So I reached my limit on the original Koihime Musou and gave up on it
after 6 episodes. But there are a couple of other series in that franchise. I'm
going through the BD rip of Shin Koihime Musou, and the graphic quality
is a hell of a lot better:
What I'm finding interesting is the way that the characters are surprisingly
similar in terms of personality to their equivalents in Ikki Tousen. Not
identical, of course. Chouhi, for instance, is strong and powerful but
uncultured, in both series. Koumei is a loli but also highly intelligent and
responsible for strategy and planning. SKM starts out with a major battle where
villagers, led by our girls, defeat a huge force of bandits, and it turns out
that they were carrying out a plan that Koumei came up with.
It also turns out that Koumei is literate. Which was rare in ancient times no
matter where you were, but triply so in China given how difficult the writing
system is.
Meanwhile, Ryuubi Gentoku just showed up. And like in IT, she's a brainless
bimbo with little or no fighting ability.
Anyway, the thing I'm wondering is whether a lot of the characterization is inherited from the original books, or alternatively whether Koihime Musou is ripped off from Ikki Tousen.
I'm still having problems with all the brain cells I'm sacrificing here, but
given how nice the render looks I'm going to try to stick with it.
1
It's safe to assume that it wasn't ripped off from Ikki Tousen. The original stories are quite character-driven, though not all of the characters are especially deep or anything.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 13, 2011 11:54 PM (mRjOr)
That's Bachou. In Ikki tousen she was on a quest to kill Sousou in revenge for the killing of her brother. This time Bachou tried to kill Sousou in revenge for her father. (She's the one with the sweet rolls inside her bra in IT:XX.)
And the blonde loli from the OP turns out to be Koumei. She's a kid, learning the healing arts and a lot of other things. I must say, she's a lot more likeable in this incarnation than in the Ikki Tousen version, where she seems to have no emotion at all.
I'm leaving the subtitles on, so I get what's going on. They're actually telling half-way reasonable stories, and I can see how they're laying groundwork for some later plot arc. It actually feels a bit like the center section of the first Slayers series, where a lot of pieces were flung around, which all came together in the final plot arc. But for the moment, it just seems to be "road trip, looking for work and sometimes finding it."
Toutaku, another loli, was pretty cool. There were two episodes about her, and I wonder if she'll end up as a recurrent character? This case really is a lot different, since in Ikki Tousen Totaku is a vile son-of-a-bitch. I was sure glad when he died.
It doesn't seem likely that she'll end up on the road with the main gaggle of girls, but she may appear again if she needs help from Kan'u and the others. Anyway, she's as noble as the other Totaku was not.
1
Koihime's better than its reputation would imply. Not much better, but better.
Toutaku is a major character in the last season, btw.
Posted by: tellu541 at May 11, 2011 11:26 AM (pJ1uW)
2
Just wanted to hijack for a second to mention that to AVOID hijacking in the future I've finally started blogging on my mee.nu account. I was going to start blogging all the stuff I've recently downloaded, but I had a tragedy over the course of switching from Vuse to uTorrent, and lost 186 torrents worth of stuff, around 100 gig.
I am not a happy camper.
Sorry, just venting, but it will not happen in your comments any more.
Posted by: Mauser at May 12, 2011 05:11 AM (cZPoz)
Koihime Musou is a really stupid concept for a show, but there really are a lot of good looking women in it. I've found 17 candidate shots in just the first two episodes.
And at least one loli:
Based on the OP, there are a couple more, too. Haven't seen them yet, though.
3
Translation: There's a show called Lotte no Omocha (or Astarotte no Omocha) running at the moment. Avoid. No, really. Don't even Google it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 10, 2011 12:11 AM (PiXy!)
4
I noticed that Steven was running through shows looking for rotation pictures, in a quick succession. That made me thinking that there ought to be more coming down the pipe. As for Lotte no Omocha, I happened upon the manga in Comic Alive. Good lord. On the other hand, sometimes they take the dumbest nukige and put a nice story on them, so I don't know. Afraid to test it.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 10, 2011 08:38 AM (9KseV)
7
Whenever I read "Don't google X!" I am immediately overwhelmed with temptation, to which I fell victim this time. Ugh. However, per the wiki page Lotte no Omoch isn't so bad as to have ended my hope for humanity. It's just sort of general "WTF Japan". Reprehensible, but no more than many prior examples.
Posted by: Boviate at May 10, 2011 10:33 AM (C8t4z)
8
And now we're kind of thread-jacking. Sorry. I won't be offended if you delete this and my prior comment.
Posted by: Boviate at May 10, 2011 10:33 AM (C8t4z)
I came up with about 30 frame grabs from the first five episodes of Dog Days.
Apparently these three are ferocious fighters, but also brainless bimbos. The one on the right is a tiger. The one on the left is obviously a rabbit. The one in the middle? I'm guessing she's a black panther.
5
I trust anyone looking at that first picture, who has also seen pictures of the opposing princess, knows why I would defect to the cat forces in an instant.
6
No, see, you're supposed to not defect, but manage to woo Leon anyway. What better way to get her to respect you than to face off with her a few times?
(Then again, if you've got a Becky back home, you oughta get back home! Or at least invite her to come hang out.)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 10, 2011 05:39 PM (pWQz4)
7
Not my type, she needs constant attention and gets all angsty if she doesn't get it. Now Yuki, the blonde ninja, well, that's a different matter.
Should I assume from your remark that you've seen episode 6, a.k.a. "The Plot Starts Here?"
No, I haven't. Looks like things are getting dark from here on out, and that isn't really what I want.
Anyway, I'd already lost interest after ep 3. I hadn't watched eps 4 or 5 until I went through them looking for frame grabs. It's not that there's really anything wrong but there isn't really anything right, either. I don't care. There wasn't anything pulling me to make me see more of it.
9
Actually I meant Avatar, but yeah, I wouldn't bother but for how lame this season is. Been thinking about pulling out Misaki Chronicles or Fate/Stay Night to counter all the cutesy fluff.
So I just finished scanning through Infinite Stratos. 44 grabs, and I'll probably be able to use about 35 of them.
UPDATE: I had the subtitles turned on, so I mostly followed the plot line, such as it was. Ultimately there wasn't really any story except for the harem.
Tabane
was the evil genius behind it all, except that she isn't really evil. Looks like she's on a quest to try to prevent the world from being destroyed by nuclear holocaust, and she decided the only way to do that was to give everyone a different, less devastating, way to fight.
She comes off as a loon. Is it an act? Has the weight of responsibility driven her around the bend? Or maybe it takes someone crazy to dream big dreams.
I think maybe it's a bit of all three.
I wrote one time that "Great power must be challenged by great adversity in contention for great stakes. Power without challenge is just crass spectacle." It's one of my heuristics. And the problem here is that there ultimately wasn't any great adversity or great stakes.
The mecha side of this story was just gizmo fixation, nothing more. And as far as harems go, it was all by the book.
1
Interesting. I had been distracted by the other three bombshells in that episode (two of which were in that conversation), and missed the import of Tabane's last question,
Those being,
1. Byaushki is actually sentient, and 2. has powers beyond what Tabane knows; further, . . 3. Ichika can't really control an IS. Byaushki chooses to do exactly as he commands it to do. (Or would her be more accurate?)
The implications are that Tabane didn't invent the IS core; she reverse engineered .the principles from Core #001 -- which gives rise to the question, "where did it come from?" And the second question becomes, "what is her plan for Ichika?" Is she trying to set up her sister with her best friend's brother? Or throw people off the trail, who might be wondering if she's deliberately designing mecha that will only work with women?
Until it regenerated his wound, I was taking the entire conversation between Ichika and the mech to be Ichika's anthropomorphizing the mecha with his sister's personality, while unconscious. The fact that it made him live up to its (her?) expectations makes me wonder if the harem has a mechanical member too.
Some interesting concepts, and the girls are cute, but seriously, this is more speculation than the series is worth.
It reminded me just a bit of one of the best episodes of the Sakura Wars TV series. Kohran had given up, lost heart.
Her koubu, that is, her steampunk mecha, came to her in disguise. It looked like a young version of Kohran herself. And indeed, Kohran asked the little girl, "Are you named Li Kohran?" The girl gave Kohran a dirty look, and she dropped that.
The little girl convinced Kohran that the koubu's could save the world, but they needed Kohran's help to do it. And afterwards, Kohran's morale was back, and she figured out the final upgrade that made it possible for them all to win.
It reminded me just a little of that, except that Sakura Wars did it a hell of a lot better.
The idea that
Tabane found the White Knight, and that all the other units are reverse engineered copies, is an interesting one, and may well be true.
But if so, they hardly made anything out of it. Maybe it was intended to be explored a bit more in a hypothetical sequel.
3
The setting had some depth but the actual show never did more than dip a toe in. Harem show, and that's all. Cute girls (and some laughs with Laura's bridal declaration) but nothing worth continuing.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 08, 2011 08:20 PM (mRjOr)
4
The sequels aren't hypothetical, and there's another bad guy out there (either also, or eventually). But Ichika continues to be as stupid as they come -- when your cute (opposite sex) roomie starts sitting really close on the bed and discussing getting you and her matching bracelets, she's not just making a fashion statement.
If there were ever a harem lead in need of testosterone therapy, Ichika is it.
He still isn't as clueless as Kio in AsoIku. Let's see: three bodacious babes each, in turn, give Kio a deep kiss, and then all three of them strip off all their clothing right in front of him.
6
I dunno, at least Kio had the excuse of being distracted by the mission.
Ichika had two of the girls stripping in his room, and once woke up with Laura (the Germanic one with the eye patch) stark naked in his bed -- and then she started wrestling with him!
I mean... I can't post that picture in comments. Sheesh! "Dude, where's my elbow?"
7
In fairness to Kio, it's an emotional whiplash. He's stammering and blushing when they start stripping right after the kisses, until their explanation shifts his reaction to concern for their safety.
The real clue he missed is the fact that
they're stripping on the bridge, when their armored suits are somewhere else. They even took their street clothes with them when they left, since they change back into them after the battle, before returning to glomp him.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 09, 2011 09:06 AM (2XtN5)
8
Meh. I was going to post them at my place, but I can't get the screencaps to work. It's not just doing captures out of zplayer, I can't even take screen prints. The behavior is just... bizarre.
I've been using Media Player Classic to get my frame grabs. Problem with Zoom Player is that it nearly always advances one frame before taking a grab, so I don't get the image I wanted. MPC, on the other hand, takes a grab of the frame I'm looking at.
10
Zplayer may be the problem, but some of the behavior of my other programs was crazy. Basically, any picture frame, be it Paint Shop Pro, or an instance of MS Paint, became a window to the Zplayer scene underneath. Pull it to the other monitor... black screen. pull it back... window. Even if there were something else between them. Never seen that behavior before.
OK. The way that zplayer is working is that it's using a special mode with your display chip. There's a certain color which means "This is where you put the video you, graphics chip, are creating." The graphics aren't really available in the CPU; they're being created by the graphics chip.
What you've saved is a frame which is full of that color.
By the way, it doesn't have to be that way. If you tell zplayer not to take advantage of the graphics chip features, it'll do all the rendering in the CPU.
I believe that this is required in order to take frame grabs.
13
Depending on the renderer you choose, MPC will exhibit the same behavior, i.e. giving you a screen full of Alpha Channel. It's easy to not notice this if you have both the player and your graphics program in full screen mode.
Posted by: Mauser at May 10, 2011 03:04 AM (cZPoz)
14
Ah! Thanks, I'll try that tonight. I usually manage to fix it, but I could never figure out which change actually helped.
16
Sigh. I couldn't find anything like that feature. Then I noticed I was using zplayer 4.something. Apparently I grabbed an old backup file after my last system reinstall.
Ok, so I go download the latest and greatest free version, zplayer 8, RC2. And I still can't find it. So I try a screenshot anyway, and get the message "Can't capture current format."
. . . . . My software's being mean to me. I'm going to go sulk in a corner somewhere.
Alright, I stuck it out through ep 9, and I have 65 candidate grabs, of which I'll probably be able to use 40, and that's enough suffering for the cause.
A few NSFW grabs below the fold.
UPDATE: By the way, another reason I'm quitting is that I've found that most fan-service shows cut way down on the fan service as they move into their final plot arc.
1
Not to be a prude, but your NSFW tags seem to be not working correctly. I don't mind, heavens no, but it's at least somewhat comprehensible that someone out there might be offended... though what they're doing reading a blogpost that's marked as "NSFW below the fold" is beyond me.
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 07, 2011 06:32 PM (n0k6M)
4
I'm getting the same thing, it's like the picture is outside the NSFW tag. I see the NSFW button above the pictures in question, and if I click on it, it changes to "Hide" and a gray box the width of the column and a line of text tall appears.
While I do have a blocker (NoScript), this site is whitelisted, and the transformation of the button suggests that Javascript is working.
Posted by: Mauser at May 07, 2011 06:48 PM (cZPoz)
With both IE9 & Firefox 4, all 8 images are exposed after I click more; the two NSFW buttons display 1-line gray boxes and the nude pictures are not inside them. I don't have any kind of javascript blocking going on.
Nice pics, BTW. I've always liked your image rotation!
Posted by: Intrope at May 07, 2011 06:49 PM (GVP9d)
It works correctly for me with IE8, which is my usual browser (and don't give me any grief about it, pleasse). On the other hand, it doesn't work with Firefox 3.6.
Posted by: Siergen at May 07, 2011 07:57 PM (TaNW9)
8
Maybe there was a recent change, the NSFW buttons have always worked for me, but as said, the pictures aren't actually in the hidden section, so you see them regardless. Thats true in Firefox 4, Chrome 11, and IE 9.
Posted by: David at May 07, 2011 08:24 PM (Kn54v)
9
Tag soup, span start tag enclosed by P tags. Since this is not to spec, behavior is browser-specific. It might be possible to fix in the source editor.
Posted by: benzeen at May 07, 2011 09:40 PM (vbOa4)
12
Brickmuppet, on your site there are no P tags, so you're not getting nesting problems. Here, there are a bunch of auto-inserted tags around every line, so it ends up as P, SPAN, /P, P, IMG, /P, P, /SPAN, /P. In browsers that decide to end the SPAN when they hit the first /P, the show/hide button controls a blank box, and the naughty bits are off in a completely different paragraph.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 07, 2011 11:08 PM (2XtN5)
13
I wonder if this is being caused by me composing my post with Frontpage?
14
Very likely it is Frontpage adding the extra tags - I've found Microsoft products often insert extra tags. While usually it doesn't make a difference, if there is something other than a browser parsing the resulting HTML (like the javascript used to implement the hide buttons) the results can be something other than what is expected.
Posted by: Hypozeuxis at May 08, 2011 02:30 AM (5eWak)
15
Thing is, I've been using Frontpage this way for years, and this is the first time anyone has ever said anything.
16
The NSFW boxes have never failed for me before. I went back to your April 30th post, and those NSFW boxes are working just fine.
Posted by: Intrope at May 08, 2011 06:22 AM (GVP9d)
17
Yeah, it's a tagfight between the <p> tags and the <span> tags generated by the [spoiler] tags, rendering the HTML technically invalid and the result browser-specific.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 08, 2011 08:22 AM (PiXy!)
18
A quick bit of tweaking on the raw post data fixed it; I think I can twiddle the BBCode parser so that it avoids this situation in the future.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 08, 2011 08:24 AM (PiXy!)
19
There was a change to the [spoiler] tag not too long ago to fix a different problem vis-a-vis <p> tags. Maybe that led to this breakage. I'll experiment a little and see what I find.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 08, 2011 08:26 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Mauser at May 08, 2011 04:07 PM (cZPoz)
21
Although the layout ends up a little odd. Un-NSFW pics have a certain x-pixel margin from the edges of the white column, and the gray box has that same margin, but then the NSFW pics have a slightly less than X pixel margin from the edge of the gray box, pushing them over the right edge of the box and almost to the right edge of the white column.
I wonder how much indenting you could end up with if you put an NSFW pic inside a spoiler tag....
Posted by: Mauser at May 08, 2011 04:11 PM (cZPoz)
OK, I found something with lots of cheesecake that I think I can manage to scan through: the second season of Rosario to Vampire.
...sheesh there are a lot of panty shots in this, however. Which, of course, I can't use.
UPDATE: Kurumu always looks good:
UPDATE: Now this is completely gratuitous:
UPDATE: I am actually watching this. Sound turned off, but subtitles on, and I'm not doing a lot of skipping. It's a stupid show, but it doesn't make me writhe in agony the same some shows do.
Ep 3 was Parent Visitation Day, and it was about Mizore's mom and Kurumu's mom who, it turned out, were rivals in high school and still hate one another. So lots of mayhem.
Ep 4 is Measurement Day, and I have no doubt that's going to be loaded with cheesecake, most of which I won't be able to use.
Here's another gratuitous shot:
UPDATE: Uh-oh! Bath scene!
UPDATE: Although obviously being a harem/fan-service show, the first season was mainly about Tsukune as a normal human trying to survive in a school full of monsters, where it is a death-sentence offense to be a normal human.
The second season seems to be girl-of-the week stories. Eps 1 and 2 were Kokoa. Ep 3 was Mizore's mother and Kurumu's mother. Ep 4 was Yukari. Based on the first couple of minutes, looks like ep 5 is Mizore.
The first season was about Tsukune. The second season isn't. As of the first third of the series, Tsukune is now a trophy, someone the girls are all competing to get. He isn't a wimp, but he isn't really a character, either.
As before, there's a battle in every episode. In the first series, most of the battles were various monsters attacking Tsukune. In this series, so far, it hasn't been. In the first two episodes, Kokoa was trying to kill Moka. In the third episode, Mizore's mother and Kurumu's mother were trying to kill each other. In ep 4, the school nurse was trying to do evil things to Yukari.
I won't say that the first series was wonderful story telling, but there did seem to be something of a series storyline. If there's one this time, though, I sure don't see any hints of it.
They did provide an explanation for the Rosario, though, in Moka's flashback to her childhood. Seems that Moka and Kokoa have the same father but not the same mothers. Initially they grew up together in their father's house. When Moka was about 10 (I'm guessing, based on the art) she went to live with her mother, who was in the human world. So she had to start wearing the rosario to seal most of her power, because she was living in the human world.
No indication of why Tsukune can remove the rosario, though.
UPDATE: Quick character rundown:
Tsukune -- the guy in the middle of the harem. Moka -- the pink-haired vampire who wears the rosario. when removed we get... Alt Moka -- with white hair, red eyes, bigger boobs, and a killer attitude. (Literally) Kurumu -- the succubus with blue hair. And the biggest boobs in the main cast. Mizore -- the yuki onna, snow woman. It's a legendary monster in Japan with no real western equivalent. (Some fansubbers have referred to her as the "abominable snowgirl" but it isn't really an accurate reference to the legend.) Yukari -- 12 year old witch. As of the second series she's 13, and the way they're drawing her she's just beginning to bloom. Ruby -- an older witch who is now working as a utility infielder in the staff of the school. Kokoa -- red haired, violent. She's Moka's younger sister. She loves Alt-Moka, and thus she hates pink-haired Moka and wants to destroy her so that Alt-Moka will come out permanently. The bat works for her.
There's an episode of Keroro Gunsou where the kids and frogs divide into teams and compete to see who can tell the scariest story. One of the girls ends up telling the legend of the yuki onna. Problem is, the legend isn't scary. It's sad, and everyone ends up crying, but they're not scared so she doesn't win the contest.
1
"Measurement Day". I've tried to look this up, to find out how common it is, and how long Japan has been doing this, but this was the most substantial mention my quick search turned up:
"I'm not sure what exactly they measure in the nurse's office, but when I rounded a corner I saw a line of girls waiting to go in and one of my scrawnier charges tugging the collar of her shirt out and looking down into it, turning her head slightly from side to side with a quizzical look on her face. ...(I think she'd already been making fun of her own inability to find anything down there)....I've learned to avoid the corridor outside of the nurse's office whenever there are girls lined up there."
No wonder this is a source of so much fetish material. I'm surprised it's not as popular as onsen or beach scenes.
Posted by: refugee at April 30, 2011 06:54 PM (auErC)
3
And if they really do this, as my little excerpt suggests they do, what do they do with the data?
I can sorta understand tracking height and weight — I remember vaguely maybe being measured in grade school (early sixties) but not high school — but bust size for girls? Enough measuring to take up a whole day? Really? Why?
Posted by: refugee at April 30, 2011 10:05 PM (auErC)
4
I'm under the impression that it's not "take up the entire day" - it's just a physical, generally speaking. They also do vision screening at the same time, which is probably not a bad idea.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 01, 2011 12:53 AM (mRjOr)
7
Did the manga ever go dark again after the switch to Jump SQ? From what I saw, the mangaka saw the money coming in from the licensing deals and switched to pure monster-girl cheesecake.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 01, 2011 02:38 PM (2XtN5)
8
The manga definitely goes dark, with Tsukune having troubles with
his transformation into a ghoul, a new threat from an organization called Fairy Tale (not the same as the anime one)
which includes another step-sister of Moka's and the real reason alt-Moka was sealed. (The reason hinted at in the anime doesn't really stand up. Alt-Moka isn't a berserker and can fit in the human world better than Kokoa.)
In the last two eps of the anime if you want to hang on until then, Tsukune reclaims his status as the protagonist.
Can I use this picture in the top rotation? Huh? Can I? Can I?
Or how about this one:
OK, I have 157 grabs from Rio but a lot of them (including those two) aren't usable. Still, I suspect I can use about half of them, and that's enough. Now on to something else.
Last time I got a fair number of pictures from Fairy Tail, but they were all from about the first 20 episodes. Since then it's kept running, and I think I might be able to get some more luscious pictures of Luscious Lucy. And maybe a few of Erza, if I can find any where she isn't scowling.
Eps 32-41 have a lot of Erza in them, and there are even shots of her not scowling. There are, however, plenty of scenes of her crying at various ages, from about age 11 through age 19.
Ep 33 (I think it was 33) has Lucy in a bikini. What more could you want? Time for my patented drooling emoticon! ';'
Posted by: atomic_fungus at April 28, 2011 09:17 PM (wh6WI)
I don't think it's going to be very good hunting even for pictures of Lucy. I just went through eps 24-29 and only saw two that might have been worthwhile. Most of the pictures of Lucy she was getting beaten up, or was covered in dirt and grime, or was crying.
Of course, ep 29 ends that plot arc, and maybe there are more later, but it seems like I'd do better hunting in a different series.
3
You know, I've never understood the image of the purple skin highlight with the reflective white dot on it. It sure as heck doesn't come from nature, or optical physics....
Posted by: Mauser at April 30, 2011 02:44 PM (cZPoz)
I was just looking at the Tropes page for Strike Witches and one of the items was this:
Inverted Bowdlerization by Fan Sub Group Strike Subs. Because the removal of Censor Steam in the DVD version just revealed Anime Anatomy below the waistline they took the liberty to release an alternative version of episode 7 with some digital video editing to make the characters more anatomically correct in the groin area. This "uncensored" version got five times as many downloads as the unaltered one.
This is the first I've ever heard of it. I went to TokyoTosho and tried to find it -- and it's there. But the tracker is dead. I searched for it on Nyaa Torrents, and it doesn't seem to have been posted there. The circle that did it ("StrikeS") started working on season 2, but bagged it after the third episode, and there hasn't been any update on their blog since then.
I confess to a certain scientific curiosity about this, so thought I'd ask: anyone have any idea where this might be gotten?
UPDATE: The Tropes page also explains why Chiba Saeko didn't do the voice of Sakamoto in the second season: she was on maternity leave.
