Miscellaneous

Unsung Heroes: Introduction & BGM Composers – Part 1

 

No, I’m not Omni or Patrik or Jaalin. I am Kyouya, the newest member of the Random Curiosity editorial staff. Since the latest power rankings, I have been invited to contribute here with my thoughts and opinions. I will be helping Jaalin with the monthly Power Rankings as well. I hope this writing of mine can expand some new perspectives to you.

Now that the introduction is out of the way, I’ll get to the point. This is a new segment which I would like to call ‘Unsung Heroes.’ This column will basically give the spotlight to people, anime, or anything that may have been overlooked for its achievements. In other words, the people who work behind the shadows will get the credit here.

This segment will open by focusing on one of the most overlooked workers in the anime industry: BGM composers.

CODE GEASS / FreezeFrame / Gurren Lagann / Hayate no Gotoku! / Lucky Star / Mai-Otome

FreezeFrame: I’m Looking At Her Ankles

From some deep, dark corner in the back of jaalin’s mind…

Anime girls are the best. Unlike those found in 3d-land, anime girls were created for the sole purpose of entertaining me – decades in the making, the science of creating an anime girl has been perfected down to the little personality quirks, the glimmer in their eyes, and the nuances in their voice (Aisia lisp, anyone?) I thank these artists from the bottom of my heart, cuz man oh man do they do their job well.

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.