So, another year passed, another kitchen fitted, and lessons have been learned by all involved!
This year's celebration brought to you with special guest stars:
 Colin! |
 Eniko! |
 Chunderbunny! |
So, onto the serious business of reviewing series. First of all, Yasuko to Kenji;
 Yasuko to Kenji |
No, wait.
 Yasuko to Kenji |
Yasuko to Kenji is surprisingly about two characters; Yasuko (a schoolgirl) and Kenji (her older brother), who of course live together with no parents. Fundamentally, YtK is about the classical story of what happens when a girl falls in love with a boy unaware of her emotions, set to a backdrop of ex-bikers, warehouses, and extreme facial expressions, with occasional table flipping. Also shoujo manga.
The plot itself is fairly by-the-books; coincidental meetings, blackmail, misunderstandings, characters who are totally unable to confess their feelings, and so on. The features that really carry the episodes are the humour, although while Kenji has the largest role to play here, it's worth noting that the interactions between the characters work well in general. Other than Jun, who is apparently unable to convey any emotions whatsoever. Because of this, and because most of the characters are actually doing a decent job, the episodes move along at a fair clip, so it doesn't drag. Although it should be borne in mind that we were drinking. Which leads us onto:
The Yasuko to Kenji drinking game
1 drink when:
-Yasuko falls over and manages to fly many yards (so, every time she falls over)
-Kenji goes into Biker Gang Leader mode and engages mobile facial contortions
-Anybody is kidnapped or tricked into going into a Warehouse
-A table is flipped over
2 drinks when:
-A table is successfully flipped so well it lands back down the right way up
-One of the non-biker-gang characters starts beating people up. Particularly by somersaulting.
Down the hatch when:
-Jun expresses an emotion.
Anyway, since More Voting means More Democracy, we voted and selected to watch more YtK, rather than any more of the other series proposed, which were...
 Mei-chan no Shitsuji |
Mei-chan is even more like an anime than YtK: a girl's high school reserved for the richest students, each of whom has to have a specially trained butler-ninja-bodyguard to do, well, everything for her. The lead character, Mei, obviously doesn't want to be there but is tricked/blackmailed/forced into attending thus leading to Hijinks.
I personally like Mei-chan ... possibly precisely because it's basically a live-action anime ... but the other attendees decided against it due to it being slower paced than YtK. Which is not incorrect.
The third potential contender was...
 Hanazakari no kimi tachi e |
Another classic could-have-been-anime story about an all-boys school this time, with the main character being a suspiciously feminine transfer student with a Mysterious Past, or at least a past history with one of the students. And, well, hijinks ensue.
Much like Mei-chan the consensus was that it didn't really move fast enough, which is probably a fair criticism, although realistically I suspect it's that YtK just moves faster than most series, whereas Mei-chan and Hanazakari are both attempting to focus in more on one or two main characters and tell a story. YtK just steams in with the humour and (until episode 8 or so) lets the story bubble in the background. Watching all of YtK also led to an important scientific development:
The Eniko
-50% champagne
-50% mead
-Stir with an olive on a stick
-Drink while watching anime
Or, should you not be constructing cocktails during New Year ... or had exhausted the supplies ...
The Poor Man's Eniko
-60-70% white wine
-30-40% mead
-Stir with an olive on a stick
-Drink while watching anime
Surprisingly palatable!
On the food front, we did also consume much Curry. Including, from the redoubtable Colin, CurryCAKE. Which was interesting. With more tuning the CurryCAKE could become extremely desirable. Theoretically.
Anyway, during the last day of KitchenCon, we sampled other series, including...
 K.O.3an Guo |
This is a tricky series.
On the one hand, the intro has supernatural martial artists summoning their mystic powers and kicking ass while going to school. And playing rock music on awesome guitars. The series also has girls just falling from the ceiling occasionally, and formalised literal war between schools, including some apparent students from another dimension. The Gold Dimension, apparently.
However, while Japanese series sometimes seem to do without a director, this (Taiwanese it seems!) series clearly did without an editor. The extended (one hour) first episode absolutely could have been a minimum of 40% shorter, perhaps 50%+, without losing anything. And in fact being substantially better. We are NOT watching this series to see random background characters talk ... and talk ... and talk ... about what just DID happen or what's just ABOUT to happen. We want to see it HAPPEN! Perhaps it's a noted style in Taiwan, in which case they need to get it over pronto and start using editors. Or perhaps it's their equivalent of the Garth Merenghi filler technique. Whichever, I'd be watching more episodes right now if they were half the length.
ja! for now...