2 posts tagged “review”
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.
