Recent news & updates
Hello world! · 24 May 2010
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
I lied. I totally frickin' lied. · 13 April 2009
Yes, yes I did. I am addicted to this shit and I know it. There’s no getting away from it. If I were a crack addict, there’d be no hope for me. None, zero. Just when you think you’ve pulled away, estranged yourself from your anime addicted self, they remake Fullmetal Alchemist. They REMAKE it. So, uh…yeah. I’m back. Hopefully for good.
The first episode was epic. The second episode not so much. There’s all this noise about the new series following the original manga plot line. Somehow, I find it both deeply attractive (they’ve imported all of the manga humor) and deeply exasperating at the same time (because the manga is just getting so good at chapter 94, seriously). It’s like watching a horror remake when you know all of the gore, shock and death.
I was pretty surprised when the first episoded opened up with this Isaac Ice Alchemist dude who is nowhere in the manga. The animation was superb, though. And Roy was fantastic. Lockon Stratos or not, Shinichiro Miki makes my day.
Moving along to the second episode, we’re back to good ol’ FMA territory. Two boys, one dead mother, one absent father, the whole nine yards minus the epic animation. I know, I know, I’m a BONES fan and I’m always eager to shine the spotlight on their flawless animation. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the second episode fell just a tad bit short of the usually BONES perfection animation standard. Or, I just pay too much attention to Roy Mustang’s face. In any case, I sure as hell am not complaining at the remake. Brotherhood or no brotherhood, I’m still head over heels for Arakawa’s work of genius.
Second, I am in love with Saki. I played mahjong twice, or maybe three times. Asian Fail. And for most of the two episodes that I’ve watched, I had no idea what the heck was going on, but man, did it look good. I’m not a real big fan of Gonzo. The last of their creative brilliance I’ve had the good mind to lay eyes on was Dragonaut and that didn’t turn out too well. So, I was skeptical. But the girls in the promo art were just too damn cute to turn down!
This isn’t exactly the type of show I watch either (see: FMA). Where does mahjong (a relic of Chinese grandmothers past) and yuri fit into hot guys, guns and mecha? It really just doesn’t. But the electronic mahjong table? The weird my-eyes-must-sparkle-when-I-pluck-mahjong-pieces thing? I fell for that hook, line and sinker.
And I have absolutely no idea where the show is going. I’m going to gaze into my non-existent crystal ball and guess that it’ll be about mahjong competitions and the much talked about National tournament and yuri and tits. Gonzo just couldn’t leave the tits thing alone. Just once, really, can I not have giant bouncing milk jugs shoved into my face in the first two seconds of the show?! In all honesty, I can’t really pin down by I like Saki so much. Maybe it’s Saki herself, the all too typical quiet protagonist with unfathomable, prodigy powers just waiting to be unleashed into the world of old Chinese ladies’ game mahjong.
There’s just something weird, or should I say quirky, about Saki. If FMA is the powerhouse show of the season, the big jock on the football team that cheerleaders flock to and nerds aspire to be, then Saki is the underdog, the weird one that sits in the corner and does his weird little thing but gets the girl in the end anyway. I love FMA, but there are only so many tricks you can teach an old dog, if any at all.
Haven't been here in a while… · 1 February 2009
Well, it’s three in the morning over here and I had the random urge to check back here and see what’s been happening to my old blog. It’s been, uh, a while since I’ve done anything of any sort that’s marginally anime related. I think I’m going on hiatus for good this time, which means it’s not really hiatus, it’s more like quitting time. One of my external hard drives decided it hated me, utterly, and kicked the bucket. That thing was pretty much the bread and butter of my anime career. And, when that pretty blue light stopped blinking, the possibility of a near future return to my short lived career as an anime blogger just died with it. Though, there is always a chance that I’ll make a comeback.
If anyone is still listening to me, reading my blog, out there:
Thanks guys, for everything, for adding me to your blogroll, for putting up with my rants and ramblings and grammatically incorrect and often times incoherent blog entries, for bothering to pay attention to my posts and commenting, for all the support you’ve given me by simply reading my blog. I’ve loved every moment of this blogging experiment. Thank you, everyone. Good luck and good night.
Macross Frontier – The End, or Oh god, I'm in love, oh, I'm in love. · 19 October 2008
I just finished Macross Frontier. It was damn amazing.
Honestly, in the beginning, I wasn’t too impressed with Macross. It was one of those things that I found myself begrudgingly watching simply because there was nothing else to watch. A series 25 years in the making, and all I could do was just shrug and watch and wonder, damn, that’s one hell of a love triangle they’ve got themselves going there. And even though I’ve been trying to concentrate as things that supposedly matter school, I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
So, long story, I popped back into the series the episode Michel dies. I cried like a baby. It was like everything went to complete and total hell. Nanase was in a coma, Michel’s dead, Ranka’s eloped with the Vajra and Sheryl was dying (though she’s been dying for a loooong time) and Alto, actually Alto’s only problem was just indecision, so he’s fine. And just so much STUFF happened, I don’t know where to start. Everything, everything, all the color and all the singing, it was like an explosion on my computer monitor of neon color and explosions and song. And then, and then! Grace O’Connor turns into massive naked creep and tries to take over the universe by merging with Vajra queen! It was just so crazy, but it was just so good! All I wanted to do was grab someone by the shoulders and shake them and point and tell them, look! Look! It’s one of the most amazing things you’ll ever see in your life! Just watch!
At some point, I found myself thinking back to the first few episodes of Frontier, before the shit hit the fan and Grace O’Connor got creepy, about Sheryl and Ranka and Alto, about the Nyan Nyan buns and the crazy stunts, about the underwear chase through the school. Looking back at all of it, at how everything, how everything became more epic as it went along, how everything turned from a silly love triangle into fate-of-the-world-oh-my-dear-god epic science fiction anime. I think this epiphany I just had is what most call plot and character development. There are only a couple words I think apt to describe my response to Macross Frontier: discombobulated explosions of joy.
Frontier was one of those happy ending type stories, and you can see it from a mile away, but they toss in enough twists and turns to keep you second guessing yourself. I watched the last couple episodes in a row, I’m sure Alto’s ‘death’ would’ve killed me more than it would’ve Sheryl, just from sheer exasperation a cliffhanger of such proportions was still being tossed my way that late in the series. And I was so sure, so sure that at some climactic point in the ‘holy’ battle (I hated Mishima, just the way he looked, that scheming look on his face!) that Sheryl was going to die. But, of course, she’s saved by Ranka.
At this point, I’m drifting down from what I like to call an epic sort of high, the sorta thing you get after watching something so mind blowing you have nothing to say so you just blab incoherently and pass it off as a blog post later, that sort of a high. At least, that’s what I get every once in a while. It’s the sort of feeling that drives me crazy, that makes me bash in the heads of friends and family when they interrupt me in the psuedo-sacred act of watching the very, very last episode, any episode at that.
I’ve got that Vajra love song stuck in my head. I’d describe Frontier as bittersweet, more sweet than bitter, but when you see Sheryl and Ranka standing atop the flower crested hill, and the camera pans and zooms out and fits the rest of the cast into the frame, you can’t help but notice all the people missing, Michel most of all.
It’s a feeling of immense satisifaction I’m holding onto right now, because right at the end, when Alto swoops down and the frame freezes with Ranka on the left and Sheryl on the right and Alto rising above both of them, all I could think to myself was, “Damn, that’s one hell of a love triangle they’ve got there.” Even the lens flares were triangular. Like a lot of other things, Frontier was about people, was about the relationships between people, about, as one of the characters mentioned at some point, it was about living, the everyday things people do. And, damn, it was just good.
So, I guess I can say I’m back from haitus? I’ll drop by every once in a while and produce a completely incoherent post because I know I can’t stay away from watch anime. With that said, next up on the backlog list: the ever so controversial Code Geass R2. Trainwreck, here I come!
Tell me baby… · 22 August 2008
So, I’ve been sort of MIA for a really long time. It wouldn’t hurt to say that with school starting in just a week and the infamous work load of junior year, I might be going on hiatus for even longer. I guess I’ve just been running out of steam lately, out of passion for the only thing I’m passionate about.
I coaxed one of my non-anime obsessed friends (don’t worry, he’s just addicted to Heroes) into watching Gurren Lagann. I re-watched a couple episodes here and there with him, but it was this Wednesday, when I saw, for the first time since they aired last year, the last two episodes of Gurren Lagann that I remembered why I absolutely loved that show. Even now, when I so much as to think back to say, the alternate universe dream sequence, when I think of Simon and Kamina, when I think of Yoko and Kittan, the bittersweet victory against the Anti-Spirals, I start remembering what it was like to watch something amazing.
With that said, I also saw a couple clips of the dubbed version of Gurren Lagann and was intensely horrified of the whole affair. I didn’t last two minutes. Kamina’s voice just doesn’t have the same manliness, the same edge, the same zeal and craziness that is essential to the show.
I have Shigurui, Toshokan Sensou sitting somewhere. I need to catch up on Soul Eater and Macross Frontier and Xam’d. I need to start torrent Natsuume no Yuujinchou and Ryoko’s Case Files and to preview the fall season. All I really want to do is just watch Gurren Lagann over and over again.
I guess Gurren Lagann was the show that really got me into blogging in the first place, the first real show I sat down and wrote about and ranted and rambled about, my entry way into the animeblogging thing. And I guess, though I’m certainly not leaving for good, it’ll be the one to hold my hand while I walk out the door.
Well, I have one thing to look forward to: the 3rd season of Black Lagoon.
Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuiokuhen · 26 July 2008
I’ve seen it. I didn’t cry. Somewhere between too much to say, too little say and just plain not knowing what to say, don’t really know what it is that I’m feeling. I have Taku Iwasaki’s scoring ringing in my ears, my speakers at full volume and I’m still just dying, dying to taste, as best I can describe it, intense, intense melancholic pain.
Sometimes, after I’ve watched something there’s this moment of quiet, there’s this rare moment of silence, when I’m caught in a purgatory of sorts, half in, half out, just hanging there, in the viscous amber of something so terrifyingly morose and beautiful that catches me completely off guard. I can’t feel the blood in my fingers and there’s this eerie, delicate sense of utter detachment, a sense of being unable to breath, a sense of trying to keep everything from squeezing together.
Kenshin Himura is a character I’ll never forget. Every note of Iwasaki’s score speaks to his character. Maybe the differences between the OVA Kenshin and the series Kenshin is just inherent in the approach and style, but this man, whose life is marred tragedy after tragedy, is able to walk and smile and live, it’s just, it’s just, there’s no real word to describe. Much like Iwasaki’s score, most notably Kotowari, I just can’t over how much these four episode, this one man, how much it just brushes aside all of this sarcastic, cynical, skeptical bullshit the world’s mired in and just cuts, like a searing, hot blade right through my heart, as fatal a wound as something will ever leave.
I’ll remember the music more than anything. There was just something grating, something that irked me, something that stirred discontentment in my little soul, but it was in the most amazing way. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t sad as it was heartbreaking? Tragic? It wasn’t sad as it was inexplicable. It was almost predictable in the sense that trust and betrayal, the English moniker for the series, are veteran themes of anime, but it conveyed the most disconcerting, the most unsettling sense of grief, of this mute, internal grief. Recollection or reminiscence, the Japanese title, hits closer to home. The Kenshin in the OVA is not the man from the series, he’s younger, rougher around the edges, lost. How much I appreciate this man after Tsuiokuhen, how much more do I understand the intensity of emotion…
I think it’s a bit redundant to say that it was amazing, or to tack any adjective to Tsuiokuhen. It’s an experience I’m going to walk away from not fully understanding, but satisfied nonetheless. Would it be cheesy to say that maybe it was so deep and so profound that the beauty of it is that I won’t ever truly comprehend it? Tomoe, the porcelain skinned woman, scented of white plums and Kenshin, the battousai soaked in the blood of those he had slain, bodies entwined in blood and snow, there’s something distinct, something iconic, something best, in my opinion, characterized by the last two or three minutes of Kotowari, to all of it.
I’m going to bury all of my emotional unrest and pandemonium back where Tsuiokuhen found it, bury that pebble of my emotions elsewhere. Would it be cheesy, also, to say that just as Kenshin bears the cross-shaped scar, that maybe I’m going to bear some sort of a scar as well?
This is probably the shortest entry I’ve written, but it was the hardest. From a good while, I was like a blind man, groping a blank mind for words, trying to piece together a response, my emotions askew and thoughts in disarray. It’s like being knocked out of your own body by a wrecking ball and having to fill your own skin and flesh again, an out of body experience in every sense of the phrase.
The Beginning – Strike Witches, Natsume Yunjinchou, Yakushiji Ryouko no Kaiki Jikenbo first impressions… · 13 July 2008
Strike Witches: Little girls without pants are terrifying…
Alright, I didn’t want to watch Strike Witches. The trailer made me cringe and poke my eyes out with toothpicks. I can’t handle the little girls without pants! I can’t! I can’t! Give me blood, death, gore, anything but the cute, prepubescent lolis without pants! I mean, the idea, the concept is insanely kickass. In the years preceding WWII (1939, the year it starts actually) aliens attack the Earth! That’s not so cool, but wait! They have magical witches with the power to transform into aircraft! They use magic! They kill the aliens! It’s all very trippy, but I did catch a glimpse, of the five or so minutes that I spent watching the first episode before I closed it to save myself from brain injury, of a girl with an MG-42! I did enjoy the sound of fighter engines and the macabre sound of bullets and antique 1940’s weaponry. But, but, when the cute little girls without pants showed up, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t watch anymore. If they had pants, if they had breasts, if they weren’t just moe, then, well, I’d stick around. But, the pants, the pants, and pantie shots, the cat ears?
Natusme Yunjinchou: Cute…ayakashi?
I like this show, what can I say? I’m a sucker for semi-cute, semi-ordinary protagonists, semi-shunned by society because he has semi-cliche abilities to see Ayakashi. Did I mention that there’s a talking Fortune Cat demon? And that Brains Base (Baccano! love right here!) is doing the animation? When Natsume trips over Nyanko-san’s barriers and the doors burst open in the shrine to release…a fortune cat? I couldn’t help but laugh.
Natsume Yunjinchou looked like a cross between Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist with a supernatural twist and a slight hint of Mushishi (though I can’t really say because I haven’t finished Mushishi), but it’s pretty different. Natsume inherited his grandmother’s book of ayakashi friends. The first episode (like Jacuzzi) broke that paper-thin barrier between fun and sadness. The one-eyed ayakashi that I thought was just out to kill Reiko, and in turn Natsume, was just lonely, just like Reiko. I thought it was cutest thing in the world, the ayakashi waiting in the rain with a leaf as an umbrella. The show just screams sentimental friendship drama, and y’know, I fell hook, line and sinker for it. God, I hate it when I do that…
And, nyanko-san, oh, nyanko-san…He’s so cute! I want a plushie just like him! Plus, he turns into a giant cat-like ayakashi.
Yakushiji Ryouko no Kaiki Jikenbo: Bitchy lady in heels solves supernatural mysteries and boss people around…
Yes, that was in fact my first impression. I sort of hated the show for the first fifteen minutes before the plot kicked in. I like the male lead, Izumida, he reminds me of Rock from Black Lagoon and in a way, Ryoko reminds me of a more refined (and infinitely more bitchy) version of Revy, without the badass pistols and the coolness (subverted completely for red nail polish, heals, shopping and bitchiness). The supernatural aspect of the show seems almost superfluous, it can do without it. Are people worried that without supernatural twists, show will be boring? No! I look forward to drab, ordinary, everyday homicide crime thrillers. Supernatural is almost easy, too. Oh, who did this? A ghost. Aha. Coming up with a decent crime thriller might actually involve thinking, I’m not surprised.
That aside, the series seems to run in arcs (reminiscent of Darker Than Black and Mnemosyne) but the first episode left me on a cliffhanger and I want to see how this Ryoko lady survives poison. She also names all of her cases and they sound ridiculous. I like the rivalry between her and the other detective and how there are two, tall, good looking female superintendents in the Metropolitan Police.
The one other thing that I’m wondering about is Izumida’s dream in the beginning of the episode of Ryoko shooting herself in a field of flowers and a white sundress with a Colt .45. Its only the first episode, so, I’ll wait to figure this one out.
Well, that’s about it for now, I’m still waiting on World Destruction, Ultraviolet and Blade of the Immortal. Looking back at it, I’m not so sure why I wanted to watch Birdy again.
Macross Frontier 12-14 – Confused and loving it! · 13 July 2008
I realized after a while that you run out of insightful things to say about anime after a while. All I do nowadays is just rant and rave about how amazing a series with no real meat to back up what I’m saying except for my ephemeral feelings, the ones that you can’t hold on to, the ones that you want to last after seeing something that hit the right chords and sing the right songs to you.
Okay, very bluntly: Jesus Christ! Episode 14 was frickin’ awesome! I didn’t get a thing that happened, but they nuked everything and stuff exploded and it was awesome! And what in the name of god, after Sheryl took control of Skull 2, happen to Mikhail!?
I really hate how, sometimes, a perfect, perfect moment in ruined because of plot. Ranka and Alto’s solo flight on Gallia was perfect, the atmosphere of the scene and the actual atmosphere, the clouds in varying hues of pink and purple floating past as they giggled together, as he thanked her, a perfect, perfect moment ruined by…equipment jamming? I understand how there needs to be a running plot, but couldn’t you just let us get away with a few more seconds of one of the cutest things that’s happened so far?
And then, from there on, Macross Frontier went from, “Hm, I sort of get the story, the particularities of the Macross universe has yet to inhibit my understanding of it.” to “What just happened? What just happened?! What is that?! Who is that?! Oh my god, Grace just set off a thing that took a bite out of a planet! What the hell is Ranka!? What the hell is that bug thing? Someone explain to me what’s going on!!”
The whole deculture thing, yeah, it was confusing, deculture makes it sound like they’re loosing their culture or, uh, un-culturifying, but apparently it’s just a statement of shock or surprise in Zentradi. Confusing, I tell you, for a newbie like me to sit there and wonder why Ranka’s wonderful songs make them think they’re loosing their culture.
I saw a dubbed version of a Macross movie once, on HBO of all places, and the only thing, the only thing I remember from any of it was the fact that a pretty girl sang and the fighting stopped and everyone was happy. There are two pretty girls, they both sing, but stuff only happens when Ranka sings. Halfway through the battle, the Vajra get their asses kicked because Ranka started singing and then Alto comes in and blows them to hell. My question is, at this point, do humans know that her songs stop the Vajra?
More Ranka Lee questions: What do they mean by the Little Queen? Please don’t tell me that just because Ranka’s stomach happens to glow a faintly purple like the giant bug did that she’s like the new Vajra queen. Don’t tell me that Ranka was like some lab experiment and her parents made her in that first gen Macross thing. Don’t tell me that Ranka’s parents were Vajra, or, just don’t tell me something bad like that is going to happen!
More questions in general: And that guy in the red Valkyrie and Grace and that creepy guy with the bad hair that’s always talking to the president, just what is going on with that? What were the pills Grace was feeding Sheryl? What the hell did they eat half of Gallia 4 for? Just what the hell are Grace and that guy in the red Valkyrie? Who the hell is pulling their strings? Creepy thin man? And, most importantly, why?
Macross Frontier owes me a whole lot of answers and if the preview lives up to its name, all the answers are coming out way next episode.
In the meanwhile, someone needs to write a Macross Frontier Relationship Guide. In recent episodes, fortune has been favoring Ranka, tipping the scale of that particular love triangle to her side. (I wonder if they named that song Trianguler for a reason, besides bad Engrish.) After the Vajra kidnapped Ranka, all Alto’s been say was, “Ranka? Where is Ranka? I have to save Ranka! Ranka!” and it’s making the usually cool and controlled Sheryl look desperate, vying for Alto’s attention.
I still marvel at the fact that this much emphasis has been placed on a love triangle in a show like Macross, so much that I’m dying to see more of it. It was only in 14, when the shit hit the fan and the battle started, that I remembered that Macross was a mecha show. The chain of events that lead up to Alto and Ranka dropping out of the sky like flies was one of the most perfect set-ups for something indecently romantic to happen. She came to save him, using some crazy untested piece of technology and her song stopped an uprising. Ranka Lee’s first live concert was for him, Alto Saotome. It was so good. And when the creature in the forest startled them and Alto’s first reaction was to grab her by the waist and pull her towards him, that momentary scene looked so badass. He’s half naked, he has his arm around her and she’s in a skin tight suit, he has a gun and it’s pointed at you.
Almost every character in this show is involved in one way or another, romantically or not, with someone else. That scene on the bridge, where the girls were the talking about who liked who, seemed to fit the show, surprisingly. I still can’t believe someone (Captain Bobby) likes Captain Jeffrey (well, he is voiced by Toru Okhawa…) and that girl with the bento likes him, too, loves him even. When he told her she’d make a good wife, oh, how awkwardness makes everything cute. Speaking of cute, Luca and Nanase also seem to be developing, in lieu of the usual Alto-Sheryl-Ranka drama, a relationship of sorts, though it’s one sided for the time being. When Luca told her he’s come back to tell her something, I had the worst feeling that he’d die and I was so glad he didn’t. People who make that sort of a promise in war usually don’t come back. It breaks my heart every time.
Speaking of dying, what happened to Mikhail? His Valkyrie blows up, Sheryl is rescued, where did he go? Where did Mikhail go? Even he has a relationship thing, with that Zentradi giantess in the form of a cute little alien girl. What the heck happened to Mikhail? And since I started on the questions again, what does Brera have to do with anything? Ranka’s dream shows him and his harmonica. Brera himself asked a really good question, why does he care so much for this girl?
Brera’s untimely entrances and existence really begs the question, who ends up with who in the end? I have a feeling that somehow he’s in love with Ranka, but the future doesn’t look too bright for him, he’s in conjunction with creepy thing man and girl who pushed button to eat half of pretty planet with sky.
And I’m dying, dying, absolutely dying, after this trio of episodes, for a second OST. So many new songs! So many new songs I want to hear again! The way this shows uses music amazes me. Aimo, the song, the light melodic one that Ranka sings a lot, that Brera plays on the harmonic is such a simple, repetitive gesture in the series. You can almost call it Ranka’s theme, sounds like a maternal sort of love, of windy, green grasslands and open skies and calm, gentle clouds, of flying across the sky with the person you love, gently, floating like leaves, everything that’s detached from the reality, the war, the Vajra, Ranka’s potential role with the Vajra. It makes me want to forget everything and just listen.
Baccano! – The end? THE END!? Never! How the hell can I not love this show to pieces? · 13 July 2008
Baccano! is amazing. Baccano! is awesome. Baccano! is not over. There is no end and there is no beginning.
I just watched the last two episodes, and I’m, how do you say this? At a lost for words, yet at the same time I have a gratuitous amount of feelings, emotions, just things I need to convey, one of them being how awesome Baccano! is. I sound like a fangirl, I am a fangirl.
Those last three episodes made it even better than the original thirteen. It was like, it was like, something that was just shy of being absolutely perfect finally becoming perfect. It was like finishing a jigsaw puzzle and slotting that last piece in place. It was like placing that last domino on the ground and watching the pieces fall.
Firstly, I love Vino (or, whatever he decides to call himself in the end) and Chane. I love Firo and Ennis. I love Isaac and Miria. I love Jacuzzi and Nice. The characters were amazing, the story was amazing, everything is amazing. The man who wrote the light novels is amazing. I need to learn Japanese. I want to experience Baccano! in its native media, print!
Baccano! falls into the same spirit as Gurren Lagann, or at least what I perceived this spirit to be, the sort of happy go lucky, nothing can go wrong zaniness. But, they are two completely different animals. You’d walk away from something like Baccano! on a sugar high. It’s New York (all good stories happen in New York, don’t argue with me on that), first of all, in the 1930’s, bootleggers, train robberies, mafia wars, tommy guns and all that nice jazz (quite literally), and the main characters are a bunch of immortal alchemist people from the 18th century, but they’ve all been around for 200 hundred years, toss in a couple of lovable, goofy, crazy, insane personalities like Ladd Russo, Jacuzzi, Firo, Isaac and Miria, and born is Baccano!
A small tangent: I love this show for being in New York. I remember at the end of episode 13, seeing Isaac and Miria walking around in present day New York, seeing the camera lift out of the street and zoom out, seeing the place I live, anime-style, touched my heart in a really odd way. The backdrops, the subway cars thundering past, the stores, the restaurants, the harbors and the parks and Chinatown, it presents the city in a vastly different way from, say, Darker Than Black.
I’m an official Claire Stanfield/Vino/Cross Continental Conductor/Rail Tracer fangirl. Way back when, when the conductor was just a nameless personality that I found cute, who had no lines, who had barely a role, but was listed in the credits and even had his own two second spot in the ending, I could never have guessed how big the twist was going to be. He even reminds me a little bit of myself, not that I’m crazy and walk around covered in blood, squishing little (immortal) boys on train tracks, or that I can do crazy acrobatics and dodge bullets, but just way he talked about Chane when he was eating with Rachel, that’s how I talk about people I’m in love with. How great of a character is he? Self-righteous mass murderer, pompous jerk, lovesick fool out to find the love of his life, a mute girl that he met on a train, literally on top of a train. He’s also insanely gorgeous, the red hair, that quirky smile, the way he toys with Graham because he knows he is so much better, the way he looks at Chane…
Shows like Baccano! fuel my love for anime like no other. Not only is it chock full of hot guys (Vino and Firo being my personal favorites), but it’s an exhilarating adventure, completely crazy and trippy, with a heart of gold. You can’t have characters like Isaac and Miria without having a heart of gold. Baccano!, sadly, for the most part is relatively unheard of. I met a cosplayer at Anime Fest last year that came as the Conductor. It took me a good few minutes to finally discern who he was cosplaying as and then I glomped him in joy.
And, before I forget, Luck Gandor is the demon? Is it me, or was that like a huge brick in the face? In a really good way? How insane is that? Luck Gandor, this unsuspecting, almost minor, character is the demon! The demon! From 1711! And he’s looking after Maiza! Man, they played it like Maiza was looking after everyone! Twists and little things like this just make me love the show all the more.
There’s just always so much going on in Baccano! The last three episodes are proof. They wrapped everything, and I mean everything, up in three twenty-four minute chunks. They even introduced a new character and left no loose ends. Everything, everything is explained. I guess that was the point of the last three episodes, but I’m just amazed that they did it so perfectly, so flawlessly that I have nothing to say, none of my usual, “Oh, you have loose ends.” crap apply here.
I loved that flashback of Jacuzzi and Nice. Jacuzzi is a strange character. I like him, I like him for the same reason Graham likes him. He breaks down that wall, that paper-thin wall between fun and sadness. All of those selfless things he ends up doing breaks my heart because the world is missing people like him, no wonder Chane is confused.
None of this could’ve happened in real life and I love it. That mouse, under the Empire State Building, that mouse under the Empire State Building represents everything I love about this show. There is no end to this story, it’s like a slice of life, it’s like a really good slice of life, without the sappy high school dramas and the pantie shots, instead you have guns and knives and immortals and action. Baccano! is about people’s lives entangling, in the most unrealistic, the most impossible, the most fascinating way, ever, as the chief points out to Carol (I had almost forgotten they were there). The possibilities are just mind blowing, if you even as so much look away for a second, you’d miss it. It’s like Ferris Bueller said, life comes at you fast, if you’re not careful, you might just miss it.
Despite it not having an ending, I felt like they closed the book on Baccano!, hard. It’s like putting down a really good novel, the satisfaction of having read something intensely fulfilling, like a good meal, it kind of stays with you and keeps you warm. I’m going to miss it, Baccano!, like I missed Gurren Lagann. This is the sort of stuff I can honestly say I live for, the sunshine of my love, you can call it that in a really strange way. I’m going to miss it alright, I’m going to miss it, everything from Isaac and Miria to the mice.
Summer already? I'm barely done with spring! · 9 July 2008
Backlog is a blogger’s worst enemy. Week after week, I download episodes of Soul Eater and Macross and every other show I’m following and they all just end up being chucked into the ‘Anime Have Not Seen’ folder, and they sit there and gather electronic dust as I promise, almost daily, to get around to watching them, soon. And before I knew it, summer series were airing already. I feel old, almost, unable to keep up with the vicious pace of anime releases.
So, well, it’ll all just probably end up being backlog, but there are a few noteworthy series airing this summer, surprisingly, Strike Witches is on my list of shows I want to check out. Some really quick thoughts on the stuff airing.
Ultraviolet
I saw the movie. I didn’t really like the movie, but I like Milla Jovovich. It’s action. I like action. Good enough for me, I’m watching it, or I’m going to try really hard to watch it.
Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora (Someday’s Dreamers)
Long, long name. The director is pretty famous, though I’ve seen neither BECK nor Paradise Kiss, I’m looking forward to the show. I’m digging the promo art’s soft, simple, almost sun bleached colors. I’m not really sure what the plot is, but promo art is good enough sometimes.
Strike Witches
If you know me, that’s a surprise appearance on my list, yet at the same time, it’s not. There are three things I like, hot guys, guns and mecha. I don’t like little girls at all, one shouldn’t be surprise, so this whole mecha musume thing isn’t really right up my alley, but Shermans? Messerschmidts? Panzers? Count me in! Count me in! Then again, just from watching the promo trailers, the wriggling behinds of prepubescent girls that sprout cat ears and tails and transform into my favorite tanks and aircraft isn’t really right up my alley either. I’m committing some sort of an anime blogging suicide by picking up this show. I’m stepping out of the box, though I’m going to cringe and cry and gripe the entire way.
Tetsuwan Birdy DECODE (Birdy the Mighty DECODE)
Gender confused, Big Bird anime, sounds good. Ridiculous, but every once in a while, life needs a good helping of ridiculousness (see: Strike Witches).
Yakushiji Ryouko no Kaiki Jikenbo
Another crime-supernatural series, which reminds me a bit of Mnemosyne (which I’m not really keeping up with either, it’s all backlog! Backlog!). The character designs are very tempting and the animation, from the trailers, feel solid. I’ll give it a shot.
Natsume Yuujin-Chou
I can honestly say that I’m slightly excited about this show. Someone mentioned somewhere that the protagonist looks just like Edward Elric and has Yagami Raito’s abilities but backwards. Seeing how I’m head over heels for Fullmetal Alchemist and Raito, and just by virtue of the lead being cute, I’m going to watch this show. Also, he’s voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya (Nozumi Itoshiki from Zetsubou Sensei and Tieria from G00 and more recently, Mikhail from Frontier) who I’m quite fond of, another reason to invest a bit of my time to check this out. Unlike Strike Witches, this hits closer to home in terms of what I usually watch. And his cat, his cat is adorable and when it speaks, it’ll speak like Kakashi. You can’t get better than that.
World Destruction ~Sekai Bokumetsu no Rokunin~
The series is titled World Destruction. I’m watching it. It’s another one of those RPG game adaptation anime. I take a lot better to RPG game adapations than I do to eroge adapations and not to mention, the male lead, with his springy, blond hair is played by Mamoru Miyano, who I’ve grown quite fond of. And, I also caught a glimpse of cute, tiny critters in pirate garb, I’m a sucker for cute mascots (see: Nyankon-san from Natsume Yuujin-Chou). But, still, it’s about a girl with ability to destroy the world, I just want to watch this for the hell of it. I watch all summer blockbusters for the hell of it.
Blade of the Immortal
I’ve always, always wanted to read the manga but it’s been going on for a little more than a decade and that’s a lot of reading I have to catch up on. I was pretty hyped about the anime adaption, now I’ll get a chance to see what this incredible piece of art actually is. The trailer looked stellar and it’s the last show to air this season, so I’ll hold my breath and wait.