First Impressions / NANA

NANA – 21.5

Bleh, another Junko’s room – in other words, another recap episode. This time, they had appearances by Satou Kouichi (the guy who works at Jackson Hole) and Sakagami (Hachi’s supervisor at the editing job she got fired from), along with Junko, Kyousuke, and Shouji. But other than some idle banter, this episode just recounted all the important stuff that happened in the past 10 weeks with some music thrown in at good places. I just really hope they don’t have one of these planned for every ten episodes.

Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Random Musings – Cause Evangelion Re-Creations Are Sexy…

News has been circulating around about the new Evangelion films that Anime News Service has a translation for:

The title for the new film series is “Evangelion Shin Gekijou Ban”, it will consist of 4 parts with the first part arriving in Japanese theaters in early summer, 2007. Staff include General Supervisor: Hideaki Anno, Director: Tsurumaki Kazuya , Character Design: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Mecha Design: Ikuto Yamashita, Animation Production: Khara (Color) Studio. The scenario of the 1st part will be written by Hideaki Anno with storyboard by Shinji Higuchi. Key points of a supposed interview which may or may not appear in the forthcoming edition of Newtype attributed to Toshimichi Ohtsuki of King Records have also been circulating. According to that information:
-The content is quite different though the time base of the story is the same as the original TV series.
– It will be a remake, however, it is not a re-creation but a “new work”.
– The approach will be different than what Tomino-san did with the Gundam Z New Translation films, there will apparantly be a large amount of new material.
– Even if the TV series has not be seen, the viewer will be able to enjoy it. Though the content becomes easy, it is not redundant to those already familiar with the series.
– The technique that purposely scatters difficult words and phrases will not be used any longer.
– As an antithesis to current animation industry segments. It is an attitude on the production side to pull the act in the age that started from Eva.

There are some sketchy pictures floating around, but I dug up some decent scans (courtesy of an uploader at ranobe.com):

What do I think? Well I wasn’t ever a huge fan of the Evangelion series, though it is one of the very first animes I’ve seen. It’ll be interesting to see what they decide to change in terms of the overall story and if the ending is radically different.

Densha Otoko / Fate/stay night / Random Musings / Zero no Tsukaima

Random Musings – Jumping the Shark Edition


-For those of you who are Densha Otoko fans, there will be a 2-hour special airing at 9:00PM JST on September 23rd, 2006 called 「電車男デラックス~最後の聖戦~」 (Densha Otoko Deluxe ~The Last Crusade~). According to the first announcement from back in July, Densha Otoko is planning to marry Saori, but along comes a new rival (played by Kitamura Kazuki). It will apparently take place in Tahiti and will also feature Saori’s grandfather (played by Fujimura Shunji), along with most of the original cast (including Shiraishi Miho). I’m interested, but it’s more like cautiously optimistic. A special like this can easily turn out to be complete crap. Incidentally, Sept. 23rd is the same day as the last episode of Blood+.

-The web preview of the next episode of Zero no Tsukaima is up.
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-Rumor has it that the ending song to the final episode of Fate/stay night, 「君との明日」 (Kimi to no Ashita), performed by Tainaka Sachi, will be released on November 22nd, 2006. This is based on rumblings about it on various bbs, but I haven’t seen any concrete proof yet (i.e. an Amazon.co.jp or Neowing listing or something similar). We’ll have to wait and see for more news.

-And finally, some good news and bad news. Bad news: it seems that Naakay will be unable to blog Honey and Clover II. For now, that show is in limbo because I don’t have the time to blog it myself. Good news: on the other hand, wh0sj0hngalt is signing onto the team to help out with the rest of Ouran High School Host Club.

FreezeFrame / Honey & Clover

FreezeFrame: The world through an artist’s eyes

“I want to open all these boxes…but a mortal life span is too short to do such a thing.
But, if I had someone to help me in my battles…if I had that person…”

As much as many people would like to deny, Honey & Clover has more or less revolved around the blonde munchkin known as Hagu. Who is this mysterious girl? Why does she rarely speak? And why is she so goddamn short?