One would have to be infinitely dense to not have seen the Holmes/Watson direct allusion between Victorica and Kujo. Of course, I’m confident that there was no love interest between Doyle’s two iconic characters. Although, knowing the internet, rule 34 would have cured that by now.

I suppose it is asking too much to produce a story about detectives and mysteries that doesn’t have a Holmes-type character. The archetype has become the essence of the brilliant investigator. Moreover, people accept it. They even wish and expect it. So, the obvious result is a batch of characters loosely based around a stock set of archetypes and plots.

We’re supposed to forgive this slight simply because Victorica is freaking adorable…so damn freaking adorable. Are we supposed to fall all over ourselves just because she pulls out a pipe before solving a mystery?

Well, I say, not unless there are bubbles!

At least, they haven’t had her pull out a magnifying glass.

The most unique aspect of this show is the endless wardrobe that Victorica seems to posses. In particular, the many bonnets and headbands (you had to see that coming).

No, this isn’t one of those, “and it was awesome” post. It is one of those, “I thought I finished it seven years ago” post.

So, I’m sitting in my living room all cozy and whatnot due to the relinquishing of the ambient temperature during the season Winter, henceforth known as coldy-time. It being Sunday; me having completed my usual Sunday jog. I was settling into a nice morning of watching television. It occurred to me that I had plenty of time to finish the Last Exile re-watch project that I had started several days prior.

Sometime during the re-watching of Last Exile, it occurred to me that I was not quite recalling the events of said series. As the episodes progressed, I found that I was recalling less and less about the story. Until the point that I could not foretell anything that was going to occur in the final episodes leading to the climax of the story. This troubled me.

By story’s end, I had come to the complete realization that I had never fully watched the show. My re-watch project was a re-watch not. It was a watch project; yet, I was unaware until the very end.

Who knows how many more years I would have gone without knowing this, if not for the happenstance of wanting to watch it again.

Also, Al’s hair thingies are awesome.

Let us get this out of the way first: MM! is all about a girl that goes Ultimate Fighter on a boy who happens to become sexually aroused by being beaten by girls.

…and it’s pure awesome.

Violent female protagonist are nothing new to anime. For that matter, the basic concept of this show isn’t much different from something along the lines of Zero no Tsukaima,  Toradora!, Hayate no Gotoku!, or any other anime with a short long-haired innocent-looking female lead. It is, in fact, so common that it isn’t even that much of a novelty anymore. It’s almost expected. It isn’t even considered a personality defect.

It’s all great stuff.

I personally think that the form anime takes is a reflection of the collective consciousness of its fans. It is a result of the feedback loop of merchandise and viewership along with fandom on the Internet, resulting in the production of anime that best fits what fans want to watch.  On the one hand, we have shows like Bleach, which prove that a significant block of anime fans are mindless teenagers with no taste. On the other hand, we have the fact that Bleach is a pile of crap. Seriously, why haven’t people realized this yet.  On another hand (we have lots of hands), we have shows like MM! that indicate many anime fans want to be beaten by little girls.

It’s all very straightforward, actually.

Also, I’m diggin’ that bunny-ears hair band.

There is never a flat chested teenage girl in a zombie movie. It’s a rule.

HotD doesn’t break any new ground when it comes to the zombie genre. The most unique aspect of the show is that it is probably the first “classic” zombie themed anime I’ve seen, ever. The basics are all normal. Some unknown pathogen is turning everyone into a mindless flesh eating killing machine. It is contracted through a bite. Everyone and their mother is being turned into a zombie. The whole world has gone to hell.

If you look closely, there is a bullet dodging some boobs

HotD is blazing new ground in the field of boob-physics, though. I’ve never seen breast move, in an anime, as they do in HotD. It isn’t just bouncing. These things have minds of their own. There is (literally) a scene where boobs dodge a bullet, individually. Yeah, you read that right. One boob moves out of the way. Then the other boob moves out of the way.

The scene where we see shock wave dissipation through boobs is very interesting. I think they could have done better. Obviously, they decided to animate that scene though simple assumptions about how boobies would react to short high-frequency shocks. Personally, I would have started with a computer simulation, followed by some experiments with high-speed digital cameras and ballistics gel, then animated based on the available modeling.

But, that’s just me. Nobody cares about what I think, anyway.

Also, little girls supplying ammo seems to be another level of adorable.

–

Why didn’t I use “breast” instead of “boobs.” Well, “breast” is too mature of a word and “titties” is too immature. I decided on a happy medium.

Oddly enough, it was the lack of pants that originally turned me off of this show. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were.  Strike Witches has so many gimmicky aspects that I figured there was no way an interesting story lay underneath.

Let’s list them out, shall we:

1. No pants – girls don’t wear pants or dresses. Sometimes, they go commando (I’ve noted, that I approve of this).
2. All girl/witch defense force
3. Mysterious non-human invincible enemy, kinda’
4. Girls with guns, big guns
5. Girls with magical powers
6. Girls with magical animal ears/tails
7. Striker units

I mean, really?

I wasn’t all that wrong, either. While the plot is fun and the characters are entertaining, the story isn’t very interesting. It’s fairly predictable.

Oddly enough, it was the lack of pants that brought me back to this show. It was intriguing. Where are the pants? What did they do with them? Is it a war-time conservation effort? I imagined that it may be necessary to use the fabric for army uniforms.

If the answers to my questions were presented in the show, I can only surmise that the reason I didn’t take that in was because I was preoccupied with fluffy tails and big guns.