Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc – Revival of a classic Magical Girl

As the quintessential Cardcaptor Sakura fanboy around the blogosphere, I felt it was only right for me to start writing about my thoughts on this at some point. A continuation of the series after 20 years is a pretty big thing, after all. You could mess around with Digimon Adventure tri. or Dragon Ball Super to my dismay all you want, but if a new Cardcaptor Sakura storyline isn’t done right, I’d go apeshit.

Support Kodomo no Jikan

About six days ago, the Kickstarter for the Kodomo no Jikan English localization successfully raised enough money to officially bring this manga series to the English-speaking world for the first time ever, since Seven Seas’ failed attempt to bring it over to the US as Nymphet in 2007.

I’m familiar with the series, and honestly, beyond the surface it’s actually a good read/watch. Personally, I think the controversy is overblown, but rather than jumping into my usual rants, I’ll just point you to an article that I feel is pretty much right on point. If you feel like you’re an open-minded individual and aren’t too sensitive to “objectionable subject matter”, I say pick it up when it’s released and give it a good ol’ college try.

Books, no, plenty of stories in general tackle controversial topics and issues. It’s one thing to say no and not buy it, but if you’re actively against the existence of publications containing ideas and subject matter you find uncomfortable, then I honestly don’t know what to say. As a college student, I’m no stranger to the presence of emotional infancy among my own generation, but of course, I never really know how to respond to it because anything people like me say seems to go nowhere.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei Herz! – Final Impressions

This particular season of Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya was something I was looking forward to. Somewhat-different-but-still-best-girl, it premiered on my birthday month, for one, and I honestly couldn’t wait to see Ko-Gil in action coming off from the manga.

Unfortunately, as enjoyable as it still was for me on its own, Silver Link did a mediocre adaptation job here compared to previous seasons. A lot of it isn’t their fault, but at the very end they kind of wrote themselves into a wall, terribly so, especially compared to how the manga version of 2wei flew seamlessly into 3rei.

Oversensitive people shouldn’t indulge in creative media, ever

Rin’s look of disgust.

Shinji being a sicko.

The justice served by Lancer (and more).

This was from an ANN review of episode 19 of Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works, and no, I’m not going to link to it. If you really want to read that review, look it up yourself, although I suggest not to. I’m not helping these clowns get revenue by linking to them on my blog.

What, so basically “bad guys shouldn’t do bad things because bad things are bad”? Shinji, who is clearly a sicko and desires Rin, should have baked her a batch of cookies instead?

Prequels, Sequels, Originals: Knowing the Difference

Gigantic franchises with multiple iterations often have newcomers thinking to themselves, “Where exactly do I start?”

Usually, folks assume that every franchise that contain iterations that fall into the same in-universe “timeline” require them to start at the very beginning of its chronology. And usually, all it ends up being is one big incorrect assumption.

Franchise Rant: Possibly the worst MANGA anniversary out there (Yuu☆gi☆ou/”Yu-Gi-Oh!” King film)

Best M&W

Recently, there’s been quite a few revivals of my favorite old school weeb Japanese franchises, mostly connected to special anniversaries. To name a few, Cardcaptor Sakura (North American license rescued, new merchandise and artwork celebrating CLAMP’s 25th anniversary), Digimon Adventure (upcoming Digimon Adventure tri.), Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon Crystal), Dragon Ball (30th anniversary = various goodies), etc.

I’m in a pretty happy place right now – most of the anniversaries are proving to be sweet, but there’s one anniversary that I’m particularly dissatisfied with. A shounen gambling manga series called, 遊☆戯☆王 Yuu☆gi☆ou by Takahashi Kazuki, otherwise probably translated as “The☆Game☆King” or “King☆of☆Games” (but nonsensically rendered as “Yu-Gi-Oh!” in the west, which you’re all familiar with for being popular snark bait) is receiving rather shoddy anniversary treatment, at least for the people who have actually… well, read the original manga (all 36 volumes, not just the first seven).

Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuiokuhen Manga/Anime comparison (term paper by Johnny Nguyen)

Wassup everyone. As I’ve stated here, I’ve been taking a Japanese Animation class this quarter at my community college, and as the quarter is coming to a close, there’s so many final assisgnments that I have to do. For Japanese Animation class, I have to write a term paper regarding one of the animated features we’ve watched in class. The topic I chose was a literary comparison between an adaptation and its source material, and since I’m a lazy man, I chose something I’ve seen/read a dozen of times and know by heart to save me the trouble: Rurouni Kenshin. To be specific, the first OVA.

And I’ve decided to post it here as well, because it seemed like it would make a good anime review for the blog. Note that since it’s supposed to be five pages long and I tend to be total poop when I’m writing under academic conditions (c’mon, everyone procrastinates on their homework!), it may seem a bit rushed in places.

Sakura Kinomoto’s birthday

Image Credit: かのら from Pixiv

誕生日おめでとう、 さくらちゃん!

I know it’s April 2nd in Japan right now, but it’s still April 1st here with all the April Fools shenanigans and whatnot. Of course, I don’t give much of a damn about any of that – I’d just like to dedicate this post to the birthday of one of the best female protagonists ever to grace the very existence of anime and manga. If there’s anything Cardcaptor Sakura-related, it’s pretty damn assured that I’ll post about it! 😛

That being said, I haven’t been posting all that much here because of classes (I’m always active on Twitter, though – so you’ll know if I’m actually dead or not). Rest assured, since it’s Spring Break, you’ll be seeing some final impressions on Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren, some after-thoughts on Kill la Kill, a full impression on the Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie trilogy, a few “nostalgia” posts here and there, and some other things I manage to finish up during my (otherwise) uneventful Spring Break in the near future.

Image Credit: Lewd artists from Ningen Modoki

Pupa 01 – Why, Studio DEEN?!

I’m very saddened that one of my most anticipated anime horror series turned out to be a big disappointment. The premise of the source material sounded interesting and creepy enough, and it’s a horror story that definitely has promise. But the adaptation turned out to be way too short. Four minutes per episode? Please. It felt like so much of the plot was missing because of the short length – and I was right, I checked out the first chapter of the manga and there’s so much more exposition and substance to the plot compared to this four-minute first episode. Honestly, the way the sequences of events played in the anime, it honestly gives the viewer a “what the fuck just happened?” reaction instead of being legitimately and psychologically horrified. It’s such a damn shame.

Not only that, but they could have made up for it with at least the shock value… but much of the shock value was lost because it’s censored for TV. Why couldn’t they have made this an OVA, or an online stream, instead? This was a real kick in the ass after the October 2013 delay (I really wanted a scary anime for Halloween, dammit!).

I’m honestly just going to read the manga from here on out (I was hoping for an anime that was on-par with the source material so I could watch the horror in motion). Unlike particular anime fans, when the source material is available to me, I will check it out if there’s a chance that it’s reasonably different – it’s the true essence of the story, after all. It’s not fair to an artist if they get criticized for someone else chopping up their paintings, for instance. I will continue to watch the anime, but I probably won’t be blogging much about it (instead, I’ll probably do more of the manga). It’s such a shame – the music and animation are really atmospheric, but the length just ruins it. Why, Studio DEEN? There’s nothing wrong with anime shorts, but the premise of Pupa was *not* made to be a short.

Fairy Tail x Rave Master

ELIE. NUFF’ SAID.

Here’s one way to get me to watch Fairy Tail! I gotta say… I really miss Rave. That manga has to be one of my all-time favorite shounen manga series, and it’s a shame that the anime adaptation was cancelled before it got to the really good bits of the manga. I love the fact that the original seiyuu from the 2001 anime reprise their roles as the Rave Warriors here. And they looked so good with modern animation and their finalized designs from the manga. Man, I *really* want a reboot of the Rave anime…

As for Fairy Tail, I’ve read the manga and watched some episodes of the anime. I really like the characters, but everything else seems to be so… shallow compared to Hiro Mashima’s previous work, which is disappointing. That isn’t to say that the OVA didn’t inspire me to catch up with the series regardless, if only for Wendy’s cuteness and Natsu’s badassery.