“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…)
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…)
Sometimes you follow a show and you have no reason as to why you did, but you did. This show did that for me. Maybe I was lazy or maybe I was between stuff. Maybe it was the cat (that odd basketball in the lower left box). But I will assure you that I found out much later that it was actually a dating game, and I will bet you that Keima Katsuragi from “The World God Only Knows” probably blitzed through the thing in a couple of hours. Or potentially the title drew me in: “Mashiro-Iro: Symphony: The Color or Lovers” (also known as “Love is Pure White”).
The traditional girls-only Yuihime Private Academy is considering the possibility of starting to accept both genders and has thus made an agreement with a neighboring school (Kagamidai Academy) to receive some of its students as an experiment to see the reaction to this adaptation. Shingo Iryu (the brown-haired guy, lower center and to the left) is one of the many students transferred for a ten month experimental phase at Yuihime Academy. He, his sister, and his fellow relocated colleagues are impressed by the sophisticated campus, but even more by the resistance of many students who don’t want the boys over there.
The resistance is lead by Airi Sena (that loud-mouthed number in the lower right) who just happens to be the principal’s daughter. Well, you can bet the friction is going to be long and loud on this one. Adding to the consternation is that Shingo has this amazing knack of walking in on the girls while they are in various stages of undress, furthering the assumption that all men are perverts (Psst! All men ARE perverts. That’s a given). But he is able to marshall the guys to be courteous and act well-mannered and be gentlemen, which starts to soften opposition to the merger. (more…)
Certainly in the Halls of Anime, Romance Wing, Kaichō wa Maid-sama! (The President is a Maid!) garners high marks for the tale it tells, and what a tale it is.
Seika High School, once an all-boys school notorious for its wild students and for generally being a terrifying place for girls, has recently become a co-ed school. With the female population still a minority and living in fear of the over-the-top antics of the males, Misaki Ayuzawa (the fair one at the left) takes it into her own hands to reform the school and allow the girls to feel safe in the rough environment.
As the first female president, she has to take a very harsh stand against the boys to allow the girls to feel safe enough that they can thrive. This has, however, earned her the enmity of the boys for her dictator-like stance on things. But this façade is threatened when Takumi Usui (the fair one on the right) discovers her secret: she works at a maid café one town over to make ends meet.
But Takumi never spills the beans on her little secret, but this acts as a kind of ‘obligation’ that she owes him and she never wants to be in the debt of a man for any reason (partly derived from the circumstances that forced her to work at the made café). (more…)
Many times I have found myself starting an anime and thinking ‘hey this show is great!’ but then it drags on… and on… and on….. until it just becomes boring, repetitive and flat out sucks. Well this is exactly what happened with this season’s Accel World.
Accel World deals with the rare MMORPG/virtual reality genre and had a ‘unique’ protagonist. At the start, I couldn’t wait for the following week to see the next episode, everything was just new fresh and exciting, at episode 12 (the perfect time for a conclusion) I was starting to get a little tired of the characters and now.. episode 22 I’m sick and tired of pretty much everything. The VR game which is the foundation for the show makes no more logical sense at this point. The majority of the characters are overly shallow, fickle and just plain stupid.
The only character who is even remotely worth giving any credit to is Kuroyukihime. (Xtra pic @ bottom of post *wink*), while she has extremely bad taste in guys (ie. liking Haru), she is intelligent, levelheaded and popular (not blonde popular but… ‘irie’ popular) all while still maintaining a certain level of complexity. If they spent anywhere as much of an effort on the other characters as they did on her, I personally think the show would be much better than the compilation of sniveling, estrogen overdosed buffoons that we have currently.
OK, the series is perverted enough as it gets, as there are some major bust queens in this show. The series is now ‘between seasons’, so now would be a very good time to truck out an OVA and have ourselves a good laugh.
The club is going to the beach, but since they can teleport there, they change out in the club room. They call Issei Hyodo in on this and he, magically, busts in on them when they are in various stages of nakedness and they bust him up like a cedar plank at a karate club. Once at the beach, well, all bets are off. The president of the club, Rias Gremory, wears a Borat-style swimsuit (and if you have seen “Mahoromatic”, Shikijo Saori wears the same style in Season 1, Episode 4).
Rias lies down on the beach and there is no cloth touching her body from just past her ninnies all the way to her crotch, Wow, talk about a superstructure! Anyway, she asks Issei to put some suntan lotion on her and ‘not to miss any spots’. Well this is that suntan lotion that doubles as some kind of lubricant, so it pops out of his hands and Rias gets soaked while Issei is manhandling and fondling and squishing her all about. She is upset about this, but the more they struggle the worse it gets. (more…)
Every season there is always for me this one great anime, for those who remember season before last, it was none other than Ano Natsu de Matteru. For this season that was none other than Sankarea, and I know this review is a bit late but.. oh look! a smileyface! 😉
The story revolves around Chihiro Furuya who has an obsession with zombies and dreams of having a zombie bride (to each own I suppose). He then has an encounter with the ever so popular Rea Sanka (see what they did there?… innovative right?). Whose life turns out to have its own fair share of problems. They begin talking and over time grew closer until her dad steps in, tradegy strikes and by a series of events she turns into a zombie. Aided by her new-found friend, Rea now struggles to live the life of an ordinary girl while battling her quickly rotting body.
The overall artwork was great and consistent throughout the show, there was hardly any spectacular scenery but I doubt that is going to bother anyone in the slightest. A point to note though, was that while there was quite a bit of fan service involved it was so meticulously intertwined into the plot that half the time you don’t even notice that you’re seeing a naked girl on your screen. (more…)
Hello world! Whilest I could start with an apology for my unplanned hiatus due to exams, my new-found python obsession and dealing with Kamikaze monkeys from hell, this review takes precedence. I’ll do the world a favor and get straight to the point.. Zetman sucks. I remember in a previous post I said:
“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.”
Although at episode 2 I felt I was barely keeping up, there seemed to be so much potential in this show that it had to be good right? Wrong. By episode 4 I realized that hey, things were not right. By 8 I confirmed that theory and today, episode 13 I was scratching at the screen screaming ‘MAKE IT STOPP!! DEAR GOD!! MAKE IT STOPPP!!!!!’
The root of the problem is that the original Zetman is basically the cross between a western (Marvel) comic and Japanese manga and while that sounds like a pretty awesome mix, they completely failed at the adaptation into an anime. The main character Jin is…. sigh… (more…)
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Air, it’s the story of a homeless man, Yukito, and his journey as he stops in a quaint little town by the beach. He is searching for the Winged Maiden (sounds so pretty, doesn’t it?), a woman his mother would tell him about as a child who was cursed and bound to the sky. He meets a young girl named Misuzu when stopping in this town, and suddenly everything changes for him. So that’s the basic plot line. Now you don’t have to quickly google it before reading this article.
The Air Anime
Story: The anime first appealed to me because it was short at only 13 episodes and because the artwork is stunning. Where the story is concerned, it’s sloppy and all over the place. The Winged Goddess story line is choppy and poorly explained…well maybe it isn’t but I was just bored by the time they got down to specifics. A huge reason for this is the large and pointless cast of secondary characters who are tolerable at their best and horribly annoying at their worst.
Characters: Misuzu, Haruko (Misuzu’s foster mother), and Yukito are all fairly well-developed characters. The problem is the obnoxious bunch of secondary characters who are supposed to make this a more dramatic show but make it slow and all over the place. Misuzu goes beyond your typical cute girl. (more…)
"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…)
