As a busy college student desperately trying to get his act together before graduating in mere three months and moving on to the next phase of life, I have a really hard time juggling school, a night shift job, activities, and anime. There are a lot of anime and games I would love to get to and I have started quite a bunch of them. This is a problem I am sure most of you face as well.
Being an indecisive person, I often find myself wasting a lot of time simply because I can not make up my mind. I constantly start new series before finishing/ catching up with what I am currently watching. I drop shows on a whim only to pick it up arbitrarily for two more episodes four weeks later. I begin marathons and cut them short 3/4 of the way. Therefore, I want to finish some stuff first so I can gradually decrease the size of my massive to-watch list.
Here are the anime I am currently watching. I am also watching some other series, but these are the ones I really need to either catch up on or finish.
Amazing plot and character developments make Queen’s Blade more than tolerable despite the blatant fanservice.
To Aru Kagaku no Railgun… Kuroko, yuri, and superpowers. Enough said.
Canaan has unbelievably sexy girls and strong yuri implications.
I honestly do not know why I stopped watching Umineko no Naku Koro ni, but I would like to start on it again.
After Noir and Madlax, Yuki Kajiura does it again with El Cazador de la Bruja. Further, like the two precursors, this anime again features girls with guns and yuri.
Kimi ni Todoke is a delicate drama that shows inner beauty really counts.
As for visual novels, I have quite a few lined up as well…
The latest episode of Durarara! helped cement some suspicions I’ve had since it began. Most viewers seem to be keying in on how similar it is to Baccano!, but I haven’t been getting that vibe. Baccano! plays off of all sorts of pulp adventure archetypes and the like, but I wasn’t seeing that with Durarara! The “throw the whole cast out in one episode then go back and piece it all together” method of storytelling was in place, but that was the only real similarity at work.
Mythology, legends, and all that shit are stories that were originally passed down orally amongst people back in the day. It was the sort of thing you’d recite over and over again in order for the next generation to remember and recite to their kids, and this proceeded for however many generations until people stated recording it into books. The way Durarara! is using urban legends is playing off of this concept, just in a modern context.
Yeah, those bits with the chatroom text are money-saving visual devices, but they’re also serving a purpose. This is one way that people are spreading these urban legends. They’re retelling stories much in the same way that people would sit around and pass down stories of fairies and gods and monsters in past cultures. These stories about the Headless Biker change depending on who’s telling it, much like how you have multiple versions of the same mythological story depending on where that story comes from. Durarara! is presenting the whole concept of the urban legend as the modern-day myth. Not an original idea, but it’s one that hasn’t been played out enough to come off as tired and clichéd.
Durarara is also showing what it’d be like to be a mythical being in modern times. Selty, the Dullahan, is the most obvious example. She’s essentially a grim reaper who has lost her ability to do her “job.” She’s searching for the one thing that she believes will return meaning to her life. She’s basically a mythological creature that’s going through the sort of existential crisis that’s so common in modern storytelling. It makes sense that a mythical creature would end up having to face a narrative device that’s standard faire for a modern story. Modern stories relish in “humanizing” even the most inhuman of concepts (Look at most of the recent vampire movies and books to see how a creature that was a force of nature in the original Dracula has been turned into the stuff of young adult fodder.), so seeing a Dullahan go through these motions make perfect sense. By modern standards, she’s not “allowed” to be “above” human problems or else she’ll appear to be unbelievable to the average audience member.
The same goes for other characters in Durarara! Many of the supporting characters demonstrate mythical abilities. Orihara comes off as a trickster god figure, much like Loki from Norse myth or Coyote from various Native American myths. He cares more about toying with the feelings and lives of others and sees himself as somehow “above” all of their concerns. At the same time he has to stoop to paying off Selty to help him and seems to be limited in his capabilities. He comes off as being capable of larger things, but he’s just toying around with some street punks and residents in a neighborhood in Japan. What’s up with that? It seems like his scope has been limited by modern society, as if he can’t show his stuff lest he’s exposed for the world to see.
Orihara’s “rival” or sorts, Heiwajima, comes off as some sort of “hero” type. His super-strength makes him seem like Hercules or some other legendary hero. While many of these mythological heroes were subject to hubris, Heiwajima seems to have been brought down even lower than that. He possesses massive strength, but he’s relegated to being a bartender who has trouble keeping a job. Makes sense, since there’s really no need for a “hero” in modern society. There’s no massive quests of exploration and conquest in our world that a mere individual could handle, regardless of his individual prowess. He’s a relic of the past, he’s obsolete, so he has to sink into mundane society.
The same goes for the African-Russian, Simon. His very origin sounds like the back story for a mythological hero. Banished from his homeland, he’s found himself twice-removed from his comfort zone (The US and Russia) and finds himself in a strange new country. Yet instead of taking advantage of his own physical prowess he’s reduced to hawking sushi on the street.
In the end, Durarara! seems to be a myth about a world where mythology exists but is obsolete. This isn’t like Princess Mononoke, where mystical creatures are struggling and succeed in finding balance with “progress,” this is a world where that battle has long since been lost. In a way it plays sort of like Hellboy, just with less of an emphasis on the supernatural (so far at least).
This time in my own personal attempt at creating a set of Robot Masters I present to you Stealthman.
Stealthman, unlike Novaman, is not a product of my youth as an avid gamer but rather a recent idea. His gimmick, like all Megaman bosses, is in his name and as such I incorporated “stealth” design elements acccordingly.
The key features of Stealthman are the tapered edges all along his body, as well as his thin limbs which are unusual as far as Megaman bosses go. All of this is based on the principle that stealth aircraft are thin to avoid detecting and lack rounded edges because those bounce back radar signals more easily. Now I know his design isn’t actually stealth-worthy what with him being a robot whose head is jutting out and all that, but it was more to give him the trappings of stealthiness. Also, if you’re wondering about the feet, he floats.
In battle, Stealthman would naturally cloak himself to avoid detection and then shoot bombs at you. Out of those two weapons, Megaman would be getting the “Stealth Cloak.” With it, Megaman would be able to slip by those enemies which tend to react to his presence, such as Mettools and any homing weapons. It would drain meter similar to Flashman’s Time Stopper except you’d be able to switch out of the weapon at any time. Megaman would be able to still fire while Stealth Cloak is in effect, but perhaps at a reduced capacity.
As for the sprite itself, it took quite a few tries in terms of color scheme to really match up to the drawing I made, but I think it turned out well in the end.
Here’s the recently-released trailer for the Xbox360-exclusive anime feature, now dubbed nicely in english. The audio was grabbed from the US version available on Xboxlive, so now we can figure out what’s going on with the new anti-heroine on the block, Juri Han.
Looks to be pretty cut-and-dried to me; Juri makes her debut in another evil scheme cooked up by S.I.N. head honcho, Seth, along the way kidnapping the Shadaloo Dolls and seriously messing with the Interpol SF-ers. Will Juri be evil through and through, or will the kidnapped girl from years ago somehow show up and redeem herself? Nah… Anyway, we’ll see in a few months when this anime pops up as we get our Super Streetfighter IV fix.
Ahh the nostalgia… It’s been a while (9 months actually) since I’ve watched remotely a single episode of K-ON! after its first broadcast run. As for the cunningly announced second season to debut later this year (Spring most likely) a special specially packaged with the last DVD/BD volume of the first series sounds quite nice to carry on the moé-blob legacy. Call me a Keion-fag, but to be truthful I actually enjoyed watching the series and this special. Sure the marketing campaign and the craze for it is a little over-the-top and its a tad overrated… but I guess everyone has their own tastes…
Note: Could’ve done a better title, but I thought I’d might as well cram everything in D:
Brief and flunked summary:
It’s the almost the end of the year, the members of the Keion club are invited by Ritsu’s friend to some Live House concert, they all experience how working, performing and preparing beforehand a concert goes, meeting other fellow rock band members and making new friends who, like them, are competing for the big league… They all had a great time at the Live House concert, also inviting Ui, nodoka and friends too… Sawako-sensei meets an old friend somehow back stage…best New Years Eve evur. Later that night the Keion club including Sawako-sensei have a New Years party at Yui’s house, and just before the countdown for the new year, Mugi, Yui, Ui and Sawako suddenly fell asleep all due to being tired out for all that’s happened at the Live House… Ritsu and Mio shortly then decided to fall asleep on the spot too. Morning came… Yui and the rest wake up and head off to some secret spot in the city to have a perfect view of the New Year’s sunrise, hoping to have another happy and a positive New Year that’s ahead of them. Oh and… Azusa forgot to take off her tiger ears when they got there…haha
Alright I guess. Not that much different compared to the original thirteen (except being widescreen), the usual yonkama styled scenes and the repetitive sample performance of Fuwa Fuwa Time. Although, what would’ve been better I believe is that they shown all of what happened at the concert, not just walking in half way through to see a few seconds of it… This is (in my 36 chapters or so 4koma reading) of what I believe an original episode for once, as I don’t remember any of this stuff, Ritsu’s friend, the live house (well…maybe), the other rock members, appearing in the manga. Not much animation, art style or colour palette change has taken place really… Same moe blob style while a new set of pair of tiger ears for Azu-nyan.
The cat has just been upgraded.
SATISFACTORY GRADING: 7/10
Now with the OVA done, what’s left to do is to wait for KyoAni and gang to announce further notices for the sequel of K-ON!… Almost being a year when the first season started, it’s more than likely it’ll be coming along with the anime line up in the Spring Anime Season 2010…
