No confirmed Mai sightings yet, so things are still peachy. I’m not following as many series as usual at the moment (what with the lull before the new season really gets under way), but what I have been watching has been really gripping. I haven’t even had a chance to dip into my backlog!
Top Five This Month:
- Rozen Maiden Träumend: So you are what you eat. Here’s the beakdown: Roza Mysticas are like yummy energy bars, but fatty protein-filled breakfasts will kill you. It’s really that simple. Now it’s time for Shinku to unleash the hellish powers of pollen-based allergies on Bara Suishou and Suigin Tou.
- Fate/Stay Night: Although perhaps not quite as amazing as hyped, this series is off to a super strong start. The pacing and animation are top-notch, and yet there’s just enough to poke fun at. Oh yeah, Rin x Archer FTW.
- Bleach: Nicely done, with the arc finally wrapped up, we got a well-done recap episode and even some decent fillers. I wanna believe, but my other filler relationships have been abusive.
- Shakugan no Shana: All right, we’re finally getting on track as the characters get fleshed out and the backstory is revealed. Imagine what would have happened if when Alastor asked what Jinki Shana wanted, she replied “Neko-mimi”… Shiro would have come back to life and destroyed the whole damn island!
- Gun X Sword: That bullet helped Kamo shed the pounds needed to win the race. Let him in the Original Seven already!
Rising:
- Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s: Mind-blowingly predictable, and so incredibly cheesy at the end, but I do love me some character redesigns. I was disappointed that Amy didn’t change that much, but Nanoha broke out the side ponytail. Aha hahaha hahahahahaha! I was sad we didn’t get to see the transformations, though.
Falling:
- Gundam Seed Destiny: Final Plus: Ah yes, more GSD suckage. Nearly none of the things I was hoping for were shown, although we did get to see Lacus and Kira foster a little smoldering love tension. This episode could have been enhanced by: 1) Kira punching Shinn in the face instead of shaking his hand, 2) Meryrin taunting Lunamaria (you know Lunamaria had to have spent the whole time dreading the inevitable snide comment about how Meyrin ended up with Athrun). I’m not asking for much, throw me a bone.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
The best part of Final Plus was DARTH LACUS at the very end.
She’d SO better be the villain in the third series.
Hear hear. I am totally rooting for this, especially if Kira has to take her down. It would be even awesoMeer if Lacus went seed and turned out to be an even better pilot and programmer than Kira. *happy sigh*
Maybe Lunamaria will dump Shinn in the third series // Mirialla dumping Dearka from GS to GSD!!
Wow of your rising shows, the only one I’m watching is Shakugan, but since I’m watching another sub group, I’m like 10 episodes behind
Quick note, but also agree that Fate/Stay wasn’t as impressive as one would have thought, given all the associated hype. However, I did like the fight choreography for Archer (woo for dual-wielding abilities ^^)
I think that F/sn delivers exactly what it promised, and it’s doing so in heaps
… the downside of it is that whenever a shows creates a significant pre-release buzz, it motivates people to look for shortcomings much more determinedly than you usually would. I for one am very pleased about F/sn’s ability to create atmosphere and tension – and the characters certainly are some of the most diverse and interesting I’ve seen lately.
Epi: Your own fault >:->
Epi, what the hell group are you watching?
Eclipse is perfectly fine, actually they are generally one of the better groups around.
I agree with Mentar, F/sn delivers, imo. It has hooked me more than I expected. It’s early to judge, but the characters so far are very very good (except perhaps this Tiger-sensei).It’s the only anime that leaves me quite hungry for the next ep, together with Mai-Otome (I fail a little to follow the story, I admit.Like Mai-Hime I’ll have to rewatch the whole eps in sequence to grasp all the bells&whistles of it). Ok, I don’t like the “magical girl” stuff of Mai-Otome very much (like his predecessor), and those uniforms leave me (-_-) but those punks at Sunrise really know how to keep you interested – the last development (this romantic interest between Arika and Sergei) was somewhat disturbing, but I enjoyed it, in an odd way.Made me like “No, they can’t really make this happen…OMG, they did it O_o !”.
Very interesting posts from Mentar (of course ^^) and Wyk72. However, just as a personal aside, I can’t say that the characters really struck me as *outstanding* or unique, even though they were fairly well fleshed out — as a case in point, it was rather irksome to see the main protagonist decide to enter the Holy Grail War simply on the basis of a blaze ten years ago.
Just to give my two cents on character development, it would be rather interesting to see F/sn borrow a leaf from Mai-Hime (as Wyk72 said) and work some unconventional plot lines into the story (i.e. main protagonists turns evil, all the Servants revolt against the Masters, etc. etc.)
Final note, but totally agree that the series has got me hooked, though