Monthly Archives: July 2008

FCC Chair: Comcast should be punished

By | July 11, 2008 at 3:20 pm | 4 comments

Remember that thing last year about Comcast throttling P2P traffic, especially torrent traffic?

Well, the FCC doesn’t seem too pleased about that:

The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that he would recommend that Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet….

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” the commission chairman, Kevin J. Martin, told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Mr. Martin said Comcast had arbitrarily blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so.

The FCC will vote on August 1st on whether to order Comcast to stop the practice and to give the FCC details details about the whats and hows of the program.  There was no word on what other “penalty” might in included other than telling them to stop doing it, though.

It’s still nice to the FCC slap out any pretense of anti-net neutrality behavior by ISPs.

5cm Per Second, Innocent Venus get the axe

By | July 11, 2008 at 2:55 pm | 5 comments

In more fun for ADV films, they have announced the discontinuation of 4 more titles: 5 Centimeters Per Second, Best Student Council, Innocent Venus, and Robotech.

ADV has not said whether they were also licensed by Sojitz like the 32 other titles that they lost or not, though I wouldn’t be surprised since it would seem to be odd for ADV to license these outside of Sojitz (except for perhaps 5 Centimeters).

This leaves Kurau: Phantom Memory as the only recent ADV release which it hasn’t lost or at least “discontinued” (Kurau was licensed 4 years ago just before it aired).  However, somehow I don’t think that ADV will be able to keep running the business on the back of Kurau.

H2O: Footprints in the Sand – Anime Review

By | July 11, 2008 at 10:00 am | No Comments

The Essentials

Name: H2O: Footprints in the Sand
Genre: Drama, Romance
Episodes: 12
Released: January 3, 2008 – March 20, 2008
Based On: H2O: Footprints in the Sand visual novel by Makura
Director: Hideki Tachibana
Produced By: ZEXCS
US Distribution By: TBD (licensed by Kadokawa Pictures USA)

Major Japanese Cast

Takuma Hirose: Ami Koshimizu
Hayami Kohinata: Harumi Sakurai
Hinata Kagura: Ryouko Tanaka
Otoha: Mia Naruse
Yui Tabata: Mio Yasuda
Hamaji Yakumo: Yui Sakakibara
Hinata’s grandfather: Katsumi Chou
Yukiji Yakumo: Emiri Katou

Major English Cast

N/A

Scores

Animation: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Story: 7/10 (x 4 = 28 pts)
Music: 7/10 (x 4 = 28 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 8/10 (x 2 = 16 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 6/10 (x 5 = 30 pts)

Total: 134/190 (70.5%)

Review

H2O: Footprints in the Sand is mainly about Takuma, a blind junior-high boy who has moved out to the countryside with his uncle. The reason for their move is to help Takuma recover from the trauma of his mother’s apparent suicide when he was younger – a trauma so severe that it’s caused him to go blind.

Once in his new town, Takuma meets three girls. The first girl is Hayami, a very reserved girl who is hated by the rest of the town to the point where bullies regularly beat her up without interference – something which Hayami herself seems to put up with. The second girl is Hinata, who is the granddaughter of the town elder, is popular, pretty, and clumsy, and otherwise a so-called pillar of moe. The third girl is Otoha, who claims to be a spirit, calls Takuma “the promised one” and gives him the ability to see again, even if just temporarily.

As the series progresses, one digs around here and there for things about the town’s past, though things tend to come out only in bits and pieces and probably overall too slowly, even though it’s only a 12 episode series. For example, we don’t really even find out why the town hates Hayami until about halfway through the series.

The series also tends to try to pick up and keep momentum through a series of plot twists instead of really picking a plot and sticking with it. Unfortunately, the series feel that each plot twist has to top the previous one, and things seem to start getting out of hand after a while and the series seems to lose coherence as it progresses.

I guess when everything is taken together as a whole, H2O is a marginally respectable series, but despite all of the supposedly shocking plot-twists, it still has a problem with keeping one interested, which is a serious flaw.

As for the technical aspects, The animation is OK, though not great, and the music is about normal.

If you like a drama full of twists and turns, then you may like H2O, but it definitely has it’s pitfalls as well.

First Watched: January – March 2008
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: No

Shion no Ou – Anime Review

By | July 10, 2008 at 10:00 am | 1 comment

The Essentials

Name: Shion no Ou
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Episodes: 22
Released: October 13, 2007 – March 22, 2008
Based On: Shion no Ou manga by Masaru Katori
Director: Toshifumi Kawase
Produced By: Studio DEEN
US Distribution By: N/A

Major Japanese Cast

Shion Yasuoka: Ayako Kawasumi
Ayumi Saito: Romi Paku
Makoto Hani: Hozumi Gôda
Satoru Hani: Masaya Matsukaze
Shinji Yasuoka: Yasunori Matsumoto
Saori Nikaido: Risa Mizuno
Sachiko Yasuoka: Mariko Kouda
Osamu Kamizono: Ryusei Nakao

Major English Cast

N/A

Scores

Animation: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Story: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Music: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 9/10 (x 2 = 18 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 9/10 (x 5 = 45 pts)

Total: 163/190 (85.8%)

Review

Shion no Ou – literally Shion’s King – is about a girl, Shion, who plays shogi with the support and encouragement of her adoptive father Shinji. When Shion was little, both of her parents were murdered in front of her eyes, and then the murderer proceeded to play Shion in a game of shogi before leaving. However, the murder remained unsolved.

On top of this, the shock of the murder, plus the words of the murderer telling Shion that as long as she doesn’t speak, she’ll stay alive, causes Shion to stop talking completely. After the murders, Shion is adopted by Shinji and Sachiko Yasuoka, who were neighbors of Shion’s. Shinji, who is a pro shogi player, helps train Shion to the point where she is exceptionally skilled for her age.

Now in middle school, Shion plays shogi along with her rivals, Saori, who is the apprentice of Makoto Hani, the meijin, or top player, of the shogi world, as well as Ayumi, an androgynous boy who dresses as a girl so that he may more easily win tournaments and the prize money that comes along with that so that he can pay his mother’s medical bills.

In the meantime, the Hani-meijin’s younger brother Satoru, who has become wealthy through possibly questionable means, starts organizing a tournament which will allow anyone who wants to play to register, causing Shion to believe that her parents murderer may decide to register to play for the large prize that goes to the winner.

Shion no Ou is a show centered around shogi, but it is written in a way which requires minimal understanding of shogi to understand, which is nice. The mystery behind Shion and her parent’s murder unfolds slowly and methodically over time, doing so in a way which may implicate one of many different characters, even until very deep into the series. I would have to say that the writing is definitely the star of this show as it keeps you intrigued as to where the murder investigation is heading and makes the shogi matches rather exciting, even if you have no knowledge of the game.

The only real negative to the series is that it may be a bit too drawn out, but new revelations and suspicions that pop up over the course of the series help alleviate that. The animation can be rather variable between some episodes, but is overall pretty good. The music is also good, especially during the shogi sequences.

If you’re not afraid of watching a series based around a game which one may not really understand, and you’re looking for a good mystery series, I definitely suggest checking Shion no Ou out.

First Watched: October 2007 – July 2008
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes

Some Long-Overdue Site Updates

By | July 9, 2008 at 7:33 pm | No Comments

I did some long over updating of my anime review lists (the alphabetical and by-score ones) today which I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

First off, most of the links to the reviews still used the old permalinks structure.  While the links still worked, I’m sure it added a bit of inefficiency, so I’ve switched all the links over to what they are now.

Second, I actually added my most recent reviews.  I basically hadn’t added anything to the lists since about March, so everything I’ve reviewed is now listed.

Third, I updated the reviews based on my revisions that I made for my podcast.  I do this occasionally, and really should do it when I actully do the revising, but in any case all of the reviews themselves are now updated as well.

I also added links on those pages to the other list (The Alphabetical list has a link to the list by score, and vice versa) as well as a link to the How I Rate Anime Page.

I basically did the same thing for the manga as well.

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