One of reasons that I like Chiaki is that he is that rarity in anime,a competent protagonist who understands his own competence. The usualpattern is that the protagonist is either unskilled (and learns throughthe course of the anime) or is basically an idiot savant, ferociouslyskilled but without understanding.

(Nodame herself is an example of the latter category, and one of thethemes throughout Nodame Cantabile is people trying to get her toharness and direct that ferocious skill, to think about and understandwhat she is doing

(Spoiler warning, and in fact this is probablygoing to be incomprehensible if you haven'tseen the episode or read a summary, such as here .)

I suspect that we're supposed to consider Nami an unsympathetic and weakcharacter and feel that her sisters were more or less in the right. Ihave the opposite reaction: this was a major parenting failure and Namiis a victim. Here's why:

If someone is traumatized so badly that they have horrifyinghallucinations, the correct response is not

(Well, one of them.)

There are three shutter speeds for taking pictures of moving bicycles:

• too slow: the bicyclist and bicycle are motion blurred (usefulonly for artistic effect ).

• too fast: everything is frozen motionless and the bicyclistlooks like they are doing an unnatural track stand .

• just right: the rider and bike are sharp but there is stillvisible motion blur in the wheels (and perhaps the rider's feet),so the bike still looks like it is actually in motion.

The

Here are some quick (or at least short) reactions to all of the newshows of spring 2009 that I've watched some of, written down for variousfuzzy reasons. I am not going to try to summarize or review these, justgive some brief comments.

Rather than agonize over quality ratings, I've decided to rate showsbased purely on how eagerly I'm looking forward to the next episode,from +3 ('want more right now') to -3 (

(Warning: non-specific spoilers.)

I'll begin by saying that RideBack is one of those interesting animesthat I think is good but that I'm not sure is enjoyable.

RideBack starts out as a goofy but promising sports anime with someimplausible things lurking in the background, such as the conquest ofJapan by some new trans-national military organization. But after acouple of episodes it becomes evident that its real focus is not thesports plot (that was just to introduce us to the characters

I've been mulling over this for long enough, so it's time to actuallywrite something (warning, some spoilers):

Ultimately, I think Toradora! is a good series overallbut not an exceptional one. In hindsight (and after Author spurred me into rewatching the first two episodes), I feel that it hada strong beginning, a good but relatively ordinary middle, and endedvery strong with a powerful ending, partly because it was willing tohave its characters grow and change and partly because

One of the things that I've seen repeatedly in anime is what I call'disposable first episodes'. The purest form of the disposable firstepisode is where nothing in the first episode is ever seen again; ittakes place in a location that the story never revisits, involvescharacters (apart from the protagonists) that we never see again, andthe events are never referred to or affect anything.

(The most recent pure form disposable first episode that I canremember is the first episode of D.Gray

Once upon a time, I started watching both Naruto and One Piece ;since they were both well regarded shonen fighting shows, I expected toenjoy them more or less equally. Instead and rather to my surprise, Isoon lost interest in One Piece but kept watching Naruto for muchlonger. Afterwards, I spent some time thinking about why and what thedifference between the two shows was, because it was not as simple asdisliking one set of characters while liking the other.

I eventually decided that the crucial difference was

Author correctly points out theelephant in the room for sources of unsatisfying endings with unresolvedmysteries: adoptions of ongoing manga series (or any ongoing series,since there are adoptions of light novels too). The honest answer to hisquestion is that I didn't think of it; I was more or less only focusingon things that were within the control of the anime creators.

Having said that, it's still the anime studio's responsibility to solvethe problem. I can only think of two good