Pani Poni Dash – Real-Time Blogging Episode 1

My thoughts on this series.

I’ve read a lot of good things about Pani Poni Dash. Of course, I read a lot of good things about Planetes, and we all know how that turned out. Anyway, I decided to give the show a shot. Now, a famous movie-star/male-model like myself doesn’t have a lot of time to scour the internet for this shit, so I just watched the first copy I could find. It happened to be a streaming version from Funimation’s Youtube channel. The video quality was good, but the audio was dubbed. OK, fine, whatever, that doesn’t bother me. After all, the dubs for plenty of other shows have been good. So I hit play, sat back, and started to watch. If you want to watch and read my comments, click this link to see the episode. Here’s how it went:

00:27 – OK, interesting title screen, seems more subdued than I expected.

00:41 – Let me guess, Planet of the Apes parody?

1:00 – Yep.

1:27 – Why would someone who graduated from MIT go into education? MIT doesn’t even offer degrees in education. Wait, sorry, this is anime so logic doesn’t factor into it.

1:38 – Oh, here is the crazy, super-moe opening, as expected.

2:15 – Kind of a catchy song, but not amazing. At least it’s better than that fucking Lucky Star opening. That thing was an audio holocaust.

3:00 – In the toilet? Where this show belongs, probably.

20 Shittiest Anime of the Decade (2000-2009)

I’ve seen me lots of animu in the last decade. I started watching this stuff in late 2001, and it’s ruined my life ever since. That being said, I felt it was my obligation to impart upon you the fact that there are terrible anime out there. Sometimes it seems like it’s all moeblobs and slice of life bullshit. I’m not sure if anyone else has done this yet, so I’m giving you my list of the 20 Most Shittiest Anime of 2000’s. Keep in mind that even though I have ranked these, they are all equally shitty. My list probably won’t sit well with the slice of life fans or the moe-loving fapboys, but rest assured these anime all need to be sent directly to hell.

Dishonorable Mention) Most Pointless Award – Rebuild of Evangelion – Why Hideaki Anno, why? You impressed us with Gunbuster, you further solidified your directing talent with Nadia, and you amazed us with your opus Evangelion. After that you did… well, not really anything. You went on to make a bunch of really shitty live action movies. You failed and failed and failed. You weren’t able to succeed in the mainstream, and that’s OK. But when you returned to the world of anime, what did you do? You decided to make A MOTHERFUCKING REMAKE of your biggest cash cow. Hmmm. Out of ideas already? Apparently so. Either that, or you wasted all of your money on full body Asuka pillows and mosaic screened Japanese porn. Now, I will agree that Rebuild of Evangelion was extremely well made, but it was also extremely pointless. Evangelion was by far one of the most incredible anime of all time. And remaking it is retarded at best.

Dishonorable Mention) Worst Director Award – Mamoru Oshii – To all the fans of Oshii… fuck you. This guy is terrible. He’s a horrible director. He has no concept of pacing or intriguing storytelling. There is an old writer’s guideline that says, “Show, don’t tell.” Basically, it means you should describe what’s going on, and not just say that it happened. It provides for a much richer experience for the reader. Oshii’s work is all flawed by the same problem. He “tells” and doesn’t “show.” He wants to bring up philosophical ideas, and his method of doing that is by having two talking heads spout off paragraphs of dialogue at each other for huge chunks of time. This could potentially work in a book format, but in film, which is a visual medium, it fails miserably. Immediately, this becomes boring to all but the most insane Oshii-loving otaku. I swear to god, Oshii fans are practically a cult. To them, Oshii is like Jesus and he can do no wrong. He could film himself taking a shit, and his fans would call it the greatest piece of cinema to ever grace the earth. The truth is, 99% of everything he has put to the screen is garbage. Oh, and Oshii, nobody gives a fuck about Basset Hounds, so stop putting them in all your goddamn movies.

Planetes

Fuck you Hachimaki, fuck you.

A lot of times, people think back to the “good old days” of any medium (film, TV, music, anime), and only remember the good stuff. They tend to forget about the huge mountain of shit that got produced every year. That’s why they can get tricked into thinking that the current stuff is terrible, but in the past “EVERYTHING WAS AMAZING ZOMG!!!1!!1!”

Anime is not free from this. While it does seem that, with the onslaught of moe shit, never-ending shows like Naruto, Bleach, and Inuyasha still on the airwaves, and the fact that studio Gonzo still exists, anime is on the decline. However, that isn’t the case at all. Anime companies in Japan have continuously produced giant, steaming turds every single year, just like Hollywood.

One of those turds is a series called Planetes, which, like so many shows, started out as a good idea but was spontaneously aborted by really shitty writing, and what was left was such a bloody mess that nothing of worth could be salvaged.