Scattershot anime reactions

[starlady]

Occult Academy 04-05
I love Mikaze-san and her driving and her being prepared. I'm pretty sure she's putting on the hyperfeminity for her own purposes. I also love Maya punching Bunmei repeatedly, no hesitation. Combo-punch! P.S. There are kofun in Nagano? I'm on the next bus there when I go back to Japan. Also Maya and her crossbow FTW.

Damn, #6, you are beyond useless an asshole like the rest of them. I think Maya's going to have to save the future all by herself. In her high heels, no less.

Also, Kozue's near-death experience was a) brilliantly animated and b) creepy as hell.

P.S. Should we be suspicious of Mikaze? I think maybe we should. I think she is a counter-time agent.

DTB OVA 04
The Reaper can't die, but he can get tired of watching everyone else die.

The OVAs were quite good, I think. I really want to rewatch Meteor Twins now--it's funny how the OVAs are set before the second series, but were released after them, so they don't have to introduce any of the continuing characters. Most of whom die in the end, it being DTB. And knowing what's coming doesn't make watching Hei's abrupt slide into a drunken stringer for the CIA any easier, either.

I would love more of this anime; I really hope they do wind up producing a third season.

Code Geass R2 09-11
Yes, shut up, I never finished this anime. But all the awesome AMVs at Otakon have inspired me to do so.

I've forgotten how political and psychological (in a rather overdetermined way) this show is. And how the character designs are so OTT. So are the characters and the plot, for that matter. I love it. I also love Kaguya baiting Suzaku mercilessly, and how there's a coup somewhere every other damn episode, and how Karen is angry all the time, and the obscenely obvious fan service. (In some ways Karen's character, and the fan service, are the show's most obvious Eva inheritances.)

The other thing I like is that everyone is related to each other, either by blood or by friendship or by love, and how these bonds are always either tested or betrayed. It makes the character interactions very fraught, it's great.

In a way too I admire the show's creators just deciding to go for it--they are fearless in their mixing political formations old and new to tell a story that has definite resonances with the current international situation globally and in northeast Asia, but isn't 100% congruent--the better to cultivate strategic ambiguity! There's also an important theme of abjection running through the show--I see it in Suzaku most obviously, and also in the scenes from Karen's captivity, but it has larger implications, most clearly for "Area 11" itself. The abject is trying to become, not an object but a subject. This requires lots of mecha, and explosions, and world domination. Yum.