Mahou Meido Meganekko

Steven’s been writing about the Strike Witches second season, which he’s enjoying a lot. As usual, a brief comment got out of hand, so here it is, rather than take up his space…

Curiously, there are also a series of light novels that are attempting to write a history around the war. The anime does not seem to be following it closely, thanks to the ending of the first series; but the same characters are there, as well as many others. Most of the stories follow other IJN Strike Witches sent to the European theater; most from the army are working on the Orussian front. There’s also the Suomus Misfit Squadron (officially the Suomus Volunteer Air Squadron), where everyone dumped their worst problem cases (including the Japanese). They’re fighting out of what we know as Finland. In warmer climes, the Afrika Korps (mostly Karlslanders) fighting against a secondary invasion in Egypt/Lybia; the line’s currently in Tobruk, but facing east, not west. All these stories are set before the animé; there’s talk of setting up a joint fighter squadron of all aces in Brittania, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.

At least one set of stories does follow the 501st, though it’s not translated yet. In fact, Baka-Tsukai hasn’t completed the translation of any of them yet; as is typical of their volunteer status.

(more…)

Apparently, several weeks ago, I started a post on Sekirei’s second season, and never finished it. Given that we’re now past the third episode, and this is turning out to be one of the surprise quality shows of the season, I decided to resurrect it and complete the post.

First though, what I originally wrote, from the viewpoint of having watched only the first episode and catching up on the manga.

(more…)

I don’t normally do this, but I’m going to post Jason’s thin slicing review of HOTD in its entirety, given its brilliance:

BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BREASTS BRAIN BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS

Well, I’d have added “BLOOD” at least once, and the ratio is off a bit, but still, you get the picture, I’m sure.

I have to say that this season has turned into a stunning winner to make up for the last two crappy quarters we’ve had to endure. Strike Witches 2 and Sekirei 2 have both turned up the quality. HOTD has just about the perfect mix of horror, blood, and breasts. Asobi ni Ikuyo is keeping me in stitches with its zany Illuminati hijinks, and Occult Academy had a good first pair of episodes to start before the reportedly atrocious third episode.

Losers: Mitsudamoe (too-perverted kids); Seitokai Yakuindomo (too-perverted teens, and derivative of recent series); Shukufuku no Campanella (too boring, wake me if anything happens).

Edit: I don’t know what happened to the 2nd half of this article; it was there when I opened the edit screen but not displaying until I re-saved it. Weird.

Note: thought I lost the entire post, but the autosave got about half of it.

The answer, more or less, was given this episode. Spoilers below the fold.

(more…)

(edited for spelling and clarity)

Lately, its not been that I have had nothing to say, I simply haven’t had the motivation to say it. Wait, I said that already. Ok, fine, so here we go on another stream-of-alleged-consciousness post about anime.

(more…)

I watched the Railgun omake last night, which is kind of funny, especially when Mikoto starts acting out of character. They reused a lot of shots from the show, but changed up the dialog.

Dr. Heinous writes that he noticed something while watching the last few filler episodes:

…I don’t think they were ALL filler. Odd that there was a tiny tremor of an earthquake that sent the Anti-Skill girl to hiding under a bench. Then at the orphan school there was a significantly stronger (though still minor) quake…

Hm. He may have a point. Color me Elvis — I’m all shook up. Something you just don’t see in anime set in Japan is an earthquake (Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 being the exception that proves the rule.)

That’s still no excuse for a crappy set of fillers, which the last two were. At least the first two were tolerable, but I’m disappointed that they don’t appear to be heading into the Sisters arc. I could forgive that if they do it as a movie, though. It would be a good move, I think.

So I’ve spent a couple of days reading a very bad Engrishy translation of the last few FMP novels, and I have to say that this has become another “I hate my characters” type of story by the author. While the first few novels and the anime series had plenty of laughs, there’s not much to be found funny here. (I can think of only two exceptions…”Testicle Princess” being one of them!) I’m sure some of you have already read it, but here goes anyway. Below the fold are MAJOR spoilers, so if you haven’t, venture there at your own risk.

(more…)