The Whitehawk

Hello readers, it’s been a short while since I’ve posted. You can blame Bryan Veloso for that. Today I downloaded the latest episode of the Anime of the moment (at least for me), and once again, it surprised me.

In this episode, Light and L finally meet! Two weeks ago, L planted cameras and bugs all around Light’s bedroom, however, thanks to Light’s incredible intelligence and ability to remain cool in a stressful situation, he was able to continue killing people as he always does right in front of L’s eyes, without him noticing it.

In this episode, all the surveillance items were removed from his bedroom and house, however, L decided to take a more daring approach, and joined the college that Light was just accepted to. After the first speech, as spokespersons for the newcomers, Light and L sat down next to each other, and L introduced himself to Light as the person he is, however, in college he uses the name of a famous pop icon in order to try to discover whether Light will try to murder him, or murder the pop icon in the meantime, brilliant!

I have just received volumes 5, 6 e 7 of the manga, however, I can’t read them yet because the story in the anime hasn’t gotten that far but it’s so damn tempting!

Death Note isn’t a show for the masses, but it’s certainly the show for people that love this kind of story.

Anime

Lately I’ve been watching a very funny, yet very perverted, Anime called *points up* (don’t make me spell it again, please), which is about a little girl, that happens to be a martial arts expert and descendant of a martial arts family, who is given the mission to try to find the strongest male in order to “breed” the strongest offspring with him and save her family’s martial arts heritage.

So she heads out to Inuzuka Koushi’s town, who is also a descendant of a martial arts family, and instantly decides that he will be the one who will “procreate” with her, whether he likes it or not. But not all is going well for little girl Kuzuryuu Momoko, because Inuzuka has no intention of doing anything with her, or developing any martial arts skills because he wants to be a prosecutor when he grows up.

Despite his blatant lack of interest, Momoko manages to gain his father’s approval, who is a Martial Arts expert (and a friend of her father), and thus begins Momoko’s “quest” to gain Inuzuka’s heart by doing all sorts of incredibly perverted or “sexy” things.

In short, it’s basically a romantic comedy similar to Ranma, except that Ranma wasn’t as intentionally perverted as this one most of the time (in this Anime you see 3 or more panty shots per minute).

If you liked Ranmna 1/2, you’ll probably love this Anime also, so give it a download, I recommend it

Anime

Hachimitsu to Kuroba ( ハチミツとクローバー )…

Little did I know that those words would change my life a little, and give me a different perception of the things and people around me.

A close friend of mine, and general Anime expert, Amílcar, introduced me to the show, even though he hadn’t seen it yet (and strangely, still hasn’t). I had just finished watching a great number of One Piece episodes. Basically, I had seen until the end of the decent-quality fansubbed ones, and I wanted a change of “pace”. I don’t like watching two Anime of the same genre one after another (unless they are sequels, of course), therefore I wanted a nice shoujo story.

When I watched the first episodes, I laughed a lot, and I wondered how it won best Drama, Romance and best Character Development, since the episodes were far from being related any of those. Then it occurred to me that I could be heading for another shock, like in Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. Thankfully, that never happens in this show (I’m sorry if I’m bursting anyone’s bubble) and the writer made the story in a way that makes it easy for us to get accustomed with the characters and the relationship between them without breaking the flow of the story.

The story follows the lives of 9 people, each with their own unique personalities and traits, in different stages of their lives, who are all friends and help each other out. One of the greatest things about Honey & Clover, is that there isn’t a main character. Although some of the fans might not agree with me, the story doesn’t revolve around one character, it revolves around various ones, and the episodes are divided graciously between all of them instead of abruptly. It’s amazing how an Anime show manages to this much better than a Soap Opera.

Another great thing about the story is it’s balance between comedy, and drama. Unlike most Animes that start off with one genre and then slowly degrade into another, Honey & Clover manages to keep a certain balance between it’s two genres: Romantic & Comedy, and even manages to introduce Drama smoothly as the show nears it’s end.

Regardless of how many more shows of this sort arrive in the future, Honey & Clover will always be instantly recognizable and unique in it’s own way. It made me think more seriously about what I want to do in life, and what I should do to achieve those goals.

Unlike Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, which was a very interesting story to watch, H&C is a very interesting story to watch and learn from.

In my opinion, it couldn’t have been made any better. The music, the drawings and the story, are completely fulfilling. This is one of my favorite Animes ever, and I think I’m pretty certain that anyone who watches it, walks away satisfied.

Simply superb, I give it a PERFECT 5 out of 5.

Anime

Well, what is it that can be said of .hack//Roots now that I’ve finished watching it. Bear with me, as I give my opinion right now, but overall, I found it a bit disappointing.

Even though I really enjoyed the first part of the anime, when the turnaround event occured the show went downhill until a certain point, and only at the end did it bounce back. Some of the characters started to act as if they were being forced into things they did not feel, specially the main character, which went from a timid boy with a crush to an enraged maniac.

Thankfully, some of the characters remained unaltered, while others, which contributed almost nothing to the story, remained in it, and continued to contribute absolutely nothing right to the last second.

When I saw the first trailers of the upcoming .hack//G.U. game (which will be released tomorrow in the United States), I thought to myself that .hack’s image was being stained, and that you would now play as a PK (Player Killer), however, one of the things I was pleased with when this show ended was that they didn’t stain the image that badly, and it’s focus continues to be the human mind, rather than cool “show-offy” battles and special power displays.

If I hadn’t been “marked” with .hack//SIGN, I’d probably like this anime much more, but even knowing what I do know, I can’t say that it was really all that bad. The first part of the show, and the very last episodes were specially great, but somewhere between those two something was lost in the storyline.

In short, you can cut off about a quarter of the show, from the second half onwards, and skip to the end, and you’ll still understand what is going on, because almost nothing changes until then. But still, it’s a good experience overall. I give this show a 3.5 out of 5.

Anime

I recently started to download and watch the new .hack show which ended last month. Just like .hack//SIGN, the show has 26 episodes and the events occur after the original .hack series.

This show tries to introduce a breath of fresh air into .hack and steers it away from it’s original look and feel. Though it still focuses on the portraying human intellect and emotions, “the world”, in which the events of the show occur, seems to have become a darker place, and closer to reality compared to what our online multi-player games are.

It is a world filled with players who have fun grieving others. Various bugs (and those which abuse them), and exploits. However, it does have one particularity that our modern multi-player RPGs don’t have: the game is evolving beyond the control of it’s admins; and that puts an interesting twist to the story.

So far I’ve watched 11 episodes, and even though the ambient is a bit different I’m glad that the show doesn’t focus on action much, unlike many other anime shows do. It’s too early to tell whether I prefer this .hack over the others, but it’s safe to say that I’m enjoying it just as much.

As soon as I finish watching it I’ll post a full review.

Anime

If you’re one of the people that hate the current naruto filler arc, I’m one of you also.

But if you enjoy this intro (despite the awfull storyline) like me, you’ll be happy to know that narutofan has just released it in their music downloads section, so head on over there, register (it’s free) and give it a listen.

Anime

… or should I say: that I’m waiting for. Even though it will still be a few days, or possibly a week, before I obtain them at least I already know what has arrived:

• Evangelion: Volumes 1 - 6
• X(1999) Volumes 1 - 4

Now all I have to do is wait… *waits*

Gah…

Anime, Journal

This, together with episode 58 make one of the best anime fights I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve seen a huge amount of them, but these episodes made my jaw drop. Even though episode 58 seemed very similar to a very old Naruto episode (the one of the Gaara VS Rock Lee fight) it was very well executed.

I was just happy that they managed to bring the best fights of the manga without filling them with 4 or 5 flashbacks like on Naruto…

Now for a screenshot of my favorite momment:

Next week there will be no Bleach anime episode (NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!)

Buuuuuuut… I promise you (Bleach anime fan) that things are about to get really, really interesting…

Anime