And now for something completely different…..a school-based anime. Here comes another one, just like the other one.

Welcome to school! This is Haroniwa Academy, also known as Sandbox Academy. Medaka Kurokami is elected Student Council President, despite her being a first-year student, with 98% of the vote. She institutes a suggestion box, dubbed the “Medaka Box“, for her fellow academy students to make suggestions and requests. Together with her childhood friend Zenkichi Hitoyoshi, (spikey head at the far right) Medaka is determined to address any kind of request by the students, from finding lost dogs to cleaning up club buildings and even fixing personalities. During the course of the series, Kouki Akune (that luscious manly hunk at the left) and Mogana Kikaijima (glasses girl) are also recruited by Medaka to become part of the Student Council. (the dorky-looking dude is Misogi Kumagawa, VP of the student council).

Oh, keep in mind that the shot of Medaka does NOT do her justice. She is certainly the most boobilicious character to come down the pike in the last 20 minutes. I HIGHLY recommend episodes 5 and 6, as they take place at a swimming pool. Roll your tongue back inside, prole!

The first season (yes, there is a second season, which just started) looks at how Medaka tries to answer all the problems that are presented to her, reforming those who need to be reformed (like Kikajima, who is a money-grubber) and giving opportunities to others to improve or at least not be as big a pain. However, the season-ending arc has her running afoul of Myouri Unzen. (more…)

I was looking for something festive for the new year. I’d hoped the banner said Happy New Year. It says Welcome to the Student Council

First off, Happy New Year fellow anime lovers! This message will be delivered late but shoot I’m writing this on the morning of January 1st. Hope you all managed to go out, party, and have a great time because I’ve been sick with mono all week. Besides really sucking this means that I’ve gotten to dig through a ton of Soul Eater episodes.

But this article isn’t about Soul Eater. It’s about a lesser known anime, Seitokai no Ichizon Lv. 2. I happened to stumble upon the original series, Seitokai no Ichizon, a while back. Keep in mind I’ve only seen 8 episodes of Lv. 2 thus far, but at 10 episodes to conclude the series I think I pretty much know where this is going.

The synopsis I’ve written goes for both shows since they are both pretty much plot-less: Four attractive girls are on the student council. There’s the president, Aka-chan. Despite being one of the older ones and in charge of the student council, she is the most childish: insecure about her extremely small stature and possessing a wild sweet tooth. She also happens to be my favorite ^__^ Then we have Chizuru. She is very womanly, somewhat seductive, and loves to baby Aka-chan, who she finds to be adorable. Minatsu is the bold tomboy with athletic skills. Her little sister, Mafuyu is the adorable one who loves BL and video games and often refers to herself in the first person. She’s also scared of boys.

The fifth spot is open to whichever student gets the highest grades in the class. Ken decides to work as hard as he can to become top student not because he wants a promising future (because really what sixteen year old actually cares about that?) but because he wants to spend his afternoons hanging out with all the girls. Ding! Ding! Ding! You got it. It’s a harem! (more…)

What one finds so interesting about this show is that it could tie into “Accel World”, so it may be recommended to see “Accel” first or at least the two of them together.

It is the future (it’s ALWAYS the future, don’t let the garb fool you). Now, it is the year 2022 and the Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPGLSMFTOMGTTYL), “Sword Art Online” (SAO), is released. With the Nerve Gear, a virtual reality Helmet that stimulates the user’s five senses via their brain, players can experience and control their in-game characters with their minds.

On November 6, 2022, all the players log in for the first time, but since only 10,000 copies of the game were distributed, this is all who can join on, and it’s one game per console (damn that Nintendo!) Our hero, Kirigaya Kazuto (known by his handle of Kirito) is not only a beta tester for the game, but is also known as a beater (beta tester and cheater). He shows the ropes to some of the newbies, but when it’s time for dinner, he, and others, subsequently discovers that they are unable to log out. They are then informed by Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of SAO, that if they wish to be free and log out of the game, they must reach the top floor of the game’s tower and defeat the final boss, a mere 100 levels away.

Some players are against this and try to forcibly eject. This causes microwaves in the helmet to cook the brain and they die. And if their avatars die in the game, their bodies will also die in the real world. You want out? Beat the game. (more…)

It is the future. (Well, it’s always the future, isn’t it?)  In the year 2046, Neuro-synchronization, a technology system that allows humans to manipulate their five senses, has become widespread to the point where people can access the Internet and enter virtual worlds through a device known as a Neuro-Linker (you can’t see it in the picture, but it looks like a neck collar, but it only spans around the back from jugular to jugular). Haruyuki “Haru” Arita (that short, fat boy, right in the center) has low-self-esteem due to constant bullying. To escape the torment of real life, he logs in to the school’s virtual world network where he plays squash alone and always gets the highest score.

One day, he logs on to find his high score has been topped (and by a huge margin). He is then asked to meet the person who did this. It is the Student Council Vice-President “Kuroyukihime” (just behind Haru), who is smart, beautiful, popular and elegant, everything he is not. She offers him access to a very secret program, Brain Burst, which is a virtual reality massive multi-player online game. You have a character that you make better by winning one-on-one battles. This Brain Burst program slows time (although it appears frozen in the real world) to play this game and to potentially manipulate your real time surroundings.

Brain Burst also carries with it a painful price to pay: lose all your points and not only do you lose the Brain Burst program, you lose all memory of it plus you can never install it again. Kuroyukihime wants Haru’s help as she wishes to reach the highest achievable level, which is level 10, and meet the creator of Brain Burst in order to learn its true purpose, but in order to do that, she must defeat the other level 9 users who are known as “The Six Kings of Pure Color,” the leaders of the six most powerful factions in the Brain Burst world. Haru agrees to help Kuroyukihime to repay her as well as overcome his own weaknesses. (more…)

Now, when you get into supernatural, paranormal, other-worldly shows, you tend to run into the same folks. Much like going to the local anime convention year after year, it’s more or less the usual suspects. So, it’s always zombies, werewolves, vampires and ghosts. When this show came around, I treated this with a bit of scorn. I mean, a Neko Guy? Or are you trying to save a few yen using a cut-your-hair-at-home system? And she’s a zombie? Well, how……original.

OK, back to the front.

Chihiro Furuya is the cat guy with a keen interest in zombies, collecting zombie-related videogames, film and manga, and even to the point of desiring to “kiss a zombie girl”. Did I say “keen”? This guy is an otaku when it comes to this passion. Following the death of his pet cat, Bābu, he attempts to revive it using an old manuscript, which describes the process of creating a potion for resurrection. Now, his grandfather, who suffers from terrible dementia, seems to have some knowledge of this, but getting him in rare lucid moments is, well, rare to have him really explain things, as he may have written this back in his youth.

At this time, Furuya encounters a girl named Rea Sanka, who has run away from home. Now, Daddy Dearest is like the 8^th richest man in all of the Far East and has a major fetish about Sanka. No one is allowed to get close to her, so, no friends, no folks over, no parties, no nothing. In fact, on her birthday, daddy takes nude shots of her, as he has for all these years. They aren’t pervy per se, not like some Playboy photo shoot, but it’s creepy nonetheless, as Sanka has grown into a fine woman.

Wanting to die and leave her miserable world all behind, she attempts to commit suicide and drinks a sample of the “resurrection” potion which is created from the poisonous Hydrangea macrophylla flower, although this fails to kill her. Following an argument with her father, she falls from a cliff by accident and dies; a terrible chest wound the cause of her demise (as you can see by her scar). (more…)

I had planned on doing this review some time back, when this show reached 52 episodes, but it is now another three months beyond that, but better late than never…although I bet all the tasty hors d’oeuvres have been devoured, as I came late. Again.

The only thing that I am not a big fan of, aside from giant fighting robot shows, is long-run shows. Rare is the show that can keep up both interest and plot over the course of a year, especially since you lurch from arc to arc. This show does not succeed all the time (there is a major lag in the middle) but it has kept my interest better than most.

Toriko is that criminal in the center (well, I call him that, as he wears that orange jumpsuit all the time; like Naruto, but with a far better personality). He is one of the four Gourmet Kings in this world that they live (the other two are shown up there: Coco is in black and Sunny has the rainbow hair). They specialize in the acquisition of rare ingredients and animals. Toriko’s dream: to find the most precious foods in the world and create the Ultimate Dinner Menu. As one of the most skilled hunters in the world, he is regularly hired by restaurants and the rich to seek out new ingredients and rare animals. A man with inhuman ability, he utilizes his incredible strength and knowledge of the animal kingdom to capture ferocious, evasive, and rare beasts to further his ultimate goal.

He is paired with a pretty decent chef, Komatsu, that weak looking guy under Sunny’s hair. Everything Toriko is, Komatsu is not. Komatsu is weak, timid, uncertain of himself and lacking confidence. But, in the kitchen, he is really good. Together, they go on a series of quests to make this world a better place for food and eating. (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…)

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…)

“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…)