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Feb 29, 2012
So Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa has an interesting twist to the love relationship that the male protagonist is in for. He is trapped in a mirror world and has to make sure the one he loves can reciprocate his feelings before he can be released.
There are rules that are shown for him to be able to get out of the mirror. Even though he can do so for a short time, there are some issues with this story as a whole.
His parents are fine with him dropping out of school and to take a trip around Japan. This is only a ruse for
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him to be gone and as an excuse for his parents and school why he can't tell them he's stuck in a mirror the entire time. Secondly, the rules are not fully laid out for him at all making it feel like the author is making this up on the fly. And sadly, we don't get to see what happens to him and his love interest when the series ends.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
He does get out in the end and the curse is lifted on him. Unfortunately, this is where my biggest issue lies with this series is the last chapter. The last chapter is only a filler like piece of the story. You don't know if she will love him or if they fall in love again. Just one more chapter where we see them in the future with a family or even if they just date would be fine. But sadly the mangaka said he'd end it on this note, falling flat on a potentially great series.
Even though the protagonist got out of the mirror in the end by 2 chapters before the last one, it would have been good to keep a few more chapters going to be able to see if they could make it as a couple.
Other than these gripes about the series, it is a good thing to fill your time with. It is short and doesn't draw anything out too long, a meat and potatoes type of manga. Good to tide you over but the last drop leaves a bitter aftertaste that makes you wonder why you ordered it in the first place. It sounds good at first and gets going really well but I was left with a sour feeling in the end rather than a sweet taste.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 25, 2011
Pirates. The recent surge in the movie industry has given us the imagery of Johnny Depp, Davey Jones, Blackbeard, and other old world terms that we use to identify ourselves with pirates. This however, is where this gets off the bus and takes us into a whole new direction.
We start off with ordinary salaryman, Rokuro. Whom of which is kidnapped by two people of the Lagoon Trading ship (a ruse for those being pirates). He is captured as collateral for stealing a disc with the company Rokuro works for's private data with their vital information.
Eventually, Rokuro starts to enjoy living life on the edge with
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this crew and joins them. Benny, the technological and computer whiz. Dutch, the captain and former military man. And Revy, the muscle, also known as "Two Hands" from her two guns she constantly carries.
With Rock rounding out this crew, the team goes on a series of adventures in the south asian seas near Roanapur, a fictional town. They take jobs to help them get by and to pay for the damage that they seem to consistently cause to their favorite bar. Jobs range from escorting diplomats to salvaging gold from a sunken sub which are given to them by an ex-military Russian crew headed by Balalaika. All the while they are in constant danger from other pirates or other organizations that seek out to harm those of the Lagoon crew, or have their own ordeals and the crew are caught up in the middle of it.
Now to the nitty gritty, the technical side of this review. How it delivers to the audience. To start off, the animation in this series is top notch and solid. You can clearly see how the action sequences pan out and are not lost in the constant cuts that occur in other shows.
Voices are well done and each have distinct voices that make each character stand out, minor or major.
The story, however original, does get swept up in its own weight and can sometimes draw itself out for a bit too long. Meaning that some of the sequences where we learn of Revy's past kind of draws on too long and distracts me from the oncoming action and violence to be had soon enough. Not to say that this is a regular occurrence, a few episodes are drawn down, which is why this gets a 9. If there were any half or decimal point values for this, it would definitely reach a 9.5.
Enjoying this series is not for everyone. This is definitely a more mature audience since this does involve much violence and some nudity and other more adult topics such as Nazi's, children becoming serieal killers (second season) and other very mature themes. It does take some backbone to watch. But if you can get past some of the themes, which isn't too difficult to do, you will find a very nice story to watch through out this series.
Definitely worth a viewing
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 2, 2008
Minami-ke isn't just another slice-of-life comedy that revolves around some main characters. Well, it does do that, but there is a mystical energy that comes from it that makes it not only funny, but pretty addictive to watch.
The whole story revolves around 3 sisters who have distinct personalities. There's Haruka, the eldest who is the most responsible of the three. She maintains the household, manages their bills, cooks the food and keeps everything in order in the house. There's Kana, the middle sister who has an energy that can't be beat. Although she's lazy and very gullible by her younger sister, she still shows her
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creativity in some of her plans in the series. And finally there's Chiaki, the youngest who is the straight man who has the most negative attitude towards Kana and yet is kindest towards Haruka. Chiaki loves to mess with Kana as to misinterpret her love letters from a classmate of Kana's and keeps calling her dumbass. But it drives the story onwards.
Speaking of which, there practically isn't a story here. It is practically a Seinfeld of anime. There are many scenes in their home, scenes in their school and just daily observations and creative ideas that are bounced around in each episode. What makes it stand out is during some scenes, the attitude in the moment changes to a more serious attitude with a widescreen look and a more detailed view of each of the sister's faces. Funny at certain times, but can get kind of annoying at some moments.
The content in this anime is pretty unique. Some of the episodes have them not doing anything and just hanging out around in their house where Kana and Chiaki are watching a funny soap opera titled "Sensei and Ninomiya-kun" where those words are all that they say. The elements of comedy in it are pretty original as well as some subjects could possibly be what bored girls could be talking about if they were to get together and talk about random stuff.
All in all, this was very enjoyable. I laughed a lot, quoted a lot of scenes with my friends and made me think a little at some points. Minami-ke has an addictive quality that made me impatient for the next episode. If you liked Azumanga Daioh and the like, you'll like Minami-ke.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 2, 2008
So Myself; Yourself has a not-so-original story concept to start off with. But that doesn't keep it from giving a decent story though. It starts off with Sana experienceing a flashback of his childhood the day before he left to move to Tokyo. Flash forward 5 years and Sana has moved back to his hometown of Sakuranomori where he lives in a boarding house that is owned by one of his friends, Aoi. Sana soon finds out about his friends over the last 5 years and eventually gets slapped by a girl named Nanaka. This drives the story throughout the whole series as Sana tries
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to figure out the missing pieces of his past and his friend's past.
Now the series is okay for what it's worth. But the reason why I gave it all 7's is because there are points where the predictable sets in and points where things just don't sit right and can be down right, disturbing.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
For instance, Sana gets rather friendly with a girl named Hoshino, who helps her with student council meetings, but the weird part comes from the fact that Hoshino was in love with a friend of his, Shuri, who is a girl. Coming from nowhere kind of threw me for a loop. Which was sort of weird as well as intriguing since you don't really see it that much.
Another weird staple is that eventually, the twins, Shuu and Shuri run away together after their father tries to seperate them after the sister disrespects their stepmother. But that's not all, someone drew a love umbrella on a chalk board at school (it turned out to be Hoshino), that resembled the twin's incest love which wasn't there. This lead them to run away together, almost enforcing that incest and when the time jump occurs later on, they are seen walking in holding hands together. Hmmm. Seems sort of ecchi.
One more flaw in this series is that you can see the problems Sana suffered before it is revealed in the end. Sana tried to commit suicide after some bullying lead him to slit his wrist. Ever since then, he wore a watch to cover it and was frightened whenever he sees blood. And later on, Nanaka seems to want to do the same thing after her unfortunate events and reveals his dark secret to her. But that part was all too recognizable around at least 5 episodes prior to that whole scene. C'mon, some mystery would be nice once in a while.
And the final preverbial nail in the coffin comes from the interconnections that occur between every character in the series. Not only do all of the students know each other, but the new teacher knew Sana from her childhood. This is all too boring to me. It was like "Oh yay, she knew him 10 years ago. Why is this episode even here?" It could have been removed and still kept it's continuity fresh in the end of the series.
Enough with the flaws now. This was still something good to watch intermittently. The characters are still pretty solid with some good background. The concepts for each character's background is pretty original with some fairly good plot twists that made me jump for a little bit. I'd only recommend it for those of you who are just wanting something to watch if you're kind of bored and would want a general decent anime for those rainy Sundays.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 1, 2008
Itazura na Kiss, or "Mischievous Kiss", does start out as a typical romantic comedy of Kotoko Aihara having a crush on Naoki Irie for a long time. When Kotoko gathers enough courage to give Naoki a love letter on her 18th birthday, he flat out refuses to accept it. That is when the stereotype of romantic comedy takes a nice detour.
Aside from the synopsis that I gave above, Kotoko is pretty much an airhead when it comes to most things where as Naoki seems to be able to do almost anything set in fromt of him. Actually, Naoki said "I can probably do about
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90% of all things in the world. But the other 10% I can't do, she does better than anyone." But that's getting to far ahead of ourselves. Their personalities couldn't be further apart either. Kotoko is a lively, daydreaming, hopeless romantic and Naoki is a cold, aloof, almost arrogant guy. And Kotoko seems to be in love with him.
After some of bad mishaps with Kotoko and her father, fate it seems, threw the main characters together since Kotoko and Naoki's fathers knew each other since they were kids. Pretty farfetched, but I'll run with it. Then come on the one-sided love from Kotoko that slowly (I mean slowly) brings Naoki into the realm of loving her bit-by-bit. That and she blackmailed him in the beginning with some embarassing pictures of Naoki as a baby, from his own mother. Sheesh.
(Beware of reading on at this point, SPOILER ALERT!!!)
The exceptional part of this anime is that the story goes far beyond the high school life. It even goes well beyond college. That is what gave it a worthy anime. It doesn't just stick into the high school life like a lot of anime goes through. College, medical school, even their marriage is shown. A nice way of bringing what we most want to see in the love story animes of our time. Of course ther are a few flaws.
Time jumps for example do happen in the anime. But it is not without consideration that the manga does go through some filler where the anime does not. Interesting that the Director wanted to do that. Usually it is the other way around. But there is some more flaws to be had. The fact that Kotoko and Naoki's wedding happened 2 weeks after their engagement threw me off, but it was explained that the mom had in fact, planned everything to happen. Funny how the mom is a brilliant schemer. And when you see Kotomi finally born, you don't really see a lot of character development on the last episode, or even if Kotoko and Naoki wanted another child. Speaking of which, when they do have their child, they still live with Naoki's parents. They are around 30 at the time. Don't you think that they should move out by now?
But flaws aside, it is still worth watching. Character development, sound and story does have great qualities and is well thought out. The artwork on some scenes kind of seemed childish, but that is what was intended so I let it slide. Altogether, a good story to behold. Not a "Must See", but definately worth checking out a couple of episodes to see your interest.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 29, 2008
***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***
Okay, this is my first anime review, bear with it.
Mnemosyne is a truly orginal anime. I have never seen anything like it ever before. Each episode takes place in a different time frame and jumps decades at a time from episode to episode. What's more, the surrounding environment changes along with it. Technology developes, buildings that were once prominent become dilapidated and destroyed and charaters age.
The story seems to be complicated at first, but once it ends, the whole picture seems to fall into focus. The story surrounds a woman named Rin Asogi who runs a consulting agency with her friend Mimi
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and pet dog Genta. The thing is, they are both immortal from a plant called Yggdrasil which releases spores that if entered into a woman, makes them immortal and they can live for practically forever. But if it enters a male, they become angels and can only live for a short amount of time. When both are near each other, the female is sexually attracted to the angel and asks of him to "devour" her.
Eventually, Rin meets Kouki Maeno in the first episode and throughout the series, the Maeno family becomes the key element in the story along with a demigod Eipos who is adiment on eating Rin's timespore.
The art direction is fantastic, although the memory flashbacks kind of make it hard to see and understand what is going on. But that is the point of it all, since memories can become fuzzy and hard to remember.
The sound is great since you can hear every action shot, explosion and gut-wrenching scene quite clearly.
As for characters, they are well diverse and well thought out and have a different spin on personality as well as leaving some family resemblance when it comes to the Maeno family.
I thoroughly enjoyed this anime. Although some spots become difficult to understand when you start each episode. But overall, it was very good to watch and I highly recommend it for those of you who enjoy something aside from mainstream anime and don't mind nudity, action, explosions, etc.
Mnemosyne is one of a kind.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jun 23, 2008
This was an enjoyable manga. As a fan of the harem and love story manga/anime. This one came at originality in the beginning and then came on the girls which is different in other harems like Love Hina.
The story was very original to me and was a nice take on how love can be the bind between the two main characters. And as each new character was introduced into the mix, new developments on how the main characters react to the situation.
Character wise, they seem to have depth and backstories rather than the "Here are some beautiful girls. Enjoy Them!" type of harem manga.
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They each have their own way to grow their love towards the male lead. Also, not only to they each have their own way to find that fondness, but it seemed that at some point, at least one volume was dedicated to how each female character found that they did love him.
Overall, it was a nice change of pace to the other harem's that exist out there. A new, original plot with realistic characters, settings and storylines. Very enjoyable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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