天下制覇

No thanks, we’ve got plenty.

I’m still not really certain what my plans are for Mondays. I’m still not really digging either Vampire Knight nor ef all that much, but at least this week, Kuze’s pretentiousness was easier to stomach than Yuuki’s rape fantasies, so I guess I’ll go with ef for today. My Monday schedule may change based on my whim and how much I feel like making fun of Totali in any given week.

Impressions:

The main issue I have with ef right now is that every character has been shown as being somewhat crazy, or at the very least, mildly unhinged and en route for a social disaster. Nobody is normal, they’re all already mentally broken in some way. Mizuki’s probably the most normal, and she’s an attention whore cocktease. Yuu is obsessed with his dead sister, and Kuze has dreams about himself two men in opera masks posing around a metronome heart. It’s amazing that he hasn’t snapped and raped Mizuki yet, honestly. He seems more prone to passing out and/or having seizures anyway. Yuuko’s about the only one I can dredge up any real sympathy for, and after two episodes, she’s rather passive-aggressively clingy. Where’s the everyman? Where’s somebody I can relate to here? Nobody shares my particular neurosis here. Maybe Nagi is meant to, but since 90% of her screentime is painting herself naked, I’m pretty sure that she’s not going to fill that niche either.

You’re supposed to come at crazy from the other direction. Show that people are mostly normal, but something is screwing with their lives and ability to function. Or take a crazy person and bring a normalish person in to provide contrast and reveal that they’re crazy later. Only pretentious 3rd year art students start off with the metronomes and opera masks and then at the end, all you’re left with is a shot of a wilted rose, a quote from Nietzsche, and fifteen pages of Cliff’s Notes to understand the damn thing. Bleh. I’d be a bit more enthusiastic over this one if any one of the characters wasn’t neurotic in some manner. It just feels like the entire cast is two minutes away from slitting their own wrists or slitting somebody else’s. There just needs to be a bit more balance; some anchor to the show to provide a little rationality in all the brooding instability. 

But still better than Yuuki lying on a couch and praying, but not really, that Kaname has his way with her. *sigh* Mondays…