Dead blog lives again! Random thoughts after a long hiatus.

The awkward transitioning time between school and finding a job leads to little anime watching and no blogging whatsoever. I may have popped in and said something some other time but I had nothing to talk about. I still don’t. I’m not particularly impressed with anything I’m watching right now and the only shows I really like, I’m not caught up on. The last notable thing I watched was episode 4 of Eve no Jikan, which was wonderful as always.

I’ve been reading manga more than watching tv series. Gunslinger Girl and Bamboo Blade are the most recent titles I’ve started, though I still have some things I need to catch up on/finish. Gunslinger Girl is great by the way. Not that I’m late in figuring that one out or anything. :x

New episode of Haruhi was fun. I actually thought Mikuru was cute, which was unexpected. Needs moar Itsuki.

I finally realized I’d like K-On if I just stared at all the cute girls and didn’t bother paying attention to the dialogue. Not that the discourse isn’t quite funny from time to time, but looking at the subtitles means not looking at the girls and this is clearly a dilemma that was detracting from my enjoyment of the series.

Higashi no Eden is probably my favorite thing on right now. That fat dude was the best character. Even the way he rolled off that windshield was cool.  They need to rewrite the series with him and Micchon as the stars.

They sure fucked up the second season of Hayate. Damn.

Going to Otakon again this year. Will karaoke no matter what. I want to sing Soramimi Cake with the full intent of making ears bleed.

Holy balls a gundam. Wut.

I just went to animenano to try and find something to talk about but all it made me realize was that I’m behind on everything, especially music releases. People are talking about the K-On character songs and I don’t even have the op/ed yet. The last thing I got was Kimi ni, Mune Kyun. Oh lawd.

I’m going to go lie on the floor and watch Higurashi Rei 3 while eating ice cream and pretending my blog isn’t dying.

Belated Spring Impressions

I think I used to have a formula for picking new series to watch, which was pretty much looking at previews and finding out which series had cute girls. Now I don’t know what I’m doing. I grab episodes at random and probably miss out on some of the good stuff, but oh well. Here’s what I’ve looked at so far.

Chi’s New Address

The cat is back! I was worried that the title meant Chi was going to move in with a new family, but the family simply moved to a new place. That’s fine by me. The mother and father are half the reason I like the show, so as long as they’re around I’ll happily watch another 100 episodes. The OP sucks though. I miss the old one.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I like it. FMA was one of my first series when I got into my total anime kick in ‘07, and as far as I can tell, all of the parts I disliked were after the anime split with the manga, so I’ll probably enjoy this from start to finish. I’m not a huge fan of any of the major characters, but I like the humor and the alchemy fights have always been cool to me. Now I just have to get used to the design changes.

Hayate the Combat Butler!!

lol DBZ reference. This one isn’t making me laugh as much as season 1, but it’s probably because the material is no longer fresh. I find the Hinagiku ED somewhat offputting. I like her character, but I hope she doesn’t get far more screentime than any of the other superior side characters, which is most of the cast. She’s pretty much a typical tsundere who is underserving of that much attention. Needs more Tama.

Higashi no Eden

Wonderful in every way. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but the lead “couple” (for lack of a better word) really clicks with me. The girl is adorable and the guy makes for an interesting hero. The story already has me hooked and wanting more. The OP and ED are both amazing. The end of episode 2 actually reminded me of the closing scene of Black Lagoon: 2nd Barrage, which I just bought and re-watched.

K-ON!

I’m still pretty much on the fence with K-On. The jokes and cute antics work in 4koma format, but drawn over 20 minutes, the material makes me smile but doesn’t impress. While I look forward to more, nothing about the series really has me excited.

Sengoku Basara

FFFFFFFF. Best series of ‘09. You can’t compete with this shit. Horses with handlebars, ridiculous sword fights, crazy women, guys who punch each other far too often, etc. It’s nonstop hilarity. The OP gets me every time.

I think that’s all I’ve picked up so far. I still need to watch Shangri-la, but other than that, I’m going to have to rely on suggestions. Anyone? Are they’re any outstanding series I missing? In the meantime, I also  purchased the 1st disc of Baccano, so I’ll have to re-watch that.

K-ON! 1 – Huh. That was interesting.

What does the scouter say about Yui’s dojikko level?

I thought this first episode was adorable. I also thought it was stupid. Not the brain-cell destroying kind of stupid, but the “uhh…what?” kind of stupid. I’m the kind of guy that loved it for simply being cute, and will continue to watch it for being cute, yet will possibly resent it for being too cute. The humor wasn’t based on jokes or even character interaction so much as the premise being odd and the girls making funny faces. It made me laugh, unlike others (though I agree with his assessment of the episode on numerous levels), but I’m not sold.

Bring on the music is what I say. I’ll warm up to the characters once they’re a little better established. My favorite of the bunch as of the first episode is actually Nodoka, the childhood friend. It seems like I’ve been preferring side-characters over the main cast in a lot of shows recently. Considering I’m mainly in it for the music at the moment, and considering the talent of the band, I imagine the next big joke (and I’m not the first person to say this who hasn’t read the source material) is that Yui will pick the guitar up super-fast despite herself, but even then, unless we get a lot of time-skips, I don’t see how the band intends to reach OP-ED levels any time soon, and that’s depressing.

Favorite moments:

DMC  joke. Not the best DMC joke, but it is what it is.

French Fries. Cutest scene by far. I’m not even sure why.

And the rest was 20 straight minutes of bubbly girls. I hope my body can take it.

Laughing along with all the K-ON! Fakesubs

A clear troll win, though it went on a little too long. The initial CoalGuys release was able to trick a couple hundred people (myself included), and I actually thought the translator notes for “-chan”, etc at the beginning were a funny attempt at trolling by CoalGuys themselves before I even realized the thing was a fake. So congrats to the trolls on pulling that one off, though the subs were terribly unfunny a good five minutes in. I skipped the Chihiro sub since they’re a terrible group and grabbed the qq sub just to see what it was, and lo and behold, it’s the MST3k episode – “Space Mutiny”. I actually encourage all of you to grab the torrent before it gets removed from TT (assuming it does). If you miss it, then JFGI. I ended up watching the whole thing for nostalgia’s sake.

I was going to download the rest of the bunch to see what they were, but they’d already stopped working by the time I checked back. It would’ve been better if the series were released on Wednesday, but I got a good laugh out of it anyhow.

On a related note, the K-ON ED is definitely the best part of the series so far.

Watch In HD

No seriously, a real Rideback post

I’ve heard at least one person say upon finishing Rideback that they thought the series wasn’t very good. I am inclined to disagree.

I had no idea going in exactly what it was that Rideback had set out to do. At first I thought it would be a racing series, then possibly a political drama, then after episode 6 I badly wanted it to be an action series, and you can say it was a bit of those last two in the end. What was far more confusing was the motivations of the main character. How far would she go to help her friends? What would push her over the edge, make her happy, give her hope? Rin really held the show together. The entire cast was quite strong, the animation was very good, the story faltered from time to time but could be poignant and moving when it needed to be, but overall I’d say it was Rin that made the series memorable. This was especially true when she was riding Fuego, something that really needed to happen more often. The majority of the action scenes were simplistic, with nothing more than guys rolling around on their mecha-Segways shooting rockets at each other and wacking people to death with batons, but Rin’s battles on the other hand were completely brilliant. When she trashed those White-Rides in episode 6, I lifted up my laptop and yelled “OH SNAP, SON!” at my computer screen to let those guys know they just got served.

Sadly I forgot that people in my computer can’t hear me. Seriously Shouko, calm the fuck down.

This was practically the exact opposite of my reaction to her riding scene at the fountain at the terrorist base and her battle with the Grimoires in the final episode, at which point all I could do was sit back and smile at how well choreagraphed and beautiful the whole thing was.

I guess you could consider it a fault that I didn’t care about the GGP vs. BMA battle that formed the backdrop of the series, but this was less to do with that part of the series being particularly weak and more to do with everything else being quite strong. I think the series would have needed a longer run to improve on itself, as any complaints I have are with what it lacked, namely a better explanation of past events to help me understand characters like Okakura better. Any other complaints I have are silly, like Shouko’s hair looking retarded. Fuego randomly showing signs of sentience was cheesy, but I didn’t mind.

At the same time that I enjoyed the series, I’m not sure it has much rewatch value beyond 2 or 3 scenes, but I’d recommend it nonetheless. It’s already one of my favorites of 09, though I’m sure the Spring Season will throw something better at me. For now, I’ll bow out.

edit: ohfucks! How did I forget to mention the music! The music was great!

Toradora

Heyheyhey, Toradora is over. There were a few bumps along the way, but I think it was a rather enjoyable ride. As far as romantic comedies go, it was certainly one of the best in recent memory. The cast was stronger than most, but weak in a lot of ways as well. Minorin for all her crazy antics was little more than meme fuel. Kitamura was cool when he wasn’t being srsbzns. Ami was probably the best character as many are inclined to repeat ad nauseum, but this wasn’t her show, and she was relegated to side-character status far too often. Taiga wasn’t your typical tsundere, as she actually seemed to have a personality. She was cute as a button too, and I thought she made an excellent centerpiece for the series. Takasu wasn’t all that typical himself, but I would have appreciated his personality to fall more on the side of germ-killing than hair-fiddling, if you know what I mean.

The last episodes were probably where the most complaints arise. Episode 24 was full of dumb teens doing dumb things, and the confrontations therein were completely out of the blue considering Ryuuji and Taiga’s familial problems didn’t get enough attention in previous episodes. The final episode managed to tick me off a bit though. Up until the last five minutes, things were cool. Ryuuji and his MILF sorted things out. The kiss scene was incredibly satisfying for any fans of the relationship. Taiga running off to solve her own problems was a downer, but at the same time it showed us that she’d grown a lot throughout the series. What I don’t understand is that beyond the text message, it seems there was absolutely no communication between the two for a year and instead of a romantic last minute reunion, we get Taiga showing her “Palmtop Tiger” roots by up and headbutting Ryuuji. Some people will probably think “aww, after all this time she’s the same ol’ Taiga!”, but to me, that’s a problem. I don’t like the old Taiga. The first few episodes with their overabundance of “baka inu”s and violence had me wondering if I’d even like the series. Ryuuji finding her in the locker and then getting hit was a way of coming full-circle to his first two encounters with her, but this is a bad move when you consider their initial relationship. If they wanted to revisit something, how about having her jump into his arms and get spun around like in the santa-bear scene? That would’ve been beautiful, but maybe that’s just me.

I mention that scene because it was my favorite of the series. It came immediately after the funk that was the mid-teens, and led up to the ending of all the love-triangle pussyfooting bullshit and into some resolution and bitch-slapping that was a long time coming. Everything came together and all the characters were better for it. Where they’ll end up in the future is left open, but the road they traveled to get there was a real pleasure to watch.

Final note – That SOS dvd special was terrible.

Impressions on the TH12 Demo

The Demo for TH12 (Undefined Fantastic Object) has been released and it is all kinds of fun. The game adopts a new UFO system for gaining lives and bombs that, once you have the hang of it, makes it much easier than Subterranean Animism.

Basically, some enemies, when killed, will release little UFOs that bounce around the screen and come in 3 different colors: red, green, and blue. By collecting one of each color or three of a kind, the player summons a large UFO that stays on the screen for ten seconds. By destroying this UFO, you get a mulitplier (if you collected 3 blue UFOs), a green star that gives you part of a bomb (like the stars in SA gave you a part of a life, if you  collected 3 green UFOs), and a purple star that gives you a part of a life (for 3 red UFOs). The large UFO will suck any  on-screen items towards it, and if it collects enough before you kill it, you’ll get an extra bomb, life star, or multiplier.

As it stands, there is no other way to gain lives or bombs then destroying UFOs, so if you want to survive, you need to collect them. It’s easier to stockpile bombs than gain lives, so if you’re quick with your trigger finger, going for the green UFOs is probably the better choice. I, on the other hand, tend to be stingy with my bombs and die before I use them, so I settle for the red UFOs.

As for the playable characters, Reimu is back again with her straight and homing attacks, Marisa with a laser (Master Spark is back!) and wide attacks, and Sanae is introduced with an incredible attack that shoots forward and then arcs sideways at a 90 degree angle to take out enemies on both sides of the screen, and a shitty exploding frog attack. Seriously, her B shot type is awful :V.

I beat the demo on Normal with SanaeA with practically no effort, and this was before I even realized that you could fill the UFOs to get extra bonuses. I’ve made it to the last level 3 spell card on Hard and I’ll probably beat the thing tomorrow on that difficulty. As per usual, Lunatic tears me a new one.

The only complaint I have is that dying lowers your power by 1.00, but you only release about 0.07 worth of power items on death, whereas in other games you would release enough power items to restore your power completely. In other words, dying is very bad.

The enemies are cute even though I have no idea what they’re saying, and the spells are pretty unique, at least level 3’s are. Giant fists of doom! I pretty much can’t wait until the full game is released.

If you have a nico account, here’s some dude beating it on Lunatic despite the fact that it was just released. Some people…

Edit: Beat it on Hard. Replay here for anyone interested.

Haruhi-chan is a better show than Haruhi

Seriously you guys.

Seriously.

Hey Toradora! Why are half your fans so retarded?

Let’s face it. We’re getting a Taiga/Ryuuji ending whether you like it or not, and if you haven’t figured that out yet, god help you. And by all means, those of you who are unhappy about this because you favor Ami or Minorin, go on complaining. You’re completely justified. I still hate on Clannad for picking my least favorite girl, so that’s not really the issue. It’s the other complaints about a Taiga ending that have got me wtf’n all over the place. There are some stupid people on the internet, but the people whining about a Taiga ending are really outdoing themselves.

“They’re going with Taiga to pander to otaku fetishists and lolicons!”

“Why do they have to pick her! It’s so cliche!”

Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? What the shit are you talking about? I’ve even heard the argument that the writers are corrupting their friendship by making them fall in love with each other. Are you people blind? Did you not see the signs from the very beginning? I don’t see how this can possibly feel forced or cliche to anyone, because it seems quite real to me. These two were practically made for each other, and their dynamic has evolved and grown far beyond the simple banter of your typical male lead/tsundere relationship.

And I’m not saying it was the only option. Ami was, as I see it, never a contender. It doesn’t matter if you like her or not, why you would want her to end up with a lead who has blown her off, failed to understand her, and shown relatively no romantic interest in her? Minorin on the other hand would’ve been a good pick, but she made her decision to back off at the first sign of Taiga’s affection. I think it was a dumb choice to make, but if she wants to sacrifice the relationship for her friend’s happiness, than so be it. So with the way they’ve set this up, how exactly does this pairing reflect negatively on the series? Are there any legitimate complaints about the way things have turned out between the characters? If so, I’d like to hear them. Really. The series isn’t perfect, and it would be nice to hear some negative feedback on the current situation from people who aren’t just talking out of their asses.

And before anyone makes the claim, I obviously support Taiga/Ryuuji only because I’m a terrible lolicon who sees nothing between the two characters and merely wishes to more easily supplant Ryuuji in my sick fantasies.

Oh god. I’m ranting about a romcom. ;_;

Winter Anime you aren’t watching, and probably should be.

I’m watching a good deal this season, but I’m letting a lot fall behind as well. After I stopped blogging Casshern Sins, I lagged behind a few episodes, and the only well-known series I’m keeping up to date with is Toradora. So here’s a few other series I love that I don’t think as many people are checking out.

Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou

I guess if you skipped over the first season, you’d skip over this one too, and considering how little actually happens in this series, I can understand why. But the series is very touching and at times beautiful, not to mention quite funny. The highlight of the series is Madara-sama, a fat cat who serves as a guardian for the main character. I’d consider him reason enough to give the series a try. The girls are cute too, so that’s a plus.

RideBack

I’m not sure how popular this series is. It’s got the coolest racing mecha I’ve ever seen, and the more recent focus on using them for battle  is awesome. The main girl is an instant prodigy on the bike, and there’s a scene in the latest episode where she spectacularly destroys two military units in a matter of seconds that wowed the hell out of me. The female characters are very lovable, and other than the two club kids, pretty much every guy in the series is a badass. I can’t wait until we start seeing more intense fights.

Hetalia Axis Powers

Gag anime takes a history lesson. If you don’t mind excessive mention of pasta, there is absolutely no reason why you should pass up this gem.

Minami-ke Okaeri

Don’t let the second season or the iffy animation in parts of the first episodes turn you away from this hilarious sequel. Every character gets their fair share of screen-time, and the new girl is all kinds of adorable. It’s true to form, and absolutely delightful. Also, who can turn down more Mako-chan?

One Outs

This is an ongoing series from the fall season, but I’d hate not to mention it. It’s the Akagi of baseball anime, about a relatively shitty pitcher who can strike people out by always pitching the ball where they’d least expect it, and using his cunning to lead his team to victory against overwhelming odds. The latest episodes are about a team that cheats to win, and we’re now seeing how the protagonist will turn their tricks against them. And you don’t have to like or even know anything about baseball to enjoy it. Akagi was about Mahjong for christ’s sake, and I loved it.