Weekly Review #9 – Naruto, Kenichi, Blue Dragon

Posted by Neko Kyou in Weekly Review on August 19th, 2007

Slow week due to final exams. I’ll try to elaborate more since there’s only 3 episodes.

Naruto Shippuuden Episode 25

History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 43

Blue Dragon Episode 1

Naruto Shippuuden

Episode 25: Three Minutes between Life and Death

Rating: 7/10

Naruto Shippuuden Episode 25

After last week’s episode, almost any half decent Naruto episodes would start to look real good. Fortunately, this week’s episode wasn’t half bad. No Team Gai – BIG plus there. Not much time wasting either – at least Kakashi is doing something different other than jumping from around trying to get Naruto to slow down. This episode was actually quite speedy compared to the drag we’ve been treated to the past few weeks.

Sasori finally shows his true self, which explained why he didn’t look a day older than he did when he left the Sand all those years ago. He had turned himself completely into a puppet, the strongest of his arsenal. The next episode promises to bring the battle a lot closer to an end, although based on experience, the actual meaning of “10 Puppets VS 100 Puppets”.

The Akatsuki discussion segment at the end of the episode was quite entertaining as well. I find it the most interesting segments compared to the rest and hopefully we’ll get to see more of it 😀

History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi

Episode 43: Limiter! The Asura Realm’s Lure

Rating: 6/10

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 43

Not a very exciting episode and there really isn’t any funny moments in this one, unless you count the part where Kenichi was chased by a bear, which was quickly taken care of by Ogata Ishinsai, who turned out to be the person who would have been Ryouzanpaku’s first disciple if it weren’t for the Elder’s objection.

One of the Elder’s objective to bring Kenichi to Yamigata was to test whether Kenichi would accept the invitation of a “dou” user, a fighter who uses their anger to gain massive destructive power. To do that, the Elder had planned for Kenichi to meet with Ogata, a dou type fighter. It was later on revealed that Ogata is none other than Ragnarok’s Kensei.

The second objective was to train Kenichi in Seikuuken. The draft behind his head that Kenichi kept feeling since entering the forest was actually the Elder kicking behind him, testing to see if Kenichi had realized the basics of Seikuuken. The fish catching exercise turned out to be the training Kenichi needed to achieve that. The real training for Seikuuken began at the end of the episode.

Blue Dragon

Episode 1: Invoke the Shadow

Rating: 7/10

Blue Dragon Episode 1

Being the first episode, there really isn’t much in it except for character introduction. Zola quickly stood out among the rest as being the cool type character for this series and I immediately took a liking to her. Zola and Jiro went to a ruins nearby a village in search of the Blue Dragon and met Shu and his pals there.

Shu had heard that a Knight Master was in town and decided that he would join up with him as a disciple. Shu picked a fight with Jiro and just as Jiro was about to unleash his power on Shu, Zola appeared and interrupted. Mistaking Zola as the Knight Master, Shu tried to convince Zola to take him as a disciple, but was shot down instead with a question he could not answer.

The village then came under attack from the Grand Kingdom and Shu rushed to the ruins to get Zola for help. However, Zola refused and Shu, angered, rushed back to the village with his friends to save it. Just before Shu reached the village, Zola purposely attacked one of the enemy’s aircraft and caused the attackers to become even more hostile. Things got worse when Shu and his friends finally arrived and confronted the army from Grand Kingdom, but was quickly captured.

That’s when Zola finally showed up and attacked the army. The commander realized who Zola was and challenged her with his Shadow, Goblin. Zola responded with her own Shadow, Killer Bat. The battle between the 2 shadows caused a building near where many civilians were and the debris threatened to flatten them all. Shu rushed in, remembering Zola’s questions earlier which now suddenly made more sense to him. As Shu leapt under the falling pieces, the Blue Dragon manifested from his shadows.

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My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime II

Posted by Neko Kyou in Personal on August 17th, 2007

You can find the previous post for this here:

Continuing where I left off, it wasn’t until this particular anime did I start to find a liking to Japanese animation. It’s blue, it’s round and it has a pocket that has everything you could ever imagine and more.

Doraemon

DoraemonI don’t think there’s really any need to go too deep here. I’m pretty sure everyone knows who is Doraemon. The cat robot from the 22nd century with the all useful 4-dimensional pocket filled with gadgets from the future.

It was a pity that The Doraemons story arc was never animated (at least to my knowledge) since that arc has some of my favourite stories for Doraemon.

Shogakukan recently released 5 new volumes of never before seen story in 2005. If anyone knows where I can get this (translated of course) please do let me know 😀

Doraemon was probably my first true anime experience, in the sense that I knew it was a Japanese animation. I would never miss a single episode on TV or any volume of the manga (with some exception to the long stories and The Doraemons arc).

Around this time…

It was around this time when I first caught glimpse of some anime like Ranma 1/2, Slayers and some others that I can no longer recall. I didn’t pay much attention to Ranma 1/2 and Slayers until a bit later, but there are a few that I could somewhat recall being crazy over at the time.

Isami’s Incredible Shinsen Squad

I believe the Japanese title for this is Soar High! Isami! and it was released in August 1995 and ran until June 1996. It doesn’t seem to be very popular since I could no longer find any information regarding the series on Google. I couldn’t find any decent image of it either.

The story is about 3 descendants of the Shinsen Squad that had once defended the world against the evil Black Tengu and his faction a few hundred years ago. At the start of the story, the Black Tengu Faction reappeared once more and Isami and her two friends Soshi and Toshi discovered that they have inherited the powers of their ancestors and decided to use it to defend the world against the Black Tengu Faction.

As I recalled, the ending was somewhat of a shock, when the Black Tengu was revealed to be the kindly old man who always plays with Isami. It was also revealed that the Black Tengu was in fact the very same one that Isami’s ancestors had fought hundreds of years ago. I can’t remember how he had gained immortality, but in the end the Black Tengu decided to disband his faction once and for all.

Gosaurer

This is actually very similar to the first Power Rangers. A group of kids were given control over a mech called Go-Saurer by Earth’s ancient protector, Eldoran, to against the the Kikaika (Mechanization) Empire. The Kikaika Empire had already conquered most of the solar system and Earth was it’s next target. However, with the appearance of Eldoran and the Go-Saurer, Earth was saved over and over again.

Go-Saurer was a cool concept, and I still find it to be so even now. Eldoran had altered the school blocks to become Go-Saurer itself and everytime they had to launch the whole school started to move about and merge like some sort of jigsaw to complete the Saurer Jet.

The Saurer jet could then split into 3 different dinosaur robots; the Mach Ptera, Land Stego and Thunder Brachio. These 3 mechs could then merge into the Gosaurer.

Magnasaurer and Gransaurer were introduced later on, and they could each merge with Gosaurer to form either Magna Buster or Gransaurer.

King GoSaurer
King Gosaurer

When GoSaurer, Magnasaurer and Gransaurer combines together, they become King Gosaurer, the ultimate mech in the series. I’m pretty sure King Gosaurer had another upgrade during the final battle against the Robot God. Eldoran had used the rest of his power to transform whatever was left of the school into an armor upgrade for King Gosaurer.

If you’re interested to know more about the different mechs found in Gosaurer, you can check this link out.

Ninja Senshi Tobikage

Ninja Senshi Tobikage - Ninja RobotsFirst watched this on Cartoon Network as Ninja Robots and it actually took me a while to realize that its anime. Humans had colonized Mars by the year 2200 and the main protagonist, Joe Maya, who managed to get an ancient lion beast mecha to function and protect the alien ship, Xenos Five, that crashed on Mars. Only ninjas or their descendants could operate these war mechs, and Joe happened to be one, though that wasn’t really made clear until they got to Earth.

The lion beast mecha, Kuro-Jishi (Black Leo – a rather funny name for a yellow-orange mecha), wasn’t the only one aboard the alien spacecraft. There were 2 others – Hou-Rai-Oh (Phoenix Thunder Strike) and Baku-Ryu (Brust Dragon). Both machines were piloted by 2 of Joe’s closest friends – Reny and Mike. All 3 mechas are in a humanoid form when piloted.

But the coolest was yet to come. Tobikage, a ninja-like machine, often appeared out of nowhere when the 3 mechas are in danger and merges with one of them to form the animal version of the mecha.

The real fun began when Joe realized he could control Tobikage and began piloting Tobikage instead of Kuro-Jishi. Another highlight of the series was the final confrontation between Tobikage and Mantis near the end of the series. It’s a pity though, the story could have continued since it hasn’t really ended yet. All they did was get out of the solar system.

Coming Next…

While I’ve discovered what anime is by now, I had not become a big fan of it yet. My favourite channel at the time was Cartoon Network and Disney Channel, but since my source for anime at that time was still very limited I guess it was to be expected, really. But the few that I did managed to watch later on got me started to hunt around for anime VCDs, and some of those have become my favourites even until now. In fact, I’m still watching one of it right now :)

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MapleStory Anime

Posted by Neko Kyou in Coming Soon on August 16th, 2007

Maple StoryI totally never saw this coming. Never would I have expected that MapleStory would become an anime.

For those who don’t know what it is, MapleStory is a 2D side-scrolling Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) developed by a Korean company called Wizet. It’s pretty popular especially in South East Asia.

Personally I’ve never played MapleStory before, probably because I was a Ragnarok Online player at the time. The gameplay somehow didn’t appeal to me, although I know many RO players eventually migrated over to either MapleStory or Gunbound due to the negligence of the region’s poorly maintained RO server. As far as I know, MapleSEA (MapleStory in South East Asia) had great server maintenance and is still very popular right now.

I guess I really shouldn’t have been so surprised that it would be turned into an anime. After all, Ragnarok Online did have one, although the real RO anime that everyone had been anticipating never made it for release.

While I’m not a MapleStory player, this is definitely something I’ll be looking into when it begins to air on October 7 by TV Tokyo. The series will be on every Sunday, 8.30 am in Japan. MapleStory the anime will be animated by Madhouse Studios.

Madhouse Studios had animated many top anime including Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, Last Order: Final Fantasy VII, Death Note, Nana, Sakura Wars and Spirited Away.

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Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso Review

Posted by Neko Kyou in Reviews, Suzumiya Haruhi on August 15th, 2007

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso was held on the 18th of March 2007 in Japan and the DVD recording of the live event was recently released on the 27th of July. Until last week, I didn’t even realize such event had taken place and I kicked myself for it. It didn’t take long to search for it and after watching it last night I immediately made a post about it here.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

The Host and Co-Host of Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

The MC for the event was none other than Shiraishi Minoru aka Taniguchi. Yes, he’s also the same Shiraishi Minoru from Lucky Star. The co-host is Megumi Matsumoto aka Kunikida.

The show is divided into 2 parts. In the first part of the show, the entire cast of Suzumiya Haruhi was brought on stage and introduced. Sugita Tomokazu (Kyon) appeared on-stage cosplaying as Char Aznable.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Kyon

Kyon is… Char Aznable!

The best entrance belongs to Matsuoka Yuki aka Tsuruya, who started to laugh in her trademark (note: evil) laughter from all the way behind the stage until she appears.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Tsuruya

“HA HA HA HA! Nyoron! Tsuruyan des~u!”

Even if you don’t know what the seiyuu looked like, it is very possible to guess who is who simply by looking at their actions. The hyper-active Aya (Haruhi), the calm and collected Minori (Yuki) and the bubbly Yuuko (Mikuru). Sugita, on the other hand, did the unexpected and came out as Char Aznable.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

It’s Yuki, Kyon, Haruhi, Mikuru and Koizumi on stage!

The director, Tatsuya Ishihara and character designer Shoko Ikeda was also called on stage. Some of the most memorable scenes for each character is then shown and discussed. You would need to be able to understand Japanese to fully understand what’s going on here, but even with my limited knowledge, I was still able to pick up the gist of things.

After that the cast did a skit.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Skit

Is it just me, or does Sugita seems to be hiding something under the Char wig and the hat he’s wearing now? Hmm…

And there’s even Mikuru Beam…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Mikuru Beam

The Actual Concert…

Is where the real fun begins. The concert portion of Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso started off with Mikuru with Koi no Mikuru Densetsu. I’m not sure if she’s doing it on purpose, but she can’t really sing. But if she’s doing that deliberately, then she’s a real good actor. Otherwise, it’s still good, because we’re talking about Mikuru after all 😛

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Mikuru

Mikuru complete with a maid uniform…

I’ve seen many of Hirano Aya’s pictures and videos, but she has never been so hot before.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

Hirano Aya as Suzumiya Haruhi doing the Bouken Desho Desho

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

“DID YOU CUM TWICE?”

Yes, you probably read that right… It said “Did you cum twice too? Feel so dirty!!! I need a tongue bath!”

And just look at the back of her shirt…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

While I can’t make out the exact sentence, the final word is definitely “F*CK!!!” Seriously, what was she thinking!?

Minori’s performance was one of my favourite in the entire concert portion of Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso, especially with her Yuki, Muon, Madobe Nite.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Minori Chihara aka Nagato Yuki

Minori has an awesome voice and she’s gorgeous to boot!

Then Hirano Aya returned on stage… in what at first appeared to be lingerie…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

Actually… it might really be lingerie…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

Yuki surprised me with a great performance. Natsuko, on the other hand, was great with her voice as Ryoko but her singing was only so-so. But the song was kinda catchy, though. Still, no complains here it was still fun 😀

ENOZ – God Knows

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

You know what would have made this scene perfect? A pair of bunny ears…

Like so…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

A comparison between the performance of God Knows in Suzumiya Haruhi, and the Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso that was portrayed in Lucky Star –

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

After performing God Knows, Aya goes on to introduce the band members, just as Haruhi did in the anime, before performing their next song, Lost My Music.

The Guys…

Ono Daisuke wowed the crowd with his flashy moves. Granted, he’s not a great singer, but he has great moves!

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Ono Daisuke

And we finally get to see why Sugita has been hiding his head under wigs and hats…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Sugita Kyon

OMG! It’s… KYON!

The fans went nuts when he first appeared, chanting his character name in unison. I’m not sure if he’s playing some part of his character, but Sugita seems pretty stiff and uncomfortable during this performance. Aya, on the other hand, was a natural.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Kyon

And IT happened… The Hentai Trio

Minoru cosplayed Haruhi…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

I think I may be traumatized…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

Self-declared, the Hentai Trio

Introducing the Hentai Trio:

  • Hentai #1 – Sugita
  • Hentai #2 – Minoru
  • Hentai #3 – Daisuke

I have no idea what they were trying to do, nor do I think I would want to know…

Hare Hare Yukai

The girls came out for another song before the finale.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

The finale, the epitome of Haruhiism, the moment all devout Haruhiist present had been waiting for… The Hare Hare Yukai

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai

The Hare Hare Yukai

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai

Watching the dance performed in real life by the cast… priceless…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai

And the final part of the dance…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai

Pure satisfaction.

Encore! Encore! Encore!

The fans screamed for an encore, and an encore they get. The encore was the TV version of the Hare Hare Yukai, with Sugita and Daisuke joining the girls. The giant screen also showed the full animated dance as well.

Everyone was now in more casual clothing as well.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai Encore

Everyone getting comfy in casual clothes

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai Encore

You can see the animated version of the dance on the giant screen

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hare Hare Yukai Encore

… and FINISH!

End of Show

It actually got quite emotional towards the end of the show.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

A job well done!

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Minori aka Nagato Yuki

Minori asked for silence as she delivered a special message from Yuki… “Daisuki…”

Hirano Aya got over emotional and broke out in tears.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

Aya was so moved, she broke into tears…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso - Hirano Aya

When it’s her turn to speak, she once again gets emotional and sobbed through her thank you speech. I think she tried to put the blame on Kyon for teasing her too 😛

Aya’s speech is easily the most touching moment in the entire event. I felt moved as well even though I only understood about 70% of her speech. A truly great end to a truly great event. I seriously hope the event would repeat in the future and maybe to attend it in person if possible as well.

Backstage…

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

Tears are still flowing… Sobs could still be heard… Aya was really in an emotional fit.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

and Sugita/Kyon continues to tease…

I’ve said before, I would rate this 12 out of 10. A must have for any Suzumiya Haruhi or Hirano Aya fan. Wait, let me rephrase that. You cannot call yourself a fan unless you have this! This receives my highest recommendations!

If for some reason you have not gotten your hands on this, do it now! Grab Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso!

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Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

Posted by Neko Kyou in Suzumiya Haruhi on August 14th, 2007

I’ve just finished watching Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso and I’ll have to say that it’s pure awesomeness! I’m going to go through it once more before I do a proper review for it, probably within a day or two. There’s over 3 hours of fun stuffed in the 2 DVDs and there’s never a dull moment.

In the meantime, you can enjoy the Hare Hare Yukai performed by Hirano Aya (Haruhi), Chihara Minori (Nagato) and Gotou Yuuko (Mikuru) here:

If you liked that, just imagine what happens if you grab the DVD *droolz* I wished I was there for the live event :(

Grab Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekiso

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