Monthly Archives: August 2008

Anime Review - X: 80.5%

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 – 10:00 am

The Essentials

Name: X
Genre: Action, Fantasy
Episodes: 24
Released: October 3, 2001 - March 27, 2002
Based On: X manga by CLAMP
Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Produced By: Madhouse
US Distribution By: Geneon

Major Japanese Cast

Kamui Shirou: Kenichi Suzumura
Fuuma Monou: Junichi Suwabe
Sorata Arisugawa: Mitsuaki Madono
Arashi Kishu: Ryoka Yuzuki
Satsuki Yatoji: Houko Kuwashima
Nataku: Motoko Kumai
Kakyo Kuzuki: Yuji Ueda
Kusanagi Shiyu: Masaki Aizawa
Princess Hinoto: Aya Hisakawa
Kanoe: Kaho Kouda
Subaru Sumeragi: Tomokazu Sugita
Seiichiro Aoki: Toshiyuki Morikawa
Karen Kasumi: Yoko Soumi
Yuzuriha Nekoi: Kumi Sakuma
Yuto Kigai: Michiaki Furuya
Seishiro Sakurazuka: Otoya Kawano
Kotori Monou: Mamiko Noto

Major English Cast

Kamui Shirou: Steve Cannon
Fuuma Monou: Crispin Freeman
Sorata Arisugawa: Rafael Antonio Oliver
Arashi Kishu: Lia Sargent
Satsuki Yatoji: Karen Strassman
Nataku: Mona Marshall
Kakyo Kuzuki: Terrence Stone
Kusanagi Shiyu: James Lyon
Princess Hinoto: Bridget Hoffman
Kanoe: Mary Elizabeth McGlynn
Subaru Sumeragi: Dave Lelyveld
Seiichiro Aoki: Steven Blum
Karen Kasumi: Wendee Lee
Yuzuriha Nekoi: Philece Sampler
Yuto Kigai: Ethan Murray
Seishiro Sakurazuka: Dave Mallow
Kotori Monou: Michelle Ruff

Scores

Animation: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Story: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Music: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 7/10 (x 2 = 14 pts)
English Dubs: 8/10 (x 1 = 8 pts)
Gut Score: 7/10 (x 5 = 35 pts)

Total: 161/200 (80.5%)

Review

X is about Kamui, a boy who is fated to determine the fate of the world. Kamui returns to Tokyo after a 6 year absence after the death of his mother. He soon meets up with two old childhood friends - Fuma and Kotori Monou - but attempts to keep them at a distance so that they don’t become involved in things.

Soon, members of the Dragons of Heaven - a group of 7 people who are fighting to protect mankind - and members of the Dragons of Earth - a group of 7 people fighting to destroy humanity in the name of saving the planet - arrive to persuade Kamui to join their side.

Kamui is cold towards both sides, but soon the friendliness of the Dragons of Heavan, and especially of Sorata, ultimately leads Kamui to choosing sides with them. However, this leads to Fuma being “chosen” as the leader of the Dragons of Earth as, unbeknownst to either of them, Fuma was destined to lead whichever group opposed the side Kamui chose. And thus, the apocalyptic battle between the Dragons of Heaven and Dragons of earth begin.

This is an interesting series for me to try to review. First off, this series seems to have almost everything: Lots of action. Lots of angst. Lots of story. Stellar animation and music and a good dub to boot. However, despite all of this, I never could get very much into this series. Yes, it was entertaining and I didn’t really bored watching it, but…it just didn’t work for me. And I’m not sure if I can put my finger on exactly why either.

I’m generally a fan of serious drama like X, but in this case, it just seems that it perhaps lasted too long and had too much angst as compared to the action. I guess another way to explain is the fact that, here we are, everything seems to be set for the battle for the end of the world to start but nothing is really happening on that front. Yeah, people are fighting, and Kamui is being angsty and we’re learning about the characters, but after a while I was kind of like “so, when are they going to start fighting for real and stuff?” It just seemed like most of the fighting was people being like “I guess it’s time for us to fight now, even though there is no real apparent reason for it.”

It just seemed that the Dragons of Heaven were sitting there like “what are we going to do” for 23 episodes and then finally the final battle happens in like 10 minutes (if that) in the last episode. Maybe I just missed a lot of what was happening since a lot of stuff, especially at the end, seemed to come as a surprise to me in a “oh THAT’S why this other stuff was happening” way - stuff that really shouldn’t surprise you that late.

Now, after spending 3 paragraphs on that, I’ll reiterate that this is overall a pretty good series to watch for many reasons, and there isn’t anything really fundamentally wrong with it and that my feeling just happens to be one of those things were a series just doesn’t hit right, so for that reason I still would recommend this to people because a lot of people would enjoy this series.

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

By Josh | Posted in Anime Reviews | Tagged | Comments (0)

Otakon Tweets on the Sidebar

Monday, August 4, 2008 – 8:45 pm

I’ve activated a widget which shows the two lateast tweets from my twitter on the sidebar.  You can click to go to my twitter by clicking “Latest Tweets” or you can click to see each individual tweet.

Since I’m unsure whether I’ll have internet access within the convention center (it looks like most of the center is within about 300m of a wireless router across the street, I’m not taking any chances), I may end up having to post many of my updates via text message to twitter.  This way, a visitor to my site can see the lateast of what’s happening at Otakon.

By Josh | Posted in Otakon | Comments (0)

Web Stats for July 2008

Monday, August 4, 2008 – 5:05 pm

July saw a massive increase in traffic from June, probably largely thanks to the fact that I’m actually posting things again, unlike my slow months of May and June.  The traffic did start trailing off at the end (relatively) but I was still holding between 300 and 400 visits a day for the most part.  July was easily the best month for my blog (previous best was April) as I passed 10,000 visits for the first time as well as 20,000 page views for the first time.

Read More »

By Josh | Posted in Web Stats | Tagged | Comments (0)

Otakon Schedule Up

Monday, August 4, 2008 – 3:43 pm

Here it is (pdf).

Huge gaps in the Hall D schedule and all.  Not sure what’s up with that, since I don’t recall such big gaps last year.  One person on the forum suggested that it was rehearsals, though I don’t know for what since Masquerade rehearsals appears to be in the Arena.  However, they don’t have TBAs either, so it’s possible that there is just nothing going on in there, which seems like a waste of space to me.

I’m also curious about the TBA between 12:30 and 2:30 PM in the HD theater on Friday.  Possibly Evangelion?  I’m not sure what else might be there which they wish to keep a secret unless it’s Ponyo.

Also, why have 3 workshop rooms if the vast, vast majority of the time there is nothing going on in there (by my count, there is a total of 46 hours of workshops.  At 38 hours of total convention time…38 hours x 3 rooms = 46 hours or programming?  I’m just sayin’.

Update

Looking back at last year’s schedule (I still have the booklet from last year), there were some gaps in the what was called Main Events room last year as well.  This year there is about 15 hours of dead time in Hall D while last year there was 17.5 hours, so it’s actually basically the same, plus 9 hours were spent on the Masquerade and a concert, which are taking place in the area this year.  So in reality, Otakon went from 13 hours of non-masquerade non-concert programming to 23 hours so it’s actually a significant increase, despite all the dead time.  And this doesn’t even account for 2 hours where the hall was used along with Video 1 for the AMV Contest.

So I guess despite all of the gaps in the Hall D schedule, it’s still a significant increase in programming.  I just think that it’s still a waste to have so much dead time, though, when you could be showing some popular shows (see: Girl Who Leapt Through Time) a 2nd or even 3rd time during those slots, but that’s just me.  I’m not organizing the thing and there are probably good reasons for the gaps.

By Josh | Posted in Otakon | Comments (0)

Anime Review - Spice and Wolf: 72.6%

Monday, August 4, 2008 – 10:00 am

The Essentials

Name: Spice and Wolf
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Episodes: 13
Released: January 8, 2008 - March 23, 2008
Based On: Spice and Wolf light novels by Isuna Hasekura
Director: Takeo Takahashi
Produced By: IMAGIN
US Distribution By: N/A (licensed by Kadokawa Pictures USA)

Major Japanese Cast

Holo: Ami Koshimizu
Craft Lawrence: Jun Fukuyama
Nora: Mai Nakahara
Kuroe: Kaori Nazuka
Zeren: Daisuke Namikawa

Major English Cast

N/A

Scores

Animation: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Story: 6/10 (x 4 = 24 pts)
Music: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 8/10 (x 2 = 16 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 6/10 (x 5 = 30 pts)

Total: 138/190 (72.6%)

Review

Spice and Wolf is about a traveling merchant, Craft Lawrence, and the harvest wolf god Holo. Holo had always blessed the wheat crop of the country area called Yoitsu, causing good crops, but over time, as better ways of growing the crops were developed, the people of the area stopped relying on Holo’s help, and so she escapes the area by hiding in Lawrence’s wagon.

While Lawrence doesn’t appreciate the company to start with, Holo has a keen eye (and ears) for a good - or bad - deal, a trait which Lawrence eventually starts to appreciate. In return for this, Lawrence agrees to eventually agree to travel with Holo to return her to her homeland in the north.

The primary thing that drives this show along is Holo and her personality and interactions with Lawrence - especially since they are largely the only two major characters in the entire series. While Holo is indeed an intriguing character, it’s hard for a single character to carry an entire series, and that ends up being the case here. I think Spice and Wolf would have been good had either more gone on or the length of the show was cut in half or so, but a show about economics dragging on for 12 or 13 episodes just doesn’t work that well. Oh yeah, and Holo being naked half the time is kind of annoying to me.

The technicals of the show - the animation and music - are good enough, I suppose, and this may be a worth series to watch if you’ve already seen everything else, but there are just so many other series out there which are better and more entertaining to watch than this.

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

By Josh | Posted in Anime Reviews | Tagged | Comments (0)

Anime by Score Organization

Sunday, August 3, 2008 – 10:48 pm

I reorganized my Anime By Score page from listing them as Excellent/Very Good/Good/etc. to doing them by star rating, hopefully to give it a little bit more granularity and to give more context to the scores.

So now I have 5-stars to 0-stars, divided by 1/2 stars.  Each star rating spans 4%, so the ranges are:

  • 5-star: 96%+
  • 4 1/2-star: 92% - 95.9%
  • 4-star: 88% - 91.9%
  • 3 1/2-star: 84% - 87.9%
  • 3-star: 80% - 83.9%
  • 2 1/2-star: 76% - 79.9%
  • 2-star: 72% - 75.9%
  • 1 1/2-star: 68% - 71.9%
  • 1-star: 64% - 67.9%
  • 1/2-star: 60% - 63.9%
  • 0-star: under 60%

Hopefully this shows that basically the “above average” shows (3.0 or above) = shows with scores of 80% or higher, average shows (2 and 2 1/2 stars) are generally in the 70s, while below average scores (1 1/2-stars or below) are below 72%.

My concerns about this are:

  • Only one show is 5-star, which seems a little silly, but unless I use different scales for each rating, I’ll either need a bigger range, have a smaller range (and not just have any 5-star shows) or I’ll have to live with it.
  • I originally had a scale of 5% per scale, but that put the middle ratings - 2 1/2 stars - in the bottom of the 70% range, which I thought was rather low.  To me, the division between good and not-so-good in a 5-star scale seems to be above and below the 3-star mark, so that’s how I’ve tried designing my ranges.  However, that’s just me.  I don’t know what other people might think.
  • Even with this, this just shows a possible issue with how I rate shows, in that I kind of give a score of 8 or so by default, and then raise or drop it based on what I like, with the effective range really being 7-9, with a range of 6 - 10 for really good or really not-so-good things.  Of course, the problem at this point is that going back and re-scoring over 100 shows and doing so consistently seems like a rather significant job, especially for shows which I may not have seen for quite a while.

In any case, I hope this makes looking at the Anime By Score page a little more useful.

By Josh | Posted in Anime Reviews | Tagged | Comments (0)

Anime Review - Blue Drop: 86.8%

Sunday, August 3, 2008 – 10:00 am

The Essentials

Name: Blue Drop: Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku
Genre: Sci-fi, Romance
Episodes: 13
Released: October 2, 2007 - December 25, 2007
Based On: Blue Drop manga by Akihito Yoshitomi
Director: Masahiko Ohkura
Produced By: Asahi Production, BeSTACK
US Distribution By: N/A

Major Japanese Cast

Mari Wakatake: Akiko Yajima
Hagino Senkoji: Miyuki Sawashiro
Michiko Kozuki: Satsuki Yukino
Tsubael: Yuko Goto
Azanael: Ai Orikasa
Yuko Sugawara: Miho Yamada
Akane Kawashima: Akeno Watanabe
Hiroko Funatsumaru: Kimiko Saito
Shivariel: Youko Asagami

Major English Cast

N/A

Scores

Animation: 7/10 (x 4 = 28 pts)
Story: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Music: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 10/10 (x 2 = 20 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 9/10 (x 5 = 45 pts)

Total: 165/190 (86.8%)

Review

Blue Drop is about girl, Mari, who lost both of her parents in a mysterious island disaster when she was younger - an incident where Mari was the only survivor. She now lives with her grandmother, who decides that she should attend an actual school when Mari enters high school of being home schooled like she had been up to that point. However, Mari sees this as her grandmother dumping her off because she’s tired of taking care of her (which isn’t the case).

On her way to the school, Mari sees a mysterious girl standing out in the harbor. Mari soon finds out that the girl is her roommate in the dorm. However, when the girl, whose name is Hagino, touches Mari, she goes temporarily crazy, trying to strangle Mari. This obviously doesn’t start their relationship off on a good foot, and it doesn’t get any better when Mari finds out that Hagino is actually an alien who is on the Earth to do observation.

As Hagino tries to improve her relationship with Mari, Mari eventually learns about the truth of the disaster which killed her parents, how Hagino is involved, and why Hagino is on Earth observing in the first place.

I found Blue Drop a rather slow-paced but still excellently written anime series about the relationship between Hagino and Mari. While this is technically a yuri series, it’s more about the buildup of the two’s relationship than about the relationship itself, which really only lasts very briefly at the end of the series due to certain events.

Even though Mari is the lead character in the series, Blue Drop is about Hagino and her past and regrets as much as it is about Mari. Hagino also has to deal with the commander of the fleet in which Hagino’s ship, the Blue, is included, as well as the commander’s sidekick, who has a grudge against Hagino as well.

In the end, all of these dramatic elements wrap together to make a pretty good put together show.

On the technical aspects, the animation is probably the show’s weakest point, though it isn’t too bad, and is marked more by a “softer” sort of coloring in contrast to the sharper animation one might see in other series. However, the music is excellent I thought.

I you’re open to a good sci-fi drama series, and don’t mind the yuri aspect, I’d suggest checking out Blue Drop.

First Watched: October - December 2007
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes

By Josh | Posted in Anime Reviews, Blue Drop | Comments (5)

Josh’s Anime Blog Podcast Episode 83

Saturday, August 2, 2008 – 12:35 pm

Josh’s Anime Blog Podcast Episode #83 is now online! In this podcast, I review the anime movie Metropolis.

This week’s Podcast Stats:
Time: 17:02
Download Size: 11.7 MB

Opening theme:
“Idea” by eufonius
Opening theme to Noein

Ending theme:
“There’ll Never Be Goodbye” by Minako Obata
Ending theme to Metropolis

You can listen to my podcasts in the following ways:

Flash Player:

Directly: http://www.joshsanimeblog.com/podcast/JABPEpisode83.mp3

You can also download or add my podcast-only RSS feed to your favorite reader or add my podcast using iTunes.

By Josh | Posted in Podcasts | Tagged | Comments (2)

Anime Review - Murder Princess: 82.4%

Saturday, August 2, 2008 – 10:00 am

The Essentials

Name: Murder Princess
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Comedy
Episodes: 6
Released: March 28, 2007 - August 29, 2007
Based On: Murder Princess manga by Sekihiko Inui
Director: Tomoyuki Kurokawa
Produced By: Bee Train, Marvelous Entertainment
US Distribution By: Funimation

Major Japanese Cast

Falis (real): Romi Paku
Alita Forland (real): Ami Koshimizu
Dominikov: Kazuki Yao
Pete Armstrong: Akimitsu Takase
Jodu Entolasia: Takkou Ishimori
Ana / Yuna: Chiwa Saito
Akamashi: Hiroshi Tsuchida
Cecilia: Megumi Toyoguchi
Dark Knight: Daisuke Namikawa

Major English Cast

N/A

Scores

Animation: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Story: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Music: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: N/A
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 8/10 (x 5 = 40 pts)

Total: 140/170 (82.4%)

Review

Murder Princess is about Princess Alita Forland, who is sent into exile by her family so that she can escape a coup d’etat attempt against the royal family by a former scientist of the government, who has used his knowledge to create futuristic weapons.

Alita escapes, but is soon chased through a nearby forest by the forest’s guardian beast and runs into the bounty hunter Falis, sending them both off a cliff. They both survive, but due to the near-death experience, their souls have exchanged bodies. Impressed with Falis’ fighting ability, Alita-as-Falis begs Falis-as-Alita, and her two sidekicks Dominikov and Pete Armstrong, to help defend the kingdom until Alita’s brother comes back from a foreign trip. Falis ultimatley agrees, taking on the role of Princess. However, this doesn’t stop her from personally fighting enemies of the state, earning her the name Murder Princess.

I thought for a short series like this, it was written an executed very well. One problem with short series can sometimes be a thin plot or the tendency to move either really fast or really slow, but I think Murder Princess finds the right balance all around.

The primary basis for this series is definitely action, as Falis and Alita have to fight off all of their foes - and it does have some pretty good action scenes. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lack of comedy, mostly centered around the very unrefined Falis having to learn how to behave like a princess.

Perhaps the only real negative with the series is that the ultimate plot point - the switching of Alita and Falis’ bodies - is never resolved, though I wouldn’t be shocked at all if this ended up getting a sequel at some point. Also, I should note that this series may not be for the blood-shy.

Most of the technical aspects appeared to be pretty good for this series, but I’m not sure there is anything particularly notable either.

Overall, if you’re looking for a good action series with a good mix of comedy in it, then Murder Princess may be a good, short series that you can check out.

First Watched: July 2008
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes

By Josh | Posted in Anime Reviews | Tagged | Comments (0)

Nijuu Mensou no Musume - Episode 13

Friday, August 1, 2008 – 4:33 pm

It’s Nijuu Mensou no Musume Episode 13. What are the white woman’s plans for Chiko? What is her relationship with Twenty Faces? And will the real Akechi please stand up.

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By Josh | Posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume | Comments (3)