Archives for September 2009

Phantom – Requiem for the Phantom review

A lot of fans seem to dislike Bee Train and the kind of anime series they produce. But I personally find the suspense, eerie atmosphere, and thought-provoking struggles of the characters in their shows very enjoyable. Since I liked two of Bee Train’s other series, Noir and El Cazador, I decided to watch Phantom…

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Canaan review

From the first episode and onward, Canaan has been a well animated, action-packed thrill ride that always kept me in suspense. Although I had some issues with the ending of the series, as a whole I think it was one of the best to come out this year…

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Hayate no Gotoku!!: final thoughts

After the 52 episodes of the first Hayate no Gotoku! season, we have the 25-episode second season, Hayate no Gotoku!! (with two exclamation points). Despite the second season being shorter, I found that I enjoyed it more than the first…

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Shangri-la: final thoughts

Yesterday I finished watching all 24 episodes of Shangri-la via Crunchyroll’s simulcast. Despite all the hype that the series received when it first came out, I can’t say that it lived up to expectation. I don’t think it was the worst series of the year, but it could have been better…

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The true definition of “shojo” and “shonen”

This is a topic I have never given much thought to, but it recently came up during a conversation I had with a friend. I always assumed that a more-or-less singular definition of shojo and shonen anime/manga was agreed upon by everyone involved in anime. But I can see now that that’s not entirely so…

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Nostalgia: Rewatching Digimon Adventure in Japanese

Back when I first became an anime fan about 10 years ago, I didn’t have cable TV or high-speed Internet, so I was stuck with watching mostly Americanized “kiddy” anime on local channels. Thinking back, many of these series were pretty dispensable. However, Digimon was one of my early favorites that I still enjoy even to this day…

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The new Full Metal Alchemist anime so far…

I have never read the Full Metal Alchemist manga, but I did watch the original anime series that came out in 2003/04 and loved it. I heard that around the middle of the first series, the story took a completely different route than the ongoing manga. So now, about five years later, we finally have a new FMA anime series that is meant to follow the manga…

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My fall season ’09 picks

The majority of the fall 2009 anime series are going to start airing in a few weeks, so I figured now’s a good time to decide which ones I’m interested in…

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The meaning behind the otaku

I recently came across a post about a book called “Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals” by Prof. Hiroki Azuma. Although I’ve never read the book myself, Mike over at Anime Diet had some very interesting comments about how Prof. Azuma describes the mentality of Japanese otaku…

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Haruhi season 2 episode 14: The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (part 5)…and the end of the new season?

And so we have the final episode of “The Sigh” which is, supposedly, the last new episode in the 2009 airing…

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