Otakuism

Just finished Rozen Maiden Ouverture, and while I think it was too short, like most things concerning Rozen Maiden, it was still a great watch. The production values were top-notch and the fight scenes were awesome. I disliked both the OP and ED songs, but thats nothing new. But this OVA wasn’t about the animation, it was about our awesome Gin-sama!

Gin is love.

While we already know how tragic Suigintou’s life has been from both series, it was nice to see her beginnings, and more importantly where her hatred of Shinku came from. While Suigintou basically had the mentality of a child, she was still a good person with an earnest desire to see Rozen. Shinku, however, acted like a sophisticated brat the whole time, enjoying her superiority over all the other dolls and making them know about it all the time. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to call Shinku a grade-A bitch back then. How messed up Suigintou is in the present is really more of Shinku’s fault I think. Not to say that Suigintou is entirely scot free, what with her crushing Shinku’s pendant and everything, it’s just Shinku who made Suigintou mad in the first place. Though at this point, whoever started it doesn’t really matter, does it? Shinku mellowed, thanks to Jun, and Suigintou, well let’s just say she’s better. Still psychotic, and cute, but better.

I’mma throwin ma hat!

Back then, Souseiseki was pretty nasty also. She attacked a defenseless Suigintou just because she was a Rozen Maiden and knew what the alice game was. She’s kind of better in the present, but she’ll still attack anyone in a heart beat. I wonder if Rozen built this masculine personality into her, along with the boku? To what extent could Rozen create the dolls personality’s, ensuring that they would fight eachother? The only doll that stayed the same was Suiseiseki. Even if she has a rough personality, she’s the one that hate’s fighting the most. Odd mixture there. There was no Hinaichigo and ” Kanada ” was only mentioned. I found that hilarious. Poor Kanada will never get remembered.

JUNK!

My only complaints is that Enju was thrown in and we got no background on him. It seemed like he was thrown in to say ” Hey, remember this guy? He was the badguy this whole time, yes he was, “. This further cements the idea that Enju was meant to be Rozen up until the last episode of Traumend, when someone said ” Wait, we can’t end this milkcow yet! “. Also the inconsistent actions of Rozen are really annoying. He gives Suigintou a rosa mystica, but waits till she’s killed to fix her body. By now I’ve rationalized this as the anime staff didn’t know that the show was going to be so popular after the first season, and Rozen’s been used as a deus ex machina to make the plot fit with the manga’s better. You know, how Suigintou isn’t broken in the manga, doesn’t die, etc. Oh well, I should just continue to focus on how cute Gin looks smiling.

In before ” SHINKU! “

So in short, Gin-sama is awesomely tragic, Shinku was a bitch, so was Souseiseki, and RM has too many plot holes. I may of nitpicked a lot, but I really did like this OVA. I can’t explain how excited I was when Shinku first said Junk, along with Suigintou’s first ” SHINKU! “. RM has such great emo fights. This is probably the end of RM for awhile. Won’t seeing anything new until the manga finishes I guess. That’s find with me. Let them sort out the plotholes they created first. I got enough fanart to satisfy me for a while.

Santa, I want her under my christmas tree.

It seems a Christmas bug has bit the blogosphere, including me. To everyone who’s stuck with this silly blog since September, or if this is your first time, I wish a truly Merry Christmas to all! Or if your a jaded cynic, a happy Festivus for the rest of us! Now I shall go and celebrate this Christmas Eve the otaku way and watch Rozen Maiden Ouverture, before being trapped in the chaos that is my family. Once again, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good anime viewing!

Gift~eternal rainbow~ is the first series of the fall season to end for me, at least for the subs to end (let’s not get started on Black Lagoon). While the ending was a bit sentimental, it did wrap up all the major plot points, and Haruhiko did stick with Riko instead of a cop-out Harem ending. I’ll give it credit for that.

Don’t worry. He turns out cooler than this.

More Rinka was desperately needed, minus lesbian stalker.

Gift ends with Haruhiko erasing Gift from the world to save Riko. You see, after Kirino went insane, she made Riko feel all guilty and used her gift to exchange her memories with Kirino. Now Kirino was the imouto-chan she always wanted to be, and Riko was losing her mind. To fix this, Haruhiko decided he had to get rid of Gift to save Riko. Haruhiko realizes Gift was created on the day his mother died, and goes to her grave for the truth. There, he recieves a divine flashback to when his mother was alive. Since she was going to die shortly after Haruhiko was born, she decided to use the magic she was born with to give Gift to the people, in order to show Haruhiko all the happiness and sadness people were capable of. Still, once Haruhiko learned everything he could, she wanted him to destroy Gift and chase his own future with the woman he loved, and Haruhiko did just that.

A Chisa is fine too.

Love how Glasses Girl started hitting on Haruhiko at the end. Definately moe.

With Riko’s memory restored, Haruhiko goes to make peace with Kirino. He say’s he’s sorry for missing her piano recital as a kid (him missing it is why Kirino can’t play a full song), and then show’s her his piece of their cup-phone that he broke as a child. Tying the phone’s together again, he say’s he wants Kirino to play the piano song he missed as a child. She agree’s to. With Haruhiko and Riko cheering her on, Kirino can finally play a full song and accept that she will never have Haruhiko, but that he is sill her important childhood friend. With everything fixed, the people move on without Gift, and Haruhiko and Riko promise to chase their own future under the rainbow and be together forever. A very ” Awwww ” ending.

I nominate this man for best harem side-kick ever. He was actually useful, gave great advice to Haruhiko, is a mad scientist, and actually has some small gar moments.

Ok, who is this girl? She’s featured twice in the final episode, so she must of been in the series at some point, right? I just can’t remember her at all.

Yeah, so it’s not the most exciting of endings, and the whole Kirino goes insane plot wasn’t really all it could of been, what with Kirino feeling more guilty then laughing maniacally and raping Haruhiko. Admit that would of been awesome. We did find out what caused Gift, but it turned out that even if Haruhiko’s mother did create Gift, she still used magic, making the whole thing mute. I did like Haruhiko by the end though. He’s not as sarcastic as Yuuichi, but he’s manlier then most harem leads, willing to atone for his mistakes and chase after the girl he really wants and not drag the others. Speaking of others, it’s a shame Gift didn’t put it’s rich cast of side-characters to more use. Would it of really been that hard to give them some cameo’s, or have them try to help Haruhiko or Riko out? Poor Rinka only got one episode!

Even if the ending was lackluster, Gift is still a pretty good harem show. Throwing worthless fanservice and hijinks aside, Gift goes to the heart of the matter with a bunch of character drama. It’s not the best drama, but when you first see Kirino absently talking into a cup-phone, it’s all worth it. Throw in some mostly attractive character designs and you got a solid harem series. Of course, the heavy sis-con is a big bonus for some I’m sure. So if your looking for something a bit less QUALITY then Yoake, not as generic as Happiness, or not as zany as Tokimeki, give Gift a try. You may find yourself surprisingly enjoying it, just like I did.

P.S. the Nipponsei Weekly Review takes a holiday break this week, but there will be a super-sized edition next time. Also, I won’t be updating the next couple of day’s, what with christmas and all. Hopefully I can remember all the stuff I’ve watched this year and make a best of ‘06 for when I come back. Yeah, like that will happen.

IOSYS has a new flash out. Not as catchy as ” Ein, Zwei, Guten Morgen! “, but still one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. Someone must be on crack over there. Maybe this would make sense if I ever played Touhou.

Well, Haruhi is now officially licensed. No surprise there. Turns out my prediction was wrong. Instead of Funimation, the relatively unknown Kadokawa USA got the show, with distribution by Bandai to help. This actually makes sense, as Kadokawa Shoten publishes the Haruhi novels in Japan, so why not distribute it’s own show?

I love the whole viral market campaign Kadokawa has used to publicize this announcement. Instead of some dry convention announcement, Kadokawa went right to the fans and let them figure it out. It’s amazing how focused the viral campaign seemed to be, not on normal fans in America, but to those hardcore ones who were already very familiar with Haruhi, had watched the fansubs, read the novel translations, etc. In fact, if it wasn’t for those hardcore fans, who would of really understood the announcement?

A lot of thanks to the work of pKjd and DarkMirage. Without their tirelessly going over the sourcecode and translating the text, we’d all still be confused. This whole thing was aimed right at the heart of the fandom, and relyed on the blogosphere to spread it. I like that. I like a company that targets the fanbase it already has, instead of going after casual fans who have never even heard of Haruhiism. I would love to see more stuff like this in the future, but this is probably a once in lifetime kind of thing. I can’t see any American companies pulling this off, understanding the fanbase this well. Can’t wait to see what Kadokawa has planned for Haruhi in the future.

In other news, the Rebellion continues.

For awhile now I’ve had a vested interest in the state of light novels in english. Since so many new anime are based on this literary form, I’ve been eager to test it out. Scrapped Princess is part of Tokyopop’s POP Fiction line they started in October, and is the third official Light Novel I’ve read in english, after Boogiepop and Vampire Hunter D. I’ve actually had the book since a couple weeks after it came out, but it’s surprisingly hard to read a light novel when your engrossed in the tales of Dan Simmons, but that’s another story entirely, so just accept this late review.

Most people you’ve been into anime for a couple years have probably seen Scrapped Princess. However I’ve never seen it, so I get to approach this story on a clean slate. Scrapped Princess tells the story of Pacifica Casull, the princess from the title. When she was born it was prophecized she would destroy the world, and was to be killed. But that didn’t happen, and she was rescued by a couple, one a master swordsman, the other a master sorceress. And so Pacifica got to live in peace for fourteen years, that is until the beginning of our story. It begins with the kingdom in power discovering she is still alive and sending assassins after her. With the assassins having already killed her adoptive father, it is up to her brother and sister, the sarcastic swordmaster Shannon and clutzy sorceress Raquel, to protect her until her sixteenth birthday.

Not exactly the freshest story ever told, but still a good one. The characters really make it great to me. The constant bickering between the tsundere Pacifica and apathetic Shannon provide the comic relief, with the ditzy Raquel providing the cutest/funniest moments. But the story isn’t all fun and games. This is a serious fantasy novel with a ton of sword and sorcery. The action scenes are plentiful and fast, short enough to be suspenseful but not drawn out. Some can be confusing at times, but they serve their purpose well. The element of sorcery is explained naturally through dialogue and it isn’t hard to pick up it’s technicalities. It’s not the complex rules of the Nasuverse, that’s for sure. While I can’t compare the translation to the japanese, the english works well and flows naturally, a far cry from the often jarring narrations from tokyopop’s manga. The only odd intance is a joke towards the end about Pacifica and Shannon’s supposed intimate relationship, and a character saying it’s ” Hot “. Please, keep your slang out of my sword and sorcery.

The few illustrations in the book are drawn beautifully by Yukinobu Azumi aka. Mogudan of those Rei Ayanami doujins fame. Being a hentai artist, all the women are incredibly sexy (even fourteen year old Pacifica) and the men oddly muscular. I love his artwork anyways, so I don’t mind at all and wish there were even more illustrations. The binding of the book is solid, and the paper thick with no bleed through from the images. If only tokyopop could release their manga in such a quality binding. However, this is where my one complaint comes in. They completely replaced the goddamn cover, not with another Scrapped Princess image, but a shoddy crown and blood that any first year graphic design student could fucking make. Compare the Japanese vol.1 cover below to the tokyopop cover above.

The difference is jarring, isn’t it? When I emailed Tokyopop on the horrendous change, all I got back was some crap about making the book appeal to non-anime/manga fans. Ok, that may be nice and all, but won’t work when the book is still stocked in the fucking manga section! You already have a core audience, why do you need to piss them off?! And Tokyopop is doing this for all their light novels. I shudder at what will happen to the stunningly beautiful images by THORE on the Trinity Blood books. Sorry for being so emotional, but the one thing I can’t stand is the editing of perfectly good images. I’m a firm believer of if it existed in the Japanese version, it had damn well better be in the English one. Sadly, this is a little too difficult for some companies to understand.

So in short, Scrapped Princess is a good fantasy story with great characters, and should be read by both the anime and non-anime fans alike, or those who are craving some light reading after that 900 page science fiction novel you just finished. Just ignore the cover, or even better, complain to Tokyopop about how terrible it is. I’m going to get them to listen one of these day’s.

Since the winter season is almost here, I think it’s about time for me to get off my lazy ass and start looking at what’s coming out. This is more of a list to help remind myself, since I don’t even know the stories of half of the show’s coming out, and am relying on character designs to make a choice. Yes, I know I’m shallow. A lot of this also depends on fansub releases to see if I watch anything.

Full Size (Credit goes pKjd for compiling this.)

First up, the new Rozen Maiden Ouverture OVA. Of course I’m gonna watch this. More delicious Gin-sama goodness is always a plus. Comes out Dec. 22.

Strike Witches is the second of the recent mecha-musume girls OVA’s, after Sky Girls. This one is a bit more faithful to the concept, seeing as how the girls actually come with WWII plane parts. The character designs look nice, but a little too similiar. The mecha parts aren’t as…extravagant as I’d like, but I’ll still look into this. Comes out Jan 1.

Next is Saint October, a show apparenlty about three colorful goth-loli’s solving crime with swords, arrows, and nun-chucks. The girls are very cute, and remind me a lot of Rozen Maiden. Also produced by Konami, so it probably won’t be that bad. Comes out Jan. 4.

Moving on now to Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette. I’m wary of the idea of Les Miserables being turned into a shoujo anime. However, I’m a sucker for anime versions of classic tales (see: Gankutsuou). We’ll see how good this adaptation will end up. Comes out Jan. 7.

I loved SHUFFLE, so of course I’m going to check out SHUFFLE! MEMORIES. This new series is supposedly a mixture of new and old material instead of a second season. Hopefully they’ll change the ending. Sia never gets enough love and deserves to have her Rin. Green-haired girls can just go home! Comes out Jan. 7.

Jesus Christ, those are the cutest loli’s I have ever seen. Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight is some kind of love romance set in school in the future, or some shit like that. Who cares though! Look at how cute they are! This is also made by ufotable, so let’s pray to God this is more Futakoi Alternative awesome than Coyote Ragtime Show crappiness. The cuteness begins Jan. 7.

Project BLUE Chikyu SOS looks like an epic science fiction tale, with thousands of ufo’s descending on a city in the promo pic. The designs are kind of bland (reminds me of Fantastic Children), but the idea of a good science fiction tale makes me giddy. Haven’t seen one of those in a long time. Begins Jan. 9.

Hidamari Sketch is another case of infection by uber-cute loli’s. The story is about slice-of-life stuff and artists, but again that doesn’t really matter as long as the girl’s are cute. Man, I’m getting as bad as Impz. I jest, I jest. I’m not that bad yet. Begins Jan. 11.

Venus Versus Virus has three things going for it. One, one of the girls wears an eyepatch. Eyepatch’s are fucking hot accesories. Two, yuri. Can’t go wrong there. Three, Seven Sea’s recently licensed the manga for this, and I want to see what it’s like before I decide to buy the official release. Comes out Jan. 11.

I loved Densha Otoko, so now that the once fake series, Getsumen Toheiki Mina, is getting it’s own show, I have to watch. Gonzo’s handling it, which can either be a yeh or neh. Time will tell (literally if their budget goes to hell). Also, if this doesn’t have Twilight as the OP it will already FAIL. Comes out Jan. 13.

Next is the new GR-Giant Robo series. I recently ordered the entire Giant Robo series (for 12 bucks!) and if I like that I’ll definately watch this. I’ll probably like this though, as it’s suppose to be filled with MANLY and HOT-BLOOD. Excellent. Begins Jan. 19.

Sky Girls is getting a full anime series, or at least I think so. There’s some confustion there. However, if one episode of loli’s in the sky was good, then a full series is gonna be awesome. Whatever this is, it begins sometime in January.

Gainax’s last super robot series, Diebuste, was great. So of course I’m going to check out their new super robot show, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. It’s about a world where everyone lives underground, and a couple of kids try to break through to the surface. When they do however, they release a rampaging robot, which is where the super robot comes in I guess. Extra winnage for the busty girl carrying sniper gun. Begins sometime in January.

Lately I’ve been craving a fanservice show, just for fun. Hopefully Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny will fit this bill fine. I’ve never seen the original Ikkitousen, but this is a remake instead of a new season, so I shouldn’t be lost. Begins in Febuary.

Finally, another super robot show, this one REIDEEN from Production I.G. Not much information right now, but the promo pic looks epic, so I’ll definately check it out. Begins at the end of the season, sometime in March.

I predict I’ll drop 3/4’s of this list three weeks in, justl like the Fall.