I’ve been watching Code Geass R2 and Kara No Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners lately. I love both of these shows, and they’re both easily 5/5.

Silence brought Kara No Kyoukai to my attention because of it’s relation to Tsukihime; they take place in the same fictional universe and examine similar powers (Omegapaladin and I have been discussing the possibility of
creating an Exalted charm tree for Mystic Eyes of Death Perception; we believe this is only slightly more doable than a Geass charm, or a Death Note-like artifact). This set of movies is fascinating, dark, introspective, and violent.

Code Geass R2 is still rolling out. It feels like the screenwriters and everyone else involved in the creation of this series must personally hate Lelouch, because bad things keep happening to him. The Guren (Karen’s mech) gets an upgrade and reappears as a Deus Ex Machina just when Lelouch needs it to live, but events that occurs soon after make him wish he were dead, literally. Mild spoiler: At the end of episode 19, Lelouch’s goal changes to “take my father to hell with me.”

The second opening to this series feels like it belongs to a Gundam show; it’s entirely way too cheerful.

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Imagine people that do something, anything, that’s cool. Maybe they’re working on a project to create hyperintelligent computers that will benefit all of humanity, writing world-class music, or on a mission to end a war. Now imagine an anime series that focuses on these people in their dullest and most uninteresting moments; chatting someone up at bar, doing their tax returns, sitting in on a meeting about the company’s internal slogan for next year. Peacemaker, in its first volume, at least, grafts zany antics and political intrique onto such doldrums, and this is only the start of this show’s troubles.

There are few characters in anime that I utterly hate and loath as characters. You might think Gendo in NGE is a terrible bastard, but that’s just his role. Tetsunosuke, the leading protagonist in Peacemaker, is just an idiot*; comic relief miscast as the main character. Imagine an ultra-aggressive Homer Simpson in the body of Shinji Ikari, and you’re almost there; just double the arrogance and switch over from plain stupidity to anti-intelligence, always doing the one thing that’s sure to muck things up. Yet, somehow, people let him get away with his antics, more or less. Not just ANY people, but the Shinsengumi, which the anime goes to great length to depict as awesome. The premise that these awesome samurai would put up with Tetsunosuke for even a minute is less plausible than the idea that a modern Japanese high school student would gain the powers of mother earth and fight pollution incarnate. Yes, I know the character is supposed to be arrogant. I know all of this is done on purpose. That still doesn’t make it work; it doesn’t.

Finally, Peacekeeper is full of cliches; it has a very high CPM ratio (Cliches Per Minute). Tetsunosuke is driven by a desire for revenge because his father was killed. Before dieing, his father left him with a final message that has because an obsession. As a result, he “wants to be stronger.” This is in stark contrast to his wimpy/polite brother, who does bookkeeping for the Shinsengumi. Tetsunosuke is repeatedly traumatized by particularly violent scenes, but remains steadfast in his goal. And of course, no cliche-fest would be complete without METAPHORICAL RAIN. Peacekeeper feels like it was hacked together from the droppings of greater anime.

In short, from the first four episodes, it seems like Peacekeeper sucks. Just as stubborn as the main character, I will continue to watch it in the hope that one of its promising side threads will come to rescue its unbalanced plot.

*Not a reflection on the real Tetsunosuke, I’m sure.

Full details on on my personal site:

When I first made Fancruft, I wanted to make it look good even in Internet Explorer 5 running on a fairly low-resolution screen (640×480). Many “Web 2.0″ concepts were new; RFC4627 was published just earlier that year. People were still advocating Smarty for PHP templating. I had been a Wikipedia administrator for maybe around a year and a half, and had not yet read The Wisdom of Crowds.