Ku ku ku

Kamen no Maid Guy:

What can I say? No seriously I can’t really think of much. The show, is outright awesome, the characters, everything it’s just frikking insane.

STOPPU!

PICTURE TIME!

(If you miss the MC Hammer reference there I’ll slap you, seriously.)

See, sometimes I just wait until there’s enough episodes of a show to let me do the whole one screenshot per episode. .. <.< Okay in reality I’ve just been hoarding this up until now and just sat down and watched it with a few slabs of pizza and the biggest beer I could find. Turns out I’m hooked on it, the episodes just blow by and after six, which is equal to about two hours if you don’t skip the OP and ED you’re sitting there going OH SHI-! It’s over! It starts off rather innocently, with a Kendo match between the “main character” Naeka and some random people. Turns out her grand daddy is a rich old bastar… erm old guy, rich old guy. >.> I say “main character” because well… aside from her liking Kendo she’s pretty much the exact opposite of what I like in a character. ;p

He hires some maids and out of that we get Fubuki and the real main character (in my opinion) Kogarashi. He’s where the name for the show comes from he’s a maid and he’s a guy, thus maid guy. He’s not a butler, he’s a maid, wears the dress and everything. Except on him it looks more like… whatever you call those kendo pants that aren’t actually pants. And he’s tore the sleaves off ala Ryu of Streetfighter fame and he wears a mask… or half mask hence the kamen part of the title. Kogarashi is… well he’s GAR, to extremes, he’s just so epically bad ass there’s no stopping him. He’s been beaten half to death with a nail bat, lit on fire, had flash bombs go off in his face, knitting needles stuck through his ear/head I forget what all else, you just can’t stop him.

Toss in his crazy super powers, Maid Guy Eye, Maid Guy Freeze Voice, Maid Guy Shredder, Maid Guy I forget what else. But what’s he doing there? Well like I said Naeka… oh right she has a brother, Kousuke, he’s an otaku, very into eroge… and maids. Anyway her grand daddy the rich old fart is going to leave some form of inheritance to Naeka when she turns 18 and so hired some bodyguards in the guise of maids. Now Kogarashi starts to make a lot of sense. So he hires Fubuki to appeal to Kousuke’s taste and Kogarashi for Naeka, who apparently has a thing for samurai types, but like I mentioned both of them are actually there to act as bodyguards.

Kogarashi is very… oh whats the word… he has this, manner… in which he acts that makes him come across as… oh… say… sexually harassing people. He’s got no qualms about pretty much everything. Though on ONE occasion he refused to do something because the sight might be enough to make him lust after women. This is sometime after he’s wandered into the girls locker room to swap Naeka’s ‘old dirty underwear’ with something new… and I also believe it’s after he was removing girls panties so fast they didn’t notice, in an attempt to find the right pattern and thusly catch someone who’s after Naeka. Not to mention one of his ‘powers’ Maid Guy Eye’ lets him see through things like clothes… and he uses it rather frequently.

He laughs awesome too. Ku ku ku. All the time… aside from one or two times where he’ll do that and then actually laugh. Definitely something I’d put on my list of stuff to watch, if you like maids, or ninjas… or ninja maids… or just violence and panty shots and well ecchi content in general. Closest I can compare to is Hayate no Gotoku, just without the bajillions of anime and video game references. I’ve seen it compared to Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de as well but I’ve never seen that, it may mean something to you if you’ve seen it though. And yes, shot number four does feature the shows token loli…

The theme songs for it so far are both good. The opening is by Kotoko and I have no idea who does the ED but I like it more than the OP, by a lot. Still the OP goes FUNSHA! which is super cute, especially when it’s Kotoko… I know I’m strange.

The OP:

The ED

mmm Hono-chan

Finally got around to watching The Third: 7-12 today after a session with Battle Royal and… I think I tried to watch Ghost Hunt only to learn that I had it subbed in some crazy language that wasn’t english. That and my DVD player has suddenly become picky as to what it will play and what it won’t. Kanon, Akazukin, Tokko none fo them work right. I get a nice little ‘loading’ display constantly throughout and the audio/video synch goes berserk and sometimes it even gets absurdly choppy to boot. No idea whats going on since I haven’t changed a single bloody thing since I started burning divx stuff.

So, Honoka is furtherly awesome… Although she does get a little oversensitive at least in my opinion. But we already know she’s actually a very non-violent person as long as you’re not trying to kill her. She dislikes it, I don’t so it’s understandable why I can’t quite comprehend the idea of killing someone who was trying to kill you/someone you know causing you to nearly puke. Well actually it was the memorythat was making it happen and it happens multiple times until she stabs some sense into herself. Now, the subtitles I have use some starnge words and it’s at times obvious they tried to put a little ‘artistic’ twist on the english version. Fine with that but they keep using ‘but’ HOnoka cut this, she cuts this cuts that other thing and has cut people blah blah blah blah. So you can guess what happens when she’s fighting her evil twin later on. Oh yeah, you guessed right. “Can you really cut yourself?” Yeah, someone didn’t think too much about the wording there now did they?

They add a new character, and get rid of Milly gets shuffled off to her aunt pretty fast and into school where she decides she’ll study to be a mechanic so she can hang out with Honoka more. So the token loli character is tossed out the window back into side character obscurity. This new character though is brought in partly through the whole school thing as her main job is the school nurse, this still qualifies her for the sensei honorific though. Even Honoka, who’s never been to school, calls her that. Her name’s Paifu by the way…

She’s apparently a good mixture of archetypes. Aside from being absurdly well endowed in the upper portions of her body (stark contrast to Hono-chan I might add) she also hates men. She also has a gun (big one, of course), hates herself (slight exaggeration) and seems to have problems getting interested into stuff. Then she’s got crazy super powers, is good at hand to hand combat, disorganized and very whats the word… oh yeah shameless. At least in front of Honoka… She gains points for telling Honoka to get undressed and for whining at and about Ikus… but aside from that not really relevant to my interests. She’d need to be crazier to qualify for what makes me like characters like Revy. ;p that and she doesn’t smoke or drink, apparently, yet…

EXIT TRANCE

Well if you scroll down a whole bunch, not right now of course, or maybe right now… yeah well in a second. You’ll find a widget over on the right side of the screen that’s got some music in it, start one of those up and then come back.

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Okay, that’s by ‘Exit Trance’. At least int he same way that something from Sharpnel Sound is by DJ Sharpnel, it happens, but it’s not always them. Really what 90% of it is is remixes of anime music So yes, Tank. is in fact a reworking of that song from Cowboy Bebop, there’s something from Lucky Star in there, the OP from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei… and then a fourth I have no idea where it’s from but it’s nice. >.> I’ve only got four albums so far and you should be able to track them down over at good old www.tokyotosho.com

Amatsuki, initial thoughts.

(This space reserved to complain about how needlessly long the process of uploading images has become)

Those screens cover the first three episodes, and I’ve seen enough to have decided I’ll keep watching this. Rikugou Tokidoki… aka Toki managed to flunk his Japanese History exam and winds up in a VR simulation of an Edo period town because of it. He has a conversation with Shinonome Kon whom he thought also failed the test but as it turns out he only got suspended and missed too much class. He decides he should go visit the castle and finds his way blocked by some crazy little man sitting on top of what looks like some sort of giant lion… Around that moment he finds out he’s been sucked into the past somehow, well not really he just starts pondering how he’s still seeing the sky and such even though his goggles are off. It’s not till after he’s saved by Kuchiha, a random swordswoman who apparently also found and saved Kon, who through the wonders of time manipulation arrived there two years ago despite having been talking with Toki a matter of minutes ago.

Thus follows an explanation of what exactly the thing that attacked him was as well as a whole bunch of other things. The next episode sees Toki masquerading as an ‘ayakashi’ using knowledge from the future… ie: things, other than vodka, that can be made from potatoes and episode three deals with the consequences of that little adventure. Mostly a demon hunter showing up to take out the ayakashi… Not to mention the stuff I left out. ;p

BL-XXXV 06 Epsilon

Vampire Knight 1-2: Well… let’s see, this is obviously originally not aimed at a male audience as it’s rather pretty boy heavy and heck, episode two’s main plot revolves around valentines day. The show… well in a way it’s similar to Nabari no Ou, at least theme wise. A dark setting and broken up by a little comedy once in a while. But Vampire Knight is siginificantly darker, since a lot of it in fact takes place at night. ;p

The setting is a school I’m not sure the name of which is composed of two classes. The ‘Day Class’ which as one assumes takes place during the day and consists of normal human types and the ‘Night Class’ which occurs after sundown and, well it’s the vampires. Blah blah blah Day class students aren’t allowed out after hours and things like fighting, and drinking blood are prohibited… on school grounds anyway. Supposedly the point of the school is to help the newest batch of vampires learn how to peacefully co-exist with humans, which is where the title BL-XXXV 06 Epsilon comes into play. It’s a little white pill that dissolves pink in water and apparently is a replacement for blood if you’re a vampire.

There are a couple students in the day class immune the rules as they’re school ‘guardians’ whos job is to make sure the rules mentioned earlier are followed. Yuki, who had a run in with a vampire, during which she was saved by a different one… her adoptive father is the school headmaster type guy and she hides some sort of telescoping metal pole under her skirt… stashed in her garter… which is actually kind of hot… I mean…  uhm… oh hell we knew my taste was weird already anyway.

Then there’s Zero who is ’s Yuki’s uh well he’s also been adopted by the headmaster guy, he just hasn’t been there as long. (Four years) His family was massacred by vampires back in the day so as you may guess he doesn’t like them. Oh, yeah, Yuki has no memories of before she was attacked by that vampire so who knows what happened to hers. Anyway his enforcement tool of choice is a handgun, on a chain… what the chain hooks to I have no idea as it disappears into his jacket… but if it’s handcuffed to his hand I’ll slap whoever came up with that. (Zombie Loan reference)

Despite being vampirey the show doesn’t really feel like any other ones. There’s no Hellsing vibe or Black Blood Brothers or even Blood/Blood+ Which is good in it’s own way since it feels a little more original for it. Only problem is it feels part D.Grayman and part Zombie Loan, which could send it into a tailspin of epic phailure. It could also pull it off gloriously. We’ll have to wait and see as it’s got one more episode to do so and make me stop watching it. That’s the rule, give a show at least three episodes to get itself started up before you decide you don’t like it. If it hasn’t gotten interesting by then you probably won’t like it, and it usually takes that long to get the basic plot started, assuming it has one.

Next time I’ll see about going into some detail on the vampire half of the school. Maybe by then we’ll know something about more than three of them.

No posts under manga?!

Well I was busy adding a bunch of categories for some of the stuff I just watched and plan to yap about in the not so distant future… when I noticed I have a Parent category for manga, and it’s empty. Well I can’t have that so here’s a post about something called Otaku no Musume-san. I decided on it as I didn’t feel the need to terrify people with Kodomo no Jikan… yet.

Otaku no Musume-san is exactly what the title suggests. You have an otaku living in one of those awesome one room apartments. (I can say that, it’s bigger than my fortress of awesometude, I mean my room. And all of a sudden he’s got this little girl on his doorstep with a letter that claims she’s his daughter. Now, I can relate to this manga for numerous reasons. Mainly that it’s an entirely possible scenario for my future, and yes, that means I have a spawn, supposedly. (Long story) Anyway as one would imagine the humour in the series is the result of entirely awkward situations such as his pillow cover starring a character from a show his daughter watches. IT’s one of those nice ones with an almost dirty picture on one side, and a dirty one on the other side. She picks it up with the almost dirty side facing her and he sees the other side… There’s a picture of it floating around somewhere and it’s the entire reason I picked the manga up.

Now for horrible news. Yes the manga is being scanslated; And gettable here. (As per usual it’ll try to open in a new window) If after several months of inactivity you can still say such things like ‘being’ and not ‘used to be’ or ‘was being’. Though I’ll admit, the group did release a chapter of something, last month, though not Otaku no Musume-san. They took us to Chapter Six and have left us there it seems. Last update of it was in October of last year. So, Akatsuki manga, please scanslate more… or someone…

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anyone?

please?

Something new.

Yeah I know my last post mentioned Bakuretsu Tenshi or Saikano but I watched neither of those. >.<; But I can justify it… sort of as I just watched Nabari no Ou’s first episode.

The art strikes me as very Noizi Itou for some odd reason. The shows about ninjas and one very very androgynous boy (we’ll get to that in a minute) who’s got some crazy psychotic ninjutsu book inside him that allows him to control… well everything if he ever manages to start the thing up. So far he’s only ever grabbed people with what is either vines or roots that pop out of the ground, and that’s only it’s ‘wisdom overflowing’ Potential for epic badassery… except as mentioned you can’t ascertain his gender.

They even go so far as to change scenes whilst he’s changing his shirt, since his ‘friend’ knifed him, or should I say sworded and tried to seal some of his secret skill into the sword. Didn’t work very well. But you don’t see anything so for all you know the kids still gender neutral aside from people constantly calling him a him. but after Mai-Hime I’m not about to write a character like that off as just pretty boy. The voice actors a woman that much I’m certain of, because I’d recognize Kugimiya Rie anywhere. Oh… his names Miharu… Miharu Rokujo… last time I heard that name was Black Lagoon…

There’s a good deal of violence int he show despite the main character being all bishounen… which is a plus believe me. I could draw some parallels to a certain other show filled with ninja’s but the truth is it feels more like Ninja Scroll than it does… that other show which shall not be named. Not so much content wise but look and feel. It’s dark(ish) and violent… not to the point of five gallons of blood leaking out of a severed arm but you have people hitting people hard enough that not only does the hitee (so not a word) get knocked through a window the hitter follows him through. (I laughed at that actually.)

I call it darkish because it’s not a constant feeling. It breaks it up with a bit of comedy. Not enough to sub genre the show just enough to break the tension I guess. I’d compare that aspect of the show to something like Elfen Lied, where you go from super bloody massacre to super happy cute Nyu mode in the time it takes to fade out and back in. Which means there’s the risk the next few episodes will be very toned down and the violence and whatnot was just to try to hook the audience. But if we’re lucky epic storyline will follow.

I will now proceed to rant about Miharu;

He/she/it is confusing. As I mentioned, very androgynous, and voice acted by Kugimiya Rie, who is a) female and b) awesome. Not only that he acts very feminine on occasion. Reminds me of Haruhi attitude wise. Looks more like Lulu than her though. I mean the characters gender could very seriously be either or. I really wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be a she later on. Though I doubt that because other characters keep calling him he and he’s running around in a boys uniform. I somehow doubt the school would let a girl do that unless of course they have no idea, which would be highly unlikely. Probably the brain trying to justify going “ah cute!” over what is apparently a guy. ;p Or maybe I’m sulking because I couldn’t tell… I spotted Haruhi a mile away after all… and like I said I think Haruhi is cute and that guy reminds me of her so issues ensue. ;p

I’m referring to Ouran’s Haruhi not Suzumiya Haruhi… who is very obviously female…

Sketchbook mk II

Well yesterday I finished the last few episodes of Sketchbook Full ColourS… I reached one overwhelming conclusion, Kate’s voice is truley and deeply irritating. Well not her voice per say, just her ridiculous accent. I mean I’m pretty sure that kind of accent is only possibly if you’re trying to do it that way. Seriously though, got on my nerves so bad… but she’s funny and her cats engrish is awesome. I kind of liked how this show took a page out of Excel Saga’s… [sketch] book and did the whole ‘talking animals’ I mean, it’s not like some whacked out Disney movie where the animals talk to people or anything. They just go and give us a few scenes where the cats sit around and talk amongst themselves. One scene even includes the cats complaining about how they wish they could communicate with humans so they could give them a piece of their minds. It’s kind of cute how Sora progresses through the show going from her super shy self to… well… almost normal levels of assertiveness. But by the end of the show she can introduce herself… sort of, and heck she even called out to people she knows who were on the other side of the street. Compare that to her old self where if someone she didn’t know showed up she’d be pointing at the label on her bag or writing her name in her sketchbook. Oh wait, scratch that she actually has a page pre-made for introductions. Though considering it’s Japan that has it’s uses… what with there being a good twelve gajillion ways to write pretty much every name. Still a good little show, the episodes did feel really short though… taht about sums it up… So… either I’m watching something random or I’m finishing off Saikano like I ‘ve been intending to for the last while… Just waiting till my angst tolerance has reached full capacity again. >.>

Crawfish

Sketchbook Full ColourS, or Colors if you happen to be from one of the places that spells the word sans u… Someone recommended it to me because it was in the same vein as Hidamari Sketch, which was awesome and cute and awesomely cute. I haven’t gotten too far into it yet, I’m only four episodes in due to mass amounts of time being spent with Rogue Galaxy in all it’s insane grandeur. (Way too much stuff to do in it, seriously.)  So anyway… I’m not amused by the subtitles… I forget what group I have it by but I originally had it soft subbed but eventually converted it into a watchable form, at least, on my t.v. Yes I burn discs of fansubbed stuff, not to replace retail discs but because my personal computer is broken so I have all this stuff on someone elses computer and well I can watch it on the lcd widescreen monitor whose size I forget or I could go watch it on the 52″ tv I mean, hard choice there. This way I don’t tie up the computer while I try to scrape enough money together to either fix mine or get a new one. (I’m sure I’ve mentioned before I buy what anime I can find, crappy english dub or no crappy english dub.)

Anyway back on topic. The subtitles were tiny, I mean half the size or less of ‘normal’ sized ones. To the point where , on a 52 inch screen I couldn’t read them from across the room without focusing on them alone. So I had to sit on the floor halfway between… Now sure my eyes aren’t the greatest when it comes to reading small letters from you know… four feet away, but normal subs I can see fine. This was too small, but for all I know it happened in the conversion process and is purely my fault. I don’t know, nor do I really care.

The show itself is great. It’s very random, to the point of the teacher walking around with a LIVE chicken. (Whose name is P-chan) There’s shout outs to other shows, shown most prominently by President Aria being all over the place, I mean two random locations in four episodes is what I like to call frequent. (He’s from Aria/The Natural/ The Origination/ Arietta and he’s just a strange looking and really fat cat, who happens to be the mascot for the Aria boat company… if two people qualifies as a company. Good show, anyway, the show is about Sora, this girl whom we first see sitting on a cinder block and trying to draw a cat who keeps moving around often enough to thwart her attempts. Apparently she likes drawing and cute things enough to take a sketchbook with her everywhere she goes so she can draw something she sees and likes. You know, cats, flowers, birds on power lines, fireworks… She’s a member of her schools art club and so far all of the students she’s run into and whatnot are members of the club. And the teacher with the chicken is the teacher in charge of said club. I suppose I should say the show follows the Art Club around but that’s not really true, it’s always pretty obvious that Sora is the main character despite random side trips to watch Hazuki wander around a store collecting things and then putting everything but one item back.