May 2012 Archives

Just a few updates to mention.

Remember, the Anime Book Club begins again this Sunday with the first 2 episodes of Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo! Watch the episodes and discuss them in the forthcoming post. It's a great series, I recommend that everyone give it a try. The show is available in several places, including on Netflix and on Funimation's Youtube channel.

I updated the Shorts, Sequels and Stuff post for this season with a few more impressions.

I updated The Dregs with impressions of Queen's Blade: Rebellion and AKB0048.

I've been including follow-up impressions of series in their first episode reviews lately. I find that this is helpful because there are certain series that I might not feel inclined to continue if not right at that time. Please let me know how this format is working. I realize that I've been getting late again with my reviews, so I'm sort of hoping that this keeps them relevant even as the season is beginning to draw to a close.

I recently took a position reviewing digital manga for The Fandom Post, so I'll be cross-posting links to those articles here. Since I don't review much manga on this website, I figure that this doesn't really conflict with my mission statement and might help me get a broader level of experience. Wish me luck!

Here comes the dump truck! There are several series each season that have very short run-times, that are continuations of series that I’ve never watched, or which are aimed at very young fans. Even though I might not have as many things to say about these types of anime, they still deserve a sliver of the spotlight.

This post will be updated as I add more reviews.

5/30/2012 - Updated with impressions of Kimi to Boku 2, Phi-Brain season 2, Cardfight Vanguard Asia Chapter, and Jewelpet Kira Deco.

6/27/2012 - Updated with impressions of Eureka Seven AO and Kore wa Zombie desu ka? Of the Dead.

7/24/2012 – Updated with impressions of Saki Episode of Side A and Folktales from Japan.

7/25/2012 – Updated with impression of Gon.

8/15/2012 – Updated with impression of Yurumate3Dei

Shorts

Kuromajo-san ga Tooru

Choco loves the occult. One day while she’s trying to summon Cupid, she accidentally summons the dark witch Gyubid. Gyubid can’t go back to the netherworld until Choco becomes a full-fledged witch. When Choco gets to school, she hears about mysterious hauntings going on after-hours, and learns that one of her classmates is feeling depressed over a nickname he doesn’t like. That night, Gyubid and Choco return to the school and discover that a vengeful spirit has been causing trouble, and Choco uses her magic to address the situation.

Episodes of Kuromajo-san ga Tooru are seven minutes long, fairly lengthy for the “shorts” category. This is reflected in the fact that the first episode manages to introduce a short-but-complete story and introduce several plot elements that may come into play later. Because most anime in this format are gag comedies, having a bit of a plot to invest in is a nice surprise. The downside is that including the amount of information needed to establish and resolve the story causes the entire episode to feel rushed. Still, there’s a nice moral at the end (don’t make fun of people), so there’s at least some insight to be gained even if it’s simplistic and flashes by at light speed.

Polar Bear Caf� (Shirokuma Caf�)

Number of Episodes: 12

Production Company: Studio Pierrot

ANN Encyclopedia Wikipedia Crunchyroll

Brief Overview: Panda is a lazy good-for-nothing who doesn't do much besides sleeping and eating. One day, he discovers a welcoming caf� manned by Polar Bear and his staff. Panda meets all sorts of other people and animals and chats with his new friends about his day-to-day life.

Sankarea

Number of Episodes: 13

Production Company: Studio Deen

ANN Encyclopedia Wikipedia Funimation Video

Brief Overview: Furuya has a fascination with zombies, so when his cat dies he gets it in his head to reanimate it. His meeting with a suicidal girl and her ingestion of a "resurrection potion" come leaps and bounds closer to turning his zombie fantasies into a reality, but now he's being held responsible for his role in creating a monster!

Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon)

Number of Episodes: 12

Production Company: MAPPA, Tezuka Productions

ANN Encyclopedia Wikipedia Crunchyroll

Brief Overview: Due to his father's job-related absence, Kaoru moves to Kyushu to live with relatives. On his first day of school, he meets delinquent student Sentaro, and against all reason they become friends. Sentaro spends his afternoons practicing the drums in the local record store, and Kaoru soon lends his piano talents to his daily jam sessions.

The Dregs � Spring 2012 has been updated with my impressions of the new Queen�s Blade season.

Also, just as a reminder, the re-launch of the anime book club is coming up fast. If you want to participate, be sure to acquire or gain access to Gankutsuou and watch the first 2 episodes by June 3rd (Sunday).

Mysterious Girlfriend X (Nazo no Kanojo X)

Number of Episodes: 13

Production Company: Hoods Entertainment

ANN Encyclopedia Wikipedia Crunchyroll

Brief Overview: Akira, your average high school kid, is minding his own business when a strange girl transfers into his class. Mikoto sleeps during the school day and laughs out of turn. One day, Akira is compelled to taste the drool left behind on her desk, an act which affects him more strongly and permanently than he could have imagined.

This piece contains spoilers for several episodes of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If you haven't seen the series, it's probably best to skip this. The full series is available streaming at Crunchyroll.

I'd waffled back-and-forth about the order in which to present my thoughts on this series' characters, especially as far as Madoka and Homura were concerned. It's Homura's presence in the narrative that really ties it all together for me, and I love how her transformation from "quiet and ineffectual" to "intensely determined" in some ways mirrors the one that many magical girls (of other franchises) undergo as a result of being blessed with superhuman power. On the other hand, Madoka is the titular character of the anime series, so to talk about her last seemed the more appropriate (though admittedly more expected) choice.

Madoka was originally the most difficult character about whom to find something meaty to say. Normally, as the primary protagonist, she'd be the character with whom the viewers would feel the most sympathetic and with whom they'd be able to connect. In truth, though, that's far from the case; we experience the life cycle of the magical girl through Sayaka's character progression, and Homura becomes arguably the most sympathetic of the characters due to her back-story. Throughout the bulk of the series, Madoka is merely an observer, one whose primary role is to react to each dark plot revelation through her emotions. She also serves as something of a figurehead or idol to Homura, whose friendship with her grows more abstract and symbolic as the timeline repeats. It's as a symbol that Madoka serves her primary purpose, I think; her metamorphosis from normal teenage girl to goddess helps to outline and reinforce a lot of the series' primary ideas and themes.

Kuroko's Basketball (Kuroko no Basuke)

Number of Episodes: TBA

Production Company: Production I.G.

ANN Encyclopedia Wikipedia Crunchyroll

Brief Overview: Tetsuya Kuroko is an ordinary boy who plays for the Seirin High School basketball team. The thing is, Kuroko isn't any good at basketball - it's the fact that he's able to blend in amongst everyone that makes him the master of passing the ball unseen to his teammates.

Everyone probably thought that I'd completely forgotten about my plans to re-launch the anime book club. Well, that's not exactly correct, but it's certainly been on the back-burner for a while. After creating my previous post about anime on Netflix, though, I decided that I really wanted to restart this column and watch/discuss some interesting anime with everyone. I went ahead and picked the next couple of series we'll be watching, based in prior feedback and availability. Without further ado, here are our selections:

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Why this was chosen: The primary reason I chose this is that it's just a really great series and stands on its own despite being an adaptation of a classic novel. I've wanted to re-watch the show and haven't had a chance to do so. I'm hoping to get a chance to read the novel at least part way before tackling the show again. We'll see if that actually happens.

I also picked this one because it's widely available. Not only is it on Netflix as previously noted, it's also available in full (I believe) on Funimation's YouTube Channel (subtitled), Funimation's website (subtitled and dubbed), and it's relatively inexpensive to buy. I already own it, so it was a no-brainer for me.

We'll be starting this series in June, and watching 2 episodes per week. The first discussion post will go up sometime in the early afternoon on Sunday, June 3rd.

The Skull Man

Why this was chosen: This series seemed to have a similar amount of interest as Gankutsuou, but it's a completely different type of story. The show is jam-packed full of plot, and while I watched it over a couple of sessions, I feel like I missed some information that a good discussion might help reveal. I wouldn't quite put it at the same level as Gankutsuou in terms of quality, but from what I remember it's definitely solid entertainment and it has some nice Studio Bones animation to smooth over its rough areas.

This isn't quite as widely-available as Gankutsuou, but it's still pretty easy to get. The DVD set is currently only 6 dollars at Rightstuf, so I'd suggest picking it up if you're not into streaming the show. It's also available in full (subtitled in kind of crummy quality) from The Anime Network's YouTube channel, and at The Anime Network's website (via Hulu).

Discussion of The Skull Man will commence the Sunday following the Gankutsuou wrap-up post, which is Sunday, September 9th. We'll be watching 1 episode per week.

In order to help everyone keep track of what we're watching/discussing when, I've set up a public Google Calendar. This will be updated in case of any changes to the schedule. You will notice that there's a Sunday off in July; I'll be a convention that weekend and most likely won't have time to post anything. We'll be nearly halfway through Gankutsuou at that point, so perhaps I'll set it aside as a general discussion week.

As part of an effort to get more people excited about anime, I�m planning a series of posts based around good anime that can be obtained easily via means most people are familiar with. Netflix has become the go-to service for both DVD rental and streaming video. The service is available on almost any platform including most gaming devices, computers, and internet-to-tv streaming devices. It has a fairly extensive selection of anime available at the click of the button, but like the menu at a Chinese restaurant, the number of choices can sometimes be daunting to those unfamiliar with what they�re looking for.

These selections are my choices for some of the best quality anime to be found on Netflix Instant Watch, based on series that I�ve seen and enjoyed. Since this list is by no means comprehensive (some series are only available upon directly searching for them, and I know I haven�t watched all of the awesome series there are to see), feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments!

Note: These selections are accurate/available as of 4/29/2012. If there are any changes in availability or any additions, I�ll update the post.