ANIME_4_LIFE's Xanga

Darker than Black + Claymore

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:11:08 GMT

School'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.

It's just not my day...

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:16:26 GMT

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.

El Cazador de la Bruja

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:40:32 GMT

Just 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.

Black Blood Brothers + Zombie Loan

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:46:51 GMT

I 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?!

Kare Kano anime is "wtf?!"

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:42:54 GMT

... 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.

Toward the Terra

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:14:16 GMT

I'm currently watching "Toward the Terra". It's an interesting anime series; it's actually a remake of an old anime movie that was made in the 80's, and the style is even a bit old-school, but still very well done. Overall, it's really good. It's very dramatic, and has a lot of tragic moments, but I like it because it always leaves you hanging at the end of the episode.

It's about a boy, Jomy Marks Shin, in a futuristic society controlled by computers (trust me, it's not anything like the Matrix). In the society, you're supposed to take a test when you're 14 to see if you qualify to become an adult. Jomy fails his test, then gets hunted by the government because he turns out to be a Mu (a person w/ psychic abilities). The Mu people take Jomy in, and he becomes their leader. All the Mu really want is to go back to Earth, because earlier humans had made the planet uninhabitable w/ polluting and whatnot (see? That's why it's so important to recycle and conserve energy and whatnot). So now Jomy is trying to lead the Mu back to Earth (which they call "Terra" for some reason) and bring down the evil computers that control humans.

At first, I wasn't sure how great the series was going to be. Like I said, the animation style is a bit old-school (it's strange at first, but you get used to it), and all the characters had English or Non-Japanese names ("Jomy" sounds an awful lot like "Johnny"...), and looked really American (in the 1st episode, there were at least 4 blonde people). But then I really got hooked around episode 3 or 4 when Jomy first uses his psychic powers, and this really cool character called Soldier Blue showed up. Then it got better when Jomy got this ridiculously awesome outfit (he's wearing a RED CAPE for God's sake XD) and they started introducing cool characters like Shiroe and Keith and Matsuka...

Another thing I like about it is the opening and ending songs. UVERworld does the 1st OP, and it's REALLY good, and it really fits w/ the anime. Then the 1st ED "Love is..." was really good too, cuz it uses Pachelbel's canon as the underlying melody, and the lyrics sung about love are really beautiful. The 2nd OP "Jet Boy Jet Girl" (awesomest name for a song. Ever.), is really catchy and makes you want to dance or jump or do something with your body. The 2nd ED "This Night" feels like an R&B song, except it's in Japanese, so it's a little odd...

I suppose the only thing I don't like is that people keep dying on the show. Shiroe died (poor guy; all he wanted to do was go to Neverland w/ Peter Pan (you'll understand if you watch the series)), and Yui, and Karina, and a whole generation of Mu... then Soldier Blue dies!! He's one of the awesomest characters in the show!! How could he die?! T_T

*sniffle* Well, I still have 7 or 8 episodes until the end of the series. I hope no more awesome characters die in that time...

Kare Kano - His and Her Circumstances

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:39:51 GMT

*sigh* It's so depressing when you finish a good series. I've finished reading Kare Kano manga online. It took a while to get through all of it, cuz I read the 1st 2 volumes a while back from the library, and the entire series is 21 volumes long. Reading 19 volumes online takes a LOONG time, but it's so worth it... @_@

Kare Kano is really good! It's one of the few shoujo mangas I like, because it's realistic and relatable and comedic... plus, I really like Yukino and Arima as a couple. ^_^ And the artwork is very nice. And all the couples that appear throughout the manga are really cute as well! Mmm-hmm...

Although when Arima turned all dark and angry and his family's past was revealed, I didn't like it that much. >.> Dark Arima is scary...

Anyway, now I guess I'll start watching the anime for it. That way, it's kinda like I'm still "reading" the manga... I hope the anime is just as good as the manga!

Masaya Matsukaze - Coolest seiyuu ever

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:41:40 GMT

Masaya Matsukaze is instantly my favorite Japanese voice actor ever. Why? He does Ichimoku Ren from Jigoku Shoujo, Ootori Kyouya from Ouran High School Host Club, AND Mikami Teru from Death Note. ^_^ Three different favorite animes, three different awesome characters, all from one guy. Super-special-awesome...

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 03:01:54 GMT

I'm re-taking the SAT tomorrow. I really have to get a better grade this time around, especially in math. I already have a couple college applications a little bit filled out.

>_> Oh my gawd, I think I'm freakin' out...

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 03:01:52 GMT

Mwuahaha... I am an evil genius! Well, maybe not evil, but I am a genius! Why?

I made a Japanese school girl uniform! Specifically, I made a cosplay outfit for Osaka of Azumanga Daioh! ^_^

Heh, and in record time too. And it's pretty decent! Usually during the school year, I don't have a lot of time to sew costumes in my spare time. But since my mom's borrowing a sewing machine from a friend (our normal sewing machine is in California now, like most of our stuff), I have to work fast before that friend starts asking for her machine back.

Hm, next, I should do a Jigoku Shoujo school uniform... plus, I have a costume party I have to go to, so I should make that too... I have photos! Enjoy!

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v609/AR710/?action=view&current=IMG_0886.jpg
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v609/AR710/?action=view&current=IMG_0885.jpg
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v609/AR710/?action=view&current=IMG_0884.jpg
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v609/AR710/?action=view&current=IMG_0883.jpg