*Click image for large version.
Another short post this time, new season previews have been out for awhile, so I thought I’d post a bit about it.
Once again another great anime season is dawning upon us. It’s looking like Summer may be the best season of the year yet (I’ll hold judgment until Fall, which usually wins). There’s quite a number of great shows and surprisingly no shows I just outright said no to.
“No matter how many times I have to repeat this, I promise I’ll save you.”
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is one of the most popular and acclaimed series in a long time, and not without reason. When it initially aired I skipped it over, but I’ve come to appreciate it much more as the series does some truly interesting things with its plot and characters, and explores some intriguing philosophical ideas. Don’t be shocked from the first impression. The anime isn’t what he may look like the first time you see it.
From wikipedia: In this world, there exist strange creatures who have the power to grant one wish to a chosen girl. However, in exchange, that girl must then become a magical girl and use her powers to fight against witches, evil creatures born from darkness that are responsible for murders and suicides.
In the city of Mitakihara, a schoolgirl named Madoka Kaname and her friend Sayaka Miki are approached by a familiar named Kyubey, who offers to grant each of them one wish in return for making each of them a magical girl. Another magical girl named Homura Akemi tries to prevent Madoka from making such a deal, while Kyubey urges Madoka by telling her she will become the most powerful magical girl. However, contrary to the glamorous notions one would expect, a magical girl finds herself dealing with death, isolation, loss of humanity, agony over the value of her wish, and existential crisis. Madoka, following her friends, soon sees the darker side of being a magical girl, and because of knowing the truth about being a magical girl, she questions if she should become one as well.
As I mentioned nearly a week ago in my last post, I spent most of this week in a Diablo III gaming frenzy. I spent the first few hours of release experiencing server issues, like a number of people also did. And After that was done and through I had a twelve hour marathon, where I ended up finishing the the entire campaign in normal mode. I’m currently a level 53 Wizard in Hell mode Act II named Kulea and I’ll try my best to detail some of my experience while keeping this post generally spoiler free.
Hello once again, Ash here and my break officially started a few days ago on Friday. I’m planning to take it a bit easy this summer, doing tons of gaming, anime watching, and writing. I have plans to finish the first story arc of Xanatos;Deception by July and I also signed up for a couple of summer classes. Other than that though, I’ll mostly be lazying around (though that doesn’t necessarily translate into me posting more).
Xewleer is currently on his two-week break for his own finals, so you all are mainly stuck with me for awhile. I’m hoping for for at least 3 more posts after this one, so please bear with me. Today I am unveiling our newest section: Weekend Wrap. Think of it as sort of a ramblings of our week with highlights into what we watched and a few other tidbits that are interesting or that we feel strongly about. This type of post is mainly for stuff that changes focus every week, where-as our Afterword/Post Script etc sections are more focussed on one topic.
Life is constantly moving and the world is always changing.
It’s been awhile hasn’t it? My classes tend to save the last two weeks of the semester for projects and tests, so I’ve been quite busy this past week and will be for some of this upcoming week. Xewleer has taken some of the slack for my lack of posts this past two weeks. After his next post he’ll be taking a week or two off to finish finals while I take up some of the posting schedule. (tag team posting anyone?)
Well onto the post, I’ve finally given Clannad ~After Story~ a proper marathon these past two days. This has been along time coming and I really wish I had done so years before, but this gave me enough time to have the blu-ray version available. Clannad holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the last animes that I watched in my senior year of high school before graduating and thus invokes memories of more innocent times for me. During those times, I often wondered what the future would hold for me and I held many insecurities that I still hodl today, but perhaps more on that another day.
The plot of Clannad is split into two major arcs, the first season and the second season (which is also known as After Story).
From wiki:
Clannad’s story revolves around Tomoya Okazaki, a third year high school student who dislikes his life. Tomoya’s mother (Atsuko) died when Tomoya was young, leaving his father (Naoyuki) to raise him. After the accident, Tomoya’s father turned to alcohol and gambling, and held frequent fights with his son. One day, Naoyuki, again arguing with his son, slammed Tomoya against the window, dislocating Tomoya’s shoulder. Ever since then, his father has treated Tomoya nicely, but distantly, as if Tomoya and he were strangers rather than a family. This hurts Tomoya more than his previous relationship with his father, and the awkwardness of returning home leads Tomoya constantly to stay out all night. Additionally, the injury disables Tomoya from participating in his basketball club, and pushes him to distance himself from his school and other activities. Thus his delinquent life begins. Tomoya’s good friend Youhei Sunohara, who got thrown out of the soccer club for a dispute, is also a delinquent and often hangs out in his dorm room with Tomoya doing nothing much.
The story opens on Monday April 14, 2003 at the beginning of the school year,[1] when Tomoya meets by chance Nagisa Furukawa, a soft-spoken girl one year older than he is who is repeating her last year in high school due to being sick much of the previous year. Her goal is to join the drama club which she was unable to do due to her sickness, but they find that the drama club was disbanded after the few remaining members graduated. Since Tomoya has a lot of time to kill, he starts to help Nagisa in reforming the drama club. During this period, Tomoya meets and hangs out with several other girls who he gets to know well and help with their individual problems.
After Story
In the second part of the story, which starts immediately after the end of the first part but extends into the next 7 years, Tomoya and Nagisa start living together and get married. Tomoya has to endure several hardships that the family has been suffering from, mainly involving Nagisa’s illness. Just after Nagisa gives birth to their daughter Ushio, Nagisa dies of her illness, leaving Tomoya to fall into a state of depression. This causes Nagisa’s parents, Akio and Sanae, to look after Ushio. Five years later, Tomoya meets Shino Okazaki, his grandmother on his father’s side. Shino explains to Tomoya about his father’s past and tragedy, similar to Tomoya’s current situation after Nagisa’s death. After hearing that, Tomoya decides to raise Ushio and acknowledge Naoyuki as his father. Shortly after Tomoya regains his purpose for living, Ushio is struck with the same disease as Nagisa. Tomoya, Sanae and Akio struggle to save Ushio, with Tomoya retiring from his job, but all efforts are futile. In the coming winter, wanting to do anything for Ushio, Tomoya decides to take Ushio on a trip, but Ushio falls unconscious and dies shortly after.
Tomoya’s psychology developed in his dreams of a bleak world where small orbs of light float around called the Illusionary World (幻想世界 Gensō Sekai?). In the first few dreams, he sees a world devoid of all life except for one girl (and grass). Each time he dreams, he finds out more about the world. Tomoya discovers the girl has a special ability to fuse junk together to create new things, with which she creates a body for him. Thus he is reborn in this world, and fills time following the girl around. Tomoya conceives that only the two of them are “alive”. To pass time, Tomoya and the girl try to build another doll with more junk they find, but as it has no soul, it fails to come to life. Remembering a distant world where he came from, Tomoya convinces the girl to build a ship so that the two can escape the approaching winter and continue a happy life. Eventually, winter sets in, and the girl becomes cold to the point where she cannot move any more. Upon meeting this tragedy, the girl tells Tomoya that he has another chance to go back and make things right. To do so, he must collect certain “lights” (symbols of happiness) similar to those floating around in the Illusionary World. If all the “lights” are collected throughout both story parts, a chance to save Nagisa from dying will become available, and the true ending where Nagisa survives and lives with Tomoya and their daughter Ushio will also become available.
Sometimes fate likes to play you for a fool. Perhaps you were one of the top sprinters in the country and decided to confess to the girl of your dreams if you win national competition, only to have the moment of your victory snatched away by your leg breaking down. Maybe you were best looking and most talented person in class, but one mistake leads to an accident that takes everything away from you. Or maybe you were just someone that no one ever believed in and are stuck where you are because society deemed you were worthless.
Real is the latest masterpiece by Slam Dunk author, Takehiko Inoue. The plot follows three young men in yet another basketball based manga, though this time the excitement isn’t as much in the game, as it’s in the setting and character development.
Plot summary from Wikipedia:
The story revolves around three teenagers: Nomiya Tomomi, a high school dropout, Togawa Kiyoharu, an ex-sprinter who now plays wheelchair basketball and Takahashi Hisanobu, a popular leader of the high school’s basketball team who now finds himself a paraplegic after an accident.
Real features a cast of characters who find themselves being marginalized by society, but are all united by one common feature: a desire to play basketball, with no place to play it in. Nomiya, being a high school dropout, has no future in his life. Togawa, being a difficult personality, finds himself constantly feuding with his own teammates. Takahashi, once a popular team leader, now finds himself being unable to move from the chest down.
Real also deals with the reality of physical disabilities, and the psychological inferiority that the characters struggle against. The characters break through their own psychological barriers bit by bit.
While basketball is a large part of Real, a larger emphasis is placed on character development– Takehiko Inoue is just as interested in exploring the past of the characters, their inner world, and their attempts to achieve something in life as he is in looking at the sport of wheelchair basketball.
Here’s the post I promised about the continuation of Xanatos;Deception. This time I’d like to get more into detail about the “main” character of the series. As anyone that has followed my Xanatos series knows, the main male is always a John. Xanatos;Possibility had a John Smith, Xanatos;Rebellion had a John Titor, and Xanatos;Deception has a John Rolfe. I try to always use an existing name of John within these stories and have succeed thus far. Smith references the name given to any average man in English-speaking countries. Titor is about the supposed time traveler that appeared on the internet over a decade ago. And Rolfe is the English explorer that married Pocahontas.
Getting into the heart of the story. 1st’s Fate is, at its core, a love story. The main character is John Rolfe, later known as 1st, and the main female is 7th, later known as Karenn. Anyone who has read my 2nd’s Reflection article may see the semblance in the numerical names here. Well that is to show that the main characters of the nine-arcs of Deception have numerical names. I don’t want to delve too much into the global story of the arcs, so I’ll try to keep focus on 1st’s Fate.
Mahjong isn’t exactly my idea of a fun game to watch, much less competetive mahjong (which is Mahjong intensified lol). Unlike Crossgame, which featured baseball a sport I actually knew a bit about. I was mostly in the dark when beginning my marathon of Saki. Sure I knew about the game and little things here and there, but the ruleset and scoring have confused me from time to time (Though I’m sure if someone who actually plays it regularly would explain more of the rules to me, it wouldn’t seem that way).
As you guys may have guessed, Saki is an anime about Mahjong. My first boardgame anime must have been Hikaru no Go, which convinced me that board game animes can be entertaining, so Saki wasn’t an afterthought. The series itself had been sitting on my watch list for a long time coming (as is most series) and I was in one of my meloncholic moods when I decided to watch it, as usual.
Per tradition, the wiki description on the plot for Saki reads:
Saki Miyanaga, a high school first-year student, hates mahjong because her family would always force her to play it and punish her regardless of the outcome of the game. Due to this, she learned how to keep her score at zero, neither winning nor losing, a skill said to be more difficult than actually consistently winning. However, her friend Kyōtarō from middle school, completely unaware of such circumstances, convinces her to visit the school’s small mahjong club upon entering into high school. After the club discovers her ability, they recruit her permanently and convince her to win instead of breaking even. She easily does so with her skill and discovers a new love for mahjong. This leads the team to enter the prefecture’s high school mahjong tournament with the goal of reaching the national high school competition.
So yesterday night I sat around a bit after finishing my php homework and decided to start up another series. After scouring the internet for some ideas, I came upon some favorable reviews for Infinite Stratos. I had started the series back when it ran on television, around one year ago, but had given it up about half-way through. As I do with most series, I decided to come back to it and rewatch from the beginning in physical release (in this case 1080p) quality.
As usual the wiki entry describes the plot pretty well,
“In the near future, a Japanese scientist engineers a powered exoskeleton called “Infinite Stratos” (IS). Possessing technology and combat capabilities far more advanced than any other weapon system, the IS threatens to destabilize the world. Faced with such an overpowering weapon, the nations of the world enact the “Alaska Treaty”, which states that IS will never be used for military combat and that existing IS technology must be equally distributed to all nations, to prevent any one nation from dominating the others. The introduction of the IS does, however, have a major effect on society. As IS can only be operated by women, there is a shift in the power balance between men and women, where women now dominate society over men.
Ten years after IS was initially introduced, the world has entered a new age of peace. The peace is shattered, however, by an unexpected discovery. A 15 year-old Japanese boy, Ichika Orimura, is discovered to be capable of operating an IS. Realizing the potential, Ichika is forced by the Japanese government to attend the prestigious Infinite Stratos Academy, an international academy where IS pilots from all over the world are trained. Thus his busy high school life surrounded by nothing but girls who can use IS begins.”
