Reviews – Page 7 – bluemist anime blog

Wind -a breath of heart-

This is so convoluted it’s scary.

I was expecting this anime to be the hit bishoujo game conversion of the year. It might not be what I expected, it does have its merits. Firstly, it broke typicalities by focusing the plot not on the promise-type girl, 1st pic), but on the city they live in, Kazunecity. In their city each person has some kind of magical power. The story thickens when the main character starts to discover the history of Kazunecity, as well as some shocking surprises that lead up to this. This city is actually related to the mysterious-type girl (2nd and 3rd pic), as she kind of protects the city and the magical powers of it. You may think she battles monsters with that sword, but not quite, and the way she protects the city with it is very shocking too. Unfortunately, even with this beautiful plot, the 12-minute/episode, 13 episode format clearly is not enough, and it is evident near the end. So many scenes and events were seemingly cut, you may think there are DVD-only episodes (yes there are, YAY!). So my final stand is still pending because I have to watch the rest.

This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Hanihani: Operation Sanctuary

This is so typical it’s scary.

We have a bunch of bishoujo girl types here, like a childhood friend-type (1st pic), then a fallen-angel type (2nd-3rd pic), then a nosy cousin, a shy flower-lover, a small sensei (ala Sensei no Ojikan), and a sensei doctor. Have I forgotten anyone else? They are so forgettable. Anyway do we have a plot? At least we have some kind of conspiracy about the male lead himself. It’s a quite simple story about the side-effects of time travel, but since the rest of the series seems so ‘normal’ adding up this little sci-fi at the end doesn’t really match. In any case, this is typical bishoujo anime. Not bad, not too good either.

This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Kujibiki Unbalance

Kujibiki Unbalance

Nothing much to say. It has a weird premise (or maybe I just don’t get it).

Episode 1
A school which is basically organizing a bunch of challenge plays, group vs. group, probably to decide who gets to be the student council leaders. And so, our main guy Chihiro has been assigned by lottery (kujibiki) to be in the cooking room, having three girls as allies/groupmates of sort. One of them (Tokino) likes mushrooms too much. And so as preliminary they get into a cooking match with another group. The Chairman (yellow long hair) is personally there to see the match. And by luck, it’s a cooking match using… mushrooms! Well sadly, the group screwed up something. But in the very end, using a somewhat dangerous mushroom, they capture the Chairman’s taste buds and wins the match. Also, apparently the main guy and the Chairman know each other a while back, in the simple anime cliche of ‘promise girl’.

Episode 21
Shedding new light to the term recap episode, this is… a recap episode wherein we have never even seen the episodes it recaps. Considering how people tend to hate these kinds of stuff, but actually it isn’t quite bad when you think about it. This episode resulted into a fast-paced slew of comedy acts relating to all the lottery challenges that the team has faced. A soccer match, a net popularity challenge, hot and cold survival challenge, jungle shooting match, karaoke singing, swimming relay, mahjong, and dungeon RPG. We also see some sort of plot advancement, in which the Chairman met some evil-looking guy. That’s supposed to be next episode right? Too bad we have no next episode…

Episode 25
Some internal conflict I’m not quite sure of broke the team apart. It seems that they don’t wanna participate in the lottery matches anymore, so the four parted ways. It was already the finals, just when they are already close, they decided to call it quits. Chihiro (our main guy) went off to visit a grave, and saw Chairman/Ritsuko there. Again we see some kind of childhood promise scenes. Anyway, Rit-chan convinced Chihiro into not quitting the lottery, in which he agrees somewhat. But the other team members still seem not interested. Chihiro tried and convinced the three of them to reform their team, but they’re not interested anymore. Komaki is busy taking care of her siblings. Izumi is busy gambling again, and Tokino is simply not interested. But after a while of thought, they got convinced and the four are back to join in the finals!

Well that’s about it. There are 3 OVA’s of Kujibiki Unbalance, apparently listed as 3 key episodes out of 26. Let me remind everyone that, yes, this is the Kujibiki Unbalance that the [Genshiken->] crew has been watching throughout that anime series. Kujian used to be the anime within that anime, but now we get to see some episodes of it. I wish that we would see an actual TV series of this though. For now, it’s fun to look back at Genshiken and see how they discuss Kujian. Maybe I’ll be doing a rewatch anytime soon.

Now for the technicals… the OP is the same OP that was inserted into Genshiken. Featuring of course the song of the same name as the anime, probably the only UNDER17 song I heard that doesn’t seem overly cute. The seiyuu cast is surprisingly recognizable, and the animation is quite good in its own unique way. This looks like a fun anime, too bad we don’t see the entire series… yet.

New Kujibiki Unbalance

Admittedly, I don’t know too much about the new Kujibiki Unbalance, a 13-episode series featuring a completely new story and art style, but almost the same set of characters. People have been telling me to steer clear of this title since it may not be as good as the first, which I currently am. Eventually I may give it a try, but since I am currently busy I should focus on some better anime.

procrastination8: Reminiscing To Heart

My [initial review->to-heart] of To Heart is dated during my early days of being a blogger. It actually resided in an older anime blog of mine before my move to animeblogger.net. Back then I failed to elaborate on how this is the best bishoujo game-based anime series (EVER!), and now I have returned to finish the mission. This anime is almost a decade old by now, archival by today’s standards, but to me it stands the test of time. An anime about, well, nothing except the simplicity of high-school life, To Heart gives a slice-of-life twist to the almost-redundant bishoujo game-based anime genre. Oh wait, let me correct myself. This is actually one of the earliest anime based on a visual novel, way, way before it even became an oversaturated genre in anime.

Before nice boats, before 3-year amnesias, and before wish-granting sakuras, To Heart was there. Yes, before even Kyoto Animation started milking Key with all their games. What’s remarkable about To Heart is, despite it being the first eroge to be animated on TV, it features no ero AT ALL. Even modern takes on To Heart had gone the tired and true fanservice route. It could have been worse though, because the late 90s-early 2000s were also the age of eroge-turned ero anime as well. Remember those many Pink Pineapple ero animes? Many of them come from lesser known bishoujo games. And guess what? Some of them have the same slice-of-life feel as To Heart. For all we know, a To Heart anime would have been just a hentai title. Thankfully it is not, because of how groundbreaking the original game was. I think you can blame this title, and Kanon, for introducing the concept of true story-based visual novels. Past eroge would only focus on the ero, but To Heart and Kanon focused on stories and characters. Maybe the big impact of these games is how it made the gamers cry. An erotic game that makes you cry. Funny how that works eh?

And yes, I discovered To Heart “because” it was an eroge. For some reason I can’t remember, I got a copy of the game. These were my early times being the green non-otaku machine. All I knew about anime was Cardcaptor Sakura and Love Hina. But I also knew about Pink Pineapple and the H animes (hey, it was puberty). Then it arrived. To Heart, in that bootleg shop. I thought To Heart was a hentai anime, 13 episodes of ero. I went home thinking I’m going to have a ero fest with this. Sadly, I was wrong. A few episodes later… I was so glad to be wrong. Being one of the earliest animes I’ve ever watched, of course it will have a great big impact on me. But where Love Hina failed is how I keep running back to this title, rewatching it multiple times, over and over again. Those VCD bootlegs were of To Heart being subbed by a group called Sachi Fansubs. A couple years later, I was delighted when I saw a seemingly-original To Heart being sold in a video store. It was a local English dub made by Magnavision. I didn’t have any particular biases towards dubbing back then.

I went back to that “same” bootleg store some time later and saw HK DVD pirated versions of To Heart. I bought that. I kept digging. When I had the broadband internet one of my first missions was to hunt for a DVD version of To Heart, because I reckon it will have better subs. Indeed I saw and downloaded them. I would have had every possible copy of the anime by now, and I’m not kidding.

procrastination8: Kanon

Kanon (2002)

Kanon (2006)

Kanon is considered by some as the greatest bishoujo game of all time. Of course, a “best * of all time” is mainly subjective opinion depending on who you talk to, but definitely this game by [Key->] has struck a tone that will resonate in the industry for years and years to come. To sum it up, you don’t know jack about bishoujo games if you haven’t at least taken a peek at Kanon. It’s like Final Fantasy, a pinnacle of RPGs, and Half-Life, a pinnacle of first person shooters. Kanon is a pinnacle of bishoujo games.

Kanon and [To Heart->] were the two main animes that led me to be interested in [bishoujo games->summer-of-bishoujo]. For the record, Kanon was my very first completed digital fansub. Using a crappy dial-up, I remembered waiting for hours and hours using a certain P2P program to download 13 episodes of this certain beautifully animated anime that I never knew at that time. Granted that by today’s standards the characters looked kinda ‘pointy’, to me (in my early days of anime watching) Kanon certainly looked beautiful.

We have the usual setup of a bishoujo game, which is one guy, many girls. This generic-looking guy (they always look generic) comes back to his hometown after 7 years. As usual, the generic guy is amnesiac, and almost never remembers his past. And so he meets this group of girls, some of which he has already met before. Now he gets involved with all those girls, and he connects the past life he had forgotten for 7 years.

Sounds simple enough isn’t it? Let’s complicate things. Back in 1999, the original game of Kanon became the new standard that changed the landscape of bishoujo gaming forever. Why? Because there was one thing that Kanon did right… the ‘drama’. Each character was so well fleshed out, and each scenario was so heartwarming, that when the drama does come, it hits the player so hard emotionally. This game makes you cry. I remembered reading mere summaries/spoilers for the Kanon game, and each story was already so sad and devastating for me. What more if I played the game itself?

The anime more-or-less captured the feel of the original game, at least initially. Towards the end though, there were some dramatic plot lines that got watered-down in the conversion. I mean, the sad stories didn’t seem too sad anymore. Some were even converted into happy endings, if I recall correctly. Another fault of the anime was the way they introduced the supernatural theme. I think I had explained this in detail over at an anime forum, but I can’t seem to find it. Basically, I initially thought that this was a realistic world… until the supernatural themes arrived. The supernatural stuff appeared so suddenly, that my suspension of disbelief failed to see it as logical for a while. Nevertheless, the story portrayal is still pretty good, despite my nitpicks.

Kanon the anime probably was the first that ignited the boom of bishoujo game based anime. In the next subsequent years, the number of anime conversions from games had seen a dramatic exponential rise, and it has grown into its own specific genre already. The bubble can only get bigger, and it doesn’t seem to be bursting anytime soon. And so this year, we will pay a tribute by returning back to the very same series that started it all for bishoujo game based anime.

Yes! A remake of Kanon! Now to be produced by Kyoto Animation (which brought the highly successful [AIR->air-tv] anime), Kanon will be remade into 24 new episodes. I think that Toei already did a wonderful job with this first Kanon anime, but Kyoto Animation could raise that bar even further, possibly having an impact as strong as the original game itself back in the days. Surely I will be eagerly awaiting that. For now, I can recommend this first Kanon anime for those who haven’t seen it yet, and I hope that they could see a sneak peek of the powerful emotions that only bishoujo games can deliver.

This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

procrastination8: sola

One of the things that attract me to mystery series like the US television dramas Lost and Heroes is that in almost every episode, as they answer some of your questions, they pile up new ones. This kind of plot progression is quite engaging, and makes one crave for the next episodes. On the anime side though, few series can pull it off nicely, and so we go to sola.