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This blog is a storage space for various thoughts, observations and musings centering on shōjo manga (少女漫画, Japanese comics for girls), josei-oriented manga (Japanese comics for women) and manga created by women (in the widest sense). Topics from other fields of relevance, such as music, art, literature and film may be discussed here as well.

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For the most part, Japanese names appear in their original order - surname first, followed by the given name.

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Viewing all posts with tag: title: hagaren/hagane no renkinjutsushi



Make things quick!!! (Or not.)

Anime marathon I: Arjuna 1-12 on TV this past weekend. (No ep. 13 ;_;) This title hasn’t lost any of its quality. I’m still loving it to bits and pieces.

Anime marathon II: Hagaren! I was stuck somewhere between 16 and 19 for weeks and I managed to catch up until episode 32 (the most recent one) until earlier today. Go me! I thought the beginning of the second season was a bit of a let-down but it’s getting so much better again. Love this show!

Tried watching Gantz. The first episode was quite interesting but from then on it turned into the typical shounen (seinen?) junk show. Gory, vulgar, dumb, obscene :(

Monster based on the manga by Urasawa Naoki, on the other hand, is a great suspense mystery series. It took me a while to start watching this but so far I’m glad I didn’t ignore this show because I’m highly enjoying it.

I’m still watching Mujin Wakusei Survive (Uninhabitated Planet Survive).

Madlax is getting better and better too. It bears resemblances to Noir but then I again, I only saw the first 2 episodes of that series so I don’t mind at all ^^; Just like in .hack, Kajiura Yuki’s BGM varies from wonderful to absolutely annoying. And for the ultimate audio stimulation, Madlax 5 featured Irino Miyu’s voice acting godliness *raburabu*

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Categories: Anime, Various.
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Posted on May 19, 2004 (Wed, 1:11 am). .

New anime ramblings, mostly for my own reference.

The month of April, as every year, marks the beginning of the spring season anime series. What I’ve seen so far mostly made me squeal. Not in delight but in terror >_< Major disappointments everywhere. And why does just about every new show this season feature big -no!- abnormally large-breasted girls? I'm okay with the usual otaku fanboy service in a lot of anime, but why does just about every show have exclusively busty girls now? There's simply no escape, argh! Kono minikuku mo utsukushii sekai, the new GAINAX show, features major fanservice. Major as in a barenaked girl, a girl dressing; the female main character clinging to the male main character’s back wearing a jacket ONLY.
The story? The first few seconds were awesome and I was hoping for something very deep. But no, they decided to turn this into some mediocre Mahoromantic-esque crap with just a few, minor bits that might save the show from being totally boring. So, otaku boys, keep watching this. I won’t though, thank you.

Boukyaku no Senritsu (Melody of Oblivion), also by GAINAX, features the worst backgrounds since about 1991. This is below TV-series standard. Even a six-year-old can draw more intricate background settings >_<
Apart from that, it was so-so. Apparently, there was a war between monsters and mankind in the 20th century, almost everything was destroyed. The surviving people slowly built up everything again and, through the years, forgot about the war, the monsters and the melody (? something religous I think?). But now new monsters are appearing, little boys are secretely sacrificed and our hero has the power to destroy the evil attackers. Nothing new here. Except for the monster in the shape of a bus transforming into a bull. Yeah right. And guess what: The protagonist’s love interest has big bouncing boobs. And the main evil guy is amazingly good-looking and has the ability of making big-breasted women faint.
Again, this is too stupid for me to keep watching.

What’s better than one big-breasted schoolgirl? Well, a bus with four scantily clad young ladies, of course! -_- Bakuretsu Tenshi is a GONZO show though, so no surprise here. The mechas fighting at the beginning of the first episode were kind of cool. Oh and the main male character is a young cook (or kokku, as the girls say o_O;;;). And that’s where the originality ends. Joe looks like Ayanami Rei (but is quite the opposite character-wise), Meg is an Asuka-lookalike. The plot and the BGM remind me of early 90’s action cyberpunk anime. It’s all been done before. The animation is really good though. I’ll probably watch one or two more episodes to see how this turns out.

Koikaze is the story of a 27-year-old salaryman falling in love with his 15-year-old sister. Only the Japanese can make a TV story like this one. I must admit I kind of liked it. It was very calm and had an almost ‘innocent’ atmosphere… I’m not sure if I want to see more of it, though -_-;; Even with the incest thing aside, it’s just another shounen romance title. And I don’t like those.

The only new shoujo show I’ve seen so far is Aishiteru ze Baby. The manga runs in Shueisha’s Ribon so this is a series for very young girls. It definitely has an appeal to an older audience too as the story is bitter-sweet and has its sad and mature moments.
Kippei, a high school student with a rather large female following, has to take care of his 5-year-old cousin Yuzuyu because her mother ran away. So far, the anime follows the manga quite closely and Yuzuyu is the cutest little thing ever ^^;
The show’s production seems to have been done very rushed. For example, the lip-synchronicity is non-existant most of the time, which happens very very rarely in Japanese animation. The chara design is very similar to the manga but nothing spectacular.
It’s funny and cute though and I’ll probably keep watching it.

Kenran Butoh Sai – The Mars Daybreak is a pretty average sci-fi series. Still good enough for me with so many bad shows this season -_-;;

My favourite new series so far is Madlax. It’s an anime by BEE TRAIN, famous for NOIR, .hack//SIGN and Avenger (which was really really bad). The story itself is exactly like a mixture of the aforementioned three shows. However, it has a lot of originality and I hope it’ll be at least as good as NOIR and maybe even as good as or better than .hack. The mystery, almost not having a clue what’s going on, the pretty chara designs, the cool BGM, it’s all there.

The series I like most ATM are those that have already been running for some time: Mujinwakusei Survive (Uninhabitated Planet Survive), Hagaren (Fullmetal Alchemist) and the genius Mousou Dairinin (Paranoia Agent). And I’m sure there’ll be a few more good new shows this series that haven’t aired/been fansubbed yet. We’ll see.

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Categories: Anime, Various.
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Posted on Apr 15, 2004 (Thu, 8:46 pm). .

Hagaren manga

I got the first three volumes of the Hagaren (Fullmetal Alchemist) manga – my first shounen manga in quite awhile! And it’s so good. I thought I might have some problems getting into the visuals of shounen manga again when I’ve been reading shoujo manga only for so long. But it’d probably be more difficult the other way round.
The plot’s not much different than in the TV show. They’ve changed the order of a few events in the anime but those changes aren’t that drastic. I’ve only read the first tankoubon so I’m not that far into the manga yet but I definitely like it a lot.

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Categories: Manga, Various.
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Posted on Dec 28, 2003 (Sun, 11:33 pm). .




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