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Kanokon 2

post from We Are Mizuho! on 12 April 2008 10:49:26 PM. © We Are Mizuho!

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http://hayama.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/kanokon-2/

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It Only Took Two Years…

post from Hop Step Jump! on 12 April 2008 08:19:00 PM. © Hop Step Jump!

One thing I asked myself upon finishing Clannad was, “Of all the recent anime adaptations of Key visual novels, which had the most likable male lead?” After some thought, I settled on Okazaki Tomoya, but it was while evaluating Aizawa Yuuichi’s character that I tripped on something I had never tripped on before: [...]

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http://anime.jefflawson.net/2008/04/12/it-only-took-two-years/

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Nijuu Mensou no Musume (The Girl of Twenty Faces)
Episode 1 - The Doorway

post from Cinnamon Ass on 12 April 2008 06:33:00 PM. © Cinnamon Ass

OP - Kasumi (369) - the song’s catchy, and the animation’s filled with wireframes. It’s quite a nice OP, really, especially as it gives absolutely nothing away about the show whilst still showing you the cast.

ED - unnamed world (Aya Hirano) - I’m not a big fan of Ms Hirano’s singing voice but it’s alright, I guess. Not quite sure where the three ladies and their “detective club” fit in - I presume it’s just for fanservice…

Chizuko Minamo’s rich parents have died, and she now lives in her house with her aunt and uncle, unable to claim her inheritance officially until she is older. Deeply unhappy, she barely eats and instead holes herself up in her room reading Sherlock Holmes and Poirot novels, dreaming of escape - her only friend being the kindly butler who serves the family. She longs to escape with the mysterious Man of 20 Faces, the gentleman thief who steals priceless works from those who do not deserve to have them and announces his coming by letter.

Chizuko takes ill one night having refused to eat again (she lives on chocolate bars she stashes under her pillow!) and her adopted parents try to emphasise how much they care for her - however, the kindly butler reveals that he is, in fact, the Man of 20 Faces, originally there to steal a priceless ruby that belonged to Princess Anastasia of the Romanovs; having discovered that Chizuko’s aunt and uncle are trying to poison her with aconite so they can claim her inheritance, he also steals Chizuko. However, as they flee to his camouflaged airship, they are pursued by a hapless detective AND a Wolverine-wannabe who appears to have been crushed by a train but no doubt hasn’t been as “Chiko” heads off to a life of adventure.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume shouldn’t be on at stupid o’clock at night - it’s an ideal family adventure show really, even with the poisonous parental figures. It’s set in a very European-flavoured Japan (everything is priced in yen!) and the atmosphere is very Tintin-esque, all gung-ho adventure with car chases round the streets and high derring-do. For this reason it probably won’t push many people’s anime buttons; it’s fun, but it’s a throwback to Lupin and so forth in atmosphere and I don’t know if that’s what people want in their anime these days.

With that said, I enjoyed this first episode quite a lot. It didn’t rock my world or anything (Chiko was an annoying little brat with no apparent reason for far too much of it for that) but I think it’s got a lot of potential to be an enjoyable adventure story, and it’s got a decent team working on it from the looks of things. Besides, there’s nothing else decnet on on Saturday’s, I might as well give this a go!

(that’s not meant to damn the show with faint praise; it is pretty good. But Saturday is a bit crap for anime this season; Blassreiter alone is an almost impossible nadir to recover from…)

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http://www.ass-no-ryu.com/animeblog/?p=1098

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S.A. Episode 1

post from AnimeSlice on 12 April 2008 02:26:00 PM. © AnimeSlice

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http://www.animeslice.com/archives/2008/04/12/248/

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[G-Man] What constitutes a loser

post from Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts on 12 April 2008 02:13:07 PM. © Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

I was busy laughing my head off watching a rerun of the famous Leeroy Jenkins World of Warcraft clip when I stumbled on a video clip of a guy dressed up as a Paladin, attending what appears to be some sort of convention . This “guy” was obviously doing a cosplay of Leeroy Jenkins, [...]

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http://www.riuva.com/?p=1054

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Kanokon 02

post from Kurogane's Anime Blog on 12 April 2008 01:32:00 PM. © Kurogane's Anime Blog

Awesome stuff. Just pure awesome stuff. Chizuru banzai! Kouta-kun banzai! Ayako Kawasumi banzai! Noto Mamiko banzai!The highlights:©2008 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved..

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http://kurogane.animeblogger.net/2008/04/13/kanokon-02/

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Soul Eater 01

post from Sea Slugs! Anime Blog on 12 April 2008 01:00:47 PM. © Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

Maka is a young upcoming Meister at the Shinigami Weapon Meister University (SWMU). She and her trusty cool sidekick Soul Eater, a human who morphs into Maka’s scythe and is constantly drooling for some souls to consume, are working towards collecting and consuming 99 human souls and a witch soul so that Soul Eater [...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seaslugteam/~3/269037346/

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Kaiba Episode 1 - Your Name Is Warp

post from Cinnamon Ass on 12 April 2008 11:09:00 AM. © Cinnamon Ass

OP - Never (Seira) - metamorphosing arms ahoy! The music is beautiful even if the slightly Engrishy singing is a little strange.

ED - Carry Me Away (Seira) - another beautiful, strangely Engrishy song, and I think I prefer the animation to the OP; there’s a beautiful shot at the end with a plant flowering that’s particularly brilliant.

A boy/man/whatever awakens in a ruined room to discover a hole in his body, a strange triangular insignia tattooed around his navel area and his only possession a locket with a picture of a girl inside that he doesn’t remember; in fact, he’s totally amnesiac. He is attacked by flying machines that seek to harvest both bodies and memories, which are stored as tiny metallic cones, but is saved by a cyclopian astronaut emu (seriously) and his own latent pyrokinetic powers.

He escapes to a settlement where the reality of the world becomes clear - memories and bodies are interchangeable and discardable without a moment’s thought when snakes can become beautiful women in contests, brothers are discarded to clear space for data and death is shrugged off as a minor inconvenience. A man named Popo, who also helped save our mysterious hero from memory harvesting earlier, explains that the rich live among the clouds and freely trade bodies whereas the poor live in the slums below, and offers to take Popo up to see if they can find out anything about him.

In a seedy dive where beautiful bodies are being traded, our John Doe is assessed from top to tail by a mysterious lady as part of negotiation for safe passage on board a shuttle off the planet. However, a Collector sees the mysterious triangular mark and starts to ask awkward questions, demanding a quick escape for Popo and the newly named “Warp”. Warp ends up escaping on board the shuttle with the mysterious lady despite the Collector’s best efforts to stop them while the astronaut emu watches; but what of Neiro, the mysterious girl in Warp’s pendant whom Popo has stashed away whilst he tries to recover her memories?

Apologies for the long, waffly and possibly incorrect summary, but Kaiba is a confusing show. So many seeds of so many plot lines are laid out in this one episode that even without the strange visuals there’s a lot to think about (for instance, what’s the link between the kioku-sha (I can’t think of a good translation - “Memoriser”?) and Warp? It’s obviously not good given the final shot where I believe it mouths “Kaiba”, the real name of the protagonist).

First off - visually the show is fascinating. The world, as someone else has noted, like The Clangers via plasticine and CG, and it displays more imagination than pretty much anything else on the air at the moment (Soul Eater, whilst visually striking, doesn’t display the creativity seen here). The animation is unsurprisingly creative (when people die they explode into droplets, for instance) and I really hope the AstroEmu appears again as it’s a brilliant piece of character design. I know it’s not going to be to everyone’s taste but you can’t deny Kaiba’s originality this season.

Plot-wise from my babbling you can tell I enjoyed this a lot. The offhand way in which memory is treated makes for an interesting backdrop, and although the central characters being amnesiac is a bit of a well-worn narrative device I’ll be fascinated to seee how their pasts pan out; the series is, however, pitched as a “sci-fi romance”, and a lot is going to ride on how Kaiba and Neiro interact when they’re both a little more compos mentis.

Kaiba’s obviously not going to be for everyone, and I don’t know whether it’s just the novelty that makes it so interesting so far, but I am fervently anticipating finding out where the show goes from here.

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http://www.ass-no-ryu.com/animeblog/?p=1097

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Macross Frontier - Alterations Between The Two
First Episodes

I?m not going to do a full post on this episode because I more ore les did already back when it first aired however due to someone pointing it out and then me watching and seeing the same thing, I did find out that there are some changes between the previous episode and this one which I?ll talk about.

For the most part there weren?t any huge changes to the plot. It really just seemed they added a couple of scenes and probably took some out but not that I saw. Of course there was also the OP in this episode, which the other one lacked. It gave me a lot of hope for the show since the lyrics dealt with romance, and I love romance. The big scene differences were the additions of the guy flying around with Sheryl which never happened before plus her just seeing them as she was coming into the concert hall. They also revealed why he is called ?Princess? but not entirely. They kind of hinted at him having dressed up as one for something.

I do of course want to say one thing that isn’t completely related to the changes between the two episodes but more or less about the series in general. Sheryl is a bitch. I hope to god that the guy ends up with Ranka. This doesn?t even have anything to do with her being more loli like then Sheryl either. She?s a cute girl who seems nice and sincere and Sheryl is a bitch. However partially because I?m pessimistic I?m not sure if it will go that way. Plus shows like to redeem characters like her and if they do she may end up with him, but I still will always hope for Ranka.

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http://xebek.animeblogger.net/2008/04/12/macross-frontier-alterations-between-the
-two-first-episodes/

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Alison and Lillia Episode 1 - Alison and Will

OP - Tameiki no Hashi (Shinoe Yukawa) - recorders! I like recorders! I also like cave paintings hinting at interesting plot twists…

ED - Sayonara no Omajinai (Sou Matsumoto) - more recorders! I still like recorders! Photos of the cast abound. Nothing very interesting to see here.

Two great kingdoms are separated by a mountain range and a vast river, and have been warring with each other for centuries. On the Eastern side, the Rokshe Commonwealth, a slightly bookish teenager named Wilhelm (or Will) is surprised when his friend Alison, an air force pilot, comes to visit with stories of her time in the war (although she’s not allowed to fly fighter planes). Whilst generally catching up they bump into an old man renowned for his tall tales who spins them a story of his time working in an elite, secretive poison gas squad during the war, and a mysterious “treasure” that could bring an end to the conflict. However, when an ominous mayoral official comes to take the old man away due to unspecified tax issues, Alison and Will give chase, eventually commandeering a plane to investigate.

I tend to be very “bloke-ish” when it comes to fiction, particularly TV shows. I like plot, plot and more plot, and sometimes the characters just get in the way; of course it’s important to have interesting characters, but it’s the story progression that usually gets me interested in a show more than delving into character psyches. This is why I’ve held up on writing anything about Alison and Lillia so far because realistically not an awful lot happens in the first episode, and whilst there’s a lot of exposition to set up the world view and begin the story there’s nothing that really grabs the attention like, say, psychedelic concert scenes or plants bursting out of the ground like some of the other shows this season. Frankly, I found the first episode a little boring on first watch because there’s nothing to really latch on to visually or narratively as yet.

However, on rewatching (yes, with subtitles) it becomes immediately obvious that the characterisation of Alison and Will is key to enjoying this episode. While Alison’s animation occasionally falls into the SD-jealousy trap, the dialogue between the two of them is well written and consistently characterised (despite the somewhat clunky exposition at times); both of them feel realistic and act in sensible ways without going over the top. Despite the show giving off a low-budget feel with bright colours and simplified character designs the animation and art are fine overall; it may seem like an odd thing to say, but the show doesn’t feel so much like anime as it does a novel with its pacing and generally understated nature thus far.

I’m optimistic about Alison and Lillia, but admittedly only cautiously so. It’s extremely early days yet to really tell how the story is going to develop; we know very little of what’s going on in the war and who the major players are in this story, and there’s always the possibility that even if if the “Alison” part of the story is fine the “Lillia” part will end up being dull. Time will tell, I suppose.

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http://www.ass-no-ryu.com/animeblog/?p=1096

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