Blind_Guardian's Blog

Anime Relations: Hellsing Ultimate, Naruto: Shippuuden, Blade, Steins;Gate, Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi, Ao no Exorcist, Ro-Kyu-Bu!

Trying something new, breaking down the best anime of the season ...

Best Action: Ao no Exorcist. Haters can bitch about the anime-original ending all they want, in the second season we finally got into more regular (and better-animated) set of fights, and the final battles were loaded with awesome moments.
Honorable Mention: Blade

Best Fanservice: Ro-Kyu-Bu! While it was a rare AT-X show without nudity, it's because it was packed with loli-service. I do look forward to seeing the censors removed, heehee >:)
Honorable Mention: Kuro Usagi

Worst Disappointment: I think you know, I've beat that particular horse enough. Moving on ...
(Dis)honorable Mention: Naruto: Shippuden's pointless sea adventures.

Best Ending: Steins;Gate. Both the final arc and the one before that were amazing dramatic work, one of the best finales I've ever seen (even if some were disappointed the ending was a bit *too* happy).
Honorable Mention: Ao no Exorcist

Best Hero: Okabe Rintarou, S;G. No question, one of the best leading men anime's ever known. Just because he doesn't have a battle aura and can't fire lasers from his hands doesn't mean he's not a badass. Just ask Moeka ;)
Honorable Mention: Rin Okamura, AnE.

Best Heroine: Tomoka, RKB! Adorable, talented, and assertive, she's the one that most deserves to end up with Subaru if its one-on-one and not a harem ending.
Honorable Mention: Makise Kurisu, S;G

Best Overall: Steins;Gate. A 10/10 only comes around every so often, and this second season really clenched it for everyone's favorite time-travel anime.
Honorable Mention: Hellsing: Ultimate OVA 8.

Not a bad little season, though I have to admit that the fall season has surprised me by having some pretty strong shows. S;G is still pretty well a dead-lock for Anime of the Year for me, but if Mirai Nikki or Guilty Crown really impress me, one never knows ...

Anime Relations: Kidou Senkan Nadesico, Rekka no Honoo, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Ged Senki, Devilman: Yochou Sirene-hen, Amon: Devilman Mokushiroku, Koukaku no Regios, ChäoS;HEAd, Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei, Yuru Yuri

Farking MAL got rid of the first attempt. This is a vague outline of the top 10 backlogged anime I'll be getting to this Fall, when I'm not watching one of my 9 new shows or trying to keep up with University. I probably won't follow this order at all, but it'll help give you some idea of what shows I'm most interested in watching right now. Assuming anyone cares.

1. Chaos;Head
2. Devilman; Demon Bird
3. Amon; Apocalypse of Devilman
4. Yuru Yuri
5. Tatami Galaxy (Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei)
6. Gantz
7. Gedo Senki
8. Chrome Shelled Regios
9. Flame of Recca
10. Martian Successor Nadesico

Since MAL will only let me post my Top 10, here's my top, say, 16 anime characters and their anime. In no particular order, and with spoilers abounding.

1. Honey Kisuragi - Cutey Honey et al. One of the original magical girls and the hottest by far. Honey FLASH!
2. Guts - Berserk. Pure badass. Giant motherfucking sword and an Army of Darkness cyborg-arm with a cannon. Also rather insane from everything he's gone through, including hacking off his own arm and having an eye gouged out.
3. Edward Elric - Fullmetal Alchemist. C'mon, it's Ed, what's not to love about him? He's badass, he's funny in a smartass sort of way, and yeah, I dig mechanical arms.
4+5. Greed/Wrath - FMA:Brotherhood. These two immortal monsters were both my favorite homunculi at different points in the series. Fuhrer Bradley is an awesome villain and insanely powerful, while Greed is just plain awesome in either his original body or as GreedLing. Their rivalry is one of the greatest in anime, in my opinion.
6. Adam Blade - Needless. A lolicon priest who either screams every line at the top of his lungs or rasps them out like a murderous chain-smoker, and who steals people's powers and beats them up with them.
7. Kouta Hirano - Highschool of the Dead. Boobs and panty shots aside, this fat gun otaku fucking MADE the series. Deserved to be the main character IMO, much more interesting than the bland and mostly useless guy all the girls wanted to fuck.
8. Illyasviel von Einsbern - Fate:Stay Night et al. An adorable loli with considerable magical power and a huge, hulking immortal dude with a sword behind her. I wish she'd tie *me* up and tell me to be her Onii-chan.
9. Rin Okumura - Ao no Exorcist. Rin reminds me of a latter-day Yusuke (more on him in a sec), but with the added character interaction of having a fraternal twin brother. I'm interested in seeing how powerful Rin gets as the series goes on.
10. Yusuke Urameshi - Yu-Yu Hakusho. A badass street punk who becomes a supernatural fighter after dying and resurrecting, running around and whipping demon ass. His personality in the dub is hilarious, straightforward, and pure awesome.
11. Killer Bee - Naruto. Dunno why, but I love this rappin' fool. The Eight-Tails monster he has inside of him is pretty weird, it's like a Brahma Bull fucked an octopus and had some twisted kaiju-spawn. To say nothing of his bizarre seven-sword fighting style (yes, he holds them all at once, and no he doesn't grow any extra limbs when he does).
12. Senji Kiyomasa/Crow - Deadman Wonderland. Sssllice! Crow needed way more screentime in the brutal 12-episode series, but he stole the show whenever he was around. He was even the star of the most gruesome and disturbing scene in the show.
13. Kenpachi Zaraki - Bleach. Another badass with a huge sword who just can't seem to die, no matter what happens to them. In a series where everyone has at least two or three named moves and a named weapon, he's got the sword with no name and his only special move is holding his sword two-handed. Gods help you if he decides to do so.
14. The Cast of Steins;Gate. It's hard to decide on just one or two characters from this show. I love just about every one of them, from Daru's constant string of ecchi jokes to Mayuri's trademark "Tu tu ru!" The character interactions are just amazing, and in my opinion makes it the best show of the year so far.
15. Lelouch - Code Geass. He may be a cruel and sometimes sadistic SoB, but he gets the job done and damn well at that. :) The Princess Massacre wasn't really his fault, just the Geass going off at the worst possible phrase. And while his plots within plots killed or injured innumerable people, in the end he did bring about world peace. And maybe even lived to tell about it...?
16. Alucard - Hellsing/Hellsing Ultimate. I like unkillable badasses, what can I say? It's hard to get more unkillable than Vlad "Dracula" Tepes, the most prolific vampire of all time, and Alucard is yet another incarnation of him (or so it's heavily implied). With those huge pistols, his insane (and downright freaky) powers and his madcap grin, Alucard is an original badass mofo.

More to come.

Anime Relations: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

(Note: Contains major spoilers for Gurren Lagann, if you've been under the same rock I have and haven't seen it yet, and don't want to be spoiled, read something else)

Wow, I just marathoned about 21 episodes of Gurren Lagann in less than 24 hours O_o All I have to say is OMG ... that was so fucking EPIC. I can't believe how they kept making the scales for everything more and more ridiculous, yet my suspension of disbelief never wavered. The MOON turns into a battleship FFS! And even Hyper Galactic Gurren Lagann is dwarfed by the namesake Heavenly Piercing Gurren Lagann (literal translation of Tengen Toppa). I've never seen mecha literally throwing entire galaxies at one another ... until today, that is. I'm definately archiving this one!

The characters were pretty amazing. Honestly I didn't really like Kamina and was extremely pleased with the direction the series took after he died, with Simon showing himself as the real hero of the series. I didn't particularly care for Yoko, other than as a source of fanservice ... I guess otakus love a tsundere, but not so much the bitchy wimmins for me. I prefer girls like Nia, soft, sweet and elegant ^_^

The dark-horse character that really stood out for me was Viral, the rival beastman character. LOL, I just realized that "Viral" and "Rival" are anagrams for one another :P Intentional no doubt. Our favorite beastman also happens to have one of my favorite VAs, the irrepressible Nobuyuki Hiyama (aka Ikkaku from Bleach, Kota from HOTD, and a bunch of others). I saw a face turn coming a long way away for him, but it was well executed and believable. I kept expecting a last-minute backstab from him, but once he joins Simon's side his loyalties remain there.

There were some amazing deaths, from Kamina's surprise death at the hands of the Gorilla General, to all the sacrifices at the end. While at times it felt like they were just wanting a high body-count for the final battle, everyone's sacrifice felt meaningful. And that final battle ... ZOMG. The streaming site I was watching it on was choppy as hell, so I'll probably archive it on my PC to get a better copy.

If you've been putting off this anime like I have (it's about 4 years old IIRC), it's definately worth watching. At only 27 episodes it's easily marathoned in a day or two (provided you have no life and/or are laid up sick), and it's so amazingly epic. I can't believe a show about drills and funny-looking robots with tiny, stubby limbs got so fucking epic. Watching it now in hindsight I can see things that inspired future series, such as Madoka Magica and Star Driver. One of the things I love about anime is how great series like this will receive homages from later series, as if to say "Job well done! Now we'll steal some of your ideas."

Anime Relations: Bleach, Naruto: Shippuuden, Deadman Wonderland, X-Men, Steins;Gate, Ao no Exorcist, C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control

I just finished with my finals and I'm too sick to hold anything down ... sounds like a fine time for my first blog post. I think I'll start off with a run-down of what I'm watching right now, and what I think of how they're coming along.

Deadman Wonderland - One of my two favorite shows this season, DW is incredibly dark, brutal and bloody (even with the sometimes excessive screen darkening). It's pretty sick, the shit that happens to this kid who's only 15 years old. Having all your friends slaughtered in front of you, getting blamed for it, and receiving superpowers from the one who actually did it. It's disappointing this is only one season, especially with the slow pacing, and hopefully there will be more later on.

Steins;Gate - The other favorite for this season, S;G is about as far from DW as you can get. There's almost no violence or fighting, no superpowers, and no tortured, underage protagonists (well, maybe Kurisu). What there is, is some of the best comedic dialogue since Lucky*Star and a plot that's kept me guessing so far. I love Supa Hackaa guy, but I have a soft spot for the chubby perverted nerd archetype. I dunno about Mayuri, she's pretty vacant and seems to be a walking pile of moe (especially 'Tuturu!'). I always love time travel stories, tho the causality problems give me headaches. And I wonder why, if Hokarin can send text messages into the past, they're always unopened when he checks them? Seems it could just be messing with the date and time tags on the messages.

Ao no Exorcist - I love me some shonen anime, as a perusal of my list might well show, and this series reminds me of Yu-Yu Hakusho, one of my favorites. Rin's personality really reminds me of Yusuke's, and I hope the dub gives him a good, smartass VA who can do a good job. I'm hoping this will be another never-ending series like Bleach and Naruto, because I could really get to like these characters.

Bleach - I was impressed with Bleach from the initial dub, but lost track of it with Soul Society until the Hueco Mundo arc and then marathoned everything up to about the final fight with Grimmjow. Now I follow the manga and the anime both, and it's one of my favorite shows despite its flaws. The fillers directly after the end of the Aizen arc were god-awful, but the latest arc has been not pretty kickass, but excellently animated as well. As many have noted, the animation quality of this filler arc is almost movie-quality, and definately higher quality than big parts of the Aizen fight. Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing Kenpachi (either one) go batshit crazy, preferably on each other. It'd be cool to see Ken-chan slaughter the fake Byakuya or vice versa too.

C - I'm still not quite sure what to make of this series ... it's excellently done, whatever it is, and the 'fights' are wonderfully animated. It does seem to be somewhat like Pokemon with ATM cards, but with moe succubus girls instead of mutated animals. Anyways, I've been enjoying this one quite a bit and hope to see more developments in the plot soon.

Naruto: Shippuden - I was reluctant to pick this series up until about the turn of the year, and finally I just had to give it a shot. Another series I marathoned, I dig the hell out of the world and Naruto is a pretty badass hero (even if he's a ninja who wears bright orange, and needs to stop crying over his boyfriend Sasuke). Sakura is absolutely useless and I wonder who if anyone she appeals to ... maybe Japanese fans like her? Anyway, I'm loving the badass fights with Sasuke taking on just about everyone and spamming those overpowered Mashekyo Sharingan. I can't wait for the conclusion of Danzo and Sasuke, but I don't buy the idea that Danzo is 'actually a good guy'. He did some terribly shitty things and deserves whatever Sasuke's gonna do to him. I can't wait to see some of the stuff I read about in the manga, especially the Fourth Shinobi World War.

X-men - I've followed all of the Marvel Madhouse series so far, and X-men's been no exception. I wish there had been at least a little continuity between Wolverine and X-Men, but they could be at different points in the same timeline I suppose. I'm enjoying their spin on the X-mythology, and especially the Dark Phoenix stuff. The animation is even darker and grittier than Wolverine, and Logan looks a lot more like himself and less of a tall, skinny bishie with a mullet. I hope we get to see more team members besides just Beast, Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine and this new Armor girl.

I've also been watching the older anime Gurren Lagann and Casshern Sins, to keep myself amused while waiting for new episodes of the above. Now that I have more time I may pick GOSICK back up as well. This has been a pretty good season so far, and I hope it closes out as strong as it opened :)