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Both Wonderduck<\/a> and Astro<\/a> have declared<\/a> their love for Sketchbook full color’S<\/em><\/strong>, so I watched the first few episodes. Initially I was put off by the main character. In the first episode Sora seems not just painfully but pathologically shy and sensitive. However, the subsequent episodes emphasize her otherworldliness, and she seems less like a mental case and more like Osaka’s artistic cousin. Also, however strange she is, she not the only eccentric around:<\/p>\n I doubt that I’ll ever like Sketchbook<\/em><\/strong> as much as Mr. Duck does, but it is on my watch list. Slight though the series is, it’s appealingly whimsical, and it’s refreshing after noisier, busier shows.<\/p>\n Sketchbook<\/em><\/strong> earns bonus points for being 100% fanservice-free. It’s an anime in which high school girls wear knee-length skirts. (But it loses a point for the pointless apostrophe-capital “S” in the title.)<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n I’m ambivalent about Minami-ke<\/em><\/strong>. It does feature potentially the best comic character since Osaka, and the first two episodes are funnier than Lucky Star<\/em><\/strong> and Hayate no Gotoku<\/em><\/strong> combined. Chiaki is a very bright, very deadpan grade-school student. She steals the show as Ruri did Nadesico<\/em><\/strong>. She has a mischievous streak, and her hyper high school sister Kana is an easy target. The two live with their older sister, apparently without parents or other guardians.<\/p>\n Funny though it is, Minami-ke<\/em><\/strong> makes me a bit uneasy. The first episode is largely about kissing, which Kana wants to demonstrate to Chiaki. The second concerns panties. What will the third feature, bra sizes? I’m not sure I want to find out. (Note that there isn’t any actual fanservice in the show, just the threat of it.)<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Although I was not exactly enthralled by the first episode of Ghost Hound<\/em><\/strong>, as I noted below, I am still certainly going to follow the series. Nakamura et al<\/em> may yet come through.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n I’m no expert on swing, but the more I listened to the Oh! Edo Rocket<\/em><\/strong> soundtrack, the more familiar it seemed. “Matsuri,” for instance, may not have quite<\/em> the same melody as “In the Mood,” but it sure reminded me of the earlier tune. It bothered me, so I posted a few of the tunes on my other weblog and asked if they sounded familiar. The consensus in the comments<\/a> is that the pieces are pastiches of swing originals, not quite plagiarisms but damn near. So, if you like the music, instead of the OER<\/em><\/strong> soundtrack, you probably should look for recordings by Glenn Miller and his contemporaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Both Wonderduck and Astro have declared their love for Sketchbook full color’S, so I watched the first few episodes. Initially I was put off by the main character. In the first episode Sora seems not just painfully but pathologically shy and sensitive. However, the subsequent episodes emphasize her otherworldliness, and she seems less like a … Continue reading “Sketchy notes”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[660,677],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-current-viewing","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-5F","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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