MM!: Mix and Blend

Currently finished: Episode 3

While everything still feels like an extreme version of Working!, episode 3 added an interesting twist into the story make it almost feels like an quick instant replay of the second half of Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakamatachi, or at least what I thought Ookami-san would have become. Even though the event is self-contained, it definitely adds an extra dimension to this story that I originally thought to be no more than an extreme version of Working! clone.

Very interesting.

[OAD] Yozakura Quartet: Hoshi no Umi

I don't know if it's because new ideas are hard to come by nowadays or people are just not satisfied with the original adaptions, it seems that these days, more and more manga adapted animes that didn't stay "true" the the manga are being remade into either another TV series or OVAs.

Having seen the TV series, but never read the manga, I can tell you that I liked the original Yozakura Quartet TV series, with exceptions of the ending--it is terrible, it doesn't make sense, and because of that, I think the whole series ought to be remade. So when I heard they're re-making Yozakura Quartet into an OVA series that supposed to "stay true to the manga", I was quite happy.

Then I saw the first episode of Yozakura Quartet: Hoshi no Umi.

My first impression? I was a bit shocked. They completely changed the art style that neither does it resemble the original TV series, nor does it resemble the manga--it's something completely new and wacky.

WTF?! If the illustrator of the manga has never done any TV work, then I could understand that production studio could have a slightly creative freedom when transforming the art from paper to the screen. But Suzuhito Yosuda (the creator of the manga) has actually done some pretty high profile design works for TV series before, specifically, he designeded the characters for Durarara! and guess what, they look very similar in style compare to the original Yozakura Quartet series. So I don't understand how could the production studio could just completely ignore the style of the original manga and make up some new art style that looks completely out of whack when they're supposed to "stay true to the manga".

Then the problem doesn't just stop there, I think due to the contribution of this strangely different art style, the entire episode feels wacky, whether it's the parts that supposed to be or not. At this point, I just can't seem to be able to take the story seriously any more, like I treated the original series.

I was hoping for something good, something better than the original series, but it shattered it. Unless they can pull off an extremely interesting story in next couple of episodes, I'm probably going to call this one a loss.

Current score: 79

[Movie] Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime

Remember two posts ago I said that most movie remake of anime series are really just the last attempt to squeeze of the franchise? Well, in my opinion, this is exactly what Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime is. It's literally the cut-and-pasted replay of the entire TV series with some plot point changes that is convenient for fitting the entire story into a shorter plot. This modified story, I have to say, makes a lot less, yes LESS, sense than the original story. Some parts of the story, especially those towards the end, are just plain silly and laughable.

Even though they're in the similar situation of shrinking a full long season into a less than two hour long movie, unlike Fate / Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works, this movie slows down quite a bit in the middle. Generally, a slow part in the movie would allow the story to insert some background explanation on certain to make the plot clearer. In this case, however, most of them feels they're dragging too much unnecessarily. Maybe it's a certain atmosphere they were trying to set, but I don't think it's very effective.

One other thing, somehow I didn't notice it last time around, due to either ignorance or the fact they didn't literally have the Lombard Street or Golden Gate Bridge in the TV series (or did they? I don't remember at all), the Macross Frontier city is completely, I mean completely, modeled after San Francisco.

Score: 80 - "B", only barely

Recommendation: Honestly, I wish they haven't made this movie--the end of the TV series is already a bit of a stretch when they're trying to go over the top with hyped up excitement, the plot of this movie is worst. In fact, I'd describe the plot for the second half of the movie to be completely out of whack--you literally have to turn your brain off to be able to withstand the bombardment of some most laughable idiotic ideas they're trying to pitch at you. If you liked Macross Frontier TV series, I would actually recommend against on watching this movie. Yes, it is that bad.

[Movie] Bungaku Shoujo

This is a story about a girl named Touko Amano, who can eat and taste books and stories (yes, literally) and Konoha Inoue, a high school boy who used a female's pen name to write a best selling shoujo novel. However, due to an incident, he could no longer write.

When I first heard the concept, I thought that she only eats books as some kind of habit, what I wasn't expecting, is the fact they made it clear within the first 10 minutes that she literally could "eat" and "taste" the book, not only by reading it, but actually eating it. But soon, I found out that this is only minor detail that merely serves as the lead-in to the real story.

Originally, I thought this is some light drama even light comedy. But then, I realized this is a much darker and more twisted story than I anticipated.

The pace of the story is not exactly fast, in fact, it's quite slow by normal standards. But the story itself is so intriguing that I'm completely absorbed in it that the hour and a half passed by like no time.

If you have to know, this is a story about love and quest to conquer the darkness in one's heart. I think this is a story that fits a very particular acquired taste, meaning not everybody could appreciate it like me and people alike could as I've seen quite a few reviews online that consider it to be mediocre at best. To me, this is definitely an "A" anime. You have to be able to appreciate not only the sentiment it put you through, but also the contrasting darkness hidden deep within some characters' heart at the same time. I found more often than not, people could accept one or the other, but not both at the same time. That's why I think liking this story would require a very particular acquired taste.

Score: 91

Recommendation: Like I said, you may or may not be able to appreciate this story, all depending on your taste. Personally, I would highly recommend this anime movie.

[Movie] Fate / Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works

This is an alternative setting / alternative story line of previous adaptation TYPE-MOON's famous visual novel, Fate / Stay Night.

To shrink a story that is long enough to fill a long anime season into less than two hours, there are a lot of stuff have to be cut out. If I have not seen the original Fate / Stay Night, I'd probably be slightly lost during the first half of the movie trying to figure out the overall premise this story is based upon because it jumps right into the action with very little dialog that trying to explain what's going on. However, the upside of this is that there's never lack of excitement throughout the course of the whole movie--fight after fight, there's never a dull moment in the movie that does not require your full concentration.

For those who like Archer (over Saber that is, which I know quite a few people do), you're in luck, because this movie is all about Archer. Although Saber may still seem to be the main character in the beginning, but the story really is all about Archer, directly or indirectly (I can't say anymore without spoiling anything, but you'll know what I mean when you watch it).

Also, unless I remembered wrong, aside from the alternative setting, there are some major plot points of the story that did not exist in the original Fate / Stay Night anime. But it's possible it has existed in the visual novel all along and I'm just not aware of it since I've never played the visual novel.

Usually, I'm pretty skeptical about movie remakes of existing anime franchise because majority of them are no more than the final squeeze by the production studio for more cash out of the franchise before it's forever forgotten. Before I watched this movie, I thought this is the same case.

But it ISN'T.

To summarize in short, Fate / Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works is a fast paced story with some highly explosive actions and quite some original contents that were not seen in the anime series. Although it's a bit difficult to catch on with the background if this is the first time you've seen this franchise, it's still a great action anime just by itself even without the understanding of the significance of what the plot of this movie contributes to overall Fate / Stay Night story.

Score: 93

Recommendation: Highly Recommended! Also, it'll be highly beneficial if you watch beforehand either the original anime series or the Fate / Stay Night TV Reproduction OVA which recaps the entire story from the TV series in two one hour episodes.

[OVA] Shakugan no Shana S

Finally, I can get a break from the new season opener and start to dig into the OVA backlogs I've accumulated over last couple of month. I'll start with Shakugan no Shana S.

Honestly, I'm not sure about the purpose of this OVA. Some say it serves as a transition to the third season, but I failed to see how. There are probably grant total of no more than 5 minutes of scenes that I can see that could potentially support a future plot--that is 5 minutes out of the total close 100 minutes of the OVAs spanning 4 episodes.

So really, this is just the production studio trying to squeeze this famous franchise for a bit more cash in this economic hard time.

[New October 2010] Kuragehime

Japanese title: 海月姫
Info/download: http://animesuki.com/series.php/1708.html
Genres: Comedy / Drama
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: Tsukimi Kurashita loves jellyfish. She lives with a group of Fujoshi (female otaku). One day, because of a jellyfish, she brought home a very special "princess"...

First impression score: 84 ~ Noitamina!

Personal comments: Oops, apparently I jumped the gun on rating the best animes of this season. In case you aren't familiar with it, Noitamina is a Fuji television programming block devoted to anime that since its launch had brought us countless classics such as Honey and Clover, Nodame Cantabile, Mononoke, Eden of the East, The Tatami Galaxy, and more. One thing you can count on the Noitamina is that it'll always be something unorthodox, in a good way. Kuragehime is no exception. There is no fancy art or special people involved in the story, but whatever they did with this anime, it managed to grab me less than 5 minutes into the opening episode. On top of that, this is quite an unusual topic as well--most story of this type focus on Otaku that are male; but this, focuses on female Otakus, which is quite a refreshing and unusual concept. In fact, I'm liking it so much that I'm willing to recall my statement for this season top 5 anime to have it replace Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai for the No. 5 slot.

[Poll] Top 5 for October 2010

Alright guys, that's all the new animes for October 2010 season. Surprising, the season I thought is going to be a big bust turns out to have quite a few decent animes, including a "A" grade initial impression series, which is actually quite rare if you have been following my blog long enough. There are a couple of them missing from my review, namely, Hakuouki: Hekketsu-roku. I'm not going to bother to review because I've dropped the season one half way through due to it being too "dry" in content. There would be no point to watch any of this season since it's just a continuation from season one.

So, before I put up the poll to let the unreliable masses (I've totally lost faith in the masses after High School of the Dead has been voted in for last season's top anime) to collectively decide what are the top 5 anime of the month .

So my top 5 for October 2010 new anime season are:

1. Otome Youkai Zakuro
2. Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai
3. Bakuman
4. Iron Man
5. [Edit 10/18/10]Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai Kuragehime

Otome Youkai Zakuro in my opinion is the undisputed best anime of this season. It's just very well made in all aspects, period.

No. 2 and 3, I don't think too many people would disagree with me about having them in top 5.

No. 4, Iron Man, could be just a shock factor that it had turned out to be a much better anime than I was expecting.

[Edit 10/18/10]
And No. 5, Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai, I'm really not thinking too highly of it at the moment, but I do think it has potential to become something much better as the season progresses.
At this moment, Kuragehime definitely tops Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai for the last spot in my top 5 anime of October 2010.

[New October 2010] Iron Man

Info: http://www.animax.co.jp/marvelanime/
Download: http://www.nyaatorrents.org/
Genres: Action
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: Iron Man!!!

First impression score: 85 ~ Better than Expected

Personal comments: Well, I'm a bit surprised that instead of some major studio in US cashing in the success of this franchise by making a cartoon series of Iron Man, Japanese picked it up first to make an anime. Maybe it is better this way since it's less likely for Japanese to turn this into an endless money cow that get continuously squeezed by the Hollywood executives. I'm actually quite impress by the quality of the show, at least for this opener episode. It is way better than what they've done in the past on anime adaptation off US movie franchise. Although, it is a bit weird hearing Tony Stark speaking Japanese everywhere...

[New October 2010] Toaru Majutsu no Index II

Japanese title: とある魔術の禁書目録II
Info/download: http://animesuki.com/series.php/1685.html
Genres: Action / Drama
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: The story of Touma and Index continues.

First impression score: 81 ~ Not a bad restart

Personal comments: I save it to the last because I feel this series is a bit overly hyped. So I wanted to see the rest of the season opener before I see this. It's an interesting restart to jump right into the action. But as for the story content, I could be wrong, but I don't think anything in this opener story has anything to do with the main story line (the part before the ending credit that is).

[New October 2010] Tantei Opera Milky Holmes

Japanese title: 探偵オペラ ミルキィホームズ
Info: http://milky-holmes.com/
Watch online: http://www.crunchyroll.com/milkyholmes
Genres: Kids
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: Story about couple of girls called "Milky Holmes" at Holmes Academy who has powers called "Toy". But one day they lost their "toy" and became just ordinary girls. They now have to work hard to reclaim their power.

First impression score: 76 ~ Children's Anime

Personal comments: I think I'll pass, too...childish.

[New October 2010] Fortune Arterial: Akai Yakusoku

Japanese title: FORTUNE ARTERIAL 赤い約束
Info: http://newtype.kadocomic.jp/fortune/
Watch online: http://www.crunchyroll.com/fortune-arterial
Genres: Drama
I've watched: 1 episode

Summary: A guy keeps changing school because his parents' work. One day he's back to a place he lived once before and run into some old friends.

First impression score: 81 ~ Huh?

Personal comments: For the most part, it looks just like a typical H-game adapted anime. However, the first and last 10 seconds of this opening episode make me curious about exactly what this story is about.