By Entropic Order 1 year, 3 months ago.
Won the Haruhi figure! :D
Pretty stoked about that one. I’ve only just recently started collecting figures, so this will be a great kickstart to my collection.
I promise a pic or two when it arrives :)
By Entropic Order 1 year, 3 months ago.
This is a followup review to the other one I did on Full Metal Panic, so I’ll just assume you know what the series is about.
If you enjoyed FMP, you’ll go bananas for this one! The series returns to its roots of having Sagara actually do something cool, so expect mecha. I felt too that the mecha warfare was greatly improved in this installment, with the fighters spending considerably shorter amounts of time standing around doing nothing in the middle of a battle than before (AKA; DBZ Syndrome). Also, there’s a little bit of a development in the Sagara/Chidori relationship. It’s not MUCH, but hey, it’s something.
This was a great series, and with this final season, it’s concreted its place in my favorites.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
School rumble is one of my first anime, and I daresay even my favorite of all time. It’s painfully funny, the romance sucks you right in, and it’s just crazy. The first episode had me and my friend on the ground literally gasping for air.
It’s about a delinquent named Harima, who has fallen in love with a ditzy girl in his class, and endeavors to tell her his feelings. Problem is, Harima’s just as dumb as she is, and often has difficulty getting his message across.
The show, over two series, then goes on to paint a giant 'love-web’ of students around the school. It might get a little difficult to follow at times, but this won’t distract from the humor.
10/10 series – a must watch for any romantic comedy junkies.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
I personally am surprised that there are people in the world who haven’t seen this series. Cowboy Bebop is a futuristic action/drama. It opens to a pair of bounty hunters, Spike and Jet, who wander the universe looking for work. Bounty hunting has become not only legal in this future, but encouraged, as it is obviously very easy for people to escape the law when inter-planetary travel is a reality.
The show itself is a work of art. It includes fluent fighting scenes, fast paced gunfights, high intensity space dogfights, and all of this to an amazing soundtrack of funky blues and jazz. The art style allows it to live up to it’s name COWBOY bebop, as it mixes the dirty, gritty atmosphere of the old west with ultra-modern space technology.
This series is often acclaimed as one of the greatest anime ever to grace this earth, and it’s is highly deserving of this title. Its relatable characters and ingenious writing make it like watching a work of god.
Don’t overlook the dub on this one. I personally loved the english voice acting, and most people agree that it’s worth watching the dub.
If you haven’t seen this series before, put it at the top of your “to watch” list.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
A romantic comedy where mechas beat each other senseless? I’d say you’ve got the recipe for one hell of an anime! Full Metal Panic is a show about a military-brained sergent named Sousuke Sagara. He is assigned to protect a beautiful highschool girl named Chidori from an unknown threat. To do this, he has to infiltrate her high school, and try to integrate with student life.
Being told that alone, I wouldn’t have thought it was spectacularly funny, but, to my surprise, often the series would leave me gasping for air. This is a really funny show.
Then, of course, the pace the show out, and break it up with a few mecha episodes here and there. I could go into further detail as to why these mecha battles take place, but I’m trying to fit two summaries in this post. So to sum it up, Full Metal Panic is a beautiful blend of action and comedy. You don’t even have to be a mecha fan to appreciate this one.
NEXT UP;
Full Metal Panic! Fumoffu
Fumoffu is a follow up series to the first FMP, but this time it only revolves around the antics of Sousuke trying to fit in with Japanese culture. This is easily one of the funniest series I’ve ever seen. Throw a bit of romance in the mix and viola, you’ve sucked me right in. Anybody looking for a good comedy to get lost in, look no further.
Currently I am in the process of watching the third series in the franchise, Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, so I’m unable to review it now, but there will be a follow up post in a few days with a quick opinion on that one. Be there or be square!
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
Here’s an anime I’ve developed some mixed feelings for. Elfen Lied is a story about a dude named Kohta, who decides he’s going to move into a big ass building, courtesy of his female cousin. But it’s also the story of pink haired teenage girls with super strength, super long invisible arms who go around ripping people’s limbs off. And there’s boobs – lots of boobs. Honestly, it sounds like the perfect series right?
Well, that’s what I mean by mixed feelings. While the action is, in my opinion, perfect, there is a subplot of romance that seems a little forced. The plot is, one of the killing-machine girls gets loose, and the people she gets loose from are trying to hunt her down. Problem is, she’s suffered a bad bout of amnesia, and can only communicate with a series of “Nyu“s.
Which brings me to the next point. WATCH THIS ANIME SUBBED. I made the mistake of watching the dub, and I believe it’s lowered my bias for the series. The Japanese voice acting is pretty good though, from what I’ve heard, so you should live through that.
If I were to recommend this, I’d be careful who I recommend it to. It’s nice if you like a bit of a harem style romance, but this is only a subplot to the uncensored decapitations and disemboweling. An entertaining series, but I’d warn that it’s not for the faint of heart.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
“What is Lucky Star about?” is a question I often am stumped to answer. To put it simply, it’s about 4 girls talking about stuff. To put it complexly, it’s about 4 girls talking about lots and lots of stuff.
Lucky Star is a comedy series revolving around 4 friends in high-school. Most of the show is dialogue based, but this is okay because the writing is brilliant, and the English dub is 10/10. It takes on a “Seinfeld”-like approach to comedy, in that it pokes fun at every day occurrences. The problem with this, of course, is that there are a lot of cultural references that us western folks mightn’t fully grasp.
Being a culture based show, it often turns the spotlight to other anime – sometimes with subtle references, other times with full blown parodies. One of the four main characters in the show, Konata, is depicted as a typical depraved otaku – A character I think most of us can easily relate to, so you won’t be completely alienated by the culture differences. And let’s not forget; that very character is voiced by the one and only Aya Hirano (Best known for voicing Haruhi), and as if that wasn’t good enough, the dubbers even went as far as to cast Wendee Lee (Dubbed Haruhi) to voice her in the English Dub. Fangasms all around!
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
Oh boy, now was this one a heartwrencher. I’d definitely say it was a funny anime, but it had that “Scrubs” effect where the actual plot was quite emotional, so at the end of every episode they’d throw a little bit of drama at you to leave you feeling sad. Did I hate it for that? No, not at all!
It’s a show about a dude named Yuzuru Otonashi, who wakes up to find he is in the courtyard of a dark boarding school. But this is no normal boarding school – it’s a boarding school for the DEAD!
It’s really not that dramatic in the show. It turns out the school is a sort of “afterlife”, where you are placed for an indefinite time before you are re-incarnated. Nobody can explain why, but it seems that if you live the life of a normal student, you “vanish” from this world, so a group of deadies decide that they don’t want to disappear, and form a club for disobeying the worlds rules, believing that if they don’t participate in school, they won’t disappear.
As the show explores characters, it is revealed that their lives were all generally unfair. Just a warning; if you can’t handle a depressing story or two… still watch this series anyway. You might get a bit teary though.
The main character, however, has suffered a bout of amnesia, and cannot remember a thing from his life. SPOILER ALERT! It’s sad
In summary, a very touching series, with a bunch of good jokes thrown in, that could easily bring a tear to the eye of a slab of concrete.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
Time for a bit of comedy. This one is about a high school for delinquents, called Cromartie High. Most of the students there are self-proclaimed “badasses”, but the main character, Takashi Kamiyama, definitely doesn’t fit this mold. He’s more of a thinker than a fighter, and often wonders if he should really be at the school, but, being the most intelligent in a school full of airheads, he is looked up to and respected above all the other students.
It’s a very fast series, with each episode at only 10 minutes long, but you’ll be laughing the whole way though. Words cannot describe how funny this series is. Hell, I’m going to make a guarantee now, that if you can get through just one episode without laughing, I’ll eat a live earthworm. Not really, but you get the picture.
Thrown into the casting alongside the delinquents are a gorilla, a robot, and a full grown man who bears an uncanny resemblance to Freddy Mercury, lead singer of Queen. A crazy series, and good for watching inbetween episodes of whatever you’re getting through at the moment.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
It distresses me to think that there are people in the world who haven’t seen this one. Ergo Proxy dives from action to philosophy without a hitch, and even manages to give off a perfect aura of a post-apocalyptic setting that a lot of anime/movies/tv-shows fail to encapsulate.
Ergo Proxy has two main characters. “Vincent Law”, a mysterious and quiet man who has seeked refuge in one of the last human cities, and “Re-L”, an official working for this city, as an officer of the peace (or something like that). Ergo Proxy is hard to summarize, as it is about so many things, so I guess I’ll explain it like I would if I was drunk trying to explain it to a guy at a party. Here goes.
There’s this dude and two chicks right, and they’re full like sailing this boat to get to some place, but stuff happens on the way there and these thug-as robot dudes start trying to kill their shit. So they kill THEIR shit and then talk some philosophy and get out of there.
It’s really a lot deeper a series than that summary did justice to, but you really do have to watch it to fully appreciate. I highly recommend watching the English dub of this if Japanese is not your first language, because it’s heavy on the dialogue, and the dialogue itself is heavy enough to sink an airplane carrier.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
Darker than Black is one of the coolest animes I’ve ever seen. It’s an action-drama show revolving around a guy called Hei, who is what is called a contractor. A contractor is someone who has been given supernatural powers, but to use them, they must pay a price. Thus, the term “contract”.
It takes place around what is known as “Hell’s Gate”, a circular zone of Japan that has been completely blocked off by a giant wall due to strange things happening within this zone.
Hei and his allies are part of a syndicate, and the series sees them performing a bunch of tasks for this syndicate. Obviously, they often run into adversary doing so, so the viewer is in for plenty of very well animated action. There’s not much messing around with long mid-battle dialogues, so it’s a pretty fast paced anime. Each “case” or story spans two episodes, so while keeping a good pacing, it doesn’t feel rushed either.
This is one of the few anime I would even recommend to someone who’s never watched a Japanese series before, so it’s definitely there on my “Definitely watch this one” list.
By Entropic Order 1 year, 4 months ago.
There seems to be a blog system on this site, but for the life of me I can’t think of anything relevant to blog about, so I figured I’d just go through and give a short review on series that have stuck out for me, and hopefully will find the time to continue on to summarize my future watchings.
So I’ll start with an easy one. “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” is, for those few of you who don’t know, is an anime about a highschool guy who meets an eccentric girl in his class. The series then explores a series of paranormal events that unfold around this girl. Not to give anything away, but Haruhi is not a normal girl. I went into this series expecting some generic love-comedy, and was pleasantly surprised.
Series 1: Disjointed events, happening within the timeframe of a year. A very entertaining watch.
Series 2: Much like the first, filling in the gaps the first series left. If you watch the show in chronological order, rather than airing order, some of these episodes will be mixed in with episodes from the first series.
Movie: One of the few things that has made me “HNG”. A brilliantly written story, placed after the events of the two series, so I would recommend people would watch the show before the movie.
Haruhi Chan no Yuutsu: A bunch of 3d rendered shorts tying into the Haruhi universe. Fast, short and funny. Worth watching if you’ve run out of precious Haruhi to beat the cravings.
That’s it for the first one. Thanks for reading.
