First thing first, I should apologize to the readers who still visit the site. I forgot that not everyone subscribe to RSS feeds and therefore they do go here and refresh the site, hoping for an update. Having said that, it's not my plan to abandon writing even though it's hard to find the motivation to do so lately. I will, however, try to churn out something once every three days. I am not planning on giving up on the blog - not when it's close to its 5 years anniversary. I have to admit, however, that I'm not ready to dive into episodic review just yet but I can do a one-off review kind of thing. Right now I am in the middle of reading the English version of Honey and Clover and much to my delight, the story is as good as I remember it. Although the manga lacks the extra jazz that the anime provides (movement, background songs, voice acting), the core of the story and its heart are fully intact. I wish I can say the same thing about any of the live action versions of the story but I've said all I wanted to say about them. Anyway, this series is still as relevant as ever and I can now relate to almost every main character in the series except probably Shuuji and Morita.
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OP Theme: 「輪廻-ロンド-」(Rondo) Download: AVI version I'm sorry for the lack of update lately. I've been pre-occupied with many things lately and none of them are very conducive to blogging. I have a presentation tomorrow, exam next week, and my mind is also clouded with personal issues. Anyone who has seen Honey and Clover and follow Mayama OR Yamada's story would know what I'm talking about. Anyway, at this point, not many people probably care about this review but I promised to update the blog and I already started on processing the image long before life started to take over and refused to let go up till now.
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OP Theme: 「SKY HIGH」 by The Gospellers - AVI version (31MB) The story of our favorite stalker and her subject of obsession continues in this sequel. I find it amusing that these two end up getting to know each other because Nodame basically follows Chiaki around. Now she ends up following him all the way to France, although to be fair, he did ask her to come with him. Anyway, the first episode is pretty good and solid from both story and animation POV. I do wonder how much of the Europe arc the anime is going to cover. I haven't been following the manga so I don't know if it's near completion or not. I sure hope that this will be like Honey and Clover, where the manga serialisation ends a few months before the anime is scheduled to end. That way we can have a perfect anime ending that is similar to the manga version.
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OP Theme: 「PSI-missing」 by - AVI version I apologize that there's little to no update on the blog lately. Unfortunately real-life gets in the way of blogging once again. I'm starting to feel guilty as well because I haven't finished/completed several series from previous season and I think I should go and finish those before I commit to other new series. But as I promised, I'll preview some of them and this is one that I managed to write so far. A gaijin loli nun is being hunted by mysterious organization and ends up hanging over a young boy's balcony. That pretty much sums up the first episode. And oh, the boy in question is being chased around by another girl who likes to electrocute him. Speaking of gaijin, how does an anime character tell if another character is Japanese or not. After all, they all have strange and exotic hair color (ranging from grey to dark red). Surely there's nothing about Index that is more gaijin than Mikoto apart from her name.
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I have to admit that I don't hate this one. Sunrise could have ended the series in an over-the-top manner but they chose to go with a more mellow resolution. A resolution that really gives a lot of credence to Lelouch as the main protagonist of the series and I appreciate that in a series. I see that a lot of people are in rage over his death but this is the only way his plan can work. Unfortunately a lot of details have been ignored to facilitate this ending. I can definitely use a lot more closing on several supporting characters, especially C.C. I also think that at the end of the series, we still didn't get a complete resolution of Britannia vs. Japan conflict although I assume with Nunnally in charge, things will change for the better. I'll talk more about that after the cut but in general, I feel that the episode left a better impression of the series for me than otherwise it'd have been. I feel that this is the reverse of Mai Hime, where the ending made me completely disgusted for that series. I don't think I'll ever list either series as one of my favorite series but at least with Geass, they don't squander Lelouch's character development for some over-the-top joke or complete reset of what he's done so far.
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Once again sorry for the late review but it's not until now that I can watch and review the episode. I guess all of those PSN demo downloads do take a lot of bandwidth. And then there's the constant streaming of Japanese TV to my PC. Anyway, I'm not really enthused about this episode for some reason. I thought the story was rather non-eventful. I'm just not sure about Asagi's real motivation in the story. It seems to me that she's quite content with letting Akagane deciding what she should do next. It can be argued that she can't do anything since she has no corporeal body but she doesn't seem to make an active attempt to either scold him if he do something without her permission. The music is pretty good as usual though and it's interesting to hear a Koto performance because prior to this series, I didn't even know what a Koto was.
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This episode turns out to be awesome. Everything from the animation to the way the story unfolds just scream quality. The anime elongates the fight between Kishin and Shinigami a little bit but it is surprisingly well done. Also of note is the soundtrack that is used in the episode. I was especially impressed with the piece that was used as a background of Shinigami vs. Kishin fight. The episode pretty much concludes the Medusa arc but by the end of this episode, it's obvious that the arc will have a lasting impact on subsequent arcs in the series. Although I was rather confused with what the Kishin said to Shinigami about how they won't see each other again after this. I got the impression that Kishin is meant to be the ultimate chaos so I don't understand why he won't return to create some more shenanigans for Shinigami-sama.
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I'm sorry about the lack of anime reviews except Code Geass but my bandwidth is currently capped until tomorrow (Monday) and I can't download anything big without the download taking days. Anyway, these past spring/summer really tested my interest in anime. At times I feel like my interest is dwindling down. Strangely, my interest in live-action series/movies also increases at the same time. It doesn't help that I'm really preoccupied with my work these days that sometimes I find it hard finding the time to watch anime. Having said all of that, this upcoming fall/autumn 2008 seems to offer some interesting gems. I am especially delighted to see that there'll be a high number of supernatural-themed series. I always feel that anime needs more horror based series and while the majority of the series on offer are not horror in nature, I think I'll gladly take a supernatural type series as well. Anyway, bear in mind that the list I've made is not the complete list of Fall 2008 anime. It's just anime that I thought will be interesting to watch and what others might also find interesting. For a more complete list, see the link to the Fansub database below. Anyway, let me know what you think will be interesting to see this season. Autumn 2008 Fansub Wiki
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In this episode, Nunnally tries to smoke some bong but fails miserably when said bong got knocked out of her hands. She spends the majority of the episode on the ground looking for the bong. There's a lesson here: doing drugs does not pay. One has to admire Sunrise for being able to include an anti-drug message on top of the political shenanigans that this show has on offers. We also find out that not only Cornelia didn't die on last week's episode, she finds herself wake up next to dark-haired Guilford. Guilford is a proof that you can survive a nuclear warhead barely unscathed. One would think that Guilford should at least look like Two-Face by now but apart from his eyes (which will probably heal in the final episode), his skin is perfectly fine. So next time there's a warhead coming your way, according to Sunrise you'll be a-okay. Another important lesson that Sunrise teach us is that if you hate your brother, don't kill him. Instead, make him your bitch. And oh, Diethard dies like a nobody that he is while Kanon looks like he's been raped by someone whose name is not Schneizel.
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I really hate Furuichi that the part of the episodes which contain his character is almost unbearable. On the positive side, Raigyou turns out to be a good character so that kind of even things out. Speaking of the guy, for some reason he sounds a little bit like Shuuji from Honey and Clover so I wonder if they have the same VA. Anyway, the series still feel directionless but at least more details finally emerge. Like I said before, we finally find out more about Raigyou and judging from the photo on episode 9, we'll find out about Kujireika. One thing that I'm having problem with is the amount of terms that are being used in the series. It's really hard to keep up with all of the new words the show invented, especially since they all sound the same to one another. For example, there was an Ongoro-user but as it turns out, the thing that they control doesn't look like the Ongoro that Nakiami has in the postal ship (the translucent creature).
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There is actually an interesting underlying issue that this series could have explored a bit more but the chances that it can do that now is pretty slim since we only have two more episodes left. And knowing the writers, they'll probably prefer more fight scenes than insightful commentary on the state of humanity. The show also seems to have lost some steam when it comes to delivering surprises, which is unfortunate because that's what they do best in this one. The sudden death of Cornelia, for example, feels like a footnote than a major event. I also think that the writers have changed her motivation ever since season one but never really gave the viewers a glimpse as to what changed her mind. It's easily assume that Euphemia's death affected her to do this but I kind of want to know how she got from that point to the point where she is now. I also kind of wish that she found out that her role model, Marianne, turns out to be a loon, just to see her reaction.
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