Zettai Karen Children — Anime & Manga (updated)

Posted on December 26, 2010 by Ubu Roi

This isn’t one of my better series reviews, as I think I’m still too close to the show to distill the essentials out in a compact fashion. Still, letting it sit and mulling it for two weeks didn’t help, so I’ve finished this up and am posting it.

While looking for a new manga series to read, I ran across this one on Mangafox (Warning: talky commercials). My knowledge of the series was limited to what I remembered of a review of Episode 1 that Steven did months ago, which wasn’t much. Just vaguely that it wasn’t exactly lolicon, despite the appearance, and he didn’t finish it. So I decided hell, why not read a bit.

And like he did, I found myself going, “Hey, this isn’t half-bad!” Now as it happens, both the manga and the anime have their weak points and strong points. There’s 51 anime episodes (Chihiro finished, and yes, they sucked), but over 240 manga chapters, with scanlations still being posted. It’s the same author as Ghost Sweeper Mikami, another series that I’d mildly liked. As the ZKC manga is ongoing, they ended the anime on a rather incomplete note: The girls graduate from 5th to 6th grades and change uniforms.) There has been some re-ordering of events, and some things were emphasized, while others were muted — but overall, the anime stuck pretty close to the manga. One way in which it reordered matters though, is the future of the children. The first 24 episodes are pretty much lighthearted fun (much more slapstick and parody than the manga), with just enough drama and conflict to give the fluff some texture. Starting with the last two episodes of the first season though, things start to get much more serious, as PANDRA and the “future plot” start to become important. If there’s anything that’s muted, it’s just how bad the children — and their original supervisor — were.

Left to right: Chief Kiritsubo, Lt. Kashiwagi, Dr. Sakai, front 3 girls are Shiho, Karou, Aoi, then Naomi, Capt. Tanizaki, Hotaru, and Natsuko

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Posted in Fansub Review, Series Reviews | Tagged | Leave a comment

Yousuga no Sora

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Ubu Roi

Once again, what started as a comment over at Chizumatic takes on a life of its own.

As Muon and Jordi note, YnS is following the omnibus format. In each of them up to this point (except the maid’s arc, told in omakes), Sora reaches a point where she realizes she has to let go of Haruka, her twin brother. In her arc, which branches off the “childhood friend” arc, she doesn’t let go, and we’ve now reached the trainwreck; two of their classmates just walked in on them, in flagrante delecto.

I’ve noticed something that I suspect was deliberate — spoilers: the arcs have had a definite “downhill” trend, in which each successive relationship has more and more issues at the end. I don’t remember the names and don’t have time to look them up at the moment, but:

Rich Daughter — Best ending, everyone’s happy.

Miko — 2nd Best, there’s some issues remaining to be worked out between her and the rich girl’s mom, but there’s hope that they’re over the hump.

Childhood friend — Some disturbing issues from their childhood, and Sora’s unhappy, but willing to accept it for Haruka’s happiness.

Meido (from the omakes, incomplete) — Haruka knows there’s going to be problems with their age difference and his lack of income; she’s distracted by an old flame.

Sora — Siscon route, trainwreck in progress.

And finally, another spoiler, but below the fold:

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Posted in Fansub Review, Snap Reviews | Tagged | 2 Comments

Princess Resurrection OVA

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Ubu Roi

So it seems an actual OVA was produced for this series recently. I downloaded it and gave it a watch, but I can’t say as I recommend it. The first thing that hit me was that the art was terrible. Faces were…. um, bad. So I went back to the original series, which I’d previously noted as not having great art or animation, and.. well, maybe it wasn’t any worse. There were a few other puzzling things, however, below the fold.

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Posted in Fansub Review, OVA/Movie Reviews | Tagged | 2 Comments

Ohhhhhhhhhh,

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Ubu Roi

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-

I should have seen that one coming. I forgot that Fate’s other name was Tertium And now we’ve got everything that implies… three times over. Kotaru, Sayo, Yuuna, Beatrix, and Chachamaru are down and the casualty count’s about to get much higher.

They need Negi. Now. And Nagi. Plus Jack Rakan for good measure. Then they might just have a chance…

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Posted in Manga | Tagged | 6 Comments

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Ubu Roi

I swear, I get more senile every day.

I totally forgot that new registrants would have their messages held for approval — so Wonderduck was actually the third contestant to claim the poster! And I already declared him the winner and ordered the poster.

Well, stupid is as stupid does, but honor is another thing entirely. I therefore declare that we have THREE winners. M_earendil, thelenmyers, I’ll be contacting the two of you this evening for your snail mail addresses, and both of you will also receive posters. Least I can do, aside from the obvious apology for screwing up.

Posted in Random Nonsense | Tagged | 4 Comments

MT Bad News, Good News, sorta…and a Gift from Mahou Meido Meganekko!

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Ubu Roi

About a month ago, I started getting really peeved at Megatokyo’s schedule. It’s been my favorite for a while, having passed Sluggy Freelance a few years back. The story’s in a critical moment right now; low on action compared to the last chapter but key people are finally having the conversations they have needed to have for so long. And it was dragging; it seemed like Fred just couldn’t keep to even two comics a week; in fact, he was having issues with managing even one. I didn’t want to post a bitch about it in his forums, because, I’m essentially a freeloader, just reading the site. But seriously, how can you tell a story if you only put out 3-4 comic pages a month? I mean, he posted the last comic (incomplete) on the 24th, and he’s just today starting to sketch out the frames for the next one? I remember Avatar and Steven bitching that 12-14 pages a month was too slow, but four? It’s been like this for months.

Well, I finally happened to look below the comic tonight and notice the rant he posted back on the 19th, in which he finally confesses the reason for the crappy schedule.

His wife, Sarah, was just diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Um. Yeah, the “non” part is the good news, but it’s only good by comparison to the alternative. And boy, am I happy I kept my pie hole shut. Let that be a lesson to any youngsters who want to shoot their mouths off — sometimes you just don’t have all the information.

Fred suggests that if you want to help out, hitting up his store for a Christmas present would be a great way to do that. Hmmm. That new Kimiko poster is looking really good about now, but I really don’t want this room to start looking too otaku-ish, and I don’t have any friends that want that kind of stuff.

Ok, so here’s the deal. First person to post a reply claiming it gets a Bridgebunnies.com Special: your very own gift of the poster I linked above. Don’t put your address in the post, but make sure the email in your profile is good. I’ll contact you for your address and we’ll “seal the deal.” Which basically means I order and pay for it, and put your address in for shipping. Fred gets a little support, I do a good deed, and you get a poster — win-win-win!

Posted in Webcomics | Tagged | 6 Comments

Donneybrook

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Ubu Roi

As in, “a big fight!”

Ala Alba takes on Fate Avernicus — without Negi! It’s maybe ten of the most action-packed seconds ever crammed into 18 pages of non-stop mayhem. One thing’s for certain — neither side is walking away from this one without casualties…

Posted in Manga | Tagged | 2 Comments