BigJim has a post about what happened to him and his wife two years ago yesterday. It brought back some of my memories about Katrina. For me Katrina was just a nuisance and a really bad weather day at first.
For some of my neighbors, it was a lot worse. This guy had three trees on his house.
This guy only had one tree but it did a HELL of a lot of damage.
They had to deal with no electricity and trees in or on their houses. I just had three days of incredible August heat and no electricity. But before I felt too bad for anyone around my neck of the woods I had to worry about Jim. I had gotten a call from him during the storm and for a long time there, I wasn't even sure he and Shelly had survived. I'll always give him hell for not evacuating. He had lots of friends up here in Jackson BEGGING him to come up and after Katrina I'm sure he'll never even think about riding out a hurricane again. After talking to him a couple days after I still had no electricity so all I knew about the damage was from phone calls and the radio. From those details I knew it was 'bad'. Really bad. Then when I went to work a couple of 12 hour volunteer shifts for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MS FEMA basically) I got my first look at TV pictures and realized it was far worse than I imagined. I was finally able to see the pictures that everyone else in the country had seen. It was amazingly bad.
Two or maybe three weeks after the storm I went down to help Jim 'clean out his house'. When you hear that phrase you have something in mind about a mop and a duster. This was NOTHING like that! The cleanest room in his house looked like this.
And Jim was one of the lucky ones. I felt I had misjudged the damage done from hearing stories and radio compared to when I finally saw it on television, and I did, but the devastation actually done leaves even the television viewer with an incomplete impression. The destruction was EVERYWHERE for as far as you could see for HUNDREDS of miles. As we were closing in on Jim's home I saw a house on top of another house.
Jim is just now getting to the point where he'll post about Katrina and it doesn't completely stress him out. That storm left a lot of destruction behind and even more emotional pain. Drop by Jim's rundown of the storm and let him know you're glad he made it if you're a friend of his. He's got links to some of his photos from that time you can see on Flikr. You can see my photos of the coast here.
Just finished up Azumanga Daioh and while I found plenty of it quite funny and much of it very cute in the end it was kind of just there for me. No real lasting flavor and I'm sure I'll forget about this one as soon as I get a fanservice fix. This story revolves around the stories of six friends as they go through 10-12 grade together. Chiyo is the way too cute 10 year old prodigy that is the smartest character on screen. Chiyo is balanced out by Tomo, Osaka and Kagura who I think might lose a game of wits against a rock (Credit due Kagura is a bit of a jock and can actually do well in class if she tries.) Yomi is Tomo's best friend and permanent foil. She's a good looking girl that cannot sing and is overly concerned about her weight and Tomo is quick to give her hell at every opportunity. Ah the friends you can get stuck with from childhood. Finally we have Sakaki, who is extremely tall, well proportioned, all around beautiful, a superb athlete, great singer and general school idol. What makes this perfect person so fun to watch is that she isn't aware of any of her good points and simply thinks of her self as 'tall' and 'un-cute' because everyone calls her 'cool' instead. She's extremely shy and loves cats which strangely enough seem to love her; her hand that is. Cats LOVE to bite and scratch Sakaki and she ends up with cuts, bites and abrasions all the time as she constantly tries to pet every cat she sees. I must admit Sakaki managed to crack me up more than any other character.
The story is a series of slice of life short stories that combined tell the overall story of these girls high school days. Every year there is a school festival, a sports festival and a summer break episode and they always tend to elicit a chuckle or two if not some laugh out loud moments. I watched a few episodes in English and though it was a decent attempt so if you don't enjoy subbed versions this dub will be fine. I really don't remember any fanservice though the girls are shown several times in bathing suits.
Asumanga Daioh Rating: Decent I didn't lose my time. You could find worse ways to kill some time.
Tsukihime, Lunar Legend was inspired by an eroge or erotic visual book named of all things Tsukihime never would have guessed huh? The shows erotic source material is fairly well hidden and there is very little fanservice which from looking at the heroines is really a shame. ahem..anyway. I've never seen the source material but I have read up on it at wikipedia and I've read some of the manga which was also based on the original source material. From what I've seen of the manga and what I've read of the source material I'd say that Tsukihime, Lunar Legend is probably the weakest title of the bunch. Much of the story takes place at night and the material itself is dark which colors the animation but overall I thought the animation itself was pretty good. The music didn't do anything for me and the couple of times I tried listening to the English dubbed voices the voice acting seemed weak. I would definitely suggest watching this sub-titled instead of in English.
Story: Shiki Tohno is NOT an ordinary high school student though he tries to be and wishes he were. He was involved in an accident eight years ago that nearly killed him and left him with memory loss before and about the accident, a huge scar on his chest, weak health with fainting spells, kicked out of his home for some reason by his father to live with distant relatives and as if that wasn't enough he now can see 'death lines' on everything. Everywhere he looks he sees squiggles on everything and if he cuts those lines what ever he cuts is destroyed completely; chairs, buildings, trees, people or vampires(which is lucky for our hero as it turns out). Next meet our heroine, Arcrueid Brunestud, a gorgeous blond bombshell with red eyes. The day Shiki met Arc was a day neither will forget. Shiki became obsessed immediately with following Arc and once she turned into an abandoned park Shiki immediately cut her into 17 pieces of meat. Shiki came to his senses immediately afterward got sick from what he saw and passed out. Shiki woke up back at his original home which he had finally been invited back to and with no recollection of going home or how he got there and no blood anywhere on any of his clothes he decides he's either going crazy or it was all a dream or both. Things start getting weird when Arcueid comes up to him and greets him nicely the next day and tells him he's going to have to help her out out since he killed her yesterday. Turns out Arcrueid is a 'True Ancestor' of all vampires and she hunts down and destroys vampires that drink blood. She was on the hunt when Shiki killed and weakened her considerably which certainly suprised Arc. The story follows Shiki trying to make sence out of the horror show he just walked into, all the while being more and more attracted to Arc. Arc seems drawn to Shiki too as she gets to know him and sees he's NOT a cold blooded killer, but not a normal guy by any means. The story for all it's strangeness plays out rather straightforwardly and there really are no unexpected twists after the first chapter which I found a little disappointing.
Tsukihime, Lunar Legend Rating: Good worth watching, but no big loss if you don't.
I really have to start posting again. I was on vacation for 2 weeks during the beginning of July and then I didn't post ANYTHING the next two weeks either. That's what non-stop WoW playing will do for you. If you follow my link to Flikr you can see some of the pictures I took up in New Hampshire and Maine but I really should have taken MANY MANY More. Sorry for being me on this one. I tend to enjoy the seeing and being there more than the 'I need to be taking pictures now' mode that you enter with a camera in your face.
Reviews: I haven't been idle in my anime watching lately. I've seen all of Kaleido Star and Kaleido Star: New Wings along with all of Crest of the Stars, Banner of the Stars and all but two episodes of Banner of the Stars 2. Hmm...I seem to be on a star theme today. If I were comparing these series to the previous batch I'd say that these were Saturn V's and those others were bottle rockets.
Crest/Banner of the Stars: Even though I can't get Netflix to deliver the last disk of Banner 2(it's always on long wait I eventually gave up) I can say I will be buying this series. The year is so far in the future it doesn't really matter pick a big number and that'll be fine for the year. The human race as discovered a way to travel faster than light using a separate plane space which is used consistently and even influences ship design. The original writer at the least took the time to make his universe work within itself consistently. I really like that. The human race is split up into four political bodies. The Abh who take control of main character Jinto's planet in the first episode are in control of roughly half of all human worlds while the other three factions control the rest. The other three factions fearing the Abh ally with each other and a war is inevitable. The Abh have the distinction of being originally genetically altered humans that were a space based slave race resembling elves that escaped their shackles and continued the genetic tinkering making them even MORE at home in space. So at home that they call themselves the 'Kin of the stars' and they don't live on planets and if they can help it never set foot on a planet's surface. The Abh are never shown as 'good guys' and the other three factions are never shown as the 'bad guys' they are just political enemies and both sides have their good and bad sides. This is what I like in a war torn future. The animation is rather old school but then again this is a older series being originally released in 1999 I believe. The main characters are both fun to watch and neither are wimps. Jinto is a bit overwhelmed by everything happening to him but he has a good head on his shoulders and he quickly learns to trust Lafiel because she has a good head on her pretty little shoulders too. Jinto had the good or bad depending on how you see it distinction of being the son of the 'President of planet Martine' when it was captured by the Abh. The Abh really have no interest in directly ruling any of the planets under their banner they just insist on controlling all the spaceships and all the trade lanes. An Abh controlled planet is pretty much allowed to rule itself however it wishes with a few provisions. The local administrator becomes Abh royalty and answers to the Abh nobility and all Abh royalty have to serve in the Abh military for a set period of time. I think 10-20 years. Jinto's father made a pact with the Abh which can be seen as either trying to save as many of his people as possible or selling his planet out for personal gain. You never see which it actually was but suddenly Jinto has become Abh royalty and is in charge of Martine. The story starts as Jinto is being taken to the Abh capital to start his military training. Lafiel is a pilot charged with picking him up from the space port. She and he immediately hit it off but trouble looms ahead as Jinto finds out Lafiel isn't just a good looking pilot but directly in line for the Abh Throne. All that gets thrown in the background though when the war starts with Jinto's and Lafiel's ship being the first to discover they are in a war. Crest sees the early building of Jinto and Lafiel's relationship and the war, Banner takes place around three years later after a lull in the war and Banner 2 takes place roughly right after Banner. You could honestly start by watching Banner and Banner 2 then going back for Crest but I'm glad I was able to see Crest first and get a better understanding of why Jinto and Lafiel get along so well and understand each other so well.
Crest/Banner of Stars Rating: Excellent probably the best 'serious' space based war story I've ever seen.
Kaleido Star + Kaleido Star New Wings: I'll be buying these too. I expect my nieces to really like this series when they get a little older and being the selfless and caring Uncle that I am I must buy this for their sake... Ok, ok, I admit it, I'm just an old softy at heart and really like this shoujo series. Plus I'm a Cirque Du'Soleil fan and this is about as close to a Circ show as I've seen animated. The animation is excellent throughout both series, the characters are all very pretty but there isn't much fanservice which for this show I actually appreciate, and I rather enjoyed the music in this series too. The show starts with young Sora Naegino flying to America to audition to get a part in a Kaleido Stage (think Circ) production, but before she can even find her way to the show she gets robbed by a fast moving pick-pocket. Sora uses her amazing acrobatic skills to catch the fellow and actually entertain the passerby at the same time. She then gets some very unwanted attention from a guy in the street who grabs and admires her legs. Not a good day so far and it gets worse. By the time she gets a policeman to help her get to the stage after dealing with the pick-pocket she's too late for her audition and Layla Hamilton the current star of Kaleido Stage (and a personal idol of Sora's) dismisses her immediately, telling her there was no place for her at Kaleido stage. As Sora is about to leave dejected that strange man from before turns up, Kalos turns out to be the guy in charge of the stage. He puts Sora in the current show with NO preparation to replace a hurt performer. Sora's performance is really poor, as you'd expect but apparently Kalos sees something he likes in Sora and she gets taken in as a performer. The show follows Sora's trials from there as she struggles to become a real Kaleido star. Sora really has her work cut out for her too, because even though she is a natural athlete and acrobat EVERYONE at the show now thinks she got her part by sleeping with Kalos.(Note younger viewers will probably miss this, but the connotation is definitely there.) Eventually that gets cleared up and Sora begins to make friends and be accepted at the stage. It's fun to watch as Sora makes friends with the other performers. The performances are fun to watch in their own right, and watching the performers practice really gives you an appreciation for how much work they really have to put in to give a good show. Kaleido Star shows a young girl reaching her dreams through dedication, hard work, friends and never giving up, what more could you want from a heartwarming show?
Kaleido Star New Wings starts a few weeks after the end of Kaleido Star, most of the old faces are still here Mia, Anna and Rosetta are all present and accounted for plus we are introduced to a couple of new faces, May Wong is a new talent that hates Sora and Leon Oswald replaces Yuri Killian as the main male lead and trapezes acrobat. Sora has to work hard again to get May to accept her, or at least stop hating her for performing with Layla, and Leon simply keeps cutting Sora's parts back because he doesn't accept her as anywhere near good enough to be on the stage with him. Layla and Yuri do appear regularly in the series and are still important to the later storyline so all the old gang is still here. The last DVD included the first OAV 'The Amazing Princess without a Smile' but for some reason this OAV felt a bit out of place with the series. I think it was the fact that it had a little fanservice in it, which the rest of the series lacked and including it felt out of place. The story itself was fun though so I won't be giving any minuses for it being included.
Kaleido Star/New Wings Rating: Excellent. Shoujo through and through but that doesn't and hasn't ever bothered me.
