I was watching  a show that is distributed by Funimation yesterday, and I do believe I have found the best trailer ever. Please watch the trailer and you’ll see what I mean.

The animation is evidently nothing less from gorgeous and the fight scenes appear to look so interesting and full of emotion. The lead character just appears to be so attractive and very social. What more can I say besides the fact that Funimation has done it again! They have managed to license the best of the best while advertising to a wide audience for all to enjoy! Well, I hope you are amused by this video to the anime that I believe has just completed my life.

It has definitely been years since I first saw the Cowboy Bebop film, which was my exposure to the franchise. Even without much knowledge about the series before it, I still was extremely entertained by the film and actually loved it! Even still it manages to be in my top 25 anime films of all time, but now that I have completely watched the series I guess its time for a rewatch because I would imagine that this time around I would have a different perspective about it all.

I think with any form of media you can always tell when something seems to have a bit effort put into it and Cowboy Bebop just seems to have a passion behind it that you can see as you watch it. It is a classic in the anime world that at least must be watched once and for myself, it may have taken awhile, but I did finally take the time to watch it eventually. For those who do not know, the story takes place in the future and essentially, there is a cast of characters who together either help or are bounty hunters. Besides having a pretty awesome story, it really is the characters that seal the deal. They are incredibly charismatic and all quite hilarious, Ed continues to be my favourite character since I have seen the movie and I don’t doubt that will ever change.

When it comes to the music, this series has no doubt one of the best soundtracks of all time and it works so perfectly with every scene. The opening with the song “Tank!” still stands as one of my favoruite opening from any series. As for the animation, for something made in 1998, it is incredible. It looks better than some of the animes being released today. So if you are one of those people who “hate old looking stuff” then don’t threat, Cowboy Bebop doesn’t fit with this idea.

Even with all this praise, on thing that got me sort of disappointed with was how despite really liking each episode, I never really got into the whole show. I was always hoping for that one little switch to go off in my mind where the series would become too good to put down. It took a little too long for me to watch this series and I got caught up with a lot of other animes, so I really should have just forced myself to marathon it all and my overall impression would probably end up better. To conclude, I only have good things to say really about this series despite the whole “I never really got into thing”, so I really think that this is a series that needs to be watched at one point or another and there is no better time than now!

1. Dog of Flanders – Movie (midorij)

Hint: The English word for the Japanese word “inu” is in the title

2. First Squad: The Moment of Truth (Kitsune)

3. ToraDora! (kelakagandy)

4.

Hint: A series released in Spring 2007

5. Kamichu (Botch)

6.

Hint: Did a gust just go by? I can’t remember anything…

7. Candy Boy (Kode-Dekka)

8. Haibane Renmei (kirsa)

9. Mononoke (mushroomsamba)

10. Unico in the Island of Magic (markus)

I have seen way too many blogs as of late that have been hating on the upcoming anime Iron Man and so I decided to cut it some slack and think about the positive of it all. With that said, I have put myself in a mind set that I will be the unofficial supporter until I can judge it for myself.

really think that Iron Man can be very interesting depending on how they approach the storyline. If we take a look at the Hollywood movie, I do not think it is too hard to admit that it was quite awesome. Of course, it probably was mostly because of Robert Downey Jr, but we can’t disregard the fact that the mix between Marvel and Madhouse could create a character that is just as charismatic. If we just focus on Marvel’s work, their movies are never beautifully scripted, but they have always ensured an entertaining time. As for Madhouse, they have even dealt with this type of genre and the characters in them. Take a look at Casshern for an example…Similarish premises and Casshern turned out to be a pretty good series. By working with Madhouse, it should in theory result with:

-An entertaining show

-Good Animation

-Great Action Scenes

-Possibility of charming characters

In the trailer alone we can see 2 out of the 4 possible reasons to how this could be an awesome show so if people were to give it a chance, maybe it will fit all the criteria I hope it will. With that, until I actually see and judge the series for myself, I will be supporting it and encouraging more people to give it a chance. I hope I have created some sort of change of heart with a few. I do not expect the appeal of Iron Man to be for everyone because not everyone even likes Marvel at any extent, but if you like action series then I would imagine you should look no further for your action fix with the spring lineup!

As you can probably tell, I recently watched Pale Cocoon and although in terms of the story I did not think it was the best thing out there, I do appreciate the art!

When I first heard about this series, I was interested in watching it, but just sort of forgot about it when it aired. Luckily yesterday I decided to finally give it a proper chance and became instantly engrossed. It took a serious topic and made it into an 11 episode series and made it something entertaining to watch. That in itself is very difficult to accomplish, but Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 managed to pull on all the right heart strings and came out with a series that was a near masterpiece.

It tells the story of if Tokyo were to be hit by an 8.0 earthquake and focuses mostly on young girl named Mirai and her younger brother Yuuki. Before the event happened, Mirai was a very selfish and cellphone obsessed girl who would look out for nobody but herself, but when the earthquake happens and she is left to take care of her brother alone to get home, so she has to find somehow a place in herself where she can soften up to others to help her get through it all.

I think this is more of a show that holds a greater impact in Japan, in the sense that when you see “monumental” places like Tokyo Tower and the bridge they were talking about throughout and the name escapes me completely collapse before your eyes. I would at least think that makes a bigger impact because I heard that for example, with the film 2012, people in the US actually liked it and it was hard for them to watch certain scenes like mentioned before, but I guess that still is not the best comparison. Well my point was that despite that, I still felt like this series hit home and I managed to catch myself crying through many scenes. It had some very good character development throughout and despite what say may say with it being boring in parts, I was very interested throughout. The production values were obviously very high as the animation was definitely top notch. Admittedly, the weakest part of the series was probably in the middle, but after episode 6-7, the rest of the series was still pretty incredible at showing the harsh realities of losing everything.

There is only a handful of series that I am able to say that I really marathoned or I just could not wait till the next episode was released and this was one of them. I have been a bit at loss of words to in what to say when I started to try to write this review, but I hope the fact that I felt this was an amazing series came across. Thinking about my top ten list of 2009, I would probably put it near number four if I were to rethink my list. By keeping in mind that this is a series that will probably leave you on the edge of your seat and that it will be an emotional ride, I do recommend this series. I recommend to watch it all at once for the main reason that once the first episode comes to a finish, the only thing you will want to do is watch the next.

Nothing like a good commercial holiday if I do say so myself. Considering I have not posted much in a while, I decided to go with the easy way out of that by making this post. I’ve also added my top five favourite romance animes that are not necessarily the most well done of all I have seen, but really represent love the best. So whether you plan on doing something fun today or just pretending it this day does not exist, I still wish you all the best. So to conclude, here is my list of top 5 romance animes:

5. Tokyo Marble Chocolate

4. True Tears

3. Clannad

2. Princess Tutu

1. Ouran High School Host Club

I am 11 episodes into the series and I do not understand what the big fuss is about this series. To describe my feelings towards this series in the simplest way; its boring.

When I first decided to watch this series I sort of forgot that this was a show by Gonzo and when I recalled this fact once more, I started to somewhat understand why I am not liking this anime. I have never been much of a fan of Gonzo productions because they are always very boring and even if they might give you thousands of action scenes throughout they almost always do not know how to portray these scenes in an entertaining way. And they use these dull action scenes to cover up the fact that they do not really have much of a plot behind their episodes.

From a friend I learned that the character designs are by Murata who has a very peculiar look to his designs, but actually make them very beautiful. The character designs are probably the best part of the series, but just as Gonzo loves to do, there is still a lot of CG animation being used very frequently.  This CG is also by no means seamless and instead gives the show an uglier look than it could have been. I at least like the opening in all this, just because I actually like the song and it manages to give off the expectation that this series could have been good.

In terms of the characters, I once again wander in the bin of boring. Lavie should be interesting, but every time she shows more than one side to her they just prevent it from further being discussed and she drops that attitude behind to go back to her figurative one dimensional self. An example of this is when she was showing tons of dislike and jealousy towards Al and just wanted to go home, but one episode later all was forgiven and her real home was not even a thought on her mind. Al is adorable so I do not mind too much whatever she does and from what I can tell at the end of episode 11, she is finally going to become more interesting. Claus is just the true definition of boring, he means nothing to me and I can never feel much sympathy for him. The only character I actually really like is Dio, who is by far the most entertaining and funniest aspect of this series. I approve of him at least.

I am going to finish this series because I feel like it is only right this far in and with episode 11 showing some sort of promise towards the plot, the show may become better from now till the end. I still do not see why so many love this series, so to the fans I hope you can explain to me what I am missing out on while watching this.

To set the mood x)

Well with the month of love in the air, I figured it would be cool to make a list of eight mangas that I like that I think people should check out this month if they are in the mood to read some good romance mangas. Of course, most of my choices for recommendations are pretty obvious, but sometimes people ignore the obvious series. Sometime within this week I also plan to make my list of Animes to watch to celebrate the month. Why eight you may ask? Well I figured why not. So I hope you somewhat like the recommendations! (and yes, they are in some sort of order)

8. NANA

NANA is a classic within the romance world and even though it is not my favourite thing out there, I still really like it and find that it is a really well made series. This is something that just needs to be tried out at one point or another.

7. Vampire Knight

Besides the over hype about this manga, before any of that happened, I remember reading this manga for the first time and thinking nothing less about how amazing it was. And if you focus on the first half of the series, you will probably see why this series is so great.

6. Kimi ni Todoke

I am a bigger fan of the manga than I am of the anime, even if they are basically the same thing. The story is just so intriguing and well thought of considering it takes a seemingly average tale of boy meets girl and makes it much more interesting. Putting it on this list was an obvious choice for me.

5. Sand Chronicles

Sand Chronicles is very overlooked as a manga, but the romance throughout this series is just so sweet and the characters are all very interesting and all play a very important role to the overall story. If more people gave this series a chance, I’m sure more people would realize how great it is.

4. Hot Gimmick

This manga is just so intense. Maybe it is not that romantic in the traditional sense, but it is filled with romantic tension and will always keep you on edge to what will happen next.

3. Skip Beat!

This is one of the most entertaining and funniest mangas out there. When it comes to the romance, you will definitely be always second guessing yourself really trying to think over who you like more…As I mentioned with a few other titles, if you didn’t like the anime, then do not threat, you will love this nonetheless!

2. Honey and Clover

Honey and Clover does the simple act of really letting you feel the story as you read it. At times you will cry, during other times you will laugh and you will probably wonder at one point or another why it is Christmas all the time, but the point is that it creates an amazing story that enchants its readers with its simple characters.

1. Fruits Basket

This manga will always have a place in my heart and it is just so romantic and so well done. There are so many different couples throughout this series and you always want all of them to keep their relationship till the end. It is the perfect romantic comedy that everyone should own and if you have not already read this, you need to now!

When I first heard that Toaru Kagaku no Railgun was going to be animated, I did not care much for it at all. Eventually I finally gave it a chance and I am so glad I did because this series is a joy to watch. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun has been pretty popular, but still has not been getting enough popularity as it should and so, I decided to make a list of 13 reasons why to watch this series to hopefully get more people to watch it!

13. It is a spin off that is ten times better than its original “Parent Story”

12. The series takes place in an awesome setting!

11. Hilariousness in every episode

10. Good Action Scenes

9. “Dramatic” unrequited love

8. Crazy Friends

7. Crazy Enemies

6. Lots of Awesome Powers throughout the series

5. Better than just shorts and better than just a skirt..Its the Ugly Shorts and Skirt Combo!!

4. Touma is not annoying in this spin off with his guest star appearances.

3. Mikoto Misaka (enough said)

2. Kuroko Shirai (enough said)

1. Misaka + Kuroko = BEST DUO EVER!!!