Now, you need to understand that I am Old School. Hell, I’m Ancient School. I’m so old, Plato taught me at the Academy himself! I come from a time that when we got a FIFTH TV station in our area, we lost our collective minds. If you missed an episode of your favorite show, you had to wait half a year for the summer reruns to catch it. And if your show was cancelled, that really was the end of it. Home taping? Maybe with an AUDIO cassette recorder, perhaps a Super 8 camera pointed at the tube. (more…)

I recently gave a review regarding “Princess Lover”, a rather standard romantic comedy anime. It was a fan-service heavy eroge game, which became a fan-service heavy manga, which became a fan-service heavy anime. OK, the above picture never happened in the anime, but it skated pretty close to it.

They later came out with two OVAs. The first one was a six-episode offering. If you didn’t have the time to invest 300 minutes to watch the entire series, you could cough up 16 minutes to get an overall sense of the show, but not get a good feel for it. Look, if you don’t have the time to watch anime in its entirety, then go watch something else, like “Schoolhouse Rock” or “Foul-Up, Bleeps and Blunders”. Anime does require your attention.

It was the second OVA that bothered me. Now, I have seen a lot of things in anime that bother me, but this one really sticks in my craw, as it doesn’t make any real sense. The second OVA is a two-episode excursion into hentai. (more…)

Have you ever been in this situation?

Random Person : Do you watch anime?
You : Of course!! I can’t live without that stuff
Random Person : So whats your favorite anime?
You : Thats a hard one, Death Note probably, although Shingeki and Mushishi are pretty good too.. How about you?
Random Person : Avatar
You : -.-” Avatar isn’t anime..
Random Person : Well then what is it?
You : 

So what is Avatar? And why is there so much confusion surrounding it? (more…)

So, you have been reading me for a while now, and you should know by this point that the genre in anime I detest the most is Giant Fighting Robot. However, the one that is in second place is sports anime.

This is not to say that all sports animes are terrible; I could name two right off the bat that were very interesting, in that I watched them all the way through: “Bamboo Blade” (Kendo) and “The Big Windup” (Baseball), but they went against the grain to tell their stories. (Another is “Suzuka”, but the track and field aspect is a means to an end and not the core of the show). It’s that some of the shows get so involved in presenting the sporting aspect of things, the plot suffers to the nth degree and one loses interest. If I want to watch basketball, I’ll watch basketball, not a basketball anime.

Here is the problem that I have with the approach to the sporting life story, as it falls into the same tropes and traps:

Our hero (or heroine; mustn’t be sexist) is just a-walkin’ down the street, singing “Doo wah diddy, diddy, dum diddy do” and is called upon to use some hidden talent that is reflective of the sport that we are angling towards. Once this ability is now out in the open, they are asked or blackmailed or coerced or driven into joining the particular club or team to really present his talent (or hers; mustn’t be sexist). (more…)

I am noticing another trend in anime as of late and it is really starting to irk me, as it seems like we have to calm down people, lest they go screaming into the sunset because the whole world is coming to an end because of something they saw in the recent series and IT MIGHT BE TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, I first encountered these warnings way back in “UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie”, letting us know that everything that went on in the bathhouse was done with the cooperation of the National Association of Guilds Maintaining Sanitary Operation of Public Bathhouses. We’ll just ignore the fact that all kinds of naked babes are parading through. You KNOW that when the boiler is set at a certain temperature of the floors are mopped in a particular manner, that it all done with proper protocols of the industry. You’ve got our Seal of Approval…..and naked babes.

I next came across one in “Fairy Tail”, where Natsu would remind us to watch with enough light and be far enough away from the TV. OK, I have no problem with that, as some folks are so close, they might as well be behind the TV. “Dude, move your head. What the hell is Lucy doing?” (more…)

Ritsuka (dark hair) and Sobei (light hair.. but this rave isn’t really about him)

Loveless is just one of those anime I could watch/read a thousand times and never get tired of it; I absolutely adore it. I have spent hours of my time (which I don’t have a lot of anymore since school started) watching and reading this particular anime/manga combo. Loveless has slowly but surely taken over my heart. I suppose one could say that is a normal reaction for me seeing as I have I have said same with multiple anime but I am insisting still, that Loveless is a special case. It has secured its spot in my list of addictions (which includes One Piece, Naruto, Ouran High School Host Club, and a bazillion others) because it has taken the word “neko” to an entirely different level, it speaks the importance of keeping memories, and its characters left me spellbound.

Now you may be wondering what I mean’t by ‘it has taken the word “neko” to an entirely different level’. In the anime/manga all of the younger characters are cat people. Now I suppose you’re wondering why only ‘younger characters’… well it’s because they haven’t been in a “serious” relationship yet. In other words, they haven’t done anything promiscuous. (Thank God, seeing how the main young characters are twelve!). Most people don’t necessarily think of stuff like that when they decide to create a new manga. Normally it’s based off of one of the more popular topics like Giant fighting robots or zombies. It’s quite unique that they would put so much detail into such a topic. (more…)

Ohh the glory!!!!!!!!!

I’m normally not one to watch the “popular shows“, but recently I’ve found myself watching One Piece. While I was never able to bring myself to watch it until now, the moment I started, I became hooked. I’m not sure what initially lured me into its utter randomness, but something did, and I am proud to say that I have watched a decent amount of episodes in the past few weeks. I believe this new found obsession is caused by three main reasons; the strength of the anime’s characters, the power of its message and the wonder of its lore.

Let’s begin with everyone’s favourite thing about anime: the characters.

Characters are figments of the author’s imagination that embody a form which everyone can relate to. While I do love a good story and tend to be drawn into the plot, this particular anime’s characters so firmly grabbed my interest that the plot was  was completely overwhelmed. Thinking on it now, this possibly stemmed from the fact that I am more able to relate to these characters than most other anime I’ve watched. (more…)

In the last few weeks I’ve noticed that due to my own set of values I have a serious problem with female characters that try to steal the male protagonist from their female counterpart .Ume Kumurizawa, (image above) is one of those characters. Hailing from the anime/manga Kimi Ni Todoke, she shows herself to be a “Kikyo” type character and if you saw my first post ever, you know about my intense dislike for her. Ume tends to have an “I’m the most perfect person in the world” attitude because of her beauty and is extremely irritating. She even stoops so low as to manipulate everyone into thinking she’s the perfect angel when she’s everything but that.

Now most anime characters are beautiful; it’s just a fact you have to accept. It’s when the character knows that they are beautiful, and unscrupulously uses it as a way to entice and deceive people that it gets on my nerves. While its true most characters who are aware of their beauty don’t so this (Tamaki Suoh from OHSHC, Kyohei Takano from The Wallflower, etc.) Often enough you get that particular character who uses their beauty as a weapon, and Ume is that character. For instance, she has convinced all of Kazehaya’s followers (Protagonist who she madly falls in love with) that he was made for everyone (i.e, share him), so that she could have a chance to get closer and clutch him into her grasps. It’s this type of manipulation places her at the top of my ‘anime characters i despise’ list. (more…)

You really are, aren’t you?

Recently I started watching Death Note (one of the few anime I have yet to watch). Now, I’m not completely done with the series but I’ve watched enough of it to be able to identify my favorite character. As of the moment, this would be Light Yagami. He has a very interesting view of wrong and right; has solutions for the problems that occur during his revision of the world; and is probably one of the most independent characters I’ve seen.

Light, also known as Kira (which is probably how I’ll refer to him), uses the Death Note to create a world based on his sense of right and wrong. He writes down the names of people who have done something morally wrong (so basically murderers, rapists, and/or thieves) and considers it justice when they die forty or so seconds later. In the process though, he is technically killing people; which by his standards is something wrong. This makes me believe his judgement is something along the lines of “do as I say, not as I do”.  While he is my favorite character, his righteousness will eventually get on my nerves. (more…)

OHSHC is probably my all time favorite anime. It was quite possibly the first anime series I’ve ever watched in a single sitting. The main reason I love it is because its theme revolves around the fact that appearance doesn’t matter (which is very ironic considering some of the characters), it has an amazing story line, and in almost every episode there’s an underlying message.

Firstly, onto that amazing underlying message, as Haruhi (the female protagonist) repeats several times throughout the anime: “Appearances don’t matter, it’s the inside that counts.” This is a pretty big message these days as it’s constantly being spoken about to the younger generations. This theme, though very inspiring, is also very ironic; since the point of the club is to share their beauty with the world… It’s quite the paradox when you think about it, “Appearances don’t matter, but I need to share my beauty with the world”. (more…)