Anime Gerad - Anime Community

Anime publisher ADV ended the magazine Newtype USA and replaced it with a general media magazine PiQ. Of course subscribers weren’t happy getting something unrelated to what they paid for. It also didn’t help that a reputation of insulting and poking fun of its reads was growing. Without much shock PiQ has ended after four issues. This could also be another sign that ADV as a whole is having problems and perhaps near an end themselves?

The mainsite for PiQ does hint at more news coming soon. Newtype USA was making profits when it was published, why ruin it? But it’s true that it was expensive and in theory it didn’t help grow interest in anime and manga with non-fans.

It is quite unfortunate that amazing manga like this will rarely see the light of day outside of japan. Wether it be the series is considered too short or that people don’t believe that it would do well, it is when you come across a manga like this that you really just hope that someone notices it’s brilliance and decides to pick it up for translation. For those who have read this series you no doubt enjoyed it and agree with what i’ve said. As for everyone else, if you are a fan of romance then I cannot recommend this enough. It rivals Kanon 2006’s Makoto story arc which (IMO) was 1 of the 2 best and saddest romance stories i’ve encountered. This is a short series that only runs for 5 books, and was made quite awhile ago but it still remains a brilliant work. However lets get on with the point of all this.

STORY

We follow a man by the name of Yoshizumi Ikuru who lives in the future. As I read this series over 4 or 5 months ago I cannot remember exactly if you find out how old he is but he seems to be around his eairly 20s. Unfortunately due to a major traffic accident when he was young that claimed his parents, he is now close to dying. He was able to survive and avoid his imminent death by scientists grafting body parts of another person onto/into him. This allows him to live but not for much longer. As he only has short time left to live, he turns in his application for an Ai-Ren. What is an Ai-Ren? Well as the manga puts it they are

“Human beings made out of artificial genes with the purpose of relieving the mental despair of a patient during his/her last moments of his/her life”

They are custom grown to suit the person they are given to. Unfortunately their life span is also not as prolonged as 1 would hope. They usualy die a few months after being “born” which in itself is quite sad but in this case is just worse. Ikuru decides to name his Ai-Ren simply Ai, as that is all she can say for the first few hours after taking her home. With both of the main characters introduced, the story now follows them together as they experience life together and eventualy fall in love with each other.

Characters

I figure more information on the main focus of this series wouldn’t be too out of order so i’ll go into some further depth of the characters. There are more that you meet but Since 90% of the story is based on 2, I will only go into detail about them.

Ikuru: He is a rather intelligent person who often has dreams/nightmares about his impending death and about his body’s deterioration. Sometimes these are so severe that they leave him unable to eat or even move due to bodies reaction. He doesn’t seem to mind cleaning and is pretty good at cooking too. He is an exceptionaly kind and understanding character that unfortunately feels cut off from the rest of the world. He seems to feel guilty about applying for an Ai-Ren but that later disappears through time when he becomes truly happy he did.

Ai: Born/grown at the request of Ikuru in a lab. She physicaly looks about late teens, eairly 20s but since her mind requires a short span to mature to her physical age, she acts very childish at first. Drawing on walls and never being able to stay still and the like. Although her personality is designed to compliment Ikuru’s, she seems to enjoy flashy things in life such as rock music which Ikuru doesn’t. She learns to play the piano thanks to Ikuru but soon passes him in skill and picks up the guitar as well. Together with Ikuru they grown vegetables outside of their country house. She keeps a diary of her life with Ikuru and always writes in it about her day and what happened.

Final Comments

Unfortunately that is about as much as I am able to write up about this due to it being short. However don’t take that as a bad thing has writing any more would just spoil it for the people who wish to read it. If you are looking for a great romance series that wont suck up too much of your time then I cannot suggest a more perfect book. It has great artwork in it that is minimalistic at times, but really shows a sense of the atmosphere and surroundings. A great read that should be on everyone’s list of “must read” manga.

Muddy is the perfect manga if you were to mention examples when you argue that female mangaka shouldn’t make shounen. It ended so soon and didn’t connect well with the Shounen Jump readers. Not really a reason not to read it, it’s a fun read. Clay was a promising smart person who grew up as a failure…more like as an ehh. What is he suppose to be good at? Making chimeras, artificial life. After a certain point, he’s fired too soon as he makes a human chimera from mud. The name of the new lifeform in the shape of a small child is Muddy. Because of Muddy’s innocense and wild nature, Clay decides to raise him. There’s plenty of action and you get to see the many sizes and forms of Muddy with his female form likely being the most popular.

Why should you read this manga is simple. It’s has a simple theme, only has twelve chapters, and little Muddy is very loveable. Volume one in Japane with all the chapters is out incase you wanted to add it to your collection.

So for those who read my Clannad Visual Novel write up or just like Clannad in general, I thought I would post about some items that are currently out and about to come out. There are only 2 but they are pretty worthy of money I think. Since these measurements are in centimeters, you’ll have to work out inch conversion for yourself if your in the US.

First up we have a Clannad Tapestry which looks quite nice. It measures 120cm x 65cm so physicaly it’s quite large which is a good thing. I’ve ordered this one today so I can’t say much for the quality of it but judging from the price i’d bet it’ll be really nice. Speaking of price, this currently runs for 4,000 yen, which works out around $38 US. A bit more expensive than what you would find at other online shops selling Hellsing or Naruto (eucgh) equivalents, but I’m sure that this is made up for in quality. My only gripe? NO FUUKO! WHAT GIVES?! She is the best character in the entire game/series and they leave her out?.

Next up we have a plush Botan which just looks adorable. He is about 18.5CM long and looks pretty much exactly as you would expect him to look. This little guy also sells for $38 US so again he isn’t cheap, but cmon… look how adorable he is. Awwwww. The only thing that would make him better is if when you hugged him or applied pressure to him, he viborated. Not sure if that was shown in the anime version but he does it in the Visual Novel. Yeah dont ask.

I’ll be sure to pick 1 of these up for my birthday

It looks like us Westerners will be getting another shot of cel-animated insanity very, very soon thanks to a recent announcement that more School Rumble anime is on the way!

This latest addition to the anime line-up, titled School Rumble: Third Term, will be released gradually like the raw cocaine it is alongside the two upcoming manga volumes slated for release on July 17th and September 17th. Funimation and Del Ray have no hope at all of catching up to this series in it’s paper or animated form if this keeps up!

So it’s been awhile since I lasted posted something and figured that since my latest anime package just arrived I’d do a write up on 1 of the main things I bought. So here is my write up of the Lucky Star Limited Edition DVD 1 pack.

So no doubt many, if not most, of you have at least heard about Lucky Star. Many loved the show and an equal amount of people disliked it for it’s slow, pointless episodes. Being one of the former, when I heard that this show was getting an english dub I was straight away worried. It may be just me, but Lucky Star always seemed to be a show that is only good if you understood the many abundant culture refrences. If you are new to anime and hear characters talking about Otaku, Moe and “Flags” you would be very confused and miss many of the shows jokes; mainly made by Konata. However I will not go further into this as I am mainly concerned with the package itself and not the content of the show. Onward we go

Collectors Box
Straight away when I opened my package I saw the collectors box that this show comes in. While it isn’t excatly as big as I expect it to be, It is still as impressive. The box is covered, inside and out, with many colourful images of the characters of the show and is visualy extremely pleasent to look at. If you had this on display with other DVDs it is likely to be the first to grab your attention which is a great thing. 1 picture seems a bit out of place though. On the underside of the box (what I presure is the underside) is a picture of Kagami and Tsukasa in rather… interesting… poses with Konata off in the distance looking shocked. This picture wouldn’t be out of place in a form of H-manga which I think is odd for the box art. Still, for some this isn’t a bad thing so i’m surely not complaining about it. Opening the magnetic flaps at the top of the box reveals even more of the wonderful artwork that went into this. Both flaps have artwork on them (including a very nice picture of Konata in a maid outfit. Service anyone?) and the inside of the box itself has pictures of the character’s faces in it which is rather fitting. This box is ment to eventualy house the 6 DVDs that will be released so right now it may seem a bit oversized but that will be fixed soon enough.

Shirt
Now that the box is out of the way, the first thing I noticed was the shirt that comes with this. A white, XL shirt with the winter school outfit (known as Sailor Fuku) printed/swen into on the front. Personly I think that this shirt is something you would only wear around the house or when you are alone as being seen in public with this… well it just doesn’t seem right to me haha. The shirt seems well made so quality wise they did well with this as too. So far that is 2 good grades for this. Next up would be the 2 CDs that come with the set.

CDs
Included is the opening theme, Motteke! Sailor-fuku, and Lucky Star Character Song Vol.001 Konata Izumi. Each CD has 2 songs, and 2 instrumental version of those songs, making 4 songs in total on each CD. Since these CDs proved so popular in japan, it’s very nice that they added these into our boxed set. If you have seen any of the Haruhi Character Song albums then you can expect about the same type of artwork on the CDs that come with this. Motteke! Sailor-fuku is a great song with a very addictive and recognizable beat so this song automaticly gets a pass for me. I havn’t listened to the 2nd song on the album yet so I can’t comment on that. As for the Konata album, it is very unfortunate that the most popular character in the entire show (arguably) has such a standard album. Her songs are decent but no where near as good as what Kagami’s are, which is a shame. Still though they aren’t BAD so this also gets a pass from me. This should provide you with about 30 min of music give or take a bit if you listen to them both back to back.

Screen Wipe
Quite an odd little item burried underneath the Shirt inside the box. This item is a furry little chocolate cornet which I thought was going to be a lot bigger than what it actualy is. At first this was disapointing but what I didn’t expect was that this only houses the actual screen wipe. If you pull on the bit of cloth inside the cornet a bigger, but still small, cloth comes out that you can use to clean your screen or glasses I expect. Just dont pull on the cloth too much as I just did then because the cloth can actualy come completely out of the Cornet housing and then you are stuck with the annoying task of feeding the small thread back through it. Since i’m lazy i’m just going to leave it as it is. Despite it being small and semi-useless (unless you live in a dust filled room and why would you be?) I still think it was neat to add this so again another passing grade.

DVD
So the last part of this goodie filled box is the actual DVD itself. I guess I dont really have to mention anything about the show itself because if your buying this boxed set, you already like the show and know what you are going to get. The box art is very basic and when compaired to the collecters case and CD art, it seems very basic and flat. On the front is a big (and bad) picture of Kagami in a shrine maiden outfit who looks very angry to boot. No doubt this was supposidly drawn by Konata is she is always making fun of Kagami. On the back of the case we have a bit more to show off. The standard DVD seatures menu, episode list (4 per DVD) and DVD extras menu. All basic stuff you would find on any dvd. Incase you have forgotten in the few moments since you saw them last, is also a little bubble telling you what is contained in the special edition boxed set. Quite a pointless thing to add if you ask me but oh well. Inside we have a very nicely printed dvd and a fold out insert that has a bunch of show notes from the translaters about jokes you may not understand, random objects placed in the show and other things such as “Episode 4 - When Kagami can’t sleep, she is reading the novel Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo”. Mostly this is just full of useless info but it is very pleasent to have incase you dont get something. Yet again I give this a passing grade.

Overall
All in all, if you liked the Lucky Star show when you should invest in this because it is well worth it. It may seem a bit expensive but when you consider you are getting a shirt, 2 CDs (which sell for around $15 AUD each) and a screen wipe in addition to the dvd and a special box to keep everything in it is quite the bargin. I don’t regret paying for this awesome show at all and glad to support it. Now if we can only convince more companies to make special editions like this.