First Impressions: Sora no Manimani & Spice and Wolf 2nd Season

Guh, more work yesterday. I seem to doing a relentless amount of overtime at the moment. Sheesh. Anyway, I’ll cram SoraMani and Spicywolf into the same post here. Because otherwise it’ll never get all done. Besides, I did three shows a post last season, didn’t I? LOL.

Sora no Manimani

Sora no Manimani seems to have played out mostly similar to what I previewed before. Saku and Mihoshi were “childhood friends”. Notice the quotation marks; but his father got reassigned and he moved, only to return to this original town after 7 years. Its not a move that he’s relishing, since the so called friendship was not mutual. He really didn’t consider her his friend; but rather a tyrant that destroyed his life, since all he wanted to do was read, but she kept taking his books hostage and dragging him around to see lovely night skies, because her father was a astronomer (pretty evident: having ‘hoshi’  in her name, which means ‘star’).

Of course, he hopes to avoid her or that she’s changed and matured, but that wouldn’t make for fun storytelling, now would it? She’s pretty much the same evil little girl in a teenage body. Whom is still crazy about astronomy and is now the clubs recruitment specialist. Hilarity ensues. Here’s your dose of screencaps:

So small, so cute, SO EVIL!!!!

Funny how the past always comes back to bite you in the ass

~Priceless reaction~

Shooting Star Glomp Strike!!

I mean, that smile just immediately paints her as evil, doesn’t it? Especially if she manages it whilst astride him.

Excellent subtitle, if I may say so myself. But Dude, you’re blocking the toilet entrance.

Well, if you’d have just played the cute crying card earlier, there wouldn’t have been any problems, would there?

Wild imaginations rock!

The club president seems to routinely die for no reason.

I’m not exactly 100% sold on this show yet. It does have potential, though, so we shall see. I certainly be looking at the next episode.

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Spice & Wolf Second Season

Yep, this is progressing almost exactly like the preview too. As I noted there, this continuation of the Spice and Wolf series means moving into the novel which covers the Pyrite saga. Its a nice little part of the series, and though I don’t want to spoil it for everyone, has some fascinating economics and great extra characters. Of course, it pains me a little, because the anime series is faithful to the novels. Which, don’t get me wrong, is great. But of course, it also means I know exactly whats going to occur before it does.

Hence, much like me knowing the Tears to Tiara plot well and not watching that as a result, there is a distinct chance I’ll do the same with this part of Spice and Wolf. Though, of course, chances are I’ll still get the episodes and watch them when I feel like it, since I love the dynamic of Spice and Wolf.

For everyone else though, I of course can’t mound enough praise on the series, assuming you like a slow show thats mainly centred around character development. I personally find the medieval economics aspect quite fascinating too, but I guess that would alienate some. Anyways, some caps as usual:

Welcome back, guys. The cart scenes are usually what make the series.

You’re a wolf goddess. Its okay if you snore a bit.

I want to sing the fishsticks song, but I’ll resist!

Lawrences usual reaction is back, as well.

Lawrence’s buddy is rather important to this plot-line. They do alot of negotiation.

A flashback to one of Horo’s moments of wisdom.

And the ending credits have some really cute chibi’s.

Should probably do Kanamemo and/or Princess Lover tommorow. Still haven’t actually got around to watching them yet!

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The Ideology Geyser Explodes!

And its time for the random philosophy post. Been awhile since I had one, mainly because I’ve not had anything really new to say.

Cover your ears and eyes if you wish. Running in screaming terror is also an option.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Some who know me in person understand I’m perhaps a very strange beast indeed. I am quite literally a case of a person who thinks far too much for their own good. So much so, that circumstances forced me to adopt a “Stress, What Stress?” attitude to life. Not that I resent that.

Its like a state of mind, or something. I guess some people can see me as ill-motivated or lazy. Because I am not a pusher or shover or mover of mountains, and will never be. I seem to dream about getting things done rather than getting things done. But from my perspective, its merely “What are you getting so riled up about? Calm the frack down!”.

Now, I’ll clarify immediately: I’m not trying to sell my own philiosophy and ethics to you. Undoubtably, its a state of mind and action that has plenty of flaws and is quite possibly only uniquely suited to myself.

But the point of the matter is that, in my escape from the chains of stress, in abandoning all hopes of being socially conformative, in dismissing the lunacy of even trying to climb the corporate ladder, I also escape the mad throng to the top. Free from its clutches, I see with an interesting light. One whose illumination I thought I’d share with you.

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From my endless thought processes, I’ve personally come to the conclusion that desire is the mind’s true poison.

Well, that’s no revelation. I mean, come on, as far back as the Seven Deadly Sins, three of them are explicitly about desire in some form of sheep’s clothing. Lust, Envy and Greed are all desires of different kinds, whether its desire of the flesh, desire of others possessions, or desire of material gain.

Of course, humankind, in its traditionally paradoxical nature, can often derive strength from these very horrendous weaknesses. To deny your desire, to sever it from your being, is to cripple what makes you so brutally efficient as a person. So you cannot merely remove or bottle up your desires, for doing so will inevitably make you useless or, at best, volatile. Rather, you should embrace them.

However, what cannot be controlled is useless. Chaos for Chaos’ sake is still just Chaos and serves nobody. So letting loose rampant desire is also out of the question. It is only likely to destroy your morals and shatter your precious psyche.

Because, at this opposite end of the spectrum, if you are controlled by desire, and cannot obtain it, you will accumilate frustration (and hence, stress) faster than a magnet dumped in Iron Filings. And eventually, this too will cause you to snap because your desires are never fulfilled, probably turning you into a horrendous monster.

I think, however, that half of the problem in the latter case is just that you’re:

Aiming too Frackin’ HIGH!

(guns have recoil, dont’cha know!?)

Society has this way of taking its poster children and SMEARING them IN YOUR FACE.

Whether its the ‘Sexy Cover Girl Celebrity who was once the girl next door who lost 40 pounds overnight no really’ or the ‘Rich Corporate Success Story who started with a bunch of coppers and now has a high flying business empire with a harem of wenches‘, our culture has a way of saying: “If this isn’t you, you’re a fat waster. Get off your couch and become awesome. Now.”

However, unlike in roleplaying games, people can’t just click their fingers, roll some dice, and suddenly have a Crowning Moment of Awesome.

And because we can’t, its like a Huge Terry Gilliam Foot just fell from the heavens and stepped on your ego.

But of course, because these people saturate the media and business world as ‘avatars of capitalist awesome’, we have no-one else to look up to, and so a vicious cycle of aiming far too high is proliferated. And what’s worse, people start to believe THEY are HAPPY because of it. Which is also encouraged, despite the fact it could be causing irrepairable mental damage, since the rules of  ‘a happy punter is not a complaining punter’, and ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ suddenly come into play.

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What’s the answer then?

Well, for starters.

Ahem. The following things will NEVER make you happy.

1. Fame
2. Wealth
3. Beauty
4. Power

Or at least, if you get to the point whereby they do make you happy, your spirit was obviously crushed long ago.

For achieving a better, less insane balance, focus your desires elsewhere.

All adults lust. But rabidly admiring girls on the street is the fast track to a slap at best, or the sexual offenders list at the worst. So don’t forget to lust from the comforts of your own home. Relegate your sexual desires to another reality, seperate from this one. It may sound as if I’m suggesting self-pleasure here, but that’s incorrect: This is even healthy when in a relationship. In order to regard your spouse with the same lust and pleasure you undoubtably (well, hopefully) shared when you were first dating, you need to take a snapshot of them, and make them become a different person in the bedroom. When you switch over, nothing else is in the room. All other connotations they bear, and hence, all mental baggage, is to be left at the door.

Everyone also has envy. However, if is over the above listed items, instead try to think about the negatives. Fame, Wealth and Beauty come with their own horrible consequences. Try to think about those, and you’re suddenly not so envious, eh?

Greed is obviously related to wealth in the modern capitalist society. It will not make you happy. Money was invented as a disposable income. You know, something to get RID OF. An alternative to actually having beautiful things by expressing them in soulless scraps of paper and chips of metal. Rather than working to obtain money to buy things determined as valuable by people you probably don’t even know or care about, you should instead work to obtain money as a means to live, and on the side, create or do things that ACTUALLY matter to you. As in, work not to progress. Work to live. Cash is not a replacement for life.

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As much as I try to avoid making my opinions sounds like a cheesy self-help article, your mileage may vary. In truth, looking back on all of that, I can see where you might get that impression. But know that this was not the idea behind this huge geyser of philosophy that I decided to spout out today, but rather a means to express how I see things. As I said before: I’m not trying to sell my own philiosophy and ethics to you. Undoubtably, mine is a state of mind and action that has plenty of flaws and is quite possibly only uniquely suited to myself.

Nevertheless, you can see how dangerous my mind can be on ‘splurge’ mode, can’t you? LOL.

But of course, if you take something from it, then well done…Or something.

Anyway, you can take the cheese out of your ears now. Your regular programming will now continue.

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Hanasakeru Seishounen

Oops, I think I missed making a post on Hanasakeru Seishounen.

I’ve been enjoying this a fair bit so far, because its surprisingly charming (it seems strange that I’m so enamoured by the Shoujo Series from this season!), and it in fact reminds me a little of Fruits Basket.

I mean, its the usual cute girl surrounded by stacks of beautiful men thing, but how Kajika acts a foil and ‘healing aid’ of sorts to all of them is very much similar to Tohru Honda. Of course, whilst Tohru got her ‘never say never’ attitude by being poor, destitute, and absurdly hardworking, Kajika sits at the other far end of the financial spectrum, being a veritable princess of the modern world, being the only daughter of an Corporate Tycoon. She gets her foil attitude from her absurd innocence, warm-heartedness, and bizarrely superb insight from her psuedo-isolation on a tropical island during her childhood years, which in turn happened due to her fathers fear of assassination attempts.

In any case, despite a short stint in Japan after finally leaving her tropical island for the first time in years, Kajika is soon thrust into a ‘game’ set by her father, Harry Barnesworth, to find her a suitor from three men that he has personally selected. The catch? These men aren’t actually aware they’ve been selected, and Harry won’t even say who they are, only set up “coincidental” happenings that may result in them being around. The terms? Kajika identifying them and not falling for them: She wins.

Guys everywhere fall into Kajika’s grey eyes, it seems.

And she really used to love Mustafa, her White Leopard pet.

Li-Ren is her childhood friend, and the young Chairman of the Chinese Fang Group.

Episodes 2-4 focus in on Eugene Volkan and his angst ridden past. Despite the fact I don’t usually go for angsting bishies, I thought his story was surprisingly interesting.

This guy is Kajika’s bodyguard. He has a remarkably tough time…

Stop acting suave, Li-Ren…

Should add a compilation post up soon.

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Eden of the East, Ristorante Paradiso: Initial Impressions

Yep, another quick look at some of this seasons anime. To be honest, these two turned out to be sleeper hits for me, since I didn’t expect too much of either of them, hence this quick article. Again, no detailed plot exposition here, I’m afraid, but I will shoot up the usual screencaps.

Ristorante Paradiso

I’ve actually watched Two Episodes of Ristorante Paradiso now. Its definately the sausage-fest of this season, since dear lord is it full of men (hence my initial reservations). Naturally, I have no interest in that facet (no doubt the squealing fangirls will like it though) of the series, but it still managed to charm me. Mainly through the fact that its portraying Rome in an interesting light, looking at the effects of a mothers abandonment of her early child for her own happiness, and also analysing that strange girl thing of loving older men (something that’s often remained a mystery to me). It also has its fair share of very subtle situational comedy hidden in there which I appreciated. I mean, I appreciate the overt comics of things like K-ON as much as the next guy, but its occassionally nice to have smirk-worthy ‘intellectual’ laughs as well. Anyway, some caps:

‘Itsah rainin’ men! Allelujah! Itsah…’ <shot> Ahem, well, its true…

Nice way to treat your daughter whom you left 15+ years ago, huh?

Well, she gets seriously blackmailed in the process, so hey, its fine…

All guys working in the resturant must wear spectacles as per the madam’s orders. Even if they’re fake, like the Chef’s…

Inevitable plot hook.

Nicoletta tries to rape Claudio. Well, no accounting for taste, I guess, but…You go girl!

Then mother pops in at the usual inoppertune moment. LOL.

More blackmail later, and Nicoletta becomes the resturant’s first female employee.

Yeah, I’ve actually quite enjoyed this show. I’ll at least look at a couple more episodes.

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Eden of the East

I delayed watching Eden of the East, but I was surprisingly impressed by it. Our male protagonist seems to be a Japanese version of Jason Bourne. His memory is wiped clean and he finds himself naked in front of the White House holding only a pistol and a mobile phone.

At the same time, our female protagonist is trying to make a wish by throwing a coin in the White House fountain. However, the security obviously thinks she’s some kind of terrorist, throwing things towards the White House, and she looks to be in some trouble.

And the moral of this anime so far is:

PUBLIC NUDITY SOLVES EVERYTHING!!!

Amazingly, the cops don’t notice him until he clambers naked over the fence. Talk about selective perception.

And yet, they do catch her lobbing a coin into the garden.

I thought the intro for this was mightily pretty too. Its also sung entirely in suspiciously proper English.

I didn’t realise Noel Gallagher sung it at first though until I did these caps! No wonder its pretty good.

Saved by the naked guy with…uh…two guns? Lol at the white-scribble censor.

I thought she was gonna do a striptease too here. LOL. I think this qualifies as one of the most amusing meetings between male and female protagonists I’ve seen in a while (except maybe Demonbane).

You’ve got a closet full of assault weaponry and a stack of passports in what is obviously a safe house. Dude, you’re so a secret agent.

He literally asks the officer to compare his with the one of the photo. And he gets away with it!! (since apparently he was…uh…flaccid…back then)

And that makes everything better, of course.

Well, I’m interested to see where this one goes. It had a ridiculous premise, and yet, somehow managed to twist it into something impressively believable. That is seriously praiseworthy! I look forward to what it can offer up next.

I’ll get around to doing a post for 07Ghost, Pandora Hearts, the new Polyphonica and maybe a couple of the others soon (hopefully…) but I’ve been pretty busy as per usual. Stay tuned!

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Tytania 5-6

I’ve actually got reason to do this set of Tytania as a double whammy for a change, since they are a contiguous story for the most part.

Fan Hulick’s almost entirely out of the picture in these eps as well, as the story goes to focus on the Principality of Tyrandia. We open seeing the funeral of the Duke of this place:

It turns out that the nobles of Tyrandia, seemingly inspired by the Battle of Cerberus (the one Fan Hulick won), want to seperate from the Tytanian conglomorate. So Duchess Laetitia is manipulated by them into sending this proclaimation.

As a result, Lord Idris (the bishie blonde, vicious nutcase of the big four) has to return from his fun shooting random people to go to a meeting, so has to delegate his position temporarily. He does so, and hence we’re introduced to:

Marquis Estrades is actually the older brother of the leader of Tytania, Ajman:

Well unlike beardy guy and his brother, they do actually look somewhat related…

At the council meeting, Psycho Idris and Beardy guy want immediately quash Tyrandia for their audacious claim, but Ariabart and Jouslain are more level headed and correctly deduce that the duchess is being manipulated. So Jouslain goes to try and negotiate.

We switch back to Tyrandia, where we’re also introduced to the Tytanian representative Erwin, whom was a childhood friend of the duchess:

That subtitle out of context makes it sound like they’re having an affair, ne? Hehe…

Anyway, we learn that Erwin made a promise to her when he was young that he’d help her see the gods of Uraniborg by becoming a great Tytanian official…

Aww…ain’t they cute?

Jouslain arrives; and after the politcal games and charades are over, the foolish nobles immediately get an assassination attempt under way:

Thanks to Jouslain’s savvy, however, he negotiates his way out of it; and almost secures an escape for all three of them. However, the Tyrandian nobles insist on Laetiata staying behind. Jouslain tries to argue, but she says its okay if its for Tytanias wellbeing and that he should go. Hence, Erwin also ends up staying…

However, shortly after his shuttle leaves, Laetiata goes and shoots herself! Apparently she was well aware that she was merely a puppet for them and figures this was the best way out of it… (WHAT? <sigh>)

Erwin goes balmy seeing her die before keeping his promise and does a suicide run at the corrupt men who drove her to this. He is obviously gunned down by soldiers. (how depressing)

Moving onto Ep 6, we see the repercussions of before. The nobles are marshalling their forces. Idris decides to send them some insane demands for surrender in order to irritate them and flush out rebels:

Jouslain on the other hand is informed of the Duchess and Erwin’s death, and starts to wonder whether Tytania is really an entity worth dying for. He calls it:

We also see Super-Antennae girl again, with a ‘Feed me Seymore’ plant:

There seems to be alot of random scenes with her in. I hope that they actually add up to something. This one was a little relevant at least because we hear her father denouncing the Tyrandian plan of attack and refusing to help out. They turn out to gather no allies whatsoever, so it looks like they’re screwed…

Much to beardy guys disdain, Ariabart is again given the command of the situation. Presumably to redeem himself from the previous failure vs. Hulick.

Jouslain and Ariabart think its a great idea for him to learn from his mistakes and nick Hulicks strategy of using Weigelt cannons. Fast forward to the battle:

This man is smarter than he looks. He figures out Tytania is up to something with their low fleet count. Of course, the admiral doesn’t listen to him and thinks Ariabart will fight using normal tactics.

(Sigh) You should have listened to that wise guy, Admiral…

So, half of the Tyrandian fleet gets taken out, and they retreat. The guy from earlier suggest they ignore their losses and attack though, as he also realises that the Tytanian formation is just as weak after using the cannons. Again, however, that idiot admiral ignores him. So he sighs, and uses his five ships to try a suicide charge to take out Ariabart, by himself:

And he almost succeeds in ramming Ariabarts flagship and taking him out! But is shot down at the last second:

It is only now the foolish admiral realises the wisdom of this hero. But its too late; and the battle is decided. We’re given a monologue from the narrator on how Tyrandia hence becomes wiped from map (ouch…).

In these couple of episodes it gets a little confusing from time to time with the Tyrandians and Tytanians, doesn’t it? But its nice to see what’s going on in the universe whilst Fan is goofing around and eating omlettes. Seems he’s set quite the trail of dominoes running though…

On a side note, Laetitia is spelt that way in the subs, but its pronounced Lay-tee-ett-ah, so I reckon it should be Laetiata. Same with Aryabhata, when its said Ar-re-ah-bah-tt, so I write Ariabart.

So yeah, I’m aware the names probably change from time to time in this post… If someone knows how they are spelt in the novels and wants to correct me though, then please, go ahead…

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Obama in the Presidency? Phew…

I’m not American, as you might have already guessed (the Earl & Fairy post might’ve given it away), but I have been watching the American presidential run with some interest. Of course, we know as of this morning that Barack Obama has secured a needed majority.

All I can say is…phew… that’s good news. Not that I have any paticular beef with John McCain, but his policies sound almost like going for a third term of Bush, which is the last thing I think America needs right now. It amazed me, frankly, that he stayed in office in 2004, considering the blunders leading up to that point. But then, of course, having a war has a habit of doing that. (Though I don’t think neither Afghanistan nor the second Gulf conflict even really counted as wars… to be honest)

But anyway, this is a pretty revolutionary step forward for the USofA, since he’s also the first non-white president, which is a greatly inspiring change of attitude from our comrades across the Atlantic.

Lets hope it leads to good things, ne?

Yeah, I’ll blog some more anime tonight when I get back as well…

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