Academy Club Drive [Open]

battleaxeShotgun · Apr 9, 2015

"Th-the lowdown!?" Euna laughed, though a tad nervously as she took Jacob's hand and shook it. "I just told you that I haven't watched too much, but let's see."

Euna let go of Jacob's hand and looked up, a bit thoughtful. After a few minutes of "Hmmm" ing, she started ticking off every title she had ever watched off her fingers.

"There's last season's anime, but I've only watched two; ReBoot the Animation and... that cooking anime? I forgot what it was called. And then there's this season's anime, though I've only watched clips of Love of the Craft online. There's that magical girl anime, Blood Blossom, was it? And then there are the really old ones..."

Euna;s voice dropped to a mutter, her hand half-concealing the words on her lips. Before she knew it, she was blurting out old anime titles, regardless of whether or not she had finished watching them or not.

"Mahou Shounen Ikemen! Puzzle! Hoshizora no Uta!"

Critical · Apr 11, 2015

"Think of it as an exercise."

The request he made of Euna was a strange one, from an outsider's perspective. Why would Jacob, a teacher at the Academy, have any real interest in what the kids were watching in anime nowadays? And why was he so interested in hearing from one the students themselves? Jacob's answer would have been fairly simple and straight forward: he wanted to engage the students in something thoughtful that also would not have easily come across as another lesson. He felt it was his duty to make sure that their minds were working and thinking whenever the chance arose.

As per his desire to let Euna stretch her memory and recall abilities, Jacob remained thoughtfully quiet as she tried listing off some animes. He had no idea what any of them were, but that was not the point. However, he did have to intervene a little when it seemed she was getting lost in her thoughts.

"Sounds like you knew more than you thought you did, huh?"

He walked a little past her to the table and picked up one of the DVD cases at random, giving it a look over.

"So, of the ones you watched, can you tell me why you were drawn to them, or why you liked them? 'Cause I always heard that anime was all the same thing, but some of these aren't about singing school girls..."

Jacob put on an air of ignorance, attempting to spur Euna into giving him a better reason to appreciate anime on its own merits.

battleaxeShotgun · Apr 15, 2015

"I don't like girl idol anime," Euna declared almost at once, a distasteful glare spreading over her face. "They're usually the same thing over and over. Girl plus best friend plus idol group plus love interest." She pouted for a moment more, until her face suddenly shone in an excited grin.

"But the ones I've already watched, oh man. I just stayed there for the story. I mean, the promotional art on most seemed okay, and the first few episodes were pretty okay, then it got really good at around the fifth episode. Blood Blossom is one of those series," she said, positively floating; she was already standing on her toes. "I usually read the synopsis on anime sites and decide what to watch from there."

At this point, she tried peering at the DVD in Jacob's hand from where she stood, unaware that it was taken at random. "Usually I try to throw out the generic school comedies andâ€”" She paused to imitate a shudder "-idol anime, and most of the ones left are the ones I watch," she said, neglecting to mention the fact that she had filtered her choices further by haphazardly picking out the titles with the coolest poster art.

Critical · Apr 19, 2015

Finding out about Euna's exact amount of disgust towards a genre of anime, that Jacob thought he had mostly made up, was interesting to him. Teenagers were prone to over-inflating their emotions and opinions about anything and everything, and her opinion of idol animes was really no exception. However, there was always some amount of truth and honesty beneath all the hyperbole. Once that honesty could be uncovered, a lot could be learned about the student, and how they felt about themselves and the world at large.

Jacob listened closely and he was at least able to pick out what she did not like: repetitiveness and hackneyed relationship scenarios. While he probably needed more to get a read on Euna, he could understand. Cliches were annoying for a reason. There was probably more to be learned by examining what she DID like.

"So what are some of the qualities of the animes you do like, hm?"

He put down the DVD, seemingly at Euna's request, and started hovering his hand over various other cases, making sure to avoid the idol anime-looking covers.

"You mentioned... Blood Blossom(?). What about that anime makes it so different from, say, this one?"

Knowing exactly what he was picking up, Jacob showed Euna the cover to something called "Power Love Chord Live!". It was exactly the kind of idol anime that Euna did not seem to like, though with a slightly more rock'n'roll bent to it.

battleaxeShotgun · Apr 24, 2015

Euna tried her best not to cringe at the cover. "I've seen that one," she groaned. "Stock characters, generic plot... sparkles? Out of nowhere? And that romance plot might as well be called feta cheese." Euna decided to leave out the bit about her watching it solely to laugh at everything wrong with it.

Though she was being unusually cautious with what spilled out of her mouth at the moment, she couldn't put her finger on why Jacob was asking these particular questions. She didn't expend much room in her mind for long, though; these questions were kind of fun to think about.

"Blood Blossom wasn't gross or repetitive like that last one. Now Blood Blossom was massive." Euna fidgeted around for her own DVD copy, before realizing that she had left it in Ireland. At any rate, she wouldn't have brought it with her, she wasn't that much of a weeaboo.

"Well, it didn't have any of that clicheed garbage, and the plot was a roller coaster oh my god it. Like, the first part was kind of, okay, it was desperate and lame, but the fourth episode banjanxed me. Seriously, they were haunted to get out of there alive." Cue deep breath, but hell if she was going to stop there. "And then the 6th episode rolled by and everything took a turn for the sour and I was just so gutted and everyone was in bits and in the last two episodes everything came together and I think I broke the telly by screaming... And I wasn't even knackered by the end, I was so pumped for season two!"

She nearly jumped, but realized that not much of what she just said might have made sense to anyone listening, and that she was in a room filled with people, so jumping up and fangirling wouldn't have made the best impression. She straightened up and faced Jacob once again, pretending that her previous fangirl spree never happened.

"I guess it's just the emotional roller-coaster that gets me into an anime? And good characters come in second. And, oh, like good animation comes in as a distant third. Those, and... pretty poster art, maybe."

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Academy Club Drive [Open]

battleaxeShotgun

The Frenchiest Fry

Critical

Well-Known Member

battleaxeShotgun

The Frenchiest Fry

Critical

Well-Known Member

battleaxeShotgun

The Frenchiest Fry