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…

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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….

I just spent about 65 bucks on amazon.co.jp, on this and this. The CDs on their own weren’t that expensive, but shipping came up to 20 bucks. Bleargh. The only reason I did it was because I really wanted one of the tracks on the Harukanaru OST, and when I found out how expensive shipping was I just had to get something else to make it feel more worth it. I get pretty obsessive when I want a song and I can’t find anywhere to download it. On hindsight I should’ve waited to see if Tim could magically find a download for me using his l33t pirating skills, but I’m not very rational when I’m obsessed.

I feel like a complete sucker for corporate marketing. I tried really hard not to spend money on this crap too. I already have 5 or 6 albums for each of these anime, and that’s not even half of what’s out there. Obviously when you manage to produce almost as many CDs as there were episodes in the series, you’re out to get idiots like myself.

Now I’ve gone and done it. Not just anime soundtracks, but CDs comprising of songs performed by the seiyuus. I might as well be 16.

It’s ok, I’ll just tell myself that this is penance for all the stuff I’ve been downloading for free. Except that I don’t have enough of a conscience to really give a damn about that. >.<

QQ

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=5115

Spent all night on this and am now 11 episodes into the series. Ian recommended this a few months ago, but I didn’t get around to watching it till now. I’m not usually into post-apocalyptic sci-fi andriod stuff since it usually ends up addressing the same issues, but this one seemed potentially interesting.

On the whole I have to admit that the anime is quite pretentious. Every episode there are a million references to some philosopher or author or psychologist or ancient civilisation mythology. There was one episode where I’m pretty sure they said ‘raison d’etre’ at least 10 times in the space of 5 minutes. I’m sure it would all be deeply profound and meaningful, if I could only understand the relationship between the references and the plot. Unfortunately I’m just not cut out to make such obscure connections without Wikipedia-like help, none of which is offered in this case.

The animation is a bit too dark, literally. In the first episode especially, I just couldn’t tell what was going on cos it was all black and shadowy. The main female character, Real (what a typically stupid anime name, I know), is your typical headstrong determined female character, except she wears way too much eyeshadow. Isn’t eyeshadow just supposed to go on the lids?? She has eyeshadow below her eyes too. Maybe that’s how goth chicks are supposed to wear their make up? The main male character, Vincent, is your typical useless emotional male character, and his eyes are closed for the most part of the first 3 episodes. I don’t even know how that works. I can understand if your eyes are just really small (like my dad’s), but clearly this guy has visible eyes. And it’s not like he’s smiling or anything. Are they actually closed or is he squinting or something? Why is he squinting? Why does he stop squinting after episode 3? Sadly these are questions that I doubt the story will ever get around to addressing.

The first couple of episodes are pretty baffling and there’s a lot of dialogue that serves more to obfuscate than anything. Anymore and they would have been pushing it with the whole suspense thing, but the plot begins to move along pretty nicely after that (although I still didn’t get what happened with Halos/Asura…too bad no one who reads this will be able to tell me pfft). I might have stayed up all night watching this, but nothing happened episode 11 except that the storywriters got to show off how much philosophical bullshit they can spill without being in the least bit illuminating.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=4148 

The real tragedy here is that, thanks to the episode listings on aznv.tv, I watched this entire series thinking there were 14 episodes. Then 5 minutes before episode 13 ended, I realised the title said ‘Episode 13 (Final)’, and by then it was too late to psych myself up for sadness. What a bummer. I was all prepared to bawl, after hearing about how sad the ending was supposed to be.

The ending was ok. Nothing too unexpected, aside from the fact that they didn’t kill off every character in the show like I thought they might. They didn’t address the whole thing with the crazy old director guy and the scientist woman, didn’t explain why those guys had horns, didn’t tie up the relationship between Kouta and Yuka…but I guess that’s what happens when anime writers run out of manga to rely on. And what the heck was up with the clock at the end?? Totally didn’t get that.

I really didn’t like the extreme violence and the completely unnecessary nudity. Shock factor is good and all, but after the first episode we kinda get the idea. The whole person-being-nice-gets-abruptly-torn-in-half thing got old after a while. And I thought the back story they used to explain Lucy’s psychosis was a bit lame – after enduring eight episodes of flying body parts, the bullied/ostracised as a kid deal just doesn’t cut it. Should’ve just blamed it on the genes. And the nudity? I suppose you could justify it with something like, it’s supposed to emphasise how pure and innocent they are or some such bullshit, but the scenes with them playing with each other’s boobs and frolicking in the shower are just . . . (ellipse worthy).

The main character was your typical useless guy. It’s like they took Takayuki out of KimiNozo and put him in here with different clothes. But I liked Nana a lot, even if I didn’t really get the little psycho phase circa episode 8. She was probably the only character that elicited any kind of emotion from me.

In any case, it was still a pretty good anime overall. The story was intriguing at certain points, and I liked some parts of the soundtrack (definitely not the latin part, good god). I just feel kinda let down. I can’t believe I didn’t cry. I mean, I cried on episode 3 or 4 of Bleach (the one with Orihime’s brother). How anticlimactic. Pfft.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=6592 

I’m only 11 episodes into this so I’ll have to post an update when I’m done. According to TJK it gets pretty crappy in the 20s, but then again, I’ve never met anyone as critical about anime as he is.

So far, I like that:

1. The main character is, for once, not a complete and utter moron. Of course, he makes up for that by being angsty AND psychotic. But then again, he makes up for that by being very good looking. In any case, I think the show does a pretty good job of getting you to side with the bad guy.
2. Instead of being flooded with useless flashbacks, we get pensive but content-filled monologues while the characters improbably preempt every possible disaster thrown their way.
3. L is voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi, who also does the voice of USOPP, the singular most annoying anime character ever created. From village retard to boy genius. My mind reels every time he says something.

So good that I even forgive the lack of pewpew.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=2570

I checked out this one because it was ranked #2 on animenfo.com’s top 200. This is one of the many reasons animenewsnetwork.com is a better site than animenfo.com (although ANN’s new wallpaper of a gun touting skimpily clad girl is (a) ugly and (b) nsfw).

Anyway, I have no idea how this anime got to #2 (over my beloved Full Metal Alchemist no less!!!) Admittedly I’m biased because my first criteria for good anime is that it’s got to have swords. If I wanted to watch a sappy romance about high school/college kids involving cancer/coma/long lost siblings I could’ve gone to the Drama section and clicked on any random link. When I watch anime I want it to be about things that can’t be easily depicted in live action without it looking like crap.

So the story is basically about 4 high school students who are great friends. Girl M hooks Boy T up with Girl H (although, of course, she has a crush on Boy T herself), Girl H gets into an accident and goes into a coma, 3 years later she wakes up and Girl M and Boy T are now going out. Commence drama.

The problem with this show is that, throughout the 14 episodes, there isn’t a single happy moment. Every episode is sad. None of it is particularly touching. But by the time I realised how depressing it was going to be I was already 3 episodes in, and I figured I might as well finish it since it’s so short. I mean, these people are like 21, and they’re all jaded and have shitty jobs and no future etc. How’s that supposed to make me feel if these little punks 4 years younger than me are talking about unfulfilled dreams! Also, the friendship between the characters which is apparently such a big deal doesn’t get much screen time. The 4th person in the group doesn’t do very much in the show (and doesn’t even appear in the opening theme haha). A lot of the emotion is lost because of that.

Good things about this anime: (1) The animation is pretty nice, but then again nothing super spectacular happens. (2) It has lots of sad piano music which I’m a huge sucker for. (3) The guy ends up with the right girl, in my opinion anyway. The reviews I read that think he chose the wrong one are just written by morons. Apparently an OVA was released this year with an alternative ending (probably to silence the idiots), but I’m absolutely unmotivated to watch that bleaurgh.

I was expecting to cry buckets for this one (it doesn’t take that much to make me cry) but it didn’t quite cut it. Even the parts that would typically elicit a warm and fuzzy feeling generated something that was more like relief. Shrug. 6/10.