Category: Ongoing Investigations

Ongoing Investigations: Case #037

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I quickly dug into the rest Fairy Musketeers. It was all in all a solid if unremarkable magical girl show. Which is not to say it was not entertaining because it was very well done and boatloads of fun but it won’t win over anyone who did not all already like magical girl shows. The characters are enjoyable, cute, and cool when they need to be. Akazukin interestingly enough reminds me a lot of Narutaki other than the fact that Narutaki only wishes he had a magical wolf companion and was the greatest dual sword fighter in the world. Highlights of the show include the evil sorcerer/playboy named Dude; Ringo saving everyone by being a wuss; a music duel worthy of Macross 7; an episode about religion; and as always Val bringing the manliness to counterbalance all the girl power cute. I was a little disappointed my theory about Cendrillon’s motivations was incorrect. It has a solid ending that does not prevent a sequel but does not beg for one. It leaves you with a warm and pleasant feeling which is all you can ask for sometimes and possibly just what you need.

Read the third book of Switch. I was of course delighted by Hal and Kai having to infiltrate a high school drug ring. It was a decent arc but seemed a bit predictable and the ending didn’t surprise me much. There was also not enough Hal in it which always takes it down a notch for me. The new arc dealing with a new section of the team that deals in information manipulation starts off really well. Looking forward to that continuing story in the next book.

After hearing a good deal of positive reviews I went back and watched Xam’d: Lost Memories from where I had stopped the last time. I was intrigued with the show but Narutaki’s interest waned so it was a matter of me getting back into the grove on my own. That this show came from Bones and its director was a man heavily involved with Eureka Seven is unmistakable. I enjoyed the tighter storytelling in the shorter Xam’d. There was less filler but there was almost no time to catch your breath. They moved quickly from important plot development to important plot development. Eureka Seven’s filler was usually enjoyable and helped you again insight into the characters so there are benefits to taking your time as well. I really enjoyed all the female characters which is a plus. Nakiami is pretty bad-arse while still being human. Haru Nishimura was my favorite character but she was the queen of making some rather foolish decisions. I will also reluctantly admit to being way to intune with Furuichi feelings and conflicts. Another good ending that leaves time to have a sufficient amount of conclusion without dragging it out. I am a little worried that all these good endings to series is setting me up for some big disappointment in the future. Another series I highly recommend especially if you liked Eureka Seven.  They have to get it out there some way that is not just the PlayStation Network because while I loved Xam’d I’m not buying a PS3 to own it.

Read Naughty But Nice by Naduki Koujima. In a strange turn of events, the cover art is unappealing while the interior work is pretty nice. This book actually contains two BL stories, Naughty But Nice (which is only the first half, it continues in a book called Spicy But Sweet) and Bouquet of Love. The first one is mediocre at best going along without any real rhyme or reason. Even though I like teacher x student I just couldn’t get into it. It moves at too clipped a pace throwing us Wakasa’s past ungracefully. Though surprisingly they didn’t jump into bed. The second one was quite a bit better. Kazuki is very cute, he works at a flower shop, and when he helps a man who is allergic to flowers a bond forms. It has a little bit of contrived drama, but otherwise is a sweet story. However, since it is the shorter of the two it doesn’t seem worth picking up. You can read a preview here.

I read the first book of Queen of Ragtonia by Chika Shiomi. It is a standard fantasy adventure but enjoyable. Falna is looking for a magical sword that can slay the evil necromancer that has taken over the kingdom and killed her family. This is a hard task because the necromancer has stolen her ability to walk and one of her eyes. Cardus is a huge sword-wielding warrior who also lost an eye fighting a demon at the beginning of the book. When they fight together they can defeat even the most powerful demons and save lost souls. The book is fun but the pacing is really odd. I can’t put my finger on it exactly but it seems to oscillate between being fast and slow. Cardus reminds me of Gourry in both of them are big powerful swordsmen that are sort of goofy and slow but kindly and brave. Falna is a character that wants to be a strong female character but is hampered by her physical handicaps and her inner weaknesses. So far she has mostly strives to be stronger which is good enough for me. Chika Shiomi has tried to show the motivations behind all the characters including the demons (though we haven’t seen the necromancer yet). It does not always work but it kept the monsters from being evil for evil’s sake. Apparently Queen of Ragtonia was originally a doujinshi that has been turned into a professional work. In the afterward the author shows some panels from the original compared to the panels in the new version. You can read a preview here.

I picked up the Black Jack Illustrations Museum, pocket-sized, from Book Off! It is filled with pictures of, you guessed it, everyone’s favorite surgeon. A few of the pictures involve other characters like Pinoko but 85% are just the man himself. The book is 320 pages long with 78 color pages, which includes some writings. The rest are all black and white images and the end has some writing as well. It’s a really nice piece and quite affordable.

This weeks pic is the Haru who leapt through time:

The Haru who lept through time


Ongoing Investigations: Case #036

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I read books six and seven of Here is Greenwood. Always enjoyable series with just enough realism in the friendships to make the guys seems like people you know. Six is almost exclusively crazy antics while seven finally introduces us to a love interest for Hasukawa. Seven also has a chapter much like Here is Devilwood called Here is Edo. As you may have guessed, it stars everyone in a samurai drama. As always the author’s little comments throughout add as much comedy to the scenes as anything else. Looking forward to finishing this series up soon.  

So I went solo to two anime events around New York recently. Neither of them were enough for a whole report but they were interesting enough to talk about. I went to Spring Fest at Polytechnic. It was a small one day convention. I went to show some love for Subatomic Brainfreeze’s Most Dangerous Anime panel. It was mostly Dave playing Crystal Triangle and  showing some choice scenes from the train wreck that is Gundress. I had only heard of the horror that is Crystal Triangle from AWO but I finally got to see how awesomely horrible it actually was. The audience had a good time MST3King a movie that rightfully deserves it. The theatrical release of Gundress is famous for being released incomplete. It was amusing to see the slapdash job they did to get what was generally a horrible piece of cinema on the screen for the release date. I really liked their little tea room and enjoyed their “mystery flavor” blended tea. There was also a good deal of gaming going on but I would rather be humiliated at playing multi-player games at home rather than humiliated in front of an audience. I was interested in staying for the What The Hell, Game Industry? panel but I had to go to meet someone to see Watchmen. It was basically a large scale meeting of friends from the university than a full-fledged convention. While it was not worth traveling for any great distance, I would recommend it to anyone in the NYC area. Plus it’s a nice, free way to meet other anime fans.

Read book five of Monkey High! It continues to be a wonderful shojo romance that that doesn’t linger on random misunderstandings. I like the pace of the books keeping the moments quick. They have added the idea of a love triangle. However, since Haruna does not seem to be torn between the guys, rather another guy just happens to really like her, it isn’t actually a love triangle. Thank goodness. Monkey High! has done a good job of creating a sweet story about the relationship, not the chase. Looking forward to the last few volumes of this series.

The next day found me going to Anime Day at Kinokuniya. I have to say Kinokuniya events get really nice turn-outs. While this means it is another good place to meet people, it also means that most of the events are standing room only. I came in half way through so I missed out on getting a Soul Eater Key chain. While this breaks my heart I somehow found a way to trooper on. I noticed from Scott’s twitter that those two girls who cosplay Ranka and Sheryl were on the cosplay panel. I finally arrived at two and I mostly only popped in on all of the panels they were presenting. The mixture of having nowhere to sit and having cool things to look at in Kinokuniya  distracted me from the events themselves. After browsing around for a bit, Scott, his friend, and I went to lunch where I discussed why bringing poor Hayate Ayasaki and Nagi Sanzenin into Internet arguments stands against all that is good and holy.

Been keeping up with Rideback this season. After watching episode nine, I still stand behind it being the show to watch from the winter. I have really liked how the pace built over the episodes, slowly moving from school centered to politically centered. It was done in such away as to not jar you. As secrets, plots, and characters are revealed the depth of the world involved is becoming clear. The animation continues to impress as well as the coolness of ridebacks. Instilling in us that we all need one right now.

While at Kinokuniya I made some purchases that were worth mentioning. It seems my prayers to the gods of anime merchandise were obviously heard because they released an all Saber art book. It is pretty good. Not enough fighting Saber to make me happy but enough variety to make me want it in an instant. Of course we have to have a maid exploitation (or maidploitation as I like to call it) picture of Saber and the raciest shot we get was Saber in a tight school bathing suit. I always appreciate the lack of utterly depraved Saber pictures because I would like to show people the art books I own without deep shame. My favorite pictures are Saber on a motorcycle and Saber dressed as Rin. I also got a book of Kido Senshi Gundam-san manga. I will admit I partially got number 4 just because it has Sayla Mass on the cover but I don’t feel anyone can fault me for that. I am very amused by a Gundam comedy series using the Universal Century characters. I noted it was only characters from the original series. Does anyone know if there are plans to do the same thing with charters from Zeta or the UC Gundam OAVs? My favorite section had to be the misadventures of sexy but angry White Base nurse Sayla. Some one has to get to translating this series because it looks priceless. It has smoking Zaku’s and baby Garma. What more do you want. Oh and naked Char. See something for everyone. I also saw an awesome Gundam Heroines book at Book Off. It seemed to be all the Gundam series up to Gundam X. I had already spent enough at Kinokuniya that I decided to hope it was still there the next time I would swing by there. Does anyone own the book? Is it worth picking up?

Rideback is the only show I am keeping up with this season, so this is the pic of the week:


Ongoing Investigations: Case #035

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I think I will just talk about video games this week. We’ll start with Street Fighter IV. I had an interest in the game but since I don’t own an PS3 or 360 I had no real plans to buy it. Then everyone and there mom was talking about it. When I was on lunch break I even heard the manga cows in a bookstore talking about it. So I broke down and bought the game to play on my brother’s Xbox. Playing Street Fighter IV reinforced a valuable lesson. I am not very good at fighting games. I have enough knowledge to be above a button masher but not anywhere near enough skill or practice to be any sort of capable player. This is a well executed game with high level of technical finesse. It is also amazing that you cannot play arcade mode with the online challenge function on because you will get a request to fight every few seconds. I am not sure how long this amount of community will last but this is a good game to play if you like the idea of playing a fighting game online. I think Narutaki got a big kick of of it when he played it as well. Oh and for everyone who says easiest is to easy I stick my tongue at you.

I have started watching Zettai Shonen, I am four episodes in so far. It is an odd little show about a strange town in the country. Ayumu goes there to stay with his dad who he is clearly estranged from. In the midst of exploring the surrounding land and neighbors, weird things start happening and cloudy memories keep coming up. The towns folk are an odd lot that you just don’t know about them. They include a few kids around Ayumu’s age, a younger girl who seems to know a lot about what is going on, a news reporter, and a cat. The mystery of this town doesn’t seem to revolve around something horribly tragic and I am hoping it stays that way, but one never knows.

I am pretty much at the end of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings which has been quite enjoyable. I amusingly enough have yet to play Final Fantasy XII itself. I would have gotten more out of the game had I played the original but was still worth playing. When characters from the old game pop into the story it would have been cooler had I already know who they are. Vaan, Panelo, and friends are still going around being sky pirates. They find an air ship that takes them to a series of magically sealed floating islands. Using their newly gained ability to summons creatures, they go about stopping evil pirates and the evil powers that control the island. I was interested in seeing Square do a real-time strategy game. It is a rather simplistic, enjoyable RTS game but you cannot go in expecting the next Warcraft. The end game extra material seems significantly harder than anything that came before but that is Square Enix side material for you. If nothing else the game has piqued my interest in playing Final Fantasy XII just to see more of Panelo. She is super cute.

I watched more Raoh Gaiden, up through episode five. My favorite episode so far has been the one I named Raoh: Horse Whisperer. His first meeting with Kokuoh is epic. Since Kokuoh’s army of horses takes out a good number of Raoh’s minions, Raoh decides to meet this beast. As they stand face to face a tiger attacks which Raoh promptly rips in two and tells it to not interrupt a conversation between kings (which actually just consists of staring at each other). Also Kokuoh’s size varies in every scene after this. He ranges from being the same height at Raoh to being about 30 feet tall. This show is so entertaining I can’t stop watching. And for some unknown reason the fan-subbers have skipped the sixth installment, perhaps it was too powerful for them.

I also played My World, My Way. Princess Elise falls in love with a handsome adventurer but he correctly dismisses her as a spoiler brat. So she decides to become an adventurer to win his approval. The king assigns a poor guy to run around and set up monsters for you to beat and tasks to accomplish that are challenging while not being deadly. You also have the ability to change things about the game by being so selfish that the world changes just to shut you up. The idea is cute and the story can be funny at times, but it very quickly becomes the same thing again and again. You go to a town; they ask you to collect x number of items; and defeat y number of monsters. When you finish the missions you get the key to the next town and have to fight a boss on the way out. They sometimes throw a dungeon into the mix but it’s not that much different from wandering around the world map. You eventually get a little mimic slime to fight along side you. This mixes things up a little but does not radically change the game play. It feels much more like a 20 dollar game than a 30 dollar game.

I read the second volume of Mixed Vegetables. I was a little disappointed in the direction they decided to take it though I felt it righted itself a bit as the book went on. The relationship between our two main characters has really changed.

I must end with Panelo, so this is the pic of the week: