Kurogane's Anime Blog

This post is dedicated to the good, the bad and the WTF’s of this year. It’s really been an interesting year…..

Heh, I was supposed to post this yesterday, but with all the shopping, satelite tracking, celebrations and epic rickrolling, I only finished it today. I guess this will be my first real post of 2009, hehehe.

Anyways, the point of this post is to relive the more memorable moments of 2008 for me, in terms of anime and such. Another year filled with good things, bad shit and “just WTF were they thinking?!” craziness.

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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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( ﾟдﾟ)

Lelouch!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;AAAAAAAAAAAA;

Oh god, he meant to commit suicide all along. Shit I’ve gotta admit I shed a tear for him.

R2′s ending just redeemed most of the stupidity of the past few episodes well enough for me.

Finally, a small little troll by Sunrise.

Orange in an orange farm!

Also he ends up with Anya. WTFUX?!

P.S. : As for the others…

• Kallen lives back with her mom and pulls a Rei on the way to school
• Milly is still a newscaster.
• Nunnally is now the Empress. Suzaku becomes Zero. Ougi I guess becomes the Sec-Gen of the UFN.
• Everyone blames Lelouch (Maou Lelouch LOL) for everything, so the world is peaceful now.
• Tamaki runs a bar. A BAR! Bartender Tamaki HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
• Ougi and Villetta marry, Japanese style.
• Damocles burns up in the sun. Stupid decision if you ask me. They could’ve recycled it instead.
• C.C. resumes travelling. God she sure loves Cheese-kun. She does her Marianne-thing to Lelouch but the dialogue is vague enough to make you think she’s also talking to herself.

The rest I can’t see since the raw is HorribleRaws. Waiting for the HD ones now.

P.S. 2: Man, this is sooo CLAMP-ish.

P.S. 3: StoleBorrowed Omni’s caps. God I just love that guy. Here’s the two pics I was talking about.

Interesting pictures here. Why do I see Diethard there lol? Also, Tamaki trying to put the moves on to Hong Gu (is that her name?) was LOL. The bottom right pic is even weirder. Gino and Tianzi together LOLWUT? Gino ish a rorikon?

And finally, Ohgi’s wedding pics. Notably absent is Xingke, so I wager he finally kicked the bucket. Tianzi looks OH-SO-CUTE-OMOCHIKAERITAIII!! as the bridesmaid. Anya looks positively drunk or that is just sheer QUALITY and I can’t believe that SERIOUSLY MINOR CHARACTER (next to Rivalz) actually appeared in the pic as well! The Ikaruga bridge bunnies also managed to survive unharmed too.

Looks like Toudou and Chiba hooked up as well, good for her. Other couplings seem to be Gino and Kallen, Lloyd and Cecile while Cornelia and Guildford probably still have that awkward “I-love-you-but-we-not-the-same-class” kinda relationship there, judging from the body language. Guildford smile sure looks QUALITY as well.

So eh, since some one posted it up on 4chan, might as well post this up for posterity.

DO NOT FUCKING COMPLAIN ABOUT GETTING SPOILED IF YOU READ THIS. I’ve put enough safe guards in place, so unless you WANT TO BE SPOILED, you CAN’T BE SPOILED.

4ch-translated 2ch spoilers omgwtfroflol ▼

Impressions? Sounds pretty fake to me, but sometimes, reality is far stranger than fiction so we’ll see if this really IS the final episode of Geass on Sunday. I wonder if which ending will be the better troll? MacF’s or Code Geass R2′s.

Actually, I don’t really know what I should say more about the show. The show is… frankly speaking, actually, “has” ended for me a long time ago, and watching more of it going on to a downward spiral of disharmonic logic and sheer whacked out plot is just really hard to see when I actually liked the show before. It’s just like watching a distinguished war hero trying to wage another war just to experience past glories without taking in to consideration the feelings of the normal citizens who respect him and are willing to die for him, so he takes full advantage of it for his own joys at the cost of other’s happiness. Long analogy is long, but it best sums what I feel towards this series now. Sigh.

Let’s see, Schneizel makes for a joke villain especially now that he’s became Lulu’s bitch. I mean, I read all the spoilers but it still didn’t prepare me for the sheer madness/stupidity of his motivations… which is none apparently. So for the first time, we actually have an antagonist that just decides to confront our protagonist because he thinks he’s supposed to do that. And really, Scheneizel as the first end-boss was fun for a moment but he turned oh-so-lame by running away at 70% HP! On the bright side, I think it was his just desserts to become Lulu’s bitch.

And Lulu. Oh Lulu. Admitedly the video recording was some impressive shit, but it certainly is stretching the limits of logic there since it had flawless timing. Heh, seriously, watching him run up all that flights of stairs after his Shinkiro got pwned was just hillarious. Should’ve shown him panting for the extra LULZ factor.

Then finally, Nunnally. Oh poor Nunnally. She sure has got her character messed up a lot at the endgame. Plus the sudden “OMG SHE CAN SEE!!” revelation was actually quite “WTF!” after you rewatch it again. I mean, like it’s done so damn arbitrarily that I’m surprised at why I went “WTF!” in the first place.

Now, I’m just wedging all my hopes for the final episode to actually tie up the loose ends. Somehow, I’m thinking we’ll never ever know what is the real truth behind the “Code” after all. They’ve been quite masterfully covering and throwing attention away from that part of the story up so nicely with all the SHOCK and AWE plot twists and developments. Perhaps they’ll leave it that way to open a possibility of another sequel/series/spin-off.

• OMG even Arthur acknowledges Lelouch as Emperor.
• Kallen vs C.C. Red vs Pink. Guess who wins. Personally I’m glad the pink kNIGHTMARE is gone.
• Table-chan whips up a Anti-FLEIJA lance for Lelouch. Lelouch, Suzaku and some grunts use it to penetrate Damocles in the instant FLEIJA gets shot.
• Gino vs Suzaku. Shinkiro gets trashed. Gino plays dirty and gets Kallen to two-time Suzaku.
• Lelouch actually does some running up stairs! It’s crazy how fast he was.
• Schneeze gets wet feet when Damocles is infiltrated, so he tries escapes while setting Damocles to self-destruct.
• Lelouch reads Schneeze’s plans and pulls a Mao on him. So that’s what they meant with “The key is Schneizel’s heart” last week. Schneeze becomes Lelouch’s bitch and shoots the traitor Diethard.
• Cornelia survives. The holy shit is Guilford surviving as well. So it looks like the only major casualty of the first FLEIJA is that bitch Romeyer. For some weird reason, Corny and Guilford are hospitalized at Penglai Island
• Yeah, Nunnally manages to break Charles’ Geass on her. SHE CAN SEE! And she challenges Lelouch to Geass her.

I don’t know why, but that eye-opening scene by Nunnally was kinda creepy for me. Maybe it’s because her HUGE EYES THE SIZE OF DINNER PLATES contrasted so much with her usual closed-eye look. Someone in Sunrise must be aiming for QUALITY this episode.

OMG EYES! THEY SEE!!

Surprisingly, the show is actually getting more and more intense rather than continuing on the route of putting out twists and turns like mad. I guess Goro still wants the show to end on a good note than to be labeled as another trainwreck.

Lelouch is finally more… “human”, as I dare to say, and I am pleased to see he isn’t tied down to his sister as much as before, now that she’s declaring herself as his enemy. Suzaku played a big role in doing that I guess, as well as C.C., who returns back to being his only confidante on his true feelings. That short scene of them both in the bedroom was really touching.

Of course, the process of “humanizing” Lelouch comes with at the cost of “demonizing” Schneizel to the max, which we see in this episode as he calmly lies to Nunnally about the casulties sustained in the Pendragon attack, and even killing Cornelia once she finds out his true objectives to kill millions of people to attain his “eternal peace”. Sure, he has his point, but man… he is one scary motherfucker. No wonder Charles was so on-guard towards him despite of Lelouch’s existence.

Nunnally also is a poor victim of Schneizel’s manipulation, but it’s truly a wonder she actually agreed with all his plans, even to the point of “accepting my brother’s sins” by volunteering to be the one to shoot FLEIJA when it comes down to it. Unlike others, I don’t think I can really blame her though, but she should have really thought better of it.

Otherwise, the show is gearing up for the final run, and this episode illustrates it best with the collage of images in the first half, accompanied by hitomi’s wonderful “Innocent Days”. Looks like Viletta and Ohgi had been really active ever since they were reunited.

Next week will be pretty hard I guess. Looks like all the signs point to C.C’s inevitable death. But seriously. A pink Lancelot for her? I really want to kill someone for that now.

Cornelia dies. After getting shot by a machine gun activated with a snap of Schneizel’s fingers. Terribly ignoble death for her I say. Terribly ignoble. I hope someone fulfills miasma’s request so I can use it for the lulz too.

Otherwise, Geass R2 23 was actually way better than I thought. I was expecting tons of emo-drama, but that didn’t happen. Instead, they’re seriously trying to give the show a sense of closure already, very noticeable at the first half of the episode after Lelouch cuts off Nunnally. That C.C. x Lelouch scene was pretty touching ;.;

Second half has EPIC KNIGHTMARE AERIAL BATTLES. Exploding volcanoes thrown in for good measure as well. Honestly though, while the maneuvering shit was kinda lame at the start (blame LoGH), at least we didn’t get spammed with alternating footage of Guren/Lancelot pwning tons of the cannon fodder guys.

Yeah, this episode deserves a proper post.

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In response to all the EVA-ness of Geass:

{!NovaJinx} and Suzaku and Lelouch are left to start a new mankind….holy shit that’s nasty

Oh god, DO NOT WANT!

(Man, when I start publishing stuff like this, I must be really, REALLY bored.)