Anime & Donghua

I know many people don't like The Catcher In The Rye because the protagonist is a bit of a dick, but I've really been enjoying it, and I'm glad to be reading it with my own two eyes.

All in all Angelic Layer was pretty eh, not to say that I regret watching it to the end, and maybe I'll find more appreciation for it later on — it was just kinda unsatisfying. But at least the main character is cute.

My mom didn't want to watch Tesagure! Bukatsumono entirely because the fansubs (the only subs) are too hard to follow. It's a pretty mid series overall, but I still appreciate it for what it is and represents: it's a very ad libbed series using cheap 3D (MikuMikuDance) animation, being Yaoyorozu's main thing before Kemono Friends. Another good thing about Tesabu is that the episodes are only 11 minutes long, which happens to be around the amount of time I take to eat a meal.

There was a really fun one-off ojou character in one of the Tokyo Mew Mew episodes I watched recently, Saionji Kanna in episode 32. Shame that she is only a one-time character.

Episode 15 of Pokémon is "Battle Aboard The St. Anne", which was the first English-dubbed episode of Pokémon to broadcast on Turtle Island, before the rest of the series was broadcast in order. I always like to watch anime in Norwegian when I can, so it was very good to find out that so much of the Norwegian dub of Pokémon is available for free on YouTube on Pokémon's official channel. Some more of the Norwegian dub is on the Internet Archive, too.

My own relationship to Pokémon is this: I played the original Game Boy games (Red & Blue) through online emulators without save features as a kid. This meant that I had to start at the very beginning every time I played, and accordingly I never finished either game, because how the heck's a kid supposed to beat Pokémon Red in a single sitting, right? I also had a Pokédex on my 3DS, and I had a few toys and maybe even trading cards to boot, but I didn't really watch the cartoons nor know much about the lore. I think I caught part of one of the movies at a classmate's birthday party and that's basically it, and even that is a very hazy memory. I also remember I did a pen and paper trace of Ash Ketchum once, apparently because I'd just turned his age and was thinking "I'm a big kid now! Big enough to go out on adventures, if Ash is any indication!"

But anyways, yeah. Far from being in the Great Red Spot of the Pokémon craze, I was more orbiting around it at a Europa distance, to put it that way. So when I saw you were watching Pokémon for nostalgia and immersion that it was as good a time as any to expose myself to something popular that I sort of missed out on as a kid. The quality of the Norwegian dub is naturally questionable, but I of course respect the work that was put into it nonetheless; I already shared the details with you privately at the time.

I think I was especially fond of the antics of Jessie and James — which figures, they're the adult characters. Overall, though, Pokémon is probably best as a nostalgia watch rather than a first-time watch when you're a grown adult.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is another thing that was popular when I was a kid that I missed out on, and, although certainly flawed, it is genuinely a very good cartoon.

My mom and I are getting very close to the end of Steins;Gate. We're also seven episodes from the end of the first season of Ojamajo Doremi and five from the end of Serial Experiments Lain. Whether we'll continue the extremely long Ojamajo after finishing the 51-episode first season remains to be seen.

Lupin III Part 2 is always a good time. The episode we watched this month was "The Island of Dr. Derange", in which Lupin, Fujiko and Jigen are put on auction, and are bought by Dr. Derange and put on a desert island with killer cyborgs.

Ranma ½ (reboot) is a a very cute show with a very good dub. I like how Ranma and Akane's relationship is developing. There will probably be a season 3, and I look forward to it when it comes out. I already mentioned in a previous thread that SungWon Cho plays Mousse in the dub. Shampoo's voice also stands out to me because of the Chinese accent: I couldn't confirm it but I'd certainly suspect that Grace Lu probably grew up speaking Chinese, because the /ɻ~ʐ/ in how Shampoo says "Ranma" is very distinctive. Shampoo in the English dub of '80s Ranma was voiced by Cathy Weseluck, apparently.

The Squid Girl OVA has been as fun as the main series de geso. It's only three episodes, though, and we've already seen the first two de geso! Ah, cruel fate, that we have almost run out of Squid Girl animated content de geso…

We started Kodocha basically just to have two English dubs in rotation. We've only seen the first episode so far, but it looks very promising, we burst out laughing at several points. I've already seen the first two episodes of Kodocha by myself, but that was years ago, so I don't mind rewatching it. Kodocha is really a bit of a legend among shôjo anime, and many anime fans my age grew up with it, so I look forward to continuing it. Funny Moments™ clip compilations make it seem like a very good time, too.