Sankarea 4 - Reborn

Last week's ending to Sankarea was very impressive. Rea was able to break free from her father and Chihiro gets his zombie he always wanted.

Sankarea episode 4 starts off with a creative sequence through her father's perspective. This scene was amazing, using a contrast of shadow and light for life and death, signifying a new beginning for Rea as she walks away from the shadow her father once cast over her existence. The falling photos of Rea over the awestruck father was a nice way to show his emotions. I was half expecting Rea's father to wake up from his obsession with his daughter and show some love to his wife, but surprisingly Rea's mother had a use for Rea, which explains why she never really confronted the father about his obsession.

After speculating about Rea becoming a zombie, I pondered where the show would go, thinking it would turn into a slice of life type between Chihiro and Rea. Instead, Sankarea has a few tricks up its sleeve, the Mother's determination to get her daughter back, as well as how Chihiro will deal with a rotting corpse will provide some internal and external conflict.

It's pretty obvious that in order to "cure" Rea's rotting corpse Chihiro will simply have to feed her hydrangea, since it was blatantly obvious when Babu starting eating them as soon as he became a zombie and had his eyes return to normal.

Chihiro gets his zombie that he has always wanted, and it seems he was confused to the actual turn out of Rea's condition. Rea is no different from when she was alive, the only difference is that she feels no pain, and is rotting away, her personality is all there. I'm sure Chihiro's promise to Rea will bring the two closer together, creating something I have not seen in any other anime. I will end this post with another question. If Chihiro and Rea were to marry, what would the priest at the ceremony say? Surely he wouldn't say "until death do you part" seeing how death brought them together.

~Djr7

Fate/Zero 16 - Good Night Sweet Fast Wheels

Delayed post from the weekend, I'll explain probably later in the week. As always, Fate/Zero shows off their extremely high budget they have in their battle scenes. When you are such a large cut above everyone else, it is very noticeable. This was the fated episode I was waiting for quite some time for, it turned out to just as great as my expectations, which is quite rare.

Hyouka 01: First impressions and the Angel's Glare

Hyouka, a series that caught my attention due to its K-On! character designer and the charm of the female protagonist. However after watching its first episode I’d have to say that the series is very generic and different at the same time.

At its core the series comes from what seems to be becoming a generic trope of a lazy-ish protagonist, who would rather not to things, and an energetic female protagonist, who acts as the catalyst for our protagonist. Yes, Hyoukas first episode is quite similar to the “Haruhi Suzumiya” series. However! This series seems to have its building blocks at the right places, making the series come from an idea of another but built into something entirely different.

Our protagonist, Oreki Houtarou, is the series very own lazy guy. And throughout the series his actions and motives are very clear and is what drove the first episode to be what it is. It is also apparent that he is quite the thinker capable of solving and creating mysteries. And because we have ourselves a lazy protagonist, this is where our female protagonist and catalyst comes in, Chitanda Eru.

Chitanda Eru, a beauty with what I’d like to call an “Angels Glare”, a character with the stare that rattled Orekis mind. And for the rest of the episode we see how Oreki tries to deal with her. The episode does a good job of showing how he reacts and goes to work after being enchanted by her. On another note, I really love the way they depict how Oreki was enchanted by her.

In the final scenes we also get to see how Fukube Satoshi, Orekis best friend, helped build and support the mind set of Oreki after stumbling upon Chitanda. These scenes really show a good example of a good supporting character. Overall this was another example, of a few, that the series is a character driven series.

In the end, Hyouka looks to be a slice-of-life, mystery anime. Though there seems to be some sort of connection between Oreki and Chitanda, I doubt there will be any romance, it would be a good addition to its genre. The series may be very ordinary for some but from my stand point is a very interesting and a worthwhile anime due to the “ingredients” put together into this series. Though I don’t expect the series to be something equal or greater than the “Haruhi Suzumiya” series, I expect it to be a well-plotted, well-directed, series that could at least try to get up there. Hopefully this series would get its viewers’ attention because of its art, design, story and most of all it character driven events.

OkamiSan~

Sankarea 3 - Life

It seems Sankarea's main story has just begun. After learning about Rea's conflicts with her weird family we spend the bulk of episode 3 with Rea, confronting her father in an attempt to be set free from his ownership of her body and soul. After being put under house arrest by her father, we get a peek into Rea's mother as a character. It seems Rea's mother holds grudges of jealousy towards her daughter, but on the other hand it seems she secretly wants Rea to be free. If Rea was set free, it would mean the father might pay some attention to his drunken jealous hot wife.

The guy must have some real issues if he is to turn down his wife, dressed in nothing but a shirt, roaming the hallway with a bottle of wine offering him a drink.

Baabu lives! It was funny seeing how silly Chihiro was in his excitement over Baabu's resurrection, much to the surprise of his cousin Ranko. The main change to a zombie seems to be a hunger for hydrangea, which is better than eating human flesh. You'd think that the first thing to be worried about is if your zombie would turn out to be of the flesh eating kind, and yet Chihiro never considered it.

This particular scene with Rea and Chihiro's school friends was quite the laugh. Yasutaka gets all worked up about Rea, the hottest girl at school asking if he knows where Chihiro is. Yasutaka can't believe a zombie freak such as Chihiro has the hottest girl asking about him. All of the sudden Rea mentions castration, and the mood suddenly does a  polar shift from Yasutaka's point of view. Despite being under house arrest, Rea manages to sneak of easily, through the same path she escaped before, you'd think the father would have blocked off her escape route, but I guess Rea's acting was enough to convince him to trust her loyalty to him.

The climax at the end of the show was perfect, I won't spoil it for you but I will leave you with a question. Is it considered murder if they turn into a zombie? The conclusion to this episode marks the end of the father issues with Rea, and looks to focus on the relationship between Rea and Chihiro.

~Djr7

Ozma 06 - Finale and Final Thoughts [4/10]

What's with Japan's fetish of girls clasping their hands together like that? Save for praying, I've never in my life seen anyone do that. This episode concludes the short and forgettable Leiji Matsumoto series. If you thought that the poor quality art in the earlier episodes were bad because they were saving the budget for the finale, you're wrong. Unfortunately, the final installment was plagued with plenty of off-model shots as well. They did, however, step up their game in the music department.

So this must be what netorare feels like. I kept up with this show because it was relatively short, but I really found the first couple episodes to be boring and uninteresting. It got much better to watch when they introduced all this Ideal Children stuff, because some interesting things were said. The whole idea of Ideal Children is flawed. What they probably created was a genome that was optimal for survival at that current time and environment. The flaw is that they use cloning to perpetuate the population. Without genetic variation, their "perfect" genome is no longer perfect when the environment changes. It should be no surprise that the Ideal Children weakened as time passed by. No wonder they had to resort to catching unsuspecting Dicks and using their bodies to perpetuate themselves. Charles Darwin could teach these Theseus guys a thing or two.

Another interesting idea that was brought was humans being on top of the ecosystem. At first glance, I would definitely agree with that statement. There is no organism on Earth that humans wouldn't be able to kill. Then upon closer and perhaps microscopic examination, humans are whittled down by various strains of bacteria and viruses everyday. To take it a step further, after humans die, their bodies are eaten by decomposers. It really all depends on the confines of how one wants to define the classification. Nowadays, people are applauded for being able to come up with medicine and other methods for extending human life. Interestingly enough, it's sort of fighting against natural selection, assuming people with "unfavorable" genes are able to pass on their genes to the next generation.

Oh wow, this scene really reminded of Lance's Dragonite using Hyper Beam back in the older Pokemon versions. Except Ozma can fire off multiple beams at once, doesn't have to recharge, and Theseus couldn't shut off the Gameboy to restart. We finally got more of a full body shot of Ozma this episode, and it really did look like a giant mechanical sperm whale. Unfortunately, other than it creating the life that lives in the Zone right now, we know nothing new about this titular being. Maybe it's the god and Maya is the goddess after all.

It's raining. . . . It turns out that what looked to be a fatal fall was all part of Dick's elaborate plan to regain consciousness of his own body, stowaway on Bainas' ship, and save the world all in one go. This was probably my favorite scene of the show because Dick and Bainas were more interesting characters than all the others combined. And if Ozma knew how to Hyper Beam, Dick's move was definitely Explosion. He pretty much had to sacrifice himself to stop Ozma's rampage because the Monokeros was genetically exclusive to Dick. Pretty convenient for him to be alive, eh?

This really is the takeaway message of the series. Just live your life out with the people you love and let nature takes its course. The ending really felt anti-climatic though. I expected some sort of crazy battle under the sand, but Theseus keeled over pretty quickly. Now all the creatures of the Zone will spread out to the hot sand-filled world and die because of their heavy dependence on water. I wouldn't say the ending was rushed, but a little more information about what happens in the end would have been nice. I'm especially disappointed that Sam barely did anything the entire show, despite being the main character. Overall, Ozma was rough, unpolished, and not very interesting. Even the thought-provoking bit on genetics didn't save this show. It was watchable, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. 4/10

-Bern

Vote Us for Aniblog Tourney

I knew this the hip new happening thing on the scene, but I hadn't gotten around to make a post about it. With our match being held today here, I am here to steal votes now. If I have learned anything from politics, it is smear campaigns work!

Reason to not vote for Anime Viking:

• Endless Scroll You hated endless 8 you should hate this too!
  
• They secretly savages, that is why they are named Viking
  
• They aren't as flashy and kool looking like us, voting for us is what the kool kids do
  

Btw: they also smell funny and punch puppies, you wouldn't vote for that would you?

Koreha S2 03 - Vodoo Dance Time

I gave the show another week for an attempt at episodic posts, but it is just too difficult to do humour based shows without ruining the jokes. I will still be watching this one every week, I will probably hold off until the plot picks up before making more posts. That plus I been super busy lately doesn't help jog my creative juices either...

~Pearz

Tsuritama 02 - Knotting Up a Friendship

Though Thursdays aren't ideal for me, I've decided make posts episodically for this show. I just hope I have enough to say every week! This episode doesn't move at a very fast pace; it was just more or less delving into the characters a bit more as well as opening some semblance of potential plot. Though as colorful as it is, I can understand people not wanting to watch this show because some of the characters can be a bit annoying.

So where can a guy get one of these water guns? I didn't expect Haru to have a little sister; she's a less wacky and a more agressive alien. At least she doesn't scream every time she opens her mouth. It's from her that we get any kind of plot going: to fish is to save the world, and it's our protagonist that's going to have to do it. Judging by his lucky catch the previous episode, maybe he has some sort of special affinity for fishing. What kind of mystery fish lurks the calming blue waters of Enoshima?

Nuu, death flags already? It's not often that there's a cool grandma in anime. She seems to be one of the more sensible characters in the series. I hope nothing bad happens to her. Maybe eating some of that mystery fish will help alleviate this apparent sickness. This may also open the road for a potential emotional obstacle Yuki has to overcome over the course of the series.

Our lesson on fishing this week is on tying uni knots. More importantly, it shows how our protagonist is progressing. Though we understand that Yuki has never been a good social person, I wouldn't hesitate to say that he can be pretty annoying. He keeps everything bottled up and never says anything about what he's feeling. Though Natsuki was a bit harsh in his berating, he wasn't wrong. At least this episode shows that Yuki will grow as a character. Just can the angst and say what you need to say, maybe you'll make some friends!

The final member of the quartet finally makes his move. What anime would be complete without the mysterious transfer student? Sporting a turban, the 25-year-old transfer student and his duck, Tapioca, already makes them the best duo of the show. We'll probably get a bit more into Akira as a character next week. Overall, we're slowly but surely getting somewhere plot-wise. Hopefully, the assortment of characters will mesh well despite them all being so different.

-Bern

Gundam Age 27 - Arc End?

I am not sure if this marks the end of this arc or not. You would think everything is over now that the fortress has fallen but the preview minutes make it seem like they aren't done battling it out. I mean you even had that reunion scene too. Btw, post delayed again due to Sword Girls. I am currently #1 in ladder for a 1k cash prize with a small lead on my competition. Tomorrow is the final day so all my attention is there.

Lupin III: Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna - Late First Impressions

Let me first say that I've never seen anything from the Lupin series prior to this show. After watching the first two episodes, I can say that this is more fun to watch than a lot of the other anime airing this season. Though I don't really know anything about the series, it seems that this installment is some sort of prequel; after all, it shows Mine Fujiko meeting two members of the Lupin gang for the first time over the course of the first two episodes.

The art certainly reminds me a lot of Redline, with character designs and animation director done by the same guy. Interestingly enough, the art director worked on K-On, Lucky Star, and the Haruhi series. It feels very stylized and looks good so far. There's a lot of Mine Fujiko fanservice, which is something I don't mind at all. Another thing that I'm loving is definitely the music. I don't think I've heard something quite like it since Baccano.

All the main characters introduced thus far are very fun to watch. Since I really haven't seen much "older" anime, I'll have to compare these characters to its contemporaries. Mine, Lupin, and Jigen are all multidimensional unlike characters from a lot modern anime. I guess it sort of reminds me of Cowboy Bebop, in which characters all had pasts that they had to deal with. Overall, they seem like decent people despite being thieves. They look like they're more in it for the thrill than the spoils. Excluding the stock villain from the first episode, the Italian boss lady was fairly interesting. I'll have to wait and see how future antagonists stack up.

Judging from the trend, I'd hazard a guess that Mine Fujiko will meet up with the final member of the Lupin gang in the next episode. A nice mix of comedy, action, and noir is certainly something refreshing to see. I'm definitely going to be following this show. Looking forward to next episode!

-Bern

Black Rock Shooter In Review 6.5/10

Well this is late, nevertheless I found this show to a bit short of my own expectations. BRS T.V. was nothing like its OVA counterpart. I absolutely loved the OVA, but unfortunately the T.V. series tried a bit too hard to explain the reasoning behind the girls in the dream world.

Before I dive into the usual grading of its strong and weak points, I just want to make a few comparisons between the T.V. series and the OVA.

I watched the OVA in BlueRay and was left in awe at its quality art style and awesome battle scenes. Unfortunately the T.V. series did not keep up with the OVA for quality, which I can fully understand, but the battles between the girls in what I like to call the "dream world" were very dissatisfying. I was actually pretty shocked with how different Dead Master and Yomi were; they were practically different characters between the OVA and the T.V. series. Dead Master was bad-ass, and had all sorts of awesome fight scenes during the OVA, however she participated in almost no battles, and had this helpless emo look about her in the T.V. series.

One of the best things about this show was how it was able to create a story and conflicts between the characters themselves.

Black Rock Shooter had some god awful fight scenes, they really lacked the flair that was in the OVA, and it seemed like she was immortal. It was quite the change of tempo finding out how Kuroi ends up being the villain herself, fighting against Insane Black Rock Shooter to find redemption for putting all of her misery and pain on her counterpart. From the information I gathered from watching the show, the girls in the real world push a percentage of their pain and suffering onto the girls in the dream world, forcing them to fight it out to resolve the personal pain of the girls in the real world. The school counselor ends up being portrayed as the villain, since she would attempt to bring pain and misfortune upon the real girls, so that their counterparts wouldn't suffer instead. Because Kuroi is oblivious to misfortune and doesnt ever want to see it or feel it, she forces all the pain onto her counterpart, which is Black Rock Shooter. This selfish act on Kuroi's part, forces Black Rock Shooter to run rampant, killing off the girls in the dream world, and thus, mentally breaking the girls in the real world.

Strength ends up being the best character of the show, she came in a bit late, but you can practically tell she was very similar to Homura from Puella Magi Madoka. The biggest twist was how Strength was actually living in the real world while Yuu battled in the "dream world". Yuu ends up being the center of attention for the explanation of the girls in the dream world and real world, she ends up saving Yomi and becomes the most important character, making everyone else's issues seem like useless conflicts.

Gold Black Saw ends up being the most bad-ass character with her awesome character design. Not only was her counterpart the strange school counselor, she was also the very foundation of the conflicts between the girls and she became the connecting link between the girls and their dream world counterparts. Yomi/Dead Master were the weakest characters after the Kagari arc. I will admit, Yomi was pretty awesome going insane, and even gave me some much needed thriller moments early on, but she quickly dies off and becomes a weight to the show, and don't even get me started on Dead Master, she was absolutely useless. It was very sad seeing how this Yomi/Dead Master were so different from the OVA versions.

Chariot/Inori were pretty strong characters, she was the initial villain in both worlds and even played a key role as the main conflict between Yomi and Kuroi. I was pleased with how well she developed and made progress as a character, she was even the key example of what happens when you kill off the dream girl counterpart, loosing an emotional connection in the real world. Finally we have Black Rock Shooter herself, Kuroi was a great character in the OVA but unfortunately she becomes rather bland imo. I had more fun watching the other characters develop around her, but there was never anything particularly about Kuroi that made me interested in her.

Characters: 7/10
The characters were all over the place, some were great, some died off and weighed the show down, and some were useless in either the beginning or end. I gave this a 7 because of how well the producer created an entire story and all the conflicts with just the girls and no other source of evil or conspiracy, it was about using the characters conflicts to find the secrets of their other selves, and become a better person.

Plot: 7/10
The plot was completely developed from the characters themselves, which is fantastic, however it was very hard to understand what was going on until the final two episodes.

Setting: 7/10
Even though the quality and art lacked in comparison to the OVA, the show had its own unique worlds full of color that related to each character. I felt that the characters were unattached from their environments. Aside from Strength and her rubix cube world, each character had its own wonderful world, but it felt like it made no difference as they could have easily fought in any location.

Fighting: 5/10
The fighting was pretty bland, with only a few moments that met my expectations I felt they could have done a lot better, except for the battle between Insane Black Rock Shooter and Strength, that was the best fight imo.

Overall 6.5/10


~Djr7

All my ratings are based on the show itself, just because this receives a higher/lower rating over others has nothing to do with it being better/worse over others.

Sankarea 2 - Death

Secrets hidden behind smiles; this was the theme surrounding Sankarea this week, and I have a feeling this will continue throughout it's season.

We had a very heavy Rea episode, which is surprising since were only 2 episodes in. We learned a lot about Rea's issues at home with her abnormal family and saw the skeletons in her closet. Rea is like a caged bird, her father wants no one touching her, and her mother is as cold as ice towards her. Rea isn't allowed any friends and ends up being locked away after being found out by her father for sneaking off to meet with Chihiro. 

Rea has already developed  a solid reasoning for wanting to meet with Chihiro, she claims she wants to be "reborn" as a zombie and live a normal life away from her messed up family. Rea is definitely reaching her limit, and i'm sure well see Chihiro reach out and save her at some point, whether it be through a knight in shining armor approach, or turning her into a zombie. 

It will be very interesting to see what the next episode holds, judging by the preview, it might be an end to Rea's father in some way after seeing that cliff scene. I am also highly interested to see the effects of the potion and whether or not we will see our first zombie next week.

~Djr7

Shining Hearts 01: First Impressions

Shining Hearts, I’m sure a lot of people are drawn to this series for its character artist; the famous Tony Taka. I personally fell in love with his works after playing Shining Tears. Later I found out that he also excels ‘adult’ artworks.

First episode and I’m pretty sure that its impressions to some are either hanging in the air or not so very good. It has this slice-of-life thing going on throughout the episode and considering the fact the anime was an adaption of an RPG game for the PSP, I personally was expecting something more action packed. However, whether they go slice-of-life or an action or whatever genre, it’s not really something that bothers me. Besides a slice-of-life genre on a fantasy setting is a nice change of pace, I mean we always get action coupled with fantasy.

This episode seems to be more of an introduction piece like most other series. Take a look at “Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai,” its first episode was epic and very eye catching but later on it just turned out to be a cliché harem love comedy. Hopefully this has a lot more in store, though I wouldn’t expect any high end action gig. From the little info I got from the game I’d say it’s something like the series “Shukufuku no Canpanella” but with a deeper story and more action.

On the side note, the series seems to have this jolly elf character, Rana. I don’t know if she’s in the actual game but her appearance is just too suspiciously similar to that of Elwyn from another RPG game “Shining Tears”. Really I don’t know what to think of this but it just confused me.

Besides Rana, our Hero, Elwood Rick, is seems to be one of the more reliable heroes. It is also hinted that he is hiding something. Personally I like the reliable hero type, though I would like to see a more diverse personality from him. We also have the three “not-so-sisters-but-they-act-like-they-are” characters, Ardet Airy, Filiam Neris, and Manaflare Emil. They don’t seem to have anything behind them much less a character type to differentiate them. Quite disappointing considering they are the main heroines, well they seem to be the main heroines. I just hope a better female character pops out to be the proper Heroine instead of the three.

Overall, this is a series I look forward to despite its differing approach to the audience. This is mostly cause I personally like almost anything with a fantasy setting.

"I'm Cute Eh?"

OkamiSan~