Well, we have another voting period in the Anime Club! I implore everyone who is, or wants to be, involved in the club to cast your vote for the new series. There are a crapload of good choices this time around; I am not sure which to vote for, myself, although Kannagi and Revolutionary Girl Utena seem to be the favorites at the moment.
Also, I watched Up last night, and it's awesome. :O
Anime discussed: Axis Powers Hetalia, Basquash!, Claymore, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Hare+Guu Final, Hayate no Gotoku! + OVA, Higashi no Eden, Kannagi DVD special, Kanon (2006), K-On!, Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~, Sengoku Basara, Shugo Chara! Doki, Vision of Escaflowne
-- Axis Powers Hetalia ep19: Aww, poor Canada, going unnoticed by the other Allies. History is cruel to our northern neighbors. :( Gotta feel a bit sorry for Germany, too, because 1/3 of his troops bolt at the first sign of trouble.
-- Basquash! ep9: Fun episode. I like these Eclipse girls, even if right now they're pawns for something more sinister hanging in the background. The basquash match between Eclipse's team and Dan's team is very good. Love the music to go along with it, and the action is exciting. One comment I read regarding this episode is that it's a Macross Frontier-esque episode; I'd say that's accurate. Hell, it might be accurate regarding the entire series, since Frontier took its time getting to the main story as well. Flora coming out in her disguise and revealing herself as a huge Eclipse fan, and helping Dan's team to continue the match, is the best part of the episode. She has Rie Kugimiya voicing her, so of course she is a good singer, haha. Something interesting to note is that Dan seems to have earned Iceman's respect after catching that Destroy pass in the last episode.
-- Claymore eps 1-5: Good, bloody series so far. Just what I need after watching so many cute/funny shows as of late, haha. Clare, aside from being really badass, shows off even more of Houko Kuwashima's incredible range -- she is one of my favorite seiyuu, and yet I can almost never spot her voice when I hear it. It's crazy. (Food for thought: Kuwashima is Clare, Tomoyo from Clannad, Medusa from Soul Eater, Quon from RahXephon, Isara from Valkyria Chronicles and Satsuki from X. Six completely different voices that require her to go completely different places and hit completely different emotions. I repeat -- she has absurd range.) I'm really enjoying the struggle between Clare's human nature and the Yoma influence she has taken into her body. (That process could not have been pretty.) It is really interesting that she has to pare down her human emotions to be able to do her job effectively, but it's that exact thing that leads to every Claymore's downfall as the Yoma side of them asserts itself. Easy to see that a big part of Clare's journey is going to be learning how to kill the hell out of demons without becoming one herself (literally and figuratively). The current storyline has a ton of potential, too. I suppose it is an origin story of sorts for Clare, as she travels along with another Claymore, Teresa. I wonder if Claymore will stick to the past for now, or if it will switch between past and present.
-- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood ep9: Not a bad episode. I am glad the brooding!Al stuff is limited to just a few minutes in this episode. Lots of Winry and Hughes to offset all that. It is so adorable seeing Winry interact with Hughes' family and immediately become like another daughter, haha. Hughes pulling out his gun to protect his daughter is such an inappropriate, dark joke, and it cracked me up. The brief brooding!Al scenes pay off at the end of the episode with a nice scene of bonding between Ed and Al. Good to see that even when they suspect the worst in each other, all they need to do is rumble a bit and everything will be resolved. :P
-- Hare+Guu Final eps 1-7: In terms of overall humor, I think this is about on the same level as the two prior seasons. Hare+Guu really benefits from the OVA format because then the stories can just be an all out onslaught for six or seven episodes, and it won't get tiring. Some of these episodes are just so dark, and Guu is so effortlessly evil, that Hare is in danger of snapping just about every episode. Poor little guy. My favorite is either ep5, with Hare journeying into Guu's RPG world so that he can rescue Ame (Hare has to deal with useless party members, overgrown enemies and the actual game genre randomly shifting), or ep6, with Yumi-sensei going for broke in her quest to make Hare hers (so creepy, and yet so funny) and Clive and Hare trying one final time to repair their broken father-son relationship. The ending, though, leaves a bit to be desired, because it hints that there is more to come ... and yet it has been about five years since Hare+Guu Final was released. Lame. :(
-- Hayate no Gotoku! eps 25-36: Hm, yeah, I could kind of see why some people would have jumped ship at this point in the series. I mean, I still enjoy it and want to watch it, but whereas the show is constantly moving forward in the first half, it feels as though it is spinning its wheels right now. The overall story is not the reason people should be watching the show, of course, and it is still funny as hell, but yeah. If Hayate is going to keep giving me things like Jun Fukuyama as a hilarious Lelouch-wannabe, though, then there is no way that I will abandon this show. That episode is hilarious.
-- Higashi no Eden ep8: Hm, this comes off as more of a set-up episode than anything, which feels sort of strange since there are just three episodes remaining in the series. There seems to be a slight rift of sorts developing between Akira and Saki, at least from Saki's side. After what happened with Shiratori, she's obviously suspicious about just who Akira is. (It could be questioned why she was not more suspicious before, but I would say it is because Akira did not seem life-threateningly dangerous to Saki. Very strange and mysterious, yes, but not overtly dangerous.) I wonder if Ohsugi's research has helped him happen upon information that is unknown even to Akira? Doubtful, but you never know. Speaking of research, I am interested to see how Itazu fits into everything. He knows more about the Selecao than I figured he would -- his confusion about there being 12 agents rather than 11, though, says to me that he is not aware of the Supporter. However, he does know enough to see the connections between the events of the story so far. Itazu could be someone very helpful to Akira, or he could be someone quite dangerous.
-- Kannagi DVD Special ep1: Ah, it feels like forever since I watched Kannagi. Takako pushing the Art Club into a not-so-secretly pervy scheme is the perfect way to see everyone again. Some of the funniest parts of the original series involve Takako pushing Akiba's buttons and subtly stroking his ego in such a way that she gets him to do whatever she wants, and there is plenty of that in this episode. Akiba was probably born to direct a Takako production, haha. I love that he wears the same director costume that he has in the OP. That Akiba is a geek, but he sure has style. The actual filming is pretty funny. Zange and Nagi are surprisingly good actors, although Zange is quite familiar with being a villainess, and Nagi is simply imitating the heroines in the magical girl anime she watches. Nagi's epic hero voice cracks me up. Tsugumi is expectedly bad at emoting; her attempts at being angry are cute but sad. Second half of the episode is fun, too. The homoerotic jokes among Jin, Akiba and Daitetsu are so cheap, but damn it, they're funny. Again I say Jin x Daitetsu is the most canon couple in the series. :P The epic Lord of the Rings-esque journey to the video store to return the DVD Akiba borrowed is the best part of the episode. I love the music, haha. Akiba getting swept away by the flash flood is perfectly timed. "Why did a flood come just as I finished?!" haha
-- Kanon (2006) eps 19-20: I really hope Shiori's storyline gets a bit more closure than this. The end to ep18 is more of a cliffhanger than the conclusion to a storyline, and yet basically all there is of her here is, "Oh, Shiori must be fine!" Yeah, there's limited time to tackle Ayu and Nayuki's stories, but still. I'm just kind of miffed because the story made me care about Shiori more than I thought I would. Right now, though, we're in the thick of Ayu's story, and, uh, everything is going to Crazy Town. It was obvious from the sheer amount of flashbacks that Kanon would build toward a Yuuichi x Ayu pairing. You'd have to be in extreme denial to not see that. At the same time, they hint at some darker stuff that carries over into the present ... so although Yuuichi and Ayu's kiss in ep19 is an undeniably sweet moment, it's also clear that things would not be rosy for too long. With Ayu's sudden disappearance, I am wondering if the show is going in a Fuuko-esque direction and having her be a spirit of some sort (then again I said the same thing regarding Makoto and was not entirely correct there ... lol). Her mind seems to be stuck in the past/some alternate world where there is a school in the space where that tree is, and she's searching for whatever it is she lost (which is clearly something spiritual/metaphysical rather than tangible -- obvious guess is a lost memory of some sort, but I have a feeling there's more to it than that). The tree is central to whatever she needs to find, though, or else it would not be so dominant in her mind, inadvertently or not. Or she could have just run away really fast for whatever reason. Hell if I know.
-- K-On! eps 9-10: LOL, poor Azusa is already put through the wringer by the light music club. Yui is especially awesome in this episode, going all aflutter when Azusa calls her "senpai," claiming her back is hurt when she knows Azusa will kick her ass at guitar and calming Azusa down with bubbly hugs and cake. Way too adorable. And of course Sawako immediately goes in for the kill, as well, first putting cat ears on Azusa (earning her the nickname "Azu-nyan") and then putting bunny ears on her later in the episode. Best part of all that is when Azusa gets all creeped out by Sawako and basically thinks she is a stalker, haha. The semi-serious stuff with Azusa near the end of the episode feels slightly out of place, since K-On! is normally so carefree, but all that is handled decently well, if also predictably. Azusa should be a capable newcomer to the show, though. I foresee her becoming more attached to Mio in the last four episodes. (It's so weird that this series is nearly done. Not entirely sure how popular it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a second season in the works. That is, unless there is another trolling in the works. :P)
Ep10 is a redux of sorts of the summer training session from earlier in the season. I like how the story is framed, with two meetings between Ui and Azusa showing the growth and bonding between Azusa and the light music club during the trip. Tan!Azusa looks friggin' weird, though. They basically do the same things they did in the earlier episode, so it is not quite as funny this time around. I did laugh at Mio chasing Ritsu around while everyone eats, haha. And, wow, next episode we are already dealing with a crisis regarding a potential snag in the light music club's performance during the school festival. Time progresses so quickly in this series lol. It is kind of ridiculous.
-- Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ eps 7-8: And now the shit has hit the fan. Scythe Master was set up as such an obvious power-hungry villain that it seemed almost inevitable that Claudia would actually be the one to make the first move and seize more influence in Inferno. She basically plays Scythe Master like a violin, capitalizing upon his desire for more power by presenting an irresistible plan that would earn him more points with the higher-ups, and then orchestrating things so that it would appear as if Scythe Master had betrayed Inferno. Very cunning, but also very evil. I don't really buy her song and dance about wanting Zwei to "choose" to be her subordinate. I would say she sees it as likely that Zwei would not be able to resume his previous life in Japan. Even though she knew him for a relatively short time, an intelligent observer like Claudia would be able to see that Zwei's personality just would not enable him to do that. So, that choice really isn't a choice at all -- it's actually a variation on the "decision" Zwei is presented with at the beginning of the series: "Kill for Inferno, or be killed yourself." She is no different from the Scythe Master or the rest of the people at the top of Inferno. Hell, she says she does not want any puppets or pawns, but she is pretty much using Lizzie in that way. There is a good chance Lizzie could have been killed while defending the cocaine shipment from Ein. Claudia uses Lizzie, who does not have all the information, as a pawn in her plan to discredit Scythe Master; I imagine Lizzie will be quite pissed when this is finally revealed to her. So, yeah, Ein and Zwei are none too happy about being thrown away so easily. I wonder if they will look for Scythe Master, or if it will be a while before he pops up again?
-- Sengoku Basara ep8: Eh, the action in this episode is good as usual, but overall this Hisahide side trip is sort of dull. It works to strengthen the bonds between Takeda's clan and Date's clan; however, it feels more like a distraction from the main battle more than anything else. Any opportunity to hear Keiji Fujiwara as a villain is welcome, though, and watching Katakura kick some ass is fun. Next episode appears to be swinging back to the main story. The title basically gives away that Takeda is going to die, which isn't too shocking. Hopefully he goes out in an awesome way and bequeaths upon Sanada much badassedness.
-- Shugo Chara! Doki ep34: Excellent episode. It breaks away from the main storyline, but then it gives us Rie Kugimiya as a guest star, so the trade-off is worth it. Rie plays a young model, Yua, who also has aspirations to sing; problem is, she has crippling stage fright from an incident in kindergarten. (Apparently Amu gave Yua some inspiring words that day that helped her conquer that fear, if only temporarily.) This really felt like a two-parter from the start, and I am glad to see the show go through with it. The episode teases the usual clean ending, but instead it ends with Yua onstage in a panic, because she cannot bring herself to sing, and it's like a sad gut punch. There are a ton of lighter moments throughout the episode, however. Yaya and Rima pretty much run the show with Amu, which is an automatic formula for win. Rima's facial expressions, especially, are so damn funny, because she's trying to pretend she's into all the crazy antics, but she has her usual ":|" face on, haha. Yaya constantly horning in on the modeling sessions is amusing, too. Speaking of wannabe models, yay for Saaya getting a random appearance. Feels like forever since she has shown up.
-- Vision of Escaflowne eps 3-4: OK, now we're getting more into the swing of things here. Allen is a pretty cool character. (Of course, when you are voiced by Shinichiro Miki, you have to try really hard to not be cool.) I like the balance between him and Van, where Van is trying to throw himself into everything and be a fiery, angry young man, whereas Allen is like, "... OK, dude, settle down a bit. Jeez." I'll admit to warming up to Van a bit more upon watching the episodes a second time, though. He's still a huge doofus at times, but he's not quite as bad in these episodes as he is in the first two, because he actually shows some concern for Hitomi. But those two pale in comparison to Dilandau, on whom Minami Takayama is forcing me to develop a man crush. Ugh. I totally fell in love with her voice as Kati Manneqin in Gundam 00, and she uses the same voice here (or I guess she uses her Dilandau voice for Kati), so it is pretty much destiny. Takayama gets to be violent, arrogant and psychotic, and my heart goes aflutter. Also, I think the relationship between Folken and Dilandau is interesting. There is some obvious tension between the two -- Dilandau is definitely the "kill 'em all, burn down their kingdom and then piss on their graves" type, whereas Folken strikes me more as the Well Intentioned Extremist type. He has some mysterious goal in mind that, at least, he sees as noble, and teaming up with nutjobs like Dilandau is just a sacrifice he has to make to get the job done. Or maybe that is just me wanting to sympathize with Jouji Nakata because his voice is so badass. Haha. Not really going to try to guess on anything else plot-related at the moment, because it is just too early for me to speculate.
