2001: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist

I’m keeping up to date with a few current anime series at the moment, partly in an attempt to be able to join in the conversations surrounding them online while they’re relevant, and partly because I liked the look of them.

One that I’ve found particularly noteworthy is called Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist, typically shortened to Shimoseka as an abbreviated form of its original Japanese name Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai.

Shimoseka is an interesting concept. At first glance, it looks as if it’ll be fairly straightforward slice-of-life material, but there’s an interesting dystopian future angle to it. The story is set 16 years after the passing of a law in Japan that made all lewd and coarse material and language illegal, all in the name of public decency and healthy child-rearing. All citizens are fitted with a device which can detect when they’re using inappropriate language or even drawing inappropriate pictures. The price for this lack of freedom is a constant connection to the world’s information at the tip of your fingers — everyone’s wrist sports a neat little holographic computer thingie that acts as the natural extension of today’s smartphones.

The protagonist Tanukichi is the son of a notorious “terrorist”; in actual fact, said “terrorist” was guilty of nothing more than expressing his (sexual) frustration at the prudishness of modern society. We’re introduced to Tanukichi as he starts his new high school life at an institution he’d chosen primarily because of Anna, a girl he liked: a girl who, unlike much of the rest of society, didn’t judge him for being his father’s son, but rather appreciated him for who he is. That was many years ago, however, and she doesn’t initially remember him, so doubtless the series will explore their developing relationship and why she means so much to him.

As Tanukichi makes his way to his new school, however, he encounters “Blue Snow”, another notorious terrorist who habitually shows up clad in nothing more than what appears to be an artist’s smock (with no underwear underneath) and a pair of panties on her face. Blue Snow allows him to flee from an unfortunate misunderstanding on the train to school that could have seen him landed in prison, and Tanukichi is very surprised to later discover that his “saviour” is, in fact, Ayame, a member of the school’s student council who presents her public face as being somewhat quiet, stern and hard to approach.

Ayame’s “public face” couldn’t be further from the truth, however. She has a filthy mind and a foul mouth — plus, conveniently, a device on her elderly flip-phone that allows her to freely use as much coarse language as she likes for just a few minutes each day. Ayame quickly recruits Tanukichi to her cause in an attempt to educate the ignorant masses in the wonders of sexuality and “body-melding”, since the student body is so ignorant of basic biology that it’s clearly going to be a problem for future generations.

Shimoseka is interesting in that it feels like a direct response to several things. In some respects, it feels like it’s an interpretation of Japan’s notoriously low birth rate — modern day Japan’s enthusiasm for erotically charged and explicit material is often attributed to this. In others, it feels like it’s a take on Japan’s curious censorship laws, in which sexually explicit material isn’t outright banned, but instead makes use of the most half-hearted censorship in which things like penises and vaginas are still clearly visible, but blurred out with mosaics. In another sense still, Ayame in particular feels like a literal interpretation of the concept of honne and tatemae, the division of the “private” (honne) and “public” (tatemae) faces: putting up a respectable façade to the world while being as deviant as you like in the comfort of your own home.

Speaking from a Western perspective, Shimoseka feels even more curiously relevant considering the growth in “moral policing” that there’s been over the last few years. Given that Japanese media is often on the receiving end of these tedious tirades from self-appointed “think of the children” moral crusaders, it’s entirely appropriate that it would be a Japanese work that shows the inevitable consequences of allowing this sort of behaviour to continue unchecked. It’s obviously an extreme example, but it’s powerful and relevant given the climate of “criticism” (and I use that term loosely) that we live in today. I find it hard to believe that this angle couldn’t have been deliberate; while Japan generally doesn’t give much of a shit what prudish Westerners think of their pretty cartoon girls with big tits, many creators have doubtless run into these attitudes at one time or another, and Shimoseka has — so far, after two episodes, anyway — acted as an excellent smackdown to such criticisms, albeit in a fairly heavy-handed manner.

So far it’s been a really good show, then. I’m looking forward to seeing more, if only to hear more of the creative obscenities that Ayame habitually hurls forth. Cock-a-doodle-pussy, indeed.

1997: Chromecast Initial Impressions

Picked up a Chromecast today, Google’s little HDMI dongle that you can plug into your TV (assuming you have an HDMI socket) and stream stuff from your phone, tablet or computer to. Andie and I had been thinking about getting one for a while — primarily so if we want to watch TV at night we’re not forced to suffer Dave’s endless reruns any longer — but hadn’t got around to it. Finding myself at a loose end today, I went and forked over £30 (they’re the same price wherever you go, which is nice) to pick one up.

Setting it up was pleasantly simple. It was a matter of going to the Chromecast site on my phone, which subsequently redirected me to Google Play to download the Chromecast app. (I could have skipped that first step if I’d known there was an app involved.) The Chromecast app then walked me through the process of setting it up — a process which took about two minutes, the most complicated part of which was going downstairs to find out what the Wi-Fi password was — and it was then ready to go.

Using it is pretty easy, too. There are several ways you can use it: certain apps such as Netflix, YouTube and Crunchyroll (the three sites where I watch most of my videos these days) support Chromecast natively and effectively allow you to use your phone, tablet or computer as a “remote” and beam the video directly to the TV; other services effectively “mirror” what’s on your device to the TV, and via the Chromecast app itself (or natively in your phone’s OS if it’s one of the relatively small selection of phones that support it) you can mirror your whole phone’s screen and sound to the TV. (This latter option is perhaps less practical than it sounds; it’s no good for gaming, for example, as there’s a noticeable lag of a second or two between doing something on the phone and it happening on the screen, but then it probably wasn’t really designed for that.)

Alongside getting the Chromecast set up, I finally also set up Unblock Us on my phone. Unblock Us is a service that allows you to “trick” sites such as Netflix, Crunchyroll and the like into thinking you’re in a different territory to where you actually are. The reason why this is useful is that different territories have different stuff available — Netflix’s American version, for example, has a bigger selection than its British counterpart, though the later has improved significantly over time. It was a bit of a faff to set up on the phone, because you have to set up IP addresses manually rather than simply downloading a little applet to sort it all out for you (which is how you do it on a computer) but once I managed to find the right combination of numbers to put into the various slots on the form, I was happily streaming Bojack Horseman to my TV via my phone.

I’m really impressed so far. The picture quality is excellent and the streaming seems to be reliable, even though our Wi-Fi signal isn’t all that strong upstairs. It’s definitely going to fulfil our desire for streaming video in our bedroom, and for those of you with a slightly older, non-Smart HDTV, it’s a cheap and effective means of getting most of the benefits of a newer unit without having to break the bank or find a space for a 55-inch behemoth.

Thumbs up to Chromecast, then. Looking forward to playing with it some more.

1973: Muses

The world and their dog are talking about E3 at the moment, because everyone needs to livetweet the things that everyone else is watching. So rather than add to the noise, I’m going to talk about something completely unrelated to E3 or even video games: Love Live!

I’ve mentioned Love Live! a few times recently, I know, but the more I watch it the more I adore it. I’m coming up on the end of the second and final season now, and I’ve been very surprised how genuinely emotional it’s been: the premise (“cute girls get together and form an idol group to save their school”) is pure fluff, of course, but the amount of heart and soul with which the whole experience is infused with is simply magical.

The first season of Love Live! drew a little criticism from fans for taking quite so long to “get going”, as it were; it’s about nine episodes before the entire cast is together, and the season is only 13 episodes long, which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the main thrust of the story: Honoka’s (and, later, the rest of the group’s) dream to perform at the Love Live school idol festival in front of an army of adoring fans.

I could initially see where these complaints were coming from, but now I’m coming up on the end of the second season, I completely understand why they spent so long over introducing the characters and exposition in the first season: it’s so that when the main drama of the latter part of the second season comes along — the impending graduation of three of the characters, and the question of what happens to their group once they’ve gone — it’s all the more effective because you have a deep understanding of these characters and their affection for one another by this point. Love Live! is an immensely popular anime for fans to “ship” favourite couplings in, but it’s abundantly clear throughout that the affection — and, possibly, romance — between pairings like Nico x Maki, Rin x Hanayo and Eli x Nozomi was entirely intentional on the part of the writers, and the audience feels like they’re a part of this intimacy that the group of nine share with one another.

It tugs at the heartstrings, for sure, and I’m not ashamed to say that a couple of the most recent episodes I’ve watched may have drawn a tear or two. I will also be very disappointed if the final episodes aren’t total tearjerkers.

What’s interesting, though, is that Love Live! doesn’t elicit this kind of emotion in the same way as notorious “crying anime” such as AnoHana and Clannad: there’s no tragedy, there’s no real adversity besides the girls having to overcome various challenges on their quest for idolhood, there’s no death, pain or suffering. There’s just a wonderfully heartwarming sense of love and affection infusing the whole show, and the prospect of that ending is emotional — not because it’s sad (though it is that, too, to a certain degree), but because it’s a delight to have been able to ride along with these girls as they forged the sort of friendships that last for life.

I’m really intrigued to see how the series ends — and what the recently released movie has to offer if I’m able to track down a means of watching it. Suffice to say, then, that I am very much a Love Live! convert.

Oh, and if you were wondering, my provisional “best girl” ranking — provisional because the season’s not over yet, and there’s scope for things to change, I’m sure! — is as follows: Maki > Eli > Nozomi > Kotori > Umi > Honoka > Nico > Hanayo > Rin, with the proviso that I don’t actively dislike any of them; Rin is simply my least favourite, nya. (Although bonus points to her for the “nya”-ing, a trait that always makes me go a bit weak at the knees.)

1969: μ’s Music Start

I’ve been continuing to watch Love Live! and it’s become something of a favourite, particularly now I’m in to the second season which, for my money, is considerably stronger than its entertaining but rather slow-paced debut.

A while back I wrote about how the show is unabashedly nice about everything, and keeps a positive spirit pretty much all of the time without resorting to overblown, melodramatic conflict between characters. The second season has definitely had more in the way of conflict and drama, but it’s been kept sensible and believable for the most part, and primarily used as an opportunity to develop the characters and their relationships with one another further.

One thing that is particularly charming about the show is how it subtly splits the main cast of nine down into smaller subgroups and pairings. We see the development of these individual small groups and couples as well as the group as a whole, and it’s rather touching to see — particularly as in many cases, things aren’t made particularly explicit, but it’s extremely obvious to see, for example, the genuine affection that Maki and Nico have for one another.

It’s funny, too. This scene was a particular standout moment for me:

And there’s plenty of other great moments. I particularly like how the characters all have a few surprising elements to go alongside the trope their “facade” appears to be based around. Nico, for example, acts like a cheerful and energetic young girl when she’s on stage and performing, but becomes one hell of a tsundere when she’s in private. Nozomi, meanwhile, initially appears to be softly-spoken and refined, but occasionally reveals some surprisingly lecherous tendencies towards her bandmates.

Umi’s a particular highlight for me. Initially positioned as the conventional “class representative” type — long dark hair, stern expression, takes everything much too seriously — she occasionally reveals that she has a fun side underneath her mature exterior, which she primarily maintains in order to keep the rather childish and impetuous Honoka in check. Umi has some wonderfully deadpan lines, and despite the “class rep” type of character usually being fairly expressionless (or limited to one emotion — usually anger and frustration at everyone else’s incompetence), Umi is actually one of the more expressive characters in the show; her calm and refined demeanour for the majority of the time makes it all the more impactful when she does genuinely get mad or sad.

In short, then, I can well and truly understand why this show is so beloved by its fans, even as it’s surrounded by hundreds of other shows that may seem conceptually, thematically or aesthetically similar. Love Live! stands above your average slice-of-life with its loveable characters, catchy songs and sense that it’s a show with some genuine heart and soul behind it.

I’m looking forward to watching the rest, and will be intrigued to check out the movie when it eventually arrives.

1962: Great Title Sequences (From My Living Memory)

Re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine recently has made me more conscious of something that had been on my mind for a while: the fact that TV doesn’t really seem to do lengthy credits sequences any more.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as in the case of Star Trek you’re sitting there for a good few minutes watching swirly space and Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko (still in season one at the moment) and, consequently, without a credits sequence the show itself has a few more minutes to play with. But does that few minutes really make a difference? Perhaps when the show is a short 20-minute affair, but when it’s 45 minutes or more there’s a strong argument for saying the writers should maybe look at where a few bits can be snipped.

But anyway. Whether or not credits sequences are a good thing isn’t really what I want to talk about today, since that would be a short discussion — yes, they are — but what I did want to talk about is the ones that have stuck in my head over the years. A good credits sequence is strongly iconic and does a good job of summing up what the show’s all about — either literally, by introducing characters, or sometimes in a more abstract sense by using representative imagery.

These are in no particular order. Given how I’m attempting to call them up from my living memory, they’ll probably in roughly chronological order, but I am making no promises. I’m simply going to provide them for your delectation, with a few words about why I like them, why they’re important to me or why I simply find them memorable.

Henry’s Cat

I hadn’t thought about Henry’s Cat for the longest time, but a brief Twitter discussion with the fine Mr Alex Connolly the other day reminded me of both its existence and its terrible but strongly iconic credits sequence.

I honestly don’t remember much about Henry’s Cat beyond the title sequence and the little bit of an episode I watched out of curiosity on YouTube the other day. But I do suspect it’s rather a product of its time, and not the sort of thing that kids are watching on TV these days.

Count Duckula

Whoever uploaded this gets bonus points for including the “Thames” logo at the beginning. Ahem. Anyway. Count Duckula was brilliant. And I’ve watched a few episodes recently and it’s still genuinely quite amusing thanks to some wonderful voice work and characterisation… not to mention its baffling premise of a vegetarian vampire duck voiced by David Jason.

Unlike Henry’s Cat, the Count Duckula theme and intro has stuck with me all these years. However, I did not know until two minutes ago when I looked at Wikipedia (to make sure it really was David Jason who voiced Duckula) that Count Duckula was actually a Danger Mouse spinoff series. TIL, and all that.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

You can’t really get more iconic that Star Trek when it comes to title sequences, and there’s really not much more that needs to be said about The Next Generation — aside, perhaps, from the fact that when you look at it, it’s actually rather basic. Once the credits themselves start rolling, it’s little more than text and the Enterprise occasionally hurling itself at the screen.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

I didn’t like Deep Space Nine all that much when I was younger; its relatively “static” nature of being set on a space station rather than on an exploratory starship made it feel a bit more “boring” to the young me. Revisiting it recently has made me realise (or remember?) that it’s actually really rather good — and certainly a lot more consistent than The Next Generation was in its early seasons.

I like the theme very much. It’s one of those pieces of music that just sounds satisfying. What I did find interesting, though, was when they changed it very subtly starting in the fourth season:

It becomes faster, I think it’s in a different key, the orchestration is different and the accompaniment is less “bare”. It accurately reflects the show’s noticeable change in direction from the fourth season onwards, not to mention the changes in the cast: Commander Sisko becomes Captain Sisko, The Next Generation’s Worf joins the crew and Shit officially Starts Getting Real with regard to interstellar conflicts.

Friends

Friends was everywhere when I was a teenager, and I didn’t mind because I enjoyed it a whole lot. The credits sequence was simple and straightforward, accurately summing up each character with a selection of season-unique snippets of their most iconic moments. It was fun to try and identify which episode each of the snippets had come from… you know, if there wasn’t anything better to do.

Angel

Ah, Angel. Probably one of my favourite TV shows of all time, next to its companion piece Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which is also one of my favourite TV shows of all time, but whose credits sequence I never really rated all that much). Angel’s intro was great in that it reflected the dark, brooding nature of its title character, but it also allowed the show to pull off one of its best features: the unexpected and surprising fact that while it wasn’t afraid to deal with some seriously dark themes, it was very happy to poke fun at itself and show the silly side of the supernatural as well as the scary. The intro helped with this in that it set the expectation for a very “serious” and dark story, then in true Whedon fashion, it often subverted these expectations with the actual content of the episode.

Yuru Yuri

(This was the best video of the intro I could find that hadn’t been snagged by YouTube’s copyright laws. You’ll just have to deal with the Spanish subtitles.)

I love Yuru Yuri. It’s such a delightfully mundane and silly anime; very little actually happens in it, but by the end you have such a wonderful understanding of these loveable characters that it doesn’t matter that they haven’t done anything of note. The opening titles complement it perfectly, introducing the characters visually and setting the energetic, joyful tone for the rest of the show.

Love Live!

You’d hope a show about music would have a catchy theme tune, and Love Live! doesn’t disappoint. This video (which repeats several times; you’re not going mad) is from the first season and, like any good opening sequence, neatly summarises the show and its characters without them actually “saying” anything (although one could argue the lyrics of the song have a certain degree of meaning). Also it’s just plain catchy.

Akiba’s Trip

One thing I really like about Japanese games is that they treat them the same as anime — and that means that a big deal is made out of the opening credits, with music that is often released as a single in its own right. Akiba’s Trip had a particularly strong opening with a catchy theme song, a good introduction of all the characters and, again, a summary of what to expect from the next few hours of your life.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory

The Neptunia series has some excellent songs throughout, but the opening theme for third game Victory is one of the stronger ones. It does a great job of capturing the games’ energetic, joyful spirit and acknowledges their origins as a parody of the video games industry at large through heavy use of electronic effects and synthesised sounds. It also makes a point of demonstrating the extremely strong friendship between the core cast members — they may not see eye-to-eye about everything (or anything) but they stick together and help one another out.

Omega Quintet

Last one for now, otherwise I’ll be here all night and I quite want to go to bed. I wrote a few days ago about how I like the fact Omega Quintet treats its episodic story just like an anime series, complete with opening and ending credits sequences. Here’s the opening sequence, which you see not just at the beginning of the game, but at the start of every chapter. It’s as delightful as the game itself.

1959: High School DxD is Exactly What I Want From an Anime

For a while now I’ve been seeing numerous images from the anime High School DxD that were, shall we say, somewhat on the titillating side. I follow a lot of anime and Japanese gaming fans on Twitter; a number of them are fans of this show and rather fond of posting pictures of it. And with good reason: it’s a very “photogenic” show. Particularly if you like pretty ladies.

Despite the numerous sexy pictures that had been shared, though, one thing was clear: the people who enjoy this show regard it with genuine affection and enthusiasm rather than treating it as the softcore pornography that so many people outside of the various otaku fanbases tend to write Japanese popular media off as. And so I was curious, for several reasons: first of all, who was the intoxicating redhead who seemed to dominate so many of the pictures; and secondly, what exactly was this show all about?

I’d been meaning to check the show out for some time but it’s only in the last couple of days that I’ve finally started investigating it. And, what do you know? Within just three episodes, it’s already abundantly clear to me that this is exactly what I want from an anime — and I already understand why those people who are fans of the show are quite so passionately invested in it.

The basic setup runs thus: Issei is a particularly obnoxious horny teenage protagonist who is obsessed with breasts, but, as is usually the case with this sort of character, finds himself unable to convince any self-respecting young ladies to show theirs to him. Everything changes for him when he meets a girl on the way home from school, though; she claims to have been watching him, and desperately wants to be together with him. The two begin dating and all appears to be going well for a while — Issei even manages to rein in his baser urges for long enough to appear almost respectable.

Then the shit well and truly hits the fan for our Issei. After a thoroughly enjoyable date, his new girlfriend kills him by stabbing him through the chest with a spear of light, and leaves him to die in the park. It transpires that she was a fallen angel, and that Issei has a mysterious power within him called “Sacred Gear” that the fallen angels very much wanted to dispose of — and for a moment it looks as if they were successful.

Given that all this happens in the first episode, though, that would make for a very short series, and as such it will probably not surprise you to hear that Issei is rescued from his plight by red-haired beauty Rias Gremory, a young woman held in high esteem by everyone at the school they both attend, and president of the school’s Occult Research Club.

The Occult Research Club is a not-terribly-subtle front for the fact that Rias and the other members are actually devils, and in allowing Issei “rebirth” from his murder they turn him into one, too — specifically, a servant devil of Rias. From there, Issei gets drawn into a situation that is clearly well beyond his understanding — at least in the early stages of the series — as a three-way holy war unfolds between the forces of Heaven, the devils of Hell and the fallen angels attempting to usurp the devils from Hell to claim it as their own.

What’s interesting about High School DxD is that it presents the devils — typically depicted as evil, monstrous creatures prone to the most dreadful acts of depravity in anime — as the most sympathetic, relatable of the characters. Rias and her companions are for the most part very “human” in terms of their attitude towards their situation and towards Issei, with a few exceptions; Issei, for example, is extremely surprised to wake up from his initial ordeal with a naked Rias in his bed next to him, with her seemingly completely unperturbed by the fact that they are both nude. Rias is absolutely in control of herself and clearly takes pride in her appearance — and this sort of overt sexuality is not at all uncommon in numerous mythological depictions of devils. Rias isn’t a succubus or anything — I don’t think, anyway; I may stand corrected after a few more episodes! — but it’s clear that, for her, she has transcended such petty human concerns as being embarrassed about being in the nude, or being seen by someone with whom she doesn’t have an “intimate” relationship.

By contrast, the fallen angels and the representatives of Heaven have so far been thoroughly horrible pieces of work, with an exorcist priest in the third episode even going so far as to sadistically murder someone who had attempted to make a pact with one of Rias’ household of devils and then threaten to rape his own assistant, herself also a member of the clergy, all because she had met Issei earlier in the episode and believed him to be a “good person” despite being a devil.

There seems to be a pretty strong anti-religion sentiment underpinning the series — or, to be more specific, an anti-fundamentalist sentiment. The fallen angels and the forces of Heaven — with the exception of Asia, the aforementioned exorcist’s assistant — have so far been pretty much psychopathic in how devoutly they follow the tenets of their faith, while the devils themselves are more philosophical and deliberate in the way they go about handling things.

There’s a strong amount of chess imagery used throughout the series, too, with it being explicitly lampshaded and spelled out for the viewer in the third episode. Rias is the “king” of her little group of devils, and her companions fulfil the roles of the knight, queen and rook. (Even odds that Asia shows up again later to fulfil the “bishop” role.) Issei is dismayed but unsurprised to discover that even with his mysterious Sacred Gear power, he is no more than a lowly pawn who has yet to prove himself — but even with his low status, it’s clear that Rias wants to protect him and help him grow stronger. Whether this is due to her own self-interest — his Sacred Gear would clearly be a potent weapon in the holy war — or whether she actually cares for him remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an interesting setup.

And my God — no pun intended — is it ever a beautiful-looking anime. Gorgeous women doing sexy things aside — and there’s plenty of that — the animation and design is spectacular, with some gobsmacking battle scenes in just the first few episodes. The more monstrous foes Rias and the gang face are truly hideous to behold, but even in its more mundane moments the show simply oozes style.

Wonderful use of colour helps give cues to the viewer as to what is going on, with each of the main factions involved in the holy war seemingly having their own colours associated with them. Most things the devils get up to seem to be bathed in red light, for example, while the fallen angels tend to bring an ominous, sinister, high-contrast purple light with deep shadows in their wake.

This beautiful visual design is perfectly complemented by a Gothic-cum-rock soundtrack — it may be a cliche by now for this sort of “good versus evil” affair (particularly if you’re a Castlevania fan) but it really works wonderfully, giving the show a fantastic sense of energy and a feeling that it’s had some real love, care and attention poured into it.

Yes, it’s dripping in fanservice and I’m disappointed to admit that I know all too many people out there who will write this show off purely on these grounds regardless of whether or not it’s actually any good. But there’s a strong argument for the heavily overt sexuality of the show to very much be part of its overall aesthetic, with it being used both to reflect Issei’s forever sexually frustrated teenage desires — which are still very much intact even after becoming a devil — and the common depiction of devils as something erotic, exciting, tantalising and well and truly off-limits to the “normal” people.

So why do I say it’s exactly what I want from an anime? Well, it has all the things I enjoy: light-hearted slice-of-life character interactions (yes, there’s time for that between all the Good Versus Evil Versus A Bit of Both shenanigans), thrilling action sequences with kick-ass soundtracks, memorable characters and a whole lot of sexiness. My dream anime, in other words.

I’m really intrigued to see where the show goes from here. After just three episodes, it’s already a favourite, and I’m absolutely in it for the long run.

Rias is love, as they say.

1946: Hey, Hey, Hey Start-Dash

I feel I should probably address something before continuing onwards in my life: I started watching Love Live! School Idol Project a little while back having left it stewing in my Crunchyroll queue for months, and I’m having an absolute blast watching it.

For the unfamiliar, Love Live! is a show about a group of girls who decide to form a “school idol” group in order to raise the profile of the school they love so much and save it from closure. In many ways, Love Live! is essentially K-On!: The Next Generation, in that it features an all-female cast with a broad spectrum of personality types, has music as its main theme and centres around a low-key but nonetheless meaningful “conflict” — in K-On!’s case, this was the disbanding of the school’s light music club; in Love Live!’s case, it’s the closure of the whole school.

Love Live! also possesses the same sort of heartwarming but occasionally manic energy that K-On! did, with very little in the way of conflict between the core cast members. There’s a little as the cast is gradually assembled over the course of the first seven or eight episodes, but this is generally quickly resolved in favour of more light-hearted banter, inspirational training montages and the occasional boob-squishing when Nozomi is around and wants something.

Love Live! is an unashamedly happy, positive, colourful and cheerful show, then, and it is by no means particularly deep or thought-provoking. Despite having the opportunity to critique idol culture, too, it doesn’t appear to particularly run with this, instead presenting a somewhat more idealised (or should that be idolised?) view of the girls’ journey to stardom. That said, it doesn’t skimp on representing the fact that the girls work hard to achieve their dream, and acknowledges the fact that different people come at this sort of thing in different ways — and in order to work well as part of a team, you sometimes have to make compromises or take on challenges you might not otherwise have done by yourself.

It’s an appealing cast of characters all round, though since I’m partway through the series I am hesitant to declare anyone “best girl” and potentially call down the wrath of the Internet on me for picking the “wrong” one.

Honoka makes for a good “protagonist” of sorts, though really this is a show about the ensemble cast rather than a single protagonist as such. She’s ditzy, silly, cute and fun, and she complements her permanent companions Kotori and Umi nicely.

Kotori is certainly a highlight for me — primarily for Umi-chan… onegai! — while Umi represents the rather sensible “class rep” type that I find rather appealing. Elsewhere in the cast, Nico is endearingly chaotic and rather tsun, and is wonderfully set off against her fellow third-year, school council president Eli. Nozomi, meanwhile, is an enjoyable study in contrasts, initially appearing to be the demure, quiet, shy “shrine maiden” type, but occasionally letting this facade slip somewhat as she goes full-on Katsuragi and starts feeling up her bandmates. Maki is super-cute — I have a thing for redheads, as many of you know — and arguably the character I find most appealing on a shallow, superficial level — plus she plays the piano, which is cool.

Of all the cast, I feel like I know the least about Hanayo and Rin — though Rin’s “-nya”-ing at the end of sentences is a character trait I find adorable whenever any character does it — but since, as previously mentioned, I’m only partway through the complete run so far, there’s still scope to find out a bit more about them.

I’m enjoying it, then. And I’m pleased that I’m finally in a position where I understand what’s going on when people go “Nico-Nico-Ni!” — although your own feelings on that matter may vary, of course.

1934: Across the Universe

I’ve been rewatching Star Trek recently and simultaneously introducing Andie to it. At the time of writing, we’re coming up on the end of season six of The Next Generation and a few episodes deep in Deep Space Nine, because yes, I’m one of those people who likes to watch overlapping shows chronologically so the few-and-far-between crossover episodes happen at the “right” time.

I’ve been really enjoying them. I reached something of a saturation point with Star Trek in my late teens and early twenties as it was on TV an awful lot and it was one of those shows I liked to record every episode of on video. I started collecting the official videos at one point and even had some of the more ostentatious box sets — such as the awesome Data one which had a metallic mould of Brent Spiner’s face — but eventually reached a point where I simply parted ways with it, not because I was no longer enjoying it or had seen it all — to date, there’s a significant chunk of Deep Space Nine I’ve never seen, I’ve not seen beyond the first season of Voyager and I’ve been surprised how little I remember of The Next Generation — but simply because there were lots of other things vying for my attention.

With the modern age of video on demand, though, you can watch a show like Star Trek at your own pace when it’s convenient to you, and with no fear of missing episodes because you’re out on Wednesday nights at 6pm or whatever. This gives the shows a much greater feeling of coherence than if you’re watching disjointed — and sometimes out-of-sequence — episodes once a week on the television, and makes it into a much more enjoyable experience as a result.

Although I’m enjoying revisiting The Next Generation — and, as noted above, have actually forgotten a significant amount of it, so rewatching these episodes feels quite “fresh” — the main thing I’m looking forward to is the completely new episodes of Deep Space Nine. For some reason, when I was younger, I and my family regarded Deep Space Nine as “the boring one” in the Star Trek pantheon, with it not getting truly interesting until the fourth season, when they sped up the theme tune a bit, gave Sisko a badass starship to fly around with and decided it was high time the Klingons started being villains again. Watching it with more mature eyes and — I like to think, anyway — refined tastes, I’m liking it a lot more than I used to for its emphasis on characterisation and relationships over tales of derring-do in space. It’s a good complement to The Next Generation, and watching them in parallel as we have been really highlights this.

Also Odo is a work of genius, combining witty writing with some wonderfully deadpan delivery by Rene Auberjonois. I’m especially interested to find out more about his particular story arc, as that’s something I’ve only seen dribs and drabs of here and there; I stopped collecting the videos and watching the show just as the Dominion storyline was getting underway.

There’s still a long way to go before we’ve watched all of them, but I’m not complaining; the shows — with the possible exception of the first couple of seasons of The Next Generation — very much stand up to the test of time and, while occasionally cheesy (rocking camera shots while people throw themselves around the set ahoy!) remain some of the most interesting, enjoyable, dramatic, emotional and thought-provoking television there has ever been.

Here’s to the final frontier.

1904: 21st Century TV

The Internet has brought with it many things both good and bad, but by far my favourite thing about it is to do with video.

No, I’m not talking about YouTube generally — the whole “anyone with a webcam can make videos!” culture it promotes feeds into modern youth’s unhealthy obsession with “being famous” — but rather the fact that, between the various streaming services out there, both legitimate and… less legitimate, there is probably some way of watching all those programmes/adverts/movies you wish you still had 1) the VHS tapes for and 2) something to play them with.

This last week, for example, Andie and I have watched Police Squad!, the TV-based precursor to the Naked Gun movies. Only six episodes were made, and back at university, when I “discovered” the show for the first time, I had a VHS cassette with two of them on it, so I had only ever seen those two episodes. Now, however, some helpful Polish person has kindly uploaded the whole lot onto YouTube for anyone to enjoy at their leisure. No waiting for TV networks to license them and show them again. No tracking down video tapes and VCRs. Just click and go.

The ability to rediscover old favourites is one of the best things about streaming video, then, as my rewatch of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time in about ten years will attest. But the fact that streaming services makes new favourites easier than ever to discover, too, is rather wonderful. I doubt I’d have become so interested in anime without my Crunchyroll subscription, for example; prior to widespread streaming video, the only real way to get into anime was to buy VHS tapes or DVDs, and with anime being niche-interest and somewhat “exotic”, particularly when it first hit these shores in the mid-90s, it was a rather expensive hobby. Anime DVDs and Blu-Rays still cost up to twice as much as a regular ol’ Western film even today, making online services like Crunchyroll much better value.

This is the TV of the 21st century, then; it really is the vision of the future we had twenty, thirty years ago: decide what you want to watch, then just watch it. In most cases, that’s possible to do, even if you have strange, bizarre and peculiar tastes. And even if you’re more fucked up than most, I can almost guarantee that there’s some dark corner of the Internet out there somewhere more than willing to cater to your particular interests, whatever they might be… for better or worse.

In these days of people seemingly constantly yelling at one another on social media and comments sections on large sites being widely (and, sometimes, justifiably) regarded as fetid cesspits, it’s easy to forget the great and wonderful things that the Internet has brought to modern life. I’m a strong believer that its ability to “archive” — for future generations to be able to enjoy movies, TV shows, animations and other videos from years ago — is one of the best things about it. And as technology improves and we find more and more ways to interact with this world-wide network, I hope we never lose sight of these simple pleasures that it’s allowed us to enjoy like never before.

1847: Your TV Is Not Trying to Kill You

So another outlandish “privacy scandal” looked set to erupt on Twitter earlier. For the benefit of anyone who might be considering sharing anything regarding Samsung Smart TVs sending your personal information to third parties, allow me to clarify a few things.

Samsung Smart TVs have a voice recognition feature. I know this because I have one. (I also never use it, because voice recognition is, for the most part, stupid and pointless when you have a remote control right there. Assuming you have hands, it is pretty much always just as quick to use the remote as it is to remember exactly how you’re supposed to phrase a voice command.)

Anyway. The way this voice control works is very simple. You press a button on the “special” remote, not the “normal” one, and the microphone in the remote starts picking up your voice. When you’ve finished speaking, it sends what you said over the Internet to a speech recognition service (that more than likely converts the speech into computer-friendly text for more accurate processing) and then your TV receives an instruction based on what you said. The TV itself isn’t doing any real processing; that all happens remotely, and the TV simply receives the instruction to do something based on what the speech recognition service thinks you said.

Astute iPhone-owning readers will know that this is exactly how Siri on Apple devices works — it’s why you can’t use Siri when you don’t have an Internet connection, even to access information stored locally on your phone such as your address book and suchlike.

The reason these services work like this is to take some of the processing workload off the phone/TV/other device with voice recognition. It’s not an ideal solution, but it does mean that the devices in question can be less expensive because they don’t need hefty processing power or software to recognise voices pre-installed on them. One day we may have devices that can recognise our voices accurately without requiring an Internet connection — although chances are by the time we’ve perfected that, the Internet will be “everywhere”, rather than just in Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile coverage areas — but until then, this is how voice recognition tends to work.

As such, a necessary part of the entire process involves sending a recording of what you said to the third-party speech recognition service. This means that if you press the microphone button on your Smart TV remote and then decide that the appropriate thing to say at that moment would be “My credit card number is…”, a recording of you saying your credit card number will be sent to this speech recognition service. Chances are, nothing will happen with it, but as with any sort of unencrypted information transmitted across the Internet, there’s a slim risk of nefarious types intercepting the transmission and taking advantage of it.

Because of this slim risk of stupid people telling their TV remote what their credit card number is, Samsung have had to put a disclaimer in their Smart TV documentation that the TV may send your personal information to a third party, and of course, people have misinterpreted this as the TV always listening to what you’re saying, and it therefore being unsafe to share any personal information while within earshot of your TV. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because as I’ve outlined above, you have to specifically press a button in order to activate voice recognition mode, and the “third party” it’s being sent to is doing nothing more than converting your babblings into something the computer in the TV can recognise as an instruction to do something.

That is it. Nothing more. Nothing sinister. And if you’re still uneasy, you could 1) not buy a Smart TV, since technology clearly terrifies you, 2) not use the voice recognition function (which, in my experience, is patchy, slow and pointless anyway) or 3) not talk about credit card numbers or other personal information when you’ve pressed the button that specifically asks your TV to listen to you.

So there you go. This has been a public service announcement. I thank you.