4/365: Kaze no Stigma

This has to be one of my fave anime of the past five years or so.

I can't seem to stop watching episodes even though I really only intended to play one today. And at first I thought this might be just another one of those brightly colored, computer animated shows that kind of get on my nerves.

But even though it IS brightly colored and computer animated, it is also hilarious and fun to watch and has a pretty well constructed story.

I get a big kick out of the main character. He's a smartass and kind of a dick and takes crap from nobody yet he still winds up doing the right thing over and over again. Of course he has the love hate thing going on with the main female lead, and while she's high-strung and screams a lot and seems to lose fights just so the animators can tear off her clothes, I find her less annoying than usual. Cause deep down she's not so bad. She questions her abilities and her strengths but she also does what's right when it comes down to it.

It's also fun to see a world where magic is not only out in the open but fully accepted as part of society. No super secret magical heroes popping up and doing silly costume changes here! (Though honestly I love the silly costume changes in Sailor Moon and wouldn't have that show any other way.)

There are serious moments here, and lots of violent fights and explosions, and then some very silly moments as well. It's all blended together so that one moment you're laughing and the next you're wondering if the characters will make it through the next big fight (though I'm betting they always do in this particular series).

The story is basically about a wind magic user who comes back to Japan after four years away after his family of fire magic users banished him for being weak and a failure. He's certainly not a failure now when he continually kicks everyone's butts in magical battles. He argues a bunch with his family, he flirts and frustrates his female counterpart, and he fights a successively stronger bunch of monsters. I'm sure he'll also learn some important things along the way, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

The night is young though, I'm sure I'll get there sometime soon.

3/365: RahXephon

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A teenage boy in the possible near future is hanging out in a city that gets attacked by robot monster things. He teams up with a hot kickass older chick and winds up being the only one that can pilot the robot that can save the world.

Sound familiar? If you guessed I was watching Neon Genesis Evangelion, you'd actually be wrong.

Honestly I would've guessed the same thing. At least in the beginning this show is very similar to Evangelion. I kept wanting to call the main character Shinji Ikari and expected him to start whining at any moment.

Not that I've got anything against Shinji really. But if you've seen Evangelion at all I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

Once upon a time when I was a decade or thereabouts younger, G4 showed anime on the weekends and RahXephon was the first show I really got into. Unfortunately at the time I missed the very first episode as well as the last three or four, so I never found out how the story ended. They re-aired it a while later (after the excellent Cromartie High School) and again I missed the end.

It was kind of annoying.

I remember liking the series though, even with all the similarities to Evangelion (and there really are a lot of them, I'm not gonna list them all but yeah).

It's really pretty to look at, and they obviously tried to go a different route with their mechs than other series and movies have. The music elements to the show are also pretty cool.

There is a lot to like here really. I had no problem hitting play on next episode after next episode. So it definitely is worth a try.

If you can get past the whole Evangelion thing at any rate.

2/365: Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040

I don't like the theme song.

I'm not going to base my entire opinion of this series on that, but I thought I'd throw it out there just to get it said.

It sounds to me like a messed up version of some other series theme song (I'm having trouble remembering which one and I'm watching through YouTube videos trying to figure it out which is just making it harder for me. Ugh). Maybe they're done by the same people and that's why, or maybe it is just the way my brain is working.

But it's making me not like it.

Oh well. Moving on.

So this is more of that good ol' 90s anime at work. Flickering lights, muted colors, 2D movement, pointy faces. But I like that style so it doesn't bother me at all. That's what I was raised on pretty much (well 80s into 90s anime at any rate) so it actually looks more normal to me than this super flashy computer done stuff nowadays.

Like a lot of anime, this series has a severe over-abundance of exposition going on most of the time. I pretty much got the gist of the story within the first half of the first episode as every character was kind enough to talk on and on and on. I wonder sometimes if that is why people who are just trying to get into anime get annoyed and stop watching it. Usually that tones down after the first few episodes, but it can take a while to get used to in the beginning.

So the story seems to revolve around this group of kickass ladies in the future who fight rogue robots (called boomers cause why not?) as well as sometimes each other. They wear very swanky armor that makes them look very sexy (of course) and spend a lot of time trying to hide their identities from the actual authorities while keeping normal jobs and kind of dating.

This isn't exactly the first future-themed anime I've watched, or the first with kickass women in sexy armor that I've seen. I like sci-fi anime and I enjoy robots, so yay for that and all. But maybe I've seen too much sci-fi anime with robots and kickass armor, cause I couldn't help comparing Bubblegum Crisis to other series I've seen. Not that Dominion Tank Police or Ghost in the Shell or Appleseed are exactly the same, but the comparisons are still there.

1/365: Vampire Princess Miyu

I'm fairly certain I've seen part of this series before. I know I've seen all of the OAV episodes. It looks very familiar and I remembered the Big Bad of the first ep. I'm cool with seeing it again though.

Miyu is one of those great older series (late 90s or so) that is dark and violent with some nice graphic bloodshed and a hint or two of nudity. It has a dark concept and doesn't shy away from that fact with glossy animation styles or cutesy characters (though there is a somewhat disturbing bunny creature with one very creepy eye thing going on).

It also has that old hand-drawn feel which I kind of miss. Sure the movements are slow or choppy or obviously two-dimensional, but the story still manages to be engrossing and strange and fun to watch.

The story basically revolves around a half human/half vampire 'guardian' who travels the world keeping demon-types (called shinma in this series) from doing too many horrible things. She isn't exactly a warrior of light and love, however. She has a tendency to let shinma kill people off before she stops them, and she isn't above encouraging douche-y teenagers to throw themselves off buildings if they piss her off. Fun to see a little 'anti' in the series' heroine from time to time.

Though I know I saw this series first and it should be the other way around, I find it reminds me quite a bit of Hell Girl. Similar concepts: jilted/angry/horrible people seek revenge on those that have done them wrong and call on demonic forces to help them out (or something to that effect) until a dark-haired ultra-powerful teenage girl comes along and cleans up the mess - for a price.

Perhaps as the series goes on they won't seem to similar, but I don't really mind at this point as I liked Hell Girl and I like Miyu so it all works for me.

Sooooo...that happened...

Obviously once again things did not work out with this challenge. But I'm okay with it.

Really. I am.

Because a new year starts in about two weeks and that is a brand new chance to do the AnimeMia 365 challenge right.

I've got HuluPlus, Netflix, and AmazonPrime all ready to go. I've got lists of anime for every day of the month in January (just to start off with).

And 12/26-12/29/13 I'm going to stage my very own Studio Ghibli movie marathon in the comfort of my own livingroom and watch through all 16 Ghibli films that I currently own (thanks to an awesome DVD set I found online). I'm gonna make tasty treats like fried rice and potstickers and cream cheese wontons and it will be excellent.

I'm getting very pysched up for a new chance to prove to myself once and for all that I can do a challenge like this one. And I'm getting excited for some new anime. I've gotten out of the habit of watching in the last year or so. It will be fun to re-discover that hobby.

365/1 - Red Garden

This show is kind of weird.

It has this dark magical girl kind of premise (well dead magical girls but whatever, it still kind of works) and some very melodramatic scenes and dialogue.

SO melodramatic. Like suddenly bursting into moody song melodramatic.

And sometimes the songs are more spoken than actually sung. I don't know if it would be like that in Japanese or if they just did it for the English dub, but it's ... kind of strange.

I actually laughed a little the first time in happened because it was unexpected. Here are these girls fighting for their lives against a dude with glow-y eyes who keeps barking at him (real dog-like sounding barks and not just person-doing-dog-like sounding barks) and then ...

Singing?

Huh.

The story seems to basically revolve around four pretty dead girls who don't seem all that dead but apparently totally are and have been re-animated (but not in a zombie fashion) so that they can spend their nights fighting supernatural baddies while screaming a lot. They come from different backgrounds but I have a feeling will bond in a super girl-y fashion before too long and possibly become a crack monster fighting team (sailor suits probably not included though as this show is supposed to be all dark and stuff). 

I'm digging the artistic style here a lot. It is reminiscent of Revolutionary Girl Utena with the big noses and pointy chins. And for once it doesn't seem so off to see an animated world populated by blonds and brunettes and redheads as the setting is New York (as opposed to Japan where many anime are set).

Not that the characters act particularly American really. More like how people from other countries probably think we act. With some Japanese cultural norms thrown in.

But overall, bizarre bursts of moody song aside, I'm liking Red Garden quite a bit. It has some definite horror/supernatural/fantasy/violent stuff going on, and some interesting non-linear storytelling techniques popping up, and some twisty complex mythology being hinted at.

PLUS I can watch it dubbed on HuluPlus which is excellent as that is the only way I can watch while at work (as I do have to at least pretend I'm getting important work tasks taken care of while I'm watching and I haven't gotten my Japanese language skills down yet).

Well crap.

So that happened. Dammit.

Let's try this again. AnimeMia 365 take ... whatever time this is.