Arcana_Vicarious's Blog

Anime Relations: Death Note

I managed to blast through this in an hour, it's a quick read as a shonen should be.

We finally get to see what happens after Mirai gets hit with a red arrow by none other than... the girl he's had a crush on. It goes as well as you would expect for an innocent crush. I'm glad they didn't make him all drooling over her like a horny boy, just blushing a fuckton and proclaiming he loves her... in his head. Looks like he's not ready to confess. Also, she seems to be hiding some sort of agenda of her own besides her needing Mirai's wings to get around.

Lots of Metropoliman in this one... and more people in those style of suits show up, making it ever so confusing to tell who is who without color distinction in the manga. I suppose there are intricacies, but soon as I flip a page, I have to go back and see which one is which. Looks like the god candidate in the Metropoliman suit (can't remember his name, and who cares) is the new 'Kira' as it were. He's not nearly as good, and even as villains go we know little to nothing about him. Don't even really know his motivation behind being god. Would like a bit more development behind him other than 'I am an evil genius child!' or something.

Will be exciting if it just escalates into ridiculousness on a massive scale. Not sure how long this manga is going to go on. Candidates seem to be dying left and right. I imagine the weak will get picked off first to build up the ones we want to focus on. Reminds me a bit of Mirai Nikki in a way. Hmmmm. Holding out for hope that the third volume will build upon what's happened in this one.

Anime Relations: Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei

Finally finished this hefty light novel, it's almost 300 pages long. So much for being a LIGHT novel.

Took me a few months to get through since its release as I only read it during my lunch breaks for 20 min intervals. I just decided to power through it with the release of Durarara!! vol 6, and the 4th vol of Irregular coming out mid April.

I have seen the anime of this already, so I've been briefed on visuals. And god do I need visuals because some of the events that happened are hard for my brain to wrap around without some visuals. Should be interesting later on when they move past what the anime covers... anyway. Spoilers ahead, obviously. Going to be mostly unedited thoughts.

There's a lot of high school fluff as usual, I think to lighten the heavier magic explanation segments that are explained through narrative or Tatsuya monologue. Parts I did like was the character depth they gave to him in this one. Such as when he and Miyuki go to FLT (via Tatsuya on a motorcycle hehe) to test out the new tech he made which should be theoretically impossible in the magic world, but he does it anyway. Because Godsuya.

Then we get to see the unveiling of who "Taurus Silver" is. Then their father makes a brief 'appearance' if you could call it that. Lots of noble social sidestepping/passive aggressiveness between the family butler and Miyuki about the unmentionable brother. And further WHY he's so disliked. Something to do with their mother experimenting on Tatsuya to artificially alter his magic calculation region (or something like that) in his brain, which fucked him up emotionally. Explaining why he acts like a sociopath. He can't feel anything extreme (exception being Miyuki at times). Really kind of sad, since he can't even get angry at not being able to get angry. Fucked up.

Lots of set up for the next book, which I'm hoping will be the best part of this arc (Monolith Code match). Author mentions that this book ends on a weird note, which I agree but it was long enough as is.

Excited for the next book, but definitely going to need a break from The Irregular--for now. If only they could come out with vol. 5 of SAO Progressive...