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These were pretty much cute little side stories during the main show. It’s all quite random but you can get a rather interesting look at the personalities of each character without breaking the plot of the show. I consider these more like character arcs that can really flesh out a character.

The animation actually sometimes looks a like it was done a bit better then the TV show but yet it doesn’t feel disconnected from it. It’s just enough to show this wasn’t done with the rest of it. The opening seems to be a bit confusing if you didn't finish the TV show. There is a part that will give you a small clue as to what happened at the end that could end up spoiling the show.

The music is one of the best parts because it has the really nice feel just like the TV show. The Japanese dub is rather good as well with the right feeling expressed. I wish they had also tried to do an English dubing of it but sadly I have not found anything about that.
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Pretty much this is season 2 (Technically a remake actually) of the first but it starts out exactly where season 1 started, although much more dramatic. We get a tale about Negi’s father fighting a vampire and how rather epic that fight had been, only to cut into a little bit dramatization of when Negi is given the assignment to go teach in Japan. This is a rather large contrast where the beginning of Season 1 was him already on his way to the school and the rather funny time he would have there (not to mention the strange love spell Asuna was doing in the bathe). Even the little rodent that shows up partly through season 1 is in the first episode of season 2. I contribute the change to the fact that Shinbo was the director of this one. Yes, the guy that did Moon Phase, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Soultaker, Pani Poni Dash, and Madoka Magica.

We learn almost every 31 girls all at once, getting almost all of their personalities at once. It’s a bit of a mind blowing experience to have that happen, making me wonder just how we are supposed to remember their names. Konoka Konoe is played much the same way as how Hazuki was played in Moon Phase but slightly more strong. She does work hard to get what she wants. Many of the other characters feel one dimensional or just don’t stand out at all and I think it’s based on how many episodes are contributed to them. We see Asuna and Konoka all the time and so therefore we get more of a personalized look into how each other act were as many of the others we see only for a brief time or when we get to one of their episodes. Sometimes even with something that doesn’t even feel like its part of the story, sort of like Hetalia in that sense. Still, this show does get into more of them then the first series and makes them a little more loveable except for Asuna. I’m sorry but she comes off as way to stupid and off then in the first which makes me pull away from the show. If they had played her a little more straight, then she might have become a bit more loveable.

Another thing that makes this one different then the rest is that the first few episodes at least the first few episodes have a running plot that doesn’t really involve Asuna. It is all about the vampire girl and Negi. There are some side characters, but they don’t stand out as much as these two and the ‘epic fight’ that they are about to have. The thing with Asuna doesn’t happen until the third episode with a magical contract being created. I like how they didn’t wait until the very end for every girl to make a contract with Negi. And in the forth episode, he has another partner contract so it makes much more sense.

Lot of the jokes turned very old very fast and the story went really into a odd storylines that don’t seem to mesh all that well together, but it does come into a climax although how that climax actually works is kind of up in the air. Now, this has a way of doing something similar to what Persona did in that it gets to a point where the show ‘ends’ in the middle, then they have more character development and then the final ‘battle’ as it where. Unfortunately, this anime has more dinking around then character development and storyline.

The animation looks so much more like it was created as an OVA in the beginning with strange camera angles and high detailed lines. Even Negi who is just a young boy looks a little bit more adult and well defined then in season one. With a lot of the angles and such, it reminds me of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei in how dramatic they try to be and yet how funny they get. In fact, they even have the writing on the chalkboard changing every time we pan back to the board. I’m a bit surprised that they fixed Asuna’s eyes so they would have the same color. They do cop out of some times with just a single frame but it isn’t really that bad. It actually makes the dramatic parts even more dramatic. Unfortunately, it’s when the animation looks extremely poor and low budget that makes me feel sad that they had done such a thing. Characters end up losing their shape and seem to just become stretched out piles of wonky colors sometimes. They do tend to take different animation styles and have them done in rather interesting ways but it all feels flat when we get the poorer parts or doesn’t seem to fit. Just as any anime from Shinbo, they have naked women in the transformations. This doesn’t exactly bother me although in some places they do tend to go overboard in detail. It’s rather low detailed that it doesn’t become bothersome to me, I seen much worse…

The opening and ending remind me a lot like Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei so it’s really hard to look at the show differently then that show. Makes me wonder why this was dubbed and not Zetsubou. Many times though, the opening and ending seems to change at random. I give them a bit of props for this since it shows they had a lot of money for this, I just wish some of it would of gone for the main part of the show and the script.

I seriously think we don’t need the narrator voice, which makes things feel very cheesy (to the point I smack my head against the table at times). Something about trying to make this show overly dramatic just makes me want to hit my head against the wall. I watched the English dub of course so again, it was overly dramatic and bothersome. I’m not very sure if it would have been any better as the Japanese dub though.

In the end of watching it, it is rather interesting seeing a new take on a show that I watched. I would say watch it if you want a different kind of comedy then the first season. Even though the show is really strange and even more out of control then the first, it is a bit interesting.
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So, what happens when you cross Fushigi Yugi, Sailor Moon, and a Dungeons and Dragons vibe with way too many comedic jokes? Well, I guess this shows it. The characters are pretty much generic, the story is pretty generic and to top it all off, the main characters seem rather stupid, including Fuu who is supposed to be smart. In fact, the only real character that actually had the right thought in the head during the first episode was Umi who kept trying to get back home. Of course, she slowly gets into the swing of the other characters after the first one.

I’m not going to lie; the characters are dip-shits. They are completely stupid most of the time without any real reason to be stupid. It did surprise me though just how smart Hikaru was once in a while, only to have it crashing down moments later in her stupidity. She has almost no holds bar over going head first into a fight and so its no wonder she levels up faster then the other two. Every single character, not just the main characters but even the side characters seem to have this strange way of explaining far more then they really should at any given time. It pretty much becomes a large monolog as they explain a very small piece of the plot.

Umi is pretty much a loudmouth who will always speak her mind and sadly, that means be the annoying whinny brat all the time. She whines about everything, ‘I’m tired’ ‘My feet hurt’ ‘When will we be able to go back to Tokyo?’ stuff like that. She’s one of my least favorite characters even though all the characters do tend to become whinny throughout the show. Fuu is a rather sweet girl who always seems to care for anyone but even with that, she will not go head long into battle without some sort of plan. And then when you least expect it, she will do something stupid without thinking of the other people in her group. It’s like she has multi-personality disorder or something because she never does what she says.

Ferio is a rather odd character in that he always seems to be switching sides all the time. I get kind of surprised that anyone actually believes a word that the trickster says. And Clef isn’t any help because he’s a stone who when he talks to them from the heart, his lips don’t move at all so you have no clue if its really him or actually a trickster at times.

So, now this paragraph is about a big spoiler that I really have a problem with. The ending although a good twist, comes out of the blue and doesn’t really make much sense. The rune gods turn out to be mecha’s and they have to kill the person that summoned them. So much for saving the good princess from the ‘evil’ sorcerer. Turns out the sorcerer was misunderstood and was killed for no reason at all. I’m all for killing one to save a thousand but in this case, at least four lives were lost all because a princess went gaga over a guy, not to mention whoever else died by monsters and other catastrophes. This princess was a spoiled little brat in that aspect. Don’t take me wrong, I’m all for love, but this just kind of got ridicules.

The animation jumps all over the place and goes from normal, to chibi, to overly dramatic rather fast. I believe one of these scenes did this in about 3 minutes. Not only that but they place a lot of still shots or really little movement as though they were hurting for cash, what I consider cheep ass animation tactics. In fact, after Clef is turned to stone, every time he ends up talking, he doesn’t move his lips at all in the hologram that shows him. I mean come on, if you want to show him when he’s supposed to be speaking, move his mouth at least a little bit or just do his voice with no image of him. Every character looks generic, we have the generic looking bad guys, the generic looking heroines, the generic looking side-kick plush toy, and to top it all off, a generic looking princess to bring this whole world into perspective. All the characters have really wide eyes that pretty much take up most of their faces, which have really pointy… jaws and cheeks? Characters are also really long legged like in the Sailor Moon shows, sometimes going to an extremely elongated body like in xxxHolic. Characters do not have to look like they are thrown in a taffy machine one minute, then really chibi the next.

The English dubs are all about comedy it seems but I don’t blame it all on the dubbers. The animation also shows this but I already talked about that. Fact of the matter is, they seem to crack jokes this way and that, breaking any good drama the show could have had with a witty little joke. It throws me for a loop that they would do such a thing but I haven’t read the manga yet so not sure if Clamp actually did that as well. I do like that when they are getting a bit to obvious, they actually point it out. When going about picking voices, I believe they decided to pick the generic character voices. Julie Maddalena, who played Yumi from Chobits, Meiling in Cardcaptor, as Hikaru. Bridget Hoffman, who played Belldandy in Ah! My Goddess and Chitose from Chobits, as Fuu. Wendee Lee, who did Urd from Ah My Goddess and Ururu from Bleach, as Umi. Unsurprisingly, they do a good job though I get tired of these characters.
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Well, it’s hard to talk about a OVA with one episode. I’m lumping it in with the rest of the show as it seriously makes no sense for me to go back to this show after I’m done with it. And since I know some trolls out there… *looks at Kai and Kurai* that would want me to do the OVA, I’m doing this.

The characters are not as stupid as the TV part but they don’t have the right personalities. Everyone is really just pissing me off because they go against what the TV version of them was saying and doing. And it felt as if they were forcing characters do get together which the main story line was all about Hazumu deciding. And in the end, they fucken do a marriage thing which went to fast!

Animation and English Voices are really bad still like the first.

In the end, there was no reason for it, just as we didn’t need the OVA of Green Green and the whole thing of Eiken. It just meant that no matter what you choose, you will be forced to be with someone weather you like it or not.
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Um, wow. This is um… something a little different then what I have ever seen before. I give the show props for an idea, but an extremely lousy way of making that idea bare fruit. The story feels shallow, the execution is bland, the English voices are a mess, the animation is just standard fan fair. I would of loved if they got into the physiological aspects of a man turning into a women a bit, but they don’t. They just pussyfoot around like it’s a teenage drama. I know it is one but with a concept this interesting, I wish it could have been better done.

Hazumu really freaken sounds and acts like a girl! It doesn’t seem like there is any freaken difference to him being male or female. I do think its somewhat Ironic that when he first sees the ‘star’ coming straight at him, he wishes to be manlier and yet he was turned into a woman. And then after he’s a woman, he accepts it rather fast to the point of saying that nothing really changed. (Kurai: “WHAT THE FUCK!? How can he act like nothing changed at all! When you turn me, I freaken hate it!”) All the characters act really stupid and it’s hard for me to even feel for any of them at all. His parents are the worst to because they just are way to excitable. (Akuma: “Excitable? Her Dad a big fat pervert!” Angel: “Alright, ya, I’m trying to make things better then they are.” ) They look at her as if nothing happened at all and start treating him like a girl the day she gets back home. Everyone around her acts as though she should know exactly how to be a women when she doesn’t know the first thing about it. It pisses me off slightly in that aspect because none of the characters seem to think how she feels. If we really get right down to it, it wouldn’t make any difference weather she turned into a girl on her own with a operation or with space aliens. In fact, it would be better if it was a operation then alien because then it would be more believable.

Tomari was doing nothing for him when he was a guy it seems, and treated him like a child that needed protection all the time. It makes me wonder if she is the one that’s the reason that he never became a manlier guy. The whole second episode was pretty much Tomari saying don’t do this, don’t do that and don’t act like a man but she does it rather harshly. We do get into the physiological aspects of her dealing with a friend that changed into a guy but it sometimes feels bland.

Yasuna on the other hand is awkward. It’s almost like she can’t see any men at all and only a hazy look to them when she can. I’m not sure what the hell they did that for because they could of just as easy say she was into girls instead and it would be so much better. It would of actually been closer to a real life story.

This is more of the story that centers around everyone around Hazumu rather then Hazumu herself. We only learn about everyone else and their feelings, and only a little bit of Hazumu’s thoughts and feelings in the first part. When we do learn about Hazumu’s feelings, it feels a bit to late, as we have to go through a lot of crap to get there. Sadly, every single character falls for Hazumu, which makes the damn thing a harem anime.

I have problems when Aliens look exactly like the humans without much difference to them. I also have big problems with the fact that the aliens crash into him, turn him into a woman, and then just leave him to the world. They pretty much do nothing to help him. And when they do show up, they just make things even worse for her. She ends up having a ‘clone’ of herself. (Akuma: “That’s a clone? She doesn’t look like her at all for crying out loud! We look closer then they do and we are just twins!”) Yes… clone… with light pink hair that will not stop hanging on her.

The animation is really based for the fan service. We have a lot of naked shots of girls changing and just doing random stuff. It’s pretty standard and just basic. Many times, they seem to cop out and not even draw the background of go for the close up on the faces. They also do the fucken close ups on the breasts and body too which make me smack my head into the wall.

I have problems with the English voice. Male Hazumu sounds so much like a girl that I see no difference in him being male or female. Tomari sounds more like a boy then he does as a guy! Everyone else sounds so much like a whiny little girl that it just bothers me a lot. The script is so cheesy that I just want to smack the writer. No really, its really really bad! The words sound so much like the person is just reading lines without any feeling what so ever. Even when they do have emotion, it sounds forced. It’s also done rather close to the translation so it feels really choppy. People keep saying ‘it is’ instead of ‘it’s’ and all this other problems. I just want it to end! Though the voices do get a little better (more on the lines that I had to get used to it for necessity rather then it being good) like around the 5th episode, it feels a little late. read more

Well hey all gangsta’s!…. that was completely and utterly messed up. I will try not to do that again. But anyway, I actually loved the mixture of Edo style imagery and the hip hop rap even though a bunch of people would probably say it doesn’t fit. Unfortunately, some of the characters don’t work for me since they seem very out of place. Characters that start raping out of nowhere and those that start talking like gansta’s sometimes make me want to bang my head into the wall. It may fit really damn well with the show but I still want to smack my head into the wall. I did like the main characters though… some a lot more then others.

Mugen was actually my favorite character. He was pretty bad ass and could take down almost any foe that stood against him. His style of fighting isn’t the normal samurai style but more of just a way of living. To a samurai, the sword is something to live and die with, so he does have a little of the samurai spirit but a samurai also has honor and tact for the most part. He has none of that. He will do as he pleases without any regard to those around him, even starting fights just for the sake of showing how bad ass he is. He loves the spotlight and sometimes I can picture him similar to Black Star from Soul Eater where he would yell out ‘I’ll kill you’ even if he’s supposed to sneak up on them. That personality I would consider childish in some cases but in this, I actually see reasoning behind it. He want’s to be the best he can be and to fight someone when their back is turned may be a disgrace for what little honor he has.

On the other hand, Jin has much more class to him as a samurai. He was trained professionally and you can see that when the two fight. The styles actually look extremely different as Jin has more of a stiffer pose to him. His background is a pretty tragic one but seems much more common in samurai movies then Mugen’s story line. I can see where Mugen and Jin get onto each other’s nerves. It does make for a very interesting story line when the two need to work together to get out of a bad situation. Most of the time its purely luck based.

The last main character is sadly the one I like the least. Fuu is a bit, well, I don’t exactly understand why she’s there in the first place. She’s childish, annoying, and whines a hell of a lot. She gets kidnapped almost every single time by the guys that just want to rip Jin’s and Mugen’s heads off. Only a couple times she actually has some marret to the story as she’s most likely the person who can trust others. She is the reason the other two are stuck together but her reason for going on this journey, namely finding a samurai smelling of sunflowers, really has no real fruit to it. You would understand once you watch the ending.

The animation is rather good, though sometimes can be a little… bla. Manglobe has a thing where they will have really good animation for most of the anime but in some parts, it lacks the beauty the other scenes have. Characters sometimes feel like they are also way to detailed as if the artist was trying to make the show look extremely detailed but it makes the characters look off when it doesn’t happen all the time.

The English voices are actually really well done and I think that’s partly because of the rap and pop culture references. Jin is silent and Mugen is a badass gangster. The voices work so well that I have to say its one of the best I’ve seen in a while. Even Fuu who is pretty annoying actually has an ok voice. I give the main music props for being one of the most memorable to me. I can’t not think about that fun style of music. read more

This reminded me of Resident Evil 4 slightly. Leon goes in alone and gets captured by the people he came there to stop. I guess the only thing real different is that they found something that controls the creatures to a point. We have all of the characters from Leon’s side of the storyline like the ‘bombshell’ Ada Wong to Leon Kennedy and Ingrid Hunnigan. And even in all of this, they have new characters that actually are loveable even if they don’t stay for very long.

The problems I have with the show are actually rather minimal but the ending feels as though it was extremely predictable. We have a large fight going with a ‘new’ form of strong bio-weapon, and a facility that is about to go through genetic cleansing. Then we have the ‘boss’ fight with multiple stages to him.

It’s interesting that they used images of Resident Evil 6 in the ending theme but if you haven’t played the game, your left wondering what the reasoning was for it. I know I may be reviewing these shows out of order but a good movie normally has something that helps even new watchers understand what’s going on.

Wow, the animation actually looks so much better then what they had in Degeneration. It’s much more fluid and the characters look much more realistic without going over the boundaries of the game style. We even get the exploding heads of the zombie people that I bet those who have played the games hate. One of my favorite points is when they go into first person view because it looks so much like the real thing (When I mean real thing, I mean both game and real life horror shows). The points I do hate is that they actually show someone getting forced into one of the zombies. Whenever I see someone forcing those… things… into someone’s mouth, I always end up gagging a bit. I also hate the slow motion times they use although it’s used quite sparingly in this one. The textures are good except the fact that all the men seem to have lip-gloss or lip stick on their lips.

The English voices are pretty good and you can most of the time tell who is American and who is from the Soviet Union. Characters actually sound close to what they were in the games and I believe its because they are the same voice actors but could be wrong. The music was also rather well done and worked to the movies advantage. read more

The story starts out 15 years after a war that depleted the planets resources and a war that created a creature called the Undying. After the war though, the church went on a mass scale killing spree of the undying, much in the same way the Vatican got read of the Knights Templar if you want to link it to our history. In that sense, it makes the manga a bit more believable even if it is talking about the supernatural. It’s interested that before we are even introduced to Kieli, we are given a back story on this world they live on which isn’t earth, it’s a different planet they live on that the church founded itself on. Then it jumps to 80 years, and then another 7 to the time in which the story really does start.

I can see somewhat why Kieli is pretty much a outcast and I don’t think its just because she can see ghosts. She seems to also have a belief that is not the same as the teaching of the church that runs her home. A church with soldiers that will kill someone right in front of a mass amount of people, calling it a justified killing. Her grandmother seemed to try and protect her from them by telling her not to speak of seeing spirits and her beliefs but when her grandmother died, she was left in a care of a church boarding school.

Becca, her ‘roommate,’ sadly doesn’t stay throughout the manga. She is only there during the first chapter and it’s a very heartwarming story with her when she leaves us. A young girl who died from a train accident and then became best friends with a girl who never had any other friends. I could really feel for her and for Kieli when she is leaves.

Harvey on the other hand is a reanimated corpse, the Undying as they are fully called. He has to be very careful because of the church wanting to kill his kind so he seems a bit cold sometimes. Sometimes even, his hunted radio seems to have more tact then he does in the ways of people’s emotions. Even though, Harvey has a bit of a heart and does show some times where he is gentle to Kieli. Another surprising trait is that he is actually warm to the touch. Kieli actually talks about this at one point in the first book and yet, he is supposed to be pretty much a zombie.

The last person I have to talk about is Corporal. Corporal has no other name then his rank but he knows so much from the time before the church had so much power including different types of music and how to understand a persons feelings. I consider him somewhat a big brother or adult to Harvey and Kieli because he does seem to take interest in the two and care for them slightly. Becca called him an evil spirit when she first met him but I only see him as a spirit just trying to find a place to go. He does have a wicked temper at times that he shows in the first chapter but I have my suspicions that it was more on the line of trying to protect Harvey, even if in the flight of rage, he ended up hurting him.

The artwork is actually rather beautiful with large blotches of ink to show blood. The characters are rather detailed but don’t feel as though they stand out of their world. Even the ghosts look as though they are still alive most of the time except for Corporal when he is in his static form.

In the end, this is a very heartwarming manga that will probably make you cry. read more

Um, this show is a bit awkward in that it’s about a princess and a swords woman switching bodies. It’s somewhat funny seeing a sweet and loveable princess is turned into a warrior maniac though. The true princess is actually rather strong in some aspects, as she had to see her father and her best friend die. Throughout the show, I had a great feeling of Yuri coming from the relationship of Alita and Falis. It’s really a strong feeling because Alita’s always looks up to Falis a lot for her strength and power. Though one big question I have is that how can Falis have enough strength and agility within Alita’s body. Alita’s body isn’t made for fighting but it was able to not get a broken bone in her body when smashed into the wall.

I do have a little problem with the ‘kawaii’ little characters being the bad guy robots. Dr. Akamashi must have had some sort of fetish for little girls because I have no idea what other reason he would do that to them. It doesn’t help that his head looks like an onion but he seems to have the brains of one for a moment. And not to mention that one girl is the cute innocent personality and the other is a rather dark and mean spirited personality.

There is a strange base to the time period in time where rockets are old technology. It’s strange because most of this is set within a more medieval period with the addition to magic. To have technology over all makes things a bit odd. I’m a fan of some of these shows but not when the technology is so far advanced that it feels out of wack. They do give us a strange reason for it, but I still don’t get why we need the kawaii kids though.

Animation is nicely done though it seems that some of Pete Armstrong, the purple person, his scar seems to move around a bit around his mouth. The demons seem a bit interesting in their design but I seriously think that they don’t ALL need horns. Almost every demon I saw had horns of some kind on there body. I’m not really bothered by the fact that Dominikov doesn’t really move his mouth when he talks, because he doesn’t seem to hinder the anime in any way.

Oh my god the English voices! The little robot girl’s voices sound like they had been smoking a million packs a day! For crying out loud, why does there voice have to be so gravel-ly? Some others are a little high pitched but overall it seems alright. I don’t think we really need the stupid narrator though. It tries to make it more epic then it actually is.

In the end, I guess it was pretty good and I have to say I give it props for a anime that you will not guess how it ends. Seriously, you would probably not be able to guess. read more

I have to say that this manga, even though created after the anime was done, actually has much more depth to it. The story starts out with the main character drawing a image of a girl he saw in a painting in the antic store and it feels much more realistic then him seeing the girl in a piece of glass. Not only that, but it’s a painting that was painted with her own blood after Marcello killed her. The painting actually has a background that whoever owned the painting died so it gives a bit more depth to it. It gives the realization that Eiri wasn’t actually chosen out of thin air, although he is still mesmerized by the painting for no real reason.

The manga dives much deeper into these then the anime and Cossette actually seems to have a heart instead of a heartless bitch. She seems to feel sad for the things that her items have done rather then just want to torture Eiri with there pain. And sadly, even though they have a bit more depth to them, I can’t find myself to care about these characters because of the artwork.

Throughout the whole book, we have a sort of Narrator-ish chat going on without any real way of knowing whether its Eiri or Corssette talking. Sometimes it’s a mix of the two though can be just a little hard to figure out how who is. It dives much into psychology of obsession and love with almost a surreal feeling. And yet, it also goes into a rather depressing thought about what it really means to be alive, of course, the only answer this gives is that we live to one day die. That nothing we do means anything in this world because we will all end up the same.

The Artwork is actually really bland compared to the anime, and sometimes feels blotchy. Cossette is the only one that actually is well detailed where as everyone else is bland and uninteresting. The items and background look much more like scribbles a lot of times or are much to detailed for a black and white manga. It’s hard to see many things and so it makes it inconsistent. I half the time have problems figuring out what is supposed to stand out and what isn’t because things that should be in the back, are much more detailed and interesting then things in the front. For a manga where the main character is going to a art school, the manga has a lot of problems with the art. read more