We’ve all seen the claims. “Code Geass is not a mecha anime.” I would tend to agree, at least for the first season. The Sutherlands were nothing special, same with the modified Glasgows, the Burai. Then there was the Lancelot. It was pretty much used to offset Lelouch’s tactical and strategic mastery. Fine. That works, can’t just have Lelouch steamroll everything. The Guren Nishiki appears as a rival for the Lancelot and it works out well in that role, despite the Lance still smashing things. The Gawain even makes sense. Its armaments are a pair of Hadron Cannons and ten Slash Harkens. The former is obviously a ranged bombardment gun while the latter doesn’t even see much use until near the end. The Lancelot’s flight upgrade is expected and it doesn’t turn it into hax. So, season one isn’t mecha heavy.

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Well, it’s over. Perhaps the greatest American animated series in recent memory just ended its three-year run on TV, and it did so in spectacular fashion. If you haven’t been following Avatar: the Last Airbender, let me state my opinion that you’re missing out. The fighting and effects are brilliant, the drama’s solid, the characters are lovable, and I keep saying over and over that what really makes the show shine are its villains. A cartoon needs good villains, whether they’re bumbling, a la Yosemite Sam, or downright sadistic, like Vincent of Cowboy Bebop. And boy, howdy, did the villains come to play in the final episodes–the series ended with a two-hour finale that tied up most loose ends, showed some spectacular pyrotechnics, and hopefully really jerked the chains of the worst part of the Avatar fandom–the shippers. Read on for a spoiler free review!

Fire Nation princess Azula (L), the titular Avatar Aang, and Zuko, exiled Fire Nation prince.

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Sora undertakes her first magic request, but Hara warns her that this client is very peculiar. The client, Motohashi, is an older woman with a request to open her safe. This woman does not have the key but always locks the safe again after checking the contents, so she is continually calling upon the mages to unlock the safe when she wants to look inside. Likewise, all the other students in the mage class undertake their own requests except for Gouta who is still a novice.

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It’s been some time into the Summer season and I still haven’t really taken a look into any of the new offerings. Some call it lethargy and whatnot, but there’s this feeling you have when you just keep with what you’re already watching and ignore the rest until that season is done. Perhaps it’s the somewhat overflowing number of new animes coming out that is somewhat intimidating. I don’t know.

In the meantime, there’s a whole lot of shifting going on here and there. How many of us can profess to having already moved on to current-gen consoles? I’m still here on my PS2 waiting for what else might be still coming to this console, i.e. Persona 4.

Sometimes I worry that I’m getting too old for this. Hah.

Meu, out.