Friday the 13th

Welcome to my (late) Friday the 13th post, where… can you believe it? Almost all the anime I’ve watched this week has some kind of crypt/angst/loneliness/unluckiness tied down to it! Well… don’t believe it, because I just made it up, hehe. Many anime gets kinda down sometimes. But anyway I just wanted to tell some ‘down’ moments for this special week:

(of course… SPOILER ALERT!)

Monday
Mahoraba ~Heartful Days~ 19

Sayoko… lost! Plus it’s raining! With luck, Shiratori was there, and they went home safely. Unlucky mother, just when she wanted to pick her child up from school amongst the rain, she herself got lost!

Tuesday
Futakoi Alternative 6

This one’s full of angst! It initally looked like the Shirogane twins were just jealous of the Ichijou twins, but I guess their problems are deeper than that. They have not much time, because they said that by their 16th birthday they can’t be with Rentarou anymore… why? Anyway, out of confusion, they hurt Rentarou in the face and went back to Tokyo. Rentarou went back to Tokyo too and gave them a hug, saying “I don’t understand”.

Comic Party Revolution 6

Chisa’s father just collapsed! Now Chisa’s so sad, and so Kazuki and Subaru went to Tsukamoto Printing. Chisa now has to run the family shop alone because of this. Later on, they find out her father’s condition wasn’t as serious as it seems. He’s quite sick because of… playing video games!!!

Wednesday
Naruto 134

Obviously this will be a dark episode for our favorite shounen ninja, because for the first time ever, he has lost a major fight! And with his best friend no less. Sasuke and Naruto face off with their final blows, and Sasuke is left standing. Kakashi finally reached them, but he only saw an almost-dead Naruto. Sasuke, failing to kill Naruto, is now determined not to follow his evil brother’s footsteps, and he will try to obtain power in his own way.

Thursday
Gokujou Seitokai 6

Rino’s is being pressured by the student council members about her puppet Pu-chan. Is the puppet just her act? Is Rino making fools out of them all? Just when the student council realized that Pu-chan is the real thing, the puppet gets struck by lightning. Rino now realizes that her beloved Pu-chan is dying, and cries, saying that she still needs Pu-chan. Well guess what… Pu-chan is just playing dead!

Mahou Sensei Negima 19

Imagine the loneliness of a 60-year ghost. Sayo Aizaka has been a ghost in Mahora Gakuen for that long time acting as a student. She sees many classmates she wants to be friends with, but she can’t because they can neither see her or touch her… until now. Kazumi, the scoop girl reporter, researched about Sayo’s past life, in effect making Sayo remember her long-lost memories, and she cries. Now Kazumi, the only one who sees Sayo so far, is determined to let her join in the class trip, but she’s apprehensive because the others can’t see her. With help by Evangeline, everybody sees Sayo afterwards, and she’s now part of the group! This is one of the best Negima episodes so far, and it’s an absolute rare gem in that I actually watched the episode twice in a row!

Friday
NO ANIME ON FRIDAY THE 13TH ITSELF!

Suffixes

As far as I know (which isn’t as far as it gets), using -desu as a suffix when speaking Japanese would show a bit of courtesy in a sentence. Well, anime would tend to over-exaggerate that, with some characters overusing the suffix. Even some speak basically useless words affixed at the end of their sentences to show some sort of cuteness in speech.

So here are some examples of anime characters saying different kinds of suffixing in their dialogue. The intensity part basically suggests how much they use the suffix.


Yue (Mahou Sensei Negima)
suffix: -desu
intensity: medium


Chisa (Comic Party Revolution)
suffix: -desu
intensity: medium


Sabato (Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan)
suffix: -desu
intensity: high


Tamami (Mahoraba ~Heartful Days~)
suffix: -desu
intensity: high


Kaede (Mahou Sensei Negima)
suffix: -de gozaru
intensity: high


Subaru (Comic Party Revolution)
suffix: -desu no
intensity: high


Pumo (Futago Hime)
suffix: -pumo (doesn’t mean anything)
intensity: extreme

Horie Yui

Well, she’s just one of the few seiyuu I find beautiful, on certain angles and levels of make-up though. It’s undeniable that she is one of the cutest and most popular faces in the industry, and she has that extremely distinct voice that is instantly recognizable. I have already seen a LOT of anime with her voice on it. I like her songs too.


These are some shots from a certain School Rumble Live Concert. She sang Scramble and Feel My Feeling in these two shots, along with other songs. Well, she’s cute here with the gothloli outfits and all, but she didn’t sing well in Scramble. Having her jump around and dancing made her voice a bit skippy at times, but I enjoyed the live rendition of Scramble. In Feel My Feeling, I feel like her voice is a bit off at some notes.


This is from the same School Rumble live, singing School Rumble 4Ever, along with 3 other female seiyuu. I enjoyed this performance! She has a nice outfit here too. The musical notes in her dress… liked it.

Apparently some groups are kind enough to share many anime/jpop promotion video goodies to the public, I’m thankful to them. Please support them as much as you can.

More PVs meant more Yui Horie for me, so here’s some more!


This is a music video called Sakura. Apparently it’s from her first solo album, which is virtually unknown to me surprisingly. Seeing that in that album there is another version of Yakusoku (my all-time favorite Love Hina song), I feel deprived of information. Sakura as a music video… isn’t too good by jpop standards, but oh well, it isn’t aimed at mainstream anyway.


Okiniiri no Jitensha looks like a very refined PV. On the flip side though, dunno why, but I didn’t like her in this one.


All My Life, the OP for Mao-chan, is a simple PV. If you ask me it’s trying to be jpop mainstream but as always anime-related stuff rarely succeed when they do that.


Do I have weird taste? Just tell me. This is Kirari Takaramono, the Love Hina Again OP. And… I liked it. I just like those scenes where she sings in an 80’s microphone and dances around (it’s much like the School Rumble PV). This kind of fun, hectic, and wicked energy is just what anime PVs should be.


Here’s a promotion video for Sister Princess, she sings Love Destiny here. Not bad a music video, not too good either.


She’s in a live concert here, singing again Love Destiny… wearing some sort of school uniform. Kinda in-fashion for that otaku crowd, they like her a lot apparently.


In the Fruits Basket DVDs, she has some sort of omake interview show, where she’s the host and she interviews the three main male seiyuu of Fruits Basket. These are kinda interesting segments.


This is an Ultra Maniac making-of interview. On the left is Kanda Akemi, a bit of a newcomer seiyuu back then.


Another PV, this time from the anime Da Capo. In the anime she plays Shirakawa Kotori, one of my favorite bishoujo game characters. It would have been interesting if she had a PV for Soyokaze no Harmony (a very beautiful song), but this (Pureness) is kinda a consolation.


And another PV, this time from School Rumble. The song is Scramble, a joint with a certain ska group named Unbalance. I have to admit that this is one of the best anime PVs I’ve seen so far because of its style, plus the catchiness of the song itself.

Yogurting

Yogurting
Yogurting (Japan)

Who says Koreans can’t do moe~?

This looks like a nice Korean MMORPG that is about to come out. It has a very nice promotion video! The girls and the dancing is so cute, and the video itself is very stylish (felt like I wanna dance along!) If you want, try to find a video download here.

It’s a Korean MMORPG though, so I won’t expect myself to play this one (as if I even play MMORPGs). Looks like a magical schoolgirl setting too.


Update: Yogurting is being ported into Japanese! Hope of an English version is getting closer. These caps were taken from another promo video, over here.

Here in our country, lots of MMORPGs come from Korea, including the ever-popular Ragnarok Online. This game, and MMORPGs in general become so popular here, internet cafes just continue to pop around every corner, and they’re always packed full of online players. Thank goodness I ain’t bitten by the bug yet, or else money would disintegrate faster with all the subscription bills to the online games. I think if Yogurting would come here it would be a hit also, it’s kinda cute and all that. Don’t expect me to play it still though.

image
This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Record times

To show an example of how amazingly… slow… Tsubasa… Chronicle… is… I have compiled some of the longest, most drawn out scenes in the anime so far. I will try to update this whenever a new episode appears, so check it out every week.

I divided it into two types. The first one is Single, where there is a single shot/angle that only pans through the screen without changing. The second one is Multiple, where there are multiple shots in multiple angles, but the action or the characters remain at a standstill. Please take note that the timed numbers are not necessarily exact, so please tell me if it is actually radically slower or longer than the posted time.

Update: Up to episode 9 covered.

Single
Episode 1 – Meeting with Youko – 15 seconds

Episode 2 – First encounter with Shougo – 17 seconds

Episode 3 – Kurogane’s strike-a-pose with new sword – 13 seconds

Episode 5 – Before Shougo and Syaoran’s fight – 22 seconds

Episode 6 – Travelling to another world – 15 seconds

Episode 7 – Staring at a castle – 11 seconds

Episode 9 – Staring at a castle – 10 seconds

Episode 9 – Syaoran and big guy face off – 15 seconds

Multiple
Episode 3 – Sakura staring at Syaoran – 35 seconds

Episode 4 – Sakura is flying – 48 seconds

Episode 6 – Syaoran waits for Sakura to wake up – 20 seconds

Negima sakuga tracker: Yue version

As some of you know, Mahou Sensei Negima is quite notorious for animation quality that is like a stock market. Sometimes the episode is beautiful, sometimes extremely horrible. This post is a project of mine, to somehow track whether the animators have drawn a particular character fairly, beautifully, or horribly per episode.

Take note that this is only one shot of a character per episode, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the overall quality of the episode itself. It isn’t even reflective of the overall animation of the character itself, because I tried to capture their best and cutest shots, and not the bad ones (who needs those anyway?). But in the shots you’ll still see the radical difference of Negima animation between the different episodes.

This is the Yue version, because I like her, and she’s quite prominent throughout the series. I’ll do other prominent characters… someday.

Update: TV version complete. Up to DVD 4 covered.

Continue reading Negima sakuga tracker: Yue version

Negima sakuga tracker: Asuna version

As some of you know, Mahou Sensei Negima is quite notorious for animation quality that is like a stock market. Sometimes the episode is beautiful, sometimes extremely horrible. This post is a project of mine, to somehow track whether the animators have drawn a particular character fairly, beautifully, or horribly per episode.

Take note that this is only one shot of a character per episode, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the overall quality of the episode itself. It isn’t even reflective of the overall animation of the character itself, because I tried to capture their best and cutest shots, and not the bad ones (who needs those anyway?). But in the shots you’ll still see the radical difference of Negima animation between the different episodes.

This is the Asuna version, since she’s the main prominent girl in this series. I’ll do other prominent characters… someday.

Update: TV version complete. Up to DVD 4 covered.

Continue reading Negima sakuga tracker: Asuna version

School Days

School Days

In school life, three persons were always together. Our relation was broken on that day. The past never recover no longer
(arrgh… Engrish…)

Hmm… seems to be popular for being one of the only bishoujo games to be fully animated. That’s right. No more lazing through still pictures with volumes of text (and sometimes without speech), the whole game is driven with animation. The bad part about it is that you need to get 8 gigs worth of data, and more than that to install the game, not to mention the numerous huge patches that you need to download over the internet. This is one bloated bishoujo game.

Well the demo movie starts out with our usual loser guy having an eye for this beautiful lady. He’s so much a loser, that his classmate (another girl) still lent him help in getting close to the lady. Well, it’s as Kiminozo as it gets from there, this one girl trying to bridge the two together, but she also has feelings for the guy.

I guess the story starts from there, and it seems to be… whoa! It’s a psycho game! The characters would eventually experience jealousy, deceit, and… violence. Many say it’s not your average high school game after a while… Hmm… interesting. Wanna be spoiled by bad endings? If you’ll probably not play the game anyway, feel free to click here and here, and thank yourself for not having school days like that.

This being fully animated, I can kinda understand the game by treating it as if it is a RAW anime. The only things I don’t understand here are the choices (written in Japanese), so this has been a massive guessing game for me.

But some sources tell that there is actually an ending even if you haven’t made a choice at all! Well, that’d be boring because I may not get to win the girls, but at least I get an ending. Well, I can only guess that it is a bad ending though.

image
This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Sasuke… girl?

Taken from Naruto 134:

I love picking on Sasuke’s gayness. I know he’s not, but the entire series makes the Naruto-Sasuke connection so cheesy… Great episode by the way.

Taken from Naruto 133:

With Naruto shouting “friend! friend!” in all recent episodes, Sasuke finally gets too annoyed… and crossed over. Welcome to the girl… err… I mean… dark side.

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