Thought this was interesting enough to post a link here. Ken Akamatsu delivers his thoughts on moe.
Monthly Archive for July, 2005
I’m not very good at doing this once per week, am I? Once again, I’ve been pretty busy with my thesis so I’ve not had much time for fansubs. Busy adult and all that.
‘Not much time’ of course means that I did actually manage to get some watching done. For starters, the first two episodes of Ichigo Mashimaro have been subbed by the RH crew, much like Kamichu. I must say, I’m really starting to like softsubs. Also, their original release of episode two introduced me to the h264 codec - better quality than the 140mb XviD raw that was released, and only 60mb. Clearly it’s pretty lossy, but you wouldn’t have known. That said, Ichigo Mashimaro isn’t exactly the most action-filled series, so not noticing the problems isn’t that surprising.
Episodes 11 and 12 of Basilisk are finally out. I watched 11 last night, and will watch 12 just after I finish writing this. I really dig Basilisk, it’s very much Ninja Scroll TV, done right. If you’re looking for a serious shounen action series that’s currently running, this would definately be worth your while.
Stratos 4 Advance episode 2 was another that I watched last night. Another enjoyable episode - I really can’t help but enjoy Stratos 4. Something about the simple approach they’ve taken with it is very appealing, and the fact that I can nerd out over the aircraft and stuff is a bonus. Yes, there’s high-altitude antics this time. I’ll probably write about this in more depth later.
There’s a trailer floating around for Banner of the Stars III at the moment. Looks very good. Of course, it’s Banner of the Stars so it being good is pretty much a guarantee. No word yet how long it is - two DVD releases, so I’d guess it’ll be two large episodes, but a lot of people have been saying it’s 3 normal-length episodes per disc. That doesn’t seem right to me though, because Japanese like to rip each other off with expensive OAV DVDs that have only one episode per disc.
Da Capo Second Season episode 3 wasn’t very good. I really hope that the promise it showed in the first two episodes wasn’t just a glitch. Needs more Kotori. In other stupid harem anime, Froth-bite have done the first few episodes of Shuffle!. This one is just as mediocre as I expected, but I’ll probably continue to watch it because Primula is a carbon-copy of Presea from Tales of Symphonia <3.
Froth-bite also finally got the next two Mahoraba episodes out. This series was a real surprise, turned out to be a hell of a lot better than it had any right to be. 21 and 22 explored Sayoko and Asami’s background, which was interesting and very heartful :P. I’m hoping the last four episodes aren’t too long in coming.
Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid was just as good in episode 2 as it was in episode 1. This time, instead of being mecha-based and serious, they managed to get a perfect split. Half of the episode centered around the token villain for the series, along with his hot chinese assassin twins, who may or may not be engaging in the time-honoured art of twincest. I’m hoping for more of that. Meanwhile, the other half of the episode involved Sousuke / Chidori antics a la Fumoffu, which is most definately not a bad thing. So far it looks like the decision to take the FMP franchise out of Gonzo’s hands has looked to be an extremely good one - the fumoffu team can do serious stuff just as well as they can side-splitting comedy.
Gundam Seed Destiny ep 40 was pretty disappointing. I think they’ve basically given up and stopped trying now. This series has turned into utter dogshit, we’re now getting solid gold quasi-Gundams which have just been lying around in convenient locations, and just happen to be on a similar tech level to the latest suits, which are two years more recent. Seriously, what is this shit the writing team are smoking? Seed was just as blatant at its merchandising, but this has gone beyond blatant merchandising. We’re basically getting 30-minute toy commercials now. I’m still going to watch it until the end, but I fully expect it to suck hard.
A couple of days late, but here’s another boring update from Negs.
I haven’t been very diverse with my anime watching recently. For the most part, I’ve been watching Hajime no Ippo, which I’m getting close to finishing now. Very enjoyable series, would recommend it to anyone who likes the style.
I just watched Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu (UFO Boobs) ep 4. Another enjoyable installment, though it looks like things are getting a bit nasty for the cast now. It’s reminding me a lot of Saikano. Normally that would be a bad thing for me - Saikano is one of the most boring series I’ve tried to watch, far too much melodrama. However Iriya does things right, by establishing a more diverse and interesting cast, and easing you into things gradually rather than throwing it at you and forcing you to swallow. Because of the added development that the characters have gotten, you feel much more empathic towards Iriya. The fact she’s cute - especially with her hair gone white - is icing on the cake.
Kamichu continues to impress with it’s ghibli-esque atmosphere. While episode 3 cut back on the astoundingly detailed character animations a bit, it seemed to have moved that budget into creating lush background visuals. The episode itself was once again excellent, this is shaping up to be one of the signature series of the season. It seems Meyrin will continue it, and I seriously suggest picking up the MKV releases they’ve put out. The video is in massive quality HDTV, 720p (1280×720 frame). The fact that they’re soft-subbed helps a lot here, as the other groups doing hardsubs are forced to re-encode and thus the video is degraded in quality due to further information loss during compression. Considering that there’s very little difference in size, you’d be insane not to go with Meyrin’s. Why stick with antiquated formats like AVI?
Da Capo Second Season episode 2 was also good, though featuring less Kotori :(. I’m really surprised with this, by all measures it should be terrible but somehow it isn’t.
Ichigo Mashimaro has been pre-licensed by Geneon USA, so the only subs we’re seeing at the moment are from underground groups. ICE-CREAM would be my pick at the moment, and I’m not just saying that because I know the guys. Read my rant above about MKV. The first episode was good, though it seems they’ve changed Nobue’s age to 20 because of her smoking habit. Fucking censors.
Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid also screened last week. I watched the raw, currently waiting to see which groups (and I guarantee there’s going to be lots) end up subbing it. My pick at the moment would be SD, translation wise, but I’ve heard that their video quality is less than impressive. This is a well-animated series, and it’s in HD, so sub-standard video quality isn’t ideal at all.
Finally, last week’s Gundam Seed Destiny was a bit of a surprise. While I can’t get over the new OP (whoever okayed that should be SHOT) the episode itself was extremely good. It also had an almost complete lack of Destiny characters, relying on the original cast. It had Lacus actually doing things, and it had Andy kicking ass. Strike Freedom is absolutely fucking ridiculous though. Freedom wasn’t powerful enough, they had to add more guns and a funnel system, making it the bastard offspring of Freedom and Nu. They’ve basically burned through the entire UC tech tree now, to boot, since Destiny’s ‘Fairy Magic’ engine is quite reminiscent of F-91.
I watched all of Da Capo ages ago, back when it was new and fresh. While I enjoyed it, I wouldn’t really consider it to be that good. Additionally, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an eroge / dating sim adaption where the second season wasn’t terrible. So, in short, I was expecting this to suck hard. It doesn’t. If it continues along this line (more Kotori ;)) then it looks like it’ll be a keeper. Still nothing stunning by any standard, but not a bad watch.
Shinsen have subbed episode 1.
Yeah, originally I wasn’t going to cover this series, as Negs had already done a well enough job of it himself. But y’know, I’m sitting here at work with nothing to do, I’ve got time to kill, and I really enjoyed it to the point that I might as well at least give it a quick, full-series review. What could it hurt, really?