I read Akira Toriyama’s one-shot Kintoki. Toki believes he is the last of his clan the Kine known for their fighting prowess. One day while collecting money in town, a girl from Venus helps him, later when she gets in trouble with a local lord Toki rescues her.

It is pretty straight-forward. The battle panels look great which is no surprise. The character designs are just so-so, though I did like the girl’s weird suit. There are dinosaurs and Toki uses a bow so that’s fun to me!

But it doesn’t really feel like a one-shot; it doesn’t come a satisfying conclusion. It feels like the setup for a larger story which a lot of times one-shots are! But I don’t think that was really the goal here.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is entering the final part of part two of the series otherwise known as Battle Tendency. Since this part is fairly well regarded they have definitely slowed down the breakneck pace they had with Phantom Blood but by the same token they have not drawn out anything out as well. So everything has been moving along quite nicely.

Joseph Joestar is a very different protagonist than his grandfather. He is cocky, brash, street smart, and just more fun that his predecessor. Plus who cannot love when he predicts the next line his opponent is going to say. It always comes off as slick when he does it. Hirohiko Araki does it enough to make it Joseph‘s signature trait but makes sure that the gimmick does not wear out its welcome.

The main villains of Battle Tendency are the Pillar Men and they take already on the nose names like Robert Edward O Speedwagon and brings them to the next level. I mean when you have a vampires named ACDC and Wham you are not playing your cards to close to your chest with your references. But in a way that makes it all the better. While they are still vampires they come off as very different than Dio which is good for the story overall.

Lisa Lisa is probably one of the strongest female characters in the series. It is a shame that not many of the female character in the series really reach her heights until part 6. It is amusing to see how many characters in other series she went on to inspire including Rose from Street Fighter and Iku Nagae. Caesar Anthonio Zeppeli keeps up the tradition of Zeppeli family members who befriend the protagonist and then die horribly. Rudol von Stroheim is probably the only Nazi you will ever root for (but still feel dirty about it.)

The animation is cheap but I have long since accepted that. That is just part of the show’s makeup at this point and no amount of popularity is probably going to change that. I’m mostly just happy the series is being animated in the first place.

I really want to know if they are going to continue onto part 3. They might stop here or as hinted by the trading card game we might get a new version of Stardust Crusaders. I have my fingers crossed. I mean we all want to see D’Arby! again.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

 A friend of mine, maybe like a friend of yours or yourself, has been playing the new Fire Emblem 3DS game pretty much nonstop. Naturally, I’ve been hearing a lot about it. So I decided to start playing the first Fire Emblem game released for the GBA here in the U.S.

I completed Lyn’s story which I was not expecting to be so short! Because of the battle system and length of the encounters, it was only about 10 fights before the conclusion. I definitely got the hang of what I was doing, but it tested my patience because my tendency is to just run into the fray but you can’t do that. Or rather I’d lose characters if I did which was not an option for me.

There are about a million stats and screens of information that I’m basically ignoring.

I worked hard on building up my theif, pegasus knight, and archer so I hope they come back into my party at some point!

I probably would have played sooner if I had known about all the cute boys and cute girls!

It is time for another chapter of All Around Type-Moon – Ahnenerbe no Nichijou! This time we get a chapter focusing on Chikagi Katsuragi in Thousand Keys of Love. An errant sigh by Chikagi is quickly interpreted as the sign of a troubled romance by some bored patrons of the cafe. Soon everyone who is a romantic busybody is throwing out dubious advice and charms.

Kohaku of course offers up all sorts of potions and trickery because she is the evil mastermind that she is. Although most of her plans seem more like barbs at Akiha than anything else. But it is Akiha so that is fine. Khoaku’s Fate counterpart, Caren, who has an equal amount of unhelpful assistance for Chikagi although her contributions are of a more sadistic nature. Sakura burst on the scene with actual advice but that mostly just turn in a pity party for a sad little purple haired girl. Eventually child form Gilgamesh actually has a tool that might have answers.

In the end the last person to show up causes a very “lily” centric ending to the whole affair.

Still the best part of the story is classic shojo Akiha. Priceless.

 Inferno Cop 11 ended on a cliffhanger so I had to watch 12 as soon as I could. It has an amazing and totally unexpected Scarlet Witch reference. Also utopia makes Inferno Cop literally physically ill.

I forgot to mention that the last few episodes have ads for Inferno Cop merchandise. The studio pasted the YouTube add template over them so it looks like you can skip them but not really.

Chapter 52 to 54 of Binbougami ga! are a little bit of breather in between chapters of major story arcs. Now that whole Kanna story has concluded a chance to explore the charatcers is nice. I thinking jumping into Ikari’s next scheme would seem a bit too much.

Before they get into the main three heroines 51 A and B look at Tama and Akane Tange respectively. Tama’s story is another chapter that is entirely dialog free. That seems to be the modus operandi for chapter centred around the mascot characters. It is just her story of wanting to grow up and be slammingly sexy like her owner. Of course this come to no good end. But if nothing else we learn that Sorata Tsuwabuki is going to grow up to be just as hot as his brother. That and with a little time Nadeshiko will be a force to be reckoned with. Akane on the other hand seems to have a bit more than a Class S crush on Rindou. But then again who would not have a crush on Rindou? (Random side note: Why does Sakura have nothing but super sexy photos of Rindou?)

But after those tales of side characters we get the big three. The first is a tale of diets and insanity with Sakura. In the end it seems that she is still a healthy growing girl. Lucky Tsuwabuki. The next chapter is Nadeshiko and her butler having a falling out. She was so very close to getting Tsuwabuki as her butler. The question is would that have lead to some work place romance? The last story is Rindou and Momo teaming up in the woods to try a learn some super moves. They have been pairing those two up for a bit now. I wonder if this is going to lead to some serious shipping down the line as opposed to the little gag at the conclusion?

Also Tsuwabuki seems to get the short end of the stick in all these chapters. Poor kid.

Still a nice bit of fun. Like Hayate whenever a new chapter of this series comes out it distinctly brightens my day.