Mightyblue’s Corner

First off, some brief administrative business and notes:
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1. Putting my “serious” anime articles/reviews/etc. under “anime” tags, since a recent thread on Talking Time has pointed out the etymology of “Animu.” WTF Japan and other non-serious anime related stuff will still be filed under Animu though.
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2. Starting next week I’m going to go through a trial revival of my old Anime Release column, which will focus on a few titles more in depth rather than quick hits on a bunch of titles. Maybe. Still of mixed feelings about it.
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3. I’ll eventually start posting some of my fiction writings and other associated mental lint, but that may be a while because I’m lazy and this Wordpress theme doesn’t like extra lines between paragraphs. Not that it would be particularly annoying for fiction type stuff, but annoying to me.
Anyway….
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Persona ~trinity soul~ is shaping up with more questions than answers, such as who the older brother is working for, or at least providing info to, and the strange red-haired girl that looks veeery similar to one of Shin’s classmates, if five years younger. It’s also taking on a darker and more “serious” tone, serious in this case meaning it’s serious all the time like most other Megaten games, since 3’s almost split personality between the school and Tartarus sections of the game sort of robbed it of some of the darkness inherent in most of the Megaten series and spinoffs. It’s shaping into a fine supernatural action drama with more emphasis on the drama and cerebral end of things than the explosions and muscle flexing.
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Shigofumi is another series that started up in the last few weeks, following a shinigami [death god/grim reaper] type girl (hard to say if she’s really a “girl” or not, since she’s a being from the underworld), and while her character design is sigh inducing zettai ryouiki material, the show itself is anything but. The girl, Fumika, delivers the titular shigofumi, or the last letters of the dead. The dead cannot be anything but honest in these final testaments, and what they say is often unsettling for the recipients, if the first few episodes are any judge. This is a dark, dark series, moe affectations aside, and it shows quite the contrast between the heights a person can achieve and the depths they can fall to. I’m kinda surprised I hadn’t noticed this show earlier, but zettai ryouiki and other moe-isms tend to turn me off a show fairly quick. Also, everyone’s favorite goth-loli duo, Ali Project, did the opening theme for the show, and no, I didn’t make that term up as much as I wish I did. Sigh, oh, Japan…
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As a bit of a postscript, apparently Funi’s bringing Shuffle! over, which is a bipolar exercise in 1/2 middling harem show and 1/2 awesome romance/character drama. It’s also conveniently divided so you only have to watch the first two or three episodes to learn who all the major players are and then skip to episode 13 (I think) for the real meat of the show. The only things you’d miss are some occasionally groan worthy (okay, often) scenes with a surprising lack of panty shots, at least comparatively anyway, though there are other fanservicy bits. Sigh.
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It also happens to be one of the few romances anywhere (anime, live action, whatever) where the main ends up with the tomboyish girl next door character, which makes it all the much more entertaining.
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EDIT: Forgot about some grammatic and stylistic dealies there, and that damnable period-graph thing I have to do. Shouldn’t be so wall ‘o’ texty now.