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…)

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.

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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?

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Short of vampire movies, it feels like “The Count of Monte Cristo” is one of those stories that has been made (and remade) a huge amount of times. I mean, it is a pretty resilient story of betrayal, revenge and redemption and this anime version is no different at the core than any other version. But how they approach it is very intriguing. Now, the official title is “Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo” and that part of the title is made clear as the series progresses. But what we have here is what I call Future Past. It feels like 19^th Century France in architecture and dress and those phony airs of tact, but we have a lot of the conveniences of the modern age: space travel, computers and hover vehicles, to name a few. It does help that this takes place in the year 5053.

Although we keep a lot of the story, we also tinker a lot with the story and that is not a bad thing. We focus in on Viscount Albert de Morcerf. A rather naïve 15-year-old lad, he and his friend, Baron Franz d’Epinay, are attending some grand and glorious festival on Luna (yes, we are on the moon; remember, this is the 51^st Century), where they are having a ripping good time. However, Albert falls afoul of some cutpurses and is kidnapped, only to be rescued by Le Compte-de Monte Cristo, a mysterious man of enormous wealth and magnificent charisma. (If you know the plot, this will not come as a great surprise as to the reason for the kidnapping, OK?)

Still, it is a good retelling of the story, in tandem with the surroundings, but the huge selling point is the look of the show. (more…)

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?

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Upon waking up this morning i decided to add a new series to my list of shows to review, after careful deliberation so I  decided upon Ano Natsu de Matteru and took a look at episodes 1 and 2. As far as first impressions go i suppose i can give it an A, maybe its just because i had just woken up and the light comical nature of it suit my mood perfectly, or it really was that good, im really not sure, all I know is that I liked it. What else is that it didn’t take much out of me, there were no intricate plot twists that i had to wrap my mind over or super actiony scenes which got me pumped up, it left me with a sort of mushishi afterfeel.

Over the two episodes this is what i got from it, the story more or less revolves around Kaito Kirishima  a first year at high school and Ichika Takatsuki an alien whose spaceship crash landed on earth injuring him in the process, As she is not used to life on earth she often seems to act weird and is continuously correcting herself. Due to her having nowhere to stay Kaito invites her to stay at his house and she meets his sister who agrees to let her to stay as long as she wishes.

Unfortunately, due to the injury caused by the crashlanding Kaito suffers from some sort of skin mutation (top image) which supposedly can only be cured/reversed by being embraced by Ichika (cant say we didn’t see that coming). (more…)