Very much my situation.

Long story short: my computer done broke, time to get a new one.

Short story long: around the time Clannad and ToA were ending, out of nowhere, booting my computer led me to a black start up screen prompting me that my hard drive would need to be swapped due to imminent failure.  My subsequent actions: didn’t listen, didn’t do anything, didn’t care, continued to use it like nothing, boom, the damn thing failed.  So yes, the past three months I’ve been relatively PC-less, resorting to my other friend’s PCs and laptops to get by with my schoolwork (even used a netbook at one point, which I must say feels incredibly fragile).  This happened about a day after I had typed up my ToA 26 post, which still needed to be screencapped and FTP’d to our site.  Thankfully, although it’s unfortunate that it took 3 months to finally get up and people have probably stopped caring, I can safely tuck it under the “Completed Series” category and not worry to much about my future plans.  To be honest, I never intended to blog anything in the spring season anyway: the only shows I’ve been semi-watching were Hayate no Gotoku!! Second and FMA: Brotherhood, but Hayate is hardly blogging material to me since it doesn’t really have a overarching plot, and I didn’t want any obligation to compare Brotherhood to the first incarnation since I haven’t seen all of the 1st series yet.  Thus, I tried using the season to try and get a job, not just for a new hard drive but for a new computer/laptop altogether.

But damn, Blazblue is fun…

…And yet here I sit, penniless and still reliant on another friend’s computer (one who was willing to let me install Filezilla for a spell).  Job-hunting sucks, especially when you don’t get one.  And now, not having a working computer HAS impeded on my plans, as the shows I WAS planning on blogging are going to air, and the money I had hoped to gain to get to Anime Expo has now gone down the drain.  Thus, though I wasn’t as active and up to date as I’d like to think, it seems to comming months will be  slow on my part:  the following series may only get an entry every so often the same way Shirukii is doing, depending on how much free time I have to spend at a friend’s house hogging the computer for a few hours, but I hope you continue to enjoy them.  That said, the following series I’ll be following this season are…

CANAAN

My Type-Moon faggotry forces me to pick this up, since I’m a sucker for Takeuchi’s art. I know almost nothing about the storyline, other than it’s based on a scenario Type-Moon conceptualized for the Wii visual novel game 428: Fūsasareta Shibuya de. The game itself gained a perfect score to Famitsu, and the concept of switching to different protagonist’s and experiencing different scenarios is interesting, but since Canaan isn’t a direct adaptation, it’s hard to say what to expect. Also, I can give two shits about Famitsu, since their infamous notoriety seems to me to stem from a bunch of elitist faggots as well as whether or not their judgement can be trusted or not (see KHII’s “almost perfect” score and Dirge of Cerberus “somewhat good” score…and FFXII getting a perfect is a load of shit as well)…but I digress.  This is pretty much a blind dive, since there’s little about the Canaan part of 428, but the game apparently takes place within a 10 hour time span, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM.  Leads me to think they might do a sort of “24″ One episode = One hour type progression, but we’ll have to wait and see.  Other than that…Canaan (titular character) has been the hardest trap for me whose gender is to discern, cause those boobs just look like pecks to me.

Takeuchi must REALLY like his Saber design. o_o

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

Do YOU believe in witches?

Been meaning to actually get into the Visual/Sound Novel series, but since reading takes time and effort (clicking the mouse is only fun the first few hundred times and auto-read never scrolls fast enough or slow enough), I haven’t so much as downloaded it; not having a computer doesn’t help either.  Still, the premise reminds is very much the same charm Higurashi had: 6 mysterious murders with more to follow, and a battle between a witch and a man who does not believe in witches.  What’s intriguing to me is the concept of the two (Battler and Beatrice) overseeing the events in a parallel dimension, almost like a game of Risk or the Millenium World Arc of…ahem, right.  Beatrice is being voiced by Ohara Sayaka, and since learning that, I can’t help but hear Beatrice speaking like Yuko from XXXholic, without the alcoholic tendencies.

So there you have it:  both series are murder mysteries if Canaan follows the murder that happens in 428.  Therefore, prepare for mass amounts of speculations and hypothesi.  Also, I plan on doing a few more video game posts here and there, so please look forward to those.  And to spice up the lack of K-ON we’ve had…

Unfortunately, I’m NOT going to be doing a review on this, but you gotta admit, it is pretty clever… ;_;

If you’re still butthurt disappointed it’s not real…maybe potential DLC for Rock Band: Japan?

-Jay

Tear casts Tales of equivalent of Cure, Luke recovers 1 HP.  Luke at Max HP!

WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY OVERDUE.

Take this! TRIPLE FINISH!

It’s super effecti-!

lrn2EVtrain, Thundering your Gyrados ass.

I’m glad that Van’s fight was a little longer than previous fights, but shouldn’t that have been the case anyway? If Van is the final boss, then yes I do expect a bunch of pretty lights and swordplay, especially from LUKE. Yeah, as it stands, Luke went through the entire series without using any sort of Arte. Hell, Natalia at least used one by the time Van went deaders, and as I said before during the first Van fight, it would’ve helped emphasize Van’s superiority over Luke in terms of swordplay if Van backhanded him everytime Luke used one; not that Van needed to demonstrate it anyhow…at least when he was shrugging off attacks like mosquitoe bites before Tear started to sing and “Oh dear, you’re singing is atrocious!” enough to cripple him worse than a Pokemon affected with every status defect facing it’s opposite element with one hit point left…and it has no PP left…and it’s Cynthia from D/P.

Wild VAN fainted.

…How the fuck does Luke stab him when the Key looks like a gigantic popsicle stick?

Yup, game ended EXACTLY like this.

The ending was abrupt, but this is unsurprising since the the game ends the same way. Obviously, the person at the end is Luke/Luke-dominant fusion of the two/something dumb like that. Would’ve been nice if they chose to add onto the ending, if anything to silence the Asch-believers. At least the ending illustrations are different…they don’t do anything really, but it’s different.

Closing

Overall, I enjoyed Abyss’ story. It’s unfortunate that any given episode has a sense of hastiness, as no matter the significance of an event, it will never be doted on for very long before moving on. I also wish that the anime would add on or elaborate on the ending, it’d help bring something new to the table and have another reason to watch it other than being an extremely loyal adaptation. Still, as a loyal adaptation, it does it’s job in condening an 80-hour or so RPG into about 8 hours. A bit of a hit or miss (especially if you don’t like Luke for the first 9 episodes…or the show for the first few episodes), I’m sure only Tales fans and/or those who’ve already played the game will appreciate it, and even then still prefer the games, but Abyss can stand on it’s own as a fantasy series…or at least coerce people to spend $30 bucks in order to gain a better understanding of this Planet Storm, Seventh Fonon/Fonim, Memory Particle nonsense. Then you can enjoy it more…I think…

The true villain of ToA.

Anise is evil in the game, I renounce any compliments I ever gave her (…I don’t remember giving one?)

-Jay (Next up, explanation for my leave of absence and how this will continue for a while…)

Bring me closer! I want to poke him in the eye.

After months of anticipation and preparation, some cosplayers combing meticulously over their costumes to ensure the utmost degree of accuracy and workmanship, and others throwing together shitty closet costumes (yes, you, L “cosplayers”) Anime North has come and gone, signaling the beginning of con season.

Packed in a car with my waifu, her brother, two of her friends, all of our luggage for the weekend and a sizable amount of alcohol, our journey to the con was underway. A damn long journey it was too, traffic around the con was absolute ass, but we passed the time by picking fun at the thickening crowd of cosplayers as we inched closer. We got to the hotel around 5, checked in, tossed our stuff in the room and hung around for a while. We eventually made our way down to the dealer’s room, which was closing soon, I bought this t-shirt I’ve been after for the better part of a year and that did it for con activities for the day.

After some so-so take out sushi from a nearby restaurant, me and the waifu got some much needed sleep, after two days of running on 2-3 hours of sleep.

Inazuma Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!

First of all, to anyone who doesn’t recognize this character, watch Gunbuster. Yes, it’s from the 80s, yes, the animation is kinda dated, no, there’s no moe, but it’s a damn good series, better than almost everything that succeeded it, and it’s a crying shame how little people have watched it.

I woke up on Saturday and spent a couple hours watching crappy daytime television (John and Kate Plus 8) while the waifu put on her costume and make up.

This is where the weekend began to veer off what thin guise of a schedule we had devised. On Friday before we went to sleep, we planned out what we were going to do on Saturday:

- Grab passes to the masquerade
- Watch a screening of Sword of the Stranger
- Go to some Best/Worst Moments in Anime panel, just to see how well/badly the list was put together
- Masquerade
- The 404s comedy skit show

How much of that did we end up doing? Absolutely none of it! But for all the day’s insubstantiality, it was really fun. The day was instead spent messing around with friends and taking in the sights, ie. creepy old guys and the delicate mix of fail and win cosplays whilst trekking back and forth between the dealer’s room and the Doubletree.

At night we went to the one and only con organized activity we attended over the whole con, the J-Pop dance. A couple words to the Anime North staff is in order on the subject of the J-Pop dance, YOU IDIOTS. For some reason, the Anime North staff decided to separate the line into the J-Pop dance based on gender, that is, girls in one line, boys in another. The best guess I have at why they did this was to funnel more girls into the dance so it wasn’t a sausage fest. But what it actually achieved was splitting up mixed gender groups of friends, creating a cloud of people hanging around the entrance waiting for their buddies to clear the security check. The security check itself was necessary, so I don’t fault them for that, even though it slowed the line to a crawl. Last year’s J-Pop dance was ended prematurely due to some drugs or something, so tighter security was definitely necessary.

Ears ringing, feet aching and stomachs full of nothing but alcohol, popcorn and chips, we went to sleep.

When you see it… =O

Sunday began with another couple hours of waiting for the waifu and her friend to put on make up. As soon as we hit the crowd, it became apparent that it was going to be a hassle getting anywhere with the two in their ridiculously cute Plusle/Minun gijinka cosplays. Our group was advancing at a rate of 3-5 strides between photo requests. Those of us not cosplaying got so bored that we began sabotage their photos by posing in the background doing stupid stuff like holding up a box of donuts or pointing at nothing.

With the con winding down, Sunday was a rather uneventful day. It was, however, free burger day at Harvey’s, the line was massive and it was hot outside, so we opted to use the drive through to procure our free food, during which I was tasked with reciting the burger toppings of the five people in the car, fun times…

Some more perusing of the dealer’s room and the artist alley brought the con to a close, and not soon enough, as something in my leg gave out and I ended up having to limp my way back to the car. I drove my waifu’s friend home, headed to her house, collapsed on the couch and fell asleep.

And now for the pictures! You’d think that with all that free time at the con I’d have taken a ton of pics myself, but I barely took any. Credits for most of these photos go to Tiffany Trinidad and her bitchin’ d300.

Cosplay: The Good

Kweh

So awesome

I’m still not finished watching CCS D:

Cosplay: The Bad

The harpoons. Man them.

I can only hope they’re not Caramelldansen

Cosplay: The Scary

Ah, ah, ah.

I think it might be time to retire

In addition to this, there were like…4 Misty crossplays, bizarre

Cosplay: The Waifu <3

Garmoe

Less than half the boobs, more than twice the win!

And finally my pathetic excuse for loot this year…

Is that a gorilla high fiving a shark?! Why yes, yes it is.

And that does it for this year’s AN! No tirade on the stupidity of anime fans when they gather this time, all that vitriol was spent last year. Now to start preparing for CNAnime in August, where I’ll hopefully be cosplaying for the first time!

~ Shirukii ~

Post Script: I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize for the lack of K-ON blogging, it’s an awesome show and I have tons to say about it, but in all honesty…I’m lazy D:

Back from the con, extremely tired. Pics and a proper report soon to follow, “soon” pending pictures from a friend and some energy to move my body for more than 10 minute bursts at a time.

Immediate congratulations must go out to congoers this year though, not once did I lose the game, see someone fail miserably at Caramelldansen, get asked for a free hug or had to hold my stomach contents in due to fat Yokos or fail Ls. Excellent work people, I hope to see your continued commendable conduct at cons to come.

…for those who don’t attend cons, please note with the greatest emphasis, that was sarcasm.

~ Shirukii ~

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 ~

Luke’s sword always seems to grow longer than it’s sheath the minute it’s pulled out (hurr hurr).

Not one technique in this fight.  ;A;

As expected, the rest of the God Generals have died pretty quick deaths, thanks to Tear’s hax song that instantly “ZA WARUDO” effects all enemies (I’d complain more, but I herd she’s pretty broken in the game too), though I did find Sync’s attitude towards Anise and during the battle in general to be satisfying enough to excuse his particular death: he spends the entire time speaking down on the defunct Ion and guilt tripping Anise over his death (which also gives Anise a chance to announce her HEROIC RESOLVE, except without the part where she starts kicking ass). When he finally starts disintegrating, he merely laughs over how he’ll finally be released from the world, having absolutely no redeeming values whatsoever; all of the other God Generals had at least a semi-justifiable reason to fight (Largo’s loss of his family, Arietta’s love for Ion), but Sync leaves with emotions other than his hatred of those who created him. You could argue that he’s being a bit emo, but at least he’s still badass while bitching.

The non-explained past doesn’t work well with Legretta though, other than the fact that “I want my beloved to achieve his dream.” We know that the Generals were treated like shit before they came to Van (except for Asch, who was treated like shit before AND after meeting him), but it’d be nice to understand where Legretta’s POV stands. Oh well, she was a poor shot anyway, it must not be a very clear one (hyuk hyuk).

Asch is past the point of “pissed off” and seems to just be whining over how he thinks Luke sucks compared to him just because he’s a replica, yet considers him a threat enough to want to challenge him to a duel in order to back up his ideal/ego. It’s funny that in this way, he’s almost a bit like spoiled, pre-haircut Luke in that he seems to be fairly immature about the issue. On the other hand, the issue about the replication process fucking over his life seems to explain why he’s been so agitated, especially considering the fact that whoever dies first gives their remaining fonons to the other, which I assume may stop the other one’s decompisition. Regardless, he doesn’t accept his defeat very graciously, but at least does seem to at least reach the same level of understanding that the two are different and goes back to using the name “Luke” once more…RIGHT before he’s skewered by three swords (he pays that back, but damn. o.o).

Asch’s death marks the end of the God Generals, and now only Van stands in the group’s way…

Abyss is already over, so no preview thingy this time (I’m not so sure they were even as useful as when I did them for Clannad, either. o.o) Stay tuned next time for review of the finale!

Poor Natalia. 1st choice is dead, and 2nd choice is going to choose someone else.

 -Jay

How many times now have they re-dubbed this fucking scene?

Boring recap was boring, but at least you have a choice of watching it or not since the story’s done.

Jay’s Final thoughts

Clannad at times just felt really slow to me, especially during the earlier Fuko and Kotomi arcs but it’s harder to distinguish when the series is a slice-of-life anime anyway and one of the reasons why I enjoy them. The only times that felt like they REALLY wasted time were the Fuko reappearances during the 1st season; although somewhat enjoyable, the significance of them dropped to absolute zero by the time After Story kicked in.

For After Story itself, most of it just continued to be an extension of Clannad, since the actual story wasn’t carried out until less than halfway through the series, and thus can really be considered a 12-episode series. That said, I guess it dispelled my worries that those short amount of episodes wouldn’t be enough to tell the story properly, though, and I’ve mentioned this before, the execution of the links between the real and Illusionary World were very rushed, being resolved less than 5 minutes into the final episode.

Overall, the series had it’s Key-quality and adapted fairly well. I didn’t think it was good as Kanon: as sad as Nagisa and Ushio’s deaths were, Kanon still beats it in number of breakdowns for me, but that’s just me (keep in mind, I haven’t watched AIR yet…so I guess all my credibility is taken away).

Got my fucking picnic scene, but nobody’s even there. O_O

Now for Shirukii’s thoughts…

Dearest KyoAni,

I hate you. Recap episode + 30 seconds of “new” footage a finale does not make.

Cheers,
~ Shirukii ~

Post Script: Despite your lackluster rendition of this series, I still eagerly await your Little Busters anime. Don’t fuck it up.

Jay: …Well, fine. ] :

I agree though: Little Busters! better be coming up soon. Preferably before Lucky Star K-ON! ends.