Honey & Clover / Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Random Musings – Honey and Clover Drama Edition

  • There was a short commercial aired earlier this week for the new Honey and Clover live action drama. Pictured above from left to right are Hagu (played by Narumi Riko), Takemoto (played by Ikuta Toma), and Morita (played by Narimiya Hiroki). You can find the rest of the cast on DramaWiki, and the official site is here. Hagu’s actress looks a lot taller than I would have pictured her (she’s 163cm tall according to her wiki page), but I guess it’s hard to find an actress to fit the exact profile. Everyone else looks about right though. The series is set to begin January 8th on Fuji TV, and I’m more than interested enough to check it out and see if they can capture the same feel as the manga or the anime. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be that good, after watching the Negima Drama, I think I can stomach any type of adaptation now.
    Download the commercial.
  • I’m not a huge Weekly Jump reader, so I don’t know if this happens for other series too, but I found it odd that To LOVE-Ru‘s tankobons have nudity in them while the magazine version does not (compare this and nsfw this). I always thought that Weekly Jump series were targeted towards a younger audience, and this makes me wonder what they’d do if the manga were ever licensed in the US.
  • I’ve started work on the preview for the next season. There are a relatively smaller number of shows (around 20) compared to the fall, so hopefully it won’t take too long to finish. I’ll also be putting up a poll around the middle of this next week asking for your opinion of the best show of 2008.
  • For those of you wondering about an update on Jaalin’s whereabouts: I still haven’t heard from him. I’m getting rather worried, but unfortunately I can’t do anything except wait and hope nothing bad happened.
    • CODE GEASS / Random Musings

    Random Musings – CODE GEASS Second Series in Spring

    A quick note before I head off to class: Newtype’s January issue has announced that GEASS’s second series is confirmed for Spring of 2008. As you can see in the image above, there’ll be a new boy named Rollo (I didn’t think we needed a shota character, but whatever), and the white text questions if that Zero is actually Lelouch. Also, the setting for the new series will be the entire world instead of mainly Japan. They haven’t yet declared a broadcast time for it, but I assume that since the Gundam 00’s first part’s ending will coincide with the beginning of this, there’s a high chance it’ll be taking that coveted Saturday 6PM slot.

    Miscellaneous / Random Musings / Shakugan no Shana

    Random Musings – The Melonpan Song

     

    If you’ve watched Shana at all, you’re probably aware that she loves to eat melonpan. Well there was a song released last month called 「メロンパンのうた」 (Melonpan no Uta – The Melonpan Song) by a nine-year-old singer/songwriter girl named Yuppi. It’s an incredibly cute song with some simple lyrics that have been stuck in my head since I heard it (“there is anko in anpan, there is no melon in melonpan, there is curry in curry bread, there is no melon in melonpan”) and the video above is the PV for the song that debuted on Music On! TV’s Top 100 Countdown at #55 a couple of days ago. At least one person has already suggested that this should be Shana’s OP for next season. 😀

    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.
    • Random Musings / School Days

    Magical Heart Kokoro-chan (School Days OVA) Coming Soon

    This was a bit of odd news today: School Days is getting a Kokoro-chan OVA DVD to be released next year. This was originally an April Fool’s Day project (see this Youtube video) by 0verflow, and from that clip alone, I was on the floor laughing. I had expected the School Days series to be done for now unless they were planning on animating Summer Days, but I’m very intrigued by this, especially if they’re going to be using all the characters in a magical girl setting. The release date is in late March 2008 (right before April Fool’s Day), and MOON PHASE is reporting that it’ll be out March 26th, though Sofmap’s listing indicates a release on the 28th. In any case, it might be something to look forward to.
    Random Musings / School Days

    Random Musings – So Much For School Days

    For those of you waiting to see the final episode of School Days, some bad news: TV Kanagawa suddenly decided not to air it and replaced it with a nature/scenery program instead. This appears to have been without any prior announcement, so speculation is rampant right now about what really happened. Some people, including MOON PHASE, are suggesting that it might have something to do with how a girl killed her father with an axe yesterday. If true, that would mean that the School Days finale was indeed very bloody.

    I’m really disappointed at this point, but there’s really no choice but to wait until tomorrow to see if Chiba TV or TV Aichi air it. Both still list School Days in their schedule, however there’s no telling what will happen. If they don’t air it, then there’s technically still Teletama on Thursday and TV Osaka on Friday (though the latter is very unlikely due to its past record). For now, this probably means that I move the schedule around so that I blog Claymore and Romeo X Juliet today, and Bleach and School Days tomorrow, assuming it airs. Also, I’m still working on the fall preview, but it’s coming slowly because of schoolwork and job-related stuff. Hopefully it’ll be done by sometime next week.

    Edit: If you’re curious or bored and have a Nico Nico account, you can now watch the full 28 minutes of scenery.
    2nd Edit: Chiba TV, TV Aichi, and Teletama have all taken the show off their schedules.
    3rd Edit: Mainichi News now has an article confirming that this was indeed because of the axe murder and that the airings on at least TV Kanagawa, Chiba TV, and TV Aichi have been postponed. It also confirms that there is a scene of violence done by a high school girl in the episode and that they changed the color of blood from red to black, but still decided not to air it. One possible ray of hope lies with AT-X, which the article claims is still considering showing the finale on September 27th since they do R-15 airings.

    Negima!? / Random Musings

    Random Musings – Watching The Negima Drama Wreck Unfold

    As many of you may know, a Negima live-action drama has been in the works for several months now. Well, this past weekend, there was an unveiling of sorts in Tokyo with all of the girls and Negi, who is being played by 13-year-old Kashiwa Yukina. Also there were Takamichi (played by Hiroshi), Minamoto Shizuna (played by Oikawa Nao who I believe used to be an AV star), and the school headmaster (played by Satou Gajirou). I’ll let the pictures from Mainichi’s coverage of the event do most the talking, as the actresses seem to have all been put in the costuming and makeup that they’ll be in for the actual show (unlike the official site’s original class listing).

    Frankly, I couldn’t stop laughing when I looked at some of those images, and it’ll be really interesting to see how bad the drama is what the drama is like. The official site now also has a look into classroom 3-A with some more images of the students, and they’ve announced the OP and ED too. I really hope Asuna, Konoka, and Setsuna’s actresses have some singing ability. Anyway, the Negima drama is set to premiere on TV Tokyo on October 3rd at 25:20, and it’s slated for 26 episodes. I wonder how many episodes I’ll be able to last – probably only one…

    DEATH NOTE / Random Musings / Shakugan no Shana / Yamada Tarou Monogatari

    Random Musings – DEATH NOTE: R and Miscellaneous Notes

  • NTV aired a three hour special of DEATH NOTE today that covered pretty much the entire L arc with some added material. It started out with a scene of a Shinigami approaching Ryuk wanting to know about the human world because he’s gotten tired of the Shinigami world. Ryuk proceeds to tell him about a man who tried to change the world and become god, and this sets up the recap through the first arc. Most of it was stuff we’ve already seen in the original series (they even included the potato chip scene), but there were some additional scenes too, (highlight to read) including L meeting Light in a theater, everyone visiting L’s grave, Light declaring his victory over L’s grave (after everyone else leaves), and bloody shots of the deaths of members of the Yotsuba group. The episode ends with Ryuk looking at how Light’s name is written in his Death Note and commenting on how Light wasn’t a god back then.
    If you’re a big fan of the anime, you might consider watching it, but for the most part, I didn’t think this was worth it if you’ve already seen the entire series.
  • There was no episode of Yamada Tarou Monogatari aired today because of a track and field event. Episode 09 airs next Friday.
  • Several people have asked me for the Shana II commercial, so here’s the download: Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Mirror 3.
    • Idolmaster XENOGLOSSIA / Random Musings / Yamada Tarou Monogatari

    Random Musings – Schedule Shuffling

    it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a....croquette!?

    With the new season now underway and having watched a lot of anime and dramas in the past week, I’ve decided to make some changes to the schedule. For Fridays, which used to be when sola aired, I’m going to start blogging the new drama Yamada Tarou Monogatari. I’ll talk more about this soon when I write up the first episode, but it reminded me of everything I loved about Hana Yori Dango, without all of the frustrating back-and-forth love crap from the second season. On Mondays, I’m going to be dropping Idolmaster and won’t be replacing it with anything. For those of you curious, today’s episode was about stopping a raging Imber, and the tactics used included dressing all the girls up in revealing outfits (though the final scene did have Haruka getting jealous of Chihaya for being in the Imber’s logs). My main problem with the show is that the level of storytelling just isn’t very good, and to be frank, I’ve grown rather bored watching it.

    As for what new shows I’ll be picking up, it’s looking like School Days and Zero no Tsukaima will work out very well with all the other series that I’m carrying over from last season. Jaalin also still hasn’t completely made up his mind about what he’s going to blog either, and that’ll depend on how good second episodes of certain series are. There are still a few more anime that have yet to premiere, and I’m curious about Baccano! in particular, so we’ll see how it all turns out.