First things first: Aniblog Tourney. I’m up for my quarterfinal match against Listless Ink. It’s unbearably close so far, which is everything I’d hoped from my most worthy opponent to date. Head over there and cast me a vote (or 3) if you haven’t already!
Anywho, the summer season has begun with one of the shows I was most looking forward to, Ookami-san to Shichinin Nakama-tachi (or, as the English title-cards refer to it, ‘Ookami-san and Seven Companions’). It’s a fun first episode, but there’s one thing that threw me off about it. That thing was Akazukin (erm, Akai Ringo).
You might be thinking, “but Digiboy, she’s an adorable loli! As a professional lolicon, there’s no possible way that you can be bothered by her.” And you’d be right. Hell, you’d be more right than you think, because lil’ red riding hood is voiced by Itou Kanae (Hinamori Amu, Suzukawa Koume, Saten Ruiko), who’s one of my favorite up-and-coming seiyuu. But something about this flaming-haired, burning-eyed gal just didn’t sit right with me. And it wasn’t the fact that she uses a macbook.
Though it still worries me
Nay, as I watched Akai-tan be cute and say moe things for a good part of twenty minutes, the burning question on my mind was ‘where’s all the fucking blood?’
Ookami-san and Seven Companions is a show about old-school fairy tales, retold as weird school life adventures. For instance, the first episode does a parody of Cinderella, complete with bike-driven pumpkin/carriage (and a particularly excellent parody after the credits). I’m not sure what fairy tale Ryouko Ookami-san is supposed to be – she has these cat-shaped boxing gloves and kicks lots of ass; I was too focused on her legs to notice anything else.
I love you. Come to butthead.
But anyway, back to Akazukin. Now, I know the tale of Little Red Riding Hood quite well. One of my favorite manga is based on the story. It’s about a little girl in a red hood who goes around having sex with older men, then torturing and murdering them in the hopes that one will be masochistic enough to handle her, and then be able to dish the pain back. Her goal is to find Mr. Wolf so that he can eat her, because that’s just about the hottest thing she can think of, and in the meantime she fights all sorts of mutants and psychopaths, all while having her body destroyed and reformed again and again. It’s a classic.
I didn’t see any of that represented in this series. I felt a bit like a mahjong fan watching Saki – it’s not that the show’s bad, but when you know so much about the Akazukin story, it’s harder to get into a series that doesn’t portray it properly. I started to think about what the first episode would’ve looked like if it was truer to the story…
There we go! That’s looking a lot more like the Akazukin I know and love (nsfw). Anyway, I’ll try not to let the inaccuracy get in the way of my enjoyment too much. I’ve been able to continue watching Yu-Gi-Oh! even though none of the characters know how to play the fucking card game, so I should be able to handle anything. Besides, I’m really watching this show for Ryouko and her bitchin’ legs. I’ve waited what feels like a lifetime for a good show with a coodere lead, and I think my fairy tale wish may have been granted tonight~
God I want to bite her thighs.
Oh, this show… >.>
Still, Azakukin is great. It’s Torso-Splittingly, Cat-fuckingly great.
But really, I could not comprehend the last few chapters at all.
Yeah pretty much all of volume 3 and the last chaps were unintelligible, but hey, I was hardly reading for plot, hehe.
oh you digi-boy you sure know how to make me laugh.
The macbook, however, is debilitating.
Ryouko is cute.
You are clearly a master with Photoshop. Or Paint.
You would have scored higher here, if it wasn’t for that NSFW picture. That smashes you down to a C-.
If I put a warning, then it’s fine.
Paint, btw.
Good to know.
The warning should be (NSFW, [May cause Emotional harm])
With just the NSFW tag, the implication is (NSFW, [Too hot for work]).
I feel betrayed. To be fair, though, I’ll raise it to a C+.
For the record, IMO, the pic is hot as it gets :p
Fakepucco Ftw.
Hell yes. Was saving a massive collection of his work last night hehe
Hmm… Didn’t he do a lot of Eureka 7 stuff in the past too?
Indeed he did.
On a side note, the most awesome desktop of all time
http://i50.tinypic.com/2pzcme1.jpg
That is pretty boss. K-On! girls are looking pretty Soul Eater there.
See the “Get Chance and Luck” in the to-do list?
You two are amazing. And terrible.
So Nanoka~
You know it’s ‘Sou nanoka’
I beg to differ.
Well, this can clearly only be solved by a duel. Considering your temperaments, I’d recommend hammers.
With a name like Ookami-san, Ryouko strikes me as the “wolf” to Akazukin’s “red riding hood”. Thanks for this post, by the way; the premise of “recontextualized fairy-tales” is a lot more interesting sounding that the intitial summaries and impressions I got from the show. I doubt it will be played to depth, but it sounds much better than I initially gave it credit.
>>With a name like Ookami-san, Ryouko strikes me as the “wolf” to Akazukin’s “red riding hood”.
I can’t believe I never thought of this, considering at least 3 times I sat there wondering ‘why the hell is she named wolf.’ Thanks for the tip.
Yeah the show is fun. I don’t know how far the referencing really went since I watched it raw and I don’t know Japanese, but nonetheless the ending reference was totally gold.
Clearly, we need a Tokyo Akazukin anime, and we need digiboy to direct it.
I would literally kill for that opportunity~
Kill, gut, then send to a butcher/producer.