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.

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.

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.

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.

Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.

The D.N.Angel Manga was the biggest masterpiece I’ve ever read. Then the Anime must be equally awesome, right? Sadly no.

In case you didn’t know, D.N.Angel is an unfinished Manga series that happens to be one of the best ones I’ve ever read. The story centers around a boy named Daisuke Niwa who on his 14th Birthday gets rejected by his crush Risa Harada. This triggers a hereditary gene that has been in his family for generations, and awakens the master thief Dark Mousy from within Daisuke. Because of this, Daisuke starts living a double-life as both the usual clumsy Daisuke during the day and the perfect and unbeatable master thief Dark during the night. Dark and Daisuke swaps places no matter if Dark or Daisuke wants it or not whenever either of them sees a girl they really love. Of course this opens for a lot of romantic complications in the middle of this. Daisuke ends up falling in love with Risa’s twin sister Riku, while Dark falls in love with Risa, who happens to be a devoted Dark fangirl(?). Then there’s also Daisuke’s classmate Hiwatari who is Daisuke’s friend, but leads the search for Dark. Hiwatari knows very well that Dark and Daisuke is the same person, but doesn’t let his hunt for Dark go out over Daisuke. Hiwatari also reveals himself to be the bearer of Dark’s polar opposite, the mad artist Krad, who looks like an angel but is completely insane and doesn’t care about anything else than killing Dark, no matter the price. He also sold his soul to the devil while he was still human, and is the reason he and Dark is locked inside others’ bodies. The plot is incredibly complicated(now we’re talking complexity on the same level as the Kingdom Hearts series), incredibly deep, incredibly well made, and incredibly engaging. Not to mention the beautiful drawing, which is on par with or even surpasses Love Hina. Also, this is the kind of story that is very easy to understand if you’ve read all of it, but almost impossible if you’ve skipped even a single chapter.

One of the things that made the Manga to such a masterpiece was the mysterious atmosphere. There was constantly something mysterious or unknown or both over the slightest of things, and you were constantly figuring over what exactly was going on behind the scenes. Not to mention the incredible feeling of depth and it’s ability to keep up the energy in a similar fashion to Mayoi Neko Overrun! ensuring that you were constantly completely hooked, and just had to know what happened next. Also, I’m not sure if the author is trying to imitate Beethowen by leaving an unfinished symphony, or if she is just actively trying to piss off the fanbase. If she leaves D.N.Angel unfinished, she’ll succeed in both.

Too bad none of that is in the Anime. The Anime Adaption brutally murdered the mysterious atmosphere, cut the remains to pieces, burnt the pieces and scattered the ash over the ocean from a helicopter. Not an ounce of the original D.N.Angel feel is left. Where the Manga was figuring, suggesting and implying, the Anime puts all the cards on the table, ruining the entire mystery of it. Also, the Anime is far more action-oriented. Dark now has a black feather that works like some sort of magic wand, while Krad has a white angel feather. This makes absolutely no sense at all, since in the Manga both Dark and Krad can use magic all by themselves, but Dark refrains from doing so as much as possible since it will gravely hurt Daisuke’s body should he do so. Now he instead spends a lot of time wildly blasting magic at Krad. Also, since the Manga is still unfinished, some moron came up with the idea to write a new ending. A terribly bad ending at that. They should have done like Toaru Majutsu no Index instead and left it unfinished. Or waited for the Manga to be finished.

The Anime does have it’s good spots too, however. The graphics are beautiful, but a bit un-original – especially Dark and Krad’s wings are really beautifully made and looks about as real as angel wings can look. Krad also gets a lot more screentime, and is introduced earlier. The voice acting is excellent, not as good as Hayate no Gotoku! but still great, and I especially like Krad’s voice that really sounds like an immortal insane artist (don’t ask how I know how immortal insane artists sounds) and Hio’s that is very high-pitched and loopy and sound really funny. The scene where Daisuke grows his own wings is also a lot better than in the Manga. A bit on the downside is that they cut the coolest character in the entire series, Argentine. Possibly because they thought there was a terrible lack of living artworks trying to kill Daisuke, they cut in a girl named Hio Mio, who pretends to be an exchange student from america, but is really just a doll given life for the sole purpose of killing Daisuke, but changes her mind when she sees how happy Risa is with him, and instead gives up her own life to lift the curse she laid on Daisuke and move in as a second personality in Riku, a bit like Dark is for Daisuke, but she only comes out when both her, Riku and Risa wants her to, and posesses the bodies of both the twins instead of just Riku like Dark does to Daisuke – possibly because her magic is weaker than Dark’s and she needs two people’s energy to materialise herself. A lot of the plot is changed, and a really annoying thing is that Daisuke keeps whining about that Freedert is dead for like 5 episodes after she died. Dammit, Daisuke! You knew her for 20 minutes before Dark killed here! Blame him, but don’t waste 5 EPs whining about it!

Despite all the shortcomings of the Anime version, it’s still a good Anime – just short of ‘great’. You can start watching here already, if you feel like it. The story that is left is by far enough to motivate watching it at least once.

Quick Update on Angel Beats! since the fifth episode has just been released. This is actually the first of these Single Post reviews, but certainly not the last. The reason is simply that I’ve never felt this sad for an Anime character is you don’t count Aeris. The only thing I can really say about this episode is: Now they’re just plain mean.

Tenshi never do anything to them unless they break the rules, and then she doesn’t do it because she wants to but because the NPC teachers chew her out otherwise. In this episode, Yurippe has “Christ” sabotage Tenshi’s tests for no reason, knowing very well that it would just traumatize her. Sure, they do it in a very enjoyable episode, but it’s still mean to Tenshi. This causes Tenshi to lose her status as the Student Council President to be replaced by the scary green-haired guy from EP4. Somehow I get the feeling that Tenshi will seem like a shy little girl who wants everyone’s best most of all(Tohru from Fruits Basket?) in comparisation to this guy. Also, after Yuri is done ruining Tenshi’s life for no reason, she initiates an Operation Tornado and even steals Tenshi’s last food cupon! Seriously, Yuri! You’ve already traumatized the poor girl for life several times and when she tries to drown her sorrows in Mabu Doofu(A sort of spicy dish that she and Otonashi are the only people on the school who actually orders) you even steals that away from her!? I sure hope Otonashi is right in that Tenshi might want to join the SSS, Tenshi is by far the best character in the series, even with her life destroyed. Otonashi is the only member of the SSS who is able to have a normal conversation with her without trying to kill her, so if someone is going to recruit her, it’s Otonashi. I can’t really see Tenshi of all people going for revenge, Roxas Style with guns blazing, but it could happen. Angel Beats! has surprised me before.

Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.