Glad it’s winter break finally. After a long and tough quarter, I could use a rest. Not sure if I’m actually getting one though. Over the course (and whatever is left of it), I’m going to blog about some random things that have been occupying my time and thoughts.
Since baseball season is over, and I’m rediscovering how disappointing it is to be a Mariners fan during the off season, and I put WoW on almost hiatus status, and Brawl isn’t out yet, I have to find something to waste time. So with the advent of YouTube, sites like YouTube, and a bigger hard drive, I’ve taken up to watching anime. All the under the guise of studying Japanese. Lots of it. Some of the ones I’ve been watching lately… as you might see, they tend to vary a lot. Just some random thoughts about some of them.
Oh and as a side note, I generally have a weird habit of trying to pretend I’m a TV station and stick to a schedule to watching it. Some I only watch once a week, others daily. It’s like just how real TV shows go, right? It’s weird. Maybe this shouldn’t have been brought up in the first place.
Aria the Animation
Why – I had something in my downloads folder with a song from it. Never really listened to the song at all, just saw it and, why not.
Plot – Takes place on Mars, in a city that looks a lot like Venice. The main forms of transportation seem to be walking, and gondolas. And gondolas, and the gondoliers (called undines) are the focus of this.
Thoughts – There’s no plot. Almost no action. It’s main focus isn’t really on comedy. But that’s okay, I don’t think the main goal is to be any of these. As such, it can be boring, if President Aria wasn’t so silly and cute. I tend to watch this right before I go to bed, and it works great, cause, well, I wouldn’t say it would bore you to death. It’s just relaxing. That’s a good thing, especially since there’s plenty of other anime where people are getting decapitated, there’s a war that threatens to destroy all of humanity, or the cute bunny girl did something really funny and you can’t stop laughing.
Future - There’s a second season of 25-28 episodes. 12 was fine for Aria the Animation, but dunno how 28 episodes of this will work.
Random -In the entire course of the anime, all the characters that were given names except probably two, started with an A. That would be an あ, as in Akari, Akira, Ai, Alicia, Aika, Alice. The only two that didn’t, one was grandma, which is more of a title. Her real name probably started with an あ. The other was Woody, but I hear his name started like everyone else’s in the manga. Oh, and they also renamed Mars to Aqua, cause it’s all blue instead of red now.
Turn A Gundam
Why – I used to really like Gundam. But possibly for the wrong reasons. When Gundam Wing was dubbed and aired in the States, it was great. Cool looking robots, and a cast of male characters that a lot of ladies could swoon over. As a bonus, nearly all the opening and ending songs were performed by TWO-MIX (now II Mix Delta), and then later on I went on to discover J-Pop.
Unfortunately, when Cartoon Network decided to capitalize on the success of Gundam Wing, all the other Gundam series didn’t seem to have done as well. Possibly because most of the other Gundams may in fact, not turn out to be just like Gundam Wing. I didn’t quite watch the original Mobile Suit Gundam in the right mindset (was expecting Gundam Wing Zero with a kick ass beam rifle and other flashy things), but Domon Cashew (or whatever his name was) was funny in the overly uneccessary dramatic way. And because of WoW, I never got into Gundam SEED.
Now it’s 2007. What inspired me to watch this overlooked entry in the Gundam line of anime? The plot sounded interseting when I first read about it. Probably what did it was the music. Apparently, Yoko Kanno was composer. A friend from WoW one day directed me to a video of some guild killing Kael’thas. So I reluctantly downloaded it, and one of the tracks that guild used in their video was inner universe by Origa used for Ghost in the Shell TV. I did a search on Origa on either YouTube or my P2P application (forgot which came first). One of the songs I found was called Moon, and it sounded beautiful. And it was used for Turn A Gundam. Not sure how the rest panned out, but I don’t care.
Plot - It’s 19th century Earth vs. sci-fi technology from moon. 19th century Earth actually puts up a decent fight, even without the ugliest Gundam ever conceived on their side.
Thoughts – Turn A Gundam is really underrated. It starts off slow, and you see the male lead nude more than any of the female characters (there’s very little nudity, really only in the first two episodes). And then the animation isn’t the greatest either (feels like Gundam Wing had better animation, and it came out three years earlier). I like the two main characters a lot. Loran, the main guy is definitely a pacifist. In fact, he would be labeled a hippie, if there weren’t already people that looked more like hippies in the anime. Despite being really peaceful, he can kick some ass when necessary (and not get all emo about it a month later). And the other… Dianna, has a really peculiar hairstyle. And good at being in two places at once (quite literally).
Future – Over 30 episodes tend to scare me, but I’m at around episode 30 and I’m still interested. Because of my weird watching habits, I will finish the series after break is over. After Turn A is over, it’s time to find another Gundam to watch… thinking Zeta. Always wanted to watch that one for sure.
Random – One nice thing is about Turn A is that a couple of the characters I don’t like have already died.
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (cause the translated title is too long to type, although adding this makes it longer to type)
Why - I’d say it’s obvious enough… if not, search YouTube for “hare hare yukai.” Also, all the product placement in Lucky Star worked.
Plot – From what I could make of it, it’s vaguely about saving the world, although it may not have been saved in the end.
Thoughts – Hilarious. Nonsensical. Overall was just fun to watch. Gonna have to watch it in chronological order someday and see if it makes more sense.
Future – I heard season two was in the making.
Random – Yes, overall, I’d say this anime was really random.
Kino’s Journey -Life Goes On-
Why - Cause I really liked Kino’s Journey.
Plot – A prequel that reveals more about Kino’s past, while keeping in style with the anime.
Thoughts – Roughly the same thoughts I have after most episodes in Kino’s Journey. Which is nothing really, but a little more tangible. You learn more about Kino, but at the same time, not everything.
Future – I have reservations about reading the light novel series, as my Japanese is crap, and scared whether the translation is faithful to the original. I’ve heard overall good things about it though. And then the price is a little pricey ($8 for about 200 or so pages).
Random – She’s kind of cute with long hair.
Claymore
Why – Abundance of positive word of mouths pertaining to this.
Plot – Typical setup for a “monster of the week” series. To put it in brief, scary beings called yoma eat humans, and humans are powerless to stop. So half-yoma, half-humans are the only way to kill them. This makes Claymore sound not so interesting, doesn’t it? Don’t let that scare you off though.
Thoughts – I’ve watched a fair amount of anime. Not nearly as much as some of the people I’ve met in my years in college. Those guys are really crazy. It’s like a happy world. Animated girls with all sorts of crazy hair colors, giant robots, swords, magic. And then they all save the world in the end. It’s great!
And then Claymore came in and ruined all of that. There was more blood being spilled in Claymore than in all of the other anime I watched. Not to say I watched any especially violent anime (or any television show for that matter) before. And some of the episodes made it hard to sleep the following night. I could probably best attribute my survival of my first quarter at Western being that my roommate is not a yoma, or if he is, he simply has not decided to eat me yet.
That said, the story in Claymore is overall pretty solid. It seemed to veer towards the monster-a-week thing, but any thoughts about that faded fast. At first, this type of stuff really isn’t what I’m interested in. But I kept watching anyway, before I knew it, I just had to keep going. I could do without the violence, but what I probably liked the most was the theme of companionship. I get a feeling they were trying to get the viewer to sympathize with Priscilla in the end, but I don’t think it worked. Maybe the manga does a better job of it.
Future – Season two in 2-3 years. Seems like there is plenty of material to expand on for that. There is also a manga, which I heard the anime is faithful to up to a certain point.
Random – Romi Paku is the seiyuu for a minor (but important character), Teresa. She also voiced Loran Cehack in Turn A Gundam. Their voices sound almost the opposite. She also provided the voice for Edward Elric in Full Metal Alchemist (the original version, of course). In possibly even more of a contrast, the seiyuu for Priscilla also did the voice for Kero-chan in Cardcaptor Sakura. Just always found it neat how some people can take on different roles.
Speaking of different, Riyu Kosaka also sang the ending theme for Claymore. She also sang a number of songs for variuos Bemani games (true in DDR 7th mix, and a bunch of BeForU songs come to mind). As one may guess, they sound very different. Is that even the same person?
That’s all for now. Looks like this post has ran a lot longer than I wanted it to. Expect more of these types of posts for at least the winter break. And I will try to make more posts that no one will ever read.
edit: Forgot to put a title, and “tags” and “categories” are confusing. Possible experimentation with these two in the future may be imminent.
