Archive for January, 2010

Time to start filming the shower scene

Summary:

If only I could /headdesk

Unlicensed doctor Kishitan Shinra (age 24) starts off by mentioning he is an underground physician who lives with the Black Rider, aka Selty Sturluson.  Selty is a Dullahan, and 20 years ago she woke up and found her head completely missing.  With a vague and incomplete memory, Selty became obsessed with getting her head back.    When she sensed it traveling overseas, she transformed her headless horse into a motorcycle and stowed away on a boat.  This is when she met a 4-year old Shinra, whose very open-minded father Shingen agreed to let Selty stay in exchange for an autopsy of her headless body.  Shingen finds that Selty has a dulled sense of pain, no heart, no blood, and various non-functioning organs.  In addition to her self-healing powers, Selty can sense smells, sounds, and sights around her, possibly from the black gas seeping out of her neck.

Back in the present, Selty meets up with Shizuo after getting a tip about a street artist who had seen a Dullahan many years ago.  After a wild goose chase, they finally track him down but find out that he can’t draw the head because it has been censored and is only available in the DVD/Blu-ray version. The artist mentions that a strange man told him that the drawing looked better headless and we later find out that the strange man was actually Shinra.  Shinra’s in love with Selty, and he worries that she might leave once she finds his head.

Reaction:

Go ahead son, throw some D's on it

20 years of living together and no marriage signifies a fear of commitment (or gold rings), if you ask me.  When Shinra was filming and Selty got in the way, all I could think was that maybe Shinra was using one of those racist HP cameras.  Anyway, I’m glad that Selty finally downloaded the Sawashiro Miyuki text-to-voice app, since I’m a big fan of Miyuki.  It looked like Selty was using some kind of hackintosh laptop, and we also learned that she keeps her money in her cleavage.

After hearing Shinra talking about Izaya and then seeing Selty hanging out with Shizuo, I get the feeling that all of them belong to the same organization.  Selty doesn’t seem that fond of Izaya, since he’s a creep who preys on emo girls and Selty seems to have her emo moments.  Selty also reminds me of how people say, “She’d lose her head if it wasn’t attached to her body.”  What Selty needed was one of those little elastic strips with the clips on the ends, like what little kids use to keep their mittens attached to their sleeves.

©2010 Sea Slugs! Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Related posts:

1. Naruto 441
2. Durarara!! 03

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I agree, Darker than BLACK 2 was so much better than the prequel!

Summary:

This is what happens if you toss recyclables in the trash can

On the school side of things, Anri becomes the female class rep, and Mikado volunteers to be the male rep so that he can share ogling duties with that creepy teacher.  On his way back from unsuccessful flirting alongside Kida, they run into Erika, Walker, and Kyohei who are going to Susie’s book signing.  Mikado also spots Anri getting bullied by some kogals and gets pushed by Izaya into helping out.

Izaya takes the opportunity to pick a fight with the kogals and some fake dollars, but his nifty knife work attracts the attention of Shizuo.  Shizuo’s still sore that Izaya framed him, but Shizuo gets distracted by some fake Dollars, and beats them up with his pants on the ground attack.  This new battle is in turn interrupted when Simon flips down from a top-floor delivery to try to stop Shizuo from fighting.  Meanwhile, we see that both Anri and Seiji are searching for Harima Mika, but seemingly for different reasons.

Reaction:

Minute man

While seemingly slow-paced, my Baccano experience had me feeling like there was a lot of stuff going on beneath the surface.  First of all, the combination of Seiji spotting Mika and Anri mistaking Mika from behind seems to confirm my theory that Mika is not in possession of her original head.  Given that the Black Rider is headless, I bet Mika got in some kind of trouble in a flashback and some crazy dudes stitched the Black Rider’s head on Mika’s body.  What I need to know now is if Seiji thinks Mika has a hot body or face, because we know he’s probably not attracted to her personality.  Also, the way those kogals were talking to Anri makes me wonder if Anri used to be a gangster herself.  Show ▼

The stuff with the adults was interesting, too.  It seems like the Dollars are some kind of internet gang and possibly interested in recruiting Simon.  Although it looks like Simon got worked, being able to stand up to Shizuo for any period of time is a feat.  Izaya was crazy-amusing again as well, with his excellent knife skills and also his transient cellphone-stomping hobby.  It almost seemed as if Izaya knew Mikado, too…

©2010 Sea Slugs! Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Related posts:

1. Durarara!! 01
2. Durarara!! 02

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TTGL: Lagann-hen is probably what the final episode of Gurren Lagaan should have been. And a bit more.

But still, doesn’t diminish it’s epicness. You guys can read my sidebar for my thoughts about it for the time being. I will post more later.

©2010 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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So you're the one responsible for all this lag!

Summary:

If I told my boss to 'Bite me!' I don't think it would end so well…

Surprisingly Danzo and Sasuke really did stab each other.  The twist, however, is that Sasuke noticed Danzo checking his Sharingan watch constantly, and so cast a genjutsu on Danzo so that Danzo wouldn’t realize that Izanagi ran out a few seconds prior to the stab.  As a non-Uchiha, Danzo never knew if Izanagi was active without constantly looking to see if how many Sharingans were open.  Thus, Danzo was vulnerable to getting stabbed, yet rushed in especially confident.  With that, Karin declares it Sa-sucky time, and Sasuke refills his MP and HP bars.

Also pierced a few mushrooms and peppers behind them to make a tasty shish-kabob

Unwilling to give up, Danzo activates Hashirama’s cells but his shoulder-face is too hard to control.  As his arm starts sprouting uncontrollably, Danzo makes like a tree and leaves the arm behind.  Danzo is still concerned about conserving Shisui’s Sharingan (which finally got off cooldown) to use against Madara as Sasuke seems spent, and so takes Karin hostage.  However, Sasuke simply tells Karin to be very still and then stabs through her to deal a vicious blow to Danzo.

Reaction:

Judging by the difference in height between Danzo and Karin, as well as the slightly elevated stone that Sasuke is standing on, I find it highly unlikely that the attack pierced both Karin and Danzo’s hearts.  As a skilled ninja with exceptional eyesight, it’s much more likely that Sasuke stabbed through Karin but avoided any major organs.  What’s a little flesh wound between friends?  Besides, Sasuke has always been careful to avoid collateral damage to innocents and teammates, and there’s no reason to think he’d get careless now.  So for now, I guess we’re left waiting to see if Danzo reveals the Sharingan implanted in his wiener.

How great would it be if Naruto got back and found Sasuke wearing the Hokage hat?  Haha, now it will be forever before the next election; so much for realizing your dream before you got old!

©2010 Sea Slugs! Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Related posts:

1. Naruto 479
2. Naruto 476

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Lori Henderson rounds up this week’s all-ages comics and manga at Good Comics for Kids.

After Twittering with fellow bloggers David Welsh and Sean Gaffney about female friendship in shoujo manga, Joy Kim posts a list of manga that feature female friendships in a positive light.

Karen Gellender responds to fan snobbery about Twilight at Japanator.

Sad news from Japan: With the Light creator Keiko Tobe has died.

Gia looks at the One Piece phenomenon in Japan at Anime Vice.

Blogging about blogging: This is not specific to manga, but Heidi MacDonald’s The Beat is one of the top blogs in the comics biz, and Heidi has been a good promoter of manga (and of MangaBlog!), so it’s big news that she’s moving to a new location. Reset your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly.

Reviews

Michelle Smith on All My Darling Daughters (Manga Recon)
Lissa Pattillo on The Apartment (Kuriousity)
Eric Robinson on vol. 1 of Bamboo Blade (Manga Jouhou)
Kevin Church on vols. 1 and 2 of A Distant Neighborhood (About.com)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 3 of Kimi Ni Todoke (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Erica Friedman on vol. 2 of Kimochi no Katachi (Okazu)
Connie on vol. 34 of One Piece (Slightly Biased Manga)
Julie on Only By Chance (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Emily on Sensei Datte Otoshigoro (Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of V.B. Rose (i heart manga)
Snow Wildsmith on vols. 1-5 of Very! Very! Sweet (Good Comics for Kids)
Lori Henderson on Voices of Love (Comics Village)

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Togame is pretty entertaining. Well worth sitting through the show for 50 mins to see her mess up.

But otherwise, Katanagatari was pretty…. “balanced”; the good parts and the bad parts were pretty much equal for me.

For example the dialogue; while it was pretty witty at parts, the wooden voice acting cancelled it out a bit, especially from Shichika. Only Yukarin actually sounded proper, enthusiatic and all, but otherwise Shichika and Koumori were pretty wooden. Mai Nakahara didn’t really get to say much sadly.

Story-wise, pretty okay so far, no gripes on that yet since it’s purely just the introductionary episode.

Art-wise…. while the overall quality was pretty good, the bland directing didn’t do justice to how pretty everything is. I think it’s the problem of all the pans. Pretty much feels like a budget-saving technique more than anything. Rather unfortunate too that the action scenes were short since many (me included) expected a bit more from a show with the premise of collecting evil swords.

Still worth continuing, but I wouldn’t recommend it enthusiatically to anyone yet.

©2010 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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This was a fun episode…

Epic retort there by Hino-kun.

Never let your guard down when under Mikan-sensei’s watch.

Haruka Tomatsu is pretty fucking hillarious as Hedyeh.

Daichi; confirmed as reverse trap.

Hot daymn, I’ve missed that face. Evil Face Tomomi = win.

Seriously… i think every freaking show this season is going to have some form of BL-hijack in them. Ookamikakushi, BakaTest, Vampire Bund (wait till they get to Yuki’s novels!) and even LvsB isn’t spared.

Oh wow, hottest cameo sex scene ever. Can we get more of them later?

And I am surprised to find out it’s Kana-chan as Ayse (Aishah?) at the end of the episode. I was thinking Ayse’s mute or something.

So far, I have to say that Ladies vs Butlers is turning out to be the show I am enjoying wholeheartedly this season. I guess it’s the unrestrained manner they go about with fanservice (nipples. everywhere! literally!) and how simple the story is so far. It doesn’t pretend to more than anything that it is at face-value and pretty much delivers on its market niche perfectly. People have no idea how I miss shows like that. Granted, rewatch value might be “meh” but hey, we ain’t watching GitS:SAC here, so who cares!

That aside, the story this week was based on a pretty fucking hillarious setup; walk in to foreign beauty changing -> suddenly forced in to marriage. I wonder how long has it been since I’ve seen that used, haha.

Star of the episode admittedly is Tomatsu Haruka’s rendition of the mental Hedyeh, followed closely by Flameheart’s extremely dirty mind. Hell, she’s the one who created that “child rape” scene last week, and she delivers again this week, ahaha.

And holy shit… the preview for next episode seems like they are going to kick that fanservice knob up a full notch or two. I shall be waiting.

©2010 Kurogane's Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Can you handle one more best manga of 2009 post? This one is from manga expert (and banned author!) Paul Gravett, so you know it’s good.

Melinda Beasi ponders the larger significance of the Twilight graphic novel at There it is, Plain as Daylight.

Myth and Manga looks at the monkey king, the literary ancestor of Dragon Ball, Naruto, and many others.

Julie is looking forward to Alice in the Country of Hearts at Manga Maniac Cafe.

The shoujo-sunjeong alphabet reaches the letter P at Manga Curmudgeon.

Manga Views profiles blogger Lorena Nava Ruggero.

Not manga, but fun: The Manga Critic plays test kitchen with Vertical’s Worry-Free Bakery.

News from Japan: Canned Dogs gets word of a doujin opera adaptation of Higurashi When They Cry. My first reaction was “That’s a great manga to adapt into opera,” but my second thought was “Doujin opera???!?!!”

Reviews: Park Cooper tells us what he has been reading lately at Manga Life. Other reviews of note:

Rob on vol. 1 of 11th Cat (Panel Patter)
Danielle Leigh on vols. 6 and 7 of 20th Century Boys (Comics Should Be Good)
Noah Berlatsky on vol. 1 of Biomega and vol. 4 of Ikigami (The Comics Journal)
Charles Webb on vol. 1 of Biomega (Manga Life)
David Goodwin on The Box Man (Eastern Standard)
Connie on vol. 4 of Bride of the Water God (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 31 of Case Closed (Slightly Biased Manga)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 1 of Crown of Love (The Comic Book Bin)
Connie on Darkside Blues (Slightly Biased Manga)
Simon Abrams on vols. 1-3 of Dororo (The Comics Journal)
Katherine Farmar on vol. 1 of I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow (Comics Village)
Joy Kim on vol. 1 of The Lapis Lazuli Crown (Joy Kim)
Leroy Douresseaux on Love Hurts (The Comic Book Bin)
Christopher Butcher on not simple (About.com)
Nina Stone on not simple (The Factual Opinion)
Connie on vols. 32 and 33 of One Piece (Slightly Biased Manga)
Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane on vol. 4 of Otomen (Manga Life)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of Portrait of M&N (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 2 of Rin-ne (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Connie on Saber Tiger (Slightly Biased Manga)
Susan S. on vol. 1 of Sea View (Manga Jouhou)
Dan Polley on vols. 23 and 24 of Tsubasa (Comics Village)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 2 of We Were There (i heart manga)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 2 of Yokaiden (Kuriousity)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 7 of Yotsuba&! (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)

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Down a shot every time you see a new scene… nope, still not buzzed

Summary:

Even one of the narrators fell asleep during the boring recap

Those weird, tiny, eyeless, maybe-imaginary old men from Pin’s hallucination show up and recap episodes 1-15 with barely any commentary.  Thank god they never started an anime team blog.

Reaction:

I kept hoping evil, scary Sawako would pop out of here and start killing everyone

This was a very lazy recap episode.  Only watch it if you want to quickly catch up on episodes 1-15 or if you are a busy blogger and know that you can get a post out of the episode in under 10 minutes.

©2010 Sea Slugs! Anime Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Related posts:

1. Kimi ni Todoke 11-12
2. Kimi ni Todoke 14

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At PWCW, Kai-Ming Cha talks to author and translator Fred Schodt. There’s lots of interesting commentary here, including Schodt’s take on unflipped manga:

It preserves the idea of original manga but disturbs the flow of the reading. Because it is in a hybrid, unorthodox format, it’s harder to get people not in the manga scene or part of the fandom to read it. This will probably be solved by a virtual or e-reader where people can read manga page by page on the computer.

Schodt’s current projects include translating Pluto. Also at PWCW: Michael Fitzpatrick looks at the popularity of manga on e-books in Japan.

David Welsh, Gia Manry, and Brad Rice look over this week’s new manga. Ryan Sands goes over some recent purchases at Same Hat! Same Hat!

Deb Aoki notes that the Twilight graphic novel shot into Amazon’s top ten—not just graphic novel, top ten bestselling books, period—on the strength of preorders alone.

Kristy Valenti concludes her analysis of Fruits Basket at comiXology.

Manga Curmudgeon David Welsh will be organizing the first round of the Manga Moveable Feast: During the week of Feb. 8, a bunch of us manga bloggers will be reviewing Sexy Voice and Robo. David will track the posts and even host reviewer who don’t have a blog of their own.

Same Hat! Same Hat! has some comics and covers to look at (some are quite NSFW): Desert Eyeball, by Maki Sasaki (in Japanese), more Shintaro Kago gag cartoons, and the covers to vols. 1-4 of Kazuo Umezu’s My Name is Shingo.

Deb Aoki posts the results of her best manga of 2009 polls at About.com. Deb, Jason Thompson, and JD Banks also discuss manga and comics in the latest Anime 3000 podcast.

Manga University will debut a new online manga next week, based on the game StepMania.

ANN sums up a Mainichi interview with Tetsuya Chiba, the creator of Ashita no Joe.

Hey, someone wrote a book about yaoi manga!

At Rocket Bomber, Matt Blind has the graphic novel rankings (online sales) for the week of Jan. 10, as well as a report on new releases and preorders.

Blogging about blogging: Coffeeandink accuses the bloggers and commenters at The Hooded Utilitarian of sexism; Noah Berlatsky responds.

Matt Blind has some tips for would-be podcasters.

News from Japan: Big news: Yuu Watase has ended Sakura-Gari and resumed work on Fushigi Yûgi Genbu Kaiden, which she had set aside in 2008. The last chapter of Tsukihime has been delayed, and the creator of Kōshokuaika Moto Volleyboys has put that series on hold while he recuperates from cancer surgery. On a lighter note, Michio Ueyama, the creator of Zoids, has posted a Doraemon/Loveplus crossover comic. According to Asiajin, the first manga has arrived for Kindle. At MangaCast, Ed Chavez posts Taiyosha’s manga rankings for last week and this week.

Reviews: The Ninja Consultants devote their latest podcast to Black Lagoon.

Sean Gaffney on All My Darling Daughters (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Greg McElhatton on All My Darling Daughters (Read About Comics)
Julie on The Apartment (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Julie on vol. 1 of Black Butler (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Danielle Leigh on vol. 1 of Black Butler (Comics Should Be Good)
Amy Grockl on vol. 1 of Happy Cafe (Comics Village)
Chris Zimmerman on Haridama: Magic Cram School and vol. 1 of X-Men: Misfits (cbs4.com)
Rebecca Bundy on vol. 18 of Hikaru no Go (ANN)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Jack Frost (Manga Xanadu)
Eric Robinson on vol. 2 of Maximum Ride (Manga Jouhou)
Danica Davidson on Only One Wish (About.com)
Julie on vol. 1 of Portrait of M & N (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Lissa Pattillo on vol. 2 of Rin-ne (Kuriousity)
Michelle Smith on vol. 2 of Rin-ne (Soliloquy in Blue)
Kinukitty on Sense & Sexuality (The Hooded Utilitarian)
Oyceter on vols. 1 and 2 of Shitsuren Chocolatier (Sakura of DOOM)
Johanna Draper Carlson on Solfege (Comics Worth Reading)
Julie on vol. 1 of Stolen Hearts (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Lorena Nava Ruggero on vol. 1 of Stolen Hearts (MangaCast)
Ng Suat Tong on Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (The Hooded Utilitarian)
Carlo Santos on vol. 25 of Tsubasa (ANN)
Erica Friedman on vol. 1 of Ultimo (About.com)
Brenda Gregson on vol. 1 of Venus Capriccio (Animanga Nation)

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