The series is 13 episodes, and when there are an odd number of eps, what do they do with the extra one? In some cases it gets its own BD, selling for the same price as all the others. (Which makes it highway-robbery-times-2.)
In this case they made the first BD 3 episodes, which is kind of classy. Presumably all the others will be 2-each, the Japanese norm.
There are also three extras, on the order of 140 megabytes each. That's pretty generous; if there are even extras at all, usually it's only one per BD.
I don't have any of it yet, but it's coming down now.
Looks like the Japanese BDs have English subtitles. (& French & Chinese ones). Wonder what that means for an R1 license?
A site called "Can you Moe?" seems to be tracking all the Japanese-release BDs with English dubs or subs. Not too many yet, but I wonder if some folks are making a bid for the R1 market at R2 prices...
I've got a few imported BDs (more concert videos than anime), but serious collecting would be an expensive proposition.
Posted by: Mikeski at July 28, 2011 10:41 PM (GbSQF)
2
The download isn't finished yet, so I can't confirm that. But if it's true, I might buy this one.
3
The Amazon Japan listing for the limited edition confirms that: 「Blu-rayã®ã¿è‹±èªžã€ä»èªžã€ä¸å›½èªž(簡体å—)本編å—幕ã‚ã‚Šã€, or "Blu-ray only has English, French, and Chinese (Simplified) subtitles". Also a soundtrack CD, etc. Subtitle details aren't up for the later volumes yet, but presumably they're the same. -j
Posted by: J Greely at July 29, 2011 07:19 AM (2XtN5)
4
Given that the Japanese Nanoha 1st Movie release also had English subtitles, I'm just wondering if maybe Seven Arcs hired an English speaker within the last year.
Actually, I had been hoping that my copy might have turned up today, but alas, t'was not to be. The English subs are there, though, and apparently perfectly legible, though I gather they've subbed the protagonists name as "Sink".
Posted by: DiGiKerot at July 29, 2011 07:29 AM (oz46z)
That's right. (I thought it was supposed to be "Cinque".) And the world (?) is named "Flonyald".
And yeah, the rip does include the English subtitles on the three episodes. The extras don't have, but they're just clips from each of the three episodes. They aren't real omake.
6
One of the hallmarks of the native Japanese speaker using romaji is extreme difficulty with placing compound consonant syllables like "sh" (or "ts" in front of a vowel, which is more understandable since English really doesn't do "tsu" natively.)
And one of the pitfalls of enjoying R2 subs is the fact that it's unlikely the Japanese company has someone to tell them "hey, that is not how it sounds to an American". Not that they listen even when they do have someone to tell them, to be sure...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at July 30, 2011 03:38 AM (mRjOr)
I finished my pass through Dog Days looking for stuff for the top rotation. Last time I only used the first four episodes, and only got 21 images. This time I ended up with 121 candidates. I should be able to come up with 100 finalists.
Usually I avoid images which feature guys, but this image is just too good to pass by.
Yukikaze's line in that scene is "You can worship me if you want." Yes, ma'am!
Actually, she's saying that because Shinku just found out that Yukki is a fox god. But I like the, um, body language and what her pose seems to suggest... (gad, I'm a dirty old man...)
That scene also features Brioche telling Shinku that both of them are more than a hundred years old. She also indicates that for "some reason" she isn't aging. I think I know why:
I think that Yukki is using her magic to keep Brioche young and healthy. It's entirely possible that neither of them are aware of it, though.
This is turning out to be a mediocre comedy, that inspires a few smiles, but few laughs. And a lot of skipping.
This week's episode is about a mangaka in deadline trouble. She's an onmyouji and has been using summoned manga gnomes to help her with her work, but they ran away when her schedule got particularly bad.
Shamo is her friend, but she tries to get Shamo to help her. So Shamo brings in the gang.
Really not very good. Given that this is based on a manga, this story is pretty much "write what you know", to be charitable.
How many "I'm late, so you folks have to help me with my art" have we seen, anyway? I recall it from the Nadesico movie, for instance.
Just not very good. But not bad enough to be worth making fun of. Snore...
1
In some back issue of Animerica vintage 1996-ish there was an interview with someone from Gainax who worked on Wings of Honneamise. Apparently they were in serious trouble because of a huge backlog of unpainted cels.
In this interview the guy said they were even trying to recruit visitors to paint cels: "Welcome to Gainax! You're safe here! You're safe! Now, you must paint!"
So it seems that it doesn't just happen in the manga industry.
Posted by: atomic_fungus at July 26, 2011 11:17 AM (lAZdX)
As to a second series, yes there was. So far as I know no one is doing it.
Wasurenai's dedication to the first series has been half-hearted at best. The last episode before these two came out last December, and they started working on it (with ep 10) about a year ago.
You can use it that way. (Ranma does, for instance.) But it means "old man".
In Ichigo Mashimaro there are a couple of places where Chika taunts her older sister Nobue by calling her "oyaji". (This is when Nobue has convinced Matsuri to wear a cat costume and go "nyan".) In this case, the implication is "dirty old man".
But it can also be used to mean "old man", any arbitrary old man. Family words are like that. "Onii-san" means "older brother" but it also means any older boy. "Oba-san" means "aunt" but it also means "any middle aged woman".
9
There's different kanji that's specific to the "old man" meaning (è€çˆº), but usage seems to strongly favor 親父 for both meanings, with the katakana オヤジ being popular for the "creepy older guy" situation.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at July 20, 2011 10:55 PM (2XtN5)
10
Oh, I didn't know about the different kanji/spellings. What I meant was that when we learned about the saying in a Japanese Culture class I took, the professor taught it as earthquakes, lightning, fire, and one's father being the greatest fears. Some basic web-searching (after finding a search string that didn't just result in disaster news) found consistent results:
12
The wikipedia entry for 親父 says that it's believed the last word of the proverb was originally ooyamaji (大山風, an old word for typhoon), eventually corrupted to "oyaji". -j
Posted by: J Greely at July 21, 2011 11:10 AM (2XtN5)
The wikipedia entry for 親父says that it's believed the last word of the proverb was originally ooyamaji (大山風, an old word for typhoon), eventually corrupted to "oyaji".
Who said the ancients didn't had a sense of humor?
Posted by: Jaked at July 21, 2011 07:24 PM (wGCeG)
I'm sad to say, ep 2 was a big disappointment. I just don't handle "embarassment" stories very well, and Mayu really screwed up this time. About five minutes in I started skipping.
Shamo left at the very beginning, and only showed up again at the very end. She seems to be the hook for the next episode, so I'll give it a try, but I'm no longer holding out much hope.
Sigh, is there going to be anything this season I can stand to watch?
UPDATE: A farce story has to have a rock in the middle, a stable character around which all the chaos swirls. The Yuzu character can't be it for this story; she isn't central enough. It has to be Mayu, and in the first episode it was. That's why the first episode worked.
Mayu was a self-absorbed hell raiser when she was younger, and that's what led to her being banished. But for this story to really work, she has to have grown up in the mean time, beginning to get to the place she'll really need to be to gain forgiveness from her mother. And that's what she seemed to be in the first episode.
Not in this one, though. And that's why I started skipping.
Well, it's one of the reasons. Another reason is that the joke pacing and timing was awful. There was one joke that went on way too long, for example. They repeated it over, and over, and the problem is that it was already boring before they hung a lampshade on it.
Another thing is that Mayu's "find lost things" ability was the obvious answer, but I thought of that several minutes before Mayu did. And it's her power!
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at July 18, 2011 05:03 PM (9KseV)
2
So far, the best in this weak season has been Kamisama no Memochou. There are still a few I haven't checked out, but this one's decent. They lay on the "belonging" theme a little too obvious, but the mysteries are good -- and rooted in the dark side of human nature, not poorly done and schlocky Agatha Christie knockoffs (*cough* Gosick *cough*)
One odd bit that impressed me was the hour-long premiere. It was not a gimmick; it was a necessary decision. The mystery would not have worked nearly as well divided over two episodes and a week -- and they had the guts to go with that decision rather than just try to force the formulaic half-hour format.
There's a place where the gods live, a floating island in the sky. Mayu is a young cat god who likes to get into trouble. She's been grounded by her mom, but uses her power to escape so that she can go gambling. She gets caught, and we learn that this isn't the first time.
Her mother takes away Mayu's power and banishes her from heaven aka Takamagahara, forbidding her to return until Mom calls her back again.
So once on Earth, a human girl named Yuzu found her and took her in. Mayu has been living with Yuzu ever since, some four years at this point.
Let's get some cast work in here:
Meiko, Gonta, Mayu, Sasana.
Mayu and Sasana were introduced to each other by their fathers when they were very young. The two of them seemed to get along very well, and their fathers decided to betroth them, each thinking the other's child was a boy. In fact they're both girls. But Amaterasu, the top god of the stack, approved the marriage contract. Sasana doesn't seem to mind this, and is ready to get married at any time. Mayu has rather more mixed feelings about it all. Sasana is a nice girl and all, but Mayu would rather marry a guy.
They're both cat-gods, with two tails. Meiko is the granddaughter of the god of destruction. She was in the same class as Mayu and Sasana when little, and was stuck up and desu-wa, and thus isolated and lonely. But Mayu invited her to play one time, and she's been hung up on Mayu ever since.
Gonta is the officially-assigned god of this here particular town. He's got a different kind of tail -- and only one tail -- and it looks like he may be a doggy.
Gonta also happens to be infatuated with Yuzu, the girl who took Mayu in. Yuzu is a kind girl and doesn't seem to mind Mayu free-loading. And since Mayu didn't lose all her power, once in a while she comes in handy.
And then there's this moe-blob, name of Shamo. That's a can of beer she's buying.
I can't really figure out where they think this series is going. At the beginning, based on the OP, I thought it was "cute girls, mostly with kemono-mimi, doing cute things" but the first episode doesn't really unfold that way. About the only thing that's clear is that it's comedy. What I'm wondering is if they're really going to try to tell some sort of story, possibly of Mayu eventually facing some sort of crisis, acting nobly, and because of that gaining redemption from her mom.
Or maybe it's just a joke series. I think the second episode may make that more clear. I will watch it when it comes out.
By the way, this really has a stellar cast. Mayu's seiyuu was Manami in AsoIku. Yuzu's seiyuu is Horie Yui. Shamo's voice was Uiharu in Railgun. Meiko's voice was Eclair in Dog Days. Mayu's mom's voice was Kuroko in Railgun. But Kuroko was the only one I recognized.
3
By the way, if anyone decides to watch the series, do you agree with me that in terms of art style that Meiko and Sasana both look like refugees from Touhou?
6
Quite enjoyable, if somewhat random. I'll follow it for at least a couple more episodes.
I don't know Touhou from a hole in the ground (that is, I know of it, but that's all) so I'm afraid I can't help you with that question.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 17, 2011 06:26 AM (PiXy!)
7
Me neither. My only knowledge of Touhou comes from TVTropes and youtube music remixes. Which admittedly I have listened to a *lot*, but it doesn't tell much about the games anymore than random fan fiction tells about whatever.
Posted by: metaphysician at July 17, 2011 07:07 AM (hD30M)
The first episode felt a little crammed in, with lots of back story and characters being introduced. Based on the OP, there are still a couple of characters to come, but I hope that the pacing will be a bit slower from now on.
The second episode is out in raw now, but I haven't seen a sub of it yet. The first ep sub I watched came out last Tuesday, but I'm hoping the circle will be a bit more prompt this time.
I did a guilt-buy of the Sentai BD about a week ago, and tonight I took at look at it. It's two discs, one about 40 GB and one about 20 GB. The first one has the first eight episodes, and the second one is the other four.
Sentai didn't include the omake. There were six on the Japanese BDs, each between 3:00 and 3:30 in length, but American audiences don't get them.
The only extras were a clean OP, a clean ED, and a bunch of production drawings. Those are always disappointing on DVDs because they're shrunk so much, but in this case they're 1080p. Only they aren't. Looks like they were upscaled, and there are jaggies and JPG artifacts.
Finally, I myself can't play them. I don't have a player program that will handle BD correctly. I can look at the files using MPC, but they don't play, as such. (I own the most recent version of PowerDVD, but when it's installed it fouls up everything else involved in playing videos.)
So let's look at the chart:
Torrent
NA BD release
Timeliness
within days of
Japanese availability
A year later
Quality
high
high
Price
free
$47
Extras
6 omake
production
drawings
Dubbed
no
yes, but I
don't care
Karma
poor
good
It really isn't any wonder that the North American market for anime discs is imploding. The product is worse in nearly every regard, for someone like me who doesn't care about dubs.
It's only really karma that induces me to buy. And now that I've looked at it, it'll go onto my shelf and never get opened again. The rips I downloaded months ago are better and more convenient.
I hardly ever watch discs anymore. Having rips on my server is so much more convenient that when I find myself wanting to watch some older show, it's easier to go out and find a rip of it to download than it is to go get the disc off my shelf. In fact, I don't remember the last time I did watch one of my older discs.
UPDATE: While we're bitching, I might as well talk about something else. Sentai made the English title "Demon King Daimao".
Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou means "Demon Lord in the back row". "Demon King Daimao" is redundant, and stupid. And they romanized 大é”王 wrong. Either it's "daimaÅ" (in Hepburn) or it's "daimaou" (in Wapuro).
UPDATE: I was wrong. Zoomplayer handles them fine.
Except that I can't choose the Japanese audio, or turn on the subtitles. In fact, I don't get any audio at all.
Anyone tried out the new version of µTorrent? I've got 2.2.1, and it works fine. But now they've rolled the major version number. Is it worth getting?
Based on a perusal of the nominal features, it doesn't seem to offer anything I really need. And among users of BakaBT it doesn't seem to have taken hold. (The consensus version there is 2.2.1, the same version I'm currently using.)
Any opinions about v3.0?
UPDATE: That's interesting... the µ character disappears out of the title. I've added a "u" instead.
I suspect they don't think of it as an "upgrade", considering all the things they changed.
The "drop in this box to send it" may be the most interesting feature, but I fear it won't work for me since my torrent computer is using NAT to see the world. Unless they are running some sort of customized tracker.
3
An RSS client that keeps a history like Vuse did would be nice (About the only thing to like about Vuse).
Posted by: Mauser at July 15, 2011 04:51 AM (cZPoz)
4
So far, everything normal, nothing really outstanding. Maybe more seeding reliability I think, but for the most part, it's trivial stuff changed like the ui (new look, columns changed, if it's a video what's its resolution, etc.)
Posted by: Jaked at July 16, 2011 08:53 PM (hURPF)
6
Yeah, it kept them all (I think even left them as they were, running, stopped, paused, etc).
Posted by: Jaked at July 17, 2011 09:08 AM (hURPF)
7
I'm still running 2.2.1. It's working very well (other than occasionally missing matches in the feeds). I don't want to take another chance any time soon.
At least not until I hear about it being some quantum improvement, or after the next minor rev.
Posted by: Mauser at July 17, 2011 02:11 PM (cZPoz)
In the beginning, there was Go Nagai, the evil genius behind such classics as Cutey Honey and Getter Robo. He was also responsible for Kekko Kamen, and about that we won't say any more.
Anyway, he created a TV show called Dororon Enma-kun, all the way back in 1973. It starred the nephew of Enma Daiou, the Japanese king of the dead. The nephew is also named Enma, and he was sent to Earth to find and capture escaped demons which were causing trouble here, assisted (apparently) by a human boy named Tsutomu.
The art was about what you'd expect from that era, and the girl with the blue hair is completely flat. They don't explicitly say so but I'd guess it was intended as a children's show.
Last winter it got remade. The new art is a lot better. And Yukiko is a lot cuter, not to mention seriously shapely.
Our first view of her in the OP, she's nude. And our first view of her in the show proper, she's also nude, taking a shower.
There's also a human involved, only this time it's a girl. When Enma first meets her, the first thing he does is look under her skirt.
"Oh! Humans really do wear panties! Yukiko doesn't, you know." At which point Yukiko beats the crap out of him. Harumi doesn't quite know what to make of this all.
And then we get an eyecatch:
This is a show with very broad comedy. There isn't anything subtle about it. In the second half of the first episode the group fights against a demon which is haunting the Youkai Grade School, that being where Harumi goes to school. The weapon it wields against Enma is... well... I'm a bit surprised it made it onto Japanese TV, especially considering what eventually happened to it. That's all I'll say. (Actually, I'll say one more thing: "No cape!")
There's a lot of wild energy here, and the voice talent is excellent. It really is an all-star cast. Enma's voice is better known to us all as the male voice of Ranma. Yukiko is Noto Mamiko, who has been in damned near everything. (She is Angol Mois in Keroro Gunsou, and Ana Coppola in Ichigo Mashimaro, just for starts.) The kappa is Koyasu, using a voice somewhat like that of Kururu, only even stranger. Harumi, meanwhile, is Kawasumi Ayako, voice of legend.
The animation is amazing, and it looks high budget.
Pete just finished watching Infinite Stratos, in order to get the foul taste of Railgun out of his mouth. He was quite enthusiastic about it in the beginning, but by the end less so.
I've got an explanation for why the ending doesn't satisfy. It's loaded with spoilers, so it's below the fold.
The cores
of those IS's came from her, but the IS's built around those cores came from somewhere else. The last one came from Hawaii IIRC and presumably was American. Also IIRC the Americans themselves didn't know why it went out of control.
3
IS:
The show hinted pretty strongly that, at the least, the second core wasn't actually out of control, but was made to do what it did (presumably half-killing Ichika was an unexpected development; maybe not.)
Honestly, though, the real problem with the show is Chifuyu. Okay, we get it, she's the best in the world and it's a long way to #2. So when there's an emergency, she hops in her IS (super-customized because, after all, she's good friends with their creator) and flies off to face it, right?
No, wait, she's standing around the control center like a cut-rate Misato. What? I can see her getting assigned to training duties if she's that good. But putting her in a relatively powerless command role while her mostly-untested rookie brother goes out to get shot up? How could you remotely justify that? For that matter, how could you sell that to her, hardass that she is?
So there's something absolutely tremendous going on, and the show doesn't have even a hint of it. Not so great plotting. I mean, I came for the eye candy and I stayed for the eye candy, and as a harem show it's not terrible, but come on, guys.
Asobi:
For that matter, I have trouble figuring out the doggies' motives. Okay, Jens isn't hard to figure out - she is a dog, here are cats, the cats are doing something she doesn't like, so she messes with the cats at every opportunity. But what's she doing there in the first place? What interest do the dogs have in Earth?
Well, there's this show's Ichika. She (and whoever is feeding them to Jens) can create talismans that are a match, or more, for both the cats and the dogs. "Access to an unknown technology" is a pretty good motive, especially if you're generally prohibited from doing stuff like that. It has the added advantage of having nothing to do with the cats, which lets the dogs get there well in advance (long enough that Aoi's organization has obtained suit technology, for example).
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at July 10, 2011 10:58 PM (mRjOr)
4
I think IS ended with book 4. The start of book 7 indicates there's something else going on, as someone forcibly steals an American IS core.
.
Re-watch the last conversation between Tabane and Chifuyu -- Tabane set the whole last arc up to pay back her little sister for the disruption she'd caused -- it's earlier revealed that Houki's anger and attitude problems come from resentment from having to move and remain in hiding for the last eight years. The new machine was intended to put Houki in the spotlight as the one who stopped the renegade IS.
Then there's Ichika, and I'm not quite sure what's going on there.
Tabane set up the event to make it look like Ichika activated an IS, so he'd be invited to attend the school. Although she doesn't know why Byakushiki responds to Ichika, Tabane had to have some idea it would, or the fraud would have been exposed right away.
It's hinted in the last episode that Byakushiki is sentient, and it appears in Ichika's dreams as female. (I'd have to rewatch, but I think it takes on the appearance of his sister, which given Ichika's reaction to her in a swimsuit, leads me to think there's some fetish fuel here.) I previously speculated that the cores weren't discovered by Tabane, they were reverse engineered. So where did the first one come from?
I've been contemplating a full writeup on both IS and Gosick, but I'm feeling rather lazy this month.
5
The anime adapts Vol 1 - 3. And this is in fact the only possible
choice, because together they form an introductory arc to the story,
with Vol 3's ending providing at least a little closure. None of the
later volumes so far are even suitable to end a show on.
Vol 4 is
comprised of side stories that happened during the summer break. The
upcoming OVA will adapt part of Vol 4. Vol 5 can be said to start a new
arc that is not yet concluded.
>the ending... isn't really any kind of ending.
Nothing
to disagree about that. However it must be pointed out that the
original Vol 3 had an ending that, if adapted, would be much more
emotionally satisfying. Partially due to a crucial change to the plot,
the anime removed that ending.
In the book, no one other
than Tabane has developed automated IS. Thus to Ichika, the revelation
in Ep 10 was only "military-grade IS exists", not "the US has unmanned
IS". Silver Gospel, the out-of-control IS in Ep 10 - 12 has a pilot,
Natasha, who was unconcious during the whole ordeal, and when Ichika
finally struck Gospel down in the sky, he saw Gospel dissipate and
Natasha fall into the sea underneath.
The story continued after
the anime ending: they were packed up and ready to return to the
academy, when Natasha suddenly came and kissed Ichika as her expression
of gratitude, in front of the main girls.
She then went and talk with Chifuyu. It's revealed that when Gospel was
hacked, it began to view all ISes as threats to Natasha, and everything
it did was for the purpose of protecting her, including forcing itself
into 2nd Shift (the glowing wings in Ep 12; recall that Byakushiki's 2nd
Shift gave it several new abilities). Gospel is now in lockdown, and
Natasha vowed she would avenge Gospel. The end.
Natasha is the
only character so far who views and talks about ISes as if they are
sentient beings (she refers to Gospel as ano-ko "that child"), and she's
shown as a compassionate and sympathetic character, just like Kouran in
Sakura Wars. That's enough reason to believe she would play an
important part in the future.
>The rogue ISes
Vol 7 cleaned up any remaining doubt.
Tabane made the unmanned IS in Ep 4.
This, and other events in Vol 7, make me wonder that perhaps the
anime made the plot change because
hijinking a manned vehicle,
putting the life of its pilot in danger is way too much and becomes
morally unacceptable. They still want Tabane to be considered a likeable
character and don't want to make her look too bad.
>Chifuyu not coming out
It seems this will be addressed in Vol 8.
>antagonist
The
later volumes have introduced villains. Unfortunately, so far it looks
like the author can't write an interesting villain to save his life.
>chapter titles
Actually most IS episodes are named after chapters in the books.
