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Sora no Otoshimono 3-8

Still really enjoying this, and now the long-awaited Nymph has appeared as well. I'll finish it this weekend, probably. I saw the second season has gone up for preorder already now too; why does Funimation put out this kind of series so much faster than the ones I most want?

Senkou No Night Raid 0-4

The packaging for this is extremely confusing, with conflicting episode counts on the front, back and discs (it appears that this is because some of the tallies include episode 0, and some don't, and the OAVs are counted separately on the back but not the front and not at all on the disc silkscreens). They could really have used a listing somewhere on the box. Anyway, the actual show is great. I don't understand why it seemed to meet with such apathy in the west when it was coming out; everyone seemed to be so busy judging Japan making a show set in China that most of them must have forgotten to watch it properly. I like the designs, and the multilingual presentation is cool even if some of the seiyuu struggle at times.

New Prince of Tennis 1

I never finished the original Prince of Tennis so there's a weird gap in my viewing, but it doesn't really matter. This was an introductory episode to get things going again and the plot was wobbly even by PoT standards, but it brought the usual blend of attractive boys and superpowered tennis back. Not sure if I'll bother watching this through to the end, either, but it's a fun diversion.

Mazinkaiser SKL 2-3

More insane yet awesome stuff happened. Manly guys did manly things. There was no explanation given for anything to break up the pace, but it never mattered. And then the series ended. I look forward to the next bizarre OAV project the series will inevitably spawn in a few years' time.

Star Driver 1

It finally came! Unfortunately for me my other half decided he wanted to watch it too so I have to go at a sensible pace, but on the bright side I get to watch it on the big TV so the shiny blu-ray can really do its thing. I love how unashamedly stupid and brightly coloured it is, and I hope Ishida Akira's character gets to lounge around and talk a lot in the episodes to come. The setup and mildly sexualised design work reminded me of Utena as well (delayed response), in a good way.

R
 
Black Cat 1-8

I think some of you already know that one of my dreams is for the Black Cat anime to be remade to be more faithful to the manga. While the manga series ranks among my favourites, the anime isn't much to write home about.

I can respect why they decided to move Train's leaving Chronos into the story's timeline, but the way they handled Saya kinda screwed all that up. In those crucial moments and even in others, the animators cheap out on having flashy scenes by using stills and playing with coloured backgrounds...

I can imagine the thought process when Gonzo's team sat down with the manga volumes:
1) Get a chef.
2) Get chef to pile up all the volumes and randomly cut them into tiny shreds.
3) Pick up random shreds, glue them together.
4) Script made. Animate.
 
Giant Robo - Episodes 1 & 2

A brilliant and entertaining update of the Super Robot genre, I watched the first episode on VHS when it first came out in the 90's and I never appreciated how georgous the animation was!
 
Shakugan no Shana III -FINAL- 13

Who knew Khamsin was a Pokémon trainer?:
400124_10150497740367976_566872975_8525674_249830352_n.jpg


Other than that. I felt too much of this episode was wasted on Sabrac, who is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. Now, let's see this war get interesting now that The Snake of the Festival's real body has been awakened.
 
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K-ON! 12-14

I'm going to be honest...it's obvious that episodes 13 and 14 (the two specials) weren't adapted from the manga. Not that the episodes were bad, but they didn't have as much "charm" as the previous 12 did.
 
The Tatami Galaxy 1

I'm not entirely sure what it is I just watched, but I am intrigued. Trouble is, the rapid fire delivery of the main character's outrageously verbose narration makes The Tatami Galaxy one of the least suitable sub-only anime I've ever watched. Instead of taking in the creative visuals my eyes are almost constantly fixed on the lower part of the screen, trying desperately to absorb the information being conveyed before it disappears to be replaced by more information. In truth most of the dialogue seems utterly superfluous, a criticism I'd also level at certain other overly-wordy anime.

Beez's subtitles are fine, incidentally, but this show needed a dub. Unfortunately not many people watched Funi's streams, so it was never going to get one.
 
Nisemonogatari 1

Cool stuff, and even though my other half hasn't seen the previous series he was chuckling away by the end of the episode. I thought it was a worthy follow up and look forward to next week.

Gintama (a dozen random episodes)

I was in a Gintama mood this week so I watched some classics and some newer arcs on Crunchyroll at random. It was all great. It's a crime that this series has never found success in the US so that I can have a nice DVD collection.

R
 
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