Nope sorry ain’t working. Back to pron and Maxim.

Heavy ‘MOE’tal?

Maybe I should form my own LIGHT and HEAVY music club…

Yet, I still love her. She plays bass, I do too. That is probably the reason I paid attention to her. If she played the guitar, I would just pass her over and all the moe-ness.

Come to think, Mio has the same Tsundere qualities as William Murderface (Bass) in METALOCALYPSE.

Must every bass player be tsundere?
Those are my favorite shows by the way…

@ TheBigN: Like with all moe, it’s forced, artificial. There are a few exceptions in iyashikei and, if you can call it moe, miscellaneous characters like Saki in Eden of the East, but for the most part moe will always be targeted. I think it just comes down to how bothered you are with the pandering. The people that hate otaku pandering will hate the show (like Evirus, evidently), but the fact remains that KyoAni has done a good job of making a “fake” character more likeable than she should have been. It’s a harder task than one would imagine, and countless mediocre harem/VN adaptations have shown us that blatant pandering does not always make a character this popular (or this loveable).

@ Chris K: “Sneaky hot” is a surprisingly good way of putting it – I completely forgot to address the issue of the ending video. In addition to her personality that we’re treated to in the show, we’re also presented with a more visual form of fanservice; quite simply, Mio can be sexy, in a way that few anime girls can be. It sounds impossible – and it is, since the flashiness doesn’t carry on into her personality and character – but from the perspective of a fan, she’s capable of being both moe and…well, hot.

@ Alastor: The animation is definitely worthy of mention, I noticed that myself. It has that difficult to describe, slow moving, overly fluid look that Kannagi had – as if there were too many frames per second, or the same amount of frames were stretched out over a longer time. I’m not sure of the technical details, but it looks great, and you can feel the detail of the characters (since the backgrounds are pretty much irrelevant). It just goes to show that KyoAni can do the technical stuff as well.

@ Jinx: I probably have the advantage here in not being familiar with the source material; the show was never “about” anything for me, and after the whole moe moe kyun affair, I decided to succumb to Mio’s charms. The plot is more of a pleasant bonus for me rather than the main attraction, because really, I’ve already seen Beck – and while I wouldn’t mind another Beck, I also wouldn’t mind seeing KyoAni unleash the full potential of their moe. Like with many other situations *coughGONZOcough* it’s all about expectations.

@ Glo the Legend: Alastor’s comment makes a general point which I agree with, but the last point especially should be highlighted: sometimes it’s best to just ignore the curtain. If you accept that the show is otaku targeted and you still don’t like Mio, then it’s your opinion; if you dislike her because she’s targeted, then the show is incompatible with you. Of course, I’ve also seen a few romanticized characters and settings that I wanted to believe in, most notably visual novels like minori’s Wind, but the lack of realism was a bit too much. It’s very much hit or miss.

@ A Day Without Me: Yeah, you might be. I didn’t want to include bus/boat/horse carriage so I kept it simple, but you can probably vote based on distance: if the con is far enough that it would be impractical to drive to without wasting a day, then it might as well quality as plane travel :P

@ Baka-Raptor: That brings to mind something I though about a few months ago: psychological vs physical fanservice. K-ON is obviously the former, since it blatantly panders to fans, but it’s different since it doesn’t use the standard definition of the word. It’s “innocent” from a technical perspective, but in reality it’s far from it. It’s an interesting concept, really, and I’ll probably write something on it at some point. But in the meantime, I’m enjoying watching moe moe kyun spread to the farthest reaches of Danbooru :P

Baka-Raptors last blog post..The 2009 Baka-Raptor Awards