The Seleção logo/emblems are really neat. I wonder how long until someone
recreates one as a Halo 3 emblem. Dang, I just depressed myself.

So are you watching Eden of the East yet? Because you should be. I know it’s really easy now a days to pick out a couple of Shakespeare quotes and drop terms like “noblesse oblige” all over the place, but the show really seems to have its shit together.

And by has its shit together I mean it doesn’t get itself lost in philosophy and plot. All the intrigues and memory loss doesn’t get in the way of the developing relationship between Takizawa and Morimi.

On the left is Takizawa Akira, on the right Morimi Saki.

Anyway, don’t judge the show from the first episode. There is a lot of good stuff in there, like a fairly faithful re-creation of Washington D.C. and English voice acting that doesn’t physically hurt to listen to, but there is some bad too.

It’s usually ‘Long Takizawa’ but it’s a little cold out here, ya know?

For me, Takizawa just don’t feel real in the first episode. He comes to his senses in front of the White House, naked and holding a gun. Also he can’t remember anything about himself. I don’t see someone in that position acting in the calm and collected manner that Takizawa does.

Not that it’s a huge deal if I am. I mean, it’s kind of a small thing.

But by the second episode, Takizawa starts acting a lot more believably. Also, one of the major hooks of the show is introduced. Remember when Takizawa was naked in front of the White House? Yeah, well in addition to holding a gun he was also holding a tricked out cell phone. It turns out the phone is connected with an account containing 8.2 billion yen in digital cash.

So by episode two the show is in full swing. Takizawa is starting to piece together his past and how he figures into “Careless Monday”, a bizarre missile attack on Japan that resulted in no loss of life.

In addition to the content being sweet as hell, the wrapper it comes in is pretty slick as well. With Production I.G. doing the animation it is no surprise that the quality of the animation is high, but there are so many other little things that it is amazing.

The exploding pencil missiles are the best part.

The aforementioned accurate depiction of D.C. (Which I’m hoping holds true when they’re running around Japan too) and the English voice acting are just the start. The song in the opening is by Oasis (Yeah, the Wonderwall band) and the stop-motion papercraft thing at the end is creative to say the least.

I feel like MyCircle or one of those other chumps should steal this for their interface.

Also, make sure to hit pause every time there is a phone on the screen. The amount of detail being put into those little buggers is impressive. Ditto for the Seleção interface on Takizawa’s phone.

Good, now that those jerks are gone, free candy for everyone! Just send me a pre-paid envelope and you will be buried in candy. I have literally no candy that I can’t wait to send out to you. Wait… what?

Damn that hand blocking our view of what number he is!

It seems clear to me that the guy we saw in the first episode is the Supporter. What with him being in such close proximity to Takizawa when the mind wipe happened. What I’m curious about is if his line “Number 9 is proving to be more unique to be imagined. But this is the end.”

Does that mean he has set up this situation and thinks that Takizawa is going to be killed? That seems hard to believe given how much random element was contained in that situation. It was hardly a way to ensure he was killed?

Or does he just know what Takizawa is planning and just think that he isn’t going to survive it? I guess that could be a good explanation, but I can’t see how the Supporter would figure out what Takizawa’s plan was.

Right now I think the best explanation is that the Supporter manipulated Takizawa into erasing his memory. But even if we settle on that explanation we don’t know why the Supporter is targeting Takizawa.

If I am right and these are NEETs, I am slightly scared of how judgemental Japanese people are.

These “Johnnies” were the other thing that struck me as really odd in this episode. Possibly it is just a weird head trauma thing, but I doubt they’re going to waste time in an 11 episode series.

The first thing that ran through my mind is that they were the NEETs that he rounded up in the shopping mall. But does that mean he killed/sent them away because they pissed him off in some way?

Anyway, three cheers for an awesome fourth episode. Please remember to use the spoiler tags if you want to talk about episode four stuff peeps.

See what I did there? Dohohoho, I am so clever.

So, I’ve decided that I’m going to blog K-ON exclusively, because Saki fills me with rage thinking of what it could have been, as opposed to what it’s shaping out to be, I guess I jumped the gun on Gonzo not failing. Meh.

That said though, I just finished exams and am getting over a bout with the flu (and no, not THAT flu) and lethargy is a gross understatement of my current state of mind in terms of blogging motivation. So, it’s time to cop out and do the whole picture plus some brief commentary thing!

Blackmail is awesome and I totally did not see the mild mannered music teacher being a punk rock/metal goddess with a split personality. Her desire to fit into the sweet school teacher role and her previous changing of personality for the sake of impressing a boy makes me dislike her though, as she’s trying to force fit her identity into the situation du jour. Neither of her split personalities were ones that she cultivated on her own, her identity is probably lost forever, poor thing.

Pointing out that any particular season is wrought with lesbian undertones nowadays is grounds for “Captain of the Obvious” accusations, but damn is this season wrought with lesbian undertones. Then again, my sample size is a whopping two shows, so perhaps it isn’t as wide spread as I’m being led to believe. I wonder what kind of “bonding” Mugi imagined happened between Sawa-chan and Yui, I bet Sawa is all kinds of freaky in the bedroom.

Watching K-ON is doing wonders for my motivation to play guitar, but it’s so damaging to see Yui’s playing progress at a rate much quicker than mine, I bet she’ll be better than me in an episode or two D:

But hey, in the past week I’ve learned most of Don’t Say “lazy”, so I’m still having a blast.

I lol’d hard at this scene, it was like a commercial for Gibson. I’ve always had a thing against Gibson (and Fender) guitars because their dominance of use in mainstream entertainment annoys me, however I do admit that the tonal signature of Gibson guitars is a thing of beauty, this scene made me want to grab one…when I have $2,500 lying around ;_;

More on product placement, FUCK YEAH AKG 701s, one of the two headphones that I had narrowed down to in my great headphone debate. I ended up not choosing them though, opting to get Sennheiser’s HD650s instead, boasting better bass than the flat AKGs. They do have their merits over the Senns though, a much wider (almost unnaturally so) sound stage, mainly.

Moe moe kyun~

Anyway, can’t wait until next week, which should be the school festival concert, perhaps I’ll do a full and proper entry for that. Until then!

~ Shirukii ~

I know that this has probably been said a plethora of times previously, but…she came.

Oooh, big dilemma, do I blog Saki, do I blog K-ON, both? Neither?! I kinda want to do both, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep up that pace, since…well, I’m lazy. However, these two shows have the potential to drag the blogger out of me once again. They’re a ton of fun to watch and I can see them being a ton of fun to blog.

Anyway, I digress.

Saki 02

This week starts right where episode 1 left off, Saki pulls an insane hand out of a very select few to bring her score back to +/- 0. Another game is set up, but this time the president asks Saki if she might not try to play to win, suggesting she think of the initial scores being altered to her opponents favor so a perceived +/- 0 is really a guaranteed win. Nodo steps her game up and dominates for the majority of the round, but Saki wins the last hand with a, pardon me if I get this wrong, rinshan tsumo, suanko. (For some reason I want to say it’s a chankan tsumo, instead of a rinshan).

The rest of the episode is reserved for Nodoka BAAAAAW. Saki confronts her after the game but Nodo is all pissy because she got beaten by Saki, who doesn’t even like mahjong. Nodo runs home, broods in the shower, her wet hair clinging to her huge breasts, then she broods some more in bed, her huge breasts pushed against the bed. Breasts breasts breasts breasts breasts. I bet GONZO could redesign Nodoka to have no head and not a single person would notice.

Oh, there was also that bit that hinted that Saki’s mom is a mahjong celebrity of sorts.

I really hate Nodoka, not only because of her cow boobs, but because she keeps switching intermittently between creaming her panties over Saki and hating her because she’s a sore loser.

Speaking of panty creaming, dear god the lesbian undertones are strong in this one. All it’s missing is Nodo humping the corner of the mahjong table while moaning Saki’s name.

Just out of curiosity, I’d like to ask those of you who don’t know much about mahjong to comment on how the show is doing in terms of explaining it. Are you guys following along easily or do you find yourselves lost in the terms and scores being thrown around and only know something is epic when the speedlines and lightning kick in?

K-ON 01-02

This anime is a riot to watch. Yui is by far the driving force of the show, the lazy, easily distracted, airheaded lead who stumbles into the light music club in an attempt to bring some measure of excitement into her otherwise mundane life. She sorta reminds me of mai waifu with her general sillyness and some of the cute stuff she does…

Hup hup hup

And the effectiveness of sweets as a calming agent…

There’s more to the show than Yui though, the rest of the cast meshes very well together. You have the rich ojou-sama character, Tsumugi, the off the wall insane character, Ritsu, and her boke sidekick and voice of reason, Mio.

The show is a great mix of school comedy and slice of life, sorta like a Minami-ke/Manabi Straight fusion. The part time job scenes were pretty funny and everyone hanging out in the club room talking about music and fattening Yui up with cakes and pastries is equally hilarious.

A huge reason why I’m partial to this anime is because I’m also an aspiring guitarist, and when I saw Yui’s excitement to start playing, watched her pine over that Sunburst Les Paul Signature, I started to remember how I felt when I first started out, and it led me to pick up my guitar and start messing around again, the first time I had done so in many months. Damn Yui for getting her $2,500 LP in less than a week while I had to wait for close to half a year before I held my Ibanez RG, at less than half that cost retail. Spoiled brat D:

Now that everyone has an instrument, the real fun (ie. SCALES SCALES SCALES) should begin. Although for some reason I think Yui’s going to be some sort of guitar prodigy and have sweep arpeggios and string skipping under her belt before the week is out.

Quick note on technicals, animation is cutesy, but fitting. Music, judging from OP and ED, seems to fit the bill, and not half bad for an animu.

=O Ritsu you bitch!

~ Shirukii ~

The new season is here and so far I’ve only watched two of the new releases, FMA Brotherhood and Saki. I’m not a huge FMA fan, and while it’ll be fun to watch the series take the darker, more serious route that the manga did vs the first anime, I don’t have much to say about it. Saki, on the other hand, is basically Akagi with lolis, and there are few things better than Akagi.

Saki focuses on the titular character, who is a mahjong prodigy unbeknown to herself, or perhaps more accurately, in denial. Her style of mahjong is an odd and almost surely impossible one, to finish every round with a score of exactly +/- 0. Her compulsion to do so is rooted in her childhood, playing mahjong with her family. If she scored too low she wouldn’t get her sweet candy reward, but if she won too much, she’d be scolded, so consciously or not, she aimed for the middle ground. The EXACT middle ground.

So Saki avoids playing mahjong, even going so far as to say she dislikes it, presumably to avoid similar ridicule/anger that she was subject to as a child. However, her friend drags her to the mahjong club, some easy prey for its members. As the game progresses, one of the club’s star players, Nodoka, begins to suspect Saki’s odd style of play, but its only when their president wakes up that the (rather obvious) conclusion that Saki was playing for +/- 0 becomes apparent.

Bribing her with books, the president gets Saki to return the next day, having shook up Nodoka, who, despite her best efforts, can’t match Saki’s unique skill. And once again, despite her best efforts, cornering Saki into a position where only a couple choice hands (70 fu 2 han hands) would net her the coveted +/- 0 score, she manages to pull a rinshan tsumo (winning on the bonus draw after a kan) out of sheer godly luck.

Thoughts

It’s okay Saki ;_; someday you’ll find someone who loves your DFC

FUCK YEAH AKAGI WITH LOLIS!

Well…actually, not quite. So far, Saki, both the show and title character, lack the chronic insanity that Akagi did. Saki has a sort of calm confidence about her, which kicked up a notch in the final scene where she drew her “winning” hand, but she’s not about to play chicken with a bunch of thugs and run herself off a cliff in a speeding car. Also, the mindfuck element is missing in Saki, so far. No lengthy explanations as to how Saki set up her hand, defying all logic, reason and odds, it was seemingly random, or purely luck, which is fine, but not nearly as awesome as seeing Akagi’s perfect manipulation of not only the game itself, but the people playing it. And the cheating, of course.

However, the sheer impossibility of consistently scoring +/- 0 in every game Saki plays edges it into the same domain as Akagi mindfuckery.

But damn if these high schoolers don’t take their mahjong seriously, let alone the club owning a fully automatic mahjong table, Nodoka has her own personal one (albeit with little else in her room). These things can run you thousands to tens of thousands of dollars! Also…

Mahjong graphs!

Akagi comparisons aside, on the technical aspect of things, animation is…sufficient. No frills animation is at work here, with some questionable choices here and there, like the CG umbrella in the rain scene. But at least GONZO knows where to allocate their resources, putting the most animation weight into Saki’s epic final draw.

Music is, once again, inconsequential, if not bordering on pretty bad.

Finally, seiyuu cast is decent, with Kugimiya Rie, Ueda Kana and Koshimizu Ami being the recognizable voices thus far.

Speaking of GONZO, with two seasons of Druaga and now Saki, whose manga has a respectable following, they’re actually not sucking too hard as of late. Kudos guys.

lol at the pseudo fanservice though, a stupid move if you ask me because it’s going to piss off both extremes, those that clamor for fanservice any chance they get and those that abhor it. Personally, I don’t mind it, I think it’s funny and not at a level that’s distracting…yet.

I’m going to blog Saki, or at least TRY to, when school doesn’t have it’s boot firmly planted in my ass. It’s a quirky and fun show whose base concept I have an underlying knowledge of. I’m by no means a mahjong expert, but I know enough about it that I’ll be able to explain to the clueless out there exactly how epic Saki’s latest hand was.

Then again…perhaps I’m just choosing Saki because I long for the excitement that Akagi brought to the table, even if it’s in its most watered down form D:

I’m definitely not doing it for the lolis, not at all. What kind of absurd accusation is that!?

And a pinch of yuri undertones for good measure

~ Shirukii ~

Heyyy, guys. Whats up? 

Anyway, in case you have forgotten (because I know I had going into this episode) I figured I’d throw in a quick character/episode re-cap here. Rikuo is your average every day high school student. One day he dumped the movement records from his family’s android, Sammy, because he thinks it might be doing things no one has told it to do. Taking along his friend Masaki, Rikuo retraces the android’s steps and discovers the quaint little cafe Eve no Jikan.

Beware the wrath of the small woman, for sure is surely a robot.

While hanging out at Eve, Rikuo and Masaki meet Nagi, the sassy barista manning Eve’s counter. As they sit drinking their “evlends” the pair almost give themselves heart attacks over-dramatizing the fact that androids cannot display the halo of light that distinguishes them from humans while the cafe. Just before Rikuo causes himself to stroke out, he is accosted by Akiko. She chats with Masaki and him for a while and seems to make a pretty good impression on Rikuo. Finally at the very end up the episode, he notices her at school. With a halo of light over her head. Shock! She is an android!

I am gasping! This is what surprise looks like!

Episode two picks up an indeterminate amount of time after the first episode with Rikuo debating about going back to Eve. His android is still acting funny and as Misaki so handily points out,

No law against Matrix sequels either. This is a major flaw.

there isn’t a law against lying. So they decide that it is time for another excursion. Rikuo seems a bit obsessed with finding out if Sammy is visiting the place and I guess Misaki just doesn’t have anything better to do.

There is what relief looks like. Obviously Studio Rikka are masters of portraying emotion. 

After being in the cafe for approximately three seconds without spotting Sammy, Rikuo decides that she isn’t there and has never even been to the place. And before you even have a chance to process how stupid that is, Masaki comments that it is probably too early for him to be as relieved as he is.
Then the two are accosted by the best thing in this episode:

I’m really hoping that Chie gets a spin-off show. Or some sort of prize for being the best child in an anime. 

Normally child characters like this bug the crap out of me, but Chie (apparently that is her name) is kept from being too annoying by her grandfather/guardian/keeper.

This is the Colonel’s cat impression. Watching the entire episode is completely justified by this five seconds.

Yeah. Chie is watched over by the anime equivalent of the KFC Colonel. Well that and the wacky faces. Those help a bunch too. Anyway, while the Colonel’s back is turned Chie runs off with Rikuo’s glasses.

As you can see, there is nothing up my sleeve… 

The only real reason I mention this is because, not because it gets used to set up a “hilarious” situation later on, but rather because what else Studio Rikka uses it for.

Rikuo’s vision is so bad that he’d be better off blind. 

Maybe I just don’t watch enough anime where people where glasses, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone show how disorienting being without glasses can be. This is obviously exaggerated, but really isn’t that far off from the truth.

To be honest stuff like that is really the reason I’m watching this show. Studio Rikka always seems to be pushing the barrier visually. Not with how things look, although they are quite good at blending traditional drawing and 3d, but with how things are presented. More than any other studio, Rikka seems to rebel against how scenes would be commonly presented.

Take for example, the opening scene of the first episode:
Yeop, Firefox still hates embedded videos

It is not immediately obvious, I didn’t actually catch it ‘till I watched it a second time, but this is a GPS record of where Sammy has been. Because she is sitting right next to Rikuo, the last point on the GPS record is obviously the house. Using this as a segue into the next scene is great. For other examples, see the television sequence in either episode. It is cool stuff.

As I was browsing through my ongoing series in my anime folder, I suddenly remembered about this series.

It has a halfway decent plot about a girl so shy that she loses her voice in front of crowds, and through a series of consequence ends up joining a drama club. It has a great cast of characters, Mugi in particular (pictured above) being full of lulz and general win, and a supporting cast with tons of comedic potential. It even has mild yuri undertones!

About the only thing it is missing, at this point, is fansubs! Episodes 1 and 2 were subbed by HgM, a new group with no completed titles to their name, but whose quality was pretty good. But after that, nothing, we’re up to episode 11 in raws but nothing past 2 has been subbed T_T

I tried to raw a couple of episodes, but I found myself missing chunks of convo here and there, and while it’s possible to fill in the rest reading episode summaries on blogs, the effect just isn’t the same.

So uh…not wanting to make this post sound like a senseless rant, I now issue a plea to fansub groups everywhere: SOMEONE PLEASE SUB HITOHIRA!

Now we can only hope that fansubbers are part of the reader demographic of this blog…

~ Shirukii ~