The hellish experience of final exams has reached its halfway point and from here on in they’re spread far enough that I don’t have to put blogging on hold to study, so it’s time to play catch up on the stuff I missed.

Additionally, narrowly beating out Vampire Knight (seriously?!) in the poll, Soul Eater will be the fourth show I will cover this spring. Not a bad choice I suppose, for the record, I voted Itazura na Kiss.

Soul Eater 02

Despite its extremely generic feel, I’m liking Soul Eater quite a bit, perhaps it’s the fact that it doesn’t even try to take itself seriously and offers a nice mix of in your face action and fanservice. The second episode introduces Black Star and Tsubaki, another team of meister and weapon of the Shinigami Technical School for Weapon Meisters, trying to create a Death Scythe fit for Shinigami-sama.

Even more eccentric than the Maka-Soul pair, Black Star proclaims himself as a stealthy assassin, but his egotistical rock star attitude makes him anything but. Because of this, his numerous attempts to defeat Al Capone and his subordinates, effectively gaining the 99 demon souls required in one fell swoop, has been met with nothing but failure.

Shinigami-sama then tells Black Star something interesting, Al Capone plans to hunt a witch named Angela and acquire her powers. With the possibility of all 99 demon souls and 1 witch soul needed for Tsubaki to become a death scythe all lumped up in one place, Black Star races to the scene. However, when he gets there, all that’s left is the graveyard of souls of Al Capone and his gang, defeated by Angela’s bodyguard Mifune. The two fight and despite Black Star goofing around at the outset, he eventually gets serious and manages to land a crushing blow on Mifune. But imagine his surprise when Angela, who turns out to be a weakling toddler of a witch shows up begging him to leave Mifune alone. Echoing Mifune’s words on killing children and how hard it makes it to sleep at night, Black Star passes up the free upg to Death Scythe and spares the two, even giving the souls of the Al Capone gang to Shinigami-sama since they weren’t his kills anyways.

Thoughts

The animation in Soul Eater took a bit of a dip compared to its debut episode, but for a series that will run for a planned 51 episodes, that’s to be expected, and even then it was far from what you would call bad. The fight between Mifune and Black Star lacked that fluidity we saw in the opener in Maka’s fight against Jack the Ripper, but it was still an interesting fight, even if it did pull the whole “SPEED LINES, AAAAARGH!” thing.

Also, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when focus was shifted from Maka and Soul onto the new pair, and from the looks of things, another team will be introduced next week. I love the Maka-Soul pair, I think the dynamic between them is great and with Blair added into the mix, they’re fun to watch. But that being said, I’m sure somewhere along the 51 episode run, that would run dry, so it was relieving to see that there’ll be at least two other story lines running in parallel.

On that note, I’m hearing a lot of criticism against Maka’s seiyuu, many saying she lacks the experience to properly convey the emotion necessary for her character. While I can see where they’re coming from, indeed some of Maka’s lines weren’t the greatest, not every single line needs to be delivered with over dramatic expressiveness, some of the more monotonous lines that she delivered I found quite fitting. It’s also a refreshing break from hearing the same old casts recycled, I’m a huge fan of Noto, Kugimiya Rie, Teh Rie, Kawasumi Ayako, Hocchan, etc. but you do tend to tire a bit after hearing them so many times.

I hope Soul Eater keeps the feel it has now and continues to deliver the mindless fun, I’d hate to see this end up train wrecking, especially since I’ve already boarded it.

Kure-nai 02

Kure-nai still has me in the dark, besides Murasaki being dropped off at Shintaro’s house and Benika telling him to protect her, we’re still not given much info as to what this series will be about, so not much can be said summary wise.

But that doesn’t stop it from being an enjoyable show, far from it, Murasaki is a riot to watch, seeing her struggle to adapt to a commoner life, having to step down from the pedestal she’s been standing on all her life thus far.

The only slight hints towards a plot that were revealed this episode was a bit more of Shintaro’s traumatic past, seems like his parents died right before his eyes, rather gruesomely too. We also see him at work as a “dispute mediator”, which amounts to nothing more than “we’ll beat the crap out of whoever you pay us to”. It was a bit disturbing seeing him pound away at that guy’s face with absolutely no emotion showing. Incorporated into all that is a fantasy element, Shintaro’s body clearly not being that of a normal human.

If I had to guess, Kure-nai will probably continue in its current direction of Shintaro teaching Murasaki how life outside the bubble of the Kuhouin family is like, revealing small plot elements here and there, only to have Murasaki abruptly snatched away and brought back to the Inner Sanctuary. Rescue arc, etc etc, you know how it goes. Given Kure-nai is only slated for 13 episodes, I think it’s likely it’ll follow that well beaten path.

Macross Frontier 02

Oh God it’s like she’s staring into my soul

From where we left off first episode, the Macross Frontier colony is being attacked by biomechanical weapons called Vajra and Alto, an amateur pilot is caught in the midst of it. Having watched Gilliam, a member of the civilian military organization SMS die in front of his eyes, he hops into his VF-25 variable fighter and tries to fend off the Vajra in an attempt to protect Ranka, a girl he met earlier that day, both heading to the Sheryl concert.

Ranka’s brother Ozma then shows up, also a member of the SMS, a fact not known to Ranka, and covers Alto while he tries to escape with Ranka. With the help of some cover fire from the SMS, the two make it to safety and the Vajra retreat, seemingly in response to Ranka’s voice, which is a product of her being 1/4 Zentran (not that I have any idea what that means).

In the aftermath of the attack Alto runs away from Ranka as the adrenaline runs out and he realizes what he’s just been through. The following day Ranka asks Ozma, who she believes to be a human resource worker, to track Alto down. Luckily he doesn’t have to search too far, Alto ends up at the same hospital as Ranka, both going for a checkup after encountering the Vajra, in addition, the military tries to recruit Alto after seeing his piloting skills. Ozma eavesdroppes and snatches him away before that happens though, using the VF-25 Alto totaled as leverage.

Afterwards, he takes him to SMS’s headquarters where everyone gathers around, wanting to hear how Gilliam died, first hand from Alto, who was there in his final moments. But before he has a chance to tell the tale, the Vajra spring back into action and another code Victor sortie order is issued. Alto asks to be of help, wanting to pilot one of their valkyries, but Ozma just shoves him aside and has him tossed out for saying something so irresponsible.

Meanwhile, Sheryl is in a panic, seems like she lost something during the concert and suspects Alto might have it. Outside, she meets Ranka, who doesn’t recognize her idol despite her crappy disguise. The two wander around and its only when Sheryl joins in when Ranka starts singing one of her songs is her cover blown, Ranka’s shock goes up threefold when at that exact moment the SMS launch to continue the fight against the Vajra and Alto runs in to her and Sheryl.

Thoughts

I have this feeling that I’m missing out on a lot of subtle references and throwbacks to previous Macross series as I go through Macross F. Let alone the obvious things like not knowing what a Zentran is (I’m guessing a race renowned for their majestic voices, or something like that) I bet I’m missing a ton of other less glaringly apparent things. I do plan on going through the rest of Macross when finals are completely over and done with though, so hopefully that won’t be a problem for long.

Aside from that, Macross F is definitely one of my favourites of the season thus far, the story isn’t anything ground breakingly different, but it’s interesting enough that I’m slowly being drawn in by it. The animation and character designs are holding up great so far, God knows where the budget is coming from, but that scene where Ranka and Alto were on the verge of flying out of the colony’s dome was great. The miscellaneous fight scenes are fairly well done too, hopefully they’ve budgeted it so it stays like this throughout its duration.

Also, Ranka > *. To hell with Sheryl!

Bonus: Mnemosyne 03

On the off chance that there are readers out there viewing this in a particularly strict work environment, I’ll throw this in spoiler tags, since it could be NSFW.

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OH GOD KUGIMIYA RIE MOANING. FAP FAP FAP.

I love Mnemosyne, the story is a complete throw away, the entire series is just an excuse for the nudity and lesbian sex scenes involving Kugimiya Rie and Mamiko Noto. And you know what? It works.

It is going downhill a bit though, subsequent episodes after the first proving not to be as good. Rin doesn’t even try anymore, she can barely go two minutes on screen without dying, that scene where she just ran into the line of gunfire was pretty sad. But hey, when dying slows you down no more than tripping and spraining an ankle would your normal person, why not?

I’m a little saddened by the time skip though. Where are my PCs running 40 MHz CPUs and 128 MB of RAM. WHERE ARE THE PAGERS?! ;_;

Anyways, I guess that’ll do for today. Normal episodic blogging will resume…whenever the next episode of whatever I’m blogging comes out. Until then, time to get some much needed sleep.

Aside: Oh yeah, I guess I should remind you that nominations for the Anime Blog Awards are nearing a close, April 22nd, I think, is the last day. See this post for details.

~ Shirukii ~