Archive for the English Anime Category


Kurau Phantom Memory Anime, Volume 6 (English)

September 11th, 2008

Hey, look at that! The Large Hadron Collider started spinning particles around and, inexplicably, mini black holes did not suddenly split time and space open and destroy the world. I’m sure you’re as shocked as I am that the world refused to be destroyed yet *again*. It’s so irritating of the world, isn’t it? We get all our cans of food and ammunition and whatever else we think we need to survive the end of the world and, dammit, the world is still here. Gets on my nerves, and now what am I gonna do with all that bottled water and batteries?

In honor of the world not being destroyed once more, today’s review is of Kurau Phantom Memory 6, the final volume. Watching this volume of anime was a bit like waiting for the world to end….

Not really of course. It was more like waiting for the dentist to start drilling. Only this time, I guess I had a good dose of NovacaineTM in the form of the director’s liner notes for the series. Apparently I had it all wrong.

*I* thought this was a series about a powerful, competent woman, being chased by another competent woman. Instead, I was informed by the director that all that was just an aside to the real story, which was about utter and complete normality. Apparently the real moral of Kurau was that not being different is way better than being different.

…

So, let me get this straight – being able to fly, to leap across the Alps, to open a portal to a new world, to have incredible strength and to love deeply and permanently because a being is out there who complements you perfectly is *not* as good as marrying some guy or other (who never gets a name or a face, so you know he’s special) and having his kid? I’m just checking, ’cause nothing personal, that really doesn’t fly with a sci-fi/fantasy audience. It’s almost as irking as the crap at the end of Labyrinth with whatsherface “putting away all her childish things” and me hurting from gritting my teeth, until the sappy ending sort of belied the point. Ptooey. Surely flying and phasing through walls would be a small price to pay for having nebulous government organizations hounding you day and night?

While it didn’t make me want to chew nails this time, I still found the end of Kurau frustrating. I’m glad that Christmas finally finds her pair again, because otherwise this entire series would have been rendered into a tragedy.

Thankfully, it was not a tragedy, and Kurau was able to pass into the obscurity her non-Rynax self deserved, while Christmas was able to once again discover the finest thing about the human condition – love.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – 7
Music – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Overall – 7

The second best thing about the human condition is that no matter what the change in society or technological advance, *some* group of people will start screaming about the world ending. It’s nice to know that some things, other than particles, are universal.





Kaleido Star Anime, Volume 4 (English)

September 7th, 2008

It hasn’t taken me as long to review this series as it did, say, Noir, but I feel like it’s taken a darn long time. But, finally, we’re getting to the best bits of Kaleido Star, in Volume 4. And it’s all thanks to Ted the Awesome for his sponsorship of today’s review! Thanks Ted!

So, all of a sudden Yuri, who up until now has seemed to be pretty much a nobody and leading man to Layla’s leading lady, suddenly becomes a raging asshole. He joins Carlos in a head to head race to see who is more of an asshole. This race will remain tied until next volume.

Thankfully, the parts of the story that do not involve Yuri or Carlos are awesome. Sora and her friends band together to save their vision of the Kaleido Stage, but as usual we don’t really care because we’ve watched a lot of these anime things and are pretty used to the whole idea of our heroine overcoming great odds to do whatever it was she wanted. We’re not really worried.

No, what *we* care about is the website that Mia builds called “Mia’s Room” and how she mostly populates it with sexy pictures of Anna. LOL That was so awesome I watched it twice over. lol

So, as Yuri continues to be a jerk, and the storm before the calm brews, the gang gets together to put on a show (just like a Mickey Rooney movie!) and in a moment of wonderful, Layla Hamilton realizes that what is most important to her is having Sora as her partner. Yahoo!

Rating:

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Overall – 7

The best part of Volume 4 is that it sets up Volume 5 which is so utterly totally awesome that I will never be able to stop thanking Ted the Awesome for sponsoring today’s review!





Yuri Anime: Strawberry Panic, Volume 3 (English)

August 25th, 2008

If the Strawberry Panic anime had begin with what is now Volume 3, I think that I just might, maybe, have liked it a lot more than I originally did.

It’s true that if the series began at the beginning of Volume 3, we wouldn’t have been treated to 11 episodes of *absolutely nothing* in which Nagisa is ever so cute as she remains confused and out-of-place, and we probably wouldn’t have seen Hikari cry a couple of times. Certainly we wouldn’t have been treated to Amane riding up on her horse, saying practically nothing, then riding away. And of course, we would have missed all those almost-kisses that so delighted us through the first half of the series, as Shizuma teased Nagisa.

Episode 12 picks up with as significant an episode as we’re likely to find in this series, as Tamao symbolically ties a ribbon onto Nagisa’s arm “for protection.” Like Chekov’s gun on the wall, you just know that this has to play a part and so it does when, after Shizuma and Nagisa have admitted feeling lonely when the other isn’t around, they “fall” into the pool and kiss while the ribbon symbolically unties and floats free. Afterward, in Shizuma’s room, Shizuma begins to have her way with Nagisa, but a memory of Kaori brings her up short, allowing Nagisa to escape back to her own room.

Meanwhile, Kaname and Momomi step up their “seduce Hikari to break her up with Amane, and make Amane depressed so she won’t run for Etoile” campaign. This is the source of the infamous and utterly hilarious “Global Warming” scene, which is no less fabulously stupid than the first time I watched it. The entire series peaks at that moment, I think. Everything afterward is simply denouement. LOL (If you can stop laughing long enough to listen to the rest of Kaname’s monologue, it carries on, no less amusing than the beginning.)

From this point on, the entire series takes a turn. Amane and Hikari go on a romantic date, only to have Hikari return home to find Yaya crazed with desire, the result of which is that she is the object of a sexual attack for the second time in one day. Rough day for Hikari. This is followed by an episode in which Hikari and Yaya make up. Good thing for Yaya that Hikari is another Himeko.

And then suddenly, it’s time for the school festival and the play, a time-honored subject of pretty much every anime ever. And yet, these final episodes of the volume are probably the best in the entire series. They have a good plot – actual grasp of and use of character and a pretty good climax, if you ignore the utter absurdity of our resident EPL duo’s “plot” to take Amane down. Since absurdity is practically the raison d’etre of this series, by now we’d better be sucking this series down with handfuls of salt – preferably adorning the rim of colorful glasses holding margaritas. :)

And just in case we don’t yet really get that this is a Yuri series, with Yuri, we are treated to several bath scenes involving nekkid Kaname and Momomi doing Yuri things.

Last note – I was warned by the folks at Media Blasters (who I once again have to thank for this review copy) that this volume was full of typos but, if there were any, I missed them. In fact, the quality of the DVD was so consistent and decent, that I just barely remembered to even mention it – which for this kind of thing is the highest praise. In a nutshell, the technical aspects of this DVD were so good that I never noticed them. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7 (towards the end, 8)
Yuri – 9
Service – 7

Overall – 9

I’m going to pretend that I used the above French terms in honor of the “Nagisa studies French” episode, but in reality, it was just coincidence. ;-)





My Zhime (My Otome) Anime, Volume 5 (English)

August 17th, 2008

Volume 5 of My Otome brings us to the beginning of the fall into dread. Where up until now the series has been primarily a schoolgirl fantasy with a backdrop of bigger issues in the political sphere, Volume 5 shatters our and the characters’ innocent point of view with cruelty.

Windbloom is invaded, Garderobe is taken over by Nagi “for protection”, and the girls of the school find their loyalties tested. As the plot catches up to us, there’s less and less room for the kind of happy-go-lucky scenes that filled the first half of the anime. This volume is about loss and war.

However, because a Mai series is not really a Mai series without service, the extras jump in to fill the gap. In “Erstin’s Last Smile,” we get some heavy duty bath service starring Arika, Nina and of course, Erstin and her breasts. It’s a win for Nina x Erstin ‘shippers, of which I am sure there are many. Certainly, the Erstin goes lesbian scenario of the Mai Otome Miss Maria was Watching: Garderobe Secret Diary, Vol. 1 Drama CD implies that that is where Ers-chan’s feelings lie. The other extra presents us with a rather unlikely, and somewhat disturbing, Yuri pairing in Mikoto the cat and Aswald’s Midori.

Volume 5 is not happy, but it is crucial, if we are to have an actual story to care about. Another good volume of My Otome.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Characters – 7
Story – 8
Yuri – 1
Service – 5

Overall – 7

And my thanks once again to Ted the Awesome for being a hero and sponsoring today’s review!





Maria Watches Over Us Anime, Volume 2 (English)

August 14th, 2008

From the perspective of having read so far into the novels that I have already “met” Nana, Yoshino’s prospective soeur, it was a huge step back to watch Volume 2 of Maria Watches Over Us, “meet” Yoshino once again, and watch her transform in front of Yumi from an apparently meek, mild and submissive soeur into the banshee we know and love.

There were so many things that interested me about the “Yellow Rose Revolution” arc the first time around and twice as many this time. But the one thing I want to point out is that where later, in Rainy Blue, Rei complains that Yoshino wields herself as a weapon against her, in Kibara Kakumei, Yoshino calmly points out that Rei uses herself as a shield. I was once again blown away by the detail and continuity in Konno’s writing.

One of the big complaints western fans have about about Marimite as a series is that is starts off very Yuri, but never has payoff – i.e., there’s no melodramatic protestations of love and/or snogging. But for my dollar, the end of “Rosa Canina” is about as sexy as hell. More so, when you remember that in the novels, that arc came after Ibara no Mori and we know that Sei is potentially gay. I say “potentially”, because after reading Ibara no Mori I allowed for some wiggle room, but after Rosa Canina was convinced that Sei is gay and knows it.

The translation for these episodes was generally good, with one notable gaffe, in which the “Lillian Kawaraban” is translated as the “Lillian Ledger” in dialogue, but the “Lillian Gazette” in text. Woops. ^_^

The extra with the recap of Yoshino returning Rei’s rosary still makes both myself and the wife giggle until we hurt. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – 4 (Rei and Yoshino love each other more than anyone else in the world, and Sei kisses Shizuka. Nice.)
Service – 0

Marimite Fan – 100

Overall – 9

I know Sean disagrees with me on this but for me Shizuka x Sei is the hottest pairing in the series. ^_^