seiyu's Blog

Anime Relations: Ichigo Mashimaro

Cuteness....overload....

YES

As of 3 days ago (April 16) I have finally caught up to One Piece. I find it amazing that out of the top 3 Shounen Jump series (One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach), it is by far the best. Not only that, it's also the LONGEST, with 540 chapters, compared to Naruto's 444 and Bleach's 354 chapters. Somehow, Oda Eiichiro is brilliant enough to continuously come up with hilarious ideas and situations to keep his story interesting. Sure, there are some parts that are a bit repetitive. After all, pirates aren't like ninjas or shinigami who go through random bits of training and learns a new level-up every 50 fucking chapters.

In this case, Naruto isn't that bad either (if you focus on the manga. I have lost all hope for any ongoing anime). Naruto's only been seriously trained maybe 5 times, excluding the original genin arcs. He 1) learned to use Kyuubi chakra 2) learned Rasengan 3) insert 3year time skip 4) learned Rasenshuriken 5) learned Sage mode. Of course, every once in a while Naruto has to take up 4 pages charging up his fur as he goes Kyuubi, which is annoying.

On the other hand, Bleach is hopeless. Of the 3 shounens, it's the shortest so far, and Kubo Tite has already hit a serious case of writer's block since around 100 chapters ago. Ichigo doesn't solve a single problem by himself, it's always Bankai this or Hollowification that, not to mention the random plot-twists that make no sense whatsoever. Yes, One Piece had infinitely more random plot-twists, but you know why no one minds those? It's because the author was not serious when he thought it up. Every ridiculous plottwist in One Piece is exactly that, ridiculous, and Oda highlights it every time by drawing completely exaggerated facial expressions on his characters. Unfortunately with Bleach, Kubo is always 100% serious, and that's exactly where is story and plot becomes laughable.

On a side note, here's a short comparison, with spoilers.

I am definitely glad that despite being the longest thus far, One Piece appears to be the farthest from finishing. Bleach, being the shortest, SEEMS to be pretty close to completely. Kubo's still gotta get through some Level 0 Yami busting, 3 more Espadas, and 2 grunt traitor captains before finally getting to big boss Aizen. Of course, somewhere in there he's going to have bring in the 8 Visoreds in typical hero-fashion. Oh well, cross your fingers for a 500-chapter manga series finish. Naruto probably has at least as many chapters planned as Bleach does. NagatoPain's almost gone kaput, but we still have the Plant guy (though I seriously doubt he'll do any fighting) and Kisami before the final confrontations with Sasuke and/or Madara, in whichever order you want. We even have some time Kabutomaru to make a fun appearance and Hinata to DO SOMETHING.

Aaaaaaaand...I seem to have forgotten the rest of what I was going to say. Must have KuboTite syndrome. Guess I'll finish this later.

Anime Relations: Kanon (2006)

Auuuuuuuuuuu~

Anime Relations: Chrno Crusade

Well I just finished Chrno Crusade finally. I think I started it more than a year ago, got halfway, and decided to read the manga (which was brilliant I might add). Unfortunately, the ending of the manga, beautiful as it was, was sad (big, big duh statement) and really kept me from wanting to finish the anime.

For a year.

And now almost a year later, I've just marathoned through the last 8 episodes. I have to say though, the last episode really should have ended with the fadeout after Rosette and Chrno died. It was simply a perfect combination of the sunlight fading, the clock hitting 12, and their eyes closing with melodramatic music and a slow fadeout. It was just TOO perfect a scene to not have ended the episode.

But they didn't...

Then, literally half a minute afterwards, they had another almost perfect ending, with Azmaria and the Magdalene Order Trio finding Rosette and Chrno's bodies holding hands and smiling while leaning against each other and Azmaria realizing that the two ultimately died happily together. But no, they decided to add in another 6 minutes about historical facts no one really cares about, with a cameo appearance by Aion that was really unnecessary (almost like an attempt to make a sequel), causing me begrudgingly drop my 10 ranking to a 9. Even if I don't give 10s very often, I did give its manga counterpart a 10, and was hopeful for the anime too. It's too bad that the last six minutes were a shame. For me, what separates the best animes from the perfect 10s is always the ending.

Yea, right now is where Spike would say "Bang!"

Anyways, I might do a review in a few days and literally copy+paste this rant into it somewhere in there. If I don't, kick me because this series should as hell deserves to be higher than 45!

Apparently I've spent a total of 29.1 days watching anime and 32.5 days reading manga. That's a a grand freakin' total of 61.6 days...about 2 months...I've killed on Japanese media.

Needless to say I'm feeling rather depressed now (I want my 2 months back!).

I wonder how MAL calculates how much time is spent reading manga anyways.

I tried playing one (Fate/stay night). I think I spent longer downloading the game and all the english patches than the actual game itself before uninstalling it. Seriously, I might as well have been playing Minesweeper with all the clicking I did.