Being in a harem anime sucks (when you aren't the main)

 Previous letter: Why does my girlfriend enjoy crossdressing so much?

Dear Bryanime

Hello, I’ve been having this issue, and I was wondering if you have any advice on it. You see, I’m in a bit of an awkward situation. I’m living next to this guy I like, you see. Unfortunately though, it isn’t just the two of us. About three other girls are living in the same dormitory. I’d like to think he only has eyes for me, but on the other hand, it seems like he’s been looking at some of the other girls in the dormitory too…

Anyway, we seem to be getting along pretty well most of the time, but at other times he seems to be paying more attention to another one of the girls. I confront him about it, and all he does is give me some explanation about “not hurting anybody” or something along those lines. It’s REALLY frustrating sometimes. What really gets me is that I can’t get a straight answer from him about whether he likes me or not. Whenever I try to get something out of him, something weird happens, or one of those other girls conveniently buts in before we get anywhere.

I’m not really sure what I’m doing in this situation. I mean, part of me really likes the guy. We met in one of our classes, and then we really hit it off. On the other hand, he seems to be that way with a lot of other girls. It makes me so mad. Sometimes I want to go off and find somebody else, at other times I want to force him to commit to me somehow.

What do you think I should do?

Sincerely,

Anonymous harem girl

Dear Anonymous harem girl,

Well, it looks like you’re in a bit of a rut. Frankly, it looks like the guy doesn’t care about you enough, and lacks the spinal column to commit. Do you really want to go about your life competing for attention with three other girls, just because he doesn’t want to “hurt” anybody? If he won’t commit now, what makes you think you will ever convince him to commit to you? Obviously, you have more invested in him than he has invested in you, so why do you keep going to him? I know every guy dreams of having his own harem of girls fawning over him, but what do they get in return? Is the guy really THAT great? I think not. I know you could do better than this guy. Like me. I don’t have no harem, and I’m more than enough man for you *starts sparkling like Armstrong*

Sincerely,

BryAnime

Get Featured in a fan letter! Email you're problems to DarthSomebody@yahoo.com, or post it in the comments section, and I just might respond to you!

Please Comment and Subsribe!

Next Letter: How to get my Boyfriend to stop watching anime

Related Stuff:
School days review
Being the male lead in a slapstick comedy is painful

Anime in Focus: Fate Stay Night Episode 4

 <-Today's enemy is the great Demon... Hercules!

 Previous Episode

Alright, onto the last episode of Fate/Stay Night that was shown at an anime club meeting, meaning the rest I’m gonna have to go watch on my own. This is not an issue, since the series has been quite fun, despite being a bit slow moving.

Anyhoo, this episode starts with Shiro, Rin, and Saber running into a scary little gril named Illya. Illya is accompanied by her servant, a big macho guy of about 8 feet tall. This guy is apparently the great demon…. Hercules? Wait…. WHAT!?!

Anyway, Hercules is going by the name Berserker these days, and seems to have retained his love for hitting things with a club. Unfortunately, Saber is still using an invisible sword as a weapon, which isn’t very effective when compared to Berserker’s bigass club. While showing off some nice athletics, Saber gets her ass handed to her in after taking about one hit. While Berserker is about to perform the fatality on Saber, steps in and attempts to soak the blow for her. Unfortunately, Shiro has much less endurance than Saber, and gets thrown around like a ragdoll.

This fight disappointing ends with Illya and Berserker getting bored and walking off. This was really a disappointing out, since it would make more sense for Illya commanding Berserker to off Saber and possibly Shiro, just to get them out of the holy grail war. Alas, Shiro and Saber’s plot armor managed to save the day. Unfortunately, Shiro wakes up in a body cast, since he kinda took a hit from Greece’s biggest badass.

Shiro wakes up to get a lecture from Rin about being a moron and protecting Saber. Apparantly, it would be possible to bring her back from the dead, it would not be as easy to bring him back, since servants are apparently immortal. Since if a master dies, the servant dies anyway, it’s obviously not advantageous for Shiro to die protecting Saber.

More interestingly, we learn that servants can eat people’s souls to gain more power. Saber says she’s sworn not to do it, but you just KNOW this will come up later.

Interesting episode, but an awful lot of talking. I hope this just leads to more violence in later episodes.

Coming Soon: next ep

Please comment and subscribe!

Anime in Focus: School Days Episode 3

<- Today's episode guide brought to you by Saionji's work uniform. Awww yeah

Previous Episode:

Hm, this episode isn’t nearly as interesting as the last couple. Stuff doesn’t get real at any point in this one. I was very disappointed, because in the first couple episodes stuff got real.

Now then, I’m not really familiar with Japanese dating customs, but by American standards, I’d say Saionji is definitely trying to sabotage Itou and Katsura’s relationship. While the three of them are having lunch, their Katsura and Itou are flirting, and Saionji tells them they need to slow down, even though sparks are flying between the two ot them. Anyway, Itou gets invited to Katsura’s house.

The plot with Saionji and Katsura is kinda boring for the rest of the episode. What isn’t boring is Saionji’s work uniform. Holy crap man. Even 10 minutes after I watched this episode, that’s all I really remember.

Oh yeah, Itou goes to Katsura’s house, and meets her sister or something.

Then we see Saionji talking with one of her friends about whether or not she like Itou. Of course she does, but she ain’t admitting to it. Oh yeah, did I mention her work uniform?

Well, hopefully the next episode is as interesting as the first two. And I’m exited for when the **** hits the fan.

Please comment and subscribe

NEXT EPISODE!

Mythology and its relation to Modern Anime Entertainment

 <-Did you know GAR and general manliness was invented in Greece

Kids, it’s time we discuss how little attention you pay during your history class, A great majority of the fantasy anime you watch is unsurprisingly unoriginal. Not unoriginal in that every anime takes elements from another anime, unoriginal in the sense that most things take elements that are about as old as dirt.

I’m not about to go about calling everybody unoriginal, today at least. Instead, I am going to discuss how knowledge of ancient mythological concepts will actually enhance your anime experience, making being an anime fan a much more enlightening. Your conversations with other fans will suddenly have more substance, as you will have a wide array of things to talk about and expand on your favorite series. This is fun for both the optimist and the pessimist, as the optimist can find deeper meanings in everything he does, while the pessimist can find further things to complain about.

This becomes apparent with some of the more mythology based series, such as Neon Genesis Evangellion. Knowledge of Christian mythos will help you realize that the concept presented as deep actually make no sense when applied to the mythos, and that cross shaped lasers are just dumb. Furthermore, while Shinji gets crucified in the end, casting him as a messiah figure just makes me facepalm. It would make more sense if Koworu was placed as a messiah figure, placing Koworu as the Christ figure, and Shinji as the Jewish leaders who killed him out of fear.

Now then, knowledge can be used for more than nitpicking. Granted, even doing the most basic research shows the mythological references in Fate/Stay Night (Great Demon Hercules…?) are wildly inaccurate, doing that research ensures that you can converse with others and tells you how little research your average writer does.

An underappreciated set of mythos belongs to the Greek pantheon, which basically ran a divine soap opera of betrayal, seduction, and just plain weirdness that inspires people to this very day. Alas, people insist on taking out the shades of gray and turning it into a bunch of black and white battles between good and evil, portraying Zeus as a good guy with Hades as a jerk, when both of them had about the same moral fiber (No, really, go read into them and get back to me.) The shades of gray nature is a section of mythology that largely goes unnoticed, despite Greek mythology being one of the most frequently used mythos in modern media. At the same time, it suffers the greatest amount of adaptation decay (Okay, I admit, I loved Disney’s Hercules, but nobody acted like they do in myth) At the very least, it allows you to perform intelligent sounding conversations comparing the mythos modern media bases things on, and how they interpret it.

The main reason I like to encourage researching mythologies of various cultures, is that it is just plain good fun. It’s like reading a comic book before comic books were invented. It’s not like the philosophers in ancient Greece, the Scandinavians, or the Celts had anything better to do besides survive and tell stories. I’ll admit, to really appreciate mythology you should probably look up a version with footnotes, but once you fully understand the concepts, it’s like doing research on a comic book universe. Anybody who enjoys watching high fantasy anime or manga would get a great deal of enjoyment out of researching the world’s mythologies that inspire fantasy anime and manga.

Please comment and Subscribe!

Why not do some research?

Anime in Focus: X episode 1

 <-Our main character, Kamui, holding the Sword of destiny or something

Alright, I was turned onto this by my a guy in anime club. This anime is available for free on Funimation’s website here, because Funimation is run by real men who don’t believe in letting pirates take part of their market share.

Unfortunately though, I didn’t find this episode very interesting. It starts out showing a post apocalyptic Tokyo, complete with the ruins of Tokyo tower, with some guy standing on it. (That thing gets destroyed as often as the Statue of Liberty) Then we go back to today, where we see a whole bunch of people being summoned to Tokyo, including some guy in some Buddhist Srhine, some chick who looks exactly like Ayoyama Motoko from Love Hina, a lady wearing some nice lingerie, and some other people. Furthermore, all of these people wind up seeing some symbol of an eye for some reason.

Meanwhile, we go back to that guy from the opening that was on Tokyo tower, who is apparanlty named Kamui. Kamui is at some Budhist shrine, demanding that the guy running the place hand him “the sword of destiny” for some reason. The guy running the shrine resists, and a moderately interesting fight breaks out. Frankly the fights aren’t nearly as interesting as the last show I did, Cutie Honey  but enough to stave off boredom.

After this, Kamui winds up fighting a bunch of Agent Smiths (no really, they call them spell servants, but they look just like Agent Smith) Fortunately he kills them off because he’s the one or something. Anyway, after this we cut to a high school for some reason where a girl is having a dream about Kamui returning to her school because they were childhood friends or something. As fate would have it, Kamui DID transfer back to that school, but unlike the sweet boy she once knew, he’s turned into an antisocial jerk.

Overall, this was a pretty weaksauce first episode. There were details, but not the details I was interested in. There were fight scenes, but I didn’t care about who was fighting or what they were fighting over. They introduce a lot of characters, but tell us nothing about them that makes us care. My friend sincerely vouches that this show gets good, but I’m having trouble getting through this shows astounding mediocrity

Next episode

Please comment and subscribe!

Related Stuff:
xxxHolic Volume 1, manga (also by clamp)

Anime in Focus RETRO EDITION: Cutey Honey Episode 1

 <- Yes, this show is every bit as cheesy as it looks. but don't worry, it's mozzarella, so it's good

In today's retro edition of anime in focus, the 70’s come out to get you. Enter Cutey Honey, one of the anime that inspired that one major anime, what was it called…. Oh yeah, Sailor Moon.

The first episode starts out showing a bunch of girls singing in a church, while an important looking one sneaks off. This is our main character named Honey (This has to be one of the stupidest names I’ve ever heard) who apparently has to get back home to see her dad about something. On her way out, one of her female teachers starts sexually harassing her, which seems weird in a show from the 70’s.

Well, on the way out, she gets a transmission from her father telling her how to activate some weird mechanism in an earring she’s wearing, which lets her transform into a body capable of performing whatever task is at hand. All of her clothes vanish briefly for this transformation, ensuring intense amounts of fanservice in this show. Meanwhile, we get a scene of one of the villains, who is a weird dominatrix jewel thief person. It’s really weird. Of course, by this point I had turned my brain off anyway, so it didn’t matter.

Anyway, when Honey gets to her fathers house, it’s been taken over by generic henchmen who all wear masks to save the animation team money. They apparently belong to some organization known as “Panther Claw,” who are looking for Honey’s father’s work. Unfortunately, while they are looking for this experiment, they wind up killing Honey’s father, who reveals that she is really a robot with transforming powers. Honey is entirely unfazed by this for some reason. Anyway, Honey decides to use her transforming abilities to assume a form capable of combat, and slaughters the whole bunch of generic 70’s henchmen. It’s actually pretty badass. Despite the shows outward appearance, the fight scenes are comparable to most action series that come out today.

The plot to this show is quite silly, but it’s very entertaining. It contains lots of fanservice, and even more 70’s style cheesiness. I’m not really sure if Honey’s transformations are supposed to symbolize different aspects of her personality, or if they were just an excuse to draw a bunch of pretty girls by the author. Either way, the show is very fun and contains some solid fight scenes. Worth looking up on Netflix or something.

Please comment and subscribe!

Artist Profile: Egg Finger

This week’s profile From Small Press Idol

Help Egg Finger win round three of voting! Register and vote now!


Previous Artist: HakuBaikou

This week instead of an individual artist, I’ve decided to report on a project I encountered while hanging around Facebook. Noticing his frequent ramblings about slaughtering the innocent and conquering the world, I decided that striking up conversation would be fun. From this, I learned that this was actually an up and coming comic book artist that was trying to break into the industry. Hence, doing an article came naturally.

Here’s the project’s logo design. Not too bad, but could use a little more “oomph” for the final project.

Plot: Alright, this is the proposed comic about an egg person-thingie who, while he grew up as an innocent idealist became corrupted by this world and all of its materialistic pleasures.

Don't let looks fool you, he's a sick manipulative bastard. The on site-bio doesn’t tell you much, but here’s some nice quotes by him in his facebook updates:

“Just beat up Mr. Potato Head. And it felt good.”

“Eggy says "Keep the streets clean- strangle a prostitute!"

Fun Game: Dress up as a police officer, wait outside a home until you see
someone leave for work, knock on the door, and tell his wife "There's been an accident..."

So, as we can tell, this book’s going to be filled with black humor. Outside of eggy, the author is demonstrating a varied cast of characters that will be fun to watch, such as Awesome Aid Man:

This is a mascot for the soft drink Awesome Aid, who after a rough start doing several jobs he’s ashamed of, he now has a semi-flourishing career appearing at trade shows and supermarket openings. Also, he insists that his own mother refer to him as Awesome Aid man.
Along with Awesome Aid man, we have Ted:

Ted is a blob of a human who’s life just keeps getting worse. He’s addicted to just about everything a man can be addicted to, his wife left him, and I suspect his dog died too. Looks like a good target for some of Eggy’s bleak humor.

Finally, we have Deviled Eggy…

This is half of eggy’s conscience. The good half seems to have gone missing. Unfortunately, Eggy has become so unspeakable evil that even the evil half of his conscience is trying to scream out against him and stop his evil plans.

Overall, I am a bit intrigued about this project, and would like to see where its creators take it. I’m hoping for some bleak humor that can only be described as “delicious.” Doesn't look like it'll be too deep, but hopefully a fun read, like the preview. However, since the project is still not off the ground, and needs people to vote for it on small press alliance.

Want to get featured in my artist profile section? Email me at DarthSomebody@yahoo.com with a link to your online art gallery, and I may do a feature on YOU!

Please comment and subscribe

Next Artist: Sabretooth Fox! 

Related Article:
Egg Finger Comic Preview
Project Profile: The Cure
Overview of Small Press Idol Round 3

Vampire Hunter D Volume 1 (Manga)

For the record, this is my first exposure to Vampire Hunter D. I believe this to be the last of the comic books and manga that I picked up at ye local library.

This book starts off with an exposition explaining how society succumbed to a nuclear apocalypse, and later rebuilt itself, except run by vampires instead of humans. After thousands of years a select few humans got sick of vampires running everything, and organized themselves as hunters. So it’s a post apocalyptic world run by freaking vampires with lazer beams on their castles.

Anyway, on to our main character. Here we’re introduced to D, a rough and tough vampire hunter wearing a cowboy hat riding on a cyborg horse. Despite being the prettiest looking character in the book, he is also clearly the manliest. While riding on his robotic horse, he encounters another lead, (in this book at least) Doris Lane, a rancher who weilds a whip and isn’t afraid to use her looks to get stuff done. Doris is looking for a vampire hunter in order to slay a vampire that bit her recently. Hence, she hires D to slaughter the animal.

Plot is kind of generic, silent protagonist comes in to save some girl from the horrible monster, fights ensue, yada yada yada. What’s REALLY interesting about this book is the setting. Here we have vampires who manage to be total bastards, (why is that so rare?) freaking robots, and a wild west setting. Also, the fights are pretty entertaining, although they lack any sense of suspense. Designs look cool though, and a lot of the concepts introduced are pretty interesting.

The characters are sort of interesting. Nothing too memorable, but at least nobody does anything so stupid you want to facepalm. I like the combination of wild west with European knights and castles. The sci fi puts it directly into really awesome territory

Overall, This manga is really interesting, mainly due to the scenery being very unique and interesting to look at. Exposition starts out strong, no part really struck me as dull, and it ended in a nice spot. An overall very interesting book to read.