I took a look at the list of fall anime over at (DOA)nimation today and it looks like the new shows are going to start airing next week. What are your picks and eagerly awaited shows? Here’s a list of what I’m looking forward to.

Eagerly awaiting:
Clannad
Genshiken 2
Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro
Shakugan no Shana 2

I’ll give it a shot:
Dragonaut: The Resonance
Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor
Gundam 00
Night Wizard - The Animation -
Rental Magica
Blue Drop
Da Capo II
ef - A tale of memories
Myself; Yourself
Prism Ark

Wait and see:
Jyushin Enbu - Hero Tales
Makke
Strait Jacket
Goshūshō-sama Ninomiya-kun
Shion no Ō

The show finally ends with a not-so-loud bang. A powered up Clare fights SSJ2 Priscilla, and the two seem evenly matched at first. Priscilla quickly overpowers Clare with her sheer delusional emo-ness though. Clare has another flashback of Teresa getting beheaded by Priscilla and pulls a Deus ex Machina powerup out of her ass. She flash swords Priscilla with her awakened arms, but Priscilla doesn’t die out of plot convenience.

A berserk Clare is about to finally kill Priscilla when Raki jumps in the way urging her to stop. He embraces the Berserk Clare, but her arms have a mind of their own and want to make Raki into a shish kebab. Cough. Jeane intervenes and takes an arm through the gut. Again. She uses the last of her yoki to push Clare’s yoki level down to become a human again.

Isley swoops in to spirit Priscilla away while the other Claymores are standing over Jeane who sacrificed herself for Clare. When all is said and done, the remaining Claymores decide to defect from the organization and go their separate ways. Clare pays her last tribute at Jeane’s makeshit grave and sees the spirit of Teresa that smiles, which seemingly tells her to go on living.

Final opinions? Not a bad ending as a standalone medium. We can be 99% positive that this will be the only season since the story deviated from the manga so much. There are too many loose ends however. The current number 1 and 2 Claymores have only been vaguely hinted at with no resolution. We know that the rogue Claymores will be tracked down, but we only get an ending that implies everything is back to normal. Isley is still going to invade the other territories because his forces are still very formidable even with the loss of Rigardo. Clare didn’t even get to kill Priscilla.

The ending is somewhat disappointing, but you can always read the manga if you don’t like how the Northern Campaign turned out. Now it’s time to look forward to the Fall season anime.

For all two of you that probably wanted to see the extras, here they are. The artbook is probably the best of the goodies. I doubt I’ll ever use the keychain or buttons, but you never know. These little trinkets are like a badge of honor for collectors.

After diving into the game yesterday, I have one thing to say. The prologue is damn long. I played it for about 2-3 hours and I still haven’t gotten to the main part of the game yet. Don’t let that detract you though, because it’s still a fun game. Let’s have a brief overview of the nitty gritty.

Battle System: The real-time active battles are back in full swing. You can directly control your main character in a grid-free environment similar to what you can find in Star Ocean 3. Your party members can be assigned to an auto AI setup of your choosing or you can direct them yourselves by pausing to issue commands to them. If you played a Growlanser game before, you should know what to expect.

Skill Tree: You earn new skills via a tree setup that sort of levels up skills when you defeat enemies to earn KP points. You set up skills from the left and work your way to right as you branch your skills out. Think something similar to FFX’s Grid Sphere system. I’m not sure if putting too many skills in bad spots will stunt or otherwise hurt your skill progression, so don’t go too crazy with the new skills.

Hot Chicks: Yep. Lots of eye candy.

Extras: I’ll take a few pictures of the extra goodies later in the day. Believe it.

Currently listening to: Lia - Natsukage ~Cornwall summer mix~

Lucky Star is officially over and it was a sweet ending. It’s a bit odd that they decided to end the show with the girls’ last school festival rather than a graduation ceremony or something. No matter because it was a fun episode. I expect to see otaku doing the full “Motteke! Sailor Fuku” dance en masse around the world now.

This final episode was just plain chock full of Haruhi references. Konata’s witch Yuki impression was pretty spot on and I must say I’m impressed with Aya Hirano’s voice range… But maybe she cheated and had Chihara Minori do that bit.

Overall series impression: This whole show was just a giant plug for Haruhi and to a lesser extent, Kyoto Animation. It was by no means a bad show. The comedy was really a hit-or-miss roller coaster with the low points getting pity chuckles and the high points inducing laughter that made me laugh out loud quite literally. The first half of the show really felt like the Konata and Kagami Happy Hour with Tsukasa and Miyuki tacked on as the straight (wo)men. I felt that Yuutaka and the other minor girls were introduced too late for me to really click with them.

The minor girls just really seemed very tacked on to me. We saw them so many times in the opening sequence but their characters really didn’t seem to shine too much when they were introduced so late in the show. Manga yuri fangirl was my favorite of the minor group due to how hilarious she was.

See ya later Lucky Star! Timotei timotei!