TAB: Tom's Anime Blog

Well, been a while since I posted here, as I've been busy with other projects. But I just finished watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, and I had to comment on it.

The thing that really impressed me about As is the way they were able to tell a story involving conflict to the point of battle without having any truly evil characters in it. While there were many sides, and the sides came into conflict with each other, every side thought they were doing the right thing... perhaps some of them thought that they were serving a higher good, and some lost control of their powers, but everyone was trying to achive a result they considered good.

To me, not having an out-and-out villian in the show, yet still being able to tell a good battle story, is a sign of writers that know their stuff. And while I won't be able to proclaim A's great until I rewatch it, it really is a very good story that is worth taking the time to watch. (But do watch the original series first, also a fairly good series._

Well, haven't been posting much recently. This is primarily because a lack of time means I've been focusing more on current-week anime and manga then watching series.

Anyway, I did get a chance to watch Alien Nine, but I didn't like it. Alien Nine is a series about three elementary-school girls that are elected to their school's "alien party". They are each given a "borg"--- a symbiotic alien helmet that protects them as they fight the various aliens that invade the school.

I think the Alien Nine OVA series suffers from being overly short to the point of being confusing. It seems vital information is being omitted, making it hard to follow the story.

I'd probably give Alien Nine a rating somewhere between watchable and good. If you're interested in the story, check out the manga, which does a significantly better job of conveying to the reader what is going on, and extends the story significantly beyond the end of the OVA series.

Kuromi is a 40-minute OVA about a girl, Mikiko "Kuromi" Oguro, who is thrown quite abruptly into managing the production of an episode of an anime series. She's right out of college and expecting to work under the old production manager, but he has a bleeding ulcer and leaves immediately after showing her around the office.

She has one week left to complete the episode, out of the five weeks originally alotted to that task. It's made complicated by a crew of key animators that wants to do anything but draw. Kuromi's job is to do whatever she can to ensure that that all the drawings come in on time.

The show that this is closest to is probably Comic Party. Not so much in tone, or animation style, or anything like that, but because the characters are united in an artistic endeavour, rather than something like saving the world or falling in love. Still, there are many differences. Kuromi is animated in a very cartoony, somewhat slapstick style, in which it's okay to be off-model for a laugh. (The style looks alot like Jubei-Chan, which isn't suprising as the series share a director.)

The show is about two things... Kuromi learning how to manage creative type people, and the larger question of why people subject themselves to life in the low-paid and hard japanese animation industry. And the OVA managed to draw me into these two things, as well as the story, to the point where I was interested in what would happen to these characters, and what their answers to those things would be.

Kuromi manages, in a single 40 minute OVA, to achieve a degree of audience tie-in that's missing in some series. I like that. It's a good OVA, and interesting if you want to know how the anime sausage is made.

Girls Bravo is the story of a random loser guy who manages to get kicked by the girl next door into another dimension. This dimension has 10 girls for each guy. This would seems like a good deal, except that the producers decided to make the poor guy allergic to women. Chase scene ensues.

Overally, there wasn't all that much to the episode. We met the guy, the girl next door, and the girl from the other dimension that isn't allergic to him. Even though quite a bit of the episode takes place in the bath, everything is concealed by strategically placed CG fog.

It's hard to tell where they'll be going with this one, or if it will be any good or not. Not enough happened to give me a feel for the series (unless it's all slapstick, which I think probably it won't entirely be).

Wind is a new bishoujo game turned into an anime, with the first episode having come down the pipe last weekend. The first episode doesn't really reveal much. When he was younger, a childhood sweetheart asked him to eventually marry her as she was leaving town. (He said he'd think about it, and gave her his harmonica.) Cut to the present day, as he goes through a normal day. We meet his cute girl sister, the class-president type, the funny male sidekick, the cute girl waitresses in the cafe, the cute girl who stares at a blimp in the distance, and a cute harmonica playing girl... sense a theme in the characters yet?

The animation style is strange, with a mix of 2d and 3d backgrounds. The 3d backgrounds let them move the camera with wild abandon, something that the creators take advantage of at every opportunity. It gets to be a bit distracting after a while.

The first episode is 12 minutes and change, which is the shortest episode length I've seen for a series in this genre. We briefly get to meet the cast, and then the episode is over.

Still, the characters seemed interesting enough, and it's an new show in my favorite genre, so I'll be giving it a chance to see where it goes.

Well, Koi Kaze just ended, so it's time for a review of the series. For those unfamiliar with it, check out my earlier episode review.

Considering the subject matter, I really liked Koi Kaze. It dealt with the subject matter (incest) in a way that felt real. You really felt the way the various characters agonized over their situation. Even though it's somewhat tough to condone such a relationship, you still wanted to root for them... It's a series that was really a character piece.

Unfortunately, I felt the ending was a little to... open. There isn't much a final resolution, I don't think. (Or else it was too subtle for me. That happens at times.) I really want to know what eventually became of the people, and it's unsatisfying, if perhaps somewhat realistic, to have that denied to me.

I'll call the series a good one (but not great), with sub-par ending. I wonder if there's going to be a 13th episode OVA for the 12 episode series.

Update: Whoops. Koi Kaze was a 13 episode series, if you count episode 7.5 (which should have aired as episode 8 but didn't).

I go back and forth in my opinion of Hanaukyo Maids Tai: La Verite. First, let me begin by saying that I'm a fan of both the Hanaukyo Maids manga and the Studio MOE anime. I started out disliking the series, as it changed the personalities of many of the characters for the worse, and the storys were just repeats of those in the earlier series. I came very close to dropping it.

Then, two things happened. The first is that I got volumes 2 and 3 of the manga, so I realized that the thing was that the character's personalities in La Verite are those they have in the later manga. So it's not total mischaracterization, but rather a lack of seeing them evolve. The other thing is that they did the "Blue Silent Bell" arc, which is the best part of the manga.

Unfortunately, La Verite ends rather abruptly, without resolving much. It was also a mixed bag in terms of episodes throughout the series. The animation also didn't appeal to me, feeling somewhat sloppy.

I'll call this an okay series, especially for fans of the larger work. I do reccomend the "Blue Silent Bell" arc, but you might as well just pick up the manga.

All good things must come to an end, and the spring anime season is no exception. So it's time for me to review the final episodes of the shows, and give a final judgement on them. Since I still have yet to form a coherent opinion on the ending of This Ugly and Beautiful World, I'll start with Midori no Hibi.

For the past few weeks, a portion of my monday activities revolved around MnH. Sometime in the morning, I would begin checking to see of the new episode has been posted. Around noon, it would be, and so I would ssh home from work and kick off the download. I would drive home, eat dinner, and start watcing the new episode of Midori. Twenty-something minutes later, I would watch the nifty end credits start rolling, and go off to do something else, satisfied.

And I really did enjoy Midori no Hibi. It took one of the strangest and perverted premises one can think of (the guy who has his right hand as his girlfriend), and turns it into a very good romantic comedy.

The creators struck the right balance with Seiji, the male lead. He had to be at the same time the fighter type, noble, and oblivious to the attraction of the various female characters to him. If he was any smarter, some of the things he did to Midori would have come across as cruel, but instead we manage to have an interesting story without him.

There's also a good cast of minor characters, including various love interests for Seiji and Midori. I really like how they resolved, at least to some extent, their stories in the final episode, and the way in which they gave the final push to the leads. In fact, I liked all the minor characters with the exception of Seiji's sister. Be sure to watch to the end of the credits of the last episode, as the cat that makes appearances throughout the show gets his story resolved under the closing.

Midori no Hibi, though, is primarily about Midori, and the final episode makes that abundantly clear. It's really about the way in which mini-Midori, can do all the things that real-life Midori couldn't bring herself to do, like confess to Seiji. The finale does a good job of showing how the experience changed Midori and Seiji.

Midori no Hibi had a good premise, good characters, good episodes, good animation and a good ending. That's all I can ask for in a series. I'll rate it a very strong good, with the distinct possibility I will, after an eventual rewatch, give it a great rating.

The only question is, what will I be doing on my Mondays? Well, there's always the manga...

Well, I read 118 chapters of the YKK manga. It's, I think, more satisfying than the OVA series. They both have the same, slow, slice of life pace to them, but the manga, which has been running forever, is more satisfying as it has time to develope the characters and world more.

I really want to see where this is going, but at the rate of a chapter a month, the story could take forever to finish. But I think the point of the YKK is that the getting there is more important than the story.

I'll rate this manga good, and say I'm looking forward to more chapters being scanslated.

Yokohama Shopping Log consists of two OVA series, each consisting of a pair of episodes. It's apparently set in a post apocalyptic world. I say apparently, because even though we have ruins of modern buildings and so on, there really isn't much about what happened to make the world go away.

Instead, the story follows around a robot-girl named Alpha. She's been left behind by her owner to tend to a cafe, but with no travellers she gets very little business. In the first OVA series, there isn't much of a story, but instead we simply see her trying to (out of routine or whatever) find meaning or things to do, in a world that has kind of left her on autopilot.

The second series has the cafe destroyed by a Typhoon, and so she goes out on a trip to see the surrounding countryside.

The closest thing I can compare this to is the movie A.I., insofar as it involves an abandoned robot. But it's not really a good comparison, as YKK is much lighter in tone, and had very little in the way of a plot.

This is a manga turned OVA series, and especially in the second OVA series, there are points where minor characters show up just to get screen time.

I'll say it rates somewhere between okay and good, but it did inspire me to download the Manga scanslations. (here, and click on Contents.) I want to see if there's any story underlying this.