http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=348

The name of this anime bugs the hell out of me. Fruits Basket. Fruit Basket. FruitSSSS Basket. As TJ observed, these people need to stop trying to speak English until the Japanese language develops more consonants.

A family cursed with turning into animals whenever they’re hugged by a member of the opposite sex. Sounds like a completely fluffy anime? It is. Up till episode 11 it’s been pretty insubstantial, barring a few ominous hints of possible disaster (which I’m sure Tohru will successfully avert with her winning personality and incredible cuteness). It’s ok though, because this anime never makes pretenses at anything but fluff. And it is very good at being fluffy.

One thing I really don’t get is how they make such a big deal out of Kyo being a cat and thus not part of the Zodiac, then they introduce, of all things, a fricking SEAHORSE. Like huh?!!? A seahorse?!?! How random is that I ask you. Also bewildering is why Yuki looks like a girl and sounds like a girl. He sounds exactly like Youko from The Twelve Kingdoms. In fact, he is Youko from The Twelve Kingdoms. I like Hisakawa Aya’s voice a lot (recently I discovered that she also plays Haruka in RahXephon, which I’m currently trying to re-watch), so it kinda pains me to watch (listen to?) her play the primary (or part there of) love interest of a high school girl. I always feel a bit sorry for these female seiyuus who play young male characters. How would you feel if all of Japan agreed that you sounded like a prepubescent boy? Definitely not the most flattering thing you could tell a woman…

I really like Kyo’s character, but then I’m a bit biased because he’s played by Seki Tomokazu, who probably has the best main-character-of-anime voice I’ve ever heard (even if he ends up playing essentially the same guy in every one lawl). Whenever he softens up it’s soooo cuuuuuute. There are some scenes where you just gotta go awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww /warm fuzzy feeling. This show is excellent at producing warm fuzzy feelings. Which is why I don’t understand why guys enjoy it. It makes me laugh sometimes but it’s not that funny. Then again, I don’t really understand why guys enjoy most anime.

The opening theme is pretty warm and fuzzy too, although the singer’s voice is a bit too saccharine sweet for my liking. It has a nice wistful tone to it that suits the story well, as does the rest of the soundtrack, which is suitably happy and/or sappy depending on the situation.

One of the biggest things that determine how much I like an anime is how good I feel about it, and I have to say, this one gives out damn good vibes. I try to keep happy shows for the pre-bedtime slot (the one time I didn’t do that I ended up dreaming about Shinji having conversations with himself while sitting in LCL), but it’s kinda hard to find a happy show that isn’t completely stupid. Definitely dragging this one out as long as I can. =p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koutetsu_Sangokushi

I got suckered into watching this because of the cast. That was before I found out that they took characters from all my favourite anime and made them gay. Gawd. I’ve never felt so cheated in my life.

Because the story is loosely based on Romance of Three Kingdoms, all the characters have to be male. Even if they look and sound 100% female, THEY’RE NOT. And they couldn’t have left it at brotherly love, they had to inject all this homoerotic stuff into it. I don’t understand what kinda audience this is supposed to appeal to. I know guys are supposed to find girl on girl action a big turn on, but the same thing just doesn’t apply to girls. Why couldn’t they have thrown a couple of concubines in there? Or they could’ve just made the Sun Quan character a female (JUST LIKE SHE LOOKS AND SOUNDS), it’s not like they’re taking anything from the story aside from the character names. And then in episode 4 (I don’t consider this a spoiler because the plot is non-existent at this point anyway), they kill off one of the extremely few non-gay characters in the show. Urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

And the Liu Bei character is this freaky little twerp with curly pink hair who seems to have a crush on Zhuge Liang (who likes gathering flowers). WTF!!! I don’t know much of the original Three Kingdoms, but I did hear a few of the stories when I was a kid, plus I played the Sango fighting game, and all this is just violating my sensibilities.

Maybe it’ll get better later, maaaaybe…

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=14

One thing I like about aznV.TV is that the home page has a ‘What’s Popular’ section that occasionally recommends random anime that I’ve never heard of (I don’t believe they’re actually Popular per se, but I won’t fault them). Sometimes when the synopsis sounds mildly interesting, I figure, why not? And I watch a couple of episodes. Before I know it I’m already 20% through the series and I’m committed to finishing it. Like with this one.

I actually kinda like it so far. I can’t quite figure out what it’s trying to do, but there’s a trilogy that comes after it so this may just be some kind of prologue. It seems that way anyway. I’m already on episode 5 out of 14 and it doesn’t feel like a whole lot has happened. I do like the way they’re portraying the relationship between the main characters. It’s pretty mild and understated, but I think it’s very endearing. The protagonist is a pleasant surprise - he’s a little confused and bewildered but he seems pretty self-possessed (rare for anime teenagers). PLUS he is not a moron (also rare).

The captain of the patrol ship they’re on really bugs me because she keeps referring to her crew as ‘her precious crew’ (kawaii kimitachi or something to that effect). The first time it was sorta cute I guess, but after the 3rd time it was just weird. And she carries this sword around that she waves like some kind of baton when they’re in battle. I don’t know if there’s a point to that. I like swords and all, but it’s just awkward when you try to force it into a spaceship fight sequence. Speaking of which, I don’t really like spaceship fight sequences. Even less than I like mecha fights. It’s just things exploding here and there, the grandeur of it all escapes me.

I don’t really like the soundtrack either. The opening theme aspires to be Stars Warsy, and it’s very un-anime like. Urgh. I don’t care what you do with the anime itself, but the opening theme should sound like an opening theme. Totally fail. Oh and every episode starts with this guy talking in some strange language. It sounds so strange I can’t even tell if it’s a language that actually exists but I’ve never heard of, or if they totally made it up. So damn poser.

Not going to end it on that note cos I still think this is a decent anime so far. I think in future I should structure my posts by talking about the things I don’t like first…

Huge ass picture, but doesn’t it look so nice and colourful??

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=49

I was really scared about watching Evangelion. I put it off for the longest time, but the boyfriend won out eventually. I’d seen RahXephon (supposedly a rip off of NGE) a few years back, and I didn’t understand it at all, so I was pretty sure the same thing would happen here.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the first 20+ episodes of this anime are actually fairly normal (barring some psychological issue scenes that were really more boring than disturbing). I watched the first half of the series in trepidation because I was so sure it was going to go crazy on me any moment now. Strictly speaking, I don’t think it turned terribly bizzaro until the last two episodes. I didn’t actually watch episode 25 and 26 from the series, because TJ warned me off them. I haven’t seen Death and Rebirth either, although I read on Wikipedia that they’re mostly the same thing. I might go back and watch it for completeness because I’m compulsive like that, but anyway…

I don’t think there’s any real point trying to describe the plot, because the finer points are just way too complex to summarise, and I’m sure my readership of 5 either (a) have seen it or (b) have no intention of doing so. Philosophy aside, I really enjoyed the story for the story itself. The show doesn’t do a very good job describing some parts of the plot - there’s only so much you can do in 26 episodes - but Wikipedia and TJ (with his wealth of internet research) took care of that. More importantly I think the story telling was absolutely excellent. I’m a huge sucker for good story telling. It is one thing to have something meaningful to say, but most anime fail to put any thought into how it is said. In this respect I think FMA, Ergo Proxy and Saiunkoku are the only other ones that managed to do this to some extent, but they’re not my favourites for nothing.

The main character is ok, he got pretty annoying at some points, and he’s in pain for most of the last few episodes so there’s a lot of yelling and crying. He’s your typical confused kid who spends most of his screen time berating his own incompetence and his inability to sleep with any of the girls in the show. But it’s ok. I sympathise with him. If I had to watch all these crazy alien things tearing other alien things apart I’d flip out too. The character I liked most was probably Misato. Partly because her little love story was so sweet *sniff*, but mostly because she’s just about the only person in the show who isn’t really screwed up. She’s proof that not everyone with an effed up childhood has to be emo. o.o-b

Being not a philosophy major like dear TJ and not having gone through clinical depression, I guess I failed to appreciate all the really esoteric stuff. But I definitely liked the overall message of the story (even if I still think they could’ve done better at connecting it with the earlier episodes in the series). I thought the ending was really well done (another differentiator from most anime). The very last scene was so poignant. I almost cried. I like!

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=7028

Been watching this on and off the last few months and finally finished it tonight. It was one of those shows where you get to the end and you wonder why it took 26 episodes.

I mean, it starts out decently enough. The problem is it just never gets any better. The only part I thought was moderately interesting was the Teresa and Priscilla arc. Speaking of which, POSSIBLE SPOILER!!, Priscilla must be one of the most annoying villains I’ve ever seen. What’s her excuse for being a total b****?? Was she just born psycho? Is she a very very extreme case of sore loserism?

Then in keeping with the tradition that anime writers are incapable of independent thought, the story doesn’t even attempt to be coherent after episode 20 where the manga runs out. Every 5 minutes Clare dings a level with no apparent explanation aside from sheer willpower, a la every other anime that features the protagonist valiantly overcoming increasingly insurmountable odds. And of course by the end of the series absolutely nothing has been resolved and everyone kinda just goes back the way they came, all set for a sequel.

Anyway, it was still pretty enjoyable on the whole I guess. A big plus was that Clare and Teresa are played by Kuwashima Houko and Romi Paku, who played the main characters in my very favourite anime, and so are my very favourite voice actresses by association. Also, I have to commend the writers on coming up with a seemingly endless stream of generic female names. And hairstyles. Unlike other anime where the 20513 characters can be differentiated by the most improbable shades of hair and eye colour, all the Claymores have to be blonde and silver-eyed, which means the only differentiator here is hairstyle - long/short, straight/wavy, fringe/no fringe, braids etc. It still got pretty confusing after a while, but A+ for effort.

Hopefully in the manga (I think it’s still ongoing?) Raki grows a bit taller before he meets Clare again. The whole relationship thing is a bit awkward when she’s 1.5 times his height.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=7213

Fifteen children attending a summer camp wander into a cave improbably filled with computers and are invited to take part in a game by a suspicious looking man going by the name ‘Kokopelli’ (!! I was trying to figure out why that name sounded so familiar and thanks to Wikipedia now I know - it was the name of a smoothie chain I used to go to in Singapore that had really good mango smoothies! Apparently it’s also the name of a fertility deity…wtf? Who names a smoothie store after a fertility god???). Um. So as I was saying, totally sounds like a trap but thirteen year olds are not too bright I guess, so they enter a contract to pilot a huge robot and protect Earth against foreign invaders. They are guided by a diabolical flying stuffed toy looking thing voiced by Ishida Akira (Gaara), who does an impressive job at sounding like a maniac.

Aznv.tv had this classified as, I quote, ‘Action, Angst, Mecha, Piloted Robots, SciFi, Tragedy’. I didn’t know ‘angst’ was a genre of anime! Although all anime arguably falls in this category haha. Anyway, from the genres quoted you can kinda figure out what’s going to happen…but I really like the story so far. Little pieces of information are revealed every few episodes, and I can’t say that I saw everything coming. The plot is interesting without getting too weird (not by episode 16 anyway). I like that they didn’t try to make it so that every one of the 15 kids had some kind of screwed up issue (though a disproportionately large number of them still do).

I also like that this isn’t your typical mecha type anime; the robots aren’t particularly cool looking and the fights are usually over very fast, plus there is actually some attention paid to the fact that when 2 huge machines are ramming at each other many many many buildings tend to get destroyed (which is one of the reasons I prefer watching anime of people fighting rather than robots!).

Things I don’t like are: (1) The very first time I watched this I had my volume turned up a bit too much, and the opening bit of the theme song consists of a chorus of female voices which sounds kinda freaky, and it literally made me jump. The song itself is pretty nice though, except its chorus starts with ‘uninstall, uninstall’, which are really, really strange words to be using in a song if you ask me. (2) The clip they play for ad breaks has this mechanical voice sorta whispering ‘bokurano’ which hella creeps me out.

Definitely one of the best anime I’ve seen so far. This was another one of Ian’s recommendations - Ian is 2 for 2 now, which is leading me to the inevitable conclusion that he actually has good taste in anime…

Up to episode 17 now and am well and truly hooked. This is one of the few anime I’m watching that actually has a pretty coherent AND intriguing plot; maybe I’m just watching all the wrong stuff. Of course, I’m less than halfway through this one so it still has a huge chance of screwing up. I’m a big skeptic on good endings because the more you try to obscure the story the harder it is to make sense of it at the end, and most anime just seems to have a knack of messing up a perfectly legit story. This one seems to have a good handle on things though, so far anyway.

Spoilers inc…

Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=254

I decided I want pictures too, like all the other anime blogs out there, even if I can’t do reviews every episode and I’m years behind =(

As you can tell from the name, this is a pretty poser anime. The actual name is really Weiß Kreuz, but the squiggly thing is too much trouble to copy and paste. The name means ‘White Cross’ in German, which is somewhat puzzling since the show is most decidedly set in Japan…

The story is about a group of 4 assassins who operate under the cover of a flower shop, which is frequented by high school girls who come and ogle at our protagonists. They are given missions Charlie-Angels-style, via a secret agent looking woman with too red hair and too much lipstick, and a video of a man obscured by darkness who always ends his mission delivery statement with “Hunters of Night, deny these Dark Beasts their tomorrows!” Lololol. After they’re told about each mission, they’re given the choice to participate or pass. Not sure how that works. Maybe they get paid on a mission by mission basis? In any case, no doubt secret agent woman and video man are scheming something behind the backs of our brave heroes, and will double cross them at some point. But we’ll see (still on ep 8 here).

So we have Aya, your dark, morose man of few words, who has a comatose sister/girlfriend character lying in a hospital somewhere and who has some kind of troubling past I haven’t found out about yet. Then there’s Yoji, the ladies’ man, beneath whose playboy demeanour of course also lies some kind of troubling past. Followed by Ken, ex-football player and the reckless, emotional character of the group. And Omi, the obligatory prepubescent type and also resident tech expert. The problem is, at this point the show hasn’t really told you what kinda relationship these 4 guys have. Are they just coworkers? Or are they brothers-in-arms ready to throw their lives away for one another? Thus far every episode has been pretty episodic (for lack of a better word), and until some sense of continuity emerges, the plot isn’t going to get very gripping.

This was released in 98, so the animation is pretty so-so. But the best part of this anime (in fact, the only reason I even heard about it) is the most excellent vocal casting, consisting of some of my favourite characters from Saiunkoku Monogatari (which, aside from being my almost favourite anime in the world, also has a most excellent vocal cast): Koyasu Takehito (Sakujun), Seki Tomokazu (Ryuuki) and Midorikawa Hikaru (Seiran). Good enough to watch based on that alone =p

I’ll update again when I actually have something substantial to say heh.

From the first few episodes, I thought that Shippuuden had finally rid itself of some of the idiocy that had plagued the original Naruto series. Nevermind that it wasn’t getting particularly interesting or displaying any kind of plot advancement; I still held out a bit of hope that the story would get back to being at least marginally captivating. Then today, all my hopes of any improvement were completely dashed.

So I got through episode 29 today. Gai and co. have spent the last 10+ episodes fighting copies of themselves created by some fancy ninja move. They’re obviously getting nowhere (why does Tenten seem kinda useless?) and they’re getting tired and about to lose (naturally). Then Eureka! Lee comes up with a brilliant idea that CANNOT FAIL. Since their copies possess the level of ability that they themselves had when the copies were created, all they have to do is become stronger than they were then!!!!

NO S*** DUDE. I’m fighting a losing battle, so if I want to win I have to get stronger, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT! Thanks to this stunning revelation, our heroes are miraculously inspired to produce never-before-seen moves that eliminate the enemy in 5 seconds.

…

Instead of coming up with some clever solution, trust Naruto to turn this into some ganbatteganbatte bulls***. Urgh.

And I can’t stand the way sound seems to carry so conveniently in this show. Like the characters are standing around discussing their strategies or whatever, and somehow people standing a mile away can hear them, even though they’re talking at perfectly normal volumes. It defies my basic sense of logic. Ugh. Why are people still watching this anime??? More importantly, why am I still watching this anime?!?!

I’m really starting to get into this. The last episode I saw (15)  featured the characters in some diabolical quiz show, which gave some background on the state of the world and introduced a few more mysteries. A bit of a lame way to convey information, but it was better than nothing, plus it was kinda funny. Nevermind that they never explained how they got there in the first place…

The characters are becoming a lot more likeable. Real’s a bit of a bitch but she’s ok. Vince is pretty endearing when you get past the immense self-pity and inferiority complex. And the little android girl following them around is genuinely cute (in my opinion anyway), once I established that she wasn’t going to turn into a psycho killer (after effects of Elfen Lied are apparently still lingering). I particularly liked episode 13; it was your obligatory Robots Have Feelings Too episode, but it managed to make me kinda sad.

The bad thing about this is that (a) I’m gonna be unhappy when it ends and (b) somehow it makes me feel like everything else I’m watching right now is crap….