Manabi Straight

Sometimes when you consume a shit tonne of the same sort of media, it becomes difficult to tell whether or not you are actually enjoying something for what it is, or just because its similar to a thing you do like. For me one of these things is SoL anime. And by SoL I don't mean the half-assed pansy shit like Kokoro Connect or any Key-shit. No. SoL doesn't really mean Slice-of-Life literally, it's its own thing. A good policy would be that if a show has more than one gender, its not SoL; and if it's guys then its gay. Except Nichibros, I liked that show. (And Cromartie) ((Wait no Cromartie's pretty gay))

Anyways, my recent experiences with SoL is that its hard to tell if a show is shit or not. A good'un is always pretty obvious, like nobody watched K-On episode 1 and thought it was nothing special. But I seem to be finding it hard to recognise when a show is truly good until a week or so after I finish it. I don't really get it. It only ever happens with media types that I consume an unholy amount of. I'll be the first to point out the flaws in any Shounen-Harem show or an FPS vidya. It's probably because I'm inherently attracted to the concept or something. I can easily blaze through a mediocre 2-cour SoL; but getting through just 12 episodes of shounen battle show is a slog no matter the show's quality. In fact. That may be the crux of the whole problem. I seem to get bored with a show much faster the more action there is. If there is no action, I'll scream through; if there's only action, I'll end up dropping before half-way. A good case study of this is Cardcaptor Sakura. I really loved the show, its been the benchmark of mahou shoujo for nearly 20 years and its animation blows most of today's stuff out the water. But it took me an age to get through, because it insisted on not only being SoL, but also action. I'm not saying action is bad. Action is cool. But so is not-action. And it just so happens that I get bored with action way faster that not-action. Maybe it drains me faster? I don't know. Oh fuck yeah this was meant to be about Manabi Straight.

Manabi Straight is a cool anime centred around cute girls in high school. But I don't care about you so if you don't know it then oh well fuck off. But the reason it's worth toalking about is that watching Manabi Straight made me the least bored I've been in ages. Usually I end up putting a show on auto-run and falling asleep around 3 episodes in. With Manabi Straught I binged straight from midnight till sunrise. And I think the reason why, is that my subconscious innately knew it was a well made show. It'd been crafted in such a way that it held my attention, made me care about the story and all the while still pandering to moe culture. I think some dick with a mic and an inflated ego could go into great depth over each scene individually and how well its made, but as a consumer I don't give a shit. I can just feel that it works, everything clicks together. The plot never gets too big, meaning all the loose ends are tied up at the end. There are 5 (five) main characters, the optimum amount to give each an in-depth development arc but not to be too smushed in to one another. The character's personalities aren't overly anime, and are grounded in some sensible realm (except for Manabi's) without going and being all “realistic” and just removing the reason why people find fictional characters fun in the first place. The list goes on. But the overarching problem here is that I don't actually know. Unlike other favourites where I can give conclusive reasoning behind my ratings, with this one I can't put my finger on it. At the time of writing its been 3 weeks since I finished it, and I still would rank it among my tops, so I doubt its just a matter of the post-binge wankfan. Bringing this sprawl back to the start, I think my love for this show is just that its a really good version of a formula that I love. Its a high school SoL that stands out from the crowd, if only for being sufficiently proficient in every area I notice or care about. And of course the weird funky aesthetic design choices are a huge plus for me; being an arthouse-fag.

Cool all around with a hint of spice.

The Hierarchy of Study

-I'm sorry arts, I love you really.

All through secondary kids around the world are forced to study an array of nonsensical, boing and useless subjects to “widen their horizons” or some bullcrap. Being a (normal) school kid I was downright angry how they forced all this useless shit down my throat everyday for years. Religious Study? Really? And don't get me started on fucking Drama. Thankfully I was a gay nerd who was actually good at science and the real subjects. So naturally I hated all this poncy side-work I had to do, and naturally the progression was to reaffirm my suspicions through my innate autism. Stats and charts. So here it is. The fully remastered Hierarchy of Study:

Subjects here are sorted into this tree thing, as well as being sorted into horizontal tiers. The links show when a subject is merely a subsection of the one above. The tiers are sorted from elderberry tier at the top, down through neck yourself tier to Floor Tiles tier right at the bottom. Lets start from the real trash. Arts: fuck you. Art should be a pastime or a passion, not something to learn about in a class. Do you think real art men went to school? I mean they did but they didn't need to, probably. Next.

Humanities. More like cuckmanities am I right? Its all just learning about stuff humans do, and not actually doing it. History might be cool to learn and parrot off to your friends like some kind of grimy wikipedia gnome, but what is it really good for? We literally know this stuff already, we did it. Languages are also shit. English is the ultimate language and luckily you already know it, so just stop.

Now this one is possibly tenuous. I've stuck very one of the aforementioned subjects as subsections of “psychology”. Which is possibly dumb, I don't know, I never did psychology. Next one.

Psychology is the study of human minds, Biology is the study of life. The human mind is just a small section of life. This one makes perfect sense. Biology is kind of useful I guess, but I've never met a medicine student I liked so there.

Chemistry is studying chemicals and their reactions. Biology is just chemistry that happens to make life. Simple.

Again, an easy one. Chemistry is just a small part of physics; which isn't just limited to the properties of chemicals, but the properties of everything that exists. Physics is the king of science, the overarching subject that includes literally everything you can see.

But again physics pales to maths. Physics is just applied maths. Maths that has an effect on real shit. Behind all physics is maths, and without maths, physics just couldn't. If physics is the king, maths is the omnipotent god that pulls the strings.

However, stuff is never that simple. I've left out one subject which doesn't really fit anywhere. That's a lie, I left out almost every subject but whatever, they don't matter. The real big one missing is philosophy. Yeah I know in real life doing a philosophy diploma is a sure fire route to the homeless shelter, but that doesn't lessen the concept of it. Really its about the big questions that even physics, and not even maths has the answers for. Literal god-tier stuff. Maths is just the parts of philosophy that work with numbers; so therefore I place philosophy right at the top. King of gods. The end.

But wait! Philosophy could also fit right at the bottom of this chart. Right down there with the dogs. Because really its just about thinking. And thinking is a mere human construction right? Just a section of what psychology covers. And thus this tree has turned into a loop. From top till bottom and back to top. I love it when a good circle appears. I'm sure this symbolises something, and I'm probably the only person who could work out what that thing is. But dammit I'm going to bed.