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.