Hi, guys! Are the strike-outs getting old yet? No? Alright, awesome.

At last night’s showing we watched Psychic Detective Yakumo, Katanagatari, and Bakuman, all three of which made for a night which I have heard other people dubbing ‘Boring Anime Night’. While part of me tentatively agrees, I also think that it wasn’t such a bad night. Here are my thoughts; you know where to put your questions and concerns.

First up was Psychic Detective Yakumo, a show I think I would be well within my rights to call “horrible”. I would say that this is the first truly bad show that we’ve seen this semester. It pretty much insults the viewer’s intelligence at every turn. The plot is always either contrived or uninteresting, the main character is a dick (and not even an endearing one, for the most part), and the female lead is kind of an idiot. The detective guy also reminds me a bit too much of Gumshoe from Phoenix Wright. Except that I like Gumshoe.

What I think actually annoyed me most about the show was that each case was only an episode long. I can see how this might work–I remember watching Detective Conan and thinking the mysteries were brilliant–but the mysteries in Yakumo aren’t mysterious at all. Yakumo basically cheats his way into solving every case (and the very first one was stupidly easy; Yakumo magically finds a bunch of buried shit, and then picks up the suspects cup, and that’s all it took to close the case?), which does not make for an interesting show. If the mystery isn’t difficult to solve, it’s not worth paying attention to.

Unfortunately, every mystery in Psychic Detective Yakumo is opened and then closed immediately. I get the idea of wanting a show that is episodic in nature, but it just makes the cases so short that there’s no reason to keep watching. Once Yakumo fingers the culprit, it might as well be over.

Our second show, Talking: The Anime Katanagatari, I would probably say was the best show last night. It does seem very shounen in its way, but it seems to be kind of aware of that, so it isn’t too hard of a watch. The show isn’t too serious; a lot of what happens is shown in a pretty lighthearted fashion. Not to mention the artwork is unique and the animation is generally beautiful. I thought this was a very good-looking show, and the sense of style it had gave it something that I think a more standard animation direction would have ruined.

I can safely say this is a show I will be finishing. Each episode is fifty minutes, yes, but with only twelve of them, I figure it can’t be too bad unless it gets very boring very fast. I know some people were put off by this during the showing, and I agree that the talking is excessive, but I didn’t really mind most of the character interaction. This was another very shounen thing about it, actually–stopping to talk in the middle of a fight isn’t exactly a rare phenomenon in those sorts–but in many places it seemed to be sort of making fun of itself, and I like that.

That said, I can see how it wouldn’t be for everyone. The speech is lengthy, the action is usually short, and the story is… well, I don’t know, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

The third show, Bakuman, was better than I had been expecting. I’d been hearing so much about how it was boring or just plain bad, but I think I was pleasantly surprised. It doesn’t look like I’ll watch the rest, but I don’t think it’s a bad show.

In fact, it was frequently funny, which I think for the most part saves it from being boring. The premise is also interesting, but I don’t know if it’s something I can bring myself to watch for a whole season. I can’t think of many exciting ways the protagonist can draw manga before I get kind of bored. There’s little else to say about the show, though. It’s not exactly deep, but it’s not a complete farce, either. It’s hard for me to decide what to make of it, but I only see the humor and interest lasting so long. If somebody can convince me it gets exciting later on, please go ahead.

…And that’s all I have to say about that. See you guys next week!