Anime DVDs

May 13, 2008
Kanon - Volume 4
Project Blue Earth SOS - Volume 3
ShinChan - Volume 1 (dub)
Super Robot Wars OG Divine Wars - Volume 6 (sub)
Teknoman - Box Set (dub)
Welcome to the NHK - Volume 4

And to just make a lot of us more depressed, today was supposed to be the day that Shigofumi Volume 1 was released.  Oh well!  Bad Bandai Visual, Bad!

Manga

May 13, 2008
Aria - Volume 2
Basara - Volume 27
Battle Club - Volume 6
Chibi Vampire - Volume 8
Crayon Shin-chan - Volume 2
Demon Flowers - Volume 3
Enchanter - Volume 8
Flame of Recca - Volume 27
Getbackers - Volume 24
GTO: The Early Years - Volume 7
Happiness Recommended - Single
Hayate the Combat Butler - Volume 7
Kedamono Damono - Volume 3
Kingdom Hearts II - Volume 2
Monochrome Factor - Volume 2
Parasyte - Volume 3
Project ARMS - Volume 19
Rave Master - Volume 28
Rozen Maiden - Volume 8
Samurai Deeper Kyo - Volume 28
Sgt. Frog - Volume 15
Switch - Volume 2
The Record of a Fallen Vampire - Volume 1
Togari - Volume 6
Toto - Volume 1
Trinity Blood - Volume 6
Tsubasa, RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE - Volume 17
V.B. Rose - Volume 2
Wild Adapter - Volume 5
Yagyu Ninja Scrolls, The - Volume 3
Yakitate!! Japan - Volume 11

May 14, 2008
Blood+ - Volume 2
Eiken - Volume 10

In any case, I’m not sure how often this series is airing. Apparently not weekly as this episode was released 11 days ago, and episode 2 has yet to appear. Don’t tell me this is going to be a monthly thing…

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• Kana gets ready for school, but Yuki, who is still in bed, unconsciously invites her back into bed, an offer which Kana accepts, resulting in the two being late to class.
• Meanwhile, another girl who attends their school, Sakuya, is enraptured to take (and receive) pictures of Kana, due to her quite obvious girl-crush on Kana. However, due to her enraptured nature, she ends up missing the train, being left by herself at the station.
• At school, Sakuya demands that Kana repay her for leaving her behind at the station for going on a date with her that weekend. Kana tries to refuse, and asks for Yuki’s help, but instead of helping Kana, Yuki shares some pics of Kana with Sakuya.
• A few days later, it’s raining when school lets out, but Kana can’t find her umbrella and realizes that she must have used it the previous week and had forgotten. She goes around trying to borrow an umbrella from someone, but without success. Sakuya invites Kana to go home with her, since it’s nearby, but Kana refuses. Finally, Yuki arrives after swimming practice, and they share an umbrella on the way home.
• Back at her house, Sakuya reveals that she’s somehow gotten her hands on Kana’s umbrella, though her plan to have her come home with her as a result didn’t work.

Well, I’m not sure there is a lot new in this episode than the ONA released last year, except that Sakuya’s crush on Kana appears to already be established in this episode.  However, otherwise it just seems to be showing what Kana and Yuki’s relationship is again. I guess we do learn that Sakuya and Yuki are both on the swim team together and Sakuya seems like the persistent type.

It’s be nice if this had a little bit of a plot, though I guess it’s hard to tell that after just one episode.

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review

• Twin sisters, Kanade (Kana) and Yukino (Yuki) live in a room together as the two attend an apparently all-girl school. Kana asks Yuki what she wants for Christmas, and Yuki says she wants Kana’s breasts, but Kana (who glares at Yuki for the response) just says that’s her wish.
• Kana and Yuki go to a karaoke bar with some fellow students, where another girl, Sakuya, appears to confess to Yuki outside the room.
• The next day at school, Yuki remarks that Kana seems sleepy again, and shows her a picture of Kana drooling all over her desk that she has on her cell phone. Kana tells her to delete it, so Yuki does, but not before sending it out to everyone in her email list.
• That night, Kana tells Yuki that it’s probably time to sleep in separate beds (they still sleep together). Yuki asks Kana if she’s OK with that, and Kana says she is. At school a few days later, Yuki tells Kana that she loves her, afraid because Kana has been becoming more distant. Kana asks if it’s OK since Yuki is dating Sakuya, but Yuki tells Kana that she is the one Sakuya likes, and she thought that they were dating.
• Kana asks Yuki what she’s been doing with Sakuya then, and Yuki tells her that Sakuya wanted to get closer to Kana, so she asked Yuki for information about Kana. Kana asks why, and Yuki just says that she never thought Kana would leave her…and Sakuya offered her snacks.

As I remarked before, this is a pretty short episode and basically sets up the series: Yuki and Kana are fraternal twin sisters who share a pretty strong bond (though it doesn’t really seem truly romantic in nature at this point), and we have another girl, Sakuya, who has a crush on Kana. And that’s basically the bulk of this episode.

We see that Kana is the more grounded of the two sisters while Yuki is pretty much an airhead as well. In any case, this basically leads us straight into the series proper it looks like.

Where the series will take us…well I guess we’ll find out.

As a result, I’m suspending my episode reviews for this series, as I quit downloading series once they’re licensed, which is a shame as I only got to see half the series subbed, so I’ll have to wait until 2009 to see how it finishes as well.

This series seemed to have a good storyline like the first, but the animation change from the first series just seemed to overshadow just about everything else on the series.  Hopefully that will get improved at least a little on the DVD release (though I seem to doubt it).

Funimation also licensed Save Me! Lollipop (a.k.a. Mamotte! Lollipop) and Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple (a.k.a. History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi) earlier in the week.  Funimation states that there will be another licensing announcement tomorrow as well.  So far these have all been new series.  I wonder if we’ll see any Geneon rescues in this batch or not.

Actual numbers are out now, and they say that Speed Racer actually made a paltry $18.6 million over the weekend, placing it at 3rd place behind the 2nd weekend of Iron Man and What Happened in Vegas, earning it a lousy $5,147 per screen.  That’s $1,716 per screen per day.  At the national average ticket price of $6.88, that’s 249 people per screen per day, or probably something around 50 to 60 people per screening.  Ouch.

OK, yeah, it finished in 2nd, but it only took in 40% of Iron Man which is in it’s second weekend, and even though it (barely) brought in more money than What Happens in Vegas, at least based on the estimates, it took in less money per theater.

And next weekend we get Narnia (followed by Indiana Jones the following weekend), so don’t expect any sort of rebound either.  That’s a pretty bad opening for a movie that cost $120 million or whatever to make.

Looking at movies with similar openings last year, Speed Racer will probably hit $50 million (for example, 1408 opened at $20.6 million and finished with $72 - though it only cost $25 million to make, while Halloween 2007 brought in $26.4 million on it’s opening but totaled only $58 million), but I’m sure they would have liked that as an opening weekend, not as a total domestic haul.

But don’t forget this report from Skirt One to Skirt Leader: Maid Guy Eyes has seen everything about you.

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review

• A trio of camouflaged men infiltrate Naeka’s yard in order to steal her underwear, but Kogarashi shows up and stops them. After being tied up, they tell Naeka and the others that they are the “Purple Lovers” - serial underwear thieves, though they reveal that they’re actually after Fubuki’s.
• Angry after being told that her underwear would “only fetch $700,” Naeka tries to smack one of the guys with her kendo stick, but he stops it with his feet and another blocks Kousuke and Fubuki, allowing the third to grab the panties and split.
• Fubuki calls for Kogarashi, who had gone inside to call the police, and he chases the man. However, the man is first defeated by a blond haired girl, who takes the underwear for herself.
• The next day Kogarashi starts to investigate by hypnotizes a truck driver who drove by the night before so that he can tell Kogarashi what he saw. He tells him that, besides the underwear thief and Kogarashi, he saw a girl with a green skirt and strawberry print underwear go by.
• At school, the girl, named Elizabeth K. Strawberryfield, transfers into Naeka’s class. Liz starts telling Naeka how she was amazed by how she defeated one opponent after the other at the last kendo tournament, and Naeka starts fearing that this is another confession by another female. However, it turns out that Liz is there to challenge Naeka at kendo instead of to admire her for it (and she tosses on top that she hates “large useless things” like Naeka’s boobs).
• To try to find the culprit, Kogarashi starts stealing the underwear form all the girls at school to find the one wearing strawberry-print panties. Once Fubuki sees what Kogarashi is doing, she presses the phone self-destruct button, blowing up the phone Kogarashi is talking to her with.
• After school, Naeka goes to the dojo where Liz is waiting for her. Naeka refuses at first, but Liz shows Naeka that she has revealing photos of her, and she’ll hand them over to the male kendo club if she doesn’t fight. Kogarashi notices what’s going on, but before he can do anything. Liz’s battle maid shows up.
• In round 1 of 3 in Naeka and Liz’s kendo match, Liz passes out due to the mask Naeka lent her which hadn’t been washed in three years and Naeka easily gets a hit. In round 2, Liz tosses underwear pics of Naeka in the air to distract Naeka and Liz gets a hit on her.
• Meanwhile, Maid Guy follows Liz’s maid to the roof of the school and eventually finds her in a closet there. He steals her underwear as well and sees that it isn’t strawberry, and then leaves to go back to the dojo.
• Back at the dojo, Naeka and Liz are in a fierce fight, but Liz tries to distract Naeka again, this time by tossing her stolen panties. However, Kogarashi calls in crows to retrieve Naeka’s underwear. However, this also results in them violating Liz, who is still hiding more stolen ones, as well as them trying to take off the ones Naeka is currently wearing.
• Kogarashi then tries to confirm if Liz is the girl he is looking for, but just as he steals her underwear, Fubuki blows up Kogarashi’s phone again, charring Liz’s panties to the point that Kogarashi can’t tell what’s on them.
• Back at their house, Naeka, Fubuki, and Kogarashi notice that Naeka is missing one pair of panties. Kousuke then comes home, incidentally with $700 worth of ero and doujin games.

While the story of this show is hardly anything to speak about, the things they keep having Kogarashi do almost makes this show worthwhile to watch. I like how he’s able to steal panties so quickly that girls don’t notice (though, wouldn’t they figure it out soon enough? Isn’t it a little breezy in here?). We also see Maid Guy hypnosis and copious amount of “Maid Guy Eye.” I also liked Liz’s “Nutcracker Fleuret” move as well.

The amount of strawberry-print panty flashing is a little much, but I guess it’s not too bad. There is something disconcerting about Kousuke selling his sister’s panties for $700, however lol.

I guess the main new thing in this episode, other than Liz and her maid showing up, is that Maid Guy has started harassing other females other than Nakea - especially Fubuki and Liz’s maid, though at least Fubuki is able to fight back, which makes it that much better.

Again, this isn’t a great series, but at least it’s entertaining.

Go Straight to the Screenshots | Go Straight to the Review

• Hikari goes to Kei’s house to see his family, which she hasn’t done in quite a while. However, Kei’s father turns out to be a whiny loli-shota who wants to see Hikari’s wrestling moves.
• Hikari then sees Kei’s little brother, Sui, who is basically into a rebellious stage at the moment. Kei and Sui’s father has an idea, though: to get Sui back under control, Hikari will be his tutor. (however, Akira is rather upset that Hikari has to go to Kei’s house every day as a result).
• Hikari soon learns how Sui has driven away his past tutors as he hurls insults at Hikari non-stop. However, this still doesn’t keep Hikari from trying.
• Hikari takes Sui outside the next day since “there is more to learning than what is in books.” Hikari then catches a dragonfly, but Kei shows up having caught three. Hikari sees this as a challenge and she and Kei proceed to fight over who can catch the most, but of course Kei ends up winning.
• Afterwards, Sui yells at Kei, calling him a “robot behind a human face” for being so perfect. Sui says he doesn’t care about doing anything since he wouldn’t be able to beat Kei at it anyway.
• The next day Sui expands on that, telling Hikari that Kei doesn’t care for him, and that his expression never changes no matter what, but Hikari tells him that that isn’t the case. Sui then asks Hikari if she loves Kei, which of course causes Hikari to get all flustered.
• Kei then shows up and tells Hikari to not concern herself with Sui anymore. Sui gets angry and runs away, but Hikari eventually finds him. Sui tries running again, but Hikari grabs him, but as a result ends up hitting her head on a railing really hard.
• Sui decides to carry Hikari home (and Hikari lets him!) until Kei finally catches up to the pair. Kei thanks Sui for bringing Hikari that far, and Sui is happy that Kei praised him.
• The next day, Sui comes to the school and tells Hikari that he thinks he’ll get Kei to tutor him from now on, since he thinks he’ll be more effective. This, of course, horrifes Hikari as she loses to Kei once again…

This is yet another OK, but not great (but not bad) episode. I guess the main things accomplished here are that we see Kei’s family, we have a one-shot problem solved, and finally someone vocally asks the most obvious question: do Kei and Hikari like each other.

However, other than that, it’s largely just more competing between Hikari and Kei which is seriously starting to lose it’s novelty at this point.

About the best thing about this series are the faces Hikari makes, but while funny, that’s hardly enough to carry the show. Other than that, what was funny about this episode? Nothing, really. Not that this was supposed to be a funny episode from start to finish, but I’m trying to figure out the point of this series.

Hopefully it’s more than “Hikari and Kei like each other but won’t say so” and “Kei beats Hikari at everything” because they are both about to wear out their welcome, and we still have 20-something episodes to go.

This week’s Podcast Stats:
Time: 16:08
Download Size: 11.1 MB

Opening theme:
“Forever We Can Make It!” by THYME
Opening theme to To Love-Ru

Ending theme:
“Ai no Melody” by KOKIA
Ending theme to Origin - Spirits of the Past

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