Yeaaa it’s pretty much canon at this point Quinza tries to kill Kajika, Li Ren kills Quinza, Kajika realizes in that “life flashing before your eyes” moment that she only wants Li Ren. Also Carl’s sister threw an ashtray and somebody died by having a light bulb fall on their head lol. Ah well it was obvious from the start who she’d end up with, but glad they’ve finally sealed the deal here. Unfortunately the show’s taking another stupid break and there will be no new episodes until January 17th blah. I guess they really wanna just stretch it out so that it ends simultaneously with the winter anime season.

If you want your loli to grow up, just take her out on a date.

Yosh, now I can support Akari x Roppongi without having any guilty feelings! Bwahahaha! WIN! ヾ(●ﾟ∀ﾟ●)ﾉ　アハハッ Akari x Roppongi flag raised!! Can’t wait till the final episode!! XDDD

☆-(ﾉ｡･ω･)八(｡･ω･｡)八(･ω･｡)ﾉ ｲｴｰｲ

Soo it was a happy ending but a few things still bug me. Anyway brief rundown of events:

• Chris turns out to be the guy who was a poor bum but Sera’s dad adopted him and saved him. He’s not a super rich dude and he basically takes Sara under his wing and she’s back to being an ojousama again.
• The iincho sensei tries to take Sara back but she gets pwned by Chris for treating Sara like a slave. The school is now completely broke and may be going out of business.
• Sara then uses the money from Chris and basically becomes the school’s owner, on the condition that they let her be a student, the iincho continues to be an iincho.
• When she becomes the school’s owner she then hires 2 new people to work as servants for the school who basically bully around the old hag and the old man that bullied Sara in the same fashion.
• Kaito admits his feelings to Sara and tells her that whole “I’ll become a better man for you” thing (Didn’t I just see the same plotline in ohitorisama?) and they kisu and he quits his stupid job as a slave at the school and goes to high school. He then sends her photos of his classmates and he tells her to wait for him etc.
• Sara graduates with the rest of her classmates and goes to college in London along with Masami.
• Emiko sensei actually decides to put effort into being a teacher.
• Aran-sensei proposed to Chieko but she refused it, doomed to be an eternal spinster

Eh personally I’m happy but yet I’m not. While at some parts I’m like pwned bitch, but in the end there was no revenge! Like ok I realize this isn’t the Count of Monte Christo but it personally annoys me that Chieko, and Maria particularly all basically got away with abuse, assault, enslaving a child and etc. I kinda wish they’d all go to hell and the school had closed or something but I suppose that wouldn’t be the “true happy Japanese drama ending”. Oh well I guess I’m kinda happy with the Kaito thing but meh screw everything else. Also I think Sara’s mom is like a complete airhdead idiot. In her dream Sara’s like “but mother, I don’t know what to do I am so confused” and her mom goes “That’s so wonderful”. Wtf you dumb bitch half of this shit is because you’re an airheaded moron who fucked around with people’s feelings lol. Overall I guess I’d give the drama a 7, even if it felt wrong, it was at least convincing enough with the acting.

Well at least we got a happy ending for these two, although I’m still not convinced of their “relationship”. No matter how I look at it, it’s like a shota and some milf or something. I could totally be convinced with MatsuJun in Kimi wa Pet but I think Koike Teppei is better off for shota roles like in Waterboys lol. I’m glad that they both got to stay at the school because the students are like “wtf’s the big deal? we’re ok with it O_o”  That’s what I’ve been saying the whole time. They’re acting like a teacher just had a sexual relationship with one of the students, when its just 2 adult teachers going out. Sure they’re like 10 years apart but that’s none of your business Japan(屮ﾟДﾟ)屮 　Oh well I still found the drama to be somewhat enjoyable, I’d prolly give it like an 8 out of 10.

So since JP just finished watching Kaleidostar and he found my old amv uploaded by some ignoramus (claiming they made it) I decided to see how many of my other videos were uploaded on YT as well. Turns out I was able to find like 26 of them on there haha! I’ve put them into a nice playlist so you guys can watch it all at once. Warning they range from pretty awesome to pretty awful haha so watch at your own risk!!

Since WordPress doesn’t let me embed playlists click here to watch~

というわけで昔作ったMADをどうぞ！(*＾▽＾*)

Hey guys, remember when Gonzo used to make good shows? Really, it’s true! Back around say, 2000-2003, you could reasonably expect that whatever Gonzo was coming out with that season would probably be eminently watchable. Samurai Girl Real Bout High School was the only real clunker of this period, and there were very few of the instantly forgettable shows that plagued them later on.

Kaleido Star is a great example of the kind of shows that they don’t make any more. Er, I mean don’t make any more if they actually were making shows at all. Anyway, Kaleido Star is a pretty standard (I guess I can’t say “standard” since most of these do not have invisible talking jesters) hard work and guts, girl chasing her dreams, yadda yadda story about how Sora wants to become a member of a Cirque de Soleil-esque circus troupe that she once saw when she was little. You might not believe me when I say this, but I swear this is true: what really sells this show is how well executed it is. Yes, I know: “Gonzo” and “well-executed”.

It appears to me that most anime about someone who wants to (or gets roped into) doing some kind of sport of competition either have some kind of hidden talent or the aforementioned hard work and guts. Even when the show focuses on the latter, the emphasis usually seems to be more about the “guts” than the “hard work”. Kaleido Star flipped that around, with hard work being the emphasis. It makes the story much more satisfying to finally see the characters achieve concrete successes through their own agency rather than because the plot said so.

And let me tell you, they show all the implications involved in “hard work”. In order to learn her complicated acrobatic routines, Sora has to put in insane hours to get everything into her muscle memory. Because these are complicated acrobatic routines, all of those constant failures during practice are not exactly pleasant. Slip off a tightrope? Miss a trapeze? Time for a faceplant. Hopefully with a net underneath.

One of the elements that makes the characters endearing in this show is that they do understand what it takes to master their routines. A couple screwups during the first attempts at learning a new show do not result in characters angsting while the rest of them degrade them or spread rumors about them and their incompetence. They keep it up because they know that they will have to simply do everything over and over again in order to perfect things.

Take Layla. Layla is the current star of the Kaleido Stage troupe. She is wary about Sora because Sora missed the audition and hadn’t shown her anything particularly special. They end up having to work together on a pirate-themed show. Rather than sabotaging or undermining her younger (and therefore sexually threatening!) rival (because she makes her painfully aware of how as a woman her only value is in her body!), she grabs Sora (all these parentheses are sarcastic ways of showing the lame cliches the show avoids!) and forces her to put in the same level of dedication to her craft that she holds herself to. After all, the consequence would be that they put on a crappy show. She’s not a backstabbing bitch; she’s a consummate pro. Even when she gets injured and realizes that she’ll have to retire, she’s not bitter. The show must go on.

Finally, this show has REALLY good cast performances. A lot of the characters walk a very fine line between feeling genuine and feeling stock, like with Layla (Sayaka Oohara) above. Similarly, Ryou Hirohashi is REALLY good as Sora. Sora needs to sound upbeat without seeming simple or naive, and needs to avoid sounding childishly angsty during the tough moments that are part and parcel of chasing one’s dream.

Also, AMV. I love the “My Video” as the description on the page even though this video has a title card at the beginning which quite clearly shows that this is not your video.

Would I watch it even if I weren’t forced? You know, I wouldn’t have thought to watch (and didn’t) this because it just looks SO girly, but it’s well-made and a lot of fun. You’ll notice that this post is not tagged with tags like “annoying bitches”, “bawwwwww”, “wtf”, or “THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.”

When I said I wanted Junpei and Kaede to get together, this isn't what I had in mind.

Eh well I guess I didn’t have that much high expectations for the show so I’m not surprised this is the ending. I heard the manga has less fanservice and more koi so I might check that out in the near future. I guess in situations like this I wish they’d do an anime original ending and actually have Junpei confess to Kaede or whatever instead of getting cockblocked for the 12th time. Maybe this is a sign that there might be a season 2? Although honestly after Haruka season 2 I’m afraid what a season 2 of this show would end up like.

Angelic Layer is a shounen fighting series, except that it has a girl as the main character (are there any other series other than this and Soul Eater with one?), and everyone fights with their custom Pokemans. While I’ve felt that Rurouni Kenshin kinda killed the whole shounen fighting series genre for me (in that I don’t expect to see anything as good as it), Angelic Layer felt like a pretty good baseline standard to compare other series to. If they’re worse than Angelic Layer, they’re bad. If they’re better, they’re good. I like to keep my baselines fairly high (my average score on MAL is 2.5 points lower than average), which goes to say that Angelic Layer was a fairly strong show.

Angelic Layer manages to do so many of the little things well. These add up! The characters are spunky and fun, as they should be in this genre, but also never fall into the trap of being annoyingly so. The fights are clever enough, and often visually stunning. Perhaps most importantly, the game of Angelic Layer itself is treated with the proper amount of levity. The game does have a serious undercurrent (the whole medical research aspect of it) that’s separate from the game itself, but the people that play the game really just do it because it’s a fun, exciting hobby. Nobody uses the game to bully others, or becomes so involved that their life depends on the outcome, or feels guilty about “wasting” their time playing it, or tries to keep their child/friend/whatever away from its evil influences. We’re all supposed to be having fun here, and we do. On that note, it’s easy to see how its Kouhei Tanaka soundtrack fits it perfectly.

The other thing that really helps the show is the pacing. It’s 26 episodes long, and really doesn’t waste any time. We don’t have hours worth of filler episodes where the story and the excitement just grind to a halt. It also doesn’t have the problem of multiple story arcs with awkward transitions between them. The show provides some decent action, reasonably satisfying character arcs for Misaki and Shuuko, a decent (if kind of random) ending, and then has the good sense to end before it overstays its welcome.

I’ve heard that Angelic Layer is one of the few cases where the anime is supposed to be better than the manga. I haven’t read the manga, but that wouldn’t surprise me. The anime itself was very well-executed and polished, which I’m going to heavily chalk up to Bones being the studio behind it. With Ouran High School Host Club and Soul Eater before this, I’ve generally quite liked Bones’ manga adaptations. They really seem to have a flair for using the anime medium’s visual strengths to enhance the visual style of the source material. I’m thinking of things like how they can use color to juxtapose somewhat superflat-ish visual along with the standard shoujo art nouveau-type visuals in Ouran. With Angelic Layer, they really make the fight scenes pop. Between the colors and editing, this is really the sort of thing that needs to be done in anime, rather than manga form in order to have its strongest impact.

Would I watch it even if I weren’t forced? I would if it were described as “A good shounen fighting series that doesn’t have dozens of episodes in a row of grunting.”

I admit it’s been ages since I really cared about Soul Eater. I loved the anime & manga at first but I guess waiting for a chapter per month kinda kills interest especially when chapters often don’t feel like a continuation of each other. Sometimes I’ll read a new chapter and be like “wtf was going on again?” However I did lol at this scene:

Does this mean Chrona is really a shota? I can’t even tell anymore. Oh BlackStar you and your huge cock ego.

Naruto finally comes to terms with the shocking truth that Sasuke in fact, doesn't want his sweet hole.

So now that Sasuke’s busy being Mr.  Evil Avenger Anti-Hero, someone’s gotta take over the emofag role. Since Sai has to go rescue Sakura from being turned into a susanoo sandwich, Naruto’s up to bat!! Honestly at this point I can’t decide who the bad guy is Danzo or Sasuke? On one hand, Danzo’s like “your brother died for the village, and pretended to be a bad guy, now you wanna destroy that village?” but on the other hand “NOO YOU MADE MY BROTHER A SACRIFICE YURUSANAI ZOOOOO *burns with rage*” So yea I’m not really sure here.