A weekly look into American otaku culture

Well, I didn’t quite make it to 1,000 again today, but I did come pretty damn close. I could see through out the day that my ANN references were dwindling, and I started getting a lot of my hits back from my fellow anime bloggers. Let me just mention a couple of them right now.

Matt is awesome. Not only is the guy very smart and funny, but he’s also extremely friendly. And his site is incredible. Being into programming and web design myself (hell, Computer Science is my major ), I can see that he’s put a lot of time into building up that site and it shows. And he’s very popular! If he links to you in one of his posts, expect to see a lot of traffic coming your way.

Mina is a sweetheart. Her blog is just as cute as the comments that she leaves on my blog. Every time I hear from her, I just have to smile. It’s good to have a little female touch in this community, and this Germen girl does a great job with it. So everyone check her out.

That being said, I think I’m really going to cut back on the posts about fansubs here. The truth is that because I can’t get the raws of these things, by the time I’ve posted a review and screen caps, 100 other bloggers have done it already weeks before. So I think I’m going to change the focus of my blog to really stand out. Expect to see more of my observations and (hopefully) comedic commentary. And while I know most of them are crap, I’ve been getting some nice compliments on some of the reviews I post. Particularly the ones for Full Metal Panic and Dokuro-chan have been giving me good feedback. So I’m going to focus more on dubbed US releases and even manga as well. I’m been putting together a manga review for I’’s that’s one of the best things I’ve ever written, so be on the look out for that over the weekend!

But I’ll still continue to blog Yakitate, Mahoraba, and of course Ichigo 100% as the fansubs come out. I’m a little on the fence on He is My Master. I’m not quite sure if I’m going to pick that up or not. It’s been three weeks now and still no fansubs. But I’ve got really good news…. a new fansub group called Anime Sake has appeared and they seem to be solely dedicated to fansubbing He is My Master. So this blogger believe that we will be seeing episode 1 come out very soon. (^_^)

Futakoi Alternative appears to be the most blogged fansub of the new season, so I gave into peer pressure and finally watched it. The impression that I was getting from everyone is that it was FCLC with kawaii girls. Sounds pretty good to me, right? Well, I didn’t like it at all. Probably the main reason for this is because I know nothing about the first series. All these characters are quickly introduced in the middle of a very complicated action plot. I was confused, and not in the good FLCL-way. Not to mention the fact that the EP brought up horrible nightmares of Gumby.

::shivers::

But the thing that gets to me would be that as soon as they started introducing the characters, I felt like this all seemed familiar. The fast pacing, the freeze frames, the main character’s narration… this wasn’t FLCL! It was the Guy Ritchie film Snatch! And every new character introduction further sunk this idea into my head, especially the last one with the ugly police officer. And then suddenly the main character is boxing… BOXING!!! For those of you that never seen Snatch before, the movie’s climax is a boxing match with Brad Pitt’s character. So not only are they imitating the style of the film, they also stole the plot! If anything, I would call this episode a direct parody of it.

But how come I haven’t heard of this before? I surely would have remembered anyone mentioning that it was an anime parody of Snitch. So I did the google thing, and in fact the only two other people who mention it are two guys who left a comment in Jeff’s blog. Am I going crazy here? I thought it was plane as day. Does anyone else see it?!?

First of all, let me apologize. When I review a series, I try to leave the plot as ambiguous as possible so that I don’t spoil anything good for anyone. But this episode was so good that I can’t help but to blurt out what’s making it so damn funny. It might not be much of a spoiler, but if you really care about it, please don’t read any more of this review or pay attention to the screen shots.

That being said, let me just start off by saying this is the f’ing funniest episode of Yakitate so far. Why you ask?

“I’m Examiner Kuroyanagi Ryou. After sampling Azuma Kazuma’s bread, because of its extreme deliciousness…”

“I died.”

Hahahahaha! Man, there’s been some really great reactions when it comes to tasting bread with this series, but this is by far the best one imaginable! After tasting Azuma’s Japan 44, both Kuroyanagai and Dave die and go to heaven. God, I’m still laughing over that.

First, the episode started me with that same excitement you get when you watch an action anime. There’s just certain points when the main character acts so calm and cool that you know he’s about to kick some major ass. I know that whatever Azuma had up his sleve, it was going to blow everyone away. But…. TO HAVE THEM DIE AND GO TO HEAVEN?!? God, that’s f’ing great.

And they play out the joke through out the entire episode. They depict Heaven as some kind of cosplay club with bunny-girl waitresses. So Dave and Ryou settle down and enjoy all the good gifts of eternal paradise . But we also get a chance to find out a little bit of Ryou’s past and a romantic relationship with an American named Cathy, or “Cashie” as the Engrish will allow. I thought that was just a joke in the last episode, but apparently there’s some substance to it. But eventually the two come back from Heaven and award Azuma the victory. Wow, how are they going to be able to top that?