Got quite a few recommendations for this one so I was surprised by dialog after dialog after dialog.  ‘course don’t get me wrong – having played my fair share of galge I’m not biased against that or anything.  Rather, was surprised that others weren’t ^^;  pantsu screenshot incoming, don’t say i didn’t warn you.

I suppose with an opening like this though… perhaps it’s not surprising people sat through all that dialogue? :P

pantsu and service aside, I really enjoyed the unique style of the show.  Kinda reminded me of shigofumi and natsu no arashi – not in content, but that both of those shows really captured a certain feel and ran with it.

You may know I’m a japanese language nut so the brief flashes of text on screens really caught my attention and added to my enjoyment -

Not sure if the translators are capturing this in their editorial notes or whatever (well, actually knowing their fanaticism I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already dissected everything in much more detail ^^;)… but here’s my simplistic take on things:

The above screen seems harmless enough.  Two characters and they even have a reading at the bottom.  However, you’ll notice that 黑, in the screenshot isn’t the usual writing of black, 黒 is.  Also, the other character isn’t very common either – it’s not listed in my “compact” nelson japanese character dictionary (i put “compact” in quotes because it still has 3000 kanji ^^;;).  Finally looked it up for this post and it turns out that 齣 means paragraph or section.  It’s kind of hard to describe the feeling if you’re not familiar with characters, but seeing these non-standard ones evoked a unique sort of flavor for the show for me.

I’ve given up on translating the bottom part for now… more crazy characters that aren’t commonly used anymore make it hard to search ^^;

More word fun below:

Usually kanji aren’t used at all for その (sono == that, or in this case, part of “sono ichi” which is like, “part 1″ or, “the first”).  Not toooo weird to use it, but then they go and bust out 壹 for one (ichi)!  One is usually written 一, sometimes you’ll see 壱 for some old school flavor… but this takes it to the next level ^^;  Turns out that this is the character sometimes used in Korean, and I’m sure it must be a Chinese character as well… not sure if the feeling they wished to evoke was ancient Japan, Korea, China… or just uniqueness ^^;;

And on the bottom, it says something like, “Font used: HGP Mincho B”.  What the heck?!   (oh and they used another weird character in place of 体 (tai) ^^;).

Soooo, just imagine that sort of internal conversation/puzzling going on every time they flash text on the screen… that’s what a large part of the viewing experience was for me ^^;

After geeking out on the language aspect, add in 戦場ヶ原 (senjyougahara)

feisty little mayoi-chan

tomboyish suruga

…who, i really thought was a guy all the times i saw the following ^^;

buruma nadeko

meganekko iinchou tsubasa

I liked the short vignette style of story telling with a greater arc coming to a close as the series ended.  Was like that in shigofumi too.  Characters come and go, but, when done well, their arc will leave a lasting impression on you.

Couldn’t get enuf of mayoi’s butchering of araragi’s name ^^

かみまみだ。

^^

Speaking of mayoi kamimamida, there’s a huge craze of マイムマイム (mayim mayim) vids going around niconico in which she has no small part ^^

Think I’ve watched it at least 10 times ^^;

Oh yes, and top things off with an ED song by supercell!

Really grew on me throughout the series and now I’ve set it as my alarm clock song ^^;

Haven’t seen enough (other shows) yet to call it the anime of the year (or even of that season ^^;;) but it was definitely a solid watch for me.  Need to pick up the light novels now ^^

Without my visual novel exposure I’m not sure I would’ve enjoyed this the same way.  Since playing, long dialog and run of the mill everyday conversation have become part of my expectations ^^;

Have you watched it yet?  Favorite character?

以上！