Lucky Star – Episode 17

This episode was better than last one, though not one of the better episodes. I’ve been thinking and I’ve come to the conclusion that the biggest problem in Lucky Star is the humour (Well done, Captain Obvious!). It shouldn’t be no surprise to anyone that people have different tastes of humour and Lucky Star’s idle and every-day-ish humour hasn’t ever really been to my liking. However, in this episode there was a scene of the Hiiragi sisters making dinner and eating it together. I liked this scene a lot though it was not funny, at least it wasn’t meant to be.

Lucky Channel was sort of fun. They had the manager from anime store as their guest. The ending was Minoru Shiraishi singing and dancing the OP song and it was definitely the highlight of this episode. It’s kind of sad that the ending credits were the best thing in this whole episode, mayby in the whole series if this level keeps up.

Lucky Star would probably could probably become a great anime if all the un-funny attempts at humour were left out and the there would be more focus on Kagami and Tsukasa for they are both totally moe. Though it’s already the 17th episode, meaning that there’s only seven more left, and I don’t have enough fate in KyoAni being able make something so good that everything so far could be just ignored.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Episode 18 (spoilers)

The truth behind Spiral Power and the Han-Rasen is revealed. There are two opposing factions: the Rasen, those with Spiral Genes, and the Han-Rasen, the Anti-Spiral. The Han-Rasen rule the universe and consider the Rasen dangerous. Whenever a world reaches certain limit of such beings, Human Extermination System is activated and it will destroy them.

The battle between humans and the Han-Rasen has begun. In three weeks, the Moon will collide with the Earth destroying it. There are also Mugan, the faceless mechas of the Han-Rasen, attacking the Earth. And because everyone knows that the Earth will be destroyed, people are rioting and want someone to place their blame on. In order to calm the people, Rossiu decides to make Simon the scapegoat.

The peace sure didn’t last long. The situation has become really chaotic. Not only Simon has to fight the Han-Rasen, but the entire humanity is blaming him because of what’s happening. And how can Simon save Nia from the Han-Rasen. One could say that there is not that much stuff happening anymore, but I think it’s exactly the opposite. Now that the politics have stepped into the scene, the goverment has to look good in front of the people. Rossiu, who’s the one running the show, is willing to do anything in order to secure his position and the safety of humankind, even betray Simon.

I’m going to say it again, Gurren Lagann has become an entirely different anime. Where the first 15 episodes were quite outright action, post-time skip episodes focus more on the relations of the characters, politics and of course the impeding enemy, the Han-Rasen. While I probably liked the last episode better, 18th is no let down.

Although Rossiu would probably try his best to handle this situation with politics, I know that Simon is not going to submit and will use all his power to protect humanity from the Han-Rasen. Right now, Simon and Rossiu must confront each other to decide how they are going to save the humanity. I expect that there will be a battle with even more epic scale than ever before! Definitely looking forward to it!

Lucky Star – Episode 16

Random obvious Haruhi references, boring talk, a book store with a cute cashier, even more obvious Haruhi references, Konata goes to that anime store once again, Kagami hangs out with girls from her own class and once again a little bit of boring talk. Then we have the Lucky Channel with Akira’s big live concert. It was fun for a second and that’s it. The song in the ending was already once in the episode, couldn’t they have chosen another?

KyoAni, we all know Haruhi is awesome and it seems to be you know this as well. However, could you please get serious with Lucky Star? Just because most people in fact do watch it just because of the “from the creators of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”-mark it bears, we don’t really get excited from seeing how Konata hypes songs from Haruhi, works at Haruhi-themed cosplay cafe and etc. I’ve heard you’re probably making a second season of Haruhi, which is good for you, but this here is Lucky Star, not just some self-tribute-ish declaration of Haruhi’s awesomeness.

And if anyone reading this felt that I have something against Haruhi, you have misunderstood me. Haruhi is one of my favourite animes, but I don’t like the fact that KyoAni is using Haruhi as the subject matter for Lucky Star, which at least should be a different anime. Lately, Lucky Star has lost the little edge it ever had and KyoAni has tried to make it good with references to Haruhi. Sorry, it’s not working on me.

Am I the only one who finds this really annoying? I really like Haruhi, but what the heck is so great about Lucky Star refering to Haruhi once or twice in every episode? Obvious and predictable references are boring and I can’t understand people who get all fired up about seeing Konata cosplay Haruhi and stuff like that. This is turning into a rant so I’d better just stop right now.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei – Episode 3 (spoilers)

This time Kaere Kimura, a girl who has been in the overseas class, returns back to Japan. Although she is Japanese, she behaves like she’s never been to Japan before and annoys everyone else. The class tells her to go back home and triggers something inside her head changing her personality totally. It turns out that she has a split personality, a personality of a foreigner and a personalty of Japanese. Her Japanese personality, Kaede Kimura, instantly falls in love with Nozomu, but since she’s very shy, she’s afraid to approach him. Kaede finds her situation hopeless and tries to take her life by jumping down from the school’s roof. Nozomu stops her, because he found that spot first, and won’t let her have it. Instead of falling down, Kaede just bumps herself on the wall which triggers her personality change again. Kaere is not happy about being dangling upside down making her panties completely visible and tells Nozomu that she’s going to sue him. As expected, Nozomu is in despair once again.

We meet another foreigner, Tarou Maria Sekiutsu, an illegal immigrant who bought a student number and her new name along with it from some guy who’s had enough of school. Maria lives in a small room with bunch of other illegal immigrants and collects stuff thrown away by people. Her childlike naivety and cheerful behavior makes the whole class want to protect and support her.

Another great episode of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. I love the way every episode introduces new characters and deals with their issues. I also like the fact that those characters are really cute. Well Kaere/Kaede is not exactly my type, but Maria is awesome.

Moetan – Episode 3 (spoilers)

Ink and Ah-kun are watching some horror movie together, but it’s too scary for Ink and she’s screaming whenever something happens. Sumi invites Nao to her seaside mansion and the rest of the friends decide to tag along. They have a pool at the mansion and they all swim together. It seems to be that Ink can’t swim and needs to have a swimming ring, so cute!

After a luxury feast, Ink and Sumi go to bath together. Of course Ah-kun and Kaa-kun try to peek at the girls, but they end up fighting each other and discovered by the girls. Suddenly the lights go out and the girls go to the cellar together to find why. Of course they first need to transform into magical girls. In the cellar, they find Yuriko, Sumi’s maid, drinking sake together with a ghost. Wheter they had or had not anything to do with lights going out, I didn’t really figure it out…

To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an anime that has been aimed this clearly at lolicons. There’s so much fanservice featuring little girls, like bathing, panty shots, swimsuits and henshin scenes. I admit that there’s only little service to non-lolicon watchers, but there are already plenty of animes aimed for such audience like Umisho, Ikkitousen and Nagasarete Airantou to name a few. I don’t deny liking some of them, but lolicon is the greatest!

This time Sumi does the Moetan Corner. I think it’s a good idea to have different girls do it, instead of Pastel Ink doing it everytime.

Umisho – Episode 3

The swim club goes to another school for a competition, Kaname and Amuro go to the beach together and the swimming club helps to attract more customers to Masa Ikariya’s father’s restaurant by wearing their swimsuits while serving the customers.

Oh My God! It’s a Shark!

The quality of animation was clearly lower in this episode. Expect for close-ups of the girls and the fanservice, it looked rather awful. Then again, not like anyone would watch this for anything but the fanservice, though I noticed that there weren’t that much fanservice either.

He is my Master – vol. 1

Yoshitaka Nakabayashi, 14-year-old boy, who has just inherited a great fortune because his parents died in a car accident, is unable to live alone and decides to hire live-in maids. Izumi (14) and Mitsuki (13) Sawatari, two girls who ran away from home find his offer and accept it since they need some place to live in. Sounds like a typical setting for a love comedy from every perspective.

However, He is my Master is not a love comedy! Yoshitaka is a healthy boy in puberty and has extremely perverted tastes. After seeing what kind of person her master is, Izumi wants to refuse the job, but after breaking various valuable furniture and items, she has little choice but to work for Yoshitaka to pay back her debt. Yes, this is a gag comedy manga with really, really dirty humour!

The art is nice, but I think Asu Tsubaki is using too much raster for shading. It’s just a personal preference, but I prefer shading that has been done without raster. And since Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine is aimed at young boys, the art cannot be very daring. However, since I have a thing for maids, and various other forms of cosplay fanservice, I’m fully satisfied with the art in this book.

Now let’s take a look at the translation, editing and stuff. Seven Seas Entertainment, a relatively unkown manga publisher who has recently managed to gain (negative) fame with cancellation of the much anticipated Nymphet (AKA Kodomo no Jikan), has done an average job on this book. I have no complaints for the translation or editing, but the print is too dark, making lighter raster turn darker and darker raster turn completely black, which makes some details disappear. Also it seems to be that the lower and outer margin of pages have been reduced from the original, meaning that some of the art has been cut away. Not good, very not good. The preview at the website however had the pages uncropped and no problems with colours, so I guess I should blame the printer not the publisher, though it’s still the publishers fault for choosing an unqualified printer.

Regardless of the problems with the colours and the cropped pages, what we have here is a solid release of the long awaited He is my Master, a gag comedy manga completed with beautiful young girls in sexy maid outfits. If this sounds interesting, don’t hesitate to get the book despite the print errors I’ve mentioned.

Doujin Work – Episode 3

After a lot of hard work, Najimi has drawn her first doujinshi, Love Typhoon. She goes to Comiket together with Tsuyuri and Justice to sell her own doujinshi.

This episode was lot of fun! I liked the part where Najimi and Tsuyuri talked about giving birth to a doujinshi, but Justice mistakes them and believes Najimi has given birth to a baby. The same misunderstanding goes on for the entire episode and the puncline at the end was the greatest. I like this kind of verbal humour where characters use words or metaphors that have multiple meanings that can easily be misunderstood.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Episode 17

Seven years have passed. Mankind has become prosperous and lives on the surface in Kamina-city. The peace is broken as Lord Genome’s prophecy comes true. The existence of humanity is threatened once again.

To be honest, it really did feel like a different anime, but I’m not entirely unhappy with this development. Simon, who is now the commander of the goverment, has come a long way from a wimpy little kid to this and he will go even further, I’m sure. Gimmy and Darry have become Grapal (mass-produced Gurren-Laganns) pilots and Rossiu works as Simon’s assistant. As for Nia… She’s the same old Nia I guess, though there seems to be more to her than eye meets.

The world of Gurren-Lagann has become a more typical sci-fi world with huge buildings, lots of traffic and futuristic design. I really liked the barren world better. But since the peaceful times seem to be over, the world might be in for another catastrophe.

While Grapals look quite dull, though since they’re just copied of Gurren-Lagann they’re supposed to look that way, but the enemy in this episode looked interesting. I’m looking forward to see more of Han-Rasen, the current enemy, mechas.

The post-”Lord Genome” Gurren Lagann looks pretty good so far. The new story arc began with a blast and my expectations are really high.

Devil May Cry – Episode 6 (spoilers)

This episode is a story of Elena Huston, a musician who wanted everyone to hear her song. She was tired with the slow process of becoming famous and made a deal with a demon, who granted her a hypnotizing singing voice. Elena gained lots of fame, but eventually realised that her fans and band were posessed by the demon. In the end, the demon took over her body. Dante is given the mission to free her soul. By playing Elena’s song, they make her appear and Dante kills the demon.

I liked Elena’s song and I think this show has pretty good sound track, much like the games. Besides that this was another typical episode of Devil May Cry. Nothing special, just the same old.