Year: 2009

Ongoing Investigations: Case #055

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Another Kara no Kyokai movie and other review. Movie number 6 is Oblivion Recorder which focuses on Mikiya’s sister Azaka Kokuto as she looks into students with missing memories with some help from Shiki. Apparently fairies under a mages control are stealing people’s memories. It is a flawed work without a doubt but I really enjoyed as I have all the other Garden of Sinner’s movies. This is really a movie all about Azaka co-staring Shiki. Azaka does most of the investigation and gets all the keys scenes. If there was any doubt that Azuka was the prototype for Akiha from Tsukihime they were dispelled by this movie. The animation stays fluid and while the action scenes with Azuka are very well done, Shiki’s action scene was quite brief and somewhat underwhelming. Satsuki Kurogiri hovers on the line between important and unimportant and his fate is ultimately left very vague. As I understand he has a much more expanded role in the original book which makes much more sense. In fact a post on Anime Diet goes into great detail on how the book and the movie are vastly different. I hope that Del Rey continues with their plan to translate the books so I can compare the two myself. Oh, the little omake scene at the beginning is all build up to one horrible pun. Of course I loved it.

I picked up a copy of My Japanese Coach for DS, I had been weighing whether or not to do this for quite a while because quite frankly I am just terrible at language. However, my fluctuating desire to know Japanese got the better of me. The program is broken into six stages of which I just completed the first one so it seemed like a good time to discuss how it is going. You are first given a multiple choice test to see what you might already know. Just from what I know from anime and the such I was able to skip 4 or 5 lessons. The game then does a quadruple duty of helping you learn vocabulary, sentence structure, verb conjugation, and kana through lessons taught by Haruka-sensei and games designed to help your memorization and writing skills. As you learn more, lessons unlock and new games appear. I haven’t gotten all of the games yet, but it is easy to see that some are much better structured than others. For example, Spelltastic would be much better suited (and helpful) to spelling in kana rather than romaji. The lessons themselves are set-up fairly well and for the most part don’t overwhelm you. Teachings that are long such as learning kana letters and verb conjugation are split up into many lessons with other things in between. This really helped me to learn what little was shown to me before heaping on more. It is also worth mentioning that after lesson 30, no more romaji is used in the lessons. By the end of the first 30 lessons I know all of my kana; I have started making sentences; my vocabulary is way up and I can catch more when watching anime; and most importantly, it seems to be sticking with me. I say that is progress indeed!

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Gundam 08th MS Team, Can love bloom on the battlefield?

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When NYAF announced that Tomino was coming we decide to try to watch as much Gundam as we could before he arrived. Since the original plan was to watch all the Universal Century series in chronological order this meant we had three Gundam OAVs to get through before we could move onto the next major TV series directed by Tomino, Zeta Gundam. I knew that different people liked different OAVs for different reasons so I was eager to watch them all as see which ones clicked with me. The two main selling points on 08th MS Team for me were realism and a good love story.

Since I really started to become a Gundam fan I have heard basically mixed opinions on every single iteration of the franchise. No one seems to completely agree on anything so really who knows what expectations to take into any of these shows! I can’t say I was any more or less curious about 08th Team than anything else on our plates. Nevertheless I went into 08th MS Team full of excitement and vigor, luckily the show kept me feeling like that throughout.

While Amuro Ray was still fighting during the One Year war there were countless other stories going on. One of those is the story of Shiro Amada a young Federation officer who came down from the colonies to help Earth fight the land war against the Zeon. During his trip to Earth he saves a fellow Federation officer in a underpowered Ball. Although he survives the encounter he strands himself on a derelict spacecraft and encounters a beautiful Zeon pilot named Aina Saharin. After they are forced to help each other escape, there is an undeniable bond between the two of them. Once on Earth, Shiro is assigned the commander of the 08th MS team and finds that his fate is tied to Aina who is a test pilot for Zeon’s newest mobile armor super weapon. Both Shiro and Aina must decided what is more important. Is their love doomed to tragedy when they are on opposite sides of the war?

Shiro’s new team isn’t exactly well loved and with a constant rotation of commanders people start placing bets on how long Shiro will last. And unsurprisingly this land war disrupts civilian life in the region as well. Because of this the 08th Team often finds them selves allied with a group of guerrilla fighters who live in the jungle region. While these guerrillas have no love for either side, they see as Shiro comes on the scene that they are the lesser of two evils for now. As for the flip side, we don’t see too much of the goings on as far as Zeon goes. We know there is a big, secret weapon. Though of course Aina is shown on some frequency both pining away for Shiro and also becoming increasingly wary of the project she is involved with. Most notable about this series is its focus away from the battles and robots. That is not to say that they are unimportant, but rather much more emphasis is given to the growing friendships and relationships on and off the battlefield.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #054

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This week your lovely writers were on the Ani-Gamers podcast! Okay, so we did the podcast a while ago but it is just now up. We discuss Otakon 2009, I know our con report was just not enough for you readers so you should listen to this, too! There is also an appearance by the ever elusive Kohaku and travel buddies Ogiue Maniax and VamptVo (obviously since he runs the podcast). Don’t forget to listen till the very last second for a special treat!

Tanpenshu 1 and 2 are a collection of short stories by Hiroki Endo. Endo also writes Eden: It’s an Endless World! which I very much enjoy so I was curious to see his some of his other projects. All the stories in Tanpenshu have the same component parts that make Eden. On the other hand they are all their own stories with their own feel so it’s not like your reading endless variations on one story. We have everything from modern day stories about yakuza, to sci-fi sex stories, to an autobiographical story. All the tales, even when they are comedies, tend to have an adult feeling mixed with a deep melancholy. When he decides to make his story dark they can be as dark as pitch. Because You’re Definitely a Cute Girl is is clear example of that. Platform was my favorite with a very twisted but powerful story. Hang mostly seemed to be very awkward sex scenes with a sci-fi twist. Maybe I am just dense and did not get why it was trying to say but it just seemed gratuitous to me. No matter what all of his stories will stay with you after you read them. The art has a distinctly seinen feel that often can be quite detailed and breathtaking. These are a great buy if you are already a fan of Hiroki Endo but also a great place to test the waters and see if you like him.

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