Having finished blogging ep 3, I’m moving straight on to 4, as I want to catch up to roughly where everyone else is. Since it’s pertinent here, I thought I’d share my usual approach with these episodes. I get and watch the raws when they release - my command of spoken Japanese is good enough to follow it, assuming there’s no complicated dialogue. I then watch the subs (Static-Subs is my subber of choice for this) once, then watch again as I blog. I think this three-pass approach gives me a chance to notice a lot of things that I wouldn’t normally pick up in a single run. Anyway, Otome episode 4. Once again, no pictures unless needed - you can find those on just about any anime blogger’s site at the moment. I’m far more interested in content.
EDIT: Added Nagi’s impressions.
Continue reading ‘Mai-Otome - Episode 4′
Last week I was incredibly busy finishing off my degree. With that out of the way, I decided to wait for SS to release Otome 4 and blog the two of them at the same time, especially given that they run together quite nicely. However, just blogging ep 3 has taken me quite a while, so 4 may be a half-day or so coming. I’m aware though that a lot of aspects of these episodes have already been discussed. I haven’t read much of said discussion, though, so I may touch on a few things that haven’t come up elsewhere. No pictures again, except where they’re relevant to the discussion - look on other blogger’s sites for screencaps, I can’t be bothered.
EDIT: I have added Nagi’s comments about this episode to the end of this entry, making it even longer and more likely to provoke a tl;dr response. 
Continue reading ‘Mai-Otome - Episode 3′
Blogging about Mai-Otome once more. Two weeks in a row, something must be wrong. Basically this time Nagi and I were discussing it over IRC. Given that our comments are kind of all over the place, I thought it was probably best if we post separately. Unfortunately, wordpress isn’t designed with multiple people writing one entry in mind. Anyway, I’m personally really enjoying this series so far. I think one of the great things about it is that its predecessor proved that, unlike most anime, the predictible event is not always what transpires. They have a history of not taking the soft option, and that lends itself to far more in the way of debate, discussion and speculation. Once again, I’m not going to summarise the episode (people have done that already) but instead discuss and speculate.
Continue reading ‘Mai-Otome - Episode 2′
Well, by now most people are at least aware of this quasi-sequel, and have probably seen the first ep. I’m not going to do the usual summary blog, because I’m pretty sure that almost everyone has done it already. Instead, I want to actually have a bit of a discussion about the actual things we see in the episode. Needless to say, this will likely be full of spoilers for both the first episode of Otome and the bulk of Hime. No pics due to lack of time - I might add some later.
Continue reading ‘Mai-Otome - Episode 1′