Year: 2009

Ongoing Investigations: Case #066

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I received a copy of the first book of The Lizard Prince from CMX last week. It seems to follow in the footsteps of many of their shojo fare of late, not bad but not great and a bit forgettable.

In this short (just two books) story, we follow the misadventures of Sienna a Prince who was turned into a lizard only to have the spell (semi)broken by true love. And we and his new love Canary find out quickly he can still transform into reptilian mode though getting back to human is a bit dodgy. This is a running gag and makes up for a good portion of the incidents in the book. Woven into these frantic moments are some cute trials and growing affection between these two young members of royalty.Though they keep trying to make Canary into this tomboy princess it rarely comes through. Sienna’s kind of a weenie but very trying and sweet though he a lot more amusing in lizard form.

The humor, like the love story, is kind of just middling without really making you laugh out loud nor moving you to cheer.

There is also a one shot about a girl who is always burning hot and a boy with nice, cool hands. This story I liked a bit better than the main but that might owed to it being just a one off.

As a whole The Lizard Prince is cute but nothing that seems all that special.

With the gentle urging of a fellow Hitohira fan I finally decided to go and watch the anime. I prefer the manga but the anime is a wonderful adaptation.

Hitohira is the story of a painfully shy girl who after being roped into joining one of the two competing drama clubs learns to be more confident and peruse her dreams.

The anime captures all the powerful moments of the manga with the added force of voice acting for any of the scenes where they play is taking place. I enjoyed the manga a little more because I feel it was a tighter story. Everything happens pretty much the same they just take more time to do it in the anime.

Also Mugi Asai seems less hopeless when we spend less time with her running away from her problems. I was glad to see a bit of resolution to things that were only coming to a peak in volume three of the manga, which is the last volume of the manga that has been released in English.

The anime has a good stopping point but I know that the manga continues the story. I wish that we could finish the manga in the U.S. but I am not holding my breath until that happens.

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Time of Eve, All About Eve

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Narutaki and I found this series when we were doing our overview of Crunchyroll. We decided to check it out on a whim and were impressed how well it was done for something that was otherwise completely off our radar. It is fascinating series for a number of reasons. It is a sci-fi series in a time when sci-fi series seem so rare. It is also an ONA not based on an established property. I am hardly the most informed anime fan but I usually have a decent idea of what is out there. So when any modern title comes out that I do know about it is always intriguing.

I stumbled across Time of Eve and I don’t even recall how beyond the fact that it was on Crunchyroll while I was testing the site out. Though I am always interested in short series to check out in between other longer shows. Time of Eve fit into this doubly so because the episodes came out rather infrequently and minus the final episode run only 15 minutes long. However, don’t let that fool you into thinking this show doesn’t do anything, it uses its minutes very wisely.

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In a deliberately unspecified time in the near future robotics has advanced to the point where androids are nearly indistinguishable from humans. They are so hard to tell apart that androids have halos over their heads to identify them. One day Rikuo notices that the android his family owns, Sammy, keeps disappearing from time to time. After some investigation he discovers that she has been going to a cafe named the Time of Eve. In this cafe no halos can been seen in hopes of promoting everyone treating each other as equals no matter who they are. Rikuo and his friend Masaki soon start coming to the cafe and slowly learn more about complexities of the dynamics between humans and robots.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #065

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Recently I had the good fortune to buy a rather inexpensive PSP opening a whole new avenue of portable gaming. The seller also threw in a copy of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII which I had been meaning to try out. Crisis Core takes place before Final Fantasy VII and stars Zack Fair who was a minor but important character in Final Fantasy VII. We get to see how exactly Zack became a Solider 1st Class as he deals with defectors from the Shinra Electric Power Company aka the most militant electric company ever. We also learn how Zack met certain flower girls, beloved blond men, and silver haired yaoi bait. Zack is pretty likable so I am sure that Narutaki would give this game his seal of approval on that front. It is action RPG based although the level up system is based on a slot machine which is odd to say the least. The most interesting is the fact that they seem to be taking time to make Sephiroth more human. I wonder how much does this have to do with them wanting to flesh him out as more and how much this has to do with his enormous popularity? It reminded me of why I liked Final Fantasy VII even though the game has sort of become the mark of a poser.

I went to see the Japanese horror movie House (also known as Hausu) during Halloween. I say horror movie but what I really mean is 1970’s b-movie hilariously badly wonderful horror movie. Oh, did I mention the director let his 11-year-old daughter write the story? As you can imagine, things for the most part aren’t very scary at all. The basic premise is about 7 high school girls (are you ready for these names? Gorgeous, Fantasy, Melody, Sweet, Mac, Professor, and Kung-Fu) who visit a house in the country, but the house is evil! And one by one the house eats them up. There is also an evil cat(s?), a crazy aunt who is only randomly disabled, and a most spectacular array of bad special effects. As a person who doesn’t like horror movies, I highly recommend this one. It will leave you laughing!

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