This was another show that got a lot of buzz. It just came off as no different when the AC kicks on and you hear the hum. A lot of noise for minimal results.
The plot revolves around Natsuru Senō, your typically clueless dense anime male. He wakes up one morning to find that he is a girl (the blue-haired one). What? How could this have happened? What gives? He is told by his stuffed tiger toy that he is a “Kampfer” (German for ‘fighter’) and that he has to fight other Kampfers. On his way to school, managing to regender himself, he meets Kaede Sakura at the bus stop (blondie, dead center). An old and dear childhood friend, suddenly, they are set upon by some mysterious red-tressed woman who tries to kill Natsuru. Fleeing the scene, he manages to switch back into his female form and defeat said fighter.
At school, things get worse. This might as well be the East Berlin School of Academics. Another girls-only school that went recently went co-ed, it is separate but equal. The guys are on one side, the gals on the other and there is a massive concrete wall, topped with barbed wire and packed with guards, to keep the boys away. In the library, Natsuru hooks up with Akane Mishima, the shy, bespectacled librarian…who tried to kill Natsuru. Yes, when she transforms, she becomes an Alpha female, packing a black Springfield M1911A1 .45 pistol and a mouth on her that would make Nixon proud. (more…)
I remember a few years back I was going to a friends house when I saw this little poodle in the opposing yard, being as small as it was it slid through the bars of the gate and came into the road barking at me. Being no stranger to dogs I calmly took a step in its direction and shouted BOO! It immediately ran back into the yard, and shot to the back of the house as fast as its tiny legs possibly could and while I stood there literally dying of laughter… I saw him/her coming back with Butch (the name implies all).
The fear and unexpectedness I felt at that moment reminded me of this episode, whereas episode 6 was like that little poodle, it needed to be there to have this grand, final explosion which we call episode 7. We confirmed that Kaori’s sudden feelings for Kaito was partly.. PARTLY! due to her recently having a breakup with her boyfriend and in fact she only made the trip to Okinawa to help her get over it. Of course after having been shot down last episode she decided to be very mature about it and move out of Kaito and Ichika’s way.
Even Arisawa (finally remembered her name) as forceful as she is had to back off when she saw what was going on with Tetsurou and Mio. With that said I feel I should give Mio some recognition, she not only confessed her secret (of being a nudist) to the person she loves and a (semi) stranger and rival, she confessed her love to Tetsurou even while knowing what his answer would be all in one go. I’d say that takes some guts so hats off to you my dear Mio and Good Job. (more…)
There is a scene in “The Mummy Returns” where one of the minions, Jacques, goes “It is cursed! It is cursed!” That is how I feel about C³. That stands for “Cube x Cursed x Curious”. Now, I gave an overview comment of it a while back; this is the full review and it is another Frankenstein’s monster, in that it is made up of bits and pieces from other shows.
Yachi Haruaki lives by himself, as his father is always away on these buying sprees, where he finds rare and unusual objects. One day, another of these trinkets arrives, this one being a cube, black and heavy. Since he gets all kinds of weird objects, he thinks nothing of it. Later on that night, he is awakened by noises to find a naked girl, in his kitchen, noshing down rice crackers.
It is discovered that she IS the cube. Given a name, Fear Cubrick (Ice Blue on the right), we learn that she is a cursed tool, used for centuries to torture and kill thousands of people. She has been sent here in the hopes of purifying her and removing her curse. And for some magical reason, Yachi seems to be curse-resistant and the house is located in a kind of No Curse Zone, so nothing affects them (except a direct attack by some Guardian of Justice or what have you.)
Sadly, there are those that wish to destroy Fear and she is almost immediately under a direct attack by some Guardian of Justice or what have you. Peavey Barowoi tries to kill her, as Fear is mean and evil and vile and does terrible things to kittens and puppies. Coming to the aid of Yachi is Konoha Muramasa, a childhood friend. She and Fear are at loggerheads, as Fear constantly refers to her as ‘cow udders’. (more…)
This week’s episode of Ano Natsu de Matteru was pretty interesting develomentwise but overall I found it to be a tad disappointing, as i’ve said before the thing I loved the most about Ano was its unexpectedness. I’m sure that you all can agree that each romantic comedy has a few cliché elements that well, gets a bit repetitive. As ‘The Droid’ Noted in his post Not a Big Fan of Fan Service
I can pretty much guarantee that every romantic comedy will have at least three opportunities for fan service: a day at the beach, an afternoon of clothes shopping and a night at the bathhouse. Three guaranteed sessions!
Well today was that guaranteed beach session, I do give though that they tried their best to mix it up somewhat by adding the even more cliché fateful encounter with a childhood friend (who just happens to love you unconditionally) but it just felt somewhat lacking. Maybe its just me for having such a high expectation for the show but hey, lets wait and see. (more…)
Pretty sure one can tell from when I finally got around to writing this that I’m really not interested in this arc. Since the previous season she was a bit too soft-spoken and shy for my liking and everything progressed so slowly. In fact there was no progression, the guy simply felt sorry for her and joined the tea club. On the bright side we see more definite proof that that Junichi is just as pervy as his guy friends but we still have to bear with Sakurai’s annoying self-consciousness about her weight.
So after grinding through those two episodes, you what happened? Absolutely nothing, was a dud up to the end. True, she confessed.. wait.. no she didn’t, he did, but it was so stretched out and annoying when it came it was like more of ‘good riddance’ than ‘awwwww’. Sigh, why on earth did i decide to pick up this show this season. Could have picked up Nisemonogatari, HighSchool DxD or even Poyopoyo Kansatu Nikki.
I really hope the last 4 arcs are better or at least half as good as the first arc was, and with that I’m ending this here.
There’s nothing like the fresh summer air to make one really appreciate the gifts given to us by God, the trees, the clouds and most of all the women. Episode 5 reminds us that we are not watching a korean drama but instead a very well scripted (and animated) anime. I dont believe it was ever the point of focus before but in this episode we bore witness to quite a bit of oogling from Kaito at Ichika’s 92-58-88.
But enough on that, its now summer and believe it or not things are starting to progress even faster (don’t worry, nothing is compromised with the blazing fast pace). The filming starts and I would swear Remon knows Ichika’s identity because she gives her (and Rimon) the perfect role to play…. herself (themselves). Unfortunately for Kanna, due to the fabricated feeling of security the filming allows she finds herself more and more frustrated as it enables the romantic pair (Ichika and Kaito) to freely express themselves emotionally. Sad to say we got a glimpse of her true colours and it was not anything like what Cyndi Lauper imagined.
I resisted this one for a while, as the title initially put me off. “The World God Only Knows” sounded like one of those megalomaniac shows, where some power-hungry fiend wants to take over the world. No, it is a delightful romantic comedy that isn’t really all that romantic, but is quite funny, and a rarity that the second season is better than the first.
It tells the story of Keima Katsuragi. He is a caliber of NEET, in that he shuns all human interaction. Oh, he goes to school and gets amazing grades, but his entire focus is on conquering the hearts of ladies. He has, in fact, conquered 10,000 of them……..too bad they are all VIDEO GAME girls. He is so good, that he has a title, The God of Conquest. Everyone comes to him to ask for help in how to beat the latest dating Sims games. He has played them all, on all platforms and has almost every copy of them. (His room could be a caliber of museum, as he has every gaming system. I am sure there is an Atari 2600 in there).
One day, while going through his e-mail, he gets an oddly worded challenge, daring him to take on the task on wooing girls who have a void in their hearts. He takes the challenge, not knowing what it all means. The letter has come from the Demon World. It seems, owing to some bureaucratic bungle, souls have escaped from Hell and they need his help to recapture them. Demons, however, are not the sharpest bowling balls on the rack and they somehow thought he has conquered 10,000 REAL GIRLS. Also, he has to take on an assistant, the rather ditzy and clueless Elucia de Lute Ima, better known as Elsie (who has spent at least the last 300 years as a maid). (more…)
Ah Yes! There’s nothing like the fresh scent of rivalry to catalyse ones relationship, and thats exactly what were having :). Unbeknown to Ichiko, Ogura Minami (Tetsurou’s older sister) was just that, popping in and using her acute ‘I can cause some trouble here’ senses, grabs hold of Kaito and takes off for an afternoon of frivolous activities. Now a few things must be taken into consideration, Ogura is really good looking (appearance-wise she’d be my personal fav XD) and from what I can tell its in her nature to use that to her advantage, you then mix that in with her slight promiscuous aura and as a result you have a really riled up Ichika.
Of course at first she tries to convince herself that she’s just so emotionally involved to that point of stalking them because its her duty to ‘take care’ of Kaito but pssh, I think after today we have an Ichiko who is very much aware of her feelings for our protagonist, after all its a given rule that if you come from a distant planet you can only kiss an earthling one so many times before falling hopelessly in love…. Cute right?
I’ve always wondered why they give this show its name (Eng: ‘Waiting in the Summer”) but as it progresses I think i’m starting to get a general idea of why…. unfortunately that ‘general idea’ is nowhere near concrete enough for me to be able to put in into words and so ill be taking a raincheque on explaining that one :). Anyways in this episode we simply have the resolution of a misunderstanding and i suppose some slight progression in terms of the relationships between pretty much all the characters confirming what one could call a love tri… well.. pentagon… (Kitahara > Tetsuro > Kanna > Kaito > Ichika) of which all is one sided.
Now after Kaito’s very vague and uncompleted confession to Ichika during the last episode we had this result; Kaito believed that she knew he was going to confess but rejected him because he was not nearly good enough for her,whereas Ichika believed Kaito was going to tell her that he knew she was an alien and therefore she was afraid that he would be calling the ‘MIB’ (men in black) to arrest her.
Psssh, who said aliens weren't afraid of anything?
Now, I know that this particular series veered over into a sub-genre I am tired of…vampires. It’s not that there aren’t good or interesting vampire animes out there, like “Black Blood Brothers” or “Hellsing”, but it is the sheer amount of them that gets overwhelming to the point where I run away. The other genre I am tired of is Giant Fighting Robots, so if they have a Giant Vampire Fighting Robot show, I can avoid it. (And if it is voiced by Chris Ayres, it’s everything I hate in one spot!)
The one under the microscope is “Rosario + Vampire”, which got a lot of positive spin in things I saw. Many girls liked it, as it was sooooooooooo romantic. Well, I was between shows and it came up, so I gave it a test run. I didn’t crash and burn, but it got really old really fast.
This is a shame, as it started out so good. Our hero, Tsukune Aono, is a ronin. This is a term used for a student who has left one school, but is not attached to another one. (It is a samurai term for a swordsman who has no master, but roams the countryside). He is a bit of a brick and is having a most difficult time getting accepted anywhere. His father magically finds an errant admission packet (dropped in an alley, after dark, by a strange hooded figure. Man, things have got to be rather weird and desperate if you are willing to grab an admission packet, dropped in an alley, after dark, by a strange hooded figure) and gloms it, scampering away. Hooray! Their son is not a total dweeb dork dingleberry dognice! Now, get to school! (more…)
