You watch it, you rate it!

Yozakura Quartet
Supernatural / Action

Animation: C+
Story: C-
Dub: N/A Sub Only release
Sub: C+

I must be on a bad streak of watching crap lately. This was another series I just couldn't get into. The show was lacking any good comedy and good fanservice, which would be OK as long as the action was good.... but it had none of that either. Lots of bloodless fight scenes galore. At one point, one of the main characters gets smashed by a lizard the size of a Menos Grande and comes out of it with a few scuff marks on her cheak.

There were some retarded episode plot arcs that dealt with the Mayor of the town finding a stray dog, feeding it and loving it, only to scold it one day and have it run away after which it got possessed by some cat eared possessed **** boy. Sounds retarded on paper? Try watching it.

This series, probably due to it's short 12 episode length, also fails to explain quite a bit of backstory too. How did **** catboy get possessed in the first place... how does a tuned demon come back from 'tune land'..... why the hell was some old man hiding a weapon that could have finished this when the troubles first started in his underwear drawer....

I really am beginning to dislike the 12 episode series. They always seem to do space time leaps over backstories and decent explanations...

Overall suggestion: Boring and at times annoying. One of the characters has the ability to summon pretty much anything. She frequently summons machine guns where she proceeds to REPEATEDLY shout ARARARARARARARARARARARAR (or something along those lines) for a good 20 seconds which a bunch of badly animated bullets move across the screen. I wouldn't even bother renting this either...

Next up: School Rumble. I'll probably review it by season.. or maybe I wont finish it at all. I'm getting tired of forcing myself to finish bad series -.-

Took a break from school rumble to watch the Blu Ray edition of Ponyo that came in today.

Ponyo
Fantasy / Ghibli

Animation: A+
Story: A
Dub: A-
Sub: A+

While not one of Ghibli's best works, Ponyo is stll without a doubt a very very good movie. The movie (according to the jacket it came in) adapts The Little Mermaid, but makes it awesome and cute!

The animation is seriously gorgeous. In the opening 5 minutes, you see a scene where there are at LEAST 50 independantly moving creatures moving on the screen at the same time. Just to give you an idea of how much time and money was invested in this shows art and audio, let's do some calculations.

According to a website I saw (Not a reliable source but good enough for this comparison), The average 30 minute anime costs between 8-10 million yen (110,000 dollars per episode approx). This averages a production cost of about $3,600 dollars a minute.

According to Wikipedia, Ponyo had a budget of 34,000,000 and a run time of 100 minutes. Do the math.

$340,000 dollars a minute

Overall: A must buy. It's a cute story, which should be enough right there to encourage you to get off your asses and buy it, but the art/visuals are what really brings me to loving this show.

This is how anime should be. Now we just need Ghibli to do a remake of Crest of the Stars with this level of art, and I can die happy.

up next: Still watching school rumble. On to episode 2 of the second semester. So far, there have been some moments were I have nearly hurt myself laughing out loud, but most of the humor is starting to fall flat on its face... and the constant retardation of the characters when it comes to each others feelings is getting annoying.

ETA to completion: 1 week if I keep having to work these BS shifts

School Rumble
Comedy / Half assed retarded romance / high school

Animation: B+
Story: D+
Dub: Did not watch
Sub: A+

I really, really hate overly retarded anime characters. I really do. I really really hate non conclusive endings. I really really really hate romances that go nowhere. School Rumble has all of these and more. Why did I even watch this? Because I was hoping something would develope between Eri and Harima. Nope. No go.

The relationships in this series are all freaking stupid. I know this isn't really a romance series but come the **** on. Tenma likes this weird, airheaded moron. Harima Likes Tenma but the feeling isn't really mutual, so you get a lot of stupid misunderstandings where Harima will think Tenma is doing something because she loves him, when in reality her true intention is something completely different. So... for 40+ episodes, all I am treated to is a bunch of misunderstandings that never end. Great.

The one plus side to watching all this nonsence with the story was the art. It was cute. Fanservice was lacking with the exception of a couple of scenes, but there were a fair ammount of Chibi scenes and a ton of those weird facial expressions that anime characters make that could never physically be done in the real world. The voices were also very nicely done.

Overall: This series really did have a lot of potential but in the end it just fails. All it really has going for it is the occasional cute art and the voice actresses. Really, I wouldn't recommend spending money on this unless you are REALLY bored and enjoy series that just never go anywhere.

I don't know if it's just me or not, but it feels like most of the new series now a days all suck. You'll get the rare good one once in a while, but the rest all either have retarded confusing story lines that leave millions of unexplained backstories, or just Moe **** that has no story whatsoever and is just plain stupid. I'm looking at you lucky star. Anime companies need to take a look at some older licensed and rerelease them in the US... but enough with this half asleep rant.

Next up: Bleach - Bount Arc

I have work in 7 hours. I am so going to be dead tomorrow. Ah well, I need SOMETHING to wash the rage out of my system after watching School Rumble. A bankai or two should help.

Bleach Season 3: Bount Arc
Action / Filler

Animation: C
Story: D+
Dub: Did not watch
Sub: B


It's bleach filler.... what more is needed? The animation is bad. It was probably almost all outsourced to korean 'quality' companies. All the fights consist of ichigo getting his ass kicked left and right with lots of still frame grunting added in between.

The story itself is a complete recycle of earlier episodes. Ichigo fights, gets beaten up, hollow shows up, hollow owns the world, ichigo says NO and rips off his mask.

Overall: You can skip this arc and still known exactly what is going on when the hueco mundo arc starts. Seeing how this is filler, nothing happens that affects the storyline. If you find yourself strapped on cash, spend your money on other things.

Next up: Bamboo Blade part 2.. or strike witches.

I cant remember off the top of my head what I have recieved lately. It's a large pile stacking up near my bed.

Ah! My Goddess Season 1
Romance / Light Comedy / Supernatural

I'm really tired so I hope my half dead brain is making sence here...

Animation: A
Story: A-
Dub: Once again forgot it even had a dub... I just instinctivly hit 2 buttonts and it goes to japanese with subtitles... heh... heh....
Sub: A

AMG is a rather unique find in the Media Blasters catalog. It's not porn. It's not old. It's not low budget!! (In before MEDIA BLASTERS LICENSES QUALITY CONTENT! It's a joke, relax).

There really isn't anything epic in this series. No 300 fps animation scenes, no epic fights like in banner of the stars, but what it lacks in epicness it makes up for in a constant stream of interesting entertainment.

The main thing I liked about this series was the rather unique storyline. It's not a recycle of stuff like Love Hina (Which I love non the less...) where the character relatonships are molded around 'bad timing' and Tsundere hate. You wont be watching the whole series till the end just to find out they never even say I LOVE YOU to each other. YOu don't have random people dying for no reason other then to add drama to the series, or people getting hit by trains, or even spaceships!!!!

The art is good and the animation very clean and smooth. I could not easily spot any 'quality' scenes during my watching of this series. The japanese language track did a very good job selecting people for their roles. Belldandy sounds exactly like she looks. A very very caring and beautiful lady.

Overall Suggestion: A fun series. I'd recommend buying it. The complete collection for season 1 is out by Media Blasters and the season 2 set is going to be re-released by Funimation some time in June. The Individual disks for season 2, except for volume 5, are available on clearance on Rightstuf.com. The disks are from ADV before they ceased operation, so collectors should go grab them now! You can even get a pretty collectors box too if you buy them individually! Welll, at least I'm excited about that.. Both box sets are dirt cheap too. You have no excuse!

Up Next:

Inuyasha Season 3.

Inuasha Season 3
Fantasy / Shonen

Animation: A-
Story: B-
Dub: Acceptable. Saw it on adult swim. B-
Sub: B

INUYASHA!!! KAGOME!!!! INUYASHA!!!! KAGOME!!!! It was a long running joke between my friend Dwayn and I. In the past, I remember CONSTANTLY poking fun at this series, saying its **** and that I'll never watch it. It was simply too long and at the time, I wasn't really making that much money working 18 hours a week at an office max.

Fast forward a couple years...

Through someone's suggestion (I think it was THEM anime reviews or something), I watched Maison Ikkoku. I loved it. I shelled out WAY too much for the full series on dvd form (Curse viz and their out of print dvd's. I WANT MY ORANGE ROAD!), but I was hooked. I learned on those fateful days days that Inuyasha's manga can actually write a good story... and I became curious how inuyasha and ranma were...

Well ranma was pretty bad. The jokes got stale, and the retarded characters annoying... but I digress. That's for another review date if I can ever force myself to finish the 4 unopened seasons and ova / movie boxes I have. I decided to give Inuyasha a try and now I'm going to waste probably over 300 dollars finishing my collection of the dvd's.

The animation for something that spans some 180+ volumes is pretty solid. There are the repetative still fran pan shots here and there, and it's no Clannad, but for what it is it works.

The comedy in the series is interwoven pretty smoothly into the story. From Kagmone's OSUWARI to Inuyasha constantly beating the crap out of Shippo, the humor is there in a decent ammount. It's nothing that will blow you off your chair laughing, but without these humorous moments, the series would just be too... serious... and boring... like if Berserk had no Puck. Just fight fight fight power up power up train fight fight.

The character relations are steadily building up nicely. A lot of the characters are evolving (For lack of a better term... I almost wrote for back of a letter term. **** dyslexia!) Hentai Monk Miroku and Sango seem to be hitting it off rather nice, and a little flame seems to have started between them. I love how Seshomaru is starting to soften up a little.... It's amazing what one little mortal girl can do to a full fledged demon. I won't spoil any more! Of course there is also Inuyasha and Kagome. They clearly want to have consensual sex in the missionary position, but we have a love hina effect where both sides vehiamently deny their feelings and just act like idiots. It's ok for now. We'll see if t gets annoying later on.

So far I've only picked up on a few things that I dislike about the series. First and foremost is it's length and the fact that it's not fully released in the US. The final act just finished in japan and god knows how long I will have to wait to see it on my dvd player. Second is the lack of damage the characters get in fights. If you've read my Rin review, you'd know that I hate dumbed down violence. If you get impaled through the chest by a spider arm, you are going to bleed profusly. ALl inuyasha ever gets is a little stain on his shirt. I know since this is aimed at a younger audience that they can't really put full on splatter effect. But one can hope. I'll just have to watch Hellsing OVA to make up for it.

Overall suggestion: It's entertaining. If you have money to spare I'd definitly check it out. Buy a season and give it a test run. It's a good way to pass time.

Next w... wait. I completely forgot! Rather, I tried to force myself to forget... that I also watched the Second bleach movie! I should have just gone to bed and gotten that extra hour and a half of sleep that night.

Bleach Movie 2

Animation: D
Story: D
Dub: Didn't watch

Arent movies supposed to be higher budget then series? The whole movie was fuzzy as all hell. The fight scenes were really not that spectacular, and the story sucked.

Here we have Genious Boy Toshiro running away from the Gotei 13 to aprehend some ghost from his past, captains loosing in battles that they should have no problem with, and story that is not explained well, and makes no sence to begin with.

Overall Suggestion: Avoid. It has nothing to do with any of the major non filler story arcs, and will never ever be referenced in the Bleach Universe again.

Next up: Either A!MG season 2 or Strike Witches.

Strike Witches
Fantasy / War / Pantsu / Gonzo's last chance at making money etc.

Animation: A-
Story: B-
Dub: NO
Sub: A

So it is possible for Gonzo to make decent anime.....

Pantsu Witches takes place in an alternate timeline where world war two never happened and all the countries have weird ass names. Instead of fighting each other, the world has come together to fight the evil Nerouis (sp?) who have seemingly decided to take over the planet. This show has nothing to do with a war on pants. Shame on you funimation.

The story itself is nothing spectacular. The fights incorporate CG elements very heavily, not dissimilar to vandread, but the blend between the CG and the animation is pretty decent. It seems no company wants to hand animate space ships before. I still think banner of the stars had some of the best battle scenes EVER.

The series focuses on fanservice a lot. There are several bathing scenes with full nudity (minus of course the evil crotch area which japan seems to hate). Nipples, butts, and groping galore. The Witches outfits are apparently tailored to fit EVER curve of their body to the nanometer. (EVERY..... CAMEL AND ALL). There are lots of gratuitous butt shots and crotch shots of our pretty little witches whenever possible. This actually got a bit distracting. I was, believe it or not, actually trying to follow the fights, but I kept on having my attention diverted to sweet loli ass. Even during the fight scenes, the camera angle would always focus on showing the SW assests, Agent Aika style. Fanservice for me is fine. I encourage full nudity of every female particpant!!!... but only when it's appropriate. Bath scenes and random breast groping are fine, but when it's going on during what's supposed to be a serious fight scene it just annoys me.

Overall Suggestion: I think it's worth at least watching it. You will be decently entertained throughout the series. It's 12 episodes long so you wont be spending much time on it either. I finished it in 2 nights.

Next up: Star Trek Enterprise . I've burned through too much anime lately and my reserves are running low. Pay day is Monday. I'll have stuff from the Amazon sale by thursday. I can hardly wait