It’s Valentines Day and Kobato wants a Valentines Day party…
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Kobato Episode 20 Thoughts and Impressions
Fanservice and Nogizaka Haruka, What the hell happened?
A while back in June 2009, I wrote a lengthy editorial on how fanservice can ruin the overall story of an anime. Well, this becomes a reality with Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu.
I have watch both seasons and the first season was far better besides a few panty shots is that they focused on the over lining purpose of the story. Yuuto and Haruka sweet romance and also her Otaku interest. However, the second season lost it’s purpose completely. Like Kimagure said on Melative, “sweetness replaced by pointless fanservice.” The second season of Nogizaka Haruka just proved what I have said in my editorial I wrote in June of 2009 that adding lots of fanservice makes the over lining story alot worse than it would without the fanservice. All I got from this is more pantyshots, boob groping and other stuff that shouldn’t be in the anime. If I want to watch a fanservice-oriented anime, I would of watched titles like Ladies vs Butlers, Kampfer or even Chu-Bra! I bet one minute that 90% of the fanservice seen in the second season is not in the Nogizaka Haruka light novels (yes, the Anime is adapted from the light novel…)
The problem with the route they taken is that it’s completely unnecessary and the story can do better without it, besides the other flaws besides fanservice. I felt that Diomedea is trying to use fanservice to try to attract more audience to the show, at the same time, alienating its viewers who liked the first season and be constantly let down by every episode. If there is ever a third season, Diomedea better shape up and not add the fanservice and bring it back to what the story is intended to be in the first place because viewers aren’t going to take this excessive, overdone and redundant fanservice and panty shots anymore. There are already enough fanservice laden titles out there already, Nogizaka Haruka is a series that doesn’t need to go down that path too. We already have other anime that does that.
Sora no Woto – Episode 9 Thoughts and Impressions
Mostly a Klaus/Kureha focused Episode…
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Sola – Episode 5 Thoughts and Impressions
Mostly lighthearted moments with some drama…
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Kobato – Episode 19 Thoughts and Impressions
Christmas Eve comes and Fujimoto started acting strange…
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Melative and Making Previews More Informative
Preview posts always had problems for not giving enough information or resorting to “chartfag” charts that become outdated when a stream of new information comes in, giving the readers not enough info on when the series will start, how long, what genre and so on. This leads people writing preview posts without enough information and just making noise for the sake of it.
There is a solution. If you familiar with Melative as I discussed a while back. The advantage of Melative that Melative has open APIs and a open Wiki format where the info can be edited by editors (and users can create their own versions of their pages) and add up to date information. Lime is what the whole thing is based on, well at least for the open Wiki part. I have suggested a Wordpress plugin where a user just enters the URL to the title page on Melative (in a certain format) and it would be replaced with the up to date information that is currently in the database that includes the picture, any context information (date of when the series will start, how many episodes, genres, etc.), links to other resources and of course the description. This approach is a lot more informative and takes the guess work on researching information on that title. This is how I done my “Upcoming Anime” page.
The usage is really simple. Copy the link to the title and put it in this format. For example
It should look like this:
With it’s advantages, there are some disadvantages. One of them is that the “melative-item” plugin will not work on wordpress.com or any other blog software that isn’t a self hosted Wordpress. This is because Wordpress.com does not allow third party themes and plugins. Second, this Wordpress plugin is still in development and not complete yet. Although the chances of it malfunctioning is low, the plugin can malfunction or do funny stuff, but it will not affect anything in the Wordpress database.
If you interested, you can download the plugin here. To install, just unzip, upload the melative-item folder to your Wordpress Plugins folder (/wp-content/plugins) and use the format I demonstrated above to show the information from Melative in your posts or pages. If you have any issues, report them on IRC, #melative on freenode. Also, the plugin will be available on wordpress.org in the future, so keep a lookout.
And this plugin pretty much made chartfag charts obsolete… for most bloggers. Also note that a melative account isn’t necessarily required to use the plugin, although you should take part in it and ditch services like MyAnimeList.
Sora no Woto – Episode 8 Thoughts and Impressions
You wished there was such thing as a cell phone or cordless phone, so you don’t have to stay in the same room all day… …
Editorial: The Harsh Reality of the Anime Industry
With the last article, I decided to write a response to the author of “The Golden Waste” as he seems to be ranting about people not buying licensed anime for some reasons. Everyone should be buying licensed anime if they like the show and/or want to support the studio, there is no way around with that. However, the money that comes from both the Japanese and licensed Anime sales of DVDs is very small for the Animation Studios. We can argue or rant about dub versus sub-only releases, Crunchyroll and licensing companies as much we want, but it doesn’t change the fact that how much corporate greed comes from the Japanese Anime Industry causing the animation studios be left with peanuts in comparison with the American Music Industry.
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Kobato – Episode 18 Thoughts and Impressions
Well, it’s winter and…
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Sorry about that hiccup! Blog goes down 2 days!
Well, yesterday if you haven’t noticed, the blog went down suddenly and I was wondering what happened. Well, the host Notcliche is hosted on, midphase had decided to move the site to a more reliable server. Because of that, my comments that were made in the last two days were lost, but I was able to recover the posts and comments from the last three days. Hopefully, this won’t happen again, but it’s one lesson learn from this. Always make backups of your posts and that Murphy’s law is in full effect, which states that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
We know, sh*t happens, but it’s not end of the world. :p
Now excuse me, I have to restore the snapshots on my Sora no Woto Episode 7 post and blog about Kobato Ep 18.
Attribution Information
Fanart used in this post is made by そら. (source)
Sora no Woto – Episode 7 Thoughts and Impressions
Well, there is one thing we know… War is bad…
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Editorial: US Anime Industry and Corporate Media, What is the Problem?
After reading this particular rant, I believe that it haven’t covered the most important area. Sure, Anime have gotten cheaper, but they remain more expensive than a whole season box of a US series like Heroes or Lost which have alot more episodes and I end up spending 40-50 dollars for the whole season. Sure the days of 3 episodes on VHS for $30 or 4 episodes on a DVD is over, but this is not the main focus on this topic, The main focus is the US Anime Industry and Corporate Media.
And believe me, I buy licensed anime on shows I want to watch and my sister owns a pile of licensed DVD releases.
The editorial fails to mention about licensed anime outside the US.How about Europe? Some series will probably never get to be licensed in other countries, which leave people who want to watch the series having to import, which cost more and requires another DVD player due to region coding. DVD region coding is another problem caused by corporate media.
With corporate media, you think you own the media, but you don’t. The anime you have on your DVDs are licensed to you, not owned. This holds true with streaming media in one particular postkimaguresan posted:
Ownership: This is the elephant in the room. When you watch a streaming show, you see it, and then it’s gone.
There is no freedom with corporate media. Their interest is to license the show, distribute it and make a profit, and while you at it, restrict your fair use rights with crap like digital rights managements, region coding, streaming, and other things. There is no freedom in this model, ever. Another point with big media is that the content creator gets shafted and get a very small cut of the profits sold from these licensed DVDs. Big media companies like Funnimation and Sentai Filmworks take most of the cut from the sale of Anime DVDs which leaves the Animation studios like Shaft, Kyoto Animation and the rest with so little profits. This is the same with music labels where the music labels like EMI, Warner and others get a big cut from album and digital music sales guess what the artist or even the composer get? A very small cut from it. The problem here is corporate greed and less profits from the content creators. On top of that, the greed comes in form of high prices on price gouging on Blurays (on lesser extent, DVDs) and DRMed media. On top of that, removing DRM from your media such as DVD ripping is illegal according to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) because using such programs circumvent Digital Rights Management. Stuff like DMCA further take away our fair use rights away. What happens if our media gets scratched up and become unreadable, do we have to buy another copy of the media? I think this is wrong because anyone should be able to back up their DVDs because we own the media already, why can’t we since “fair use” allows us to make a personal backup copy. (Note, it’s technically illegal to rip DVDs in this Real Network ruling.)
The end of the day, no matter if we own the media, we are slaves to corporate media and with streaming, our freedoms are basically gone with this and the content creator don’t benefit from this at all. The only way you can surely support the series you like is buying related merchandise such as figurines, artbooks, albums, games, etc. The merchandise they sell usually generate more money than licensed DVD releases and remains a great way to support the series you like while still buying R1 releases.
Note: I do not advocate not buying the Licensed DVDs or resorting to illegal means to obtaining “licensed” DVD releases because of some of these reasons… You should still buy R1 Licensed DVDs despite this and expressing my opinion won’t change that, I will still buy anime that is licensed.
Further Reading
kimaguresan on Crunchy and Big MediaOne License to Rule Them All
Chikorita157’s Anime Blog turns 1 year old and how it was started.
Time flies when you are having fun and blogging. When February came, I went… Oh shoot! It have been a year since I have started blogging about Anime exclusively. The blogging started in February 17, 2009 when I decided that putting my Anime stuff with all the rest of the stuff on my old blog isn’t a good idea. I have split the anime section of the blog from the main blog, but the main blog ended up dying since I didn’t felt like maintaining two blogs and there is alot to talk about Anime and it’s related stuff like visual novels, related songs, etc. Of course, this blog won’t be possible if I haven’t rediscovered Anime when I started freshman year of college in September 2008 (more on that story in About chikorita157 page)!
Well, when I first started this blog, I decided to use WicketPixie as the theme for Chikorita157’s Anime Blog since it looks clean and stylish. I just removed the text logo and the Twitter stuff on the top since it wasn’t necessary. As time went on, the banners improved in quality, but the theme stayed pretty much the same. I could of use the same theme as everyone else, but that would look boring and not so unique.
As of Feb 17, I will probably make close to 260 posts, and thats good since I wanted to always update the blog. I’m dedicated and love blogging about Anime because this is what I enjoy doing. Watch Anime and blog about what I thought about it. So dedicated that I even blog when I’m on vacation, because there is nothing to do around the hotel room except sleep and watch TV. I am hoping that more people decide to look up at my model and start blogging more often than just leaving their blogs collect dust for more than a week.
2010 will be another great year and as always, I will keep blogging… until I get tired or lose interest on Anime, which isn’t happening anytime soon. So I give these two words as I go onto the second year of blogging.
2010, fighto~
Attribution Information
Fanart used in this post is by 透子 (Orig Source.)
Chikorita157's Anime Blog gets a makeover
I have always wanted to update the blog style, but I haven’t got the time with my programming projects (MAL Client OS X and Melative Library), college work and spending time watching Anime and Audiosurfing that I neglected to update the theme for a long time. Now, it have been almost a year and I have decided to change the theme.
I didn’t want to ditch the current theme, Wicketpixie since it’s a very clean theme and I want it to stand out since bloggers use the same theme over and over again… I wanted to be different, so I just updated the banner, icons you see on the top and the color sceme. The image is obviously themed on Furukawa Nagisa, my second favorite character from the anime Clannad. I used my Wacom Bamboo Tablet (very useful and they are inexpensive now) to quick mask the whole thing to have a clean cut from the original image and paste it into the banner with some touch up. The graphics tablet made life alot easier to make the selection possible and I haven’t discovered the quick mask tool until I learned how to use it in Intro to Digital Photography, one of the electives I’m taking this semester. Also, threw in some snapshots with some effects and I was done.
The color scheme is now purple and it used to be bright yellow. I was getting sick of the yellow, so I replaced it with a darker color that is easier on the eyes… Well, it comes down to preferences.
However, if you compare this current theme to the one used since February 2009, it’s a big difference. It really shows how much effort I put into this blog because I really enjoy blogging on Anime and expressing my thoughts. Hopefully, this will be another great year…
Kobato – Episode 17 – Thoughts and Impressions
This is the second part of Mysterious Lifeform, in Ioryogi perspective. He goes to the “Sprit World” to obtain baumkuchen, his favorite food. On his way back, he gets hit by a soccer ball, on a sheet in midair, using his fire breath to avoid getting the box wet, be he fell into the pond, going into a dryer and also being a target of a shoot a object game. That is one rough and hilarious adventure he had.
After Kobato and Ioryogi met again, she returns to the bazaar and found out that her mysterious lifeform she stiched haven’t sold, but Domoto, the nice guy he is, buys one… and Ioryogi’s baumkuchen got sold, so he never got the chance to eat it and gave Kobato a -300 for her selling it.
Unlike the last few episodes, this one was really lighthearted. As you noticed, you saw cameos from XXXHolic and also Tsubasa Chronicle? Yes, there is a theme park named Mokona Land… it made me laugh because I instantly recognized it since I did watch a few episodes of Tsubasa with my sister a long time ago… It seems that Clamp sure love their cameos… or they are running out of ideas… One or the other… Anyways, it was good, but not as good as the last…
Verdict
8.6/10
Spring 2010 Preview
But it’s Winter! Why the hell you be posting a Spring 2010 Preview?! Well, because everyone else is. I will be covering two new spring shows and perhaps another old one after the Spring Semester ends… The picks are:
Thoughts: It’s been a year since a Key anime have aired (the last being Clannad After Story) and they are really good at story telling, although some may not agree. The surprise that KyoAni isn’t doing this. PA Works, which have done some rather good adaptations of True Tears and CANAAN… Heck, why not? From the looks from the trailer, the show looks very promising.
However, compared to earlier works, the characters are already dead. 😮
Thoughts: More of this stuff? Well, suck it haters… I will do it anyways because I have enjoyed the first season. Sure there is a lot of moe compared to other series, but it’s something just to enjoy. Besides, I liked the first season since brainless entertainment makes me relieve stress from my college work and who doesn’t like girls eating cake all day and play music?
Although, Sora no Woto so far is alot better at story telling than K-ON!… But then again, the main advantage of K-ON! is MOE!
Not to mention, they had to take the naming conventions from Hayate no Gotoku Second Season… They just added another explanation point at the end of K-ON! Makes sense, but they could of be more creative.
Older Series
I won’t start these series until May 2010 and by then, I will have the DVDs to start covering them.
Thoughts: I was looking at this anime for quite awhile… but when someone actually made a blog post on it, well… I’m convinced because Kampfer disappointed me and I felt like watching more trap animes… they are quite funny if you ask me, but I won’t start this until I obtain the DVDs for this series.
Compared to Bakatest’s Hideyoshi, it’s obvious that the main character obviously wasn’t forced into girls clothing…
Thoughts: I haven’t seen a mahou shoujo series for awhile since what have hit me. Somehow, this interested me since it had moe magical girls fighting whatever… Well, I find out when I actually start it in May/June.
Well, there you have it… Like with the Fall 2009 Season, this list is subject to change since one day, something can interest me and I decide to watch it. Up to date info can be seen at “Upcoming Anime” on the top of the blog.
All the info are pulled from Melative and WP plugin, melative-link.
Sora no Woto – Midseason Review
Sora no Woto was tainted by preview and people thinking that it’s a rehash of K-ON!, but in the military. However, when it first aired, the series proved to be more than just a moeblob series… Perhaps there is hardly any moe at all?
Well, they do alot… Rather than drinking tea and eating crumpets all day long, they go on field trips and checking safety device, checking for ghosts, finding lenses for the tank and the questionable dealing of bootlegged wine for goods or some dramatic moments like Kanata getting sick. Sora no Woto is a slice of life show more in the style of ARIA or perhaps Haibane Renmei instead of K-ON! where we have girls doing cutesy things like tripping over cords or acting childish.
The strongest point with Sora no Woto is that it doesn’t have any moe and more on serious plot like Misho’s story or Kanata getting sick. Although the story have some happy moments, it has alot of serious moments, which one can appreciate.
Another strong point is the art and music. The music perfectly fits in, especially with Hikari no Senritsu by Kalafina because of the theme of the song that sets the setting of the story. Also, it features other important music such as Amazing Grace (we know…) and others. The art is rather good, dispite the K-ON or Kannagi like art style. It’s background is appealing to the eye.. as they say.
However, “Hater’s gonna hate” no matter what (complete with animated GIF)… Just ignore them and watch it without comparing it to obviously moe shows like K-ON! You might just enjoy it.
Verdict
Rating so far: 8.88/10, B+
Sora no Woto – Episode 6 Thoughts and Impressions
Well, this gets more interesting…
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Just an update…
The last week as a very busy week since the Spring Semester is now in full force and I need to work my butt off this time around. Well, not so many hard courses, but I still need to do better than last semester… On top of it, I have been working on some coding projects, closely related to Anime/Japanese media related services such as that dreaded MyAnimeList and Melative. This is a main reason I wasn’t blogging as much plus I had homework to do, and with a test coming up, time will be strained a bit, but I won’t stop blogging for a whole month… I can promise that.
First off, the Unofficial MAL API is now fixed and I thank gcassonnet for fixing it and chuyeow for making this program possible. Now, I have spent two to three hours future proofing the program to prevent a program like this happening and what came out of it is 1.0.0 Final. This means that you will notice that the update and add dialogs loading faster than before since it’s not retrieving information from the internet for the status. Other improves include the password being saved on the Keychain, which is a more secure way to storing the password instead of having it saved in the preference files.
However, even though I fixed the client so it works fully, but I cannot promise that it will stop the delayed updating and other stuff… That is the website problem, and if you don’t like it… I suggest switching to a different service. For the time being, I won’t actively develop this since there is nothing to add at the moment and wait for manga support to be added either on Unofficial MAL API or the official one. Now… enjoy my fruits from my labor and have a client that doesn’t suck that much (yes, I’m looking at you iMAL):
Download 1.0.0 Final
Also, I have released Melative Library 0.9.0 Beta, on the same day yesterday. Melative Library have evolved just in about 1 month and now I have implemented 90% of the features. Unlike Melative Micro which is a microblogging client with basic library functions, Melative Library can manage the whole library without needing to the website (compared to MAL, where you need to use the website to use some/most of the functions). Now the program is at beta and is stable for everyday use and at this cycle, I won’t be adding that many features in this cycle. If you considering to switch to Melative or have an account, try this out. (and it’s crossplatform)
Download 0.9 Beta
So, that is out of the way, I can finally have some time to blog about more anime. Also, don’t forget to vote Shiori for the International Saimoe League!
Kobato – Episode 16 Thoughts and Impressions
In effort to save the nursery, Kobato suggests them to do a bazaar.
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Sora no Woto – Episode 5 Thoughts and Impressions
Now they go on a torture field trip on a hot and steamy summer day.
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Kanon – Episode 18 Thoughts and Impressions
Well, it’s never too late to post about Shiori’s birthday, right?
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Melative Library, it puts all MAL Clients to Shame!
Melative Library is a Melative Client that came in the making after finishing MAL Client OS X on January 10, 2009 and evolved quickly shortly after the Unofficial MAL API broke and there was no usable API.
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Kanon – Episode 17 Thoughts and Impressions
Yuuichi keeps a promise in treating Shiori like he always does when she starts attending school before her birthday… and still conflicted with her older sister.
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