D.Gray-man / Miscellaneous / PV / Random Musings

Random Musings – A Little Bit Of Everything

There are some miscellaneous things this week that I think don’t warrant a full post, but are worth a mention.

  • Hirano Aya’s latest single NEOPHILIA, the second of her three releases on consecutive months, was actually pretty good. At least, it was pretty good in comparison to last month’s LOVE★GUN which I thought was absolutely horrendous (both the PV and the song). NEOPHILIA showcased her vocal talents a lot better, though the PV with the mannequin was a bit too creepy for my tastes. According to the official Lantis website, each single has a separate theme – the first one being CRASH!, the second being COOL & elegance, and the third being HAPPY!. With that in mind, I’m not exactly looking forward to the third single, but it might be worth a listen. It’s titled MonStAR and is due out December 5th, 2007.
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  • Although I’m not actively watching or blogging Genshiken 2, I saw some screenshots of this week’s episode and had to take a look. They expanded on Ogiue’s fantasy from volume six of the manga into this whole boys’ love story that turned out to be way more homoerotic than anything I’ve ever seen on television, yet I couldn’t stop laughing because of how seriously it was portrayed in both theme and animation style. It’s definitely worth a watch if you have the time.
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  • I’ve gotten literally dozens of emails this past week about blogging D.Gray-man again because it’s finally gotten back on track with the manga story, so this is something that needs to be addressed: I have no current plans to pick DGM back up, regardless of how good it currently is or isn’t. Never mind the fact that doing so would require me to drop Myself; Yourself or BLUE DROP, but after having sat through those anime original episodes, I’m just not willing to go back to it again unless it’s damn impressive. The recent episodes 55, 56, and 57 were good, but still not quite good enough for me to reconsider, especially in light of the current weekly schedule. It’s possible I’ll think about it again next season, however that’s still unlikely unless Winter 2008 has some really weak shows. For now, I’ll just stick with reading the manga.
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  • It was officially announced yesterday that the second Vocaloid2 package (the first being the insanely popular Hatsune Miku) will be Kagamine Rin. She’ll be voiced by Shimoda Asami, who’s probably most famous for being the voice of Ami and Mami in THE IDOLM@STER game. In terms of singing, Hatsune Miku is listed as being good for Idol and dance songs, but Kagamine Rin will apparently be good at rock, pop, and even some enka. She’ll also sing at a higher tempo – 85 to 175BPM – compared to Hatsune Miku’s 70 to 150BPM. It should be interesting to listen to, and it’s a surefire bet that this’ll be a huge hit too.
  • mewmew has decided to drop Taiho Shichauzo Full Throttle, citing that it’s not interesting as he had originally thought it’d be, and he hopes this’ll give him more time to concentrate on Ghost Hound and Moyashimon.
  • Oh, and I almost forgot. I’m really looking forward to the first episode of the Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations OVA coming out next week. I’ve got my fingers crossed for Production I.G to do as good a job with it as they did with the Tsubasa movie.
    • CODE GEASS / D.Gray-man / Miscellaneous / Negima!? / Random Musings

    Random Musings – Two Year Anniversary Edition

    Today, the Fourth of July, happens to not only be a national holiday in the US, but it also marks the two-year anniversary of this site. I actually started writing on this blog a little earlier than that, but it wasn’t until I moved here to AnimeBlogger in July of 2005 that I consider the site to have really started. Since then, the site has accumulated 1,646 posts and 45,172 comments, and it’s gotten almost ten and a half million hits. As always, I want to thank all the readers and everyone who’s helped out with the site, and hopefully we’ll have more years of blogging to come.
    Now, on to some miscellaneous newsworthy notes:

  • As you can see in the image above, the cast for the live action Mahou Sensei Negima! drama has been decided. The official site has profiles for each of the girls, and I was kind of surprised by some of the choices, stemming mostly from how the ages of the actresses range from 12 to 24 years old (for easier comparison if you don’t know their names, refer to the Wikipedia pages that list the characters in the same order). Although Asuna and Nodoka’s actresses look about right for their characters, who the heck decided that Kaede should be played by a 13 year old? Anyway, the drama starts in the fall of this year, and you can find some magazine scans of the actresses here.
  • For the guy who specially requested it, here’s the download link (mirror) for the new ED to D.Gray-man, Antoinette Blue by Kitade Nana. However, I still don’t have any plans to blog show again despite the story seeming to pick up.
  • There’s been a bunch of rumors flying about in the recent week about a one-hour CODE GEASS special that’s supposed to be airing on the night of July 28th. Although nothing about it has been confirmed, speculation is that it’s either the highly-anticipated episodes 24 and 25 or it’s a recap special. Given that that’s a week after the premiere screenings, the possibility is certainly there, but I wouldn’t get my hopes quite just yet until there’s been an official announcement. On a related note, ANIMAX’s schedules now state that they will be airing those final two episodes on August 30th and 31st. Whether or not the other channels will get broadcasts before then remains to be seen.
    • Claymore / D.Gray-man / Random Musings

    Random Musings – Claymore Edition

    With all the clamor over Claymore I’ve been hearing and reading about in these past few weeks, I finally got enough free time to pick up the manga again and see why everyone seemed to like it so much. I had watched the first episode of the anime a while back, and at the time, it didn’t seem good enough to warrant me dropping D.Gray-man or DEATH NOTE. After blazing through the first 7 volumes of the manga in a few hours, I think I’ve finally started to understand what everyone is talking about. I felt that the beginning of the story wasn’t great, but it really got good once the Teresa arc started, and the rest of it just kept me reading. It also, of course, got me very interested in the anime.

    In many ways, I think Claymore is the quintessential shounen-style show based on the principles of friendship, effort, and victory that series from Weekly Shounen Jump are known for (before anyone asks, yes, I do realize that Claymore originally started in Monthly Shounen Jump). Jaalin likes to think of it as a supercharged version of Bleach. Now that’s in no way a bad thing since these types of series are very entertaining to read and watch, and Claymore adds a distinctively darker and more violent feel. In fact, I was quite surprised at how freely limbs get chopped off and people lose their heads – it makes the violence in Bleach look quite tame in comparison.

    For those of you who don’t care about anything I just said and want me to get to the point: Yes, this does mean I am going to be blogging Claymore. I’ll be replacing D.Gray-man in the schedule with it on Tuesdays for all of summer season until Claymore ends. Truthfully, if D.Gray-man hadn’t become a chore to watch and blog due it being stuck in anime-original mode while the manga had such an awesome story going, then I wouldn’t have even considered doing this. But the fact is that it did become like that for me, so this wasn’t too hard a decision to make once I got hooked on the Claymore story. I’ll be starting on Tuesday with episode 13, and I look forward to Ophelia’s upcoming battle with Clare.

    D.Gray-man / Gurren Lagann / Random Musings

    Random Musings – D.Gray-man Manga And Gurren Lagann News Edition

  • I finally got caught up on the D.Gray-man manga last night after sitting down and reading seven volumes worth of material, all the way to the most recent chapter. Given how generally disappointed I’ve felt with the anime up until this point, I was curious to see what else the manga had to offer since I had previously stopped reading at a point right after the first Krory arc. Overall, I was incredibly impressed with how action-packed and fast-paced the manga was, and it turned out to be a lot darker and bloodier than I thought it’d be. Everything else I have to say about it I’m going to put in spoilers:
    Show Spoiler ▼

    I really would love to see a good animated adaptation of the manga, but I have my doubts if the current anime is ever going to get there, and even if it does, the question remains if there will be too much edited out in terms of violence or religious imagery. Anyway, I’m going to give the anime four or five more episodes to see if there are any signs they’ll be returning to the manga story, and if it doesn’t look promising, then there’s a good chance I’ll be dropping the show by the end of this season.

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  • In Gurren Lagann news, there was a GAINAX Gurren Lagann panel held at the Fanime convention in San Jose, California this past weekend featuring Yamaga Hiroyuki, one of the people responsible for planning the show and current president of GAINAX. You can read a full report here, but the interesting stuff included:
    -Drills were chosen because boys like drills in Japan.
    -Because of the negative reaction to episode four, they won’t be trying stylistic changes like that again.
    -Episode six was edited because it was airing early in the morning in Japan. The DVD will have the full version, which might feature what they originally had in mind: Kamina peeking at the girls in the hot springs.
    -The reason humans live underground will be explained in episode 16.
    -They are currently up to recording episode 21.
    -Yoko may or may not be 14 years old, but time underground may be measured differently.
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  • Also, the official site has updated with their romanizations for the new bad guys: Adiane, Cytomander, Guame, and Lordgenome. Given that last name and focus on genetics, maybe we should be calling him the Helix King instead of the Spiral King. The Japanese word rasen can be translated both ways.