From episode 3 of Chihayafuru, which I’ve been running catch-up on today. It’s one of the boxes into which Arata was packing his stuff into before moving. Admittedly, I’m going out on a limb at will with this one, with only the last two hiragana visible – it could well be Iyokan (which, admittedly, is a type of Mikan) for all I know. But, whatever.

(I’ll also admit that I’m sitting on two genuine Mikan Boxes I’ve not got around to posting about yet. Need to dig out some DVDs for one of them).

Chihayafuru is pretty good, I guess. I’m not digging on it as much as I expected giving all the praise many have lauded upon it, but it’s a very pleasant watch non-the-less. It didn’t really pick up for me until after they got back to current day post-flashback. I’ve still got a few episodes left before I’ve fully caught up though, but I’m typing this in haste whilst watching Sherlock, so that’s going to have to wait for another eve.

This is just me following up on something I mentioned when I saw it theatrically a little under a couple of months back, although this isn’t something that came in the same package as iM@S which I got yesterday, rather being something I’ve just procrastinated posting about.
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I guess this shouldn’t be much of a shock given that there was one in Disgaea 3, but they seem to be a bit more common on the field this time around.

Hey, has it really been almost a month since I last updated? Whoops, must try harder, though I’m sure many of you are caught in the middle of the end-of-year Gameagedeon right now as well – personally, I jumped straight from the main story of Disgaea 4 (well, I got as far as Etna post-game, but don’t really have time to devote to power levelling right now) into Zelda Skyward Sword, have the new Assassins Creed queued up already, and I want to crack through another couple of cycles of PS3 iDOLM@STER at some point as well…

So, I’m kind of behind on my anime watching at the moment, aside from my weekly Sunday double-bill of Fate/Zero and WorkNaria’!!?@£%&@!, and the later of those has really just been carried along by it’s airing proximity to former. I kind of feel the second series of W! is really uneven – at times it’s a lot better than the first season, and at times it’s a lot worse.

As for Disgaea 4, it was alright. I love the new higher definition sprite art, but the characters are a little too one-note. Not that Disgaea has ever exactly been the pinnacle of quality character writing, but this one seems way more aggressive in it’s repeated pushing of the same jokes over and over again.

I’m also rather missing the PS2 days, where the mainline N1 SRPGs always brought something new to the table in terms of the way they played – La Pucelle, Disgaea, Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom (not to mention Soul Nomad), whilst all being SRPGs, had mechanics which gave them all a very different flavour to each other. I know that the Disgaea team made ZHP between Disgaea 3 and 4 (and I’ve played a fair deal of that game), but there really isn’t enough difference between D3 and D4 for my liking. Just as well I’ve only bought this the once this time, then.

From the movie Oblivion Island (Haruka and the Magic Mirror), near the beginning. Thanks to Don for the screen cap – it’s kind of hard to take one in a theatrical context without being accused to film piracy ^^;

After The Princess and the Pilot (To Aru Hikuushi e no Tsuioku) had to be pulled from this years Scotland Loves Anime event due to undisclosed reasons just before tickets went on sale, it was replaced by the enigmatic Mystery Film (or as I like to refer to it, the FUSHIGI MIIiii~STRIIiii~ movie, not that anyone will remember that reference). They got a pretty great turn-out considering it was a movie that most people would have had no idea of the identity of prior to booking tickets.
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I was most disappointed after it failed to appear in the first episode of the Persona 4 anime, but the second episode provided the goods! Sure, it doesn’t actually say “Mikan”, but given prior evidence I’m going to claim it.

(As a vaguely related side-note, it’s kind of disappointing that, for a film set in a region where Mandarins are farmed, and featuring an number of Mandarin farmers, A Letter For Momo doesn’t have a single obvious Mikan Box in it. I think I might have spotted one at one point, but it’s going to be a loooooooong wait to check).