Anime blog that focuses on Yuri and School Girl Slice of Life Anime and Editorials
Back in 2009, I wrote an informal post about Shiori’s Arc after I had finished it. I was disappointed that I haven’t gone deep enough in analyzing and adding my thoughts about her arc, so I decided to go through and redo the review as I attended. No, I’m not going to cover what was different in the Anime adaptation, but analyze the story and give my own thoughts along with it.
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Anime Blogging may have a fun aspect given that you are sharing your thoughts to the world, but in reality it takes a lot of time and dedication. The blogosphere is so vast that you might find thousands of Anime Blogs out there to read. However, it’s the blogs that stands out the most get the most attention.
You may ask, why are you writing an editorial about reading other people’s Anime blogs in the blogosphere? You asked a good question. I’m writing about it because I read a blog post on it. Additionally, I had an idea that reading other people’s blogs gives a blogger an idea on how to improve their own blogs. After all, everyone wants to be successful Anime bloggers and get as many readers out there as possible.
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Friendship is one of the most desirable aspects of life since it allows us to interact with people that share the same interests and have a fun time. Without friendship, people would not be enjoying life and be setting in a corner with a feeling of boredom. In addition, having many friends can increase the chances of getting a job depending on how good your friends are.
K-ON is probably one of those shows that most people wouldn’t know about the friendship theme because of its reputation of being a girls doing cute things kind of show. If you look deeper in the activities and the songs they do, you realize that they are enjoying themselves because of their strong relationship between them. That feeling of friendship is what brought some of the nostalgia explained more in the last editorial when I looked back in my high school years.
Fanart used in this post is made by n@tu
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After listening to the Angel Beats Original Soundtrack, I wondered about the other Original Soundtracks from other previous Key works like Kanon, Air and Clannad. After extensively listening to them, the three soundtracks had different styles between them and obviously completely different from the synth dominated tracks in Angel Beats.
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by さとPON
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Almost a month later, another arc is finished with some triumph. Kaoru’s arc compared to Haruka’s arc felt more realistic and natural. However, it still suffers the same issues of pacing. The question remains, how well Kaoru’s arc held up in Anime form?
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What exactly makes an Anime be considered in the Slice of Life genre? There has been talk about it around the blogosphere on the true definition of the Slice of Life genre (Midnight Equinox provides a whole lowdown of bloggers who provided their views on the Slice of Life genre). Like I said in my slightly trollish response, it’s actually complicated. There is a reason why explaining the genre complicated. People have different views on what qualities in the show they would consider as Slice of Life. However, I’m going to share my views on what qualities that would be in the Slice of Life genre.
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Makoto’s arc was one of those arcs that I couldn’t watch in one sitting. The drama was so tense that I skipped her arc during my first time of watching the Kanon remake. Its not until the middle of July that I finished her arc off. After I wrote the whole review on the Kanon Anime, I decided to continue with the visual novel and finish Makoto’s arc. The feeling of the visual novel arc was just as emotional as the Anime adaption, but it was more spread out instead.
For those who watched the Anime, there was hardly any content that was left out so you don’t have to worry about spoilers.
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Since zzeroparticle and ETERNAL reviewed the Original Soundtrack very nicely, I don’t feel the need to review the whole soundtrack over again. However, I do feel that I need to share my overall “too long, don’t read” thoughts about the whole soundtrack because it sounded so good.
I do have to admit, even though the plot of Angel Beats and Girl’s Dead Monster’s songs are a big mess, the Angel Beats Orginal Soundtrack does not disappoint. The big surprise that everyone doesn’t seem to notice is that the synth songs. Although they have the Jun Maeda style, they are actually composed and performed by a synth group called “ANANT-GARDE EYES.” Most of these synth songs primarily sound like video game music, primarily music from role playing games like Final Fantasy for example. The video game style music fits pretty well with the overall setting of Angel Beats since it’s a virtual reality purgitory afterall.
From the whole soundtrack, my heart, my most precious treasure, kanade, Ichiban no Takaramono (Orig. Version) and theme of SSS stands out the most. I will pretty much discuss the mentioned songs on why they sound better than the other songs in the soundtrack and my overall thoughts about the soundtrack as a whole.
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Cataloging sites are an important pillar to any Anime Fan since it keeps track what we watched, completed or planning to watch. People share these lists with others so other people can see what the person watched.
The evolution to good and easy to use Cataloging Services have been a rough one. MyAnimeList from the opinions of other users have been rather negative for unnecessary changes, random bugs and no open APIs that its been a frustration for both regular users and developers alike. AniDB hasn’t changed much and still too advanced for the average user. AnimePlanet is rather new still and still missing some features. However, its still better than MyAnimeList in many aspects. Lastly, Melative, the whole kitchen sink remains powerful and became more accessible to users. However, it does not have a really pretty web UI. In this State of the Union, I will discuss my thoughts on what’s good and what’s not good about these services and which one benefits the user the most.
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by えびばーちゃん
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After reading Yumeka’s blog post on different generations of the US anime fandom, it would be interesting to tell my experiences of Anime when I first started in the nineties in full detail instead in a small paragraph…
From the nineties, things were a lot different compared to what Anime fans have now such as easily accessible fansubs, fast Internet connections, streaming, and cheap boxsets. Anime was hard to obtain and can only be watched from limited sources from television or VHS. Since the topic is relevant, I will show you my experiences on how Anime was like back in the nineties to the present.
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by 米
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As Haruka’s arc begins, we saw a few good scenes that came out of the arc. The excitement happened as a result of Haruka having an enthusiastic personality. Does our male lead, Junchi reaches his goal of finally getting a lover on Christmas Eve? We will find out soon enough.
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Kanon, released on June 4, 1999 was a visual novel that changed the bishoujo game industry forever. It featured deep melodramatic story lines for each girl that gave a sense of sympathy and sadness (along with the optional eroge scenes). The one that was behind this masterpiece is Key/VisualArts. They continued to create other masterpieces like Air and Clannad that released several years later.
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Something tells me that Amagami SS looks like a generic harem with ideal archetypes. On the other hand, after I watched this episode, I enjoyed it. Is this the “guilty pleasure” anime I was watching? It sure is since Amagami doesn’t have the greatest character development. It has the over the top situations where the male lead and/or the girl do silly things that make the show sound so funny and enjoyable. Even some people can’t admit that they enjoy the absurdity of the actions in Amagami. However, that is okay since it’s a guilty pleasure after all? Right?
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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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This is an unbiased review on the new dub. Since I have watched the whole season back in 2009 when it was only in fansubs, why not take advantage of viewing it in English? It seems fun, right?
The dub wasn’t all that bad. I’m pretty lenient and don’t complain why it doesn’t sound like the original because it’s difficult to imitate the pitch since it’s a different language. As long it’s not 4Kids, we are fine.
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After the Credit Crisis of 2008, the economy was taking a downward spiral of unemployment, foreclosure, loss revenue and such. Add the BP oil spill in the Gulf and it looks pretty dismal. It’s no doubt that the Manga industry is taking a big hit not only because of the recession, but the existence of scanlation sites and the lack of viable and legal alternatives.
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WordPress 3.0 is the next big installment of the popular WordPress blogging platform used by the majority of Anime Bloggers. Automattic, the maker of the WordPress have been working on 3.0 since the early of this year and there had been some Beta and Release Candidate builds. Currently, they are very close to releasing WordPress 3.0, which brings a new array of features to bloggers. I will discuss some of these features that could be useful to the Anime blogger.
This only applies if you have a self-hosted WordPress, not blogs hosted on WordPress.com
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In light of the drama, I felt that I needed to write this editorial because things went out of hand. People arguing each other saying that Listless Ink doesn’t deserve this victory and that Random Curiosity should have won. I have discuss this on my sideblog that I won’t go into detail (just read the post on my Sideblog if you are still interested). Still, this argument keeps going and going, which disturbs me. This editorial won’t be about Random Curiosity and Listless Ink, but other things that bother me about the whole situation.
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by 紅雪
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Album Title: Little Braver
Artist: Girls Dead Monster (Singer: LiSA)
Catalog Number: KSLA-0055
Release Date: June 6, 2010
If you haven’t heard enough of the rather mediocre music from Girls Dead Monster, there is more! A few weeks back, there was a promotional video on Little Braver, but I didn’t take a look at it because I don’t want to go and spoil it. Several weeks later, the single is released. Have LiSA improved her rather mediocre and rather forgetful performance of the “Thousand Enemies” single? It’s only slightly better, but I am still not convinced if it’s good enough. LiSA seems to sound good on the lower notes, but she still goes slightly out of tune in some areas. Not as bad as Thousand Enemies, but that is saying too much about it. The songs are still pretty forgettable and made me wish that they had better singers singing these songs…
Little Braver is the song that was shown in the promotional video. It starts off with a calm intro and when LiSA enters. This is where the good composition gets drown out by the mediocre vocals. It does sound slightly better than Thousand Enemies, but it’s slowly goes downhill from there. The songs feel pretty dull and the higher pitches like with the previous album sounds slightly ever out of tune. Not only that, Little Braver is pretty forgettable several minutes after. Little Braver is an okay song, but it doesn’t try to go beyond the mediocrity of Girls Dead Monster.
The intro of Shine Days sounds pretty well like the intro to Alchemy and it’s a pretty upbeat song. This is probably the best song out of the whole single, but it’s hardly perfect. It still have several flaws like the slightly out of tune pitches on the higher octaves and it’s slightly dull. It’s an okay song, but still forgettable like the rest of the songs LiSA has sung. It’s worth mentioning that at 4:30, her vocals are barely audible…
Lastly, we have Answer Song, which is probably the most disappointing song out of the whole album. The performance of the song felt a bit messy and somewhat dull. I don’t feel any energy in this song, except mediocre singing that could put me to sleep. Probably the worst song I heard from LiSA.
I don’t know what they are getting at by not letting the seiyuu sing! I’m pretty sure Eri Kitamura and Miyuki Sawashiro are fully capable of singing, but no! Lets pick two amateur singers that doesn’t necessarily represent Japanese Indie scene and fuck up all 9 songs! Thats how I feel about the whole Girls Dead Monster thing and it’s a big disgrace. Jun Maeda does a wonderful job in composing these songs and these singers go out and ruin the work he worked hard for. It’s just like making a good game with good game play, story and graphics and the orchestra go and fuck the music up. Like I mentioned in my rant in the last paragraph of my Pure Pure Heart single review, they choose singers that can’t sing properly and resulted in the mediocre and disappointing performance of these songs. Girls Dead Monster will never reach the appeal of Houkago Tea Time because their songs continue to have flaws with the vocals, which make them rather forgettable. Houkago Tea Time is simply more polished, sounds better and the vocals don’t go out of tune so many times that it makes me cringe.
Not only that, there is more Girls Dead Monster singles that is coming out and what can you expect out of them after hearing the first 9 songs? More disappointment. They are making a mockery out of Girls Dead Monster and milking it what its worth from the hype. Believe me, My Soul, Your Beats!/Brave Song sounds like heaven compared to the mediocrity of all the Girls Dead Monsters songs combined.
7.0/10
Somewhat irrelevant to HeartGold, but whatever…
After three months and a few weeks, I have finally beaten Red, which people say that he is hard to beat. Well, I managed to beat him with minutes, so yeah… Since I completed pretty much everything in the main story, I will share my thoughts about Pokemon HeartGold.
Back when the original release of Pokemon Gold and Silver came out back when I was in 5th grade, I have played this game a lot. There was only 251 Pokemon back then and I also bought Pokemon Stadium 2 for a bit more fun with 3D battling. Fast forward to today when I am a college student now finished Diamond and Platinum, when the remakes of Gold and Silver was revealed, I wanted to play it. After the English release back in March, I have started playing it and the nostalgia factor came back.
People who have played this game will notice that most of the story and the maps are pretty much the same, with minor differences. These differences included updated mechanics since the Second Generation (basically, it has everything from Diamond/Pearl/Platinum), berry trees replaced with Apricorn trees (since the 4th Generation has a different berry system compared to the 2nd generation), Battle Frontier, Pokéathlon (essentially a sports version of the Pokemon Contests), Revival of the Safari Zone and other changes to music and graphics. If you compare the graphics to D/P/Pt to HG/SS, the newer remakes look slightly better. There are some minor changes to the story to take advantage of the new graphics and such.
If you played Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, you will immediately notice that the menu is moved to the touchscreen since there is no Poketch. This allows you to easily access your Pokedex, Pokemon list, Items, Save, etc. Another thing I liked is that you can lock on to using the running shoes without needing to hold B down. Another improvement is that you can set two key items for easy access. This made it easy to use the fishing rod without needing to unset the other item. The PokeGear is pretty much the same, except that you can store an unlimited amount of phone numbers. However, this can be annoying since your PokeGear will keep ringing at random moments after you get out of a building, defeat a Pokemon/Trainer, etc.
Like in Pokemon Yellow where you have Pikachu following you, in HG/SS, you can have any Pokemon walk with you, as long its on the first slot of the Party. This is where you can find accessories for the dress up mini game like in D/P/Pt and check your mood of your Pokemon.
The game is pretty easy since I used my other game to Effort Value train the Pokemon and send them back to the game. I managed to beat the first 8 Gym Leaders in 21 hrs and 47 mins, beat the next 8 Gym Leaders in several hours later. However, when it was time to train for Red, training got very frustrating. Compared to D/P/Pt, HG/SS does not have a VS Seeker. This meant that you had to rely on trainers that call you, weekly rematches of Gym Leaders depending on the day and the Elite Four. The lack of a VS Seeker is the biggest flaw in this game because they push the PokeGear so much for rematches that it becomes a gimmick. I liked it when I can battle trainers on demand since I can level up quicker and go on. Because of this, I had to resort to trading the Pokemon to my older games, train them and send them back. I even battled the Elite Four (I deposited my money before doing this) until I lose and I do it again over and over again. Eventually I managed to beat the stronger Elite Four’s Pokemon 6 times because my Pokemon were already on Level 70s to 90s. If I had the VS Seeker, it would have been done in no time and I see this as a flaw in the game. If HeartGold/SoulSilver is the only game you have, be ready for a long level grinding up to Level 82 or higher because if its below level 82, you won’t stand a chance against Red.
Talking about Red, he was incredibly easy (Beaten on the first try after 74 hours of playtime). I beaten his whole team with these Pokemon:
If you properly Effort Value train the Pokemon along with the right natures, you will stand a better change against Red’s Pokemon since I highly doubt Red’s Pokemon are EV trained.
Another flaw with the international release is that they replaced the slot machines with this incredibly hard Voltorb Flip. Basically, it’s a game of chance that involves no risk. I don’t really care about the games, but they took away the ability to buy coins. So, the only way to get coins is beating Voltorb Flip, which I found very frustrating, even with a helper. Eventually I gave up and bought the items in Platinum. Slot Machines replaced with Voltorb Flip was simply the worst change they made in the whole game.
Now to the positive aspects of the game… The Pokéathlon is the Sports version of the Pokemon Contest. There are five game modes (Speed, Power, Skill, Stamina and Jump) depending on each performance stat. You can raise these stats by blending Apricorns and giving the Apricorn shake to the Pokemon. Honestly, I only tried Speed and Jump since they are the easiest out of the five, but haven’t tried out the other three. They consist of three events that takes advantage of the touch screen on the DS. The games are okay, but they take some time getting use to. Once you get use to these events, they will go pretty easy.
If you notice, the cartage of the game is different from the others. This is because it contains an infrared sensor used by the PokeWalker. PokeWalker, as the name suggests allows you to send a Pokemon to level up by one and raise happiness. You can find items, catch Pokemon and send watts back to your game. Basically, the PokeWalker is like those Pokemon Pikachu gigapets that you walk around with and earn watts. I’m guessing that Nintendo and the creator of Pokemon wanted to get people off their butts and start exercising. However, there are always going to be some cheaters… On Youtube, I saw people taping their PokeWalkers to phonographs and fans. They even go so far to build a MindStorm device to have it shake the PokeWalker. That pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the PokeWalker and its pretty sad.
For me, I have used the PokeWalker a few times by bring it to college to generate watts. Ever since the Spring Semester was over, the PokeWalker is sitting by my bedside collecting dust. I rarely use it nowadays since I have a lot of stuff I bring with me when I go out.
Lastly, there are a few mechanics changes to this game. Breeding for Individual Values is a lot easier since you can just have a Pokemon hold a single-stat EV enhancing item and keep the IV of that Pokemon. Like with Platinum, additional moves that was previously unavailable for various Pokemon is now available. This allows for better move set building.
Overall, HeartGold is a great remake of the original games. There were some flaws, but I enjoyed the nostalgia factor and the pretty graphics and music. If you played Pokemon in the past or still like it, I recommend this game… Although there were a few things that bothered me about the game, it didn’t impact my enjoyment of the whole game and I will continue to play it as long as I can.
One last thing… If you want to do any online activities with my Pokemon Game, my friend code 0818 6384 1156. If you want to do a Battle, I only do Level 100 Singles with no Ubers and Hax Items. Contact me via my XMPP address or Twitter (as a Direct Message) if you want to arrange a battle (See “About chikorita157″ page for my contact information). I’m usually online throughout the summer at 10 AM to 11 PM Eastern Time.
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by わっこのやろう
Album Title: Pure Pure Heart
Artist: Houkago Tea Time (Toyosaki Aki, Hikasa Youko, Satou Satomi, Kotobuki Minako, Taketatsu Ayana)
Catalog Number: PCCG-70075
Release Date: June 2nd, 2010
1. Pure Pure Heart
2. Sakuragaoka Joshi Koutougakkou Kouka [Rock Ver.]
3. Pure Pure Heart (Instrumental)
4. Sakuragaoka Joshi Koutougakkou Kouka [Rock Ver.] (Instrumental)
5. Pure Pure Heart (Instrumental [-Guitar1])
6. Pure Pure Heart (Instrumental [-Guitar2])
7. Pure Pure Heart (Instrumental [-Keyboard])
8. Pure Pure Heart (Instrumental [-Bass])
9. Pure Pure Heart (Instrumental [-Drums])
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Sorry for the delay… I was playing Half-Life 2 (which is a good game like with Portal) and totally forgot about the last few matches… so I guess I have to write them up…
Like the last digest, blogs will be judged on content and design with content weighing more. Second Page contains the Round 2 Followup. Note that I won’t be doing any digests next round since I have already reviewed all the blogs in the tournament.
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by 竹家ﾕｰｷ@待機.
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When I really need to do these digests, I forget now since I have no classes at the moment. It was a week and a half since Spring Semester ended, so I will try to roll these posts a bit more quickly than what I am doing right now.
Like the last digest, blogs will be judged on content and design with content weighing more.
Note: Fanart used in this post is made by 悠夜
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Album Title: My Soul, Your Beats! / Brave Song
Artist: Lia, Toda Aoi, Maeda Jun
Catalog Number: KSLA-0054
Release Date: May 26, 2010
When something gets animated, the theme song will get referred to as the national anthem.
– Ken from Seitokai no Ichizon
Typically, all the Key Anime Adaptations always had great opening and Eeding Themes (Tori no Uta, Last regrets, Megumeru, Toki wo Kizamu Uta, Light colors and others). Angel Beats is no exception to this, except the insert album songs from Girls Dead Monster since the vocals sound like they were amateurs. From hearing the songs over and over again, I think this is a pretty solid album overall with some tiny flaws (some minor screeches in a few areas in My Soul, Your Beats! and vocals being soft in Brave Song), but nothing that serious. Both songs have strong instrumentals and sound really beautiful, especially with Brave Song.
The intro of My Soul, Your Beats! has a simular feel to Toki wo Kizamu Uta (A Song Engraved in Time) from Clannad After Story… Heck, the vocals sound similar. From the song, I like how the piano and the guitar is played in the background as it gives this feeling of being blown away because of how powerful it is. Since it’s Lia, the vocals are solid. Nothing else to say about My Soul, Your Beats! as its a very good song. No need to recommend as most people will like this off the bat.
It’s worth noting that while I was listening to My Soul, Your Beats, I was comparing this song with Lia’s past opening themes with Key (Tori no Uta, Light colors, Toki wo Kizamu Uta). While My Soul, Your Beats is a good song, it lacks the emotional feel from these three songs. However, Brave Song conveys that feeling, which is the next song in the review.
Honestly, it took several listens for Brave Song to click in, but it has the feel of Chiisana Tenohira. It pretty much fits in with the whole premise of the show. The vocals from Toda Aoi seem to be a bit soft at first. After listening it a few times, it fits in well with the song although not as good as Lia. The strength of this song is the lyrics that can compare to Toki wo Kizamu Uta as it has emotions that’s not present in My Soul, Your Beats. Although most won’t get Brave Song from listening it to the first time, but after a few listens, it will click in. Maybe not like Go Go Maniac since I still can’t get over the screechy vocals from Toyosaki Aki.
By the way, Brave Song is the song that is played when the rocket goes off, which I found really strange.
From listening to both of these tracks, Jun Maeda should be proud that his Opening and Ending Themes are not ruined by mediocre vocals from marina and LiSA, but with more established singers. Lia delivered just like she alway do from all of her tracks I had listen to. Toda Aoi on the other hand isn’t as refined as Lia, but her performance of Brave Song turned out pretty good. Nevertheless, this is a solid single and is a recommended listen if you are watching Angel Beats or like Jun Maeda’s compositions.
8.9/10, A-/B+, Outstanding