The Japanese title for this is…(take a deep breath…) “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai”, which means “I Have Few Friends”, but we know it better as “Haganai”. Look, it’s another school-based anime! How original! And we have a new transfer student! Doubly original! And he’s having troulbes fitting it! We hit the trifecta!

OK, let’s put the snarkiness aside. Kodaka Hasegawa (the guy in the middle) is a recent transfer student to St. Chronica’s Academy, a Catholic high school. As with every other school he has ever attended, he finds it difficult to make friends there because of his naturally-blond hair (inherited from his deceased English mother) and fierce-looking eyes, which make him look threatening.

While doing something on campus, Kodaka comes across the equally solitary and highly abrasive Yozora Mikazuki (the one to his right) while she converses with her imaginary friend, Tomo. Realizing that neither of them have any friends or social skills, they decide that the best way to improve their situation is to form a club, The Neighbor’s Club, intended to make friends and learn social skills.

They slowly start to acquire members, as these folks are also social misfits for one reason or another:

Sena Kashiwazaki, that busty blonde up there. She has a double whammy: she is rich and her mother is the school’s head teacher, so there is a seething arrogance about her and no one wants to be her friend.
(more…)

Animes have been known for pushing the envelope, and this one is no exception, except that it is so thoroughly honest about one man’s perversion. But when you dress like that, well, what did you REALLY expect? I mean, did you really expect that outfit to contain all your feminine charms? Did you honestly expect that a man who wears panties on his head is not going to blow a gasket or two? Adding to this is the Naïve Factor and this show serves it up with two hot, heaping scoops.

Oh, for those who don’t know, the Naïve Factor is that the woman in question has absolutely NO IDEA that they are sexy. For guys, you have read the comments that accompany the photos in any girly magazine or see the picture and she is totally amazed that she possesses the prodigious protuberances, as if she had never noticed them before! Yeah, it’s kinda like that in the show.

Tomoki Sakurai (that Chibi, panty-on-head wearing guy in the center) is a teenage guy whose motto is “Peace and quiet is the best”, but he finds it difficult when he has to put up with Sohara Mitsuki, his next door neighbor with a killer karate chop (not seen up there); Eishiro Sugata, an eccentric pseudo-scientist bent on discovering the “New World” (not seen either); and Mikako Satsukitane, a sadistic Student Council President (also not seen).

One day, while he was witnessing a strange anomaly in the sky, an UMA (Unidentified Mysterious Animal) crash-lands nearby. Tomoki discovers what fell from the sky is a winged female humanoid named Ikaros, (white wings to the right) who soon declares herself to be Tomoki’s servant. From then on, more creatures known as “Angeloids” arrive, and with this, he finds himself losing his peace and quiet, but at the same time finds pleasant things the Angeloids bring him. (more…)

Hiya all! Just so you know right away this isn’t a review, tis a rant on internal affairs and whatnot so if you’re really not interested in that, I would suggest reading instead Droid’s Desert Punk Review. Okay, so I’ve been brainstorming alot recently about what to do now that my life has been swamped with… stuff, which unfortunately leaves me only time to eat and KO on my bed. And I have come up with a brilliant solution (inspired by this weeks episode of Bakuman [season 3 ep 5]). To put it simply, ‘blog more efficiently’.

Okay that was a bit vague so ill explain in more detail. Normally when writing and maintaining stuff I would set aside an hour or two and sit, boot up my pc, compose myself, think of all the awesome stuff I saw or thought about this week. Choose one which I think will be interesting, try to remember how my thought pattern was at the time and as soon as the wave hits me, start writing as it comes to mind. The downside to this is that I need at least an hour of uninterrupted time to get something that doesn’t look completely horrible and lately that hour has been hard to come by.

The solution I came up with was this, I recently got myself a new phone (Samsung Galaxy Note II) and thought heyy!!! With all the time I spend during the day either on a bus, or waiting for one thing or the other, I could totally blog! So as of today I shall be changing the internal workings’ to accommodate that. The process will be as follows:

1. In the goal of being more mobile friendly those visiting from phones will see a nice clean mobile friendly layout :). (of course those using pc’s will see the usual site)
2. Revamped, mobile friendly admin [This is mostly for me as only my awesome authors and I have backend access.]
3. Will also do that much needed maintenance on InfinityAnime I’ve been putting off for ages. Will rewrite the entire site in python if I have to (damn spammers made me have to close down registration and whatnot).

While I am doing all this I will definitely not leave you all empty handed so every Monday Wednesday and Friday I shall be posting one of the many posts from The Droid (awesome writer) I have stashed in a folder somewhere. On Sundays I shall be writing about the progress done. And possibly at random intervals during the week if I’m not swamped with this blog’s spr.. autumn cleaning I shall write a post or two.

So yea, that’s the plan. If you read all that then… *references pic below*

Seldom do you see a character who is so totally amoralistic and every time he gets his butt handed to him (which is like, oh, every episode), you know that he fully earned his come-uppance, but you also find yourself cheering him on. Kanta Mizuno (our garbed hero in the center) is easily one of the three greatest perverts in anime history, and that is saying a lot. He is a mercenary, a ‘hero for hire’ and his ability to complete his job, in the face of insurmountable obstacles, has earned him the reputation of being good at what he does. But he’s still a loathsome punk and nobody likes him. If they found him face down in the desert, they would go through his pockets for loose change, then roll him over so the sun could bake his butt but good!

Japan has been reduced to a vast wasteland (referred to as “The Great Kanto Desert”), where people scratch out a meager living. Some cataclysmic event has triggered this ‘nuclear summer’ (for want of a better term), as ruined cities and relics from another time can be found. Kanta tries to do his job in this cauldron of hopelessness, but he has two distractions.

The first is Junko Asagiri (the vixen on the left). Now, you can’t see it here, but she has enormous breasts that Desert Punk is always making lewd and crude reference to and drifting into his salacious fantasies about them. Junko is no fool and uses those sand dunes of hers to manipulate the Punk to do her bidding during missions, then absconds with the rewards, leaving him high and dry. (more…)

Finally doing a review again. I really need to stop rambling so that I can get to more of these.
I love myanimelist.net. I really do. It’s the best place to figure out where to begin when you’re trying to diverge from “mainstream” anime. Being that the site aims to catalogue every anime in existence, I’m bound to come across a lot of junk. But then there are those anime I find that are real gems. Yosuga no Sora is one of those gems.

Twins Sora and Haru have just lost both their parents. The first scene of the show opens with the two of them sitting across from each other on a train. Sora and Haru quickly move into a quaint little town and get to know all of the other young teenagers who live there. The short series, concluding at 12 episodes, follows 4 story arcs each at 3 episodes. Each arc involves Haru befriending and later developing a sexual relationship with a different girl.

Obviously, this show is famous for its incest content, which does not even happen until the final story arc. I always hear “Oh it’s not as taboo in Japan but still considered wrong”. Granted, it is only anime but at the time I was watching this I’d only seen around 10 anime and of these 4 of them (the other 3 being Elfen Lied, Kaze no Stigma, and Fruits Basket) had paired off family members! That’s nearly half! Clearly this is a popular issue in Japan.

I really didn’t know what to expect upon watching the first episode but by the end of it I was not only entertained but very interested in seeing what happened next. At first glance, Yosuga no Sora can be written off as an ecchi, sometimes labeled as “soft hentai”, but with eye catching visuals, an enchanting, mystical setting, and surprisingly well-developed characters those terms just wouldn’t do the show any justice. (more…)

In the 1980s, Tommy Shaw released a popular song called “Girls with Guns”. Does anyone remember the song? Does anyone remember Tommy Shaw? Does anyone remember the 80s? Am I that old?

Anyway, “Upotte!” takes place at a school known as Seishou Academy. Unlike your average school, all the students are actually anthropomorphized guns, training to one day become a useful weapon, and is divided up into submachine guns (elementary school), assault rifles (middle school) and battle rifles (high school) classes. All students in Seishou train to shoot their target (literally) using live ammunition.

Our four middle-school heroines (Riflettes? Assaultines? Armamentrix? Can you be sexist towards a weapon?) are, from left to right, starting with the bun head, Sig, who is a Swiss SG 550. She is an excellent shot, but can be a bit diffident. The blonde is Ichiroku, a kind of leader, as the rest look up to her, but she would say otherwise. She is the American M16A4 assault rifle and is highly photogenic, appearing on the covers on numerous magazines.

The taupe-haired beauty, brandishing the weapon is Eru and is the lemon of the lot, despite her determined attitude. She is a British L85A1 assault rifle. Shy and clumsy, she has an unreliable nature and the habit of breaking a lot just like her namesake gun. (The brown-tressed girl with the blue ribbons is just a classmate or ‘background people’. Pay her no heed). The last is Funco, the main lead of this show. She is a BelgianFN FNC, who is often displeased to be nicknamed Funco. As the real FNC has a skeleton stock, she wears a thong instead of panties, much to her embarrassment and occasional anger. (more…)

One feature of animes is that they sometimes drop you right into a show, so you may spend the first episode or two playing catch-up to figure out what is REALLY going on here. “Black Rock Shooter” is that kind of show, as it takes you a bit of time to realize that we are dealing with the reality of two alternate, but connected, lands, but it focuses around Black Rock Shooter, a mysterious black haired girl who possesses a burning blue eye and a powerful cannon that can shoot rocks at high speed.

Mato Kuroi is starting school and tries to befriend Yomi Takanashi, who is also new to the school. However, there is a problem and that is Kagari Izuriha, a friend of Yomi who is using an accident to make Yomi her emotional slave, preventing her from having friends and being cruel to anyone Yomi brings into the house.

They are connected by this very strange and depressing book “The Little Bird of Many Colors”, which acts as a metaphor for things that happen and occur, but it’s very obvious. What you learn is that the land of Black Rock Shooter is where the black persona and dark emotions of the people in the normal world go to fight it out. (more…)

“Ano Natsu de Matteru” (or “Waiting in the Summer”) is a different approach to the ‘fish out of water’ tale. It almost succeeds, but the last two episodes get hard to take.

Kaito Kirishima (number 4 from left) is a movie maniac, constantly lugging around an 8mm camera from his grandfather (Film? We are talking actual film?). One night, while filming something, he sees a blue light and thinks he was injured. The next day,  Ichika Takatsuki (the redhead), shows up in his class. He discovers that she has no place to live and offers her room at his house, as Kaito’s sister will be gone for three months (like, all summer?)

We learn that Ichika is a space alien, bent on trying to find something on this planet, aided by Rinon (that odd creature at the far right).

The others in the entourage are, left to right:

Mio Kitahara. She has feelings for Tetsuro, but wants to help him along in his quest.

Tetsuro Ishigaki. He has feelings for Kanna, but knows how she feels about Kaito, so he keeps it all hidden

Kanna Tanigawa.  She has had a crush on Kaito for some time, but, despite being outgoing, has never really confessed it to him.

Remon Yamano. This one is generally cold towards people, but harbors a secret that is revealed in the last two episodes. (more…)

I first ran into this show at an anime expo. I was taken in by the gorgeous artwork, the realistic settings, the magnificent music and the poised story telling with measured pacing. I had to wait a bit before I could fully track it down and when I was able to see the full run, I was disappointed beyond words.

The series is set in the 24th century on a terraformed Mars, now named Aqua, and follows a young woman named Akari Mizunashi (far right) as she trains as an apprentice gondolier for the Aria Company. Her two friends and rivals are Aika S. Granzchesta (far left, Himeya Company)  and Alice Carroll (center, Orange Planet).

Now, you don’t always need slam-bam, massive explosions, dramatic battle sequences, giant fighting robots and unrelenting carnage for an anime to work, but you do need SOME kind of action or conflict. Aria’s biggest drawback is that the worst thing that happens is Akari feels she will never be a Prima undine (the highest level of gondolier).

You feel really badly in smacking this show about. Seldom do you see such a wonderful convergence of character design, artistic output and music. Now, I know that the author wanted us to find happiness in the small things and not to focus on our failures, but you feel something MORE should be happening. I mean, you can’t make progress without understanding set-backs and this merely steels your determination to achieve what you want. (more…)

The path to becoming a Manga-ka is one of sweat, tears, malnutrition, and lack of sleep

As we approach the Autumn 2012 anime season I found myself with the dreaded question once again. ‘What am i watching this season?’. As you can see from next season’s Animuchart we have quite a few new shows to look forward to as well as a few continuations. Upon seeing that Bakuman season 3 was being released I finally decided to get around to watching the previous two seasons and over the course of the last week I have been constantly doing so. Well, enough of my boring introduction here we go!

Upon doing initial research the first thing I noticed about Bakuman was that it’s created by the awesome team of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. For those who aren’t familiar with the names, they are the ones who created Death Note. Yes, the guys who were behind my all time favorite anime created another masterpiece and I am only now watching it. Sad huh? Also, while one may say that because of that fact I am biased towards the show i’d like to point out that since I came to expect so much from them, I was even tougher on it than I would be with the average anime.

The story revolves around two boys in their teens and their dream to be mangaka (manga artists). Seasons one and two highlights a chronological timeline of their journey beginning at the final year of Junior High and ends at the first year of university. There is a quote ‘The path to becoming a Manga-ka is one of sweat, tears, malnutrition, and lack of sleep’ and throughout Bakuman we are shown exactly that. From day one where they decide to follow their dreams, to the creation of their first ‘hit’ manga. Everything done in their life is portrayed in those two seasons. (more…)