Making exceptions

While I generally find myself easily annoyed by the usual schoolkid cutesy cliche series, and often avoid them like the plague, there's always exceptions to every rule.

First off, "Windy Tales". I've mentioned this before; it still stands as a very charming, and very uniquely styled, and very well written little experiment by Production I.G. I'll be sticking with this one. It might even wind up ranking in my top 10 someday. Mostly because it's so different.

Secondly, not quite as high-ranking to me at all, but still surprisingly charming, is "Kamichu". Which I wouldn't have bothered with at all, except I saw "HDTV" next to the download's title on AnimeSuki, so I thought "what the heck". It starts out with a young middle-school girl eating lunch with her friend, and she innocently says "I became a god". All kind of off-hand like it was normal.

And the weird thing is, it is normal. While it's just these rather stereotypical anime schoolgirls and all, there's this whole nifty mythological underpinning going on. There are little "Earth Spirits" everywhere, in every nutty shape and form. There are other gods, including the "main" god of the town who really just wants to go off and start a band. And when it's confirmed that the girl really is a god herself, everyone pretty much accepts it happily as if it's a normal everyday thing.

It's got some funny-cute kinds of moments to it. In episode 4, the goverment summons her to the capitol to help deal with a visiting Martian -- they give her a visitor badge with the label "God" on it. One of those silly little things that just struck me the right way, I guess.

Anyway, it makes for entertaining-enough casual viewing, and the hi-def PQ is quite good.

Finally, after many months, I finally rented disc 2 of "Stellvia". I must have forgotten to add the others to my rental queue at the time. No biggie, it was pretty easy to remember what everyone's role was since it's not that challenging a show. Supposedly the series is left wide open for a 2nd season, but news recently said that there won't ever be a 2nd season for some rather final reason. Anyway, seeing that news made me realize I hadn't seen it in a while, so I thought I'd continue giving it a chance. It's still not all that great, but it's got it's moments.

All told, though, I think I'd rather have new episodes of "Tsubasa Chronicle" for my Sunday mornings. Heh.