Opinion Prone

Finally! The announcement of the license came in July of last year, but DOGS finally officially released middle of last week (though a few people have reported seeing them in stores before then). I had had my preorder through HeavyInk, which has only served me well in the past, but I’m beginning to think that their strength is only in subscriptions and US trades, rather than licensed manga — typical of a comic store, I guess. They seem to have had various complications/delays with my order, so I finally just canceled it and ordered through Amazon. It arrived within three days. Because they only included bubble packaging on one side, my cover was a little warped, but other than that: it’s beautiful~.

I’ve updated my MAL review for DOGS to include some commentary about Viz’s release, but I’m going to do an in-depth semi-review here because I feel like it.

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I still need to write reviews for Soul Eater and Gundam 00 S2, but I still don’t feel like writing either. So instead, here is a review for the Lovely Complex anime, which I finished last night because it is adorable. Sickeningly adorable. The premise is exceedingly simple, the characters somewhat predictable, and the animation is all over the place, but damned if it isn’t an extremely well done series despite all that. I really want to check out the manga and the live action movie now.

Baww, shoujo. Damn the genre for being so appropriate for adaptation into live action because there are so many series I want to check out now (still need to hunt down the Nodame Cantabile dramas). If the first NANA movie is any indication of how awesome these adaptations can be (granted, I haven’t seen the anime nor read the manga in that case), then I’m pretty sure the Nodame and Love★Com are at least worth checking out.

I discovered whilst looking up some information for the review that most of the characters in Love★Com speak in a Kansai/Osaka dialect. What followed was a gigantic “no wonder!” kind of epiphany. I am simultaneously proud of and endlessly amused at the fact that I noticed something was off about the way they were speaking — sure, it would be LOL OBVIOUS to someone with better knowledge of the language, but for a weeaboo, I’d say just noticing at all isn’t bad. :P The easiest indications were the replacement of “aho” for “baka,” which I also noticed in BECK way back when, and “na” for “ne.” The second easiest was the substituion of “chau” for “chigau” because the dialect apparently likes to contract the hell out of everything (which makes a lot more sense than whatever the hell Shanghainese does to Mandarin!).

Purusing through this list, I spotted a good number of other things that I noticed, including “denna” for “desu ne” though I believe Seiko and a few others still used “desu ne.” Actually, I also noticed that a lot of things on that list didn’t actually show up. Otani definitely never used “wai” in place of “ore,” and Risa never used “wate” in place of “watashi” or “atashi.” I really love first person pronouns in Japanese (they’re so much fun and can say so much about certain characters!), so I’d have probably noticed much faster if those had been swapped out. Also unmentioned on the list is “-chi” as an affectionate suffix, though I don’t know that much about it either way — why did they only use it for Nakao? And why did both Risa and Nobuko use it?

Fun times, Japanese. I should just get off my ass and learn it some day. I might be going there in December. Maybe that can be some motivation.

You know, I almost didn’t want to write this review because it meant I had to keep thinking about this movie, and all I want to do is forget that it exists. My immediate thoughts after viewing Dragonball Evolution were: “LET’S PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED.” Sentiments haven’t changed much since then, but I’m pleased to hear that it’s bombing at the box office. I hope pray this means that they’ll put to rest their undoubtedly terrible sequel/trilogy plans. Anyway… this review. It’s obviously not going to be pretty, but I’m going to at least try and shelf some of the fan rage in favor of a coherent analysis. Try.

Dragonball Evolution

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I was a bit skeptical about this album. I wasn’t all that fond of Utada’s previous English album, Exodus, because I found a lot of the lyrics to be really awkward (“You’re easy breezy, and I’m Japanesey”?). In general, I’m much more fond of her older stuff than her newer stuff… I didn’t like her most recent Japanese album, Heart Station, all that much either. I didn’t listen to the “Come Back to Me” single when it came out, so I was walking into this album blind more or less. Here are my first impressions during my first run through of the album:

TRACK 01: On and On (YouTube it)
Very upbeat opening; I like the guys yelling in the background in addition to Utada’s voice, which is gorgeous. Steady beat continues into main melody, and it’s very energizing in that you-gotta-tap-your-feet-and-move-your-body kinda way. Awesome transition into the chorus via a sudden silence in the background, same with the transition into the second chorus. This song definitely has a very American feel to it, which I almost find surprising because I didn’t think Exodus was very American at all. I really love all the layers of voices in this — the guy in the background just keeps going and going, then there’s Utada’s voice, and at the bridge and end, there’s a second layer of Utada’s voice; it’s a very nice combination of sounds. What a great way to start the album!

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I always pick up the most random series in the amidst of finals and such, and Antique Bakery was just one of those series, I guess. It was short and available, so I watched it. Now here is the finished review. I think it’s going to be one of those very forgetful sort of series; honestly, it didn’t leave much of an impression on me at all except that I think the Japanese pronunciation of “cake” is kind of hilarious. I’m also ever impressed with Mamoru Miyano’s voice acting abilities. And lastly, screw what anyone else says, Antique Bakery isn’t actually a shounen-ai series.

This is my first review on MAL since its review overhaul though, and I must say, I really, really miss that BBCode. I am still using my old review template, so I still wrote the review containing BBCode assuming that it would just be stripped out when I actually posted. Instead, MAL posts the review, code and all, forcing me to manually weed out what I’d put in. This made me realize just how much I do actually use italics to emphasize certain words so they’re easier to read mentally.

I also still hate how jumbled the review looks without bolding to announce each subsection. I suppose I should just swap to “traditional” reviewing and write everything in that cohesive essay format, but I don’t want to. :|

I’m not really sure this should be considered a review. I cover the basics, I guess, but it’s more like me rambling in an semi-organized manner about the movie and the book and describing which of the changes I liked and which I didn’t. As such, this is your spoiler warning:

(Hey, this poster looks kinda familiar…)

Watchmen

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This was something that has been on my to-read list for years. One of my professors assigned it as required reading last quarter, but we never ended up discussing it, so I never got around to finishing it. I was determined to finish it before the movie’s release though and thus finally sat down and marathoned through it in five hours on Tuesday. Now I can finally look forward to the movie tomorrow (not seeing it at midnight). I hear there have been a lot of mixed reviews going around, but I don’t really want to read any of them until I’ve seen it. I’m not really worried, honestly. The trailers look great, though I’m kind of on the fence about the special effects. Despite that, I don’t think I’m expecting a whole lot from it, so hopefully my purist neuroticism won’t strike too badly.

We’ll see. I will definitely be writing a review of the movie as well, so yeah. In the meantime~.

Watchmen

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Finally. I finished watching Darker than BLACK (and its OAV) over the weekend, so here’s the review for the series. I’m still rather surprised with how much I ended up liking the series, but I’m not sure I explained that very well in the review. I never feel like I adequately explain anything in my reviews, haha; maybe that’s why they always end up excruciatingly long.

I’d really like to see a sequel to DtB though. If that BONES document leak last summer was right about the Fullmetal Alchemist sequel, then here’s to hoping that DtB part was true too, eh? As much as I’d love to have some answers to the five billion questions I have though, I have to wonder if having a sequel explain it all would take away from the huge mystery that is this series. I watched the last two episodes again while writing the review, but I still can’t be confident in making any kind of solid conclusion about the ending. It’s nice in a way, probably because it’s such a big change from the usual fare.

Side note: I can’t decide if I should bother reviewing the OAV. It’s really not that important to anything, but it was entertaining all the same — probably as close to DtB will ever get to crack.

I finished my review for Ouran High School Host Club. I’m still surprised at how great this series actually was, and really want to see a sequel for it. In the meantime, I think I’ll make my way through the manga. I wonder how many chapters of material the anime actually covers? When will there be enough material for a sequel? :3

The first eight episodes of Host Club are available dubbed and streaming from FUNimation’s website. The first three episodes are also available subbed. I highly recommend checking them out~.

As far as the winter season goes, the first episode of Kurokami was amazingly disappointing, and I think I might end up dropping the series after another one or two episodes if nothing improves. It’s really too bad; Bandai picked a really risky series to put so much effort in. If Kurokami does go by the wasteside, I guess I can finish Darker than BLACK or something instead.

Being Asian, the “real” New Year’s has never been as important to me as the Lunar New Year (for 2009, it’s on January 26th), but I guess Planetes is a pretty good series to have reviewed for the new year regardless. I was thoroughly impressed with the depiction of space here: it is amazing, and everyone that considers themselves any kind of sci-fi fan should definitely check it out. It’s the future, guys!

A lot of people seem to recommend Infinite Ryvius for those who like Planetes, probably because Goro Taniguchi directed both of them and both deal with space, but I’m having a hard time moving on with the former. I’m four episodes in, can’t relate to any of the characters, and don’t really feel moved towards caring about their well-being. It’s kind of frustrating. I think finishing it might depend entirely on how much I want to review it because I hate reviewing series I haven’t seen in their entirety; it always feels like I’m missing something that way.

The series I’m breezing through now though is, surprisingly, Ouran High School Host Club, lol. I’ve avoided the series thus far mostly because the premise didn’t interest me. I hear their fanbase is pretty annoying too, but I don’t really concern myself with that usually. As it is now, I’ll probably be finishing off the series tonight and hope to have a review by the time classes start again on Monday. v_vV I’m flying to New Orleans on Friday though, and carpooling the ten hours from there to Savannah on Saturday, so maybe not. We’ll see! I’m sure nobody cares but me! 8D