• Live-Action Blood movie to be released in US in March
• Birdy gets Season 2 in January.
• Kyoto announces, then cancels, Tonari no 801-chan anime
• New Fullmetal Alchemist anime series confirmed.
• Minami-ke gets first 3rd season.
• Disney to release Ponyo in 2009
• Funimation licenses Kaze No Stigma
• Ike decides to just pile on ADV

OK, so thankfully not too much was going on.  Unless I missed it, not many new show announcements, and no word on Haruhi 2 or anything either (nor many new licenses).

As for the single series that I’ll blog in the fall, I’d say that CLANNAD: Afterstory is pretty much a shoe-in for that.

Episode 17

We got some nice Akira lovey-lovey action in this episode as she starts getting all depressed over how Tadashi doesn’t understand her feelings (nor anyone else for that matter, other than Yahiro, who goes a long way towards not being an ass in this episode). I liked the Ouran Host Club gone wrong scene, though, for some reason in this episode. In any case, we appear to be heading into an area where Yahiro has repaired his relationship with the S.A. (for the time being anyway) and may become Tadashi’s rival for Akira as she struggles with how she feels.

Episode 18

Akira’s romance story arc ended faster than I thought. I thought I’d go on for a least another episode with some Yahiro thrown in, but it was Tadashi all the way (well, I guess I’m not surprised, but you never know). So, Tadashi both wins and loses in this episode, getting beaten to a pulp by both Akira and Sakura, but he still gets the girl (yay!). We had a sort-of tie-up with Jun and Sakura as well, though we may see more of that. We’ve also seen more of Megumi, and we really haven’t had a Megumi-centric episode yet, so I’d like to see one. And of course, we still have Kei and Hikari to wrap up as well in the final 6 episodes.

Episode 19

OK, I swear I didn’t see the preview or this episode before saying that I wanted to see more of Megumi since, lo and behold, we get a Megumi episode. From fears by Ryuu that Yahiro may try to still go after Akira (I guess Yahiro and the S.A.’s relationship isn’t as patched up as I thought), Megumi decides to take matters into her own hands by telling Yahiro that she loves him and wants to date him. However, they don’t end up being much of a match, and Yahiro ends up telling Megumi that she doesn’t have to worry about he and Akira anyway. Along the way we finally get to hear Megumi talk and why (she protects her voice for singing) and we finally get to hear her sing, and sing well (yay!)

In the meantime, the rest of the S.A. ends up getting lured into watching Hikari’s house for the day as her parents go out fishing while Hikari remains with a fever. Unfortunately for the S.A., Hikari regresses when she’s sick, and ends up driving everyone batty.

In the end, I thought this was one of the best episodes of the series, just because it was funny all around, and we got to explore one of the more interesting characters in Megumi. I’m not sure what’s next. We haven’t resolved anything with Ryuu, so maybe he’s next?

Episode 20

So, episode 20 ended up being Jun’s wrap-up episode as pretty much the whole episode was Sakura chasing Jun around all over the place since he won’t hang out or even look at her. Of course, the reason ends up being because he loves her, so every time he looks at her, he turns into “Inner Jun” and back. However, in the end all ends up being well. So now that’s 4 S.A. people we’ve wrapped up stories for with only Ryuu, Hikari, and Kei left (at least, I don’t think we’ve had Ryuu’s unless the BBQ episode counted as his). It looks like we’re heading into a Kei story arc next. Perhaps the concluding one?

Episode 21

Well, we’re starting to get into the thick of things, Apparently Kei’s grandfather, and his agent, Aoi Ogata, have decided that Kei’s school is too “low” for him and intend to have him transfer to a school in London. Hikari tries to argue against it, but Aoi just shows her how much above her Kei is. However, just as Aoi is telling Hikari how much trouble she’ll have if she sticks with Kei, Kei comes to her rescue. Also tired for Hikari to figure it out herself, he remarks how “it’s almost like she loves him…romantically.” Of course Hikari denies it and runs off. However, despite Kei’s assurances that he won’t transfer, I doubt it will be that easy to get out of it.

Episode 22

Kei is certainly determined to get Hikari to admit that she loves him, and he basically does after he convinces her to go out on a date with him. Of course, it can’t go all according to plan as, deciding that she’d “lose” to Kei if she admits it, Hikari stops just short. In the meantime, Aoi is going to extra lengths to get Kei to come with him back to London, going so far as causing Tadashi’s mother, the Headmistress of the school, to do something to the Special A. I’m guessing Hikari will have to eventually do something she’s never been able to do to save Kei in the end: beat him.

Episode 23

So the members of the S.A. arrive to find that the S.A. has been disbanded. Almost immediately, Jun and Megumi are pulled from the school, since the only reason they were there was the S.A., and Kei’s family forces Akira’s family to pull her out as well. Hikari tries to find some way to fix the situation, but Kei realizes there is only one fix: for him to go to London. Kei tells Hikari to go to school with her S.A. uniform on the next day, and when she gets there, she and the other members of the S.A. arrive to find Kei gone. Hikari rushes to the airport to stop Kei, but it’s already too late.

Well, I’m not sure exactly how this will end. I guess Kei could go to his grandfather and be like “dude, this isn’t cool, man.” or something. In any case, I thought the bit with Hikari running after the airplane was a bit over the top. In any case, I’m at least interested how they’re going to turn this into a happy ending. This is a very Ouran-like ending, though.

Episode 24

So that’s the end. They all go to London, and pulling every trick out of the book and using all of their skills, they finally…persuade Aoi that it’s pointless to resist? Well, yeah, that’s basically it. Hikari finally wins a “fight” with Kei, with the prize being that he comes back too, but like Kei would have been able to without Aoi finally relenting to Hikari’s determination. And then Hikari confesses to Kei and they’re all lovey dovey and the end.

Thoughts

This series had it’s up but also a lot of deep downs, lingering in the depths of hell for most of the first half before coming back and having a semi-respectable second half of the series. I guess my initial thought that this would be Ouran High School Host Club and His and Her Circumstances mixed together were sort-of, kind-of right, though I think it was more Ouran than H&HC, and it had a tendency to pull out the bad parts of those shows instead of the good parts.

Also, while the core basis of the story is reasonably sound, I’m just not sure how excited I can get about the trials and tribulations of a bunch of rich bastards, whose primary day-to-day worries seem to be deciding what business they’re going to buy today. My initial gut reaction would rate this series somewhere around a C-, doing good enough to be around average…but more on the lower side of average.

As a result, I think instead of trying to catch up on episode reviews one at a time, I’m just going to do a series omnibus review for all the episodes I’ve missed so far, and then hopefully continue on as is from that point.

The omnibus posts will basically be that – a post with a approximately 1 paragraph review of each episode in that series up to the point that fansubbers have released episodes.  Right now Special A is finished, and that’s the first omnibus I’m releasing.  Twenty Faces has only one episode left, and I may wait until that episode is out until I release that one.  Otherwise, Someday’s Dreamers looks a little behind, so I may do a packaged released up to the point that it’s been released, and pick up from where it left off.  I only have two episodes of Maid Guy left to do (still) and one is still outstanding, so I may just wait and do both together as well.

My being busy will probably result or has resulted in a couple other things:

First, expect no more than one blogged series in the fall season.  Heck, I haven’t even looked to see what’s even airing in the fall yet.  Also, there is a good probability that I’ll only blog one series in the winter as well and, depending on how crazy the last month of my class looks like it will be, I may only do one show for the spring as well.

Second, I said this in a comment already, but I’ll post it here now too: the podcast is on hiatus until further notice – almost certainly until at least the end of the year, maybe until the end of my class until May.

Third – for full episode reviews – I still have Netflix DVDs sitting around since before Otakon.  I’ve probably watched, outside of the row of episodes that i’ve watched for the first omnibus, maybe no more than 3 to 4 hours of anime since the start of August.  I just haven’t had any time to.  I’ll try to watch a bit more, but I can’t review many series if I’m not watching them to begin with.

Just for the fun of it, I’ll probably post a “what I’ve missed’ post tonight or tomorrow just so see what all I’ve missed since I haven’t really hit sites like ANN since mid-August either, so the anime world may have blown up and died already and I don’t know about it.

These cartoony, sexualized characters are all part of otaku culture. Otaku is a Japanese word that has evolved from meaning “techno-geek” to describing devoted fans who pore over Japanese animation (anime), manga (graphic books), hentai (erotic comics) and other comics-derived media.

Thanks.  It takes six paragraphs for the article to finally say this:

Of course, not all anime and manga is overtly sexual — a lot of it is meant for children. Even some adult anime isn’t sexualized any more than, say, Wonder Woman (who was created as a dominatrix bondage fantasy.)

And then continues on with the sexualized aspects of it.  I was thinking about ordering Otaku USA, but I’m not sure about that now:

“The appeal of Japanese pop culture [to Americans] is that it is a moral-free zone,” explains Patrick Macias, editor in chief of Otaku USA, a bi-monthly magazine with a circulation of approximately 60,000. “The ideas of good/bad, right/wrong, that duality is not present.”

Thank you very much, but I like watching my anime because it’s entertaining, not because it’s a “moral-free zone.”

Basically the entire article is “look at all of these loser, lonely freaks and perverts who wack off to cartoon porn of 12 year old girls getting penetrated by octopi!”  The article tries to approach the subject with moral agnosticism, but I’m not sure Mr. and Mrs. Average American are exactly impressed by reading that all these anime people enjoy watching cartoons of 5th graders getting tentacle raped.

Bleh.

Update

Apparently the author doesn’t know what he’s talking about either:

Lolicon” (or Lolicom, a combination of “Lolita” and “comic”)

Wikipedia:

Lolicon, also romanized as rorikon, is a slang portmanteau of the phrase “Lolita complex”.

Oops.

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review

• This episode picks up right where the last one left off, with Twenty Faces falling off the blimp. Chiko gets hysterical, thinking that he’s died for real this time, but Ken calms her down, telling her that this is the 5th time he’s “died” and that he just enjoys shocking people. However, it’s suggested that Ken made up this story to calm Chiko down. Ken and Chiko make their way to the bridge as bombs explode all over the blimp.
• Back at the mansion, Chiko’s mother lambasts Akine for losing Chiko again and cries crocodile tears as a much wiser Tome watches silently. Chiko’s mother leaves the room and a detective asks Tome for her version of events, however, she doesn’t tell the detective about the poison.
• After the detectives leave, Tome confronts Chiko’s mother about the poison. However, she puts Tome on notice that she’ll accuse Tome of swapping out Chiko’s “medicine” with poison if Tome goes public with it and fires her.
• However, Tome demonstrates that she can do to Chiko’s mother what Chiko’s mother was doing to Chiko, by showing that she was able to slip the “poison” into her tea without her noticing, and can continue to do so at her will.
• Sensing that she’s in a tough spot, Chiko’s mother asks what Tome wants, to which Tome says she wants a separate house for Chiko, with Tome assigned to her.
• Back on the blimp, Chiko finally finds some parachutes, but finds bombs right next to them, which explode almost right away, blowing the parachutes away. Worse, the explosion destroys the left rudder.
• Meanwhile, the guests on the blimp turn out not to be dead, but just knocked out from the wine. Somehow Ken keeps the blimp up long enough to crash it into the sea instead of the city.
• While the passengers are easily rescued, the bridge is trapped under the blimp, and Ken and Chiko try to escape, but Chiko gets caught on the wreckage. However, Akechi, who fears that they may be trapped, goes to rescue them. However, before she knows it, Ken has run off on his own again. Chiko then decides to “walk down the road Twenty Faces was walking down without him.”
• Akechi tells Chiko that a man was murdered and a secret research building in the town of Toran years ago, and he thinks Twenty Faces is connected. They also found a single burnt document with a single piece of information on it: the fourth state of water.
• Meanwhile, Chiko’s mother finally gives Tome and Chiko their mansion, and Tome goes to pick Chiko up from the hospital…

Well, they like adding twists to this show. This time it’s a curious reference to Twenty Faces’ possible work on the 4th state of water. Of course, the big question is: how does that work into what’s happened so far and how is it attached to whatever Twenty Faces is trying to accomplish. Is he trying to destroy all the possible clues to his research, fearful that someone might discover what power his discovery would provide?

Ken’s remark about saying “it’s better this way” after telling his story about Twenty Faces often faking his death is ambiguous. Is he saying that it’s better than Chiko doesn’t know that he may really be dead, or she’s better off knowing what he’s doing?

We also appear to be escalating the battle between Chiko and Tome and Chiko’s mother. Oh, and where is Shunko? She can’t be too far behind in finally joining up with Chiko and Tome for good, can she?