The anime thread sequel (it's still not as good as the Manga though),

I can see why you declined to comment on Ga Rei, Andi. I'm about two thirds of the way though and not finding the series as good as I'd hoped. My personal feeling is by doing it the way they did they lost a lot of momentum the first episode generated and I'm hoping there is a strong ending as I'm finding the middle components of the show quite dry.
 
Finished watching Mashiro-iro Symphony this evening. A (very) average harem series with the usual selection of female characters vying for the affections of a lead which makes you wonder ... why? The series suffers from being only a single cour hence the pacing is a bit poor. I did find the plot lurched a bit after the first girl (he got so far and then the next thing we know things have moved on and things aren't really explained why). The two main instances of fanservice were both "censored" by the big white light on broadcast.

The female characters were all nice enough, if stereotypes, although Ranka, Machi and Yuiko are more to my tastes really ;) It hits most of the usual scenarios (although misses beach/pool and onsen) for this sort of thing.

It was a reasonably enjoyable watch but don't expect to much from it as it isn't big or clever.
 
Finally decided to give Death Note a try. Heard it was supposed to be good but wasn't too sure about the concept.

I've only seen the first 5 episodes and its absolutely awesome.
 
Finished watching Ef ~ a tale of memories ~ this evening on the above release.

For people who haven't seen it it is an interesting series. I'd say that it'd be classed as a romantic drama with multiple simultaneous plot lines which have indirect links between them, (for example one character in one plot is the sister of a character in another plot). And it is a drama, don't expect humour and fanservice here ...

The thing that makes the series is the visuals though. The characters are reasonable but some of the other elements are very good, like the water and the use of light effects ... but the most amazing things are the skies ... they are just beautiful. The animation is interesting at times with the use of different effects to put across the emotions the characters are going through. This is cleverly done at times although at one point I did suspect an error on the disk, (~12:10 on episode 10), where you got a kind of old school rolling video affect ... but I checked against my R2J DVDs and they were the same so it would look like it's supposed to be like that. The sound track is very good too with music used well throughout the series. Overall this release is good on BD.

The downsides to the release ... personally I found the subtitles a bit large at times, I know there have been complaints on some BD releases that the subtitles have been to small but this was a bit to much the other way. There were also a few glaring typos.

I was amused to see in one episode what appeared to be references to Clannad, (going by the dates on Wikipedia the original Clannad game would have been out prior to Ef), with a phone card being clearly shown with a collection of dango's on it and an extended sequence with glowing balls floating in the air, (for visual affect ... unlike in Clannad they appear to have no really meaning here).

Overall I really liked re-watching this series ... if you want a good looking drama series I would recommend it and I look forward to the second seasons' release.
 
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Received another copy of Towards the Terra disk 6 today so I could finish watching that series.

Overall it isn't a bad sci-fi series with the main story being a fight between Humans and Mu (who are basically humans with psychic powers. There are various characters whose (non-romantic) relationships become intertwined through out the series.

At times it did feal a bit like Banner of the Stars in that it felt that it could have easily been a lot bigger than it was and that you were only skimming over some parts. I didn't find the ending to be very satisfying either really.

The other thing I finished watching this afternoon was Gundam Seed Destiny (GSD) ... having seen the first Gundam Seed (GS) series I thought I'd better pick it up, given the status of Beez/Bandai US, and given their reputation for non-working disks I thought I'd better watch it sooner rather than later.

GSD is supposed to be weaker than GS and I'd agree with that. I admit I am not a huge fan of the Gundam series' overall (I've only seen GS and Gundam 00 Season 1 before watching this) and tend to find them rather repetitive. This series was no different really with battles with the same protagonists seeming to happen over and over again. It didn't help that it's been a long time since I watched GS and I did struggle at times keeping the characters and alliances straight (and even keeping track of who was who out of Kira/Athrun/Shinn who tended to look the same to me).

Overall I thought the series was ok for what it was but nothing overly exciting. (On the up side at least the disks worked!)

I see it looks like UP are due to be getting in the final titles being released by Bandai US at the end of next week / beginning of the week after (they were added to the 7-10days new release RSS feed yesterday afternoon) ... means I should have a pile to watch the week after (plus other stuff to read / watch as well) ... just when the at hand backlog was getting under control ...
 
Finished the second disc of The World God Only Knows last night.Seen it talked about here a bit and decided to take a punt on it.
Took about 3 episodes for me to get into it and enjoyed it by the end,although the ending was a bit ....
anyway when/is a second series going to be released?The ending implied this and introduced elsies sister?
 
ANDARIAL said:
Finished the second disc of The World God Only Knows last night.Seen it talked about here a bit and decided to take a punt on it.
Took about 3 episodes for me to get into it and enjoyed it by the end,although the ending was a bit ....
anyway when/is a second series going to be released?The ending implied this and introduced elsies sister?
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The second season has already aired in Japan. I don't think it has been announced as licensed nor solicited yet for US release, (but it's probably only a matter of time ...)
 
Yes, because I have so little going on with my life that I can remember every little news item from 4 months ago ...

... anyway ...

Finished watching Rosario+Vampire on Funimation's DVD release earlier ... both season 1 and 2, (had season 2 for best part of a month before my season 1 LE showed up ::mutter::).

So human boy goes to monster school ... chaos ensues ... pretty much sums it up. We're not talking a complicated story or even a scary one, what with vampires, witches etc, it's all just silly fun.

I did find the first season better for the most part than the second; although the second did have times when it was pretty reasonable. The characters were pretty two dimensional but with this sort of series that doesn't really matter. The fanservice is pretty strong is this one ... in the first series we are limited to almost continuous pantsu shots but things get even "worse" in the second series ... it's not really over the top but it's just so constant it gets boring.

Overall I find both series an ok watch and they made a good counter-point to the other, more action, series I was watching over the weekend.
 
memyselfandi said:
Yes, because I have so little going on with my life that I can remember every little news item from 4 months ago
Click to expand...

Well I didn't even know the second series had been licensed until just after I'd gotten the first season through and I had to go digging through the news articles relating to season one to find that article.

memyselfandi said:
Ah, my Puella Magi Madoka Magica volume 1 BD actually shipped today from UP, (along with a myriad of other things)
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And my LE volume 1 will most likely ship out tomorrow (it's been happening a lot on my orders and pre-orders from UP lately).

Anyway......

I got through my first play through of Katawa Shoujo (got Hanako's good ending) and even though I'm sticking my thumbs into several of the other characters paths (I already have Emi's path on the go with a bit more to go to get into Lilly's route and a lot more to get Shizune's route) I've decided to start on the story I had planned on doing using the same timeline but with some alterations and a few extra characters (one of the extra characters is the protagonist in the story).
 
demonix said:
... and even though I'm sticking my thumbs into several of the other characters ...
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... I read that as being something very wrong initially .... :p

@ANDARIAL, according to vndb.org they list a couple of titles if you filter with xbox 360 and English ... I can't say how bad they will be ... but I suspect they really aren't what you want ...
 
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