Limited Lovers

Karin, a spoiled rich girl, falls down the stairs and becomes paralized from the waist down. While in the hospital, she falls in love with her doctor, Teppei. He refuses to give her his personal information when she leaves, so she investigates him herself. She ends up buying his house, but will let him continue staying there with her on one condition: he must spend 2 hours every day with her. She finds out soon enough that Teppei is engaged, but is only using the marriage as a stepping stone for his career. Eventually he falls in love with Karin and they get engaged, have some problems, break up, get back together, etc. Pretty average and predictable.

This one was a random short manga. Only 15 chapters. There was actually some potential in the story concept, but the writing was pretty terrible. I only read to the end because I knew it was so short and my sentimental side did want to see them together.

Glass Mask - Anime

I just finished the 2005 version of Glass Mask. Fifty-one episodes in about 2 days. Heh. There's been another TV anime, 3 OVAs and 2 live action films as well. These are all based on a manga that has been running since January of 1976. Summary from Anime News Network:

Kitajima Maya, a 13-year old girl with a talent for acting, was discovered by the reclusive actress Tsukikage. The story follows Maya's growing up, intense training, overcoming challenges, and evolving into the foremost actress of her generation (she is about 20 so far). Maya's greatest rival is Himekawa Ayumi, the beautiful daughter of a famous movie couple. They ultimately vied for the most sought-after role - the "Crimson Goddess". An equally important subplot Maya's relationship with the handsome and ruthless entertainment mogul Hayami Masumi, who secretly became her number one fan, but misunderstandings and bad-timing obstructed their romance.....

This show has a compilation of so much that I like about shojo manga/anime. Strong female lead, worthy rival, several love interests, one destined love, challenges, and triumph. There's something about Masumi that makes you want to root for him, even though he's been such an amazing jerk sometimes. It's nice to see Maya grow and change. The anime was undoubtedly much much faster than the manga. I wonder how much they cut out.

It took me a few episodes to get into this one, but dagnabit, I love the story. I found myself cheering for Maya, crying when her Mom died, and feeling downright anxious about her relationship with Masumi.  I feel like I have to hunt down the manga now. I don't know if I want to start reading it from the beginning or .... *sigh* I'm going to read it from the beginning.

Kuroshitsuji - Black Butler

Kuroshitsuji means black butler, which is an understatement for Sebastian. Darker than black, he's "one hell of a butler". His master is 12 year old Earl Ciel Phantomhive, who has lost his home, parents, and dignity. He exists only to find the person who caused all of that pain and drag them down to hell with him. To that end, he entered into a contract with Sebastian, a demon. Sebastian will obey Ciel's every command in exchange for his soul.

This anime is freaking awesome. I was hooked after the first episode. The action is engaging, especially when Sebastian defeats a house full of mafia men with the silverware. I couldn't help but think that it would be hell to polish it all again. The plot can be very simple for a few episodes, then throws you for a loop or four in the next episode. The supporting cast is great, too. Ciel is an intriguing main character with a very dark past. We only get a bit of what went on in the past, though.

The anime was only 24 episodes. The manga it is based on, however, started in 2006 and is still being serialized. I will be reading the manga. Oh yes. I will. There's a second season of the anime, but it has different characters. I'll take a look at that one too. I am very pleased with this discovery.

Working!! - Episode 13

Takanashi and Inami go on their date. Poplar and company trick Takanashi into cross-dressing, though. He does get to obsess over cute things without looking so creepy, though. Inami manages to make it through the date without hitting him and he starts thinking good things about her and even calls her cute. Of course, he calls her a dog too .... Ah well. Inami doesn't get incredibly upset about it anyway.

Well, apparently this is the end of the season. It would be great if there is a second season, but I'm not counting on it. I hope that more scanlations of the manga are released. It's funny and the characters are great! This is one I'd buy.

Neo Angelique Abyss Second Age

Angelique goes with everyone to Erbos, they defeat evil, and save their friend. Then she gets to go to the Holy Grounds by herself to become Queen and pray for Arcadia for countless years. By herself. -_- But everyone's happy and all the boys know that they'll be able to see her again someday, somehow.

Ugh. I'm disappointed enough where I don't feel like taking the time to find an image for this post.

Neo Angelique Abyss

The world is plagued by Thanatos, huge monsters that appear out of nowhere and attack people to feed on their life force. The only people who can defeat them are Purifiers. Angelique is living as a normal school girl, until she is approached by a Purifier named Nyx. He claims that she is a Purifiers as well, the only female Purifier, known as the Queen's Egg. A Thanatos attacks the school and Angelique uses her unique purifying power to extinguish the Thanatos and heal her friends. She starts living as a full-time Purifier and is trying to somehow become the full-fledged Queen.

Bishie wonderland. Angelique lives in the Sunlit Mansion with four purifiers: Nyx, Lein, Jade, and Hyuuga. Hyuuga has a topless workout scene complete with glittering sweat, not once, but twice. Lein is walking around in his half-shirt all the time. Then there's the Silver Tree Knights, the two reporters, and the priest guy.

Good show. Some deus ex machina going on, but I still liked it.

Hakuouki - Season 1

Yukimura Chizuru has come from Edo to look for her father in Kyoto. She ends up being chased by a couple of rounin, who are cut down by some evil looking Shinsengumi, who are then killed by some regular Shinsengumi. Hijikata Toshiro is there, and decides to take Yukimura with them instead of killing her on the spot. She ends up living with them, disguised as a boy, and helping them in anything she can.

Gotta throw a wrench in there, though. Turns out that Yakimua's actually an oni. Yukimura's father, who is a doctor, helped create a medicine which turns humans into a Rasetsu, or pseudo-oni. The Shinsengumi are using the Rasetsu as their trump card. All this goes on during the actual historical events, modifying things here and there. Very cool.

The current season is over, but a second season will be airing in the fall. Yay!

Tokyo Crazy Paradise

This series is always cited in the mini-bio of Nakamura Yoshiki in the Skip Beat volumes. Kozuki Tsukasa is a girl, living as a boy, in Toyko in the year 2020. The city is so dangerous for women that pretending to be a boy is much safer for her. Tsukasa's parents were killed when investigating an incident involving the yakuza, leaving her and her 3 brothers to fend for themselves. Tsukasa is tricked into debt by her classmate and yakuza boss Shirogami Ryuji, who is one of the few people who know that Tsukasa is actually a female. Ryuji allows her to work off the debt as his bodyguard, but it is just an excuse for Ryuji to keep Tsukasa by his side. The story revolves around yakuza conflicts, Tsukasa's true identity, and the deepening relationship between Ryuji and Tsukasa.

I thought it was pretty good. I did finish all 111 chapters in 24 hours. (I didn't sleep last night.) The art is definitely recognizable as Nakamura's. There are a couple of panels that could have appeared in either manga. It is quite different from Skip Beat, though. The romance moved along much faster and there is a lot of action, which is virtually nonexistent in Skip Beat. It's quite a bit more graphic. Lots of blood, limbs being severed, and Tsukasa's breasts are shown about a half dozen times throughout the series. The boob shots aren't just random fanservice, though. They actually serve the plot.

The scanlations that I read often had missing pages, untranslated pages, or pages with blank speech bubbles. I don't think I missed anything major, but it was rather irritating. Maybe I'm just too spoiled by all the high-quality stuff I get. Since TCP is listed in all of the Skip Beat volumes, you'd think that it would be licensed in the US, right? Wrong. There is no English release for TCP. Why cite it as a major work in an English volume if it's not available in English? I don't understand. Ah well.

My verdict: Definitely worth the time, but I probably wouldn't buy it unless it was on sale (in English).

Tono to Issho OVA

I watched this OVA before knowing anything about the manga. It's somewhat amusing. I'm sure I missed some of the jokes, but I think it might have some promise. I don't know if I'll be able to find anyone who'll fansub it, though. I'd like to read the manga, but I couldn't find any scanlations.

Summary: "4-panel gag manga ... follows the humorous exploits of generals during Japan's tumultuous sengoku (Era of the Warring States) period." Source: ANN

Princess Tutu - Anime

I thought this one looked cute, so I put it in my NetFlix queue a looooong time ago. It's about a duck who falls in love with a prince, but the prince has lost his heart. She becomes a girl, and then Princess Tutu, to find the pieces of his heart. The problem is that once he has his heart back, he is destined to fight the Raven and lose it once more. But the characters in this story are determined to change their fate.

I finally got around to finishing it, and I'm kinda pissed off at the ending. It's only a half-happy ending. Why not just take it the rest of the way? The prince ends up with his princess, although not the princess you expected, but the main character who makes the story possible doesn't really progress?! Fakir and Ahiru obviously end up loving each other, but they don't verbalize it. Ahiru just turns back into a duck even though she would rather be a girl. It seems like everyone just forgets about her except for Fakir, who writes by the pond while she swims. You could assume that he's writing a story to get Ahiru to turn back into a girl, but I'd rather see it happen. Pfft.

This won't make sense unless you've seen the series, but here's how I think the ending should have gone: Ahiru spreads hope through her dancing as a duck, returning the townspeople to normal and helping the prince destroy the raven. Ahiru is relieved, then collapses. Fakir rushes to her side, tells her thank you and that her hope helped him keep writing. He tells her he loves her and will love her no matter what. She opens her eyes and thinks "I love you too, Fakir. I wish I could be with you always." The same light of hope engulfs her and she turns into a girl.

See. That wasn't so hard, was it? Geez. Very cheesy, but it's shojo, so who cares? There's a manga, but it apparently doesn't add any more to the plot, so I'm not going to bother reading it.

Gakuen Alice - Anime

Fail.

The only thing I liked about the anime was in episode 18. There is a brief scene that shows Luca, Natsume, and Mikan as adults. ^_^

Now for everything that sucked:

The opening is very irritating. The voices are a bit different from what I would have chosen. They give away too much stuff to quickly. But the fire is badly drawn and it's kinda an important element of the story. And the story concentrates mostly on the Mikan-Hotaru relationship, almost ignoring the growing Mikan-Natsumen relationship. Pfft.

Episode 9 is random filler, which is surprising for a 26 episode series. Episodes 23 to 25 make up a random arc that's not in the manga. It sucks. A circus in the academy? That would involve a lot of contact with the outside world. Also, why would a circus be interesting to a bunch of kids who can do the same things naturally? Bringing back Leo for these episodes was a mistake. Natsume's opinion of the academy seems to randomly do an about-face. I'm sure this was created so they could attempt to have some sort of conflict with the academy which has been foreshadowed so much.

Episode 26 was another random story which didn't appear in the manga. I think that they had just stopped trying. Crappy crappy ending and no resolution of the real issues that were presented. I was actually glad to be done with it.

Special A - Manga Conclusion

Overall, it was alright. I do agree with many people that 99 chapters was a bit too much for the storyline that was presented. Also, the whole resolution of Kei's moving to London felt very anticlimactic and weird. That arc was very drawn out and then it ended in about 2 pages quite randomly. It was like the mangaka couldn't figure out a good way to end it. Disappointing. It was also a bit irritating that Hikari's character doesn't evolve much. The same could be said for most of the characters. Dunno if I'm going to watch the anime.

What's next? I'm thinking I might read Death Note since it seems to be popular amongst my students.

Superior Cross

So I finished the rest of Superior (Ch. 27) and have read the first 4 chapters of Superior Cross. Basically the author did a summary of the story so far for the new readers in the new magazine it's being published in. A majority of Superior was stuffed into those 2 chapters, so it was sort of refreshing. Chapter 3 gave some backstory for Angelica and a bit of closure on an area of her life. The plot seemed rather forced, though. Chapter 4 is a "Part 1" kind of chapter. I can already see what Part 2 will be like. I do prefer how Sheila is being portrayed so far. I'm cautiously optimistic ...

BTW - The cover makes you think that this is a "let's draw some hot chicks" manga. Not so much. It is, however, designed to pull in the target audience: men, of course.

Superior

Simple premise: Hero sets out to kill demon queen. Demon Queen finds hero and decides to tag along with him in disguise before she kills him. Hero is a pacifist and vows to kill no one except for Demon Queen. Demon Queen falls in love with Hero; Hero falls in love with Demon Queen. Hilarity ensues.

This manga was suggested to me because there is a strong female lead. It seemed interesting at the beginning, but it's not living up to expectations. Sheila, the demon queen, has been appearing less and less. Lately, the hero, Exa, has been getting most of the attention with his angst about whether or not he can follow his ideal of not killing anyone. The pacifist thing reminds me of Trigun, except it's getting really annoying. There are several "what the heck??" and deus ex machina moments. It seems like the mangaka loses track of the plot sometimes.

I like the general idea that is presented, but I'm very much disappointed at the follow-through. While reading I can't help but think of how it could be fixed. The story so far could have been presented in a tenth of the space. But ... I'll probably keep reading it, hoping it will get better and because I've invested so much time in it already. I'm on chapter 25. The name of the manga changes to Superior Cross after chapter 27(?) because it switched magazines. Dunno why they have to do that.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Anime Completed(?)

Well, only 14 episodes, but it was really good! It had the weird existential quandary thing that anime loves to do, but it ended up really well. Kyon is definitely an awesome character, although somewhat dense. Haruhi starts out as pretty annoying, but you end up really liking her in the end.  The characters have more depth that what you would expect from the first episode or two.

Apparently there are 14 more episodes that were added to the re-runs of the originals. It's weird. Wikipedia has more on that.  I'm hoping to find those episodes. Maybe crunchyroll will add them as well at some point. I dislike having to scour the web for anime.