Origin ~Spirits of the Past~ is the licensed English name of what was called Gin-iro no kami no Agito. This isn’t so much of a “hey look at this” anime, but “hey it’s been many months and I’m still thinking about it” anime. Origin is one of those Gonzo movies that came out a couple years go when the company stated how they wanted to change their image: A family company that could make movies for everyone and compete with the big corporations like Disney.

To sum up the movie, you have humans on a nature ruling Earth with cities in ruin below ground. Plant beings rule and humans are restricted in certain areas such as places with waters. Nature decides how much water the people get. Nature and humans are suppose to coexist, but with swift destruction of most of the human population and technology, that’s not the case anymore. One day a young boy named Agito finds a machine with people inside. One person appears to still be alive and out comes the girl. This pretty much angers and strikes fear into forest above. This girl (of course named Toola) has something that can allow her to unleash something that can return the balance. The people who live with the forest aren’t the only people, as nearby there is a massive structure in a desert that provides water using technology and machines to keep the forest at bay. As a whole that was their only intention.

If you plan on watching this anime you may want to skip this part for spoiler reasons, but if you’re okay with that then this is what made Origin ~Spirits of the Past~ special. It hit me and my progressive views in ways that disturbed me. Humans are no longer able to develop? The sky is no longer a limit because it makes the world unbalanced. Media and all the comforts that make everyday life as we know it are no more. The goal of the anime is to show that you can’t live without balance and that life should be respected, even if not human.

Years ago scientists wanted a way to make a balance on their own, so they made an experiment on the moon that was suppose to make plant life smarter and better able to compete. Sadly one of the scientists on his own thought that the project would go faster if the plant life was even stronger. This lead to massive dragon like plants shooting across to earth destroying cities and laying ground to the new world. This man is the same who also awoke in a similar machine like Toola, but instead sided with the desert people and (mis)lead them to help him destroy the forest. This all is bothering in more ways than one. The human made machine meant to destroy forests had let’s change our mind and live with the forest feature. That feature was used and the forest showed that people are apart of nature and that nature creates people. That is nice, but that puts humans back to the basics and no way of return. If humans were ruining the environment, why not allow them to develop technology to explore the universe and why must so many people die for balance? After many months after watching this movie, it bothers me that all of our progress became the past and the people who were alive hundreds of years ago moved on.

If you seen Origin ~Spirits of the Past~, you may also like Green Legend Ran. They both have a similar aspects where Earth’s landscape is changed, water is controled, and a young boy who ventures out to save a girl.

Letter Bee or also known as Tegami Bachi is getting an anime quite soon. The thing is that it may not be released on DVD or shown on television. It’s for the Jump Super Anime Tour in Japan, but perhaps a single episode could spark interest in producing an animated series. The original creator Hiroyuki Asada sure likes the idea of a Letter Bee anime. The guy mentions how wonderful it is often on his blog. Screenshots and voice actor information can be found here on the Jump Square official site. Jump Square is the magazine where the new chapters are coming from.

Hope it doesn’t get over shadowed by the Dragonball, One Piece, Bleach, Blue Dragon, the other special episodes being shown with it.

Volume eight cover of the Yotsuba&! manga above. It can already be found on Amazon Japan. There’s five volume of this manga in English already, but it’s by ADV Manga. ADV has dropped a lot of manga in the past. If finishing Yotsuba&! is one of your life goals, you’d be better off learning Japanese to buy it while everyone else waits for the delays for volume six. Maybe if ADV were to advertise and promote their products better, they’d have better sales. When was the last time you’ve seen a commecial for manga (or even anime) on television?

A brief intro, though. It’s the girl in image board 404 missing file and banned images. There’s a soundtrack, yet no sign of an anime like Azumanga Daioh. Yotsuba&! is a story of a small girl and her everyday adventure. Humor takes setting up, the art style is known for being very clean, and everyone is very expressive. What you can expect is girl who’s still learning about the world with her usually not really getting what something is actually for (with doorbells as an example). You can see view revisions of this new volume here.

This is a pretty spot on and in full remake of the opening music of Bokurano. The song is titled Uninstall by the artist Ishikawa Chiaki. Bokurano is a manga with an anime adaptation of twelve children who deal with life while deciding to give up their lives to save their world. This may seem like your average Evangelion like anime, but brings forth some intense moments. Don’t Wikipedia this anime for details or it’ll ruin everything.

Also known as Pantsu Witches to some and is set to run for 13 episodes. Oh boy where to start on this show. What genre should I even classify it under actually? It hits so many bases that I just don’t know where put it. I’ll let you decide. Heres some of what you can expect. Bloomers, semi mecha, magic girls, furry, no pants and most importantly loli/jailbait characters. Where would you put this now? Yeah exactly. So anyway what is all this about? What possible storyline could they come up with to try and hold all these elements of service together? Here it is.

Strike Witches takes place in a world that has been under savage attack from an enemy known as the Neuroi which first started to attack in 1939. They sporadicly appear and attack and just when people think they have worked out how they think, they change their strategy often catching people by surprise. Neuroi take the form of abstract or funky futuristic style aircraft. Not much is known about them really except that they spread a destructive miasma that annihilates human life, and transmutes the land into weapons for them to use.

The only way to combat this enemy seems to be use mages, typicly young girls, in what is called Striker Units. These mecha-like contraptions are fitted onto the legs like large stockings and allow the user to fly, enhances the ability to carry/use weapons that normal humans wouldn’t be able to and create a defensive shield when for when the user is under attack. When using these units the occupant sprouts animal ears and a tail, different to each girl be it cat, wolf like or fox.

Interesting no? I thought so at least. However the real attraction is the characters to me at least. Also as mentioned above, all the women under in this show seemed to be banned from wearing pants. I have no clue as to why exactly this is as none is given, but the best reason for this I have heard is “Pants would probably interfere with the machines they use, and it would take time to take them off when they have to get in the air really fast”. You’re welcome to try and conjour up a better reason but for the sake of continuing lets pass that speed bump. Lets introduce a few characters such as the main character and my personal favorites. Please excuse some of the photos, i’ve had to cap them from episodes due to the disturbingly low amount of single character photos.

Yoshika Miyafuji – She is the 14 year old main character of the show. She is your normal anime 14 year old in personality. Perhaps a bit more caring than what you would fine but there you go. She is part of a family who run a doctor’s clinic that heals people using magic. When she was little her father was called to assit in the war against the Neuroi and as a result, he created the Striker Unit. In the later episodes (4 onwards I suppose) she has an attraction to large boobs. What? Don’t look at me like that, its true. I’m not sure why exactly and your welcome to try and answer.

Mio Sakamoto – She is the Strike Witches 2nd in command and ranks as the oldest of the witches at 19 years old. She has a fondness toward Yoshika and is a normal type of military commander of strict and dominating. However she is always kind to people. She wears an eye patch that covers her right eye. Under this patch is a magic eye that allows her to see incredible distances and helps when fighting Neuroi.

Francesca Lucchini – She ranks as the youngest girl in the witches at 12 years old. She often is found sleeping around the base in downright odd places such as a tree, or in the rafters of the mechanics bay. She would much rather sleep or find a way to have fun with the girls over training. Then again that is normal isn’t it? When in her Striker Unit she gaints the ears and tail of a black leopard. She is tied with the next girl as my favorite. I can’t decide between the 2.

Sanya V. Livyak – Close behind Francesca at 13 years old. She is quite nocturnal and is often put on night duty because of her magical ability to detect signals such as radio. This gives her quite an incredible detection ability and is little wonder why she is on night duty so often. Her personality is a bit introverted and is often quiet, thinking to herself rather than speaking. When she flies at night she has a pretty song that she sings in order to help her detect things. She shares the same birthday as Yoshika.

Charolette E Yeager – 16 years old and is called Shirley by friends. Like Francesca she is rather carefree but is quite fond of cleanliness. A speed freak (not the drug) who loves going as fast as possible and was the first witch to break the sound barrier. She has perhaps the biggest… er… bust of all the girls.

Well there are 11 girls all up in the witches squad and since I can’t really go ahead and write about all of them for the sake of space and time, here is a group shot that wiki was kind enough to help with.

So with the series half over (buu!) there is little doubt that a 2nd Strike Witches season will be announced eventualy. We can only hope at least that is. If 1 of more of the above genre tags pique your interest then it wouldn’t hurt to watch 1 episode and see if you like the show. I suppose the closest type show would be Sky Girls but having never watched that I cannot comment exactly how close the shows are. That said if you liked Sky Girls then give this a try. Worst comes to worst you just wasted a bit of your time right?

Very sad news from a few days ago, but only heard of today. The brillint singer Kawai Eri passed away on august 4th just before midnight from liver cancer. Many of you may not know who she is, but she worked on music for anime such as Utawarerumono, Tales of Symphonia OVA, Bamboo Blade and Strange Dawn. But perhaps her best known work was the singing voice of the character Athena Glory on Aria.

I’m going to really miss hearing her sing as her voice was, and is nothing short of brilliant. RIP Eri. I’m gonna miss you.

On a totally unrelated note, the next part of my gundam post will be coming soon. I’ve had some delays in buying the remaning paints and would perfer to get it all done in 1 go so yeah.