I’d be surprised at the show I’d spotted this in, but it’s not as if Slayers has ever shied away from anachronisms in it’s content.

Actually, what makes this mikan box significant is that it (hopefully, having not seen the show previously) marks the disappearance of Nama from the series. Seriously, if anyone had told me before hand that they’d find a way to make me like Naga less, I’d have had a really hard time believing them. It turns out that making her an amnesiac suit of magical armour did the trick.

… and I wasted valuable Q&A time asking the director about it. It kind of makes me wonder if there’s anywhere else I can take this blog from this point onwards. I kind of feel like I’ve now peaked, and it’s all going to be downhill from here.

That said, I’m not sure that I bought his answer – that such things are so common in Japan that most households will have at least one, which is why he likes to include them in his works. I think he’s trying to cover up some grander conspiracy that the anime industry is maintaining.

As for the film, it was pretty fantastic, though I’m loathe to talk about things too much since it’s likely to be another year before most people get to see it. What I will say is that the movies final act could really have done with losing about fifteen minutes – everything leading up to that point was gold, featuring a lot of the kind of irreverent humour you’d expect from something written by Hideyuki Kurata, but the climax drags on a little. It’s hard to complain too much about it, though, as it’s such a visually stunning movie. There’s an amazing density to the look of the movie – like those scenes in Kamichu where Yurie visited the land of the gods, only on a movie-level budget. Honestly, I also think having seen Evangelion 2.0 the previous evening may have elevated my expectations for how a movie should be paced, as that really is insane.

One of the things I really want to do over the coming months is finally get on-top of all the unwatched media I have lying around. The problem here is the huge stack of movies I bought back when I figured that I really wasn’t watching enough in the watch of HK, Korean and Japanese live-action movies. With even legit HK releases being dirt cheap, I ended up picking up a few too many titles which were a little too random, all of which have since remained entirely unwatched. Until today, that is, when everything other than this peculiar little number which found it’s way into my DVD player remain sealed within their shrink-wrapped cells.

As for why this movie is of interest, well…
(more…)

That’s six “9”‘s then. I suppose I could say it’s over (point) 9000, but that would also result in me having to apologize with great immediacy for inflicting such a terrible joke upon you all.

This is the last of the Japanese DVD releases for the second season of Haruhi, which was actually released about a month ago now, but I’ve been sitting on it for the simple reason that I sat on the previous months volume for over a month as well, and there’s nothing quite like a bit of consistency. Anyway, since it seems like a befitting thing to do for the final volume, I guess I’ll reiterate to context for the whole thing.
(more…)

That is is, Korone, That it is.

I don’t really have anything to say about Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou – it pretty much falls into that category of shows that I watch simply because it’s stuck online at Crunchyroll at the same time as another show I watch. By this I mean, whilst I have the laptop hooked up to the TV in order to watch Drrr!, I figure I may as well watch this as well before I unhook things. This is pretty much how I ended up getting into Saki, actually – I’d hit Crunchy for Natsu no Arashi and just keep watching. Ichiban is no Saki, but it’s fun enough in it’s own right, I guess.