For years now, you have read this blog and watched the related anime from a distance.  As such, you’ve merely been living vicariously through the television shows that give you such comfort.  This has caused you to go through life feeling superior to those around you, those who are doomed to watch substandard American animation and reality shows.  However, this mentality has kept you from knowing the horrors of the entertainment industry.  This week, I offer you true terror.  In front of you is a link.  Should you choose to click it, a Night of Disturbia awaits, seeking to unsettle and jar you from your mundane reading experience.  You may have to play an eroge VN game, or perhaps try your hand at fortune-telling, or even assume the role of a serial-killing pop star.  Should you not click, the device around your neck will detonate, and totally ruin your day.  Choose carefully, you only have 60 seconds.

Read or die.  Make your choice.

Koe de Oshigoto!

This series is about a high school girl named Kanna Aoyagi.  She has a 28-year old sister who works in the eroge game industry.  On her 16th birthday, Kanna is asked by her sister to work as a voice actress for one of her new games.  The problem is that she’s a total novice, doesn’t play those games, and is a virgin.  What she DOES have going for her are her looks, her personality, her athleticism, and her… very active imagination.  Of course, it would be unspeakably embarrassing if anyone ever found out about her new job, so she uses an alias.  That works out fine, except that one of her male classmates also works with her sister.

Now, I’m not a video game player in general, console or computer-based, so I especially don’t know much about eroge gaming.  However, I am a 23-year old college male who watches anime, so there’s not much I won’t throw a thesaurus at.  The show straddles the line between decent and softcore basically every 3 minutes.  Chaeha, the club’s resident VN and eroge game otaku, tells me that the way this show portrays such game development is the exact opposite of real life.  While I’m almost inclined to believe him, it is well-established that voice actors are primarily actors, so I can also believe that experience (or at least a ridiculously detailed imagination) is necessary in order to perform this kind of work.  As for the animation, it’s alright, but the character designs are almost exact copies of their manga forms.  In fact, if you were given only a stack of the stills, you’d swear that they were full-color RAW’s for the manga.  While that makes for a nice transition to anime, it’s still a style that doesn’t seem completely appealing.  Then again, moe is moe, and this show borders on K-On! levels.  If you’re into eroge-style humor, you might like this show, but odds are you’ll like The World God Only Knows a lot more.

Mirai Nikki

A loner student named Yukiteru (“Yukki”) Amano has always viewed himself as a bystander, an observer.  All he has is his phone diary, which he records interesting observations in, and his imagination.  In his imagination, he meets the Deus Ex Machina, who is the king of time, space, and causality.  One day, Deus sends a text message to Yukki’s phone.  It contains Yukki’s journal entries, except that they haven’t happened yet.  Naturally, he uses this information to his advantage, getting perfect scores on exams and dodging everyone who wants to beat him up.  However, the fun stops when he notices an entry noting his death by the Street Killer that has been murdering people for the last month.  It also turns out that one of the greatest girls in his class, Yuno Gasai, knows exactly where he is going and what he’s doing.  After being cornered, she reveals that she also possesses a diary that can foretell the future, the Love Diary.  Unfortunately, the Street Killer has yet a third Future Diary, the Murder Diary.  By working together, both Yukki and Yuno defeat the Street Killer by destroying his Future Diary.

Afterwards, Yukki confronts Deus, thinking that it was only a manifestation of his imagination.  Deus replies that as a god, he can also inhabit one’s imagination.  With that, Deus calls a meeting of all the Future Diary holders, all 12 of them.  In this Survival Game, each person keeps a Future Diary on their flip phones, and the objective is to eliminate everyone else by killing them or destroying their Future Diary (thus killing them).

The winner will take Deus’ place as the ruler of all time and space.  Of course, then Deus displays his favoritism towards Yukki, whom he refers to as First.  This causes everyone else to target him, which freaks him the hell out.  Better still, his new girlfriend Yuno turns out to be a totally unhinged stalker.

Let me be perfectly clear: this anime looks amazing.  While the story may seem like a rewrite of similar series, such as Eden of the East, this series focuses more on the thriller/horror aspect than romance.  Actually, this is what I wanted Eden of the East to be like.  The character designs always seem to bounce between adorable, paranoid, and insane.  The artwork is a feast for the eyes, and the soundtrack…it’s superb.  Every.  Single. Track.  However, the best attribute is how the script steers the viewer’s responses.  It can switch from comedy to action to horror at the drop of a hat, and yet it doesn’t ever feel like a forced transition.  The only conceivable thing that I could dislike about this show is the stereotypical weak protagonist.  While it’s nice to see him make steady progress from being a wimp to…being less of a wimp, it just gets a bit irritating having to wait for a weak protagonist to catch up to more interesting characters (i.e. everyone else).  Also, I had this surreal feeling while watching the fight between First and Second with Ninth.  At one point, it felt like watching two computers playing chess, but each one was using the Force Move option.  Regardless, this is definitely a show (and an extended manga) worth following.

Perfect Blue

Produced in 1997 by Studio MADHOUSE (It’s a Madhouse!  A MAAAADHOOUUSE!!!), Perfect Blue is a psychological thriller that centers around the acting career of the former pop star Mima Kirigoe.  As the lead singer in the pop group CHAM!, Mima enjoyed unparalleled fame and adulation.  Then, she wanted to expand her horizons and become a legitimate actress.  Unfortunately, doing so also means taking increasingly degrading job offers.  As such, she starts to see her alter ego, the Diva, constantly infiltrating her everyday life.  This hallucination continuously reminds her how much better life was without any substance, referring to Mima’s current self as “a trashy actress.”  All throughout the movie, the boundary between what is real and what is fantasy steady breaks down, and all the while, she is being secretly pursued by the Diva’s personal serial-killer, Mi-mania.

Perfect Blue is one of Studio MADHOUSE’s most iconic projects to date, and it’s easy to see why.  Although the animation style is rather old considering the film’s 1997 release, the direction style remains one of the most memorable.  This film takes many cues from Alfred Hitchcock’s films, including Vertigo.  However, the film gets almost comically repetitive with some effects, namely the “false wake-up” effect.  At one point, the film becomes an endlessly-revolving door between Mima’s personal insanity and that of the character she must portray.  I can understand that the director wants the audience to become as lost in the experience as Mima is, but there are plenty of more subtle (or at least less repetitive) ways to accomplish this.  If anything can be learned from this movie, it’s that method actors don’t last very long.

Assuming that explosive collar around your neck didn’t detonate, congratulations, you’re still alive.  Next up is Fall Sweeps, where we’ll show the best of what’s coming in Fall 2011.  Of course, that only begs the question of what garbage we’ll shove down your throat afterwards.  For the answer to that question and many more, tune in next time!