Thoughts on Your lie in April episodes 1-3

I have been on and off blogging about anime for a long time and this time I decided to start blogging again with a different tack since I came to realize that writing reviews is a bit soul crushing, or at least boring for me. Also I listen to a couple of podcasts that do it better than I ever could. So I decided to blog about shows that I find important. Hopefully you will find it entertaining.

After last season finished there were no more episodes of March comes in like a lion and and after a month or so I realized that my sad glasses boy anime itch needed to be scratched and I didn't get around to watching Your lie in April when it was first airing so I decided to finally get around to watch this show.

So the show starts and we have our protagonist Kousei Arima. He used to be a child prodigy at the piano but due to some vague emotional trauma from his sick mother. Now he lives in a depressed state with his two friends Tsubaki and Watari as though Kousei is a taller version of the protagonist of Accel world. One day Tsubaki invited Kousei to a double date. When he arrives at the location, he sees a beautiful and mysterious girl, and takes a picture of her playing music on some local kids.

This leads to a misunderstanding and thus unleashes said girl's Tsundere nature. It also turns out that said girl is the violinist Kaori and the person he was supposed to meet. Episode 2 is mostly devoted to showing off Kaori's music talents.

Some people here might complain about this show saying that Kaori is what is called Manic pixie dream girl. Episode 3 shows that this is quite, quite false as the MPDG is someone who doesn't have much in the way of personal motivation while Kaori spends a good part of episode three bullying Kousei into playing piano with her at the next music competition. Eventually he agrees and they zoom off to the next competition with the help of Kousei's more athletic friends.

I found the first three episodes of this show to be decent but it hasn't gotten exceptional yet. I notice that there is quite a bit of foreshadowing and the art of the show is really nice. I will continue watching and hope you find this worth reading.

Getting around to watching Zeta Gundam part 1

Why haven't you watched this by now, God

You know how if you ever consider yourself an anime fan for any significant length of time a collection of shows that you mean to watch eventually but never have the time to watch seems to accumulate? Well as it just so seems to happen I have gotten the chance to start cleaning up that so called pile of shame and the first piece of anime that I decided to get around to is the most classic of mecha anime shows, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. This article covers my thoughts on watching the first ten episodes of the show. 

But without your glasses people will know who you are

First thing I noticed about this show is that it is clearly a show that lives in the sizable shadow of the first Gundam show. There is a noticeable amount of name dropping and references that people who haven’t seen the first show wouldn’t understand. This isn’t all bad as Zeta Gundam has clearly better animation than other anime shows of the era and my guess is that Sunrise had a known property that they were willing to throw a good sized animation budget at. I found the fight in episode eight to be especially well animated and fun to watch.

For those of you asking, yes I am going on a date with Madlax tonight

The main premise behind the show is that a few years have passed and the Earth Federation and especially a splinter group called the titans have become so corrupt that they are basically the bad guys now. If it wasn’t obvious by their actions the fact that the Federation now flies zaku lookalikes called hizaks  cemments this.

The story centers around the angtsy teenage hero of the day this time being anime’s very own boy named Sue, Camille Bidan. After managing to steal a gundam during a Aueg (this show’s underdog freedom fighters) raid on a colony Camile hops aboard a ship called the Argama and ends up fighting the titans every episode and loses his parents in the process. While the show for the most part feels fairly episodic there is some slow progress with each episode so most of the episodes don’t feel pointless. 

As of this point I consider this show to be a good one to pass time with. I plan to watch all fifty episodes so this is only my preliminary thoughts on the show but I am glad that I have finally gotten around to it.