Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the final evolution of Gainax. The transformational journey from Gunbuster to Evangelion to FLCL to Diebuster to Gurren Lagann has finally ended with the release of the first epsiode of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. With their latest creation, Gainax has worked three times as hard to extract the pristine essence of ridiculous comedy untainted by unnecessarily impurities like plot or character development. Imagine Gurren Lagann without all the preachy manly life lessons or Diebuster without the touching character dynamics, but with way more funk and screen-shattering action. This is it. And, it’s inexplicably incredible.

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is about two fallen angels called Panty and Stocking working for a black African-American afro-wearing priest called Garterbelt to exterminate evil Ghosts that plague the city of Daten. Panty is a blonde girl whose magical panties can turn into a ghost-slaying gun while Stocking is a long-haired goth whose stocking can transform into a long sword. Panty is also a nymphomaniac while Stocking is addicted to sweet deserts, so you can roughly guess what cardinal sins they were expelled from heaven for.

They also have a pet… dog(?) called Chuck who looks remarkably similar to Gir.

Stocking

The series is animated in a super deformed stylized presentation that bears some similarity to American cartoons like Powerpuff Girls and Invader Zim, and the art style is heavily influenced by graffiti aesthetics. This may be an immediate turn-off for some regular anime viewers, but it actually works quite well once you get used to it. The quality of animation is actually quite decent and all the fast-paced camera movements and fancy text overlays actually require a lot more effort to animate than the typical cookie-cutter anime series.

Panty

It’s hard to describe what exactly is appealing about Panty & Stocking (sorry Garterbelt, the title is long enough as it is), but it is oddly so. It’s just ridiculous to the point of being funny. Things happen so fast that there’s no time for the viewer to stop and think just how ridiculous the whole thing is. It captures some of the ridiculous charm of the American cartoons it borrows from, but at the same time mixes in some of Gainax’s own brand of ridiculousness, which it developed over the course of FLCL to Gurren Lagann.

Now normally this is where I start to deconstruct the story and examine the writer’s perspectives, but there’s none of that here. The most I can say is that Daten City is definitely meant to be American (there’s an allusion to President Carter at the end of the episode and the cop cars are distinctly American), but I am not at all sure how that Americanness brings anything significant to the table beyond the graffiti and hip-hop visual motifs — it doesn’t. Also Garterbelt’s huge afro. Anyway, there’s really no meaning to be found at all. It’s really pure distilled ridiculousness.

In Afro we trust

In each episode, the two angels encounter a new Ghost who fills some kind of special monster niche (e.g. toilet monster) like those monsters in Powerpuff Girls and fight them with their panties and stocking. When they defeat the Ghost, a holy bell sounds out from heaven and they receive a few Heaven Coins, which I suppose they have to collect to redeem themselves, much like a crack addict fishes out coins from a drain to pay for his next fix. Either that or Garterbelt uses the coins to trade for blings. I really don’t know. He does keep them in this box, though.

I guess you could say that Garterbelt is like the pimp and Panty and Stocking turn tricks figuratively (and literally in Panty’s case) for spare change. Maybe the whole show is a social commentary of the American sex industry? I DON’T KNOW BUT IT’S AWESOME.

Typical pigs amirite?

Each story is so short and straight to the point that it’s only 10 minutes. So each episode is really two mini episodes. It’s like watching Powerpuff Girls again, except that Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup are all grown up, violent and vulgar. Shit, maybe this is a show about innocent lost? That’s, like, so deep man.

This almost looks like the city of Townsville

Oh and there’s this awesome part in episode 1 that’s sort of like the equivalent of a mahou shoujo “transformation” scene where Gainax shows off the pretty art style that fans are more familiar with. (I suspect for the benefits of any potential merchandising opportunities.)

O_o

o_O

Wrong show?

Panty & Stocking is probably a love-it-or-hate-it thing. I loved the first episode, but I do wonder if the Gainax can keep the formula fresh for the rest of the 26 episodes. Still, a surprising and refreshing hit to say the least.

What is this I don’t even-

P.S. The ending theme “Fallen Angel” by Aimee B is pretty decent English.

And so it begins, just as the prophecies predicted (somewhat ambiguously). The thundering cries of male ecstasy shake the ground as hordes of frenzied fanboys awake from their winter slumber and descend upon the unsuspecting intarweb. As onslaught and carnage devastate 4chan, no one notices any difference. The absolutist doctrine of the Great One sweeps across the land, engulfing it in a chaotic whirlwind of moé and unleashing upon its innocent a renewed crusade. Throughout history, it has been called many names — ragnarok, apocalypse, rapture — but they are all one and the same. The end of time is finally upon us. The Second Coming of Haruhi.

One day in the distant future, after humanity recovers from a global cataclysm and historians attempt to piece together the past from fragmented chunks of centuries-old hard disk drives, the above paragraph will be so epic. But until then, let’s talk about this new Haruhi thingamogie.

Let’s see… The brand new episode aired on the 22nd. It is now the night of the 24th. We can therefore safely assume that every single person on Earth with a pair of working eyeballs has already watched the episode thrice and written two blog entries on it, except me. As a result, there is little point for me to talk about the episode itself, which by the way is awesome.

How about we talk about relativity instead. Now, as the theory of relativity as put forth by Einstein — and no doubt originally conceptualized by Haruhi before she assumed her present human form — predicts, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. The phrasing of this statement is however somewhat misleading, as the equation doesn’t necessarily prove that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. It merely shows that it takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any mass to a speed infinitesimally close to the speed of light, which logically means that we cannot accelerate a mass to light speed and beyond due to the lack of sufficient energy in the universe. Also, a mass travelling at light speed gives a divide by zero error which crashes the universe’s operating system, Mac OS Ω.

However, something travelling faster than the speed of light is within the realms of theoretical imagination; the entity merely has to do so without having had to accelerate pass the light barrier. This means that either it has always been in the state of faster-than-light speed travel, or it had its kinetic reference frame instantly changed via some kind of apparent violation of the laws of energy conservation (e.g. when you jump through the portal in that awesome game with the psychopathic feminine robotic jailer). The exact state of any “entity” doing so and its subsequent interaction with the flow of time as perceived by ordinary matter such as us will forever remain a mystery except to the subconscious of the Haruhi overmind. It also probably can’t have any “mass” (as we know the term) unless it wants to deal with imaginary numbers.

This brings us to Haruhi’s wish for the Earth to reverse its direction of rotation. Though theoratically her message is being sent out at the speed of light in the form of the light reflecting off her handwritten note, the message itself does not need to be bounded by its medium. A wish is but information, and although electromagnetic radiation is the fastest information carrier known to mere mortals, there is a high likelihood that a more fundamental medium, which Haruhi’s true form operates in, exists. Also, it is safe to say that due to attenuation the electromagnetic information radiating from her tanabata paper will never reach Altair and Vega in any readable form, even by higher beings wielding godly powers.

Therefore, since we do know that the information representing her wish will in fact reach Altair and Vega (due to the fact that she is the supreme creator) but at the same time this information cannot be conveyed by light, we can conclusively say that some kind of unknown cosmic force is at work in transmitting this information and this force is probably not bounded by the limited equations as put forth by the divinely-inspired Einstein. Also, isn’t Mikuru cute? She’s never been my favourite character, but oh isn’t she so cute?

So cute

Anyway, back to the mortal world. It appears that Kyo-ani has outdone itself again this time. I’m not talking about the show itself, but rather the fact that these geniuses have managed to conceive a cunning plan to force people to essentially rewatch the first season, effectively doubling the number of episodes in the second run without incurring any additional cost. Kyo-ani has rejected the boring old concept of “second season” and replaced it with the new-age hipness that is a remixed hodgepodge of new episodes and old episodes sorted by chronological order.

Since some of the new episodes actually take place before some of the old ones, this brilliant tactical move has completely screwed up our concept of the space-time continuum grouping episodes by seasons and numbers. It’s kind of like relativity: depending on the reference frame of the observer, this is either episode 1 or episode 8. I’m going with the former because I reject Kyo-ani’s fancy smancy liberal elitist broadcasting order.

Of course this also means that we can’t tell when the next new episode will be out. It’s kind of like Schrödinger’s Cat: until the next episode airs and gets fansubbed by ten dozen groups, thus collapsing the quantum wave equation, we won’t know for sure whether it will be a new or old episode. How exciting. Although, I suppose one could just collapse the wave equation before that by reading Newtype episode summaries or something, but where’s the fun in that?

On a final closing note, here’s a shocking confession: unlike everyone else, I took the initiative NOT to read the original novels beyond the third book. My experiences with the “first season” (damn you Kyo-ani!) led me to believe that this will result in a much more enjoyable viewing experience. Nagaru Tanigawa may be a genius for coming up with Haruhi (or rather, being influenced by Haruhi’s subconscious to write a book about her), but the story only truly comes to life as animated by Kyo-ani. Reading the novels just feels too much like cheating.

It is therefore in this open spirit of ignorance that I shall blog the rest of the “season” (damn you Kyo-ani!), so please keep that in mind when you post any comments. If you want to discuss unaired plot development from the novel, this is not the place to do it. Instead, you can talk about how adorable Mikuru is in this episode and how the theory of relativity is awesome.

P.S. If I were Kyon, I’d screw up the past just for the lulz.

Why does everyone assume that I would be blogging Gundam 00 Season 2? I never said that I would. It’s not good to be overly presumptuous. I mean, it is true that the only thing keeping this blog from becoming a desolate wasteland is my weekly episode “review”, but that doesn’t mean anything! So yeah, you can take your baseless preconceived notions and stuff them up that place where you stuff things up into! (Turkey?)

So anyway, let’s get this thing going.

Summary

Don’t tase me bro!

These guys called A-LAWS, who sound like a cross between A-HOLES and ARROWS, are totally bad ass dudes who have been running the post-Celestial Being solar system like their own private Sim City, except that Will Wright didn’t make slavery an option in the game. If I had to compare them to one classic group of assholes in a previous Gundam universe, it would probably be Titan from Zeta.

“This is so not in my contract”

Saji is finally realizing his true potential, not. After appearing to be cool and grown-up for the first 30 seconds of his appearance, the degeneration process kicks in and he’s the same old crybaby by the end of the episode. This is to prepare him for the journey to real maturity that he is about to embark on, something he should have already completed in the five years since season one. But let’s give him a break: he’s not been getting any.

He grew up into yaoi doujinshi material

Now, I’m not one to read up on background stories from magazine articles, so I don’t know what the heck is going on in G00 right now. Judging by this episode, I guess there’s a lot of political tension between the regular Earth Special Forces Earth Sphere Federation and the elitist A-LAWS, just like in Zeta. In addition, there are some random third parties like Celestial Being wandering around messing things up, just like in Zeta.

Saji should consult an optometrist

Everyone is all grown up and cool now (just like in Zeta) and Setsuna even changed his suit colour to a less gay shade of blackish grey. Peries and Sergei are living together and there’s some rather disturbing chemistry going on between the two of them that I want to pretend is just my misunderstanding. I like Peries more now that she’s not loli anymore. Louise is an A-LAWS pilot now, which I totally predicted one year ago when she lost her hand.

I quote myself:

… But seriously, I can just imagine Louise being abducted by some top secret joint Union-AEU-HRL black project to manufacture cyborg pilots for whatever super weapon they plan to build to counter the Gundams …

They sewed her hand back

In Gundam, losing an arm means that it’s time for an upgrade! That said, Louise’s a pretty crappy pilot so far, but I guess she’s due for a berserk pwnage sequence sometime in the next few episodes, Stellar style. I think I may be in love.

Thoughts

I realized that my summary didn’t actually summarize anything about the episode, but screw you! I’m sure everyone’s watched the first episode by now! Leave DarkMirage alone!

“AI EIMU GANDAMU”

In any case, the first episode is great. I can’t say that that’s unexpected since the first season had an awesome start too. I want to believe that this is a sign of improvement from the ending of the last season, and that this season will finally be awesome now that everyone’s grown up and not so whiny. I really want to believe it, but unfortunately Sunrise made a cynic out of me with the false hopes it’s been giving me over the years.

In order to not raise my hope again for nothing, I’m going to be a pessimist and assume that episode two will drop right back into clichéd dramaville and it will be a one-way ride to hell from there on. In fact, I’m going to just call this a “trainwreck” right now at this stage, before anyone else does. Remember: I did it first!

Of course, I may be proven wrong. Perhaps the forgettable first season was intentionally meant to be an awful prelude, so as to accentuate the awesomeness that will be season two. Maybe now that the main characters are all grown up, both literally and figuratively, the real story behind this boy-love franchise can finally take its ultimate shape. I want to believe, but let’s not.

In any case, this show should be worth watching, considering the number of female cast members who have now reached full fan-service maturity. Mmmmm.

She’s legal now, right?

It’s a good thing Grace didn’t die. Christina did a great service to mankind

(*ﾟДﾟ*)

Setsuna is most definitely gay

So…*cough* I wonder when the next swimsuit episode will be?

Screencaps

He sounds like a good guy, but his eyes look evil

What’s going on here?

New loli to fill the loli gap now that everyone’s grown up

In space, no one can see you pose

The cameraman is upside down. What an idiot

They repainted their Realdos and call it an upgrade, just like an MMORPG

Red vs Blue, just in case you can’t tell the two sides apart

Tachikoma rejects

Pew pew pew

Twice the penis size

This thing actually looks way cooler than all the Gundams

After Louise left him, Saji became a crack addict

*Cue Imperial March*

I should really be studying.

Surprise! I bet you totally didn’t expect me to blog Code Geass, especially considering that awful parody video I made which should best be left to rot in the depths of hell, my MySpace account and the fact that I used to own code-geass.com.

That said, the fact that I’m a huge Kallen fanboy has absolutely nothing to do with why I have decided to blog R2.

OP Sequence

Miku miku ni shiteageru~âª

OMG who made her cry? T_T

Hurray for racial stereotypes!

For King and Country

Whose illegitimate child is this?

I hope this won’t be the eventual pairing…

Summary

Season 2 starts off with a fast-paced bang that manages to give airtime to most of the major characters that we have come to love/hate.

At the end of the first season, Lelouch faced off his former friend Suzaku and the confrontation ended inconclusively. Due to his (Zero’s) absence from the front line during the critical moment of the Black Knights’ insurgency, the Order was eventually crushed, with most of its senior members captured. (Kallen escaped, though.) Zero himself was announced to have died. Due to the failed revolt, Elevens are now mistreated even more badly than before.

Since then, Lelouch’s memories have been sealed off, presumably by C.C., and he has returned to his regular life as a Britannia student in Area 11.

Kinky

Interestingly, Villetta (the platinum blonde Knightmare pilot) is now a gym teacher at Ashford Academy, placing her right in the comedic relief section of the Geass cast, although that is probably going to change soon.

And I must have missed a few memos, but out of nowhere, Lelouch now has a younger brother called Rollo. Whatever happened to Nunnally?

mai waifu~

In the first episode, Lelouch and Rollo go to a high-rolling casino where Lelouch intends to challenge rich Britannian nobilities to chess as usual. Unknown to him, the remnants of the Black Knights are betting all their remaining strength on a plan to reunite with him and bring back his memories as Zero.

A secret royal military unit meanwhile has kept Lelouch under constant surveillance to lay an ambush and wipe out the Black Knights when they make a move.

chuuu~

The episode ends in (predictable) bloodshed, and Lelouch regains his memories in a déjà vu sequence that feels just like the first episode of the last season. Still, C.C. fans can rejoice.

Kallen and the rest of the Black Knights are once again under the command of Zero. (It seems that they all know his real identity now.)

Opinions

I think it’s a pretty good start. The feel is a bit too similar to the start of the first season, but I’m sure the story will diverge soon considering the difference between then and now, content-wise. The fact that Lelouch regains his lost memories in the first episode suggests that the comedic aspect of the show will probably be short-lived as compared to before.

At this point, Code Geass is pretty hard to screw up. Even if we are served more of the same, the well-established characters will probably pull the series through to the end. That said, I really do hope that Sunrise tries something different. Looking back, the most awesome shows from Sunrise are always the ones that try to be different from Gundam, while the rest suffer from the burdens of their past (“staying loyal to the franchise”) and are inevitably overshadowed by their similar predecessors.

I mean seriously, Sunrise. Let’s be creative and go all out! Make Kallen the main character! Kthx bye.

Screencaps

Isn’t this scene from that ero anime…

A familiar sight

Bunny kick

This alternate future is screwed up

Fanservice @_@

Poison gas

Suzaku is totally the villain now

Now if you would excuse me, I have to write a one-page report on postwar Japan’s new constitution… in Japanese.

Genshiken is a manga series about an anime/manga/game club in a Japanese university. The title is short for gendai shikaku bunka kenkyuukai, or “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture”. Basically it’s an excuse for a bunch of otaku and fujoshi to have a room to hang out after school and make funny references to Gundam and ero-games.

The second season just started airing last night and I’ve got a few bones to pick…

Episode one of season two continues from where the first season and the ova series left off, right around volume six of the manga or so, exactly as I predicted just over an year ago. Maybe Kodansha stole my idea! Or not.

Actually, I’m not going to review this episode, I just want to rant a bit. But here’s a bunch of screen caps if you really want them:

Click to viewer larger version

…Moving on.

As a fan of the manga and the anime’s first season, I’m somewhat disappointed by the first episode of season two. It appears that the producers are not even trying anymore. There’s one Gundam joke and some references to doujin artists, but that’s about it for this entire episode in the comedy department. It’s like the series was robbed by the humour bandit and suddenly lost all the things that made it awesome.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Kyo-ani‘s animated otaku in-jokes encyclopaedia, but I recall the first season to be a whole lot more amusing than this sad mess.

Of course, unlike Lucky Star, Genshiken does have its serious moments and they are pretty good too. But so far season two is just…boring. It’s not funny, and it’s not much else. That and a complete lack of proper introduction means that the producers are not going to woo any newcomers to the franchise. Which I guess means that they are depending on loyal fans of the manga, ergo they don’t have to try too hard. That sucks.

TV-series lame-ified style

And what I really, really hope will not be an indication of future episodes: the Kujian scenes are done in the TV-series style instead of the much more distinct and stylish manga original that was used by the first season. For shame!

Original awesomerific style

Hell, even the new ending theme sounds like a cheap copy of “Biidama”, the ED to the first season. And did I mention that the new logo looks like some monkey took the brush tool in Illustrator and drew a “2” below the original logo by mouse?

I hope it gets better… :(

UPDATED: ZOMG. After watching episode 2, Genshiken is now officially awesome again. Yay!

The general premise of the game is turn-based strategy role-playing etc, and I sort of recall the game having a few somewhat innovative features in its battle system but I can’t remember what exactly.

I thought the game wasn’t that great despite all the hype and I didn’t think the anime adaptation would be anything special either. But Priecia is kind of cute so I gave episode one a try.

Basically the story of Prism Hearts/Ark revolves around this war fought between two religions. There are three neighbouring kingdoms in a land that looks suspiciously like Europe. Windland (where Germany should be) and Vietaly (where Italy should be) are allies and Sablum (symbolized by a red patch of evil) are the weird foreigners.

By calling upon the powers of fearsome biological weapons called “Angels”, Sablum created a vast and powerful army and invaded Windland, conquering a huge portion of it (dark red on the map) before finally coming to a stop. The king and queen of Windland were assassinated by Sablum before the war began, during their trip to visit their neighbouring ally Vietaly. After the war, a knight took over the running of the kingdom and set up the Rozenberg Knighthood Academy to train a new generation of knights to fight and defend Windland.

The main characters of Prism Ark, Hyaweh and Priecia, are students of this school.

In the game, the story starts with you, as Hyaweh, enrolling in the school and learning how to fight, while slowly getting entangled in a web of conspiracies that have their roots in Windland’s past and meeting new party members during the course of the adventure.

The anime, however, takes a different route by beginning with the full party so as to expose the audience to all the important characters first.

I didn’t actually play the game to the end because, despite the admittedly high production value, I was bored by the story. But it seems to me that the anime is really shuffling things around because I don’t recall seeing the flashback scenes in the first episode at all. In fact, I was a little confused by the whole sequence until I did some research.

The first episode basically alternates between two timelines. The first is Hyaweh and his merry gang fighting Sister Hell (what a name), a sister who gave up her faith and joined the Sablum army. Also she has a fricking huge cross-shaped claymore.

In fact, almost everyone has funky-looking weapons. I guess that’s why it’s a fantasy RPG.

The other timeline tells the story of Princea, who is actually Priecia’s mother… (Also, witness how much the graphics have evolved between the two games)

Basically, the flashback tells the story of how Priecia’s father and mother first met and fell in love…when they were like eight or something. These things never happen in real-life.

This part of the episode was quite confusing because I don’t think it was in the second game. I thought at first that the flashback was of Priecia’s childhood, but that wouldn’t make any sense at all due to reasons that you will find out later on in the series.

It also doesn’t help that the two of them look so much alike that for a good while my brain didn’t register that they were supposed to be different characters. I simply assumed that it’s the lack of consistency in animation quality that seems so common with UHF titles these days…

Priecia

Princea

The first episode actually has tons of information crammed into twenty odd minutes. That’s not to say that it’s good or interesting, but it does seem like the producers is trying very hard to grab the viewers’ attention. Maybe too hard. I think a person who has never played the games before might feel somewhat overwhelmed and disengaged by this barrage of disjointed information, but then again maybe not. At least they managed to give every girl some airtime…

I guess ultimately, this is what’s going to keep people coming back for more:

Oh well, perhaps I shall stick around for one more episode to see if the story gets interesting. Priecia does look kind of cute…

The title aside, I actually enjoyed the first episode. Unlike every other Gundam series ever, no mobile suits were stolen in this episode, although for a moment it looked like one was about to be but it was just a false alarm. That’s good news.

Background

G00 is set in AD 2307, unlike the other Gundam series that use UC, CE and other arbitrary era names. This means that in 300 yeas’ time, by 2307, if we still don’t have Gundams flying around in space, we can look back and laugh at Sunrise for their silly predictions.

After running out of fossil fuels, the world presumably descended into chaos and eventually consolidated into three giant blocs, the Union, the AEU and the Human Reform League.

Union

President of the Union

The Union’s full name is “Union of Solar Energy and Free Nations” (太é½ã‚¨ãƒãƒ«ã‚®ãƒ¼ã¨è‡ªç”±å›½å®¶é€£åˆè»), which is frankly a very stupid name and that’s why they like to be called the Union instead. Anyway, it’s formed around United States, which makes the “solar energy” part extremely ironic if you consider the current president’s energy policies and the country’s infatuation with SUVs. But I digress.

AEU

Councillors of AEU

AEU stands for “Advanced European Union”, which is just like EU, except better! Also it sounds like “Anti-Earth Union Group” from Universal Century.

Jinkakuren

Chairman of Jinkakuren

Human Reform League jinrui kakushin renmei (人類革新連盟) is a bloc formed by China, Russia and India, which explains the nonsensical name. The name is shorten to jinkakuren (人革連), which can also mean “People’s Revolution Alliance”, so you can say that it’s a futuristic spin of Communist naming sense. Of course, as per mandated by the Law of Anime Stereotypes, Jinkakuren people are required to wear traditional Chinese costumes such as qipao so that no one would question their Asian heritage…

As usual, Sunrise’s story setting seems to be pretty influenced by current events, although I doubt that in 300 years’ time the geopolitical situation of Earth will be so predictable, considering how fast and drastically things change with every generation. I mean, just half a century years ago Japan took two American atomic bombs, just a century ago the Communist Party didn’t exist, just two centuries ago the Brits burnt down White House and three centuries ago USA didn’t even exist. But I digress again.

The three superpowers control the sources of Earth’s energy production, namely giant space elevators with solar panels in orbit.

Prologue

The start of the series takes place in AD 2301, in a yet-to-exist country in the Middle East. A group of mechas advances slowly through a town, killing everyone while declaring themselves as warriors of god fighting a holy war to cleanse the land of infidels. Save for the mecha, it sounds like something I just read on BBC.

Setsuna F. Seiei, the main character of the series, is still a young guerilla fighter struggling to escape from the fanatic jihadists, but all he has is a rifle that looks like 300-year-old technology. Just when all hope seems lost, an angelic mobile suit makes a deus ex machina entrance and save him, marking the beginning of his new life.

Hallelujah!

Fast forward 6 years, Setsuna is now all grown-up and cool bishounen-ish. He’s now an elite pilot working for the Celestial Being, a mysterious armed organization that is quietly and secretly executing a plan that will change the world.

I’m cool now

Celestial Being

Celestial Being’s goal is to eradicate war through armed conflict (平和の為の武力行使). There are four Gundam pilots, called Gundam Meisters, who pilot the four Gundams manufactured by Celestial Being.

GN-001 Gundam Exia

Setsuna pilots GN-001 Gundam Exia, a high speed melee combat unit.

GN-002 Gundam Dynames

GN-002 Gundam Dynames, a sniper unit, is piloted by Lockon Stratos.

GN-003 Gundam Kyrios

GN-003 Gundam Kyrios, which has a flight mode transformation, is piloted by Allelujah Haptism

GN-005 Gundam Virtue

GN-005 Gundam Virtue, a heavy weapons unit, is piloted by Tieria Erde.

Hmmm, but where’s GN-004? I wonder…

Summary of First Episode

As part of the Celestial Being’s plan, Setsuna attacks an AEU training base in order to destroy their new experimental mobile suit and to expose AEU’s secret arms build-up which exceeds the agreement set by international treaties between the three superpowers.

AEU’s experimental prototype

AEU’s experimental prototype getting pwned

Actually I’m reminded of Gundam Wing now… Oh shit. Well at least Setsuna didn’t steal the experimental prototype as that would have induced much worse déjà vu.

The rest of the episode involves an attempted terrorist attack on Jinkakuren’s space elevator which is foiled by Celestial Being’s Gundam Kyrios and Gundam Virtue. Like this:

Jinkakuren’s space elevator

Terrorists

Jinkakuren’s useless response team

Celestial Being to the rescue!

Mysterious cute girl interlude

Jinkakuren’s still useless response team

Terrorists

Gundam Virtue: I’m a camping whore

No more terrorists

Thoughts

Actually the first episode is pretty good. It has very nice animation, it introduces most of the important characters and factions and it has explosions. Not bad. I also realized that having Yun Kouga, the artist behind LOVELESS, do the character design isn’t as bad as I had imagined. I don’t like the opening theme song, though. I hate L’arc~en~Ciel.

On another note, Haro is in G00 too!

Haro in Gundam Dynames’ cockpit

And, going by the OP animation, this girl, Marina Ismail, appears to be the main love interest. Knowing Sunrise, the OP is usually quite a good guide for predicting plot directions. :P

Marina Ismail

It’s weird that she’s the queen of a newly-founded Middle Eastern country but she looks East Asian…

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that G00’s setting is partially based on recent events of our time, just as the original Universal Century was influenced by the second world war. I shall continue to follow this series because I’m really curious as to how Gundam’s usual anti-war message will be influenced by today’s headlines.

I just caught the first episode of Da Capo II and, as a long-time fan of the game and the franchise in general, I must say, “WTF!?” The whole episode is just one huge blasphemy.

But if you have never heard of the series before or if, heaven forbids, you are a Koko fan, then it’s actually a pretty decent first episode of a series that’s clearly trying its best to differentiate itself from its source material. But I am a fanboy and I find the overall lack of Nanaka to be highly disturbing.

For a quick summary of Da Capo II, I quote myself:

For the uninitiated, Da Capo II is the sequel to the popular bishoujo game Da Capo. Both the Da Capo and Da Capo Second Season anime series are actually based on the first game, leading to much confusion amongst casual fans and the non-hardcore. This time the main character is Yoshiyuki Sakurai who has not one but two sisters unrelated by blood, Otome Asakura and Yume Asakura, the granddaughters of Nemu (heroine of the first game).

So yeah, it’s a pretty generic harem series made for the sole purpose of leeching fanboy money. But it’s reasonably good due to a good mix of character types and a generally strong cast of seiyuu, which I will talk about later. But let me first tell you what I think of episode one…

Point number one, this is the single best scene in the entire episode.

Or shall I say the single best split second. Because it’s part of the opening animation and the only other appearance by Nanaka has her surrounded by a bunch of annoying fanboys (I hate fanboys). WTF!? This makes it considerably difficult for me to enjoy the rest of the episode.

Secondly, Yume, the protagonist’s stepsister, is voiced by Yui Horie! WTF!?

Basically, because D.C. II takes place 50 years after the original, a few of the heroines are related to the characters in the first game. Yume Asakura is the granddaughter of Nemu Asakura, while Nanaka Shirakawa is the granddaughter of Kotori Shirakawa.

In the anime adaptation of the original series, and especially in the Second Season, the producers decided to go with Nemu for the happily-ever-after ending instead of Kotori, the bestest best heroine in the entire Da Capo franchise (tied with her granddaughter). This decision pissed me off a great deal and bought them an express ticket onto my list of people-to-be-killed.

Although Yui Horie had no involvement in the games, she played the role of Kotori for both seasons of the original series, so it’s entirely ill-fitting for her to be taking on the role of Yume, the granddaugter of Nemu. If anything, she should be voicing Nanaka.

This brings me to my third point of discontent: Nanaka is not voiced by Hitomi Nabatame!

Hitomi did an exactly job playing Nanaka in the game. Usually well-funded anime adaptations prefer to drop obscure seiyuu used by the original 18-kin games in favour of more recognizable mainstream names, which is why Yume is not voiced by the same seiyuu as the game. But for Nanaka, this is clearly not true as Hitomi has also appeared in numerous high profile titles such as Shana, Marimite and Sukuran. Whatever the reason is, I hate this decision.

In the anime, Nanaka is voiced by Minori Chihara (Yuki Nagato). WTF!?

Sigh.

Well, these are actually all very personal reasons for my disliking of the first episode. In all fairness, the production value appears to be fairly high and the plot is not copied wholesale from the game, making it somewhat original.

Also, I think that an Otome ending is highly possible, and she is quite high up on my list (not the one of people marked for death, the other list), so I shall continue following this series.

Okay, I’m lazy to describe the episode any further (or at all), so I shall do it the Anime Bloggers Way® and spam a ton of pictures instead. Actually, I’m too lazy to do even that, so I’m going to just insert this table of thumbnails which was auto-generated using Media Player Classic. :)

Click to view the full version

I hate Koko.

School Days is a 2005 AVG from Overflow that featured fully voiced and animated gameplay. Thanks partly to its infamous blood-soaked “bad ends”, the game achieve cult status in otakudom and can be said to be the first and, thus far, only hit for the obscure studio. A sequel starring Setsuna Kiyoura, the most popular sub-heroine in the original game, called SummerDays was thrown together in less time than it takes for snow to melt in an August afternoon, and the result wasn’t very good. At all.

Anyway, the first episode of School Days 2007 aired this morning and I managed to obtain a copy via Bittor… Haitian black voodoo magic. The first episode is pretty much a blow-by-blow remake of the first chapter of the game with a few minute changes. So, how does it compare? Continue reading for my expert fanboy opinions.

Despite the royal screw-up that is SummerDays, the original School Days is still popular enough to warrant an anime adaptation. Being a huge SD fan (I own both games and even attended a pre-launch SummerDays event in Akihabara), I feel conflicted about an anime adaptation. On one hand I am happy about having more Sekai and Setsuna, but on the other hand lies uncertainties and doubts. The original SD, especially the first chapter, had a certain magic that caught my attention when it was first released as a 22-minute WMV demo, something that SummerDays and the other SD spin-offs failed utterly at recreating. I am almost certain that the anime will suffer the same fate… It’s still too early to tell, though. Anyway, moving along…

Basically the story is about a love triangle (or square or pentagon or hexagon) between a bunch of carefree high school students. It’s a little bit more complicated than that but that shall suffice for the purpose of this post. The main character is Makoto Itou and the two main heroines are Sekai Saionji (yay) and Kotonoha Katsura (boo).

Taking a page from my own “advice“, here’s a whole bunch of screenshots from the first episode! As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words. Or was it, JPEGs are a lazy blogger’s best friend. Anyway, here goes 26,000+ words…

WARNING: No (real) spoilers but lots of fanboy jokes!

“Why did I enroll in a school of faceless monsters?”

Glad to see the story still takes place in the same setting.

Split-screen face-closeups faithfully ported from the game.

PANTSU DASSHU!

I am cute, innocent, pure and I don’t carry knives with me. *eyes sparkle*

Do Not Disturb. Professional stalker at work.

Makoto has bigger eyes now.

SEKAI 4EVA!

Character designs are pretty close to the original.

“Wanna make out on the rooftop after school?”

“Ok, but only if Kotonoha can join us too. She is pretty hawt for a fellow girl.”

“Note to self: this guy will stab me in the back one day.”

“Don’t mind me, please continue with your hawt yaoi sechs.”

Sekai’s trademarked 120-degree head turn!

“I have nekkid pics of Kotonoha, you want?”

“Hand them over!”

Best 3 seconds of the entire episode.

“You lied… those were Paris Hilton pics. I had to pour acid into my eyes.”

“I am just an innocent girl. No knives at all. No siree.”

I like this expression.

“Look at me laugh innocently. I am such an angel. *sparkle*”

Yes, the awesome train station scene is in this episode. Rejoice!

Emo…

The ending is just not the same without “Still I Love You” by KIRIKO. :(

And that concludes my 26,000+ words… now for a few more.

The first episode tries to take the safe path by remaining generally faithful to the original and taking very little risks in terms of new content. Although the original game was billed as fully animated, the reality was that only crucial scenes were properly animated in the normal anime series while a good potion of the regular dialogues was done using mouth overlays and a combination of facial close-ups from various angles. This saves a lot of money and effort by greatly reducing the amount of actual animation in the game. That of course does not work very well for a real anime which is why the anime only uses split-screen close-ups for the occasional dramatic effect. So, I guess it’s an improvement over the psuedo animations of the original… right?

Paradoxically, I actually prefer the original. I admit that it’s cheapskate and mostly a cost-cutting decision, but it actually helps to make the emotional scenes stand out more. I thought that the climax scene in the first episode didn’t work nearly as well in the anime because of this (and because of the lack of the awesome game theme song). But maybe it’s all just the irrational fanboy in me speaking.

Moving on… It’s great that the cast is the same because I like it with the exception of Makoto. Sekai Banzai! Setsuna Banzai!

And did I mention that I really, really miss the theme song from the original game, “Still I Love You ~Mitsumeru Yori wa Shiawase~“? I mean rino has a great voice and all but the new ED just doesn’t do it for me. BTW the anime ED theme is Usotsuki (Liar) by CooRie (aka rino).

All in all, the anime was better than I had expected, but not quite the “ZOMG I MUST STOP EATING TO PREORDER THIS GAME NOW” level of pure goodness that was the original episode one.

By the way, I’ve uploaded the legendary Paikia-Fansubs translation of the original 22-minute promo video in all its crappy-editing galore to YouTube. I would’ve re-encoded a new version with better translation but the original soft script has been lost in the labyrinth of time. FLV quality FTL. And yes I do realize that the subs are pretty much unreadable… blame it on YouTube and the typesetter. I do have a copy of the untimed and unedited translations if it helps.

P.S. In case I haven’t already made it crystal clear: SEKAI & SETSUNA ROX MY SEKAI! :)

Animation is OVA quality and significantly better. Soundtrack seems to be the same, except for the new theme song. (Crap BTW.) The episode starts with the Meister Otomes gathering in space to destroy an incoming asteroid and ends off with a mysterious attack on the academy by an unknown invader. In between, we have neko ramen, teenage quarrels, Shizuru in swimsuit, and a taiyaki thrown in for good measure.

In the year AD 2101…

…War was beginning.

Doesn’t this remind you of a certain meme?”

Her mother was hotter

Lens flare!

Arinko, save us!

…from the Engrish!

More Shizuru-oneesama please!

Please don’t feed the Fat Taiyaki Fangirl.

kuroitani is now nekogamisan? The old name was cooler

“I want one thiiiis long.”

“Is there actually cat meat in this ramen?”

Her robed form never ceases to amaze…

Brooms are multi-purpose weapons of self defence

Mai has more airtime in this episode than in the entire TV series

Still alive

Her too

This episode needs more Nao and more Shizuru.

P.S. I can’t believe that her name is actually Lena and not Rena. WTF!