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1."Problem Children:"This sounds like an interesting show. A group of kids with special powers are taken to another world to do whatever it is that needs to be done. We have the delinquent with super strength,the wealthy girl with the ability to bend people and animals to her will,and the woman who can talk to the animals like Doctor Dolittle did but also have the dexterity of a cat. This sounds like a pretty good anime. I hope someone licenses this one,it sounds like a good one.

2."Tamako Market:"Another great sounding anime is called "Tamako Market." It's about a girl who's family business is making moochi or big round rice cakes. Basically,she lives a normal life with her family and friends,which include the son of the neighboring moochi bakery who has a crush on her and so it goes,until the day the girl finds a cockatoo-type bird in one of the stores and takes it home. To her amazement,it talks and she finds out that the bird's name is Dera and he's searching for a missing princess. Needless to say,Dera starts making the girl's life a lot less ordinary.
This sounds like a really fun anime and I hope it's brought here soon and dubbed into English. I'd really like it.

3."Love Live!:"What would happen that if you liked your school a lot but you found out it was going to close? If you were the girls of "Love Live!,"you'd start a rock band to drum up more enrollment in your school. The premise may be a little goofy but from the reviews I've read,it seems like it's on really solid footing. This sounds like a real gem of a show and I hope it's brought here someday. This anime sounds like it's loads of fun to me.

Finished Trigun and it was amazing. I really is a "cool" show, in all the extension of the word. Though there were some obvious things like spoiler[Wolfwood's death, which the whole episode screamed about hours before it happened] and spoiler[Vash eventually killing someones] I loved the scene with spoiler[Vash walking to meet Knives while carrying Wolfwood's cross]. My only complaint is that the animation is insanely cheap, but when the shootings start, it doesn't matter so much.

On the other hand, today I marathoned The Hakkenden and I have 3 things to say about it

1. What just happened
2. I don't get it
3. What is this shit

For starters, this is an OVA series, (which makes no sense because it's as long as a regular one-cour series) so the episodes last 30 minutes (minus opening and ending 25-26 minutes each) so it took me at least a whole more hour to finish it than a regular 13-episode show.

So the first episode does a good job in setting up the story about a woman who married a dog (literally) and gave birth to eight dog-children (spoiler[who have nothing doggish about them except they all have the word Inu in their surnames, and have nothing outstanding about them, they're just above average swordsmen]) and what not.

Episodes 2-4 somewhat make sense while being absolutely boring, setting up the story spoiler[of the initial meetings between the dog-warriors] while entrusting the apparently main guy with the mission ospoiler[f delivering a mysthical sword to the heir of an ancient lord] (spoiler[which would be fine if the sword had anything special to it, but it doesn't, and the plotline about the sword who designates the ruler of Kanto is left unresolved])

Episodes 5-7 are the best because the dog-warriors spoiler[actively try to reunite] and you get some input on the kind of relationships they develop. So the story actually seems to be going somewhere. Then episodes 8 and 9 take a detour to something that looks like the past but could also be the present, and episode 10 is such a mess of Idongetitwhatisthisshit that I don't want to talk about it. It's also the crappiest animation I've seen in a very long time.

Episode 11-13 go back to the main storyline where somehow, 7spoiler[ out of 8 dogs have gathered, -god knows how- and the eighth one arrives just in time to prove that he's not only younger, but overall more capable than all the others together, and a psycho too]. The final battle ensues, against a big bad feudal lord who does nothing of importance, and the other big bad guy, spoiler[a superdupertriplecombo evil ghost who is evil for the shit of it and even though he eluded the heroes for 13 episodes because he's a ghost and doesn't get cut by swords, for reasons unknown turns into a hugetastic dragon that gets killed by the magic of the heroes' kamehameha.]

All the while trying to save a girl spoiler[who died but was revived (or her revived self was killed and she had a lost twin, I never understood this) but her body was taken over by both a vengeful dead woman and the mother of the dog-warriors, then died again and somehow survived.]

The series ends when the spoiler[girl/woman/mother hugs the youngest, who turns into a baby just to go back to being a teenager 4 minutes later and the eight brothers deciding to pursue their destiny], FIN.

There were a couple good things about the series. Mostly, the fact that it did explain the origin of the curse that made it possible for the dog-warriors to exist. But there was no actual character development at all or any exploration about the heroes' relationship as they discover they're brothers or battling together (spoiler[because they only fight together once, and it lasts like 30 seconds])

TL;DR
Give my wasted time back, damnit!

Damn you, Panzer World Galient. You had a show with centaur mecha that could shoot laser beams and human aliens trying to rule the galaxy and a Chirico Cuvie clone, and you were boring! And you were made by one of my favorite directors, Ryosuke Takahashi! But now I know why we don't see more kid works from him, PWG was just too damn boring to continue. 15 episodes was enough. I blame the main boy, a prince with the ridiculous name "Jordy", and the little girl, Chururu, for being the main characters. Chururu is easy, she's just annoying and useless. Jordy (aka "Jojo", just to make his name more ridiculous) is just incredibly bland. It's like he has no personality whatsoever. Advertising mascots quite literally had more personality than him.
And while Jojo and Chururu were the mains, the far more interesting (and older, I suspect those two were the mains because they were supposed to be 12 and 10, respectively) characters of Windu and Hilmuka were sadly background characters. So Windu is a bit like Gotho and Vanilla from VOTOMs (and in one scene, went hilariously off model. He normally has a mint green vest and black underclothes, then for one small scene he had a white vest and dark green underclothes, and inexplicably changed race from black to white) in that he's kind of more of a mildly useless money grubber, but he's hardly a bad character in that he clearly has personality. And then there's Hilmuka, a definite gem of awesome female characters, who was still not the main character even though it would have been most awesome if she had been. She certainly deserves her own series, I'd gladly watch it.
So yeah, it's just too freakin' boring and no amount of beam shooting centaur mech can somehow fix this. And the eye catch looks like a Doctor Who opening and that didn't help either!

Ok, also been watching more GaoGaiGar and damn if I don't find it irresistible! It's a super sentai team made entirely of robots! Transforming robots! Oh yeah, and there's that little magic boy.... this show does have some human characters.... anyway, definitely in the second half, with the more badass opening. I've gotta say, they were totally teasing me about sending Mic back to the US. Being the Tagalong kid trope in robot form, boy did I want him to go back to.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, we are introduced to Swan White's brother. In case you cannot tell by the name (and I do not blame you), the blonde hair and tendency to say random Engrish phrases should indicate she is from America. Her brother's name? Stallion. Stallion White. I cannot help but laugh every time he comes up on screen because his name is Stallion! There was also this delightful scene in America where everyone was speaking Engrish, it was amazing! I'm always up for a good dose of Engrish.
But yeah, it's a damn fun show and somehow, I don't seem to get sick of the same transformation scenes every time. Also, I want toys. And this show just keeps coming up with an excuse to introduce a new robot or gadget for some reason, and it somehow makes sense in the plot (and not just in the toy department). But yeah, I am so enjoying this, and it's such a cheap show too! Even if it did start off with mostly episodic boring eps, once they got some Zonders with brains, it became instantly better in the episodic department, which is all you can really ask for sometimes.

Back in college, I started watching a series, Time Jam: Valerian and Laureline, because I found out about it on here and it was on youtube (now only on damn hulu). But yeah, I finally decided to finish it. Since it was mostly episodic, I clearly didn't mind taking it slowly, though the last 5 eps or so were like one big arc. It's a simple, fun, space adventure show, and I'm glad I watched it. Hopefully I'll check out the original comics someday? But yeah, I definitely do like French animated series.

Super Dimensional Century Orguss is another show on my 80s hit list. Partially because it's in the SD_ anime series with Macross and Southern Cross (not that any of them take place in the same time, era, or world), and because look at the name of that series! So despite our main being a womanizing jerk and picking up a loli robot 3 eps in (that actually turned out to be useful in a strange twist of the trope), I'm finding myself oddly drawn to it. It's mostly just some adventuring kinda sorta so far, but that's fine. There's some political stuff going on because spoiler[it takes place in a mash of multiple dimensions merged into one planet Earth] so clearly some fighting will happen, but it's an intersting world set up and I'm willing to see where it will go for now. Also, I will take a womanizing jerk protagonist over a super bleeding heart one any day, so at least they didn't pick the worst possible trope. And he's nice to his loli robot.

classicalzawa wrote:

Ok, also been watching more GaoGaiGar and damn if I don't find it irresistible!

Glad to see you're enjoying the adventures of OUR KING OF BRAVES!, it's only going to get better and better, especially once the show hits the second half. Be sure to watch Final too.

Hellsing Ultimate up till eps 8
Good series. Seras sure had a diificult childhood, yet she's still so cheery (most of the time)

In the middle of watching the TV series take on Vampire Princess Miyu. I've had the old Tokyopop release on me for nearly a year now, so it was only a matter of time before I chose to watch it. This series is quite different from the 80s OVA series where Miyu is more reserved in personality, Larva's face can be seen, Miyu has taken the guise of a middle school girl and some new characters like Miyu's new companion Shiina and ice spirit Reiha appear to be recurring characters. Still thus far, the series retains its episodic focus on Miyu dealing with different Shinma that threaten humanity. Considering I enjoyed the original OVA a good deal, I guess I'll be sticking with the TV anime for much of this week.

Watched the Gunbuster/ Top wo Nerae OVAs. I'm still not sure of how I feel about it, on the one hand it felt like a traditional mecha series, but on the other one I really liked how they went on the topic of light-speed traveling and time in space, the last two episodes were particularly magnificent

Also watched Usagi Drop, it was very sweet and cute. It's not overly ambitious, but a simple story about family, and while it was mostly inconsequential, I still enjoyed it a lot, it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. I know what happens in the manga next, but I'm happy the anime sticked with the simple sweet of fatherhood that it is.

I'm currently watching Mawaru Penguindrum, I marathoned half of it today. Up to this point I mostly have a load of questions, they've done a heavy job building this intricate mistery, so I hope the second half solves those questions. I'm not entirely sure of what the show is trying to accomplis, but I enjoy the human aspect of it and the narrative is very interesting, I really want to see where it goes.

Woot! So I finished GaoGaiGar and then went ahead and watched the entire OVA of GaoGaiGar: FINAL (which is 8 eps, but OVA rules dictate that the final ep can be as long as it damn well pleases).
Ok, so first, I wanna get the elephant out of the room. Comparisons to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann really are inevitable, both series dictate that having enough courage, spirit, and awesome is the key to winning, they both treat 100% failure as 100% success, and they both introduce mechs all the time for no apparent reason. That's in addition to the over the top attack shouting, Volfogg's Silver Moon attack looking like Gurren Lagann's attack shades, and both Viral and Kamina's seiyuu voicing major characters in GaoGaiGar (Gai Shishio and Volfogg, respectively). So which did I like better? I'm going to give the nod to Gurren Lagann. As awesome as all the transforming robots are (and I thought everyone except Mike's joke character form were awesome), there's something different about humans being the ones to throw caution to the wind that's different. I think it's partly because the Brave robots get broken approximately all the time, but they can be fixed, and generally are within a few minutes. Also, they are programmed to always keep going, it doesn't quite feel like they can quit like the people in Gurren Lagann can. So due to having humans doing all the awesome, I have to give the nod to Gurren Lagann, there's just something about it that makes it a bit more special to me. Both final enemies were super tough (going based on FINAL and the Lagann-hen movie), they felt about equally epic and near hopeless, making them both very exciting and awesome to watch.
So, back to GGG. Final added some awesome closure to the series, but also a bit of fanservice. At least the Gainaxing wasn't often enough to be thoroughly distracting, but it's like they found out older audiences actually liked it more so, yeah, fanservice! Other than that distracting element though, it was pretty much awesome from start to finish, with more robots, cyborgs, and fighting. It was pretty much exactly what I wanted, an extra short arc to finish off the series. I would almost certainly call it necessary viewing, some "continuations" are most definitely not worth the time and effort to watch them, but this is.
I can definitely say that this is not a show for everyone. It's got more transformation scenes then Sailor Moon and Digimon combined some times and if you don't care for having robots comprise half the main cast or just don't care for giant robot fights, you're not going to find anything here. Also, the first 10 or 15 episodes are episodic and average. Once smarter Zonders start appearing, then things get more interesting and the second half (which starts more around ep 35) is definitely well worth it (though for me, it was interesting far before that). But if you think you can deal with so-so opening eps and you do actually like robots to begin with, I say go for it!

Now to grill the internet on how this is related to Betterman, because I remember seeing some Betterman on TechTV back in the day, and I mostly just remember it being weird, but I sure don't remember it being able to connect to this at all. Maybe it's just the director being weird, it's the same guy.

I'm currently watching Fate/ZERO and just finished watching episode 11. Honestly, this was the only episode that I liked so far, mainly because it focused more on the dialogue than the action. All of the other episodes were boring (episode 10 was the worst; seriously, it almost felt like a filler). Apparently, I'm just not cut for action. Even with such high production values, I still find most of the action boring. This is probably the very reason why I didn't like FMA: Brotherhood.

Almost the whole episode 11 was just Servants talking to each other, and that's what I like! It showed different ideals and goals of some of the Servants. I hope there will be more episodes like this one.

So after a brief while of not watching anime I decided to check out some stuff while chilling and not having that much work to do. I caught up with some anime I missed last season and checked out some stuff from the current season.

Here is my 'noteworthy' list:

1. Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions
I've only watched up to Episode 4 so far and I really like it. I remember that this was the series that all those Key fans got upset at Kyoto Animation for picking over an adaptation of Little Busters. Looking at 'Chuunibyou' I feel glad that Kyoto Animation went this direction.

'Chuunibyou' seems to be Kyoto Animation at its best: creating love stories people can relate to between a wry male observer and a quirky teenage girl. There's been quite a bit of stuff from them along this line (the recent one was Hyouka) but I think this is more enjoyable than Hyouka.

I also think that while this series' primary audience are males, it is something that can be followed by a female audience pretty easily. The male protagonist, Yuuta, is quite likable, and the main female lead (Rikka) is probably someone whom awkward, nerdy girls can probably empathize with. When I saw scenes of Rikka sitting alone in class, being the weird nerdy kid people feel nervous about hanging out with, I felt like I could relate. I've also got a soft spot for stories that are about misfits in love (like Welcome to the NHK) so this story is already something very much to my taste.

There are still several episodes more, and I hope that the rest of it is just as entertaining.

2. AKB0048
It doesn't surprise me that AKB0048 would be enjoyable given the massive budget behind anything related to AKB48. Production quality is high, storytelling is pretty good. The character designs struck me as lacking when I first saw them, but they blend very well with the background -- and the background details in AKB0048 are gorgeous.

AKB0048 pretty much the most appealing aspects of old anime (the gorgeous space opera setting) coupled with aspects that are appealing of new anime (cute girls singing). There's some of the 'teamwork and friendship' theme that anime fans from the Nineties and Noughties would probably like. It's not going to break any major ground, but it's a total winner as far as entertainment value goes. And the music, of course, is really fun to listen to.

Nothing in the current season interests me much, though. I liked watching Mangirl! but that's only because I think the lesbian(?) girl (woman?) in the business suit is kind of hot.

CrowLia wrote:

I'm currently watching Mawaru Penguindrum, I marathoned half of it today. Up to this point I mostly have a load of questions, they've done a heavy job building this intricate mistery, so I hope the second half solves those questions. I'm not entirely sure of what the show is trying to accomplish, but I enjoy the human aspect of it and the narrative is very interesting, I really want to see where it goes.

I am curious to know what you'll think when it's over, I hope it answers some of these questions! I just started this not long ago and am watching in on AoD, so I am only like 4 or 5 episodes in, but it reminds me a little bit of Revolutionary Girl Utena in the oddness department and strange things popping up in the story...just kinda has a similar vibe, not that they are telling a similar story. I wonder if that carries through or if it's just me.

bonbonsrus wrote:

I am curious to know what you'll think when it's over, I hope it answers some of these questions! I just started this not long ago and am watching in on AoD, so I am only like 4 or 5 episodes in, but it reminds me a little bit of Revolutionary Girl Utena in the oddness department and strange things popping up in the story...just kinda has a similar vibe, not that they are telling a similar story. I wonder if that carries through or if it's just me.

They have the same director.

I really liked Mawaru Penguindrum. I haven't watched Utena, so I couldn't say, butas for Mawaru goes, I loved it. The first half doesn't make one bit of sense, but from episode 15 all the questions are slowly answered and every piece of the puzzle matches perfectly in a very emotional and heart-touching finale. The bottom story about fighting against fate and fraternal love was beautiful. It was fantastic.

On the other hand, I've just given up on Accel World. I just can't take all the self-deprecation going on in that show, I'm 18 episodes in and the guy hasn't stopped hating himself or made any serious effort to confront reality as opposed to trying to be the strongest in a videogame that nobody seems to understand what purpose it serves. It keeps sending confusing messages: on the one hand, about trust, honor and friendship; on the other, about self-loathing, servilism, alienation, cheating and betrayal. I was particularly struck by a speech given by the Red King in episode 12-ish saying spoiler[she admires Kuroyuki because she's defying the peace treaty, and that she considers peace has caused the Accelerated World to rot and fall into mediocrity] Because apparently for this show, peace and friendliness = mediocrity and decay. Also, if Haru's self-loathing wasn't enough, KYH, Takumu and sometimes even Chiyu spend hours dwelling on how much they hate themselves. Such a healthy show.

My new quest is to try and finish Beelzebub, which I've had on waiting list for years. I pick it up, drop it, pick it up, drop it, and so on. I'm now 40 episodes in, so I hope I can finish it within the next two weeks. I can say the Six Holy Knights arc really lifted my enjoyment of the show, in particular spoiler[the fight in the school roof, it was pretty cool.] I hope to see Natsume kicking ass some day, it's been hinted he can be crazy strong when he's serious, but has never been in the spotlight long enough for that.

I just randomly saw an episode of Wan Wan Serepuu Soreyuke Tetsunoshin. I must say, I am loving this show. It is like Keroro Gunso but with extremely cute dogs rather than sort of cute frogs. It's also a bit more light than Keroro Gunso, but very similar with its comedy. I wish I had seen this show a long time ago. It's obviously a very kid friendly show, but a lot of the humor is quite mature. The running gag of Tetsunoshin's family constantly being on the brink of bankruptcy somehow doesn't seem to get old.

P.S. I just watched episode 8, which was really an exceptional episode IMO. Hilarious with "The Matrix" references and some silliness with the head dog sending them on a quest to recover his pacifier, and yet the episode still was actually very touching, dealing with issues of abandonment and moving on to the next stage in one's life. It's a cute show but it is also so smart.

P.P.S. Somehow I get the idea Zac would be ROFL at episode 10, given his prior commentary about Moe. That was really funny!

As of right now I'm watching Blackjack the Movie. I love the suspense and tone of the series and this movie s pretty good too.

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