Nodame Cantabile finale Opening Ending

Magician (KIM Sarae) Chapter 54 55 56 57 58 59 560 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

2011-06-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

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Considered by some to be the best volume of the Hellsing TV series, volume two certainly packs a bigger bang than some of the others. The series comes to a head with this release, ramping up the action and what's at stake (pun intended) for the main characters. This volume is made unique mostly by the episodes involving the Valentine brothers, certainly the most interesting villains the show has to offer.

College student Takuto Kaneshiro only wants to be with his sweetheart Maki, but she spends most of her time working on a secret government project to revive a giant alien being which crash-landed on Earth recently. So when Maki taps Takuto to help in the experiment, he reluctantly agrees. Unfortunately the attempt to revive “Frank”, as the creature is known, backfires with disastrous results, and Takuto is the only survivor. Frank escapes and forms an unlikely bond with a young Montana girl named Hattie, who bears a striking resemblance to Maki.

Blood Alone Chapter 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

2011-06-27T05:01:00.003-07:00

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There's a mole inside the Hellsing organization, and they've been leaking classified information to the press. Walter discovers a snuff video on the Internet that features someone wearing a Hellsing badge; naturally, Alucard is on the job. The vicious and hedonistic Valentine brothers also make their appearance, launching an attack on the Hellsing organization that will rock Sir Integra's important Round Table meeting to its very core!
Hattie and Frank are then taken into the custody of FUNERAL, a military group in charge of defending the planet from alien attacks. Takuto assumes the alias Ryu Soma and joins FUNERAL to get close to Frank and wreak his vengeance on the monster for destroying his life. But when giant aliens show up to ravage the planet, Ryu must team up with Hattie and Frank to save the day.

She's Scary Chapter 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

2011-06-27T05:01:00.002-07:00

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Those who have become enamored of anime through recent bright, sharp-looking digital animation may not find a relic like this one to be much to their tastes, but fans of older anime and more open-minded individuals looking for a light, generally entertaining diversion that requires no long-term time commitment may want to check this one out. It certainly shows its age, but also shows that entertainment value endures.

Argentosoma is the latest in a long line of “Secret Military Organization versus Giant Aliens” shows. You'd think after so many years this anime cliché would be dead on its feet, but the creative staff at Sunrise has managed to once again work wonders with the old familiar setup. Argentosoma's premise is nothing new but it is an extraordinarily well put-together show, and there are enough creative spins on the formula to keep things interesting. Aside from some horrendous character designs and a really stupid closing theme, this is solid entertainment.

Bokura wa Itsumo Chapter 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

2011-06-27T05:01:00.001-07:00

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Each of the DVDs beyond the first gets shipped in only a paper sleeve, with the expectation that the DVDs will be stored in the case which comes with the first DVD. They also lack any sound or visual quality upgrades, which should result in those with higher-definition TVs noticing distinct picture quality issues. The subtitles contain regular grammatical errors and occasional naming errors; references to a prominent historical Italian family in one episode should be “Medici” and not “Mesichi” (itself a bad interpretation of what the characters are saying), for instance.

The series skips around quite a bit at first but gradually weaves its separate threads together over the course of these first five episodes. Starting with Takuto's disastrous experiment, the story then jumps to the little girl Hattie and her encounter with the giant Frank. From there we go to the agents of FUNERAL, and then the convergence of the three parties. Along the way there is plenty of characterization, and the audience gets to know who these people are, not just what they do.

Yoru Made Matenai Chapter 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

2011-06-27T05:01:00.000-07:00

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The pricing of the series is very economical: $12.99 for the first DVD with storage case, $9.99 for the rest, with an $82.99 complete set also available. You get what you pay for here, however, as these are cut-rate productions. The first seven volumes lack even trailers, much less any other Extras, though volume 8 does include a clean opener and art and design galleries. The original Japanese credits are retained with a translation separately on the DVD, but that feels like more of a cost-cutting measure than respect for original artistic integrity.

Takuto/Ryu's quest for revenge is complicated by Hattie's friendship with the monster and soon enough the two are reluctant allies as Hattie's ability to control Frank becomes a key element in staving off further alien attacks. The contrast between the anger-driven Ryu and the innocent girl gives the show a lot of edge, and the supporting cast is great fun, particularly the mysterious Shakespeare-quoting benefactor who gets Ryu into FUNERAL.

S Kareshi Joujou Chapter 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

2011-06-27T03:56:00.003-07:00

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In the end, MeltyLancer is a completely forgettable piece of animation. The DVD provides all the usual special features that come on an anime DVD: a textless opening and closing, a list of terms, some mechanical designs, and a special video segment. Bandai hasn't announced any plans to bring the video game to America, and after watching this series, I can't imagine it being worth playing. There's plenty of good science fiction anime available now; there's no reason to watch this.

Most of the episodes are stand-alone tales only thinly connected by a vague plot thread about the sisters needing the artworks to look for clues about their lost father. The status of their father never gets resolved by the end of the first season, and for most of the series just lies in the background as a convenient way to give the girls more honorable motives that just stealing for profit.

Sengoku Strays Chapter 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

2011-06-27T03:56:00.002-07:00

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Despite the generic production design, there is a considerable amount of eye candy to be had here, and if you're a fan of Gonzo, you may want to give this title a rent just to see them at their best when backed by a colossal budget. The dub is serviceable, but as with many dubs, it's hard to tell the females apart when they're speaking off-screen. You can't blame the voice actresses for that, since almost every anime female in every series is Around 17 to 25, and there are only so many voice styles to go around. The two younger females in the cast sound like the same obnoxiously high-pitched woman in her late 20's who's struggling to sound like a little girl is voicing them. It's nearly impossible to tell them apart.

The typical episode involves the planning and execution of some kind of heist mixed with action, making a fool of Toshi in some way, and a smattering of Hitomi and Toshi's relationship hijinks, although some episodes, such as one where Toshi recovers a medallion dropped by Cat's Eye and seeks to return it to her, do get a bit more involved. The episodes of the first season mix their exact format up enough that the series offers a good variety and never feels entirely formulaic. (This is a problem often attributed to the second season, however.) Most episodes also prove surprisingly entertaining.

To Find My Brother Ara Chapter 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

2011-06-27T03:56:00.001-07:00

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That isn't to say that MeltyLancer is completely devoid of quality. It's an OVA series, animated by Gonzo on a very high budget, and the result is visually impressive. Despite the generally dull look of the show, the animation itself is fluid and very well done. The CG work isn't bad either; consider this show is pushing four years of age, and CG work has only improved in those four years. The DVD transfer is undeniably crisp and presented beautifully.

Production values are typical of other TV series of its era. Its animation actually looks good in some shots but the shortcuts taken are too painfully obvious in others, especially in any scene intended to show some kind of depth. The exact body proportions of the sisters vary a bit over the course of the series, with Ai in particular looking much broader in some scenes than others, but in general the character designs portray the sisters as solidly-built young women who look satisfyingly sexy in a swimsuit or leotard. Hitomi is by far the prettiest of the lot, and the bespectacled Inspector Asatani also could turn a few heads, but the other sisters have their appeal, too.

Miunohri to Swan Chapter 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

2011-06-27T03:56:00.000-07:00

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The villain, a showboating, bratty redhead, looks exactly like Tira from Bakuretsu Hunters. In short, there is nothing in this series that hasn't been done a hundred thousand times before in nearly every other science-fiction anime available on the market. Nearly all anime is derivative, but most other series inject at least a modicum of creativity and attempt to look like more than an amalgamation of other popular shows.

The series is not shy about giving the sisters a wide array of clothing changes, and indeed at times seems to be using its female characters as fashion plates. Those used to the sharper and more refined drawing and coloring of recent digitally-crafted series may find the grittier look of this one to be drab by comparison, but by the standards of its time it actually looks pretty good. While the first season does include some fan service and even a little bit of nudity, such content accounts for only a handful of brief scenes out of 36 episodes and one James Bond-like outline in the opener. The series focuses more on being generally sexy than outright fanboy-pandering.

Asu no Yoichi Chapter 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

2011-06-27T03:55:00.000-07:00

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The design of the mecha, the space ships, the cursory characters, the costume design--everything is utterly forgettable and looks like it was lifted out of several similar-looking anime titles. There's even a magic-using girl whose costume seems to have been dug out of the dumpster after the production of Saber Marionette J; she shoots down enemies with rainbows from her magic wand. There's also a requisite catigrl, a character type that's apparently required by law in any Japanese video game that features anime-style characters.

The Japanese script requires its seiyuu to overact at times to account for its characters' exaggerated reactions, but overall the voice work suits the series well. The involved, heavily-synthesized soundtrack likewise can get excessively dramatic at times, but generally also does a capable job of backing the visual content and would probably appeal to fans of early '80s music. Its opening theme “Cat's Eye” by Anri was one of the first anime songs to be a J-pop hit, and it retains popularity to this day due to its remix's inclusion in a recent edition of Dance Dance Revolution. Closing theme “Dancing with the Sunshine,” which is sung primarily in English, offers another partly-choreographed dance number.

Silver (FUJITA Kazuko) Chapter 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

2011-06-27T03:45:00.001-07:00

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By day the three Kisugi sisters – wise older sister Rui, athletic Hitomi, and high school technical genius Ai – operate their café Cat's Eye. By night, however, they team up to create the notorious cat burglar Cat's Eye, who specializes in stealing objets d'art, always leaves a calling card, and regularly succeeds despite always announcing her intended theft to police before it happens. Their thefts are not without purpose, as they seek clues in the artworks about the disappearance of their father Michael Heintz, himself a prominent artist.

The plotline is pretty basic: a team of hyper-talented female cops, each with a different specialty, is called together to defeat a band of space pirates that's been stealing DNA from endangered species. Science fiction is a genre in anime that's been mutated a thousand times, and this series seems like the long-lost cousin of the unpopular and forgotten Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko. But it lacks the creativity and mild entertainment that even Yamamoto provided. It's difficult to describe just how generic this series is.

Toraware no Minou Chapter 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

2011-06-27T03:45:00.000-07:00

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It also relies on Toshi being relentlessly stupid and unintuitive in not making the connection between his girlfriend and Cat's Eye, especially given that she helps operate a café of the exact same name and Toshi gets to see Cat's Eye from behind on multiple occasions. To the series' credit, though, the sisters do often comment on his lack of wit and the sometimes-buffoonish behavior of the other inspectors. They also have enough individual personality to avoid being purely stereotypical or one-dimensional, especially the moody and temperamental Hitomi, who receives the lion's share of the screen time.

Team MeltyLancer, a team of the top-rated policewomen in the Galaxy Police Organization, has been disbanded. Something's not right in the galaxy, though, and a band of space pirates have been stealing endangered species from across the universe and thieving their DNA. Their purpose is unknown, but since several members of the MeltyLancer team are considered “special” specimens, they're in serious danger of becoming part of a most nefarious science experiment!

Billion Girl Chapter 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

2011-06-27T03:44:00.002-07:00

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Based on a manga by Tsukasa Hojo (likely much better-known to American fans as the creator of City Hunter), Cat's Eye originally aired on Japanese TV beginning in 1983, racking up 73 episodes over two seasons before coming to an end midway through 1985. Though it aired on TV in several other countries over the years and is widely-considered a classic by Japanese fans, its lack of an English dub has long limited its penetration into the American market, leaving the title little-known by any except ardent fans of old-school anime.

MeltyLancer was a big project for Bandai about three years ago. They released a video game and this OVA series, titled “MeltyLancer: The Animation.” Both incarnations enjoyed modest success in Japan, but never really caught on in America with fans. It's fairly easy to see why; MeltyLancer is routine, unimpressive, and in the end, downright lame.

Antique Romance Chapter 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

2011-06-27T03:44:00.001-07:00

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In 2007 ImaginAsian Entertainment acquired the series for broadcast on their cable TV network, airing the first season in subtitled form beginning in June and releasing the series on subtitled-only DVDs beginning in July. At the time of this writing all 36 episodes of the first season are available spread over eight DVDs in a 5/5/5/5/4/4/4/4 release pattern, with a release of the second season promised if sales of the first season are good enough to warrant it. At this time, however, no official announcement has been made on that.

As a general rule, anime series that are based on video games are disappointing. The various Street Fighter and Vampire Saviour anime series available have been met with disdain from fans of both the games and anime in general. Since MeltyLancer isn't based on a long-running, credible video game franchise, it comes across as being horrifyingly generic. The cast of characters, assembled seemingly at random, consists entirely of hyper-competent, intelligent girls and a few inept and/or evil men. The female cast, obviously the focus of the series, is entirely forgettable.

Bowling King Chapter 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182

2011-06-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

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Cat's Eye could reasonably be described as a cross between Lupin III and the original '70s Charlie's Angels TV series; in fact, given that its manga began serialization in 1981, it would be too much of a coincidence for both of those series to have not had a decided influence on this one. Despite its lack of sophistication, it is a mature, sexy series aimed at least partly at adults, one which can occasionally be serious but more often turns silly. The series frequently depends on improbable circumstances and massive contrivances to make its schemes work; in one episode, for instance, “Cat's Eye” and Toshi fall into an abandoned well when he tackles her during a chase, and Hitomi only avoids her identity being discovered because Toshi conveniently goes temporarily blind from the fall.

There's practically no fanservice in the series, which is highly uncommon for a show that's based on a game and focuses entirely on a cast of cute girls. It's as if the screenwriter didn't know he had crafted six utterly uninteresting characters, and then wrote a screenplay that focused on the bland personalities of these characters instead of giving the intended audience what they probably wanted, which was cheesecake.

NOBARA NO HANAYOME Chapter 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

2011-06-27T03:31:00.003-07:00

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When creative types try to create stories about foreign cultures, they often end up fudging things along the way—but with Hotel Africa, we have a Korean telling a story of an American life ... and actually succeeding. The secret of her success? Focus on the characters and their stories first, and let the world develop around them. The rugged Utah desert and the humble furnishings of Hotel Africa are simply backdrops for something much more powerful: the forces of love, family, and friendship.

But for all that, the series is still able to beat back senescence with its sense of humor, breaking out enough little tweaks and off-the-wall comic inventions to keep its entertainment value largely intact. Jokes are allowed to cross episodes to become short-lived running gags (a privilege not extended to the plot), an approach that reaches its apotheosis in a silly winter sports showdown in which two essentially unrelated half-episodes are joined together by a series of amusingly overlapping disasters.

Pure Love Labyrinth Chapter 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

2011-06-27T03:31:00.002-07:00

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This volume's $12.99 price is justified by its premium treatment: a surprising 16 pages of glossy, full-color art at the front, plus a larger-than-normal print size and over 250 pages of content in total. Clearly, this is not your average commercially-produced work, and the unique publishing format confirms that.
These themes are universal to all cultures, and the story's unique setting makes it all the more fresh and striking. It was a ten years well spent for Hee Jung Park, because the end result is a collection of stories that truly touches the heart.

The series' eye for hilarious sight gags (Keroro's confection-barfing dango machine) and bizarre parody (Keroro casting himself as the Little Match Girl) remains unerring—enough on its own to ensure that, even with their success rate sputtering, a sufficient number of jokes smack the funny bone upside the head to keep the show consistently fun.

Sora Log Chapter 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

2011-06-27T03:31:00.001-07:00

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More beauty can be found in the eloquent writing style of the series—this may be one of the few times where there's a lot of text on the page and it's not a bad thing. Whether it's because the text translates really well, or just that Park is a superb writer, the dialogue and narration in this book is a step above most other comics and manga. Sound effects, meanwhile, don't come up very often (this is about as far removed as it can get from the action genre, after all) but most of them have been translated into English. One still finds the occasional Korean sound effect in the art, but it doesn't really affect the reading experience.

As the series' focus shifts a bit away from pure humor, it experiments more with other facets of its signature look. The Valentine's Day episode cranks the show's cuteness up to warp factor ten, the final episode dabbles in melancholy atmosphere, and more than one episode channels the series' frenetic energy into sci-fi action that wouldn't be out of place in the continually-referenced Gundam. ...If you discount the fact that it is performed by ridiculous frog aliens. And therein lies the series' genius. The sight of frog aliens doing galactically dumb sh** never gets old, be it Keroro posing as a "lovely and cute" kappa, Giroro going colonial, or "Magical Girl Kululuko."

Kurohime Chapter 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

2011-06-27T03:31:00.000-07:00

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The layouts and visual storytelling are a bit less dramatic, though, with stately rectangular panels leading the way. There are some departures from the norm—Chapter 9, "Geo's Story," is drawn in an entirely freeform layout—but with story and character being uppermost, the panels try to avoid being too flashy or confusing. Even within these prim and proper rectangles, though, the artwork is still a beauty.

Indeed, such sight gags are the series' backbone. It may be glossy and unusually well animated for an endless comedy, but it's that eye for the composition, execution and timing of sight gags, as well as the unflagging energy with which it throws them at you, that elevates Sgt. Frog above its peers. Well, that and the return of the Kogoroader.

Zennou no Noa Chapter 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

2011-06-27T03:30:00.000-07:00

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Park's artwork isn't necessarily groundbreaking, but it is certainly beautiful, combining touches of old-school shoujo with stylish, modern lines. Each character design is unique, with Elvis's dark skin and dreadlocks being the most distinctive of all: in fact, his biracial background is brought up a couple of times in the story, adding even more depth to the character. The renditions of the Utah landscape are also a strong point in the artwork; the rugged rock formations and wide expanses are as striking as any fantasy world in the comics medium.

It has an energy and life that the company's more conservative dubs sometimes lack, fuelled by a continually brilliant turn by Todd Haberkorn (as Keroro) and consistently enthusiastic work from a team of veterans who manage to ape their Japanese counterparts even as they take a wrecking ball to their personalities and dialogue. It can still feel a little arch, and does not handle the serious episodes well (it generally tries to steer them into comedy territory with massive doses of self-derision), but it is undeniably fun.

Houou Gakuen Misoragumi Chapter 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

2011-06-27T03:22:00.000-07:00

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And without tears of laughter to blind us, the show's major shortcomings are only too obvious: the repetitious nature of it, the sometimes uncomfortable tension between its wholesome messages and frivolous treatment of them (particularly in English), the way it occasionally lets Keroro torture Natsumi so long that it gets weirdly sadistic.

Elvis Spillane is a young man trying to break into the film industry, along with his friends Ed and July. The life of a twentysomething slacker has its ups and downs, but that's nothing new to Elvis, whose unusual childhood was spent growing up in rural Utah, raised by his mother and grandmother in a bed-and-breakfast called Hotel Africa. While spending time with his friends, Elvis reflects on his childhood memories: the travelers who passed through the hotel, the ways they touched his life, and how he might have touched theirs.

Delinquent Cinderella Chapter 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

2011-06-27T03:21:00.003-07:00

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Taken in conjunction with the premise's loss of freshness, this has the inevitable result of making the series less uproarious than it initially was. Its family-friendly messages of friendship and responsibility take point ever more often, extending into episode-long riffs on laziness and the bonds that tie families, even makeshift ones involving froggy invaders, together. Gag density goes down and those that remain, particularly the ones reliant on familiar character shtick, fall flat more often.

Hee Jung Park says it took ten years to publish the first volume of Hotel Africa. As it turns out, the gestation period was worth it—this is a unique work that successfully blends short story, memoir and personal drama. And who knew that a foreigner could create such a striking portrait of the American heartland? In fact, it barely even feels like a comic; the writing and characters are so well-developed that it reads more like an illustrated version of a modern literary novel. Fortunately, it won't take as long to finish as a novel, although readers will probably still be wanting more by the time they get to the end. That's where the advantage of being a serialized work comes in: unlike a typical novel, Hotel Africa has more volumes to come.

Monkey High Chapter 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

2011-06-27T03:21:00.002-07:00

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In short Sgt. Frog has become hugely predictable. Each episode is ruled by laws that are as immutable as any that Newton formulated: Any serious turn will be undercut at the eleventh hour by a gag that zeroes out any growth or change. No character ever violates the sanctity of their basic personality. Keroro always gets his comeuppance. And there is nothing in the universe that cannot be resolved in the space of a single episode.

But before thinking too far ahead, let's look at the content of this volume. The first few pages are quick to introduce the main characters, and from there it slips into flashback mode and tells a brief tale of Elvis' childhood. That's basically the formula for each of the 24-page chapters in this book—show a brief scene from the present day, and then tie it into a memory—but it turns out to be an amazingly powerful formula.

Yumemiru Taiyou Chapter 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 363 7 38 39 40 41 42 43

2011-06-27T03:21:00.001-07:00

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The series has finished introducing new cast members, who have in the interim grown so familiar that a child could map their relevant personality quirks. And its reliance on holidays and Japanese traditions for in-episode plot structure has become so total that it could easily be sub-titled "An Alien's Guide to Japanese Culture."

By picking out key moments in the characters' lives, each chapter is able to deliver maximum emotional impact, while also revealing more about them: the long-term hotel guest who became like a father to Elvis, the relationship between July and the nanny who raised her (a genuine tearjerker of a chapter), and even something cute like Elvis' first boyhood crush. These scenes from childhood are all touching in their own way, and by connecting them to the characters' present-day adult lives, the series also comes with a sense of continuity.

Look for Oppa! Chapter 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

2011-06-27T03:21:00.000-07:00

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At this point in the series any reasonably attentive viewer, and most inattentive ones, will know everything there is to know about it. Its basic structure is metronomically invariable: Keroro and his platoon hatch a hare-brained plan (to make money, conquer the world, get Natsumi to stop beating him) that goes well for a while before self-destructing in some spectacularly Keroro-abusive way—all within the compact confines of a single half-episode.

However, as with any short story collection (even one with a recurring set of characters), some efforts turn out better than others. The chapters that involve passing travelers at the hotel aren't quite as impactful as the ones that involve the main cast—sure, they still tackle those big, heart-stirring issues like love and family and death, but when it involves characters that only show up once, it doesn't connect quite as powerfully.

Darren Shan Chapter 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

2011-06-27T03:12:00.002-07:00

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A-1 Pictures' animation reflects that confusion. Not that it's sloppy; not by any stretch. It has its shortcuts and flaws, of course. A little stillage here, some awkwardness there—few television series are without them. But it maintains superior quality throughout, be it in something as flashy as the CGI fireworks that accompany the aerial spellcasting or as modest as the unusually complex ways that Maya and her compadres' faces and mouths move.

For anyone who is wondering, yes the story does actually end here. Scriptwriter Jukki Hanada ties off every relationship in the ongoing manga as neatly as he can, and there is, believe it or not, a measure of finality in the show's ultimate conclusion. Of course, closure will be of little importance to anyone who finds the series' brand of shamelessly fake romantic comedy irritating. And be warned, many will. But for those who can weather it, or thrive on it, there's a glut of sugary reward awaiting.

Battle Angel Alita Last Order Chapter 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

2011-06-27T03:12:00.001-07:00

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Over the course of the next three episodes it veers between supercharged magical action, maudlin pseudo-romance, gothic atmospherics, broad physical comedy and clunky sentimentality without so much as a thought for how they complement each other. No cleanly escalated climax is this, with it's fake-out endings and gear-grinding shifts in tone; it's a lumpy mess of mismatched moods that never works as a whole and only occasionally works during discrete scenes.

And that, in honesty, is more important even than the spindly character designs or the colorful backgrounds or the striking use of Scrooge-friendly shortcuts in fights. After all, in S.A's fantasy manga world, blatantly unnatural delivery is natural, obvious musical cues fit right in, and Three Stooges sound effects are perfectly normal. In any other context any one of those would be a deal-breaker. Here, they're just part of the ambiance.

Kuroko no Basket Chapter 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

2011-06-27T03:12:00.000-07:00

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The final confrontation between Maya, Bunmei and the Black Witch (who likely borrowed her costume from someone in Witchblade) uses solid animation and rich background artistry to combine visceral action and dark atmosphere with a skill that the rest of the series really could learn from. And the love the animators have of certain things—Maya for instance, or architectural demolition—shows in the care with which they handle them. For all its technical prowess, though, the series never achieves anything approaching stylistic unity. It looks, as well as feels and sounds (thanks to an equally unfocused if periodically rockin' score) like a random collection of stylistic elements.

Perhaps more important, however, is his use of angular thick-lined SD, speech bubbles, hugely exaggerated expressions, arrows, soft-focus impact scenes and explosions of abstract sparklies to evoke the active yet flat look of a shojo manga. It's comic booster fuel of a fine grade, but also encloses the story in a manga fantasy world, which makes its sugary fakeness a lot easier to swallow.

Happy! manga chapter 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134

2011-06-27T03:11:00.001-07:00

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Never has the series been so focused or (the horror!) sensitive. Naturally it's followed by a three-episode magical apocalypse. Whiplash aside, the finale includes some suitably spectacular action set-pieces, including a running fight between a truckload of students and a pair of goggle-eyed granny demons and an extended duel between a couple of spell-flinging witches. It also squeaks a few real emotions past one's growing disgust at what it is doing to Maya and horns in an excellent little joke about the practical applications of Bunmei's Maya-instigated pain tolerances.

Through New Year's and Girl's Day and Valentines the mission of the Keroro Platoon remains the same: conquer Pekopon, AKA Earth. And their methodology remains constant as well: total incompetence. Glory in the might of the Keron forces as they turn themselves into living pieces in a high-tech board game, hatch a scheme to hijack Valentine's Day from the chocolate manufacturers, and, naturally, build robots fashioned after Earth's most powerful being: Mom Hinata. And all to no avail. After all, how can you subjugate a people when you keep befriending them? And they keep enslaving you?

Issho ni Neyou yo Chapter 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

2011-06-27T03:11:00.000-07:00

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The shame of it all is that if it weren't for the implosion of Maya's once formidable presence, this wouldn't be a bad stretch of episodes. Not terribly good, mind you, but not bad. The end of the UFO diptych is exceedingly silly (hint: Chupacabras!), but the ghost girl arc is a compact little tearjerker that finds the series finally in control of its extended short-story structure. It is at turns warm, amusing, and sadly beautiful.

With forty episodes under its belt, Sgt. Frog is finding it rather more difficult to take us by surprise. Which is not unexpected, but nonetheless bad news for the series' laugh factor. Though not as bad of news as it could have been. Even if it can't ambush your funny bone the way it once did, Sgt. Frog still has enough invention in it to secure it a place as one of the more consistently funny long-running comedies around.

The World God Only Knows Season 2 Episode 1 subbed

2011-06-22T00:56:00.000-07:00

sequel of (The) World God Only Knows (TV)

Alternative title:
Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai (Japanese)
神のみぞ知るセカイ (Japanese)

Genres: comedy, romance, supernatural
Themes: moe, ren'ai, school life, spirits

The World Only God Knows II Episode 1

The World Only God Knows II Episode 1 part 2

Boy's love (BL) has one of the most rigidly and instantly recognizable narrative formulas of any manga genre: 1) Boy meets boy. 2) Boy resists boy's aggressive romantic overtures. (Alternatively or additionally, boy secretly pines for other boy.) 3) Boy learns that his feelings for boy are mutual. 4) Boy lives happily ever after in arms of boy. The best storytellers working in genre fiction are those able to take a narrative formula like the one above and stretch or distort it in novel, creative ways that nonetheless remain recognizable to those familiar with the genre. Fumi Yoshinaga is one of those storytellers, and in Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law she shows us why she is both master of the BL genre and plenty capable of so much more.

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Despite the recent improvements in the storyline, the series still wallows in average-to-decent artwork that slavishly follows convention. All the main characters are graced with soul-swallowingly huge eyes, and the only way to tell Sora and Daichi apart is by keeping track of "the light-haired one" and "the dark-haired one." Then come the visually busy backgrounds where screentone patterns are shoved into just about every available white space, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

The colorful and diverse cast always gives the viewer something interesting to watch, and the clever writing skillfully juggles the action, comedy, and assorted timelines without needlessly confusing viewers. The one place in this volume where the series falters even a little is in Claire's tiresomely long-winded explanation of his psychotic view of the world on top of the train in episode 12, although his conversation with Czeslaw also wears thin fast; in fact, the series seems to bog down just a bit whenever he's on screen doing anything but killing. By contrast, Ladd, who's just as psychotic and lethal, always enliven things with his dialogue as much as with his actions. He may be a crazy, bloodthirsty bastard, but at least he's entertaining anytime he's on the screen.

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Nature may abhor a vacuum, but does grade-school shoujo have to be the same way? Yet somehow, by some act of artistic magic, the layouts are still easy to follow compared to other works in the genre—the backgrounds may be overly decorated, but you can always tell which panel to read next and which character is talking. With 30-40 pages per chapter, there's plenty of room for those big, emotionally charged scenes—especially the cliffhanger where the main storyline leaves off.

(Is it any surprise that Isaac and Miria are unwittingly integrally involved?) How Ladd and Lua ended up off the train along the railway in episode 1 also gets explained, as does how Czeslaw ended up with his head blown off, what really happened in the engineering compartment, who or what the Rail Tracer really is, what happened to the young woman with the bandaged leg who got off the train in episode 2, and why Chane is mute. Some big issues still remain to be resolved, such as how Chane also ended up off the train, how Ennis managed to detach herself from Szilard and get in tight with several other characters, who Claire is coming to New York to kill, and what ultimately happened to Dallas. (Both the opener and a certain earlier scene in the series allude to this, however.) Some fun has to remain for the final episodes, though!

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Simple, straightforward dialogue is another key to the series' ease of reading. All right, so maybe the characters wear their emotions on their sleeves a little too much—everything boils down to "I like you" or "You are special to me"—but it's still better than being painfully vague. A glossary in the back helps clear up any cultural points, mostly specialty foods that are mentioned in the story. But the real bonus material, of course, is the collection of recipes based on the desserts featured in each chapter, and even total beginners can have a go at the microwave cupcakes.

With this volume the disparate threads scattered across the three main time frames gradually start coming together and the gaps between the teasing shots of later events and the circumstances which brought them about start filling in. Viewers knew as early as the first episode that somehow certain mafia members became immortal, and by the end of episode 12 exactly how and when it happened, as well as why it happened, should be much clearer.

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2011-06-13T01:09:00.001-07:00

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There have been times when Kitchen Princess' potential for success seemed questionable: was it going to devolve into a pointless back-and-forth love triangle? Was the heroine going to get locked into an endless tournament of increasingly difficult recipes? Fortunately, these doubts have been washed away by the events of Volume 5, which is loaded with twists and revelations: the true motives of the school director, the role of Najika in the competition, the story behind her parents, and of course, the cliffhanger that will have devoted readers waiting with bated breath for Volume 6.

The story, by contrast, continues to be nothing but pure fun, despite darlings Isaac and Miria having their most limited appearances to date. They once again make the most of their screen time, however, whether it be a daring rescue, their not-so-innocuous way of searching for a speakeasy's office (and thus safe), or their propensity to gleefully seek to steal from hardened mafia members and the ridiculous ease with which they are able to pull it off. When they are on the screen, things happen, and usually things which give an entirely new twist to the events otherwise playing out normally.

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Baccano! is one of the most entertainingly complex series to come along in quite some time, but it certainly can be graphic. Volume 3 stands proudly with the great anime gorefests with scenes like two different characters experiencing an arm disintegrating from impacting with railroad ties under a fast-moving train, a little boy (who isn't a little boy) literally getting his head blown off, Szilard devouring one his victims in a thoroughly gross manner, or Ladd stomping around gleefully in the midst of a literal bloodbath. Episode 9 in particular is not recommended viewing while eating.

The Gunsmith Cats' latest case finds the girls in pursuit of counterfeiter Jim Macks, who has hired Rally's sometimes-ally Bean Bandit to deliver the ink and paper lifted from the mint to his underworld print shop. Misty decides to "break the rules of the game", so to speak, and steals Bean's car, along with the keys to the goods. But there are other, less-noble individuals after the instant fortune, and Misty soon finds herself and Jim Macks captured by a ruthless mob family. Rally must once again team up with getaway-driver extraordinaire Bean Bandit if she wants to get Misty back alive. As usual, heavy gunplay and high-speed chases are the surefire result.

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In 1931 aboard the Flying Pussyfoot, conductor Claire Stanford (actually the assassin Vino) takes on the identity of the Rail Tracer and goes on a messy rampage. Czeslaw Meyer tries to make a move, but finds himself painfully thwarted in his efforts to ferret out the other immortal on the train. Ladd goes hunting for the Rail Tracer, only to find something even more interesting in the mute, knife-wielding Chane Laforet. Jacuzzi's team and the black suits also make their moves against each other, while Daily Days agent Rachel tries to help everyone who isn't trying to kill everyone else. And, as normal, Isaac and Miria find themselves caught in the middle.

Najika Kazami went to Seika Academy's culinary school with a dream: to become a master chef and to find the "Flan Prince" who saved her life when she was a little girl. Now that her classmate Sora has revealed himself to be the Prince, the dream has come true—except that Sora's brother Daichi has also expressed his feelings for Najika by stealing her first kiss. Amidst these distractions, Najika must come up with dessert ideas for a nationwide competition. What she doesn't know, however, is that Sora and Daichi's father, the director of the Academy, has a very good reason for wanting Najika to succeed in the competition ... a reason that could destroy her trust in Sora.

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In New York City in 1930, Szilard Quates makes his move to recover his stolen immortality elixir, using Dallas Genoard and his crew as both test subjects and flunkies. When Isaac and Miria unwittingly get involved, however, plans always go awry; in this case, several people end up immortal who were never supposed to be that way. (And some aren't even aware of it!) Firo also gets involved when he and Ennis cross paths again.

Yakitate!! Japan for girls? Maybe! All right, so Kitchen Princess doesn't quite have the insane humor of everyone's favorite breadmaking saga, but Volume 5 shows that it contains all the other essential ingredients for a great cooking series. The Confectionery Competition goes into full swing here, and with it, all the technical challenges, competitive tension, and mouth-watering sights that make cooking contests so much fun. But the personal side of Najika's story is not forgotten: her relationships with Sora and Daichi continue to waver up and down, while the school director's intentions add a whole new set of problems. But the single most stunning moment in the book is that one end-of-the-last-chapter cliffhanger that proves this is more than just another fluffy cooking series.

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2011-06-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

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If the first two volumes worked for you then so will these, but if neither of them worked for you then these will not, either. If you have held off on watching this series, whether because you just have not gotten around to it or because you don't think its style would suit you, you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try. Whether you like it or not, this is one of the year's best.

Admittedly, the previous volume was kind of a romantic polygonal mess: too much jealousy and bickering (and something about a watch), and not enough of the culinary spark that made it interesting in the first place. Fortunately, this installment totally puts the "kitchen" back in Kitchen Princess, with Najika looking for a solution to the next round of the baking contest. This is the volume where you will learn how shortbread cakes differ around the world, how to kick castella cakes up a notch by applying Japanese ingredients, and (in the side-story chapter) how to make cupcakes out of a microwave. It may not be a wild plot twist or a striking new character, but these pockets of culinary creativity do add to the story in their own way.

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2011-06-13T01:02:00.001-07:00

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For Extras, both volumes include the standard textless opener and closer, accompanying booklet with character profiles and sketches, and pair of Mushi-Shi postcards. Both also have two more parts of the “Mushi Talks” Director interviews. In volume 3, Part 4 focuses on the sound direction, while Part 5 focuses on the filming. In volume 4, Part 6 deals with music direction and Part 7 concerns opener direction. These can be quite enlightening and should be considered must-views by dedicated fans of the series. Both volumes also come inside cardboard slipcovers.

What about readers who care more about the characters than the food, though? Not to worry. The excitement of the competition is enough to propel the story through first couple of chapters, but then deeper stuff comes up when Sora and Daichi's dad arrives on the scene. The school director's media manipulation techniques cast a darker tone over this story arc: Najika discovers her true purpose in the competition and must face the memory of her parents, while Sora's integrity is called into question as he must choose between family allegiance and the girl he loves. But just as things seem to have settled between Najika and her boys ... then comes the cliffhanger that plunges the series into a whole new world of tension and promises more drama to come.

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2011-06-13T01:02:00.000-07:00

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Extras-wise, this volume is graced with a pair of very lively interviews, one with Kaori Shimizu (Akira) and the other with Yukari Fukui (Sara).

As School Rumble grows into its role as a romantic comedy (i.e. its romance gains equality with its comedy), the series' one draw grows ever stronger: from the moment the words "School Rumble" come spinning onto the screen, you know you're in for two hours of undiluted good times. And really, it'd be churlish to demand anything more.

Unfortunately, that's the point where the side story comes in and takes up the last 40 pages. It's an irritating bait-and-switch that diminishes the quality of this volume: after all, the main story is finally starting to go places, and one more chapter would have really hit the spot. Instead, we get some light fluff that harkens back to the catty classroom rivalry of the first two volumes.

make anime Directing the Story: Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation (Paperback) by Francis Glebas

2011-06-13T00:43:00.001-07:00

Directing the Story: Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation

That mood also carries through the voice acting in both dubs, as the number of times in these eight episodes that characters actually raise their voices can probably be counted on one hand. That doesn't allow much room for expressive acting, and on top of that the English dub is even more dedicated to maintaining the atmosphere than the Japanese dub. The one-shot performances encompass a myriad of normal Funimation and ADV dub actors, from old-timers like Tiffany Grant to prominent newcomers like Brittney Karbowski, and will neither excite nor disappoint in most cases. In this case, though, it is probably more important that a given performance doesn't stand out.

Tempered and considerably mellowed by his one-sided romantic ordeal, Harima returns to school life just in time to desperately weasel his way into a group trip to the beach with his beloved Tenma. Unfortunately the group includes wimpy romantic rival wannabe Nara and a gaggle of other interfering bodies, not the least of whom is Harima-hating Eri, whose disposition towards the reformed delinquent has soured considerably since Harima accidentally propositioned her. Harima being Harima, the trip to the beach transforms into an enormous romantic misunderstanding (no thanks to the world's worst mishandling of accidental nudity), and Tenma being Tenma, she takes everything the wrong way, adding waves to already turbulent waters. Only this time Harima may not be the only victim.

make The Japanese Grill: From Classic Yakitori to Steak, Seafood, and Vegetables by Tadashi Ono

2011-06-13T00:43:00.000-07:00

The Japanese Grill: From Classic Yakitori to Steak, Seafood, and Vegetables

The background art and mushi designs do impress, but the true visual appeal lies in how the series frames its shots, uses its special visual effects, and combines everything to promote a certain effect; one of the Extras on volume 3 reports that about 80% of the series was re-shot in pursuit of just the right look, and that attention to quality control shows. The gentle musical score flows smoothly out of the English language opener and into the closers without a hiccup or change in style, along the way gently punctuating key moments and evenly promoting the spiritual tone and subdued mood.

Humor still reigns supreme in the land of School Rumble, this volume providing such comedic delights as generic-loser-guy Nara (whom the series snidely refers to as "the person who would normally be the main character") learning the terror of hitting on a buffed-out delinquent's sweetheart and Harima dragging his relationship with Eri to new lows with some extremely ill-timed nudity (a moment that ranks among the funniest moments in recent memory). The writers glory in new ways of making Harima's love-life even more miserable—the end of episode fourteen being a particularly cleverly choreographed disaster—and adding new characters to perpetuate endless romantic entanglements and the humor they spawn doesn't rankle since the expansion of seemingly incidental characters like Ichijo and Imadori into larger roles is one of the series' many small joys. The humor is heavily dependent on the dunderheaded stupidity of its cast, which is actually kind of charming in its own way.

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2011-06-13T00:42:00.002-07:00

Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals

As mentioned before, the artistry and music function more to craft a unified whole than impress individually, creating a beautiful overall package which absorbs its minor flaws without being weighted down by them. The character designs never impress but nonetheless suit the style of a series more about plain, ordinary people trying to live their lives than flashy individuals trying to do great things.

As the series gains confidence and the characters worm their way solidly into the audience's good graces, School Rumble gets bolder in its explorations of more explicitly serious material. There's always been a melancholy tint to the humor thanks to the impossibility of the series' many crushes (everyone, it seems, is in love with exactly the wrong person), but this time the series is bold enough to abandon humor altogether for considerable periods. The story about Hanai and Mikoto as children is sweet and uncharacteristically serous, Eri's reaction to Tenma's theory about Harima's love life is telling, and a short chapter about Yakumo trying to find a cool place to rest is almost lyrical in its relaxing simplicity. More surprising than its occasionally somber tone is the series' success in such endeavors. Too often dramatic ambitions are bad for a comedy, but School Rumble's characters command enough sympathy to pull it off, and the writers know exactly when to cut the sentimentality short with a sharp laugh.

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2011-06-13T00:42:00.001-07:00

Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook

While no episode in this span ever completely fails at being compelling, their effectiveness varies. Some feel rushed in working all of their elements into a single 24-minute episode, or end too quickly; this is a particular problem with “Clothes That Embrace The Mountain.” The episode “Picker of Empty Cocoons” is the most gimmicky but still has its moments, while “The Sleeping Mountain” and “One-Eyed Fish” arguably make the strongest impressions. The average story quality is slightly lower in volume 4, but those episodes are still better than most stand-alone fare.

The series' look is all cheerful prime colors and pretty girls (yes, a beach episode means oodles of swimsuit-clad flesh). The animation is still more remarkable for its timing than its movement (which tends to be heavily shortcut-ed whenever things get too busy), but a few judicious computer effects are on hand to add visual spice to this volume, and some of the combinations of CG effects and background art during the serious bits, specifically a mirror-surfaced rice paddy during Hanai's flashback, are almost incongruously striking. The score is unusually restrained, highly enjoyable, and still most memorable for its guilty-pleasure opening and ending themes.

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2011-06-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

The Asian Barbecue Book: From Teriyaki to Tandoori

Those who can get into the spirit of the series will find several captivating stories about ordinary people's interaction with phenomenon beyond their comprehension, ones which Ginko can try to help them understand and live with. The mushi, as portrayed here, are neither good nor evil, neither outwardly benevolent nor inherently malicious, although they can be dangerous and certainly have both positive and adverse effects on those who get too closely involved with them. Dealing with them is like dealing with nature; there are no foes to be defeated here, just creatures to be understood and compensated for. That storytelling approach incontrovertibly set the series apart from all of the brighter and flashier anime series out there.

Aside from the usual troubles with honorifics and naming conventions, surprisingly little (for Funimation) is changed in the translation of the series to English. The dub isn't above spicing things up here and there, and there are more than enough changes, some of them of questionable necessity, to turn off purists, but most of the time it delivers exactly what the original did: good comedy, solid drama, and loads of fun. The comic timing could still use a little work (although it does seem to be improving), but the addition of some new jokes in the incidental background dialogue balances things out (says the male half of a poolside couple to his beau: "Wanna come and watch me work out?")

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2011-06-13T00:29:00.000-07:00

The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics

Even with the aspects of the series that make it sub-par at times, Love Hina still has a large fan base, and it's understandable why. Despite the downfalls of the series, it's still entertaining at times, and when the overdone chaos dies down, there are calm moments in which the characters can bond closer together and learn more about one another's pasts. If anyone wanted to get into Love Hina, the random nature of the series makes it possible to just jump into the series midway through without missing a beat. With three more volumes to go, people who have already started collecting the series should be assured that the episodes do get much better. Besides, every good thing has to have its slumps every once in a while.

While the quality of the series may be inarguable, its entertainment value is very much subject to debate. So much of its ability to involve its viewers depends on acceptance of the low-key, spiritual tone that some are going to find the series intolerable, and volumes 3 and 4 do nothing to change that. Those who prefer an ongoing storyline of some sort, or like to become attached to characters over the long term and watch them grow, may also find it hard to connect with the series, since nearly every episode is completely independent of the others and the only recurring character – Ginko – never develops much beyond his base persona.

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2011-06-13T00:28:00.002-07:00

Writing for Comics and Graphic Novels with Peter David (Writing for Comics & Graphic Novels)

One pleasing aspect of the series that stays true in this volume is the beautiful background work. With gorgeous pastels and almost quasi-Impressionistic landscapes, the backgrounds render the artwork in the series as absolutely beautiful. Just the calm mood that the backgrounds impart gives the series a refreshing air that makes one forget how incoherent the plot actually is. The animation itself is rather choppy though, but considering the characters are always moving so much, it isn't as noticeable as it is when they simply walk down the street. The one nicely animated part of the series is the way the characters' facial emotions change. The transitions between emotions are smooth, and are drawn exceptionally well, enhancing the fast pacing of the series.

That Mushi-Shi is a unique series of extraordinary merit is beyond reproach. To deny this is to refuse to acknowledge that the series has done something truly different. By melding its music, visuals, voice work, and storytelling into a unified whole, it spins stand-alone stories of sublime beauty which speak to the essence of life and death in a style which harkens back to ancient fables told around a fire at night. The serene mood it establishes, even when dealing with the fantastic and/or dangerous mushi, can wrap a viewer up in its wonder. It can also, unfortunately, bore viewers unable or unwilling to slide into the comfortable place the series constructs, and can get tedious if too much of it is watched at once.

make manga by Marcos Mateu-Mestre Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers

2011-06-13T00:28:00.001-07:00

Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers

This disc continues the tradition of previous volumes of including a brief omake at the end of each episode. Like installments past, these omake are amusing, informative, and quite racy. No extras—except previews—are included outside of the omake.

Mai-HiME is simple, rock-solid entertainment, no more, no less; and while on the surface disposable, this particular set of episodes serves as a springboard for later developments and is awash in important details, so watch carefully.

As for the dialogue tracks themselves, the Japanese actors perform just as well as they normally do. The chaotic and frantic atmosphere of Hinata Inn is articulated well in their voices, which are able to transition faithfully between sad overtones, angry screaming, and giddy happiness. The English dub, on the other hand, is rather mediocre. The actors themselves perform decently, but the casting is horrendous. Kitsune, with her southern Japan dialect, is cast with a Palmetto Southern voice, which some viewers may find grating to the ears and mind. With bad casting coupled with only-adequate acting, the English dub is as far removed from a Tour de force as possible.

make manga by Shawn Martinbrough How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling

2011-06-13T00:28:00.000-07:00

How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling

Praise is in order, however, for the female actors, who generally speak in a lower, more natural register, which prevents the female-heavy cast from devolving into the unnatural screechfest it might have been had they attempted to match the exact tones of the Japanese voice actresses. Voice actors are also generally well cast, although Mikoto ends up losing her feral edge in the English version. It's also refreshing to see the increasingly standard substitution of the Kansai dialect with a light southern drawl, a practice light-years beyond the complete standardization of years past.

Those in volume 4 include “Pretense of Spring,” about a boy thrown into a hibernating state by his winter encounter with mushi that mimic spring; “Sunrise Serpent,” about a woman whose mushi infection causes her to gradually lose her memories; “Picker of Empty Cocoons,” about a twin sister lost in a mushi-related accident; and “Clothes That Embrace the Mountain,” about a man who left his home mountain behind to become a famous painter, only to be drawn back years later.

make manga Vanishing Point: Perspective for Comics from the Ground Up (Paperback) by Jason Cheeseman-Meyer

2011-06-13T00:26:00.000-07:00

Vanishing Point: Perspective for Comics from the Ground Up

Bandai's dub fares poorly in comparison to the cast of Japanese veterans and prominent up-and-comers. The original performances were highly dependent on slight shifts in tone, timbre and emotion, many of which fail to make the transition, and the emotion overall is dampened by the slightly lackluster delivery. Very few liberties are taken with the translation, except where necessary to match lip-flaps, but the accuracy comes at the sacrifice of flow, resulting in some awkward dailogue.

Eight more stories of the mushi master (aka mushi-shi) Ginko's journeys across the land and his encounters with assorted mushi play out, including “The One-Eyed Fish,” which involves the circumstances that led to Ginko adopting his name and becoming a mushi master himself. Others in volume 3 include “The Sleeping Mountain,” concerning a fellow mushi master who serves the guardian of a mountain; “The One-Night Bridge,” concerning a young man whose beloved fell through a bridge into a ravine and survived, but has behaved abnormally ever since; and “Inside the Cage,” about a man who seems unable to leave the bamboo forest he has come to call home.

make manga by Will Eisner Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative (Will Eisner Instructional Books)

2011-06-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative (Will Eisner Instructional Books)

Really, the whole package is just a container for the parts. It contains some very nice pictures of gothic angels in lolita dresses. The idea of Undertaker, the redeemed soul who purifies suicide victims, is interesting and could have been taken a bit farther than it was. While this manga is billed as a romance, don't look for too much romantic interaction between the main characters. There isn't any. The characters are too distant to connect with, and at the end you don't care about them any more than you did in the beginning. In the end, there are far better manga about bored Heaven dwellers that you could read instead.

Composed as it is, from an apparent swamp of been-there-done-that anime story elements, how does Mai-HiME find firm ground from which to take off? In a word: competence. Extreme competence in all areas of execution. It's simply superior entertainment at every level, and by dint of this, every constituent of the show flows together into one mightily satisfactory whole. How else do you describe a show that can take the standard "everyone goes to the beach!" episode and manage to sneak romantic entanglements, character back-story, some plot hints and illumination of dark conspiracies in between all the swimsuits and comic misunderstandings? The show may know when to slow down and have some fun, but even while spinning pure fluff it's never standing still; even the entirely disposable cake competition serves as the basis for darker developments later on.

make manga by Will Eisner Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (Will Eisner Instructional Books)

2011-06-13T00:08:00.001-07:00

Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (Will Eisner Instructional Books)

The quality of the release is standard for publisher Tokyopop. There are only a couple of disappointments. For one, the sound effects are left untranslated, which is always sad; if they don't need to be read, then why would the creator include them? The second is the lack of extras; in a story this short, no extras means a scandalously thin book. A few extras would have made the package a little more appealing.

Virtually every character gets a little bit of the limelight in nigh-on every episode (although you may have to keep a sharp eye out for some of them), all without ever feeling crowded, rushed or forced. Juggling a cast of this size without letting any of them drop is no mean feat, yet Mai-HiME manages to make it look effortless. The ability to write episodes that seem like simple filler, while inconspicuously seeding them with important portents and subtle developments is a skill that, while not as flashy as composing bombastic explorations of the human psyche, is no less difficult or praiseworthy. The plot may only begin to kick in in episode 11, but the preceding episodes are no waste of time.

make manga by Jessica Abel Drawing Words and Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond

2011-06-13T00:08:00.000-07:00

Drawing Words and Writing Pictures: Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond

The look for Earth was I think intended to be “dark and gritty,” but that really just applies to the inking job. The backgrounds on earth are so dark that they are mostly just globs of black ink floating behind the characters, and when they are discernable, the quality is truly poor. It isn't much of a problem, as backgrounds rarely show up at all, and when they do are limited to a church and graveyard that are frequently reused.

And additionally, throughout it all—from the fan-service fluff to the creature smackdowns and hand-to-hand battles—runs a thread of pure psychological unpleasantness that lends everything a highly becoming edge. Tate and Mai continue to emotionally abuse each other and themselves; Shiho shows the first signs of an unbecoming catty streak; Miyu demonstrates the ugly flip side of her devotion to pint-size Alyssa; Shizuru begins to let slip signs that she's not nearly so simple or easy-going as she lets on; and Sister Yukariko's weakness and insecurity begin to undercut her devotion to God.

draw manga Alan Moore's Writing For Comics Volume 1 by Alan Moore

2011-06-13T00:07:00.001-07:00

Alan Moore's Writing For Comics Volume 1

The art in R.I.P. is gorgeously detailed on the characters. Each detail, from ringlets of hair to rows of ribbons is brought out and defined. They look consistently great, which is impressive considering that almost every character changes outfits every couple of pages. The clothes are fantastic; again, Mihara seems to have built the whole story around angels in gothic dresses. The backgrounds are not nearly so nice, however. Mihara takes advantage of the Heaven setting by filling all those scenes with fluffy cloud backgrounds, which is boring, and a bit of copout.

Sunrise's art and animation for Mai-HiME are the same quality as the writing, not extraordinary, yet subtly impressive. Extra care is given to the animation of character's expressions, allowing one narrow-eyed glance or unhealthy grin to carry a disproportionate amount of meaning. Characters for the most part move fluidly through their surroundings. The staff also takes time to occasionally animate non-essential background characters, a rarity in most anime. Nevertheless, the obvious recipients of the animation budget are the action scenes, full of enough smooth movements, striking imagery, and outrageous acrobatics to match the rising stakes of the fights.

write manga by Will Eisner Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (Will Eisner Instructional Books)

2011-06-13T00:07:00.000-07:00

Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (Will Eisner Instructional Books)

The main story is a bit more interesting, but it doesn't really pick up until the second half of the book. Undertaker obviously wants to die for a reason, but Rose doesn't care enough to find out what that reason is until halfway through. The mystery surrounding his death, and the death of his girlfriend, is the best portion of the story, and it is a shame that it is hidden in the back of the book.

The art hasn't changed since the beginning: Mai is as stunning as ever, and the supporting cast is literally rife with character designs that look good enough to eat. The colors are bright and eye-catching, and distinctive, complementary color schemes are used for all of the major characters. Backgrounds and settings are all well rendered, with special mention going to the nicely atmospheric crumbling ruin that the disc's climactic battle occupies. The Orphan designs are still kind of generic, although the beasties used by the Searrs Foundation have a more angular, mildly inorganic appearance that sets them apart from your run-of-the-mill monsters.

read Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics by Paul Gravett

2011-06-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics

Another downfall of this volume that decreases the value of the series is the complete lack of coherence or consistency in the plot. While the randomness in the earlier episodes still had a background plot that tied them together, these four episodes are farfetched and outlandish beyond reason. For example, Naru becomes a pop idol in one of the episodes, only to have that incident never to be brought up ever again. With the main element of humor gone, and the story line rendered useless, this volume of Love Hina is one of the worst in the series.

The back cover of R.I.P. calls the creator, Misukazu Mihara, “Goth Loli Queen,” and it seems that the whole point of this one shot story is to prove her artistic skill in that department. The whole thing feels like the framework for her to hang a lot of goth loli outfits and hairstyles on. The plot, characters, story, and everything else seem a bit secondary, which is a shame, because the idea of the story has a bit of merit. Unfortunately, that merit is hidden under angsty men and dresses with too many ribbons.

read Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga by Frederik L. Schodt

2011-06-12T23:53:00.002-07:00

Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga

Love Hina is one of those series that is able to provide mindless entertainment that is enjoyable to watch either alone or with friends. By the ninth episode, however, all the quirks of the series that made it appealing in the first place are beginning to get very old. It's time for a change. The humor in the series revolves mainly around the slapstick angle of the girls resorting to random bursts of unjustifiable violence. This, unfortunately, stops being funny after a while, and renders some of the girls extremely stupid, hen-pecking, paranoid, and annoying. They don't listen to reason, they have no patience… in short, some of the girls make the viewing experience a truly exasperating one.

The story opens on a couple of angels sitting up in heaven, being bored. If you have religious sensibilities and they are easily offended, prepare yourself. The Japanese interpretation of Christian philosophy is always interesting, and this story takes it in a childlike direction. Here, there are sweet, gothic angels, who refer to a bishounen-ized Jesus as Papa, and lounge about in a palace of Greek pillars nestled in clouds. Seeing Jesus in any manga is rather creepy, but after the shock has worn off, the whole scenario is kind of sweet.

read Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott Mccloud

2011-06-12T23:53:00.001-07:00

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

In the background is the animated head of the director talking, accompanied by dubbed clips. Overall, the format of the interview is very colorful, highly tacky, and painfully gaudy, making the viewing experience only tolerable for any brief insights he might have on the characters. Another extra is the character photo gallery which, although small, is fun to look at. Another bit of packaging fun comes with the DVD insert and cover, the former featuring a fold-out “guide” to Shinobu, and the latter being reversible to reveal shots of Naru as a pop idol.

The characters are all interesting, if not flat out weird. Transylvanian Rose is no exception. She is about as attractive as her name implies. This is one ugly character. It's nice to see some variety in character designs, but she seriously looks like Gloria Swanson at her worst. She is also a fairly annoying character, very loud, self-centered and careless. There really isn't much to like about her, other than her fantastic wardrobe.

read by Scott Mccloud Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels

2011-06-12T23:53:00.000-07:00

Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels

As Love Hina kicks into the third DVD release, it's just as weird as ever, and the hijinks are just as crazy as they were before. Released by Bandai Entertainment, the DVD includes four episodes as well a few extras. Among these is an interview with the director Yoshiaki Iwasaki. Normally, this would be a very helpful and exciting extra. In the format that Bandai put it in, however, the tiny pearls of wisdom that could be garnered from watching it aren't even worth half the time watching it. The interview features an annoyingly condescending female voice over that makes it seem like a children's documentary.

She turns Phony Brian (another weird name) into an angel on a whim, because she supposedly takes a liking to him, but she is terribly inconsiderate of him through the entire story. The rest of the characters are attractive, and a little more likeable. Phony Brian, or Undertaker, is annoying with his repeated attempts at suicide, but is an otherwise agreeable character. The bit characters are all pretty and distinctive, which is about as much as you can ask for from bit characters in a one-shot story.

read by Scott Mccloud Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form

2011-06-12T23:52:00.000-07:00

Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form

Mysteries abound in this volume of Love Hina as the characters have to figure out who stole the rent money from Keitaro's room. On top of that, there's a mysterious woman who keeps appearing in the town. For some reason, Su's also acting strangely, transforming into an older self under the moonlight.

Looking good is about as far as those characters go, however. Undertaker gets an introduction to angeling through a few side stories where a restless soul must be cleansed. The problem with these chapters is that they are too rushed. They are just too short. Basically they see the soul, the soul tells its story, and Rose purifies it. It isn't climactic or dramatic at all. The stories are a little petty, also, like the lady who is stuck on earth because someone copied her shoe designs. It is a little difficult to sympathize with that, and she sounds more like a spoiled brat than a lost soul.

Bleach Episode 315 English sub

2011-06-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

Genres: action, comedy, drama, supernatural
Themes: dark side, developing powers, giant weapons, secret identity, shinigami, spirits, superhumans, swords

ブリーチ (Japanese)
死神 (Chinese (Taiwan))
漂靈 (Chinese (Hong Kong))
블리치 (Korean)

adapted from Bleach (manga)

Bleach 315 http://www.mediafire.com/?v1na867099gyq3l

watch Bleach Episode 315 part 1

watch Bleach Episode 315 part 2

The packaging is nice, but I still don't understand the point of having all of the liner notes on the inside of the insert. It's impossible to access, you run the risk of ruining the cover, and the chapter names are not easy to get at. (They don't help much anyway, as the chapters are kind of unevenly distributed.) The Japanese cast is not noted anywhere in English -- not on the video or the packaging, which I found a bit annoying, especially since they make that information available on the VHS subtitled release.

Overall, A Wind Named Amnesia is a great anime that anyone that considers themselves a fan should pick up. Never mind the weak ending or the so-so DVD execution... this is a classic. Hey, it's still just as good as an LD release...

read eng A Certain Scientific Railgun vol 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Kazuma Kamachi

2011-06-09T00:32:00.002-07:00

A Certain Scientific Railgun
Kazuma Kamachi

It has been said that the deep ocean is the true "final frontier"—and no story makes that notion come alive quite like Children of the Sea. Although this introductory volume occasionally drags its feet, it's hard not to get caught up in the flow, as mysteries and curiosities begin to gather like a rising tide. Daisuke Igarashi's penwork shows no weaknesses in rendering the wonders of the ocean, and his understated storytelling guides the plot forward seamlessly.

If you make it through The Stone of Gelel and find yourself thinking “hey neat” on occasion, consider yourself fulfilled. That is the most anyone, outside of hardcore Naruto addicts, can reasonably expect from the film. You likely won't remember much of it, but it is a pleasant enough way to spend an hour or two... I think.

read Christopher Hart Manga for the Beginner: Everything you Need to Start Drawing Right Away!

2011-06-09T00:32:00.001-07:00

Christopher Hart Manga for the Beginner: Everything you Need to Start Drawing Right Away!
Christopher Hart

Since the dialogue sticks to conversational simplicity, a one-page glossary in the back covers all the points of Japanese that need to be understood in this volume. Collectors will also appreciate the color pages, cover flaps and 300+ page count that make this edition worth the price tag.

Five years ago Mari Wakatake lost everything, even her memories, when a freak tsunami struck her home island and killed everyone else. Since then she has lived with, and been home-schooled by, her grandmother, but now Grandmother has sent Mari to attend Kaio Academy, a prestigious all-girls boarding school that Grandmother once attended herself. Once there Mari quickly becomes fascinated with classmate Hagino Senkōji, the school's idol and model student, but she soon learns that Hagino is much more than what she appears and later learns that Hagino has some big secrets in her past, ones which directly involve Mari.

read Scott Pilgrim, Vol 4 3 2 1 Bryan Lee O'Malley

2011-06-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

Scott Pilgrim, Vol 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
Bryan Lee O'Malley

As a tale that hews close to realism even when unreal events occur, there's plenty of casual, matter-of-fact dialogue to be found here. Ruka's snippy conversations with her father take on the familiar tenor of teenage awkwardness, and her encounters with Umi and Sora usually lead to laid-back (if occasionally cryptic) chatter. Even text-dump moments, like the discussion of disappearing fish at the aquarium and some eyewitness accounts of seagoing babies, are presented in a readable manner—the words are never allowed to overrun the imagery.

Hagino (aka Ekaril) and her fellow Arume (an alien race whose members mostly look like young human females) are not the only ones around with an interest in Mari, either; certain officials have long suspected that the tragedy which orphaned Mari involved much more than just a mere tidal wave and that the secret to the incident may lie in her lost memories, so they secretly have their own representative at the school. One of the Arume is also less than satisfied with official reports on what happened five years ago due to the loss of a loved one in that incident. As the Arume ship Blue lurks in the depths off the coast, Mari tries to adjust to her new life and Hagino tries to find the peace of mind which has long eluded her. In each other they may find the answer to their needs.

read Anya's Ghost Vera Brosgol

2011-06-09T00:31:00.001-07:00

Anya's Ghost
Vera Brosgol

The views of the seashore alternate between majesty and intimacy, while the underwater scenes often reach a surreal quality. Of course, that surrealism is enhanced by the exotic species of fish that show up throughout the book (and yes, this guy can draw those accurately as well). Lastly, the widely-spaced panels and fluid character poses give each page an effortless, easygoing feel; this is clearly the kind of story that needs room to breathe.

Blue Drop resembles the super-powered action series Darker than BLACK in exactly one key way: both are far better than they probably should be given the common gimmicks and story elements which lay in their foundations. An amnesiac whose lost memory conceals a dark secret? Budding lesbian love at an all-girls boarding school? Lesbian relationships involving aliens from an all-female planet? A play used as a metaphor for “real-life” events and relationships? Certain aspect of the plot resolution which are too spoilerish to delve into here? Been there, done that many times.

read eng Negima! vol 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 21 20 : Magister Negi Magi Ken Akamatsu

2011-06-09T00:31:00.000-07:00

Negima! Magister Negi Magi
Ken Akamatsu

The other contributing factor to Children of the Sea's uniqueness—and much more immediate in its impact—is the rich, organic artwork. Although it takes a few chapters to really get into the story, there's no such time lag with the visuals, which are outstanding right from Page 1. Daisuke Igarashi doesn't always draw perfectly straight lines, his sketchy cross-hatching occasionally wanders outside the borders, and his character designs aren't exactly marketable or cosplayable—but few other artists can wring so much expressiveness out of pen and ink.

For all that its story elements may be familiar, though, Blue Drop succeeds because its story is much more about the characters than the gimmicks; in fact, the character drama predominates so much that it is easy to forget or overlook those gimmicks. Sure, there is the sci fi element about aliens scouting out the Earth, but their motivations for doing so, and exactly how the Earth could be a solution to their long-term problem, are left rather vague because that aspect of the story is merely a framing device for the rest rather than the main focus. The series does have a few action scenes, but those scenes are more dramatic punctuations than any attempt to enthrall viewers with battle footage.

eng read Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 Hiromu Arakawa

2011-06-09T00:23:00.001-07:00

Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 25 (Fullmetal Alchemist (Graphic Novels))
Hiromu Arakawa

Dub fans will be more than pleased. Though prior knowledge of the franchise isn't necessary to understand the film, Viz still provides an option for pop-up notes that explain the history of each special move and give pointers on relationships and other television-specific information. And it's all stuffed into a heavy book-bound case that also contains a sizable booklet translated directly from material included in the original Japanese release. All told, a package solid enough to be worthy of use by ninjas—or people who like to think that they are.

Ruka's summer isn't off to a great start. She's been kicked off the school handball team, she's not getting along with her parents, and she's got nothing to do all day. That is, until she meets a mysterious boy named Umi with a natural affinity for the ocean. According to the accounts of others, Umi and his brother Sora were raised at sea by dugongs, making them more accustomed to water than land. At the same time, Ruka's father, who works at an aquarium, is investigating the sudden disappearances of fish around the world. Things only get stranger when whales, sharks, and other creatures of the deep start showing up in places they shouldn't be. Could Ruka's new friends be the cause of these unusual phenomena?

read The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya Nagaru Tanigawa english

2011-06-09T00:23:00.000-07:00

The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya
Nagaru Tanigawa

Viz gives the film the kind of lavish treatment one would expect of their flagship title. The two-disc set includes perks like storyboards (half an hour of them), production art, and trailers, along with a nice chat with the director and character designer. A pair of featurettes, one on the movie and Naruto in general, and the other specifically on the process of English adaptation, along with a feature-length commentary track featuring most of the main players (of the production staff, not the actors) provide a nearly exhaustive account of how Viz produced Naruto for an English audience.

To put it simply, Children of the Sea is a supernatural mystery. There are marine biological events going on that might possibly be supernatural, and are certainly mysterious. But such a literal description doesn't begin to do justice to this work, where the element of mystery moves in clever and subtle ways. In fact, based on the first couple of chapters alone, it would be easy to dismiss this as one of those rambling slice-of-life indulgences—and nothing could be further from the truth. As it turns out, there's much more to be discovered beneath the surface.

read eng Bleach, Vol. 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 Tite Kubo

2011-06-09T00:22:00.002-07:00

Bleach, Vol. 35 (Bleach (Graphic Novels))
Tite Kubo

Slight though it is, the movie features a stellar dub. The actors, now long-time veterans of their roles, are impeccable. The English script is as natural and faithful as can be expected, and the dialogue is unusually well-matched with the more detailed lip-flaps of theatrical features. The humor is dead-on, nearly everyone is a world-class pro at bellowing the names of ninja moves, and there's no emoting throwing spanners into the works, so the English version runs smooth, light, and as fun as can be given the substanceless feel of the entire enterprise.

The story begins innocuously enough: ordinary schoolgirl, extracurricular summer activities, a little bit of strolling around the seashore perhaps. This gentle mood draws in the reader effortlessly—if anything, it's the manga equivalent of a soothing summer vacation. But even in these early, idyllic chapters, the stage is already being set for Ruka's grand adventure: her first encounter with Umi comes in dramatic fashion as he jumps into Tokyo Bay, while another critical moment is heralded by the arrival of a shooting star. By alternately contrasting the mundane and the wondrous, this story maintains a strong grip on the imagination, especially in the way it willfully blends the borders between real and fantastic. (Can human children really be raised by dugongs? Well, if you suspend your disbelief just long enough...)

read eng Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 Bisco Hatori

2011-06-09T00:22:00.001-07:00

Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 16
Bisco Hatori

Certain details are allowed to slip through the quality control net—keep an eye on the sloppy movements of Haido's transformed minions—and the only flashes of inspiration are during the fights and one moment that references an important event from the television series. Compared to the wild, unrestrained energy of Spriggan, Gelel is downright insipid, not even good enough to be called a shadow. That Toshio Masuda's quirky, rocking mixture of blazing guitars and traditional Japanese instrumentation is diluted by bombastically stereotypical theatrical action themes does nothing to help.

The introduction of more characters and the deepening of mysteries in the second half make the story even more irresistible, adding new layers of depth at each turn. Even the supporting cast has a fascinating charm—Sora, the sickly wandering child; Jim, the old-time surfer who takes care of Umi and Sora; and the sea creatures who also play a key role. Most importantly, the events of the story become ever more adventurous: Umi and Sora take Riku out into open water, where they witness yet another barely-believable event, while back at the aquarium, bizarre-looking deep sea fish start washing ashore. So exact is the sense of pacing that every single scene seems to flow naturally into the next; there's nothing that stands out as a plot hiccup or a forced moment.

read eng One Piece, Vol. 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 Eiichiro Oda

2011-06-09T00:22:00.000-07:00

One Piece, Vol. 57
Eiichiro Oda

Kawasaki handles the visuals with confidence, keeping human movement fluid and never forgetting the dancelike appeal of martial-arts grace. He uses the forest backgrounds well, and Haido's mobile fortress is pretty impressive. The smooth simplicity of the character designs facilitates their mobility, and Kawasaki is fully willing to resort to flashy digital effects—particularly during the massive destruction of the climax. However, his heart obviously isn't in it.

At the same time, however, this effortless flow occasionally defeats itself—the events of 300-odd pages could probably have been told in 192 if there had been a bit more editing of all those landscape scenes, or moments of Ruka and Umi just walking around, or the conversational snippets that are only peripheral to the plot. But that seems like a silly nit to pick when the languid pace is the whole point of the story's unique feel.

read Body Language (Yaoi Novel) Aki Morimoto

2011-06-09T00:14:00.001-07:00

Body Language (Yaoi Novel)
Aki Morimoto

Extras on the disc include a textless ending, credits, trailers and a very good interview with character designer Akemi Takada in which they reveal fascinating insights into character and story development. Especially interesting are the discussions on Miho's home-vs.-work life and how they tried to break away from the Magical Girl formula.

All in all, Fancy Lala vol. 2 is a good continuation of the story. I'm still hooked and want to see more--if you liked the first volume this is a must-see, and if you've avoided Magical Girl shows until now, you might want to give Fancy Lala a try.

Assigned, like the elite ninja they are, to the task of recovering an old man's pet ferret, Naruto, Sakura, and Shikamaru run up against a young knight. Much yelling and exploding later Naruto and the knight, named Temujin, end up in the same traveling caravan, where Naruto learns that Temujin is part of an exploratory force that lives in a giant mobile fortress. Temujin's master, Haido, a utopian with a draconian ends-justify-the-means philosophy, is searching for Gelel stones—mysterious objects with amazing powers—a search that Naruto can't help but interfere with once he witnesses its ruthless execution. In no time flat, it's ninjas versus knights as Naruto and friends face down Temujin and his monstrous comrades. With a little timely help from their scary Sand Ninja buddies.

read Endless Rain (Yaoi) Yuuya

2011-06-09T00:14:00.000-07:00

Endless Rain (Yaoi)
Yuuya

The best thing about the grab bag of episodes on this disc is that there's probably something to suit most personal tastes—whether that taste runs from to intense philosophical drama to ... comical snowball fights. What will probably not suit anyone's taste, however, is the gloriously sloppy animation that continues to waver between decent and freakish. The characters and situations in XXXHOLiC continue to fascinate, but this is one of those times when the old adage holds true: the source material is still better.

It's one of the nearly immutable laws of anime that any theatrical adaptation of a currently-running series will be disposable garbage. The exceptions are few and far between (The Castle of Cagliostro being the most prominent), and yet somehow the hope is rekindled with each new film spawned by some popular sensation. Only to be cruelly crushed. Welcome to The Legend of the Stone of Gelel.

buy Maximum Ride: The Manga, Vol. 1 2 James Patterson

2011-06-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

Maximum Ride: The Manga, Vol. 1
James Patterson

The dub script takes its fair share of liberties from the original translation, mostly to re-structure a sentence or make an idiomatic phrase work better in English, but one can always switch to subtitles anyway, which are accurate even to the point of honorifics and Japanese food names. Aside from language options, though, there's little else to find on the disc unless you're a really big fan of textless credit sequences or pathetically undersized image (read: screencap) galleries.

Not that Gelel is actively awful. It isn't. It moves quickly and painlessly, inflicting no mental anguish and never embarrassing itself. Though in retrospect, it would almost be preferable if it did. At least then you'd feel something. Gelel is an ethereal wisp of a movie, a ghost of entertainment so slight that memories of it dissolve instantly into nothingness. Aside from some high-calorie eye-candy, it has no substance. It recycles the television series' message of self-actualization and the power of dreams, recycles the characters' established behavior patterns, and recycles the ruthless utopians from dozens of previous anime. The identity of the true villain is obvious from the first slow zoom onto his expressionless eye, and the plot jogs towards its semi-apocalyptic conclusion with listless predictability.

buy Manga for the Beginner Chibis: Everything You Need to Start Drawing the Super-Cute Characters of Japanese Comics Christopher Hart

2011-06-09T00:09:00.001-07:00

Manga for the Beginner Chibis: Everything You Need to Start Drawing the Super-Cute Characters of Japanese Comics
Christopher Hart

Speaking of character, the English dub continues to be marred by one very noticeable shortcoming: Todd Haberkorn's high-pitched overacting as Watanuki. Yes, we know he's supposed to be cantankerous, but doing it in the style of a screaming wailing Nabeshin comedy character just doesn't fit. On the opposite end, Colleen Clinkenbeard's cool-headed Yûko pretty much nails it; the other side characters fill in their roles quite nicely as well.

One can't really blame the staff for the airy nothingness of the film. Working from a continuing series places screenwriters in a strait-jacket where the status-quo must be rigidly maintained for fear of violating the continuity of the series, eliminating nearly all suspense—the cast can't even break character, much less evolve or die. Creating something substantial within that framework requires genius (remember, The Castle of Cagliostro was directed by Hayao Miyazaki). In the absence of genius, the best one can really expect is some superior action.

read Vampire Knight, Vol. 12 13 14 15 16 17 Matsuri Hino eng

2011-06-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

read Vampire Knight, Vol. 12 13 14 15 16 17 Matsuri Hino

Visual inconsistency aside, at least the music gets it right—the combination of light electronic ambience and orchestral grandeur perfectly compliments Yûko's mysterious world. And sometimes, it is silence that speaks the loudest: a tense scene can be made all the more powerful once you realize that the only sound is that of the characters speaking to each other. Suga Shikao's opening song also captures the series' air of enigmatic mystery, with a minor-keyed, jazz-tinged number, but the rock ending by BUCK-TICK is perhaps a little out of character.

Given that director Hirotsugu Kawasaki was the guy responsible for the bone-crunching action extravaganza Spriggan, that isn't an unreasonable expectation. And he does deliver. Gaara fans will be pleased at the ruthlessness with which he dispatches his enemies, Shikamaru's underhanded analytical combat is refreshing, if visually unremarkable, and Sakura's battle is a lightning-fast fistfight with some nifty choreography. The disappointment is Naruto, who never gets a proper showdown with Temujin, and whose final battle with the true villain occurs largely off-screen and ends with a strategic letdown (anyone willing to lay odds that he'll use the Rasengan?).

read Caged Slave (Yaoi Novel) Yuiko Takamura

2011-06-09T00:00:00.002-07:00

Caged Slave (Yaoi Novel)
Yuiko Takamura

As for the dub, it's not awful but not great either--it's about average. I do wish, however, that North American voice actors would learn how to pronounce Japanese names. "Miho" is not pronounced "MEE-Hoeww". But I digress. Some voices are okay, some aren't, and I'd put it about on the level of the Cardcaptors dub. Surprisingly, they even dubbed LaLa's CD single song, but the English voice actress is about on par for singing ability with the Japanese actress, so it isn't too bad.

Kimihiro Watanuki has the ability to see spirits, a skill that is both a blessing and a curse—as well as the main reason he works in the service of mysterious shopkeeper and sorceress Yûko. Not everything is a spiritual matter, however, as one of Yûko's clients turns out to be a young woman with a self-destructive streak. But at least Watanuki can be pretty sure he's dealing with otherworldly issues when he's asked to join an annual Procession of Monsters ... there's just the sticky issue of humans not being allowed. Things can get strange in the real world too, with a snowball fight that comes to life in unexpected ways, and a cursed photo that hides a shocking secret behind its innocuous appearance.

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2011-06-09T00:00:00.001-07:00

Pathos Volume 1 (Yaoi) (v. 1)
Mika Sadahiro

The art is quite good, especially for a Magical Girl series (they have a penchant for VERY simple line work and lots of cel recycling) and the music is quite tolerable (the theme song is cute but insidiously catchy, and the BGM fits nicely). And, most important of all, the comedy is actually funny! Because of the fact that half of Miho's character lives in the adult world, the humor isn't dumbed down for the kids. All in all, it's definitely one of the best magical girl shows out there, and is recommended even if you're not that much of a magical girl fan.

Even the animation itself is an example of not reaching full potential; one only needs to go a few minutes into the first episode to see what happens when animators fumble their way through the show's unusual artistic sensibilities. (Watanuki goes tromping down the street like a malformed man-spider.) And really, it's a recurring theme: the spindly character designs, which look so effortlessly stylish when standing still, become almost nightmarish when put into motion. Even the Monster Procession—with its panoply of colors and literally dozens of unique creature designs—show signs of cutting corners with sloppy linework and jerky motion.

read Manga Moods Saori Takarai

2011-06-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Manga Moods
Saori Takarai

Factor in the often sloppy artwork, and it's hard to imagine sticking with this series for the humor (which keeps falling flat) or for the visuals (unless one enjoys checking out overdressed rockers and tubby middle-aged men). Yet there are still signs of hope, signs that Kiminori Wakasugi has some crazy ideas up his sleeve that will remind us why we fell in love with Detroit Metal City in the first place. If Johannes Krauser II ever needed a comeback, it's now.

The fifth disc of XXXHOLiC shows, all at once, what makes this anime so great and yet so disappointing. On the one hand, the idiosyncratic characters and tone of the series allow it to approach a variety of genres: human drama, fantastic folk tale, even light spots of comedy. On the other hand, that kind of variety—along with the lack of a continuous plot—makes it difficult to find a cohesive center. Of course, some of the blame can also be placed on the source material; the manga doesn't hit any major developments until the chapters that would eventually be adapted into xxxHOLiC: Kei. What these episodes do offer, however, is a stylish and distinctive world, filled with stories about the mysterious ways of spirits—and the even more mysterious ways of humans.

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2011-06-08T23:59:00.001-07:00

Manga for the Beginner: Everything you Need to Start Drawing Right Away!
Christopher Hart

At this point in the series, Detroit Metal City seems to have turned into one of those albums that one comes to dislike after having listened to it for too long. There are still some tracks that withstand repeated listening, but the amount of filler has become too much to bear—often resulting in the urge to skip. Volume 5 is just too full of chapters that go nowhere, jokes that stopped being funny two volumes ago, or jokes that don't come off as jokes as all.

No episode explores the mysterious ways of humans better than the first one in this set: the appropriately titled "Self-Mutilation," about a girl who repeatedly sabotages her own life in order to avoid success and happiness. If that doesn't sound like anything from the manga, you'd be absolutely right; this episode is actually an adaptation of NISIOSIN's "OuterHOLiC" spinoff short story. Because of that, perhaps, it is also more cerebral than the typical XXXHOLiC outing—the grand climax is an intense philosophical discussion between Watanuki and Yûko, which, although it worked decently in prose, actually comes out in animation as deadly boring. Fortunately that's offset by the visual delights of the Monster Procession episode, where Watanuki and his rival Dômeki travel through a folklore-inspired otherworld. Although scant on story and character depth, the art and design alone are enough to impress—as well the the always-comical interaction between the two boys.

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2011-06-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

The Monster Book of Manga: Draw Like the Experts
Estudio Joso

A lack of subtlety is also the guiding principle for the dialogue; the script holds nothing back when it comes to off-color language and sexual content. Things get even wilder with the variety of fonts used to emphasize the characters' lines, but don't expect anything profound here—it's mostly the shock value and inappropriate subject matter that make the dialogue entertaining. Meanwhile, the sound effects reach their own levels of outrageousness: this translation replaces all Japanese characters with English text, resulting in gems like "SHLO-LO-LONG" when one of the characters reveals his goods. There aren't many cultural notes to be found in this volume, but then again, the madness of popular music culture speaks for itself.

The snowball fight episode, meanwhile, is purposely designed to be scant on story: this is a pure diversion, a chance to see the characters' personalities as portrayed through snow sculpture. Although amusing enough with its slapstick and action—especially when Yûko gets her comeuppance—this episode also exemplifies just what is wrong with the series. We could be learning about just how Watanuki's character is "changing" (come on, it's Episode 19 already), or digging into exactly why Yûko happens to own all that memorabilia from the CLAMP universe (sharp eyes will spot it in an early scene), but no ... we get 22 minutes of a snowball fight.

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2011-06-08T22:16:00.001-07:00

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Another thing that's nice about this show is that they've already dispensed with the standard magical girl transformation sequence; it's alluded to or simply ignored as just a thing Miho does before going to work. You barely see it at all in this disc; you see a flash of light from the wherever she happens to be changing, but that's pretty much it. Best of all, there's no monster-of-the-day, no evil powers to fight, and no obligatory 5-minute-long recycled transformation and attack every episode.

The stand-alone chapters in this volume are symptomatic of the mess that DMC has become, ping-ponging between bizarre Krauser incidents and bizarre Negishi incidents—and falling flat either way. In no particular order, we have: a retelling of Aesop's fable about the wind and the sun, Negishi proving his incompetence as a photographer, the Capitalist Pig from DMC's stage act having a crisis of identity, Negishi desperately clamoring for the attention of a female singer-songwriter, and an entire chapter that isn't even about Krauser or the band but disgraced rapper Kiva.

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2011-06-08T22:16:00.000-07:00

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What continues to impress me about Fancy Lala is that it keeps breaking the Sailor Moon-style Magical Girl mold. The characters are a good deal more developed than most magical girl shows -- these people actually have some depth to them. Another thing that makes it stand out is the wonderful tension of Miho leading two lives, one of which is a teensy bit out of her league. Best of all, there is no villain in this show, just comedic or dramatic problems to be overcome. This is such a relief, as it opens up many more story possibilities and allows the show to focus on the characters and their development.

Does the logic of these episodes make sense to anyone? Due to this lack of focus, the humor has become diluted as well, relying on the same old gimmicks over and over: the exaggerated depravity of the metal scene and Negishi's wimpiness in his everyday persona. Look, it was pretty funny the first volume ... or two ... or three. But past a certain point, the gags lose their freshness and need some kind of spark.

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2011-06-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

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Episode 9 brings us back into the full swing of LaLa's world, as she is called to make her singing debut...but Miho is demoralized after hearing her voice on tape for the first time. Then, in Episode 10, her CD single is released and Miho has to deal with scheduling problems for an appearance at a record store. Here they introduce a bit of the running-back-and-forth hijinks that we're familiar with from sitcoms, but it's handled lightly and deftly and avoids being ridiculous or groan-inducing.

Luckily, this volume has a couple of glimmers of hope: the first is the two-part tale of Negishi's sister's wedding, which gets back to the roots of the series' humor. It's not just about Krauser being a sicko, or Negishi being a loser, but about the uproarious way in which those two worlds collide—and how polite society reacts to the collision. Negishi's metal-obsessed brother, as well as the unsuspecting bridegroom, make a great supporting cast as witnesses to this chaos.

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2011-06-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

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Miho's relationship with Taro (which is still on a childish level) develops gradually throughout the five episodes on this disc, and it's clearly going somewhere. Mr. Mystery (Fushigi-san), Miho's mysterious benefactor, shows up occasionally, but we don't really get any more information on who he is or why he's there. Miki, the rival model, is one of the more interesting characters and this disc brings her to the forefront.

The last two chapters show promise as well, with rival bands from the Satanic Emperor festival making a comeback appearance and hints of a mysterious individual from the record label's "dark past." If this turns out to be an extended story arc that pushes Krauser and his shock-rock to its limits, then it might just be the kick in the pants that the story needs.

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2011-06-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

The Paintball Question and Answer Book
Paul Love

Miki sees LaLa as a rival, but what brings her beyond a two-dimensional 'rival' character is the fact that we get to see her outside of the modeling environment, and she's a decent, normal girl. She's very fond of Miho, but feels pressure from her arrogant manager to act like a 'star', i.e. spoiled and selfish, when in the working environment. It's just another example of the realism and depth of character that makes this show worth watching.

As usual, the awkward and sloppy artwork could use a kick in the pants as well—but it still has its moments, usually in depictions of grotesquerie. The Capitalist Pig chapter, for example, reaches a strange sort of beauty towards the end as it grows ever more shocking. And no one can deny that Krauser's many faces of terror and hatred are a gallery unto themselves. However, the clumsy linework and poor command of anatomy keep the artwork from reaching its full potential; sometimes it looks as if the characters have just figured out how to hold a guitar for the first time.

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2011-06-08T22:04:00.002-07:00

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Hall of Fame Memorabilia

With each passing volume, Detroit Metal City seems to become ever more unglued, still searching for a solid storyline. Is it about Krauser having to perform increasingly perverted acts to maintain his reputation? Is it about Negishi and his continued failings as a wannabe hipster? Is it even about—as one chapter suggests—the struggles of one of Krauser's musical rivals? And as the subject matter grows more disconnected, it also grows more desperate, sometimes reaching to the furthest edges of the DMC universe in hopes that there may be some jokes left. For a series that once started out with such a clear, hilarious premise, it seems to have lost its way—and is trying anything to get back on track.

Miho is an 11-year-old girl who draws manga fan-art and has fantasies about cute male idol types, in other words, a perfectly normal Japanese schoolgirl. Then she meets Pigu and Mogu, two little fairies who look like SD pastel dinosaurs. They explain to her what they are and offer her a gift of magic. This takes the form of a sketchbook and pen, which have the following abilities:
- She can draw clothing in the sketchbook and it will become real.
- She can use the pen to transform herself into an older girl - actually, to transform herself into the model/idol singer character she created named Fancy Lala.

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2011-06-08T22:04:00.001-07:00

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Riddell

Yes, we know that Chi is going to find something or someone to play with, get in a spot of trouble, and it'll be all right eight pages later. Only at the last minute does this volume redeem itself with an intriguing development: characters from previous encounters catch up with Chi and lead her to an unsettling cliffhanger ending. It's a reminder that raising a kitten, or being a kitten, is not some magically charmed experience where everything is happy and beautiful. That's the wisdom of Chi's Sweet Home—although that wisdom might be easier to reach if it weren't buried under so many cloying layers of cuteness.

Aspiring pop songwriter Soichi Negishi can't believe his success in the music industry—mostly because his success comes from his loathsome alter ego, death metal guitarist Johannes Krauser II. But even as the dark emperor of metal, there is no rest for Krauser: he has to deal with his manager's demands, troublemaking fans, and fellow performers who also want their due. Mild-mannered Negishi, meanwhile, has issues of his own as he tries to break into the indie-pop scene: his aesthetic sense is suspect, fellow artists don't acknowledge him, and his own family doesn't respect his musical aspirations. However, such problems are miniscule compared to the arrival of a dark force who dares to challenge Krauser's throne ...

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2011-06-08T22:04:00.000-07:00

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Riddell

For most of Volume 6, Chi's Sweet Home readers will find themselves experiencing various degrees of amusement, affection, and boredom. Chi's mischievous antics at home, coupled with animal encounters outdoors, are a consistent source of gentle entertainment—so consistent, in fact, that by the midpoint of this book it's easy to become weary of the same formula replayed over and over.

Naturally, she's thrilled about this. She gets scouted (as Lala) by a talent agency and gets a job as a model. Then the real fun begins. She's got two lives now; she's a student and has friends and family as Miho, but she's also got the excitement of a modelling career and friends as Lala. And they tend to conflict. And her friends wonder what she's doing with that cell phone, and it tends to ring when it's very inconvenient. And she has to find places that are safe to change clothes and transform into Lala. And she's got these two little gluttons of dinosaurs on her hands who aren't trying very hard not to get discovered...needless to say, chaos ensues.

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2011-06-08T22:03:00.001-07:00

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Wilson

Meanwhile, the script itself is as simple as they come, with Chi basically commenting on the events around her. Thankfully the "baby talk" is all but gone now—a sign of growing maturity?—and some of Chi's conversations with her animal pals even lend themselves to a little humor. (Not that the hilarity of the parrot scene really has anything to do with witty dialogue...)

Disc 2 continues with Miho's family vs. professional life, providing interesting insight into how this little girl deals with the very grown-up entertainment business.

Episode 6 shows LaLa encountering the infighting and dirty tricks in the modeling business, and she's called upon to defuse a tense situation involving Yumeno Miki, a star model with an attitude problem.

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2011-06-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

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What makes the action even easier to follow, at least for general readers not accustomed to manga, is that this translation is presented in left-to-right format. Fortunately, the artwork is simple enough that this page-flip doesn't cause any hiccups, and the story reads just fine in the Western direction. Sound effects also go through a full conversion into English, and while the comic-styled fonts could use a little more variety, they match up nicely with the dialogue text and give each page a unified look.

Episode 7 is a standard ghost story in which Miho finds that even as LaLa she's still a kid inside, and Episode 8 is a sweet little tale which shows Miho's experimentations with the magic notebook ("I wonder if I can make things other than clothes...?"). It was a bit difficult to suspend disbelief, however, as the kitten she finds is, judging from its scale in comparison with Miho, about 3 inches tall.

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2011-06-07T03:09:00.000-07:00

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The common thread running through all of these storylines is the dippy robber duo of Isaac and Miria, who once again prove that they are one of anime's liveliest and most entertaining couples. In one way or another they seem to be involved in almost everything, sometimes in surprising fashion, and the bizarre logic behind their thefts is priceless; at one point they are unable to steal an entire museum, so they decide to steal its entrance (i.e. front door) instead.

It's easy to criticize Cross Game's visuals. Original author Mitsuru Adachi's jug-eared characters are an acquired taste, to put it mildly. Niggling problems with movement through (as opposed to across) cinematic spaces persist. Bulked-up frame rates are not among the show's advantages. For some reason director Osamu Sekita insists on repeatedly panning up to the exact same cottony cumulus clouds. But those kinds of potshots are a little cheap. And not just because they overlook the things the series does right—like sunny palettes and fan-service that appreciates the unusual sex appeal of Aoba's athletic angularity—but also because they overlook more important stylistic faults.

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2011-06-07T03:07:00.004-07:00

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The series isn't simplistic enough to rely solely on its cast and emotional undercurrents to keep it running. Ko's quest to fulfill Wakaba's final dream and stand on the mound at Koshien moves forward, bringing Seishu up against harder and harder opponents. Aoba's women's team tryouts also promise to stir the plot up some. Both developments introduce enough baseball action to prove that the series can ratchet up the sporting tension (thank you, snazzy soundtrack) even without relying on Coach Daimon's convenient villainy. But still, the baseball games are better enjoyed for Ko's unflappably dry wit than their adrenaline content, which says a lot about the series' priorities.

In 1711 aboard the ship Advenna Avis an alchemist summoned a “devil,” who gave the ship's complement an elixir of life, hence turning them all into immortals who can only die if they are “eaten” by another immortal. A feud over who should control the formula results in many deaths and the immortals going their separate ways. Most of those who survive find themselves involved in mafia families or schemes to reconstitute the elixir in Prohibition-era America, while others get caught in the mess aboard the transcontinental train Flying Pussyfoot as the marauding “Rail Tracer” and various conflicting groups turn the train into a bloodbath.

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The words "really happy," uttered during a rare lapse in Akaishi's stoicism, hint at the trove of conflicted feelings Akane's arrival has inspired in him. Aoba's reaction to the Ryuou game's conclusion speaks to her abiding loneliness at being barred from playing with her team. And, in perhaps the series' single most welcome development, Akane's interference in Aoba and Ko's established dynamic makes crystalline the pair's feelings for each other—without so much as a word uttered. There's really no word for it but beautiful.

In other time frames Firo joins the Camorra family, multiple parties continue to seek out Dallas Genoard (including his sister Eve), Ennis encounters a couple of odd characters who start to change her outlook on things, and Isaac and Miria demonstrate how such a goofy pair of thieves managed to get an entire task force assigned to hunting them down.

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2011-06-07T03:07:00.002-07:00

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But what doesn't—and really, can't—make it into a synopsis is the emotional life teeming beneath Cross Game's placid surface. While nothing of moment is happening, the rich inner lives of Cross Game's fully-realized characters are subtly but substantially evolving, breaking to the surface in ways that gently ache, thrill and amuse. A running joke about the uniform reaction to Akane (whoever spots her drops whatever they're carrying on the ground) is a tiny window into the still-raw wounds inflicted by Wakaba's death. An injury reveals the depth of Ko and Aoba's mutual understanding and unspoken affection.

Can a series that sometimes gets tremendously gory also be tremendously fun? Baccano! seems intent on proving that a series can be both, and it offers its middle episodes as convincing evidence. People die in messy ways (but don't always stay dead), characters get “eaten” (a shiver-inducing and yet really cool effect), and others get beaten or otherwise abused, and yet those are only small parts of the overall tapestry that is the story the series weaves. In this case the devil – or what passes for one, anyway – is literally somewhere in the details, and it is the rich assortment of details scattered across the length and breadth of the tapestry that make viewing these episodes an involving and highly entertaining experience.

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To your average kid (at whom the series is not aimed, despite its TV-G rating) or attention-span-deficient adult, the show could easily seem suspended in some kind blue-skied, cicada-chirping stasis. The insertion of a recap episode (to remind us of Wakaba's postmortem influence, as if anyone needed the reminder) does nothing to correct the inertialess impression.

As with the first volume, these four episodes never progress in anything approaching a linear fashion. Even the flashback episode 7, which details the goings-on aboard the Advenna Avis that set everything else in motion, jumps back and forth between two time frames within that setting. The rest of the episodes continue to skip around between 1930, 1931, and 1932 as they bounce between various storylines, including those featuring Firo, Ennis and Szilard, Eve, the mafia guys looking for Dallas, and the complicated events on board The Flying Pussyfoot.

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2011-06-07T03:07:00.000-07:00

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Cross Game doesn't synopsize well. That's particularly true now that it's past the summary-ready hook of its opening tragedy. The above synopsis really does cover the entire plot of these thirteen episodes. Which makes them sound terribly uneventful. And in a way they are. Truth be told, little of moment happens in any given (non-game) episode. Most of Cross Game is just its characters living their lives, in all their petty glory. An entire episode can pass during which all that happens is Akane—Wakaba's doppelganger—walking around town surprising everyone with how much she looks like Wakaba.

Within the latter, the story splits further to focus in turn on Jacuzzi Splot and his crew, Ladd Russo and his crew, the cultists, and the immortal boy Czeslaw, each of which have their own distinct agendas but nearly all of which find themselves messed up with the rampage of someone – or something – some refer to as the mythical Rail Tracer. Exactly who or what the Rail Tracer really is has only been hinted at so far, but his capacity for bloodshed is copious indeed.

worth getting Sigg Thermo Pouch for Sigg 0.3 and 0.4-Liter Water Bottles (Wonders of the Sea)

2011-06-07T02:54:00.003-07:00

Sigg Thermo Pouch for Sigg 0.3 and 0.4-Liter Water Bottles (Wonders of the Sea)

Flaws from the series' fun-but-slight beginning reach their long fingers even this far into the series, but overall the new tone of the series—serious, more unpredictable—is proving to be a significant improvement, and a permanent one. If past encounters (and the next-volume preview) are any indication, the final volume should be potent stuff. Still, the desire to cross one's fingers to ward off the possibility of an eleventh-hour face-plant is strong. But hey, that's half the anticipation, isn't it?

Master Mosquiton is one of the most deliciously odd shows I've ever come across. I do include what might be considered spoilers below -- but the people who made this obviously had about as much interest in the plot of it as I have in seeing "Practical Magic." Each of the 6 episodes opens with a brief scene of intense gothic horror/romance, with dark, brooding music. The scene ends, and the title fades onto the screen accompanied by a dark organ dirge. The screen fades to black... and a horde of flappers wander into the sound booth.

worth getting Eco Vessel Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottles - Double Wall thermos (25 Ounces) - Sunrise Yellow

2011-06-07T02:54:00.002-07:00

Eco Vessel Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottles - Double Wall thermos (25 Ounces) - Sunrise Yellow

Mosquiton himself is really odd -- he's tall, skinny, pale, a vampire, and has a huge cape all right, but he's so damned goofy you can't really take him as at all threatening. This is probably because he's a wuss. He's Irresponsible Vampire Mosquiton, except, unlike Tylor, he really IS as useless and stupid as he seems. He's a quarter human, which means he simply goes around with sunglasses in broad daylight, but he is vulnerable to being impaled on a stake, which, he is quite frequently. Just about every episode, in fact.

The dubbing is fairly well-done. While there are a few moments that could have used a little more work, for the most part, the dubbing is exceptional. It's amazing how far ADV's dubbing studio has come from the wretched crap dubbing of Golden Boy.

While Ninja Scroll may have been a masterpiece, Ninja Resurrection just sits there. The animation is flat, and while there is a lot of action, the story is simply not told well enough, giving the feeling that the plot resolves itself in an anti-crisis.