Welcome Tourney People!

April 22nd, 2012 in Miscellaneous, Resources by

For those who were redirected here from the AniBlog Tourney, Welcome!! I know you’ve been though over 60 blogs throughout the last week so i’ll make this short. We are a relatively new blog (approx 8 months old) and mainly focus on General Reviews with the occasional Rant every once in a while. As I prefer you look around and read whatever catches your attention I won’t recommend here any specific posts.

We do recommend though (especially to other bloggers and after voting of course) that you check out InfinityAnime.com, an Anime Community created by Façade for Bloggers and followers alike. I hope you enjoy your stay with us at AniRecs Anime Blog and don’t forget to Subscribe and Vote «Subliminal Message: FOR US!».

What made me like anime? & Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Review *spoiler free*

April 20th, 2012 in Anime, Movies, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by

:O Is that PIKACHU!!

Here’s another question I often get from other bloggers as well as a few acquaintances, “What made you like anime?”. And while I could go on about how anime has a greater ability to captivate and excite the viewer than ordinary shows/cartoons my answer is quite simple, Hayao Miyazaki. For those who have never heard of him before, he is the guy behind Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, My neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howls Moving Castle among other works, all being brilliant anime masterpieces. When it comes to anime, this is the guy with the Midas Touch (everything he touches turns to gold). Now let’s get back to the question at hand, the first anime I had ever seen was Princess Mononoke, while flicking through channels (a very long time ago) I came across it and being used to the average run of the mill cartoons at the time I was hooked. The rush of emotion ranging from joy, sadness and anticipation had me enthralled from start to finish and from that moment I knew I had to find more movies like that, and so began my search that lead me to be the anime enthusiast I am today (Quite a long into huh?).

While I intend to review all Miyazaki’s movies, for today our target is Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic era where Industrial civilization has been destroyed by nature. And by nature I mean huge indestructible bugs pissed at humans after years of waging war and destroying the planet. And after those bugs are done wreaking havoc they simply lay there, die of exhaustion and from their body grows forth a forest, toxic to humans and practically every other animal that isn’t a “toxic-forest” insect. The remaining humans, slowly being wiped out by said forest gather in small communities, surviving by farming and possessing a mixture of ancient and modern technology. (more…)

Plans for this season (Spring 2012)

April 11th, 2012 in Anime, Miscellaneous by

Hiya there! 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. Accel World too, although it slightly reminds me of [C]: The money of soul and possibility Control. I have pretty high hopes for these two shows :).

I also plan on following Fate/Zero part 2 (I have seen all the previous seasons so I might as well right?) as well as Jormungand and maybe something light for the mornings such as Tsuritama or Haiyore! Nyaruko-san or Queen’s Blade Rebellion.. or Upottle or Sengoku Collection or…. Sigh, okay maybe I don’t exactly have it all worked out. Why are there so many anime this season!! Quite a few of them look good too!! Anime Overload!! ….. *reboots brain*

Okay, so i’m sure you’re wondering out of all of these which will I be reviewing as they progress, well the funny thing is I won’t be reviewing any.

“WHAAAAAAAAT!!!!??”

Yea you heard right, I won’t be reviewing any. Instead I will be going back to my roots and will instead be doing general reviews and rants about relatively older.. completed anime. Reason being that (more…)

Naruto SD (Rock Lee) : First Impressions

April 4th, 2012 in Anime, General Reviews, Naruto SD: Rock Lee by

Ever had an experience where you decided to try something new and well after all said and done you think to yourself, “sigh, that was a waste of the last 23.5 minutes of my life”. Well that was exactly how I felt after episode 1 of this thing, true I not the biggest chibi fan out there but having chibi animation doesn’t give a show the leeway to create something completly ridiculous. Okay… maybe it does (  😯 ‘LEEway’ … rock-‘LEE’ )

To those who are familiar with the original Naruto (and I’m sure all of us are) you will notice that they tried to keep the personalities of each character intact (key word here ‘tried’) and while the entire show seems like it’s going to be a spin-off of the very worst filler episodes, I will give them that because of the extremely lighthearted feel it radiates they have the potential to actually be…. funny. For example medium awareness seems to be a very prominent factor in these episodes “he is also the main character of the main Naruto TV show”, “Do we even have electricity and gas in this world?”. There is also bad guys who, well apart from the part that its practically impossible to make a chibi look evil we have them on the level where they can say in response to Rock lee pulling down the leader’s pants “if we’re just gonna get embarassed like this, we’re never comming to this house again”.

One last thing I can’t figure about this show though, where in the main series does its timeline take place, because while Naruto has abilities like multi-rasengan and Tsunade’s face is already engraved on the Hokage’s mountainside memorial thing, both which imply Shippuden. Rock lee seems to have regressed back to early Naruto days when it comes to his abilities. Maybe this was done to boost the entertainment factor but we’ll just have to wait till episode 2 to see.

To be honest while the concept of this show is great (ninja comedy, thats new… right?) I feel it’s going to make the average fan of Naruto a tad bit disappointed but hey, I feel that i’m somewhat biased against this as light comical shows are hardly ever my thing and chibi’s well… lets just say i’ve had one or two scrubs with my die-hard chibi friends.

Overall, I suppose I should be unbiased and give it a 6.8/10. Don’t think I’m being fair? well bearing in mind that I gave naruto 6.5/10 and Naruto Shippuden 7/10 and I still call myself a Naruto Fan, I’d say its score is pretty good.

Ano Natsu de Matteru Final

March 30th, 2012 in Anime, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Episodic Reviews by

"If you want to mess with her...I'll show you how badass I am"

A brilliant An ABSOLUTELY PERFECT end to what was possibly the best anime this season, notwithstanding the fact that they were delivering a very cliché story I have to say that they did an awesome job with it. Throughout the course of this episode I pretty much switched through 4 phases.

The first being the hype of Remon handling that robot bus like it was a toy car and the fact that she was indeed MIB (finally our suspicions have been confirmed). This also explains how she knew Manami (Tetsurou’s sister) seeing as her husband was also MIB. My only remaining question is… how old is remon? Also we got to see biker Rinon again (cen never get tired of seeing that)

The second was of intense anticipation and ‘awww-they-look-so-cute-together-ness’ from the point where they were on the train up till that crystal memory pod archive thing appeared from the lake and placed them both in the memory. Im my mind I thought YES! THEY MADE IT! AWESOME! I Have to give it to Ichika and Kaito they are an awesome couple, they don’t struggle to say what needs to be said or what is important (glares at Kimi ni Todoke, whole bleddy season and nothing significant happened). (more…)

Ano Natsu de Matteru Episode 11

March 22nd, 2012 in Anime, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Episodic Reviews by

I'm liking the focus Kaito!

What started out as a heart-wrenching parting of friends turned out to be a comical race against the clock to God knows were. The pace this episode was nowhere near the usual for this show, it was actually slightly rushed but was a pleasant change. At the end of this episode I’m sure everyone who has been following this show was on their toes anxiously anticipating the next moment.

One more episode to go, the grand finale. Will they find the place and promote Earth from level F allowing Ichika to stay? Or will they find something else entirely, something so profound that although Ichika has to leave they all come to a greater realization that it was for the best? While all points to option one Ano Natsu has proven itself to be very unpredictable time and time again (:O is that bus part Optimus Prime??)

Its good to finally have everyone aware of each others feelings and even better that we have things settled Tetsurou x Mio and Kaito x Ichika. Kanna, well unless Ichika leaves then she’ll just have to deal with being alone for now although I love how she screamed ‘You’ll regret it in 3 years’ (even though i’m pretty sure he won’t). Well as we say in le français comme si comme ça (one can interpret it here as.. ‘it is as it is’). (more…)

Ano Natsu de Matteru Episode 10

March 15th, 2012 in Anime, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Episodic Reviews by

He just looks awesome doesn't he?

Episode 10 of the 12 to air this season and although things are starting to shape up to give us all the nice mellow ending that everyone would be content with, somewhere in my gut there’s a little man screaming out that we haven’t seen all there is to offer. That there is something hidden in the plot just waiting to pop. And while on one hand I really want things to settle so that the anime can end, I also want something BIG forcing there to be a second season (hey I really like that show ok).

As I mentioned today was relatively slow but not in any negative way whatsoever, we had quite a bit of personal growth where Kanna and Tetsurou is concerned and Mio is very gradually coming out of her shell. Although our main characters Kaito and Ichika were not the focus of this episode, the few moments where they had their screen time was nothing less than fastastic (especially at that point where Remon slides Kaito that *clears throat* item ). And for those who failed to notice >.< Kaito not only immediately knew what it was but stashed it into his pocket, and although it seemed as if he only took it so Ichika would not see it. When the need arrives *whispers* Kaito you’re good to go.  (more…)

Façade : A little more about me

March 13th, 2012 in Featured, Miscellaneous by

facade-gin-mushishi1

Ever so many times in the past I have been asked ‘What do you do when you’re not watching anime?’ and I suppose I could always reply with the very obvious ‘well blogging of course!’. Truth be told, while a lot of my free time goes into blogging I do have school, my other half and other miscellaneous hobbies. Now as the first two are private and shall forever remain a mystery I shall be giving some insight on my other hobbies (yay >.<!!).

  • SLEEP! –  I’m not sure if this can exactly be considered a hobby but it seems recently I’ve been doing it so much I might as well put it in.
  • Gaming – Sad to say I haven’t exactly had much time for this one recently (sacrifice sleep time? Nevuh!). As I prefer the community feel of MMORPG’S my game of choice would be Cabal Online but I should also mention at a certain point it sucked up so much of my time (and some money) I might as well have switched to Party Casino (at least there I would have the chance of winning!)
  • Information Security – Some call it hacking, others call it penetration testing but whatever the name it involves compromising a vulnerable system which actually is as thrilling as it sounds minus well, what you see on tv (it’s nowhere near as quick and easy as they make it seem.. well most times anyways). Ah yes, I believe it is also worth mentioning that I only work on the ethical side of the spectrum and have had my certification for about 3 years now (so there’s some experience under my belt). (more…)

Ano Natsu de Matteru Episode 9

March 6th, 2012 in Anime, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Episodic Reviews by

This week’s episode of Ano was nothing short of a masterpiece hitting a straight 12 on the Richter Scale. Flashing back to last week we ended with a cliffhanger where the rescue pod that was sent down to pick up Ichika got destroyed (compliments to our tag team of Rinon and Kaito) and with Kaito injured in the process she had to use her ‘skill’ to heal him.

Now of course the explosion of an alien pod is going to attract quite a bit of attention and Ichika’s friends had just enough time to arrive on scene to see Ichika in her vulnerable state. Now I will give it to Ichika, while she could’ve hid it or make up some sort of excuse she didn’t, she immediately decided to fess up and tell her friends what she really is

(more…)

Ano Natsu de Matteru Episode 8

March 2nd, 2012 in Anime, Ano Natsu de Matteru, Episodic Reviews by

Over the last few days i’ve been thinking that the spring season is almost at an end. There’s more or less only a month left for every anime to either wrap up and come to an end or to get the viewers so riled up that the powers that be have to be off their rockers to not allow them a second season.

Now as you should already know I try to keep my anime list organised here http://myanimelist.net/, and one of the requirements that I have set for myself is that I rate each and every anime that I have had the pleasure of watching. This one is no different, currently it has an ongoing score of 7 but I’m strongly considering moving it up to a notch. It may not seem like much but to me it’s a big deal. The difference between a show rated 7 and one rated 8 is a hell of a jump. So now the question remains… How good is this show? Well, for one its good enough for me to be considering a 9.. And how good is that you might ask? Pretty damn good. The only thing that might make its score fall and remain as a 7 is if the producers decide to screw up the momentum as we approach the end.

This week’s episode for instance was a perfect example of why Ano Natsu de Matter deserves such a high score. We have Remon approaching Tetsurou’s older sister with a proposition, one that her busybody nature would not allow her to turn down To catalyst the ongoing struggle for love going on between each of our protagonists. To that effect we have the usual ‘test of courage’, now I believe I need not explain what that is nor what each protagonist hoped the outcome of this excursion would be (all can be inferred from image on top right). (more…)