Tag: To Heart 2

But you don’t understand them at all project: bluemist chart liner

bluemist’s “But you don’t understand them at all” Project: bluemist chart liner

Status: On Hold

Here I go again, with a new blogging project after the successful To Heart 2 project.

This time, it will be an anime music ratings chart!

What are you trying to do here?
I’m going to list down the top anime songs that currently ring in my mind (and my music player). It doesn’t necessarily need to be the latest anime music (I pick up classics from time to time), and doesn’t necessarily need to be a favorite of mine (I may torture bad songs from time to time). I’m gonna put some descriptions about the song, and my witty reactions about it and stuff. However, I will NOT tell where to get the songs (well if you wandered into the anime world you probably have enough know-how to find them anyway).

Why would you do this?
I guess I needed a venue to shout out on how good or bad a song is, and this may serve its purpose pretty well.

How about jpop and stuff?
Generally, this will apply to only anime and related music, but it wouldn’t hurt to include some right? Unfortunately, I don’t seem to dig them lately, for various reasons:
– Many of them sound alike anyway. Face it, a Nami Tamaki song just sounds like any other Nami Tamaki song, talk about variety.
– The jpop industry seems stagnant nowadays. Proof is that even Negima music singles shoot straight up the charts everytime.

Mechanics?
Well this is still in the planning stages so I don’t know of an approach yet. Stay tuned for updates, I guess.

Playing a Bishoujo Game is Futility Project: To Heart 2 edition

bluemist’s Ultimate “Playing a Bishoujo Game is Futility” Project

To Heart 2

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Let’s just end this once and for all!

What are you trying to do here?
I will attempt the impossible by playing through a bishoujo game… in Japanese.

Are you suicidal?
This is just because of the extreme urge to somehow play a popular bishoujo game.

You won’t understand it at all!
Yes I know. For one, To Heart 2 is a Visual Novel. It has TONS of text which I won’t understand whe way I am now.

But because this is an attempt at futility, I have some tricks up my sleeve:
– I have a walkthrough.
– I have 5% knowledge of conversational Japanese.

Using the walkthrough, I’ll be able to get a proper ending with a specific girl… if I follow directions right.

And using my 5% Japanese words, vocabulary and sentence understanding, I may be able to understand the story.

This is ridiculous. You won’t understand the story without the text. Besides, the player is YOU. You are supposed to be talking, but the talk is only through the text. The girls and other people may be talking to you through voice-overs, but that means you are getting half the conversation only.
Yes I will get half the story that way.

Enough self-talk. Let’s see where this goes.

You will find my introduction and updates through the URL:
http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/toheart2/

To Heart ~Remember my Memories~

To Heart ~Remember my Memories~

I love the [To Heart->] anime. I love that anime so much, that I really wished nothing will get wrong about the new series which is called To Heart ~Remember my Memories~.

Alas, I was wrong.

Being an anime-only fan of To Heart, I can already expect that I may not deserve to say bad things about To Heart ~Remember my Memories~ (hereby named as To Heart R for clarity), clearly because I haven’t even played the entire game nor understood it fully. For the bishoujo game players, To Heart R is a big treat. They get to see the new stories that happen after the original game. To Heart R is not a direct sequel of To Heart, and because of this, I am trying hard to separate them.

Technically, it’s an absolute shame. The art and animation levels are more of a stock market from the first 2/3 of this series. Sometimes good, sometimes horrible. I know that the producers of this anime are trying to make an accurate art rendition of To Heart using the original game’s character designs, and that’s fine with me. However, the massive and radical differences of the designs between each episode really make me sick. The same character in ep. 1 may not ever look the same in other episodes. Thankfully, the latter part of the series have gotten it right, which makes you wonder why they didn’t do it that way from the first time through. Yup, even before Mahou Sensei Negima, anime like To Heart R is already suffering from varying sakuga levels.

The story is, for me, something up for debate. On one hand, it was nice that they had a full forward story approach, as opposed to the filler-ish nature of the first series. On the other hand, one can argue that the series has been too focused on Multi. Multi’s plotlines run deep through every single episode of To Heart R, in that you may think they are really leaving Akari behind, despite her being the main girl. For fans of the iconic HMX-12 robot, To Heart R is a dream come true. For non-fans of Multi, To Heart R became too unfair to the other characters.

The biggest complaint I had with To Heart R is of one character itself, and that’s Hiroyuki. This is really the biggest disappointment that made me want to ask if his attitude is really that way in the original game. To Heart R’s Hiroyuki is the most insensitive, indecisive, and inconsistent bishoujo male lead I’ve ever seen. It’s an extreme reverse to To Heart’s Hiroyuki, the bored but kind male lead. There is a reason for the girls to love Hiroyuki of the original To Heart, because he is really kind and helpful to all of them. To Heart R’s Hiroyuki, yea sure he’s kind too, but I really can’t see it that way. For one, his “cruelty level” to a person is proportional to how close the person is to him. It means that he is somewhat mean to Masashi and Shiho, and to the worst extent, he is really mean to Akari. He is also hot-headed, and shouts a lot, especially when things don’t go his way. He is impolite to the elders he talks to throughout this series.

I really wonder how the To Heart R Hiroyuki made 3 girls in love with him. Yes folks, 3 people confessed to him in this series, as opposed to 0 in the first. And I really hate how he handled their broken hearts. We all know Akari is the main girl, and Hiroyuki is destined to be with Akari. But those 2 other poor girls got the no answer while Hiroyuki is still confused about his priorities, and Akari is being jealous. Therefore, the 2 busted girls didn’t have the chance to to make themselves worthy of Hiroyuki’s affection at all.

I want to say something good this time about To Heart R. Well, the OP and ED are really good. The OP reminds me of classic bishoujo game music, while the ED is a new rendition of a popular To Heart song. There are also multiple cameos of characters from the new bishoujo game To Heart 2, which I liked very much. The voice cast is almost the same as the first series, which is one of the best ingredient of this anime. Back in 1999, many of those seiyuu are already relatively popular. In 2004, the same seiyuu cast made To Heart R one of the most spectacular lineup of voice talents in recent history. I never thought I could see [Yui Horie->horie-yui] and Ayako Kawasumi together in an anime again.

I really want to say many more things about To Heart R, but you may be bored about this absolutely biased rant. Sorry that I am biased towards the original To Heart anime, but that’s my true and honest opinion. To Heart R is actually an ok anime, but because of so many reasons, I can’t find myself to liking it.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

To Heart

To Heart

Best bishoujo-game based anime series… EVER! That is just my opinion, but watch it and you’ll see how absolutely well-executed this anime is.

Ok, it’s a typical bishoujo story. One main guy, one main girl, many other girls. Classic bishoujo harem… NO WAY! Even with the cliched setup, it breaks all other bishoujo rules. Unlike all other animes of the same kind, To Heart focuses on the main girl, Akari, instead of the main guy Hiroyuki. By looking at it from a girl’s viewpoint, the anime becomes suddenly shoujo in style. Moreover, the anime has a slow-paced slice-of-life theme. Think Haibane Renmei and Kokoro Library. It’s not a disadvantage, it is the most unique setup for a bishoujo game based anime isn’t it? The art and animation is absolutely OVA-style, even though it’s an 13-episode anime series. It astounds me to look at how many frames of animation they did for this, the characters’ movement is very fluid, and is also absolutely beautiful (a definite for a bishoujo game based anime). Plus, the soundtrack/BGM is the best I have EVER heard.

Okay the main guy is quite dorky, just like the rest of the bunch like him, but this dork has a very kind attitude. He may appear boring but he has that ‘something’ that attracts girls to like him (not romantically, but as a friend). Many episodes of To Heart focus on one girl and how Hiroyuki managed to touch her heart by being her friend. Do not count Akari out though, she is very instrumental and influential to Hiroyuki. Sometimes she makes the move to talk to Hiroyuki and let him understand other girls’ feelings and dilemmas. Even the supporting characters Shiho and Masashi as well. This is an anime that is not so much of a romance or love. It’s all about ‘friendship’, and slice-of-life. This makes it so interesting to watch.

Enough talk, this anime has been licensed recently. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has a ‘heart’ for great anime like these.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

procrastination8: Da Capo II

After the powerful [first series->da-capo] and its less than impressive [sequel->da-capo-second-season], the popular bishoujo game franchise returns for yet another ‘da capo’ in anime form. Da Capo II the anime is actually made up of two 13-episode seasons, and I’m here to review both, although some may argue that the only one worth reviewing is Da Capo II Second Season. I think everyone knows by now how bad Da Capo II (first season) went, but I have another alternate reaction about it.

All along Da Capo II was probably really slated for 26 full episodes, but the producers deliberately cut it in half, maybe because of production/time constraints and TV broadcast conflicts. Assuming that is the case, Da Capo II, when taken as a whole, is an excellent anime overall. The problem is that viewers would tend to isolate the first season from the second. But do remember that the first Da Capo didn’t really hit its stride until after the latter half of its 26-episode run, and Da Capo II isn’t any different from that. If both seasons were taken as a whole, it makes more sense. The first half would be introductory episodes for everyone, and minor arcs for minor characters. The second half would make up the serious main arcs. This setup captures the essence of the first Da Capo anime, without those half-baked seiyuu music videos and side-stories.

So Da Capo II is around 50 years since the original, and the same city setting of Hatsunejima. We see that the sakura is unwithered all year round just like before, and the magic to grant wishes is starting to grow once again. Joining the Da Capo mythos are new characters, mostly descendants of the original set. First, Yoshiyuki is the ever-present boring male lead, and in twice the fun, he has two sisters, Yume and Otome Asakura (imouto and onee-chan complex). Sakura Yoshino returns as the eternal loli, while we see our original male lead Junichi as a grandfather, and Suginami… as the same freaking Suginami (a mystery?) The rest are the usual fare of male sidekick (Wataru), childhood friend (Koko), tsundere robo (Minatsu), loli know-it-all (Anzu), and school idol (Nanaka). Thank goodness we have a smaller cast, although too bad they didn’t capitalize on each one effectively.

The first season gave the limelight mostly to Koko and Minatsu, with a sad little spotlight to Nanaka. I’m quite surprised that they gave the love angle immediately to Koko. It was something worthy of praise especially with the annoying bishoujo cliche of having so many girls but not much romance. Koko was an underappreciated character in the game, so this is one point for the Koko fans. It was really a fair run during the Yoshiyuki-Koko relationship, and I feel that Yoshiyuki had more character in this first half, because he deteriorated a lot in the latter half (more on that later). Minatsu’s story starts its stride in a very accurate portrayal of her game scenario. But again, Minatsu is another underappreciated character. With those two getting so much attention, all the boos by fans came out of having almost no loving for Nanaka. She gets a few episodes but not much story. Towards the end, the Yoshiyuki-Koko separation is very expected, and many wonder how this season overall is da crapo because of no Otome and Yume in sight. Again I argue that if taken as a whole 26-episoder, this isn’t any different from CLANNAD and Kanon right? Kill a few arcs from the start before going to the main juicy stories.

In any case, fans rejoice at the announcement of Da Capo II Second Season, where the much-awaited Otome and Yume stories are expected to be shown. This is really where the series shined like no other, the animation was consistent, and the music is atmospheric. But where it really hit the mark is how they gave the baton to not only Otome and Yume, but also Sakura as well. If one didn’t play the game, this is a welcome surprise, as Sakura is really central to the plot. This solid mixture of Otome, Yume and Sakura’s game scenarios is one for the history books. The pace is excellent, and the drama is endearing to watch. Classic Da Capo like never before, and it “almost” dethroned the original in terms of magical emo drama… “almost”. Because I have a fundamental nitpick… Yoshiyuki. Yup, again the male leads tend to spoil all the fun. Yoshiyuki in this second season lost his character, and he is more faceless than ever before. We see Otome, Yume, Sakura, and even the minor cast pouring out all their love for him, and yet I can’t see that he deserves it. He accepts everything at face value, and his smiles seem so empty. Even when Yume and Otome confessed their love, he seemed too naive. Why not show a bit of affection? Not even sisterly love? I know that it is a good decision to get rid of some romantic aspects so that Yume and Otome are treated as equals instead of rivals, but I can’t see how Yoshiyuki loves even ‘both’ of them, not even as sisters. He’s so emotionless here, and he acts indifferent. And the ending which is essentially a deus ex machina is expected, but with an unlikable character such as Yoshiyuki, the experience is somewhat cheapened. I’d rather have it end at episode 12, where he is completely gone.

That’s a nitpick that doesn’t take away the magic of this anime though. The rest of the anime is so solid that it deserves a second sitting. It was really a good run, deserving of the original Da Capo standard. If you liked the original Da Capo, you’ll definitely love this one. It extends the bishoujo-dorama genre upward to new heights of quality.

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