Jumping in Headfirst

Whew! Let's get caught up again. Our first full series this time, hitting 24 episodes. Maburaho Having gone through several OVAs that both I and Traveler thought were...below-par, we switched to a series that I had began on my own back when it initially came out in 2005, but never finished it. One of our later additions, I think I mostly added it because I was curious as to just HOW it ended. For those of you who have heard of this series already, it's a harem, yes. Deal with it. I watch harems sometimes. Anyways. Maburaho, to me, has quite a bit going for it. To start off, there's only three girls. The absolute smallest harem one can have and still qualify to BE a harem. As a result, Maburaho's three girls--Miyama Yuuna, Kazetsubaki Kuriko, and Kamishiro Rin, are all given a chance to develop properly. They begin rather stereotypical but eventually grow to be three distinct characters who come to care about the lead for different reasons that all reflect their ...

For part seven, Traveler and I took out another set of OVAs, though sadly...well...click the jump. Initially, our next series' were planned to be Gravion and Gravion Zwei. But, we ran into a roadblock: ...Gravion is a terrible series. We REALLY hated the opening song's lyrics, the creator of the Gravion creeped us out, and the animation was terrible. Worse yet, the story was incredibly repetitive. Monster appears, use a weapon. Next episode, new monster appears, weapon from the last ep doesn't work, but its okay there's a NEW weapon and THAT works. Rinse, repeat. The fifth episode had a bad encode, and we took it as the opportunity it was to replace both series with...something not crappy. (Current choices are Melty Lancer and Sora no Kakeru Shoujo.) Anyways, after realizing we wasted two days on Gravion (long story), we had to make it up somehow: Our answer was to get two OVAs and wrap them up quick to see if we could make a bit of time. Dirty Pair: Affair of N...

No need for the opening song, I'm starting the show without credits today. Subject: Variable Geo. Variable Geo Variable Geo is regrettably, the first series replacement we've had for our project. The plan (if you want to call it that) was to watch V.G. Neo, and we planned to make it the back-up plan in case Pretear sucked. (Of course, we didn't find OUT Pretear sucked until 9, after which point the time sink effect took over...) But as I found links for V.G. Neo, I saw screenshots, and the opening seconds of the opening episode had some guy raping one of the fighters. ...Yeah, not in MY Variable Geo. It was not until I got the chance to do this re-watch that I realized...V.G. is a *very*...not, female-oriented, but, its a universe where the women are plainly in charge. There's no question about this. Even traditionally male roles are given to females. The protagonist is a female. Her best friend is a female. The first opponent in series like this is generally a...

So I've been doing this for two weeks now, and I've yet to run into a crappy series. Are my tastes that good? As it turns out... No, they're not. Or at least, my prediction powers are not that good. The marathon continued with this little...ugh. Pretear I'm not sure HOW Pretear got added, but for whatever reason, my partner-in-crime Traveler (who really needs a site) suggested we should watch it next. I agreed, but with the caveat that, if we hated the first three episodes, we would throw it out and watch Variable Geo instead. ...But the opening third was actually not that bad. Himeno Awayuki is the Pretear, the girl who can make the red snow, white. The Pretear is the only being alive who can battle against the Princess of Disaster, a being that uses evil seeds to steal Leafe, the essence of life on Earth and on Leafenia. As a result, the Leafe Knights (protectors of Earth) are forced to find the Pretear when the Princess of Darkness begins to make moves to des...

Three more of these (including this), and I'll be all caught up. Here we go! Gakuen Tokusou Hikaruon Another of the 80's anime series I chose. My first thought upon seeing the description for this series is... Who thought THIS up, and how come no one told me?? A single episode OVA, Gakuen Tokusou Hikaruon is pretty much..the anime Metal Hero. Seriously. The kid does a henshin into an outfit that looks exactly like Juspion, his bike has super-powers (Super. Bike. The villains don't stand a chance.), and the battles take place in alternate realities (a part of many of the first Metal Heroes). Within a mere thirty minutes, Hikaruon managed to give me everything. Introduced the main character, his sidekick (a hot teacher...apparently), a conflict with the villains, a highly creative fight scene, and a resolution. I almost thought it would cop out and go cliffhanger on me a la Eien no Aseria, when both the rescue fodder *and* the female sidekick had been kidnapped and t...

Part 3 in your mouth! Swallow, BITCHES! Ah, humorous urban colloquialisms. Anyway, let's get to it. My brain froze for a bit, but I'm back with the reboot and hopefully coherent thoughts on this series. A little behind so here's me *almost* catching up. Friday night/Saturday morning I marathoned Mobile Police Patlabor with my trusty friend Traveler. Mobile Police Patlabor This series is straight out of the eighties. Not in a bad way, either. The OVA is not an action series, so it relies on the characters' relationships to make it through seven 30 minute episodes. And, to be honest, it works well for them. The first episode is somewhat boring, but after the characters are introduced properly, the other six episodes are a breeze. ...Such a breeze I performed a marathon on all seven episodes in a single night after coming home last week on a Friday after midnight. >_ Patlabor reminds me of Gunsmith Cats: Both the premise *and* the show is set up to allow for...

According to Variety, Power Rangers has returned to its original owner, Saban . This is interesting for a couple of reasons, but first... If I haven't made it clear by now, I'm a *huge* fan of Super Sentai, essentially the original, Japanese series from which Power Rangers is adapted. I could write out a list a mile long as to WHY I enjoy Sentai, or I could show you this, the roll call for 2007's Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger, versus 2008's Power Rangers: Jungle Fury. Sentai: - Poses look like actual martial arts stances (they aren't, but still) - Beautiful music playing in the background, almost orchestral - Descriptive phrases during their poses explaining the difference in each character's martial arts philosophy that is almost poetic. Power Rangers: - Random poses that look like...every other pose you've ever seen in Power Rangers. - Generic rock music in the back ground. - Phrases that say...fuck-all about who each character is. Feel free to rag on me for...

It continues! This one's a bit shorter. I'll be going by what I actually finished on a given night, so this time its just one addition. I'd intended to do more than one, but I got invited to see Iron Man 2. (Thought it was great; see it for yourself.) Anyways! My second night involved finishing Gunsmith Cats before I left home. Gunsmith Cats Right back to the 90's again for an OVA that's well-known by anyone who started watching anime pre-Gundam Wing, or just anyone that enjoys knowing their history. Another example of how researching the series somewhat would be helpful--both I and my watching partner Traveler believed the series was *actually* about catgirls! Can't say I wasn't disappointed (slightly), but I'd be lying if I said I cared after episode one. Watching this OVA, I suddenly longed for a return to stuff like this. We got fanservice without being beaten over the head with it. The girls were cute without being preteens (I don't mind...

With explanations out of the way, let's get started on the first night of my marathon. My first night involved the OVAs Gestalt and Eien no Aseria. I was excited to watch these, but truth be told...they were kinda letdowns. Gestalt Gestalt is one of about a billion fantasy anime ideas that get shoved into OVA format and never goes anywhere. I'm not sure what I expected out of it, but I wanted better than a "tournament of the demi-gods" and a priest going on a long journey to find out a blatantly obvious truth. The thing is, Gestalt kinda does that thing I hate about OVAs. It sets up a lot of plot points that would take several episodes to play out, while the writers are already aware most won't be able to pay off. The one part I did enjoy was Ouri's (click the link) introduction. The character has a Silence spell cast on her, so she talks with text boxes, RPG-style. Its simultaneously hilarious and cute. The priest seems likable enough, but only as a si...

Y'know, normally I don't ascribe the term "otaku" to myself. Western anime fans have kinda made it their own version of the word "nigga". After all, in Japan, the term is a perjorative few care to be described with, but Western fans have taken on the term as one of endearment to describe each other. But with my current project...there's just no other way to explain what I'm doing aside from power-leveling in the game of Otaku. See, the week of finals, for reasons that can only be called "stress-induced insanity", I decided that I would attempt to finish fifty anime over the course of the summer. Of course, a goal like this is rather lofty--even impractical if one has other things they feel like getting done. Like, video games, reading comics books or going outside... So my list had to be carefully planned, if I wanted to finish *and* get other stuff done during my first summer away from college. Basically this means I stuffed about half...

Ahh, the first Wednesday of [my] summer. I've been out of school for about four years, and finally returning I gotta say: Nothing's changed. That first week of summer after you've finished the Spring semester always feels amazing. It's not just about the break. Its the feeling of accomplishing something. Whether its your first year of high school or the last semester of your senior year, or in my case, the first semester of my freshman year--it just feels GOOD to say, "I did it. They threw their best at me, and I handled it." It helps of course when your final grades are three As and a B (technically four As...they knocked off a letter grade in my Psych class for a lack of extracurricular work in that course), but even if you just made all Cs, it still feels good. Summer has been missing that for me, while I was out of school. In fact, EVERYTHING was missing that for me while I was out. Holidays, weekends...none of it mattered to me because every day was...

Honestly, I'm not usually for internet videos. They tend to represent the internet in a visual form: Mean-spirited, and nowhere NEAR as funny as they think they are. But, while I was surfing on HJU, I ran across this video by Linkara from AtopTheFourthWall (great name) entitled History of the Power Rangers. For whatever reason, this blogger decided to go through each of the seventeen Power Rangers series, one by one, doing a cross between a description and a review of each one. Initially, I thought it would be yet another "Abridged" deal, and he'd just toss out as many harsh criticisms as he could find about each show, and given that for some people, somehow, its cool to diss Power Rangers, I figured it'd get pretty bad. But I watched the first one anyways. ...Surprisingly, I was completely wrong. While I expected a mocking of the biggest part of my childhood, I got an honest, analytical look at Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Yeah. Read that twice. He e...