Kurogane’s Anime Blog

I failed at making a gif for this…

Am I the only one who finds that hiccuping is extremely moé-inducing? Oh, and Hagu-chan’s character design is much more likable now. I think I must be the only person to harbour thoughts that Hagu-chan isn’t exactly the definition of cute last season.

The real first episode of Hachikuro II and it’s a Mayama-Ayumi-Rika episode. One of my favourite parts of the Hachikuro series the Mayama-Ayumi-Rika love triangle, which I attribute to Mayama’s voice and Rika’s moéness. Due to that, I support Mayama x Rika, but that does not mean I hate Ayumi, rather in fact, I find her one of the most symphatetic character in Hachikuro, due to her position and status in Mayama’s heart. She is, as Morita-senpai says to her, hurting her ownself by working with Rika and Mayama.

I do feel a certain attachment to both Ayumi and Mayama now, due to the fact that I have been in their position before, so I really shed a tear down for Ayumi at the end of this episode. I must really watch Hachikuro alone… need to keep my macho image up :P.

Well, next episode is another Ayumi episode by the looks of it, and I’m glad to see it. Takemoto’s “arc” can be considered to be on it’s downward slide after the events of the last season, while they’re hinting of the beginning of Morita’s “arc” as well, with the mysterious words that his brother says.

2ble wielding PNF90’s…. I’m sold!

I take back what I said for this season to be lacklustre. I obviously didn’t expect Coyote Ragtime Show. This is easily one of the better shows this season, assuming if the quality of the show remains consistent with the first episode’s one.

Plotwise, it’s a western, space-opera styled story about a master criminal, Mister, and the cop who tries to catch him, Angelica. Expect all the usual twists and turns that come with this type of shows.

But anyways, who the hell needs to care about the plot?! I’m fucking sold on this show based on the action scenes alone. Hell, I just came from the appearance of the 12 Sisters parachuting in and slaughtering everyone in sight. Too bad they’re robots though, it’ll be fsking awesome if they were humans mainly to see them being screwed.

Uniquely speaking, it is refreshing to see the investigator being played by a hawt, busty, meganekko. It’s always good to see some bouncing boobies woman power, instead of some beardy, smoking macho guy. Chelsea is tipped to be a perfect, bumbling dojikko sidekick.

The supposed antagonist, Mister, is a deadringer for the gentleman thief types and I will expect from him, extremely high-risk, hare-brained robbery plans ala Italian Job, Ocean 11 style. I am a sucker for those types of plans, and there’s nothing that raises my boner more effectively than seeing those impossible type plans to succeed.

I’m having extremely high hopes for Coyote Ragtime Show and judging that ufotable did pull off Futakoi Alt. quite well (btw, is the 12 Sisters a tribute to Futakoi?), I think Coyote will end up being quite satisfying.

Far from being the mindless fanservice show that I thought it would be, not to mention the usage of the Buddhist temple setting that made me put it in the anime shitlist when I first heard of it, Amaenaideyo! has been a big surprise for me, as it wasn’t as 1% as shitty as I thought it would be.

First off, the thing that saves this show is the characters. Everyone is undoubtably likable and the characters are all well developed and not 2-dimensional bimbo fanservice fodder that I’d thought it would be. Each character has their own attractions and flaws and each have their spotlight equally. I don’t feel like elaborating much on it but safe to say, it’s worth a watch.

Next off, must be the seiyuu work and I’m particularly impressed by Ryoko Shintani’s work here, esp on her episode. Mai Nakahara’s Chitose is reminiscent of her other strong type roles and the rest also shine on their own.

The later episodes actually seemed a bit messed up, mostly on the parts dealing with Ikko’s power, which still hasn’t been truly revealed yet as of how he get’s this ero power-up. The usage of the Buddhist terms is quite jargon-rific and I respect the amount of research that was put in to the show.

So, I’m looking forward to Amaenaideyo! Katsu, which I hope explains more on the show’s unresolved plot points and more mindless fanservice. Yeah, to be honest, I’m actually wishing for more skin to be shown :P.b

I’m quite disappointed with Amaenaideyo!…. where the hell are the stripping scenes?! And there’s not enough bouncing breasts every episode!! And… what is with the non-generic personality girls and character development!

Ok, so seriously speaking, Amaenaideyo! is actually a good watch. Ikko as the protagonist isn’t annoying nor a pussy and he is seriously funny to watch when his “power” switch gets turned on. There isn’t any hints of a romantic development among the girls to him, thus the drama factor is almost nonexistant, with the girls treating him as a fellow trainee(that’s perverted and fun to tease). The girls themselves are actually quite interesting, with the elder trainees being the focus. I loved Sakura’s secret hobby of giving advice and making her look quite useless but which she actually isn’t that bad. Haruka is fun to watch too, as the lazy but good-at-everything type.

Another interesting factor to Amaenaideyo! to watch out for is the seiyuu work, with some seiyuu’s doing roles that they usually don’t do.Case in point is Ryoko Shintani’s voicing of Hinata, the silent type girl of the show, when Ryoko’s more famous for her hyper-genki voice roles, most prominently Milfeulle Sakuraba from Galaxy Angels. I was surprised to see that she was as good at voicing Hinata as Minoru Chihara did for Nagato Yuki.

Well, that wraps up my mid-marathon break for now. I’ll post more when I finish.

And that sums up the first episode of Amaenaideyo.

Why the hell am I watching this?!! For the love of my braincells, I just can’t really answer. I’ve managed to pinpoint it to Chitose though, but I wonder if it’s her voice, boobs, tsundere-ness or the stripping scenes.

And the doll in this episode…. reminds me of Shinku….

Now, excuse me while I go fap to watch the rest of Amaenaideyo.

A typical Gonzo production, full of visual imagery and eyecandy, but totally lacking in spirit, originality and rewatch value. This first Gonzo movie production really shows off the mastery of it’s visual department, and at the same time, the ultimate suckiness of it’s storytelling department.

Having a man vs. nature theme, typical of a lot of original anime movie productions, Gin Iro is set in a world where plants have developed a form of sentience and are now the superior life form on Earth, with humans being forced to strike off a cooperation with the forest to live.

So then here, this guy, Agito, meets girl, Tula, where the girl is actually from the past before the plants took over and holds the key to reset the world, which antagonist, Shunak, wants. Tula decides to follow Shunak and Agito gets SSJ’ed by the forest and rescues Tula and manages to save the day in the end. The End.

Yeah, so that’s the basic plot. The creative department actually did manage to create a very interesting and deep setting, with the plants and humans, but they didn’t explore it much further and instead it becomes just a mere plot device.

The plot itself is… well… boy meets girl and saves world type of plot, so there’s not much depth. Character development is handled extremely bad and is shallow at best description. We are expected to actually imagine their own character development and the show has a feel of being a 24 episode TV series script cut in to a 90 minute movie one. Gonzo could’ve pulled off another Last Exile with this script to be honest, but instead they made this failure of a movie.

Worth a watch, if for a bored Thursday afternoon and it’s lavish visual fest, but don’t expect to be “wow”‘ed or have your life changed after this movie.

Watch this. No shit.

*Kurogane watches*

Aya Hirano: Dame desho, Hamada-san.

*Aya Hirano deals CRITICAL HIT on Kurogane*
*Kurogane suffers 100 Moé damage*

Yeah, it was that good. I was kinda suprised that her normal voice is so high-pitched and different from her seiyuu voice. Must be a way to maintain her anonymity, wouldn’t want her to get mobbed/worshipped by the Haruhi-ists if she strolls by Akihabara and spoke suddenly.

I was a bit overwhelmed with words to start talking about the ending of Suzumiya Haruhi. It was a perfect conversion from it’s novel chapter for a start and even had a few extras that were tossed in to add in more win.

The whole episode had all the elements that made Suzumiya Haruhi a big success, from Mikuru’s cowering sounds, Haruhi’s tsundere-ness, Yuki’s stoicness, Itsuki’s weirdness and Kyon’s heroic feat of saving the world from being deleted. Even Imouto-chan had her appearance in this, and damn… she’s pretty cute. I’d like her to meet Yuzuyu from AishiBaby… too bad for no LOLFANG-tan, but I guess there’ll be plenty of chances for her next season.

So, as for now, I’ll have to deal with the absence of more Suzumiya Haruhi episodes every week and it doesn’t seem that the new season will have anything that can live up to it’s greatness, except for Hachikuro II. Also… over the course of Suzumiya Haruhi’s run, I’d like to thank a few people who made it enjoyable, the Haruhi novel translation team, a.f.k’s wonderful and consistent sub team, the people over at #SEKAIWOOOINIMORIAGERUTAMENOSUZUMIYAHARUHINODAN and the various bloggers and doujin artists who have made Suzumiya Haruhi so popular.

A very blantantly Harry Potter rip off setting and the Shana-esque voice cast is the distinguishing feature of this show. I mean… doesn’t the whole *tsukaima* summoning scene looks just like the first Quidditch class in Harry Potter 1? And man… everytime Louise speaks, I see her hair turning all red and her cape looks more like jacket. She’d only need to go “Urusai! Urusai! Urusai!” for the transformation to be complete.

Still.. there are differences… on like how Louise is the most untalented magician in her class and how she just blows everything up. Her classmates are also interesting to watch if for the dark skinned witch who seems to be screwing around with half the class, hope her pregnancy test involves less than 30 people. And not to forget… the extremely perverted headmaster and his secretary, who reminds me of a certain *taichou* and *fuku-taichou* from Bleach.

Plot doesn’t seem to have established itself yet, and one wonders will they go to the saving the world from other-dimensional beings or even vanquishing an evil sorcerer who has conquered death in an unorthodox manner or even better, harem romance comedy drama! Well… time will tell, I guess… time will telll.

Manglish. For all Malaysians, the word has been synonymous with the excessive usage of the “-lah” particle behind every sentence (for non-Malaysians, think “-desu”) and words like “Aiyo” and simple short concise replies to daily situations.

Imagine my suprise when this popped up on Slashdot. I’ll leave it to all my fellow M’sians to judge. Honestly, I was half expecting to see “-desu” being replaced with “-lah”.

On another sidenote… I feel sad now. I’ve just moved in near my campus and it seems I can’t download anything through torrents (no Suzumiya Haruhi 14!!). The modem needs some serious tweaking as such as I see it. Might as well be off getting a new modem :P.