Spot the Difference: The Second Sortie

Yeah, I know, its a day late. Busy, busy, etc.

Well, I haven’t got a specific anime this time like I had with the K-ON spot the difference. So this is really a miscellaneous bunch of spot the difference exercises, mainly showcasing ridiculous things that have been found in the anime and games world recently. Its also hopefully funny and perhaps even marginally educational. (LIES!)

Exercise 1: A Loli wearing nothing but a copy of Zelda: Twilight Princess?

Yup, The IGN guys even somehow managed to find their way into Bakemonogatari!

I had to rewind to see this again because I burst out laughing too hard.

The exercise here is to guess which part is causing the reaction. The Loli or the game?

I guess this meme has taken a life of its own. I believe they are known as bakagaijin on 2channel. Which is amusing.

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Exercise 2: And behind magic curtain number 2, is… <drumroll>:

Its like that daft game of chance in Mario Party, where you just choose doors until you die. Except with curtains. And, uh, more lingeries.

Despite a ridiculously rushed and rather contrived ending, Gendai Yokou Mahou had its moments like this. It amazed me to see the curtains opening simultaneously apparently by Kaho’s telekinesis. She’s so hardcore, she doesn’t even have to look to know its going to be an unfair deity moment.

Speaking of mystery curtains, why aren’t there any cheesy gameshows on television anymore? Everybody loves the Price is Right and Strike It Lucky. Or am I just showing my age? (or perhaps my disgust at so called ‘reality television’, which is drivel in my opinion).

And I just see Yumiko being that obligatory girl modelling on the top prize sports car. LOL.

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Exercise 3: Testing your Trap Detection capabilities

Yessiree, you have 5 seconds to decide which of the above is male, and which is female.

…

Times up! Answers on a postcard to the comment box.

Gotta Love Maria+Holic. Easily one of my favourite shows of the season it was in. Mainly because it was just innately WRONG, I suppose. And no, the above is not a trick question at all, which you will understand if you have actually watched the anime. One of the above is Maria, and one of the above is Shizu. One is a trap, the other is a reverse trap.

See, reading blogs is not a waste of time. This is actually developing survival skills! (well, survival skills for watching anime, anyway)

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Exercise 4: Learning to play the pure/vile maiden guitar?

With you powers combined, I…AM…Captain Gibson!

Which do you think makes a better riff, Mio’s Panties or Matsurika’s Bloomers? Both are instruments of the finest caliber? Its hard to say, isn’t it? I guess some of these exercises are a bit mean. Sorry.

LOL, this combines the old and the new. That is to say, I managed to stuff some K-ON in here again, and double the Maria+Holic for double the fun.

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Exercise 5: King of Heroes and Queen of Gaps: A match made in hell?

Yukari vs. Gilgamesh. Gap of Gensyoko vs. Gate of Babylon.

Holy cow, I’d pay good money to see that fight. But I don’t have to, as it is happening right above as I speak.

In before causing a storm of excrement, who wins? I imagine its a standstill. Depends on how many Flandres can be pulled out and their effectiveness against the blast of Ea. Are the roadsigns epic artefacts in same realm as noble phantasms? I’m sure Yukari thinks so.

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Exercise 6: And we’ll be right back after this…

Lets go full circle to finish and close up with another comment from our new friends, the IGN bakagaijin guys!

Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na’s anime adaption was one of those that makes you lose your faith in humanity. I mean, everyone can tolerate some animation cuts, but the animation in this was…sheer eye cancer. The above shot of the Anime Feena is actually a pretty good shot as far as some of them go. The anime is legendary for the slanting eyes of doom and the never ending lettuce of death. So much so, it became known as Yoake Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na: Cabbage Love among more cynical 2channel viewers.

And of course, considering how amazing the ingame art is, many fans of everyones favourite lunar princess died a little inside that day.

Its also one of the reasons that I am VERY wary of most dating game adaptations these days. They can be done right, like with Akane Iro Somaru Saka. But more often than not, they can be done wrong. Very wrong, like the above. And VERY, very wrong, like the soul crushing travesty that is Da Capo Second Season.

Anyway, thats all for now. I’ve exhausted all the spot exercises I could think of! Enjoy!

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First Impressions: Taisho Era Baseball Daughters & Princess Lover!

Well, had to wait quite a while for a sub of the Taisho era baseball daughters. It just came out today. I also had a anime fest and got around to watching Princess Lover! as well, so I’ll cover both shows in this little post.

Taisho Era Baseball Daughters

Again, my preview from before is fairly on the mark. There’s really little to say about this show other than the prior prediction being rather true: It does indeed feel remarkably like Princess Nine stepped into a Time Machine and sped back a few decades. Of course, in a way, it skewers itself in doing this, because it changes the probability of the story from ‘possible’ to ‘highly unlikely’. Since, hey, japanese girls in this period are only ~just~ beginning to get any sort of real recognition of rights at all; and alot of the public conciousness is into the fact that they are ladies or nothing.

Of course, I guess thats the point of the show. Its just it strains historical accuracy a little, but no worries, as long as it turns out entertaining, eh?

Naturally, this first episode is establishing the premise. The first few eps will likely be similar, following the recruitment of the other girls needed in the team. The protagonist is really dragged along for the ride here, unlike her fire headed princess nine counterpart. Anyways, some pics

Koume has a “What the frack did I just get myself into?” face. She’s got the bizarre permanent blush as well…

I can think of many things that boys do. The first one that comes to mind is NOT baseball. So I just LOL’ed at my perverse thought process.

GAHHHH! Its like hitchcocks birds gone anime style! This is part of Koume singing a bizarre history song during the first few minutes.

Aha! I spotted you, great-grandmother of Tsuruya-san.

The class rep’s chillingly doll-like movements somewhat scare me. She’s such a ‘perfect’ mannered young lady you think she’s gonna crack the screen.

These sports type shows always take a while to accelerate, and this is no different. Its got a very slow pace. If they don’t do it quick enough, such shows also manage to fall flat. We shall see.

Princess Lover!

Now this managed to surprise me a little. I guess I was expecting a flat out harem comedy. I mean, who doesn’t see that hilarious title and think otherwise, eh? Hence, getting into the right mindset was required before tackling it. However, it opened with a surprisingly interesting and even action packed (if hilariously ridiculous) first outing. Mainly because there was a car chase a horse and carriage being chased by a jeep and motorcycle. But of course, the horse and carriage was at no significant disadvantage against the motor vehicles, since it was driven by an AWESOME BUTLER ™.

No, I am being serious. Teppai is also (currently) a strong male lead. He’s tough, valourous, only a little perverse and stubborn enough to be likable, with good combat prowess. Of course, he ~could~ do an Asu no Yoichi on us yet, so I’m holding a breath for him at the moment to see if his behavoir can continue to err on the side of good. We’ve not seen enough of Charlotte yet to determine if she’s annoying, but similarily, she hasn’t made any blunders yet either, so things look okay. Sylvia is obviously a Saber clone (given breasts, of course), but she’s okay as well. Anyway, pictures to follow ze words, as usual:

Teppai’s mum was awesome. Female control at its paragon. Shame she dies in the first 3 minutes. Yeah, that was a spoiler. Oh well.

The Carriage/Jeep/Bike Chase was Lul Wut, but awesome. Mark Sullivan is apparently the head of the US secret service. I had to look that up…

Kappuchu!

Stop hiding Loli’s behind your leg. Its just not proper etiquette!

Like I say, Sylvia is obviously Saber given a Rapier and some breast implants to replace her usual Flat chest and Bastard Sword combo. (does she keep Excalibur there when she’s not using it?)

Teppai’s little sparring match with Sylvia was also pretty fun.

Its a good start for a harem show. It looks to be at least as decent as Akane Iro Somaru Saka. If it develops into the decent romance of the season I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Finally, I still need to finish off with G.A. and Kanamemo. Probably by Monday. See ya then!

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I’m not dead! (No really…)

Yeah, sorry for the distinct lack of…well…anything…over the xmas and new year period. I was mostly at the folks; and was technologically impared whilst I was staying over for the holidays. Though I had internet access of a sort, it was far too slow to consider doing any blogging, and I was also pretty busy.

Suffice to say, this now means I’m somewhat behind, yet again, with my anime blogging. In the interests of playing catch-up over the next few days, I’ll likely dispense the large scale, full plot posts for snap-shot type things.

I’ll also put up a ‘what I’m watching post’ for the new anime season. Kannagi and Akane-Iro have finished airing now (Toradora, Index and Tytania look to be carrying on). So I need something to fill up the slots!

From my initial look at the new season, I’m most interested in Kurokami (reminds me of Shana) and White Album (potential for a good new romance?), but I’ll have to evaluate their first episodes to be sure. RIDE-BACK and Maria+Holic might also be worth looking into, though they’re not my usual cups of tea. (the former has motorbike mecha and the latter involves a TRAP!).

And, as my New Years gift to those whom are interested, have a new wallpaper:

Its Alice Margatroid from Touhou, the mistress of dolls, sometimes known as the seven coloured puppeteer. Which I’ve taken literally in this design (LOL). As per normal, click the image to see the full size version…

Keep tuned!

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Akane Iro Somaru Saka 9-10

Squee, more lateness!

These two episodes of Akaneiro managed to defy all of my expectations. Why? Because, much to my sheer amazement, fillers stop and progress occurs! And I’d almost given up hope of the first episodes pace returning.

By doing this, actually, they’ve managed to pull a ‘Shuffle’ on us, by offering sudden, often misleading progress by the mid section. Hopefully, they’ll also pull of a surprise ending too rather than a forced pairing.

Anyhow, on with the commentary…

Episode 9 opens with us discovering that the photo of Junnichi and Yuuhi actually went and won the silly contest Tsukasa was talking about last episode, which causes some inevitable friction:

We also learn that its Junnichi’s birthday in a couple of days. Yuuhi refuses to do anything for the occassion, much to the other girls chagrim. As the scene switches to back home, I got mightily disturbed by this:

Maybe its just my perverted mind, but I saw something wrong there, and was sat broken for a couple of seconds.

Its just leg moisturiser, by the way, if you were thinking what I was…

Anyway, Minato uses her usual scary pyjama intimidation tactics to get Yuuhi to co-operate for the birthday party. She has little choice but to play along; and is assigned the mission of buying Junnichi a present. However, she cannot decide. Karen also stumbles across her looking, and adds her usual overreaction to the matter:

These aren’t just Argos catalogues. They’re apparently rich persons mail order express, as they even have boats, diamond studded watches, and throughbred horses among the items (with prices in the millions of yen). We also learn Yuuhi got bought a boat when she was 6. Damn rich girls…

Anyway, no consensus is reached, so Yuuhi decides to investigate Junnichi’s room for tips:

What I find more incredible is that he keeps them in such pristine order. No satchels on top of the cupboard like my old systems. He even seems to have colour coded game cartridges…

Of course, in the process of the search, Yuuhi stumbles across a dirty magazine too…

And becomes embarrassed in the process. Whilst this is occuring, Minato somehow manages to sneak in.

She shows Yuuhi where he keeps his other priceless possessions. (Jeez, can’t trust a sister with anything…) Minato and Yuuhi spend awhile perusing the porn collection…

What I did find refreshing is that Yuuhi wasn’t angry about this. Its normal anime girl behavior to immediately clonk the guy and burn his recreational materials. Yuuhi and Minato, if anything, seemed to be rather fascinated. Minato even commented his fetishes had obviously changed over the last few months, indicating she was keeping track…

Anyway, Yuuhi still can’t decide a present, so instead, Minato is a good sport, and says she should bake the cake, giving up her amazing ‘Nii-san friendly’ recipe for Yuuhi to use:

Which for some reason seems to resemble a diagram of the Tree of Life from the Kabbala.

Complex!!

That also describes Minato’s feelings quite well. The party goes off as planned, and Yuuhi manages to craft the cake without annihilating the kitchen, though its droopy on one side and everyone else comments on it being dry.

Nevertheless, Junnichi eats it all and says its delicious simply because she made it. Awww…

Moving onto Episode 10, Nagase is composing a report on Junnichi being a kind, but clumsy buffoon. In the meantime he’s walking around the house in a just a towel and scaring Yuuhi…

Yuuhi then pretends to be sick for the day since she’s confused about what to think about Junnichi. Her thoughts mirror Nagase’s description. She can’t hate him despite her best efforts.

Minato takes the bait and leaves as normal with the intent to tell the school about Yuuhi being off sick. However, she also urges Junnichi to take some soup and a croissant to her.

He, on the other hand, immediately sees through her ruse. She has no fever or anything. (It doesn’t help she starts shouting at him as he enters, either…)

Eventually, giving in, he says ‘fine, there are just some days we feel crappy…’ and gets up to leave. However, she suddenly leaps out of bed and grabs his sleeve. There are arguements, confessions, and etcetera. Junnichi eventually gives up that he always liked Yuuhi. She is mad her first kiss was improper. She can’t decide what to think again and starts shouting, when he suddenly takes the initiative…

‘Like me, or hate me? Make up your mind!’ he says.

So yeah, progress! There is unilateral consent on them having feelings for each other… and I guess this is a trigger for them to properly start ‘dating’. Sort of. Its kinda vague, but suggested that some time passes where the two have become closer together, and where everyone has realised that this is the case… and so tries to grill Minato and Yuuhi for information…

No doubt, Minato…

Eventually, everything is spilled, and some the two’s absurd behavior from the preluding weeks is showcased. Their embarrassment around each other being the theme.

Junnichi seems to be barrelling along quite contentedly, but gets warned that to pick Yuuhi means giving up Minato, and is asked whether he can really do that. He shrugs off the question…

Yuuhi, however, doesn’t seem to know how to proceed in their relationship. So she eventually gets some advice from Nagase… (oh god, of all people…)

This results in her cloaking herself and entering his room at night…

No jokes about cloaking devices, please, children.

Junnichi is awake, and wonders what the heck she is up to. More randomness occurs, and she is de-cloaked to find…

Maid Clothes!?!? Well, I suppose its to be expected from a Nagase plan. However, this is apparently a weakness for Junnichi and he finds her very cute…

Now personally, I find the above to be cuter…

They’re about to kiss again, when Yuuhi swoops away…

Wuh!? Another wonderful out of context subtitle.

She really means she doesn’t need silly cosplay to learn about him (well, duh!) and begins to leave. He’s dissapointed that the maid clothes are going away though and gets a drop kick for his impudence.

Elsewhere, Minato has woken up in her room, and is standing around, looking sad and crestfallen. Evidently, the other two forgot that she has absurd survival skills (and hence, no doubt has sub-sonic super hearing and would have been woken, even if they had of managed to be quiet, which they didn’t).

Some more time later, Yuuhi has to leave to tell her family the good news that she is happy with getting to know Junnichi more and more and is probably okay with him being her finance. So a car picks her up and she leaves temporarily.

Minato says this is the first time they’ve been alone for a while. She then makes atrocious errors in cooking, which is tremendously unlike her and her uber-hax chef skills. Junnichi of course worries about her because of this; knowing something extremely heavy must be on her mind.

Which leads us to Minato suddenly having her mask of ‘its fine, no really’ dropping off, and…

Oh Shi-

Despite her best efforts…she can’t seem to help herself. Junnichi has a flash back of ‘can you live without your sister?’.

And we end there…

Oops, looks like Junnichi’s not the only one with needless sibling lust. Despite Minato trying to make her best effort throughout these last few episodes to encourage him and Yuuhi, she’s shown some obvious pain each time…

I just hope this isn’t the shot in the head to the Yuuhi relationship. Though it looks that way, anything could happen… and I do hope that we don’t have to tread the sis-con road again. Its a well travelled route after all. With a little luck though, we’ll veer off this course after some angst and this series will pull a surprise on us.

At least this has rekindled my hope for the series.

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Akane Iro Somaru Saka 7-8

Yep, I’m doing a double whammy again for AkaneIro since I missed out on watching episode 7 last week, and decided to do 7 and 8 back to back.

Episode 7 involves the old favourite; the cultural festival episode.

Its the old Tiger/Dragon fight cliche again. What a pretty backdrop!

Anyway, we hear that Minato is planning to run a Yakisoba noodle stand with her sempai’s. (those shrewd upperclassmen; they obviously know very well that Minato is capable of making instant noodles of win and god and awesome!)

So Junnichi asks Yuuhi if she has any ideas for their class. Yuuhi thinks a resturant is a good idea too, but given Yuuhi’s past cooking failures, he knows it will end up somewhat like this:

And hence says its a terrible idea. Nevertheless, come the day of the festival, the class just so happens to also be running a Yakisoba noodle resturant.

Junnichi is then kidnapped via a revolving Blackboard by Nagase.

He is then subjected to an evangelion moment from the pervy sensei and Mitsuki-sempai, wherein he is made to wear a Megaman outfit and test some equipment. WTF?

Meanwhile, the Yuuhi and Karen run Yakisoba stand manages to kill some innocent customers, as expected, destroying all hopes of them becoming popular. They practice loads with their ingredients, however, and eventually get something resemble edible noodles. But its now late, and naturally, Minato’s place has a ludicrously long queue as well, since they’ve cunningly decided to serve the dishes whilst wearing a combined tennis uniform with maid aprons.

Several ‘revenge’ cosplays later, and loads of photos by Tsukasa, popularity for the Yuuhi cafe increases because of the extreme methods. Namely, school swimsuits with neko mimi mode (cat ears) for the waitresses:

No, there isn’t any connection. Really.

Things proceed, and eventually, as the day draws to a close, everyone in the school is summoned to the courtyard by Mitsuki-sempai for a final event.

Which involves an octopus attacking the school…

What is it with this show and octopi, I’ll never know. To counter this “attack” by the wheely octopus, the Geno Killer robot appears, naturally, piloted by Junnichi, given its namesake:

However, the mecha is evidently made of sausagemeat and duct tape, since it immediately explodes as soon as it takes its first step (sort of in parody of Evangelion again, I suppose). Junnichi feints in the wreckage and the octopus (piloted by Nagase) sidles off with a “damn you, I’ll retreat for today” catchphrase… WTF…

Later, Tsukasa gives Junnichi some pictures of Yuuhi in her swimsuits and other cosplays, which he seems to enjoy. Despite him not being at fault at all here, he gets piston punched anyway, though…

Poor guy…

Episode 8 seems to follow immediately after the Sports festival, most of which we do not get to see, though we do witness Yuuhi failing at the relay because Junnichi is in an Octopus costume (again!?) and it creeps her out, allowing for this subsequent photo:

Tsukasa threatens to submit the above photo for a competition:

But, it turns out this episode is actually a Tsukasa episode, anyway, and she gets the lion’s share of the screentime this week, as we learn that she wants to be a voice actress. Junnichi remembers she used to practice magical girl moves with him as a kid, humiliating her in vengeance for the photo with Yuuhi:

Aww, thats actually kinda cute…

As is chibi-Junnichi doing his kung-fu stuff with her, lol…

Tsukasa gets home and seems happy that he remembered their childhood friend exploits. So she decides to get on the net and audition…

ORLY?

For this, however, she needs someone to take a photo of her, so of course pops around to see Junnichi the next day. However, since no one besides Minato knows that Yuuhi is living with him, he has to hide Yuuhi in the closet.

Junnichi thinks its a good idea that she auditions. But he wonders why she wants him to take her photo. She dodges the question, saying she’s good at taking photos of others, but not so good being the subject herself. Somehow the conversation gets onto how the audition also requires a swimsuit contest (WTF!?) and so Tsukasa asks Junnichi whether its true that he likes School swimsuits. He goes into his fantasy world, and also imagines his sister in one again (sigh):

Does your rampant, obvious lust for Minato never cease, Junnichi?

Anway, Tsukasa goes for the audition. In the meantime, the others are playing a piss take of the Game of Life:

Hmm, thats not an obvious reference to a previous episode at all, is it? And again with the Octopi!

Unfortunately, she gets nervous and fails the audition. Later, Junnichi finds her under the bridge. They reminicise about the past. He remembers her advising him about something to do with fighting (huh? something to do with the Geno Killer past, I assume). He also says she shouldn’t give up, since her singing and dancing is superb, and once inspired/saved him. This cheers her up:

Again, Tsukasa gets all the cute shots this episode.

Looks like they are going to do the usual dating game adaptation thing of going through each of the characters then… sometimes this can work well (see Kanon, Shuffle), but I’ve also seen it fail miserably (too many examples). Lets see if they can pull it off. At least the animation budget seems to have gone up again in the last couple of episodes.

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Akane Iro Somaru Saka 6

This week on our favourite mindless trash anime, its time for the hotsprings episode. This, much to my relief, brought back some more instances of Karen’s desire to impress and Minato’s commando like survival instincts, which help freshen up the otherwise cliched proceedings; at least slightly.

We begin with the bus journey from hell, with everyone’s favourite pervy teacher bawling out some kareoke numbers like this little gem:

I hope I’m not the only one detecting the slightly less than subtle innuendo in those lyrics…

Junnichi is less than impressed, though everyone else seems to be clapping along out of…pity, is it?

Karen getting quite literally fired up for the journey.

Though she’s a boastful rich girl stereotype, I can’t seem to hate her. Maybe its the determination.

I guess she gives new meaning to ‘fiery personality’. Heh…not to mention it looks like they spent at least 70% of this weeks animation budget on those pretty flames…oh well…

After ascending the longest hill in the history of man, we arrive at the 5 star resort that has been booked out for our predominantly girl party. Junnichi has a pervy moment over his sister again; and conversation decends into how his previously scary reputation has gone down the toilet, and he’s become known as a closet pervert rather than the Geno Killer.

Needless Yaoi moment, much to the girl’s amusement.

Anyway, Karen interprets Junnichi’s apathy as him being discontent with the facilities and begins to put another one of her ludicrous plans into action (ye gads…)

Geez, Minato, I know you have super strength, but surely that’ll make his face saggy…

This plan is actually just a super secret hotspring; which they have to trek through mountains and forests to reach. After more discussion about Junnichi being a pervert, Minato goes into survival mode when she hears a bear roar; and dashes off to attack.

But after 10 seconds (LOL), Junnichi goes into a panic she’s not returned already, and goes after her. Only to find that she’s stripped butt naked and is now sharing tea and biscuits in the hot spring with the bears in order to get to know them better.

I guess this is where the PedoBear legends originate from…You go girl!

Well, that made me go WTF, LOL…

As you might expect, this week has immense amounts of steam censoring. To encourage hopeless fools to buy the uncut DVD versions, no doubt… (sigh)

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