Aug
29
Summer Anime 2008
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A quick round-up of the spring and summer anime: I’m continuing to watch Itazura na Kiss and Kaiba, but dropped xxxHOLOC Kei as the plot wasn’t interesting.
Nogizawa Haruka no Himitsu The hero wastes little time in extablishing a relationship with the school “princess” after discovering her secret – she’s an anime and manga otaku. It’s fun but by about episode 5 I’m starting to feel that some of the elements are over-familiar.
Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto is a sort of sequel to “Someday’s Dreamers”. in which a witch girl leaves home in Hokkaido to start her apprenticeship in Tokyo. This is animated with very detailed and realistic backgrounds that rather out-shine the character designs. Modern setting with mobile phones etc. Not sure yet how good the story is going to be, and so far the heroine seems a little blandly “nice”.
Very realistic background art, but otherwise weak.
Yakushiji Ryouko no Kaiki Jikenbo – adult police drama which contains some supernatural elements (that’s apart from the lead female character being very rich, super-competent and gorgeous). The other main character is her put-upon male subordinate. Watchable.
Bounen no Xamdou has great production values and a very busy first episode introducing lots of interesting characters. There is also lots of action in the second episode. Not sure if I can take it seriously as it’s hard to suspend one’s disbelief at times, and there’s too much fun to be had playing “spot the influence”.
Eve no Jikan is set in a near-future world where many families have an android servant. The androids look and act exactly like humans but can be distinguished by the illuminated halo above their heads. They get treated much like the whites used to treat their black servants. The androids seem to be developing their own sub-culture, and there are some people who feel they should be treated more like humans… Though those who spend too much time with their androids are reviled as geeks. Fascinating stuff, and probably the best of the bunch so far, but there seems to be only 1 episode of this 6-episode ONA available at time of writing.
Aug
29
Kashimashi – Girl Meets Girl
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Hazumu enjoys being a girl
I see that I’ve only written one anime review since April, clearly slipping! I’ve ben ill, but that’s not much of an excuse. But I particularly enjoyed Kashimashi – Girl Meets Girl. Kashimashi (which actually means something like “girlish chatter”) is a comedy of gender identity, and how a group of friends react to a change in one of their number, Hazumu. Some of the comedy, like the notorious bra-fitting scene in episode #2, is quite racy.
Hazumu is a somewhat effeminate boy, fond of gardening, who confesses his feelings for the elegant Yasuna, but is firmly rejected. He goes for a walk on the nearby wooded mountain, but is fatally injured by a crashing alien spacecraft. The aliens manage to bring him back to life, but with one crucial difference – Hazumu is now a girl, even to the level of having female DNA. This incident is splashed all over the news media, while Hazumu is checked over in hospital, and found to be perfectly healthy.
Hazumu’s school friends gather as Hazumu prepares to return to school. They find the new, feminine Hazumu rather hard to cope with, while Hazumu, proudly showing off her new female school uniform, clearly has no problem adjusting to her new gender. Hazumu’s parents have her sex altered in the family register, and while her mother is quite happy to have a daughter, her father is happy in a rather inappropiate way…
Hazumu soon discovers that her friends Yasuna and the tomboy-ish Tomari both have sapphic feelings for her. A relationship is in prospect, but as both girls fight for her affections, Hazumu, a naturally indecisive person, is unable to choose between them.
Meanwhile, Hazumu’s former male best-friend Asuta is disturbed by his reaction to the new Hazumu, whom he clearly finds attractive. These feelings are likely to be shared by the male viewer…
There are also a pair of aliens, visible only to Hazumu, who appear repeatedly, offering further comic relief.
As the series progresses, Yasuna and Tomari compete for Hazumu’s affections. Only in the final episode does Hazumu choose one of them. But which will it be, protective childhood friend Tomari, in whose company Hazumu seems most at ease, or the elegant Yasuna?
Aug
1
anime.in4mation re-siting
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Following a dust-up with the former ISP, I have moved my anime.in4mation site, formerly at http://www.anime.in4mation.org.uk, to http://www.anime-info.co.uk. (quicklink in column at lower left)
Mostly it still works, though the front page menu has a slight fault in IE7 and there are a lot of little Home links that don’t point to the right page anymore.
This was on a free hosting site, but I left it for more than 90 days without dialing into it, and the ISP then removed the site and wouldn’t re-instate it unless I upgraded to a pay service, which, since I already had a vacant domain I could move it to at no extra cost, I was not going to do.
Topics covered are a miscellany:
miscellaneous media reviews, Escaflowne, 12 Kingdoms, FAQ’s, Japanese shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, mangaka Ryouko Ikeda, satellite TV anime, shopping, and shoujo stuff.