Last year Fireryda did a blog post here about his top 5 female anime characters with Kino from Kino no Tabi heading the list which stunned me at the time because I had never heard of her and could not imagine Fireryda rating someone so boring looking over the other 4.

However…it wasn’t until I started watching it that I realised that Kino is by far one of the most interesting anime characters I have ever seen. Also, there are spoilers within.

As far as the story goes Kino no Tabi follows the journey of Kino, a traveller who moves between countries and stays no longer than 3 days at any given place. The world Kino lives in is a strange parallel world to our own that wavers between futuristic sci-fi and medieval life and includes all sorts of weird things like Kino’s companion Hermes – The talking British Motorcyle. The story itself is so incredibly profound and beautiful even though it can be horribly morbid at times and coming from watching Zero no Tsukaima (something I wont bother blogging about at all) the story was fantastically written.

It seems throughout the journey Kino finds places that have issues mimicking our own here on Earth like religious wars, countries promoting slaughter of others to save being slaughtered themselves etc. Kino herself, as Fireryda put it, is able to completely disconnect herself morally from the places she visits and observes almost apathetically how they act. She remains on the road to experience places and learn about people and cultures but she never stays long enough to settle down.

One of the best things about the series was the final episode which featured the only episode where you see emotion registered on Kino’s face:

What made this particular episode so powerful is that every single episode before it took place after the events in the finale! This emotional episode served to show the hardships Kino faced throughout her travels and how they came to affect her and it was brilliant.

Other than that, the other episode that was great for me was the android one…where Kino stumbles upon a group of people alone in a forest where an entire country should be and she soon discovers that everything is not as it seems. The whole episode was horribly morbid but it was amazing because of it and because of Kino’s apathy to the whole story that unfolds.

I’ll talk about the art and music in a minute but let me quickly talk about Kino.

The entire story revolves around Kino and special emphasis on how she reacts to certain situations and how her past experiences influence her actions. Throughout her Journeys, Kino is faced with dangerous and life threatening situations but no matter what she never panics…she simply assesses the situation and acts accordingly meaning even when she doesn’t have her trademark guns she can still fight back using her wits. In more than one case she is able to overcome enemies vastly outnumbering her with a single shot.

She likes meeting new people but at the same time dislikes it because she fears becoming attached to people and places which is also why she never stays more than 3 days at any given place as she doesn’t want to settle down. She also got her passion for travelling as well as her name (her real name is never given but we can guess it to be “Sakura” based on 2 episodes that reference each other) from a traveller who met her in her home town which was a morbid place that believes after the age of 12 you must have your brain modified to remove many emotions so you can become more of an “adult”. The traveller (the original Kino) rebuilds Hermes and prepares to leave the town where upon he throws his own life away to save the young girl Kino…she jumps on Hermes and escapes into the open where she meets an old lady called “Master” who trains her in shooting and grants her “Cannon”, the first of two guns.

The art in this anime is brilliant in its simplicity, the designers found a style and stuck to it. The style echoes throughout the entire series without changing and is a predominant feature throughout. The animation is simple and there are many long scenes that simply don’t have any words so that you can stop and get a feel of the world Kino is in. The character design can be a little bit sloppy sometimes in that many people end up looking the same as well as sounding the same.

Kino herself is wonderfully cast as she always seems to have an air of melancholy about her as she speaks. Hermes is great as well in that he never changes.

I don’t know how much more I can talk about Kino no Tabi so I think I’ll just cut it short here. Basically its an amazingly powerful anime that is well written and planned out. Easily a 10/10 from me and a must see if you want to watch something well written for a change.

Next up is Eden of the East once I finish catching up on the other series I have.

Also I apologise for the screenshots I will post below, I only had a low quality 4:3 sub seeing as its a few years old now.

The first thing that struck me about DearS was how similar it was to Chobits…some might disagree there but the first episode just screamed it. So I was rather surprised to find out that DearS actually came out first…but only by a month. Which means two separate anime with similar(ish) stories were in production at the same time….awesome.

DearS is an anime about an alien slave race known as … DearS. Pronounced how you would say: “Dears”. These aliens are given to other people to form a master-slave bond with them which manages to make use of the word “goshujinsama” which makes every single Anime nerd word wide get a woody. A small contingent of these DearS have crash landed in Japan and are now stuck on Earth as they try and pretend they are not a slave race as to not come across as completely useless aliens.

The DearS have an innate ability to understand languages and can learn them in a single day to perfection…however that level of skill doesn’t continue through other academic subjects…but who cares, they can fly and have magic powers and stuff.

We follow the life of Ikuhara Takeya as he comes to grips with living with a DearS which proves to be a great source of entertainment. Ren (Takeya’s DearS) is a defective DearS in that most DearS are assigned masters where she simply chooses one, this of course fulfils some weird prophecy about being the “Gift” or something.

Takeya is chosen by Ren against his will and he struggles to come to terms with the fact right up until the last episode. Along the way he is befriended by another two DearS which causes huge upset among the community and among his friends, eventually he is pitted against the DearS community who are after Ren…all in all its a pretty cliche story but the emphasis is all on the characters. So lets talk about them.

Takeya himself (pictured in the above two screenshots) is a high school student who comes from a torn family and has decided to leave them behind and go study alone. Takeya has a hatred of aliens and constantly thinks they are conspiring against him and thus he struggles to form a bond with Ren.

He also has a loli imouto who made me rage every second she was on the screen…she isn’t related to him by blood but the two have a relationship stronger than most siblings:

All she does is complain and moan about how Takeya isn’t giving her enough time and that Ren should move out away from Takeya…ANNOYING!

Ren herself is an odd sort as you would expect from a defective alien slave. All she wants to do is please Takeya in any way she can, however she does not understand humans correctly and constantly makes elementary oversights while in public which drives Takeya mad. She will often point out things like his porn collection to his friends thinking that it is a perfectly natural thing to talk about…hilarity ensues.

Just to add to Takeya’s mounting frustration surrounding the DearS, Miu comes along. Miu is an educated DearS who is attempting to learn about humanity by enacting a home-stay with a Japanese family while she studies in school. Miu eventually befriends Ren and Takeya and struggles to come to terms with her responsiblities as a DearS versus her love for her new friends and family. She also has ridiculously long pink hair.

The school teacher is worth noting as well…pretty much every time you see her, she is half naked talking about sex, even in the classroom. Although all she does is advance plots and provide comic relief:

The last person I’ll make note of is Neneko who is a childhood friend of Takeya and is madly in love with him but she simply cant admit it to either herself or others. She goes out of her way to help Takeya no matter what but her struggle is with Ren being so close to Takeya…while she dreams of bathing with Takeya, Ren simply hops in the bath with him.

There is little in the way of actual story apart from it being Takeya’s daily life with his friends but there is also the conflict among the DearS community which rears its ugly face towards the end of the series. But of course it isn’t expected to be a highly in depth story as its a light anime which is fun to watch casually and will make you laugh no matter what. Aside from that, it has an awesome ED:

The art isn’t fantastic either seeing as time is against it however the style is awesome with lots of emphasis on stupid looking faces. The animation is smooth enough even if the backgrounds are rather dull and lifeless in just about every scene…but again, we’re watching this for the characters…so balls to the art.

I gotta admit I kinda liked this anime…I didn’t expect too. It seemed too simple and didn’t have the level of comedy that the series I am currently watching but I liked the characters a lot and they all seemed to compliment each other. I especially liked how the characters base personality didn’t change at all through the series, that is to say Takeya stays defiant of the DearS and chooses not to be Ren’s master no matter what happens…this of course drives all the women around him barking mad and confuses the shit out of Ren. But yea…the characters were well casted and likeable (save for Takeya’s little sister).

I know there is a hell of a lot more to say about this anime but I simply can’t be assed…I give it an 7.5/10 because I’m not sure if I simply liked it or really liked it…I’ll figure it out later.

Now I’m off to watch Zero no Tsukaima and think about whether I should bore you lot with an impressions blog of Working!! (which is definitely worth watching btw).

Ciao!

This is where I usually sum up my overall thoughts on the anime I have watched…but I struggle to think just what I could write about Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. To me it hit all the right notes but didn’t go out of its way to be something truly amazing, it just sorta got half way and said: “Bullocks to everything, this is pretty good, lets go home and have a beer”.

It had a deep enough story planted through it but a lot of the time it skimmed over the plot purposely to keep you guessing as to exactly what relates to what, unfortunately it came across as thin, instead of being full of suspense. Of course this didn’t apply to the entire anime, simply certain parts however it was still there enough to get me more than a little annoyed.

Also I have to say one thing cool…what I usually do with these reviews is go back to the first episode and skim through each and every episode to not only get the baseline of what happened but also various screenshots to throw into these blog posts. What I accidentally found though was brilliant: In the first episode, the Major calls out to Batou and he flies up on a chopper hanging off the side. I didn’t pay a lot of attention too it, however in the final episode the exact same thing happens but with a lot more meaning so you remember it. It just made me flashback and was just plain awesome to do…someone clearly thought something through there to please returning viewers.

I shall now continue with my now familiar type of blog writing by talking about: The story, the characters, the art, the voice acting and the over all attraction.

Without further adieu:

The Story:

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a sci-fi, cyberpunk anime set 20 years in the future in 2030 and follows a special police force known as Public Security Section 9. They specialise in dealing with cyber-terrorism as well as those that employ androids and cyborgs to fight for them however the underlying story follows the life of these people as they attempt to uncover the “Laughing Man”. The Laughing Man is a supreme hacker who has intercepted details about a medical scandal and is desperately trying to show the public the truth of the matter however in doing so, he becomes a cyber-terrorist and attracts the attention of Section 9.

Of course in any anime there will be filler episodes that have no relevance to the underlying story…but in this anime those episodes aren’t just plain annoying like many others. You even come to enjoy them especially if two or three of them relate to each other in some way.

The story almost comes across as a thriller as you constantly try to place what is going to happen next and more often than not you simply can’t hit the nail on the head due to (as I said earlier) the fact that it can be a little thin. I’m going to quote my mate ChatterboxZombie again as I did in my B Gata H Kei Impressions post: “Those who pay attention will be rewarded with an intelligent and engaging scifi experience, but for many its just too much”…while I can’t fully agree with his words for reasons I just explained, they’re close enough.

The Characters:

Usually, as no doubt I have explained before, I get attached to certain characters in an anime. Once the attachment forms strongly I will usually come to love the anime but it was such a struggle with this anime, hence I’m so lost as to think what was good/bad about it.

The main characters of Section 9: The Chief, the Major, Batou, Togusa, Ichikawa, Boma, Pazu and Saitou are all…really…really…boring.

Sure the Major is about as bad-ass as you will find in any anime but she lacks so much personality and it isn’t until the last 2 episodes that you can start to understand her feelings in any way.

Sure Batou is a huge angry cyborg and has a morbidly chipper attitude, but apart from having a crush on the major and having a military past…we really know nothing about him.

Sure the Chief is a tactical genius but you really learn nothing about him and barely get told about his past and family.

The rest aren’t even worth mentioning…save for Togusa. Togusa is the family-man of the lot and is also the least cybernetically modified yet spends most of his screen time in fire fights and espionage.

But…oddly enough I didn’t become attached to these characters at all. I came to love the Tachikoma robots…sure its pathetic but their hilarious antics just appealed to my crap sense of humour…they are just awesome:

The Art:

Unfortunately since I have only recently been watching new anime released within the last few years I have become somewhat of a quality whore. If the anime isn’t in 720p or in widescreen I struggle to adjust and come to terms with the low quality picture…but I have to say that I wasn’t at all bothered with Stand Alone Complex. Considering it was made in 2002 it has an amazing style to it, it doesn’t even try to do the pathetically futuristic flying car crap…it just sticks to future robotics and cybernetic implants.

The drawing style was smooth and simple, no over the top outfits or vehicles or anything and it was punctuated well by smooth animation although I can’t say I was a fan of the 3D scenes with cars and whatnot.

Speaking of cars…why is it that whenever someone wants to go anywhere in this anime they take off with wheel spins and smoke…that’s just unnecessary.

The Voice Acting:

There wasn’t anything overly special about the voice acting but it fit very well to all the characters but again, every single one of them lacked emotion. Perhaps that was the point? I’m not really sure.

Where I initially came to love the Tachikoma’s was over their hilarious voice…here is a little scene:

Also as far as I understand it, the English voice actors portray their characters very similar to the Japanese but as usual I prefer to watch Subs over Dubs so I cant comment on the English version.

I guess there isn’t a hell of a lot more to say about voices so lets talk about…

The Attraction:

What makes me want to go back to this anime? Well simply put it is as I said earlier: Each episode is great, even the fillers and you can appreciate even the plots that don’t have relevance to the main story as they expand on the characters.

The cyberpunk sci-fi style comes across wonderfully and I love that they didn’t go over the top with futurism as many anime/movies/games seem to do. It stuck to a core story around the integration of humans and machines and everything revolved around it instead of simply incorporating it into the story.

The story itself can seem light at times but has very heavy undertones if you listen closely and that, if you don’t watch anime to have pretty pictures on your screen, makes for a fine watch.

Batou and the Major are worth watching it for too, they might seem a little bland but they kick ass like no other.

In the end then I have to give this an 8/10. It could be better but I’m sure that it would simply lose what it has if it tried so it is content and so am I.

No doubt you will have already looked at the images below and discovered what B Gata H Kei is all about, but I shall warn you that this post isn’t really SFW. I’m sure your boss doesn’t want you to see ecchi whilst being paid.

The Story:

The anime itself is set around a 15 year old girl Yamada who is a virgin but is kinky as hell. Her goal is to reach 100 casual sex partners but alas that would turn this anime straight into a full on hentai anime, instead she gets caught up on some unremarkable boy named Kosuda. Kosuda is a soft spoken virgin (well…we don’t actually know…but we can assume) who is extremely nice but at the same time awkward as hell. So the story continues with a girl that is super model material against a guy who is too awkward to get any where with her – You can kinda guess the plot from there.

While talking to a friend ChatterboxZombie about the anime, we discussed whether or not it is as we expected. I honestly didn’t think I’d like this anime as it guarantees to leave a lot to be desired but was I increasingly surprised as the first episode played along, Chatter exclaimed: “i knew i would [like B Gata], even though its generic and paper-thin its fun and light” and that sentence right there almost sums up the anime completely. You know it isn’t there to be in depth so you expect the story to be pathetic else the overly cliche characters (explained next) simply would not fit into the series well.

15 year old 43 kg girl with that sorta cleavage?…lol.

The Characters:

Our protagonist Yamada is highly outspoken yet horribly confused about how to get men. She really wants to have sex but she only views the end goal instead of the path to get there which leaves her in some seriously awkward situations. She is voiced by Yukari Tamura who I only really know well from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (as Nanoha herself) and again to quote Chatter: “The voice for Yamada was for me rather unexpectedly high…kinda annoying at first but I got used to it”. Within the first 5 minutes this same thought hit me, initially it was just annoying to listen to but as time went along it became more natural, unfortunately however she does the singing for the OP and ED, neither of which I like:

Kosuda is how you would expect the typical mid-pubescent teenager to be around Yamada, highly awkward. Yamada is hopelessly inept at conveying the correct meaning in her thoughts and Yamada always misunderstands her meaning so is not sure if she is coming on to him or just being bi-polar. When he thinks there’s a chance to get closer he makes a move but each time is thwarted by Yamada as she realises how weird she is being…so he’s stuck in a rut and its funny.

Yamada has a few friends that are introduced in the first ep, notably her big breasted F-cup friend who is the typical sidekick to the struggling main character. There is also a few other girls (and guys for that matter)  that idolise Yamada but they aren’t worth mentioning.

Both Kosuda and Yamada have sisters, Kosuda’s is older than he and is protective of her spineless brother while Yamada has the moebomb loli imouto who, at one point, is reading her hentai magazines…

The Art:

Its awesome…as I have sadly come to expect these days which makes it infinitely harder to move back to older series. The style is well thought out and looks simple yet elegant, the characters themselves aren’t particularly amazing facially but their uniforms/bags/other shit (pantsu) is drawn well and it works. So nuff said there.

The Attraction:

Essentially the reason I look forward to this anime is its comedy, honestly its so cheesy its funny. Again, its light hearted and blunt and you can’t really predict anything because Yamada is a fucktard so it keeps the comedy flowing rather well.

So far I think I will watch this anime for the rest of the season, if it keeps up with its great style and comedy I could easily see this being a potential favourite comedy anime…but we shall see.

The other reason to watch it of course is the ecchi…which is always followed by comical moments.

OH GNOES! FORGOT THE CONDOMS!

Some time ago I wrote my impressions about Sora no Woto based on the first episode and as of last night I have finished the series…below is a somewhat spoileriffic review because chances are that if you’re reading this, you’ve either watched it or wont watch it at all. Also…I shall tell you the entire story using only screenshots.

Starting after episode 1, our heroes find an owl...The owl is also the symbol of the Platoon they are in...so they keep it.

The team is trying to repair an ancient tank using the amazing technical skills of Kannagi Noel who is a genius scientist.

Grievous injuries occur.

Felicia talks to some dead bloke.

Further injuries occur...this time far more serious...

Kanata wears some stupid fucking outfit.

Theres ALWAYS a bathing scene.

Klaus gets raped by a loli.

Some senile old bitch appears and is killed off in the same episode and Rio is all like: "Shit woman, you're like my mum!"

Rio has a brain...and buggers off leaving only a trumpet behind.

They find a Roman scout...who speaks German...

Some insane prick appears and tries to trigger a war because he wants the economy to flow...

Yui-Ahh...I mean Kanata stops a war by playing Amazing Grace on Rio's trumpet.

Rio turns up all regal and shit and is like: "Cut this shit out!" and the war ends...yea...so to end wars you need to play a trumpet and wear a dress.

Anyway that was the premise…as far as the anime goes here is a quick list of things:

• Style:

Basically it follows the same art style as K-ON for most purposes. The art itself is very focused on clean character faces with detailed backgrounds and by all means it looks wonderful and I can’t really fault it there.

• Plot/Story:

This is where things go awry…the story is about a girl who signs up to the military because she wants to learn music. She is taught the bugle and it is used for signalling…oddly enough even the most advanced spider-like war tanks simply don’t have a comms system. Anyway her squad is completely female who sport a variety of skills and attitudes, the weirdest being Felicia…the captain. She just is too nice to be a captain…then again Rio takes role of the hardcore lieutenant but I don’t think that counts for much. Pretty much the entire series is a filler…the last 3 episodes are war related and its all over too suddenly, which is annoying.

• Voice Acting:

You know what, I cant fault the voice acting either. Each characters voice portrayed their specific character perfectly even if I didn’t like those characters.

• Theme:

What I got from this anime is that it was trying to say (quite blatantly) that all humans are the same and that war is totally unnecessary. The theme was upheld throughout the anime using the song Amazing Grace as both armies knew the song regardless of culture and background.

• Final Rating: 6/10. Great VA and Art work but the story leaves far too much to be desired and the themes were portrayed weakly.

Let me say now that I will try and keep this brief because I know you dickheads either cant be assed reading or simply dont reply so I have no idea who actually cares about this shit.
Background:

Misaka Mikoto of Tokiwadai is a level 5 ability user (the highest known level) and is affectionately known as the Ace of Tokiwadai: Railgun. She has the ability to create and control electrical fields and that alone is an extremely useful skill but she takes it one step further by taking a common coin and forcing it to accelerate at horrendous speeds using her electrical field mastery…thus she is Railgun.

Misaka was introduced in To Aru Majutsu no Index…an anime I didn’t particularly enjoy but it had its charm I suppose. She was a sub character throughout the anime and I guess someone just thought: “Man people like this chick…lets make an entire anime out of it!” and you can almost guess that it would have notorious filler eps…which it does.

Anyway, Misaka lives in the Tokiwadai school dorms with Shirai Kuroko…a level 4 teleport user who is also crazily in love with Misaka and on many attempts she tries to make advances on her. Shirai is also a member of “Judgement” who are essentially the Police of Academy City (the city they live in). The story follows Misaka as she helps Shirai and judgement using her ability and they throw in Uiharu and Saten from another school nearby and you get a crazy team of young girls who are apparently the only ones that can save the city from total destruction.

The anime itself is pretty boring to be fair…I can’t honestly recommend it to anyone other than Index/Misaka fans. Here is my reasoning:

• Its just fanservice…Misaka and Shirai psuedo-lesbianism throughout the series with overly cliche characters everywhere.
• The story is thin…honestly the first bad boss helps defeat the last boss even though they tried to destroy the city.
• Cliche characters…seriously…as soon as the intro stops you should have been able to predict every single character.
• Uiharu has the worst power ever…its actually so bad its laughable…and no one explains the head-flowers.
• It sounds as if it was written on the fly…after episode 12 the whole series just falls apart and fillers hit from eps 13-19 and then suddenly they introduce and kill off a major bad guy in the last 4-5 eps.
• The ending sucks…After wasting 23 episodes watching crap, they finish it off with crap. Ugh.

I think I’ll leave this short ass review there, basically watch this anime if you are horribly bored and liked Index…other than that it simply isnt worth it.

Misaka is fucking cool though.

Rating: 7/10. Barely hits a 5 but gets 2 extra points for the fight scene in ep 12.

In unrelated news, I took a photo of my desk for a mate…and I might as well share it…check it out here

We were meant to start with 7 people, but one cbf…and one couldn’t join due to internet connection issues. But we had a team of 5:

- Dante

- Fireryda

- Affian

- Illiana

- Nobody (who had to leave unfortunately)

So yea…we had fun laughing away at the ridiculous antics of the show. Fireryda and I lost years of our lives due to brain hemorrhaging each time Sora appeared on screen…Affian concluded that Tsuyuri was the most appealing character…Illiana pointed out that Nidou looks far better in a bikini than Najimi.

And I was the only one that frowned upon boy love.

So good times…not sure what anime is up next, hopefully we can get a few more people

What I expected was a romantic comedy slice-of-life anime that I enjoy so much…and it started out so well. The humour was on the mark and the characters were well portrayed but the novelty started running out by episode 10. Aisaka Taiga was portrayed as the typical moe tsundere girl and it worked well for a while…but as with all Slice-of-life anime, you expect to see change. Change that didn’t appear until around episode 20.

I’ll quickly summarise the story by saying that we follow the life of Takasu Ryuuji as he enters his second year of high school. Ryuuji is very kindhearted but his face and eyes make him look like an angry deliquent which earns him a fearsome reputation for no reason. He befriends many people throughout his high school life (most notably Aisaka Taiga) and his goal becomes to date Kushieda Minorin while Taiga’s is to date Kitamura Yuusaku. Other people get mixed in with the strange love scene and you can predict very quickly what is bound to happen.

Its essentially the daily life of a group of friends trying to find some love while learning from a teacher with bipolar or something.

Let me say quickly that while I enjoyed this anime, it was far from what I would have liked. It started out as a fantastic romantic comedy but turned into a serious drama from ep 10. By the time ep 20 rolls on by, the drama is so serious that there just isn’t any humour to be seen which in my eyes degraded the anime. I watched the first 15 episodes almost back to back but I struggled to watch anything from there on because I knew what was coming and I didn’t like it.

The last episode was almost completely world shattering (I expect only 1-2 people will get that joke) until the credits rolled on by and the season outro played…the last 10 seconds of the anime saved it…if they had not been there I would have eaten my own arms off. It was actually gut-wrenching waiting for it to happen not knowing if it would and I was starting to get seriously angry at the sudden turn of events in the second to last episode which simply made no sense at all and served only to create a “dramatic suspense” which turned out to be “a joke”.

Anyway, good anime but can be a little tedious when the drama gets real heavy…but I enjoyed it.

Also, forgot to mention…the OPs and EDs were very cool…loved the soundtrack.

First and most importantly, the OP to the anime is fucking awesome. I have the song on my playlist because of the songs from Stepmania but I never knew where it was from until I fired up episode 1…and I came. Hard:

Anyway, let me point out quickly here that if you have not played Star Ocean: The second story and dont know that Celine loves Baby Rabbit Risotto, then don’t…I repeat, DONT, get this anime…It is very slow and tries to pad out 5 minute scenes in the game over 2 episodes BUT in being its downfall, the fact that it remains true to the games story makes it very fun to watch for Star Ocean fans. The first 3 episodes revolve around Claude getting owned by a teleporting machine then meeting Rena who is portrayed as a moebomb with an annoying voice…so…exactly the same as the game.

Some things in the story are over embellished and some are completely skipped. For example Mayor Regis is a ninja and tries to smash Claude in his sleep to see if he really is the warrior of light…but then he suddenly goes back to being a frail old man…which of course makes perfect sense. Then there’s Claudes raygun…get this:

Talk about extreme…just to kill that oversized gorrilla thing that attacks Rena in the forest.

The anime itself makes use of a hell of a lot of still frames…the animation is somewhat shoddy and in the still frame shots (obviously) completely missing, which is kinda annoying. In certain scenes, like when Claude chases after Alen once he steals Rena, the animation is very smooth but then straight away its back to still frames with voices thrown over top…Which not only downtrails any semblance of good animation pants, it also slows the anime down further.

Recognise this place?

Although this sounds like I’m just complaining about the anime, I still kinda like it. I’m not sure why but I can only think that its simply because I found an anime based on a game that tries to stay EXACTLY on the story instead of making some arbitrary side stories. I seriously doubt I’ll ever finish this anime though unless something changes by episode 9 (which is the last episode I have on my HDD) because when I get to this point, I then have to go find a torrent containing the next 15 episodes of an anime that no one really cares about.

So yea my final words are: Only get this anime if you liked Star Ocean…otherwise don’t, it’s too slow to warrant watching frequently.

Time to go watch Durarara!! Ep 3 methinks.

EDIT: The anime is now going off track and losing focus from the main story…Celine is a bitch and Rena is stupid…also:

Beware, this short review thing is a bit spoilerish…but kinda not really…who really cares…its K-ON!

Anyway I picked it up because I’m bored and cbf watching Moetan like I should be doing and I watched ep 15 of Railgun earlier (dont watch it…srsly its rubbish…I must be masochistic or something). I expected this episode of K-ON! to be just another episode with nothing spectacular which follows the life and times of 5 girls as they tear apart the world of music.

What I got however was completely the opposite.

Alright I lied, it was exactly the same…nothing changed, not even the theme songs.

Basically our crew has got themselves invited to a small live gig by Ritsu’s drummer friend from another local band “Love Crisis”. We follow them as they completely muff everything up then end up putting on a half decent gig. Sawako turns up with a leather outfit on and meets up with some old friend and they all fall asleep waiting for the start of the new year.

Let me point this out loud and clear…if you liked the way K-ON! was, then this episode is for you…I nostalgia’d a little when the theme tunes came on which sorta got me a little pumped for the episode…but yea…its the same ol’ same ol’ which I can appreciate and I know others will…but in the same sense it will add to peoples scorn of me for finding this show watchable.