Tag: Kekkaishi

Ongoing Investigations: Case #022

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For the 40th anniversary of Shonen Jump they released three new special anime episodes on their website subtitled in English. Romance Dawn was the One Piece addition to the line up. Romance Dawn is the name of one of several prototype manga that would influence One Piece. This anime take the version with Silk instead and modifies it to be a part of the current One Piece continuum. Luffy gets separated from the rest of the crew and has to save a village from the pirate Crescent-Moon Galley. It was an enjoyable little filler story. While not amazing, it is an effective little wink to any big fans of the series which I think all of these special episodes are supposed to be. If you already knew that Eiichiro Oda made three separate prototype manga named Romance Dawn then you should have already watched this if you already haven’t.

Read Monkey High! volumes 2 and 3 and it continues to be a sweet romantic comedy that doesn’t dwell on minor miscommunications. The second book has an epically long chapter that the manga-ka talks about at the end, apparently it was for a special issue. The kids participate in a quiz show to much laughter and antics but we also saw a little more of Haruna’s home life and her strained relationship with her father. Also in the second volume there is some hilarious commentary at the end by the manga-ka depicting her reactions to the many postcards she receives. She also goes on to say that she can’t believe girls think Masaru (the main love interest) is cute. Volume 3 deals with the ever popular Valentine’s Day and as usual with this series it results in minor drama and much laughter. Both these volumes have Haruna attempting to communicate that she likes Masaru as much as he likes her amidst their ever meddling classmates. I am looking forward to the next volume, it always puts me in a good mood!

Cobra The Animation: The Psychogun is over the top, pulp, science fiction fun. Cobra is one of those so-silly-it-is-good shows that thankfully never takes itself seriously. Cobra is part bounty hunter, part space Lupin, and part Inspector Gadget. After Cobra wastes three space pirates in the intro he decides to dress as a priest to steal some diamonds. During his flawless heist, pirates attack the museum he is robbing and that means it’s Psychogun time. He eventually saves the sexy archaeologist the pirates are after. He follows her to Mars partially to hit on her and partially to kill more space pirates. Seems fine enough but it’s all the details that are crazy. The archaeologist Dr. Utopia More I like to call Dr. Space Thong. Every woman in the series is dressed in either a bikini or skin tight spandex. That is height of women’s fashion in the future. There is also the pirate commander who is a sarcophagus with arms and legs, flying skeleton robots, and a super stereotypical Mexican space pirate with mustache, sombrero, and bandoleer. Cobra himself has a sexy female android, about a dozen gimmick cigars, and his uberhax Psychogun that puts Megaman’s blaster to shame. Oh and Cobra not only tosses women around he uses Newton’s law of universal gravitation as a pick up line. Good times. I can’t wait for the next one.

I always wait anxiously for the next book of Kekkaishi, so I was very happy to finally get volume 15. At the end of the last volume we saw a small girl and were unsure of her powers. In this book she proves to have a totally cool ability to make friends with inanimate objects and specifically rope in the story. She is then able to have it do things for her and even use it as a weapon. She totally needs to take the place of lame Sen. Along with her, enter some cool villains with the power to paint boxes and make them into walls, portals, etc. We also meet the librarian for the Urukai, lots of interesting characters showing up recently. We also see characters fight that we hadn’t had a chance to yet. In addition to all of that, Yoshimori starts to pull more power into his zekkai and Tokine starts developing more of her ability to manipulate space. They are growing and the questions about Karasumori are coming to surface as well.

The Bleach: SOULs Character Book is a very pretty book. The first part is some very nice colored art and stickers. The second part is detailed character write-ups of just about everyone, locations, items, and concepts in Bleach up to the end of the Soul Society arc with a preview of the Hecto Mundo Arc. There is also an interview with Tite Kubo and Masakazu Morita who plays Ichigo. We then have an original prelude comic and the prototype comic for Bleach. I was amused that Ichigo and Orhime had crushes on each other in the original draft of Bleach. It also has palm sized Rukia for most of the story which is either super silly or super awesome depending on who you ask.

My recent obsession with the Vocaloid phenomenon has sent me to many a great fan artist. I like this person’s overall style and they happened to do a few pictures of the series as well. So this is the pic of the week:

Ongoing Investigations: Case #012

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We started watching D.N.Angel with the misguided belief that we would review it for the blog. Well, that ain’t happening. I also read all of the manga that has been released in English, this was a much better experience. The manga is fun, cool, sweet, and even a bit heartbreaking. The anime was a weird mix of fan-service and super-filler. There were good episodes and good moments, but there was too much space between these instances. They don’t explain much and some things just plain don’t make sense. They also seem to throw out the whole phantom thieving at one point. Uh? And yeah I’m still pretty bitter that Dark is in love with Riku in the manga but not in the anime. Read the manga and don’t watch the anime!

I liked the Riku and Daisuke solo dynamic but I feel that adding Dark into the mix makes it interesting to read. Since the manga was not completed they decided to simplify the story in order to adapt it. The problem with that was two fold. First they simplified it too much so you were left with large amounts of filler, wasted space, and uninteresting new additions. I’m looking right at you Mio Hio. Ironically several of their attempts to simplify things made several points more complicated or just plain confusing. Secondly we are cruising along the story pacing highway speed limit at 30 MPH and then the anime original ending cranks up the speed to 110 mph. The last two episodes feel rushed and somewhat unexplained at crucial points. It’s not a bad anime but it’s clearly an anime that is inferior to the manga it was based on.

Ghost in the Shell SAC first season finished! Really amazing show, jumped up into being one of the best things I have watched lately. It had a great climatic ending with some serious emotions emerging. I have heard that it is debated whether or not Batou has feelings for the Major, not sure how this could be debated unless you are blind. Whether the Major actually reciprocates is a different story. Seriously though, the sexual tension in the room (you know the scene I’m talking about) was so intense I thought it was going to crack the windows! As for the Laughing Man, I was pleased though I would love to see him again. And as promised I have a Laughing Man wallpaper.

I want to meet the cool dude or lady who fully got Ghost in the Shell SAC the first time through. I wish to shake the hands with such a genius. I got most of it but I am still fuzzy on several of the details of side cases. I thought everything involved with the Laughing Man was awesome. He is such an awesome character. It was well written and well executed. They could have thrown in some more complex episode in between Stand Alone episodes in the middle but that is a minor flaw. The Stand Alone episodes were often as good as the main plot. Good filler, will the wonders ever end? Oh, I would go as far as to say blind and deaf to miss Batou’s feelings.

Read Kekkaishi volumes 13 and 14. The latter ends the first arc of the series and wraps it up quite nicely while leaving a few lingering villains to show up later on. We also get a glimpse of the tremendous power that is housed in Yoshimori. This is also where the anime ends so I am now reading totally new material. I love that the first thing Yoshimori does when he gets home after this whole ordeal is to bake a cake. I am glad to see this aspect of his personality in tact. The rest of book 13 and most of 14 is mostly short adventures but the end of the book looks to be the start of something.

I read Parasyte book 4. Even though it has a high school student as the protagonist it clearly straddles the line between shonen and seinen that makes it hard to categorize some of the titles in Afternoon. It seem like a shonen manga with it’s high school love story. On the other hand it can be placed in the seinen category just by the number of gory deaths of several important characters and countless unnamed ones. I was a little saddened by the death of the major character in this book but I can’t say it was not interesting.

So when you go to the Live-Evil fan-sub group’s website, the top banner changes and I kept seeing this cute picture but it didn’t say what it was. Finally decided to go through a process of elimination to figure it out, turns out it was a show called Ask Dr. Rin. Watched the first couple of episodes so far. It is essentially a magical girl show with Feng-Shui. Meirin has incredible fortune-telling powers using Feng-Shui, she has a secret identity of Dr. Rin who is becoming famous thanks to her website. Her fortune-telling seems to be dead on for everyone but herself. But when the guy she likes is in trouble her power manifest themselves into a dragon like spirit and she is able to save him. Looks like a major baddie caused this and his motives are yet to be revealed. Cute and fun show that promises nothing more than that.

I watched the Dirty Pair OAVs this week and they are just so much fun! I really like that the science fiction elements are there each and every time to make the story cool. Science is not there to be explained or deus ex machina. It’s just there to enhance the story. I like my hard sci-fi anime like Planetes but some times you need to kick back with two hot girls with big guns and watch them kill God in one episode and upper cut children in the next. Kei and Yuri have a fun dynamic that makes them like sexy versions of the stereotypical buddy action movie characters.

Narutaki & Hisui VS. 2007

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This is pretty self-explanatory, we are looking at what we loved or hated from 2007. There was a lot going on, even with the decline in licenses in the U.S. there were still some great shows released! And Japan hasn’t been letting us down either. Not that is any surprise.

The Harold and Maude Award or Favorite Classic Manga Release:
To Terra
It is so rare to get older, 70’s titles. But I feel it is even rarer to find old shojo titles,
hopefully this will be changing in the next few years. It was nice find a serious, sci-fi story that had a solid story and characters. While looking at real world issues, it doesn’t losing any of its charm coming from the fantastical elements.

Ode To Kirihito
“Ode to Kirihito is moving, tender and engrossing. Also very, very odd.”
—Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman and Anansi Boys
If Neil Gaiman likes it, it has to be good. At 832 pages for $25 you definitely get your money’s worth with this classic Tezuka work. One of Tezuka’s more mature works, it follows the story of a doctor who contracts a disease that makes him more bestial than human. It then becomes his quest to restore his humanity and at the same time is a examination of what makes someone human.

Burn this Book or Worst Thing I Read:
Rurouni Kenshin: Voyage to the Moon
I think I was a bit spoiled because the first translated light novel I read was Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow, and it was well done. This one was either translated horribly or just not good to begin with, unfortunately I will never know. The characters seem odd in prose form; the movements were very stilted and awkward; the fight scenes were boring and matter-of-fact. There seemed to be zero that reminded me of the greatness of the manga series.

Pretty Face
“Rando struggles to be a good “big sister” to Rina as fate conspires to put him in one disastrous situation after another. When pants start coming off, and half-naked women start crawling all over him for the thinnest of reasons, Rando must use all his karate wiles to avoid being exposed as a complete weirdo. Meanwhile, will the mad Dr. Manabe succeed in his plan to remove the last remnants of Rando’s manhood…or will Rando remove Dr. Manabe’s brains with his fist? It’s 7.5 inches of manga heaven!”
-Ad copy for Pretty Face Book 2

I admit I have not read this per-say but all the ad copy for it makes it seem so very bad. It’s like the most messed up shonen romance show premise I have heard in a while. Even Boku to Kanojo no XXX and Midori Days seem sort of cute compared to Pretty Face. Maybe it’s really good but everything about it makes me not want to give it a chance.

Hot, Wet Nobu or Best News of the Year:
Death Note Movies
Death Note movies have been licensed and the third movie (all about L) is coming out in Japan! They may even get a big screen release here in the states. Really loved these two films and am anxious to watch them again and own them for myself! Also can’t wait for the new movie, surely only made because they realized too late that everyone really loved L in the series and not Light. Yay for L fan service!

ImaginAsia getting into Anime
ImaginAsia really seems to understand how to pick up and distribute older and/or niche series and actually make a profit. If anime companies are going to continue to license older series and distribute them on DVD, they just might have to do it how ImaginAsia has been doing it.

DearS Season 2 or Worst News of the Year:
Geneon closes down
Bye, bye Geneon. I for one am very sad to see you go. Especially in mid-release of some good shows! They did a quality job and picked up some beautiful, but not super marketable shows.

Okiku Furikabutte made into anime
I guess it would be too easy for me to pick Geneon’s death as well; so I’m going with Okiku Furikabutte being made into an anime. What I have seen of this show makes it seem like moe for girls. It is nothing but shota yaoi doujinshi fodder and a side order of actual baseball manga. The main character is a useless crybaby and everything seems to be designed to be eaten up by horrible Fujoshi.

Just Shut You Mouth Already or Things I Wish People Would Stop Talking About:
 Nymphet Controversy
Kodomo no Jikan! It is a horrible thing but seriously what else is there to say about it that hasn’t been said yet? Could there be a week gone by where this topic isn’t broach yet again.

Why fan-subbers are saints and heroes
I know that part of the industry’s problems come from their inability and refusal to adapt to the fact that the internet changes everything; but that does not make every fan-subbing group a bunch of faultless white hats and untouchable heroes. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Fan-subbers can be cool and do a service to the American anime community but that does not forgive the bad groups that don’t follow the rules of proper fan-sub etiquette. It also does not mean that fan-subs are only good and that they don’t sometimes hurt American fans on certain levels.

Peanutbutter and Relish Sandwich or Show I Unexpectedly Liked:
Hayate the Combat Butler
Hayate no Gotoku! It just sounded kind of “eh.” But after a friend of mine described the first episode to me, I was laughing out loud, and I had to see it for myself. It’s so wacky and ridiculous that it infectiously makes you laugh. So, while it isn’t some earth scattering series that will change your life, you can bet you will have a lot of fun watching it.

Kekkaishi
I expected Kekkaishi to be a generic shonen fighting show. But I think it takes the tried and true shonen formula, then tweaks it enough to make it something that stands out from the pack. Kekkaishi’s focus on the romance while not making it overbearing is refreshing. Also every episode seems to add to the world and plot without seeming like a stall for time. Then the fact that the female character is not just a damsel in distress or eye candy. Added to them not pulling punches and killing characters. All this and more makes it a very unusual and refreshing show. Too bad no one cares.

Can You Stop Playing That Please or Favorite Opening:
 “Sha la la -Ayakashi NIGHT” by Saeka Uura
This is a tough one. I really love the song in the Gundam 00opening (it is L’arc-en-Ciel afterall) and also loved the catchy tunes from Lovely Complex. But overall awesome? Guess that would have to the Kekkaishi opening. It was one of the first things that got me curious about the show, so it was good enough to draw me in. The song is really fun and since I have sought out the artist to hear more of her stuff.

“Brand New World” by D-51 (One Piece opening 6)
The opening to kick off the Ennis Lobby section of the Water 7 Arc is an upbeat and fun opening for One Piece. I think the opening really gets you pumped while really encompassing the spirit and flavor of the series. I’m just warning you that the opening is sort of filled with spoilers so if you have not finished Water 7 you might want to hold off on watching the opening.

Wowza! or Hottest Character:
The Men of Saiunkoku
The majority of the male cast from Saiunkoku. Unless they are an old guy, there isn’t a bad face to be seen in the court! And even the old guys were good looking when they were younger. Not only is this series full of historical type drama and romance it also boasts lots of eye candy!

Revy from Black Lagoon
Damn! Revy would probably kill you as soon as you look at her, but who cares? She is HOT. She is a very competent mercenary and the way she handles herself just makes me think that she is a goddess drenched in a gown of blood. She is also built like a brickhouse and that never hurts. In a time of moe, she is the antithesis of helpless and under-aged; she is a breath of fresh air. Or more like a breath of smoky spent shells and cigarettes.

All Those Sacrificed Goats Were Worth Something or Best License Announcement:
 NANA TV
NANA TV series. PERIOD. Awesome story, awesome characters, awesome music. My only really complaint about the series is it doesn’t finish the story since it is an ongoing manga. But it was a delight seeing my favorite characters moving and to hear the music. Any music series is obviously made better by having an anime counterpart.

Honey and Clover
Even though I have mixed feelings about the ending of Honey and Clover, it is an excellent josei manga and a well done anime. We get so little josei in the U.S. that any of it is welcome. Very well done josei is even better. I really want this show to have a vocal fan-base because the more diversity there is in the U.S. market the better it is for fans in general. Hagu is love.

The Micky Rooney of Manga or Best Short Manga:
 Penguin Revolution
I actually wish more series were in the 5 to 7 book range. I am always anxious for a storyteller to tell their story, in a complete fashion, but then to move on to the next great story! I want to say Penguin Revolution, but it hasn’t finished in the U.S. yet and I haven’t read the last 3 books (out of its 7). But I really like the story thus far, combining hilarious capers with a bit of mysticism and romance. Her other series Land of the Blindfolded, also released in the U.S., was along these lines but the mysticism was more prominent.

Wanted!
Wanted! is a collection of short stories by Eiichiro Oda. These were written before he started One Piece. There are 5 different stories including the second version of Romance Dawn that was the prototype for One Piece. It’s an interesting look into how his style and storytelling has developed. You can also see that Oda takes certain aspects and characters from his earlier works that later incorporates them into One Piece.

Sometimes Shipping From Japan is Worth It or Favorite Piece of Merchandise:
 Bandai’s Athrun Zala 1/8 figure
My brand-new Athrun Zala 1/8 figure. It is all mine! MINE! The loveliness of his face made only better by his perfect pose. Okay, maybe I’m bias.

Max Factories’ Fate/Zero 1/8 Saber
It’s Saber. She is wearing a Suit. She has an awesome sword. If you don’t like that then I’m not sure we can be friends.

Here is My Room Key or Favorite Convention Guest:
 Tomokazu Seki
Tomokazu Seki who was at Otakon was so great! He did so many voices and gladly did special parts from the series for the audience. He was super kind and gracious. I almost injured myself getting his autograph and after I go it he even said something that I requested! He was all around an awesome dude who also happens to always be voicing characters I love.

Katsushi Ota
If nothing else, it’s a sure sign that we are one step closer to getting Kinoko Nasu as a guest at a U.S. anime convention. He seemed a likable guy and to be an interesting, well articulated guest. The fact that he gave me two book of DDD just because I was was a big fan was really gracious. And that he took my picture and promised to pass it on to Nasu made my day. I really hope Faust does well here in the U.S.

Mr. John Holmes Award or Best Packaging:
 Beck Box Set
It would have to be BECK. The box for the DVDs looks like a mini-amp! It has some weight to it and the top of the amp opens to put the DVDs in. I just love it. It also came with stickers and all the DVDs come with guitar picks. How fun and appropriate. I don’t buy boxes much anymore unless they have some unique feature and this definitely has that.

Saiunkoku’s box set case
It’s a classy little box for a very classy show. It is shaped like a jewelry box and it has a ornate red ribbon on the front. I like how it folds open and has the fan-like disk sleeves. It also just looks very nice on a self or a desk. I’m not sure I would buy a box like this for every series I pick up, but it seems very right for this series. It’s a shame that Saiunkoku is in limbo right now. If anyone else picks up the series, I would probably still put them in this box.

Spewing Milk Out of my Nose or Funniest Manga:
 Nosatsu Junkie
Nosatsu Junkie is definitely a shojo romance but it is surpassed by its hilarity. Between the dual personalities of Umi, our male lead, and the serial killer expression that our main character makes whenever she tries to smile and look cute, it is a laugh a minute.

Nodame Cantabile
Nodame is such a fun character that she could be in any manga and just make it funnier. Combine her with Chiaki and it makes comedy gold. They play off each other very well. The best part of Nodame is the characters are real enough that you feel that they could be actual people you could meet. I guess in part that comes from Nodame actually being based on a real person. I’m sure that Narutaki will agree with this assessment almost as if it seemed that parts of Nodame were based on parts of his life.

I know there haven’t been many articles this month. But with the end of the semester, holidays, and whatnot it just wasn’t possible. Next year will be a whole other story! Look forward to it.