Author: bluemist

To Aru Majutsu no Index

Too short, too much. That would be my initial impression of this series. Well I do have to commend the light novel author for trying to convey a world where supernatural powers exist, and either through religion or science, humans can take advantage of such power. Although I am unable to read them, I have a certain feeling that the anime based on those light novels didn’t give the concept enough justice, but at least it tried. To Aru Majutsu no Index is an anime has surprisingly great animation and presentation, but a bit hampered by trying to rush stories too fast with its limited time on air.
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Spice and Wolf

Sometimes I don’t need to have knowledge about a topic to enjoy some entertainment that uses said topic to further its story. I realized this in part when I talked about [Saki->], where I don’t know much about mahjong but I enjoyed the anime anyways. In these instances, either there should be simple explanations about the subject matter, or the characters should be interesting enough for me to continue watching. Spice and Wolf somehow fits both solutions quite well. Its main theme is classic European cross-border trade business, which I don’t know anything about, and would even care less to learn about. Thankfully, all complexities of its economics are explained in simple terms, as we follow the trade adventures and romantic comedies of a travelling merchant and a mystical wolf in the form of a young girl.

As described, this is a historical setting with a little fantasy touch. Horo, our female lead, is a centuries-old wolf who can transform into a young girl. She used to take care of a certain town as a deity of harvest, but as time passes its people had forsaken her in favor of modern economics. Actually, the fantasy takes a backseat in favor of all this trade business stuff. Kraft Lawrence, our male lead, is a young wandering merchant who is quite smart in his line of work. With these two characters crossing paths, they set out on a continuing journey with Horo wanting to go back to her homeland up north. Lawrence’s goal is to be rich enough to not travel anymore and settle down somewhere owning a shop. Of course, their goals may change when you add romance in the equation. I wonder where their business and love would take them.

The way the anime presented the economics part is sometimes too fast-paced for my liking. Maybe they didn’t explain enough, or I myself didn’t care much about how trade works in their world to understand it. They have this confusing number of currencies, silver and gold coins with different levels of actual gold/silver content depending on the town producing it. Of course, each town and system fluctuates based on certain trends similar to our stock market today. To compound my confusion, Lawrence and the people he trades with talks too much econo-babble. Much is spent in the anime just talking-economics, really. Well thankfully, the conversations often end with quite understandable conclusions and a clear goal on who profits or got debt. Yup, they explain things in simple terms. At least I have that, because up until now I don’t understand those finer details. As a whole, the stories are still interesting considering the many aspects of their economic world, including even the Church being a rich overall player. Trade seems quite dangerous in this world too, with backhand deals, bankruptcy or trickery which may even lead to life-threatening moments.

The romantic comedy part is quite interesting as well, because the two characters are so witty and smart in their cross-talk. We have here an experienced economist guy with all the smarts to survive and has his way with words. We also have a hundreds-of-years old girl with more than enough knowledge of human behavior plus her animal instincts of sharp senses. It’s just so fun to see them outsmart each other, both in the middle of business deals and in their everyday wandering lives. They go to pubs and drink a lot, talking and arguing about everything from economics to food to “love games”. It seems that they really like each other, only that they don’t want to be caught red-handed on accepting the fact. Horo tries to make him squeal all the time, but Lawrence is a tough nut to crack. A third-party character introduction in the form of a shepherd girl named Nora complicates things more. Horo and Lawrence is an awesome double-tsundere pairing, and so even if your mind is bogged trying to understand economics, the romance of these two characters is where it’s at. It doesn’t even bow down to typical ecchi tropes, no fanservice stuff even when Horo is naked so many times. Impressive.

Spice and Wolf as an anime production is technically fine, but nothing special to report. The historical settings are visually nice enough, and the characters are adequately animated. I don’t notice much of the background music at all, they have odd melodies placing it at odd scenes too. I didn’t care about the OP/ED at all, and even the seiyuu. I had to check who voices who, but the number of characters are quite low here overall. Horo has a nice and enticing accent by the way.

The way the story goes seems to be structured like a travelling anime with a set goal but not reaching it by the end. Surely I was quite disappointed in that, but that fact was overshadowed by these two wonderful characters that I don’t want their journey to end. Well indeed there’s a second season and possibly more to come featuring more of them two, with the original format of Spice and Wolf being a light novel series. Nice introductory show I guess. All in all, this anime is short and sweet, with of course a lot of spice along the way.

White Album

Anime soap operas. It seems to be a new trend nowadays, especially for bishoujo game-to anime adaptations that dare to be different. If an anime based on an eroge or visual novel doesn’t want to be thrown into the generic pile of shows with the same story patterns, same character archetypes and same ridiculously lame male leads, it must be turned into serious business. It means featuring a lot of intrigue, drama and sometimes excessive emoness. What I have here to review is quite an excellent example of that kind of transition. Made more than a decade ago, White Album is considered one of the earlier well-loved visual novels. Today, with a fresh reimagination and a new medium, White Album is back to put those cold and harsh winters in our minds once again.
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true tears

It’s hard to review true tears, and as I write this, I can’t seem to find the words. The topic in front of me is a genuine example of a great anime, featuring some of the best animation, music, art, and characters, with an intriguing story that may still be in the memories of many up to this day. I was there during the initial broadcast, and I have read many bloggers and forumers arguing and discussing this series rather extensively. They paid attention to detail, and also had chosen their sides. It was like an epic battle, with everyone trying to convince everyone else that this-or-that girl will get the guy for sure. Of course, the ending showed a very decisive conclusion, and while some may not like whatever the results had been, I think we are all in agreement that this anime entertained, and affected us, sometimes to the point of having true tears in our eyes.
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Seraphim Call

11 girls, 11 stories, 12 episodes. Seraphim Call takes you to a journey throughout the city of Neo-Acropolis, seeing many ways of life and love through the experiences of these 11 girls.

In almost the same way as [Sentimental Journey->], Seraphim Call is a series of 11 separate stories for 11 different characters, with the final episode only bringing them together by way of being subtle acquaintances living in the same city. You can say this is just an amusing anthology of separate anime girl stories. On the other hand, I can see some splashes of genius in this otherwise old anime. It is as if this anime was set up as an experimental testbed. Each episode has a radically different writing and directing style. Episode 2, for example, is entirely shot from one camera angle. Episode 4 employs rapid scene-jumping from one timeline to another. Episode 5-6 are essentially mirrors of each other giving a different viewpoint. Episode 10 shows manga panels brought to life. Finally, episode 11 has a surreal feeling where only one character is actually onscreen. The rest, while relatively normal by comparison, have quite good stories in itself. Some of them though have unusual twists at the end which spoil the otherwise good run.

These characters were made and drawn by [Aoi Nanase->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aoi_Nanase]. She is quite popular for her bishoujo drawing style. Seraphim Call, along with the rush of dating sims during the late 90’s, may have instigated the early wave of bishoujo fandom. Seraphim Call was actually serialized and featured in G’s Magazine before it went anime. Maybe this was one of the early historic templates on how to make a multimedia bishoujo franchise. What followed it after all (Sister Princess, Happy Lesson, [Futakoi->], Strawberry Panic) had similar approaches of having around 12 girls in the roster, along with having multiple media forms like illustrations, short stories, manga, music and video. Seraphim Call may have followed a similar approach at the height of its popularity back then, but as it’s quite old and rare to find the only remaining memorials would be the anime and this fansite which catalogs the various media related to the franchise.

It’s certainly an interesting old piece, although I liked the set of girls in Sentimental Journey a tad better. Sad enough, all these characters are locked forever in their respective one-shot episodes. Same way as in the anime mentioned, each episode in Seraphim Call is so very appealing and interesting on its own, you’d regret the recent anime for losing the quality of old ones like these. I don’t have an idea of what kind of trend this was, or if there are other similar anime I haven’t discovered yet. One thing is these two are produced by Sunrise, so I wonder if they have more of this kind. It strikes me with a strong aura of nostalgia, when animation wasn’t done digitally yet animated well enough to immerse and entertain a tad better (sometimes) than the current animes of today. Seraphim Call is yet another example of a wonderfully old anime, and I certainly hope I could journey into the past for more old gems.

Episode_1:_Kurimoto_Yukina

– Yukina is a high-school girl who is also a renowned inventor.
– She is extremely scared of guys.
– The city has a terrorist threat of bombs going off, and Yukina is the only one who can diffuse it.
– The authorities try to seek for her help, but she refuses because of her phobia, to the point of actually fainting asleep.
– Despite this, she went to the scene hiding herself inside a robot.
– The police want to confirm her identity, so she said only the chief may look. All others were ordered not to.
– But when the chief remarked that she’s cute, the other police went to peek. Her phobia returned and she fainted again.
– She woke up to the sound of her best friend, and successfully defused the bomb in the nick of time. Then she faints again in front of the inspector.
– She apologized for all the trouble by making a robot of herself to go say sorry to the authorities.

Episode_2:_Teramoto_Tanpopo

– This episode is entirely shot from the viewpoint of Tanpopo’s new doll, Margarine.
– Tanpopo loves dolls, and oddly, always talks to them as if they were friends.
– We see her day schooling by distance learning through the computer, drawing with crayons and telling stories to her dolls.
– After gym class which is actually outside, Tanpopo talks to her dolls about her best friend Chihiro’s secret crush.
– Chihiro visits Tanpopo. Tanpopo introduces Chihiro to her new dolls.
– Chihiro thinks Tanpopo is too childish, and she should stop talking to her dolls and making fantasy stories.
– It turned into a petty fight, and Chihiro went away. Tanpopo cries, wondering why her friends can’t talk to dolls anymore.
– Chihiro apologizes later by voice mail, saying that Tanpopo should never change. Tanpopo is happy again.
– Err… the next day, the police discovered that the viewpoint from Margarine’s eye is actually a hidden camera by stalkers.

Episode_3:_Ose_Chinami

– Chinami likes baking as a hobby. Her best friend Noriko says she’ll get fat from trying all the cakes she makes.
– Chinami’s father and mother are divorced. Chinami and her two younger siblings live with the father. The mother still meets them sometimes.
– The father talks to Chinami why she doesn’t want to go abroad anymore. She wanted to go to France to study pastry making.
– Chinami now wants to find work she can do at home, so she can also look over the house duties. Her father is busy with his work, and it may be harder for them without Chinami around.
– Dining at a restaurant with her mother, Chinami discovered that one of the chefs in the restaurant is her mother’s new boyfriend.
– Noriko talks to the mother about Chinami worrying too much over family and not thinking about her goals. Noriko wants her friend to succeed in baking and have a cake shop someday.
– That’s also why the mother revealed about her fiance. The father lectured Chinami similarly about how families are supposed to support each other’s happiness even if they go their separate ways.
– Chinami challenged the chef in making a cake. The mother will taste and determine which is more delicious.
– With her defeat, Chinami was able to redecide to go to France for her goals.

Episode_4:_Kusunoki_Hatsumi

– This episode jumps very frequently in different timelines in the story.
– Hatsumi had always been boyish and athletic all her life. She starts to wonder why she isn’t feminine.
– One day she met an interesting girl named Miyabi. Miyabi is an artist, and she wants to draw Hatsumi to reveal her inner beauty.
– Hatsumi rejects the offer because she’ll be posing nude.
– Miyabi believes Hatsumi has an angel deep inside of her. Hatsumi is herself troubled about her personality.
– Miyabi oddly starts to stalk her, writing a big “Hatsumi is beautiful” text on school grounds and following her on her track runs.
– Miyabi applies for a job to coach Hatsumi at the school, and it is revealed that she was also a varsity sprinter in the past.
– To set things straight, Hatsumi challenged Miyabi to a swimming match. Miyabi lost, and so she finally agreed to model for the painting.
– Well… the finished product actually turned out to be an abstract painting rather than a portrait.

Episode_5:_Murasame_Shion

– Shion is the stronger-willed of the Murasame twins. She always protects her twin sister Sakura. Sakura loves her sister.
– One day, a love letter was addressed to the Murasame residence from an admirer. The first name was burnt off though so they don’t know who it’s for.
– Having a staunt personality, Shion shrugs the love letter off, thinking negatively about things. Sakura argues with her about it, taking a more optimistic approach.
– Shion wants to know more about how Sakura really thinks, and so she uses a certain virtual simulation device to enter Sakura’s personality virtually.
– We are now projected into a series of scenes where the sisters are talking. It is unclear which is real and which is virtual. There was even a knife and stabbing sequence.
– The point though is Shion discovers that Sakura is envious about her intelligence, and thinks she doesn’t compare.
– Also, Sakura fears that Shion might leave her if she accepts the admirer.
– Nevertheless, they agree that the simulation device and the letter only sent them astray, and decided to get rid of those.
– Finally, Sakura and Shion tests if they were in the real world… by kissing each other!

Episode_6:_Murasame_Sakura

– Sakura is the more introverted of the Murasame twins. She always looks over her twin sister Shion as her guidance. Shion loves her sister.
– One day, a love letter was addressed to the Murasame residence from an admirer. The first name was burnt off though so they don’t know who it’s for.
– Having a staunt personality, Shion shrugs the love letter off, thinking negatively about things. Sakura argues with her about it, taking a more optimistic approach.
– Sakura wants to know more about how Shion really thinks, and so she (also) uses a certain virtual simulation device to enter Shion’s personality virtually.
– We are now projected into a series of scenes where the sisters are talking. It is unclear which is real and which is virtual. There was even a knife and stabbing sequence.
– The point though is Sakura discovers that Shion is envious about her attractiveness, and thinks she doesn’t compare.
– Also, Shion fears that Sakura might leave her if she accepts the admirer.
– Nevertheless, they agree that the simulation device and the letter only sent them astray, and decided to get rid of those.
– Finally, Sakura and Shion tests if they were in the real world… by kissing each other!
– It is revealed that the stabbing actually happened with Shion injured in the hands, and that the admirer was actually addressing the love letter to… the Murasame twins’ mother!

Episode_7:_Hiragi_Saeno

– Saeno is an English teacher, who actually reveals to three of her students that she likes Mathematics very much.
– One day, Saeno along with the students visit a nearby library to visit Professor Rosencrantz, who actually passed away 5 years ago.
– Saeno admired Rosencrantz’s expertise in the past, but she worries that he seems to waste his time on proving a “theory” that a square can be drawn the same size as a circle.
– The theory seems impossible to solve because of the number pi, which is “assumed” to be infinite.
– 10 years ago, Rosencrantz discovered a secret hallway at school, with mathematical equations pertaining to try to prove the theory, and found a pi book with all the decimal digits that have been discovered so far.
– Rosencrantz discovered that the pi book’s owner was a little girl… who was actually revealed to be a young Saeno herself in an alternate past reality. She was the one continuing the equations.
– Simply put, the secret hallway projects a time and reality paradox.
– Present-day Saeno went to the hallway, and met the Rosencrantz from 5 years ago, continuing the calculations to solve for more pi digits.
– Rosencrantz said that the world, and life itself, may be an endless calculation, and thinking of it that way, no mathematical quest is a waste of time.
– To further the research, Saeno went back in time to give the updated pi book to the young Saeno. This way, the solution for the theory progresses as each cycle of the time paradox happens.

Episode_8:_Rindoh_Ayaka

– Ayaka is a rich and spoiled girl who just bought an expensive giant robot lizard as a pet.
– Her father wants to teach her the value of money, and convinces her to get a part-time job.
– Ayaka did get a part-time job as helper of a ramen shop.
– But then some trouble breaks loose in the city, so she neglects her ramen delivery job and went into her secret job as a superhero!
– Along with 4 other members (disguised normally as the Rindoh mansion helpers) and their robot mechas, they chase some jewel thieves!
– During the chase, her dad gets injured, and her pet lizard caught one of the thieves.
– Her pet lizard also helped deliver the ramen… late delivery though.

Episode_9:_Kurenai_Kasumi

– “Kasumi” is a person who has become a urban myth/legend of sorts, with girls idolizing her and her various stories of being a strong woman.
– Most all of these stories are just hearsay, and that it accidentally started from what she did at a park fountain, which had then become a good luck ritual for girls.
– An idol news reporter, Lulu, is a rabid fan of the Kasumi legend, and follows it with much dedication as she reports.
– The real Kasumi though is actually the cameraman of the crew with her identity not revealed. Kasumi starts commenting negatively about the legend, and Lulu always confronts her.
– They continue filming reports. Kasumi herself would star as the legend Kasumi in some re-enactments with people who allegedly talked to Kasumi and were enlightened.
– Kasumi asks why Lulu hasn’t been going to school. It is revealed that Lulu is running away from a broken heart when her crush liked someone else.
– Lulu thinks she can improve herself with the legend Kasumi as her model, and is angry at Kasumi for always picking on the legend.
– Lulu re-enacts a dangerous motorcycle stunt done by Kasumi. She pushed herself too much, and so Kasumi jumped to save her.
– Kasumi reveals herself to Lulu. Kasumi quit being a legend trying to match up to people’s expectations, and is trying to find her real self. She told Lulu to be her best the way she is.

Episode_10:_Matsumoto_Kurumi

– Kurumi is a mangaka under a male pen name publishing her new manga called “Real Blue”, which is about a setting of a boy and a girl living together.
– Kurumi’s best friend thinks that she is living like the characters in Real Blue, because a guy called Satoshi suddenly moved temporarily in to her home.
– Satoshi and Kurumi don’t talk much though, and her experience with him isn’t like the manga she writes at all.
– Satoshi aspires to be a photographer. His father takes pictures to depict reality, but he believes otherwise, and that people sees a picture in different ways and interpretations.
– She is starting to struggle with her manga work, with her friend and even Satoshi saying that the manga is shallow and cliched.
– Kurumi starts to take the manga in complicated situations, similar to what Satoshi said about interpretations. Still, it’s not the way she wants it to go.
– Satoshi is about to move away again to live with his own father.
– Before he leaves, Satoshi tells that he changed his beliefs as a photographer. What’s important is the fact that he took the picture, and though people see the picture differently, each interpretation is real.
– Kurumi succeeded in giving an appropriate ending for her manga.

Episode_11:_Tachibana_Urara

– This episode is animated with Urara as the sole character in an opera-like setting. Other characters do not show or speak up onscreen.
– Urara has a complex for her late father, and she wants to be a city architect like him. He doesn’t have interest in other boys. Her mother is quite weak.
– Her mother and her friends tease her for being close to a certain boy, but she repeatedly denies liking him.
– Nevertheless, Urara and the guy go frequently to movies and are quite close together. He plays the piano and Urara frequently listens.
– One day, while they’re watching a movie, the boy confesses to Urara.
– Urara was unable to answer him even when he called over the cellphone. Also, she doesn’t seem to care even though another girl wants to date the boy.
– The boy left for Austria.
– Urara’s mother fainted due to sickness, and so she was confined in the hospital. Her mother had to move outside the city for cleaner air.
– Urara experienced a dream sequence with her father. The father says that her problems are just part of growing up, and assures that everything will be alright.
– It is implied that Urara has moved on from her father-complex.

Episode_12:_Sacred_Night_of_the_Seraphim

– This episode combines all 11 heroines together for a city event in which their faces are shown up to the moon to show that beautiful angels live in their city.

Saki

There’s a certain way of feeling in my watching of anime that I dub as the “shounen feel”. It’s a bit hard to explain, but you kinda feel this whenever you are hooked into a certain shounen anime so much that you just had to watch that next episode or read the next manga chapter. In some cases, this feeling will hook you into the anime even though you don’t know much about the actual subject matter at hand. One of my personal best examples of this oddity would be the anime Hikaru no Go. From the start until the very end of the anime, even with the bonus video lessons they show, I learned and knew JACK about Igo as a board game. Yet, I regard that as one of the best shounen anime I have seen. Similarly, Saki brings me into the world of mahjong. While mahjong is a bit easier to understand, I still had problems keeping up. Yet, despite the lack of mahjong knowledge and my hate towards useless fanservice, Saki keeps the shounen feel strong.
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