#fuuka is my favorite character to draw right now

[bia-bonne]

@/SwapsDaily (on Twitter) gave me the idea and I loved it, it was a challenge and very fun to draw!

Also, Fuuka can't swear

[helloweezz]

you got any shinjiro x fuuka art?

I'm sorry to disappoint you but no, I do not.

As for now, Shinjiro to me is that one character I can't really ship with anyone else outside the otp lol (crazy, right? me? not shipping my favorite character with everyone?)

Not that I think this pairing is bad, I think it's quite cute! But I don't see myself exploring other Shinjiro ships in the near future, sorry. But maybe one day that could change idk.

However, I do plan to draw him with Fuuka in the future, granted my idea is platonic but I won't mind if you see it as romantic! Don't let the lack of a ship tag stop you, anon!!!

[fluffyfiranalysis-blog]

My Favorite Genre

What is my favorite genre? What do you think my favorite genre is? It's a question that I've thought about for a while and despite all of that I never really had an answer. Despite the amount of genres I could say that I liked there was always a problem with considering any of them as my favorite genre. That being the massive amount of shows that had that same appeal but didn't work for me. Or rather the fact that in the end pretty much every genre ended up being more or less the same from each other. Furthermore, when I looked through the shows that I had highly in my top 10 there never seemed to be that much of a connection between them all.

Oh Etotama, you're just as confusing to genre label as Show By Rock!! but at least Show By Rock!! has the benefit of being a music anime first and foremost. Etotama is a confusing mess of many different genres that I honestly can't say that it's any one genre over another. Maybe comedy but I really can't put anything down there.

But I'm sure you can see there are multiple appearing genres. Also if you notice this is an old list, this is because this is the list I've been dealing with for a long time. Well besides that URara wasn't there. But honestly the random shows that cycled through the #10 spot before that are really not notable enough for me ever to consider them for the purposes of finding my favorite genre.

Let's consider each of the ones that appears

Back when I started looking at fiction again and shed the shows of the dark times (oh what a dark time that was.) I went through a phase where I thought harem and ecchi were the genres for me. Yes, I know shade shall be cast on me but it had cute girls and I liked cute girls! Furthermore, Nagasarete Airantou dragged me out of the dark times and made me really like with Ayane and the rest of the girls and adventures that I really liked. It was lots of fun, and I figured the rest of harems would be like. And sure I found HenNeko as well, but harems as a whole are ranked #16 via MALGRAPHS, with an average that's basically the same as my usual average. It's partner ecchi is in an even darker place at #36 (of #39). Which it's safe to say is bad. Sure I liked Nagasarete Airantou and HenNeko, but what about Nisekoi (2)? or Infinite Stratos (5)? or Date A Live (4)? all shows that perform weakly with me. Sure there are others that still preform good but as it's gone on I look less for harems and the joys of them are found in other places. Cute girls aren't only in harems and while I like seeing cute girls it cant prop up the genre on its own. The vraiety of girls was also usually good, and the idea of hoping to see what girl would win was interesting, but that doesn't really counter the boring bland MCs, as well as the lack of good romantic development. In short no.

As I mentioned before I like cute girls, so why not CGDCT. I have two of them in my top 10, so that seems like a good fit. And as I said I do love cute girls! And even better they tend to have the  more soft plots that I like, ones that don't stress me out.  Then I ran the numbers. I don't have them anyway and they might have changed but it's the same result. Barely any change. And sure I love Urara and Lucky Star, but shows like A-Channel (4), Minami (3), Koufuku Graffiti (5), point back at this not being true. Add in shows from iyashikei and it seems less true. Sure I look forward to seeing CGDCT and I do like the cuteness of it but is it really my favorite genre when it's results again seem so neutral?

What about slice of life? CGDCT is a subset of that and I do like focusing on more mundane characters, and while it has the #4 slot it's mean isn't that much higher than the average mean. It's high enough to mean something but like with CGDCT it has a large pile of shows that just bore me. I may not be married to the plot but yet I am able to get distrested quickly. Which is a problem.

Well romcoms appear there twice so why not romance? Well... ignoring the fact that one of them is at the lowest spot romances don't have that much that interest me besides the romance. I mean I like romance but does it carry things on it's own. Becuse most pure romances end up being pleasant but not something I really love. Sure it's nice but it's rarely something that I look for. It ends up ranking #9 via MalGraphs and #10 via AniList which is decent but never really makes a case for favorite. And then there's the more drama based romances which can be very tendious (Hi Fuuka.)

Music appears once and... oh let's just make this quick. I actually don't like music in fiction that much although I like the process of music and music itself. So shows that have music in them are nice and I enjoy them but I don't enjoy musicals much at all. Furthermore it's more setting to me than anything and while it's a nice setting, settings don't appeal to me as much as the structure and content of the show.

Looking at MALGraphs for hints it has Fantasy at #1, and Magic at #3, but I can't really say that I care for either that much even though they end up ranking high. I'm not sure why they rank that high except for that both of them get the wonderful JEWELPET BONUS. Having 3 10s and 3 7s in them does help a lot but while JEwelpet is a magic fantasy series it's not really known for either of those.

What about comedy? That's #5. Well while I like to laugh if a show is only focusing on that it usually doesn't have enough to rise to the list of favorites. Just like romance. They're both nice to wartch but not things that I actively look for, or actively love so much.

AniList has Pyschological at #1 and Adventure at #3 (among other repeats) which makes me question how these got this high and why. Pyschological is nice but usually gets too dark for me, and Adventure shouldn't even be considered here.

Now you're probably wondering why I didn't touch on the obvious. Because I like to work in that way. There are two seasons of Jewelpet up there and they're both Shoujo, and hey wait with Lady Jewelpet that's 3 shoujo seasons in the top 10 so it has to be shoujo! Well... ther eare a couple of problems even here. Is shoujo a genre? Some would argue no, while others think it is. Furthermore what are we considering as part of it? Besides while on MALGraphs it has a high rating #2 and 6.75 mean score, part of that is due to JEwelpet being a shoujo and the limited amount of shoujos that Iv'e seen. If it were my favorite genre then wouldn't I have watched a lot more of it? Furthermore on AniList, it's much lower at #13 in the tag section. That's because the more shoujo mangas I read the more I found stuff I didn't like. Furthermore it's because of how diverse shoujo is. Sure I like stuff like Jewelpet but just like with romance I don't particularally favor Shoujo romance. Or even really care for it in the first place. I mean part of that is a lack of trying but that lack of trying does express something. And so is it right to say shoujo is my favorite genre when I don't even care for half of it?

So I thought of just limiting it to the side of Shoujo that Jewelpet fits into it. But then what draws those lines. And how? And what is it called? Is there any better way to define it? Even at best that's only 3 out of 10, (although a nice 4 out of 12, or 5 out of 14, when you add in manga and/or cartoons.)

But is there any way to do it better?

As it turns out yes.

There has to be something that ties my favorites together. Even if they are different genres, there should be something in them that makes me love them. I figured there had to be but I never found out what it was. Until the last week I finally put it together. And I finally understand why all those genres appealed to me but none fit.

What I love is shows that are CUTE and SILLY. The problem is while harems and CGDCT, and shoujo all focus on cute to a degree they often have their other focuses as something else. Meanwhile comedy can be silly but it's often not trying to be cute. So some shows in those genres will hit that sweet spot that I love, while others won't and thusly fall off the mark leading each genre to look good but not great. They have the potential but the large amount of misses due to falling out of that area create the problem.

And to check with my new top 10:

Ookami-san is off at #11 but it also fits cute and silly. The only borderline cases are Lady Jewelpet (It can be Happiness levels of silly at times but tends to more be serious. Which can make it an odd mix considering it'll be quite serious and then suddenly go really silly for like a scene before being serious again.) and Toradora (it was silly at points but it was much more serious, let's face it, it's there because it's amazing though.) Everthing else fits. And espeically for my top 4 oh goodness do they fit.

But that's not all. Because I like my cute and silly but what's going to stop something like Nekogami Yaoyorozu from getting to the top (Although the fact that it's #13 in my list should tell you something about how this "genre" is exactly what I want.) Well then we add in the last part.

I love characters. Espeically deep well written characters and character interactions. Where does that come into play? Well that's the last layer, one that I'm not sure if it's genre related or not. But basically I like it when shows are able to make deep, developed, and well-written characters. Something that attached myself to the characters. And if you look at my MAL you'll notice that usually my top characters align with my top shows. Which then makes this the formula for what I will consider a great show: Something that's CUTE, SILLY, and has well developed likeable characters. And if I think of that my list of favorite shows is exactly what comes to mind. Even if I may critique Jewelpet sometimes for not going as much into development as I would have liked, I do think it has good development and does have characters I quite like.

I also like originality and creativity but that's genre independent honestly. Good characters is also a bit genre independent but I do think good characters is more important to a SOL compared to a action series.

So in short, what is my favorite genre? I'm not sure. I'd probably say something along the lines of CGDCT or Shoujo, but all things considering, the genre traits that I truly love and those that are cute and silly.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Anime vs. Real Life – “Gabriel DropOut” & “Fuuka”

This week’s Anime vs. Real Life is going to be a double feature on both the real-world locations of Gabriel DropOut and Fuuka. You might ask yourself now, why exactly those two, what might they have in common? To be honest, next to nothing. The only similarity they share is that neither of them really show all too many outdoor locations, which is the reason why I did not have enough material to write about them individually, but I still wanted to share them nonetheless. So first up, Gabriel DropOut!

  *All images were taken with GOOGLE STREET VIEW (images I took myself are marked ‘WD’)

Gabriel DropOut

via Google Earth

After graduating school in heaven, Angels continue their studies in the world below, where they attend human schools, learn about human behavior, and ideally lead people to happiness. The bird's angel’s-eye view already gives it away, but Gabriel Tenma White gets sent to Hamamatsu. The industrial town is located in the west of Shizuoka Prefecture, and roughly borders Lake Hamana to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the south. It is here, where the once so promising young Gabriel was supposed to mature into a full-fledged angel. That is until she fell for most evil trap imaginable, probably invented by the devil himself – MMO microtransactions. After that, Gabriel fully embraces her lifestyle as an irredeemable faillen angel and shut-in, so it’s only natural that we don’t actually get to see a great variety of locations throughout the show. 

  Image source

  Hamamatsu is not really considered a big tourist city anyway, but its most popular tourist attraction is probably Hamamatsu Castle. The castle was constructed around 1532, and even served as Tokugawa Ieyasu’s base where he moved to in 1570 and stayed for 17 years. Today’s Hamatsu Castle is only a reconstruction, since it was destroyed during the Second World War. Other than that, Hamamatsu is well known for the production of musical instruments, with big companies like Yamaha or Kawai Musical Instruments having their headquarters there. Maybe that’s also where Gabriel acquired the first trumpet of the apocalypse.  

    Blessedly, not even faillen angels are exempted from the mandatory beach trip episode, but luckily for Gabriel, they don’t actually have to travel all too far out. Benten Island is a small island in Lake Hamana, in the west of Hamamatsu. 

    They are enjoying their summer vacation at the Bentenjima Kaihin Park with its wide and shallow beach, although I guess Gabriel is still busy protecting the Valhalla Kingdom. (Protecting another god’s dominion? How blasphemous!) 

    At least Satania is in the mood for some beach fun. Visible in the background is Bentenjima’s picturesque “floating” torii gate. And even further in the back past Hamana Bridge is already the Pacific Ocean. 

    The future queen of hell, Raphiel Satania! 

    JR Bentenjima Station, or UR Maitenjima Station in the anime. 

    In Gabriel DropOut’s latest episode, our favorite angels and demons pay their first shrine visit of the year to the relatively far away Okuni Shrine. The Shinto shrine’s primary kami is the Okuninushi. Again, such blasphemy. 

    Whose side are you on? Angels or demons?

Fuuka

Last but not least, Fuuka! Aesthetically, the show does not really stand out at all, which is actually fine as the show’s main draw are its characters and its music. Fuuka takes place in Itabashi for the most part, a special ward in the northwest of the Tokyo Metropolis, with a brief change of location to Kamakura during the show’s summer vacation arc. The manga’s creator, Kouji Seo, seems quite fond of the area, as he already used it in a couple of his other works, like a A Town Where You Live or Fuuka’s prequel, Suzuka. Yuu’s and Fuuka’s eventful and akward first encounter happens at the west entrance of the Narimasu Skip Village shopping district. 

    While Yuu was completely captivated by Koyuki’s new song playing in the CD store next to him, Fuuka enters the scene and runs him down. While still on the ground, with her underwear in plain view, and with Yuu still having his phone out, she suspects him of taking pictures, and therefore punishes him by smashing his phone to the ground and a hefty slap in the face. 

    The Narimasu Skip Village entrance right outside of Narimasu Station.

  WD

That’s Koyuki gracing the Shibuya 109 department store in the anime, and Ariana Grande on the real one.  

    Koyuki even performed in the iconic Nippon Budokan. 

    Shusse Inari Shrine. 

    In Fuuka’s ninth episode, Yuu and Koyuki meet up for their date at Kawagoeshi Station. 

  WD

  Kawagoe is a small town just a bit north of Tokyo, and often gets referred to as Little Edo (the old name for Tokyo) due to its many historic and traditional buildings. The street seen above is the Kurazukuri Street, lined with a great number of traditional warehouses. 

    Perhaps the city’s most prominent landmark, the Bell of Time. The bell tower is Kawagoe’s symbol and has been telling the time for 350 years now. 

  WD

And that’s how the tower looked during my trip to Kawagoe last summer. I originally headed to Kawagoe for the locations of Kamisama Hajimemashita, but as you can imagine, I wasn't amused that I didn't get to see the Bell of Time.

  Who do you think should end up with Yuu? Fuuka or Koyuri? Sound off in the comments below! 

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You can follow Wilhelm on Twitter @Surwill.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com