Ahh, the ecchi genre...

The worst part of this episode was at the very end, when Ako and Riko announced that there will be another OAD episode next June. I was so pumped in getting rid of this thing off of my “Currently Watching” list, but it looks like all of that anticipation turned out to be in vain. Now I’ll have to wait another half-year before I can get an opportunity to do so… And no, I am not watching the TV series that is to follow the OAD. Like I said in my previous post about Kiss x Sis, straying from its OAD format would be abandoning the only thing making this show watchable.

…Actually the worst part of this episode was the urine. Keita helps out Riko in her bodily functions after they had a little too much to drink. For those that have fetishes of this liquidly human waste must have been in urine heaven when watching this episode. I am actually sane and don’t understand this fetish. So I couldn’t get a lot out of the first half of the episode.

Sigh... I waited six months for this too...

The second half was much more tasteful and sexy. After Riko doses off due to her weakness to alcohol, Keita turns into a horny animal due to his drunkenness and gets it on with Ako. The best scene was when they French-kiss and Keita tells Ako to only suck on his tongue and then vice versa. I thoroughly enjoyed that particular scene, but that’s beside the point, as I will demonstrate…

Ecchi anime is like those flashy internet ads that say you have won a new I-Pod Nano!!!!!!!!! Or some other blatantly outrageous lie: they’re all a damn trap. Ecchi anime lures in unsuspecting randy male otaku in promising ecchi moments and the newest and hottest 2D character designs… and provides them exactly that. The problem is, hentai is superior in every way in terms of its satisfaction power, and real anime is superior in every way in terms of enjoyment of a real story. In the end, Ecchi anime ends up getting nothing accomplished other than to piss of its viewers. I’m not criticizing ecchi itself, for most shows nowadays slip in a little bit of ecchi here and there and that’s totally fine; legitimate anime like Haruhi, Shana and Gurren Lagann have a heavy amount of ecchi in them, but none of them actually uses their ecchi to define themselves as a genre. It is when a show has ecchi and nothing else that the show falls apart.

Kiss x Sis is good example of this kind of show, not that they are difficult to find or anything nowadays, as the anime industry is infested with them.

A recently hobby that I’ve acquired is the tiering and ranking of arbitrary subjects in terms of how good or bad they are. I used to do this in terms of favorite anime or characters but now it has totally spiraled out of control. I’ve made lists for best soundtracks, best couples, best tsundere, best anime OP and EDs, best seiyuus, hottest/moe anime characters, the worst of these categories, and of course, most annoying speech tendencies.

However fun this activity is, it is rather difficult. The only lists that I am completely satisfied at the moment are my top anime and characters list, which I will probably share in some subsequent post. This makes sense because I have been working on them the longest, well before this obsession developed. And even these two lists are subject to change, due to the fact that I am always digesting new shows and forgetting or taking older shows for granted (Which reminds me, I better fix my Top 10 anime page of this blog, since that list is about as accurate as me trying to read something without my glasses).

My Most Annoying Speech Tendencies list is by far one of the least developed ones, but it is definitely the most original and has the most potential to be the subject of a humorous post. Keep in mind that this is not a list of most annoying voices, but most annoying speech tendencies. If it were, this list would be way too long to handle; recent anime and annoying voices almost share a one-to-one correlation with each other, and the blame primarily goes to moe, i.e. characters like Asahina Mikuru (forget Mikuru Beam, Mikuru Voice has much more potentially destructive force) (Kugi’s voice is an exception, for those who might see a contradiction in my arguments. I view (or hear, would be more appropriate) her voice as goddamn sexy, rather than annoying). Anyway, without further ado…

Top 6 (Because 6 is cooler than 5) Most Annoying Speech Tendencies

6. Isaac and Miria from Baccano!

Isaac: Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrriaaaaaaa!

Miria: Isaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkuuuuuuuuu!

Their tendency to always say each other’s name before they speak to each other in an elongated and exasperating manner puts them up at number 6.

Complemented by Onosaka Masaya’s intrinsic ability to put an annoying and somewhat homosexual spin on whatever character he voices and Miria’s screechy voice, most annoying speech tendencies can’t get better than when it comes to this duo.

Now, if you’re asking why are there two characters sharing one slot on this list, you need to understand that if you do split them, it would be like splitting an atom; it is forbidden to do so. fangzhao over at Mikotoism has similar views when it comes to this subject matter.

5. Wilhelmina Carmel from Shakugan no Shana

Carmel-san’s propensity to “de arimasu” everything so consistently is something to behold. Most characters with speech tendencies break out of their habits at least 10% of the time, but not Carmel-san. What adds to the annoying factor is that it is so freaking long. “Desu”, “Nya” and other similar characters are more bearable by the fact that their sentence enders are only one to two syllables, while “de arimasu” extends for a whopping five syllables, multiply that by the number of times she speaks, and you have a character that sits at number five on the most annoying speech tendencies list.

On another note, the fact that subbers actually sub in her “de arimasu” into the English translation makes it that much more annoying. “De arimasu” at the end of a sentence just doesn’t work in the English grammatical structure.

4. Kamio Mizusu from Air

“Gao!” as she hits her head in a cutesy manner with her own fist…

Ugg… I hated this character. Her “Gao” tendencies weren’t even that bad in terms of how often she recited it. It was just too cheesy and fake. I didn’t buy for a second that it was moe or whatever it was trying to convey about her character (that she was retarded?… ). Now that I think about it, there are other characters in Air that were also damn annoying when it came to how they speak: Kirishima Kano and Michiru. I can’t put my fingers on exactly why they were annoying, and I just don’t care enough about the show to pinpoint exactly what made them make me want to vomit out of my ears…

Basically what I’m trying to say is Air blows (no pun-intended).

3. The Misaka clones from Toaru Majitsu no Index

Remember when I mentioned how long Carmel-san’s speech tendency was (Assuming you don’t have anterograde amnesia…)? Well, The Misaka clones’ tendency is much much worse. The first thing you will notice is that they refer to themselves in third person. That wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t say the fact that they just said something whenever they said something!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those who are confused, basically this is what a Misaka clone would say to you if she hated your guts,

“Misaka really dislikes your guts, Misaka says as she looks at (insert your name here) disgustingly,”

Just like Carmel-san, and probably more so, they never break their own rules. However original their speech tendency was, it got old and irritating very, very fast.

2. Link (The “Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, Princess” version) from The Legend of Zelda

Now, he isn’t exactly an anime character, but that’s okay, because he’s too legendary to be left out in a discussion about annoying speech tendencies.

I must be clear about the fact that this is the cartoon Link we are talking about, not the ones in the Legend of Zelda video games, the ones that are totally mute…

Here is a video for your enjoyment of this great character.

1. Last Order from Toaru Majitsu no Index

She is a character that inherits the Misaka clones’ speech tendencies with her own twist: She says “Misaka” twice when referring to herself. This might sound like one of those cop-out situations in an RPG or something, “This new monster you encountered is much more powerful, even though it uses the same sprite as a previous monster and the only difference is that its stats are doubled…” but adding that second “Misaka” in there really does magnify things tenfold.

Last Order – “Misaka has the most annoying speech tendency in the whole world, Misaka Misaka states affirmatively as she crosses her arms in her pride.”

ugh…

I discovered this series of videos though Sankaku Complex over the summer. They are basically compilation videos of every OP and ED of the latest anime season. The songs are altered so that they flow into each other, and when a song does change, the background image of the video changes to a picture denoting which show the song is from, along with the name of the song and the artist. The latest volume released so far is volume 7, which is separated into two parts, and it compiles every OP and ED songs of the summer 2009 season.

These videos are quite popular on Nico Nico Douga. For those of you who don’t know what Nico is, it’s basically a video sharing site in Japan similar to YouTube, but the catch is, you have to have an account to see any of the videos on it, which can prove to be a pain for us non-Japanese speaking individuals. Luckily if you type in “How to sign up on Nico Nico Douga” or something into Google, you can find a simple guides that direct you step by step though the registration process.

Here is a link to Anisong Mixxx Volume 6. which features songs from the Spring 2009 anime season.  Sankaku is the only English site I know that allows for Nico streaming without registration.  You can also browse through the Nico charts and search for videos on Nico there, and its all in English.  So this is another alternative if you really want to watch Nico Videos aside from signing up on the actual site.

I was sitting in East Asian Literature class today (What class I was in is kinda irrelevant… actually, it’s kinda ironic) and randomly got a nosebleed.  Thankfully it was a relatively large class and I just stealthily slid out of my seat and took care of the problem. What actually caused the sudden discharge of blood surplus is a mystery. It’s not like I was looking at NSFW images or anything on my laptop, nor was the professor hot or anything (actually both statements are for the most part true. The professor is actually kinda hot and I was wasting time on my laptop browsing through anime related websites that had potentially NSFW material on them.) But one thing is for sure though… and that is that nosebleeds aren’t caused by arousal of any kind. According to my sources (by sources I mean the first couple of links on the first page of Google search, one of which was a Yahoo! Answers question.), the link between nosebleeds and arousal in Japanese anime and manga started with some old wives’ tale. It’s supposed to be a euphemism or an implication for ejaculation. Recently, female characters have begun showing the same tendency as their horny male counterparts, most notably fujoshi and lesbian characters (with Kanako from Maria Holic in the lead). What nosebleeds can imply for those female characters can only be stopped by your imagination.

This got me thinking, what if arousal actually did cause nosebleeds? Well, on one hand, it could cause a lot of unnecessary messes and complications, and on the other, it might not be so bad. Everyone would have to carry around those portable Kleenex packs. Considering how sick our minds are, we would probably all bleed to death by the end of the day. Putting that aside… let’s look at some of the lighter complications of nosebleeds. People would inadvertently bleed in front of someone they did not wish to see them do so, this would lead to the other person bleeding back or ignoring the bleed and the person all together from there on out. This would ultimately lead to human society taking a totally animalistic turn in its sexuality. Everyone would be completely open about their sexuality whether they like it or not. No beating around the bush, no religious sects suppressing any cardinal desires, no hiding our loli or furry fetishes. Everything would be out in the open and practicality would ensue, whether this is a good or bad thing would be up to whoever lived in such an alternative universe.

What was the point of this post you ask? Well, I haven’t updated my blog in ages, which is a shame, so what better way to give it some life than with a completely useless post about nosebleeds? (Anything?) Anyway, if I were to post anything again, it would probably be about Railgun, which is airing at the moment and Shakugan no Shana S, which I am patiently waiting for the second episode for.

It’s pretty hard to find topics to talk about when you’re way behind on current anime (Especially if you’ve lost enthusiasm in it. I’m looking at you Canaan… and also Haruhi, jeez, I’m one episode away from breaking out of Endless Eight, I guess the arc is so good that I refuse to put an end to it.(Let’s watch the first five episodes again so it NEVER ends!! jk jk). So I decided to write up another tsundere? article.

Let’s focus on one of the four tsundere wonders with this one; Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, arguably my favorite character and a character that I can never remember the full name of. There is no doubt her tsundere power levels are through the roof, but it is not clear how well she fares with the rest of the Kugi-four. The purpose of this article is to hopefully solve that mystery. Ohh, suspense, suspense!

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière from Zero no Tsukaima

Does she qualify as a tsunderekko? And if so, does she succeed as one?

Louise exhibits nearly all tendencies of a tsundere flawlessly starting from episode one of the anime, and for good reasons. She is a second year student at Tristain Academy and can’t seem to do anything right. The reason all of her peers call her “Louise the Zero” is because she has yet to accomplish anything regarding her magic work. All of the teasing and self-loathing leads her to become very bitter with the people surrounding her. To top it off, in a familiar summoning ceremony, the only familiar summoning ceremony, she accidentally summoned Saito, a teenager from another world. At first, Saito seemed to be nothing but a useless peasant to Louise, until she found a use for him: As the outlet of all of her abuse she needs to let loose after her failure at the ceremony and in life.

The way in which Louise treats Saito throughout the series is quite dynamic, in two different ways. At first, Saito was nothing but a dog to her, and her treatment of him went well with that notion. She revealed her naked body to him nonchalantly, made him clean underwear, etc. But after incidents regarding the Gandalfr, and having spent so much time with him, she begins to harbor feelings for him. She doesn’t downright admit it at first, even to herself, but it is evident though her jealous behavior and reactions whenever another character would come on to Saito (especially Siesta). It was when she realized that Saito might go back to his own world that she admitted her love for him (to herself…). During the end of the first season, when Saito chose to give up his opportunity to return in order to be with Louise, was when their relationship started… a relationship of ruthless abuse.

This brings me to the second reason why Saito and Louise’s relationship is so dynamic. The first reason is because of the 180 degree turn she exhibits in the long run, from Saito’s summoning up to the formation of their “second” contract after Louise first made use of her void magic. The second reason is because of the countless 180 degree turns she does thereafter. In season two and especially season three, Louise would often (as in over 20 times each episode) go from totally-love struck Louise to “I’ll blow your brains up” Louise in an instant. If Saito showed the least enthusiasm in other girls (such as talking to them), or even if he didn’t, as in, another girl came on to him, it was game over for Saito. Whether it would be a kick to the groin, a brutal whipping or an explosion in the face, he received that tsun side of her well. But her dere side balances out her murderous tsun side accordingly, even if it doesn’t show up as much, as shown in this scene.

Now that I think about it, Louise is a beast of a tsundere when it comes to the far ends of the tsundere spectrum. She is not as strong when it comes to the middle (transition) of that spectrum. With vicious and otherworldly abuse methods to back up her tsun-side, and equally strong proof of her dere-side (she would be willing to sacrifice her life for Saito – end of the second season), it is no wonder not many other characters can match her in what she does best. In fact, most tsundere characters all need some time of contemplation before they are deemed a true tsundere, this is not even necessary for a character like Louise.

Verdict: Tsundere

Tsundere effectiveness: 10 Urusais

until next time…

Now that I’ve finally regained my ability to get online (heh, silly me to think that I could actually update this thing while on a trip to China even if I did have access to the internet (traveling =/= usual habits, routines, etc. in terms of free time and priority)), I waste no time in updating this blog… actually, I’ve already gotten back for three days. Regaining momentum of previous seemingly mundane activities can actually be quite a feat. For example, I have been watching anime like a mad man earlier this summer, but when I first got back, I actually had no urge to watch anything, in fact, it felt like a chore to seek out, download, and sit through those long 24 something minutes of animation (22 something if you decide to skip the OP and ED…).

I hate bloggers that make tons of excuses and go on giant tangents that do nothing more than comfort their guilty consciences because they’ve been neglecting their blogging duties or have nothing better to write about…………………………………………………………………….

Ah, the hardships of getting back to something after you’ve abandoned it for a while… The first hardship that I can come up with right now is figuring out what Haruhi episode I was on. There are two factors that make this task somewhat of a challenge. First, Haruhi episodes do not follow conventional episode 1, episode 2, episode 3 type of progression. Second, “Endless Eight” really have me scratching my head on exactly how many “Endless Eights” were there and where did I left off. I have two choices to make, either figure it out by searching it online with the risk of spoiling myself, or ask a friend who is up to date on Haruhi with a greater risk of spoiling myself (seriously this guy does not comprehend the idea of “spoilers are bad and may potentially wreck a viewing experience). Both choices seem very dangerous and I am in a quite a quandary (seriously, there is no way I’m getting spoiled after waiting so patiently through all that “Endless Eight” bullshit.)

On another note,

I’ve recently figured out something. Having just watched Lucky Star, I’ve discovered Deretsun was blurted out by Shiraishi Minoru in Lucky Channel when he and Kogami Akira were discussing the character archetype of Hiiragi Kagami. Now this is very awkward for me because obviously Lucky Star came before this little dingy little blog ever saw the light of the earth (and even if it came after the blog, people might still deny it due to the huge magnitude of difference between the power, authority and overall presence of the show and this blog), I can’t call this blog’s name as my original creation, nor can I say I named it after the term that was used in Lucky Star, for I had no idea of it until a couple of weeks ago. Then there is the whole issue of “is this really a big deal?”, because, really, Shiraishi only blurted out “Deretsun” once and it was quite quick… I have decided. From now on, I shall proclaim that this blog’s title was originally derived from the term, “Deretsun” originally used in Lucky Star – this makes this thing a lot easier to deal with, and Lucky Star ain’t such a bad show anyway. (I’ve officially joined the ranks of those anibloggers that derive their blog names from obscure references from obscure anime (which is like 85% of all aniblogs.))

I’m surprised this blog actually got consistent hits, albeit less than when I actually updated this thing, during my long absence. It means either I was getting a lot of new readers who were unaware of the deadness of the blog, or I have some really devoted readers who checked every day for my triumphant return. Either way, I’m somewhat flattered because I truly thought the hits would bomb once I left.

delicous picture has only 0.01% relevance to this post.

I haven’t been blogging often like I’ve used to, several reasons have been devised to explain this phenomenon. First, an old friend of mine came back for a visit in the middle of last week, and I’ve been pretty busy keeping up with old times. Second is the lack of new episodes from the series I’m watching. Haruhi 15 taught us that Endless Eight is really endless or the fact that Haruhi is the best show to have ever existed, either one, the situation is making me very nervous. Canaan have yet to release episode 2 (I will definitely follow this show very closely in this blog, in fact, the waiting is hurting me a bit), and who could forget about Jyuden-chan. Yes, I’m watching this show, although the lack of speedy subs and… quality have refrained me from blogging about this series just yet… And the third reason is my totally incompetence as a writer. New, original, kick ass post topics aren’t coming to me as rapidly coming to me lately like they used to. Though I’m sure this drought of ideas will wear out rather soon.

Out of the three reason, the last one probably have the most impact on what has happened this past week, that is, the lack of posts. Blogging is a lot of fun, especially if it is about anime, and there is no way I’m going to let a little writer’s block getting in the way of the success of this blog so far and the successes to come.

I’ll give an update of what is going on with me right now, since I haven’t been on Twitter all that much either these past 10 days. Remember the old friend I talked about? Of course you do, you read it less than a couple of minutes ago (no offense to those less fortunate slow readers… seriously get the fuck out… jkjk). Well any way, the old friend happens to have the ultimate internet connection, downloading at around five anime series a second (actual speed may vary) and has provided me with a healthy amount of anime to chow on. Right now I’m watching Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid. I tell you, this is the probably the most elusive series I’ve ever come a crossed. I thought my internet hunting skills were proficient, but this series proved me wrong. I enjoyed the first season and Fumoffu is one of my most favorite series ever so you know I was quite happy to find this in his collection. I no longer had to bear with shady torrents and random-French-subbed-episodes-disguised-as-English-subs that this series is legendary for. Currently I’m on episode 8 and will probably finish it tomorrow. It is a riot.

Now, regarding the months to come. I’ll be leaving for China very soon. Why am I going to China you ask? Well, coincidentally, I’m Chinese (this information was going to be blurted out sooner or later, might as well do it now. And it wasn’t a total mystery, since the self portrait I drew myself on the “About Me” page resembled someone Asian… I think… minus the red hair). I’m checking the websites that are blocked on the internet in China right now on Wikipedia and is getting very nervous. I think WordPress is safe, but I have doubts about Twitter. Twitter is unblocked as of now, but they are so flip-floppy about this, that I guess no website on the web is truly safe from their censoring ways… sigh, I better start using Bing or something because it looks like Google is in the red zone in terms of this whole blocking issue. I don’t even know about my anime download sources (sniff… Canann… I’ll die a little inside if I can’t watch this series over there)

I’ll update on my adventures in China once I get there… or not, depending on the level of care I think you guys actually give about some random dude’s vacation, as of right now, I suspect none. But I will definitely blog about anime, once I get my ideas rolling again.

Jumping out of a exploding helicopter has been a popular pastime lately.

I finally managed to watch the first episode of CANAAN. Plotwise… well I have no opinions of that, since it confused the hell out of me. I might as well have watched the RAW because there was just too much information thrown out all at once. There’s also the problem with anime characters all looking the same. Of course, this problem is always adverted later on when you watch more of a series, but for now, I couldn’t tell apart certain characters, especially the secretary and the leader of the Snakes… (or are they the same character, I told you I was confused ^_^;) However, I’m really interested in finding the history behind the relationship between the camera girl and Canaan, also the whole mystery behind the masked people spazzing out. In a way, the confusion adds to my enthusiasm to find out more, so in that sense, the plot is a success so far.

Random picture that you won’t get if you didn’t watch the episode! And even if you did watch it, you still wouldn’t get it!

But leaving the plot aside, everything else about this show makes my five senses orgasm at the same time. The action sequences are top notch, the animation is smooth, and the character designs and art style is damn cool. Of course, this is the first episode, so I assume a lot more money would be put into this one than later episodes. Still I have not witnessed this much visual/audio win in a long time. The opening is also incredible, though I can’t say much about the song itself, though it fits the atmosphere of the show perfectly (and it might grow on me later), but the visuals are stunning. P.A. Works attention to quality is astonishing, this show has motivated me to check out more of their work.

Voice acting wise… I think it gets the job done, though Canaan’s voice is a little distracting. I keep on getting Tsugumi in my head whenever she talks. But the quality of the voices is professionally done. On a side note, I couldn’t even tell the voice of the secretary was done by Rie Tanaka at first, even though she’s one of my favorite voice actresses. I guess I’m not use to her playing such a devious character after just finishing Hayate no Gotoku!. Also, the camera girl’s voice sounds a lot like Aya Hirano. Eh, I should really stop saying camera girl; I’m going to have to find out her name eventually if I’m going to keep on blogging about this show… Oh, her name is Maria, did not know that.

One gripe I had with this episode was the ignorance of the crowd in the festival. People are having seizures, falling into rivers, getting shot up by assault rifles, and the crowd doesn’t even have a damn clue. Though it would be extremely difficult to realize something is wrong when there are fireworks, thousands of people talking and the festival itself going on, it only takes one person to realize what is going on for it to create a chain reaction for panic. And having the crowd panic wouldn’t really damage the direction of the plot I would think… unless I’m wrong, which most likely would be the case.

Seriously, this show makes my eyes and ears bleed pure bliss:

I’ve had bad experiences with accidentally skipping an episode or chapter in a show or manga. The worst incident happened when I was reading the Genshiken manga. I was happily reading through the story. The members of Genshiken were on their summer trip to Kuruizawa and the Sasahara and Ogiue crisis was about to be solved. So I’m reading and reading and WAM! Suddenly Sasa and Ogi were in the woods, and Sasa was apologizing to Ogi for some apparent reason. Being the noob that I was at the time, I paid little heed to my confusion and kept on reading. It was later that I found out that I had skipped a chapter, but it wasn’t just any chapter, it was probably the most pivotal chapter in the whole manga. I read through the entire manga only to find out later that I had missed it. From that day forward, I vowed to never make the same mistake again.

To advert certain disaster in the future, I always double check to see if I was indeed finish with an episode or chapter before continuing on (Of course, this doesn’t happen if I’m watching or reading something with episodes/chapters back to back, I’m not that forgetful). For example, even if I am quite positive that I had watched an episode the day before, I still click on the file and have the progress bar jump around a bit to ascertain that fact. Then Haruhi 14 comes… If you’ve seen the episode (I don’t know why you’re here if you haven’t seen it yet… Slow internet?) You can see why I have met my match the moment I opened up the newly torrented file today. “Something was strange, I somehow got that feeling.” Was my thought when the episode began. Kyon was lying on the couch watching a baseball game in which he cared for neither teams. His cell phone rings and Haruhi’s voice burst through the speaker commanding Kyon to get ready. What the fuck? Haruhi is known for her dirty antics, but this was going a little too far. It was time for progress bar abuse. To avoid potentially spoiling myself, I clicked conservatively rightward toward the halfway point of the file, somewhere past the midpoint, my sweating started to… not diminish at all… The entire Haruhi 14 was an imperfect replica of Haruhi 13! It was like episode 12 and 13 had a kid and due to unfavorable DNA mutations, we are stuck with a shitty new episode. But like all children born “special”, they might have some unknown potential hidden deep within the retarded look in their faces. Think savants who can solve cube roots of arbitrary numbers faster than a calculator… And I’m hoping that is just what episode 14 is, an incredible child with hidden potentials that will hopefully be revealed soon (like next week). Episode 13 did it for episode 12, now I’m hoping for it to happen again. I must not lose faith in Haruhi, because I know if any series can totally backfire their own “screw ups”, it’s this one.

Repeat episode deserves repeat post, lol. But to not look like a complete lazy ass, I made some slight modifications  here and there to emulate how the episode was set up (Because I’m so innovative and smart like that, and also, this completes my excuse for making the post longer than it should be). In all seriousness though, there is not much to talk about this episode, as it essentially was a complete remake of last week’s episode (I knew Haruhi was popular but to receive a remake even when the original is still running?? This is getting ridiculous).

Fansubbers are gods among men. Their work is strenuous, frowned upon from a majority of the anime industry and motivated by nothing more than the adulation and gratitude received from their fans. And yet, they still manage to release punctual, accurate (for the most part), and professional translations week after week after week. We recognize the blood and sweat put into their works and we thank them, we rely on them, and we question them, how could mere mortals accomplish such awesome deeds?

However, there is one faulty road that some fansubbers decide to occasionally take that gives me a lot of mixed feelings.

Just when you are about to praise about how a fansub equals or even exceeds the quality of a professionally subbed work, something smart-aleck like in the above screen wiggle its way into an otherwise flawless work. I guess these are the little things that make fansubs what they are, the occasional jab at the characters, translating the Engrish “sankyu” as “arigatou”, and breaking the fourth way and directly speaking to their audience. These methods are a fansubbers way of telling us that they are there toiling day and night trying to get us the latest releases. They are not robotic, like official translations, which are very accurate and to the point, but lack heart and soul.

But then this question comes in, does a sub work really need a soul. The purpose of a sub is to help us understand the enigma that is Japanese. If random things start to pop up in between the translations it can be very distracting and can even kill the mood of an entire episode. I realize that they are doing this for free, but it is a huge responsibility nonetheless. Some fansubbers need to understand the weight their jobs carry. Hundreds upon thousands of fans heavily depend on them to bring them the anime they deserve, anime in its original language, in its true form, not defiled by ear bleed inducing dub work and heavy editing. To underestimate this responsibility and pull things like intentionally translating something wrong or ruining a scene can not only be disgusting, but also disappointing as well.