Well, the final battle of Saimoe is upon us and after the bloodshed and carnage we’re left with the Hiiragi twins, Kagami and Tsukasa, to battle it out. I predicted a Kagami win at the beginning but never in my wildest imagination did I think her final opponent would be her twin sister. Kagami remains my favorite character of Lucky Star but now that we’re here though I want Tsukasa to win because Tsukasa always plays second fiddle to her twin.

The epicness of the battle makes large-size pictures a must.

Check the animesuki forum - here - if you want more information about the tournament and a good place to see the final results, because I’ll be too slow, is Kurogane’s Anime Blog.

Hope everyone that celebrates Halloween has a Happy Halloween today. I was planning on posting some Halloween-themed anime pics but there’s not many and I’ve seen them posted already in a bunch of places so instead I’m going to show how my house was decorated for the season.

Here’s our jack-o-lanterns. We normally do more but we had trouble finding pumpkins at a decent price. Remember, you can click on any of the pics to get them full-sized.

The one on the left was the one I carved.

Our Halloween decorations out front during the daytime.

I just love our Japanese maple tree, hopefully it'll be tree-sized someday.

Last year I had the idea about creating a witch’s cupboard and we liked it so much that we did it again this year.

Our family’s Halloween party is managed by my younger sister and this year she thought it would be a good idea to watch a couple of classic horror films. Vincent Price is always a treat to watch but I found Frankenstein to be unintentionally very funny because of the German setting and that it was made in the 1930’s.

Posted in anime, off-topic      

Massive amounts of anime was watched this week by me and I still feel like I’ve not watched enough of the series because I’m skipping sequels to shows that I haven’t seen the previous season of. As a side effect of rating so much anime at this concentrated rate, I’m finding it easier to see the gradations of quality that separates a perfect episode and one that’s an A+ or A. Therefore, it’s now harder for an episode to get a perfect score and the ones that do, deserve it.

The scores:

Soul Eater, episode 28 – 12+/12
Soul Eater, episode 29 – 12/12

Ga-Rei Zero, episode 2 – 12/12

Skip Beat, episode 2 – 11/12 A+
Skip Beat, episode 3 – 12/12

To Aru Majutsu no Index, episode 3 – 12/12

Wagaya no Oinari-sama, episode 24 – 10/12 A (end)

Kannagi, episode 3 – 11/12 A+

Kemeko DX, episode 3 – 10/12 A

Earl and Fairy, episode 2 – 11/12 +

Chaos;Head, episode 2 – 12/12
Chaos;Head, episode 3 – 12/12

Kurozuka, episode 2 – 12/12

Mouryou no Hako, episode 2 – 12+/12

Yozakura Quartet, episode 2 – 10/12 A
Yozakura Quartet, episode 3 – 9/12 A-
Yozakura Quartet, episode 4 – 10/12 A

Hyakko, episode 3 – 9/12 A-

Toradora!, episode 4 – 12+/12

Daughter of 20 Faces, episode 20 – 10/12 A

(previously reviewed)

Michiko to Hatchin, episode 1 – 6/12 B-

Earl and Fairy, episode 1 – 9/12 A-

Thoughts and Highlights

Alas, this amount of shows this week make it impossible to mention them all. Writing in any form has always been difficult and time-consuming for me. If I write an email that’s a paragraph long, you can bet that I spent over an hour composing it. Someday I hope to get better at writing and that desire is one of the personal reasons for doing this blog. With that said, onto my thoughts and highlights.

The best episode this week was from Mouryou no Hako. I was wondering what they where going to do after the first episode and while I still don’t know for sure, it appears that something strange is going on. For instance, they keep talking about how boxes can hold people’s souls. It was done with the girl in episode 1 that was just a living head in a box and the doll-maker and the characters have mentioned it as well. As this makes me wonder about the building-size box that is shown at the end of episode 2. What is it and what is it meant to do? Also, there appears to be reason to suspect that the girl that fell in front of the train at the end of episode 1 was pushed for a reason. Both of the mysteries make me real anxious to watch the future episodes and the stunning animation doesn’t hurt.

Soul Eater continues to impress me on the shounen front. I thought the show was a touch slow in the beginning, even if I liked each individual episode as it aired, but since about episode 18 the show has kicked itself into high gear and the pace hasn’t slacked yet. If this isn’t the top shounen series right now, it’s very close.

Use of eye-catches is always a plus for an anime

I’m finding that I’m warming to both Kannagi and Yozakura Quartet this week but Hyakko is still not winning me over and it was the robot girl that secured the A- for the episode, if she wasn’t there then it would have been scored lower. In Kannagi’s case, it’s probably the combination of successfully forgetting the manga and giving the characters time to be more developed and thus likeable. Yozakura Quartet is still not matching J.C. Staff’s Index but episodes 2-4 where good enough that I want to continue to watching.

And finally, the two shoujo shows that I’m watching, Skip Beat and Earl and Fairy, both where very fun shows to watch this week. The first continues to excel at making us care about the main character, Kyoko, and root that she gets her revenge. The second has a talking cat, always a big plus, and is doing a good job at developing the three main characters.

I forgot to post this pic with the series review. This was a good way to end the series..

Posted in anime, weekly anime review      

Today I got my hands on the soundtrack to Somedays Dreamer’s Season 2 and as I was playing this most awesome cd, I started wondering if music made for a slice-off-life anime would sound good while reading slice-of-life manga. To test this hypothesis out I opened up my scanlation of Yokohama Shopping Trip and started at volume 1.

If you’re not familiar with Yokohama Shopping Trip, aka Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou or YKK, it’s a fusion of two genres that normally don’t intermingle much: slice-of-life and SF. The story is set at some point in the future, in Japan, after some sort of cataclysm that has raised the world’s oceans by dozens of feet. This future Japan has only a small fraction of the people of today so even with less land, much of countryside is reverting back to how it was before humanity (with a twist). It appears that science advanced enough that human-like robots where created because our main character is a robot named Alpha that runs a coffee house in the sticks. This sounds like a recipe for either a very depressing story, a story meant to admonish us, or a chest-thumbing tale of how humanity will always preserve over adversity. None of these are the case though, instead we get a relaxing, slice-of-life story about Alpha’s life as she runs the coffee house. In fact, the manga is told with such warmth that it makes me wish that I could live in the world and have the chance to visit Alpha’s cafe, even if I don’t like coffee.

Getting back to my experiment, I found that listening to the soundtrack to Somedays Dreamers Season 2 did enhance my reading pleasure. I actually couldn’t stop reading and after about five hours, I had read all 14 volumes of the manga in one sitting with the soundtrack looping the entire time.

This marks the third or fourth time I’ve read YKK in it’s entirety since discovering it about a year ago and because it hasn’t lost any of it’s greatness or impact, I can easily say this is the best manga ever. Which is why I find it astonishing that this title is still unlicensed for the US. I’ll leave an actual full review of YKK for some later point, though you can probably guess how I’ll rate it.

Finally, discovering this fact, I’m curious how many other people do this – listen to music to enhance the reading of manga?

It’s around those times that I don’t feel like writing when the desire to make new anime wallpapers springs up. This time I felt like making a few wallpapers to the new anime Toradora.

I was able to keep the number of different versions down this time. Like always, click on the thumbnails for the full size version.

1280×1024

1600×1200

1920×1200

This was a title that I decided to watch on a whim, with the thought that I’d probably drop it in a few episodes because it was probably harem-esque, boring, and generic. Give the show all the rope it needs to hang itself, as the saying goes. Since, I’m writing the series review, though, you can probably guess that I got through the whole show.

Final Series Score: 11/12 A+
Rewatchablity: med-high
Pros: solid, well-developed characters that where very likable; every part of the show worked harmoniously to create an atmosphere for the characters to shine; it’s mix of light comedy, light drama, and small character-driven story arcs made the show feel original and pleasantly unpredictable
Cons: animation will not win any awards, people looking for an easily compartmentalized show will be frustrated

Awards given to this show by this blog

• Best Fox Spirit of Spring 2008
• #2 Top Continuing Anime of Summer 2008

Story

A pair of brothers belong to a family that have been caretakers of a shrine for hundreds of years. When the younger brother gets into trouble of the supernatural kind, they visit the family shrine to see if there’s something they can do. Luckily for them, the shrine has a trapped fox spirit and a shrine maiden that has power over water to combat this trouble. The grandma decides that both the fox spirit and the miko would be useful in protecting the brothers and sends them to live with the two brothers. This starts our show, and we get to follow the shrine maiden as she becomes acquainted with living in a city, the fox spirit as she/he/it sees how society has changed in the years since being trapped at the shrine, and the pitfalls that the brothers will fall into as they meet the area’s gods and spirits.

Thoughts and impressions

When I first starting watching this show, I was puzzled by how much I was enjoying it, nothing stuck out that I could point to as being the reason. I don’t think I was alone, judging by the lack of people that blogged about this show. I stuck with it and it slowly became apparent that the reason I liked this show so much was that the animators used every part of the show to develop and showcase the characters of this show.

For example, there’s a bit of action in the show, but not because fight scenes are a good way to pad the series; instead, we have a chance to see how willing the fox spirit, Kuu, is in protecting the two brothers. Also, there’s a bit of comedy in the show and the majority of it involves Kou, the shrine maiden, or Sakura. In Kou’s case, she’s lived in the country and has lived her entire life to fill the role of “Sentinel” at the shrine and thus doesn’t know about modern conveniences or how to act like a normal person. And in Sakura’s case, she has a way with over-analyzing what’s going on to absurd conclusions. In both cases, the comedy is used to reinforce traits of the characters. If your wondering, Kou does slowly learn throughout the show as would be realistic.

The story for the series is split into small arcs that run roughly one to four episodes and each one runs directly into the next. Characters introduced in one arc will almost always appear at some later point so the show does slowly build upon itself. This setup allows each arc to unfold differently and this keeps the show feeling fresh and interesting.

Sakura is one of the great reasons to watch this show

I mentioned in a comment on another blog that this show ascribes to the rule that I first learned in shop class in middle school: KISS – Keep it simple stupid. The show is not pretentious about itself, you won’t see any fancy narrative tricks that some shows use. Instead, it’ll find a simple solution to convey what it wants to. This is something I wish, frankly, other anime producers would take to heart sometimes.

Another thing that I really liked about this show was that it was consistent. So many two season animes have a period in the middle that the animators seem to lose focus and the quality of the show drops a great deal but this wasn’t one of them. This is probably helped by the slice-of-life feel of the show. I’ve noticed that shows that strive for a slice-of-life feel run on a more even keel as opposed to the more classic plot progression of raising tension, climax, and then resolution. But whatever the case, as I watched this show, I could always count on the next episode to be a good one.

There’s one last thing I wanted to comment on before concluding. I have a strong feeling that this show wasn’t given the largest budget to work with and the biggest proof I think is that for the last 5 episodes (of 24 total) was run with a new ending. This ending was done in a much nicer style then the show so I can’t help but think that it was only near the end when they realized that they’d have a bit of cash left that they did a second ending to the show. I have to hope that if a (well-deserved) second season is done then a little more money is spent on it.

So in conclusion, this show was a pleasant surprise and one that I’m sure just about anyone would enjoy watching. Don’t let the lackluster animation quality fool you, the characters and story are top quality and well worth the time.

Essential Information

• 24 episodes
• genre: Supernatural, Slice-of-Life
• animation studio: Zexcs
• director: Yoshiaki Iwasaki
• OP: “KI-ZU-NA ~Haruka Naru Mono e” by Hitomi Sora
• ED:“Kaze ga Nanika wo Iou to Shiteiru” by Saori Hayami and “Shiawase no Kotodama” by Yukana, Hayami Saori, Takahashi Mikako
• Seiyuus of note: Yukana, Yuichi Nakamura, Takahiro Mizushima, Yui Kano

Can one person/character carry a show? The answer is normally no but the possibility exists – look at the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, as an example. I mention this because the series that’s being reviewed, Maid Guy, is reliant on how well one character can shoulder the burden of making this a good show.

Final Series Score: 9/12 A-
Rewatchablity: low-med
Pros: Kogarashi aka Maid Guy
Cons: lackluster animation, comedy becomes repetitive and boring, enjoyment hinges exclusively on when Kogarashi is on screen

Awards given to this show by this blog

• Best Male Character for Spring 2008
• Best Ability/Power of Spring 2008 – Kogarashi
• Best Male Seiyuu of Spring 2008 for Rikiya Koyama (Kogarashi)
• #2 Top Anime of Spring 2008

Story

A teenage brother and sister are the only direct relatives left of a super-super wealthy businessman because members of the family keep dieing, presumably so someone becomes the heir to the fortune. The elderly businessman decides to hire two bodyguards / maids to protect the brother and sister until the elder sister can inherit the money in half a year. Maid Guy has many special powers that will be called upon to protect the two, including the ability to control flocks of crows, the ability to plug a printer’s USB into his ear and print anything his mind imagines, flight, x-ray vision, and unbreakable hair to name but a few.

Thoughts and impressions

Kogarashi is almost awesome enough to carry the entire show on his shoulders. He truly is like a force of nature that transcends being a mere mortal. If this show was given to more capable hands, I might me gushing how this was the best comedy of 2008. Instead, I can’t help but feel this was a near-miss by the people at Madhouse.

And that’s about all I have to say about this title. If you haven’t seen it already and don’t mind fanservice too much then definitely catch a couple of episodes just too see Maid Guy in action.

Essential Information

• 12 episodes
• genre: Comedy, Fanservice
• animation studio: Madhouse
• director: Masayuki Sakoi
• OP: “Special Life!” by KOTOKO
• ED: “Wakugai!!” by Yoshiki Fukuyama
• Seiyuus of note: Rikiya Koyama, Yuka Iguchi, Megumi Toyoguchi

Here are the updates of the shit released this week:

• Now and Then, Here and There (R2J) episode 05
• Tekkaman Blade epsiode 20
• Votoms (Remastered) episodes 16 & 17
• Outlaw Star (Remastered) episode 21
  

Enjoy these new eps.

Also we’ve reached 100.000 hits in the webpage during this week. Big thanx to you people who continue to support us.

Regards.

- The_Soulforged

Since my fall anime impressions were spread out over the past few weeks I thought it would be a good idea to combine the scores all in on place (and sort by their score) and link back to the individual entries so in case you missed one you could find it easier. Plus give any final thoughts on the beginning of the fall season.

Episode 1 ratings

To Aru Majutsu no Index, 12+/12

Clannad S.2, 12/12
Kurozuka, 12/12
Shikabane Hime: Aka, 12/12

Chaos;Head, 11/12 A+
Skip Beat, 11/12 A+
Mouryou no Hako, 11/12 A+

Toradora!, 10/12 A
Kemeko DX, 10/12 A

Ga-Rei Zero, 9/12 A-
Hakushaku to Yousei, 9/12 A-

Hyakko, 8/12 B+
Yozakura Quartet, 8/12 B+

Kannagi, 7/12 B

Michiko to Hatchin, 6/12 B-

Akane-iro no Somaru Saka, 5/12 C+

Tales of the Abyss, 04/12 C

This appears to be a rather strong season of anime. If I’m counting this right, that’s a total of 17 shows that I’ve watched the first episode for and so far I’ve only dropped the bottom two. That leaves me with roughly double the maximum number of shows that I want to watch at one time but I think it’ll be impossible to trim more then a few without losing good shows. And since I don’t want to do that, I’ll try to be that idiot that watches to many shows at one time.

Probably the biggest surprise is J.C. Staff’s pair of shows being awesome. I’m a big J.C. Staff fan, don’t get me wrong, but they haven’t exactly been hitting many homeruns lately. If these shows signal a resurgence for them, I hope they get to another season of Shana soon. The Shana series shows flashes of brilliance and when it does, it’s hard to beat it.

I think one of the reasons that I’ve been enjoying the second season of Clannad so much is because I know that Tomoya and Nagisa are a couple and we can really focus on the story now. I wonder when we’ll find out what KyoAni plans to do next. I’d bet it’ll be Haruhi season 2.

It’s a little early to start thinking of my seasonal awards but I can’t help but mention one show’s effort in earning an award. Ga-Rei Zero has impressed me with it’s sheer number of killed characters that seem like real characters, and not just nobodies, that I feel that it has to deserve some sort of award. I’m not sure what yet.

And finally, I wanted to mention that when I started this blog, I shrunk every picture down to a width of 450 pixels to fit inside the column width but starting right before this fall season, I realized that I could upload a full-size screenshot and let wordpress autoshrink it down to the column width but when it’s clicked - the full size version would show up in a separate window. Therefore, in any of these impressions, if you want to see a full-size version of the screenshot, it’s available by clicking on it.

I believe this was one of the first of the season’s anime to air and one of the last to get fansubbed. That probably means something, but I don’t know what. This is another shoujo show but I enjoyed Skip Beat so I popped this one in with only a little trepidation.

Rating: 9/12 A-

Earl and Fairy showed it’s shoujo roots more then Skip Beat during this first episode. The gratuitous amount of eye and smile sparkly pron was absurd but wasn’t enough to really dampen my enjoyment of the episode.

The story takes place in the England during the 19th century. We are introduced to a young woman that has the ability to see fairies and she lives as a fairy doctor, a person that helps people with their fairy problems. This being the enlightened 19th century, not many people actually believe in fairies so she doesn’t get much work. She is on her way to London when she is tricked into following a devilishly handsome aristocrat. This aristocrat claims to be a descendent of the Earl that’s in charge of the fairy nation but needs a special sword to prove it so he needs her help to find it.

Before I go on, I should admit to something – I’ve seen A&E’s 5 hour version of Pride and Prejudice at least four times now and needless to say, really enjoy it. Therefore, I conclude that I might have a weakness to shows that take place during this time period. If that’s the case, your mileage my vary with this title but I found myself being drawn into the world and becoming interested with the characters. Also helping my enjoyment of the show was the talking cat, though I was a little disappointed that the cat didn’t sound like Cary Elwes (The Cat Returns, Princess Bride).

I’m pretty sure these two fall anime impressions will be the last two that I will do because I think that I’ve pretty much exhausted my choices (excepting sequels to shows that I haven’t seen yet). If you remember, I was looking forward to this show because it was coming from Manglobe, who was the makers of the stylish Samurai Champloo.

Rating: 6/12 B-

Well, that was definitely underwhelming.

We are first introduced to a woman in the middle of breaking out of a super-max prison The talk of it being inescapable prove false when she gets away with the help of a windmill. Next we are introduced to an orphan that lives in the house of a married priest. It’s not out of kindness that she lives there but because the family can collect welfare for her and keep it for themselves. The prisoner, now on-the-lamb, goes looking for the orphan because she is supposed to be the prisoner’s daughter (or more likely, the girl knows something that’s worth finding her for). The pair meet up and the child decides to go with the prisoner to escape the abusive household.

On the plus side, it appears that the anime will have a funky styling that will remind us of Samurai Champloo while being different. Also in it’s favor is the setting of the show, Mexico, because it’s different from standard shows. On the flip side, outside of establishing the girl lives a very unpleasant life and the female prisoner is tough, nothing much was done in the first episode and that doesn’t give me a big incentive to watch the next episode. I realize that quite possibly there’s a bigger story that they don’t want to spill right now but there have been a few shows this season like Ga-Rei Zero, Kurozuka, Mouryou no Hako that have left me wondering what to expect and really impressed me at the same time. I’ll give this one at least a few episodes more before deciding to keep or not.

The fall season continues to wow with even more awesome shows this week. I might be biting off more then I can chew by trying to watch them all but I’m willing to try. Also this week, I was able to finish one my favorites from the spring season.

The scores:

Soul Eater, episode 27 – 12+/12

Toradora!, episode 3 – 12/12

Kemeko DX, episode 2 – 8/12 B+

Clannad S.2, episode 2 – 12++/12
Clannad S.2, episode 3 – 12++/12

To Aru Majutsu no Index, episode 2 – 12+/12

Kannagi, episode 2 – 9/12 A-

Shikabane Hime: Aka, episode 2 – 12/12

Maid Guy, episode 12 – 9/12 A- (end)

(previously reviewed)

Kurozuka, episode 1 – 12/12

Skip Beat, episode 1 – 11/12 A+

Mouryou no Hako, episode 1 – 11/12 A+

Thoughts and Highlights

As you can see in the scores, I was able to finish Maid Guy this week so I’d like to thank the joint effort from [Yakuza T-K] in doing this great series. Expect my series review soon. This final episode was of the type that signaled to the viewers that a second season will be forthcoming if they think it will make money. Therefore, this episode didn’t have any sense of closure and we were even introduced to a maid that looked like a worthy adversary to Maid Guy. I like the idea of someone on Maid Guy’s otherworldly level but I’m really ambivalent about another season. For the episode itself, it contained enough Awesome Kogarashi Moments to keep me happy.

Oh the joys of playing the violin.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Sanae wearing her daughters' uniform.

The Japanese always get the best aquatic-themed rhythm games

BRAAAINS!!!

I hope Tomoya decks Sunohara for making Mei sad.

The best episode of the week was actually the pair of episodes from Clannad. It’s like KyoAni was psychic or something – how else can you explain how they knew to start off the season with a baseball episode and then go into an arc about my favorite character – Sunohara and his younger sister, Mei. As an aside, if Mei doesn’t finish in the top 8 for Saimoe next year – I’ll be supremely surprised. So far Clannad has been delivering that perfect blend of comedy and drama that so epitomizes a Key/KyoAni show.

There really wasn’t a disappointing episode this week. The lowest scoring show of the week, Kemeko DX, was because the show took the time to do character introductions and not the comedic craziness that the show is promising. It’s always important to take the time to introduce and flesh out a character but this episode didn’t quite charm me like I was hoping it would. I still have relatively high expectations for this show so I’ll keep watching.

I think someone was watching too much LOTR

Soul Eater continues to keep me on the edge of my seat. This episode we got to see Justin fight and more of Crona being awesome. Another bad guy (actually a woman with really freaky eyes) appears and Stein continues to battle his temptation to give into the madness. Also, while, I wasn’t really impressed with the seconding ending, this new ending is awesome. The song is perfect – upbeat and snazzy – for the animation and the animation fits the feel of the song and even takes the time to showcase more of the main characters. On a side note, if how Death the Kid’s way of holding his guns bothered you, I was watching a show on History Channel that showcased a few of the great trick shooters living now and it included a guy that held his shotgun like Death the Kid holds his guns – so it is possible.

I can't decide between titling this "You shall not pass"or "Vague Christian imagery 4TW"

The pair of J.C. Staff shows, Index and Toradora, continue to be very good. We got character building in Toradora and they were able to make it interesting. Even though Rie Kugimiya’s Taiga is in many ways very similar to her other tsundere roles there is differences that make Taiga a much more likable character. It makes it hard not to root for her. In the case of To Aru Majutsu no Index, we get an awesome fight that shows off Tohma’s null-power right hand as well as his intelligence in finding ways to win. I have the feeling that the guy Tohma fought really isn’t a bad guy but one that has a temper and is more concerned about the safety of magic books then their carrier – Index.

Sunohara doesn't like to see cute kittens die

The final show I wanted to talk about was Kannagi. In my impression post for episode 1, I mentioned that a lot of fanservice was added to that episode and I didn’t think it was warranted. This episode once again adds in needless, and definitely implausible, fanservice. Implausible because if the main character is worried about people seeing Nagi’s underwear, why does he walk to the front door, holding them, where she is obviously talking with someone. Needless because I think in an episode that’s meant to be more serious with a mother cat and her two baby kittens dieing – the fanservice cheapens their deaths and frankly I wonder what the director was thinking. I have already seen the next episode and liked it more so maybe I’ll end up liking this anime a lot.