Okay, it’s a pretty unscientific manner of gauging popularity, but I dare you to come up with something better. Hashihime has one of those reports about what anime has the most completed threads (=1000 posts) on 2channel, and the winner for winter ‘08 anime so far is Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei by a longshot– 67 to 17 for second-placer True Tears. Yatterman, surprisingly, takes third with 13. Shigofumi and Spice and Wolf round out the top five with 11 and 9, respectively.

Catch the rest of the list here. Make sure you read the added notes (like the fact that Minamike ~Okawari~ is sharing threads with its predecessor, making it hard to gauge). And try to ignore things like the fact that Hatenkou Yuugi accidentally got named Hakuten Yuugi (which is kinda funny; “Hatenkou Yuugi” would = roughly “Unprecedented Games,” “Hakuten Yuugi” would = “Infectious Games.” Like, as in a disease-type infection).

Original source: Hashihime

• Title: Yatterman New Series
• Studio: Tatsunoko Productions
• Genre: Kids

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥

• Animation: ♥♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥½
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥½ (Sorry, I don’t date geezers.)

Thoughts:
Okay, I don’t know how many of you are really into the classics and whatnot, but here’s this remake of the ‘77 mecha Yatterman, and they’re also making a couple of live-action movies based on it– directed by Takashi Miike (of MPD Psycho and Sukiyaki Western Django fame). So I figured I’d better check out the show.

The plot is something like this: Gan-chan and his girlfriend Ai-chan reconstruct an old robot called Yatterwan, a dog mech. They stumble upon the evil schemes of the Doronbo trio (a hot woman with a surprisingly old voice named Doronjo, plus her two moronic lackeys) and combine with the Yatterwan to become Yatterman and the Yatterwan (no name for Ai-chan’s superhero self so far) to defeat the trio, which they do with ease and life goes on.

Now, unless you’re really hardcore into that old-school feel, I can’t say I’d recommend this one. It’s so retro, it’s…well, old. Except for the animation, which is pretty decent-quality, and the art, which has a solid retro-meets-superflat style, it’s completely mindless and infantile, even for a kids’ cartoon. It’s excessively formulaic, albeit with a formula that would be nostalgic if you grew up watching this show. I’m not sure I’d like it even if I was a little kid (and if I did, it would probably be for purely aesthetic reasons; the characters are too dumb to even be funny).

Though I do have to say that the ED sequence is actually hilarious. It’s sort of one of those classic emo people-walking-in-rain-looking-at-stuff bits, which is so at odds with the rest of the show that it’s a complete hoot. And the ED sequence also ends with a shot of the villainess Doronjo’s clothing lying on a couch, which is so reminiscent of Lucky Star’s uniform-on-a-desk that I couldn’t help but chortle.

So unless you’re a nostalgia-freak, I wouldn’t bother with more than a single episode of the show– and even that only if you’re curious about what the show’s about and/or the updated style.

Not that there’s any such thing as “too much anime,” but I mean to say because I’ve been watching piles and piles of first episodes (along with, you know, working, and stuff). But without further ado: news, and stuff.

News: