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ローゼンメイデン 
Well, here are the last two episodes of Ultra Maniac. It looks like the series tries its best to make up for all of those useless fillers by going all out on the ending. And it certainly doesn't disappoint in this regard. In fact, I'll probably remember the series in a better light thanks to the ending, which somehow manages to surprise me a little bit with a neat little revelation. And as I thought, the ending does end up focusing more on Nina and Tsujiai's relationship, leaving Ayu and Kaji as supporting background characters. On the positive side, this allows for some good interaction between the two. Unfortunately, this seems to give the writer the chance to pull a rather Deux Ex Machina solution for one of the sub-plots.
For those of you who are wondering "What kind of anime blog is this? I haven't seen any anime recaps/review lately", please accept my apologies. Work, classes, and social interactions have taken away most of the time that I normally have to watch anime. And when I do have the time to watch some anime, I often have no desire to blog them. Or alternatively when I do feel like blogging, I haven't seen any anime so I ended up blogging something else. Anyway, enough with the excuses. As I promised early in the month, here is the Ultra Maniac recap. There is one more to go before the whole thing wraps up. As expected, since the series is about to end, the plot finally kicks into high gear and presents some neat revelations and a cliffhanger. Unfortunately, some of the animations in these episodes look quite bad. Some of them are inconsistent and appear as if they've been drawn by amateurs.
Heh. It's amazing what you can get from a little bit of fact finding here and there. I just found out that the actors who played Onizuka and Fuyutsuki (Takashi Sorimachi and Nanako Matsushima) are actually a couple in real life. I don't know if they actually got hitched after their roles in GTO but it's not that difficult to see that as a possibility. Their chemistry together in this live action version is miles better than that of the anime version. As a result, the fact that Onizuka is interested in her right from the start instead of chasing some high school girls is far more believable here than in the anime version. I also like the fact that the teachers in this version are far more lively than in the anime version. Watching their shenanigans and their office politics is as entertaining as watching Onizuka trying to win over the respect of his students one by one.
Hmm, just when I'm about to lose interest in the series, Takaya-sensei has to throw in a shocking revelation. If you ask me, I don't know if this latest 'twist' was actually planned right from the start or simply a new idea that Takaya-sensei came up with very recently. But if one really thinks about it, this series does have a long list of characters with similar issues to a certain extent so maybe this revelation was actually planned right from the start. Anyway, this chapter is actually a continuation of the last chapter and as a result, not many characters appear in this chapter. Those who appear are: Tohru, Kureno, Shigure, Akito and one pair of boobs courtesy of Akito ;)
My Naruto obsession has finally reached its fever pitch. I've actually gone and purchased the R2 DVDs. Well, the ones that contain the Chuunin exam parts. I just like watching Naruto finally getting the acknowledgement that he deserves from the people in his village. The DVD packaging themselves are very good. These are the 2nd Stage DVDs, which feature the individual regular from the series instead of collage of 2 -3 characters like the first half of the R2 DVDs. The extras are pretty slim though. There is only a first press sticker for all 3 DVDs that I got and inside the disc itself character sketches are the only extra available. The disc with Kakashi and Iruka on the cover, however, also contain the trailer for Naruto: the Movie. The menu itself is clean and simple. Only the main menu has any kind of animation in it.
Updated date list - see comment. For those who are wondering, I have indeed lost interest in Elfen Lied. The silly moments in the otherwise bleak series ruined the mood for me. The combination simply doesn't work anymore after I watched the second episode. It reminds me too much of Kono Mini and that didn't bring pleasant memory. On top of this, I want to be prepared for the lineup of Autumn Anime which will be quite big. Elfen Lied is 13 episode show for now and that means the schedule will bleed over into the Autumn season. The problem is, I already have another anime which will continue down to the Autumn season (Monster). If I don't cut down on something, I doubt I'll be able to keep up with the onslaught of Autumn Anime. Speaking of the Autumn anime themselves, Blurry Anime have mentioned some of the titles. But here are some titles that interest me:
There aren't many revelations shown in this episode. But the series makes up for it by providing some interesting action scenes. There is also a minor hint given at the end of the episode as the series finally shed some light on Johan's behaviour. In general, however, the episode focuses on the sub-story of the main characters' attempt to prevent the right-wingers from executing their plan to burn down the city district. The animation in this episode seems to be more fluid in comparison to the other episodes. There are definitely more movement than still shots, which is good because with the amount of action that happens inside the episode, the episode won't look as interesting without several multi-angle shots and tracking movement.
The series finally moves in to deal with the curse part of the story. As usual, however, there are more questions asked than answered, and it's getting a bit frustrating sometimes. Having said that, this is a rather interesting chapter that deals with Kureno and his association with Akito. It seems unlike the other Sohmas, Kureno really cares about Akito. And interestingly enough, unlike the other Sohmas, there is something else that makes Kureno a little bit different. This chapter also shows the other side of Shigure that has always been hinted at but was never shown clearly before. Unfortunately, there is not much of anyone else in this chapter apart from some minor story about Izusu, Yuki and Momiji. I supposed it's a nice break after the rather couple-heavy focus of the previous chapter.
I just realised that I haven't scanned the last 2 Tsubasa Hardcovers. Well, it's kind of hard to do this when I didn't even open the books ever since I got them a couple of weeks ago. I was kind of bored, and in some ways, a bit pissed off at the series because it indirectly makes CLAMP postponed their work on X, which I consider a much superior story. Anyway, the entire hardcover version of Tsubasa makes me wish that CLAMP will give X the same kind of treatment in the future or at least half of the attention that they've given to this dimension-travel series at the moment. For now, I'm a bit mollified with the fact that these two volumes present three crossover characters from X: Yuzuriha Nekoi, Kusaragi Shiyu, and a young Seishirou Sakurazuka (who physically looks very similar to Subaru).
It looks like the metaphorical 'monsters' keep making their way to this show and this time, it's the extreme right-wingers' turn. In fact, I was kind of surprised to see the author waiting this long to introduce a racial vilification story, given the fact that the lead character is non-caucasian guy placed in a real world setting. Admittedly, this storyline was kind of hinted at in episode 1, with the hospital giving preferrential treatment to a wealthy opera singer while ignoring a poor Turkish man who needs more help. However, at that point the story focused more on those characters' social status instead of their race. At any rate, I'm even more impressed with this series after watching these two episodes. The series started out as a simple ethical story that turns into a murder mystery. But lately the story has evolved into a bigger plot involving mysterious organisation and characters.
I've been a bit lazy to complete this series lately because there are other interesting series that I would rather watch/read. But I'll try to complete this sometimes before the end of this month. Anyway, after a mixture of plot and fillers, this series finally decide to completely ditch the filler elements and go for the main story of the series. I think this also has a lot to do with the fact during the production of these episodes, the manga finally came up with several important plots that the anime can use. Having said that there are certainly certain deviations that the anime decided to take. This is necessary mostly because the anime gives Nina a whole different reason for being in the human world to begin with.
