Weekly Review #12 – Naruto, Kenichi

Posted by Neko Kyou in Weekly Review on September 30th, 2007

Naruto Shippuuden Episode 29 – 30 (1 hour special)

History’s Strongest Disciple, Kenichi Episode 48 – 49

Naruto Shippuuden

Episode 29 – 30: Blast Him into the Next Dimension! Naruto Shippuuden Special!

Rating: 7/10

Naruto Shippuuden Episode 29 - 30

If you do not mind another 8 minutes or so of repeated scenes of Team Gai’s battle, as well as another few minutes of watching them as they watched their clones dissolve slooowwwly into whatever elements they were made from, you might find this episode to be rather good. By Shippuuden level, anyway…

The animation team loves to waste time by showing us things we don’t need to know, nor things we should care about. Like Sasori’s original puppet body being sealed to wall and his dead puppet body lying on the ground.

The first highlight of the 1 hour special is of course, Kakashi’s Mangekyou Sharingan. The effects weren’t as dramatic as Itachi’s Tsukuyomi. But even so, it’s probably the best most of us could hope for.

With Kakashi’s new ability, he managed to force Deidara to lower grounds where he got ambushed by Naruto and his kage bunshins. After so many episodes of chasing, he had finally retrieved Gaara.

But it wasn’t over yet as Naruto ambushed Deidara a second time, furiously turning Deidara into a punching bag. Naruto gave Deidara the Rasengan treatment, only to find that Deidara had performed Kawarimi and replaced his body with clay.

Naruto Shippuuden Episode 29 - 30

And here we have the second highlight of the 1 hour special. Naruto going Kyuubi mode. Even though I already knew what would happen and how Naruto would look like in Kyuubi mode, I couldn’t help myself to stop laughing when what appeared to be red coloured fart came out from his ass.

Other than Naruto’s lips transforming to one that eerily resembled the Kyuubi, it was pretty cool. Especially the tail, after it’s been fully formed and no longer look like fart gas.

(oh, anyone noticed Anko walking pass the shop where Jiraiya was warning Kakashi about Naruto going Kyuubi?)

Deidara watched the whole thing as Naruto Kyuubi mode wrecked destruction and even tried to attack Kaakshi. Kakashi managed to return Naruto to normal using a seal given to him by Jiraiya. When Deidara tried to retreat, he was greeted by Team Gay Gai thanks to Neji’s Byakugan. I swear Deidara is probably one of the very few who faced a Sharingan (a Mangekyou Sharingan at that) and Byakugan user while handicapped and still live for a long time. Oops.. Did I just say that? XD

Well, I suppose any battle where there are only one Team Gai is a good one. Although I can’t understand how they managed to defeat their clones one on one but couldn’t catch an Akatsuki who had no arms with only a single kunai in his mouth.

Deidara tried to take them all out ala Cell (Dragonball) by blowing himself up. Kakashi must have had the same idea as Goku and transported the exploding Deidara into another dimension. But unlike Goku, Kakashi didn’t have to sacrifice himself to do it. Therefore, Kakashi > Goku. (Nah, j/k… Maybe… Nah…)

Naruto Shippuuden Episode 29 - 30

Apparently Naruto still hasn’t given up hope on Gaara and tried to have Sakura to check up on him. But when Sakura couldn’t do anything to help, Naruto started to go emotional and tears began to flow out faster than water can flow out of a pipe. Despite that, it was a pretty emotional scene and even I shed a tear or two.

Chiyo looked very surprise when he saw Naruto in that state, which seemed to have toughen her own resolve to finish what she had set herself to do.

No new Naruto episodes until the 18th. Rescue Gaara’s arc would finally end and we’ll finally get to see Tobi and Yamato. If only Sai didn’t have to be part of the story.

History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi

Episode 48: Summit showdown! The man who carries the spear of legend

Rating: 8/10

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 48

The final showdown finally began between the two leaders. As expected, the battle of the two Seikuuken were magnificent and graceful. Halfway during their fight, Odin ordered Ragnarok to crush the rest of Shinpaku Alliance so that Kenichi could no longer concentrate on his own fight.

Fortunately, Elder dropped off Siegfried in time to save Hermit from being hit by a hammer, and immediately after that the rest of the Shinpaku Alliance and Kisara’s team appeared to join the battle.

This allowed Kenichi to once again fight at full concentration, and he went back to the very basic, the evasion move first taught to him by Miu. With that, he was able to throw Odin to the ground and demanded that Odin remove his spectacles.

Odin asked Kenichi whether he truly wanted him to remove his specs, and when Kenichi continued to insist, he gladly obliged. Without his specs, Odin could no longer see properly, but instead, he gained a far more frightening ability. The true reason behind his title of Odin. The ability to read your opponents move to accurately dodge everything and land every hit.

Actually, the best part of the entire episode was really the next episode preview. It had me laughing so hard, I knew episode 49 would be a really good one.

Episode 49: The strongest transformation! Ryouzanpaku’s rythm!

Rating: 9/10

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 49

As I said before, I knew episode 49 would be a good one judging from the episode preview alone. I was not disappointed.

Odin’s ability of foresight and his Gungnir attacks which never misses its target proved to be way beyond Kenichi’s capability to attack or defend. He went on about how he was like before he met Ogata before continuing his assault. No matter what Kenichi tries to do ends up being useless.

Siegfried then revealed to Kenichi that Odin’s secret is that he had already memorized Kenichi’s rhythm. That was also the reason why Odin didn’t start off directly with this move. He had not caught Kenichi’s rhythm at the start of the fight. Sieg then told Kenichi to use his special thrust that he had used to defeat Sieg before.

After struggling a bit, he managed to get into the position and launched his deadly thrust. It probably would have knocked Odin out, if he hadn’t blocked in time. Kenichi continued to get beaten around until his body was shaking.

In a move that reminded me of Sakuragi Hanamichi (Slam Dunk), he knocked his head hard on the metal pipe he and Odin were fighting on to stop himself from shaking. The knock must have some real impact as he suddenly started to imitate each one of the Ryouzanpaku master’s moves.

This is probably my favourite scene in Kenichi so far. Since Odin had already picked up Kenichi’s rhythm, Kenichi would just change his to that of his masters. And right before Odin is able to analyze the new rhythm, Kenichi would switch again to another master.

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 49

Apachai Mode and Sakaki Mode

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 49

Kensei Mode, Shigure Mode and Akisame Mode FTW!

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 49

Elder looks so proud (for the wrong reasons…)

From Apachai to Sakaki to Kensei to Shigure to Akisame. It was so cool and hilarious at the same time, I fell on the floor rolling with laughter. Literally.

I seriously can’t see how Kenichi can top this, but seeing how Odin finally pulled out his trump card, Kenichi would need to find another strategy once more that is more effective than his mimicking his masters.

What does Shigure say about this episode?

History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi Episode 49 Kousaka Shigure

Hurrah for Kenichi!

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Luminous Arc

Posted by Neko Kyou in Personal on September 29th, 2007

I’ve actually spent a lot of my time the last 2 weeks playing a new game on my Nintendo DS. It’s called Luminous Arc, and was just recently released in US version.

When I first saw it while going game hunting with Dyna and Carbunkid about a month ago. Kid picked up the game from the shelf and shoved it to me. The first thing that immediately caught my attention was the artwork. It’s simply gorgeous. My first thought was, “I need to get this game…

Luminous Arc

Luminous Arc is a Strategy RPG that uses a battlefield grid for battles. If you’ve played this kind of games before, you’d know how addictive it can be. There are also replay values as well, especially if you didn’t max out all your other character’s “hearts” (which is quite difficult unless you battle a lot, and I mean a lot) and the side quests if you missed them in your first playthrough.

The English voice cast is great and very fitting with all the characters. You will seldom find me praising the English dubbed cast of any Japan-made games and especially anime, so it’s saying quite a lot.

What does this have to do with anime?

Since this is supposed to be an anime blog after all, I’ll try to justify why I’m posting about Luminous Arc.

I’m currently on my third playthrough of the game (with all my over-leveled characters) and I’m actually thinking of getting the Japanese version of the game. If the English voice casting is already so impressive, I was wondering about the Japanese voice cast.

And according to Wikipedia’s entry on Luminous Arc:

Character Actor/Actress – Japanese Actor/Actress – English
Alph (アルフ Arufu?) Akira Ishida Vic Mignogna
Leon (レオン Reon?) Keiji Fujiwara Doug Erholtz
Lucia (ルーシャ Rūsha?) Aya Hirano Amanda Winn-Lee
Saki (サキ Saki?) Mie Sonozaki Michelle Ruff
Heath (ヒース Hīsu?) Kousuke Toriumi Yuri Lowenthal
Theo (テオ Teo?) Yuko Sanpei Wendee Lee
Cecille (セシル Seshiru?) Fumiko Orikasa Karen Strassman
Nikola/Nikolai (ニコラ Nikora?) Daisuke Kishio Dave Wittenberg

With some of my favourite Seiyuus like Aya and Akira as well as Keiji, Yuuko and Fumiko who had impressed me with their anime roles before, it’s really hard to resist the temptation to grab the Japanese version and enjoy their voice acting talents.

Ahh… So many things to buy, so little money…

Click here to get your own copy of Luminous Arc.

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My Chronicle: Journey Through Anime III

Posted by Neko Kyou in Personal on September 26th, 2007

You can find the previous post for this here:

Pokemon

Pikachu I was first exposed to Pokemon when my mom bought a set of 10 VCD of the series from Singapore in 1998. Before that I was totally clueless to what Pokemon was. I just took out the CD and put it into the player with absolutely no expectations.

I remembered that I was totally hooked by the 3rd or 4th episode. From there on, I nagged my mom to buy more whenever she went to Singapore. This went on until the Orange League arc began. I can’t remember for what reason, but my mom suddenly stopped buying and I stopped watching. The reason could be because another anime had caught my attention at that time, which I will talk about after this.

During the Johto league season, the episodes were starting to become available locally and I started watching again, but that didn’t last long as well. The shops I went to never have the episodes I wanted, almost never restocks, and it was difficult for me to go around to other shops looking for it. So once again, I gave up watching the series. On the other hand, I kept up with all the movies and major events in the storyline, at least.

A few months ago when I bought my Nintendo DS, I started playing Pokemon Pearl (my first game on the DS). When I learned that a new Pokemon 10th season (Diamond and Pearl) was recently released, I started watching again although at a slower pace.

I was first exposed to Pokemon about 8 years ago, and I’m still watching it now. Unless they really screwed up the anime, chances are I would continue to watch it for a long time to come.

Cardcaptor Sakura

Cardcaptor Sakura Cardcaptor Sakura started showing on a local TV channel in 1999. I remember disliking it at first but after watching a few episodes from season 3 I began to find it rather interesting.

Luckily for me, the station re-ran the series from the first season after it ended. This time around, I never missed a single episode. If I were to name any series that got me truly started to liking anime, it would have to be Cardcaptor Sakura. Because of that, it easily became my favourite and continues to stay that way even now.

Because of Cardcaptor Sakura, I waited impatiently for Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, and from there I got to reading and watching many other of CLAMP’s work, many which became a favourite as well.

Cardcaptor Sakura was the first full anime collection I had (season 1-3, movies 1 & 2, 12 volumes of manga) and they seldom collect any dust since I still go through them quite frequently.

A magical girl series that revolves around Kinomoto Sakura, the chosen successor of the Clow Cards. Each episode shows Sakura finding or later on when she had collected them all, converting the Clow Cards to Sakura Cards. Although a mastermind exist behind most of the events, there really isn’t any villain. Despite that, it’s still very entertaining to see Sakura catching all the mischievous Clow Cards that she accidentally released and using them to battle strange happenings when Eriol arrived.

Digimon

Digimon Omnimon

I didn’t like Digimon at first because it sounded looked a lot like Pokemon at first. But I did catch it on TV whenever I had nothing better to do.

It wasn’t until around the middle of the first season, the arc where Hikari appeared, that I began to pay more attention to this series. Strangely enough, I also found out that many people started to become fans because of Hikari.

Unlike Pokemon, Digimon is *cough*serious*cough* business. The world is constantly in danger due to the threats posed by some evil Digimon (except maybe Savers, but there were still those who wanted to destroy the human world anyway) and its up to a few selected children (again, Savers is an exception here) with their Digimon partners to save both the human world and the digital world from certain doom.

The process repeats itself every season and it does gets a bit boring, but I still enjoy the original 2 series (Adventure and 02) and Savers as well.

Coming Next…

The next part could be the last in this series. Around that time I started to watch many other anime on satellite TV and it became quite impossible to keep track of all of them. The next few would be the ones I could still remember that pushed me to become the anime fan I am today.

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Midori no Hibi Episodes Review IV: Episode 12 & 13

Posted by Neko Kyou in Reviews on September 25th, 2007

Earlier posts from this series can be found here:

Midori no Hibi

Episode 12: Sudden Farewall

Rating: 8/10

Midori no Hibi Episode 12

Kouta tried to convince Midori to let her mother know about what’s going on, but Seiji refused on her behalf, saying that Midori herself is troubled by this as well.

And one of the shamans that Midori’s mother invited seemed to be the real deal, saying that Midori herself did not want to return yet. Even if he was to forcefully return Midori’s spirit, the same thing will happen all over again. It’s best to let Midori find what she truly wants and then return on her own. I remembered reading that Midori actually did return to her real body a few times in the manga, but quickly went back to Seiji’s right hand again each time.

Midori seemed to be really bothered about what Kouta said and Seiji only made things worse for her. It seems to me like Seiji was actually trying to convince Midori to want to return to normal in his own way.

After Seiji went to sleep, Midori completed the muffler she was making and put it over Seiji. Then she started to wonder if it really wasn’t her own fault that she ended up that way, and whether it was okay for her to stay that way. Seiji woke up a bit later to find that his right hand had returned (and I quote “What the hell is this?”) and started to panic when he realized Midori is missing.

Seiji tried to convince himself that it was all for the best and that he should be happy. Midori would be happy to return to her own body too, right? Despite that thought, he got easily upset at even the smallest things and even ditched school that day. Instead, he went on a shopping spree for everything porn and had Miyahara carried a huge backpack full of it around as he continues to shop for even more.

They met with another group of delinquents while walking on the streets who had been waiting for him. They were the same ones who Seiji had beaten up the day before at the bowling alley, but this time there were more of them. Seiji told Miyahara to run and keep his new collection safe as he released all his pent up anger on the delinquents.

Miyahara ran into Ayase as he was running away and told her about what happened. By the time Ayase reached where Seiji was, he had already taken care of all the delinquents although he was bruised as well.

Ayase began to pour out her true feelings for Seiji and finally confessed to him how she truly feels.

Episode 13: Our Days

Rating: 8/10

Midori no Hibi Episode 13

Seiji rejected Ayase with the excuse that he can’t seem to think about it right now, but Ayase told Seiji that it’s probably because he already likes someone else. He said that even though he always thought of Midori as being noisy, but when she was no longer around all he could think about is her. Ayase then explained that its probably because he doesn’t know how he truly feels about Midori.

When Kouta came to see Midori, he found out that Midori had no memories at all about what had happened to her. She totally forgot about how she had been Seiji’s hand, but said she felt all warm and happy inside. Kouta was torn about whether or not he wanted to tell Midori what had happened, fearing that Midori might decide to return being Seiji’s hand and fall into a coma again.

Seiji went home that night and began to notice how much Midori had been a part of his life and was given a surprise greeting from his sister, Rin. She noticed that Midori was no longer on Seiji’s hand. When she found out that Midori had probably returned to her real body but Seiji did not go and look for her, she gave him a beating and took his allowance as usual. She also took away the hot spring buns she brought as a present, saying that it was supposed to be for Midori, to which Seiji had no reply.

He also found Midori’s little diary underneath the muffler she made for him and read through it.

Seiji appeared in front of Midori’s house the next day but chickened out the last minute and turned to walk away when he heard Kouta calling out to him. Kouta explained that Midori had woke up in her real body but when Seiji asked Kouta to hand over Midori’s diary to her, he asked Seiji why wouldn’t he hand it over to her personally.

Seiji seemed shocked when he heard that Midori had no memories of what had happened. Kouta tried to persuade Seiji by telling him that she still wanted to be by his side, but Seiji said its best that she doesn’t remember anything and tried to leave. Midori heard Kouta calling out to Seiji and saw them both outside the gates of her house.

A flood of emotions came over Midori, who suddenly felt like she had lost something very important, and wanted to return to that time when she felt really happy once more. But her mother told Midori that she cannot return to that world, and that if she doesn’t do anything in this reality nothing would change. Midori seemed to have made up her mind and quickly rushed out of her house.

Kouta directed Midori to find Seiji and stopped her mother from trying to go after her. Midori went to all the usual places where she used to see Seiji, but had absolutely no luck, and sometimes just passing by each other without noticing.

Seiji, on the other hand, roamed all over town reminiscing about what had happened through Midori’s diary. He was obviously very depressed as well.

As fate would have it, Midori finally found Seiji at her special fountain overlooking the city. She gathered up her courage and walked up to Seiji, who was really more surprised to see Midori then she would have thought. Took her a while to actually say it, but Seiji responded in kind with a smile. They really looked like they were about to embrace each other but it started to snow and they ended up looking at the falling snow instead.

Midori no Hibi Episode 13

“And they live happily ever after… The end…”

Well, at least it sure seemed that way 😛

Click here to get the entire set of Midori no Hibi DVDs

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No Weekly Review This Week

Posted by Neko Kyou in Updates on September 23rd, 2007

I’ve only managed to watch episode 48 of History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi this week since I’ve been busy playing Luminous Arc, among other things. Luminous Arc is a Strategy RPG game for Nintendo DS and I’m quite hooked on it.

I’m just about to complete the US version of the game and I am planning to grab a Japanese copy of the game as well. You might be wondering why is that and the answer will be coming in a post by itself soon.

As for the review of Kenichi episode 48, it will be up next week instead.

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