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:


The Shining Darkness Series: 5cm Per Second

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One of the major questions I have always asked myself is whether or nor it is worth reaching for an seemingly impossible goal? At what point is grasping at some thing that you may never reach stop being noble and start being self-inflicted misery? At what point are you giving up before the fight truly started? Are you clinging to memories that are merely holding you back? Is fighting for a noble and impossible ideal running towards something or running away? 5cm Per Second looks at that same question and weaves a beautiful but heart breaking tale from it.

This was actually the first work by Makoto Shinkai that I watched. And honestly I don’t know why I hadn’t watched the others. I knew of them for so long, but grabbing up this film made me desperate to go back and watch the others. And I honestly don’t think the order of films is important in terms of his ability to tell a story. However, you can clearly see the progression of the animation and character designs.

5cm Per Second is broken into three distinct parts each with its own title but they are all part of the greater story about Takaki Tono. It starts with Cherry Blossom Extract which introduces us to Takaki Tono and Akari Shinohara‘s blossoming long distance relationship. Cosmonaut skips ahead a few years to high school where we see Takaki and his friend Kanae Sumida. She is in love with him but cannot bring herself to tell him. 5cm Per Second concludes the tale and we see how Takaki and Akari have grown up and how the events of the first story have effected their lives.

Takaki is very single-minded and while in the first short this makes him endearing, by the end it is his greatest flaw. He shows that the things you think and want as a child have to change as you grow up or you may never get anywhere. It also makes me think of a fleeting idea that the things you love about someone, you can come to dislike after a period of time. It is a very honest lesson and a very difficult one to reflect upon while watching. Contrastly, all the girls in the film seem to understand the concept of letting go or reaching for someone that can never truly be there. Kanae I found to be very relatable (though all the characters have extremely empathic qualities) because she has the passion for something, in this case, surfing, but displays indecision of where she is going in life.

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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: