Author:
• Friday, September 12th, 2008

This fan made CO2 gun actually shoots and looks like one of the guns found in the Gungrave anime and games. It can hurt you and that’s likely why it’s not for sale. It would have been perfect if there was a similar case and a silver version of the gun to make the pair.

There’s one odd thing about Gungrave: There’s not much of tie between the fandom of the anime and the video games. The anime was more realistic and included romance while the games from Sega were mindless but very styled. Gungrave the anime wasn’t bad, but it has two sides to it. From the start it’s about the friendships and the mafia, but later changes focus on Grave and his powers. Worth watching for drama or playing to shoot everything up in the games…just depends on your interest.

Author:
• Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Wikipedia is a wonderful site for information despite the spoilers. It’s best used when you’re writing when you don’t wish to spend time creating a summary or telling some of the readers something they already know. It’s not so helpful when used to explain for you everything you wanted to say. Wikipedia isn’t perfect and nobody is saying that Wiki sites shouldn’t be used or linked to. Many anime and manga pages contain episode summaries on the main page or carelessly drop spoilers. Perhaps it’s the Wiki user’s fault or maybe that’s how the largest encyclopedia site wishes to be, but it’s something to think about before linking, though.

One other issue is giving credit to Wikipedia for information when there’s sources you can link to instead provided by the site itself. It would surely help other sites get some nice attention, too.

I have had series like Bokurano almost ruined, but it does make up for it with the epic CLAMP versus Clamp debate when users were deciding if the mangaka group should be all caps. At the moment it is Clamp. Maybe let CLAMP decide?

Author:
• Tuesday, September 09th, 2008

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.

Origin ~Spirits of the Past~

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.

Author:
• Sunday, September 07th, 2008

Letter Bee anime

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.

Author:
• Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Yotsuba&! volume eight

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.

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Author:
• Monday, August 25th, 2008

Soul Eater avatar Soul Eater avatar Soul Eater avatar

And Kazuko is the winner! The Soul Eater avatar contest has ended. Two more contests coming up soon.