I give it a 7/10. This is the second season of Yuru Yuri, which aired in 2011. The anime is a slice of life comedy about four middle school friends who are all part of the tea ceremony club at their school. To be more specific, the story is about a bunch of lesbians and the hilarity that ensues from their interactions.
There really isn't much to say about Yuru Yuri ♪♪. If you've seen the first season, you'll know exactly what to expect. The anime doesn't expand at all on the concept of the original. Of course, no progress is made between any of the characters, but watching their humorous fumbling efforts, trying in vain to get closer to the targets of their affections, is fun and admittedly pretty damn funny.
Character designs remain the same as the first season. The animation isn't spectacular but isn't horrible either. The kigurumi is cute, though. Unfortunately, you got much more of it in the first season, and really only references in this one.
The OP/EDs are again by Nanamori Chu☆Goraku Bu, which I think is comprised of the main cast members. I preferred the OP and ED from the first season, personally, but it's all generic happy JPOP either way. The OST is the exact same from the first season.
The voice acting is pretty good. The seiyuu for the four main characters are still newcomers to voice acting, but give good presentations. I recall seeing a video where the seiyuu were informed that they were bringing Yuru Yuri back for a second season, and they all went nuts, which I thought was kind of cute. Of course, I can't imagine the life of a new seiyuu is that easy, and any work at all is probably a godsend.
I would recommend this anime to anyone who likes slice of life comedies. You can watch Yuru Yuri ♪♪ and just turn your brain off. If you liked Yuru Yuri ♪♪, you'd probably like K-ON or Minami-ke. I probably wouldn't buy this anime if it was brought to the states, but it was entertaining enough.
I give it an 8.5/10. Little Busters! is a visual novel by genre giant Key. Released in 2007, Little Busters! came out three years after the Key classic, Clannad. In 2008, Little Busters! EX was released, and is an eroge expansion to Little Busters! A Little Busters! anime was announced earlier this year, and the first episode aired this past weekend. As a side note, Kud Wafter, an eroge spinoff to Little Busters! focusing on the character Noumi Kudryavka, was realeased in 2010. There has been no domestic release of Little Busters!
Naoe Riki lost his parents when he was very young. Slipping into despair and misery, Riki was miraculously saved when he was invited to play with a group of children. Natsume Kyouske, the charismatic leader of the self-proclaimed champions of justice, the "Little Busters," held out his hand saying "Let's go have some fun." Riki took Kyouske's hand and never looked back. Kyouske, his shy little sister Rin, Riki, the good-natured musclehead Inohara Masato, and the stoic kendo ace Miyazawa Kengo spent their times getting into all sorts of trouble under the sun. Riki's childhood is filled with fond memories of his best friends.
The beginning of Little Busters! takes place during Riki's junior year of high school. Kyouske, a senior, comes to the realization that after graduation, the team will likely be separated from each other, slaves to jobs/college/etc. Kyouske wants to go out with a bang, and in typical Kyouske fashion, announces his outrageous idea to his friends at breakfast. Baseball. Despite the confused looks of his friends, Kyouske delcares that their final year together will be spent playing baseball, and it's up to Riki and Rin to put together the team. Five other players must be found, as Kengo declines due to his obligations to the kendo club. At the end of May, the Little Busters will go up against the captains of every sports team in the school in a baseball match. Thus begins Little Busters!
Little Busters! is a typical visual novel. There's a long route (a
"common" route) which eventually branches off into six other routes,
based on choices made during the common route. There are six arcs,
including two halves of Rin's route, a "true" route for Kurugaya Yuiko,
and a final arc, called Refrain, which is unplayable until all other
arcs (with the exception of Kurugaya True) are completed. During
Refrain, all of the questions you'll have over the course of the story
will be revealed. The arcs are as follows:
Natsume Rin Saigusa Haruka Kawakita Komari
Kurugaya Yuiko Noumi Kudryavka Nishizono Mio
Refrain: No spoilers!
Little Busters! added an RPG element to the mix. Throughout the game, to help break up long blocks of reading, the members of the Little Busters can (and will) compete to reach the top of the ranking list. Fights break out on the regular using non-lethal items. Fighting with eel-pies and RC cars is entertaining, and I found myself wondering what crazy item would be used next to fight. The winner bestows the loser a title which that person must keep until he or she reaches the top spot, or when given a new humiliating title by someone else. Some of the titles are incredibly funny, especially those given by Kurugaya (ex: Hobby: Repeating the world 'Manhole'). You may notice after completing each arc Riki and Rin both become a little bit stronger. This helps with the battle system and, later, the baseball match. After each day in the game, you'll participate in a batting practice minigame, which was incredibly fun (if not simple). The object is to get your multiplier as high as possible by hitting to the members of the Little Busters. Some of them will return the ball to you, allowing you to hit it again for a higher multipler. Sometimes you'll just see a funny animation, like Komari or Kud tripping and falling in the outfield (lol).
The baseball minigame.
The story is great, but I don't think it was as good as Clannad. Still, there are some very emotional moments during the game. All of the individual arcs are great, even though I was convinced I would hate some of them (how the hell did you make me like you, Saigusa.. you ended up being like my third favorite). I really loved Mio's arc. Typical of a story from Key, I was openly sobbing during some points, especially during Refrain. Much like Clannad After Story, Refrain is where the core of the story takes place. There's a very Key-like ending.
Rin gets a title.
In any visual novel, especially Key visual novels, the music is as important (if not more important, in some cases), as the story itself. Key Sounds Label did a fantastic job on Little Busters! Maeda Jun, Orito Shinji, and Togoshi Magome (among others) are all masters of their craft. Even after the fact, listening to the melancholy opening of "Song for Friends" brings a tear to my eye. These gentleman have the power to make a scene all the more emotional with their wonderful music. For vocal work, the artist Rita was brought in, which is a big change from the usual Lia. I think her songs ("Song for Friends," "Sunshine After Rain," and "Alicemagic") were very nice but had a totally different feel from "Tori no Uta" or "Last Regrets."
The game is fully voiced. Even characters without sprites have spoken lines, which was a very nice touch. All of the voice acting was good, but Kudo's voice actress, Suzuta Miyako, deserves special praise on the girls' side. She has a couple heart-melting moments during Kudo's route that are very well done. What was truly outstanding, and surprising, about the voice work in this VN, was the male's performances (though Riki's CV is female). Tamiyasu Tomoe (Riki), Midorikawa Hikaru (Kyouske), Canna Nobutoshi (Masato) and Oda Yusei (Kengo) all give very powerful performances. I've never heard such amazing voice acting from male CV's, to the point where I would rank them above the females. Remember when I said I was openly sobbing? Yeah, that was because of the male's performances. Good stuff.
Little Busters! was the first Key project where Na-Ga took over as head art director. The characters you've perhaps seen in Angel Beats! are all his, and I think they'll be using him from now on (including the newest Key work, Rewrite). Hinoue Itaru, the old Key art director, worked closely with Na-Ga on Little Busters!, but you can see a distinct change in the styles, which I liked a lot. Older Key titles like Clannad and Kanon were Hinoue's works, which are nice but definitely look dated. Na-Ga's work is very distinctive and has a very modern look to it. You can definitely see some of Hinoue's influences in his stuff, though, especially with smiles and facial porportions.
In the end, I would recommend Little Busters! to anyone who likes Key stories, that is to say, a slice-of-life funny common route with very emotional arcs (especially Refrain) and a helpful dose of "Key magic." This visual novel took me about 60 hours to complete, so if you don't have the time for that, I'd recommend the anime. People have been bitching about the decision to let JC Staff take over the anime, but from the first episode, it's got my approval so far. However, you definitely won't get the same experience. I would recommend spending the time and reading it, if you can get ahold of it. YAJ or Mandarake are good places to look.
I hope you enjoyed my first visual novel review!
"From the beginning, I was always that sort of existence. No different from a cloud blown about by the wind, and eventually scattered."
I'm back from my trip. I'm waiting to get some pics from someone before I post a full story about it, so please be patient. Suffice to say I had a great time and got everything I wanted.
Today's story (I know it's a long time in coming) is about Saimoe 2012. Being gone for so long, I forgot about it, and it's currently in round 3. Saimoe is a yearly popularity poll that takes place in August - November (I believe) on 2ch. 168 anime females from the past season compete in an all out battle for the right to be called the 'moest.' Each match has a voting period where users are allowed to post their picks. After the voting period the thread is locked and votes tallied.
A fight card. "Moe: Serious Fucking Business."
In the years that I've been watching Saimoe go down, I've noticed a few things that annoy me. Fans tend to eliminate popular characters early in hopes that their waifu will have an easier time in the finals. This is a valid strategy, but I think people should focus more on the current match instead of plotting long-term.
For this season, it looks like there's a lot of Saki characters in the contest. There's 34 characters from Saki!
If you'd like to vote in Saimoe, here's some information about it:
Generate your voting code here: http://ast2012.sakura.ne.jp/ (open now, voting starts at 1am JST)
Current voting thread: http://kohada.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/vote/1349647381/
How to vote: http://www.animesaimoe.org/votingguide.html
Yes, it's in Japanese. Deal with it. Oh, to see who is competing, check your friendly chan. There's almost always a thread up with the current standings.
And now, some great moments in Saimoe history!
Fate's loss was devastating. Damn that Suiseiseki! The voting results were 2306 - 2239.
Rika battled her destiny and won! This was a closer match than I thought it'd be, at 1499 - 1521.
I'll be going back to Japan very shortly! I plan to make a trip to Akiba with some friends. I'm specifically looking for Kud Wafter, a game which I've been unable to locate (outside of YAJ) using my normal means. So, wish me luck. Hopefully I won't go bonkers like I did last time and spend a bunch of money.
Also, I may hit up a maid cafe in Nakano that I'm fairly famous at, hahah. They also have a pretty large Mandarake there that I want to go through. I doubt they'll have anything I'm looking for, though, since they put all of their stock online.
Thinking I'll top the night off by getting Yoshinoya's. If any of you that read this want me to pick you up anything, please post it and I'll do what I can to get it for you.
I give it an 8/10. It's 2046, and technology has reached a point where physical terminals are no longer required to access computers. The internet is ingrained into our lives, to the point where it has become even closer to a virtual world than it is today. Arita Haruyuki is our protagonist, an overweight, self-loathing, insecure individual going through the darkest time of any outcast's life: high school. Being constantly bullied, Haru's only escape is online gaming, particularly an online squash game, which he is exceedingly good at.
Enter Kuroyukihime, the cold, beautiful vice president of the student council and most popular girl in school. She approaches Haru and invites him to play a secret online game called Brain Burst. Brain Burst has a huge cult following, but there's a catch: losing the game causes the user to forget everything about Brain Burst.
I felt this anime was outstanding. The story was very interesting and brings forward a few questions about virtual reality. While using Brain Burst, thought processes are sped up to an insane rate, and it's possible to spend months or even years in the game when mere hours have passed in the real world. At that point, which is reality? It has kind of an Inception feel to it, which I thought was really cool.
You heard me, Niko.
At its heart, Accel World is a fighting anime, and each episode is action packed. You'll see Haru get beat up a lot, you'll see Haru cry like a bitch, but in the end you'll be rooting for him. Kuroyukihime is truly waifu-material, but she is a good example of someone placing their online persona ahead of their real-world one (though Snow Black is awesome). The secondary characters are great, especially Niko. Of course, there's Chiyu, the annoying childhood friend, which is an anime cliche that I loathe.
The animation in Accel World is great. In a show like this it's important to have good action sequences, and Accel World pulls it off very well. The game avatars look like something out of a Kamen Rider-type live action superhero show, which I thought was odd at first, but it was easy to get used to.
Can't say no to her.
The OPs and EDs are really good. I especially liked "Unite" by Sachika Misawa. "→unfinished→" by KOTOKO is good too (another KOTOKO reference in my blog, this is getting out of hand).
I would recommend Accel World to anyone who likes action anime. If you liked Accel World, you'd probably like C, which has a similar battle system and story.
On a final note, I preordered Snow Black immediately. I'm trying to cut back, dammit! Thanks Kotobukiya!
I give it a 6/10. This is the second season of Amagami SS, which is based on a PS2 visual novel of the same name. This is a traditional high school dating game which follows the protagonist, Tachibana Junichi, as he lives his junior year of high school surrounded by beautiful girls. Two years ago, Junichi was dumped and has developed a fragile little heart. Being that his childhood friend has been in love with him since they were kids, I had no sympathy for him.
This second season is more or less a "where are they now" thing, since all of the arcs were resolved in the first season. There's only two episodes dedicated to each girl, and, much like the prior season, I didn't feel two episodes was enough to get anything interesting going. The story is generic and not very engaging, and any veterans of this genre will probably find it stale. There's absolutely nothing crazy going on, so don't expect any interesting plot twists. The girls are already "captured" at this point (thank you, Keima). This was a major turnoff for me, as your typical "go to the bon festival," "Junichi helps X get into the student council," and "Junichi becomes a borderline camera deviant," really wasn't enough to get my attention. I will say that I was glad Rihoko got a proper ending, since the poor girl was friend-zoned in her own arc the first time around.
AIC did a good job on the animation. Like the first season, you won't see anyone with crazy hair or eye colors in this anime, nor will you see any girls with impossibly huge breasts. The characters are at least believable in that way.
Lonely otaku will stay just for these.
The OP, "Check My Soul," and ED "Kokuhaku," both by Asuza, are pretty
good by themselves. However, in the first season the respective arc's
girl sang their ED songs, which they decided to skip on this time
around. I was kind of dissapointed in that. Our only consolation is a
small snippet during the ED relating to the current arc's heroine. See pic.
The voice acting is decent, but again nothing to write home about.
The characters are more or less all stereotypes. You have the childhood friend, school idol, class rep, sister, quiet girl, "one of the guys" girl, and a swimmer who I have trouble putting into any particular stereotype. Junichi is Shirou-level dense, and I find it hard to believe anyone would fall in love with him unless they're an idiot, which isn't true in most cases for these girls. I guess being simple-minded is an attractive quality.
I'd recomend Amagami SS+ to anyone whose seen the first season, and Amagami SS to anyone who is relatively new to anime and likes romance anime. The nice thing about Amagami SS is that there's an arc for each girl, and no one "wins" as you'd usually see in anime like this (because every girl has an ending). Each girl having their own arc seriously detracts to the amount of content you can have over a 24 episode run, though, and it's even worse with SS+ because it's only 13 episodes. If you like Amagami SS you'd probably like Clannad.
I give it a 7/10. I finally got around to watching the third, and final, season of Shakugan no Shana, and while I don't think it was outstanding, I felt the conclusion for this long-running anime was pretty decent. I say long-running because, even though it's only 3 seasons, the first season aired in 2005.
Yuji and Shana, this time around, are surprisingly pitted against one another. Within the first few episodes, we find that Yuji has accepted the God of Creation into himself and joined the Tomogara leadership Bal Masque in a huge war against the Flame Haze. Think of this God as the opposite to Shana's Alastor (the God of Destruction). Almost every episode of the anime is dedicated to depicting the war. The anime is action packed and at least a dozen new characters are added on each side, to compliment the ones we've already accrued over the past two seasons. As the anime progresses, it's harder and harder to identify the bad guy, and toward the end I was personally cheering the Tomogara on. The story is decent, but has "THE HEART" somewhere in there, which proves itself the cheesiest cliche this side of "running with toast in mouth." Also, only the Japanese can be so hell-bent on pride that they are unable to come to a compromise with someone they love. If you could sum up the plotline to this entire anime with one word, it'd be pride. Bottom line is, say what you will about the show, but that kiss at the end made it totally worth it. It's something that every Shana fan has been waiting for for the past seven years, and they really knocked that scene out of the park.
Shana never looked so good.
As usual, the show was animated by JC Staff, which is one of my least favorite studios. This time around I think they did a really good job. There's so much action in Final that you don't notice the shortcuts that JC is infamous for taking, and close up shots are admittedly pretty nice. Special effect work was pretty damn good too. Also of note is the way they've aged the characters. Shana is noticably older than she was in the first season. One of the things I approved of was the decision to leave fanservice largely out of the show. Aside from one scene in the first episode, I can't remember any point during this show where there was blatant fanservice. For such a serious ending, I'm glad they made this decision.
The OST is faithful to the other two seasons, which is nice. There was a time when KOTOKO was the queen of anime songs (lol). You couldn't watch a one-off OVA without hearing KOTOKO's electronic voice in the opening, and it really did work back then. I can appreciate being faithful to the beginning (2005 mind you), and I liked the songs by KOTOKO and Kawada Mami in this anime. I dare you to watch the anime in its entirety and not mutter a few words from "Light my Fire" as you watch it. "Koubou" by Kawada Mami is also amazing, though you only get to hear it once during the show
The voice acting of Final should get some special notice. Everyone really did a great job voicing their characters. Kugimiya Rie brought Shana back for the last time (got a little choked up there.. haha), and it's a little nostalgic. Granted, there's been a million cookie-cutter Rie tsunderes since Shana (Nagi, Taiga, Louise, etc), but Shana was the first, and I guess she still holds a special place in my heart.
I'd recommend Shakugan no Shana III Final to anyone who has seen the other two seasons. If you haven't seen Shakugan no Shana, I'd recommend it if you like action anime with some romance. Shana is anime's queen tsundere, so if you'd like to see the birth of a phenomenon, check it out.
