First part of my 2009 in Review article. Only shows I’ve completed watching are in this list, divided in to four tiers of descending “accumulative entertainment value”.

GOD Tier

Bakemonogatari

Senjougahara-fascination in full swing.

Toradora

Poor Ami~n :(

Maria+Holic

“o..o..o..o..onii-sama no. IJIMEKKOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Ristorante Paradiso

Almost made me gay for megane-jiisan’s

Eden of the East

Mass Naked NEET Event.

Seitokai no Ichizon

I’m still rooting for Key-kun’s Harem End.

Awesome Tier

Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo

Epic space colony battles. Badass Asimo deserved more screentime.

Saki

Rin Shan Kai Hou is rather cheating.

Kanamemo

Lolicon Hocchan and musical episode made my Season.

GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class

Most educational anime I’ve watched this year.

Sora no Otoshimono

Flying panties are awesome.

Kuchuu Buranko

Second most educational anime I’ve watched this year.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei

Resolves a lot of questions for the series + lots of focus on Rika.

Okay Tier

CLANNAD After Story: KEY should stop using those deus ex machina devices so much.
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou: Needs more youkai.
Denpateki na Kanojo: The fastest way to happiness is to look awak from reality.
Asu no Yoichi: Better than I thought.
Hayate no Gotoku 2nd Season: J.C. Staff redeemed themselves.
Fight! Ippatsu Juuden-chan: Would’ve been Awesome tier if they didn’t overuse the urination trope.
Taisho Yakyuu Musume: Would’ve been Awesome tier if they won the last match.
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0: Did KEY had a hand in writing the last few episodes for this?
Ontama: Short and (bitter)sweet.
Darker than Black Ryuusei no Gemini: Didn’t learn from its predecessor.
Aoi Bungaku: Batshit insane Nana Mizuki was the highlight.
Kanokon OVA: Rather iyashii-kei, surprisingly.
Nyan Koi!: Just barely in here.
Suzumiya Haruhi II: Not counting Endless Eight that is!

Shit Tier

Kurogane no Linebarrels: Only watched it for the name similarity.
Asura Cryin’: Causality loops are mindfucking.
CANAAN: SUGOI SUGOI SUGOI SUGOI
Chrome-Shelled Regios: Felli was in the wrong show.
Tales of the Abyss: Even gg didn’t finish subbing this shit.
To Aru Majutsu no Index: Adaptation Decay.
Gundam 00 2nd Season: The Innovator’s names.
WHITE ALBUM: Give me back my boyfriend.
Tower of Druaga The Sword of Uruk: Needed more Ropers.
Munto TV: Pretentious as fuck.
K-ON!: A music anime with sucky music.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni: DEEN Adaptation.
Princess Lover!: Took itself as a joke.
Kampfer: Ode to Joy.
The Sacred Blacksmith: Cecily is annoying.
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu Purezza: WHITE ALBUM wannabe.
11eyes: The sex in the penultimate episode was just a vision? GODDAMNIT.

In total, 43 shows completed this year. I’m surprised at how much I managed to watch despite thinking about how slow this year was. Then again, I never did keep track of the number of shows I watched for the last few years…..

Part 2, which consists of other miscanellous accolades, should be up tomorrow!

©2012 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Also, did Gilgamesh die or is he still alive? And what is with Ki’s spoon fetish?! Was Lord Kelb wearing a SKIRT to his wedding? And LOL at Utu’s sudden proposal to Fatina when they were about to be overwhelmed, ahahaha.

Well, all in all, a surprisingly engaging Gonzo series, just sadly ruined by another nonsense ending by Gonzo. Dear god, Gonzo, stop ending your shows in this way! You are bound to be ruined if you don’t. And they’re gonna be doing Saki… oh dear.

©2012 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

P.S. An episode with Ropers that doesn’t end up with tentacle rape?! Unpossible! (No, Jil’s 3 second delusion doesn’t count.)

©2012 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Fatina~~♥! She’s oh-so-cute. Too bad she’ll probably get shafted again :(.

Also, Coopa?! Wearing glasses?! Holy shiet.

And Gonzo… what’s with the eyerape of Lady Amina’s bath scene =.=;;;;

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From “boy meets girl” to “boy and girl meets loli”. Sounds REEEEEEEEEEEEALLY familiar… like a certain 2001 Gonzo series that was really popular over here.

That said, they’re introducing a shitload of new characters right from the start already. It’s also kinda sad to see Fatina having to eke out a living as a lame tour guide T_T. Looks like Gilgamesh really screwed them up.

The new loli is also irresistibly cute. Definitely a loli-fied Kaaya. Oh wait, she’s Kaaya’s MOTHER OR GRANDMOTHER. OMG LOL.

This time round, I do hope they explain the underlying motives and the big conspiracy behind some of the shadier characters of the series. Season 1 had quite a lot of hints and clues but it ended without any proper underlying explanation.

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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.

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This looks like a good time for me to say something about superiority of actually buying the episodes (I spent 1100 BOST points, or about 22 U.S. dollars thus far), and to lampoon Kuro’s cheap-ass lameness. But I won’t. What Crunchyroll is doing is just nasty. The deal was to show the series for free on YouTube. We don’t know why GONZO agreed to that, and the deal made little sense to me, but since they did, they should have followed through with it. Now we know that either Cruncyroll or GONZO is not trustworthy (if GONZO made the decision to truncate the episode, it’s them; if Crunchyroll made it behind GONZO’s back, then the obvious).

In short, Kuro is still lame for not paying for his show, but he made his decision based on the information available at the start of the season, and was deceived. That is inexcusable and outrageous.

While Author has gotten the point of my post right, i.e. they promised us free streaming but instead didn’t fall through, I feel compelled to reply to his accusations that I am “lame” because I do not pay for my anime.

Yes, he has it right, I do not pay for the show, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I am “lame”. Given an unlimited amount of money, I would probably choose to spend at least 50% of it on anime, but sadly, being a student and also living in a country where the exchange rates make all but only the upper middle classes and above to be able to afford splurging on foreign stuff, I’m just plainly too poor to afford anything beyond the usual necessities every month.

But that doesn’t mean I do not support the buying of originals. I purchase a number of english-translated manga imported from the US every month, at the price of RM 34 or so, per book, and I have actually bought original DVD’s before. There’s also a whole bunch of Megami I import in each month to the tune of RM 50 a month. The prices are all of course, converted accordingly to the exchange rates.

However, let me put in to context, the imbalances of our buying power compared to the exchange rate. 1 US Dollar is equivalent to Ringgit Malaysia 3.2 at current rates, so a USD 10 manga is priced at around RM 32-36 here, after the inclusion of shipping fees and such by the bookstores. Yet, the buying power of the ringgit and the dollars are roughly the same in their respective countries, so a dollar converted to ringgit here immediately gets 3x more buying power (rough estimates again), but in reverse, a ringgit converted to a dollar has its worth reduced 3x. Not very fair.

So imagine paying USD 34 for a single volume of manga, USD 50 for a magazine and USD 180 for a DVD, and you’ll get the idea of how horrendously expensive to be a paying otaku over here. It’s hard not be “lame”, but hey, if you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it. I wonder if Author would’ve been willing to spend USD 70 (that’s the amount of ringgit that 22 USD converts to) on Druaga, if it were priced as such.

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I find it highly annoying, especially because I have been using Youtube much more, and I do not really like the CR site much. This blatant attempt to force the Youtube viewers to their site (meaning account registration and etc. etc.) is highly insulting and reeks of profiteering, even more so when the show is actually nearing it’s end, especially with the story turning a lot more darker and deeper in tone compared to most of the series. I had been looking forward for my usual fix of Druaga on Youtube, but this has left me in despair.

In fact, hints of this had emerged already during the upload of last week’s episode, where a sizable portion of the upper half of the Youtube upload was basically a billboard for Crunchyroll. I was quite irritated, but merely shrugged it off, but this tactic of uploading only the first 25% of the episode and forcing the rest of the viewers to their own site really takes the cake.

I sincerely hope it might be all a mistake and a botched upload, but the evidence points all to the contrary. I do hope that the people behind this realize that this is not the way to attract more viewers to their sites, and in fact causes quite the opposite, especially since there was a promise to fully stream the show on all the three sites that signed up initially.

Meanwhile, I await for my HD raw of Druaga episode 11 to finish.

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This episode was a fucking riot, with all the random traps and stuff. Those who loved the madness of episode one would definitely love this episode with all it’s hijinks.

Basically, Jil and co. try to take a shortcut that’s filled with traps, that when stepped on, activate a variety of jokes, such as turning them in to 8-bit sprites, exchange their genders, turn them in to furries, make them in to kigurumi mice, clone them in to versions of Koopa and etc. Bloody hilarious, especially the gender-change one. Jil made me laugh so hard when he enjoyed his new-found big boobs. And WTF was with that random onsen appearing suddenly?

As if that wasn’t enough, at the end of the cavern, they have to perform a funny act to please a door (voiced by the GOD, Norio Wakamoto) so that it would open up for them. Various things are tried, including Kaaya doing a cat impersonation (kawaii!) and finally, in the end, Jil decides to perform his family’s secret Roper Dance, but fails because Neeba did it first.

Man, this episode was sure whacked. Seriously, Gonzo, what are you trying to do with this show?!

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Okay, this show has turned rather interesting now. King Gilgamesh managed to survive unharmed from the assassination attempt, apparently due to the curse of Druaga, and Kaaya is probably way more older than she looks like. At the least, it seems that she and King Gilgamesh knows each other, and she also knows a lot more about the tower than she lets on about. While she also seems to give off a feeling of innocence, she sure does know how make people see things her way :). This show might not be so cliched as I thought.

Koopa and Melt finally get some well-deserved screentime, and Koopa is definitely win. When she did that “Mikuru-beam” pose, I half-expected “kira~kira~” stars to pop out lol. Minorin-sama is definitely having fun doing her voice.

Wonder if we’ll see a KOOPA BEEEMU!

©2012 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.