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Moon girls and flower girls.
First of all, allow me to be the umpteen millionth person on the internet to squee about the new Sailor Moon anime that will air in 2013!!!!! For the record, I dragged my ass out of bed at 6:30 this morning to watch the streamed announcement on NicoVideo, because I had a hunch that the promised "special surprise" would be an anime announcement.
BTW, anybody reporting on twitter or elsewhere that the new Sailor Moon anime is "for adults, not for kids" is blatantly wrong. Or they misunderstood what was said during the NicoVideo announcement. The new show is promised to "appeal to adults who grew up with the original," but it will still be a kid's show. So in other words, it will be just like the My Little Pony reboot: clever and layered enough to appeal to adults who grew up with the original series, but still very much intended primarily for little girls.
In other news, the Montreal Fantasia Festival (one of the largest fantasy/sci-fi film festivals in North America) is rechristening its animation prize as the Satoshi Kon Award for Achievement in Animation. That's a pretty awesome way to honor Kon, especially considering that Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress had their world premieres at the Fantasia Festival in 1997 and 2001, respectively.
Speaking of good stuff! I somehow found myself volunteering at a local anime con this afternoon (not my fault, blame my co-worker!) and ended up watching the first four episodes of Hanasaku Iroha. This is a show that some people on my flist were gushing about when it aired last year, but I never got around to checking it out because a) the opening song was so terrible and b) the publicity artwork made it look like the main character was another Honda Tohru clone whose defining personality trait would be relentless cheerfulness in the face of adversity, but without any of the accompanying depth and complexity of Honda Tohru Original Flavor, since most Tohru-type clones end up being annoyingly shallow waifu-type moeblobs. I also knew that the serieswas based on (ETA: actually, the anime is an original production, the manga was the adaptation - sorry!) a manga that ran in GanGan Joker, a magazine which is defined by moe-moe-blargh manga desperately trying to grasp for a sheen of depth/respectability when really all they want to do is wallow in moe-moe-blarghness. Since the Hanasaku manga was serialized in the same magazine alongside such esteemed (*cough*) peers as Zombie-Bitch Sakina, Inu x Boku SS, and the worst of the Umineko manga adaptations, I didn't expect it to be very good, and I didn't expect the original anime series to be very good either.
Turns out, I shouldn't have judged a book by its cover, or a series by the company that it keeps. Hanasaku Iroha is really, really, really good. Gorgeously animated, genuinely funny, genuinely moving, and with a fantastic cast of characters. Ohana, the heroine, is a completely different character than the type that I thought she would be. And I totally love her. I can't wait to watch the rest of this series.
Hanasaku Iroha is still available streaming on Crunchyroll. So if you're one of those skeptics like me who passed over it last year because it looked too much like the average boring moe-moe-blargh fare, you should definitely check it out. The series is not at all what it looks like (and certainly not at all what it was marketed as). I'm glad that I gave it a second chance.
That first opening song is still irredeemably horrible, though.
BTW, anybody reporting on twitter or elsewhere that the new Sailor Moon anime is "for adults, not for kids" is blatantly wrong. Or they misunderstood what was said during the NicoVideo announcement. The new show is promised to "appeal to adults who grew up with the original," but it will still be a kid's show. So in other words, it will be just like the My Little Pony reboot: clever and layered enough to appeal to adults who grew up with the original series, but still very much intended primarily for little girls.
In other news, the Montreal Fantasia Festival (one of the largest fantasy/sci-fi film festivals in North America) is rechristening its animation prize as the Satoshi Kon Award for Achievement in Animation. That's a pretty awesome way to honor Kon, especially considering that Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress had their world premieres at the Fantasia Festival in 1997 and 2001, respectively.
Speaking of good stuff! I somehow found myself volunteering at a local anime con this afternoon (not my fault, blame my co-worker!) and ended up watching the first four episodes of Hanasaku Iroha. This is a show that some people on my flist were gushing about when it aired last year, but I never got around to checking it out because a) the opening song was so terrible and b) the publicity artwork made it look like the main character was another Honda Tohru clone whose defining personality trait would be relentless cheerfulness in the face of adversity, but without any of the accompanying depth and complexity of Honda Tohru Original Flavor, since most Tohru-type clones end up being annoyingly shallow waifu-type moeblobs. I also knew that the series
Turns out, I shouldn't have judged a book by its cover, or a series by the company that it keeps. Hanasaku Iroha is really, really, really good. Gorgeously animated, genuinely funny, genuinely moving, and with a fantastic cast of characters. Ohana, the heroine, is a completely different character than the type that I thought she would be. And I totally love her. I can't wait to watch the rest of this series.
Hanasaku Iroha is still available streaming on Crunchyroll. So if you're one of those skeptics like me who passed over it last year because it looked too much like the average boring moe-moe-blargh fare, you should definitely check it out. The series is not at all what it looks like (and certainly not at all what it was marketed as). I'm glad that I gave it a second chance.
That first opening song is still irredeemably horrible, though.
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This is the Kotono Mitsuishi blog post that people are referring to with the Dark Kingdom bit, and... I really don't think that's meant to be taken literally. She's writing somewhat tongue-in-cheek. "I can't wait to perform a role in the new series! But the enemy isn't the Dark Kingdom! It's my reckless self from back then! Gaaaaaaaaah!" I think maybe she's talking about her voice having changed or something? I dunno. Anyway, considering that Mitsuishi hasn't even been officially cast yet, there's no way that she could know plot details about the upcoming series anyway.
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Having said all that, I have to go run around in circles some more.
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(Anonymous) 2012-07-07 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)wandering-dreamer
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Also, as a dedicated Fujiwara Cocoa fangirl, I have to make a comment on Inu x Boku SS (even though it was only mentioned once). I just wanted to plead to the more sensible people who recognize how pointless and fancervice-y the anime is (and yes, a good bit of the manga too) that her other works are so much better in my opinion. She's admitted to having her own thing about moe~moe~ girls so yes they're common in her works, but even though I adored some of the characters in the manga and drooled endlessly over the art (which is just my preference), I also didn't like the anime adaptation all that much. I really wish more people knew of her other works (like DEAR) because although they're not the best manga, I think they deserve more attention. Okay pointless paragraph is over now, I just wanted to say that much.
Hanasaku Iroha sounds pretty interesting. I'll look into it! Thanks so much for the recommendation! ^^
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Yes! It's supposed to be a reboot, which means that the story of the new anime series is going to start all over again from the beginning.
I admit that I've never read any Fujiwara Cocoa manga other than the first two volumes of Inu x Boku SS, which I honestly didn't like. But if her other stuff is better then I'll definitely try to keep an open mind about her.