There’s More Then One Way to Enjoy Anime – Occult Academy and Asobi ni Iku Yo!

Both Occult Academy and Asobi ni Iku Yo! have been fairly enjoyable series, not classics, but, well-suited for the laid back summer season. For me, I’ve been finding some rather incidental (and not much tied to the story, plot, or characters) ways to enjoy these anime and now that I’ve done with the Spring season, I’d like to share.

One way that I’ve been enjoying Asobi ni Iku Yo! has been some of the word play and choice by the fansubbers.

In the screen shot above, I’d like to think the use of “dogmatist” was purposeful since the speaker was a member of the Dog-like aliens that are nominal villains of the show. I had to actually pause the show because I was laughing too much.

Next up:

Wench is one of those insults people hurl at women that just make me giggle uncontrollably. I don’t know why, I just do. Other terms that’ll get a laugh from me include “strumpet” and “saucy tart”.

The time-travel aspect to Occult Academy and the setting of 1999 made me think about technological advances society has made from 1999 and today. We’re only talking about slightly more then a decade but there’s been so much change that I start feeling nostalgic. I find my eyes often drawn to the background to seek out these once cutting edge pieces of technology.

Look at the computer in the corner 🙂

More old computer goodness

A 2fer here, look at exaggerated roundness style and the TV/VCR combo

Monochrome cell phones screens

CRT TVs that took up so much room

Of course with time travel, sometimes things get overlooked. In this first screen shot, it appears that there’s poster of Lebron James in the corner. I could be wrong about it being Lebron James, I’m not much of a fan for basketball, but it certainly looks like him.

In the next screen shot we see the future phone at work. It certainly wouldn’t look out-of-place in the near future but when it was brought back to 1999, it should have been the cause of much amazement and wonder to the people of 1999. Maya should be dumb-founded over this phone but she starts using it like it’s normal for the day. Which it isn’t, the first camera phone was also the first color screen phone and it wasn’t introduced until more then year later. It retailed for roughly $500 dollars and featured a 0.1 megapixel camera and a 256 color screen and even that phone would have looked primitive compared to the future phone.

Even finding these small mistakes is fun.

I’ve mentioned before how I was a fan of science fiction long before anime and I love it when an anime can speak to my SF side as well. It’s become obvious that the people behind Asobi ni Iku Yo! love science fiction on a fairly deep level. The references to Star Trek weren’t that hard-core:

I so want a holodeck.

Beam me up Scotty.

But then they mention Clarke’s Third Law:  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

How can you argue with a show that quotes Arthur C. Clarke?

Just like how it’s impossible to not enjoy it when an anime like Occult Academy includes awesome, over-the-top faces.