Instead of writing separate posts for each First Glance this season, I’ll write them all in a single post since it gets less crowded that way. I might also mention that since I don’t have much time to write during summer (normally I write on my phone on the bus, but during summer I mostly bike) I’ll be taking a break from the Mahou Sensei Negima! coverage and my Fairy Tail coverage won’t start until autumn when school starts again.

Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi
Translates to “Ookami-san and Seven Companions”(Ookami means wolf), also known as just “Ookami” since the full title is so long. Or the parody variations “Ookami-chan” or “Ookami-tan” because this title just begs to be made fun of.

“Long, Long ago… Well, not that long ago actually, there was a place called Otogibana City. And in that city, there was a school called Otogi Academy. The director of this school was a dirty old geezer named Aragami Lamp. I mean old man. He also happens to be a big shot in the Aragami Syndicate that controls the city. And this is the club he formed, the Otogi Academy Student Mutual Assistance Association, also known as the Otogi Bank. In return for fulfilling requests, they have their clients return their obligations to them as necessary. And that is the setting of our story”
—Narrator, Episode 2

That quote from the Narrator summarizes the setting pretty well. The club called Otogi Bank, because it’s real name is too long, help clients with requests of all possible natures from love confessions to assassinations (yes, seriously!). The pay is simply to owe the Otogi Bank a favor. They then cash in this favor in ways that makes Loan Sharks go green out of jealously (another quote). The main characters of the story are Ryouko Ookami (“Ookami-san”), whose name means “Wolf”, and who handles most of the tasks involving beating someone up. Ryouko is a typical Tsundere (and a Dere-Tsun if we’re following Sebastian’s definition from Lucky Star), and she’s not particularly good at hiding either her softer side or her interest. Then we have her roommate and best friend Ringo Akai, whose name is a pun on Apple and Red Riding Hood. She is obviously based on the latter, and is about what you’d get if you’d combine Komoe from Toaru Majutsu no Index and Kitsune from Love Hina. And she’s just as fun as this sounds (thought less manipulative, fortunately). Then there’s Ryoushi Morino who is the only guy to ever have fallen for Ryouko, and who is more or less forced into the club by Ringo both because she, like Kitsune, thought it would be fun to get Ryouko and Ryoushi together, and because the Otogi Bank needed some male members (everyone except the president and Tarou Urashima are girls) – Ryoushi is a hunter and is a master at hiding his presence and shooting people with a Slingshot from the shadows. He also has Antrophobia (fear of being stared at) and Scopophobia (fear of being seen) and his way of ending his sentences with “~su” which just adds to his cuteness. The Narrator also deserves a special a mention. She’s voiced by the same person who did Kuroko Shirai in Toaru Majutsu no Index and Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, and isn’t a passive narrator who just explains what happens but frequently comments on the situation (commonly it’s remarks about Ringo and Ryouko’s flatness), or gets overly engaged in what happens. Seems she kept a bit of Kuroko’s personality from doing her voice for two “seasons” (soon to be three).

Ookami also makes fun of a lot of classic folktales, for example Cinderella’s tennis shoes (and Cinderella’s running spinkick!?) and two of the members of the Otogi Bank are Tarou Urashima from the japanese Dragon King’s Palace legend, and Orihime from the Tanabata legend – Tarou flirts with everyone (“He’s not just a corny womanizer for show” is the Narrator’s comment), and Orihime has a crush on him and “deals with him” every time he flirts with someone else (and she acts a lot like Chizuru from Mahou Sensei Negima! minus the Mutsumi-part of her personality). And did I mention the Graphics are gorgeous?

If the plot starts going anywhere this could very well be a 9 or 10 out of 10 rating, right now it’s about 8/10.

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin
Also known as “Occult Academy” in english is both a serious horror/mystery story and a comedy. A bit like Ken Akamatsu’s stories, it keeps serious without taking itself overly seriously. If you’ve read Mahou Sensei Negima! or Love Hina you know what I mean.

The series begins with Maya Kumashiro travelling to the school where her father is the headmaster after he died. There, one of the teachers has found a casette which contains a parting message to his students, which she plays to everyone in the school. Due to the headmaster reciting a spell for reviving the dead since he confused it with another spell, he revives his own body from the coffin and the zombified version of him starts rampaging around the school until Maya, together with an “Occult Dowser”, the school mechanic and two friends stop him. While this could be a completely serious “arc” (can you call it that when it’s just a single episode?), OA turns it more towards being the ultimate clumsiness to accidentally revive himself. It’s more comedy than serious plot and Maya’s faces are completely epic. At the end of this episode, Maya announces that she hates the occult, when a naked guy falls from the sky without any explanation. Apparently he’s a time traveller who came from the future to prevent the world from being destroyed in 2012 (see The Nostradamus Prophecies). By destroying a certain object that could be located anywhere inside the school, they can prevent a dimensional rift from opening and letting out aliens that will destroy the world – and apparently that was also exactly what Maya’s father had been doing.

Occult Academy (“OA” for short) reminds a bit of Durarara!! in both the art style and the general atmosphere – and since Durarara!! was a complete masterpiece that’s more than welcome. As I mentioned, the story doesn’t take itself overly seriously while still keeping a serious plot going. It could be described as what you’d get if you’d combine Death Note and Durarara!! with a bit of comedy added in. So far the story hasn’t really started up, instead it keeps suggesting and foreshadowing like D.N.Angel (the Manga version, the Anime sucked and didn’t do either a single bit!) or Canaan. If it keeps the pace and story going, this could easily be one of the best shows of the season. 9/10

Nurarihyon no Mago
The pointless english title is “Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan” (that’s not even a translation!) is essentially the Manga version of D.N.Angel combined with Harry Potter and a bit of demons added in. Also, I tend to call it “Noriyasu no Mago” because I can’t pronounce the title.

Rikuo Nura is a boy who is 3/4 Human and 1/4 Demon (“Yokai” actually, but that’s essentially the same thing). He is also the heir to a clan of demons (again actually Yokai), which his Demon quarter fully approves but his human part has no interest in inheriting anything, and just wants to be normal. Said Demon Quarter is essentially Dark Mousy from D.N.Angel all over again, just as his human form is a cuter and less whiny version of the main character Daisuke Niwa, again from D.N.Angel.

That’s about all there is to the base plot, but the execution is so awesome it’s almost scary. It has the same kind of atmosphere as the Manga version of D.N.Angel, and more or less revives the whole Supernatural genre which has been lying untouched for a while. It has a lot of colorful characters, and switches between being really badass and really funny seamlessly. Yuki (means Snow in Japanese), the Ice demon who looks a lot like the Pokémon Frosslass, has a really good voice acting and a cute somewhat moé-ish personality, and is also pretty clumsy (Rikuo spills his coffee over his pants and screams “Aaaah! Hot!”, Yuki tries to cool him down by blowing an icy wind at him, but accidentally freezes him into a solid block of ice instead is one example of that). The only part of the sountrack that really caught my attention was a theme that plays in the background about 60-70% of the show and that sounds almost identical to the main theme of the Harry Potter films. Along with the great animation – the quality is certainly along the lines of Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou or Toaru Majutsu no Index, which is really good, but not as good as for example Clannad and Clannad ~After Story~. Also, if you’ve read D.N.Angel, you’ll find similarities (or ripoffs) everywhere from character designs to plot to “split personalities” with their own bodies. If this keeps the quality up, it could easily reach 10/10 once the plot starts. Currently it’s 9/10.

Mitsudomoe
No! No! NO! You can’t do something like this! Perverted humor that passes “funny” and over to the “annoying” and “disgusting” side with a cast consisting of sixth-graders spells “EPIC FAILURE” with big letters. Don’t watch this. 0/10 – Unwatchable

Shukufuku no Campanella
I first tried to translate this title myself, but confused “Shukufuku” (blessing or blessed) with “Seppufuku” (a sort of compromise-solution to a love-triangle). Just in case you wanted to know. You may also want to know that this is incredibly boring. It’s not as much of an epic fail as Mitsudomoe is, but I was seriously about to fall asleep after the first episode. Think a show with several main characters who are essentially Mutsumi from Love Hina. Without Keitaro and Naru to balance her, that’s just annoying. People are also genuinely stupid (but not like in Angel Beats! where they are stupid in a funny way, this is the kind of stupid that’s just annoying), the “plot” (if you can even call it that) is slow and likes to over-explain things since they apparently takes the viewers for idiots. Don’t watch this, it’s just a waste of time. Watch something better, like Ookami-chan. But Kurogane thought it was funny, so if you give it a chance, I won’t blame you. 2/10 – Don’t bother

Gakuen Mokushiroku HIGHSCHOOL OF THE DEAD
More epic failures. Sure, HOTD has pretty visuals, but there’s a bit too much zombies, indiscriminate slaughter and fanservice/ecchi for me. I didn’t even bother watching the first episode to the end which may be giving up to early on my part, but I really hate ecchi shows if it isn’t a really good series apart from it (Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou) or if it’s written by Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina, Mahou Sensei Negima, A.I. Love You). ?/10 – Didn’t give it a chance

Asobi ni Iku yo!
“Let’s go play” in english, is one of the ecchi shows I can actually stand.

A guy named Kio Kakazu one day finds an alien with cat ears and tail, and has her live at his place. At the same time, an FBI group and a cult of alien maniacs are after the alien.

Not the world’s best story, but it’s really well made. In the start of the first episode, there’s a girl who solo-raids a ship filled with soldiers without taking a single hit, then survives an explosion that blows said ship up without a scratch. This scene serves mostly to show of the graphics. The story makes no sense, but isn’t as bad as most other shows of this type is. The graphics are well-made, the body motions are exceptionally fluent. The soundtrack isn’t very noteworthy, but serves it’s purpose. If the story starts making sense, it could raise the score greatly. Right now it’s just 7/10
(EDIT: After watching the 2nd episode, the rating suddently raised to 8/10)

Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.

Angel Beats! was definitely the best show of the Spring Season. Anyone surprised considering this s a Key series? Would the makers of Clannad, Clannad ~After Story~, Kanon and Air do something that isn’t the best show of any season? It hasn’t happened yet!

Yuzuru Otonashi wakes up lying on the ground, without any memories beside his last name. The only person beside himself is a girl who is pointing a Sniper Rifle at a defenseless girl on the schoolyard. According to the girl, Yuri, Otonashi is dead. Just like herself. Otonashi considers her to be completely nuts and walks over to the girl she was aiming at. The other girl, called Tenshi (“Angel” in Japanese), tells him the same thing Yuri did: that he is dead. Otonashi asks her to prove it, in reply Tenshi stabs him through the heart with a blade she summons out of her wrist. When he wakes up again (you can’t die if you’re already dead, you just collapse for an hour or so then wake up again, and any injuries or even teared-off body parts will have been restored), he is killed again, this time by a purple-haired lunatic called Noda. Third attempt results in him walking into a trap which makes a large hammer come down from the roof and knock him out of the window – from the 3rd level of the building. At the fourth attempt, he finds Yuri and a bunch of other people in the Principal’s office, where Yuri asks him to join their battlefront (which changes name about once every 5 minutes, some names include “The Afterlife Battlefront”, “Like-hell-I’m-dead Battlefront”, “Near-death Battlefront” and “Barnacle Battlefront”), and rebel against god since Yuri blames this world’s existence on him/her/it. Otonashi actually joins the battlefront, as they all try to “survive” in the world between life and death.

While this is original, the cast and the execution makes it even more so. If we start with the case, The Afterlife Battlefront (they use that name for most of the series) consists almost entirely of complete idiots, or undescribably weird people, with the exception of Otonashi and Yuri who are the only sane and somewhat intelligent. TK is constantly break-dancing, no matter if it’s appropriate or not, speaks only in short phrases, mostly in english catchlines from the 1990′s, for example “Trap”, “Whoa, dancing in the shadow!”, “Goodbye, wild heaven!”, “Knockin’ on heaven’s door…”, “Don’t stop dancing!”, “In the mountains.”, etc.; think Tiamat from Shakugan no Shana, but in english and without his phrases complementing anyone else’s. Shiina is a self-proclaimed Kunochi (female Ninja) who has terrible focus and is constantly balancing something on her fingers – even while doing something else, like balancing a broom on her fingers while playing baseball. Yui is the same kind of character as Rikku from Final Fantasy X, Kaolla Su from Love Hina, etc. who has too much energy and is constantly hyperactive. Yui is also not just a bit stupid, doing things (like accidentally strangling herself with a mic) about all the time,  she’s easily the funniest character in the entire series. She also has a demon tail for some reason, and may be based on Etna from the Disgaea series Kanade “Tenshi” Tachibana is initially pretty mysterious and an antagonist up to Episode 5, then becomes friends with Otonashi – and she’d also gets high on both my badassness and cuteness lists if I ever write them. Takeyama is a hacker and self-proclaimed genius (who is actually just as stupid as everyone else), who always wants everyone to call him “Christ” which no one does. Naoi is completely crazy and thinks he’s God, adores Otonashi and actually notices how stupid everyone else is, and he can also hypnitize people, which he demonstrates by for example making Hinata feel inferior to a clothesclip or making him think he’s a piece of toilet paper. And those are just the more notable ones.

Angel Beats also manages to make a big deal of the slightest of things, in completely ridiculous ways (think Yotsuba&!), such as “Operation Monster Stream”, which is also known as River Fishing to everyone else (I don’t want to explain that one in too much detail, since it’d spoil a lot), Lifting Food Tickets from NPC-students which means to literally lift them using a large fan to blow them away, or visiting their weapon manufacturer “Guild” past an Indiana Jones-style trap labyrinth

Towards the end, the entire series seems to have changed without you even noticing. About EP11, the plot starts actually reaching the climax, and EP12 is an epic Fantasy-Action episode. The last episode are vastly different, really dramatic and actually very sad. Still, they manage to put a Clannad ~After Story~ happy end to it, something I actually thought was impossible to do with a scene of 5 seconds. The last episode also uses what Divine at Random Curiosity calls “The Jun Maeda Emotional Sneak Attack”, first lowering the viewers emotional guard by putting a lot of light-hearted comedy first (Naoi and Hinata fighting over who was out of tune, Kanade writing a serious school anthem revolving around praising Mabu Doofu (a kind of very spicy dish), Hinata dressing up as Principal with a bald wig and hitler-mustache, etc.), then putting in an emotional scene where the viewers last expect it. The resulting ending is both very sad and happy at the same time. And actually very good, it fits this series more to have a more speculating ending than a complete Clannad ~After Story~style ending.

Visually, Angel Beats! is possibly the best series ever made. It’s sharp, has a really unique animation, extemely detailed both character designs, backgrounds and locations, and plenty of eye-candy. Just look at the animation, and tell me one series that could possibly even compare to this visual masterpiece! And since this is a Key series, it has all the music composed by the director and story writer Jun Maeda himself. And he’s a really good composer, something he has already demonstrated with Clannad’s masterful soundtrack, and now Angel Beats! isn’t that much after. It’s not better than Clannad, but certainly not far from it. About the only thing it lacks is a really emotional theme like Clannad’s “Nagisa ~Farewell at the foot of a hill~” (okay, unfair comparisation since that’s just about the saddest theme ever, but still… it doesn’t have anything like the themes Existence, Illusions, The Place where Wishes comes true or Roaring Tides either). The Opening Theme, “My Soul, Your Beats” by Lia (there’s also a remix by LiSA used in EP3, but it’s not as good) is simply a masterpiece despite it’s nonsensical lyrics – but it still doesn’t beat Clannad ~After Story~‘s “Toki wo Kizamu Uta“. The kind of hopeful sadness that Toki wo Kizamu Uta contains is completely impossible to replicate, even for it’s own composer apparently. The ending theme “Brave Song” is really good too (not as good as the Opening though), and the image shown during it is updated almost every episode to show new characters, or excluse “dead” characters – the image at the top is the one from the final episode.

Angel Beats! is a bit hard to classify in just one overbearing genre, since it has about even parts Slice of Life, Drama, Fantasy-Action and Comedy, and also touches the Psychological and Supernatural genres. It’s hilarious, yet keeps serious, a bit like Ken Akamatsu’s stories (Love Hina and Mahou Sensei Negima! are excellent examples of his stories that keeps serious yet on the side doesn’t take itself seriously at all – you have to read them to see how that’s even possible), a bit like what Fruits Basket tries to do, only Angel Beats! does it right.

You want to watch this now right here. You don’t want to see it because of the description? Yes you do! The description is completely pulled out of the air and has hardly anything with the actual series to do.

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Yeah! Go get her, Negi! No one is gonna miss her!

Here it is! The first Single Chapter coverage on this site! And also, it is a chapter in the middle of a story arc so if you haven’t read the past chapters, this post (and the chapter) will make no sense. If you actually haven’t read Negima, I really recommend you start since it’s a real masterpiece.

Tsukyomi is caught by the neck by Negi, who has turned into his Dark Lightning form(Come on! Break her neck! No one will miss her!). She tries to cut his arm off with her Zanmaken-ni-no-Tacchi attack, but Negi dodges it by turning his arm into lightning. She instead attacks him directly with Resshuuzan-ni-no-Tacchi, which he can’t block in time, and drops her. She then threatens to “slice up” Nodoka, something that actually makes Negi angry and he fires his arm, again turned into lightning, into her stomach, unleashes a violent series of Lightning-Powered attacks which actually blows a rock outside the ship to pieces, and tells her to quit if she’s just a mercenary hired by Fate. Tsukyomi just laughs at him, saying that she doesn’t do this for money, but instead just for the fun of killing (something here also seems to turn her on completely), and delivers a message from Fate: “I’ll be waiting”. She then pulls out Code of the Lifemaker, and uses it to summon a huge bunch of Shadow Demons. Negi stays behind to stop the demons, while the others escape in Paru and Johnny’s airships – something that actually even gets Asuna (actually Luna) worrying about him. The rest of the chapter is spent on a long, unfinished scene where the two airships escape from Tsukyomi and the Shadow Demons, protected by Ku-Fei, the Battle Maiden Squad(Yue, Collette and Bea), Saiyo (still playing with the Sagitta Magica-Turret Gun), Mana(who is for the first time in the series actually getting worried, and seeing our cool and collected mercenary sniper actually worry is not just a bit odd), Kaede, Koutarou and Yuuna, the latter mostly experimenting with her Twin Gun Artifact and seemingly not helping that much – her similarity with Yuna from Final Fantasy X and X-2 is getting even more prominent here.

My feeling that Negima is turning a bit too much towards Dragonball is getting even stronger now with Negi’s Dark Lightning Form (named by me, the actual name is a very long phrase of mixed Japanese and Latin). But, knowing Ken Akamatsu, he’ll probably find some way to correct this. Unlike Dragon Ball, Negima still has side characters (a whole lot of them, and they’re all quite capable on their own) and, more importantly, a Story. A good story at that. Dragonball stopped haing a story after book 17, Negima has been announced to be at least 400-500 chapters long so he can’t really let it slip out of his grip this early. My guess is that Negi will be unable to use Magica Erebea outside of the Magic World, since the normal world has much less magic power in the air, as someone explained a few chapters ago, or something along the lines of that. I also wonder why there hasn’t been much comedy in a while, but I guess it’ll be more of that soon enough…

Next chapter: Enter the Gravekeeper’s Palace!

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After having read all 292 currently released chapters of Mahou Sensei Negima!, I’ve decided to cover the new chapters released every week. These posts will contain  a summary of the plot, a commentary and a couple of screenshots taken from the chapter. I’ll do this just because I want to write something about just about every chapter, and this is the perfect excuse to do so!

The next chapter should be out by wednesday, and my first Chapter coverage will be published then as well.

The reason why I started reading Negima can be summarized in two words: Ken Akamatsu. The guy who wrote my all-time favorite Manga “Love Hina”, Ken Akamatsu, is back as the author of a still running (since 2002!) fantasy series involving a 10 years old english teacher of an all-girls middle school, who is actually a mage-in-training. Ken Akamatsu is the only one I know of who can make a this weird plot make a jack of sense.

Negi Springfield is a 10 years old mage, newly graduated from a magic school. He hopes to become a great mage to search for his father, the Thousand Master – one of the most powerful mages who ever lived, and he’s so mysterious so that no one even knows where the Thousand in his nickname stands for, and who has a seriously weird sense of humor. Instead, he is appointed as the new english teacher of an all-girls middle school, and the homeroom teacher of class 2-A.

This could have turned out to some kind of slice of life series, or a sick harem series due to the 10 years old main character. Instead, it’s a great fantasy-comedy that picks the best out of all it’s genres.

Just like Love Hina, Negima’s main strength lies in it’s characters. 3-A consists mostly of weird people – Some examples are a Robot(whom no one seems to notice is a robot despite the highly visible joints on her knees and her antennas), an immortal 10 years old vampire who uses an illusion to look older, an anonymous web celebrity, a ninja, a ghost, a mad scientist and a girl obsessed with all kinds of exploration. Ken also reused a lot of the character designs from Love Hina, Nodoka is Shinobu(Yay!) with longer bangs and who uses a book that reads minds, Asuna is Naru with bells in her hair and uses a giant folding fan that works like Touma’s Imagine Breaker ability in Toaru Majutsu no Index(apparently it can become a huge sword too) and Sakurazaki has Motoko’s personality and even uses the same Shinmeryuu skillset as she did(the main character almost getting his head chopped off by a Zanganken attack, sounds familiar?) with Angel Wings she normally keeps hidden(I love Angel Wings!), Ku-Fei is my favorite character Kaolla Su but a lot less silly(not good) and her obsession with huge guns put onto another character, etc. Almost all of these girls also somehow gets pulled into the magic world, some by accident, some due to a certain obsession with exploration, some were already there and some came by their own choice. The so far most notable character outside of the class is Kamo, the talking ferret who “organizes” most Pacts, has a tendency to pull cigarrettes out of nowhere pretty often and who fled his land to escape being sued for 2000 counts of stealing underwear. With a main cast consisting of over 35-40 characters, do I need to mention there are a lot of names? Fortunately, this isn’t that hard since there are a lot of character-focused chapters/chapters told from someone else’s viewpoint, Profiles, and they introduce one character at a time so it doesn’t feel like you are drowning in names. Most of these characters also has their own unique personalities and backstories, and it doesn’t feel like a class full of nameless nobodies. It’s not as well as Fairy Tail, though, where all the over 100 clan members had some kind of personality. But Fairy Tail is an exception, and Negima’s cast feels more living than most Animes and Mangas ever made.

You are constantly picking up tons of references to Love Hina, but also to several other series such as Clannad. I already mentioned the character designs, but there are also a visit to Kyoto where both Motoko in Love Hina and Sakurazaki trained for example. Ken Akamatsu also wrote himself that Nodoka was based on Shinobu on the cover of the first volume.

There is a bit of fanservice/ecchi in here as well, but unlike parts of Love Hina, Negima knows where the line between acceptable and tasteless goes. There are underwear showing a lot, and an occasional butt, but no more than that. The ecchi is a quite a lot less than Love Hina, generally just sightly more than The Familiar of Zero. Just like Love Hina, there are a lot of jokes centering around personality clashes and people not taking each others seriously or making fun of each others, mixed in with a bit of slapstick making a really nice mix that never feels repetitive despite many jokes are used numerous times. The action scenes in here are also more over-the-top than even those towards the end of Love Hina, but still not like Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou where you in some episodes(EP10 for example) had to really put some effort into finding anything not extremely over-the-top and/or overkill. There are several enemies that turns into allies(Evangeline and Koutarou so far), but they don’t make the mistake of putting extremely powerful villains on the good party like for example Dragonball does, but they down-power them significantly similarily to how Soul Eater does when Crona joins, by shrinking down Ragnarok from 3 meters tall to 30 cm. Evangeline who is at just a few percent of her full power due to a curse and Koutarou who lost his ability to use Wolf Spirits and his transformation. This also helps saving from the feeling that they’re just piling more and more powerful villains after each others, since that tend to make the story disappear, again like Dragonball. So far Negima’s story quality has just been getting better and better, as expected of Ken.

You can read the so far 291 chapters that has been released(it’s still in production with a new chapter every week, each chapter being about 20 pages) here, as well as getting an RSS feed that notifies you each time a new chapter is released. In order to get all the references, you should also have read Love Hina here, but it’s just heavily recommended – even if you don’t want to get all the references, it’s a really good Manga – the Anime wasn’t anywhere near though so if you only watch that you can’t expect to get all the references. Currently it is about to get a 10/10 rating from me, and I sure hope it doesn’t drop that score anytime soon.

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Some screenshots are sightly edited to remove unnecessary content
(such as overlapping boxes and talk bubbles) and focus on the actual content

Screenshots taken using an iPhone 3GS, so they are fairly small

There’s certainly a reason why this is ranked #1 at Anime News Network’s Anime Top-10. It has a depth that no other Anime can dream of, an atmosphere like the Manga version of D.N.Angel, and it’s made by Key that are famous for three things: 1) Writing beautiful stories 2) Killing off major characters at least once per series 3) Playing the viewers’ emotions like a keyboard partially using #1 and #2. There’s also a whole lot of scenes that leaves the viewer on the venge of tears, if they’re not already crying.

AS first begins as just a Season 2 of the previous masterpiece Clannad, but then shifts focus progressively towards Tomoya and Nagisa becoming a family on their own, facing all the hardships and obstacles that comes with it. Then, something happens which I’m not going to spoil that completely shatters Tomoya’s life and almost has him completely break down mentally. After that, it shifts more attention to Tomoya trying to live on his own despite this, together with his and Nagisa’s daughter Ushio (Remember the little girl who was shown running through a field of yellow flowers in the opening of Clannad for half a second just near the start? That’s her). Like Clannad, the base story doesn’t impress much if just described – it’s the undescribably beautiful way it’s performed that makes it so great. The entire plot is much more adult-ish than Clannad, and so serious it makes Clannad look like Ponyo in comparisation. The comedy part is much piped down, as is most of the cast, but on the other hand the drama and romance parts are increased. There are far more tear-dripping parts in After Story, especially what happens in Episode 16, but also a lot of other places, and will leave you sad for hours after you’ve finished watching. I’d like to see anyone watching Episode 16 for the first time without almost crying. True to Key’s signature style, they manage to amplify the smallest of things into huge symbolical piles of sadness seemingly with ease, in a way I’ve never seen anyone do.

For all you fans of Fuko Ibuki (count me in that group) who apparently “died” in Episode 9 of Clannad(although it was actually her consciousness given physical form) is revived and back in After Story and immediately raised the comedy levels a few steps. In one scene she greets Tomoya, who pats her on the head, Fuko slaps away his hand, Tomoya places it back, Fuko slaps it away and they repeat that very quickly for almost 10 seconds (did I mention Key can make almost anything funny as well?), then Fuko runs off with a loud “Aiiiee!!” and hides behind a tree, and calls Tomoya a meanie. Then she spots Ushio, asks if she can hug her, and without waiting for a response hugs her – and spaces out like usual. When she returns to reality she proclaims that Tomoya is a meanie, and now Ushio would be her official sister instead of Tomoya’s daughter, then tries to carry Ushio away and exclaims with a surprised tone “She won’t fly!?”. All accompanied by Fuko’s cute voice acting… She makes several attempts at making Ushio her sister, and Ushio just plays along too.

In terms of visual appeal, the one and only Anime I’ve seen that could rival this animation is the ongoing Angel Beats!. And that’s a really good score, like rating it between starfish and sea cucumbers like Fuko does in Clannad. The soundtrack is the same as in Clannad for most part, and I must really agree that it’s one of the better soundtrack I’ve heard and fits so perfectly into the general atmosphere. Like Clannad, the voice acting is good with the exception of Tomoyo whose voice just gets on my nerves – and I’m not particularily picky when it comes to voices.

The ending is just about the strangest one I’ve seen(not counting those endings that doesn’t make sense, like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Soul Eater). Using a complicated series of events involving two concurrent time paradoxes, a mental breakdown, emotions from another world, an Orb of Light, an alternate reality, a mechanical doll, the song “Big Dango Family” and Fuko they somehow manage to put a beautiful happy end to the parade of misery that was the final episodes, without the ending seeming completely out of place(D.N.Angel) or making no sense. And when I say beautiful, I really know what I’m talking about. I didn’t know it was even possible to make a happily-ever-after ending to this, but apparently it was. While doing all this they also took the chance to reveal the true identities of the scrap metal boy and the girl in the white dress in the Hidden World, the pasts of several minor characters(like Misae), and the truth behind the orbs of light.

First watch Clannad here if you haven’t already after my last post, then the moment you’re done, watch After Story here. Or, if you prefer to download it to your iPhone/PSP, you can do so here for Clannad and here for After Story. If you want it on your iPhone, you can jack iTunes’ TV-Show feature by renaming the files from .mp4 to .m4v, importing them to iTunes, opening the Info dialog, filling in the Series, Season, Episode and Episode ID fields on the Video tab, and on the Options tab choose “Media Type: TV-Show” on all of them. The last one can be batched by selecting all of the episodes and applying it to the combined info dialog. Sync, and you’ll have a whole bunch of Anime Episodes to enjoy on the bus or during breaks in school.

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Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.

Clannad is a seriously beautiful high-school love story at it’s best. This is one of those must see-Animes that goes down in history.

Tomoya Okazaki has grown up with only his alcoholic father, and because of that he’s become something of a delinquent. On his way to school on one of the days when he doesn’t skip class he meets a girl, Nagisa Furukawa, talking to herself about how she loves this school. Tomoya somehow befriends the strange girl, and together they try to reetablish the Theater Club that had to close because of a lack of members. They also befriend Fuko Ibuki the ghost of a girl who passed away on her way home from the opening ceremony a few years ago and is trying to get as many people as possible to come to her sister’s wedding by handing out sculptures of starfish(don’t ask); one of the candidates for the position as head of the Student Council, Tomoyo Sakagami(who has the only voice I’ve ever actually gotten annoyed at, except for Kitsune’s english voice in Love Hina); the genius who also happens to be the worst violin player in existence, Tomoya’s childhood friend who has less than no social skills at all, Kotomi Ichinose; and Tomoya’s twin classmates Kyou and Ryou Fujibayashi who is the polar opposite of each other – Kyou is violent and outwards while Ryou is timid and cares more about others than herself.

While the base story of reetablishing the theater club seems a bit classic, straightforward, uninteresting and a bit boring, the execution and countless side-tracks makes it far better than it seems. Anime News Network had a fine definition that “Tomoya finds his life turning in a new direction”. On top of the beautifully executed story it has the ability to create an atmosphere almost like the D.N.Angel Manga version, great character growth, some of the best animation and soundtrack ever, and an Art Style I completely adore – just look at Nagisa’s eyes on the picture above. It’s actually so good so that it even received a Sequel/Season 2 called “Clannad ~After Story~”. On top of the serious drama and love story in the foundation it also has a high class comedy on top of it that somehow manages to integrate with the serious parts (unlike for example Fruits Basket that switches a bit too fast between trying to imitate D.N.Angel’s Depth and being light-hearted sitcom) and goes along the lines of Angel Beats! or Arakawa under the Bridge‘s humor in that everyone says completely inconsequent and odd things yet stays serious. Example: Nagisa can call Fuko “Fu-chan”, but when Tomoya asks her if he can call her that too she immediately responds with “That’d be horrible!!” in a shocked tone, but can’t define what exactly would be horrible about it. That scene is a lot funnier than it sounds. Another example is that Fuko can’t give a high-five without first pretending to score in basketball. Clannad is also home to some of the saddest scenes I’ve ever seen in an Anime – such as the scene where Fuko disappears and everyone starts forgetting about her. Imagine the scene where Xion dies and all memories of her disappears from her friends in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, then do that to one of the best characters in the entire series(Fuko actually has a personality unlike Xion). The result is definitely sad no matter how you look at it. She reappears a few times later, though, don’t worry.

Watch immediately here. There are no acceptable excuses not to.

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Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.

I’m Haruhi Suzumiya, from East Junior High. First off, I’m not interested in ordinary people. But, if any of you are aliens, time-travelers, or espers, please come see me. That is all!
—Haruhi

Haruhi is many things. Excentric, hyperactive and strange are some of the adjectives that can be applied to her. But Melancholic is not one of them, so I have no idea of where this title came from. Nonsensical title or not, this is one of those series you really need to have seen. This is history, like Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it’s rating of “Masterpiece” at Anime News Network(a site that is to Anime and Manga what IMDB is to “regular” films) is well deserved.

The series is aired with the episodes in a more or less random order, meaning it feels a bit like watching an animated time paradox. It is obvious which order the episodes are supposed to be in chronologically, but you’ll be better off watching it in the default order, since the ending is chronologically in Episode 6… Also, the first episode is number 0 and doesn’t have almost anything to do with the main series other than being referenced in Episode 12. Aside from confusing all viewers, this random order seems to have confused the production company as well, since in Episode 10 there is a reference to the episode “Bamboo Rhapsody” which was never aired until the remake.

The story revolves around a girl named Haruhi Suzumiya(she who wasn’t melancholic, remember) but is told more from the perspective of her classmate Kyon(a bit like how Final Fantasy XII is told from Vaan’s perspective). The first day of high school Haruhi clearly announces that she has no interest in “Ordinary Humans” because they’re boring, but asks any time travelers, espers, sliders and aliens who may or may not be listening to join her. If this wasn’t weird enough, she initially changes her hairstyle, having one hairstyle for each day of the week. She also never turns anyone down, but drops them after a short while instead, as she thinks that love is a sort of mental illness that she don’t want to have any part in. She initially also doesn’t talk to anyone, and joins every club in the school, but decides that they’re all boring and quits them. Then Kyon says something about that if nothing suits her, then she can just create her own. Haruhi takes that as an offer, and forces Kyon into a club she just created in hope of something out of the ordinary happening. She somehow manages to get her hands on both the Literary Club’s clubroom and the Literary Club’s only member, Yuki Nagato, who would do just about anything as long as she can read her books. After that she proceeds to “scout”(= force into her club no one has any idea what it does) a random cute 2nd year girl named Asahina, who spends most of the series making tea, and a not-particularily-mysterious transfer student named Itsuki. That far everything seems normal to some degree. Then it turns out that Nagato is an Alien observing Haruhi because she apparently manipulates “data” surrounding her, Asahina is a time traveller who observes Haruhi because she is apparently a Time Warp that seals access to anytime prior to 3 years ago and Itsuki is an Esper who observes her because she apparently is god, and created the world 3 years ago. Haruhi isn’t aware of any of this, least of all that she is that powerful. And Nagato, Itsuki and Asahina are all working hard to prevent her from discovering her own potential, since that could spell the end of the world. Haruhi’s ability simply works like that if Haruhi wants something to happen, that happens. So if Haruhi wants to play detective, someone gets murdered, etc. And with this background, one of the weirdest and most enjoyable Anime series ever begins.

One of the weirdest things about this weird series is the way Kyon constantly seems to be stuck in the middle of weird situations he has more or less nothing to do with. Haruhi also doesn’t realize how dangerous she is to her surroundings until in the final episode where she and Kyon gets stuck in Closed Space. This series contains a lot of parodies on other things, such as in Episode 8 they imitate Case Closed’s way of showing shadow silhouettes of suspicious people, and also make a parody of Phoenix’s classic ‘Objection’ pose from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. And that’s just two of the countless references. I think the Giants in Closed Space is somehow based of Adam from Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I’m not sure.

All of this neatly comes together in a very original and incredibly well made high-school story that you should watch here right away.

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Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.

This game is set in a world where everything is caused by Spirits, the official language is cliché and all names seems to be just a bunch of scrambled letters thrown together. Everyone also dress worse than in Final Fantasy X, and no one seems to have put any care into either the character design or the voice acting.

There are two main characters, Aldo and Reiha, who somehow gets windled up in a nonsensical story involving spirits. That’s about all there is to the story. It’s lucky there’s no minimum amount of characteristics required to call a character a character, otherwise not a single character in the cast would have passed it. Aldo hits things with swords, Reiha hits things with Magic, and one other party member runs after you acting like a moron.

I can stand bad stories if the gameplay are any good, but Twin Age is played the same fashion as Runescape, which essentially means you tap an enemy and they will trade blows until either of the characters involved dies. And with that I’ve covered all there is to the gameplay as well. You tap your way through the entire game, completely unchallenged since all enemies are constantly under-leveled, through dungeon after dungeon consisting entirely of a straight path with some side-tracks scattered along the way. Possibly just to raise the irritation even more all main characters runs extremely slowly, and the loading times just gets on my nerves. This entire game smells of low budget long way, and I couldn’t stand more than a few chapters. I’m gonna play Lunar Knights as soon as I’ve fixed my DS, since that game at least had some sort of quality to it.

It’s not even worth my time making a picture gallery for.

This is one of those series where every little thing goes wrong, and I completely love it. What I don’t like quite as much is the large amount of fanservice/ecchi, but the plot makes up for it.

Akuto is a guy who enters a high-school for mages trying to become a high priest and make everyone happy. However, a spirit on the school that can apparently predict the future with 100% accuracy tells him that he will instead become a Demon Lord and destroy the world, the exact opposite of what he wants to. Because of this, about everyone in the school except a weird blonde boy named Hiroshi literally cowers in fear of him. Hiroshi instead thinks it’s insanely cool to be classmate with a Demon Lord and proclaims himself as Akuto’s minion. After accidentally scaring the hell out of his classmates, he says he wants to do something to help without own gain, and says he’ll volunteer to be a member of the Cleaning Duty – not knowing until too late that “Cleaning Duty” in this school means silencing anyone who finds out the school’s secrets, and just manages to scare everyone even more. Then the girl named Junko whom he befriended on the train after almost getting his face kicked in by her proceeds to attempt to kill him for “betraying” her by being a future demon lord. Akuto instead absorbs her magic and creates an explosion that blows up the entire classroom, apparently without knowing really what he was doing. At some point he also gets an Observer named Korone, an annoyingly flirty android who enjoys teasing him, and otherwise acts a lot like Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. He also somehow finds his childhood friend Keena, an excentric hyperactive girl with the average maturity of a 7 years old and the ability to turn invisible and fly. She somehow also reminds me of Kaolla from Love Hina – and that’s my favorite character in that series. Those are the most important ones, typically for an Anime in this category there are a few others, like the two-face decieving little bitch Etou who tries to control Akuto because of his incredible power and my favorite, Lily, the girl with a witch hat and a Hayate-style flowing scarf and a mysterious personality.

Like I said, there’s a tad bit too much Ecchi going on, but the rest compensates for this nuisance. There are an awful lot of superpowers, over-the-top firearms, sci-fi weapons and magic flying around all over the place about all the time, in a similar fashion to Toaru Majutsu no Index, and I like that kind of stuff quite a lot. The more the merrier, they say, and there is more than enough magic here.
Purely animation-wise, the series doesn’t impress as much as Angel Beats!, but it certainly isn’t bad as such. Pretty good actually, just not the best. I really like the art style, though, especially the character designs for Junko and Keena. I really hope this keeps the quality up, but I also hope they’ll pipe down the Ecchi a bit. This is really interesting so far(Episode 6 has just been released as of writing) and certainly doesn’t seem to drop in quality in any way.

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Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.