boy, the way glenn miller played

[langwidere]

So, as we all know, I can complain about anything — and that, in fact, I prefer whining to commonplace gratitude. It makes me feel safe and happy. I could walk outside tomorrow and see the fragile dome of the daylight sky stretched above me, slack and content as a satisfied cat, and my reaction would be: Ugh, this fucking sky is so blue! Why is it so blue? Is this like some kind of an insulting paean to the marketing campaigns of the 1950s or something? I am not impressed with your homage to Americana, God. It hurts my delicate eyes!

So, of course, it will surprise no one that I am kind of down on the fall 2010 teevee season:

My overwhelming feeling about television programming this year is that everything is really, really, really old-fashioned. Not "retro," you know, or "endearingly kitsch." More like "everybody ran out of ideas in 2002." When I sit down to watch a show, I have to physically examine myself to be sure I’m not somehow 25 again (which would be great and all, except for the fact that back then I was still battling persistent acne). This is an elaborate and difficult process, and sometimes I forget what I’m watching while I’m counting my age on my fingers — but I’ve done my best not only to complain extensively about the actual programs themselves, but also to compare them to their analogues from days gone by. To wit:

Glee
I am not in love with Glee this season. In fact, I usually want to punch it in the face anytime the screen is occupied by anyone other than Kurt, who remains adorable, talented, and awesome (and to whom I would have dedicated a painstaking and worshipful website, had the teevee time-machine managed to launch me all the way back to adolescence). Rachel and Finn have somehow managed to render one another fictionally inert, I miss Quinn being mean/sweet as opposed to "strong," I was enraged that the show made Kurt kiss a girl before letting him move on to dudes even though he already knows he’s gay, and the Britney episode? Terrible! 'Me Against the Music,' but no 'Lucky'? No 'Womanizer'? No 'I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman'? No danceoff? Glee, I suspect that you may not have the feelings for the Britney canon that you think you have. If you don’t love it, let it be. Also, a Rocky Horror salute? Really? What’s next? A quasi-ironical Bye Bye Birdie episode? (I have tried to watch Rocky Horror repeatedly, but I always fall asleep. It is rather boring. And then they started those wacky sub-sub-cult midnight shows, which are now some kind of suburban rite of passage or something, and eh. Eh.)
THIS SHOW REMINDS ME OF: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the crap years)

Hakuouki: Hekketsuroku
Let us take a moment remember that this show is not very good in the first place. It was old-fashioned to begin with — all harem shows are old-fashioned. They were tailor-made for unsophisticated geeks who had not yet been extensively catered to by an industry designed to milk them of semen dollars in the form of branded Hello Kitty dildos and talking Domo-kun dicksleeves. But, because all geeks have Asperger’s and cannot tolerate change, we will be suffering through anime harem shows forever. I’m looking forward to it! One of these days, someone will make a mainstream gay harem show with a plot that will be just as awful as all the other harem shows with plots, only gay, and represent! Represent! Anyway, Hakuouki is like Fushigi Yuugi starring Aoshi Shinomori, who is the only man I will ever really love, only worse. The new season features many exciting costume changes, and plot! twists! that a toddler would find obvious. I love it. (I am two episodes behind, though.)
THIS SHOW REMINDS ME OF: Fushigi Yuugi, Rurouni Kenshin, Blood+

Togainu no Chi
This show is based on a BL game that I am too stupid to play (and also my Windows partition somehow appeared to contract a virus, so I erased it). It is kind of dull. There are tragic drug addicts and 小父 who are probably 24 and some kind of disbelief suspension-challenging, elaborate organized crime/street-fighting subplot which will allegedly motivate the story in future episodes. All of the characters have codenames. I think? One of the characters is an openly-gay Squall Leonhart. Another is a gay disabled Japanese John Uskglass. His name is "Il Re." Heehee. Hee! Anyway, the production values are stellar; I imagine threes of dollars were lavished upon the series’ opening and ending sequences, which seem to be scored by different horrendous J-rock "songs" every time I fail to fast-forward through them quickly enough. Also, Toga sometimes affects that most venerated of crap-anime tropes: characters "walk" by moving their legs up and down while the scenery changes. Awesome! (One episode behind.) (If you are so inclined, you can download many enthralling Togainu no Chi doujinshi here.) (No, I have no idea why they did the wordbreaks like that; evidently there is no standard method for breaking Japanese words and everybody does it differently, so I usually go by whatever looks "official.")
THIS SHOW REMINDS ME OF: Weiß Kreuz

Otome Youkai Zakuro
This show is based on a Lily Hoshino manga which I once translated really, really badly. I would have had to apologize for it, had I been dumb enough to post it. I’ve only read the first volume of the series, but it is, I would say, "cute." I know. I’m sorry. The characters fulfill their appointed stereotypes without being entirely consumed by them, and I am so glad that everybody is pretty! I am a little tired of the "plain but honest" shoujo trope. Let’s have some crazy, hot characters! Um. This show is a standard monster-of-the-week concoction with a "subtle" anti-prejudice subtext, and the production values are only middle-of-the-road, but I still like it. (Two episodes behind.)
THIS SHOW REMINDS ME OF: Tactics (not gay)

I started watching Star Driver, because the Colony Drop guy said it reminded him of Utena, but it was boring and I dropped it. If I get desperate after Christmas, I’ll download the batch and watch it three episodes at a time while I’m praying for everyone in my family to be suddenly struck mute and then to develop a great yen to spend the holidays hanging off a precipice on a mountain in Tibet.

NOTE: Possibly the most persuasive evidence that Japan has officially run out of sauce? The fact that the big event show of the season parodied The Powerpuff Girls :[


Lastly, I am still struggling, lady Hercules-like, with my awesome translatory surprise. So keep your calendars open (MOM).