More anime natter

[joiedecombat]

While I'm at it: the "otaku baton" meme, from annwyd.

オタクバトン - OTAKU BATON

◆好きな女性キャラクターを五人答えてください
(Your five favorite female characters.)

❶ Murrue Ramius (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED)
❷ Fujimaru Yukari (Penguin Revolution)
❸ Sango (Inuyasha)
❹ Michel Volban (Glass Fleet)
❺ Teresa (Claymore)

◆アナタが一番好きなのは誰ですか？
(↑ Who do you like the most?)

Murrue. She’s such a warm and maternal character, and she’s also very strong and capable. You don’t see that a lot that I can think of: a female character with traditionally feminine strengths occupying a position of authority and actually doing quite well in it, rather than being overwhelmed. Try to imagine Gundam SEED with any other character in charge of the Archangel - go on, try it.


◆好きな男性キャラクター五人答えてください
(Your five favorite male characters.)

❶ Fujimiya Aya (Weiss Kreuz)
❷ Sagara Sousuke (Full Metal Panic!)
❸ Suou Tamaki (Ouran High School Host Club)
❹ Mwu la Fllaga (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED)
❺ Leon Orcot (Pet Shop of Horrors)

◆アナタが一番好きなのは誰ですか？
(↑ Who do you like the most?)

It varies a lot depending on what I’ve been watching most recently, to be honest. It’s hard to pick a single favorite. At the moment, just because I’ve watched Ouran most recently, I’ll say Tamaki, who can go from smooth and gentlemanly and classy to flailing slapstick silliness at the drop of a hat. He is comically over the top and full of himself and he’s remarkably dense in some ways and he’s forever trying to make things better for people in his own strange ways and it’s completely adorable, and I think a lot of his appeal is that none of his behavior is an affectation at all. He is one hundred percent genuine. Crazy, but genuine.

◆好きなゲームを三つ答えてください
(Your three favorite games.)

❶ Mass Effect
❷ Knights of the Old Republic
❸ Final Fantasy VIII

◆好きな声優さんは？
(Your favorite anime seiyuu?)

Takehito Koyasu
Kuwashima Houko

◆好きなアニソンは？
(Your favorite anison [anime song]?)

➝ Sakamoto Maaya, “Kiseki no Umi” (Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight)
➝ Weiss, “Tomorrow” (Weiss Kreuz: Glühen)
➝ Yoko Kanno, “Space Lion” (Cowboy Bebop)
➝ Origa, “Rise” (Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig)
➝ FictionJunction and YUUKA, “Akatsuki no Kuruma” (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED)
➝ Shimokawa Mikuni, “Mouichido Kimi ni Aitai” (Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid)
➝ Nakashima Mika, “CRY NO MORE” (Blood+)


◆コスプレをする？またはどんなコスプレをしてみたい？
(Do you cosplay? Or, what kind of cosplay would you like to do?)

I don’t cosplay, because I don’t feel it would be worth it unless I went all-out, and I can’t really afford the expense of time or money to do all-out, detailed cosplay. (That said, if I got my hair cut I could cosplay as Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club with very little effort. I’d basically need a light blue blazer and a tie. I’d like to do that sometime.)

◆アニメ・漫画・ゲームの中で現実に欲しいものは？
(Does the one actually wanting it : in the animated cartoon, the cartoon, and the game?)

[Judging from other answers, what this is asking is what's most important to you in an anime.]

I have to agree with annwyd here; the characters are the most important thing. I’ve found that I can overlook all manner of failings in plot and animation if I feel like I’ve connected with the characters, if I find them interesting and if I care about what happens to them. This is why I’m so fond of Weiss Kreuz, even though it’s really a terrible series, but am lukewarm about Noir, which is a very similar series with much better execution in most respects. Go figure.

◆アナタが最も萌えを感じるものは何ですか？
（What makes you feel "MOE" the most?）

➝ Damaged people: characters who have been misused or traumatized somehow and must struggle to overcome it. As I have often said, I like them broken.
➝ Women in roles traditionally filled by men, and men in roles traditionally filled by women (see Kaidan and Ashley in Mass Effect for a great example). Role reversals in general are neat, but I especially like it when it’s gender role reversals, which is why I like the Shepard/Kaidan romance so much.
➝ Characters who are in some way off kilter from the socially acceptable. I don’t have annwyd’s affection for cloudcuckoolanders, but the bunny ears lawyers and the raised-by-wolves characters? I’m all over those. See my above comments about Tamaki from Ouran, or look at Sousuke from Full Metal Panic!, a character who literally cannot parse any given situation as anything other than a military action, even if the context is actually high school social interaction.
➝ Complex multilayered personalities, like Tamaki or Inuyasha’s Miroku, or especially the particular layering of a harmless and somewhat foolish exterior over a hidden scarily competent dark side over a fundamental decency that keeps the character on the right side of the line and usually results in self-recriminations. Nom nom.
➝ Characters who struggle to understand their emotions, or retain their humanity - see Sousuke again, or Aya trying to hold onto his humanity and his sanity while continuing to do a bloody and morally dubious job, or Sesshoumaru in Inuyasha gradually thawing from villain to anti-hero. Apparently I like them not only broken, but emotionally retarded. Overcoming intimacy issues is a bonus.
➝ Romances which are functioning partnerships first and romances a distant second, like Mwu/Murrue in Gundam SEED, Shepard/Kaidan in Mass Effect, and Sango/Miroku in Inuyasha.

◆このバトンを回す人五人
(Five people who you pass this baton to.)

As usual, I can’t be bothered to tag. Do it if you want it.

Comments

[annwyd.livejournal.com]

I almost put "Akatsuki no Kuruma" on my list, too.

Moe is, I think, not quite the same as "what draws you to a character or pairing"...if it was my own examples would have been pretty different (and overlapped more with yours). It's more about what puts you in a state where you can't decide whether to go "squee!" or "awwwww."

But then again, nobody quite understands moe, I suspect. The more you understand it, the more dangerously enmeshed you are in anime fandom.

[yang-wenli.livejournal.com]

I always liked Larry better. He seemed almost like he understood things. That said, Curly provides the most humor when it comes to doing impressions. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

Mm. The things I listed were pretty much the closest I could get; that's the stuff that I get excited about and the stuff that gives me an "aw, punkin" reaction. I don't know that I really moe very much.

Ah well.