To Aru no Majutsu no Index

Well it seems the problems I was having with pictures last post must have been because I added comments to them. >.> anyway, onwards.

To Aru no Majutsu no Index: Hereafter referred to as Index… which will be confusing since a character is also Index. The show is set in this crazy city made up mostly of students several of  which are  ‘Espers’… people in possession of crazy “magic” powers. Except there’s real magic out there… which makes Grimoires and whatnot real. There’s a whole bunch that the church have destroyed, they did make some copies however and put them into an Index.

Or should I say put them in Index? :p She’s this little gray/silver/platinum/whatever the crap you want to call it haired girl; Who shows up hanging from the main character, Kamijou Touma’s, balcony railing. He then proceeds to feed her, debate with her and rip her clothes off.  No further explanation will be given. Oh, apparently she has a superb photographic memory.(Note: She’s the first picture up at the top.)

Touma is a student and a level 0 esper. The best you could be is 5. but his ability seems to be his right hand which nullifies any esper ability it comes into contact with. Much to the annoyance of Biribiri… I mean Misaka Mikoto.

Mikoto is a level 5 esper… and manipulates electricity, and tends to use this power to rail gun coins at people. Typically Touma since she has this one sided rivalry with him because she can’t seem electrocute him at all.

Then there’s my personal favourite.

Tsukuyomi Komoe. The teacher… no wait, let me rephrase. The loli teacher. She’s 135cm tall, so spaketh an article on wikipedia. Despite being short, and absolutely dfc AND frikking moe… she’s actually teacher aged. She drinks she smokes… she wears pajamas that have a hood with bunny ears on it. Yeah, she’s the second picture. I guess she likes to play up the loli card since she’s kind of got that going for her in spades. Complete with penalty games for misbehaving in class. And her class is a little… well… let us just say they don’t dislike her. She also has no esper skillz… probably because that’s some crazy class/experiment thing.

I don’t have much more to say having seen only two episodes. Suffice it to say I wish I’d picked this up a whole lot earlier.

Jushi~

Hansel Onii-san...

JUSHI!~

A couple pictures. I had some indecisiveness as to what picture of Gretel to post. I have ones with her in full costume and others… not so much. So I went with the one that didn’t look like all she was wearing was that apron thing she wears. >.>

Anyway I’ve had Otogi-jushi Akazukin kicking around on a DVD for a while now. I recall I was going to watch it a while back but I threw it into my player and it had some major a/v synch issues. (Yes, that implies it was xvid.) It’s got a lot of voice acting names in it. Kugimiya Rie, Tamura Yukari, Hiyama Nobuyuki. Yukari was in everything from Nanoha (Nanoha) to Higurashi (Rika) and Nobuyuki well… I recognized him right off the bat as being in Bleach (Ikkaku). I’m sure I don’t need to mention what Rie’s been in. :p

Anyway the shows a comedy/action/mahou. Well you could go mahou shoujo but… It really isn’t. It takes some elements from the genre though. The ‘Sweet Phone’ is used in tandem with some little card like things to summon weaponry or used to attack things, usually with magic/projectiles. But the rest of the magical girl genre doesn’t happen. Because anyone who has magic powers already had them when they appeared on the show. (So far). There’s no transformation sequences at all, which is not a complaint.

The storyline isn’t anything genius. Souta, the main male character,  lives by himself with his father. Not a bad way of putting it because his dad’s almost never around. He has a memory of his mother telling him a strange fairy tale about a brave hero and a king and some tasks that were given and ends with the world being split in two. One half for science the other half for magic.

Problem is no-one else knows this story and he’s never been able to find it in any books. On top of that he can talk to plants, and they talk back.  Not audibly for the viewer, just to him… So then all of a sudden he’s attack by a monster that calls him Elde’s Key. He’s then saved by a big blue wolf. A big blue talking wolf. Except there’s two monsters… and the wolf isn’t in the greatest shape. Enter a very badass looking Akazukin. Badass looking until A) she takes off the hooded cloak and B) You notice her foot step sound effects are way to freaking cute.  Akazukin translates as ‘red hood’ and as Akazukin is a loli erm I mean little… we’re to presume she is in fact little red riding hood. Or at least, the real version over in magical world. Oh did I mention she’s part of the three musketeers… whose symbol for some baffling reason is a four leafed clover?

Did I mention one of the bad guys is named Hansel, he has a sister, Gretel and his main minion is a cat person, I haven’t checked to see if this cat wears boots but… Oh and they all work for an evil witched named Cendrillon. Notice the theme? Ah, I forgot, Akazukin dual wields some swords called Grim Taler. Which is something else that kind of baffles the mind. Because if you notice, Akazukin wears a sort of half gauntlet on her left hand… yet she dual wields…  So either she’s a lefty and has a one handed weapon we haven’t seen yet, she fights predominantly left handed, or it’s just to look cool. Any, even all of which is entirely possible. Also; buttons, lots of buttons.

I mentioned the storyline is nothing epic. It isn’t, but it’s not bad. It’s good, but not great. It’s got some exciting moments and stuff but it’s not edge of your seat or anything.

Bafflement

I was puttering around my favorite anime list site. Because I do that and somehow wound up looking at the page for Shikibane hime: Aka. I checked my favorite anime tracker only to find out apparently Funimation [hereafter referred to as Funi] licensed it and sent this website a letter… well an email.
Supposedly they’re offering subtitled episodes on their website for free. I thought well, I know I’ve had my issues with Funi ever since I started getting into anime. This however is one of those things I’ve been saying Japan should do instead of selling rights to a north american company, which they did anyway. So this is very close… but no cigar.
Anyway, Funi is only telling a partial truth. The episodes are in fact available for free. To stream. To download it costs about 1.99, I presume in american currency. That there is the part that baffles me. You’re offering a streamed version, rather high quality might I add… for something streamed. And then in order to download said material… you’re demanding money… Bad idea, there’s a million and a half tools out there that’ll rip the video out of the stream box. I’m not sure what the quality of the download is like, but the stream is pretty good…
Of course we’d be bashing them if the stream quality wasn’t very good. :p The sub text was a little blah, but you can’t have each characters text colour coded to their hair in a show that isn’t as… chromatic as say Lucky Star.

But if you want to boost sales, lowering the price is a good idea. That’s typically the biggest complaint you get from people. Now, if only actual dvd prices would drop to a little more reasonable… and they’d add more extras. -.-;

And this is from someone who considers a show effectively ruined once North America gets their hands on it. ;p

Picture Unrelated

Random picture.

Ahoge faito?!

As the title says, Saber and Shana fighting with their hair is unrelated to this post.

This is about Kannagi, largely the last three episodes.

I’ll say here, right now. This show was so much better when it was doing it’s random slice of life comedy stuff. It does the drama thing decent but it was just out of character for the show in my opinion. They spent 10-11 episodes building up a specific vibe and then in the last episode or two it just all gets shut down. And then given a jolt of electricity and brought back to life. Seriously the last little bit of this show is just, I laughed, a lot. Plus, we see some moar of Nagi. There’s enough material for a second season. And the ending is left in such a way they could do it, or they could leave it. Though Nagi looks strange without her hair tied. That could just be that she’s had it like that *all* the time.

I liked the show, though. Very funny, kept a decent pace and it didn’t take itself too seriously and try to do a whole lot of story in just 13 episodes. I do hope that if there is a season 2, it stays with the comedy. Though I don’t know if that will happen considering the manga going on hold thanks to a few crazed otaku. -.-;