This is a tentative weekly section devoted to critiques of the most recent anime I’ve seen; Usually the newest episodes that I want to talk about without going too in depth, but I may focus on older anime as well.

Clannad episode 18: Woo-hoo. Nagisa is back baby. Kyou and Ryou just got served. Well technically, Nagisa was the one that got served… In the face with a tennis ball. Ouch. It still goes without saying that all the other girls pretty much know that they lost the game to Nagisa. I especially liked the girls ganging up on Okazaki to eat their food. Tomoyo’s arc has been lackluster compared to the other girls, but I still like her character as a whole.

Shakugan no Shana II episodes 14-15: Still catching up after missing episodes for more than a month. At least the plot is finally starting to go somewhere now. It was getting really stale with all the early episodes being slice-of-life.

That about does it for this post since that’s all I had time to watch. Have any of the winter shows gotten better in the meantime? Some of them are starting to show promise and some opinions would be nice.

Tenchoooooouuuuu! Filler posts need love too, but they have to pay for it. I probably post way too many Lucky Star pics. I’ll blame that on… Hmmm… Global warming. There are a couple 90% complete articles that need a few finishing touches before they get published. Anime episode summaries will come sooner or later. Well now. Back to gaming studying!

Notice the lack of “Happy” in the title? Good. If you have a girlfriend/wife, it’s that time of the year where you buy candy and flowers at greatly inflated prices. Hooray economics. Meanwhile, the singles out there will stay at home and watch hentai or play video games. If you want to show your gamer pride to your valentine, you must be out of your mind. If you’re not going to let a little thing like reason stop you, here are a couple links. Picture barrage after the jump.

VG Cats Valentines
N&B
4 Color Rebellion

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I’ve recently been exploring Front Mission, the original one, the turn-based mecha sim released for the Super NES in Japan, but never in America. I’ve had a copy for some time now, acquired through…surreptitious means. As is my habit, I’ll return to a classic Super Nintendo title years after I last played it mostly because I’ve forgotten how it plays. Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and Earthbound are examples that I re-explored this past summer, and I suppose it was only a matter of time before I returned to Front Mission. After all, I love mecha titles, and I’m fond of turn-based strategy titles as well.

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Burn, baby, burn! Not literally of course, because I don’t condone random acts of arson. It’s been quite a hiatus, so I have a ton of stuff to get through. Marathoning a variety of anime on the weekend is always fun. Synopses will come throughout the week as I also tackle a couple essays that have deadlines on the horizon.

With that out of the way, it might finally be time for me to cave and buy a PS3. This means no more figures (or food for that matter) in the foreseeable future unless a Shiori gets announced. The dilemma is choosing between the lower-end and higher-end model. I’ll probably have to settle on the more expensive model in the end, because it makes marginally more sense.

The search for a web host continues as well, but this is a lower priority than the PS3. Wordpress has been pretty good to me, so there’s no rush. Balancing price, features, and reliability is really boring. Since I’ve got bandwidth to spare, the idea of a home server actually doesn’t sound too bad and might end up being a better solution in the long run.

FNDF, you say? Bound, have you gone mad? Are you making up acronyms simply to generate confusion and bring this fine blog into ruin? The answer may surprise you.

Maybe.

Or possibly I’ve just started a little tradition for myself: a tradition of a Friday-night double-feature! That’s right, years old films or at least nothing recent, rented on DVD (or, heaven forbid, VHS) and viewed with a company of comrades. Each week will purportedly have a theme, and this past one was “robots run amok.”

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Trailer at Youtube. It looks like Bandai is placing their bets on Lucky Star’s success on this side of the ocean. With all the blatant Haruhi references in the show, as well as Haruhi’s massive success over here, it looks like money in the bank.

Let’s talk about the trailer though. I do try to give dubs the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn’t sound good. Based on the preliminary viewing, Konata and Kagami are way off. The dub voices for Konata and Kagami are so far out of the ballpark that they somehow ended up in a soccer field. Miyuki and Tsukusa are pretty decent, but the show is still predominantly a Konata-Kagami comedy act. I dread having to imagine the VAs do the karaoke bits at the end of each episode.

As an aside, how is Bandai going to handle all the cultural jokes and obscure references that will no doubt fly over the heads of most mainstream anime watchers? If Bandai doesn’t pack any liner notes as extras, half of the experience is already lost. As an aside to an aside, how will the Minoru Shiraishi ending “songs” play out? I’m not exactly holding my breath, but I’ll put LS on the Netflix queue when it gets released.

Source: Bandai

Pre-preview begin! Here’s the list of new shows slated for this spring courtesy of Fansub Wiki. Some big hitters are coming, including the likes of Code Geass R2, To Love-Ru, xxxHolic season 2, and Vampire Knight. There are also a lot of unknowns entering the fray too, so it looks to be an exciting season. Will there be a full preview if I can compile some pictures and synopses? Maybe…

Edit: Moetron has a list of anime with thumbnail pics here. Be sure to mark your calendars, kids.

Here’s my obligatory Chinese New Year post. Hope everyone out there has a good one. May you usher in the Lunar New Year with many red envelopes and illegal fireworks.

I don’t know what this is really about, but for $20 I’ll probably get it. Apparently it’s a puzzle game involving octopuses or something. Double wallet whammy because the release date coincides with Brawl. If anyone else is thinking about getting Octomania, maybe we could have a match when it comes out.

Source: Kotaku