bingerama

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=5943

The good thing about this anime is it’s so easy to take screenshots, cos there’re a lot of thoughtful looks and flying around fighting with no dialogue. As you can see I am pretty obsessed with this screenshot thing. Every time I’m done with a set it’s so exhausting that I don’t think I could do it again.

Anyway, I’ve been watching this series over the last year or so. Still not sure what to do about the movie and the specials,  but I’m not feeling particularly motivated to watch them since I didn’t particularly like the series. Season 1 started out with an interesting premise but whittled out into too much slice of life mediocrity. Season 2 showed vast improvements in the form of: (a) more exciting things happen (although as expected, none of the mysteries get resolved by the end of the series) (b) Yuji becomes slightly less useless (c) Shana’s ‘urusai urusai urusai!!!’ thing only occurs twice in the whole 24 episodes.

And what is up with Margery Daw’s bearform? If I were a hot blonde chick I would not turn into a bear when I fight. So uncool.

The bad guys are uninteresting but somehow just never die. The plot is not very coherent and kinda pointless – it showed signs of improving then plummeted again when nothing ended up getting connected or explained. The show’s saving grace is the somewhat cute love triangle (although Yoshida Kazumi really gets on my nerves, and all the ‘watashi mo makenai! we will both be very fair and fight for his love and be best friends!’ bullshit. Sorry girls, things don’t work like that IRL.)

What I’m really upset about is that I finished Skip Beat! last night and I don’t see any imminent signs of season 2. I’m inconsolable. Tsuruga-san! Kaettekure!

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=883

Took these screenshots months ago and finally decided to put them to some use. I don’t even remember when I actually finished the series, so this is clearly going to be a shitty review. But it’s ok, cos the screenshots still look awesome as usual. I’m also pretty far into Gundam Seed Destiny (to be accurate, I’ve been on episode 42 or so for at least 5 months now), so my opinion on the whole is very much influenced by the sequel.

This was my first foray into the land of Gundam and had the life changing effect of converting me into a huge mecha fan. I don’t know what I was thinking before! Now I can see why it is every little boy’s dream to be a mecha pilot.

Two things I found really disturbing about this anime: 1) the way Kira screams when he’s having one of his anguished moments – I pretty much hated Soichiro Hoshi before I watched this, and the screaming really didn’t help. Thankfully Kira becomes 2,000 times cooler when he stops crying and I promptly became a fan thereafter 2) the fact that Kira actually slept with someone in the show??!!? WTF dude aren’t they 15 or something? It’s just wrong. What are they teaching all those youngsters who’re hoping to grow up to be mecha pilots??

Things I really liked: 1) the way Kira falls out of the sky and kicks everyone’s ass (not sure but I think he does this on multiple occasions)  2) Koyasu Takehito as super charming big brother type character 3) Marrue Ramius, because it’s practically like they transplanted Katsuragi wholesale from NGE 4) nice shiny robots.

I really liked the story too (minus all the drama emo parts). I think they did a pretty good job with the whole conflict such that you could convincingly sympathise with both sides. It was rehashed a little too many times, but it did manage to be somewhat thought provoking wrt the whole why do people fight issue (tbqh it has long been a personal belief of mine that if more people in the world read more books and watched more anime there’d be less people blowing themselves up etc.) Oh and the whole childhood friends turned enemies thing was much more plausible than a certain other anime I reviewed 8 months ago.

In conclusion, not as good as 00, but still fun to watch (especially the shiny robots!) Plus the OST is quite catchy (although I’m not happy with how they use stills for the OP and ED, cheaters).