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Sometimes life can be such a lonely existence

By some miracle I woke up early today and thus have some time to write my response. But as the date has passed I won’t be tagging anyone else. For those who have no idea what i’m talking about you can check out Cely’s original post here.
Now the answers to the 5 questions.

1. What is it that lead you to become an aniblogger?
Thats an easy one, It was summer and I reeeeeally wanted something to do besides watch anime all day and sleep. So I decided to create a blog. And what better thing to blog about than my obsession?

2.  How many times can you recall where an anime or anime scene made you think “WTF”?
Hmmmmm, Currently I can only think of two instances. That would be at the ending of school days where those two crazy, gruesome murders happen and then seeing the girl at the end with Makoto’s head on the boat. The second would be Junjou Romantica, while it wasn’t as WTFesque as the first instance somehow I thought the show would simply be a romance anime but halfway through episode one I noticed….. OMG!! This is… this is… (go watch it to find out :P)… After pouring concentrated Hydrochloric acid on my eyes to get the image out I instantly dropped the show and live my life now forever scarred.

3.  If you could be an anime/manga character, who would it be?
Gin from Mushishi, somehow I can relate to him. Always by himself, travelling around helping others and the ability to see and resolve what other’s cannot. While at some point during the show you stop and think that he must live a very lonely life, I still found it captivating somehow.

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Many times I have found myself starting an anime and thinking ‘hey this show is great!’ but then it drags on… and on… and on….. until it just becomes boring, repetitive and flat out sucks. Well this is exactly what happened with this season’s Accel World.

Accel World deals with the  rare MMORPG/virtual reality genre and had a ‘unique’ protagonist. At the start, I couldn’t wait for the following week to see the next episode, everything was just new fresh and exciting, at episode 12 (the perfect time for a conclusion) I was starting to get a little tired of the characters and now.. episode 22 I’m sick and tired of pretty much everything. The VR game which is the foundation for the show makes no more logical sense at this point. The majority of the characters are overly shallow, fickle and just plain stupid.

The only character who is even remotely worth giving any credit to is Kuroyukihime. (Xtra pic @ bottom of post *wink*), while she has extremely bad taste in guys (ie. liking Haru), she is intelligent, levelheaded and popular (not blonde popular but… ‘irie’ popular) all while still maintaining a certain level of complexity. If they spent anywhere as much of an effort on the other characters as they did on her, I personally think the show would be much better than the compilation of sniveling, estrogen overdosed buffoons that we have currently.

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Its been some time since I’ve seen an anime that made me get up lazy self up and write a review. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (literally ‘Anohana: The flower we saw that day’  or ‘The Blooming flower of that summer’). Is one of those one in 1,000 anime where from the getgo it has you hooked right up to the end. For those who are familiar with Ano Natsu de Matteru, it was created by the same team and so has a similiar feel throughout.

Like Ano Natsu de Matteru, it revolves around 6 early adolescents and features a love pentagon. The main difference would be that in Anohana. It follows the issue of the death of one of their friends and the repercussions it had her family and everyone around her. It is truly a profound piece of work which (from what I saw in the little research I did) caused of quite a bit of ‘man-tears’ (ill be sure to write up a rant on man-tears later).

The story tells of six young children who drift apart after one (Menma) dies in an accident. Each growing up emotionally affected in one way or the other by the incident. The ghost of Menma appears to one of them (Jinta) who was the so called ‘leader’ of the group back then. Coming to the conclusion that she was unable to pass on and enter heaven because she had an unfulfilled wish here on earth, Jinta rallies the other members of his group to help Menma pass on. Throughout the ordeal, hidden feelings of resentment, envy and love are uncovered as they try to accomplish their goal of sending their lost friend up to heaven.Continue reading

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Sigh….

A few days ago, as usual I woke up and headed over to my favorite anime streaming site. First thing I did when I arrived there was to check for the recent anime updates (for the newest Naruto, Fairy Tail, One Piece etc) and saw something very… unexpected. Premiering on June 30th (subbed) was Code Geass: Nunnally in Wonderland. Seeing as the original Code Geass series is easily in my top 5 anime of all time I was obviously very excited. So there I went and clicked play…. and they could NOT possibly have destroyed my love for Lelouch (no homo) any more completely.

The plot is basically a spin-off of Alice in Wonderland with a comical and ecchi twist. Lelouch plays the role of Mad Hatter while Nunnally, C.C and Suzaku plays the roles of Alice, Chesire cat and the Knight of White respectively. All the other supporting characters have other mundane, sometimes even ironic roles (like Charles being the softspoken King of hearts).

To be honest after episode 1 I won’t even be giving the other episodes a second thought (update: its actually an ova so there aren’t any more episodes. Thanks to Son Gohan for pointing that out). Code Geass used to be a pleasant memory, it was always attributed in my mind with the tags ‘Kickass Story’, ‘Badass Main Charaters’, ‘Strategy worthy of praise by Light Yagami himself (Death Note) ‘ and ‘Huge robots kicking butt’. I now have to add ‘sappy characters’, ‘Fanservice’ and ‘Tries to hard to be funny’ to that list and believe me I want someone to pay!!! *HULK SMASH*.Continue reading

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Every season there is always for me this one great anime, for those who remember season before last, it was none other than Ano Natsu de Matteru. For this season that was none other than Sankarea, and I know this review is a bit late but.. oh look! a smileyface!  😉

The story revolves around Chihiro Furuya who has an obsession with zombies and dreams of having a zombie bride (to each own I suppose). He then has an encounter with the ever so popular Rea Sanka (see what they did there?… innovative right?). Whose life turns out to have its own fair share of problems. They begin talking and over time grew closer until her dad steps in, tradegy strikes and by a series of events she turns into a zombie. Aided by her new-found friend, Rea now struggles to live the life of an ordinary girl while battling her quickly rotting body.

The overall artwork was great and consistent throughout the show, there was hardly any spectacular scenery but I doubt that is going to bother anyone in the slightest. A point to note though, was that while there was quite a bit of fan service involved it was so meticulously intertwined into the plot that half the time you don’t even notice that you’re seeing a naked girl on your screen.Continue reading

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Hello world! Whilest I could start with an apology for my unplanned hiatus due to exams, my new-found python obsession and dealing with Kamikaze monkeys from hell, this review takes precedence. I’ll do the world a favor and get straight to the point.. Zetman sucks. I remember in a previous post I said:

“So the spring season has started and I must say that there are quite a few shows that caught my attention. Zetman for instance 🙂 I love how we have an initial episode giving us some background then in episode 2 we jump 5 years straight into the action.”

Although at episode 2 I felt I was barely keeping up, there seemed to be so much potential in this show that it had to be good right? Wrong. By episode 4 I realized that hey, things were not right. By 8 I confirmed that theory and today, episode 13 I was scratching at the screen screaming ‘MAKE IT STOPP!! DEAR GOD!! MAKE IT STOPPP!!!!!’

The root of the problem is that the original Zetman is basically the cross between a western (Marvel) comic and Japanese manga and while that sounds like a pretty awesome mix, they completely failed at the adaptation into an anime. The main character Jin is…. sigh…Continue reading

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Maturity... yea it matters

After my last post ‘Appearances can be Deceiving‘, I realized that what I called a ‘deceiving start’ was not the only thing that could make one drop a show. While it is the most common reason, one’s Level of Maturity also plays a pretty huge part in how much one is able to understand and appreciate an anime.

A lot of the time viewers find themselves more able to relate to certain shows (especially those with a ‘deeper’ sense to them) when they are older and have a better understanding of the world (usually brought about by both good and bad life experiences). A perfect example can be found on Canne’s Anime Review Blog when she expressed that ‘watching anime at the right time is as important as watching the right anime’.

The thing is. I wasn’t ready for Princess Mononoke when I first saw it. I was too young, too ignorant and inexperienced to truly appreciate it. I could feel that this was a great anime but I didn’t understand why. Now I do and I am grateful to myself for giving the anime another chance.

Shows such as Princess Mononoke, Akira and Grave of the Fireflies are examples of anime that while can be enjoyable by all, takes a certain level of Maturity to fully appreciate.

Like Canne I remember a few years back watching Akira for the first time and to be honest it didn’t hit me, it felt old, boring. I actually felt somewhat confused for the greater part of the show. After a re-watch a few months ago by the slightly more mature me, or at least the slightly older me. I found myself thinking thatContinue reading

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The power of deception.. blessing? or curse?

Do you remember in the first Transformers movie, when Sam Witwicky went out looking for his first car, and ended up with this average 1976 Camaro? If so then you surely remember when it self-pimped up to the 2009 model. Sometimes it feels to me that anime does the same thing. On numerous occassions I have found myself dropping an anime, only to find myself picking it up again after a certain period of time and only then realizing that hey… I LOVE this show!

While there can be numerous reasons for that, I believe that the main reason is simply because of a ‘Deceiving Start’. This is the case where you start watching a show and by episode 3 or 5 you feel you have just wasted way too much of your life on it, that it can not possibly get any better and so you simply move on to the next show that peaks your interest.

I call it ‘deceiving’ for lack of a better word, saying ‘A Slow Start’ or ‘A Boring Start’ would imply that the plot progression is slow (or boring) which is not always the case. In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann for instance, although it is currently one of my personal favourites, it was once on my ‘dropped’ list due to its… somewhat unappealing start. Continue reading

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Today I’m going to attempt to review Trinity Blood but before we begin I would like to throw out there that this review will be affected by various factors. The first being that I watched it in french and while my ‘le français’ isn’t as bad as a monkey’s English it isn’t the most eloquent thing either thus I probably didn’t get as into the show as I could’ve. Secondly, before doing a general review I like to watch or re-watch (assuming it only stretches one or two seasons) the entire show in 2 – 3 sittings so that it’s fresh in my mind. This on the other hand I’ve been watching in groups of 2 – 3 episodes with extremely lenghty spans of time in between. So with that in mind, lets begin.

Trinity blood summed up is basically a poorly made Hellsing, okay maybe I shouldn’t use the word ‘poorly’ so instead I’ll call it a ‘lighter’ version of hellsing. I suppose that was a given as it was adapted from a light novel instead of an action packed anime but sigh, we have a potentially AWESOME protagonist with all the power he could possibly want with the personality of Vash the Stampede (Trigun) in a show with highly detailed artwork and a potentially awesome setting and they still found a way to screw it up.

The plot was unnecessarily complex and disjointed, we kept jumping from one thing to another and sometimes it seemed like we had 5 different people (with conflicting personalities) or at least one guy with a really serious case of multi-personality disorder directing individual parts of the show. But regardless here is what I believe the show was intended to be about:Continue reading

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While Naruto has been the bane of my existence recently (the annoying recap/flashback spanning multiple episodes), if the producers were simply working on this movie then it was definitely all worth it. Naruto movies have always been noted for bring pretty good (can’t say the same about the OVA’s) and this one was no different. This movie revolves around…. Hey! Instead of a boring synopsis, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so heres a video/trailer for ya! (Watch in HQ)

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As you can tell from the Trailer (assuming you watched it) Naruto gets accused of killing multiple people as well as for an assault on the Raikage resulting in him being sent to a shinobi prison. Now if you are an avid naruto fan throughout the the rest of this trailer your thoughts went something like this:

Of course poor goody goody Naruto couldn’t kill anyone so its clear he was framed but why? *pause* :O There seems so be something huge going on here *pause* :O Gamabunta (The Chief toad) was summonned which means there must be a really powerful enemy! *pause* :O Is that Killer Bee! *pause* OMG Sage Mode! *pause* ROARRRRR!!!! THIS IS GONNA BE EPIC! DOWNLOADD!! (or if you’re like me) WHERE CAN I STREAM THIS!!

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