A Channel (Aチャンネル) Anime

June 23rd, 2011

Ah well. I gave it the old college try, but this “girl’s life as seen through the filter of unimaginative otaku marketing” series just didn’t do anything for me.

A Channel (Aチャンネル) is yet another four girls – high school life manga. Created according to the Gospel of Moe, each character is a “type,” not one of which is “character with a personality.” Run-chan is the protagonist and like all good moe heroines she falls asleep in class and is barely competent at anything, how adorable. Her sidekicks are well-endowed, Nadesico-type, Osaka-accent-sp……..zzzzz….oh sorry, Osaka-accent-sporting Yuuko and smart, glasses-girl Nagi. The fourth for this gaggle is First-year, extra adorably small, overprotective, yandere Tooru.

There is nothing *wrong* with the series, except that when Fanboys write stories about girls for other Fanboys they focus on all the wrong things and after a while, it just wears on one.  The first big hit my interest level took was when I was supposed to believe that a 15-year-old girl wearing a skirt forgot to put underwear on. Forget to shave her legs, yes. Forget to wear underwear….I can’t do it. I cannot be that stupid. Sorry.

Then, of course, we needed a bath scene. The fact that the first extended bath scenes were in episode 2 to me very much was a calling card for a paucity of imagination.

And then came the the scene where they bemoan the fact that they wear bloomers, long after no one does any more and gosh, mostly everyone else where shorts, but you know they have to wear bloomers and which are just like underwear over the underwear and why bloomers, because you know no one wears those anymore….

And I threw up my hands and said “Done.”

Yuri comes in the form of Tooru, who has a possessive crush on Run.

Ratings:

Art – 4
Story – 3
Characters – cookie cutter
Yuri – 3
Service – It’s for you, fanboys. Hope you like it

Overall – 3

I think I’m done on girl’s school life as told in the Gospel of Moe. So. Very. Dull.

New house rule – when a series mentions the word underwear more than 4 times in the first 4 episodes, I’m done.

8 Responses

  1. C. Banana says:

    Is this a sign you’re going to skip Yuru-Yuri?

  2. Anonymous says:

    Lost interest after 2 episodes. Could’ve been better but fell short. Yeah, and Madoka has more caffeine than this.

  3. Motormind says:

    I don’t care if they throw all the standard moe stereotypes at me, as long as they don’t commit the Cardinal Sin of boring me. Actually, Tooru’s feelings for Run might have been interesting, if they hadn’t only used it for laughs. Ah well, at least they had an episode in Kamakura, which I could compare the my holiday pictures I took there.

    As for Yuri Yuri, I keep hoping they will also include some stories of the Yuri Yuri spin-off, which I thought were rather cure, but I guess I’d better not get my hopes up.

  4. N says:

    The sad thing is that these plot elements aren’t “bad” at all. An entertaining situation comedy could be made with the exact same premise. Moe isn’t always bad, but the LFBs, who believe they know what they like, have made a list of “what is good” in all moe. So long as their checklist is 100% checked, it’s all good. Throw in the word “underwear” and it’s PERFECT. Doesn’t matter if the LFBs actually like the show, they can just pretend, because otherwise they’d have to question their morals. The same thing happens in american superhero books, with the fandom’s precious and pointless “continuity.”

  5. @C.Banana – I stopped reading Yuru Yuri long ago – there’s so little anything to hold on. 7 volumes into the manga, it’s exactly same as the first chapter.

    So, I will probably watch the first few episodes for a review, then stop. I am not the target audience.

  6. Anonymous says:

    New house rule – when a series mentions the word underwear more than 4 times in the first 4 episodes, I’m done.

    A lesbian mangaka makes a series about women working in an underwear store. No molestation happens at all, nor shots of anyone getting dressed, the store is just where they work. Underwear gets mentioned a lot due to that.

    Would you still drop it?

  7. @Anonymous – Too little information to go on. Is it a good story? Does it have well-developed characters with motivations that are plausible? Or is it a “Plot, What Plot?” about underwear with lascivious and endless discussions of underwear and wearing bras and materials? The second I would drop in a heartbeat.

    It’s not the gender or sexual orientation of the author that makes the difference for me – it’s the quality of the story, most especially of the characters.

  8. Motormind says:

    Well, I worked myself all through to the last episode and … I actually started to like it (which is a given, or I wouldn’t have kept watching). The characters, no matter how flawed, grew on me, and in the the last few episodes there was this atmosphere between that just felt right. I kept feeling though that the characters would have been better served with an actual story, instead of stringing them along in aimless scenes. Even something simple like starting a club or having a shared hobby would have worked.

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