Wednesday December 29, 2004

Well I haven't updated this site in a few days, but fortunately not much has happened in my anime viewing in the last few days.

I saw episodes 11 and 12 of Gundam SEED: Destiny. Now I'm completely caught up, and the next episode isn't airing until January 8th. I'm feeling a bit sad, and I'm wondering why I decided to watch a 50-episode series as it airs, but I guess I'm too far in now to get out of it.

I also saw the next episode of Fafner. I can't get over how much Canon's voice sounds like Cagalli from SEED. They DO have the same Seiyuu, but still, you think that she'd be able to make up a new voice!

In other news, I managed to download the REAL version of the first episode of Love Love. Those fake subs were so close, yet so far away from the truth! Can't believe I got fooled!

To end off, here's a fun link that lists all the new shows airing in Japan for winter of 2005:
Winter of 2005

Sunday December 26, 2004

There's nothing like Boxing Day to get your juices flowing. My day today started off with a 5:30am wakeup so that I could get the latest bargins on various electronics. I ended up getting a spindle of 100 DVD-Rs... that's it.

The last two days I had the opportunity to watch a bunch of anime that I'd been meaning to see, but just never had the time to. I also saw two parts of the great Cosprayers trilogy.

First off, I saw Macross Zero (review coming soon!). Although it wasn't my favorite within the Macross continuity, it was definately amazing. The animation as expected was the best non-movie animation I've ever seen in my life. After watching Gundam SEED for the last few weeks, it was a very refreshing change to see mecha battles where absolutely everything was animated to the fullest, and where battles were quite intricate and well thought out. It was hard to feel for the characters when you basically know that within a year or so they'd all be dead anyway (you'll understand if you've seen Macross), and it didn't have quite the epic feel as past Macross series, but still it was adequate for what it was trying to convey.

Another show I saw this weekend was RE: Cutie Honey, Gainax's Cutie Honey OVA remake. I only saw the first part (out of 3), but this was pure fun. The show was hilarious and just really fun. I followed up with Hideki Anno's (director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and co-founder of Gainax) live action Cutie Honey movie, which closely aligned with the OVA. The acting was a bit subpar, and so were the effects, but after seeing the OVA I appreciated it a lot more than I ever would have and it was actually quite entertaining. I liked how Anno managed to sneak in various fan service shots without making it overly obvious (so that kids could still watch the movie and be completely oblivious).

The last thing I saw were the two series Smash Hit! (aka Hit wo Nerae!) and Love Love. Both are spin off shows of Cosprayers, a really horrible magical girl show about a group of girls who fight monsters. Smash Hit was actually a fake 'making of' show about a woman working at a TV production company who is making Cosprayers. It actually makes fun of Cosprayers quite a bit and for that, I applaud the writers, because they were able to poke fun of themselves. Smash Hit was actually quite funny, and now I have to track down the last two episodes so I can finish it. Love Love meanwhile, was a spin-off 'harem show' about one of the writers in Smash Hit who's a high school student who suddenly has the teenage female cast of Cosprayers attending his high school. Hilarious antics ensue when all five girls start bumping into our hero in various eechi ways at school. Unfortunately all I had was a fake 'parody sub' of the show (by JLA). I knew there was something not quite right about the first episode from my limited Japanese, but I thought that was the product of bad subs. It was the 2nd episode where I realized that it was completely fake. I guess I'll have to find a good copy somewhere out there.

Saturday December 25, 2004

Merry Christmas(u)!

Here's some fun Christmas pictures I found:

Credit: www.gainax.co.jp	Hah look at this cosplay!

Friday December 24, 2004

It's Christmas Eve, and with all the snow outside, it's actually going to be a white Christmas this year. The only thing missing now is a 'krisumastu cake' but I guess I can do without that for now.

I finished Mahou Tsukai Tai (TV) today. Overall a very enjoyable series, although I didn't quite like the ending. It seems they sacrificed continuity to some extent for the sake of having a cool magic battle at the end which is a shame. I know Sai's been mentioning 'Mickey-sempai' for the entire series (post-OVA), but still it just didn't fit in with the overall show as it doesn't fit in with the continuity of the OVA. Either way, it was a fun series with lots of jokes, sillyness and even a good romance. I'll post a more complete review in a few days when I have more time.

I also saw the next episode of Gundam SEED: Destiny, episode 10 so I'm finally all caught up. The series is moving along nicely, although it's moving away from our main character Shinn back to Athrun more, although that's not too big a problem as I don't like Shinn anyway. There's a scene in episode 10 which is almost exactly like a scene in episode 34 of Gundam SEED (the first season), so much so that I checked the older episode just to make sure they weren't lazy and completely reused the animation. Of course they did this for dramatic effect instead of merely saving money on animation, but it was interesting to compare how close the two scenes actually were, from camera angles down to the dialog.

It seems like the gay character in Mahou Tsukai Tai (Aburatsubo) and the mysterious mask guy Neo in Gundam SEED: Destiny have the same Seiyuu (voice actor) none other than Takehito Koyasu who was also Gamlin in Macross 7:

Aburatsubo	Neo

Thursday December 23, 2004

There was a huge snowstorm today over most of central and eastern North America. This meant that my plans for the night were more or less ruined, thanks to all the snow and freezing rain that came afterwards. The only good thing that came of all of this was that I got some time to work on this website.

I've added in some subpages, a little blub about me on the about page, and did some massive work in the overall design (look) of this site. Say hi to Naru, Lafiel and Milfeulle the new mascots of this site. I'm liking it so far, so it'll probably stay like this for a while barring minor changes. I'm using a weird setup right now, connecting my laptop to a spare 21" monitor and spare speakers, but still typing on the laptop keyboard (with a wireless mouse). Not having the screen right in front of the keyboard is a bit jarring, but at least it's better than staring at a tiny screen all day.

I saw three more episodes of Mahou Tsukai Tai (TV) today, so now I'm up to episode 11 of 13. The series is running along very well, and the real plot of the show has started to appear. The love story which anyone who saw the OVA would have pretty much expected to happen has been taking place, but surprizingly there's been a very weird twist to it all. The characters are recieving a light Eva-style mental breakdown (okay it's not THAT bad) that you wouldn't expected from how lighthearted this show has been. Still the really great slapstick is still there, so I'm loving it. Let's see how this one ends!

Wednesday December 22, 2004

My new site is finally here! After months of waiting, and weeks of agonizing over when I'd actually have time to do this, I've finally decided to register a domain name. So here it is, animeslice.com! What this site will eventually become I'm not quite sure yet, but for now, I'll be using it as both an anime blog and place to rant about stuff that I feel like ranting about.

I just finished 4 more episodes of Gundam SEED: Destiny tonight, and a few more Mahou Tsukai Tai! (TV) episodes as well. Both are pretty great shows. I'm actually kind of sad that I'll be completely caught up in the Gundam SEED universe after I watch episode 10 of GS:D. I've been madly watching all of SEED for the last while, and after finishing the first season earlier this week, I'm now almost completely caught up. GS:D has been quite good so far, with a noticable improvement in animation (even though the frame rate still has a tendency to drop quite a bit during battle scenes) and a storyline that you can tell is set up for a lot of surprizes.

Here's two fun pictures of Gundam cosplay that I found earlier today as I was looking for GS:D cosplay. Absolutely astounding!