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:
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.
Random Musings – GEASS Updates and Tsubasa OVA Edition
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Random Musings – D.Gray-man Manga And Gurren Lagann News Edition
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. |
-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. |
Random Musings – Starcraft 2 And Live-Action Negima Edition
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Random Musings – For Those Of You Wondering About Rain In The Poll…
I normally don’t talk about non-anime related stuff, but this was too funny to resist if you know anything about Rain or popular Korean music. Time Magazine in recent years has been making a list called the Time 100 – The People Who Shape Our World. They also ran an online poll to see who people think should be #1, and the winner of that by a large margin was Rain. #2 was Stephen Colbert, and that’s what led to the above video.
Random Musings – Starved For GEASS Edition
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Random Musings – Da Capo II Anime And Other News
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Random Musings – Another One Of Those Days…
You ever have one of those days that’s completely filled with only highs and lows? That’s what I went through today, and it’s quite exhausting. Anyway, Nodame and Darker than Black will be up soon.