{"id":1616,"date":"2014-12-09T15:22:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T20:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2014-12-09T15:23:12","modified_gmt":"2014-12-09T20:23:12","slug":"this-week-in-anime-ships-and-witches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/this-week-in-anime-ships-and-witches\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in Anime: Ships and Witches"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are we really so far into December that people are starting to put together \u201cBest of 2014\u201d lists? As crazy as it feels, we are. We\u2019ll have a few of those between now and January, but right now it\u2019s time for This Week in Anime.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shipping Out<\/h3>\n

The anime adaptation of Kantai Collection<\/em> premieres next season, and it\u2019s one of the few cases where I genuinely have no idea what to expect. The source material here is a free-to-play online game that involves building a fleet of historical Japanese naval vessels. This is Japan we\u2019re talking about here, so of course all the ships are personified as cute girls. You build your fleet, level up your ship girls, fight aliens, and try to avoid questioning how it all actually works.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: the KanColle<\/em> game only makes some modicum of sense because it doesn\u2019t really show any of the combat. When all you see is a classic RPG-style battle interface, you don\u2019t really have to think about how a five foot tall girl in a school uniform manages to drag an arsenal of naval weapons around without sinking. Adapt that into a visual medium like anime and suddenly you\u2019ve got to start answering all those annoying physics and scale-related questions.<\/p>\n

Arpeggio of Blue Steel<\/em> made the ship girl concept work with AI-controlled vessels, so I assume the people working on the KanColle<\/em> anime will come up with something. For the life of me, though, I can\u2019t imagine what it\u2019ll be. I\u2019ll be watching in January just to see how things work out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Weekly Spotlight: Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches<\/em><\/h3>\n

\"Yamadakun\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m cheating a bit here, as this is half spotlight and half preview. The manga version of Yamada-kun<\/em> has been in print for a few years, and all 130-something chapters are available in English through Crunchyroll Manga. It\u2019s the kind of series that feels built from the ground up to make the jump to anime, and that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening next April. Before the full adaptation comes out, a few one-shot episodes are set to ship with upcoming manga volumes in Japan.<\/p>\n

Yamada-kun<\/em> is a dumb, goofy series, but it\u2019s smart enough to use that blockheaded nature to its advantage. The story starts off with high school punk Yamada switching bodies with straight-A student Shiraishi. It turns out that the two of them can swap back and forth by kissing, and hijinks ensue as they run into other students with crazy powers of their own. The lovably dumb Yamada is the series\u2019 driving force, moving the plot along with his \u201cHulk smash\u201d approach to problem solving.<\/p>\n

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches<\/em> is at its best when it steps back and lets its core cast play off one another\u2019s quirks. All of the heroes (and most of the villains) exhibit their own unique brand of stupidity, and it can be a lot of fun to watch them butt heads. In a lot of ways, this series reminds me more of an American sitcom than a shonen romantic comedy. It works equally well in small doses or as a binge read. As for this spring\u2019s anime adaptation, it should be interesting to see how well the voice actors handle playing different characters inhabiting the same body.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This Week in Anime\u00a0is hastily cobbled together by Paul Jensen. You can follow his ramblings about anime and manga on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>. Check back every Monday for new articles.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are we really so far into December that people are starting to put together \u201cBest of 2014\u201d lists? As crazy as it feels, we are. We\u2019ll have a few of those between now and January, but right now it\u2019s time for This Week in Anime.   Shipping Out The anime adaptation of Kantai Collection premieres [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions\/1619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}