Azure Flame

As a newbie anime fan, one of the earliest series I ever watched was Ceres, Celestial Legend. Fuelled by a desire to expand my experience with Yuu Watase beyond Fushigi Yuugi, I watched all 24 episodes of the anime in the course of about three evenings, and at the time, it seemed a worthy endeavour. Thus it was that in more recent times, I decided to revisit the series by way of the original manga and a rewatching of the anime- and it was only then that I could see how bad the animated version actually is.

Continue reading Ceres, Celestial Legend: Anime vs. Manga…

I rarely write a dedicated mid-way impressions post- between commenting in the Weekly Round-Up and writing final thoughts at the end, such a thing would seem surplus to requirements. Nonetheless, when it came to Nodame Cantabile, I had a sudden and overwhelming urge to create a post about it- not because I find it overwhelming good or appallingly bad, but to address the mixed feelings I have about the series.

Continue reading Nodame Cantabile: Mid-way impressions…

Yes, so everyone does these and they do them a lot better than I can be bothered to, but since I’m opinionated enough to want to write this, and it turned out to be too long to be absorbed into Tuesday Rumble, a spring preview has come to exist anyway. If you want pictures and decent descriptions of these series, look elsewhere, for unlike my usual attempts to impart some kind of quality to a post, this is just me rambling on for a while- and I’m even too lazy to include those same few pictures you’ve seen several times before.

Anything in red probably won’t be touched, blue will be watched for at least a few weeks, and black is indifferent/undecided. Edit: the blue got messed up when I pasted from Word so it may not be entirely correct.

Continue reading First Ever Obligatory Season Preview Post: Spring 2007…

This may be from a calendar, but I figured everyone was sick of seeing the same two pictures of Nanoka.

Koshiro and Nanoka are siblings, but thanks to their parents’ divorce and twelve year age gap, they haven’t seen each other since Nanoka was a baby. All that is about to change, however, for once she starts high school, Nanoka will be moving in with Koshiro and her father to avoid a lengthy commute each morning. Now, Koshiro will have to learn how to cope with this unexpected intrusion into his life- but will his relationship with Nanoka evolve into something beyond what is considered normal for a brother and sister?

Continue reading Koi Kaze, Anime and Manga: Two Sides of the Same Story…

For my last few Otome articles, I’ve repeatedly said that I don’t have much more to say about the franchise. Now seems as good a time as any to admit that that never seems to be the case; until the day when I can play as Mikoto in my own isometric battle game, there will always be something more to say about Mai-Otome- and maybe one day I will even be clever enough to understand the complex plot that one troll commenter seems to believe it has.

Continue reading Just when I thought I was done with Mai-Otome, I realised I needed to talk about Zwei…

A year ago, in the dark and distant pre-Azure Flame days, I finally got around to watching both Rozen Maiden and the then recently aired second season Traumend. Despite some inconsistencies in the plot, on the whole I felt it had been an enjoyable experience, and in my mind, Rozen Maiden was firmly marked as an eminently worthy series.

The recent release of the Overture OVA, however, made me rethink my position- whilst I couldn’t deny that I had indeed enjoyed those episodes, I could no longer ignore the fact that the anime was filled with annoying plot holes. Continue reading Rozen Maiden Deconstructed…

I can now exclusively reveal that the reason my blog is so HARD GAY is because I have Lui chained up in my basement.

As the days became depressingly short and winter tightened its grip upon the land, I had the great idea of summarising all the 2006 series I watched in one great ‘Annual Round-Up’; hardly an original idea since everyone likes to do it, but nonetheless a course I became determined to take. Little did I realise that such an innocent decision would lead to a massive fifteen page document that took over a month to compile; in fact, if I had any sense, I would take the lazy route of posting this over several days in order to avoid having to write anything else for a week or so. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective), I’d rather just include it all in one guide so that I can get on with writing newer and more interesting things to spice up the inevitably dull and grey January.

I shall also take this opportunity to thank necromancer, whose screencaps made many parody posts and Tuesday Rumble sections possible, as well as my blogging ‘sempai’, who can identify himself if he wishes.

For once, red is not for generally poor series, just for the ones I dropped before the end of their run (mostly because they were generally poor). Series in blue are my top picks for the year. Links lead to earlier reviews, rants and parodies of the series in question.

Continue reading Annual Round-Up: 2006…

Is this image even necessary? Not really, but since a picture is supposedly worth a thousand words, it effectively doubles the length of my article.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to rave about Air, but since I didn’t really think I could turn it into a coherent blog post, I had to leave that idea on the backburner. Then, more recently, I decided to review Kanon (old) and rant about Kanon (new), but neither of those seemed quite worthy of their own post either. The solution- combine all three into one article and pretend that’s how you meant to do it in the first place. Thus I present “Kanon vs. Air”, an attempt to explain why I enjoyed Air so much and yet couldn’t reproduce the effect with Kanon (bear in mind that I haven’t played either of the games so I can’t comment on how the anime series compare to the original material). Continue reading Kanon vs. Air: why I loved one and not the other…

…and yes, I watched this episode myself too! What is the world coming to?

The unthinkable has happened. Phyllo, staple of the Mac Anu bridge and chief coordinator of The World:r2’s HARD GAY, is gone. As the male players try to adjust to this unexpected loss, they must decide whether they can now continue along the HARD GAY path, or if it is time to throw in the towel. Meanwhile, Tabby confesses her true feelings, and Yata grudgingly pays his cable bills.

The ultimate HARD GAY monster materialises. Continue reading .hack//Roots 26 [end]: HARD GAY’s Greatest Loss…

Before I begin, I thought I should mention that, since my usual source for screencaps wasn’t available, I actually went to the effort of watching this episode myself. This may not sound like anything remarkable, but considering I haven’t watched episodes 15-24 in either raw or subbed form, it was quite a big step for me to risk myself firsthand in a return to the world of Roots. Will seeing what actually happened affect my take on the episode? Perhaps, but it’s too late to worry about that now.

~

Tabby’s love life has been far from simple, but the time has come for her to finally choose who should settle down with. With former loves Sakisaka, Shino and Grunty out of the picture, the current contenders are Seisaku, Haseo, and the ever tempting lure of HARD YURI. Can Tabby finally choose which one she wants to spend her life with, or will it all end in tears? Meanwhile, Yata and Pai get an unpleasant surprise after a particularly hefty cable bill drops through the letterbox. Continue reading .hack//Roots 25: Who Will Tabby Choose?…