Monster

Genre: Mystery, Drama, Horror, Police, Psychological, Thriller, Seinen

Episodes: 74

Personal Rating: 8/10

Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari blu-ray

After jumping through several hoops, I finally managed to lay my paws on the US licensed Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari blu-ray box-sets (Therightstuf doesn't ship this outside of North America you see.) I surprise myself by popping in the Nise blu-ray over Bake and streaking straight to episode 2 - Nadeko and her Twister/Ou-sama games. While it's disturbing how anime enjoys imparting copious sensuality to their 14 yr old bishoujos (see also Asuka from Evangelion or Momo from To-Love-Ru Darkness), I can't help but relishing in Nadeko's (failed) seduction.



Onward, the creditless OP Platinum Disco was up next featuring another cute 14 year old. This catchy tune was listed as Random Curiosity's top OP for 2012 and is surely of deserving of the honor. Tsukihi herself ranks fairly highly in on my Bake-girls list (Mainly due to Nekomonogatari - Kuro) and I lament her short short arc in Nise.

30-Day Anime Challenge, Day 16

This one really isn't even a contest. In all my years of watching anime and other animated shows, only once Have I ever been completely blown away by animation. Just straight up blown away. The animation in this show is so good, if nothing ever happened, ever, it would still be worth watching. Got it? Good. Because that show is



BAKEMONOGATARI

The Anime Music Tournament 2013 Bracket Guts

Do these have Guts? I'm hoping they do, as definitely had some pretty damn good songs like that.

BGR1P1

secret base ~Kimi ga Kureta Mono~ (10 years after ver.) - (Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai ED)

Kotobukiya's Hitagi Senjougahara Is Perfectly Menacing

I have a confession: I absolutely cannot stand Bakemonogatari. It's jokingly referred to as Eyeballs and Walls of Text in our household, and to be blunt any anime that starts out with an opening shot of panties has me jumping ship immediately. It's just not my cup of tea, though I totally adore the character design and have about a million figures from the series. But I'm getting monogatari fatigue-with Nisemonogatari and whatever the other one is, the new figures kind of have me rolling my eyes. So when Koto , I wasn't exactly jumping for joy.



However, their original Hitagi is my favorite figure of her (a controversial opinion, especially since I rank GSC's at the bottom and Alter's at second) so I decided to hold out hope-and the picture of her looked great. Well now we're getting the promo shots and I'm having a hard time lifting my jaw up off the floor. Holy hell, she is PERFECT. Plus she comes with two ways to display her-handcuffs or, um, dripping goo. You also get to pick between ponytail (the clearly superior option) or short hair. I can't wait for preorders to open!

RahXephon and Blu-ray Bakemonogatari Released Monday

On Monday August 26, the video label will reissue the 2002 Studio series . The eight-disc DVD set that will contain the 26 TV episodes as well as the re-edited feature film version (). The series was previously released in the UK by .

The series is described on Anime-on-line as follows:It is a new reality. For 15 years, the remnants of the human race have fought against the alien Mu and their unstoppable giant Dolem; a battle mankind seems destined to lose. But deep within the captured city of Tokyo, where time flows on a different path and mind-wiped citizens do not even know that they have been conquered, there is something that the Mu fears more than all of mankind's weapons. To find that secret, one young woman must penetrate the domed walls of Tokyo Jupiter and find a single young man, a young man upon whom the fate of all humanity dependsfor in his heart lies the power of RahXephon, and with it all the worlds can be remade. is releasing the first eight episodes of (pictured left) on Blu-ray. (The DVD edition has already been released.) The anime series 's Bakemonogatari light novels. The short stories in NisiOisin's two volumes of Bakemonogatari deal with a high school boy named Koyomi Araragi and strange students he encounters. ("Bakemonogatari" is a wordplay on the Japanese term bakemono for supernatural creatures and the term monogatari for stories.)
Full Post

Anime: EF: A Tale Of Memories

EF: A TALE OF MEMORIES 2 Discs (Distributor: MVM) Running time: 293 minutes approx.

How important are memories? Are they something we simply live with because they are there or are they to be cherished? Can we live with them or live without them? Five teens are about to find out the true power of memories holds, both good and bad in maters of the heart.

Renji Aso is looking for somewhat quite to be alone and read his book. He finds an old abandoned railway station but sees someone else had the same idea. A quiet girl with a patch covering her left eye sits alone intently reading a dairy. She is Chihiro Shindo and Renji is smitten by her. He returns to the same spot day after day to meet Chihiro again, who acts vague around him, which he takes as a sign of her shyness. Renji is about to confess how much he enjoys Chihiro's company when she drops a bombshell - following a car accident in which she lost her left eye, Chihiro suffers from a rare condition in which she loses her memories after thirteen hours.

The Anime Music Tournament 2013 Bracket Alpha Polls 1-4 "Analysis"

I was relatively late to the party for something like this new tournament.Music is something that I hope most people enjoy listening to, and definitely there have been more than a handful of anime that I decided to pick up due to music associated with it, from openings and endings to background music. So I feel like I should have been paying attention to something like from the get-go,or at least from the nominations stage. Others have said that I have "questionable" taste in music (:)), so at least my potential nominations might have made things interesting, although of the results of the nominations point out that such a decision might have been moot. This is too good to pass up though, so I've participated in the , and I wanted to put in my two cents on the songs that are on the ballot as the tournament goes, especially as there's a fair bit that I haven't heard before (which is always exciting). This will be pretty tongue in cheek and probably not up to how I usually write on the blog, but it's good to be reactionary than thoughtful sometimes. And it will probably make me put more effort on this blog than I've been doing in the past two years combined. Whether or not that's a good thing is anybody's guess.



Without further ado, the , with streaming music and everything :

Bakemonogatari

Genre: Mystery, Romance, Vampire, Supernatural

Episodes: 15 + 11 + ??

Personal Rating: 9/10

Thoughts and Predictions On the Animusic Tournament

The first round of the has just begun - go vote if you haven't already -and already, I can feel the disappointment starting to pile up. Intellectually, I know only one song can win in the end and I am excited to see how the matches play out but it's hard to watch favorite songs, or even just well-liked songs, not do as well as one feels they should. Before moving onto my predictions I wanted to highlight these already fallen songs.



I really don't have room to complain - and that's why I'm not - over the number of songs that made it into the tournament from my nomination ballot. If we look at my ballot to see how they ranked

Fun Stuff: My Top Ten Favorite Anime Ladies

I may be all about the bishies, but I've definitely got a lot of love for some of the leading ladies of anime, too! As someone who likes to take the feminist perspective when digesting literature, film, etc, the subject of the role women play in anime is of particular interest to me. Several anime titles (especially those geared towards young men) tend to disappoint me with women whose characters are entirely dependent on fanservice and their physical appearance or otherwise dependency on the male lead(s) without any other driving purpose given, but several shows have developed fantastic heroines who have brains, guts, and emotional depths to go along with their looks.

Here are my top ten anime lady crushes and the reasons why I love them:

10. Kaname Chidori (Full Metal Panic)

Sankarea Review

SANKAREA is impressive on the merits of its story alone and that makes it a good series overall. It is shame that though that the "good" could have been "great", if it only tried a little harder to hold it all together.



INFORMATION

Dat Rainbow (It'sh Sho Intenshe!!)

This is from Bakemonogatari, right?And did y'all spot the Double Rainbow reference?If not, I'm disappointed.And you probably didn't spot the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei references a few posts back either, or the Oreimo ones, or the Kuroshitsuji ones.If that's the case, I'll be horribly disappointed in worldwide youth culture.Ya gotta be able to handle hard-core references!!It's practically a requirement!



Updates;

Fun Stuff: Summer Season Impressions

Now that the summer season is in full swing, it's about time for me to take a look at the shows I've been watching and gather early impressions. Overall, I've been very pleased with my personal selections, as well as the variety of shows available this season overall. There's a little something for everyone this time around, and since I enjoy several different genres, I've been as happy as a clam over the diverse selection. Here's what I think thus far:



Attack on Titan (second half)

Ending Theme Song of Nekomonogatari (White) "Ai wo Utae"

One of chrams of the anime version of "Monogatari" series would be goodness of the theme songs.



The ending theme song of the first anime of the series "Bakemonogatari" was especially wonderful.

Medaka Box Abnormal: Season 2

Age: 13 and up

Rating: 7 1/2 out of 10

Episode Count: 12

JJ's anime review: Bakemonogatari

WHAT IS A GHOST? WHAT IS A GOD? WHAT IS A VAMPIRE, A MONSTER, A HUMAN? ALL ARE JUST ABSTRACTS, WORDS WHOSE MEANING WE THINK WE KNOW. LOOK A LITTLE DEEPER, AND YOU MAY BE SURPRISED BY WHAT YOU FIND. IT COULD BE TRUTH, IT COULD BE THE ANSWERS YOU LOOK FOR, OR IT COULD, IN THE END, BE NOTHING MORE THAN SMOKE IN THE WIND. JUST ANOTHER GHOST, BUT IF YOU LOOK ONLY AT THE SURFACE, HOW WILL YOU EVER KNOW?



"WARNING - THIS ANIME REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS - READ AT YOUR OWN RISK "

Effect of Music to Anime and Games

Today's topic is not animations or games but music.



I love music so much as well as animations and games as you may realize from previous articles in this blog.

Putting It All To Rest: Hourou Musuko and Aoi Hana

A couple of months into my senior year, Ion about how much I despised the J.C. Staff adaptation of Takako Shimura's Aoi Hana, which made me so violently angry, I would eventually claim that I sought to smash in my computer monitor by the third episode. The comment wasn't for effect; I'm too earnest for that. I oozed similar rage in , in which I more or less asserted that I was done seeking wholesale realism in anime, which for the most part tended not to come together, anyway. However out of whack I was over the course of that godawful year, I don't apologize for the particular sentiments. Such energy wasted over clumsy banging on the table! The feelings are still ambivalent or negative, but I don't care anymore. It's no longer worth it.



Half-expected her to whip out a bokut .

Anime Season Midterms

The final part, Sunday. Quite a few shows, some of them even air on Sunday, or late enough at night that I can't watch them before I get back from work. Definitely a strong day in terms of the shows it contains, probably the strongest day. I work on Sundays, alas, making it not as pleasurable as it could've otherwise been.



: Blood Lad, Makai Ouji - Devils and Realist, WataMote, The World God Only Knows Season 3, Free!