Clichés make a show boring. The more clichéd a story is, the less interesting and enjoyable it becomes. But my theory is that this relationship only holds true until you hit a certain magical event horizon where the laws of the universe break apart, one gets divided by zero and clichés become art.

How people react when I tell them I enjoyed IS

Infinite Stratos was my guilty pleasure from last season. I actually caught the last episode in Japan last month and have since read volumes 4-6 of the light novels, picking up from where the anime leaves off. Hence, I speak on good authority when I say that IS is one huge clichéfest. But for some reason, it’s enjoyable.

Only in anime: girls fight to feed you food

The basic premise of IS is one of the oldest stories ever told by anime: some lucky bastard ends up in a situation where he is constantly surrounded by sex-deprived girls who lust for the first man they bump into in the hallway. The inclusion of fighting mecha is initially reminiscent of Sakura Wars, but the storytelling is closer to Tenchi Muyo.

Hey wasn’t this from Gundam 00?

The Chosen One

In the story, IS are personalized powered armour suits, equipped with insanely powerful weapons ripped straight from the Gundam multiverse that — for very feebly conceived reasons — are not used for warfare but given to teenagers for unspecified purposes that no one really bothers explaining. They can only be piloted by girls, except for the one single exception, chosen by the almighty plot device, that is the main character, Ichika Orimura. As a science fiction, IS is pretty terrible, so it’s a good thing that the author is not trying too hard to make it one.

Spot the tsundere

The cool part about the character interactions is the fact that almost all the heroines are tsundere! Okay, it sounds lame when I articulate it in words, but really it is an impressive feat. Probably.

Of the five female IS pilots chasing after Ichika, only one can be categorically excluded from the tsundere classification, while each of the remaining four represents a different sub-division of tsundere. I am pretty sure making 80% of the characters tsundere violates some kind of international convention governing harem anime. This is either a work of madness or genius.

How people react to IS‘ storytelling

Just to be clear, the story is absolutely terrible. But the story is really not that important when it comes to having a good time with IS. You must enjoy the characters and relish the ridiculous situations they create when they get together. It’s one of those shows.

Of course, such a formula only works well for some quick laughs. The lack of an engaging story is definitely unsustainable in the long run.

Tatenashi Sarashiki is introduced in Vol. 5

The light novels injected life into the post-anime story by introducing a new character, Tatenashi Sarashiki (the playful but capable head of the student council), into the mix, hence covering the previously unoccupied teasing-senpai (i.e. Tama-nee) spot, but it is clear that constantly introducing new characters is not a viable long-term solution to generate interest. The author does take a huge step in advancing the overarching story in Volume 6, but so far it has failed to impress.

Beach episode: the forward pass of harem anime

But for the length of 12 episodes, the formula works just fine. In fact, the anime’s excellent pacing is almost sublime in its execution, like the well-timed punchlines of a skilful comedian. I was particularly impressed by episode 9, the fan-service episode, where the writer has somehow managed to fit an unbelievable amount of character and visual fan-service into one tight 20-minute package. That is truly the work of artisans.

So much armour and yet so little is covered

The animation and art quality is also surprisingly decent and consistent across the 12 episodes, all things considered, especially when you compare it to the typical cookie-cutter low-budget adapted-from-game titles found in great abundance in the same genre. Okay, maybe my bar was just set very low.

Ultimately, it takes a particular kind of mindset to get into IS. In my case, I started with very low, almost non-existent, overall expectations and found myself liking the characters, hence a good story was never within my range of considerations and its absence was not disconcerting. It also helps a great deal if you love tsundere, because the show is full of them… XD

More screencaps

Ichika’s teacher/sister is kind of tsundere

As IS technology advances, the skin exposure increases

The kendo-girl childhood-friend tsundere

The twin-tail childhood-friend Chinese tsundere

The twin-drill refined-lady British tsundere

The stoic tough-yet-naive flat-chested German tsundere

Three tsundere caught in an infinite loop of mutual contempt

Tsundere rule: smiles like this are usually followed by swift violence

Possibly the boss character of some fantasy RPG

Floating shoulders, how do they work?

This is a job for Admiral Ackbar’s brother

Some kind of futuristic mating ritual

I think this is what people call a reach around?

Okay so this is my favourite character in the show…

●__◎

Unlimited?! That’s over 9000!

Okay not twin drill. More like quad drill. It’s the future

Bunny ears…

How people react when I told them I was going to Tokyo last month

Eye-patch moé?

Mecha designs in the IS universe are often suspiciously convenient…

tl;dr version: Infinite Stratos is for people who appreciate the finer subtleties of tsundere.

Moteki is a short manga series by Mitsurou Kubo about a girlfriend-less guy, Yukiyo Fujimoto, who suddenly finds himself catching the attention of three different girls from his past just as he is about to turn 30. He decides that this is his once-in-a-lifetime “moteki” (lit. period of popularity) and his last shot at finding a girlfriend and not dying alone.

Interestingly, this is not exactly a harem title. While the three female characters, Aki Doi, Itsuka Nakashiba and Natsuki Komiyama, do have some kind of romantic encounters with Fujimoto, he soon realizes that his “moteki” is not what he imagined it to be and things won’t go smoothly as he had thought.

Fujimoto begins the story as a typical awkward Keitarou-type character who spends way too much time second-guessing the girls he interacts with and yet somehow manages to overlook all the important details.

The Keitarou dash (usually the result of a misunderstanding)

The girls themselves are not entirely well-adjusted individuals (e.g. tomboy who finds it hard to be seen as a girl; girl who can’t keep her pants on when drunk) and seek solace and support in various forms through their encounters with Fujimoto, but he suffers from a severe inhuman lack of self confidence and is unable to see pass the fact that the girls have boobs long enough to compute their silent cries for help. C’est la vie.

There are no explicit scenes

Over the course of four volumes, Fujimoto learns that he is not the undesirable loser that he thought he was and that romance is about more than just finding the courage to say, “I love you.” He matures as a person and eventually finds the self confidence to help the girls around him and himself to become (slightly) more well adjusted individuals.

The interesting thing about Moteki is that it is written completely from the Fujimoto’s herbivorous-male perspective but the mangaka, Mitsurou Kubo, is secretly a lady whose real name is Mitsuko Kubo. She likes to draw a beard on her avatar and use a male pseudonym because she was told by her editor that it’s better to pretend to be a guy when drawing male-oriented manga.

You would never guess this from reading the manga because the monologues feel so authentic that I swore it was meant by the author to be autobiographical. Heh.

Sometimes you feel like there’s a whole stadium cheering you on

Moteki was originally intended to be a one-volume release but it was extended due to popular demand. I have mix feelings about this.

Volume 1 and, to a lesser extent, Volume 2 are very well written, but the story wanders off into a weird direction somewhere around the third volume when Kubo decides to introduce another socially-awkward extremely-creepy character (who just happens to be a popular manga artist) and dedicate a few chapters to his sad life story that ultimately lead nowhere. It was a completely wtf-inducing plot digression that was clearly not in the original plans.

On the other hand, one volume would definitely have been too short to properly let Fujimoto grow as a character.

The eye of a sex predator

The ending is not entirely satisfying — not every one of the three male female characters receive proper closure and there is one (or two) huge loose end left hanging — but the first half is good enough to carry the story to the finish line a winner. More or less.

The author apparently agrees with this assessment because there is a Volume 4.5 special release containing a few extra side-story chapters to give a proper finale to one of the girls who got screwed particularly badly by her haphazard story planning. (Let’s just say she doesn’t show up at all in Volume 4.)

Despite its flaws and faltering second half, Moteki is a brilliant bitter-sweet example of seinen manga with imperfect characters who feel human enough for you to empathize with without being too edgy, and heart-wrenching despair (絶望した) matched by moments of pure joy and tenderness. A good read.

The tsundere blush (*´д`*)ﾊｧﾊｧ

I experienced a brief moment of surreality when Twitter was mentioned by one of the characters in the story. Somehow, it just felt so out of place in a manga, granted it’s probably because most titles I’ve been reading are years (if not decades) old.

This is also surreal

Kubo also talks about visiting Singapore to see the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix in one of her end notes. The world is, like, totally interconnected, man.

I have half a mind to give the live action adaptation a try, but I think I probably won’t like it.