Innocent Sato confused for a pervert.

When you’ve got a sister who constantly searches for anime, you can’t help but skim through at least an episode knowing that it’s already downloaded onto your hard-drive—-so basically, I would not have bothered with this series at all if it weren’t for her. Initially, I brushed off the idea of checking out the first episode because although the artwork was pleasant and very cute, slice-of-life anime has never been my favourite genre. Before watching the first episode though, my expectations were pretty low so that would explain why I thoroughly enjoyed it.

While I wouldn’t exactly call this series the best show aired this season, it’s definitely fun to watch when you’ve got nothing else to do (or when you feel like going back to the good ol’ days of being a preschooler). It’s not extremely hilarious in a sense that you’ll find yourself rofl’ing every second, but the characters are quite adorable nevertheless. Since our main character Sato is given the image of a total dope, he’s always in the wrong place at the wrong time: it’s priceless watching his friends accuse him of being a pervert as he tries to defend himself, but fails to convince them of his innocence. My only complaint about this series is how the maturity level of the female characters are awfully exaggerated. Well, maybe not so much exaggerated that they’re like 30 year-old’s disguised as kids, but I still don’t approve of their behaviour: I don’t remember myself ever walking down the street bragging about how “woman” I am back then, and even now I don’t do that.

OP/ED:

Summary:

A young lord known as Minamoto Kurou runs into the distance as an army of soldiers clad in red chase him deep into the forest. Just as he is on the verge of being beheaded by his opposition, Benkei arrives to rescue him. Once the warrior is easily defeated, his soul disperses into the air in a blue luminous spark. The surviving pair look further into the darkness, taking notice of a stationary campfire. After identifying the pursuers as not of the Kamakura family, both of them make haste towards the torch in the night. Upon arriving, a beautiful, mysterious woman appears and introduces herself as Kuromitsu, owner of this building. She allows them to remain the night and for as long as they want in exchange for a promise to never look into the last room down the hall. Kurou collapses onto his knees as Benkei learns his companion has a high fever.

The next morning, Benkei returns to the village in order to purchase medicine for his ill friend while Kuromitsu takes care of Kurou. Kurou explains that as soon as Benkei returns, he will depart at once but Kuromitsu coerces him to stay here with her. She plants a delicate kiss on him and the couple are later seen admiring the ancient trees in the forest. Consumed by madness and temptation, Kurou leans in and kisses Kuromitsu. He’s about to go further until he realizes his mistake and stops himself. After apologizing, Kuromitsu explains that though they both desire each other, fate has made it certain that the two of them can never be together. Elsewhere, Benkei journeys through the forest and comes across a field of blossoming red flowers. His expression changes into fear, as if the red fauna hold of some significance.

At home again, Kurou wakes up and senses a dangerous presence. He gets up and glances into the room which Kuromitsu had forbidden him to look into and watches her as she sucks the blood out of a naked man. Kuromitsu notices Kurou is staring and tries to explain herself when all of a sudden her hand comes off. An assassin standing behind her had cut her arm off completely. When Kuromitsu is about to be stabbed to death, Kurou immediately unsheathes his sword and fights the intruders head-on. Kurou and Kuromitsu manage to escape into the forest when he begs her to leave him here and run away to safety. Kuromitsu then invites him to be with her until the end of the time and the episode ends with Benkei siding with Kurou’s enemies.

Thoughts:

Hynavian knows better than anyone else in the aniblogosphere that I detest the vampire folklore simply because I know too much of it already, but since bateszi recommended KUROZUKA, I thought I should at least give it a try. After all, I sort of liked the last series he recommended. I downloaded the first episode of KUROZUKA when the subbed version was first released, but never bothered watching it until about an hour ago when I had nothing better to do. I would have liked to have seen this sooner because it was really impressive, and now I’m staying up late typing this up lest I forget this excitement by tomorrow. I mean, this certain and extremely mysterious vampire can withstand sunlight.

This episode was definitely enjoyable, especially near the beginning and towards the end when people’s limbs were being sliced off with such ease by the main character, Kurou, that I couldn’t help squealing in delight. A few parts were confusing, such as the very beginning when a man/priest/monk was chanting or praying, and another bemusing part was when Benkei cringed at the sight of the red flowers. What I also like about KUROZUKA so far is that the characters use Old Language: they communicated to each other with such formality that I was instantly reminded of the good ol’ days when The Lord of the Rings was “big”. The action scenes were brilliantly choreographed, and this episode moved at a nice and even tempo. The second episode is already subbed by SHS-YuS, so I guess I’ll check that out soon!

Let’s try this again.

So, Blissmo posted about episode 1 of Mouryou no Hako about a week ago and hated it, so I stole her images and went on a journey to write her wrongs, since she obviously won’t cover the show anymore. Mouryou no Hako is not only my favorite show of the season, but this episode was my second favorite opening episode of all time.

Mouryou no Hako is for the kind of person who likes shows with lots of flowery, cryptic, philosophical dialouge, and that is me. It’s also for people who like very intense and dramatic imagery – also me. It’s dark, but not brooding or shocking so much as gallant and smirking. It’s got style and class. The easiest comparisons that come to mind are ef ~a tale of memories~ or Paranoia Agent or Vampire Princess Miyu OVA. It’s a dark but glittering essece of romanticism, like an old-school vampire story where the girl falls in love with her vampiric captor before he drains her life juices in a gothic castle.

Since you probably haven’t read the second Boogiepop volume, and therefor don’t know about the opening chapter, I won’t bother to make the comparison. I can probably tell you that if you like Boogiepop, you’ll like this, though. The first episode has some yuri overtones, but not the trampy yuri, more like the Blue Drop or Marimite dramatacular yuri full of pent-up emotions. And emotions there are many – the girl who narrates this episode is an emotional bomb, full of joy so overflowing you can swim in it at the sight of her companion and full of rage so thick you can cut it with a knife at her mother and her stepfather. Much like the victim of vampirism, she falls in love with something she doesn’t understand, obsesses over it, and lets it take her, placiing everything she is into it only to watch it’s existence threatened by itself. She is confused. Meanwhile the other girl is one who thinks she understands everything and has that sort of inhumanity that makes her take your breath away. Actually, episode 3 of Boogiepop Phantom is another good comparison.

Add in the absurdly great animation. Madhouse has done it once a fucking gain making something visually unbelievable. I’ll say straight up, the scene around the 10-minute mark where the two girls are dancing brought ters to my eyes it was so beautiful. CLAMP’s designs really come to life here. In addition, the thick atmosphere made the show’s two creepy bits extremely creepy. The one in the beginning left my jaw dropped and the one later had me shocked. Very very fucking good directing, especially from someone doing their first show as the head man (though he’s been working for Madhouse for a while). Better still is that the scriptwriter has worked on a lot of great projects.

Mouryou no Hako doens’t show it’s whole hand in the first episode, but what it gives is un-fucking-believably good. I can safely call this the best of season and mos likely to land on my favoirtes list.

Girls talk too much … right?

I honestly don’t know why I held high expectations—-or any at all—-for CLAMP’s new anime entitled Mouryou no Hako. I was quite sure of myself when I told hazy that it couldn’t get any worse than long legs, but the first episode definitely proved me wrong. In fact, it was so urgh that I don’t think I care what happens next. And I’ll just quickly apologize beforehand if I’m starting to sound really harsh, but let’s face it, this is what I truthfully felt. And in case you’re wondering, I did watch this RAW, but even with subtitles, this episode would have most certainly bored me anyway.

Even though I know I really shouldn’t be judging this series from the very first episode, it just really sucked full-stop. Sure, you’ve got the creepy white-faced talking dolls and ugly men, and if that wasn’t frightening enough, you’ve got a pair of homosexuals cast as the main female leads. Personally, I don’t have anything against homosexuals, really, but I didn’t think the first episode was going to focus entirely on Kanako and Yuri’s relationship … and … funny dancing.

While the plot regarding mutilated bodies found scattered across the town and a group of high-school detectives investigating on the matter sounded cool—-I mean: awesome—- it seemed almost as if CLAMP suddenly remembered that Mouryou no Hako wasn’t about two chicks making out and decided to chuck in a “scary-cliché” train scene in the last few minutes to grab our attention. But I was long gone before that. I don’t know what disappointed me more: the fact that this episode was terrible, or that I was actually expecting something from it.

Tales of the Abyss has 10 groups subbing it, Shikabanehime:Aka has 1.

Let’s hope that the number of groups subbing is not highly correlated with how good of a show it is.

Summary:

Ouri Kagami, an orphan who grew up on the grounds of a Buddhist Temple and one night wanders around looking for his ‘brother’. He stumbles into a room where a young girl lies, dead. After secretly witnessing his brother revive the girl (and having a conversation with a cat) we get thrown into the present day – where Ouri is moving out of the orphanage.

This mysterious girl is a Shikabane, a living corpse, and she’s running around hunting down other Shikabane with two sub machine guns. She crosses paths with Ouri again, and this time it is Ouri who revives her – but even after being revived, her heart does not beat… for she is a corpse princess.

Thoughts:
It’s a little hard to judge how Shikabanehime:Aka will turn out from this episode alone, since it really depends on what Gainax wants do with it. Of course, I can understand why a lot of people aren’t jumping all over this – it wasn’t particularly exciting and it wasn’t particularly funny – but it was a solid introduction. To be honest, that’s completely fine with me, it’s not like Gurren Lagann had me drooling for more after first episode either, yet it turned out to be my favorite series of 2007.

Gainax sets the tone with a dark palate as opposed to their usual vivid colours they love to use and Shikabane looks like it will serve up some decent action, with a side dish of potential mind rape. And to the excitement of some (and annoyance of others) we get a glimpse of some trademark Gainax fight scenes reminiscent of FuriKuri and Mahoromatic.

And for the record, I love this art style

This is like … only the best Fall has to offer so far. And spoilers ahead.

Besides CLAMP’s new anime, Mouryou no Hako, I was also fairly anxious about GA-REI -zero- because of the character designs and the promise of the sweet supernatural action I witnessed during the promo. At first glance, the characters seemed rather shallow—-if not, imagine your typical soldier boy with little knowledge of the “real” world. However, at the beginning of the first episode, we see a glimpse of Tooru’s (main character voiced by Maeno Tomoaki) past; this allowed me to figure out the whereabouts of his demeanor, how significant his role in this series may become, and what consequences could lie ahead for him and his friends. Regardless of my lack of understanding of what was really going on due to the absence of reliable subtitles (not that there were any, anyway), I was altogether captivated the second the show started playing.

Yes, her motorbike is her weapon

The idea of having the human-shaped creatures invisible to the naked eye was different from other supernatural anime I’ve seen, but it was a good different. After all, it never hurts to be original, even a little. One scene I particularly enjoyed was how the vehicles were being trampled on by what seemed to be thin air. Of course, I was confused just as much as the innocent fire-fighters were, but when the secret organization revealed what they were dealing with through special a rectangular lens capable of detecting the monsters, I leaned in closer just to make sure that I could capture every single detail of what the monsters looked like. Although simple in appearance as they seem, I can’t help thinking that they could be souls escaping from Hell, or that they have some sort of “bad” tie to the human beings.

Ahuh, the main guy just got his throat cut

Another memorable moment in the first episode was when the gang planned a way to defeat the “big lizard” without us really knowing what exactly it was that they were planning—-either that or I really shouldn’t have watched this RAW. Each character did his or her thing and everything worked out really nicely, and the background music definitely complimented what was taking place. It was just minutes after that marvelous battle rewarded with cups of coffee to celebrate their success in defeating the demon that they all were suddenly easily wiped out—-to be more specific, sliced to pieces by a girl in black uniform. More of Tooru’s past was then unveiled, showing us a scene where he was forced to kill his friend, or possibly, lover, in front of a boy with blue butterflies fluttering around him. When we find out that the girl in the uniform had shared a close relationship with Tooru, she slits his throat and the episode ends with a gradual fade.

*nods* The evil boy likes blue butterflies

Unfortunately, there isn’t even any preview for what happens next week *sobs*, but I can guarantee you that this episode of GA-REI -zero- won’t be a disappointment. I’ve got no complaints—-nothing against this fantastic episode. It was thrilling; a joyous ride. I mean, how many times have you seen a girl kick butt on a motorcycle, and since when did elephant feet scare people? This may not be your average cup of tea, but it’s definitely worth a try. I just hopes this series can continue to stay good or eventually get better, and way less predictable (not that it is).

Slice-of-life never ceases to humour me.

Confusing rather than hilarious would be the most suitable description for the first few minutes of Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei’s initial episode. After the strange and somewhat dull opening theme, the sudden turn of events that tumbled one after the other seemed to make better sense. The characters obtain an overly exaggerated persona of “ordinary” humans, which only adds more sweet comedy to the honey. Regardless, the artwork, while unique, is also beautifully austere that I can’t seem to stop myself from admiring the simplicity. Since all the characters were introduced so abruptly after the other, I can’t seem to remember any names. “Even the simplest of events can have the deepest of meanings”, but in this case, the characters are the ones who seem to have a prominent message behind their attitudes.

One good example of this would be Hito Nami (God bless Wikipedia), who claims to be a truant and despises it when people refer to her as a “normal” girl. In this episode, she also tried to desperately make her classmates show sympathy towards her — why? I’ve never been much of a philosophical fan like good man newgeekphilosopher, so the only reason I can come up with for her acting this way is that she wishes to be noticed. She could have tried other methods of gaining her classmates’ attention, so it’s a real puzzle why she wanted to lie in order to have people pity her. While Nozomu always looks at life through despairing eyes, I’m beginning to wonder if he’ll ever rid his pessimistic character.

Unfortunately, I would have liked to write more about this, but I felt that I needed to get it over and done with lest I lose my spirit later on. I’m back to being busy again because I’m preparing the constume for the character I’m going to cosplay as for Manifest (that explains the poll on the side-bar, plus cosplaying is a dress-code for my group, so I have no choice). Summing it up, overall this episode was funny, especially when Nami was challenged to remain in school until night befell. Actually, staying after-school is really not that horrible, but I’ve never tried staying back so late either. I’d like to see how the next episode turns out soon! And what are you waiting for — Dragonica is finally out!!

Two minds think alike.

By acknowledging my abnormally great and eminent appreciation towards anime that involve an extreme amount of bloodshed, bateszi recommended that I check out a violent series called Shigurui, and without really knowing what it was about besides sex and torture in the medieval times of the samurai, I decided to give the first episode a try. Within the first few moments, a man was slaughtered by the blade of a katana, and this very incident had me in tears of joy. Nowadays, I find myself immediately fixated on novels that contain a homicide during the prologue or the first few chapters, hence I held high expectations for what the remaining twenty minutes of this episode would deliver. It was only seconds later I witnessed a man wrenching his gut out, which was shortly followed by his collapse to death, his garments drenched in blood.

Probably the most engrossing aspect of this anime is the exquisite yet disturbing artwork, and according to bateszi’s compelling review based on the first six episodes, the ill-treated women are the ones who eventually become the true heroes, even though in the beginning of the series the main focus revolves around a notorious conflict between two warriors. These two strange and clearly unsympathetic men are known as Fujiki and Irako; Fujiki only has one arm while Irako is blind with an injured foot. Suffice to say, neither of them seem to represent the good or evil side, therefore it isn’t your typical samurai film, nor does it follow the general plot-line for a show. While Irako is conspicuously and frighteningly insane with those radiant red lips of his and his deranged fighting stance, Fujiki is a rather apathetic person towards others, believing that by afflicting pain upon a fellow soldier as a consequence for a blunder, in return he would learn to never repeat the same mistake.

I can still fight because I don’t need those two fcuked up fingers

Art-wise, the women in this series are extremely beautiful and attractive; their eyes and body language are quite expressive and alluring. However, they are apparently a very disrespected bunch, accused for being unfaithful and are constantly raped as a form of punishment. One of the two women introduced in this episode hopes to see Irako fall in his battle with Fujiki, and her hatred towards this blind man is evidently firm. Meanwhile, the other woman who walks beside Irako has the appearance of a devious and manipulative feline, but she also seems to be a silent one who has the looks to say it all. In contrast to the females of this series, the men are depicted realistically as muscular warriors who only seem to know about fighting and pay no consideration whatsoever to others’ feelings. Like in most samurai film, these men are either greedy, a think-they-know-it-all, a moron, or simply one whose life only seems to depend on overcoming opponents and challenges, and becoming the strongest.

Say hi to your mum for me

It’s definitely not a series targeted towards a young age, as psgels warns us, but I suppose if your mind is as violent-loving as mine, and if you delight in anime that explores the human body in every detail through a means of a character murdering another, you’ll be fascinated and intrigued by what Shigurui has to offer. Regardless, the plot seems to move at an extremely slow pace and the action scenes — while they are short-lived — are so disappointing that they’re probably not even worth mentioning. Nevertheless, this series concentrates more on how the body reacts to certain types of pain, and also on how characters endure this unbearable suffering. The men may be wounded physically, but it seems, judging from the numerous reviews I’ve read, that these pitiful women have it a lot worse; while physical injuries are time-consuming when it needs to heal, it’s a much longer and a more perilous journey to restore a harassed mind to its usual state.

I’m just here to watch my husband die since I got nothing better to do

Concluding my thoughts, I definitely found this episode enjoyable in a sense that most people might not be able to understand. There are several time-skips, so focusing on the subtitles is somewhat vital. In addition, there are a few gruesome scenes and brilliant yet disgusting sound-effects along with them, but nevertheless, it’s quite bearable. Since the fight between Fujiki and Irako didn’t even commence yet, and since there were so many “screen-swaps” from one person’s face to another, it became really irritating. I’m not going to say that this episode is definitely worth your time, but you should at least check it out when you’ve got no other anime to watch, or if you’re just bored stiff. In other words, it’s not the best first episode I’ve seen, but I was brainwashed into watching this thanks to bateszi and his lovely article on it (trust me, read it and you will be trapped as well!). I was surprised that I actually finished this episode, though, since there was a large amount of non-stop talking and the opening theme, while unique, was horrible. This series runs for 12-13 episodes, so I suppose it won’t kill me to finish it during the holidays.

Ah, the joys of dramas with sick but pretty girls…

Summary:

Kaoru Amane is sick with a disease called XP (xeroderma pigmentosum which means her body has no protection against UV rays) and is an aspiring singer. She sings out front the train station everyday. Meanwhile, Fujishiro Kouji is a young 19-year old guy who has just lost his job: he no longer has a dream. But as fate decides, he ends up meeting Kaoru on a group date. Little does he know, Kaoru has already met him: by picking up the guitar he had abandoned years ago. Destiny brought them together: a boy who has lost faith in himself and a girl trying her hardest to make use of the little time she has left. At the group date, Kouji tells Kaoru that he has lost all his faith and won’t even care if he ends up dying tomorrow. Kaoru tells him to drown into the sea: it’s there for a reason. She leaves, completely thinking she knew him. The next night, Kaoru goes to the station again and sings one of her own songs: Kouji stands from a distance and watches her. However, a bunch of delinquets start terrorising her and he helps her escape, driving away from the station.

Thoughts:

The usual typical drama, except with that sense that not everything might end happily ever after for these two. I’ve seen plenty of dramas where the girl is sick (example: 1 Litre of Tears, First Kiss…) and those were pretty happy endings. Except for the first one. But, you get the picture. The first episode was pretty boring, and her singing, to be honest, wasn’t that great either. The song that she sang doesn’t hit me.Nothing really eventful happened, just the fact that the two of them met, and she said a few pretty tight things to him, but meh.  Thanks a bunch to Jurac (her alias name) at school who let me borrow this! The Kaoru girl is SUPER pretty (Sawajiri Erika is her name fellas!) and I’ve seen her before in 1 Litre of Tears. If the blog would allow it, I’d blog that too when I have the time later. The guy, Kouji (Yamada Takayuki) is alright as well, but every time he lifts his armpits I get super shivers down my spine. *shivers*

Hope everything begins to develop in the later episodes: it better.

Now, I leave you with my sarcastic and pathetic captions that will never be as good as blissmo’s.

Attack of the Diet Cokes! GO, MY PRETTIES!

Stalkers’ Paradise! Go my babies, smex him allllll up!

Please accept my octopus of love!

Toodles!

A bit confusing, but impressive at the same time.

Omni has a short summary over at Random Curiosity.

First off, OP and ED of the show were great. You rarely hear a good Engrish song, but “Shut Up and Explode” by the Boom Boom Satellites and “Vacency” by Kylee both fit the OP and ED nicely. The former’s a good techno-rock song which goes well with the feel of the action/animation in the OP, and the latter’s a J-Pop/rock song that whcih flows with the style of the ED. Though the shows not technically part of the season, it certainly has two of the best OP/ED’s of the summer. The OP is the better of the two, though IMO.

Being animated by BONES, it of course looks stellar, and it has the look of Eureka Seven combined with  fluidity that’s reminiscent of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, or many Hayao Miyazaki films. The few portions of action (I use the term loosely, as this includes one guy running) seemed, despite the quality of the video I had, to be well animated. The scenery combines something of a modern day suburbian setting with some industrial parts here and there, such as in the airships, and overall it’s a good meshing of style which gives the show a unique feel. There was also a nice light sense of comedy that I hope the show retains.

As for the actual plot, I’m not sure what’s really going on; I understand that there’s a war going on and the pale girl received some sort of power, but there’s also something to do with Postal Law, which I think is really in regards to posting letters, backed up by the use of letters in the OP. There seem to be three main threads: that of the Nausicaa-resembling and her comrades on the airship, that of Akiyuki and his schoolmates, specifically Haru, and that of the pale girl and whatever power she bestwoed on Akiyuki to turn him into a Hollow that “Humanform Weapon”. But ,hey, they can’t reveal everything in the first episode, and they’ve succeded in capturing my interest. If this somehow comes out steadily, I’ll be sure to blog it, or even wait until the season it comes out in Japan and do so then.