Another is interesting for a number of reasons, mostly because it’s made by PA Works, of Angel Beats and Hanasaku Iroha fame. Being a thriller, it tends to bend more towards the former in terms of style, but you can see very subtle details where HanaIro has influenced the art and direction. 

The interesting thing is that, as first episodes go, it’s actually pretty standard fare: Plucky Protagonist has to move, alone, to a new town, where things aren’t quite as they seem, and he meets Mysterious Teenage Girl who holds the keys to the enigma…

Yeah, this is every anime trope in the book. But it’s executed with precision and charm: our Plucky Protagonist, Kōichi, is genuinely nice, Mai’s movements are suitably, and her eyepatch is the perfect device to show the two sides of her personality, and they use it several times to great effect. None of the characters are as wonderful and compelling as HanaIro’s Ohana, the most human character I’ve seen in anime…. but that’s a high standard to judge them by. 

Another is also, no doubt out of necessity for the genre, much deeper in terms of symbolism and foreshadowing. Even during the first episode, which is of course about introducing the characters, certain establishing shots have a still of, for example, a dismembered doll for just a split second: perhaps a slightly obvious move in principle, but if you look carefully you can find that same doll in a few of the scenes… which is incredibly effective at building tension.

In the end, though, Another 01 suffers from the same problems as any other first episode; far too much has to be said in 22 minutes. The only time I’ve seen it done well is with Kamisama no Memochou… which cheated and aired the first two episodes as one, back to back. This makes Another impossible to judge so far. It could be Angel Beats, it could be BloodC, it could be something rather original. Only time can tell.

So, I had a dream about my bass last night. I think my brain is trying to tell me something.

Those things don’t even make any sense. But hacking various tweets together is always amusing.

So I think taking the Central Line on the London Underground on a Saturday evening was always going to be a bad idea.

Holy shit Star Driver. #kiraboshi

Okay, I’m going to have to go back on what I said before: I actually cannot survive without a JavaScript-enabled browser. So I’m going to allow vimperator from now on. It is interesting, however, to see just how many sites don’t function at all without JavaScript.

RT @DemetriMartin: Please RT this to achieve nothing for no cause.

STILL HERE STILL DOING IT.

Well, I went into Windows for a bit to play some Doom 3. Forced myself to use the windows CLI to get there, so as not to cheat. And the Windows cmd.exe is TERRIBLE. Or just massively different to the Linux CLI. Either way, not going CLI-only in Windows again, even if it does mean no games.

And cmus is still impressive. As is mplayer, when I’m not trying to watch something with fancy subs.

Something makes me think I’m starting to like this CLI lark.

K-On!: Probably the wrong reason I learned to play bass.

Well I think I’m finally seeing the benefit of no GUIs. Apparently there’s this Rebecca Black person who just popped up, and me not being able to YouTube her is a good thing.

Who’da thunk it?