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K-ON!! Second Season – Episode 13 – Azusa and the Summer Memories

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What most people do during Summer Break? Stare at the wall or computer!

I spent most of my summer having my eyes glued to the computer with some exceptions. Now, I am on vacation in Wisconsin/Minnesota and I felt refreshed since staying at home all summer was boring and I wasn’t doing much except sitting at the desk doing programing work, blogging and chatting with other bloggers.

Azusa suffers the same fate with Yui, Mio and Ritsu having a study session in the library and Mugi vacationing Finland. Azusa spends time with Ui and Jun to get away from the summer boredom.

The dream flashback is rather strange, but silly.

Throughout the whole episode, Azusa falls asleep. In the dream sequences, we get a flash back of memories for all the four girls on what happened during the summer. They range from silly to completely funny. The flashback includes Yui eating the wrong combinations of food, Mio watching scary movies, Mugi trying to win a prize with Azusa winning a trip to Finland and Ritsu pushing Azusa down with a bowl of Yakisoba on top of her head. I couldn’t help but laugh since they did silly things.

I'm surprised they had such a movie within an anime like K-ON!… Also, the doggy was so cute!

Of course, those dream sequences that we are shown have some consequences… For instance, Azusa forget what she was doing or misses an entire movie… It happens when you are tired during the day and decide to take a nap while you were doing something like listening to a lecture. It’s not a good sign…

They had a fun time without the whole crew…

Most people think that summer is long… In reality, it’s not. Sitting in the house in front of the computer is no way to spend the whole vacation. If you want an enjoyable summer, you need to go on one vacation at least and enjoy what it has to offer. I’m doing so right now and It’s a breath of fresh air. Even though there isn’t much things to do in Wisconsin, I enjoyed some of the sightseeing in the state. I don’t regret it.

Besides the flashbacks Azusa had while she was sleeping, this episode was rather enjoyable. However, it wasn’t as enjoyable as the last episode. Its pretty much the trend where we have one episode being very enjoyable and the next… well a mixed bag. It’s not a bad thing, but I wished that the enjoyability factor was a bit more consistent. At least they aren’t repeating content like they did in the last season.

Next Episode: Time to study for those exams?

Rating

8.6/10

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ef – a tale of memories – Episode 1 – First Impressions

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The typical introduction, boy meets girl… girl meets boy…

I don’t care about minori scolding me for watching their materials since they don’t want to show outside Japan. I’m going to watch it since it was just collecting dust. Last year, I was going to start ef ~ a tale of memories, but I never did since I got sidetracked with other shows. Since I’m not watching much this summer, I will do it now.

Unlike the previous visual novel adaptations, ef has two male leads instead of one. This is because the original source material, ef: a Fairy Tale of Two had two separate stories. The first story consists of Hiro Hirono, Miyako Miyamura, Kyosuke Tsutsumi, Kei Shindo, and Yuko Amamiya. The second consists of Renji Aso, Chihiro Shindo, Shuichi Kuze, Mizuki Hayama, and Yu Himura. The way they adapted the story is pretty organized since they show the first story first and then the second. Combining both stores would make a big mess and it wouldn’t be enjoyable that way.

The first part of the first episode involves with the first male lead, Hiro on Christmas Eve. On his way home to the Christmas Party, some girl took his bike to try and get the purse back from the snatcher. Later, Hiro finds her unconscious on the street with his bike completely broken. The girl gains consciousness and she reveals herself as Miyako. She gives up on getting the purse back and then drags him to someplace. The second par of the episodet involves with another male lead named Renji who finds a mysterious girl at an abandoned train station named Chihiro. She keeps a diary and suffers from amnesia (she only has a memory span of 13 hours). Towards the end of the episode, Renji promises to become friends with Chihiro and leaves…

The story itself is rather interesting and a bit more down to earth than some of the visual novel adaptations I seen. That said, the series is nicely animated, but there are some of the usual “SHAFT” elements like this:

Don't worry, you just got SHAFTed in the first episode!

This weirdness they have in some of these scenes simply don’t make any sense. It looked as if it was some “Mind F*ck.” Besides from that, the scenes and the characters looked rather nice and colorful.

From the first episode, the adaption of the ef visual novel looks very promising. Although not on the same level as Clannad, it’s definitely going to be pretty much the same, except that its more realistic (then again, Clannad is more realistic than the other two visual novels Key made). Because of this, I will most likely to continue on with the series since I’m interested on how the male leads will fulfill the girls’ dreams.

Not to mention, Miyako, Chihiro and the girls are rather cute!

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sola – Episode 7 and 8 – Aono vs Matsuri… over Yorito

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Forget about Matsuri and like me instead…

After Matsuri’s disappearance caused by Aono’s promise to Matsuri, she finally gets her chance to win over Yorito and start life over again as she did in the past. However, Yorito does not like this and tries to find Matsuri…

Given Aono’s past of being forced to live forever because of Matsuri, it’s no surprise that Aono wants Yorito back. So, why not do some sleazy trick to persuade Matsuri to leave forever so she would have Yorito for herself? It’s a genius plan and she even goes on a date with him.

Aono actually looks pretty cute in that outfit…

Like in Episode 5, Aono gets a chance to go out with Yorito and make him forget about Matsuri. She goes to some places such as the plush shop and riding the rails. In a later scene, she loses her umbrella like Matsuri did in the first episode and gets really wet. Yorito tries to buy a towel, but he finds Matsuri and chases after her. Aono tries to prevent him, but couldn’t. She weeps while Yorito finds Matsuri in an abandoned building and reminded her of the promise she made. While kissing, he mindlessly stabs Matsuri and it gets into his dreams (and of course, Matsuri self-heals from that stabbing).

In this condition, Yorito really needs serious help…

How about brainwashing Yorito to make him forget about Matsuri and tell her that she is gone? This is Aono’s plan all along. We knew that she was up to no good by hiding everything away from Mana… Mana eventually gets back into the house and bring him back to his senses with a picture of Matsuri that one of her friends took and sent.

I never knew that Aono would be that malicious. She was always seen as a very quiet girl that doesn’t talk often.  After I seen the actions from her, I was proven completely wrong. Probably there is reason she wanted to get rid of Matsuri. If Aono gets rid of Matsuri successfully, she would be cured from her “Yaka” status and could stay with Yorito forever. Or maybe, she is jealous of Matsuri since Yorito spends way too much time with Matsuri and not with herself? Whatever the reason, Aono seems to be serious in achieving her goals…

From the two episodes, I have noticed that the pacing of the story sped up in a tenfold like CCY  mentioned in his comparison post:

While both are pretty slow through the first episodes and only kick in about halfway, sola feels a lot faster and feels a lot more breakneck with the plot twists.

Although plot twists like shown in episodes 7 and 8 aren’t so bad, it’s definitely not the smoothest as the excitement ends suddenly at the end of the episode. It was shown with episode 8 when Aono and Matsuri started to have their battle against each other. It makes people wonder, who will win? We will have to find out in the next episode.

And this isn’t the last plot twist, there are more plot twists coming where that came from.

Verdict:

8.7/10

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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha – Episode 3 – Magical Powers comes with Big Responsibilities

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Being a magical girl is hard work... and thus drains you.

Nanoha had done a pretty good at being a magical girl since she already got 5 jewel seeds shortly after becoming one? The three Jewel Seeds since the second episode is giving me vibes of Kobato where Kobato’s bottle mysteriously filled up with konpeito within a few episodes!

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Two Episode Taste Test – Amagami SS

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Huh? What are you doing here?

I lied about not trying out any of the Summer 2010 Anime. I decided to check out Amagami SS since everyone in the blogosphere was talking about it and there isn’t many things I can do in Wisconsin. From looking at it, Amagami SS was a pretty enjoyable show from the two episodes I watched so far.

This is a two episode taste test. This is the overall impressions I have for this series over the two episodes. The third episode will ultimately decide if I should continue the series or drop it.
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Angel Beats! – Final Review

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Angel Beats is a very odd Anime. It’s a anime original that was hyped not only because Key was producing it, but PA Works who worked on “True Tears” and “Canaan” was going to animate the show. What we got is the Tsundere of Anime with inconsistent storyline and out of place drama and comedy. Even though I enjoyed Angel Beats, it felt like an experiment.
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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha – Episode 2 – The First Jewel Seeds

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Done perfectly on the second capture!

This episode pretty much showed how Nanoha uses her newly given mage powers for the first time. Nanoha also captures Jewel seeds (two of them in this episode). Yuuno explains more to Nanoha about the Jewel seeds via the “Raging Heart” while she is at school while Yuuno is at home after the first jewel seed capture. I have to say, Nanoha did amazingly well on the first try without knowing all the magical spells/skills!

The way of how Nanoha battles seems very familiar to Card Captor Sakura where Sakura battles some kind of creature and seal them into some kind of cards. Nanoha has the same concept, except they take form in black blobs and oddly shaped seeds. The battles were very interesting to look at, but there is nothing else I can say about them. It’s a typical Magical Girl episode and it feels nostalgic. When Fate comes in, things will hopefully get a bit more interesting than just watching Nanoha capture Jewel Seeds. It just needs more conflict than what I am currently seeing right now. :)

Verdict

8.6/10

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We will see you soon!

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Ready to go…

Will be away for two weeks on vacation… so see ya until those two weeks are over. I will still be updating this blog, although the post rate might go down a little. I will be back on the full schedule once I come back.

If you want to keep track what I am doing on vacation, check my Twitter profile or my sideblog, Shiori’s Diary. I’ll try and keep up to date with my Anime watching since the hotel have free wireless internet and I can just download the fansubs on my remote computer and SSH them back to my laptop. In the meantime, I will be lurking around the interwebs on my iPhone 3GS, so stay tuned.

For now, so along. 🙂 (and this is NOT a hiatus since I never do those.)

Also, fanart used in this post is made by ななつ

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Kaichou wa Maid-sama – Episode 14 Impressions

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Did Yukimura came out of the closet?

Well, Usui was tricking the woman-hater and we all know Yukimura is a great crossdresser as proven in the last two episodes.

Episode 14 was a enjoyable episode, but not much advancement. As we all know, Kanou Soutarou of Class 1-7 hates women. He is basically a genderbent version of Misaki, except that he is more violent. With the growing population of females attending the school, he fears this the most. He tries to take down Misaki who is pushing this trend, but it fails. This makes me think that this female hater is a bad guy. He really needs serious help to get rid of his hatred of women. If he can’t, why not go to a different school or be home schooled if he can’t deal with it.

As with Aoi-chan hypnotism of believing that he is an actual girl, Usui can never get hypnotized, even by that female hater. However, everyone else can because they were tricked into believing it. The female hater goes so far and places a spell on Misaki to hate Usui. However, Misaki sadly slept 5 minutes before the spell comes in effect… The result could be funny since Misaki is pretty much a tsundere when it comes to the relationship with Usui. In reality, Misaki loves Usui, but she doesn’t want to show it.

With the concern of Misaki and Soutarou’s spell, what will truly happen to her? Will she hate Usui or not? Not to mention, open house is the next episode and we know that Soutarou will try to sabotage Misaki’s plan. It makes me wonder on how it will turn out, especially that Yukimura is crossdressing yet again. Man, Yukimura crossdressing will probably top off Aoi’s crossdressing by the rate its going.

Verdict

8.6/10

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Clannad – Kotomi’s Arc – Final Impressions

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Watch out for her violin playing! Its nasty...

Since I still have a shortage of quality subs and I have watched Kotomi’s arc over again in the first season, why not finish her arc in the Visual Novel? The anime adaptation of Kotomi’s Arc is done the same way Mai’s arc was done in the Kanon (2006 remake) Anime. However, there was a few differences in the visual novel material, so I will explain them along with my overall thoughts. (Contain VN spoilers)
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