There are a lot of great moments in anime. These of course vary from person to person and 1 I never really hear or see all that much are sad moments. I don’t mean moments that you go “oh thats a shame”. No no no, that will hardly do at all. I’m talking about moments that bring you almost to tears or make you feel so depressed that you need to do something else to cheer yourself up. So why do a list about this then? Well because I can and these moments while indeed are sad, they are so wonderful in their own way that they deserve to be seen by all. These are in no particular order so lets get down to it shall we?

Clannad Episode 9 – Fuko’s Arc End

An incredible series converted from an equally incredible game that should be on everyone’s list to play. This episode was the most sad for me of the entire series. At least what I saw of the series. I stopped watching around episode 17 as I had just come off playing the Visual Novel, and refused to have the endings i’d played through, ruined for me by the show. Fuko is a girl who on the day of her opening ceremony at school, got into a car accident and was left in a coma. If my memory serves me correct, 3 years later, when the story takes place, her ghost shows up in school carving starfishes for everyone so they can celebrate her sister’s wedding. Long story short, at the very end there is a really tearful moment where she appears in front of her married sister, congradulates her and dissappears, making everyone forget all about her, with only deja vu type memories remaining. It’s such a sad yet touching scene where she finally gets her only wish granted, seeing her sister happyly married. 

At the very very end of the episode, we get a sweet moment where Tomoya is imaging Fuko coming up to him and offering him a starfish while she asks for him to be her friend. This is the happy ending for Fuko’s good ending. Now some of these story arcs have 2 endings. a Good, and True ending. Each different ending moments or tales that play out past certain intervals. Since the show is based on Tomoya eventualy choosing Nagisa as his girlfriend and future wife, the true ending could not be shown on tv. This is unfortunate as Fuko’s true ending is what stopped me from almost crying. Yes call me a wuss or whatever names you want, but ever since playing Kana: Little Sister i’ve almost, and have cried numerious times during anime. But that is another story all together. 

Fuko’s true ending goes like this; bearing in mind of course that it has been a long while since I played this, so details may be a tiny bit fuzzy or off, but are nearly spot on. Fuko and Tomoya go to the school at night (this is shown in the anime, but with Nagisa present) and they have a sort of celebration for her. Party hats and what not. Very cute. As the night goes on and both of them become tired, they decide to sleep at school. Tomoya sits down and fuko sits down beside him. They talk for a bit and after awhile Tomoya pulls Fuko onto his lap and hugs her. Here is where her endings split into 2 paths. You are given the option to kiss her, or stay hugging her. In the TV version you get the “keep hugging her” option. So Tomoya kisses her and finaly confesses he likes/loves her. They fall asleep together hugging. When Tomoya wakes up Fuko is gone and no one can remember her except for him. Of course he is sad but goes on with his life. I’m not sure how much longer, a girl runs into him in the halls at school. Fuko has woken up from her coma finaly (long story) and holds up a starfish for Tomoya and says “Will you go out with me?” And thus ends Fuko’s arc. Of course he would go out with her.

Since I can’t find a video of the ending i’m talking about, here is a short video of Fuko doing what she does best, Spacing out.

Oh and there is this AMV of Fuko’s whole story which should show you what she is like, and why she is my favorite Clannad character.

Kanon Episode 10 – Makoto Arc End

Another anime from the awesome story tellers Key, who are responsible for Clannad. In this episode, we see the close of an even sadder story than Fuko. Granted this is a little bit more supernatural than a ghost. Yuichi (the main character) found a little fox that was injured 10 years before the main stories of Kanon start. he rescued it and all summer long looked after it, nursing it back to health. When the summer break finished he released it back into the wild and said goodbye. 10 years later when the story starts. Runs into a girl called Makoto. She has no memories of anything but knows she hates Yuichi. Another long story short (key are very good at building romance, so just watch the series already) it turns out Makoto is the same fox that Yuichi took care of when he was a child and she has transformed into a human only for a brief period of time so she can be with him. 

Both Yuichi and Makoto fall in love together, and her time starts to run out in the world. She starts to revert back to her more fox like qualities like being unable to talk or remember things except for Yuichi. Seeing (and after being told what will happen by another person) what is happening, Yuichi decides to give Makoto what she wanted, which was to marry him and stay with him forever. They go to a hill where Yuichi has bought a wedding veil and puts it on her. He says the usual speech and they get “married”. As the sun starts to set Makoto starts to slowly fall asleep and before long, she disappears entirely from Yuichi’s arms leaving him all alone. I just cannot get over how much crap this guy goes through. This isn’t even the half of it. Of course due to the original material being a visual novel, he meets 3 or 4 other girls who all either dump him, or die on him. This guy has the worst luck in the anime dating world and he is THE single best male lead character in romance shows. Still, all the other girls pale in comparison to the epic tragedy that is Makoto.

Finding videos of the specific endings is kinda difficult so you’ll have to make do with this beautiful AMV that is about Yuichi and Makoto. The scenes of her finaly disappearing are in there shuffled amongst the build up between the 2. Enjoy

Elfen Lied Episode 8 and 9 – Lucy Finally Gives Up

This comes in 2 parts, and everyone who has seen this will know exactlly what I mean. This is deffinatly worthy of being on this list. But first a bit of backstory is required to get the full effect of this. Lucy is a Diclonius. Diclonius are humans with 2 small cat like ears on their heads and are able to controll what are called Vectors. Think of these as invisible (to humans) arms that can carry, block, cut or destroy nearly anything they come into contact with. Now since it has been awhile when I last watched this, I cannot remember if it is in a Diclonius’s nature to be destructive or just something that comes as a result of how they are treated. However  this flashback looks at Lucy starting off as a child that is picked on, made fun of and teased constantly about her horns. She is given horrible names like freak and animal. Even her own family aren’t very loving of her. Growing up this way is never easy, but since she is a diclonius it is a little different for her. She has this voice inside her head telling her to kill people, like a concious gone wrong. This could be her diclonius nature coming out but I do not remember exactly, but she is a nice person.

1 day she finds a little puppy out in the woods, or area she goes to be alone. She likes him and starts to look after him sort of. Feeding him and being friends with him. Meanwhile at school things are getting worse. The kids are beating her up trying to make her cry or get some reaction out of her and a girl steps in to stop them. She befriends Lucy and is shown the little puppy. A few days later the bullies at school corner Lucy after school I presume and pretty much tell her they intend to antagonize her again. But this time they have the puppy with them. Seems that “friend” (at least to me) was only nice to her in order to betray her. Lucy finaly starts to sees that humans will only hurt her. Lucy finaly fights back to try and save the puppy, the bullies take things too far and right in front of Lucy, kill the puppy by bashing it to death with a flower vase. This is a very disturbing, and sad scene where Lucy says 1 of the most memorable quotes in anime history.

“When you’re miserable, you need someone even more miserable than yourself”  

What happens next is a scene that everyone will remember. Lucy, for a brief moment snaps and in a shower of blood destorys everything in the room. Children, furnature you name it. After the carnage subsides the area looks like a slaughter house. 

Warning, this scene may be disturbing for some/most. The dog sound… aw man thats rough.

Understandably after this Lucy is upset and goes to her place to be alone. There she meets Kouta, the main character of the story as a boy. For the first time she meets someone who thinks she is great. He loves her horns and they become friends. They go to the zoo together and play all the time. She genuinely starts to like him… a lot. One day a festival happens and Lucy asks Kouta if he would go with her. Kouta has to turn her down however as he has already promised his cousin he would go with her. Lucy starts to worry and asks if his cousin is a boy or a girl. See where this is going? Kouta lies and says a boy and she is releaved. 

So she decides to go anyway, I suppose hoping to run into Kouta. Indeed she does only to find out Kouta’s cousin is a girl who is acting very close to him (Yuka loves him but that is another story). This finaly becomes to much to her and she has a breakdown right there in the street. She has a full conversation in her mind with her diclonius’s evil nature and finaly starts believing that humans only bring pain. She finaly snaps and decides to “change the world into her world”.

“No more. I can’t take it anymore. Friends or a place to stay… I don’t… have anything anymore”
“Kouta… Goodbye. I really liked you”

As in the last episode, there is a spray of blood and she clamly walks killing people that come to help her or are near her as she says 

“I’ll wipe you all out. Every damn last one of you”

With that, the good natured Lucy is gone, at least for now, and what follows is a lot of death involving her killing people as she goes from house to house slaughtering entire families just to take their house and food.

Again, finding actual scenes is kinda hard on youtube so you have this AMV that has all the scenes im talking about in it. Well at least the main ones. Also take note, this video has nudity, however brief it may be, and a bit of blood. If you’re not ok with that then don’t watch.

Well that is it for now at least. Its late so I should wrap this up. I may do another of these since these certainly weren’t the only moments I can come up with. Time will tell.

It’s nothing too new that the big global chain Borders isn’t doing well. The company lost several million dollars this year from what they normally earn and it can be seen when entering a store. Music and other non-book merchandise has been doing more harm than good. The greeting person they have by the door now is pretty annoying, too. Shelves are getting bare, there’s longer lines, and stores I visited don’t carry any manga from Yen Press (minus the magazine Yen+). It would be a tragedy if such large stores went under. Having such stores around makes getting into manga much easier and Borders does tend to carry more mature series then others (either certain types of romance or graphic action).

It’s been weeks since volume four of Moon Boy was released. No way to get it for myself unless bought online.

1 internet to whoever can guess where I got the title for this entry from. Hint: it’s a comedian. After an incident a few nights ago that isn’t really worth going into, I decided that I would write about things in the anime world that just piss me off. No more intro needed to this really.

Male Lead Characters

I know it must be slightly hard to come up with characters to populate an anime or manga series with but do creators really have to reach for the “Character Personality Creation For Dummies” book? Here is what i’m talking about. The typical male lead, which for repitition reasons I shall now call “ML’s”. How can you tell this guy from his elusive, well hidden cousins? Here is a few things to look for.

• Nervious around women.
• Totaly stupid.
• Utterly clueless about women.
• Perversion. Usualy for boobs. If not entirely he has a obsession about 1 or more parts of the female body

Characters guilty of this:

• Yuuto – Nogizaka Haruko no Himitsu
• Tsukune – Rosario+Vampire
• Saito – Zero no Tsukaima (however this is forgivable as he has moments that totally redeem himself)
• Yuichi – Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora
• Keitaro – Love Hina

All of the above characters are guilty of this crime against the anime world. The stupid male is so overused and it is about damn time we got some change happening. How can they go about correcting this bad choice? Easy, you call the stupid moron’s couisn; the compentant, awesome ML. This guy can talk to women, understand them and what is going on with them and to a certain extent their feelings and just generaly act like a normal guy would. He doesn’t stutter or get nervious when the ladies get close to him, doesn’t freak out when they hold his arm or spew forth pints of blood at the meet sight of cleavage. He is a normal person who the anime world is much to devoid of.

Characters guilty of being awesome like this:

• Tomoya – Clannad
• Yuichi – Kanon

I wish I could add more than 2 people to this list but I just havn’t seen an abundance of romance genre shows with awesome ML’s and these are the only 2 that come to mind right now to show how well done male protagonists can really be. Of course both of these series were based off of visual novels (1 adult, 1 not) of their perspective titles, however Key know how to make male characters seem authentic and 1 can only hope others take note of this. This part is getting way to long despite this being perhaps the 1 point I can’t stand about anime over all others so it’s about time we moved on to…

Tsundere Girls

For those who don’t follow japanese terms very well, a Tsundere character is a girl who is usualy very insultive, often physically abusive and very hard to get along with. However she is a nice girl at heart and will eventually become much more friendly after awhile. These type I have never understood myself. In shows like Zero no Tsukaima, the object of the ML’s affection is a rude, abusive, bitch of a character who physically beats the male lead on a daily basis on top of blowing him up with magic. Yes these girls have their nice sides but honestly if a woman was always beating you up, insulting you, throwing stuff at you and screaming at you, chances are you’re not going to fall in love with her are you? You’d call her a Crazy bitch and dump her ass and find someone better.

Now why can’t the ML’s seem to do this? Of course everyone wants to see the guy get the girl in the end but for once why can’t it be someone who you don’t expect? Someone who is nice to him and looks after him rather than giving him brain damage by kicking him in the head when they get mad? Just once i’d like to see this play out in a series.

Guy finds girl. Girl likes guy but is a tsundere so she is a total hag to him. He tries to put up with her crap but in the end he meets someone else that is genuinely nice and he says to the tsundere “i’m sorry, I can’t put up with you anymore. you always hurt me, yell at me, beat me and i’m sick of your shit. I found “X girl” who loves me, I don’t want you anymore”. Just totaly shatter her feelings to show her what’s what. These girls need a harsh slap upside the head in the spot most vunerable. Hit the weak point for massive damage! Sorry i’m back now. Perhaps that is too harsh of a view but still I would love to see it and i’m sure a lot of others would too.

High School Romances

Ok we get the idea already. Stop it. In high school you had learnt about girls and how awesome they are so you were on the look out for a girl friend. Since when did 99% of romance show need to use this setting as the backdrop? Why can’t their be settings were the story takes place at someones work, or their home, or… ANYTHING but a damn school. Out of all the shows ive seen that involve romance I can only think of 1 that didn’t abuse this, and actually had an honestly portrayed ML. That show was Koi Kaze which I throughly enjoyed however I do doubt that the topic of full-blood incest will sit well with the majority of people.

Also a point no one seems to realise is that there is no way people who aren’t even out of their teens live happyly ever after. How often does that happen these days? Yes I know this isn’t supposed to have any real connection to reality reasoning but the chances of 1 couple surviving until their 70s or whenever they die is just insane. Much less expect every show that has 1 of these couples to. We never see what happens 2 or 3 years later to see if they are still together. Yeah yeah nit picking but still. Think of it this way though.

Remember the old Die Hard movies? No i’m not talking about the latest one, but rather the first 3. In the original Holly, John’s wife, is taken hostage. He saves her and she falls in love with him all over again and they get back together. In part 2, John is going to the airport to meet her. Hijinx ensue and sure enough he saves her life yet again. Thats life saving act #2. In the third movie however she doesn’t talk to him anymore. He has become and alcoholic and he says it’s been months says he had talked to her. If saving a womans life TWICE isn’t enough to live happly ever after then what hope do 2 18 year olds have, when the biggest obstical they’ve overcome is them admitting they like each other?

Underused Character Personalities

While there is an overflow of overused mundane personalities, the ones that really deserve to be used more than just once or twice are often forgotten about until a show comes along that makes you remember why you liked those types in the first place. Examples.

Innocently Stupid

• No real surprise here but this girl is usualy stupid but in a way that is cute enough to like. She doesn’t mean to have dumb moments but they happen often enough for hilarity to partake. She can also be tricked into thinking something that isn’t right with little to no effort
• Best example: Kana – Minami-ke

Sincere and Caring

• This lady cares a lot for the people around her and is sometimes too nice to the point where you expect them to turn into a demon and eat someone. They love people and think nothing of going out of their way to do things for others, again to the point where it just seems unnatural.
• Best example: Akari Mizunashi – Aria

Shy but Sweet

• A rarity for characters but it does exist. Thes girls are quite shy around people and often get nervious but are very kind. Usually softly spoken too. Not much else needs to be said about this class really.
• Best example: Sora Kajiwara – Sketchbook ~Full Colors~

Strange and Unusual

• I think most people know what this means by now. Anyone who has seen the brilliant Azumanga Daioh will know who i’m refering to straight away. Yes my favorite anime girl of all time Osaka. She so personifies a potentialy epic personality that should be used again. However i’m sure if it was it would come under fire for trying to copy her trademark blank stare and downright strange, random thoughts. Actually on second thoughts perhaps this shouldn’t be used again as it was done so well mabye further use would only hurt.
• Best Example: Osaka – Azumanga Daioh

Well that about wraps it up from me. This post has gone on enough that any more would just be treading grounds on issues I already have, but in different forms so let me end by saying anime is in no way perfect, and I doubt it ever will be but damnit I still adore it.

Don’t hit the play button if you don’t want to see a kid and his first friend and pet. Having color and some actual animation helps put it ahead of other videos.

What is an OP and ED you may ask? Well to be honest I have no clue what they stand for exactly but it generally means Opening Theme and Ending Theme. Some of these can be quite catchy, others may suck and then there are the ones that make you go “holy crap that was a good song”. I Figured I would share a few of my favorites i’ve come across over the years for shows I love.

Spice and Wolf OP – Tabi no Tochu. Still remains my #1 opening song ever

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni OP – Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Creepy as hell to fit with the theme of the show. Brilliant

Utawarerumono OP – Musoka

Minami-ke OP – Keikenchi Joshochu

Hanban no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora ED – Kioku no Kakera

Claymore ED – Danzai no Hana ~Guilty Sky~

Kaibutsu Oujo ED – Hizamazuite ashi wo oname. I watched this series because of this haha

And the final 2 are from the same series which I throughly enjoyed.

Full Metal Alchemist ED 3 – Motherland. Very sweet song to listen to. Always on my playlist. Winry is such a cute girl.

Full Metal Alchemist ED 2 – Tobira no Mukou e. If my memory serves me correctly, this song was the 1st anime related song I loved to death. I still do.

What are some of your favorites?

Oh get your mind out of the gutter already. Honestly… Well due to some unfortunate circumstances, the huge post I had written up is now useless as every one of the 40 odd pictures I took to accompany it were deleted by family members. *sigh* All That I can do is show off a picture of the finished result of my PG Strike Gundam, with the recently bought and constructed Striker Unit addon. Here is the big guy all finish, sprayed and posing his ass off on top of my desk..

I’m pretty bummed about not being able to follow up on my last gundam post which was ages ago. I went to a lot of trouble to have photos of nearly every step I did and even before/after shots of the pieces I had already constructed. Oh well though. So as I had this package arriving today I thought this to be a decent substitute, as i’m a bit low on stuff to write about today. Perhaps next time will be about an ongoing anime or something. Time will tell. Anyway.

So today the 2 things I ordered arrived. a PVC statue of Choco from Chocotto Sister, and a trading figure box from Pantsu/Strike Witches.

Well I that is the box itself, and pay no attention to my monitor… I was watching Zero no Tsukaima season 3 at the time I took these. Perhaps a little bit of shameless advertising for them but honestly HLJ.com are the best place i’ve found to buy anime related goods and random toys from japan. The stuff they have is cheap, very fast shipping (they can ship my order on a friday, and i’ll have it monday) and a pretty damn big selection of stuff. Ok plug over. 

This is what I actually bought. 

I was looking through HLJ one day and they were having a sale of old things that never sold. Fair enough I thought, there is bound to be something cool in here yeah? While there wasn’t a lot that interested me, I did find a ton of bargins such as things that were $110, but now selling for $15. Then I ran across this.

Way to cute to pass up and since I am a fan of the manga (never seen the actual anime however im in the process of fixing that now) I figured i’d pick it up since it was only $20. The super cute Choco. I wont go into the actual story of the show itself since that isnt the point of this post but rather just to show off some cute things.  

Next up we have the Strike Witches figures. There are 7 in the set, and come in a box of 10, all randomly picked so unfortunately I was 1 short of the whole set. To make matters even more disappointing, that 1 missing happened to be my favorite character… Lucchini. Oh well though.

And Finally, in no relation to anything mentioned above, I give you 1 of the best scenes/series enders in anime history. For those that don’t know, this is from the 2nd season of the show Zero no Tsukaima. In case you wanted a bit of a backstory for this, and I must warn that spoilers will be posted from here on so if you don’t wish to view them don’t read further or watch the video. The guy in the video, Saito, has gone to fight an army of 70,000 on his own in order to protect the girl he loves (Louise). If you were wondering as well yes technical he does die, although he is brought back to life and returns to Louise in the last moments of the same episode so there is a happy ending. This also happens to be 1 of the scenes where I started to tear up because it really is such a sad, sad set of episodes leading up to the cresendo you see now. 

Saito, for all your flaws and bog standard anime male lead features, when you’re trying to protect Louise, you become such a bad ass.