Kurogane’s Anime Blog

Yakusamashi-hen continues on showing Rika’s growing despair and feelings of hopelessness, and Satoko, meanwhile, starts to experience the similar condition that befell Keiichi in Onikakushi-hen and Rena in Tsumihoroboshi-hen.

Thank god for Ryukishi07 insisting on making the Yakusamashi-hen for the second season of the anime, as I’ve just completed rewatching Higurashi I, and while some important plot points were animated in, but they’ve never fully hinted on many of the important things that would be essential to solving the mystery, case in point the looping Hinamizawa and Rika, only seminally hinted and revealed at the end of Tsumihoroboshi-hen.

But now, Yakusamashi-hen finally fleshes out Rika’s character, and god, at the risk of being mislabeled, I’ll admit this, she’s now my favourite character of the Higurashi cast. Yukarin truly shows her talent with Rika’s role, perfectly switching from the “light Rika” and the “dark Rika” almost effortlessly and bringing out the despair that Rika feels to life.

Next episode should wrap up Yakusamashi-hen, and go in to the next arc, Minagoroshi-hen, which should be one of the bloodiest ones.

“I can die happy now.”

One day… one day…. not only will it be only Noto Mamiko, I will also get Ayako Kawasumi’s too.

One fine day….

Sorry for the quality, upscaled from eyecancer raw.

Subaru in Berserker Mode. Now, -this- is what I call “Nanoha StrikerS”.

Isn’t it funny when right after I make that post, the show suddenly knocks you socks off? Sadly, I can foresee the next few episodes sucking hard until the final 2 or 3 episodes, where it’ll all be explosions over again, and hopefully more Subaru in Berserker mode.

Heh Konata showing off her handphone.

Wow… this episode was wow… While some people I know would definitely bang KyoAni as trying to pimp off their own series with this episode, I personally felt that this episode was pretty much awesome.

Continue ->

I finished the book today. Gotta love the community. There will be spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.

Continue ->

The sh*t hasn’t hit the fan yet so this episode is still in the “light-hearted” feel, but this time the main focus is on Rika and her growing despair about the events that will be taking place, and the episode title demonstrates that. Her growing despair and feelings of powerlessness have reached to such levels that she actually shows off “Kuro Rika” to Satoko.

I can only barely imagine what it feels to get stuck in a loop which ends with you getting killed every time. The more I think about how many loops have possibly happened, the more I symphatise with Rika and admire her strength for still managing to keep up her happy facade.

The bleak things aside, this episode still has enough laughs to entertain, and Keiichi was pretty awesome during the baseball game with his way of, ahem, persuading the opponent’s star pitcher to give up the game to them. Of course, who can forget his dramatic entrance with the golf club. I’m pretty sure if Keiichi loses his baseball bat in a fight, he’ll somehow pull out a golf club out of nowhere and continue.

Also, Rena’s omochikaeri :D~~~~~~~.

Hauu~~ omochikaeri!!!

I just finished it. While the ending was out of my expectations, Makoto Shinkai has truly embodied his theme of “distance” extremely effective. Extremely. Yes, he definitely is an awesome storyteller. When the movie finished, I was truly left speechless with the ending… the movie… the whole works, practically.

As I expected, Oukashou dealt with the “physical distance”, Cosmonaut dealt with the “distance of feelings” and eponymous Byousoku 5cm dealt with the “distance of time”. I especially liked Byousoku’s 5cm, which ended the movie in a truly unexpected way, but brought to life the theme it embodied effectively.

In other words, another masterpiece by Makoto Shinkai, and his best work, to date, for me. I shall await impatiently for his future projects.

P.S. Takaaki uses a Logitech MX Revolution!!! God, I have desired for that mouse for a freaking long time. Also, he’s using a 30in Apple Cinema Display. And that’s your random geek trivia of the day.

P.S.2: I ordered the limited edition DVD of Byousoku 5cm, marking my first ever purchase of an original DVD. My dad is so going to kill me when he sees the bill come next month…. or when the DVD arrives by next week :D~~.

The MX Revolution

1. Unimpressive action.

StrikerS fights just don’t elicit that same adrenaline rush I had watching the action in the first two series. Apart from Nanoha going batshit insane, StrikerS fights have been mostly forgettable. I can still replay the first Vita vs Nanoha battle from A’s in my mind clearly.

2. Too damn many characters.

Well, for starters we had time speeded up 10 years later, introducing in 4 new rookies, along with a whole bunch of other misc. minor roles like the Church people, Mobile Six bridge bunnies and support staff and a whole bunch of other TSAB people (including that annoying General guy) plus Vivio-chan now. While on the antagonist side, we had Lutecia, Agito, Zest, the whole freaking bunch of Numbers androids and Dr. Orange with his faithful assistant. That makes around 30-40 individual characters to focus on, and that’s not including the original characters. At this rate, the next season of Nanoha will have the cast list the size of a Touhou game, maybe two.

3. Recycled character designs.

Lutecia = Loli Rider
Agito = Chibi Etna
Vivio = Alisa Bannings II.

… and I’m not even going to lump in the shitty production quality in this list. They should just screw all that TSAB politicking bullshit arc they have now and put more budget in to making more explosions and fights.

Well, that aside, StrikerS is okay if you want your moé overload…. Vivio-chan~~ <3.

While the show is going more and more to the dumps, the 2nd Soundstage is released and it seems they’ve fit in the character development parts in it instead of the show. Contrary to the cover image, the focus is actually more on Fate, Elio and Kyaro, as they face, well, family problems :P. But hot damn, Vivio is moe! Moe! Still it kinda scares me whenever I realise her seiyuu is the same one who voiced Yuuno. Plus… she truly looks like a clone of Alisa :P.

Track by track summary after the jump. There’s not really much interesting things as the last Soundstage was, but it does have much character development.

Continue ->

Aaya-chan!

Awww…. this episode was made of Kagamin, Konata and win. The awesomeness level of this episode was pretty high in my opinion. Heck, there was even an Aaya-chan cameo!

Continue ->