a lot. Really, the wild abandon with which it embraces being a cartoon is just invigorating. It's easy to forget animation is inherently alive with possibility by the virtue of being able to create from the ground up. Much as it's easy to forget that animation is a commercial concern, subject to a hard ceiling on the time and effort that can be put into it. //Heybot!// Is filled to bursting with possibilities even as it chooses to squander almost all of that [[promise on atrocious puns.|Heybot 2]]

//Heybot!// Feels like the kind of thing that's going to gently slip beneath the waves of popular consciousness until 10-15 years from now, when a generation of aspiring young animators cite it as a formative influence. It's that kind of show despite how deeply their parents might hate it. I can't tell you that you'll enjoy Heybot or even that you should watch it as an “eat-your-vegetables” sort of curio. I can't deny that it exists to sell the cheap looking Heybot toys with a gimmick that would've been embarrassing 20 years ago riding the wave of Digimon and Beyblade. [[But what I can say about it is this:]]

“//Heybot!//: Career-makingly good”. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/XmC3axA.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|nonsense you can't stand. ]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/csDQA3t.jpg" width="650" height="365"> </div/>\ [[Forward |promise on atrocious puns. ]]

We live in a miserable era, and that's before you even before you take into account nostalgia's ability to make the absolute worst shit you lived through seem warm and inviting. Tastes and trends ebb and flow, a canon typically emerges of things that are best loved or best remembered, maybe you find your niche in a long-abandoned trend, maybe you couldn't care less about anything inside or outside of a canon. One thing, though, that I think we should all be able to agree on is that [[everything is terrible and always has been|Call Me Tonight 1]].

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/aAJ5C16.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|terrible]]

Even the most undiscerning individual doesn't like everything. But with enough time and distance almost anything can become entertaining, a fun little window into a time long past. Which is probably why I like //Call Me Tonight// so much even though it's the kind of garbage ecchi OVA looking to make quick cash they made untold hundreds of in the 1980s. You can watch this kind of thing on youtube for days, not that I would know anything about that. Hundreds, thousands maybe, of similar OVAs were made in the 1980s as the bubble economy produced an infinite amount of cash for everyone, from nothing, forever. Call Me Tonight isn't well known or loved, and if I was an otaku in the heady days of 1980s fandom I would absolutely be sick to death of [[this kind of thing|Call Me Tonight 2]].

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/l5Tas7l.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|this kind of thing]]

Call Me Tonight's animation is choppy, it's VHS colour grade looks like a swamp and just when you think you might be able to get to the part that puts the H in ecchi there's a gross nightmare monster and a lot of cartoony yelling. I love it, actually? It's very clearly the product of a production team who loves horror, and the horror themeing in the music, background and plucky female protagonist involved in sex work. It goes together with the fluffy ecchi elements about as well as [[blood on your cornflakes.]]

It does have some extremely bad implications of male sexuality as an uncontrollable (literal) demon that is indefensible. And I was initially saddened by the fact that everyone who worked on this had only one credit on this and nothing else, except I was completely wrong and basically all the staff have worked on dozens of shows and especially getting grouped together again in Gundam. Who would've thought? Also the violent sukeban reminds me a lot of A-ko, which is weird given that Call Me Tonight and Project A-ko released less than a month apart, and that Project A-ko started out as an ecchi OVA. [[Weird coincidence, right? |Call Me Tonight 3]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/ePKMaz3.jpg" width="650" height="365"> </div/>\ [[Forward |Weird coincidence]]

Of course Call Me Tonight isn't the enduring classic Project A-ko is, but stumbling on it in a mire of bad VHS transfers was an utter delight. For some reason. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

What a fun little story Kemono Friends is, eh? The stuff of legends, even. A licensed TV anime based on a mobile game that was dead before the show even came out, a famously troubled production, a sudden unexpected mega success that drew a shocking amount of blood from the stone of “girls with animal ears”, a little show that wasn't afraid to take risks or try weird things and trusted the audience enough to do so. And that was it! Kemono Friends was great, everyone loved it, [[the end|Kemono Friends 1]].

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/yGljh8N.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|the end]]

Except that wasn't really the end, [[was it.|Kemono Friends 2 ]]

Like a bad omen, precursor to disaster, in a book you keep meaning to put down, the first sign that all was not well in Japari Park was the death of the beloved penguin and Kemono Friends superfan Grape. I'll be honest, it didn't really hit me until I saw his famous rock absent of the cardboard cut-out of Hululu. At which point I sobbed and sobbed. Poor Grape, but at least he had Kemono Friends to brighten his twilight. [[That's as much as any of us could ask, isn't it?]]

[[…]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/0VMSgDB.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|was it. ]]

The Kemono Friends director getting unceremoniously shitcanned and the ensuing chaos is well documented elsewhere, you don't need me to go into it. We all watched the seiyuu get dragged out like a hostage video to beg the audience to not abandon Kemono Friends. You can't blame them, honestly, we all do things under capitalism we rather would not. I don't deny anyone shelter and food on the table. Honestly it doesn't seem to have hurt the widespread popularity of it all that much, although we'll see how that shakes out when a prospective series 2 [[drained of all charm comes out. |Kemono Friends 3]]

It's always fascinating to me when life imitates art. The widespread reaction to the late in the game narrative choices was fierce but mostly positive. “That's not how these stories are supposed to go!”. Nothing could be as bold as the dramatic real life narrative. When you create a defining work in spite of having everything that could possibly go wrong actually go wrong, you aren't meant to [[end up destroyed anyway. ]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/NNc3Hnh.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|drained of all charm comes out. ]]

Sayonara, my dear, sayonara. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

I do not like KyoAni at all. I hold some of what are considered to be basic and uninformed opinions regarding their work, and whatever allure their every work holds for others escapes me no matter how hard I try. So nobody was more surprised than me at how much I loved //High Speed! -Free! Starting Days-//. I enjoyed it so much so that I've gone back to it more than once, even. And to think I never would have watched it if it hadn't been on the list for one of the anime nights we do at my house. That was back in 2016, but it seemed appropriate to [[talk about it this year.|High Speed 1]]

There is a lot of media specifically about male friendship and very little of it understands, or is interested in understanding, what those relationships actually feel like as well as this film. That's not to say that men are actually extremely oppressed or some such nonsense, but it is the truth that toxic masculinity is pervasive and harmful in its portrayal of how men should act towards one another. //High Speed! -Free! Starting Days-// is shockingly, refreshingly free of tropes of bromance or [[measuring up to a father figure.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/DbDZQjN.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|talk about it this year.]]

What it does do is take these ideas and examines them, subtly. How does it affect the relationships of the main character?. The main thematic drive of the film, for example, follows Haru's hyper-competitive drive to be the best slamming him against a wall as he's suddenly a small fish in a big pond. This shock leaves him with almost no outlet or sense of identity, and deeply affects the ever-tenuous childhood friendships he and the others had taken forgranted up until now. It's all done in a way that feels true to what being that age is like in a way that is, [[quite frankly, impressive.]]

It would be nice to end this there but the dreaded d-word surrounding this film is the reason I felt compelled to write about it. f course there's nothing I could say that could equal or embellish anything said by my friend and natsukomi veteran, twitter user at-sign monoids which you can read starting here, at www.blkmage. net/2017/07/29/high-speed-discourse-i-thoughts-on-the-work-of-yasuhiro-takemoto/. We've all had our disappointments with the anisphere, grievous ones, minor ones, and sometimes it would just be nice if we could be [[half as good as think we are.|High Speed 2]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/x2py9df.jpg" width="650" height="365"> </div/>\ [[Forward|High speed End]]

Despite all of this I'm still not a KyoAni convert, so I guess you could say I only swim free. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

My SO will read twitter over my shoulder occasionally, which is why around September of 2015 she idly wondered, “who are these fine young men that I keep seeing?”. Which is how over 2 years later she has fully transformed into an idol wota, breathlessly anticipating every new release and cheering on her [[beloved performers as much as the characters they play.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/mdg7lDE.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|sidem 1]]

It's also how I got immersed in an idol property for the first time ever, if you don't count the Macross franchise (which, trust me, nobody does). Sure, I watched the first few episodes of the original THE iDOLM@STER tv anime, thought it was fine but not for me, put it down and then proceeded to watch as the tendrils of idoldom ensnared everyone I know and various mutations of it came to dominate the section of popular culture I inhabit. Which is a roundabout way of saying [[you finally fucking got me, Scamco. ]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/UWl1LNR.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|sidem 2]]

SideM isn't the first or only 2D idol series to be aimed at a female audience, and I honestly couldn't tell you how it compares to those. Or, for that matter, any other idol franchise. What I know SideM does have is a really strong central theme that ties into and enriches the journey of each individual character. SideM is about finding a place in life where you feel accepted and you can thrive, that most millennial of story conceits. The background of the SideM characters is sometimes explicit, and sometimes merely implied. But for the most part it what they did with their lives prior to deciding to become idols ranges from “Horrifying” to “Unfulfilling”. Their palpable relief at being allowed a space to merely exist is the [[beating heart of SideM.]]

Of course that's just my reading, and there are plenty of people out there who disagree or who simply want to enjoy the songs and the idols, and [[more power to them. ]]

The anime adaptation could've easily just thrown up the characters we know and love and left it at that. Even I popped for hearing the guys voices come out of //actual animated characters// in //an actual anime//. But part of the promise of SideMは現実 is that it isn't an also-ran or a weird side project but a worthwhile endeavour in its own right, lavished with the love and attention of it's female-focused siblings. The anime understands the core of what makes SideM and perhaps most importantly is paced to allow the many narrative threads space to breathe. There's a genuine sense that the production team are as [[enthusiastic about it as the people the show is for.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/YYY6Vcn.png" width="650" height="365"> </div/>\ [[Forward |SideM end]]

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still a little leery of this whole Idol phenomenon, and I don't know that I'm going to go in for Bang Dream or B Project or anything any time soon. But I'm trying to love to performers as well as recognise the industry they work in is a merciless meat grinder. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

There was a time when I was looking forward to an //A Centaur's Life// adaptation with bated breath. I was a huge fan, I read the manga voraciously, eagerly awaiting each (questionably legal) update and the thought of seeing it animated filled be excitement. It had everything! An exciting take on monster girls, well-realised adolescent drama, centaur vulva. But then something changed, and for some reason I realised the magic wasn't there any more. Maybe it was because I didn't want the story to expand outward into the universe it created, maybe I was no longer able to relate to the cast, or maybe because it became [[fucking terrible.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/0aTxTam.png"> </div/>\ [[Forward|centaur 1]]

//A Centaur's Life// taken as a whole is weird, and not in an enjoyable, fun way. A lot of the manga and especially later chapters are heavily invested in an opaque alt-history created to support its version of modern, suburban Japan. Making up a race or species as a stand-in for contemporary societal issues is a terrible idea at the best of times and //A Centaur's Life// doesn't even manage the consolation prize "well I can tell this was well-intentioned". It is at once incredibly sympathetic, even voyeuristic, of the diverse metahumans it includes, and at the same time worryingly cryptofascist in its messages of, for example how society is forced to go to accept metahumans. [[The messages are mixed, to put it mildly. ]]

Although it had been some time since I kept up with the manga when the anime was announced and when it was airing, I didn't feel good pointing this out. After all, the fact that I found the politics of //A Centaur's Life// exceedingly uncomfortable sounded far closer to the “No politics in my titty manga” crowd than I was comfortable with. Honestly a lot of titty manga could use a little bit of politics, as I find base level examination of the assumptions behind its tropes can go a long way. And I wish, with //A Centaur's Life//, that I simply say disagree with the place it ends up, or point to a single fault and say, "here, this". No, most of the time I'm just [[confused as to what the manga-ka is trying to say.]]

That's honestly where ended up with it before letting it, “this is hard to parse”. But perhaps that's just what I took from it, maybe other people will get more out of it. I do have a tendency to over-analyse things and ruin my enjoyment of them. Ahem. But when the widespread reaction to the TV anime was much the same reaction as I had to manga years before, I just had to see if they really went [[as far as the manga did.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/d9obBR2.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|centaur 2]]

It's not at all an exaggeration to say Barasui's //Strawberry Marshmallow// is one of the most important works in my whole entire life. That's a bold statement given what it is, a tensionless atmosphere show about cute girls and nothing else. The anime has somewhat uninspiring mid-2000s production values, and the OVAs especially take some peculiar artistic license with the characters. Even the early manga chapters are a little rough. But very little has been as formative for me, in terms of my sense of humour, my approach to characters and even the way I view the world. Which is a lot for a manga and a show most people consider [[pretty inconsequential.|ichimashi 1]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/1hL1SCT.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|pretty inconsequential.]]

I went into some of the reasons why I think Strawberry Marshmallow is so great earlier in the year, when I posted this to twitter https://twitter.com/aliveinthewired/status/877728494947418112. There's a lot more I could say about why I like it but for the sake of brevity we'll start there. One of the things that makes it so wonderful is the idea of the ephemeral, that something which is beautiful or affecting is so or is made more so because it is also temporary. The morphine-like melancholy of this juxtaposition is a theme I find myself drawn to again and again and again, and is an especially common one in Japanese culture. Strawberry Marshmallow is entrancing because of the knowledge that the [[warm moments that make it up cannot last.|ichimashi 2]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/NlKKiim.jpg" width="650" height="487"> </div/>\ [[Forward |warm moments]]

It's anyone's guess why Barasui stopped drawing the manga, or why it's continued in fits and spurts since first going on hiatus a little under a decade ago. I've no wish to pry into the manga-ka's personal life but an educated guess is that ;ife just got in the way. Raising his son, health issues, simply not being as interested in it as he once was. He even gave “too much soccer” as a reason at one point. The worst part, though, was that it never ended, he never said it was going away, leaving us with the vain hope year in, year out that it would [[finally come back us.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/A7AtKu0.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward|ichimashi end]]

And, at long last, in 2017 it came back in the same halting way, a manga chapter to coincide with the long-awaited release of volume 8 of the manga. It's not much but god if it doesn't feel good. Even the preview published on the Dengeki Daioh site were a reminder of just how good Barasui is, his deft physical comedy and skill in setting tone present in just two wordless pages. As happy as I am to see it back I really hope Barasui is out there living his best life and being happy. But I also can't help but hold out the selfish hope that he will return for good one day. Come back, sensei. We need you. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

What a weird phenomenon Osomatsu-san is. Updated versions of popular Showa-era properties are typically forgettable, and that's when they don't miss the point entirely. It's scarily easy to imagine a version of this show making tired jokes about smartphones and how nobody wears wafuku any more. Instead the first series was vital and angry, taking a hatchet to the idea that Japanese life is or ever has been easy for those with the temerity toexist outside of the top rung of society. Some of the most talented people working in the industry put their best work into a genuinely hilarious modern adaptation that is a most worthy tribute to [[Akatsuka Fujio, the Gag Manga King.|muppets 1]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/Il8tWBx.jpg" width="650" height="367"> </div/>\ [[Forward |gag manga king]]

I don't think anyone expected Osomatsu-san to become the juggernaut it did, the first series has some atrocious filler, but it absolutely deserved it. And if there was any concern that second album syndrome would strike (mine included) they were completely unfounded. Series 2 might not have shocking, bolt-from-the-blue immediacy that the first one did coming out of nowhere but it's no less funny or heartfelt. If anything the runaway popularity of the horrid, irredeemable cast in spite of it's message that life is an inescapable void of suffering seems to have [[only fuelled the creators.]]

If I had to criticise anything, I would say the utter weirdness has been toned down a little, into only occasional spurts of weirdness. I imagine that that's somewhat to do with it being a victim of it's own success, there's less space for, say, a ten-minute almost wordless digression about two minor characters trekking across the land. It's made me examine some feelings I've been having lately, about how the kind of media I like tends to be weird or experimental in some way, but work that I //make// tends to be very highly structured and planned. //Osomatsu-san// says, why not have highly involved comedy work right next to weird digressions and [[vile, filthy juvenile humour.]]

There's a tendency for comedy to be dismissed as easy, and less capable of delivering insight than drama. This isn't a particularly new or prescient observation but there's just as many works with miserableism masquerading as a grand statement about humanity as there are wan comedies that mistakes a reference for a punchline. Osomatsu-san has jokes as poignant as any drama, scenarios played for laughs as insightful as any that could provoke tears. [[I missed this show so much.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/2UUUWrE.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward |muppets 2]]

I actually don't have a take, hot or otherwise, for this show, at least not one that I haven't seen anywhere else. It's just nice to have my favourite cartoon back. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

There's a really good anime adaptation to be made of //A Centaur's Life//, but much like something such as //Fullmetal Alchemist// you would need to tear characters and concepts violently from the source material, free it from dead weight and polish it until it shines. I couldn't say for certain why the adaptation fails like this, although Occam's Razor would suggest it's just a work-for-hire manga adaptation nobody particularly cared about. Which is a shame, because genuinely there was something special there in //A Centaur's Life// even if it was lost long ago beneath utter bullshit. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

Christ, but it feels good to be living in the //JoJo// renaissance. Famously youthful manga-ka Hirohiko Araki ever has been and remains divisive to say the least. But if you had told me in 2011 that not only would his magnum opus //JoJo's Bizarre Adventure// be one of the defining hits of the decade but would introduce so, so many new people to Araki's work I'm not sure I would've had the capacity to believe you. Yet here we are. I honestly couldn't be more thrilled that I get to [[share it with so many people.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/9LAztpr.png" width="679" height="949"> </div/>\ [[Forward |jj1]]

Is it wrong, then, that I was never the biggest fan of Part 4, or Part 3 for that matter? Jotaro and Josuke never really did it for me as protagonists, the kinetic Araki-style weirdness of Part 2 (my personal favourite) was toned down, it just didn't click for me why these were the perennial favourites in the canon. I never came to love Morioh in the same way I love, want to be in fictional places like Middle-Earth or Camorr. They had pacing issues, and this and that, and honestly I was expecting to not like part and part 4 animated, and in fact, didn't. [[I loved them.]]

With the weight of expectation off of it, Part 4 like Part 3 before it was spectacular. The rich production for Part 4 especially made it pop, giving the adaptation so much character. It says something about the value of being exposed to a work more than once that going through them after reading the manga made me love them so much. Part 4 in particular benefits especially from the anticipation of knowing something is coming and [[getting to be excited for it.]]

And my god, Yoshikage Kira. Even when I wasn't that invested in the the manga, Kira was an electrifying draw. There's a lot that can and has been said about the reduced scope of Part 4, how it's nice to get a small, personal JoJo story without world-ending stakes even if it didn't entirely work for me. And even for a manga-ka who can produce a dozen iconic characters in a heartbeat, Kira, Killer Queen and their designs rank as some of his best. And what a loathsome, hate-able villain, perfectly obsessed with his own mediocre existence and desperate to protect it. [[And that's not even going into how great the loveable curmudgeon Rohan is.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/VowWoXr.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward |jj2]]

It's nice sometimes to have a reasonably uncomplicated (which isn't the same as uncritical) relationship with a work and just enjoy it. JoJo is a fantastic, wholly idiosyncratic one-of-a-kind work, and I'm so glad to be able to enjoy it and share it with others. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

We're all pretty sick of mobage, even those of us who devote our precious leisure time into it. The conversation about predatory gacha mechanics peaked in 2017 after bubbling quietly under the surface for a few years, and it does seem as though (much-needed) regulation of the form is around the corner. Which makes it all the more disheartening that the game that I got the most joy this year was a ”free-to-play” mobile game with [[predatory gacha mechanics.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/ntvbsAa.jpg" width="700" height="233"> </div/>\ [[Forward |macross1]]

I guess the fact that //UtaMacross: Smaho Deculture!// is all those things is somewhat incidental to the fact that I enjoyed it so much. I found the compounding daily, weekly, monthly grind exhausting, the infrequent snippets of locked-off content frustrating, the abysmal gacha rates infuriating. What it was really good at, though, was reminding me how much I love //Macross//. It really does seem as though the game was either made by thorough and cynical people out to expertly exploit people's love of Macross, or people whose love of every aspect of Macross cannot be contained, or a third and [[worst option which is “both”.]]

I love every Macross to varying degrees but I am a huge fan of SDFM/DYLR, and Lynn Minmay's seiyuu Mari Iijima in particular. That's putting it mildly, I'm a huge, huge fan of Mari Iijima, I love her solo music and her as a person, I think she's wonderful. Getting to hear all this new voice acting after so long, even given Iijima's famously complicated relationship with Macross, never failed to make me emotional. I sincerely believe there's fewer greater pairings of role and performer than [[Lynn Minmay and Mari Iijima.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/kHHXiIS.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward |macross 2]]

But you don't have to be an SDFM weirdo like me to have your specific love pandered to. The ever-popular Sheryl and Ranka from //Macross Frontier//, the modern idol unit Walkure, Nekki Fucking Basara, Aya Goddamn Hirano herself as Mylene Jenius. And not just the music: the gacha-enabled “plate” system that rewards you with little titbits from the anime, conferring in-game power ups costumes and other fun things. And I guess it is fun, the rhythm game is [[well made and entertaining.]]

But really, one of the big most important things this game gave me was the rekindling of how much Macross means to me. I've re-watched a lot of Macross this year, thanks to UtaMacross reminding me why I loved it so much in the first place. Concerns about mobage and gacha aside I'm glad the people who have made Macross what it is over the years can get some steady work for it, and I'm glad I was able to come back to it with no loss of passion even after years and years of [[being a Macross fan.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/dWJREX2.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward |macross 3]]

Naturally the flip side of this is being angry all over again at Macross' licensing hell. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

2017 was a big year for fans of author Tomihiko Morimi, like myself, seeing not one but two animated adaptations of his work. The first, a sequel to 2013's Eccentric Family TV anime follows the further dynastic struggles of a family of shape-shifting Tanuki in Kyoto, a city as magical and wondrous as they are. Meanwhile the sequel to 2010's The Tatami Galaxy was a film, both directed by worthless hack Maasaki Yuasa making genuinely creative and compelling work for the only time in his career. Focusing on the perspective of straight-laced Kyoto-type Akashi-san and taking place during one drunken night out, again casting the city as a player in the lives of the people who live there. If you were a fan of Morimi-sensei, there was an embarassment of riches for you [[in the past 12 months.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/uD9DSyy.jpg" width="700" height="446"> </div/>\ [[Forward |morimi 2]]

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch [[either of them.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/faelT7F.jpg"> </div/>\ [[Forward |morimi 3]]

My time in Kyoto was brief, but mirrored Morimi-sensei's all too closely. A young wide-eyed university student leaving their home town and falling, head over heels, completely and wholly in love with Kyoto. He was from Nara, of course, and I was from Australia, but it worked its magic on us nonetheless. It's hard to describe if you haven't been there, or even if you have and perhaps never left the station, but it is magical. The way the city looks and sounds and smells and feels is unique, it's plumb bob-straight streets nestled with secrets, the sound of temple rituals that [[carry at dusk.]]

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Despite the more fantastic elements his writing, Morimi-sensei reflects the city as it is, the timbre of it, even the vainglorious and poisonous aspects. Take Watashi, the hapless, unnamed protagonist of The Tatami Galaxy, so absorbed by his own self worth and his desire to self-actualise that he sees other people as commodities. Or Benten, a simple schoolgirl turned into a capricious, malevolent demigod by the cities rich and powerful. Benten, happy to commit murder of people she knows intimately once a year for the sake of tradition and [[her own comfort.]]

You take the good with the bad wherever you live, though, making an informed decision about what you're willing to put up with in exchange for things that you love. Which is why despite everything, I love Kyoto and wouldn't leave it for anything in the world, except of course for the fact that [[I did.]]

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It hurts, dear reader, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]

You can’t be as wholly, completely obsessed with something, as I was with Nisio Isin's //Monogatari// series, forever. You can like something, love it, look back on it fondly, come back again and again, relish the impact it had on you, certainly you can do all those things. But to have it consume you, to wake up every day electrified at the possibilities a work has to offer you, that can't last. We humans are hard wired to crave novelty, and the same thing over and over again just can't excite you like it did the first time. So it goes with //Monogatari//, one of my most favourite works by one of my most favourite authors. The film adaptation of the //Kizumonogatari// books was announced in 2010, followed by year after year of stony silence. As the production team shuffled around, worked on different things or disappeared even the best amongst us lost hope that it would ever come out. Then, in one of those rare instances of fate actually being kind, it [[re-emerged.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/xto4MmP.jpg" width="700" height="304"> </div/>\ [[Forward |Kizu 1]]

And so it ends, the story you didn't know: how Araragi Koyomi became less than human, how Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade became less than a vampire. Taken as individual films, the three separate //Kizumonogatari// volumes are spectacular. Taken as a whole, they are an unqualified masterpiece that puts even the most ambitious of comparable works to shame. The truest expression of a Gesamtkunstwerk where ever single element, small, large, insignificant, momentous, contributes to a [[glorious whole.]]

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/5Q9GIlf.jpg" width="700" height="304"> </div/>\ [[Forward |Kizu 2]]

//Kizumonogatari III: Reiketsu-hen// had a huge task of ending the three films as well as being the most quiet and introspective of the three, despite the stunning action scene that ends in the classic Isin anticlimax. Where //Kizmonogatari I: Tekketsu-hen// sought to challenge the criticism of //Monogatari// (and indeed, much of Isin's body of work) that it's too heavily based in dialogue by making it operatic and silent, //Reiketsu-hen// doubles down on executing tone and atmosphere. The film's recreation of horrifying acts of adolescent intimacy is note-perfect, thematically as well as artistically, and the angry, listless nadir of the film where everyone ends up broken and hurt is [[brave and breathtaking.]]

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Generally speaking I'm not sure the English-speaking anisphere knows quite how to react to Isin's particular style. Perhaps it's because it's lacking in the broad visual symbolism that may mark a work as needing more than a surface level reading, or maybe people find his reliance on dialogue disconcerting. Regardless of how at odds I am with others' opinions of Isin, I will never cease to adore him. 2017 has been a worthless, harrowing year for a number of reasons but //Kizumonogatari III: Reiketsu-hen// made me feel like the mere act of [[being fucking alive, gloriously alive]], was worthwhile.

<div align='center'>\ <img src="https://i.imgur.com/p8RT6Pc.jpg"> </div/> [[Return?|I hate Christmas, but I love anime]]