It seems that the guys over at Revolve who are currently hard at work translating Tsukihime have finished proofing their translation. Now all that’s left is finishing their scripter which will re-insert the text into the game and some testing to make sure everything worked correctly, and we’ll be playing Tsukihime in English. Can’t wait. 
Monthly Archive for August, 2005
I’ve just caught up to where the fansubbers are up to with this series. While it did seem for a while like they were mucking around with useless filler for a good portion of the opening episodes of the series, around episode 9 the plot finally began to kick in. It built up even more in 10, and 11 really took off. This is looking like it’s definately one to keep an eye on.
Also, Anemone is awesome.
In the entirety of the Japanese anime and manga industries, one would be hard-pressed to find many titles that genuinely have the same overall standing as Lupin III. A true classic, the franchise has been going strong since the 1970s, and remains as thoroughly entertaining today as it ever has. To date, the exploits of Lupin, Jigen, Goemon, Fujiko, & Inspector Zenigata now span a total of four manga series, three TV series (228 episodes total), six movies (one being live-action), three OVAs, and a new feature-length TV special released every year without exception since 1989. I recently managed to acquire one of these TV specials by way of Froth-Bite’s fansub of last year’s edition, Stolen Lupin. Having not seen anything of the Lupin franchise beyond its late-1970s offerings, I was quite interested in seeing how well it had aged since the days of Cagliostro and the height of the second TV series’ run. Bluntly put, I was pleased with what I saw; Stolen Lupin manages to provide more of the same great comedic action that we’ve come to expect from the Gentleman Thief over the years, and it still remains as fresh as ever.
Been watching quite a bit of anime recently. I’ve already mentioned Banner of the Stars III, so I won’t talk about that again other than to say it is now available subbed. Rumor has it that ANBU managed to convince their old translator Crustol out of retirement to do it too, haven’t seen it yet so I can’t vouch for that information.
Previously I’d been glowing about Da Capo Second Season. It certainly started extremely well. Unfortunately, the recent episodes had far too much Aishia and not enough Kotori, and kept repeating the same plot - Aishia tries to convince Jun’ichi to teach her magic by performing annoying hijinks. One episode of this crap was enough, but they decided to do it three times which has really hurt the final product.
Conversely, I’ve found that SHUFFLE has really grown on me. I was pretty ambivalent at first, I actually gave up halfway through episode 3 thinking it was garbage. Gave it another go, and it’s really not that bad. I’ve certainly seen worse. I hear that episode six (released this morning by Froth-bite) has a double helping of Primula, which is a very good thing. I still have some reservations about the show though - for one, some of the voices are extremely irritating, especially Kaede. My other main issue is with the similarity in the names - we have a Rin-sama and a Rin-chan and a Rim-chan. Extremely confusing.
I finished all of Hajime no Ippo. By ‘finished’ I mean ‘watched in awe as Ippo struck the final blow’. Fucking awesome series, A++++++ would watch again. If you’re looking for an action-based Shounen series, then this would definately be one of the first you should check out.
Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid continues to be impressive. I’m finding I’m enjoying it a lot more than the first series - giving the license to Kyoto Animation seems to have been a great thing. I’m not sure how close they’re following the books (can’t be too close, apparently in the book the Chinese assassin twins were guys) but I really don’t care. If they continue to put out episodes at this level of quality then it’ll be one of the best shows of the year.
Kamichu episode 4 was released a couple of days ago by the ADTRW guys, who have now teamed up with iichan. This episode was pretty wierd though, involving a martian that looked like a gigantic pink gelatinous penis. Maybe I’m just imagining things though. Either way, it was incredibly cute as usual, and the fact that it’s delivered in 720p HDTV without being recompressed (I <3 MKV) is a major bonus.
I was convinced by the #marimite crew to check out Eureka 7. Only gotten three episodes so far (I STAB AT THEE, TELSTRA) but I’m really liking what I see. BONES stuff seems to alternate between being weak and being excellent every other series, and this appears to be one of the higher points. It remains to be seen whether it hits the same level of quality as Fullmetal Alchemist - it’s quite possible, but I doubt it. Will definately be watching more of this.
Since I’d basically run out of new anime last night, I decided I should dig through my collection of older stuff that I’d archived and not watched. Feeling the desire for some Fantasy, I picked out the first thirteen episodes of Fushigi Yuugi. Ages back, I’d been given the whole series and had only watched episodes 1-2. I recall that I wasn’t that impressed at the time, probably because I was expecting something a bit darker and more mature. My gateway shoujo, way back, was Ayashi no Ceres, which was originally penned by the same author, Yuu Watase. I still have very fond memories of AnC (incidentally, it also started me down the path of Ayako Doctrine). Anyway, since I was really wanting something a bit longer to watch to replace the void that Hajime no Ippo (and Inuyasha before that) had left, I thought ‘why not’ and sat down, intending to watch another one to two episodes. Next thing I knew, it was 3 am and I was on episode ten. I think I’m addicted. Seriously, it’s not that great, but it sure beats a lot of the tripe being produced in the last year or so.
Banner of the Stars III is finally out. The first DVD released yesterday, and I’ve just finished watching the first raw. Really good, pretty much completely drama. I’m just writing a quick entry here though, because this is a pretty dialogue-heavy OAV and my spoken Japanese isn’t good enough to pick up all the nuances yet. Anyway, it contained lots of Lafiel, and that is never a bad thing.
