Tag: Anime

One Comment

What I May (Eventually) Watch From The Spring 2015 Season

  By


I’ve fallen behind on what I started watching from the winter 2015 season so my primary focus for spring might be finishing most of those shows. However, I’m also interested in watching some new series that premiere in April.

Disappearance of Yuki Nagato:
I liked the first season of Haruhi when I watched it years ago but I think this spinoff series will have a less hectic pace since Yuki, not Haruhi, is the main character. I haven’t read any of the source manga so I don’t know how differently the characters will act, aside from Yuki showing more emotion.

Food Wars (Shokugeki no Soma):
I’ve only read the first chapter of the manga but it seems like its adaptation will be energetic based on the trailer I saw.

Baby Steps 2:
I only saw two episodes of the first season but I do want to watch the rest of that and proceed to season 2 soon after.

Digimon Adventure Tri:
Digimon was a part of my Saturday morning cartoon watching as a kid so I’ll at least try out this sequel series with the main characters in high school. I’m currently going back through the first season in Japanese via Netflix and there’s a lot of stuff early on that I don’t remember.

Hello! Kiniro Mosaic:
The first season of this school comedy was a favorite of mine from 2013. Happy to see more of it with the addition of a new teacher into the mix.

Sound! Euphonium:
Schoolgirls playing musical instruments is not a new thing for Kyoto Animation (K-On!). This one seems like it may be more focused and less silly since the girls will be part of an orchestra.

Teekyu 4 & Takamiya Nasuno Desu!:
I didn’t get into Teekyu until the third season began airing and then I marathoned all the episodes in a week or two. Both will be short-form shows like the previous seasons. Nasuno isn’t my favorite character of the four main girls but I’ll probably keep up with her spinoff show if it’s not horrible.

Lupin III:
There aren’t many broadcasting details on this new series in the franchise other than it will first debut on Italian television. I haven’t seen specific start dates for Italy or Japan – just sometime in spring.

No comments

My Appearance on “Anime That Everyone Disagrees With You On” Podcast

  By


I was recently a guest on the 2nd episode of Flawfinder’s fairly new “Anime That Everyone Disagrees With You On” podcast. My contributions were Voices of a Distant Star (my not-so-fond-of choice) and Madlax (my liked series that others dislike). It was a fun experience being on a podcast again and talking about differing viewpoints.

Yosuke Kuroda autograph on Madlax vol. 1

I mentioned briefly during my “liked” section of the episode that I’d like to rewatch Madlax to see if I enjoy it as much now as I did when I first watched it in college. I still have ADV’s DVD volumes in my collection so it wouldn’t be hard for me to do whenever I get around to the task. I remember many of the characters but not much of the later episodes’ plots.

No comments

Megumi Momono, Movie Lover

  By ,


The day after watching this year’s Oscars ceremony, I was still thinking about the romanticism that was expressed for motion pictures during it, particularly the opening musical number involving host Neil Patrick Harris, Anna Kendrick and Jack Black.


My mind wandered to an anime character who loves watching movies, from a series I watched years ago – Megumi Momono from Mahoraba. Megumi has many DVDs in her room at Narutaki-sou. In episode 11 of the anime, she spends a day with main character Ryushi in a shopping district and they see a movie together, which reminds her of seeing films with her boyfriend. We find out that her boyfriend went overseas for cinema studies.


I have the first four volumes of the manga but I haven’t read much of it so I don’t know if Megumi and her boyfriend see each other again in person or what kind of send-off/wrap-up she has at the end of the manga.

I don’t consider myself a cinephile or a film expert but I do want to watch more movies and dive deeper into older ones to expand my visual culture literacy.

No comments

Yuri Kuma Arashi At Its Halfway Point

  By


At the start of the winter 2015 anime season, I wasn’t looking forward to watching many new shows. I ended up trying out 9 first episodes and have 8 of those series currently marked as “watching”, despite being a few weeks behind on some of them. One I recently caught up on was Yuri Kuma Arashi, directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara with animation production by Silver Link.
Continue reading

No comments

Three Books About Japanese Movie Posters

  By , , ,

At Anime Expo 2011, I bought a book called Anime Poster Art for a discounted price of $5 from Akadot/DMP’s dealers hall booth. I looked through it at the time, intending to write something about it, but I didn’t get around to doing so.

Four years later, I found that two similar poster-focused books from the same cocoro books imprint – Japanese Movie Posters and Silver Screen Samurai – had cheap listings on digital storefronts such as Amazon’s Kindle store. I decided to buy both to go along the physical copy of Anime Poster Art that I still own.

Continue reading

2 Comments

Expect A Few More Blue Hearts Covers as “Rolling Girls” Insert Songs (Updated)

  By ,


I’m watching a handful of new anime this winter season and the one that has impressed me the most so far has been Wit Studio’s The Rolling Girls. Its visuals are very colorful and its vocal songs (OP/ED & inserts) are catchy, too. The thing that caught my attention when I looked more closely at the credits is that those songs so far are all covers of tracks by ’80s & ’90s Japanese band The Blue Hearts.

The Blue Hearts’ most recognizable song in the West is likely their 1987 hit “Linda Linda” since it has been featured in other media after its debut including the 2005 film Linda Linda Linda (here’s an English trailer), wherein a high school girls’ band plays covers of Blue Hearts songs. That movie was released on DVD stateside by Viz Pictures in 2007 but I think it’s currently out-of-print.

Back to Rolling Girls: covers of the following Blue Hearts tracks have aired so far, sung by the show’s four main voice actresses: (UPDATED 4/1)
– “Hito ni Yasashiku” (人にやさしく, 1987) as main opening theme, episode 1 ending theme
– “Tsuki no Bakugekiki” (月の爆撃機, 1993) as episode 2-3, 5-7 & 9-12 ending theme
– “1000 Violins” (1000のバイオリン, 1993) as episode 1 insert song
– “Eiyuu ni Akogarete” (英雄にあこがれて, 1987) as episode 2 insert song
– “Nō Tenki” (脳天気, 1993) as episode 4 ending theme
– “Nagaremono” (ながれもの, 1988) as episode 5 insert song
– “Train-Train” (1988) as episode 6 insert song
– “Sha La La” (シャララ, 1988) as episode 6 & 9 insert song (instrumentals)
– “Neon Sign” (ネオンサイン, 1991) as episode 10 insert song (instrumentals)
– “Aozora” (青空, 1989) as episode 11 & 12 insert song (instrumentals)
– “Yūgure” (夕暮れ, 1993) as episode 11 insert song
– “Owaranai Uta” (終わらない歌, 1987) as episode 12 insert song

Also: “STONES” (“Some Girls” by Rolling Stones?) as episode 8 insert song

There’s a song collection CD with an April release date that claims to feature five cover songs from the show so there should be at least three more debuting in future episodes.


Rolling Girls isn’t unique in using voice actors’ covers of older Japanese songs – the ending theme for Maria Holic season 1 was a cover of YMO’s “Kimi ni Mune Kyun” and Penguindrum had many covers of ARB songs including “Rock Over Japan” (aka the SEIZON SENRYAKU theme).