The Whitehawk

Tooku de kikoeru koe wo hitori
Hitori mata hitori de chi agaru toushi
Kurikaesu dake no fudan doori
Itsu ga iku jumbi ii are you ready?

*cough*

Even if you stopped watching Naruto after the Sasuke retrieval arc finished, and the fillers began, it’s hard to not enjoy the start of this new season. I don’t know if the creator of the Manga realized what would happen to the Anime, but the start of Shippuuden is more than enough to help “retrieve” some of the lost viewers, like myself, who gave up after the fillers gave no sign ever stopping (I still managed to watch over 20 filler episodes).

There is a great amount of storyline to tell, and great battles to develop, and I can’t wait to see any of them. The intro is one of the most “spoiling” ones yet, as it pretty much says what is going to happen through this entire arch. Although I won’t go into many details, I think that it’s pretty obvious that it will involve the Sand Country and Gaara, and a bit later…

And you can expect a nice surprise when that happens, trust me
The first episode starts with a straight spoiler of what will happen later on in the series. In a very dramatic scene Naruto and Sakura run through the what appear to be never ending corridors searching for Sasuke, until an explosion occurs, and from the shambles an unknown character stands up, and Naruto and Sakura quickly run to join him and finally find:

And after spoiling everyone a bit more, the episode finally goes back to “making sense”, and the story really starts. After a bit of nostalgia, we see Naruto returning to the village and meeting up with some acquaintances, among which is Sakura. And although Naruto appears to have grown strong, and more mature, he soon reveals that in some aspects he hasn’t matured at all, and ends up getting the usual Sakura treatment.

I think there were a little too many bonuses for people who haven’t read the manga yet, but then again, I think that it was the very least that they could do, after running spoilers for 2 years instead of continuing the storyline.

I hope that the people reading this will give Naruto a second opportunity. The fillers will probably return, sooner or later, but I think that it’s safe to say that it won’t happen for quite a while.

Naruto is finally back, with a more mature storyline, and great new stories and battles to show. As an anime fan, I honestly don’t think anyone should miss this. If you’ve already read the manga, please refrain from spoiling the other readers who probably haven’t in the comments.

These three episodes proceed with the story of the second Death Note user, Misa, the top model.

On Episode 13, Misa continues to approach Kira with the video tapes. At first, she seemed like very silly girl, but still she surprised me (and everyone else I guess) and found a clever way to discover who Light was without giving herself away.

At the end of the episode, the unexpected happens, and she goes to Light’s house to introduce herself. Luckily, Light is able to excuse her presence there by saying that she is his girlfriend (he had given that excuse earlier when he was asked why he spent so much time away from home).

Afterwards in his bedroom (woah woah, don’t get echii thoughts you hentai!) he discovers something that would be crucial in his fight against L. She traded her eyes with her Shinigami. In other words, she could see the name and span of life of anyone except of other Shinigamis, or other notebook users.

As if that wasn’t good enough, she decided to join Kira and help him defeat L. The only thing that would need to occur is eye contact between her and L. To avoid strengthening suspicions of Misa being the second Kira, Light decides to keep her as far away from him as he can, even though she is desperatly in love for him.

But in Episode 14, Kira, now with two notebooks under his control and a person with shinigami eyes, starts plotting a way to murder L withouth incriminating himself. He now realizes that he can’t harm Misa, otherwise Rem, her Shinigami, would dispose of Light.

With this newly shown care of Rem for Misa, Light tries to get Rem to kill L for him, so that he could, supposedly, start caring more for Misa and respond to her love and adoration. Surprisingly, it worked, and Rem accepts to kill L for the sake of Misa.

With this new information, Light starts plotting a way to get rid of L. Which nearly makes Light give up. Just when everything seemed to be going well for Light, they happen to get better. Misa manages to have a look at L and discover his name when L goes to college.

As soon as Misa leaves the too, Light grabs his cellphone with the usual grin on his face, seconds away from obtaining L’s real name, but then everything goes downhill. Since L was already suspicious of Misa, he stole her cellphone and had her arrested for having in her posession the video-tapes that had been sent back and forth to the police.

Misa, who was now arrested and being held in a room blindfolded and completely immobilized ended up giving up the ownership of her Death Note, which made her forget about all of the events surrounding the Death Note itself, including Light, and the name of L.

Now things seem to be heading rapidly towards a climax and I can’t wait to see what Light’s reaction will be to this.

This Anime is very short lived but the story is quite intense. If you are one of those persons who never watch the introduction you’ll probably be disappointed with the story after watching the first episode, because the introduction it gives is “bloodier” than the story in it’s whole.

Mind you, this Anime is still very violent, I don’t recommend it to anyone under 16, not because of the violence and nudity, but also because you might not fully comprehend the meaning of the story if you’re too young.

The first episode is probably the bloodiest and most violent one that I’ve ever seen on any Anime. It starts off with blood, and through the first 10 minutes or so that is all that you see, that and people being torn apart. If the cute scenes at the end of the episode suddenly turn you off after all the violence, then you’re missing out on a great story and a great lesson of what it means to be a human.

The story follows a young girl named Lucy that happens to be a bit different from others. She possesses telekinetic powers which allow her to create invisible “arms”. Since she is a bit different, from when she was very young she was caught and kept in a research facility. Due to that, and some memories from her past, she grew a hate for humans, therefore explaining her outburst in the beginning.
From a technical perspective, the artwork in Elfen Lied falls nothing sort of stunning. The drawings are very detail and vivid, the backgrounds are beautifully drawn and even though the soundtrack isn’t at the same level (with most tracks), it helps keep the mood straight. The focus of Elfen Lied is the story itself, not the music.

After the initial blood bath, the story takes a more familiar turn towards “shounen’ness” for a little while, and for a few episodes it even reminded me of Love Hina a bit, although it’s more serious and Ecchi than Love Hina ever was.

After the initial and typical character-introduction-episodes, with a few battles here and there, we are taken into a journey of human introspection and faced with different problems that humans have like sadism, pedophilia, violence and immaturity. And those lead me to comprehend better why Lucy, and all the other Diclonius seem violent towards humans.

After the last battle, Lucy loses the last of her horns and disappears from Kouta’s life, not only because of regret, but also because she probably realized that she could never make him happy. Even thought the story diverges from the original one (the Manga’s) from a certain point, I personally felt that the ending was very well achieved. It wasn’t exaggerated, nor cliché and it fit the story.

This is one of those Animes that make you think about it more after you finish it, and makes you want to watch it again, just to digest the story a little better, like Evangelion did (at least to me). If you want to watch a different type of Anime, and you don’t have time to watch a very long Anime, then this one is certainly one of the best choices.

Sorry for the late post everyone, but at least I’ll leave you updated until the latest episode I got.

In the past couple of weeks the Anime has entered a new, and weird, arc, which features the quiet and pretty, (invisible) demon slayer Mai. In episode 11, things proceeded as usual, however, everything started adding up as Yuuichi and Mai’s best friend, Sayuri, manage to convince her to go to a formal dance event, similar to the Proms.

In the same episode, we witnessed the “birth” of a new, more womanly Mai, and it left me breathless during the dance, that managed to impress most of her colleagues, which until then never thought very highly of her. It was yet another great moment of the Kanon remake.

Mai and Yuuichi in a dance scene that would make Final Fantasy 8’s one jealous
Unfortunately, after the image above, things take a turn for the worse, and Mai ends up having to yield her sword once again to save Sayuri, and all her school mates from an invisible demon. After witnessing the scene, the student council president steps up, and without realizing that Mai had just saved him, along with everyone else in the room threatens to have her expelled from school.

In episode 13, things start off badly, as Yuuichi breaks in the student council’s meeting and tries to prevent Mai’s dreaded fate, although his excuse for a “sword dance” wasn’t of much help, until Kitagawa (who was organizing the dance event) steps in and saves the day, telling everyone that he had been informed of it.

Afterwards, Yuuchi meets up with Shiori outside, as usual, and asks her if she’s related to Misaka Kaori from his classroom, to which she gleefully answers “yes”, however, he then mentions that she, Kaori, denied having any siblings thus lifting yet another small mystery in the show.

Yuuchi convinces himself that he must aid Mai to prevent further trouble, and starts practicing with a Kendo wooden sword in the roof, from which a sequence that I found terribly funny occurred:

“This is unsatisfying. If a stray dog or a boar shows up, it’d be good training but…” - he turns around and…

“Bucket?!” He says afterwards to Mia: “What was that for all of a sudden?”

“Doggy… Woof”

I apologize if you didn’t find that sequence funny, but at least I did. Next week seems to be the continuation of this arc, as it is Mai’s birthday, so I’m looking forward to that also.

What an excellent episode! Kicking off straight from the end of the last one, Light and L conclude that the Kira that announced himself publicly isn’t the real one. Also, they conclude that the second Kira probably isn’t very bright, and why is that? Because the second Kira is a top model…

It might sound a bit stupid at first, but after hearing the story behind her, and her former “guardian angel” it makes perfect sense.

At the end of the episode, in an ironic twist of faith, Light, and Misa end up at the same coffee shop and both try to think of ways to meet each other. And in the meantime, I’m thinking of ways of getting the next episode ASAP because I can’t wait to see it!

After the fiasco that was the last episode, this one seems to have amended in various aspects. In this episode, “Kira” sends two video tapes to a recording company in order to make a deal with the police. The deal, of course, would be to ask for their collaboration in exchange for fulfilling Kira’s dream of a perfect utopia.

However, things didn’t go as smoothly as “he” might have expected, and a member of the task force ended up being taken down, just as he was about to enter the TV station. But how could that be Kira? He doesn’t know the names of the task force members, how could he be the one killing them if he does not know their names.

L then comes to realize, that this isn’t the same Kira as the one he had been handling for a while, simply because of the way the plan is brought out. Who could it be then? Well, I won’t tell you, but I’ll give you something to speculate about I see the next episode of this brilliant Anime.

What a heart felt episode…

I think that even the coldest people who watch this Anime will certainly feel something when this episode finishes. Despite having an average beginning, the story really starts to pick things up when we discover the shocking fact about Makoto’s past, and the reason for which she exists.

Yuiichi, the main character, certainly went up a lot in my consideration, after this episode ended. Although he’s a bit arrogant some times, he’s proving out to be more “human” than I expected.

Anyway, this episode marks the end of the first arc, and if the season ended right there, I would have still loved the Anime. I wouldn’t recommend Kanon to everyone, however, those of you who enjoy other Animes like: Chobits, Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien or even Wolf’s Rain, will find it very appealing.

In terms of pencil and color quality, this is also one of the best episodes so far. And I’m quite satisfied that the quality of the art hasn’t decreased “dramatically”, unlike what we are witnessing in other series.

I leave you now with an image from one of the most beautiful, and touching, moments so far:

This was probably the least impressive episode of Death Note so far. My friend, who has already read the Manga has warned me that Death Note could, at times, be a bit repetitive.

This episodes is basically the continuation of L and Light Yagami’s approach. It starts off with a Tennis game during which they both try to figure out what strategies they’ll both use. Basically, they are in a situation in which they can’t confirm each other’s identity, yet they are both suspicious of each other.

L tries to analyze Light’s reaction to different things

The only surprising moment in this episode is when Light receives a call telling that his father had a heart attack. At this part of the episode I instantly presumed that he had murdered his own father, or someone else had done it for him.

At the end of the episode, Light manages to elude both L and his father at the same time, however, he also manage to feed L’s interest for him, whether he is Kira or not.

It seems that the next episode will be very interesting as Light tries to murder L with the powers of the Death Note, so look forward to that!

[tags]Death Note[/tags]

Yes, I managed to watch all these episodes despite having the Nintendo Wii right next to me. This show certainly surprised me in these episodes. During the first two episodes, I thought it was just going to be an average harem Anime, but after the occurrences in these episodes I think that it’s going towards tragedy instead of a neverending stream of jokes and perverted situations.

Makoto looks so cute when she’s sleeping…

Unlike most Anime shows, which have recently taken a nose dive in terms of animation, Kanon seems to maintain the same quality it accustomed us to, and the story seems to be getting better with each episode. It’s not normal for an Anime to make me share feelings for a character, or something that is happening in it, in fact, so far only two Animes have managed to do anything to me. But this one, has made me feel worried and also feel sorrow for some of the characters, specially Makoto.

Even though I didn’t find the first episodes special when I’m watching them, now that I see that one of the characters is slowly fading away, you can’t help but to feel a bit sad for those moments that will be lost. With that said, I can’t wait to see episode 10, and see how the story develops.

Yesterday I felt like it was time to start watching a new Anime. Since I had the old Kanon series on DVD, but I never bothered to watch them, I decided it would perhaps be funner to watch the remake and follow the show every week, instead of rushing it through.

“Uguu…”

So what can I say about Kanon, that wasn’t already said 6 years ago? Well, for starters, I’ve seen more girls falling in front of the main character in these first two episodes than I’ve seen in full seasons of other Animes of this sort.
Like Honey and clover, the ratio between male and female characters is unbalanced. But instead of there being five guys for one girl, it’s the other way around. And he meets most of them lying on the floor.

Ok, ok! I’ll stop with the falling down jokes. These two episodes seem to serve mostly as an introduction of the characters, and the beginning of the actual plot. I think I can already point out who’s going to be his main love interest (*points above*), but who knows, anything can happen, though I sincerely doubt it.

A young man, Yuuichi Aizawa, gets off a train and leaves the station as he enters a town that is blanketed by snow. He left the area seven years ago and has now returned to his memories that he left behind. Although his past is blurry in his mind, the girls that still remember him and that he had relationships begin to help him remember. While this happens, the bad memories of his past also begin to come back, and will eventually haunt him. 

The story seems a bit exaggerated in some aspects. Unlike Honey & Clover, in which you’re directly thrown into the story, this story seems to almost “forcefully” introduce most of the characters. Some of the introductions made sense, but, as I already pointed out, bumping into a character and making her fall on the floor is no way to properly introduce half of the cast. But still, my hopes are pretty high for this show, since a few friends of mine had already recommended the original version, so I’ll keep you posted on what I think of the episodes further on.