Well, I guess out of all the major characters, the only one who really hasn’t had an episode focusing on them yet is Tonkatsu. However, he gets his turn in Episode 13. This episode also marks the halfway point of the series so it’s, er, all downhill from here (whether a pun was intended will be determined by the end of the series).
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Episode 12 is all about Machi - and her trying to learn how to cook so that she may become a proper bride. Ayane is the one who pushes her into learning (because she’s tired of doing all the cooking), though she may come to regret doing that (as is usually the case with anything that Ayane tries to do with Machi).
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Assuming there are no breaks in the airing of Nagasarete Airantou (which can happen. Seto no Hanayome took a week off this past week), it should finish airing September 26th.
The next project I’ll be taking on is School Days which, from what I’ve seen online, is a 13 episode series with an expected 3-OVA followup (or something). This series, again if there are no breaks, should air between July 3 - September 25th.
The project after that which I’ll start on will be Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan 2. Assuming this series is aired like the first one, it will air as 2 pairs of 8 half-episodes, once every 2 months (the first double-digit Saturday date). That means it would air August 11th, October 13th, December 15th, and February 16, 2008 - but this is just an assumption.
After that, there are several projects I’m looking forward to. One is Clannad, which is another Key visual novel adaptation. If I can hack through the Japanese well enough, it looks like they’ll announce when this will start airing in August. Most likely it will be a late fall 2007 or winter 2008 start.
Another series I’m looking forward to covering is Shakugan no Shana II. Again, no definite airdate on this either, though ANN says October 2007.
I don’t see anything on the immediate horizon which I’m just really looking forward to seeing at this point, though a few other series may catch my eye between now and then.
Starting with this episode, I’m going to try to cut down on how much I write per an episode. It takes too long, takes up too much space, and is just a pain to write. This with the fact that next week I’ll be starting my second anime blogging project, School Days, I just thought it was time to make a change. I had originally planned to keep writing the Nagasarete Airantou episodes the same just to be consistent…but I changed my mind.
In any case, we’re now up to episode 11. We’re quickly approaching the halfway point of the series (ANN says it’s slated for 26 episodes) and in this one Suzu gets a fever and we meet Yukino’s mother.
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Since I don’t know Japanese, or at least certainly not enough to understand a conversation, I kind of depend on fansubs when understanding an episode. Unfortunately, this means if a fansubbing group gets behind, I get behind too, especially when there is only one group subbing a series that I’m watching.
That appears to be the case this week. It doesn’t look like Episode 11 of Nagasarete Airantou is gonna get out on time today, so hopefully I’ll be able to put it up Sunday. I already have screencaptures of it done and ready, so all I need to do is actually watch it subbed and write up a review.
This episode is kind of a mix of a lot of stuff - but mainly deals with what people do when it’s raining and they can’t get any work done. It’s kind of slow, but there are still a lot of things going on at the same time (as can be evidenced by the length of my writeup and how many screen captures I took).
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There has already been an episode where we got to know Rin a little better. This is an episode totally focused on Rin and her family, however. This really, really rounds out the episodes focused on the individual characters (or should). And Rin’s sister still concerns me…
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This week, Ikuto and Suzu visit Chikage for some, um, research, and not necessarily the type that Ikuto is necessarily looking forward to…
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Even though the only series I’m doing episode reviews on is Nagasarete Airantou, I’m also watching three other anime series this spring: Seto no Hanayome, Idolmaster Xenoglossia, and Lucky Star.
Now that we’re to the episode 7 mark - a quarter of the way through the season -it’s time for a report card.
I’d say, out of the four series I’m watching, the best one so far is easily Lucky Star. Lucky star definitely has it’s issues - it’s essentially an Azumanga Daioh wanna-be, but I think it fails at being quite as witty as AD. It’s pretty humorous, yes, but I don’t find myself rolling in my chair laughing as much as I did with Azumanga. Nevertheless, Lucky Star is still the best series I’m watching.
Next on the list is probably Idolmaster Xenoglossia. Perhaps because I haven’t seen all that many mecha series, this series still seems interesting to me. I don’t think it’s fallen into any real holes yet, despite chances to do so. One interesting thing about this series: it’s based off of an X-Box 360 Game called Idolmasters, which apparently helped boost 360 sales in Japan quite a bit. The game itself is what it sounds like - you’re a manger of a prospect idol. The anime throws a twist in, however, making the idol competition a cover for a secret government program that uses young girls to pilot mechas which help intercept meteors (the remnants of a destroyed moon) before they strike earth.
Well, ok, so we’re seven episodes in and we still don’t know either why or how the moon was destroyed or why the project has to be secret, but hopefully that’s coming.
Third on the list is probably Nagasarete Airantou. As you can see from my reviews, I find this series fairly mediocre. It can’t decide what it wants to be or where it is going, but it is at least keeping itself from falling in too deep of a hole.
Finally there is Seto no Hanayome. If I get tired of writing reviews for Nagasarete every week because I find it boring, I’m glad I dropped Seto no Hanayome as a project due to no one fansubbing it initially. This series has made me want to claw my eyes out several times while watching it, both because of it’s near substance-less plot and radical shifts in animation style, apparently just for the heck of it.
