Visual Novel Diary: Da Capo

Guh, its been a little while, huh?

I’ve been pretty shockingly busy as of late, working on menageries of projects. And, uh, most of my spare time of late has been consumed, one way or another, leaving this blog a bit in the lurch, I guess. For this I apologise.

On the other hand, I’m back with another Visual Novel Diary. This time, I finally got around to playing Da Capo, which is translated by Mangagamer (professionally this time, rather than a fan translation…though I have to wonder, since both Da Capo and Shuffle were getting Fan Translations that suddenly dissappeared and then re-appeared in the catalogue of these people. Methinks the translators were bought out, in these cases. Not that I can especially blame them, since fansubbing is a thankless job most of the time.)

Anyway, Da Capo is franchise than shot Circus into the limelight as creator of visual novels. Since its rather popular release, its had a huge host of cash-in’s, sequels, extra chapters, and gaidens; not to mention having anime’s made of its various parts.

Unfortunately, the anime was a bit of bust. Merely because Nemu was picked as the girl of choice, when basically EVERY other choice is superior, at least in the eyes of most people I’ve spoken with. They then performed extra travesties by literally torturing Kotori fans in Da Capo Second Season (this made me stop following any subsequent series of the anime).

That said, apparently the Japanese fans love Nemu. They’re all sis-cons, perhaps? I really don’t usually see the appeal of the subservient sister like character, but nearly all visual novels have one lurking around somewhere.

As you may have possibly guessed, I immediately went straight for Kotori.

Wah, she’s surprisingly forward, eh?

Cuteness. It is only cuteness.

The game itself is actually pretty good in terms of originality for dating sims. Rather than presenting the usual obligatory two choice box, Da Capo offers its branches in a different way. For starters, every evening, you have to set your Alarm Clock to one of three times (6:30, 7:00 or 7:50) which gives you different things on your way to school. After that, during lunchtime, you select where you want to eat from a map (with choices like Roof, Courtyard, Classroom, Cafeteria, etc.). Then, after school (and on sundays), you can use a different map to visit somewhere on the island (with selections like the Cherry Blossom Park, the Town, and the School etc.)

Of course, certain girls tend to frequent certain locations more often, so its not a complete bust trying to get their flags (though you might miss an event or two). Kotori, for example, appreciates you being on time and is most often seen in the Courtyard and variably behind the giant Sakura tree and the commercial district. Whereas, grabbing, say, Moe-sempai requires you to continually be late in the mornings and hang around school an awful lot.

Eventually, of course, if all flags are triggered, you stop getting mao choices and actually enter a girls route and the rest of the story follows your romance with the selected lady, where more typical choices tend to happen instead. Anyway, have some more Kotori’s:

Of course, considering a certain plot point, it is important not to lie or think too many ecchi things about Kotori chan. Be a nice guy, yeah?

Also, it seems that yellow pyjamas are popular in this game. Not that I’m complaining.

Yes, the new uniform is fabulous, dear.

Feed me Kotori! Even her pouting is cute.

Anyways, after making Kotori mai waifu, I proceeded to eventually do Moe-sempai’s route as well. Which leads to some amusing lines like this:

Ehahaha! Sure thing!

Yikes, thats…shocking… I mean, I know I saved you and all…but…wowzers…

Anyhow, it was light and enjoyable. Far better than the anime (though for biased reasons). I’ll probably get around to eventually clearing Sakura as well, but for now, thats all I’ve done due to being busy. See ya again soon, eh?

Kimi no Todoke: Reaching You

Gah, dangnabbit. This turned out to be surprisingly cute. Despite my previous assertion that the schedule was closed, I guess I’m going to have to accommodate this too now, since it was real nice. I also can’t really call this a ‘First Impression’ since I went and marathoned the first three episodes all at once. That said, I’m getting a little impatient with 11eyes, so I may just drop that in favour of this. We shall see.

Anyway, to summarise, Kimi no Todoke is about Sawako, a kind, pretty, introverted girl completely lacking in social skills. She is…kind of a school idol, but in a rather bad way.

This is partly down to the afformentioned lack of social staying power, but also a bit because she shares her looks and some of her names syllables with a certain legendary ghost, Sadako, from the Ring. (of course, if you know your Japanese mythology, you’ll know that Sadako herself is a modern re-imagining of several classic Japanese ghosts. Alot of their supernatural creatures take the form of traditional looking Japanese Ladies to decieve people.)

Of course, this leads to scenarios like this:

Yikes. Nevertheless, the poor girl is only trying to be loved. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, people seem to treat her as furniture at best and creator of curses at worst. She often takes the jobs no-one else wants on the assumption that people will appreciate her hard work, and even reads ghost stories in order to try and meet peoples expections of her better, in that infuriatingly Japanese way.

Of course, that all changes thanks to the actions of a certain guy, Kazuhiya:

He, in massive contrast to her, is a conspicuous extrovert who makes friends easily and fits in with everyone. And so, with a degree of slow progress, he begins to smash down the walls she builds about herself with all his might. Of course, the anime maps this process and their developing feelings for one another in amongst the chaos of Sawakos new found social skills.

As I said before, dang this show is cute. Sawako somehow manages to make being dense quite funny (wisdom was her dumpstat, actually, since she’s ludicrously clever), and Kazuhiya is also pretty infectiously decent as a character. He certainly has charm (and actual courage), two points which are always good things for male leads to have in an anime (and things which are often depressingly absent, as I’m sure you’ve heard me bitch about on many an occassion). The comedic timing is excellent and I found myself giggling quite alot throughout the show, something that not alot of shows can boast to me. Also, though I usually grow to hate chibification, it is used exceptionally well here.

Anyway, the pacing is slow but not in a bad way. Theres just enough development in an episode to keep it fresh, but its mellow enough for you to sit and bask in the warm and fuzzy feelings. For a romance like this, thats just about right, in fact.

And just to add to its selling points for me, theres also epic cuteness from Sawako:

Kirei! Sugoi, sugoi, ne?

Well, I won’t deny that with its impressive performance, its snapped up a slot from me. I love a good romance (as I’m sure you’re aware by now) and this may just be my shoujo anime fix for the season too. I guess, in a way, it reminds me of one of my old all time favourites, Kareshi Kanjyo no Jijyo (aka. Karekano, His and Her Circumstances), and thats always a good thing.

Anyhow, thats about all I have to say, so see ya again soon.

And now for something completely different…

Just a short post today, full of needless variety and pointless statements (yay?).

First of all, I’ve decided fairly fair and square that Kampher, Lost Property of the Sky and Kuuchuu Blank are almost invariably out of the runnings entirely for me this season and rather than forcing myself to do an angsting First Impressions post like I did with some shows last season, I’d rather just not.

Seitokai no Ichizone and 11 Eyes are also hanging precariously, almost relying a great next performance, and I still need to start Kimi no Todoke (though I’ve heard some horror stories about it). If they change my mind, these three shows may recieve a late preview. But in general, I think I’m actually pretty full already with the others.

Interestingly, even most of the shows I was into had a slight dip in their second episode this season, and others have also suddenly become good by the third episode. Nyan Koi and Railgun both had dubious follow ups to otherwise great first eps, only to pull themselves back out the mud for the third. Blacksmith continued mediocrity until suddenly introducing plot in the third ep and being moderately interesting. Bantorra the same, but replace Mediocrity with Confusion, which has suddenly cleared up a bit. Letter Bee was 70% angst and seriously grating my nerves until the third episode where it has suddenly been saved thanks to this:

As I predicted initially, the Loli is the shows savior. And she’ll probably get the monkeydragon next episode.

Kobato, I have to wonder about. She…is…so…damn…stupid… It makes you want to punch her. Her dog plush, Ioryogi, is pulling the shows entire weight at the moment, though I still have episode three to watch, so we’ll see.

In the meantime, you can have a new widescreen wallpaper. Its Shinobu-chan from Bakemonogatari:

As always, click the above to see it full size.

I still maintain that Bakemonogatari was the best show of the Summer 2009 season. Great characters, actual plot development, and ye gads an actually satisfying ending (which is supreme rarity among at least 50% of anime, which seems to fizzle out or run out of time). Though Shinobu chan didn’t actually see much screentime, she was still a highly bemusing background presence. Awesome stuff.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and New Banner (squee!). I figured Shana has been doing the rounds for a year now, so I gave her a break, yeah? She’s been replaced with Ilya, Rin, Saber and Archer from F/SN. I know it isn’t anywhere close to cherry blossom season, but oh well…

Anyway, thats all for today. See ya again soon.

Visual Novel Diary: Sengoku Rance

Its been awhile since I’ve done one of these, eh? I believe Kanon was the last one.

Anyway, this has been consuming ludicrous amounts of my spare time over the past few days, since a full-english translation was released on the 10th of October for it thanks to the efforts of the hardworking guys of Yandere Translations (and TakaJun, who seems to be everywhere!).

This is actually the SEVENTH game in the long running Rance series by AliceSoft (hence, Sengoku). As far as I’m aware, previous Rance games were dungeon crawlers with Visual Novel Elements. This one, however, is a tactical strategy game with Visual Novel Elements:

(This is showing the Items and Inventory screen, by the way)

Rance himself is…well… I guess, in a way, he’s like the fantasy version of James Bond. ‘Sex Freak’ doesn’t even begin to describe him. He unashamedly asks random women his just met to sleep with him and even seems to draw power from the act. He’s beyond arrogant and isn’t above forceful, dirty tactics to get what he wants. And yet…for all his arrogance and being a total dick, he’s a surprisingly likable character. His ‘Strongest man in the world’ claim isn’t just self appointed either; he really is one of the best warriors in the world, and is the bearer of one of the few legendary sentient demonslaying blades, Chaos. And underneath the lust is actually a strangely decent guy. Although:

Expect to see this alot. Gahahahaha. Rance has the ability to strip out of his Half-Plate in about 7 seconds when he thinks he might be able to get some. Which is impressive, I’ll give him that…

In short, the opening story is: After his adventures in Zeth, Rance decides to come and visit JAPAN (yes, in capitials) with his slave, Sill, in order to visit the hotsprings and of course, have sex with as many girls as possible. Rumours of the beauty of the princess Oda Kou lead him to the territory of Oda, where he meets a seriously chill version of Oda Nobunaga, whom apparently finds running a dango store to be more enjoyable than actually running his country.

Apparently (for no real reason) the two get along, and Nobunaga decides to appoint Rance as the new Shadow Ruler of Oda. Rance accepts, feeling this is a great oppertunity to test his strength (and of course, after conquering countries, its also a good oppertunity to exhert his right as the victor and test his bedroom skills…) Since Nobunaga is a pretty dozy guy, theres about to be a rebellion, and your first battle of the game is leading the remaining loyalists against the rebels (whom are actually an atrocious force, but I suppose this could come down to it being the first battle and hence, meant to be easy).

After surpressing the rebellion, Rance is told to basically do what he wants with the country. Leading you to this:

You’ll spend some time here, of course. Clicking on a country gives you many options for actions in the top left box.

This ranges from preparing for battle and searching for dungeons to advancing the plot and talking to your various commanders (Purple ???’s show something brand new).

Speaking with commanders raises their affection towards you, and once you accumilate a certain amount, they’ll usually have a special ??? event which raises their trust level (Its Hate > Normal > Trust > Love on a sliding scale). Each time the trust level goes up, the commanders unit levels up, allowing you to give them a new ability or upgrade their stats. Of course, only female units can reach Love and as you might imagine, raising female commanders to Trust and Love also usually results in H (and more Satisfaction for Rance).

Each time you do an event or battle of any kind, you’ll use an action fan. You normally start with two (I have 3 here, since this is from a new game+).

There’s also resource management involved, with items, gold, national power, and Rance’s Satisfaction (Sat.) to keep track of. As you might imagine, you get gold from taxes, items from winning battles or clearing dungeons, power from developing or conquering countries and satisfaction from doing Hentai type things with girls. The latter is surprisingly important, as every 10 satisfaction gives you a great bonus, from upgrading Rance’s Unit and getting more action fans, to calling for reinforcements and getting really rare items.

Rance’s objective (at least initially) is to simply conquer all of JAPAN. This can and will change as the game progresses, as you can go onto different story routes. Usually, you’ll end up having to deal with the demon lord Xavier and his demon army in some form or another.

This naturally leads to battles, which look a little like this:

You pit up to six of your units against up to six foes. Initiative order is shown on the top hand tabs. As you get to one of your turns, you select an action and a target. Troops have a number of action banners, and time counts down on the middle column. To win, you have to either annihilate all the enemy units or have the battle rating (the topmost bar) in your favour when time runs out. The number of troops left in a unit acts as its HP (a little like Advance Wars). The above shot shows the Ninja unit of Gekkou (and his Loli sidekick). Of course, winning a battle is rather strategic, and it helps to use a nice variety of units, which come in lots of types:

This is the Unit Roster, currently focused on Kanami the Ninja girl.
I’ll list the types in the order shown in the list above:

• Rance himself leads a Warrior unit. These naturally excel at doing lots of damage really quickly, especially once they learn Guard Break. Once you recruit Kenshin, she is arguably the strongest Warrior unit in the game.
• Footsoldiers are defensive. They halve damage against them when they have their guard up, and can leap in the way of attacks targeting other units. They deal pretty mediocre damage though.
• Knights are a special unit (you only get one, led by Leila, through a Satisfaction bonus). They combine the offense of Warriors and Defence of Footsoldier, but are very expensive to recruit.
• Archers are naturally backrow units and are useful mainly for versatility, since can target either row, though not for huge amounts of damage. Yamamoto Isokoru is best since she can learn penetrating fire that hits an entire column and can’t be guarded against.
• Musketeers (not actually shown in this shot) are front row units with atrocious defence but high offence. They can be a bit dubious though since they also have a low action count and they’ll be slaughtered by Warriors.
• Cannoneers are special (again, you get Maria through a Satisfaction Bonus) and are upgraded Musketeers (they’re actually a huge unit of girls with rocket launchers!). They can shoot from the back row and deal high damage, making them generally pretty good.
• Miko’s are your healing and utility unit, able to replenish dead troops. They can also provide archery support  (though not as strong as actual archer units), and with a certain ability, also grant buffs to male units at the start of a battle (apparently, in this version of Japan, Miko’s are also ‘working girls’, if you catch my drift, hence the buffs to male units).
• Mages are special units again (you can get three, two from satisfaction bonus, one from a New Game + bonus). They are ‘western’ mages in the traditional sense, in that they typically throw fireballs (though Rizna learns a hit-all, Angel Cutter, whilst Magic and Shizuka learn a Penetration laser Beam).
• Diviners are the ‘eastern’ mages, who use spellpaper and shikigami. They are the best artillery units with their charge up hit all attack, and can also throw up damage prevention shields that completely negate a single attack against a unit.
• Ninjas are fast, dealing about as much damage as archers with Shuriken. However, Ninja Shuriken also cancels spell charging, which is very useful against enemy Diviners. They can also assassinate enemy commanders, which if it succeeds, OHKO’s an enemy unit (however, it succeeds only if the number of ninjas exceeds the foes unit and then not all the time, and regardless of outcome, always uses all of the Ninja units actions).
• Tacticians add buffs to your units at the start of battle and as a command. They can also de-buff enemy units (making them important to bring along if the enemy also has a Tactician), and finally, provide archery support (at a lower level than normal archers though, like Miko’s can).
• Cavalry is only recruitable by capturing enemy units from Takeda (horses don’t exist in this world, and these cavalry ride large ostritches which can only be bred in Takeda). It basically acts as a more mobile Warrior unit, able to attack from the back row and against the enemies back row, making it pretty deadly. They are hence both rare and expensive.
• Finally, Monks are a utility unit. They have decent attack (higher than footsoldiers, less than warriors) but awful defence. However, they can give other units actions, heal themselves, remove enemy buffs, stop enemy footsoldiers from guarding, and various other weird things.

Thats all that I’m going to explain about the game. The AliceSoft Wikia goes into a ludicrous amount of extra details if you’re interested. I’ll just finish with some more screencaps:

Yep, Kenshin (right) is a girl in this game. She is known as the goddess of war and is the best swordswoman in JAPAN. She also likes fighting for underdog, randomly defending nations that are under attack (including you, or nations you attack), until you engage Uesugi. Of course, when you do, the poor girl gets more than she bargained for with Rance:

Maybe its because he actually duals her and blocks her blows? Or perhaps its just the whole him saying ‘you look beautiful even up close’ scism? In any case, its love at first sight for her. Poor girl.

Nevertheless, once recruited, she becomes a ludicrously strong unit for you. With her Commander Charge, she often personally kills about 300 troops before her own troop then attacks immediately afterward. Brutal. (Rance has a similar move with RANCE ATTACK!)

Yuzumi the Musketeer girl adores cute things, apparently.

Souun is the head diviner of what I call the ‘Triforce nation’ (LOL). He is, naturally, the most powerful diviner unit, as this might suggest!

After taking over the Blacksmith nation, Rance’s sentient Sword, Chaos, gets some very special treatment from the female blacksmiths! I LOL’ed at this scene.

And to finish, Rance at the cherry blossom festival with (left to right) Suzume, Sill, Nobunaga and Kouhime. 3G, their Youkai minister, is in the far right background. Sill is very pink, isn’t she? (and yes, Suzume is indeed a catgirl ninja, sigh…though her ability to use Naruto like clones in her scenes is quite…disturbing…)

Anyway, that was a long post, ne? If you like your tactical strategy, this game will keep you going for at least 120 hours if you follow all of the routes, and its pretty darn addictive, so I’d recommend it solely on that. Of course, theres also the VN side attached with an above average story and lots of fun easter eggs (and of course, H-scenes, if you’re entirely here for that…) so its a very substantial, slickly presented package.

Thats all for now. I’ll probably do the last couple of reviews for the new anime season soon, so see you then.

Happy Birthday, Detarame!

Yup, that’s right, Detarame turns 1 today!

So its time for Wine and Cake with the Scarlet Sisters, apparently.
The only party where you’re more likely to pass out from blood loss than drunkeness. Whee!

Morever, this is a TREBLE commemorative post!

As well as celebrating this blogs first anniversary, I deliberately haven’t been blogging for a couple of days despite having things to say, so that I could make this precisely the 100th post. Finally, a few days ago, we also cracked 20,000 visitors (its actually 21,288 as of time of writing), so this is also a belated celebration for that milestone as well.

So, yay, three achievements in one!

I’d have also liked to have made a sketch to celebrate this post, but sadly I appear to going through some artists block at the moment. Maybe next year. I suspect I’m in for the long haul. Sometimes its been a bitch to catch up with work and RealLife TM commitments, but I’m still glad to have kept this blog going. I find it mightily enjoyable to spill my thoughts from time to time.

Also, this is polling time, if you feel like contributing. What exactly do you enjoy most about Detarame? I tend to try and split evenly between interrogating Anime Seasons, posting my creative endevours, and reviewing/having ‘lets play’ sessions of various obscure games and visual novels that I found, all three of which seem to be popular in their own ways. But if theres anything else that you’d like to see or things that you’d prefer me to focus on, now is the time to shout out.

With that, I’ll wrap up with various thankyous:

Firstly, I’d like to say a BIG thankyou to my readership and visitors for sticking with this bizarre storage of my leaking brain over the past year.

Secondly, I’d also like to thank everyone who was kind enough to link and promote me through whatever means, relatively novice blogger that I am.

Thirdly, a thankyou to WordPress, whose blogging service is quite excellent and without whom this site would not be possible.

Finally, lets all give a round of applause to all those creators of the things we enjoy, from anime directors to game programmers. Though you are too many to name, know good sirs and madams, that we, your avid fans, salute you!

I imagine I’ll be posting again in the next couple of days, so keep tuning in, yeah, and see you then!

First Impressions: Fairy Tail and Yumeiro Patisserie

Well, Fairy Tail only just aired a couple of days ago and I also only just around to looking at the first two episodes of Yumeiro Patisserie, hence the delays on these being reviewed.

Anyway, I’ll do this first up:

Fairy Tail

Well, this was a nice introduction. Its the first opening episode that actually managed to impress me since Nyan Koi so far this season.  We meet Lucy, whom has fangirl joygasms over the Fairy Tail guild. A guy pretends to the so called ‘Salamander’ from the Fairy Tail guild, wooing girls with his magnetism magic. However, turns out he’s a slave trader. Fortunately, the actual ‘Salamander’, Natsu, happens to be in town (you guessed it, its our pink haired protagonist). However, his amazing entry ends in failure because Natsu gets seasick. Lucy uses her celestial summoning magic by summoning Aquarius, but apparently her control of her summons sucks, as Aquarius is a bit short with her and tries to drown everyone. However, this does put the ship back on dry land, allowing the real Salamander to demonstrate his Draconic Tactical Nuclear magic. Explosions and Lulz occur.

As expected, our protagonist, Natsu, seems fond of destruction (maybe he really is related to Lina Inverse?!). However, he is also apparently extremely suceptible to motion sickness and seasickness which is his excuse for being poor for the first two thirds of the episode (and hey, its actually handled in quite a funny way, so its okay). Its also redeemed by his later performance as he shows his mastery of various draconic aspects of firey power. (CG flames galore!)

Its brainless chaos at the moment, but it was fun. If a plot picks up shortly, it could be a great anime, so I’m interested in this. Some caps:

Magnetism at its finest!

Aquarius has a dinner date. She does not appreciate Lucy summoning her on short notice.

A glare is worth a thousand words?

It is delicious fire, you must eat it.

Somehow I think of Kuro doing Mega Exe here, actually.

Running away from the town guard is part of the job description for a fire mage. Well, it is when you manage several houses worth of collateral damage in a few punches.

Yumeiro Patisserie

Yay, an anime covering my favourite cooking passtime. That is to say, making sweets. Cinnamon Vanilla biscuits are my speciality, but I also make a mean cheesecake. Though you know something is wrong if you start to take recipe advice from an anime, I suppose. LOL. Anyway, this played out mostly as expected, though it had a slower pace than anticipated. In a way, I’m kinda glad I did episode 1 and 2 together. They do make a bit of a set. The anime follows Ichigo, a girl who looks like she fell here from Gakuen Alice (I wonder if its the same artist, actually, they look strikingly similar). She is remarkably normal except for her ability to eat cake. Which is superior. Yeah.

Apparently, this has fostered an immensely sensitive sense of taste in her though, which she inherits from her grandmother, who was a world class sweet chef. She impresses a teacher from the St. Marie vocational school for Sweets, and enrols there. Unfortunately, she has no actual practical cooking experience and screws up under pressure (especially since she is put in the top class). However, with a new determination, she tries practicing and makes a wish to the Sugar Fairy Queen. To her surprise (the wish was mainly out of desperation!) a fairy called Vanilla is summoned and, after a spartan training regime until she gets her dessert right, then becomes her partner to become an amazing Sweet Chef.

This is cute. I like a bit of cute from time to time. As I’ve already said, the art style is suspiciously like Gakuen Alice, an anime which was also cute and full of nice fuzzy feelings (but also a surprisngly decent on the action and cute romance front). It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out, at least. Anyway, caps:

Fortunately, dad ends up paying. But she makes him spend 12,000 YEN on sweets! Thats £80 or $132!

Its heavily implied that her grandmother also had a contract with a Sugar Fairy.

You go girl! I mean, why not? Its not like other career options are flowering before you, eh?

Wow, poor Ichigo had a kinda lonely childhood if the flashback was anything to go by.

Even though I like making dessets, I would not want to be a ‘Prince of Sweets’, thankyou. Thats a kind of embarassing title…

Klutzy Girl = Klutzy Fairy summon

Also, theres the LOL evident in the fact that the Fairy is called Vanilla and she is called Ichigo (‘Strawberry’). Strawberry Vanilla, a lovely combo attack for all ages!

And thats all for today. Expect a certain special commemoration post within the next few days! Tune in then.

First Impressions: Kobato and The Book of Bantorra

I had a slight delay in watching these, and only got around to watching them today.

First up, the new CLAMP series.

Kobato

This turned out both similar and completely apart from what I originally expected, actually. In actual fact, the first episode has her passing tests to obtain the bottle to store the scarred hearts for the beginning of her quest. And yes, Kobato herself is ridiculously (almost sickeningly) innocent, matching her character design. She crosses into the naive, in fact. The key here, however, is that Ioryogi states that ‘this is the human world’ at the start, implying that she herself is not human, despite her looks. The immediate thought is something fairy like since she doesn’t immediately strike one as being imposing enough to be angelic. Ghost is also a possibility, I’d imagine.

Anyhow, her misadventures in this episode include intrepreting that parks are for tramps (not playing), opening a bag of trash for the crows to swarm her, not realising that she’s being hit on by jocks and accepting their offer to go with them (fortunately saved by Ioryogi’s flamethrower and intervention of her future crush), throwing a ball with a curved trajectory that somehow spins 270 degrees and destroys a noodle stand, making a cursed natto with chocolate, milk and other travesties (but somehow, it works, through some miraculous luck), then finally showing off her only good trait: her beautiful singing voice, which brings an audience to her, starts up musical accompaniment, and sends a crying baby to sleep.

Well, despite being a klutz, a twit and disturbingly cute, I’d imagine she’s the kind of character everyone either loves (those who love cute things) or hates (those who bleed from the ears at cute things). I think my earlier assumption of Tohru Honda mk. II isn’t far off the mark, in fact. Heck, this is going to be a show about helping people and suchlike, so yeah, its closer and closer.

Anyway, caps:

To me, the real star of the show is Ioryogi, though. I mean, who doesn’t want a cynical bastard blue dog plush that has the ability to shoot flames from its mouth?

Gosh, its another girl who used Intelligence as her dumpstat.

Chocolate and fermented soybean cheese? Sure, why not?

GAAAHHHH! Its SOOO Moe, I’m gonna die.

And so, the real mission begins.

---

Book of Bantorra

This took a rather bizarre and unexpected turn from what I previously thought. The main guy is indeed assigned to kill the worlds most powerful librarian, as initially thought. However, what was unexpected is that he himself is the weapon. He is also possessed by the spirit of an ancient Witch (who claims to love him) after touching a fragment from her book. See, a big part of the Evil Organisation TM’ s thing in this series seems to be the creation of human bombs, which they lovingly refer to as Meat. Standing against them is an organisation of armed librarians, whom are strong and powerful protectors of humanity. These librarians are respected because, in this setting, a person turns into a (stone?) book when they die, and are shelved in Bantorra.

Nevertheless, despite my initial enthusiasm for this series, I’m actually a little wary about it at the moment, since the first episode somehow felt disjointed to me, as if they were trying to cover too much ground at once, and I’m a little confused about what the hell is actually going on, something which doesn’t enamour me to shows. Nevertheless, its still got some time to clear up its act, but if I’m still confused down or shouting ‘wtf?’ too often (a bit like Asura Cryin) by like episode 3, then I’ll probably drop it.

Some caps:

I thought this set the tone for the importance of the books quite nicely, though, if Mr. Vanity here is that obsessed.

As I say, the books seem to be made of stone, which is kinda odd, though I guess they’d be eternally lasting, unlike paper books.

British library special forces, anyone? (since St. Georges cross is in the background!)

He’s actually standing on his floating chakrams here, by the way.

Anyway, more soon. See ya then.

First Impressions: A Certain Scientific Railgun

BIRIBIRI!!! <Mallet Smaash> Ouch. Thats better. I think I have more in common with Kuruko than I’d normally love to mention. Namely being a Misaka Mikoto drooling fan. Anyway, the railgun is back and she’s better than ever.

As anticipated, we hear a bit more about Academy city when we’re following some actual good students rather than everyone’s favourite luck and power dispelling level 0, Touma. Which is nice. More amusingly, we get to see Kuroko completely going over the top with providing Mikoto fanservice for the universe. She, as per usual, is the epitome of power, which is demonstrated in the episode by the fact that they have to test her railgun in the pool since its velocity cannot be measured out of water, which is pretty awesome.

Its also nice to see some more the esper powers. Kuroko gets to show off her teleporting alot here, something which she combines adeptly with the classic ninja pinion seal needles. Theres also the pyrokinetisist that she has a scrap with, which is very nicely animated.

Finally, we’re introduced to Kuroko’s partner in crime, whose esper ability appears to be related to the flowers on her head. There is also her friend, the mysterious other level 0 girl who makes friends with flower girl and Misaka, then acts all hero in rescuing a little kid from the hooligan (and her being kicked in the face allows Misaka to make it personal: of course, out comes the railgun.)

I’d assume Touma and Index, as well as the sisters, will eventually wander into the picture, but for now, its nice seeing this side of academy city and the opening episode is a truly magnificent start (even if I wasn’t biased!). Check out the caps:

Devastation follows in her wake as usual. The guy on the left shares Touma’s (lack of) hairstyle, amusingly

Kuroko, for your service to the fan community, we salute you!

The new girls. LOL at the sparklyness aura.

Wow, Kuroko REALLY is a complete hentai when it comes to Misaka. She even has a love hotel date plan sorted.

“Its time to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all outta gum.”

Not something to be on the recieving end of…

As this poor bank robber discovers. The moral? Do not play chicken with railguns.

This part of the ending sequence was epic too.

Kuroko herself is apparently going to be providing service for us next week. You go girl!

And yeah, this has its own post. I told you to begin with I would be oozing all over it, you shouldn’t be surprised. Lets hope it continues to deliver, eh?