Kurogane’s Anime Blog

I think news is all around the blogosphere of how local otakus are “stalking” Aya Hirano, who recently revealed she’s in town to do a photoshoot + DVD filming. Don’t worry, news of her “meat getting bitten off” has been greatly exaggerated. Besides, we have ISA in case anything bad actually happens.

Now, before people start taking the comments on a forum seriously, please be aware most of them are made in jest. Malaysians have a propensity to “talk cock” so for those worried about her safety, please be assured she’ll leave Malaysia (mostly) unharmed. If you take those comments seriously, then you definitely need to chill down and relax. We Malaysians are very peaceful people.

And no, I’m not planning to go stalk her too, even if I had a very good chance earlier to meet her at KLCC Kinokuniya. I might “bump” in to her while out shopping though… :).

Another year passes. Man, it’s hard to believe I’m already in to my 9th year of being an otaku as well as my 4th year of blogging. Time sure flies. I’m now well over 1500 posts with nearly 16k comments, and it’s thanks to everyone’s support that I’ve gotten so far.

This year was marked by an increased number of good shows, but surprisingly, it wasn’t as “happening” as last year. To put it in another way, while the average increased, the top end of the bell curve wasn’t as high as last year. Nevertheless, this year still had its moments.

My choices here aren’t particularly graded using a strict measure, it’s more of an overall rating of shows of this year that I greatly enjoyed in one way or another, so please view it as that rather than a solid indicator of quality.

Of course, being a mere mortal with a real life outside of the Internet, I will inevitably miss a few gems here and there, so feel free to voice up any other shows that you, my dear reader, believe I should have watched and not missed for this year.

With that said, here’s the list.

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….. because his mother is deaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

Sunrise really took liberties with the adaptation of Black God. I guess they felt the original Keita, arrogantly angsty as he is, would alienate fans right from the start and decided to change him in to a saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad high school student. Bear in mind he was a COOL computer game programmer in the original manga. In a lot of ways, I guess it’s a good move, though it surprised me at the start.

Noriko Shitaya’s Kuro is a lot different from what I imagined too. It’ll take some time to get used to it. Her fighting scenes were well done though.

The Doppeliner concept is also more prevalent in the anime than in the manga, with no less than 3 different “Roots” showing up in the first episode. Poor Keita had to witness the loli dying in front of him. So saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

I think Sunrise also lowered the ero-ness too. I mean, one whole episode and all we got was one boob shot?! Lack of fanservice makes me saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad, XD.

The single, pathetic boob shot.

Oi oi, Director Mizushima. I know you guys are disheartened by the criticism leveled on you guys for 00 but don’t copy the Return of the Jedi Star Wars so blindly lerr. Who knows, George Lucas might come and demand a royalty payment for that!

That said, Cherudim has BITS!! щ(ﾟДﾟщ) (щﾟДﾟ)щ

Presenting to you… THE MOST “DANGEROUS” EPISODE OF KANNAGI!!!

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Whoa, from shitty romcom love triangle dilemma development to betrayal, backstabbing and generally major drama in one episode. Seriously makes me wonder what Gonzo has in store for the show still to come.

That said, Emi’s little secret of being able to control LINEBARREL too is revealed in this episode, but she really didn’t take advantage of her limited time and powers, just only chopping off one of VARDANT’s arms and basically peek-a-boo’ing Reiji around. Kinda WTF isn’t it?

But Reiji’s backstabbing and shooting of Mr. President was sure damn sudden and out of nowhere, even I was surprised too. Is that why we haven’t seen much of him throughout the series? To set him up as the mid-boss? Anyways, we’ll have to wait till next episode to see what happens.

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I didn’t like it as much as memories, but at least melodies ended things off well. I honestly lost interest after the irritating emo arc of Kuze and Himura around after the middle of the series. Yuuko’s sudden death also didn’t help out…. T_T.

Well, for an ending episode, it’s pretty much just as planned, with present-day Himura finally getting to meet spirit Yuuko in the original Otowa city. The final scene of them both on the school rooftop was really touching and both of them really deserved better after knowing their backgrounds.

That said, melodies didn’t impact me as much as memories did, mostly because of the “draggy” feel of the story. Especially hated Kuze for being an asshole for most of the past 5 episodes, while Himura was just so undecided at times. They should’ve given Miki-chan more than just one episode of airtime too, sigh…

Speaking of Miki, nice kick there, Mizuki-chan!

Overall, I think I’ll still reserve judgement on whether melodies was on or below par until the DVD-rips come out. But I can say for certain it’s a bit disappointing after the expectations I had for it.

Two very anticipated albums just came out.

First off, Collaboration Album Message is, as its name states, a collaboration album between famous video game music composers and doujin singers. I’ve been gleefully waiting for it since I heard Haruka Shimotsuki is collaborating with Motoi Sakuraba for the first track, 「image～心像～」, and oh boy I am not disappointed.

「image～心像～」 just sounds so calming and epic at the same time it’s truly a dream pairing between two of my favourite music producers presently. The rest of the album seems pretty standard fair to me, but I have been only looping image and the other tracks from Yuri-mu Croquette, so I may not have judged them fairly.

This brings me to the other album, Ga-Rei Zero image album, Yuri-mu Croquette. I’ve been anticipating this album solely for the Yousei Teikoku song, 霊喰い, played during the heart-wrenching battle between Yomi and Mei. God I can’t stop looping it. It’s been a while since I’ve had my fix of Yousei Teikoku and 霊喰い really satisfies that. The three songs, AI, if, Reincarnation are also good too, and I believe the last track is the one used in the final episode where Kagura kills Yomi. Can’t help but to BAWWWWWWW whenever I hear those songs.

Oh god, Ami-tan. Oh god.

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Akikan, as I expected, was really, really WTF.

Steel cans that turn in to girls when you drink them. Only in Japan… only in Japan….

Good to see Jun Fukuyama back again. His character this time also loves getting naked. Not to mention there’s also a gay elder guy in the show too. After Inukami!, I’m expecting awesome stuff from Akikan.

Yeah… naked FukuJun roles always win…