Watching the first of these OAVs reminded me just how much I enjoyed Stratos 4. I already wrote a quick explanation in my previous entry, so I won’t go into that again. While this episode was really just setting everything up for what’s to come in the OAVs, it was still quite enjoyable simply because it was more of the same.
Monthly Archive for June, 2005Page 2 of 2
I haven’t had time to watch this yet (I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been spending all my spare time watching Inuyasha) but Stratos 4 Advance is finally being subbed. For those that don’t know it, Stratos 4 is an excellent example of how good a simple concept can be if executed well. Basically, it’s a slightly fanservice-oriented series by the team which previously worked on Vandread. It’s about a quartet of girls who are training to man a space asteroid defense platform. Their training involves flying high-altitude aircraft (cold-war era Russian aircraft, actually) to destroy any meteors which the space defense fails to clean up. I believe there should be some info on the first OAV series in the archives here from earlier in the year.
Stratos 4 Advance is a new OAV sequel. 6 episodes, bringing the Stratos 4 total up to 13 TV episodes and 8 OAV episodes.
Took me long enough to get around to it, but I promise this will become a more weekly thing from here on out. Basically, my aim here is to give my impressions on the new shows currently airing on Adult Swim, namely this latest “season” of Inu-Yasha, and new series Samurai Champloo, Paranoia Agent, & s-CRY-ed. For those who don’t know, Adult Swim is a sub-network airing on Cartoon Network in North America that airs both comedic and anime programming aimed at an older audience than Cartoon Network’s regular children and family-oriented demographics. Along with such comedic fare as Family Guy, Futurama, & Robot Chicken, they’ve also aired such anime as Witch Hunter Robin, Big O, & Cowboy Bebop either completely or at least mostly unedited (Cartoon Network often has to edit anime to make it friendly for both the FCC and the viewing audience…Adult Swim at least removes the “viewing audience” portion of it, and the FCC only rarely has to intervene). Eventually, when other shows and movies debut, I’ll cover those too (I actually plan on going back and re-evaluating the first Inu-Yasha movie & Metropolis, as well), but for now the aforementioned four are my focus. I will not be covering shows already in reruns like Wolf’s Rain, Trigun, or FLCL, unless I choose to focus on these series outside of their television incarnations. I will also not be covering Fullmetal Alchemist once it resumes, as I already plan to cover it by DVD volume.
That said, let’s get down to business and play a little game of catch-up already.
I’m still alive. Don’t know what Nagi is up to, but I have the first of my three exams (Pattern Recognition) for the semester tomorrow… or rather, later today. After that, I’ll be blogging again more regularly.
The folks over at Raspberry Heaven convinced me to give Monster another try. For some reason, I just couldn’t get through episode 1. Now I have, and it’s great stuff. Got 5 and 6 stashed (oh, what I wouldn’t give for that unlimited broadband back… 
) and hope to watch tomorrow evening.
As far as tracing, about the only worthwhile content here, goes… I have something special in the works. It may possibly be my best work to date. At the moment, the lines are only half-done due to lack of time. What’s done has taken me the same amount of time an average trace from an anime frame takes. Here it is.
DigitalPanic are an awesome subber. Not only did they pick up the pieces and start subbing Zipang, an excellent series which was woefully ignored last year, they recently subbed the first of the new UFO Princess Valkyrie OAVs. I love UFO Princess Valkyrie (actually, I love Kaishaku’s stuff in general), and was really upset when the whole MFI debacle happened last year because Valkyrie was affected, and A-E decided not to touch it. While the episode wasn’t that great (Catgirl vs Meganeko :o) and I was hoping for a bit more plot… I can’t complain about getting more.
In other news, I’m trying to work though my massive anime backlog. Finished Mysterious Cities of Gold on the weekend (what a trip down memory lane that was) and started Planetes last night. If I work to plan, then next in line is Gankutsuou, then Aishiteru ze Baby, Beck, and some oldschool with Fushigi Yuugi. Of course, I’ll also continue to follow current stuff and give my thoughts. Those have been sparse of late simply because there’s really not much going at the moment that deserves to be talked about.
Also, it seems a spinoff or sequel or something to My-HiME is planned. My-MAiD (or Mai-MAiD or Mai-star-MAiD or whatever the fuck the fansubbers end up arguing over calling it). Details can be found here