Kurogane’s Anime Blog

“Shit, I’m gonna need a whole ton of Viagra for that.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Dear god, Geass is slowly becoming a comedy. God damn it, Ninja Sayoko made me die laughing and I had to use a Phoenix Down to continue the episode past the 3rd minute. “Assuming three hours of sleep, I’ve made appointments with 108 girls. There’s a six month waiting list for dates as well.”… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Poor, poor Lelouch. Sayoko sure has a “fine grasp” on his character, LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Okay, calming down now, there was also the “Cupid Party” event held by Millay, and it was rather LULZ too, especially when Anya came out WITH her Mordred to capture Lelouch. Dear god, these people don’t have anything called common sense. I’m starting to think that the show is slowly jumping the shark here, which is not really a good thing in the long run. But for now, the epic LULZ was kinda enjoyable, despite the sheer incongruity of the whole episode.

Well, on the serious side of things (a lame attempt to not waste this episode), we got glimpses of the Brittanian royalty, with some of the hitherto-unknown princes and princesses and the Knight of One introduced, over a talk of declaring war on the Chinese Federation as a payback for the humiliation Odysseus received.

Cornelia also makes her much awaited appearance as well, and she’s shown to be investigating the “Order” that researches Geass users, making her way to the site in China where Jeremiah was brought to by V.V., meeting up with the bald guy who keeps saying something about “committing the greatest crime against humanity”. Orange-kun himself has also gained quite the upgrade as well, as he now has the Geass Canceller ability.

In short, they’re continuing to make a mess of the overall plot, while resorting to cheap thrills and LULZ to keep the audience watching. Sure it does kinda work in the short run, but in the end, the story isn’t gonna make any real sense at all. It’s like the production team doesn’t have a real plan for the series now at all, which is really kinda sad.

The official site for ef ~a tale of melodies~ is up now, and the major attraction is the release of the 50sec trailer for it, available in streaming and in full download. Youtube embed below:

So far, looking so good, and the trailer looks pretty nice, with some awesome usage of cinematography and camera angles. While it’s a bit too much to hope for Makoto Shinkai-level artistic feel, if they continue on with the work they did on the first series, I think melodies won’t be disappointing at all.

P.S. I wonder what happened to Author? He’s the biggest ef fan I know, and he’s barely mentioning this.

Yes! A new season of the ef anime was announced earlier on Moonphase (Moetron here provides the english).

In summary, the same staff will be working on the new series, and the story will predictably about Mizuki and Yuuko as the main focus. Which is good, because ever since seeing that “oh-mein-eyes-this-is-so-fucking-incredibly-beautiful” opening animation for ef ~the latter tale~, I’ve gotten extremely interested in to Yuuko’s story.

“Kyun~ kyun~, kyun~ kyun~, watashi no kare wa… PIROTTO!!”

Aw crap. Sorry, but I kinda laughed when Ranka burst in singing “Seikan Hikou”.

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I wonder how many people still remember this series…

Anyways, after a long, long wait, I’ve finally finished reading the Mahoraba manga, and I’m happy with it yet at the same time, my heart feels a bit torn now that it’s ended. In short, it is a totally awesome manga that I hope everyone would give it a try.

It’s definitely gonna be hard to finally part with the residents of Narutaki-sou, as they’ve each been grown so dear to me, the further I read this series. Kojima Akira-sensei treads a fine balance at humor, plot depth and character development with this series and it’s easy for readers to connect to each of the characters in this manga as it runs.

It’s also further testament to the manga-ka’s skill that each and every other minor character also got some attention of their own, to the point that I’ll miss them all as well, from the crazy antics of “Buchou” to the deadly-looking but a total girl at heart maid, Tachibana, amongst the ones who stand out the most to me.

Here, I’d also like to congratulate and thank Hiyoko no GAO for taking up and finishing this project, and generally keeping the spirit of Mahoraba alive, despite the series having ended for over 2 years already.

Everyone, please do give this manga a try! I have 99.9% confidence that you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Mmm~ quite a lame end. I was wishing for a lot of helpings of fanservice, but the risque levels never went above the minimum levels. But oh well… at least this series is done for, for now. Unless they wanna do another season of it, XD.

Well, Kanokon has been mildly enjoyable for me, given the sheer levels it pushes the envelope of “fanservice” anime and thankfully, the show realises that and doesn’t push itself too much to try and make a “deep” plot out of it. Sure, there was much interesting things, characters and settings to explore, but in the end, I’m glad the studio decided to keep it short and simple.

It’s surprising too how long the show has managed to keep my interest, and it’s pretty much a testament of the shit I can endure just to get my dose Ayako Kawasumi and Noto Mamiko, although towards the last few episodes, I’ve totally been able to predict all their lines and responses. But I guess, something is better than nothing, plus it gives me something to tide my time over, especially early in the week when there is a general lack of shows to watch after Geass airs.

Not exactly a show worth to be recommended widely, but if you’re a connoisseur of fanservice anime, I guess Kanokon is worth a watch. Too bad the shock factors went down much as the show progressed on.

It’s online now, you can watch it here.

….um so, do you like Pachinko Lagann?

Personally, I found it kinda LULZ instead of cool and such. Poor Viral, he’s such an unlucky sod.

I’m hoping the next one one will be more awesome.

Okay, so the fake Lelouch is Ninja Sayoko after all. Kinda shivered at seeing Lelouch act so girly when alone with Rollo. Also, surprise kiss on Shirley gg!

And this brings the end of the China arc for Geass R2. Of course our dear Zero is never without backup plans, and with some egging on of the Eunuchs, proclaiming they don’t care about the citizens and what not, Lelouch manages to inspire nationwide rebellions against them and takes the win, Xingke, Tianzi and China in one fell swoop, although poor Karen is now POW on Avalon, along with Guren. Sadly for poor Kallen, it looks like they’re not followers of the Geneva Convention.

With China in his hands, Lelouch decides to return to Area 11, no doubt worried about his aloof image falling in to further pieces, with Sayoko taking his place for the past week(?) or so. Unfortunately (or fortunately), he returns right in time to face a very, very confused Shirley, who has just gotten kissed by Sayoko-Lelouch and also the sudden transfer of Vino and Anya in to Ashford Academy. Cue the start of the school comedy plots.

Seriously, the writing for Geass is still crap, although the side effect is the show being unintentionally hilarious to the Zero-degree quite much makes up for things, I say.

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Thankfully, whoever was behind the “bright ideas” of the last two weeks, gave up and uploaded this week’s ending in full on Youtube, albeit split in to two parts.

That said, the ending episode begun with Jil’s plan and the subsequent valiant efforts of the others, finally managing to slay the “Druaga” they’ve been fighting against, with Jil dealing the final blow using Ahmey’s drill-spear. It was admittedly a good battle fought.

The big shocker comes no doubt in the form of the revelation that there’s another Tower, on top of the one that Jil and gang have been climbing so far, with Neeba and Kaaya the only two people who knew about it, and subsequently “betraying” their team mates to climb it themselves. Definitely, I was wondering what was the true motives behind the both of them, as it seemed that the screen time was drastically running out, but I’m pretty impressed that Gonzo decided to end the series with a absolute cliffhanger, and announcing the “Sword of Uruk” for 2009. No wonder the OP had the poster of the series with the date stated as “2009″ all this while.

All in all, Druaga has been a good watch, despite seemingly wasting time throughout the middle parts. The humor was pretty enjoyable at times, albeit many would wished that Gonzo instead dedicated more effort to build up the characters and the story earlier instead of later.

The only major developments came at the last three episodes, and despite a general lack of time, I would say it was nicely written off, and since Gonzo has decided on a sequel to it, let’s hope all the mysteries would be solved properly the second time around. There is much potential to be had for the Druaga series, in my opinion, and I wouldn’t want to see Gonzo to waste it all again.

Ah, finally a new episode of Frontier. A two week wait is just agonizing.

Ranka deals with her new-found fame but her jobs keep piling on and bringing her further away from Alto. Despite the busy schedule, she intends to celebrate Alto’s upcoming birthday but doesn’t manage to get in to contact with him, leaving only a voicemail asking him to meet her at the hill on that day.

Alto himself is facing problems of his on, when his brother comes for a visit, informing him that his father collapsed, and would like to see him on his birthday, telling him to stop running away from his true calling, acting, and come back to the family. This puts Alto in a state of melancholy.

Alto gets a reprieve, as Sheryl accepts a job to make a sympathy call(?) to the planet Gallia 4, and asks Alto to escort her there, with the promise of being able to fly in a blue, limitless sky. Alto accepts the job and the episode ends with Ranka getting stood up, as Alto and Sheryl head off to Gallia 4.

So right after the break, we get more character development, and I can’t help but to think of “The Melancholy of Alto and Ranka” as the perfect subtitle for this episode, lol.

Poor Ranka continues on her losing streak in the love triangle, even getting stood up by Alto at the end of the episode. Sheryl’s pretty much the preemptive in the triangle now, she even refers Alto in a much more familiar way now, though it was really worrying to see her coming down with something in this episode.

There’s also a bunch of plot development, involving a breakaway Zentradi faction and the planet where Sheryl is going to be visiting next week. Ominously, Grace is hinted to be the mysterious contact of Leon, connected to the VF-27.

This week’s ending theme is also different, and Ranka’s 「Neko Nikki」 song is used. I sure hope the one week delay was caused by them drawing the animation for that, lol. I do like the song though, can’t wait for the CD to come out. Nowadays, I really find it hard to think that Ranka is Megumi Nakajima’s debut role, she sounds already like a professional seiyuu.

Apparently no episode next week as well… another two-week wait orz.

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