The majority of Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren (lit. Even With Eighth Grader Syndrome I Want To Be In Love, alt. Love, Chuunibyou and Other Delusions -Heart Throb-) is forgettable fluff. The core relationship between recovering chuunibyou Yuuta and incurably afflicted Rikka that came to a head in the first series is the focus this time around and instead of the clear split between light humour and super heavy drama, this second series is almost one hundred percent affable comedy. There are diversions such as a competitive napping contest and a school trip but otherwise this is a by the numbers campus love comedy.
would a second offering be more light-hearted after the first’s rather conclusive ending?
In an attempt to inject some drama into an otherwise undramatic and glacially moving relationship, a friend from Yuuta’s past makes an appearance: the similarly ex-chuunibyou Satone who sports a mane of pink hair and shrill, borderline hysterical laugh that becomes somewhat of a warning siren throughout. She is the only notable addition to a series that was already heavily weighted towards females and the story is content to shed Yuuta’s only other male friend, Makoto, who becomes a lot like YuruYuri’s Akari in being invisible most of the time. When he isn’t wearing the anime equivalent of blackface and being preyed upon by a predatory male classmate of course.
On paper Outbreak Company is, frankly, bobbins. An otaku is transported to a fantasy realm of elven maids, busty werewolves and a pint-sized queen in order to spread the otaku way to them. But of course paper is exactly where it started with a series of ongoing light novels and manga preceding the twelve episode anime which is not only funny in a dorky, self-aware kind of way but also surprisingly sensitive to the panoply of topics it touched upon.
The first it tackles is cultural imperialism: the male protagonist Shinichi, and by extension Japan through his, what else, busty BL-loving JSDF aide, are shown to be sensitive to steamrollering their ideals and morals on the populace of the fantasy realm of Eldant. This creates some oddly atypical situations such as when the diminutive queen verbally and almost physically attacks the lead half-elf maid, a situation defused not by posturing and proselytising but by a measure of understanding. From a western point of view this very pointed approach to diplomacy could be taken as a dig towards the jingoism of real-world recent conflicts and occupations but is more likely aimed inward and towards Japan’s recent past.
On the face of it, Hiroki Azuma calling otaku "Database Animals" seems self explanatory; you only have to look as far as sites like MyAnimeList or AniDB to understand the near feral desire to categorise and analyse and verify. Were that the whole story, Otaku: Japan's Database Animals would be an unfulfilling read which thankfully is far from the reality.
If that sounds a little like an otaku Escher painting you're not far wrong
Coming from Minnesota Press, the same publishing house house as Beautiful Fighting Girl, Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams as well as the Mechademia series, the book is in good company with its academically targetted, psychological study of otaku as a recent cultural phenomenom. Indeed core to the book's central theory is that otaku are very modern, only coalescing in the early 1970's.
I am abjectly terrible at fighting games. This didn't stop me from seeking out arcades in Japan to hamfistedly fondle the seductive BlazBlue machines, or importing the US version when it was released, or venturing online to be emasculated in short order. I may appreciate their focus and purity but a lack of innate talent and free time means I'll never be as good as I desire. Talent is not in question, but is my ineptitude really an issue of time?
waiting for a time when I've run out of series to review and ideas to explore
Certainly a nine to five job blocks out close to ten hours of the day, but leaving a modest six hours for sleep that still leaves eight hours for hobbies and the minutiae of life. Pondering the issue more, I could only conclude it is still fundamentally a time issue, but it would be more apt to brand it as a lack of dedication. When that invisible plateau is reached where the time to become better encroaches on the ability to enjoy other games and anime, that dastardly analytical part of my brain takes over.
Even when I'm waist deep in Noel's story and practically giddy from her soundset when facing Litchi, a mental flag pops up. There's new anime to be watched! New games to be played! Things to do. Sometimes very good games can override this, dragging me under for weeks at a time, however all it takes one slow section to send me gasping back to the shoreline. This sounded like a good enough reason: essentially a free time defence mechanism; and it certainly fit with my habits, but it doesn't explain why the balance between video games and anime I used to maintain had been broken, marginalising former in favour of the latter.
Lifting off directly after the first season of Genshiken, the OVAs unfortunately have to the play the middle-child by introducing two new characters and settling them into the storyline in evident preparation for the second season. Handed over to the Kujibiki Unbalance studio Ajia-do, the OVAs suffer from sometimes atrocious animation but thankfully keep the charm and humour that made the first season so good.
Note: The aspect ratio for the screengrabs is incorrect, this is due to a combination of the way I capture screengrabs and the source I took them from; I have corrected this in the thumbnails and a pixel aspect ratio aware program (such as Adobe Photoshop) will display the screengrabs in their canonical ratio of 16:9.
the voyeuristic novelty of peering into an oft experienced group dynamic
The core characters remain unchanged however the focus has shifted away from the ambiable Sasahara and the entire three episode run is dedicated almost entirely to Kasukabe, Madarame and Ogiue. This is not as detrimental as it sounds and by concentrating on these characters the OVAs serve as a peninsula to the main series' continent, never feeling overwhelmed by the wealth of personalities available and not retreading old ground. It would be absurd to the view the OVAs as anything more than an extension of the first series and the soap opera appeal remains as does the down-to-earth comedy.
