Countless Cat Gods #02 — Perfect Cherry Blossom

July 15th, 2011

 

Yes, it’s a Touhou joke.

Impressions:

Meh. This episode was even duller than the first. This week introduced Yoshino, the large breasted pink haired goddess of cherry blossoms holding spring for ransom to resurrect some tree and everybody’s quest to find her giant pot that Mayu threw out. And that’s… really about it. The other characters showed up to spit out their catchphrases, but that was really about it aside from using their literally deus ex powers to fix the problem that hadn’t existed 15 seconds prior. We could have skipped over all that and… well, given the show… I don’t even know what.

The show’s apparently content to not actually tell any decent jokes or do much more than fill twenty minutes. It’s just kind of here… existing. Again, it lacks any kind of punch or impact and it’s hard to tell what the show’s focus is trying to be, if any, especially with awful sequences like sitting there, slowly reading out a comic. That’s a new level of lazy, even for Japan and makes it painfully clear that somebody was scrambling at the last second to find ways to fill another minute of the episode.

Preview:

Imperishable Night.

Posted in Cat Gods | 9 Comments »

9 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Travis says:
    July 15, 2011 at 10:14 pm

    What would solve half of the industry’s problems, is simply not relying on cliches. Maybe the character is fourty, not ten going on eighteen. Maybe there’s more action, and less navel-gazing; maybe the navel-gazing doesn’t revolve around technobabble that has nothing to do with technology and sounds laughable if you know anything about the field involved.

    That, and less timewastery. Still, this is good simply for the reason that you managed to cram Touhou jokes in. I’ll watch this when they go back to Lotus Land Story. Or maybe Phantasmagoria of Flower View.

    • Jack says:
      July 16, 2011 at 9:40 am

      What would solve half of the industry’s problems, is simply not relying on cliches.

      Well see, this was one of my reasons of commenting on cliches in another post here and I tend to disagree with you, but only from a financial point-of-view (POV). From a quality POV, I agree with you.

      I think the anime “industry” has put themselves in a tough spot. Modern anime cliches are THE financial backbone that keeps that industry running. Without cliches, anime is dead.

      They can’t, at this point, ditch many of the cliches that long time anime viewers claim to be sick of because people keep buying and watching. That’s the disease we call “hope”.

      But I think the reality is this: we, anime fans, want the visual cliches with BETTER WRITING. Better scrips, better stories or different stories.

      That isn’t going to happen. It can’t.

      There are two sets of cliches, as I see it, that the anime industry is is banking on: visual (loli, catgirls, hair styles, eye size, etc.) and writing (plot, character personality, milieu, etc.).

      The anime industry has a perfect balance: they have one good set of visual cliches mixed in with one terrible set of writing/plot/charters. That’s called “product”, and that’s what anime is: product.

      Product is almost always the balance between one good element and one mediocre element that relies on psychological hope for improvement with offerings of occasional greatness to keep the disease from killing the host.

      Mediocrity keeps people employed, bloggers blogging and consumers buying. Eliminate the cliches and you kill the host.

      • Travis says:
        July 16, 2011 at 2:56 pm

        Wella course we end up disagreeing about a lot; I’m an innately disagreeable person, ha!.. But seriously, even if I usually tend to pick fights with your wording, I don’t mean anything by it; I just tend to stick to my beliefs and pontificate a bit.

        More to the point, you’ve really hit the nail on the proverbial head here. My crazy logic is that if we kill the host, beautiful, verdant new lifeforms can grow out of its bleeding stump; like with any good nurse tree. But that’s a risk, and a pretty big one. Is it worth it..? If I say yes, does that decrease the trustworthiness of the possibility?.. Dunno.

        I wouldn’t even mind attempts at changing the visual styles and experimenting. Change for change’s sake – but at that point, my concern is no longer even good, but is it ‘different’ – and once again, I just end up watching ’cause of the hope of eventual improvement. But, all things change eventually – one day, perhaps soon, this too shall pass. Even if not from a disease, organisms die in the end, and from there, someone or something usually rebuilds or regrows.

        • Aroduc says:
          July 16, 2011 at 7:35 pm

          It does bear saying that it’s execution that really matters in the end. There are really few if any new ideas left out there in the writing world, but it’s only when the presentation is poor and the tropes applied without thought that it becomes obvious (and unengaging) that they’re just creating a weak copy of someone else’s idea.

        • Anonymous says:
          July 16, 2011 at 7:47 pm

          Agreed 100%

        • Travis says:
          July 17, 2011 at 12:15 am

          Definitely – some of the most original stuff in the world isn’t very original at base premise, but is done in such a way that it’s incredibly unique; it’s like cooking, sort of. Sorry for rambling on in this old topic. It’s just been cropping up recently, and it makes me think about things.

          That and I’ve got literally zip to say about S7 Battle Network.

  • Anonymous says:
    July 16, 2011 at 1:57 am

    I thought Yuyuko’s clone was this one
    http://tenka.seiha.org/images2/catgods1/catgods1_70.jpg

  • Chen says:
    July 16, 2011 at 3:00 am

    Haha, this show is a gold mine for reaction faces.

  • Silentbrick says:
    July 16, 2011 at 10:08 am

    Last season and this season I have struggled to find anything to watch. Granted work makes it hard but finding anything tolerable is getting harder and harder. I find myself loading up older anime on my computer to watch instead of trying to follow any of the new shows.

    I hope something changes before I wind up not looking anymore.