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| Darker than Black + ClaymoreSchool's almost over, just about a week until I graduate. Also, my birthday was yesterday, so I'm officially 18 now. ^_^
Anywayz, Darker than Black... very good series w/ lots of action and mystery, but confusing as hell. In Tokyo, a bizarre area appears called Hell's Gate, and nobody's allowed inside. Coinciding w/ Hell's Gate is the appearance of people who have psychic abilities known as Contractors, and generally they are emotionless and kill people. The series follows a contractor named Hei and his syndicate and the contractor-related incidents that occur. There is also a detective named Kirihara who works w/ contractor-related deaths, and she spends most of her time chasing Hei around for stuff he does.
Like I said, it's a very good series becuz of the action, and it's even possibly philosophical, but it's confusing, especially towards the end. Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? Is there even a line that defines the two, or do they blend together around the edges? But there are some noteworthy characters that I love, like Yin, a girl with psychic powers of finding things that always helps Hei. Usually she's a serious character, but one episode, she was trying to smile for Hei but couldn't do it, so instead she uses her finger to move the corner of her mouth up into a smile. ^_^ It was the cutest thing ever.
And I actually finished Claymore a while ago, but I never got around to talking about it until now. Another excellent series about half demon girls called Claymores who kill demons, or "youma". One particular Claymore called Claire takes pity on a human boy (who's family was eaten by youma) and let's him follow her around. As the story develops, it goes more into the complexity of being half demon, and why exactly Claire became a Claymore, and hunting special youma called "Awakened Beings". But throughout the whole series there's a lot of limb hacking and blood splattering and sword slashing... it's good if you're into that kind of stuff. Also, Claire's organization is pretty shady later on... Overall, it's a really good series, but I just don't like the human boy Rakki. I don't know why, I just don't.
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| It's just not my day...This morning, some gangsta-wannabe called me bitch for bumping into his backpack. It wasn't a hard bump that made him stumble or anything, it was just my arm swinging at the wrong moment. Then he starts going crazy, saying, "Why can't you walk straight?! There's a huge space here, is it so hard to walk in it?!" My brain doesn't function well in the morning, so I was kinda confused about the situation, and gave him the most deadpan stare ever. Then he and his wannabe-homies and hos (definitely not wannabes) walked away, and I continued opening my locker.
Then later during gym, we were playing floor hockey w/ a neon orange rubber ball. Unfortunately, there are a lot of athletic guys in my class, so they play aggressively even against un-athletic girls like me. I was defending the goal w/ this other girl so all those athletic guys could play against each other without me getting hurt in the middle. There is this one particular athletic football guy that I don't like becuz he shows off too much for the gym teacher. He wanted to score a goal, so he sent the rubber ball flying in the air. He's strong, but he has no aim, so the ball went too left... and into my ribcage. Under the circumstances, the rubber ball fucking hurt and knocked the breath out of me. I really hate him now, and told him so in short gasping breaths.
The ball left a nice red mark for a few hours, but now it's faded. I'd almost wish that I had gotten hit with a paintball instead; it would've hurt more and left a red-purple mark, but it would've been smaller and hopefully not have knocked the breath from me. If we play floor hockey again, I hope I can hit that guy in the shins... or even higher up.
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| El Cazador de la BrujaJust finished with El Cazador de la Bruja. Yes, it's really a Japanese anime, even though it has a Spanish title... it translates to "The Hunter of the Witch". I suppose the title sounds similar to Witch Hunter Robin, but it has a slightly different premise.
Basic plot is that there's this girl Ellis. There's a bounty on her head because she's suspected of killing a professor. A bounty hunter called Nadie (ironically, that means "no one" in Spanish) finds Ellis, but instead of capturing her for the bounty, Nadie decides to help Ellis find a city called Winay Marka, or "The Eternal City". So they keep traveling south in Mexico, trying to find it.
I think it's a pretty good series. It's made by the same people who made Noir, so it's pretty serious. The whole anime is pretty much about how Nadie and Ellis' relationship develops and strengthens. But even though it's so serious, there are some funny moments. Ellis can almost be counted as a comic relief character w/ some of the stuff she does...
Also, the secondary characters that show up, Ricardo and Lirio, are very cool. Ricardo is also a bounty hunter, and he helps out Nadie a lot. Lirio is Ricardo's young ward, and she's extremely cute and never says a word until the end of the series. I suppose it's like Sesshomaru and Rin's relationship in Inuyasha, except Ricardo cares a lot about Lirio and actually shows it...
Everything is well paced and well explained. The plot doesn't rush, and little mysteries that pop up during the series are explained pretty well. And it's not too long, it's 26 episodes long, which is normal-ish. Overall, a very good series. And the people who subbed it, Starlight Fansubs, were very good too.
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| Black Blood Brothers + Zombie LoanI think I've reviewed part of Black Blood Brothers before, but I think I'll do it again. It was... confusing. Probably because I left off around episode 6 or 7, and didn't watch again for weeks, possibly months. But it was a satisfactory anime, lots of flashy battle scenes and blood sucking and hidden secrets revealed and such. Mm-hm... I must say, Jirou is a REALLY awesome sword-wielding vampire.
And now on to Zombie-Loan! Hm, it's pretty interesting, with zombies that can switch hands and Ferrymen. Of course, it has a Shinigami in it. He's really cool-looking, his face is completely bandaged except for one eye, which looks angry all the time, and he wears a cape, and has black wings, and... *sigh* Zombie-Loan's shinigami is really cool. And later in the series, he gets chibified, and he's so ADORABLE then!! =^.^= I love shinigamis...
Anyway, back to the zombies... the 2 main zombies aren't the normal, decaying, brain-eating kind; they're undead, but they can think normally and eat normal food and stuff. Plus, they kill brain-eating zombies to earn money to become alive again. It's very interesting...
It's too bad that it's only 11 episodes long. It definitely could've been developed more. Still, I really like it. The two main zombies have really awesome voice actors; the guy who did Hikaru's voice in Ouran High School Host Club, and the guy who did Jirou's voice in Black Blood Brothers AND Jin's voice in Innocent Venus. *sigh* They're sexy voices... and as a random note, one of them has the last name "Akatsuki", just like the ninja organization in Naruto. XD Isn't that awesome?!
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| Kare Kano anime is "wtf?!"... I hate to say it, but the Kare Kano anime wasn't that great.
The animation is ok, since it was made in the 90's, but they did too many comedic face faults for Yukino, which bothered me cuz I think normal Yukino is very pretty. And there is too much recapping of what happened in the series, which REALLY bothered me cuz I have very good memory of stuff like that, so I don't need the constant recapping. And the thing that REALLY REALLY bothered me is that the anime only covers about half of what the manga did!! The anime ends RIGHT BEFORE the school's culture fest and the play that Yukino is supposed to perform. That is total BS, because the play was really awesome in the manga, and I would of loved to have seen it in the anime! Not only that, I would've like to have seen Arima's past in the anime, even if it had been all dark and scary to see, cuz then you could see how Yukino helps him through it and it's soo heartwarming... and I would've like to have seen the future Arima and Yukino, when they're 30 or so and have children and stuff, cuz they have really cute kids.... @#$%&!
Other minor faults are the choices of voice actors I think. Yukino's voice actor was too young sounding, and Tsubasa's voice actor was too old and nasal sounding... Arima's voice actor was also a little too young sounding, but it sounded ok at the serious moments... and the hair color choice for some of them weren't that great. Tsubasa's could of been blonder, and Rika's was a weird shade between brown and purple, if that makes any sense. And Tonami's hair could've been lighter, and his skin tone could've been lighter too, and in better contrast with his hair.
Oh, and the WAY that the anime ended bothered me too. It just ENDS with Tonami realizing that he likes Sakura... >.< They're not the main characters!! You shouldn't just end w/ secondary characters!
I wonder if it's even worth it to buy the DVD, or if it's just better to buy all 21 volumes of Kare Kano... btw, whoever did the subtitling job for the Kare Kano fansubs I downloaded totally sucks. He/She didn't translate half of the important dialogs, hardly translated any of the kanji that showed on screen, and sometimes the subtitles just flashed for a second and disappeared again, which is hardly enough time to read the whole thing. I'm study Japanese, but I'm not advanced enough to recognize everything that is said.
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