“Epic Badasness” would be the most appropriate word to describe this chapter.

Fate is pissed off at Negi because he has a better idea than his idea of destroying the world. N0 one believes this, and I actually started doubting it even more when Negi mentioned that it involved the Class Rep… How exactly could an annoying blonde shoutacon help saving anything?

Anyways, Zazie’s Sister raises again from the rubble she was buried under and exclaims that she doesn’t believe it either, and goes Xenahort’s Heartless. Chisame’s comment: “Oh, God! She’s totally a Final Boss character! Just look at that design!“. Apparently, she’s one of the Demonfolk, and yes, she holds high enough status to be Final Boss Material.

Zazie’s Sister is seriously sceptical to how a 10 years old kid could possibly save the world (I am too!), and has her Guardian do a seriously overkill attack that’s parried by Mana, Kaede, Setsuna and Ku-Fei who awakens from Cosmo Entelecheia. Kaede apparently “spent an excessive length of time in the company of my late grandparents” in there, Mana looks silly, Harumi apparently dreamed of World Domination (anyone surprised?), Setsuna is ashamed of her dreams involving a lesbian relationship with Konoka, and Ku-Fei is also getting all embarassed despite her dream seems to have been to fight someone whom I can’t recognize.

Zazie’s Sister, whom Negi decices to rename to “Poyo Rainyday”-san (Chisame: “…we’re calling her Poyo now? Seriously?”), decides to go overkill again. Negi tells the others to go after Fate while he fights Poyo-san. However, he is stopped by Mana who triggers a bunch of Gravity Mines (made by Chao Lingshen) she had apparently put in there (Chisame: “Yep, she’s a monster”), which presses Poyo into the ground and creates a huge crater (just how thick is that floor!?) and jumps after her down into the crater. Poyo theorizes that Negi’s method will lead to the future which Chao Lingshen came from (the one where everyone dies, remember?), but Mana bets that Negi’s method works while loading some of the Time-Space Displacement Bullets used for disqualifications during the Mahora Festival Arc (I sure hope she modified them, having a Xenahort’s Heartless-ripoff appear out of nowhere outside school could scare anyone out of their minds), then transforms into a… Demon!? Mana is a Demonfolk!? Okay, it was pretty clear already that she wasn’t human, but a Demonfolk? Random but awesome!

Next week there will be yet another break (hopefully we won’t have to wait a month like last time)… But there will also be a special One-Shot of Love Hina included!! Woo-hoo!

I just got the Visual Novel game Little Busters! working on my Macbook through Wine. However, since the process was far from easy, I thought I’d share how I did in case someone else wants to play Visual Novels too. Note that this guide is made for Key/Visual Art’s Visual Novels, like Clannad, Kanon, Air, Little Busters, Rewrite, etc. and other game makers’ games may not work at all. You should check them up in this database before trying to run them, if they’re gold or platinum, they’re playable. Note that you also need an Intel mac, any mac with G3, G5 or G5 processors (pre-2005) runs of the PPC architecture which makes Wine impossible to run. Some of the steps requires Administrator Access, if you have different accounts on your computer you may need to switch between them occasionally. I will tell you what account you need to be logged in to for each step.

Note that this guide uses examples for installing the game Little Busters, other games may place the installed files in other locations, if that’s the case,

Step 1: Getting the necessary files

1.1: X11 and Wine (this step requires you to be logged in as an Administrator)
To install a Visual Novel, you need a number of things. For a start, you need Wine and X11 to run Windows .EXE-files. To install X11, you can either grab it from the OSX Installation disc or from here. Then, you need MacPorts to install Linux/UNIX-packages from the Command Line, grab that from here and follow the installation instructions (it’s not just installing the package!). After you have installed Macports, open Application->Utilities->Terminal. Then type the following command (Copy it exactly! A typo will make the command fail!) and press Enter:

clear;sudo port selfupdate;sudo port install wine-devel winetricks cabextract +universal;sudo port upgrade all

Congratulations, you can now run windows applications! However, before we start doing that, we need to make said windows applications work. Type this command into the terminal (some parts are supposed to end with an “Installation Failed” message) WARNING! This step will fail if you’re not logged in as yourself!:

clear;winetricks corefonts;winetricks comctl32 comctl32.ocx d3dx9 d3dx9_28 d3dx9_36 dinput8 directmusic directplay dotnet20sp2 fontfix vb6run


The script will install much of the components required to use most Windows applications for you, just sit back and watch, however, do not leave the computer since it will occasionally ask you to accept a license agreement or ask for confirmation (Notice the gray ugly windows-style boxes? Those are actually Windows applications!). When this is done, you can theoretically run most Windows applications unless they are too complicated. However, to make it play anything in Japanese, you need to fix some more…

1.2: Japanese Fonts (from now on, make sure you are logged into the account you are planning on playing on)
To run Japanese games, your computer need to be able to render Japanese text, of course. If you try without these installed, you will just get ASCII-gibberish and there’s a large chance of the application crashing or acting strange. To enable Japanese fonts, grab this file and type this command (don’t type the [[DROP HERE]] part, instead, drag the downloaded file from Finder to the terminal when you get to that part to make it paste the full path to the file in there):

cd ~/Desktop/;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine [[DROP HERE]];mv -fv ./*.ttf ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts/

This will install the required fonts. However, we’re not ready to play just yet.

Step 2: Preparing the game itself
Step 2.1: Installing the Game
This is just what it sounds like: Install the game. If you have the physical disc, insert it. If you have an ISO or DMG with the contents of it, double-click on it to mount it. Then type the following command into the Terminal to open up the installer:

cd "/Volumes/LB";clear;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ./Autorun*.EXE

If your Installation Disc is called something else than “LB”, you must replace it with the name of your disc. Note that it is case sentitive, so “LB” is not the same as “lb”, “Lb” or “lB” and so on. If the name is long, you can replace cd "/Volumes/LB" with cd /Volumes/[first few letters of the disc name]* where you insert enough letters in the disc name to make sure there’s no other devices (Hard drives, Web Servers, Discs, etc.) that begins with the same letters. Make sure you replace any spaces with “\ ” without the quotation marks.

Step 2.2: Patching the Game Engine

When you have installed it (make sure you use the default location!), type this command and see if it mentions a file called “REALLIVE.EXE”:

clear;ls -lA ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/

If it does, grab this patch for it. Place the downloaded EXE-file on your desktop and rename it to “Patch.exe” for the sake of simplicity (again, case sensitive). Then run this command:

cp ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/REALLIVE.EXE ~/Desktop/;cd ~/Desktop/;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ./Patch.exe

And choose to patch the file “REALLIVE.EXE” that will be located on your desktop. When it’s finished, run this command:

mv -f ./REALLIVE.EXE ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/;rm -f ./Patch.exe;rm -f ./REALLIVE*

This will update the game engine and make it possible to actually run the game, as well as removing the used patch (remove the “rm -f ./Patch.exe” part if you want to keep it). Now, if you have a Language Patch, name it “LangPatch.exe” and place it on the desktop, and run this command:

clear;cd ~/Desktop/;LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ./LangPatch.exe

Repeat this step for any additional patches.

Step 3: Running the Game
Step 3.1: Creating the Script
To actually run the game, there are several steps involved. To make this a easy as possible, we will be creating a script that does most of the work for you.

Open a text editor of choice (any editor works, like the built in one, which I’ll be using), and create a new file in your home folder (/Users/<yourname>) with a name along the lines of “littlebusters.sh”. The name can be anything, but it should end in “.sh”, and should only contain characters a-z and underscore( _ ). If you have a disc, type this into it:

if [ -e /Volumes/<< The full name of your CD >> ]
then
echo "The CD is inserted, starting game..."
LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/REALLIVE.EXE
else
echo "The CD is not inserted!"
fi

Replace << The full name of your CD >> with the name of your CD (Case-Insensitive). If you have an ISO or DMG, use this code instead:

if [ -e /Volumes/<< The full name of the disc image >> ]
then echo "The Disc Image is mounted, starting game..."
else echo "Attempting to mount the Disc Image..."
hdiutil attach << The full path to the disc image >>
fi

LANG=ja_JP.SJIS wine ~/.wine/drive_c/KEY/*/REALLIVE.EXE

Replace << The full name of the disc image >> with the full name of the disc image as it shows up in the Finder sidebar when it’s mounted, and replace << The full path to the disc image >> with the full path to the Disc Image file (Note that if you move it, you need to change this). You can get the path by dropping the file into the text editing area in most cases (like the Built-in Text Editor).

Then run this command:

chmod 755 ~/*.sh

Done!

Step 4: Play!
To play the game, open up X11. You should get a large white terminal. If you don’t, press Command+N. Type this into the terminal to launch the game:

~/<filename>.sh

Where you replace <filename> with whatever you named the script you created in the last step. So if you named the script littlebusters.sh, you type ~/littlebusters.sh. It should print a few messages, and start the game.

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Lucky Star can be described with two words: Epic Randomness. It’s 8 hours of hilarious random, character-driven, top-class humor. There’s essentially no plot, zero character growth, a ton of references to other Animes and the entire show just oozes of quality. The so-called story centers around Konata Izumi, who is something as uncommon as a female otaku and too lazy to study despite she is pretty smart, and her life. That’s the entire story, did you expect something more from a show described as “epic randomness”?

Lucky Star’s main strength doesn’t lie in it’s nonexistent story, but in it’s characters. The main character, Konata Izumi, is 17 years old, but looks like 12. She’s too lazy to study, despite she is pretty smart, and doesn’t join any sports clubs despite being very athletic, because if she did she would miss her Anime shows. Konata is well-known as “the queen of comedy” for good reasons – she’s simply the funniest character ever made, and one of the most easily recognizable ones too. She makes completely epic faces, has one of the most unique voices ever (she’s voiced by Aya Hirano who has done Haruhi in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Misa Amane in Death Note and Lucy Heartfilia in Fairy Tail among others), that is, she always sounds like she’s talking through her nose while having a cold, which is a lot cuter and funnier than it seems. Konata’s best friends are the twins Kagami and Tsukasa Hiiragi, who are essentially Kyou and Ryou Fujibashi from Clannad. Kagami is is a typical Tsundere (acting tough while she’s actually soft on the inside), or a “Dere-Tsun” as Shiraishi classifies her as later. Kagami (aka “The Great Kagamin”) is constantly being made fun of by Konata, and while she isn’t made fun of she acts as the Straight Man. Her twin sister Tsukasa on the other hand is more like Konata in that she enjoys reading and playing games a lot more than studying, but unlike Konata she doesn’t study because she loses focus not because she’s lazy. She also tend to sleep in all day (she sleepwalks and turns her alarm clock off), is extremely unlucky and generally feels that the entire universe is dead set against her. Then there’s their overly smart classmate Miyuki Takara, who just like Hanekawa from Bakemonogatari “just happens to know” everything, and who according to Konata is “a wandering pillar of moé” with her unreal clumsy cuteness. Later in it also introduces Yukari Takara (or “Yu-chan” for short), who is a first year high school student who looks and acts like a grade schooler, who is the only person Konata can feel superior to and she is generally clueless about everything. Along with Yu-chan there is her best friend Minami Iwasaki who has the most obsessive flat-chest complex ever seen (if you’ve played Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, think Etna and Flonne together) and who is essentially Korone from Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou in all other aspects – except for the fact that Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou was 3 years later. Some other notable characters are Konata’s father who openly admits that he’s a pedo, a cop that drives like a car thief, the homeroom teacher who has formed a guild with Konata in an MMO, and an american transfer student who lapses into english or pretends not to understand what people are saying when it’s convenient, a Doijin author who writes perverted Doujins based on her friends because she can’t find anything else to write. Also, Soujirou (Konata’s dad) is the only male character in the entire show not counting Shiraishi Minoru and Daisuke Ono, the former who has a total of two lines in the actual show and mostly appears in Lucky Channel, and the latter who only appears in Lucky Channel.

In case you have problems keeping up with the show, they added the mentioned “Lucky Channel”, which is apparently supposed to be an explanatory corner. However, they left the role as “navigator” to Akira Kogami, who is a child idol who frequently falls out of character, to the point of it appearing like a split personality, whenever she gets annoyed the slightest. She also wants to appear in the real show, but after finally managing to get an appearance, she catches a cold that week. Along with Akira, there’s Minoru Shiraishi (a real voice-actor playing himself), who just ends up being ordered around by Akira or shouted at by her whenever she gets annoyed at something. They’re apparently there to introduce new characters and explain stuff, but Akira always either gets annoyed at some detail, gets jealous of the character they’re introducing or goes out of character for some other reason. Lucky Channel is also filled with 4th wall-jokes, starting with Akira’s wish to be in the real show up to when she sprouts water onto the camera lens and the cameraman wiping it off with a piece of cloth, or even the background falling apart.

The entire series is crammed full of references and parodies, like Konata doing her own MMO-version of the song Bokuen Desho Desho from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, “Solo-Hunting Desho Desho… (hm hm hm hm hm hm) Will make you strong… (hm hm hm hm)”, and suddently getting a backpack with wings and saying “Uguu~” (Ayu in Kanon), Kagami being Hatsune Miku(Vocaloid2) and Cinderella at the same time, or Konata spening an entire episode talking like an 18th century upperclass-lady because she’s reading Marimite (short for “Maria-sama ga Miteru”). Unlike a lot of other shows, like Hayate no Gokoku! or Seitokai no Ichizon, you don’t have to get the references to have fun, the only exception being the parody of Cinderella, and having seen Haruhi is recommended since there’s scenes that’ll make even less sense than usual otherwise, so you can watch this without having to watch a lot of other shows. Of couse, it gets funnier if you get at least a few of the references, but since there’s tons of them I wouldn’t expect anyone outside of Japan to get them all.

To say that the art style is unique would be an understatement. Everyone looks like a doll and everything is chibified and cute, and all facial expressions (especially Konata’s) are over-the-top and exaggerated to say the least. The backgrounds are generally abstract or one-colored, but never feels rushed or out-of-place. It also has a certain liking of bright colors, something which is evident from just about every character design. It all fits neatly into the overall unserious tone of the series. The soundtrack is not on par with masterpieces like Clannad or Pandora Hearts, but always creates the right atmosphere (that is, create an 8 hours long unserious atmosphere without equal) without ever being repetitive or annoying. The opening theme, Motteke! Sailor Fuku, is the most hyper song since Love Hina’s Sakura Saku, and is extremely upbeat, fast and fits perfectly into the series. The ending themes are different every time, and is always parodies on existing Anime songs. Actually, Lucky Star’s only fault is that it has an end. And after it ends, there’a 45 minutes long OVA too.

Watch it here, or grab the PSP/iPhone-files here. To put it on an iPhone, read here for instructions.

Gallery
Click on the thumbnails to view the full pictures in Lightbox

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Haruto and Yuzuki

Kimi no Iru Machi (A Town Where You Live) first seems to be just an ordinary love story-manga. A well-made one, but still nothing out of the ordinary. However, just like Clannad, that’s just on the surface – give it a chance, and you won’t regret it.

The story centers around a guy named Haruto Kirishima, who is living a fairly ordinary life until a girl named Yuzuki Eba turns up who will live in his house because she is the daughter of one of his dad’s friends and she desperately wanted to transfer to the school in Haruto’s town. Haruto doesn’t have any interest in Yuzuki since he’s already in love with a girl named Nanami Kanzaki. Yuzuki on the other hand has a clear interest in Haruto.

The story isn’t very original, but neither was Clannad. However, it has just enough originality to avoid being unoriginal, and is executed beautifully. The setting is based on the author’s hometown, which means that it has the same realistic feeling as Love Hina has, and actually feels living. The art style is also beautiful, on par with D.N.Angel and just slightly below Ken Akamatsu(Love Hina, Mahou Sensei Negima!, Mao-chan)’s art. It has some issues with misplaced eyes and sometimes there’s an arm pointing in a slightly impossible direction, but the overall quality is really impressive. The character designs are quite good too. The main character, Haruto Kirishima is not the most original character ever, and initially appears to be just a stingy, skeptical and a bit shy guy, but similarly to Ryoshi from Ookami-san to Shichinin Nakama-tachi, he can go any lengths for his friends if the situation requires him to. He’s fairly smart, but a bit too realistic for his own good. He could be considered a male Tsundere, but that’s not as obvious as for example Himuro from Fairy Tail. Yuzuki Eba is a far better character. It’s a bit hard to decide if she’s really smart or an idiot, she’s really clumsy (in a moé-ish sort of way) and reminds a lot of Nagisa from Clannad. She can also appear to be completely helpless and lost, just to surprise you by actually knowing exactly what she’s doing – though she generally actually is helpless and lost. She loves Haruto, but isn’t possessive like a lot of other heroines (Shana, Naru, Louise, etc) and actually helps him get closer to his crush Nanami. She also has a mysterious past, but as of now not much is known about this. Nanami Kanzaki is one of those characters you know will just be there to create some tension, since she lacks the details that separates main characters from major characters – just like Yoshida Kazumi from Shakugan no Shana, Risa Harada from D.N.Angel or Siesta from Zero no Tsukaima. She’s not a bad character, just not unique enough to really stand out. She’s a typical cheerful girl who will sooner or later reject the main character who will give up on her and move on to the main heroine. Then there’s Yuzuki’s evil and manipulative little sister (if you’ve seen Durarara!!, think a less prominent version of Izaya and you get the idea) Rin who somewhat shares Ryuk’s viewpoint from Death Note in that she does things because the effects are interesting, and Haruto’s childhood friends Akari and Takahashi who seriously acts like two halves of a whole, acting as a bokke-tsukyomi Comedian pair and cheering for Haruto. Akari also likes smacking people in the back of their heads with Newspapers, textbooks and similar – she once also hit Haruto with a dictionary after Kanzaki’s idea. Takahashi is Haruto’s inseparable friend and they’ve been friends since forever, and he’s also the kind of Kida Masaomi-character who hit on just about every girl he sees but never has any luck with them (sadly he doesn’t have a long list of “Girls I’m gonna’ make my girlfriend” like Kida) and has been rejected by more girls than he can remember – including Yuzuki, Rin and Akari.

The story is a typical slice-of-life one, divide into shorter arcs. It’s really beautifully written and well executed – there’s a reason why it’s one of the most popular mangas on OneManga – and it never really breaks the atmosphere like Fruits Basket among others does, and said atmosphere is on par with D.N.Angel’s. Haruto and Yuzuki also make a really cute couple, mostly by being each others’ polar opposite. The character growth may not be on par with Love Hina, Mahou Sensei Negima! or even D.N.Angel, but it is there – even though you may not notice it. Even though this is a typical love story, there’s thankfully not much Ecchi like most other love story-mangas tend to be. The first page of each chapter always has an illustration that has nothing to do with the chapter itself (up to a certain point, where it starts being an enlarged panel instead), and while some of them are annoyingly ecchi-ish, they don’t get as much on my nerves as for example Fairy Tail’s does, some of them are actually really cute. The Summary and Closing texts can also be skipped, since they make about as much sense as Angel Beats’ official plot summary (just what is a spilled memory!?). One thing that may cause you to lose track of things like the characters’ ages and such is it’s somewhat annoying way of fast-forwarding through up to half a year, but except for that the story has a good flow without being either overcomplicated or too simple.

Despite it’s faults, the overall quality of it all means that you should immediately start reading it here. It’s definitely one of the best series I’ve read in a long time. It’s position on the top list of the most popular mangas on OneManga is well-deserved.

—-
Note that this post was written before Yuzuki was redesigned to a hated bitch rather than a moé-ish cute girl…

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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.

(Extra Comment: Come on, Nodoka! Get Negi and avenge Shinobu’s broken heart from Love Hina!)

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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.