Kurogane's Anime Blog

Sakura Kinomoto in a washing machine.

Just watch. Fcuking cool clip.

The maker wins the internet. I need MOAR!!!

From ANN:

More Negima (2006-05-11 04:41:03)
Gainax and Shaft will co-produce a new Negima TV series to debut this fall in Japan. Star Child Records is also reportedly involved.

and from ANS:

5-10-06 (7:30AM EDT)—- GAINAX And SHAFT On Negima 2nd Stage
It’s been revealed animation studios GAINAX and Shaft will be teaming on the production of a second Mahou Sensei Negima! TV series to be directed by Akiyuki Shinbo (Nanoha / Paniponi Dash). Star Child Records will also be involved and this will mark the first time in many years since they last partnered with GAINAX. No other details are available but expect a Fall 2006 broadcast debut in Japan on TV Tokyo.

Considering the ultimate phail that was the Negima TV anime, with a lot of thanks to a certain party \*coughxebeccough\*, this news was the best one that I’ve heard in the whole week. I was literally crying in joy when I first read this. Akamatsu-sensei should have hired them first to do the anime, instead of the other trainwreck he used.

Of course, considering the track record that Gainax(Eva, Top wo Nerae) and Shaft(Tsukuyomi, Pani Poni) has, they are the best studios, IMHO, to animate the fanservice heaven greatness that is Negima. I’ll be waiting Fall ’06 with great anticipation.. ahhh… *waku waku suru ne….*. September seems so long away….

Oh, and for a random note, I’ve been getting obssesed with GTA:SA lately, having completed 9%, 61 gang tags, max cycling, stamina and muscle, plus getting a 2.2kft wheelie in the time I’ve been playing (a day or so). Not a very good time for that, since I have my finals in less than 3 days :)…. but the BMX is just too damned addictive….

P.S. : Omni really has super powers. I wish him a speedy recovery :).

Now… this is a much more worthwhile topic to spend time on rather than bitching about blogsuki’s rape…..

So jason has started a ball rolling by proposing the creation of you own ideal harem, with the rules of 6 entries (either single or twins) maximum, not including a meido (which makes the total of 7 lovely ladies) and no more than one character per series. So without further ado, I present my harem set ;).

**Harem Entry 1 : Suzumiya Haruhi (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu)**

First up, would be Haruhi, filling up the *tsunderekko*/God role. Haruhi would no doubt be the sparker of fun for me and my harem, given her propensity to be interested in such stuff and also that the fact she has the power to make them happen. Hell… if that’s not enough, she’s already created a cult/religion based on her. Without any doubt, Haruhi would be the no.1 entry in my (dream)harem.

**Harem Entry 2 : Kaede Fuyou (SHUFFLE!)**

Ah.. yes.. my love for Kaede still hasn’t diminshed yet, even when faced with the flak Kaede herself has received, no thanks to her infamous boxcutters. Still… I would love her to be in my harem, filling up the “dedicated ‘wife’ ” role in my harem. Worry not, Kaede! I will love everyone equally.

**Harem Entry 3 : Hayate Yagami (Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha)**

Coming up on no.3 would be Hayate Yagami, the newcomer mage in the Nanoha-verse. While everyone is fawning over Nanoha x Fayt, I found myself inexorably driven towards the sweet yet strong Hayate-chan. She would fill up the loli portion of my harem nicely and I’d be getting Reinforce-chan as an extra as well (jason, i hope this isn’t over the regulations :P). Plus, being a closet cosplay freak, she could team up pretty well with Haruhi ;).

**Harem Entry 4 : Reverie “Ren” Metherlence (Erementar Gerad)**

Next up, on no.4, coming from a lesser known series, would be Ren-chan from Erementar Gerad. It would not be exaggerating to say that she was the saving grace of the whole series, apart from Nana-chan’s voicing of Cisqua. I was attracted to her “blur”-ness, or more easily said as her naivete. Still, she is a powerful weapon and her cuteness is undeniable ;).

**Harem Entry 5 : Setsuna Sakurazaki (Mahou Sensei Negima)**

My no.5 would be Secchan from Negima, the extremely powerful and *kakkoii* Shinmeiryuu swordsgirl. First off, her weapons of choice, the long nodachi swords are already +15 moé, and the semi-*tsunderekko*-ness is very enjoyable to watch ;).

**Harem Entry 6 : Skuld (Adult) (Aa! Megami-sama)**

Coming in at no. 6 would be adult Skuld. A perfect blend of adult appeals and naivete, Skuld(adult) exudes an mature aura yet laced with childish innoncence that makes her appeal almost irresistible. Plus, her tsunderekko act scores high points with me.

**Harem Meido: Tachibana (Mahoraba ~Heartful Days)**

Last but certainly not the least, my *meido* of choice to complete my harem set would be Tachibana, the uber 1337 *meido* from Mahoraba. Having high level physical *jutsu* and a cool exterior that hides a much more feminine side, Tachibana is the perfect *meido* foil for my harem. I can already imagine her and Secchan providing the front-line while Hayate and Skuld giving the heavy artillery support, in times of danger ;).

Well… so this concludes my, current, ideal harem set. Of course there were more choices and I could’ve maximised my harem quotient with twin(cests) but I digress. My tastes are quite fickle, heh.

Dead tired now… after returning from GACC, which ironically was the reason I haven’t blogged or watched a single episode of anime this week. Was busy with the promotion booth throughout the week, and then yesterday and today, I was helping out on setting up and running the whole event. The effort was quite worth it though :).

First off, the event was quite highly publicised and was timed to coincide with a few other major events my university was holding on that day plus the school holidays, so attendance was quite good, with the amount of visitors ranging to over 1k to 1.5k people. Luckily, we chose the biggest venue in the uni to hold it, so it didn’t really felt cramped or overcrowded even with the number of people attending it.

Secondly, the amount of cosplayers was quite high compared to past events I’ve attended and to add to it, the quality of the cosplaying was one of the highest I’ve seen in recent times in Malaysia, so I was quite enjoying myself admiring the increase in quality of cosplay, especially the one who cosplayed as Haruko from FLCL, which I might add is quite a brave choice to cosplay in as, and luckily she did had the spunk of Haruko from FLCL, judging from the interesting things I’ve heard and also by the fact she won the cosplay competition. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see the events on stage as I got (myself)assigned to a place(Gempak booth) where I couldn’t see the stage T_T.

Other than that, the other events were quite interesting, as we had a M:TG tournament and a PS2 competition going on at the same time as well, so the visitors at least had something that caters to each other’s interest.The vendors in the event were also quite good, as I managed to find quite a lot of interesting things, ranging from a 1/6 scale Rin Tohsaka Swimsuit Edition Model (which almost made me wanted to commit a crime) to Ichigo Mashimaro and Evangelion gashapons. In the end, I settled on buying the EVA gashapon, as it was the full set of the Loligoth Asuka set, plus it was quite cheap, and now I have the full set sitting on top of my monitor. Rin’ll have to wait for a while. She’s darn expensive :P. To think back on it, this is actually the first time I’ve really bought anime collectibles :P.

I’ll have to excuse for the lack of pics for the time being. I really want a digicam for this events :P.

Just a little plug to help out my local anime club, EMiNA, which is hosting an event called GACC, or Games, Anime and Comics Circle, which will be a gathering for anime, manga and gaming fans in one roof to interact, socialize, bla bla, etc… Well, I’m sure you all get the idea.

They’ve got a nice website set up at http://whatisgacc.com/, with all the info and stuff for the event, so if anyone’s free that day, please come and join and support the local otaku scene :).

I haven’t been blogging much lately owing to a major angst attack last week, which explains my emo blogging recently, and seems to be continuing on to this week. I was feeling totally demotivated to do anything, even watching anime, which I currently have about 4 series (not including the ones I usually watch) in backlog.

I guess I’ll give them a little mention as well. First off, Pita Ten is quite nice to watch. Yukari Tamura shines in this one, with her voicing of Misha, the devilish troublemaker angel. The other characters are fun to watch as well, and I really have to say that Ten-chan and Kotaro-kun already win over the whole Bounty List at their tender age of 10. Koboshi-chan surely made the correct choice early on :).

Next off, Paranoia Agent is proving to be a great surreal series to watch as macabre as it is. Noto Mamiko also playes quite prominently in it, which is an instant +10 fanboyism to me. My favourite ones for now, is that episode “Happy Family Planning”, about a trio who tries to commit suicide, and “ETC”, where a bunch of housewives compete with each other to tell the most macabre(read:illogical) tales about the villain :).

As for Ginban Kaleidoscope, “Kiss my ass” wins, but not enough to make me marathon it in one round, while Nadesico is proving to be too crazy for my angst-infested mind now. So I’ll leave this two for later.

In other news, Matthew’s blog reports a remake of the Negima anime but in the form of OVA’s to be shown in Negima events. Looking at the pics already makes it seem there’s some hope, but I won’t be too quick to jump on the bandwagon. In any case, it should (hopefully) be at the least, 1% better than XEBEC’s horrible butchering of Negima in it’s anime version.

While over at ANN, as if in response to my earlier post (scroll down or click here), they’re organizing a Narutard Naruto Design-A-Ninja Contest. Mr. Answerman already wins for sarcasm , just by looking at the sample he threw in. I say he should post some of the lamest entries for all to see, which I think at least 95% of the entries will be. Random selection should be fine XD.

I semi-regularly follow ANN’s Answerman section, purely to see what kind of idiotic questions that the poor guy gets from the Narutards/\*replace-with-series-name\*-tards, which at times makes me sigh on the follies of mankind and at other times, just makes me LMAO.

Recently, the column’s been running a few contests, which at first ranged from simple “fill-in-the-empty-captions” style contests, which really only yielded lameness. But the most recent one had me in stitches as he challenged readers to submit in plot ideas for “over-the-top, ridiculously cliched shows” and threw in quite a nice stash of stuff for the winners.

Finally, he seems to have found one, “The Adventures of Magical Kitty Princess Cutie-Kat” which claims to tell the story of a \*normal\* girl who trips over a kitten one day and gets bestowed with magical powers.

Reading on the complete synopsis really makes me LOL and, same with Mr.Answerman, I also admire Ms. Wendy’s (I selfishly assume :) dedication as well, as she even set up “fansite” for her show too :).

Mr.Answerman’s also going to put up runner-ups for his contest later as well, so I gladly wait to see for more hackneyed plot ideas and anime cliché’s ;).

Jason, the most serious fanboy I’ve ever known in the blogosphere did a little post about anime blog quality ratings 2-3 days ago. Let’s see how much I fare at it…..

Blog Itself

+1 point for WordPress. Favortism. Plain and simple. Best thing ever since the advent of the Internet and Firefox.

**Look and Feel**

*+1 point for viewable on small (i.e. 1024 x 768) monitors.* Mine barely fits in though :P.
*+1 point for viewable cross browsers, down to Netscape 4.* Should be :).
*+1 point for quick loading (i.e. should be zero wait when viewed through broadband).*
*+1 point for using good HTML techniques, i.e. specifying width and height tags for images and description tags for links. (Credit: Zyl)* Thanks to Zyl for the heads-up. Still haven’t rewritten my 10k+ screencaps HTML, but I swear any future pictures will all have this.
*+1 point for modifiying readily available theme instead of leaving it “factory stock.”* Running on a heavily (badly) modified Almost Spring theme. Need to modify it more though.

Blogger

*+1 point for using e-mail address.* There’s a nice “Email me” link on the side bar :).
*+1 point for over one year of anime blogging.* Counting my time on Blogspot(ughhh..) yeah, that’s roughly one year for me.
*+1 point for at least ten posts a month.*
*-1 point for any day with more than five posts. Post dilution theorem.* Can’t help it, sometimes I’m too darn lazy, sometimes, I have tons of energy :P.

Community

*+1 point for keeping a blogroll. Blogrolls are important for community building.*
*+1 point for keeping a blogroll up-to-date. I still see a lot of blogs pointing to this “toybox” thing. By keeping the blogroll up-to-date, it shows that the blogger actually visits blogs on their blogroll and not just put up links for trade. Visiting other blogs is also a big part of community building.*
*+1 point for referencing other blogs once in a while. Again, under this “visiting other blogs is good for community building” canopy.*
*+1 point for lack of comment spam.*
*+1 point for RSS or Atom feed available.*
*+1 point for valid and Magpie parsable RSS or Atom feed. (Credit: James.)* Not sure, I just let WP take care of it.

Posts

*+1 point if posts are categorized by series or some other system that makes some sense.*
*+1 point for varied post structure. Not everything needs to be six (or four) images and a paragraph.*
*+1 point for screenshots. I like screenshots.* Ok, maybe not too much recently.
*+2 points for over 30 screenshots an episode. I like screenshots.*
*+1 point for occasional fanservice.*
*+1 point for reviews averaging over 200 words long. I like words.*
*+1 point for punctuation. I like commas. Semicolons are good too. Indifferent about exclaimation marks.*

Content

*+3 points for blogging about crap shows and making fun of them. I 100% understand why people only blog about shows that they like, but it’s always humorous MST3K style to blog about shows that are absolutely junk. How can anyone blog about Final Approach with a straight face?* Does Kagihime count?
*+3 points for using memes that anime watchers would understand but no one else would. (i.e. “Omega symmetrical docking of the year!” and “Minmay Defense”)*
*+3 points for not being afraid to go against popular opinion. I can’t seem to find non-sarcastic/cynical/joking versions for “Top Ten Reasons Why I’m Haardo Gay for Shinn Asuka” and “Final Fantasy Unlimited Is an Action and Emotional Tour-de-Force” in the blogosphere… but if I did, I’d definitely read them.* I seem to have done this with my Otome bashing.
*+3 points for blogging about shows no one else is at the moment. Nadesico in a sea of Mai Otome 4tw.* Again, does Kagihime count?
*+3 points for inclusion of manga reviews. The ratio of anime blogs to manga blogs is like 25 to 1, in other words, about the same ratio of males to females in a class titled, “RF and High-Speed Analog Circuit Design.”* \*points to Sidebar\*
*+3 points for non-generic tone. After reading someone’s blog, one should get a sense of, “That’s one angry person,” “That’s one cheerful person,” or “That’s one witty person.” If the blog fails to convey some sort of emotion through the tone of the writing, it’s generic.* I’m shamelessly admitting to it.

Totals up to 40 :P. Anyways, I still need to improve a crapload of stuff around, especially the “About” page, where everytime I try to sit down and write it, I seem to get stage fright.

Yes, it does sounds clichéd, which was quite why I didn’t really pick up Eureka 7 at first. I did get some of it’s OPED singles and particularly liked it, especially the first ED, **Himitsu Kichi**. I did thought of watching it sometime when I’m particularly free though, just to see how it is, well, y’know, surfing mechas? C’mon.

The chance kinda came this week, when I “acquired” the subbed episodes from a “certain” source, and seeing on how I had nothing to do(well, technically I had a few…”not-so-urgent” assignments) in the meantime while waiting for the next week of anime, I sat down and marathoned it.

Safe to say, I was quite surprised by it. The first episode already attracted me thanks to it’s FLCL-esque vibe it’s been giving off, mostly with Renton (I could’ve sworn he had the same *seiyuu* as Naota), the music and the whole setting, plus the whole “mecha piloted by mystery girl crashing in to house” really kinda reminded me of FLCL too.

The later episodes was also a joy to watch, as Studio Bones retains their Rahxephon style by focusing more on the characters rather than the action. Michiko Neya(Talho) wins this series, really missed listening to her voice recently :P. The rest of the characters are well fleshed out, and although some similarities can be seen with their previous works, it remains a good watch. I’d always liked how Studio Bones interconnects their characters together.

Well, that wraps my semi-review of Eureka 7, mainly for the first 13 episodes. I’m going to catch up on the rest now ;).

Got these off danbooru recently. It’s apparently a outline for an alternate reality bishoujo dating game based on the Rozen Maiden characters. I find it pretty interesting and quite good too. I so hope they can turn it into a game or even better, an anime as a spinoff :P.

*(Continue on for the lowdown)*

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