Anime DVDs

June 30, 2009
Ah! My Buddha – Volume 3
Appleseed
Blade of the Phantom Master
Gakuen Alice – Box Set (sub)
Heroic Age – Part 2
One Piece – Season 2 Part 1
Samurai Champloo – Box Set

Manga

June 30, 2009
Black God – Volume 6
Cirque du Freak – Volume 1
Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally – Volume 2
Gurren Lagann – Volume 2
Inukami! – Volume 3
Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl – Omnibus Volume 1
Kiichi and the Magic Books – Volume 5
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – Volume 3
Swans in Space – Volume 1
Welcome to Wakaba-soh – Volume 1
Zombie-Loan – Volume 6

July 6, 2009
Fruits Basket – Volume 23
Gakuen Alice – Volume 8
Game x Rush – Volume 1
Guardian Hearts – Volume 2
KimiKiss – Volume 1
NG Life – Volume 2

Name: Sora o Miageru Shojo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai, Munto TV, The World Reflected in the Eyes of a Girl Looking Up at the Heavens
Genre: Fantasy, Adventure
Episodes: 9
Aired: January 13, 2009 – March 10, 2009
Based On: Munto OVAs from Kyoto Animation
Director: Yoshiji Kigami
Produced By: Kyoto Animation
US Distribution By: Not Licensed

Cast

Review

Sora o Miageru Shojo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai, or Munto TV for short, is a story about a seemingly simple girl, Yumemi, with an amazing gift that no one else has: the ability to see floating islands in the sky.  Little does she know that these floating islands are actually the land masses belonging the various nations of the heavens, and in particular the Magical Kingdom, who is led by it’s king, Munto.

Long ago, there was a war between the nations of heaven and the “lower world” over Akuto – a power source which can be used to create virtually anything – including new heavenly beings.  However, a consequence of this war is that the heavens created a space/time barrier between itself and the lower world, cutting off the flow of Akuto to the heavens.  Now, several millenia later, the kingdoms of heaven are running out of Akuto, threatening to send the heavens crashing down on top of the lower world (modern day Earth), destroying both worlds.  As a result, a war as broken out between the Magical Kingdom and an alliance of the remaining magical nations.  As all hope appears to fade, Munto sees a vision with the aid of the royal seer – a vision that tells him that a girl from the lower world – Yumemi – has the ability to once again reconnect the two worlds, saving both.

It should be noted that this series is effectively the two Munto OVA series remastered, with what amounts to another OVA-length story added to the end.  The series breaks pretty cleaningly into thirds:  the first three episodes being the first OVA, the next 3 episodes being the second OVA, and the final 3 episodes being new material added to the story.  However, Kyoto Animation merely uses remastered footage of the OVAs instead of reanimating them.  As a result, The animation quality differs between each of the three sections of the series, which may or may not be distracting (though I think it’s less distracting if one knows this fact going in).  Also, as should be obvious by now, despite being 9 episodes, one is really only getting about 3 to 3 1/2 episodes of new material if one had already seen the Munto OVAs previously.

Also, the story is incomplete at the end of the series, with a movie conclusion called Tenjo-nin to Akuto-nin Saigo no Tatakai, or Last War of Heavenloids and Akutoloids, finishing the series off

The series is rather flawed, given the before mentioned reuse of old footage, not enough new footage, and being short despite the fact that they’re using a movie to finish the story off.  One kind has to ask what the point of the whole endevar was.  Why not just do a movie sequel and be done with it?  Having said that, I still think it’s respectable watch, though if one is familar with the original OVAs, one can pretty much skip the first 5 1/2 episodes or so.

Scores

Story: 4/5
Animation: 3/5
Music: 5/5
English Dubs: N/A

Overall: 3/5

First Watched: January – March 2009
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes

Issac is pissed that someone was able to pull off the assassination from the last episode on his turf and demands that those responsible are found. Meanwhile, Cal has doubts that Reiji can avenge her friend Judy’s death, but Reiji assures her that his “friend” will be able to do the job. Cal insists on getting deeper, and while Reiji initially refuses, Cal’s finally convinces him to let her see his “friend” as well as let her crash at his place that night (since she got kicked out of her apartment).

Reiji calls Lizzie so she can pose as his friend, while at the same time, Lizzie is rather amused by the great Phantom Reiji being led around by a little girl. That night, Cal explains to Reiji that Judy wasn’t her real sister: Cal had run away from home and Judy took her in as a result.

Meanwhile, Issac runs into Lizzie and isn’t all too happy that she’s out also investigating on his turf, and brings her along with him to Reiji’s place to see Cal. However, Reiji refuses to let Issac see her, despite his insistence. Issac then tells Reiji to come to headquarters the next day so that he and Claudia can “tell McGuire everything.”

Cal overhears all this, and thus Reiji is able to get her to tell him what she knows that night. However, the only thing she can tell him is that she and Judy were out walking, and a stray bullet hit Judy out of the dark. Cal’s also able to guess who Reiji really is from his conversation with Issac. She then reveals that she is the one lugging around the missing $5 million, dumping it all in front of Reiji and begging him to kill the people who killed Judy.

The next morning, Mr. McGuire demands an explanation of what’s been going on. Reiji explains that he prevented Issac from talking to her because he didn’t want to “spoil” her: he saw in her a special talent, a desire to kill, and a soul with no place to go. In other words, someone who would make a perfect assassin. Despite Issac’s protests, Mr. McGuire reluctantly agrees to allow Reiji to train Cal.

Well, from the best I could tell, this is what happened: Issac found out about Cal via Lizzie and was probably going to do several unspeakable things to Cal in order to get her to “talk.” Realizing this, Reiji did whatever he could do to keep Issac from getting his hands on her.

Of course, this just raised Issac’s already high suspicions about Reiji and Claudia even further, resulting in his demanding that Reiji explain what’s going on to Mr. McGuire. Realizing that Cal was probably in even more peril now, Reiji did about the only thing he could think of: coming up with an excuse for Inferno not to tear Cal apart physically and/or mentally, and his best excuse was that she had potential to be an assassin.

I’m still not totally clear if Reiji even really believed what he was telling Mr. McGuire, but he’s basically put himself in a position to where he has to train Cal as an assassin lest they both literally get the axe now.

Of course, we’re still heading down a road towards an ultimate confrontation between Issac and Claudia, though so far it isn’t looking good for Issac in that regard as he appears to be losing most of the arguments within Inferno up to this point.

Also, I think this episode pretty much confirms that the shadowy figure in the last episode was not Cal, which just makes me think all the more that it was Ein, acting under orders of Godoh’s second in command who had shown such distaste for working with Claudia. After all, it has been something like 9 months since she was shot. If she did survive her wounds, I’d imagine that she could very well be healed by then. I’m also figuring that we’re going to see a time jump of probably a few years in not too long. I doubt Cal will stay the age she is forever in the series.

The new show that I’ll be blogging in the Summer season is Sweet Blue Flowers, a.k.a. Aoi Hana.  As I said in my preview, to me, this series seems to have very little on the surface for me to dislike.  The art looks good, it’s being animated by J.C. Staff, it’s being directed by Kenichi Kasai, who has directed Honey & Clover and Nodame Cantabile (the latter of which I haven’t personally seen, but it appears to be held in rather high regard).  And with an ending theme by Ceui (who also did the ending theme to Munto TV), this one seems to have “great show” written all over it.

Now, onto the shows that I’ll be watching but not blogging.  The other show I was considering blogging, Sora no Manimani, is definitely on my watch list, as is the already in progress second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.  Wrapping up my watch list for summer are CANAAN, Taisho Yakyuu Musume, and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0.

CANAAN was probably was close to “will watch” as a show can get without being on my “will watch” list on my preview.  The lack of a good description was the main reason I held back, but I couldn’t really find anything to displace it, so onto my final watch list it goes.  Once I read the description of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, I was also pretty sure it would end up on my final watch list as well, and here it is.  Finally, the show I’m taking the biggest chance on this season is Taisho Yakyuu Musume.  As I said in my preview, I’m not really all that hot on sports shows, but this one seems to be a bit different, so I’m hoping for the best.

For the two other shows on my “may watch” list, Sea Story ended up being cut due to my increasing doubts about the show.  Meanwhile, Bakemonogatari got cut due to my just running out of spots (I wasn’t intending on picking up more than 5 total shows as it was).  If watching 11 shows at once isn’t suicidal and I hear some good things about this show after a couple episodes, I might go back and pick it up, but to start off with, I’m leaving it off.

That means, going into the summer, my complete schedule looks thus:

Blogging

• Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom
• Sweet Blue Flowers (new)

Watching

• CANAAN (new)
• Fullmetal Alchemist
• Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (new)
• Pandora Hearts
• Shangri-La
• Sora no Manimani (new)
• Taisho Yakyuu Musume (new)
• Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (new)
• Valkyria Chronicles