The End of 2010

Well 2010 is now coming to an end and 2011 is knocking at our doorsteps so it's time for my year end of post. Time sure flew by quick this year but I suspect that has more to do with biological conditioning more than anything else. Oh well, let's start off with the usual list:


Top 10 Anime of 2010

1) Katanagatari
2) Durarara!!
3) Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin
4) Angel Beats!
5) Shiki
6) Shinryaku! Ikamusume
7) Kobato
8) Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt
9) Star Driver
10) Super Robot Wars: The Inspector


There were some pretty good shows this year though not as quite as many grabbed my attention like last year. There were plenty of good OVAs and movies that came out this year to make up for that but I'd rather have more interesting shows in the season line-ups instead of the all too many harem and fanservice shows this year. Though I do disagree with the controversial bill 156 that'll take effect halfway next year, I do hope that this will get the studios to stop producing crap like Ladies vs Butlers and Ichiban Ushiro no Dai Maou. I hope to see some more plot oriented series next years and that Kyoto Animation finally stops wasting their talents on stuff like K-On!!. I'm a fan of the manga and it's humor but I really feel that they screwed up with the anime cause they stretch it out as much as they could taking out all the funny so they could trick moe-addicted saps into worshipping fictional characters doing everyday stuff in dull and melodramatic ways. That's what I have to say about that matter so let's move onto the "Best of the Year" bits.


Best Animated Movie - Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance

It's was a pretty close one here between this and the Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi but let's face it, Eva 2.22 was so much more awesome. Disappearance had the best animation work of the year and had lots of good scenes but Eva 2.22 had amazing mecha battles with awesome moments that just keep topping the one before it.


Best OVA - Darker Than Black Gaiden

With four episodes to it and a lot of great moments that explained plenty of things from the first and second seasons it’s a real no brainer here.


Best Animation - The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi

Is it unfair to give this one to a movie when it obviously has the budget to win? No, not when Disappearance not only blew everything else from this year out of the water but everything else from the years before it. Kyoto Animation put in a LOT of work into this one and it really, really shows.


Best Anime Soundtrack - Katanagatari

This one was very hard to choose from with all the amazing soundtracks from this year. Besides Iwasaki Taku's powerful and occasionally quirky feudal themed compositions there were also Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt's awesome techno beats and Black Rock Shooter's amazing tracks. Katanagatari had some of the man's best works with songs like "Gettouka" and "Bahasa Palus" in just the first OST album. There were quite a few other tracks that I loved that weren't in the first one while the other two already had theirs fully bared. Mind you though, this only applies to the anime cause Murray Gold's magical work for series 5 of Doctor Who is nothing short of spectacular and easily triumphs over them all.


Best Song - "God Only Knows"

Eight minutes long, composed of several chapters and sung in an epic hymn-esque fashion to usher in the Capturing God himself, "God Only Knows" is the clear winner of the year. The anime was a bit of a disappointment but this song was just so goddamned amazing. Honorable mentions go to "Gettouka" and "Bahasa Palus" of Katanagatari, Supercell's "Hero" as well as "I am the Doctor", "Amy in the TARDIS" and pretty much the rest of series 5's albums.


Best Character - Ika Musume

Ika-musume wins this year hands down. Shichika saw some of the best character development this year but nothing can beat the invader from the sea. I totally called it when I said that Ika-musume would make a great mascot when I reviewed her manga series.


Best Comedy - Seitokai no Yakuindomo

Well this might be a bit odd considering I put up Shinryaku Musume up on my top ten but not this but watching a bunch of perverted girls crack innuendos and dirty jokes was both absolutely hilarious and incredibly refreshing to watch. If you must know where exactly I place this series on my rankings this year I'd say at 12th, just behind Kuragehime and after Hanamaru Kindergarten. Speaking of Hanamaru Kindergarten...

Most Memorable Scene - Hanamaru Kindergarten, The Panda Neko Taisou

I will probably never forget this dance for the rest of my life. If I ever have a daughter I swear to God that I'm getting her a Panda Neko costume just like Hiiragi's and have her do this dance!


Biggest Disappointment - Iron Man

Remember when I said The World God Only Knows was a bit of a disappointment? Well, the Iron Man anime was a complete and utter failure. The trailers made it look like the awesome shit that the movies wished they could be but then Madhouse turned it into the shit regular shit shits. I really wonder what went wrong during development that made it that way. On a slightly related note, the missing battle between Sabi Hakuhei and Yasuri Shichika.


And to wrap up my last post for the year, here's a list of things to look forward to in 2011:

• Doctor Who Series 6
• Sherlock Series 2
• The Fate/Zero Anime
• The Stein’s;Gate Anime
• The Nintendo 3DS
• The English Versions of Pokemon Black & White
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part II

Movie Review: Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha The MOVIE 1st

Finally got around to watching the Nanoha 1st movie that’s been hiding around somewhere amongst the other things I’ve got to get around to watching and I have to say I didn’t feel like I wasted two hours and ten minutes on this remake. I considered the first season of the Nanoha series to be its weakest but this retelling has me putting it on par with the second. By that I mean I thought the movie was pretty big improvement from the first season much like A’s was.

The movie recaps the events of the first season and chronicles the very beginning of Takamachi Nanoha’s life as a magical girl and her relationship with Fate Testarossa. Some sources like this one say that the movie itself is not only an alternate retelling but also exists in the franchise’s universe as well as a semi-biographical “based on a true story” movie, one that apparently that had consultation from the main characters as well so any changes anyone feels they’d like to complain about should voice them out to the in-universe production staff as well as Nanoha and Fate themselves but I think they’d find that the metaphorical meta wall is going to make that very difficult.

This actually is official promo art.

So what are these changes they made to the movie exactly and what do I think of them? The biggest one much to amusement is the fact that they downplayed Yuuno’s importance in the movie. Even after Nanoha found out that Yuuno was actually a boy and not a ferret she still let him sleep in the same room with her as a ferret and we get no mention of what happens to him after the incident is over. He basically demoted from an actual person to a magical pet. Make that of what you will but I’m taking that as further proof that Nanoha and Fate are two loving mamas happily raising their daughter with little to nil involvement from Yuuno. They obviously had a reason to increase the subtext behind their first meeting cause I definitely don’t remember Fate saying Nanoha’s name over and over again with increasing joy or their farewell hug being quite so intimate and long. You’d have to be blind not to see it by that point cause well… You know what, let me just show you:

I present the evidence right here

Exhibit A


Exhibit B


Exhibit C


Exhibit D


Exhibit E

Take that YuunoxNanoha shippers! NanohaxFate is the one true pairing!!!

Ahem! Well, my yuri fanboy tendencies aside they really did make quite a number a good changes to the movie. They cut out pretty much every bit of padding the first season had and replaced it with much better flowing scenes and great new action sequences and added in new scenes to show Nanoha’s development better as well as more backstory on Precia and Fate that really made the story even more tragic than it was before. The animation’s obviously improved by leaps and bounds compared to the original series but it’s not quite at the standard you’d come to expect from anime movies nowadays but more like a high quality OVA. That however does not apply to the battle scenes which are as I have said before are quite good. My favorite one was where Nanoha shot out a Starlight Breaker at Fate and leveled an entire city in the process proving that nine year old girls are a force to be reckoned with and possibly feared, especially with magical girls like Nanoha. There are many reasons why Nanoha is often compared to a Gundam and that right there is one of them – not very many Gundams are capable of demolishing an entire city in one blast. I think she probably still had it on stun too when she shot that cause there’s no way Fate could have survived it otherwise.

Just imagine what she really could do with this

All in all it was pretty good remake of the original season. They really improved on a lot with this one. Music, animation, emotional depth, logistics – everything really. They even paced the whole thing nicely enough that you’ll feel that two hours and ten minutes was just right for the movie. While I’d like to see a fourth season animated with the quality they put into the movie I’m pleased to know that the 2nd movie, the remake of the second season, is already in the works and is set to premiere in 2012. I’m really looking forward to that one since A’s was the best season of the series and am hoping that they somehow improve Nanoha’s Divine Buster sniping scene since that was the best part of the series. Here’s to even better Nanoha movies. Let’s hope that the Mayans aren’t right and we’ll get to live long enough to see the StrikerS remake.

My favorite frame of the movie

Movie Review: The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi

The long awaited animated movie adaptation of the fan favorite fourth installation in the Suzumiya Haruhi light novel series finally went on sale around two weeks ago and I am very pleased to say that Kyoto Animation pulled it off perfectly. It’s been years since I last read that particular novel but it’s still as clear to me in my memory now as when I had first read it which really is a testament as to how brilliant that book was. Having declared that I can honestly say with the utmost confidence that it is most faithful movie adaptation of any novel that I’ve ever seen.

The movie runs 2 hours and 43 minutes long and revolves around Kyon who suddenly woke up one day that the world around him had changed overnight as he slept. He doesn’t realize this at first but he slowly comes to this shocking revelation that all the odd discrepancies between his and everyone else’s memories culminating with the impossible return of his attempted murderer Asakura Ryouko in place of the ever troublesome brigade chief he’s come to know in the past few months of his life. Coming to grasp this world so similar to his and yet so significantly different to the one he has known all this time he must discover the truth behind the events that put him in this situation and find a way to fix things so that they go back to the way it was.

I don’t mean to come off as fanboy of the series with what I’m about to say about the movie but this is in my opinion one of the very best things that anime has to offer. The animation work seen in this movie is its biggest plus and deserves absolute praise as they just piled detail upon detail upon detail here. Every character named and unnamed feel like unique individuals while the scenery can be just so mindbogglingly breathtaking that you have to wonder just how much work they put into all of it. The audio that went with the visuals was also made use of superbly and conveyed the ambience and tone of the movie perfectly. We’d get quiet sombre melodies when we were meant to feel Kyon’s anguish and alienation in the world while uplifting, hopeful tunes when he’d find some form of a clue out of his predicament. Subtlety was clearly the key to making this as good as it is. They went as far as to show very small things like Yuki stroking a teapot to show just how timid she is in the new world and even put in sounds like the flapping of arms and the low humming of lights, sounds that we’d just ignore and tune out. KyoAni did far more than go the extra mile with this one, they ran a whole marathon just for the heck of it.

Kyon's defining moment

Though the movie is called the Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi, she doesn’t really do much in the story and most of the focus goes to Kyon and Yuki. Disappearance is there to show just how much the two of have changed and what their roles in the messes that Haruhi brings them into means to them. When you think about it, there really isn’t much plot and is pretty much secondary to the characterisation but that more than makes up for it. You’re probably not even going to realize that with how great the scenes are. My favorite parts were when they played Asakura showing up in class like a horror scene, Kyon’s expanded inner conflict scene and also when Asakura showed up at the end to “protect” Yuki. Asakura showing up was just as good as the novel made it out to be but they really outdid themselves with Kyon’s inner conflict with whole symbolic way they went about it when it was just a bunch of lines in the book. As for Asakura’s protection, I just loved how psychotic she was while giving Kyon that pleased smile of hers.

Asakura the Happy Knife Wielding Psycho. My favorite character of the series.

I do have to point out that they did exaggerate some of Kyon’s reactions, particularly his outburst at Asakura but I think that just made the later scenes even more powerful, especially so for the self-confrontation scene. The movie can also seem a little draggy in the beginning but I suppose that was intended as bit of a refresher for fans since even Kyon lampshades the fact that it was a very long prologue. The rest of the movie though is quite enjoyable though so you’re probably not going to feel the length till maybe the end with Koizumi but that’ll wear off when you get to Yuki.

When I read the original novel I thought that Tanigawa Nagaru painted an amazing picture with his words but what I saw in its movie was an even grander one that surpassed. It really did make up for the whole Endless Eight troll they pulled on us in the second season and it was most certainly worth the wait. You might even want to watch it twice if you don’t mind the sitting down again for it for another few hours. Even if you don’t want to make just make sure wait till after the credits are done cause there’s an extra scene they threw in as fanservice for Yuki fans. Another really nice touch that wasn’t in the book.

This wasn't it but I thought it deserved to be shared

Movie Review: Gulliver’s Travels

Went to watch this with some of my friends some time ago when I was actually hoping to catch Warrior’s Way at the cinema that day. Unfortunately, maybe, they stopped showing it that day so we were left to choose a different movie to spend a couple hours on and our fallback movie, Tangled, wasn’t available. That left us with either this or Tron Legacy to watch and I really didn’t want to have to sit through that again so we opted for this. Frankly I’ve never liked any of Jack Black’s roles in the movies I’ve seen him in and this one just cemented my opinion of him – a noisy living indication for what movies I should stay away from. I really hated Nacho Libre by the way.

Jack Black’s latest offering to the ever increasing pile of crap they churn out over in Hollywood is just as you would imagine it to be, a story about a man-child set in the classic tale of the giant who finds himself in the classic tale’s island of Liliput where very, very, very tiny people live in a pre-tv age and view him as a giant beast. In this take of big man on tiny people island, Jack Black’s character is a guy who’s life is going nowhere and tries to impress the girl he’s taken a fancy to for the past five years by taking up a travel writing assignment despite having little to no experience with either of the necessary components of that task. He ends up going to the Bermuda Triangle where he gets caught up in this strange magical waterspout that has him washing up on the shores of Liliput and in a situation I suppose you could call an adventure.

I should start off with the biggest problem I had with the movie – either nobody on the writing team cared enough to write a good story or they hired a bunch of kids to the job. You can tell that they really aren’t bothering to use the other characters for anything and give them lines like “We are kidnapping you!”, “Oh! I am being kidnapped!” and my personal favorite, “She has been kidnapped!”. Whatever the case may be it seems that they tailored the whole thing to Jack Black and the type of acting he’s been pigeonholed into all this time and that was something I had hoped that the movie would avoid. I would have commended them for not throwing a single fart joke in there but they just had to replace it with showing a giant ass and moon us. Did I mention that at one point he had to piss floods of nasty brown liquid on a burning palace and save it? I can never unsee them and my memory continues to refuse utter and complete erasure from my brain banks.

Now let me share my thoughts on what they could have done to make the movie better – focus on the secondary characters. Though Gulliver was the eponymous main character of the movie I found that I wanted to see more of the other characters than him. I was actually cheering for the antagonist played by Chris O’Dowd, Roy of IT Crowd, who was an absolute delight to watch. I didn’t recognize him while I was watching movie but I certainly did like his take of the only sane man in Liliput. Besides that brilliant Irish funny man there was also Marshall of How I Met Your Mother fame. Both these men have shown just how much funnier they are than Jack Black in their respective shows and played their roles as best as the script would let them so I simply cannot not lament on how much better the movie could have been if they had been given more attention. The romantic subplot was just tacked onto the ridiculously predictable and unappealing main plotline and could have been explored better by having General Edward and Horatio square off against each other at some point. I mean seriously, who was actually expecting anything good out of Gulliver? Definitely not me.

In order to truly enjoy this movie I believe you’ll require two things: 1) The company of others to snark with and B) The ability to turn off your brain. I had the former but the latter would not come to me since I didn’t sneak an ice cold slushie or the like with me to give myself brainfreeze with that day. I don’t consider this a movie worth sitting down for an hour and a half at the cinema so I would suggest you don’t bother with this one unless you have elements 1 and B. If I had gone without either of these then I’d assume the people sitting next to me might mistake my ever frequent cringing for a seizure.

Video: Shinryaku Shinryaku Shinryaku and a Santa

Found this MAD someone made up on the second place of the Nico Nico rankings and it's got the cast of Shinryaku Ika-Musume parodying the original opening song of Darker than Black along with a trailer for DtB's second season and a mock-up of what I assume was the title menu of its DVDs. I was honestly surprised at how many usable scenes Ika-musume had for this video and was highly amused by how well they fit the music. Fans of both series simply have to check this out cause it's of LMAO quality and just shows how great the production was for Shinryaku Ika-Musume.

Darker than Ikack - The White Invader

There was also this video someone made for Christmas not too far down from the MAD on the rankings and it features a rags to riches toymaker and the nun that's always been there for him. Love the art style and the short and sweet story it told so do yourself a favor and enjoy this vid as well.

Incidentally, this year's Doctor Who Christmas special went pretty much the same way. A pretty good take on the whole Christmas Carol plot.