Happy Birthday

Well, for those that care, I turned 19 on the 14th. I got to spend my birthday at Tsubasa-con in West Virginia cosplaying as Kyo Sohma from Fruits Basket.

HD Failure

Last Sunday, my new hard drive decided to be a failure and crash on me. Unlike last time, I did manage to get it back up and working, but unfortunately I seem to have lost my sound card and the hardware for my shitty router, which has also been lost at my home. What this means is that A) My computer has no internet until I get another router install disc. B) Even when I do that, my computer has no sound. Having just come from Tsubasa-con (see above post) and having no job, getting it fixed soon or getting a new computer (because I’m frankly sick of my current one in the first place) will most likely be a long way off unless one of my parents suddenly feels really generous (fat chance). For the time being, I’m using my parents computer for basic internet needs, mainly chatting with friends, this blog and forums. A friends of mine offered to download the anime I was watching, so I’ll be occasionally going over to his house to watch some and hopefully continue my reviews.

D.Gray-man 01

D.Gray-man was a series I was introduced to by the game Jump Super Stars. The characters looked interesting, and since I happened to be in Japan at the time, I ended up picking up the first 3 volumes (I would’ve bought more, but Japan had pretty much made me broke by that time). While I may not have a total grasp of the Japanese language, I was able to understand the story enough (Actually, when volume 1 was released in English by Viz, I found that I had understood about 85% of the story correctly) in the first three volumes to enjoy it. When I heard that it was to be animated this Fall, it caught my intrest as something to watch. Episode one was pretty good and covered a good amount of the first volume. It does a good job of explaining the AKUMA and what they do, and breifly introduces the main antagonist, the Mellinium Earl. The animation looked good, especially that of the AKUMA and of Allen’s Anti-Akuma Weapon. The music fit, but nothing stood out to me like in Death Note and Kanon, although it has a good OP theme and a nice ED theme. Unlike Kanon and Death Note, I’m not sure of the path this show will take, having only read up to volume 3 (haven’t been able to locate a Japanese copy of volume 4 yet and volume 3 in English comes out soon.), so I’ll be watching this with intrest to see where it goes.

That should do it for the anime reviews this week, although I may still review Super Robot Taisen OG and Buso Renkin whenever subs are released of those. SRTOG is a GBA game recently released in the US by Atlus, so fans of Mecha should look into it, and since I enjoyed the game and the SRT series in general, watching the anime is an obvious choice. Buso Renkin is another Shounen Jump series I was introduced to through Jump Super Stars and caught my intrest. Volume 1 of the manga was recently released in English by Viz and it intrested me enough to consider watching the anime. As far as my personal opinions go, thus far Kanon is my favorite, followed by Death Note and D.Gray-man. I expect it to stay that way, although DN and Kanon may switch places occasionally.

Kanon 01

Kyoto Animation (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, Full Metal Panic The Second Raid) has begun airing their remake of the Key/Visual Arts game, Kanon, which was once made into an anime in 2002. Kanon was one of the first anime I ever downloaded and an early favorite of mine. It’s been two years since I downloaded and viewed the older series, but it still remains a favorite of mine, although Key/Visual Art’s other game that’s been animated, AIR, would end up my favorite of the two. Kanon 2006 already had me hooked with some beautiful visuals, rivaling AIR’s, and the music. The new series will be twice as long as the old one, allowing much more content from the original game to be animated. As far as episode one goes, not too much new from the original animation, but perfectly sets up the story by introducing the main characters (Yuuichi, Nayuki and Ayu) and showing some of the other characters briefly as well. The voice acting is top notch, Tomokazu Sugita as Yuuichi and Yui Horie as Ayu were perfect, then again, Yui Horie voice Ayu in the original production, so it’s no surprise. Music was beautiful, I have a feeling that once a OST is released, it may rival AIR as one of my favorite OSTs all time. It was nice to hear the song Kanon playing in the background in one scene, as Kanon is my favorite piece of classical music. The OP and ED song are wonderful and I can’t wait to get a hold of the full versions. Some of my favorite moments were when Ayu tackled Yuuichi and when Ayu tried to look at the wings on her back ^^. After watching this and Death Note, the two shows I anticipated the most this fall season, Kanon has to be my favorite so far, and I look forward to the rest of this series and hope it’s just as good or better than the original series.

Death Note 01

Watched the RAW of episode 1 of the new Death Note anime last night.The first episode covers all but the last page or two of the first chapter of the manga and stays 99% faithful to it’s source material. The only changeso far was minor and made a death seem more justifiable, but that’s about it. Animation looks nice, definately something I won’t have any problem watching a lot of episodes of, so long as teh quality is maintained. Having just finished Ouran High School Host Club, I can’t shake that feeling of Tamaki everytime I hear Light’s voice, something I’ll get over in time, but it’s just a little weird. Ryuk sounds just perfect. Music was good as well, although I never catch BGM very well on a first watch. The OP theme, WORLD performed by Nightmare is an awesome song, one I can’t wait to get my hands on when a single is released. Alminia, the ED theme also by Nightmare, is a good song as well. There hasn’t been a fansub of episode one yet, but one should pop up soon, givin the popularity of the series. Here hoping that one of my favorite manga will have a spectacular run as an anime.

2,000 Hits!

Early this morning this blog had it’s 2,000 hit! Last month at this time I don’t even think I had 500 hits, but the past month has really been a breakout, mostly because of my posts on Top wo Neare!, RE-TAKE and Jump Ultimate Stars. I’m gonna ask a friend if he wants to draw and scan a 2,000 hits image just for fun and post it here.

The Legend of Dragoon

The Legend of Dragoon was the second RPG I ever played and still reamins one of my all time favorite RPGs. Sadly, about 2 years ago my copy of Dragoon went missing while moving, and I’d been looking ever since. A friend came across a copy a month ago and recently gave it to me as an early birthday present. The discs are in nice condition, although the instruction manual is missing, I don’t mind too much. I’m just glad to have the game back. Of my 3 favorite PS1 RPGs, I finally have one of them completely back. I’m still missing a copy of The Legend of Legaia, my first ever RPG, although I recently spotted it at a used game store, and I’m also missing the first disc of Chrono Cross, which an old friend lost, which is a shame, since they were the nice discs that came with the first release. I hope one day to find another one…or attempt to buy my friend’s copy, but that’s doubtful.

Gunbuster & Diebuster Marathon

With the recent release of a subbed episode 6 of Diebuster by Lunar, I decided that a good way to commerate therecent conclusion in this awesome franchise was to marathon both Gunbuster and Diebuster.

Gunbuster was it’s usual fucking awesome self like it always has been. Once again, I marveled at the amount of story effectively packed into this 6 episode OVA. It’s simply incredible, and I swear some shows I’ve seen recently haven’t put that much story or development into 12 or even longer series. I noticed the music a bit more this time around as well, and once again, simply amazing. And, of course there’s the fact that of all the anime I’ve seen, the ending of Gunbuster is in the top two, heck it may even be my favorite.

Diebuster once again proved to be a great sequel. While it doesn’t surpass the greatness of Gunbuster and it almost seems unfair to it to watch it directly after Gunbuster, it still proves to hold strong and be a good follow-up to Gunbuster. Just like Gunbuster, the action doesn’t really pick up till later, although Diebuster easily has more action in the earlier episodes than Gunbuster had. The characters aren’t as memorable as those in Gunbuster, but still a damn good and likeable cast. Watching this directly after Gunbuster, the animation sure is different from the original, and it feels a lot like FLCL (They share the same director.) Music is also great, with some nice original tracks and some slight remixs to some old favorites, like the Buster Machine March. And of course another great ending, although that’s all the detail I’ll go into there.

As far as anime goes, this afternoon has been one hell of a good one. I’d recommend Gunbuster to anyone, even those without much of an intrest in mecha anime, or as a anime for those just getting into anime, since it truly is an incredible show. Fans of Gunbuster shouldn’t have a hard time at all enjoying Diebuster, just so long as they don’t try and hold it to the high standards Gunbuster set. Well now, I suppose I can say I’m truly waiting for the DVD release of Gunbuster, which will most likely be the next time I watch it, although it doesn’t take much to get me in the mood for Gunbuster, since it’s easy to watch in an afternoon and leaves you with one hell of a good feeling that you get after watching something great.

New Page, Broken Links and Other Info

Today I added a Video Games page to the blog. There’s not much there at the moment, just a list of games I own, but I hope to expand on it in some way perhaps. Some people may have noticed that the links in some posts, mainly the Jump Ultimate Stars posts, are broken. Most of these are my fault, and I’ll try and fix them soon when I feel like re-uploading the images. Also it seemed like someone messed with the Last Days of Foxhound link, I’m not sure how, but it should be fixed. In other news, I hope to get a new banner up soon. At the moment Photoshop isn’t working for some reason, so I may have a friend make one for me. I don’t know if it’ll be Kingdom Hearts based still or if I’ll choose a new theme. I’ve got about two posts in the making right now, but given that I’m pretty bad at summing up my thoughts on shows I’ve completed, those may not be up till tomorrow.

Diebuster 6 by Lunar Released

Top wo Neare! 2 Diebuster episode 6 was released yesterday by Lunar, fans of the series and fans of Gunbuster need to check it out. I plan on watching it subbed later today, having seen in raw weeks ago.