13 posts tagged “anime”

I've just finished the first season of Cardcaptor Sakura and I must say, I gotta start watching crap anime again, the desire to buy the good stuff is gonna break me. I'm buying all of this series even though I haven't seen all of it. It's that good.  It's really too bad that this is sub only. With no dub my nieces won't be able to watch this until they are probably too old to want to watch it. I'm defiantly not the audience this series was made for but I still love it. It's so cute! 

Ten year old Sakura Kinomoto is living a pretty normal life with a loving family minus her mother who died when she was three. Sakura is well adjusted, well liked by her classmates, athletic and scared to death of any mention of ghosts.  She bickers with her older brother who picks on her all the time but is right there instantly if she ever gets in trouble.  She adores her father who is a major part of her life even though he's often busy with his work as an archeology professor. She has really good friends including Tomoyo Daidouji who's favorite thing in the whole world is making Sakura dress up in costumes and she has a HUGE puppy-love crush on her brother's best friend Yukito Tsukishiro.

All the people close to Sakura are caring and kind which you expect to see from a show like this and which I appreciate a lot. If only the world actually worked this way.  Well the story would be rather boring without some conflict so enter the Clow Cards. A mysterious book Sakura finds in her fathers basement library contains dozens of magical cards that are released when the book is opened and it is now Sakura's duty to capture the cards or a catastrophe will occur. 

Sakura is given a powerful rival in the form of Syaoran Li a cardcaptor from Hong Kong.  Syaoran and Sakura seem to be rivals in everything they do but as the series goes on they start helping each other capture cards more than fighting with each other over who gets the cards. They actually make very good partners and as Syaoran learns to trust Sakura their teamwork gets better and better.  There is probably something to Sakura's brother's immediate dislike of Li, "He's the one that will take Sakura away from me" he says. Hey, they're only 10 but stranger things could happen.

Sakura gets stronger as she captures the cards and she displays a lot of courage as she has to battle some of the more dangerous cards.  The cards basically make this series a 'monster of the week' series, but it's really more of a 'slice of life' series with the card getting captured just being something that happened that week too.

This all sounds like sweetness and light and it is but there is a story evolving here. A rather complex story as well. Adults will like the cuteness of it all, but there is enough going on behind the scenes to keep them interested too.

Rating: Excellent!  This is probably the mac-daddy of Magical Girl series and it delivers. Did I mention it's CUTE!

Just finished up Ikki Tousen and I must say this is a horribly bad show.....But I couldn't stop watching because the makers just didn't care how stupid it was, they were by god gonna give their viewers some serious fanservice.  As usual per anime tropes the women in this show are supposed to be 15-18 but look more like 25 year old airbrushed playboy models. 25 year old airbrushed playboy models that fight in skirts so short you can see everything if they even take a step much less fighting using superhuman attacks that should kill anyone in one blow but instead simply tear their clothes to shreds.  I'm not kidding here it's just a show to give an excuse to strip the women nekked as often as they possibility can. I really enjoyed it. But it is incredibly stupid.

If you are looking for something to entertain your mind find something else this is entertaining a region much lower on the anatomy.

Rating: Good Worth Watching or Horrible beware your girlfriend will laugh at you for watching this.

Human Crossing is the latest series I've viewed from Netflix. HC is a series of non-related slice of life stories. I didn't think it would be my cup of tea because I usually watch anime series hoping for a complex story or at least some interesting storytelling that has a nice beginning, middle and most importantly an end, something I find woefully missing from much of the American TV experience which seems more interested in dragging out a group of characters or situations until everyone is so tired of it that it just fades away. Human Crossing has simple stories but complex characters. And almost all the stories were interesting to me. 

The younger crowd probably won't find these stories to their taste but to my more mature personage these were excellent stories showing people dealing with their lives and their loved ones.  It was really wonderful to watch as a top boxing champ comes to forgive his mother for an accident that shaped his life, or an overworking Dad realizing he's just like his overworking father.  The stories definitely have a Japanese feel to them but even so family is family where ever you go and these stories can basically be summed up with two words, "tearfully joyful".

If you want to see something wholesome and family oriented but not for kids this is a really good series.

Rating: Good. And if you are in the right mood it's excellent.

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.

OK, today's anime includes Fushigi Yuugi, Girls Bravo, and DearS. All three are harem titles except Fushigi is reverse and it really is the best of this bunch.

Girls Bravo and DearS are basically just fanservice vehicles. Lots of good looking girls throwing themselves at rather pathetic main characters.  Bravo's main character has a fear of women and breaks out in hives and will pass out if touched by them except for the mysterious alien he finds by falling through a portal in his bathtub.  This stuff, of course, happens all the time. Poor guy ends up in hell on that other planet too because it's populated by nothing but women. Women that want a man....any man. For what evil purpose could a planetfull of beautiful women want a man? Strangely enough I really don't care after watching Girls Bravo.

Girls Bravo Rating:Not Really Good (And I'm being generous because I actually liked the childhood tsunder friend.)

DearS if anything was not quite as good as Girls Bravo. To bad too, because they could have done a lot of interesting things with this set up. A UFO full of beautiful people crash on earth and ask for asylum. 10 years later they are starting to integrate with humanity and since it crashed near Tokyo that is where most of them end up. These aliens are smart, beautiful, can fly, have superior technology and are basically superior to humans in all ways except one. They are a slave race. Not just subjugated but genetically breed to be everything they are including an overriding desire to be someones slave.  Lots of moral implications could have been investigated but instead we get what probably should have simply been an h-game but with no h.  Sigh.  Other than pretty girls doing magical things it was really boring.

DearS rating: Not Really Good (And should be lower really but I just can't make it lower than Bravo)

Fushigi Yuugi is not like the other two. This one was a pretty good story and good characters I just got tired of the constant angst.  This is a shoujo all the way.  Miaka Yuuki and her best friend Yui Hongo are going to the national library so Yui can study for exams and Miaka can goof of. While there Miaka sees a red light that she follows to a mysterious old book. She opens the book with her friend Yui and even though it's in old Chinese,  Yui (the smart one) can read it. As they start to read it they are pulled into the world of the book.  While there Miaka becomes the priestess of Suzaku and Yui her arch enemy the priestess of Seiryuu. Much needless angst takes place and eventually 50+ episodes later after many deaths and near deaths and rapes or maybe rapes and memory losses and personality wipes later everything ends up happily ever after.  If shoujo is your thing and you LIKE angst and soap opera like happenings this will be a favorite. If however, you are like me and like some romance every now and again but angst for angst's sake gets on your nerves just skip this.

Fushigi Yuugi rating: Decent
Added bonus Fushigi Yuugi: Eikoden rating: More of the SAME but for no real reason!

I've been busy with work and playing WoW so I haven't had a lot of time to watch anything or to post. So to my two readers, I'm sorry for making both of you wait so long. I'm sure you've been waiting with baited breath for me to post my inane scribbling again, so here ya go.

D.N.Angel: Basic premise, every generation the oldest male of the Niwa clan becomes 'Dark' a 'Phantom Thief' who steals art that has magical properties and 'seals'  these objects before the bad juju gets out and makes problems for all us normal folk.  It's a coming of age shonen show, and while I think it was rather mediocre it wasn't really bad. I was never really sure what 'Krad', Darks opposite number (Dark spelled backward even) was up to, other than yelling and generally disliking Dark for no apparent reason.  Basically if you like watching young teens learning to overcome life's little problems, coming to terms with love, and stealing objects d'art (you know the typical teen thing) then you won't waste your time watching this.

RATING: Decent, I didn't waste my time.

Fruits Basket: Basic premise, random members of the Sohma clan are cursed with an animal spirit of the Chinese Zodiac and when hugged by a member of the opposite sex, who is not also a member of the zodiac, turn into that Zodiac animal. So basically, if Yuki (the rat) was hugged by his mother or the female lead Honda Tohru he would immediately and uncontrollably turn into a rat, much to everyone's consternation. 

As silly as this premise sounds this is a very well done shojo anime. (Shonen = young male, Shojo = young female) Honda is the star of this show, she's so selfless it's scary, you'll find you love the poor girl to death. The show starts with Honda living in a tent. Yes that is right, a tent, in the Sohma's back yard no less. Seems she's been living with her Grandfather for the last couple of months after her mother, and last remaining parent, died in a car accident. She is basically hated by everyone in her family except her Grandfather(yes they are pricks) but when his house had to have some work done he had to move in with his daughter for a couple of weeks and had asked Honda to live with some friends for the time being. Honda refuses to be a burden to anyone and since she figures she'll be on her own anyway in 2-3 years (and isn't the brightest bulb in the shop) she might as well start now and a tent was all she could afford.  Well this is a comedy so these things have to happen. The Japanese love to have tragic figures in their comedy, if you don't laugh and cry they apparently don't feel they've given you your money's worth, and you get your money's worth in Fruits Basket.  I've cheated and read the manga so I pretty much knew what to expect though the anime doesn't cover the ending or have some of the more interesting twists and turns.

Even though I would classify this anime as a comedy I was really only laughing some of the time, mostly it's touching to watch as Honda basically grows an entirely new family out of the Sohma clan. For some reason, the Sohma clan lets Honda keep her memories of their transformations (did I mention one of them has the ability to erase memories?) and all of the Zodiac seem drawn to her. Though the show isn't long enough to see all of the members of the zodiac you do get to see over half of them make a pilgrimage to visit Tohru. She doesn't always get along with each of them right away but in the end all of them take to her as an older or younger sister, a mother figure or as a potential love interest. Her relationship with Kisa (the tiger) is just too cute to stand. [Yes I said it. IT WAS CUTE DAMMIT!] If you ever watch this show and like it, I really recommend you read the manga for more detail and a resolution. The anime has a decent ending but I felt it really needed another season.

RATING: Excellent.

Ok, this is going to be short. I watched Green Green. One word of advice for anyone else interested, "Don't".

The male lead wasn't interesting the female lead was just way to into the main character for no good reason and all the secondary male characters were just disturbing, and in a bad way.

If the people that had made this anime had bothered to just go ahead and make it a hentai flick it would have been better.  This non-story is just full of fail.

Rating: Bad.

Sometimes I do things that even I don't understand. For instance, I have a bad habit of once starting something not quitting no matter how much I really should. Oh, sure it sounds like a good character trait but it really isn't. For example: Kimagure Orange Road . I've been watching this from netflix for over a month now and I just keep getting more and more irritated watching it. I started hating the main character after disk 1 of 12. My dislike has reached new peaks every disk but yet I keep watching because it's "Old School" anime that all the nerds have watched.  Well I hated it. Sure I liked the two main female leads, you really are supposed to, but nobody is like them. They were portrayed as way too perfect in some ways and pretty damn stupid or blind in others. As for the male lead I think I've already said enough. HATED HIM. What the hell would ANYONE much less two extraordinary girls like the leads want with him?

Uh...I'll just have to promise myself in the future to STOP watching stuff I hate and KNOW I will hate even after watching all of it.

RATING: Weak, I wish I'd done something better with my time.

Next from netflix: Boogiepop Phantom.
I'm already worried because I really don't like horror as a rule and I especially don't like seeing young girls killed in any format. There's enough of that in real life I don't wanna see it in fiction.