Category: Anime

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Open Your Golden “Gate”

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group shot

This was an intriguing series, but the terseness of the first season means that there will be a second season (at the very least) to try and settle the problems that were both brought up and complicated in this show. This is “Gate: Jieitai Kano Chi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri “ (“Gate: The Self-Defense Forces Fight Like This in That Place”), although it just seems to be called “Gate”. It is either current times or a slightly distant future (like 2020 or something along those lines. Still no hoverboards). It is a wonderful afternoon in the Ginza Area and Yōji Itami (guy up there) is enjoying his day off. You see, he is a JSDF soldier, but he is also a hopeless otaku and is making his way to his favorite store for the latest and greatest in manga and anime.

Suddenly, a massive portal shows up, and I don’t mean like a pulsating spiral of pure evil, but a real archway. It almost looks Roman in construction and design and size. Look, it spans the street and is at least two stories tall, perhaps taller. Then, all of these nasty monsters start pouring out and attack the citizenry. Itami is ticked off, as he had places to go to, but now, he is pressed into service to help protect people and drive back the threat. Well, despite being monsters, these guys come off as medieval, with spears and arrows and swords, so they are no match for modern weaponry and are quickly dispatched (those that aren’t captured). Continue reading

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Wrapping Up 2015: Five Short-Form Summer Anime Series

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My rate of keeping up with newly-debuted anime series has fallen in the past few years. I had decided to not participate in this year’s Anime Secret Santa project since I figured I might not be able to completely watch and subsequently write a review of a recommended anime within the given timeframe. I also passed on joining other bloggers in the 12 Days project that started on December 14th because I didn’t feel like I had completed enough anime since January to adequately compose 12 posts.

I ended up beginning more series from 2015 than I’ve finished and there are others I would still like to try out, though I likely won’t get through those until the first couple months of next year. (My curiosity in wanting to sample new shows has gradually led to a long list of half-watched anime, especially since the growth of simulcasts has allowed me to easily try out a first episode on a whim.) I’ll attempt to wrap up watching as many 2015 series as I can before year’s end and write about the ones I complete.

The bulk of my current anime watching involves series with episodes lasting less than 15 minutes. Those shorter runtimes mean smaller weekly time commitments for me as a viewer and also mean the shows featuring those shorter episodes sometimes have more focused writing and pacing compared to their full-length counterparts. Over the past few months, I completed watching five such anime from this summer.

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Returning After A Two-Month Blogging Hiatus

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Wakaba-san at a water park.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a proper post so I’ll talk about what little I have been watching over the past few months and what I might make posts about in the near future.

I haven’t been keeping up with most of the summer anime series I started watching in July, mainly the ones with full-length episodes. (Here’s a general impressions post from that month with my feelings about 13 summer anime after seeing a couple episodes from each show.)

I’ll finish what I can over the coming weeks and maybe make a short wrap-up post for each one I complete. The same goes for many winter and spring 2015 series that I began without reaching their final episodes, although posts about those may come sometime after I get done with summer shows.

I was happy that Wakako-zake was eventually added to Crunchyroll’s simulcast lineup in mid-August.

The anime I’ve watched the most recently is the Dirty Pair TV series (1985) with the weekly SCCSAV Classics group – we’re about halfway through it after this past weekend’s batch of episodes. It’s been mainly episodic so far and some of the Lovely Angels’ adventures have been more entertaining than others.


Part of the time I didn’t spend watching anime was occupied by listening to music from various anime through the Music in Anime tumblr. I also participated in an episode of the Taiiku Podcast about Cinedigm’s first two-disc DVD set of ’90s basketball anime Slam Dunk. I haven’t listened to that particular episode yet, partly I don’t like hearing my own recorded voice.

We began by discussing some issues we had with the physical release and then moved onto talking about the content of the 14 episodes in that set. I liked what I saw in those episodes enough that I’d like to watch more of the series. If you’re curious about experiencing the English dub for yourself, the same episodes that were on that Cinedigm set are currently on Hulu. Meanwhile, the whole 101-episode series is still available on Crunchyroll with Japanese audio and English hardsubs.

Briefly looking ahead at the new crop of anime set to debut in October, I’m interested in checking out the following shows:

I haven’t made any progress on the Catching Up On Detective Conan project since my season 2 post at the end of May. The next things I need to watch for that are the 1st theatrical film (The Time-Bombed Skyscraper) and then season 3 as arranged by Funimation in North America, which begins with a double episode (The Mist Goblin Murder) and wraps up with a double episode featuring the debut of Kaitou Kid.

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Non-Traditional Forms of Fanservice

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A feature article called “Five Steps to Better Fanservice” went up on ANN this week. Its author, Paul Jensen, made some good points about moderation and setting audience expectations early on in a series. However, the piece’s focus on the common interpretation of the term “fanservice” with regard to anime – body parts, hot spring/beach trips, etc. – left me a little disappointed after I finished reading it. I began to think about other types of fanservice and remembered an old post of mine that briefly touched on that notion.
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Summer 2015 Anime – Initial Thoughts on 13 First (and Some Second) Episodes

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I wrote a post in late June saying I wasn’t looking forward to watching a lot of summer anime, yet I’ve sampled *thirteen* new series so far this month and have enjoyed most of them.
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Catching Up On Detective Conan: Season Two (Region 1)

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I’m continuing to watch older episodes of Detective Conan in an attempt to catch up to the current episodes. I wrote an initial post in November 2014 after completing the first season, as defined by Region 1 DVD box set releases. This post covers season two: Japanese episodes 26 through 51 (English episodes 27 through 52).

~~~Detective Conan Catch-Up Post #2~~~
Last episode watched: JPN #51/US #52 – Driving a Bomb

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