Anime Review: Gatchman Crowds Insight

I, like everyone else, was surprised when I heard that were was going to be a sequel to the 2013 incarnation of Gatchaman since it seemed like the series had tied itself up quite nicely. However, after having seen this sequel it's a must see, that story wasn't complete before which I suppose makes this the best sequel ever in a sense.

But first things first, if you have seen Crowds but not the director's cut of episode 12 you need to see that. Given the half recap episode in the tv run they had to re-edit episode 12 on the DVDs (Japan only, Sentai could not get the license in the US) which includes how Hajime finally defeated Berg Katze and a few other key details. Next, make sure to watch episode 0 on Crunchyroll before going onto episode 1 since it has new stuff as well. And then you're all set for what may be the most decisive anime of 2015!

Gatchaman Crowds Insight

Webcomic Review: The End

As I mentioned in my State of the Blog, I'm going to make an effort to talk about more webcomics including ones I reviewed several years back since my writing has gotten stronger since then. I read quite a few webcomics these days (it's probably around 80 total but closer to 60 of them are currently updating regularly/on hiatus with regular author check-ins) and when considering which ones to review I'm looking for comics that are in a specific stage of their story. Many of the comics I read are at least partially action oriented so I think of them as having a slightly different break-down than the one I was taught in school; an introduction, explanation period, rise to and then climax (I include any mini-climaxes in this big section), and then a falling down to the closure. The End is a good example of why I think of the introduction and the explanation parts of the story as separate ones, The End has a large cast with many factions and while there are some explanations given in the very beginning (to both the characters and the readers), the story really needs all of the important players to have been introduced before it can start explaining why there are conflicts and letting the cast start reacting to them.

So expect most of the comics I choose to review to be in a similar place, still early on in the story but not in the beginning anymore. There are a few comics I would like to review that are more in that climax stage which makes it tricker (since whatever I say can be completely changed within a few pages) but I don't plan to let a conquerable problem like that keep me from telling others just how great these works are.

The End by Ran and Cory Brown

Book Review: Earth Star

Well I certainly fell off my schedule this week, I wish I could say that next week is going to be better but I'm not sure. Well, in one way it will, I realized that part of the reason I was so tired and unmotivated to write my reviews was because I had had so much free time at work lately that I was literally writing them all up in my head two or three times before I had a chance to start typing which, especially when it comes to my 1-2k write-ups, explains why I felt so exhausted. That's not the case anymore which would help but on the other hand, my computer is slowing down more and more by the week which isn't helping here, it literally took me a quarter of an hour just to open up blogger so I could write this intro. Thankfully I already had this review prewritten because trying to write in bits and spurts and waiting for the computer is even more difficult than it sounds.

Earth Star by Janet Edwards 

Anime Review: Captain Earth

It's a fact that if you stick a Bones mecha show in front of me I'm going to watch it, there are several different general styles to how various creators approach mecha shows and I just rather like Bones approach. It's never just a war or a soldiers life for them, it's about the people who end up having to do these crazy things and a lot of self-discovery, this sounds pretty great to me especially since I know that budgets usually don't allow for down-and-out robot punching fests every single episode! And in case anyone reads this review and wonders at a few of the name choices, apparently Bones enjoyed having "The Tempest" and "Hamlet" references in another show so much they added in a number of A Midsummer Night's Dream ones here, although most of them are surface, name-only references without any deep, thematically related connections.

Captain Earth

Anime Review: Knights of Sidonia

And so it's time for my first Summer 2014 anime review although I feel like I'm a bit behind the curve since nearly everyone else already has their review of this show up! Which probably made a few people double-take and look at the calendar, Knights of Sidonia is a unique show since instead of being licensed by a traditional licensor it was actually picked up by Netflix who, instead of releasing it as a simulcast in the spring, released the entire show subbed and dubbed back in July which certainly got the attention of more mainstream nerd sites. And it sounds like the show has done well thus far, I had been worried when I heard that Netflix was using this show to test their new idea since I didn't think it would be a hit but it seems like if you put anything on Netflix then tons of people will watch it anyway (plus, given it's status on the "Recently Popular" when I was watching it, that sounds like people are watching it because they like it, not just the first episode out of curiosity and then not following it up).

Knights of Sidonia

Anime Review: Blue Drop

Another Sentai title that I've wanted to see for a while, although this one has been streaming on crunchyroll for years and I could have gotten around to it much sooner. What I didn't know is that there are apparently several manga series also connected with this title (at least two of them set after the end here), obviously you don't have to read any of them to understand this story but they do seem to make the story a bit weirder and creepier than it was here.

Blue Drop

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

I've been dying to see this film ever since it came out but, due to an error in communications on my part, I didn't have a chance to watch it over the summer and was holding off until I could get over to redbox or such. And then one week I jokingly said "oh maybe the film that [my step-sister] is bringing this week is Pacific Rim!" and I was right! Clearly I need to tempt fate more often, this is so much easier than putting my name on the holds list in the library, as far down as I am for some of the 2013 films currently I'm not sure I'll have a chance to see them before the next New Years.

Pacific Rim

TV Series Review: The Time of the Doctor (Doctor Who 2013 Christmas Special)

Wow, I thought I would have this up last night guys except 1) I was on a train which did not have wi-fi which caught me off guard 2) I got in amazingly late due to what shall now be referred to as The Great Virginia Manhunt. Sorry about that, my anime review for the week is already up and my end of year wrap up should be up later as well, although I always intended to publish that one on the 31st.

Here we are, it's been an odd ride but it's time once again for the Doctor to regenerate and, oh wait, Moffat is still the series runner too? I'm actually hoping he steps down soon in the next year or two as well not only because it's time for some new blood working on the show but also because this special in some ways summed up all of Matt Smith's tenure on Doctor Who: good parts and bad parts side by side in a single episode.

The Time of the Doctor

Manga Review: Q-ko-chan

Another random pull from the not-so-local library for me, I barely looked at what this one was about or I probably would have noticed the "from the creator of FLCL!" tagline and put it back. Turns out Hajime only did the manga adaptation, he's not the original creator of the show, although I can still see some similar themes between this manga and what I've heard people say is the heart of that show.

Q-ko-chan by Ueda Hajime

Summary: Aliens are ravaging the Earth and countries have fractured as small military groups vie for power and people flock to where ever seems the safest. Kirio and his sister Furiko live in one of the safer areas but even it gets attacked by aliens fairly regularly, although Kirio seems to have made a contract of sorts with a robot that's rather good at fighting them off.

The Good: This is going to sound a bit odd considering all the problems I had with this story but I was actually enjoying the story when I could figure out what was going on. This meant that for a lot of it I was reading it with a very confused look on my face but for the rest of it I thought it worked and that it was telling a bit more of a cynical/sarcastic/world-weary story of aliens attacking (heck it even parodies the gung-ho "children will save us from the aliens!" at one point) and I liked how it flowed. However, while I did like parts of it I found it to be outweighed by all the problems I had with it.

The Bad: While I was able to follow the basic plotline of the story, aliens have been invading Earth for a while and people are fighting back there was a lot of the story I wasn't able to pick up. Like the dolls (robots), are they working with humans, just with human children, or are they actually working with the aliens? And what the heck is up with Kirio and Fumiko's antagonistic relationship (which seems to be one of the central themes of the story)? Just when I thought I figured out some of the characters they would go and say something completely different, I still don't know what the goals of any of the military characters were and I really did try. This manga is only two volumes long and I can't help but wonder if it was planned to be longer originally and shortened or if it was cut off suddenly, if it hadn't been for the "So What Happened?" page after all the translation notes I wouldn't have even notice it ended, so many things and character motivations were left unexplained and I don't feel like the characters had even developed much by the end. It's a frustrating story since while I'm sure some people could puzzle out a few of the things I had trouble with that there really are some loose ends that even the American staff couldn't work out. 

The Art: The art style is loose and sketchy at times and simply minimalistic at others which I think fits well with the tone of the story, there's not a lot of explanation from either conversation or imagery here. It was easier to tell the characters apart than I expected after a bit and I didn't have as much trouble following the action sequences as I did with the plot.


So, 2.5 out of 5 stars for this one since while confusing it wasn't terrible, if that makes sense:I could see a story in there, I could see some character development and some distinct themes running through it, the tone was consistent, it just didn't have an ending. I'm sure that some fans of FLCL will like this so if you are one go check this out (although it was a Del Ray publication so it's out of print now) and if anyone can figure out the answer/an interesting interpretation to any of my questions then please comment! 

Summer 2013 Anime Round-Up

First things first, Gatchaman Crowds doesn't air until tomorrow so I'll be updating this post for that tomorrow, heck I would have had this up earlier except apparently crunchyroll doesn't let you use multiple guest passes in a one week period which threw a wrench into my plans. Second, normally I talk about the shows that carried over for me from last season but I actually wrote a rather rambly write-up of the spring season over on my tumblr which covered those shows. TL;DR, still following Space Bros and Doki Doki Precure but other than that I'm starting with a clean slate, let's get started then! oh one more thing, each of these impression is made after seeing just one episode of the show, some of these shows do have a second episode out by now but I just didn't have time to get to them.

Blood Lad
Vampire boy is obsessed with Japanese stuff.
This is an aggressively shonen show from the way the visuals are designed (lots of sound effects on screen, word bubbles at times, things you usually see only in either a 4-koma or shonen based adaptation, I'm trying to figure out why Brains Base has pushed this show back by an entire year since it certainly wasn't because of the art!) to the humor (look at this girl! she has boobs! and not much else on!). Heck even the character designs are a bit more shonen-y than usual now that I think about it and it's been so long since I've watched a show like this I had forgotten, this isn't really my type of show (and yes, this is technically based off of a senien manga, knowing that doesn't make it feel any less shonen plus sometimes you do get weird overlaps with those categories). I'm going to give it a couple more episodes to see if I warm up to it, the entire Manga Bookshelf seems to really like the manga and their tastes often line up with mine and it's certainly a a different take on vampires (but let's face it, by now almost every story with vampires is "a different take!") but at this point I don't see myself following it's entire 10 episode run.

Blood Lad has been licensed by Viz Media and is streaming on their site and on hulu so Canadian viewers are sadly out of luck this time.


Danganronpa the Animation
Super highschoolers trapped in murderous school.
Initially I thought "oh I'll give this a shot since I'd rather watch this than read the summaries/translations and don't have a PSP to download the game/patch (plus, these games never get licensed in the US)" and then NISA licensed the game (and someone else got Steins;Gate in the same day which had previously been my basis for "these games that super popular anime are based on don't get licensed"). Well then, don't have much reason to check out the show then (even if I don't have a PSP Vita to play the actual game on) and I'm a bit relieved, this just didn't flow well for me. It's odd but I dislike books and tv shows with this kind of setting, murder-mystery with the player character having warped morals by the end, but I do like games with it (I adored 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors which is a bit similar, I joked to friends that the setting and some of the characters kept giving me flashbacks). There it's fun to play as an asshole-ish character and see how much you can screw everything up, it's less fun to watch other people do it (although I know that mountains of Let's Play videos out there contradict me on this point). So with all of that in mind, I wasn't able to take anything seriously enough to enjoy it, and you're clearly not supposed to take a lot of this story seriously to start with, and hopefully someday I'll be able to give the game a try and enjoy it much more.

Danganronpa the Animation has been licensed for streaming by Funimation but the first episode won't be up until this Friday the 12th.


Eccentric Family (Uchoten Kazoku)
Humans, Tanuki, and Tengu live in Kyoto.
Based on a novel written by the same man who wrote the original The Tatami Galaxy novel this first episode didn't grab me as much as it seemed to grab some other people which was actually what I expected, Tatami didn't grab me until I tried watching it again about two years later after all. Although I suspect it won't take me nearly as long to get around to the second episode, while this first episode might not have grabbed me and taken me for a ride like other shows have done it was still interesting enough to make me curious about the rest of it. This was an introductory episode, we see a lot of the main cast, get a sense of the different factions in Kyoto, possible conflicts and mysteries are mentioned but nothing super exciting has happened yet, it's all set-up. But I am curious what this show is setting up and I like Kyoto quite a bit so I'm not going to turn down a chance to see it as a setting. So, unless the next few episodes are deadly boring I'm going to stick with this one and see just what it develops into.

Eccentric Family is streaming on crunchyroll.


Gatchaman Crowds
Super-powered humans fight rubix cube aliens.
While it didn't start out that way this ended up being my most anticipated summer show and it's not perfect but so far it's pretty fun. Well, fun if you consider being on a rainbow colored roller coaster for 30 minute fun (although strangely enough the episode was just 22 minutes long, not 25) and it's already clear that this series is a shorter one since the pacing is frenzied and feels even faster with how bouncy lead character Hajime is. I really do hope the next few episodes slow down a bit since there was a lot to take in here, it's the complete opposite of tsuritama (which shares a good chunk of it's important staff) and I can easily see how the fast pace and Hajime are putting people off, although it seems to have no connection to the original Gatchaman so newcomers like myself don't have that to worry about. Regardless, I'm in this one for the long run since I'm just in the mood for a super-colorful, fighting aliens show with a female lead, fingers crossed that it ends well!

Crowds is streaming on crunchyroll and currently unlicensed, however considering that Sentai recently licensed the original series many suspect they'll license this series as well. 


Kinmoza! (Kin-iro Mozaic)
Cute girls have intercontinental friendship
Not initially on my to watch list but after hearing so many people call it adorable I had to check it out and yep, that was a pretty adorable show. I liked it so far, this first episode is a flashback to how the main characters (a Japanese girl and a British one) met and became friends (in a rather romanticized Great Britain) and yep, not much happened but it was adorable none the less. I want to give the second episode a try but I have to ask, what is it going to do now? Are these girls with their friends going to form a club about Great Britain things? (since forming a club is all the rage now in anime-schools) Just do slice of life daily cute things with some culture shock? I'm okay with either of them but would like to know what they're going to do since I am worried about getting bored quickly, this isn't my normal type of show for a reason after all.

Kinmoza! has been licensed by Sentai and is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Free! Iwatobi Swim Club
Boys strip and swim.
I almost feel like this series needs no introduction considering how much the PV for it was being bandied about across the internet with various cries of "YES!" and "OMG IT'S OBJECTIFYING US [men]!" being thrown around. So to make things clear, no this anime was NOT made because tumblr wanted it (guys just look at it, you think that you can animate something with that much detail in the amount of time that passed between tumblr flipping out and the premiere? Hell no) and it doesn't really objectify men either, Zac of ANN articulates quite well why not so I'm just going to link to his review (it was his first so scroll of the bottom if you don't see it immediately). So, my thoughts? Well, fanservice in general isn't my thing (neither is swimming, I like the gymnastics part of the summer olympics much better) but I'm glad that they made the show so campy since that made it pretty fun to watch regardless. I doubt I'll continue it since there's so much else out there I want to watch right now but if I want to watch a mindless, well-animated show with a sense of humor then this one is at the top of my list.

Free! has not been licensed yet however it is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist
William doesn't believe in demons, oh-well.
So a few months back when this anime was announced I went off, read the manga, and started worrying. I've seen a lot of people compare this one to Black Butler and Pandora Hearts for thematic reasons (they both have the Victorian England inspired setting with gothic elements) but structurally they're the similar as well, they're all shows whose manga took a heck of a time to get to the meat of the plot (I gave up on Black Butler before finding out if it ever got there actually). So, judging from what I know, the pacing of this episode, and what was shown in the OP and ED (which by the way has a heck of a spoiler for one of the characters) this one is probably going to have a fast pace and either an original ending or an inconclusive one (which I think is more likely) since I can't really think of a place to end it as the manga currently stands AND the story is bland enough that I doubt it's going to sell well enough for a sequel. Which is rather sad since I tried out since I liked the premise, demons trying to become the new king of hell by bothering a British kid, and while the manga did grow on me it really wasn't because the characters or the plot turned out to be super interesting, the style just got a bit better and I liked the eye-candy. At this point I'm willing to give the show another episode or two for the eye candy reason (even though I'm not that happy with some of the voices in here, it's been a while since the voices have been the complete opposite of what I've imagined), the character designs really do look great in full color I'm most likely going to end up dropping it by the end of July.

Devils and Realist is unlicensed but streaming on crunchyroll. Seven Seas manga also picked up the manga recently and plans to release the first volume in early 2014.


Servant x Service
Civil workers work.
Hmm, this series didn't grab me as much as I had hoped a series about working adults would which makes me a little sad. Of course, one of the most common comments I've seen on this show is "Working!! but less zany" so perhaps that's what I should be watching instead, heck I have much more experience with weird food-industry work than weird office/government work (the libraries I've worked at have been fairly tame comparatively speaking). In any case, this looks to be a straight-forward, slice of life (in the really literal sense) story of a few different civil workers and for the moment I'm going to give it a few more episodes to see if the characters click with me but I feel that if the characters don't click with me then there's going to be no point in watching the show.

Servant x Service is streaming on crunchyroll and unlicensed.


Silver Spoon (Gin no Saji)
Boy enrolls in agricultural school, hijinks.
The lone noitaminA show of the season (since now it's AnoHana's time to do reruns) and a bit more anticipated than most noitaminA shows since it's based off of a manga by the creator of FullMetal Alchemist. I read a bit of the manga a few years back and while it wasn't bad I just wasn't really grabbed by it either which was the same reaction I had here. We've only had one episode to meet the characters and see the setting so not much has actually happened, although the egg gag got old really fast (guys, I'm a girl, I know EXACTLY where eggs come from), although that did end in some really excellently animated food which really makes me wish there was a food anime with that kind of animation out there. However, since it's not bad by a long shot, noitaminA, and could certainly get more interesting once the characters start developing and such I plan on following this one for the long run (literally, it's split cour so 11 episodes now and another 11 next January) and I'm really hoping that the show ends up growing on me (it is set at a farming school after all....).

Silver Spoon remains unlicensed but it is streaming on crunchyroll.


Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3
Cute girls form war games club.
Wow I have seen mixed reactions on it, I honestly tried out the show because I at first saw some people saying it was fun and then others saying that, as a result of the gun culture in the US, it made them uncomfortable and I wanted to form an opinion on my own. And I have to say, even though I'm not a big fan of guns I can easily see the appeal of running around shooting each other with fake guns (probably because a lot of my friends in high school did just that) but this show still came off as a bit odd. It's trying too hard to emphasize the juxtaposition of  "they're cute girls! And they like imitating Rambo movies!", honestly it wouldn't have felt as weird if it hadn't done that. Which puts me in an odd position of being interested in watching another episode but probably not sticking with the show for the long run, this is just turning out to be an odd season for me.

C3 has been licensed by Sentai and is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Watamote
High school girl has delusions of popularity
Yet another show that wasn't initially on my to-watch list but decided to give it a shot after seeing a number of other people mention it. And, ehhhhh, I don't think I'll be continuing with it after all. As many other people have commented, so far this is a dark comedy with only one joke, oh look how Tomoke has no friends/no social skills/doesn't even know it! Sure I've seen people like that in my years of high school and college, although usually the painfully socially awkward nerds I saw instead of not talking at all had no idea when was a good time to talk or that they weren't actually funny (and most started getting better at it after a few years!) and I was never like that, so I'm not getting that much kick out of the "oh ha-ha, it's like someone you know!" humor which I think I should be feeling just a bit. However I did think it got one point especially spot on, when Tomoke is mocking all the girls in her class who hang out with guys and look cute, calling them bimbos and sluts, and yet you get the feeling that she really wants that in her own life. That I think a lot of people of all genders go through, I know that on some parts of the internet there's a lot of "oh I'm better than other girls because I am/do_____ instead!" (my first thought actually was of this meme but apparently this was actually a parody of the situation, still gets across what I meant however) which also feeds into a lot of other assumptions about what's feminine, what's not, stereotypes (both as a result of media and as a reaction to said media) and all kinds of nasty stuff. I have no doubt that giving Tomoke that viewpoint was quite deliberate but that's not enough to keep me interested in what happens next sadly.

Watamote has both it's anime and manga licensed in the US, by Sentai and Yen Press respectively, and the anime is currently streaming on crunchyroll.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: The Pyramids of Mars

And it's time for another classic Doctor Who serial, I really like how the serials that BBC decided to air complement each other so well. The Aztecs had one of the shows famous lines about not being able to rewrite time and in this episode when Sarah Jane questions if they really need to save the day since she obviously came from the future the Doctor shows her how much the future will change if they don't (and I really do think these two go together given the shows guidelines about what can be changed and what can't). In Tomb of the Cybermen we see the character Victoria and in this serial Sarah Jane is running around in some of her clothes (which are actually period appropirate for once!). And in Spearhead from Space the Doctor begins his long term relationship working for/with UNIT and here they were aiming to go back to them for a bit, and as usual end up in the right place but the wrong time by several decades. 


Doctor Who Classic: The Pyramid of Mars

Summary: While the Doctor and Sarah Jane were attempting to get back to UNIT after some adventuring they accidentally end up in what would become their headquarters a few decades too early, although knowing the Doctor and his relationship with UNIT that might have been on purpose. Also, knowing how adventure calls to the TARDIS it may also be no coincidence that they land in the middle of a plot to unseal an alien known as the Egyptian god Set from his prison on Mars. 

The Good: This was a fairly solid serial, it shows something that I've been thinking about a lot lately which is how it seems like in Classic DW the companions were always having their own side adventures instead of just tagging along with the Doctor (like they seem to do most of the time in Nu Who) and I like that, even if it's still a bit hard to see the companions as fully fleshed out characters when you only see a single story with them. Especially since in Sarah Jane's case my first experience with her was in Nu Who when she was completely and fully an independent adult whose a bit more jaded than she is here, honestly that made for some odd dissonance but that's my problem, not the show's. Other than that, while the twist on Egyptian mythology didn't work 100% for me it worked better than I would have thought if someone had just said "they were all aliens-" "suuuuure, because everything on Doctor Who is aliens-" "who sealed Set on Mars" and it's always a good thing when DW actually pulls off their bizarre set-ups.

The Bad: One thing I think I've said a lot over the years is how I don't like it when Doctor Who kills off a lot of it's one episode characters. Not because this is a family friendly show or such but because it always feels so pointless, the Doctor (and companions) rarely seem to be torn up over it and we never see how other people react to their friends and family mysteriously dying and that does frustrate me. I did feel like the story got a bit too overly complicated by the end but I guess that was the result of them needing to fill time. 

The Audio/Visuals: Oh dear, we’ve entered that weird era of British television where the shows were at least partially shot on a higher frame rate, here it’s really obvious to me that it’s not the usual 24 frames per second when the characters move around quickly. Even though I would love for us to move to a higher frame rate in general it’s still unusual enough to look jarring and, considering most of the special effects look cheesy to start with and I’ve heard it’s even harder to make them look good at higher frame rates, yeaaaaah. Weirdly enough there are some moments when the special effects look really good but by and large you can tell that most of their props were made of foam and for some reason that detail pulls me out faster than almost anything else. Also, there are some shots where the video looked a little distorted, like they were shot with a lens that was slightly fisheye, and I don’t think that was on purpose. I could be crazy and imagining something that wasn’t there, and it could be a result of aging over the years, but that didn’t really help the show regardless.


Yep I really can't wait until I'm back near my libraries that have a pretty good selection of classic Doctor Who (/the time to browse and see just what Netflix has for streaming), the more I watch of it the more I like it, bit sad that by the time the next classic serial rolls around I won't have BBCA anymore so who knows how I'm going to watch it. Actually, at this rate I won't have BBCA for the finale of the current season, that's going to be frustrating considering how spoiler laden the internet will be.....

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, Spearhead From Space

It's that time of the month again, well it will be next Sunday since that's when the Fourth Doctor Classic Serial will be anyway, time to dive into the BBC archives! And this is interesting, the only bit of the Third Doctor I had seen before was the Three Doctors special which apparently is the end of a story arc which starts with this episode, the very first episode of the Third Doctor (and I've already seen Two regenerate into Three). I went in a bit hesistant since I didn't really like Three in the special but hey, I didn't really like One there either and ended up loving The Aztecs so this should probably end well!


Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space

Summary: Directly after The War Games, the Doctor has been forcibly regenerated by the Time Lords who have also played with his memory (as well as his previous assistants/companions who are back in their own time and places) and left him stranded on Earth with a TARDIS that can't move. He's soon picked up by UNIT

The Good: The more I see of Classic Who the more I'm mazed at just how many aliens/villains they brought back for the new series, I had no idea that shop maniquens had been a source of terror for British children for decades! On that note, it's probably a good thing I never saw these episodes as a kid myself, while some things looked a bit hooky to my young adult self the basic idea is sound and certainly works. Also, as I mentioned earlier I was a bit worried going into this since I didn't really like Three in The Three Doctors (thinking back on that I just didn't like that special at all, I was a bit offended by how bad the costumes were to be honest) but yet again I ended up liking him. I caught a bit of the documentary about the third doctor beforehand and they were talking about how this Doctor was a bit James Bond like and yep, I can see that with how the Doctor was acting and it was a fun change of pace to see him more as a guy who is actively seeking out action rather than a guy who seeks out mystery and adventure and just happens to find adventure along the way.

The Bad: Weirdly enough, since I've seen episodes with UNIT in it before but they felt a little awkward here. Of course, that might have been the intention, setting up future conflicts with the Doctor since he's going to be stuck on Earth for a while, but I couldn't even tell if the Brigadier and the Doctor has met before, I think so but I'm still not 100% positive. It was also a little hard to keep some of the various characters/factions straight but I think that was more my fault for trying to knit and watch at the same time, overall I think that yet again the BBC made a really good choice here.

The Audio/Visuals: It's our first serial in color, yay! And, according to the internet, because there were some interesting production problems the serial was shot on film (as opposed to, erm, whatever they normally shot on, film is apparently superior to whatever that was) and apparently it's good enough to be released on blu-ray (the only pre-2005 serial to do so). The special effects seem less hooky than the cybermen last time, which is funny since the reason for the whole "the Doctor is grounded on Earth" storyline is because the BBC was having budget cuts. Then again, if Doctor Who ever manages to have a cheaper looking costumes than those cybermen ones then they probably had negative budget to work with.....


Not much to add one, bring on the Fourth Doctor and I can't wait until I'm near a library with more Classic Doctor Who serials again!

Anime Review: Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne Season Two

The sequel to the winter anime title of the same name, there's not much else I can say to introduce. If you haven't seen the first half, watch that first, this is a direct sequel, and it's all streaming on hulu for free anyway.


Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne

Summary:Over nine months have past since Lan and Muginami went back to their respective sides in the growing galactic feud and ever since Madoka hasn't been able to awaken her Vox and has felt a bit depressed. She hides it well but even the people around her have started to notice how lonely she's feeling. Thankfully for her Kamogawa is about to get a lot more exciting again as the "the planets orbits collide and cause them to nearly crash into each other once every 1000 years" event draws closer and the town is chosen as a meeting place for the various officials to come and figure out how all of them can live in peace. 

The Good: There was some very funny writing in the show at some points, especially early on, and at some point I will go through all the cast lists to see if I can pin down who exactly did the writing I liked since I want to see what else they can do. I also liked, and wished they had expanded more on, how it was shown that yes, Madoka is depressed when her friends have left since rarely do stories give a main character enough time by themselves away from the action to have that happen, although I also would have liked if Madoka was toned down a bit as well. 

The Bad: The show tried to strike a balance between being a more action-y, with a little bit of politics, mech show with a slice of life show and in the end it felt lopsided with the slice of life aspect taking up much more (and, since I was in it for the other stuff, I was a bit frustrated by this). All in all I think the first half was the stronger one both pacing and ending wise and, while the show did have good writing at times, it felt like it was stretching what central plot it had too thin, threw in too much fluff, and was perfectly fine with letting the characters grow and regress as much as the plot needed them to.

The Audio: While the new opening and ending themes weren't bad they just didn't grow on me as much as the ones from the first half did and I even fast-forwarded through them a few times (which is pretty rare for me to do unless I'm marathoning a show). Even though there was kinda a new character they had spoken in the previous season so there weren't any new major characters at all and nobody got suddenly better or worse at their role over the break, really there's less to say about these split cour shows in general.

The Visuals: The show is pretty much unchanged in this aspect, there is only one new character and there aren't any new costume designs otherwise, no new mech designs either, and while there were some new locations none of them felt like something I hadn't ever seen in anime before. I still like the mech designs in this show, they seem a bit more impractical than usual (why do they need legs if they just fly?!?) but I do love the sleekness of them.


So, I liked the first season better and this one just never got as great as I hoped. Due to popular request, I shall start giving number ratings on anime (since I do already do that on anime-planet, the site I use to keep track of what I'm watching) and I rate this season a 3/5 and the first one as a 3.5/5. So, would I buy it? Ehhhhh, probably not, although if I'll have a chance to buy it is almost moot. The show will be dubbed and streamed on Neon Alley and apparently if it does well there then it'll get a physical release. Of course, it's a live channel, on a PS3 (which I don't have), and subscription only (which involves money) so I have no chance of seeing it that way and I'm slightly miffed that the best way to get a physical release of shows I'm interested in is to support them in a way that is completely unfeasible for me. That's a rant for another day though, if you're in the US you can however watch the sub-titled release over on hulu. 

Move Review: Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone

So, last summer (thanks to the local college library) I was finally able to see Neon Genesis Evangelion and, well, I didn't really like it. I seem to fall into the group of people that prefer RahXephon and Eureka Seven when it comes to big mecha stories and I'm okay with that. So why watch the rebuild films? Well, actually I already had a copy of the second film (which I'll explain more when I actually get to that one) and the rebuild films have apparently done some parts of the series very differently so I was curious that perhaps a slightly less "emo" Eva would be more to my tastes. The first film only covers the first six episodes so there's nothing new here yet but does it at least do a good job of introducing the series and can it stand on it's own?

Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone

Summary: 15 years after the Second Impact, where an object from space hit Antarctica hard enough to tilt the Earth's axis and the resulting disaster kills half of the people on Earth, Shinji Ikari has been called by his father to his workplace, the mysterious organization called Nerv which seems to exist outside the control of any governmental agency. There he learns that there are strange aliens, called angels, attacking Earth and for some reason (as of yet unexplained) he's one of the few people who can pilot the gigantic mechas called Evas and fight off the angels. And thus the fate of the Earth rest in the hands of this mentally unstable teenaged boy and in the hands of quiet, mysterious girl named Rei who is almost as odd as the angels themselves.

The Good: The one big difference from the tv series I noticed was Misato showing Shinji the real reason Nerv exists which I thought was an interesting choice and that should certainly effect Shinji later on. Other than that the movie is a straightforward adaptation of the first six episodes and, like at this point in the original story, I don't mind Shinji and still find Rei confusing but not so much that I couldn't enjoy the movie. I had actually forgotten how much I liked Misato in the early part of the story (I just didn't like any of the characters by the end of the tv series, not just her in particular) and I'm really curious to see how they change differently in this version.

The Bad: My brother was half watching this movie along with me and, since he normally asks a lot of questions about movies, I was trying to figure out how to explain various parts of the movie and found that it's really hard to do and nigh impossible with just the information given in this movie. Sure you can see that Shinji has problems with his father and people can infer that he has abandonment issues but the movie didn't address why those exist. The movie did say why the angels are targeting Nerv all the time but other than that there was barely any world building and the setting should be important to every story. Heck, that summary I posted makes use of one or two details that I learned in the tv series, they never say what the second impact actually was and I think by this point it's clear that this movie really isn't a good introduction to the franchise if you don't want your viewers to be lost. Perhaps once the series is over I'll have a different opinion on it, I certainly hope so in any case, but this movie cannot stand completely on it's own and that's not a good thing. 

The Audio: This time around I decided to listen to the English dub (which I believe brings back the original dub cast for almost, if not all, of the roles) and it was a very solid dub. I had heard one or two clips of Spike Spencer's Shinji before which sounded iffy but here he certainly sounds like a 14 year old boy and the rest of the cast also sounds appropriate for their roles. There were one or two spots for many of the characters were they sounded a bit odd, not surprising considering how many years it's been since the original show was dubbed, but I have no problems with recommending the English dub.

The Visuals: I had the pleasure of watching the DVD version of this on our new HD tv where it looked amazingly good (I don't believe our accompanying new blu-ray player upscales DVDs but I could be wrong and that could've contributed). As with the rest of the story, there was barely anything new on screen but what was there looked good. There was some CGI used for the angels but it was well done, the lines on everything were crisp and the animation all looked fine. Since I'm already familiar with what the story should look like there's not really much to say except that it was a very good update in that area.


So, as the story currently stands, you can't watch just the first film and expect a comprehensible story that will stand on it's own which is a bit of a problem. Even though it's a series of movies, movies are supposed to be able to stand and make sense on their own (which I think is doubly important given how long the gap between some of the movies has been, do they even have a release date for the third one yet?). As mentioned earlier I already have a copy of the second film so I'll be checking that out but if it wasn't for that I wouldn't feel terribly motivated to continue on.

Anime Review: tsuritama

One of the two noitaminA shows for this season and the one I was drawn more towards at the beginning (since I seem to always be drawn more to the "underdog" of the two shows, odd) and while there wasn't a lot of information about the show (in English anyway) the one thing I did know made me simultaneously interested and hesitant: the director. The director was one Kenji Nakamura, a man who has worked on five other noitaminA shows (and directed at least part of all of them) who has created several well-acclaimed works but his only work I had seen previously was [C] Control from the previous spring's noitaminA line-up which, while it had an interesting concept, had some major pacing issues by the end (and budget issues as well but that's another problem entirely). The general consensus seems to be that he's a rather good director, indeed he worked on part of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales and not only was his part considered the best by many people it recieved it's own spin-off, Mononoke, so I was really hoping that [C] was only a slip-up and that with an extra episode this time the pacing would be much better. 

tsuritama

Summary: High school student Yuki and his grandmother have recently moved to the small island of Enoshima to help with her health and Yuki is resigned to once again being the new kid and school and not making any friends (since he makes, unusual facial expressions when under pressure). But there's another new kid in town, the upbeat and claims-to-be-an-alien Haru whose taken a shine to Yuki and is determined to make friends with him and for both of them to learn how to fish. And after being dragged around a bit Yuki begins to make friends and discovers that fishing is a lot of fun, a good thing considering there's an even bigger reason Yuki want him to learn how to fish.

The Good: Well damn, aside from a bit of a wobbly opening this show was paced perfectly and told a complete story in 12 episodes, that's not easy to do! It pulls off the "first half character development, second half plot heavy" set-up quite well and the four boys all develop quite a bit by the series end. As a non-fisher I didn't find some of the more technical parts fascinating but I didn't find them tedious or boring either which is good sign. In short, it was a fun show that did both comedy and drama surprisingly well and isn't afraid to be silly, something which many shows don't do.

The Bad: This show is both serious and silly at the same time during it's climax (serious in that well, it's the climax, it's a tense time, and silly because when you step back and think about what's going on it's a bit ridiculous) and you need to have the right mindset or you won't enjoy this show at all. It does build up to that point well and pull it off well but it is such an odd scenario the characters find themselves in that I wouldn't recommend it to every anime fan I meet. The show also takes a couple of episodes to get into it's groove, for the first two I really wasn't sure if I would continue with it or drop it, but if you get through the third episode and like the show then you'll like the rest.

The Audio: The tsuritama opening song was hands-down my favorite opening song of the spring 2012 season. Perhaps it was also because the song had a cute and silly little dance that went along with it (psst, Japanese staff, EVERYONE wants to see the full version of that dance as a DVD extra, just saying) but regardless that song made me perk up and grin every time. For once I wasn't even bothered by the fact that the crunchyroll stream didn't have the song subbed, The Anime Network has subs for it and the lyrics fit the show alright as it turns out, and the ending song was cute as well (although I'm of two minds whether or not the lyrics fit that show, for some lines they do and others they don't). Continuing with an odd noitaminA tradition of sorts, Yuki's voice actor is a newcomer but he does a bit of a difficult role quite well and that's true of all the characters (I've heard some people say that Haru's voice annoys them, which I can see since he is pretty high pitched, but that wasn't the case for me).

The Visuals: The show is amazingly colorful; the promo image above gives you an idea but isn't nearly as saturated as the actual show is. It manages to be vibrant and eye-catching without feeling childish which is rather impressive and I didn't notice any decrease in quality as the show went on (then again the show wasn't as detail heavy as some other shows to start with so that must've helped). The ending theme was done in an interesting cut paper look, which I suppose fits in with another (unofficial) noitaminA tradition of sorts (ie, making sure that either/or the opening or ending sequence looks different from 99% of the other shows airing at the time) and while I didn't find that as interesting as the opening with it's silly dancing it worked fine.


tsuritama has been licensed by Section 23/Sentai Filmworks for the US and Canada and can be viewed either on their website or on Crunchyroll for free. I plan on picking up a copy of the show when it comes out here (probably sometime next summer) and then seeing how many of my friends I can get hooked on the show as well.  

Anime Review: Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer)

One of the winter shows I followed that I wasn't crazy about but gave me something to watch while I was waiting for my laundry to finish up, if it had aired as part of the larger Spring or Fall seasons instead I probably would have had too many other things to watch to dedicate time to follow this. Oh, and a funny bit that doesn't really fit in the review, I've been studying Japanese for three years now and have a very, very basic grasp on it so despite all of that I still rely on subtitles quite a bit while watching most shows. However, the dialogue was so basic here that I could understand over half of each episode without looking at the subtitles which does sum up the show in an odd way, it's nothing inventive or worth getting extra excited over and if you've been watching anime for a few years and have seen your fair share of romantic comedies there's probably nothing here for you.

Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer)

  
Summary: Set in the same 'verse as Please Teacher and Onegai Twins, but not requiring knowledge of either, Kirishima Kaito expects to have a quiet summer vacation with his care-taker sister out of town and spending his time making films with his friends. What he doesn't remember however is that one night while shooting his was struck by a small spaceship piloted by alien Ichika who used some of her technology to heal him. She quickly transfers schools and manages to live with him for the summer, both to make sure his recovery goes well but also to look for a place on Earth based on a memory in her mind, a memory implanted by her ancestors that no one knows the meaning too.

The Good: This series can basically be summed up as "a more light-hearted Super 8 with slightly older characters" and I really liked the parts it did differently from Super 8. No giant militaries chasing the characters around and providing a convenient antagonist to move the plot around and causing the plot to forget it started off as a story about kids making a movie, nope Kaito is still filming even when things get heated towards the end. There are a few subtle hints throughout the series, mostly in visual details, that the story isn't set in the modern day and it was fun to see how the kids were making their movie with all the cheesy special effects (and probably much more romantic than watching them sit around a computer and carefully time noises to video sequences). Also happy that the show never forgot that part of it's premise involved an alien and that the resolution to Ichika's problems didn't feel like a hastily slapped together solution, rather it fit in with everything else nicely and cleanly.  

The Bad: The biggest difference from Super 8 however is that what romance there was there was pretty straight-forward, here Ano Natsu has a full-blown love-polygon which wasn't really my cup of tea. I must give them credit for at least making it complicated, there are no simple love triangles or such here, and all of the threads were well resolved by the end (sure some people had their hearts broken but they were starting to move past it by that point which is what I hoped to see). Those parts do get a bit cliched though, the main reason I could follow so much of the dialogue without seeing the subtitles was because I had heard all the conversations a dozen times before, it may have been resolved well but it certainly didn't do anything new.

The Audio: While there were some nice visual details to the opening and closing sequences the music wasn't memorable in the slightest so I don't have anything to say about it. Nothing really to say about the voice acting as well, it worked (well, at least I THINK Remon's voice was supposed to sound a bit odd) and I didn't have any problems with it. Again, see my statements that this show just didn't do anything new, just older stuff well.

The Visuals: While the character designs look a bit different from generic "anime character" designs overall the series isn't hugely inventive visually either. I did like the visuals used for the ending song and for the science-fiction parts, those looked rather cool and I liked that the show had a lot of little details to indicate that it's not set in modern day Japan (it's actually so subtle that I doubt everyone picked up on it but there were actually a lot of hints as the story went along). I do swear that half of the episodes were created just for an excuse to put the girls in bathing suits or yukatas (which I would actually accuse a lot of series doing) but everything looked good, regardless of what the scene actually was.


So, if this does sound interesting to anyone (and I imagine aficionados of romantic anime will try this one out) it is streaming over on crunchyroll and was licensed as part of The Anime Network's big licensing spree last winter (probably won't be out until way later this year or early next year and I think they only got DVD rights for it but it is licensed). Funny enough next week's anime also involves a lot of romance in it, guess it's to make up for the fact that the past five or so shows didn't have a lot of it (well, depending on your interpretation of Fam, Rin-ne, and Chihayafuru certainly had romance, it just more of a minor theme than a major theme over all and I'm sure people would argue with me on that).  

Anime Review: Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne

NOW things are back to normal around here and with the winter season coming to an end I have plenty of anime to review. Actually, things are really back to normal since this year followed the same pattern I've seen over the past few years, that is that I follow more one cour shows that start in the winter and two cour shows that started in the fall and are ending now so I really have more than enough to review, it's going to take a while to get through it all. So it's interesting that the first title to finish was one that I wasn't really interested in at the start of the season but ended up enjoying as the show went on. Normally I can predict fairly well from the first episode or two if I'll like a show yet it's always nice to have one turn out a bit differently than expected.

Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne

Summary: Madoka is the sole member of the Jersey Club at her school whose goal is to help out anyone and everyone out of goodwill. So when she's asked for help, albeit by a girl she's never seen before (Lan) she readily agrees, not realizing that "helping" involves piloting a mecha that she has vague memories of meeting before. What she quickly learns is that there there are three of these mechs (Vox) on Earth and two alien powers want them, Le Gartie which has allied itself with Earth (and where Lan hails from) and the rebel power De Metrio who wants the Voxes to fight Le Gartie (which introduces the third major character Muginami). There's no easy choices here but Madoka is determined at the very least that she'll protect her friends and her home with all her strength and it's that strength that everyone fears the most. 

The Good: Everyone has seen a mech show before and every variation on a mech show has been done before so these days it's often for the best not to focus on the monster of the week fights and instead look at the bigger picture. This show does a good job at showing how tricky the situation is in by both showing that De Metrio are supposed to be the "bad guys" but that the "good guys" of Le Gartie seem even more manipulative and the Earth group (Novumundos* and Pharos) seems very aware of this. I'm also happy that this show avoids the trope of Earth being helpless against aliens and their weapons, the odds may be against them but time and time again they hold out on their own and it's a nice touch. What the show does really well however is the relationship between the three girls and their stories which is ultimately what holds the show together. All three of them have different reasons for being pilots with some doubts and fears and all of them have already undergone some character development which made the ending a bit brutal. Unlike the other split cour show airing now, Fate/Zero, Lagrange choose a very good place to stop and made me realize that I'm going to miss this show until it returns (hopefully this summer).

The Bad: The show did spend a bit more time than I would like close to the end on rather trivial, unimportant details like a school festival and if the three male characters from De Metrio don't become even more important in the next part then all the time focused on them will feel like a waste as well. The show has also barely explained any of it's mysteries yet and has quite a bit of backstory to still tell as well and I'm a bit worried about how all of that will fit into just another 12 episodes. The show did start to explain one or two of those mysteries but really should have taken some of that time from the more mundane details and spent them fleshing out the plot more.

The Audio: Neither the opening song nor the ending song really clicked with me, I was more focused on the imagery, but everything seemed to work fine both song and voice acting wise. It sounds like there were a few voice actors in the show playing against type, I didn't recognize any of the voice actors myself, but again, everything seemed to work fine here regardless.

The Visuals: The all important mechs were designed with Nissan and I rather like the designs, they have a rather sleek appearance and look substantially different from at least 50% of other mechs out there so great job at making they look distinctive. The character designs are much less distinctive but still work, I still think that the show looks it's best during the fight scenes with the mechs (I can't even tell if the mechs are hand-animated or done with CGI it looks so nice). Special mention also goes to the opening and closing songs which have some very pretty art which, while it looks radically different from the rest of the show works well, I'm sad that it seems to have been toned down a bit in the DVD/BR release in Japan. 


So for a show I was only trying out because Viz was streaming it (sadly since they're using Hulu.com as their host the videos are US only, they really need to fix that for their also Region 1 viewers in Canada) I ended up rather enjoying the show and I can only hope that they will be streaming the second part and that it comes out this summer as originally announced.


*interestingly enough, "Novumundos" looks like bastard Latin for "The New World" and there's a story central to the plot about demons destroying the world, take from that what you will.

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Outsider

Hmm, more musing on names but I'm surprised that last year I didn't have any webcomics that started with "N" or "O" yet this year I had a few (couldn't review one since it appears to have vanished off of the internet but it still counts). Actually, I had simply forgotten about this comic last year since it's one with a very strange update schedule, according to tvtropes the comic started back in 2001 but only averages 8 pages a year (it appears there's also a bible of sorts for the series to make up for that but I have yet to find out if it's actually online or not). I still like the series and, obviously since I'm reviewing it here, do recommend it but potential readers should keep all of that in mind.

Outsider by Jim Francis
 In the far off future humanity has begone to colonize and expand out into the wide universe only to discover that not only does other life exist but it's engaged in a brutal, long war. There are two sides to the war, the brutish Umiack and the mysterious Loroi and neither side acknowledges neutral groups so humanity must soon make a choice whom to side with if they wish to live. However it seems like Ensign Jardin, a low ranking officer of a survey team, may have accidentally made first contact and discovered that things look even bleaker for humanity but that humans have a few tricks up their sleeves yet.

While not a common story it's not an unheard of plot premise, a raging alien war with humans stuck between a rock and a hard place just looking for a way to survive. I like that so far the comic has gone to lengths to show that there is no easy/good/right choice, although there are hints that not all is lost however which I also like. Jim Francis admits that the series has a lot of artistic influences from a lot of sources including anime which shows in the art, even though the page orientation are much more like a Western comic than an Eastern one the art designs have some anime touches for sure* which, given my taste in comics, doesn't bother me at all. As stated earlier, despite it's age the comic is still on the shorter side (just a hair under 100 pages) so currently it doesn't take long to catch up and if you like sci-fi set in space with aliens and inter-galactic conflict I say give it a shot and just check back in every month or so to see if it updated.

*I'm actually watching the space opera Crest of Stars right now so I think the Loroi look a bit like Abh, probably simply because of the blueness and elf-ears, it's not among the influences listed in any case.  

Winter 2012 Anime Reviews

So it's that time again, a new season of anime has started and there's all sorts of stuff to try out. Only one post from me this time since, as is usual for winter seasons, there isn't a ton of stuff that interests me but there are still a few shows that caught my eye. I've seen the first one or two episodes of each series, for once all of these shows are legally being simulcast so I might be a few days behind some of them, but normally my opinion doesn't change too radically from my early impressions so onto the mini-reviews!

Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer): High school student Kirishima Kaito is expecting to have a laid back summer shooting a movie with friends but then he apparently gets crushed by an alien space ship. Oops. So far he hasn’t remembered that detail but since the offending alien, and the one responsible for bringing him back, has now transferred to his school, agreed to help out with the movie and somehow moved in with him while his sister leaves for the summer, it might not be so quiet after all. Ignoring how much of that sounds like Birdy the Mighty Decode (since there have been plenty of shows with a similar arrangement of tropes) I was surprised at how much I liked this one. It took some classic romantic tropes, such as the mysterious and hot new transfer student moving in, and actually played around with them and made them funny again. Sure there were still some facepalm worthy moments when things became too clichéd but so far I think the writers stand at good chance at making this a fun little show.

Ano Natsu is streaming on Crunchyroll and has been licensed by Section 23

Another:26 years ago, a talented student who was beloved by everyone died. Yet her classmates pretended that she was still alive up to graduation and there seems to be even more to the story than that. Fast forward to 1998 and Kouichi Sakakibara has moved to the small town of Yomiyama and will be attending the same middle school while his father is off researching in India. He spends some time in a hospital first however and from there the story starts creating an atmosphere that “not everything is as it seems!” and by creating atmosphere I mean beating you over the head with all the shots of people looking uncomfortable, shots that drag out way too long with “creepy sounds” played, and too many close-ups of people’s eyes dilating dramatically. The show does sound interesting and a like a lot of it but after two episodes I just can't take the "this is atmosphere!" moments seriously and I just become too annoyed at the show. I might pick it up later but for the moment the show is dropped.

Another is another show streaming over on crunchyroll and is another new show licensed by Section 23.

Bodacious Space Pirates (Mouretsu Pirates): …..I am never typing out that title again if I can help it. Contrary to the title however, this isn’t a fanservice show (or at least not yet)! In the future there have been many planets that have been colonized and one of them, the Sea of the Morningstar, gained it’s independence from it’s mother system only 100 years ago with the help of privateers, space pirates who attack enemy ships with permission from the government (a “Letter of Marque”). This is all fairly unimportant for Marika Kato, an ordinary high school student who is very active in her school’s space yacht club, until she learns that she is the only living descendant of the captain of the ship Bentenmaru* and therefore is the only person who can be the next captain. Marika isn’t so sure about all of this pirate stuff but I definitely be checking out a few more episodes since this one seemed like a fairly fun show and I liked Marika a lot as well, she seems fairly sensible so I’m curious how they’ll convince her to become the captain. The show also has had the sense not to rush Marika into her new position, even if it’s clear to the audience that she’ll be the next captain, and I’m really enjoying the world building build up right now.

Space Pirates is also streaming on Crunchyroll and also been licensed by Section 23.

InuxBoku Secret Service: Ririchiyo is the newest tenant of the Mansion de Ayakashi, a super exclusive apartment complex where each person is assigned their very own Secret Service person. Ririchiyo, who moved in to try and work on her habit of covering up her true emotions by speaking disdainfully to people, doesn’t want her assigned Secret Service man but Soushi might wear her down yet. I read some of the manga for this series before this and it took me a few chapters to get into the swing of it and I feel like that might be the same case here. It’s kinda interesting but not a very gripping first episode, I did like the OP though which was nice since I haven’t liked most of the OP/ED I’ve seen this season.

 Take a wild guess who is streaming this one and another guess who licensed it.

Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne (Rinne no Lagrange: Flower Declaration of Your Heart): Madoka seems to be a fairly ordinary student, abet one who helps out everyone who asks and because someone asked her she ends up piloting a robot in the fight against alien invaders (she does object when she finds out this wasn't a one time thing however). It certainly feels like a lot of mecha/space/sci-fi-ish shows this season (this, Aquarion Evol, that pirate show, Senki Zessho Symphogear, Ano Natsu to a degree), I guess this is the accidental theme of the season (and perhaps the year) just like young girl detectives were the theme last year. I didn’t like the first episode that much, it felt bland and predictable, but I started warming up to the show in the second episode as Madoka and some of the other characters started to get a bit more fleshed out and there was a small twist on the monster-of-the-week style episode I was expecting. The show is (split) two cour so it has time to build up and I really hope that’s what they’re doing right now.

Rin-ne has been licensed by Viz and is being streamed on hulu since Viz doesn't have their own player.

Natsume Yuujinchou Shi: You really shouldn’t be watching this show if you haven’t seen the previous three seasons and if you’ve seen them then you already know the drill here, Takashi Natsume can see spirits and inherited the Book of Friends from his grandmother who could also see spirits and decided to release all the names contained within it. He gets into trouble a lot however and mostly unrelated to the book such as the trouble he gets into in the two-parter that starts off the season. I like the more serious arcs of Natsume myself, especially since we might even get some back story on his parents this season (it popped up recently in the scanlations), and the theme of the season so far seems to be Natsume actively helping out yokai, but regardless which way Natsume goes I’ll be sure to keep watching.

Same as the previous seasons, Natsume is streaming on Crunchyroll (and all four seasons have finally been licensed for the US by NISA).

In case you guys couldn't tell, Funico have been surprisingly mum about their pick-ups for this season, so far they only announced the DxD boobs show and honestly there aren't many other series this season I'm curious in trying. Possibly The Daily Lives of Highschool Boys or the new Aquarion Evol show but for the moment I'm good. I have 5 continuing shows, at least 5 new shows, Once Upon a Time, Grimm, MLP:FiM, 3 Nozomi shows (although the last episode of Emma streamed yesterday and the last episode of Antique Bakery streams next week), plus a few other things to watch so it's not like I'm getting bored anytime soon.

Soooo, what is everyone else trying out that they absolutely adore so far? 

*whose name keeps reminding me of a mash-up of Bettenou from Un-Go and Bishamaru from Kyosougiga, which is a pretty funny image