I have been regretting little by little for registering for Anime Next and after the flood of incoherent teenage brats who flamed my Sakura Matsuri post, the lack of communication from the artist alley, and the fact that the anime next website goes down at least once a day has increased my general downturn on the whole thing. I only registered because someone invited me to help them with a panel on eroge/otome games and at the time I was really excited to help - but now I wish I never agreed to do this. Nothing against the panelists or the panel itself, but frankly I have this disgusted feeling at this whole thing to the point where I don’t want to contribute anything to anyone there. Continue Reading »

Unfortunately I am not going to continue watching or blogging this show. It’s not a “sassy” girl at this point, it’s just a fucking cock blocker bitch. Also the plot of the show seems very clear to me: The main guy likes a girl, he gets cockblocked by the sassy girl, the girl he likes picks another guy, sassy girl feels bad and suddenly falls for the main guy, more of their random adventures the end. It was just so blah to me that after 20 or so minutes I could no longer watch it. I was sitting there thinking “how much of a bitch can she get and how much of her shit is he gonna put up with??” Rejecting dinner just to save some random bitch who claims she’s being stalked? Wtf? Couldn’t they at least pick more realistic ways to portray her “sassyness” or ones that are less cruel? Also in the KR movie at least she was his girlfriend (or somewhat of one) so he sorta had a reason to do what she told him…while in here he clearly has no feelings for her yet he still does what she says what the hell. Meh, if you like this sorta thing I guess you can keep watching, as for me I’m out.

…why in the hell are they $40 for a Saturday only attendance? That’s $10 more than New York Comic Con! I can’t see how this is justifiable when the NYCC probably has a lot more dealers/events/people that require more costs…than NYAF which has a lot less and a lot less content to begin with. Not that NYCC was exciting for me due to lack of Anime related content, but NYAF is pretty bare boney in itself. Last year I left the con feeling kinda let down because things closed early but I know that’s just because that’s how the Javitz center works. So with all of this in mind why the price jack? I had seriously thought about going to this con but I can’t see a justification of paying $40 to go for 1 day unless they get something as equally or more awesome as T.M.Revolution (B’z anyone?) The way they’ve made it is that attending for 3 days you get a MUCH better deal - but since this is only the con’s 2nd year, I don’t really find myself wanting to attend all 3 days. (Especially when last year a lot of panels/events repeated from Friday to Saturday anyway.) I really hope NYAF staff considers lowering the price or they may find a big attendance drop this year. My Anime Next 3 day pass was $40 - and I have to pay the same for a 1 day con that ends at 8?

Edit: Just got a response from the staff blogger:

This year’s NYAF will be running much longer than last year’s. While most events wrapped up at 7 in ‘07, we’ll be keeping panels, screenings, and special events on until 10 this year. If you need to wait and see, though, that’s cool. We’ll be announcing guests and programming beginning in June.

Alrighty then I guess I can see where that extra $10 comes from. I’ll wait and see what they bring out in their programming before making my purchase though.

I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this but it almost appears to be like a cookie cutter setup for this drama in a similar way that it was setup for Yukan Club. A mystery happens, the heroes solve it, they good off in the process, end of episode. It’s become quiet apparent that the first woman that Udagawa falls in love with is obviously the criminal. I guessed it right from the start and I was right. The difference was that in this episode her “murder” was justified because she did it because the guy she killed wanted to sell her father’s business…and everyone is okay with this. If this was America she’d still be sent to jail, whether or not her crime was justified. I mean what are they gonna do, blame the dead guy? Anyway I hope the show moves in to focus on Sakura and Udagawa (or both? ) because I don’t know if I wanna sit through another 11-12 episodes of “you’re not the criminal are you? oh wait yes you are”.

I’m starting to really wonder what the point of Late Show is now. While technically yes they added extra content a lot of it felt like recycled footage with some “new” dialogue. To be specific, there’s a scene during the eyecatch of Maka & Soul saying “we don’t have much screen time”. At the end after the credits there’s a short segment of Maka’s dad and Blair and he talks about how he’s a panty maker. Finally in the preview for next week instead of showing footage of Death the Kid grabbing boobs, they show footage of him getting beaten up (to which he says “Wait why’s there all this footage of me getting beat up?!?”) So really it’s not worth watching. See screenshots below of what you “miss” if you don’t.

I’ll give late show 1 more week and if it’s this crap again I’m calling it quits and just sticking to the Monday broadcast.

This episode basically covered chapter 5 of the manga. In regards to the beginning part with the re-introduction of the characters - it’s something they did in the manga for the first couple of chapters. It’s kinda of annoying though in the anime since like “yes we know who they are and no we don’t care what place they’re in other than Kei and Hikari’s 1/2″. I hope the anime doesn’t follow suit and keep doing the character introduction thing for the next few episodes. Continue Reading »

Pardon me for this post, I’m trying to make it relevant but it seems my blog is slowly turning into my encounters with all things Japan rather than an anime blog these days due to lack of any good anime to write about. Anyway, when I began watching anime just as all anime fans, the first thing we think of is “I want to purchase merchandise from THIS show!” Needless to say I spent some share of my otaku money on sailormoon chibi figures, shirts, keychains and whatever other nonsense was available from DiC at the time. Nowdays, all I really buy is manga, and as I ranted before, even the funds for that are starting to dry up. But there is one thing that still keeps gnawing at my wallet: DHC. Continue Reading »