Anime DVDs

December 29, 2009
Baccano – Box Set
Blassreiter – Part 2
Case Closed: Captured In Her Eyes
Case Closed: The Last Wizard Of The Century
Dragonaut: The Resonance – Part 2
Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – Season 2 Box Set

Manga

December 29, 2009
Crayon Shin-chan – Volume 10
Fairy Tail – Volume 9
Negima!? neo – Volume 4
Ninja Girls – Volume 2
Only One Wish

December 31, 2009
Bamboo Blade – Volume 3
Crown – Volume 5
Pandora Hearts – Volume 1
Yotsuba&! – Volume 7

It’s Kobato episode 11, and Kobato decides that she’s going to find a part time job to help out the nursery.

While leaving the nursery, Kobato sees a brochure for part time jobs and decides that she’s going to get one. After asking Chitose for some advice, Kobato lands at Tirol, where Kobato once again meets Ueda, as well as his helper Yumi (from Chobits as well). Kobato ends up having a rough first day, but she gets through it.

After work, Yumi notices that Ueda seems tired, and Kobato notices that Yumi seems worried on the way back home, and remarks that she wishes she could help out Ueda more. The next day, Yumi notices that Ueda sighs after looking at her, and fears that perhaps his worries deal with her. Kobato decides to ask Ueda what’s wrong, and he ends up telling Kobato that it’s nothing that Yumi needs to worry about, which just makes Yumi more concerned. Sayaka then enters the store to buy something for Chitose, and Yumi remarks that she remembers Sayaka from when she bought a cake for her husband, but Sayaka seems to be saddened by the remark.

Kobato asks Ioryogi about it later, and he suggests that perhaps Sayaka and her husband are separated, and also tells Kobato that this might not be something she can just go and ask Sayaka about, either. Kobato ponders whether Ueda is having a similar problem, and so she decides to conduct a “secret” investigation. However, as to be expected, Kobato gets off to a rough start in her detective role, and Ioryogi decides to take matters in his own hands. Ioryogi visits Genko once again, but this time Genko refuses Ioryogi’s request as ridiculous.

That evening, Kobato ends up roping in Yumi, and they both trail Ueda to a restaurant, where they see him sitting with a woman. However, Kobato and Yumi end up being so loud outside that Ueda notices them. Yumi runs away, and Kobato chases after her (and Ueda chases them both), until finally Kobato trips and falls.

Ueda finally tells them that he was interviewing a new full time employee for the store. He explains that while Kobato can help on the weekend, he’s never been able to give Yumi any time off, and he was worried that he was working her too hard. However, Yumi says that she likes working with him at Tirol. In the end, Kobato finds one more candy in her jar.

I guess as expected, Kobato starts trying to help out the nursery even more, and I guess she found about as good of a part time job as one could expect for her, and she still found a way to collect more candies in her jar.

I also noticed that Kobato has started suspecting Ioryogi of…something, given that he’s come back with sweets from an unknown place twice now, though Ioryogi was able to keep Kobato from digging too deeply in this episode, though I have a feeling that will eventually change. Speaking of this, we still don’t know where any of these people are from, or why Kobato is collecting the candies, or why Ioryogi was transformed into a stuffed animal, etc.

It’s still kind of odd seeing characters in a same-but-different universe (unlike Tsubasa where characters were basically in completely different situations from their native CLAMP works). If I took this episode alone, I’d say that this was pre-Chobits, but we’ve already seen enough to know that this isn’t the same universe as the “normal” Chobits/Angelic Layer universe, so who knows when they are, or even who is there.

It’s Kobato episode 10, and Kobato decides to help air out the futons at the nursery, since it’s such a nice day, and ends up learning about Fujimoto’s past from Sayaka.

Kobato is spending her Sunday morning singing and cleaning her room, but Fujimoto tells her that she’s being too loud, before leaving. Kobato decides to air out the futons at the nursery as well, but Ioryogi suggests that her time might be better spent healing people’s hearts to get candies. However, Kobato decides that she wants to help out the nursery as long as she can.

At the nursery, Kobato finds Sayaka there, and they air out the futons together. Sayaka asks how life at Kobato’s apartment is, and Kobato says she likes Chitose, Chise, and Chiho. When Sayaka asks about Fujimoto, Kobato says that he sometimes picks on her. Sayaka, however, tells Kobato that despite his appearance, he’s a nice person and has been since he was little, and then offers to show Kobato pictures of Fujimoto when he was small. Sayaka explains that Fujimoto was orphaned as a child, and was taken in my Sayaka’s father, who ran the nursery at the time.

Fujimoto was very unsociable as a child, not wanting to talk to anyone, even Sayaka or the other children in the nursery. Then one day a pair of high schoolers accidentally kicked a soccer ball into the nursery, and ended up crushing some sunflowers while climbing over a fence to retrieve it. Watching Sayaka be courageous in confronting the boys inspires Fujimoto to try to play the organ like he’s been secretly interested in for a while, which was the start of his opening up.

Sayaka then tells Kobato that Fujimoto is working so many part time jobs so that he can help pay off even a little bit of the nursery’s debt, but Sayaka remarks that she’s afraid that he’s working himself too hard.

On her way back home, Kobato walks by Kohaku’s house, who offers Ioryogi some beer she got from Fujimoto (whose job it was to hand out free beer samples, along with Misaki and Tomoyo from Angelic Layer), which Ioryogi gladly accepts since he has been sitting in the hot sun all day. Then Kohaku and Kobato talks about how it’s good to help out people you care about, which makes Kobato all that more determined to help out the nursery.

This was a pretty good episode, and finally we got some confirmation about Fujimoto’s past that had been hinted at in the past, namely that he was an orphan. We get to see that, despite how anti-social he is now, Fujimoto is a lot more open than he was when he arrived at the nursery after Sayaka’s mother brought him in, and of course it seems like Kobato is helping open him up a bit more.

Kobato also seems as determined as ever to help the nursery as well; though I’m not sure how successful she would be at trying part time jobs like Fujimoto does, considering her ditzyness. I have a feeling that in the end, she’s going to end up saving the nursery in her own way (and earning a lot of the candies in the process).

We also had our first CLAMP crossover sighting in a while in this episode, when we saw Misaki and Tomoyo from Angelic Layer show up at Fujimoto’s part time job. Though, Misaki, for better or for worse, didn’t have quite as high, squeaky voice in this episode as she had in Angelic Layer.

I also seem to be having a problem of accidentally clicking the wrong thing and taking nearly-duplicate screenshots with my laptop.  I’ve noticed in a couple of there reviews where that’s happened.  Oh well I guess at this point…

It’s Kobato episode 9, and Kobato finds two school girls whose friendship appears to be becoming strained.

Kobato is washing Ioryogi when she sees a flyer for a summer festival in her mailbox. Kobato grabs it, but it blows away. A girl, Natsuki, ends up catching it and gives it back to Kobato (along with a handkerchief to dry her hands off). Soon another girl, Yukino, from the same school comes by (and falls down since she was texting and running), and the first girl, Nat, just gives her a terse comment and runs off.

Later that day, Fujimoto tells Kobato that the girls go to Seinan Girls’ Academy, a large all girls school that Sayaka and Chitose both attended. Kobato decides to go visit Seinan Academy to go find Nat, and eventually finds her classroom just as she’s receiving an award and finds that her full name is Natsuki Mizuhashi. However, as class lets out, a teacher pulls Kobato aside before she can get to Natsuki, and Ioryogi tells Kobato to run for it. Kobato hides in some bushes, but Yukino ends up finding her while shooting some pictures out a window. Yukino leads Kobato to Natsuki, where Kobato returns her handkerchief. However, the relationship between Yukino and Natsuki still appears to be strained.

Later, Natsuki treats Kobato to a drink back at her house. There, Kobato sees an old picture of Yukino and Natsuki when they were younger. Natsuki then tells Kobato that they used to be close, but Yukino seems to be avoiding her now, and now that Yukino hangs out with the photography club, they’ve hung out even less. Kobato decides that she wants to help Natsuki, and figures that the place to start is to visit Yukino. Yukino tells Kobato how they got matching cell phone and each bought each other a charm for their phone – with Natsuki getting Yukino a watermelon charm. However, Yukino no longer has that charm on her phone. But Yukino also says that she wants to stay friends with Natsuki.

The next day, Kobato decides to go to the camera sale that Yukino was going to, and Natsuki ends up going to it as well. Natsuki runs into Yukino and her photography club friends and ends up going off on them, and especially Yukino. Yukino runs off and Kobato, who had just arrived on the scene, chases after her, but Yukino ends up wanting to be alone. Meanwhile, Natsuki is regretting what she said to Yukino, but Natsuki soon realizes that her cell charm is missing and rushes out to search the trash for it, when Kobato arrives and helps her find it.

Afterward, Kobato says she thinks that Natsuki might have been afraid of Yukino because of how hard working and driven she is. Natsuki basically agrees, saying that she started focusing on her studies and other things to keep up, and that that’s probably when they started drifting apart. Natsuki then goes and apologizes to Yukino and all becomes well, and Kobato gets two more candies in her jar.

I guess this was a pretty good episode, I guess. I mean, it was a good episode, but something about it seemed to be a bit dull, I thought. I don’t know if it was just the problem she had to solve was kind of ordinary or what. I guess it’s just the “best friends misunderstanding and drifting apart” seems to be such an old and common plot line, and there wasn’t necessarily anything in this episode that made it particularly memorable. At least Kobato got two more candies out of it.

In any case, the way this series is going, I won’t be surprised if we end up seeing Natsuki and maybe even Yukino later in the series, especially since they go to the same school that Sayaka and Chitose went to as well.

It’s Kobato episode 8, and Kobato finds an abandoned kitten and wants to find a new home for it, but she finds that that’s easier said than done.

Kobato sees a cat left out for someone to take and, feeling sorry for the cat, she decides to bring it home. Fujimoto passes her at the apartment, and tells Kobato that if she doesn’t have the resolve to see something through to the end, then she shouldn’t get involved to start with. Kobato soon discovers what he means when the cat gets hungry, and she rushes down to Chitose’s room, where Chiho and Chise are studying, and they give it some milk. But Chiho and Chise also tell Kobato that having pets in the apartment is prohibited.

Kobato thinks of asking Sayaka the next day at the nursery. Unfortunately, one of the kids at the nursery is allergic to cats, so keeping the cat at the nursery is out of the question. Fujimoto also goes off on Kobato, telling her that her thoughtlessness just causes trouble for others. As a result, Kobato goes off to think by herself, but Sayaka eventually finds her. She tells her that Fujimoto didn’t really mean any harm, and might have been projecting himself on the kitten, though Sayaka quickly realizes that she might have said too much.

Kobato, Chiho, and Chise try to find an owner for the kitty, but without luck. At the end of the day, they return back to the apartment, where Kobato finds the old lady from the first episode leaving. Kobato asks her what she was doing there, and the old lady says that she had heard that someone was trying to find a home for a kitten and she was wondering if she could take it home, since she only has one grandchild and thought a kitten would be nice to have as a companion. Kobato asks if the baby will be OK, and the woman said that the pizza delivery boy who told her about the kitten asked the same thing, but the woman says that it’ll be OK (and Kobato realizes that Fujimoto was out trying to help as well).

Back in her room, Kobato sees the dish they fed the kitty with and goes to return it to Chiho and Chise, but Chitose tells her that they’re on the roof. On the roof, Kobato tells them about how she sang for the old lady’s grandchild to help it go to sleep, so they ask her to sing for them. Kobato does, but when Fujimoto returns home, he recognizes the song Kobato is singing. Later, Kobato knocks on his door to think him for finding a home for the kitten.

The next day, Kobato finds not one, but two new candies in her jar, and wonders why. Ioryogi explains that her telling the story about singing for the old woman’s grandbaby helped put Chiho and Chise’s minds to rest when they worried about the kitten.

This episode was great if you’re a Chiho and Chise fan, since we get to see a lot of them, as well as more Chitose and the return of the old woman from the first episode. This suggests that past actions by Kobato might start building up in this series towards later and perhaps bigger actions later. That’s something I’ve always rather liked about CLAMP series – the tendency to have actions and events build up over time so that everything is in some way interconnected.

We also see for the first time in this episode that Kobato can get more than one candy from the same action – in this case, singing to Chiho and Chise. That might provide some hope for Kobato to fill up her jar, though she still needs a lot of candy, and I’m not sure what she could do to heal so many hearts that fast, even if she can do several at a time. The only question now is whether healing a single person can yield her more than one candy or not.

This episode also continued to soften Fujimoto’s facade, even if he’s still outwardly harsh to Kobato.

As visitors to this blog probably noticed, I ended up having a two month hiatus or so from blogging, which I think is the single longest stretch that I ever went without blogging anything.  I think this mostly resulted from just getting into one of those funks where I fell out of interest for a while with anime before getting back into interest, which is pretty much where I am now.

As you probably have noticed, I’ve started catching up on my blogging of Kobato and will hopefully be completely caught up posting those episode reviews by Wednesday.  I also need to catch up on all the anime I had been watching in the fall season as well, because when I said a funk, I meant a funk, meaning I didn’t watch anything over the course of the past two months or so.  It’s not that I’ve been busy or anything. I just…didn’t feel like it for a while.  In any case, this will probably delay some of my end of year top 10 lists and such since I can’t really make, say, a top 10 anime of the year list without actually finishing the shows I was watching in the fall season.

Otherwise, I wanted to go back and see what I missed over this time, and this appears to be the highlights:

• Funimation’s new initiative to co-produce new anime shows based on non-Japanese franchises.
• Funimation licenses Sekirei and both Birdy the Might DECODE series.
• Sentai licenses The Skull Man, Maria Holic, You’re Under Arrest: Full Throttle, Yozakura Quartet, and Tayutama: Kiss On My Deity

OK, not a whole lot I guess, some interesting news from Funimation and 8 series getting licensed.  Nothing like the 12 days of Christmas licensing fest or whatever like we had last year.  At least it seems like The Studio Formerly Known As ADV (aka Sentai) is busy licensing new titles, though I’m sure they’re all going to be sub-only like their others.

Also, I finally got a blu ray player for Christmas myself, so hopefully I can start trying out some of these anime series on blu ray, though they still seem to be somewhat few and far between right now.

It’s Kobato episode 7, and Fujimoto forgets a college report at the nursery, so Kobato tries to search the college campus to return it to him.

Fujimoto is repairing broken chairs at the nursery, and Kobato wants to help him, which she doesn’t do a very good job at. However, Kobato wants to help out Fujimoto for another reason too: she wants to ask him why he didn’t want her to tell Sayaka about the telephone call from the last episode. Fujimoto just gets angry and says that telling Sayaka would just make things difficult for her. However, she also ends up getting in his way painting the chairs, so he banishes her.

Later, Kobato decides to apologize, but Fujimoto isn’t there anymore, but she does find a report of his, which Sayaka tells Kobato she should return to him. However, when Kobato finally arrives at Fujimoto’s college, she’s overwhelmed by the size of it and can’t find him. She finally sees him through a window and rushes to get to him, but runs into someone else, Takashi Domoto. Takashi offers to help Kobato find Fujimoto again.

Back at the nursery, the children are getting restless without either Fujimoto or Kobato there, but Sayaka is saved when Chitose comes by with Chiho and Chise. Chitose also offers to help Sayaka find a better loan for the nursery, since she would be sad if it closed. Meanwhile, back at college, Takashi and Kobato continue to look around, and it becomes more apparent that Takashi is a student that other students look to for support.

Unfortunately, Takashi tried to give Fujimoto some advice, which made him angry since Fujimoto likes doing things on his own. However, when Kobato tells Takashi how amazing he thinks he is Takashi doesn’t seem too happy about it. Kobato finally finds Fujimoto, but she sees him telling a pair of girls in a rather nasty way, so Kobato yells at him for being mean, gives Fujimoto his report and storms away. Takashi finds Kobato sitting outside, and tells her that he’s jealous of her, because he’s known Fujimoto for much longer, and he still can’t talk to him like Kobato just did.

Kobato reiterates how she still thinks Takashi is amazing for being so nice, but Takashi just says that he’s not really that nice, he just can’t say no to people, and that he’s jealous of Fujimoto since he’s strong enough to not care what people think of him. However, Kobato disagrees, saying that being hated makes one lonely and sad, and that helping other people makes them happy, and Kobato tells Takashi that isn’t nothing bad to want to help people and that he’s a good person. Back at the apartment, Kobato finds another piece of candy in her jar for acknowledging Takashi’s kindness.

The next day at the nursery, Fujimoto awkwardly thanks Kobato for returning his report. Meanwhile, the children tell Kobato that Fujimoto is being nice now and helping them out, unlike before.

Another pretty easy piece of candy for Kobato this time, though we’re through 7 episodes and she only has 4 pieces, so obviously she’s going to have to pick up the pace eventually.

Meanwhile, we see Fujimoto’s college for the first time, which just makes one wonder: when does he have time to do anything considering he’s working at least 3 jobs and going to college at the same time, though his response to Sayaka when she asks him how college is going suggests that college may not be going so well for Fujimoto.

We also see more evidence that Kobato may very well be the person who can heal Fujimoto, and she’s able to talk to him like no one else can, and then at the end of the episode, he actually responds to what she had to say, meaning that, even though he wants to do everything by himself, he is willing to listen to advice, at least from Kobato, even if he doesn’t like it.

It’s Kobato episode 6, and the nursery kids go on a field trip, but Kobato answers a phone call from a loan shark who threatens to shut down the nursery. As a result, Ioryogi decides to meet up with some old acquaintances to find out what’s going on.

The nursery is taking the kids on a field trip. However, Kobato almost forgets Ioryogi and runs into the office to grab him. While there, the phone rings and when Kobato answers, a man is on the other end and wants to talk to Sayaka. Kobato says she’s out on a field trip, so the man leaves Kobato a message for Sayaka: she needs to fold up shop and leave because he’s shutting down the nursery.

After the call, Ioryogi tells Kobato that he’ll pass on the field trip and will take a nap. However, in reality he seeks out an old friend from heaven, Genko, to check out what’s really going on with the nursery Kobato works at. Meanwhile, Kobato tells Fujimoto about the call, but he tells Kobato not to tell Sayaka about it.

Out on the field trip, everyone notices that Kobato seems more distracted than usual. This includes one of the girls at the nursery, Marina, who tells Kobato that if they find a certain thing, it’ll make Kobato happy. The other kids decide to play hide and seek, and of course Kobato turns out to be “it.” Meanwhile, once Ioryogi is done with his business with Genko, he meets another acquaintance of his, Ginsei, who Ioryogi clearly isn’t on good terms with.

It’s finally time to go home, but Marina is nowhere to be found, so Kobato and Fujimoto go out to look for her, and they finally find her sleeping behind a tree. Marina explains that she wanted to find a four-leaf clover to make Kobato happy since she was down earlier, but couldn’t find one. However, unknowingly, she ended up finding a field full of four-leaf clovers.

On his way home, Genko sends a messenger to Ioryogi: the previous owner of the nursery, Sayaka’s father, got conned into making a bad loan. However, he died two years ago, and Ioryogi realizes that the situation is pretty bad.

This was a pretty revealing episode, especially for Ioryogi. First, we find out that several people from heaven have been effectively banished or are otherwise being punished on Earth, including Genko, and old information agent friend of Ioryogi, as well as an apparent nemesis of Ioryogi’s, Ginsei. We also learn that Ioryogi apparently did something pretty bad to make “him” angry, which is why he was transformed into a stuffed animal as punishment. However, who “he” is and what Ioryogi did to receive such a punishment, we don’t know yet.

This is also the first time that we see Ioryogi kind of going behind Kobato’s back to investigate what is going on. I’m not sure yet what Ioryogi plans to do with the information that he found out about the nursery, though, as it doesn’t look like that he’s planning on telling Kobato what he’s up to.

I’m also wondering why Fujimoto is trying to keep the seriousness of the situation from Sayaka. We already know from the last episode that Sayaka knows about the budget problems that the nursery has, but clearly Fujimoto doesn’t want her to think about it any more than she has to, suggesting that Fujimoto maybe is trying to do something about it as well. Perhaps this is why he is working so many jobs – to earn enough to pay off the debt that the nursery owes?

It’s Kobato episode 5 (finally), and Kobato runs into a remorseful author and wonders why he doesn’t want her reading a picture book that he authored.

The kids in the nursery ask Kobato to read a story to them, but Kobato doesn’t seem to good at it and keeps accidentally skipping pages and is otherwise being a big klutz. Meanwhile, Sayaka gets a call from someone who has been bothering her but again refuses their “request,” whatever it is. Ioryogi sees this and starts paying more attention to Sayaka, including the fact that the nursery appears to be running in the red.

Given Kobato’s failure to properly read the picture book, she borrows the book so that she can practice reading it to get better at it. However, while she’s practicing reading out on a bench somewhere, a man comes up and tells her to stop reading the book and walks away. When Kobato leaves, she notices the same man sitting on a bench himself, looking troubled. Kobato realizes that this might be her chance to gather another piece of candy, but she ends up bothering the man more than helping him in her first attempt to find out if anything is wrong.

The next morning, Kobato is again late getting to the nursery, but once she gets there, she finds three thugs outside, who say they’re there to “get their money back.” When Kobato sees one of the thugs being mean to the kids, she runs to help, and another one grabs her hair. Ioryogi wants to help, but doesn’t want to reveal himself, but Kobato is ultimately saved when Fujimoto shows up. Sayaka comes up and tells the men not to show up during school hours, but the lead guy says that they’re tired of waiting to be paid back. Suddenly, Kobato runs to Sayaka’s defense, surprising Fujimoto. The man tries to intimidate her, but she doesn’t back down, and they finally leave when one of the kids start yelling for the police.

That afternoon, Kobato is out walking and sees the old man she saw the day before in the same place as before. This time Kobato is a bit more diplomatic about asking what’s wrong (as well as asking why she can’t read the book), but the man still won’t tell her anything. Kobato goes back home depressed, only to find out that Fujimoto is also her neighbor. Kobato tells Fujimoto about the man she met, and Fujimoto tells her that it’s Mr. Mori, the author of the book. This surprises Kobato, both since she met someone somewhat famous, but also that he would ask her not to read his own book. It was also, apparently, the last book he wrote.

Kobato reads the story all the way through, and sees that it’s a story about a firefly that’s forgotten how to glow, and Ioryogi surmises that this is how Mr. Mori feels. So, Kobato decides to go to the library to research something, and the next day finds Mr. Mori back in the park again and invites him to go watch the fireflies that night with her. That night, Kobato waits at her designated meeting point, and Mr. Mori finally shows up, saying that he felt like he had to since Kobato said the same thing as Naoko, his ex-girlfriend. Naoko, the illustrator for the book, thought it would be nice to write a story about fireflies, and one night asked Mori to go watch the fireflies in the same place Kobato suggested. However, Mori felt like he was too busy then and didn’t go. Naoko kept asking him, and finally he got a break and decided to go see them with her, but on her say, she was involved in a car accident, and as a result, Mori blamed himself for not going to see them with her earlier.

Mori then gets up to leave but realizes that where they are is exactly like the illustrations Naoko had made – she had drawn them when she had come to view the fireflies. The morning, Kobato finds yet another piece of candy in her jar, indicating that watching the fireflies has healed his heart.

This was a pretty good episode, and set up several things. Once, it established that Fujimoto lives next door to Kobato (something he appeared to be aware of, but that she wasn’t). Kobato also showed up courage standing up to the thugs, and perhaps softened Fujimoto’s view of her. We also established that the nursery is pretty badly in the red, and Kobato wants to help out, but doesn’t know how. I’m guessing this isn’t the last time we’ll see those thugs, either. Also, Sayaka herself looks like she may need to be healed later, though the finances of the nursery seem to be the main thing bothering her right now.

At first I wondered why Mr. Mori would bother coming out to see the fireflies with Kobaot, but after he explained what happened to Naoko, it made sense: he didn’t want what happened to Naoko to happen to Kobato, even though what happened to Naoko was some sort of freak accident.

Source: Chartfag The 2009 Fall season has come and gone, and thus it’s time for the Winter to roll in. This post is the newer version of 53RG10’s Top 5 Picks for [Year] [Season] Season. I realize that kind of title is kinda misleading, making the readers think it’s about my favorites of the season and [...]

#01 – Erin Watches Her Mother Die It’s one thing seeing a child see her mother die in her deathbed, and another seeing a child see her mother die MAULED by beasts…which is exactly what Erin witnessed… Regardless, both scenes will be just has heartbreaking and memorable… What a happy Christmas post. [/sarcasm] [...]

MERRY CHRISTMAS~ Oh yeah~ Shameimaru Aya is love~<3 *sigh* It was such a hectic trip trying to finish this image. I intended to get a head start, I started this ON DECEMBER first, but lost the motivation to even continue it, all I had was the sketch. And then come the 24th and all of a sudden [...]