Lucky☆ Star
What do you get when you mix Azumanga Daioh (perhaps the greatest show about nothing) and Kyoto Animation (one of the – if not the – greatest animation companies out there)? You get the super moe~ Lucky☆ Star.
Darker than Black: -黒の契約者-
When I first saw the preview to this anime, I felt a resemblance to Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex. It has a kind of futuristic and cyberpunkish edge without being overtly futuristic or cyberpunkish.
El Cazador de la Bruja
From the makers of Noir and MADLAX comes El Cazador de la Bruja (The Witch Hunter). I myself have actually been anticipating this one for a while.
Claymore
I heard that this series is a pretty anticipated one, so after some recommendations, I decided to check it out. It’s essentially a medieval kind of action series, as far as I can tell. The story revolves around this group of people that are called Claymores that are hired to go around, killing creatures called Yoma (demons, basically). Not much plot has developed yet, but it looks like that may change soon.
. . . an age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it.”
This isn’t anime-related, but I think this is worth mentioning anyway.
I saw 300 a couple of days ago in IMAX. And. It. Was. Incredible. Go out, and see it now. You definitely want to see this in the theater. Don’t be the one that sees it on DVD and says to himself, “. . . Damn, I should’ve seen this in the theater!” (Note: Small children, squeemish people, and people who just can’t handle over-the-top violence need not apply)
I’ve been anticipating this movie since the summer of last year, and it has lived up to and may have even surpassed my expectations. This movie is simply stunning.
From the masterful director Makoto Shinkai, who also brought you Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in our Early Days has released his newest work, 5 Centimeters Per Second, very recently. Now, the full movie only shows in Japan, so I haven’t had the opportunity to see it yet (and probably won’t until the DVD comes out). However, the people behind the movie put a stream of the first part of the movie, Oukashou, on the Yahoo! Japan website. Someone captured the footage and released it on the web. It wasn’t soon until I downloaded it and watched it.
And when I finished it, I watched it again.
Continue reading ‘Anime Review – “5 Centimeters Per Second – Oukashou”’
Welcome to RANT (my subpar stab at a pun which stands for Random Assortment of Nonsensical Thoughts). The topic today is about learning Japanese from anime. Summary: Besides learning very, very rudimentary words and phrases, a beginner should not rely on anime to learn the language. A more experienced learner who is learning somewhere else (classes, books, websites, etc.) should also be careful not to absorb any unusual speaking patterns from anime. If you can take these ideas to heart, then you can actually benefit in learning Japanese by watching anime (in Japanese, naturally). The following is a post I wrote back in July on the animepaper.net message boards. I thought that bringing the post here would be a good idea since some people in our community may be wondering about this issue.
So some of you may recognize this blog from another particular place. Right, I have moved the blog over to wordpress.com. Although, my blogger blog (. . .) was very, very short-lived to begin with. Hopefully it won’t be the case here. Hopefully. I’ll try to keep the blog updated at least a couple of times a week, particularly on the weekends.
At any rate, here’s to a brand new start. For the sake of keeping a blog recent, I’m not going to move all of my old posts over. However, I may move some things that I find can still serve a purpose here. Thus, you may find some posts that look unusually familiar.
Anyway, if you have as much free time as me (you’re reading this blog, aren’t you?), then you may be wondering exactly what “uruchai” is. If you’re an anime fan who watches anime in Japanese at least some of the time, you’ve probably heard the word “urusai” being thrown around. “Urusai” is literally an adjective for “noisy,” but depending on the tone and context, it can mean “be quiet!” or “shut up!” “Uruchai” is basically just a change in the spelling of “urusai.” While it isn’t common, you can hear it being said repeatedly by Hecate-tan and Shana-tan in Itadaki no Hecate-tan (the girls you see in the image on the top of this post). The last thing I want is someone calling me on my misspelling of the word.
