Anime/Manga Journal

[Klyde Chroma]

I've been watching mad amounts of anime lately..... Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Ancient Books of Y's, High School of the Dead and The Legend of Legendary Heroes have all proved enjoyable to me in recent weeks....  I'll keep this brief as I have a few to report on here....

MGLN..... To summarize quickly, season 1 was right on point with what you guys had warned me about.... slow as hell and boring, yet charming enough by the end to egg me into season 2....

Ancient Book of Y's.... The two Y's series anime were pretty freakin' cool if you ask me... while super short, they are indeed accurate to the games in ways I didn't expect.... game music (one of the best parts of the Y's games) is used for alot of the soundtrack which was really cool.... Plus if your into the very old 80's/early nineties fantasy anime this just bleeds that era... totally worth checking out if your an Y's fan, or if like me, your about to hop into Oath of Felgahna and a little synopsis of Y's 1 and 2...

High School of the Dead... what can I say, if you dig Zombies and Fan Service you'll love it.... I personally don't get too much into the Zombie Stuff and turned in early on this one... so I can't appropriately report much...

Now on to the meat and potatos of the situation..... The Legend of Legendary Heroes.... I had no expectations for this one.... I expected another shallow fantasy anime the likes of which I've seen far too many in recent years.... To my surprise this was not the case! TLoLH totally rocked... great dialogue, entertaining plot, well paced, a few moments that made me chuckle (a rarity for me) and some characters that were cool enough to write home about.... I didn't watch the last few eps yet (going to this evening though!) but I would safely say this is TOTALLY worth seeing.

[Annubis]

I love how the current season is nearly over and nobody said anything about it...
Tame season this is. Very very tame...

[Aeolus]

I love how the current season is nearly over and nobody said anything about it...
Tame season this is. Very very tame...

That's because I've fallen off on keeping up with the latest anime and prefer to wait for the full trip reports instead of watching a decent to interesting series shit itself half way through trying to explain itself beyond "it's magic", introducing a villain that's both lame and retarded, or emphasizing just how much of a marty stu the main sausage is.

I can't even tell if I'm bitching about Chaos;He@d again or newly started ragging on Guilty Crown anymore. Both were colossal wastes of time that I want back dammit!

Aside aside though, I've heard good things about Spring and probably should be worth checking out. Now Summer on the other hand, can be safely ignored.

[Kevadu]

OK, I'll talk about the current season:

Fate/Zero: Continues to be awesome.

Nyarko-san: Quite funny, if you like crazy over-the-top stuff.  Lot's of references to the Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper games too.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: Meh.  OK, but the manga is better.

Bodacious Space Pirates: This show is almost done and I still can't figure it out.  It's a weird mix of serious space opera-ish stuff with things that are just stupid.  Who wears miniskirts in zero-G?

Kids on the Slope: I'm only watching this because of Shinichirō Watanabe and Yoko Kanno.  The music is decent, but most of the show is boring melodrama.  Can't recommend it...

Hyouka: Great animation...yeah, great animation.

Kore wa Zombie desu ka S2: What is this crap?  The first season was nonstop ridiculousness, but S2 doesn't even come close to the same level.  They just keep repeating the same jokes, and they're not even very good jokes.

Sket Dance: The only long-running series I still watch.  Er...it continues to be Sket Dance.  Funny, but not very serious.

[Mickeymac92]

The past 3 seasons, this one included, have been very uninteresting to me. Only really good show I got that started recently is Hunter X Hunter, and maybe SKET Dance if I ever remember to watch more of it. Might be something else I'm forgetting, too. Not that it matters, I still have a virtual backlog of 300+ shows to watch, plus One Piece, which is the span of 10-40+ shows all by itself, I don't really have time to stay caught up on all the current anime.

[Bytor]

Finished Taisho Baseball Girls which I totally watched on a whim and I loved it, thus admitted a couple of episodes about 3/4 through bogged down for me but still overall I thought it was fantastic!

[Klyde Chroma]

As someone who was staying pretty current with anime releases I gotta say... nothing has peaked my interest in awhile... I've no grounds to stand on and nothing to contribute to the discussion of the currently running seasons or those most recently passed.... The last new thing that came along that really tripped my trigger was Gosick to be honest.... any-hoo

On the Legend of Legendary Heroes.... let me just say after finishing it up that it is a absolute tragedy that there is not more to this.... I feel like I've been left hanging like I was at the end of Berserk only the cruel part about this is... THERE IS NO ENGLISH TRANSLATED MANGA (or in this case light novel...) TO CONTINUE TO FEED MY DESIRE TO SEE THIS NARRATIVE THROUGH!!! I say this is a tragedy because this was definately one of the way cooler fantasy series I've seen come to light in a long time... albeit unorignal, yes, but truly what hasn't been done already?

Currently now watching Gai-Rei-Zero... Really liking it so far about 8 episodes in... then again maybe my standards are just dropping a little after having been starved of watching anything that has proven worth writing home about in some time.... I'll report my final verdict in a day or two :)

[Kevadu]

Have you tried Fate/Zero, Klyde?  It's seriously good.  Second season has been even better than the first.

[Mickeymac92]

Personally, I'm waiting to see how Fate/Zero handles its ending before I start that.

[Kevadu]

Er...you're going to watch the ending first?

[Mickeymac92]

Er...you're going to watch the ending first?

No...I just meant that I'm gonna wait and hear what people say about the ending before I dive into it. Obviously I'm not gonna watch the ending first. That would just be silly.

[Kevadu]

Er...you're going to watch the ending first?

No...I just meant that I'm gonna wait and hear what people say about the ending before I dive into it. Obviously I'm not gonna watch the ending first. That would just be silly.

Well, I don't get that.  Especially in this case.  It's a prequel so we already have a pretty good idea how it's going to end.

[Mickeymac92]

Er...you're going to watch the ending first?

No...I just meant that I'm gonna wait and hear what people say about the ending before I dive into it. Obviously I'm not gonna watch the ending first. That would just be silly.

Well, I don't get that.  Especially in this case.  It's a prequel so we already have a pretty good idea how it's going to end.

I thought it was an alternate universe type thing? And it's not like prequels can't have shitty endings. In fact, for some reason it's the only thing I think it can screw up at this point, which is why I'm waiting.

[Aeolus]

Finally got around to finishing up Heroman. I could see this go into an SRW game without missing a beat. Of course wanting to see a series get into an SRW game is one thing, seeing it make it is another (and I just don't see it happening any time soon).

[Chronix112]

Er...you're going to watch the ending first?

No...I just meant that I'm gonna wait and hear what people say about the ending before I dive into it. Obviously I'm not gonna watch the ending first. That would just be silly.

Well, I don't get that.  Especially in this case.  It's a prequel so we already have a pretty good idea how it's going to end.

I thought it was an alternate universe type thing? And it's not like prequels can't have shitty endings. In fact, for some reason it's the only thing I think it can screw up at this point, which is why I'm waiting.

prequel  to fate stay night. the ending is pretty much known to anyone who follows the fate stay night series.