Xjellocross's Blog

Bored out of my mind. Making a new profile.
Lazy.
Fancy graphics stuff will come when I have time.
Maybe never even when I do have time.

Regular About Me Stuff
Age: 18
Ethnicity: Taiwanese American
Occupation: Student
School: University of California, Santa Barbara
Major: Undeclared

I'm an Anime Database Moderator so if you have any questions regarding that section of the website, feel free to ask. I'm also the founder and project leader of MAL Rewrite. If you're interested in helping out (we really need to get more active) then please send an application.

I began watching anime around Spring 2007. It started with the usual. Naruto, Bleach, FMA, etc. Then I moved onto harems and romance in general. I came across MAL about half a year later when Notepad and Excel didn't really seem like efficient listing options anymore. MAL exposed me to a much wider variety of anime and currently I don't have much of a preference in genre. I'll watch anything provided it isn't total crap.

I'm always on IRC in various channels if you can't want to wait for me to get back to you or if you just want to chat. I suggest you don't PM me if I don't know you however; introduce yourself in a channel first.
Best place to find me would be #mal @ irc.rizon.net (not to be confused with #myanimelist).

Anime Relations: K-On!

Being a completely helpless Kyoani fag, K-ON! was my most highly anticipated show of the season. I didn't know what to expect going into this, besides obvious moe overload, and I was pleasantly amused by the first episode.

The first thing that many people focus on in a Kyoani production is of course, animation. The first episode's overall production quality still exceeded that of most anime, but it didn't reach the bar previous series like Kanon 2006 and Haruhi had set. Certain scenes had excellent background scenery, usually the ones without characters in them. The characters themselves however seemed a little messy with bizarre proportions at points (most notably Ritsu's "flashback" of the rock concert) and a few strangely drawn lines. Overall movements reminded me greatly of Kannagi; they were extremely fluent but almost excessively so. No real human actually puts that much effort into a simple gesture.

For the characters we have Hirasawa Yui (bottom right), Akiyama Mio (top right), Kotobuki Tsumugi (bottom left), and Tainaka Ritsu (top left). On the surface you can already see the Lucky Star characters disguised under different character designs:
Ritsu = Konata
Mio = Kagami
Yui = Tsukasa
Tsumugi = Miyuki
And as expected, with Mio equaling Kagami, I have already branded her as my favorite 8D

All the characters were pretty cute (I got over Tsumugi's eyebrows pretty quickly) but Yui's moeblobbing, yes it's now a verb, was a little over the top. Regardless I still enjoyed her clumsy antics as well as Ritsu's crazy Haruhi-esque style of leading the club. Tsumugi's "This is my first time eating fast food" was hilarious as well, although they never did explain why she never had it before... Perhaps they'll enlighten us in a later episode.
I was too busy drooling over Mio to pay much attention to what she was actually doing. Besides being the sexiest 2D bass player ever of course.

On the voice acting side, all four of the voice actresses are relatively new and unknown. Yui's voice actress, Toyosaki Aki, plays Najimi (Akikan) and Suu (Shuga Chara), both of whom I don't really like. Her voice as Yui is tolerable however, if not a little too high pitched. I'm not familiar with Kotobuki Minako (Tsumugi) or Satou Satomi (Ritsu) but I thought both of their voices suited the roles well. And, as a continuation of my already extreme Mio fagging, Hikasa Yoko was really good in her breakout role. If I didn't look her up beforehand I wouldn't have known she was a novice.

The opening was well done with a catchy song a fast paced animation to match. It profiled all of the main characters and really matched the feel of the show. The ending on the other hand was rather dark and as a result, completely out of place (but hey, Kyoani was never one for matching endings ex. Clannad (AS), Lucky Star). However it was probably one of the best I have ever seen. It was an excellently done PV-style ending and the song was fantastic as well. The characters all looked great and, GUESS WHO, was really hot throughout the whole thing (X '_____')b

Overall K-ON! delivered an excellent start to my Spring Season lineup and I'm highly anticipating the second episode. It's not perfect but it does it's job properly, giving out plenty of laughs and boatloads of moe for fans like me to fag over.