Akagami no Shirayukihime

Akagami no Shirayukihime is basically a love story anime series which is adapted from a manga.  It occurs in a time and land where commoners live in various kingdoms which are ruled by Princes.   The story follows a particular girl named Shirayuki and a Prince named Zen.   Shirayuki is a girl with a gift for plants and healing, whose dream is to become an herbalist.  She seems to be the only person in her land with bright red hair, so she comes to the notice of the Prince of her kingdom, Raj, who decides to make her his concubine.  

Shirayuki cuts her hair short and runs away.  While fleeing she comes across Zen, an adventurous Prince of the neighboring kingdom.  Zen is accompanied by two people who are both his guardians/retainers and his friends, Kiki and Mitsuhide.  Raj sends poisoned apples to Shirayuki, thinking that she'll have to come to him for the antidote.  Zen is poisoned by one of the apples instead of Sihirayuki, and she goes to recover the antidote.  She and Zen manage to successfully get hold of the antidote from Raj and cure Zen, and Shirayuki decides to accompany Zen-tachi back to their kingdom to pursue her future.

In Zen’s kingdom, Shirayuki works to pass the herbalist entrance exam and become a court herbalist.  She succeeds in this and becomes friends with another young court herbalist named Ryuu.  She enjoys her training as an herbalist, her life in the castle, and her friendship with Zen, but she has an uphill battle for acceptance by others in the Court, including Zen’s older brother, the ruling Prince, Izana.   Being a commoner, most of the Court discourages her friendship with Zen.

The story here in this short anime series is basically a slice-of-court-life story.  Various obstacles are encountered and surmounted, by both Zen and Shirayuki.   For example a man named Obi is hired to frighten Shirayuki away from Zen, and instead he becomes Zen’s retainer and Shirayuki’s guard.   On another occasion, Shirayuki goes with Zen-tachi to another town and discovers that the outbreak of disease in the guards in the castle there is not accidental but is being caused deliberately.  She successfully figures out the disease and cause while she’s treating the sick soldiers and then finds a cure for them.   Several story arcs demonstrate her herbalist skills.

    

Both Shirayuki and Zen mature and learn during the series, and as the series goes along they finally realize they love each other.  The series ends without really exploring how that will work between the Prince and commoner, but it ends with them happily continuing on their daily lives, knowing they love each other.  Another season is planned so perhaps they’ll go into this more.

I enjoyed this series even though it was really predictable.  The anime style is nice and the character interactions are fun enough to watch to keep me watching.  There’s no seriously deep meaning or conflicts or tragedy, just a nice handling of everyday difficulties by some mostly likable characters.  I imagine I’ll watch the second season if they have one.   

Knights of Sidonia - Season 2

Knights of Sidonia second season picked up pretty much where the first season left off.  In this current season Nagate is still the main character and is Sidonia’s premier warrior.  Izana is still his best friend, but that begins to change and Izana changes from a hermaphrodite into a female as her feelings for Nagate grow.  The original season story can be found in my post about season 1  http://alter-ego-reality.blogspot.com/2014/06/knights-of-sidonia.html.  

 

Early in the season, Captain Kobayashi’s actions are questioned by the Immortal Council running the ship, and when they decide to get rid of her, she stages a coup, helped by the renegade scientist Ochiai, and kills the entire Immortal Council.  This gives her free rein to run Sidonia in any fashion she chooses, and Ochiai works with Kunato Industries to continue developing Gauna hybrids.   Ochiai is essentially the series bad guy.  He should have been executed for directly causing Sidonia almost to be lost back in the Fourth Defensive War, but because part of Sidonia’s computers and memory systems could only be accessed through his brain, he was kept alive.  His clone is working with Kobayashi.

Hoshijiro’s gauna form that was brought back to the Sidonia by Nagate after her death is taken by Kunato and impregnated with human DNA in order to create Tsumugi, a gauna-human hybrid that has the shape of a young woman in a dress and is the size of a mecha.  Tsumugi can be ridden like a mecha and is an expert at fighting gauna, rivaling or exceeding Nagate’s abilities.  Her personality is child-like and sincere and she develops feelings for Nagate.   Nagate for his part, likes her and accepts Tsumugi's affection even though she's not human.  In addition, although Tsumugi is huge, she can interact at a human-sized level by extruding a tentacle that the show’s producers managed to make amazingly expressive and cute despite being alien.   Tsumugi, Nagate and Izana quickly become friends.

In this season, Izana is almost killed in battle and loses an arm and leg which are replaced by prosthetic ones which give her special abilities.  Izana and Nagate decide to share quarters and find housing in some of Sidonia’s nice older dwellings.  Midorikawa moves in with them when she find out, as she is also attracted to Nagate.  Tsumugi’s tentacle can reach the dwelling also, through Sidonia’s ventilation system, so the series becomes somewhat of a harem series at times, and it's fun to watch almost always. 

Captain Kobayashi’s plan is to attack and take a planet called planet 9, ostensibly in order to set Sidonia up for an effort to completely destroy gauna.  To do so, she falls in with Ochiai's plans to use gauna as weapons.  The last several episodes of this season are battles to take planet 9.  Izana goes out with a reconnaissance squad as Sidonia approaches the planet, and the squad is essentially destroyed when Hoshijiro’s other gauna form (the red battle form) shows up again and takes everyone out.  

Tsumugi and Nagate come to the rescue.  Tsumugi is better than the Hoshijiro gauna and bests it, but then is taken by surprise and most of her life force is absorbed by the gauna.  She is then rescued by Nagate after he rescues Izana and another pilot.   So they win the battle for planet 9.

This season didn’t disappoint me and I find myself hoping they will do another one.   Besides the unique universe they created for the series and how much I like the character style, the interactions between the characters are really good and lots of fun to watch.  They take the time to develop the relationships, between Nagate and Izana, as well as with Tsumugi and Midorikawa.  It’s just a really good series that’s creeping up toward my all time favorites list.

Owari no Seraph

Owari no Seraph is a really pretty anime with great character design that’s based on a manga.  So far it’s also fairly predictable, plot-wise.  Despite that, I watched the first season and will pick it back up when they bring out the next season.  And not just because I’m something of a vampire fan.

The premise here is that a human-created virus got loose and catastrophically decimated all of the human population over 13 years old.  Vampires have taken over much of the world and keep human children “safe”, using them as food in return for their “protection”.  The story centers around two of those human children, Yuuichirou (Yu) and Mikaela (Mika).   With several other children they consider “family”, these two boys attempt to escape the vampires.   All of them but Yu are killed by one specific vampire.  Mika sacrifices himself so that Yu can escape.  Yu does escape and discovers that humans are still around and are fighting the vampires for control of the world.  Yu vows to destroy all vampires who held and then destroyed his “family”.

Most of the first season is Yuuichirou learning to fight and learning to get along with other humans.  The other main characters are introduced, including the captain of the Moon Demon Company, Guren.  Yu’s classmates and fellow vampire fighters are also introduced, including the girl who helps Yu cope among the humans, Shinoa.    Yu-tachi aspire to fight as members of the Moon Demon Company, and train toward that goal.  They learn to work together and all of them gain demon-weapons during training.  These are weapons powered by demons, that must be controlled be the wielder.

It turns out that during this time that Yu has been growing up, so has Mika.  Mika wasn’t killed, but was turned into a vampire by the vampire Queen and has become her aid.  Despite his human beginnings, Mika has sided with the vampires.  This has got to be a plot device because it’s hard to imagine him siding with the vampires who killed his “family”, but he also blames the humans for the original destruction of everyone’s way of life and seems to believe that the vampires are better equipped to rule the world.  So of course, Yu and Mika care for each other, and are on opposite sides of the conflict. 

They discover this fact during a raid/battle between the human and vampire forces.  They find out that each other is alive when Yu stabs Mika, and then both try to “save” the other.  During the battle, as Yu’s friends are out-numbered and getting beat, he loses control and becomes a monster and begins killing everyone/everything around him.  It turns out Yu is himself a weapon of sorts, with demon-based powers even his own demon weapon is afraid of.  Both humans and vampires retreat from his monster presence.  Guren tells Shinoa that she can stop Yu from his rampage, and she does manage to bring him back to himself.   The first season ends with a break as Yu recovers and apologizes to his friends for his loss of control.

 All this with Yu and Mika happens late in the series first season, so the first season is kind of setting the stage for the future.  Both Yu and Mika are alive, and on opposite sides of the conflict.   It will be interesting to see if one or the other convinces the other to their perspective, and one of them switches sides.   Or if the next season will be all cross-purpose battles.  Or if they’ll eventually decide they must all work together.   That last option is probably the least likely because there’s really very little common ground between the two groups. There are also hints along the way that Yuuichirou and Mikaela are “special” – meaning their physiology has been messed with from early on.  Yu already demonstrated that with his demon powers.  It will be interesting to see where this all goes in the next season, and whether Yu can control his power. 

Long gap aplogies

“Long gap” is putting it mildly.  I haven’t posted since late June and here it is the end of September.  Life gets in the way sometimes, and that probably will not get better.  I’m traveling a lot for my job and professional work, so this poor blog falls by the wayside.  In fact, anime-watching has been falling by the wayside.  Despite that, I enjoy anime too much to stop watching, and so slowly but surely I’ll finish series and then blog about them.  Hopefully I won’t have many more 3 month gaps in posting to this blog.

I began this blog in April of 2009 because I enjoy “talking” about the anime I watch.  Since then I’ve posted 162 times to this blog – averaging 27 posts per year or just over 2 a month.  Not great, but not too shabby either.  So now, I’ll try to get back to posting at least that often. 

Stay tuned . . .  

Spring Season 2015 - new and finished serieso

I’m struggling a bit for something to write about because I haven’t been too impressed with anything I’ve been watching lately, and am a little behind in getting into the series that started in April.  So this post will cover the series I just finished and the new ones I’m beginning.  First the finished series – which are all second seasons of previously watched series.

I watched season 2 of Kamisama Hajimemashite (Kamisama Kiss).  I expected to like this series since I liked the first season, and it didn’t disappoint me.  The really nice thing about the second season is that Nanami is no longer the totally helpless human god-wannabe.  She gains powers and strength and begins not only fending for herself but also looking after other people.  She still is a little quick to rush into things but overall does well.  The thing I didn’t like about this second season - Nanami’s and Tomoe’s relationship, which was going so well at the end of the first season, is relatively non-existent by the end of the second season.  That’s kind of unsatisfying.  But maybe they’re setting the stage for a third season.

And speaking of stage-setting, another returning series I watched was the second season or Durarara!  This season brought in all the old gang with Celty and her doctor lover, Masaomi, Ryuugamine, Anri, Shizuo and Izaya, and all the minor characters, and then introduced an enormous cast of new characters.  So basically the 13 episode season was entirely spent on introducing all the new people, involving them in the plot and positioning everyone for another new season.  At the end of this season, Izaya, who was the master-manipulator in the original series, discovers that he’s being manipulated himself.  That of course sets the stage for a continuation in another season.

I also watched the second seasons of Aldnoah Zero and Soukyou no Fafner, but I’ll save them for perhaps their own posts.

The new series I picked up in April include one second season and that’s Knights of Sidonia.  I really enjoyed the original series, so I’m also really enjoying the second season.  This is a short series, the first season being 12 episodes and the second only 11 episodes, but they manage to cover a lot of ground.   This is another one I’ll hold off posting much about, so I can do its own post later.

Another series I picked up in April is Owari no Seraph.  This is a vampire series so of course I’m enjoying it.  It occurs in a world where vampires have taken over much of the world and are raising humans for food.  Those humans who have escaped them and/or live outside their jurisdiction are fighting to destroy them as well as of course the vampires fighting to destroy any humans not docilely living as food.  Lots of elements of this series are a little predictable, like its two main characters and best friends ending up on opposite sides of the human-vampire war, due to one of them being changed into a vampire, but overall it’s fun to watch so I’ll keep watching it.   

And the last one I’ll write about today is Kekkai Sensen (Blood Blockade Battlefront).  This series is set in a future world where monsters-aliens-demons co-exist with humans in a city within a barrier that they have co-opted, called Hellsalem’s Lot.   The monsters are policed as much as possible by a gang of super-human fighters called Libra.  The main character is a boy named Leonardo Watch, who comes to the city to join Libra.  He has eyes that are “All Seeing Eyes” allowing him to see things not visible to normal humans.  This is a kind of freaky, really out there series, that I’m watching because it’s fun, and because I haven’t figured out everything that’s going on yet.  I’m thinking there’s a bunch of back story, under-lying plot that will be revealed along the way.  So it’s keeping me entertained and interested so far.   Hopefully that will continue.

So that’s it for today.

Death Parade

Death Parade is a unique series.  The basic premise is that when people die, they are transported two at a time by elevators to a bar, where they play a game against each other with their lives at stake.  The people don't remember their pasts or their deaths, so they think they are playing with their lives at stake.  The choice of game is decided by a roulette spin, so many different games are played during the series.  The fact that the participants’ lives are at stake brings out all the hidden intentions and flaws in their personalities.  The bartenders judge them based on their responses to the extreme games, and then one participant goes to hell (the endless void and becomes nothing) and the other participant goes to heaven (is reincarnated back into the world).  The bartenders refer to themselves as arbiters, and they have no human feelings or emotions, being essentially puppet judges.

The story follows a few of the different bartenders, most specifically Decim, the tender of the bar “Quindecim”.   Decim is new to his arbiter position and just learning it.  Assisting Decim in his work is a black-haired human woman named Chiyuki, although she doesn’t remember her name or past until very late in the series.  Besides assisting Decim, Chiyuki is learning how the arbiters judge humans by observing Decim, and seems to be there because Decim could not judge her.

  

The person in charge of Decim and several other arbiters is a senior arbiter named Nona who looks like a little girl.  And the being in charge of the entire afterlife system is an old man figure, or alleged god, named Oculus.  Oculus spends his time playing galactic pool and keeping an eye on the system.  The background story that you pick up as the series progresses is that Nona has decided that the arbiters need human feelings and emotions in order to judge humans.  Oculus is completely against this, stating that arbiters must be non-feeling puppets.  

So Nona has been secretly creating her arbiter puppets with the ability to have human feelings, including Decim and Ginti (another arbiter in another bar).  Oculus doesn't know, but Nona talks about it to other senior arbiters, including one named Quin, who was the original arbiter in Quindecim before Decim came along and now runs the afterlife information bureau, supplying people’s memories to the arbiters.  Nona is also responsible for Chiyuki being present with Decim in his bar.

As the human feelings and emotions take hold in Decim and Ginti, they start having difficulty making judgments, as they begin understanding human foibles and feeling human emotions.  Chiyuki exacerbates this in Decim, by herself judging on the basis of her own human feelings and emotions, and questioning his judgments.

 

Eventually Oculus discovers Nona’s plans, but then he tells her to go ahead because it won’t make any difference.  Decim struggles with judging Chiyuki until the very end, but he must judge her because being a dead human she cannot survive forever in the afterlife setting.  The arbiters can survive because they’re non-human puppets.   Decim gains enough human emotions to understand Chiyuki in the end and to send her to be reincarnated, even though it turns out she killed herself in life.  So the series leaves you feeling that even though gaining human emotions may make judging harder, it probably makes the arbiters better judges, and that Nona will continue with her experiments.

I wasn’t sure about this series at first, mainly because the first couple of episodes I totally disagreed with who went to heaven and who went to hell.   But I stuck, and began to realize the back story and what was taking place.  Overall, I liked the series a lot, and the OP is awesome.  Even though it started out confusing, I recommend it.      

Akatsuki no Yona

Akatsuki no Yona, or Yona of the Dawn, is a harem anime series adapted from a manga.  It follows the story of a spoiled Princess with bright red hair named Yona.  On Yona’s sixteenth birthday, her childhood friend and beloved Suu-Won comes to visit.  During the visit Yona sees him murder her father the King, and then he attempts to have her murdered.  Yona is rescued by her other childhood friend and bodyguard, Son Hak, and they run for their lives while Suu-Won takes over the kingdom.

Hak and Yona flee to his family village, where they learn of a seer/sage named Ik-su that may be able to advise them.  They leave to find the seer, are pursued by Suu-Won’s allies, fall off a cliff and are saved by a boy named Yun, who is the Ik-su’s friend and assistant.  Ik-su tells them the story of the Yona’s ancestor, the original king of Kouka, who built the kingdom with the aid of four dragons.  Yona, Hak and Yun set out to find the descendants of the four dragons, and ask for their help.

The rest of the story is about searching for and finding the four dragons, and also about the people they meet and help along the way.  It’s also about Yona growing up and learning to fight for herself.  Yona is not your typical harem heroine, in that she's not helpless and useless, letting the guys surrounding her fight for her and protect her.  Oh, they do that, but she’s determined to protect them also as well as defending herself.  She practices night after night after night to become better with the bow and arrow, and at the end of the series, she’s determined to learn the sword as well.  She’s a heroine worth following basically.  And the best part is, she dresses appropriately – not in a short-skirted school uniform.

In the order they come across them, the four dragons are:  the white dragon, Ki-ja, whose right arm is a dragon arm and claws with the strength of a dragon; the blue dragon, Shin-ha, who has the dragons eyes and can see far distances;  the green dragon, Jea-ha, who has a dragon’s leg and foot and can leap far distances or great heights and seems to fly; and the yellow dragon,  Zeno, who doesn’t have any apparent talents but is immortal, basically cannot be killed.

Toward the end of the series Yona and Suu-Won bump into each other accidentally in a town they both happen to be in, and Yona discovers that she still loves Suu-Won even though he killed her father.  Suu-Won for his part hides her from his forces and lets her escape.  You are left with the feeling that he cares for her, but cannot let that interfere with his overall goal, which is not clear.  It’s clear that he feels he can run the kingdom better than Yona’s father was running it, but it seems there’s more to Suu-Won’s goal than that.  And of course that’s left hanging when the series ends. 

   

At the series end Yona decides that even with the four dragons she’s not ready to retake the kingdom.  She’s seen a lot of suffering and misery that occurred during her father’s rule, so Yona decides to go about with Hak, Yun and the dragons, helping the people in her kingdom whenever she can and protecting the kingdom.

So not much resolution of issues occurs at the end of the series.  She just finds the dragons, grows as a person and carries on.  But the series is pretty and the music is good.  For a harem anime it’s not bad at all and to me it was worth watching.  That’s especially true when Yona seems to channel her fierce dragon ancestor.  It would be nice to have another season of this series to see where they could go with it.

Parasyte - the Maxim

Parasyte – the Maxim is a unique series about strange non-human parasite creatures that just appear one day and begin killing and/or taking over humans.  They are kind of slimy-bug-worm looking in their natural form.  They burrow into humans, if possible through the ear or nose, and try to take over the brain.  If they succeed, the human is dead and the parasite has a human appearance and begins killing and eating other humans indiscriminately. Some of the parasites mistakenly take over animals instead of humans and don’t do well.  And a few manage to burrow into humans but don’t succeed in taking over the brain.  They can then only control that part of the body they take over.

The story plot line follows a middle school boy named Izumi Shinichi who has a parasite take over his right hand.  He calls the parasite Migi (right), and a lot of the plot involves the two of them coming to terms with each other.  Early on they discover they must work together to survive, as other parasites who have taken over humans completely try to kill them.  So they learn and discover each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  In addition, Migi learns a lot about human values, and Shinichi learns that human values may not apply to all creatures.

 

Early in the series the parasites simply take over humans and then kill and eat other humans.  But as the story progresses, they begin to try to fit into human society.  Early on Shinichi’s Mom is taken over by a parasite, and she kills Shinichi by a thrust through the heart.   Shinichi lives because Migi enters his bloodstream and repairs his heart using some of Migi’s flesh.  This causes Migi and Shinichi to integrate together, with Shinichi gaining extra-human abilities in the form of speed, agility and strength, and no longer needing glasses.

Shinichi and Migi spend a lot of time avoiding the parasites that come after them trying to kill them.  They also learn to work together and they fight a number of parasites, defeating them when by rights the fully integrated parasites should be stronger.  Shinichi and Migi befriend another parasite-human mix who helps them kill Shinichi’s Mom.

They also interact repeatedly with a parasite named Tamura Reiko.  Reiko is a logical and somewhat scientific parasite who has been trying to figure out what the parasites are, why they exist and how they can co-exist with humans.  She and a parasite who has taken over a male have sex and Reiko gives birth to a baby, who is completely human.  So she determines the parasites are fragile beings with no apparent ability to reproduce.  She deplores the parasites killing humans for food, as they draw attention by doing that and they are vulnerable.  The authorities already know of the parasite’s existence and they target and kill Reiko, who chooses to protect her human baby over her own life.

After Reiko’s death at the hands of the authorities, a parasite extermination is planned and carried out, but the exterminating military forces are wiped out by an insanely strong parasite named Gotou.   Gotou was created by Reiko and is actually many parasites controlling different body parts, and all controlled by one parasite in the brain.  Gotou has almost no vulnerabilities.  He decides he must kill Shinichi in order to move on.  Shinichi and Migi run from him, but are forced to face and fight him eventually.  Part of their strategy is to separate (which Migi can do for brief periods of time) and tackle him separately since he cannot sense Shinichi when Migi is not part of Shinichi’s body. 

Their plot almost succeeds, but Migi is killed and Shinichi runs.  He then realizes he must face the Gotou and try to prevent it from killing more people.  So he returns and manages to stab the monster with a toxic piece of metal he grabbed from a toxic waste dump.  At the height of the conflict, Migi, who was absorbed into Gotou’s monster body, returns to Shinichi as the parasite in Gotou's brain loses control of the parasites in his body.   Migi and Shinichi finally kill him and return to Shinichi’s everyday school life.

Throughout the series there is also a budding love story between Shinichi and his childhood friend Murano Satomi, which has its ups and downs.  The love between them is hampered by Shinichi dealing with the parasite in his body and Satomi not liking him being so weird and secretive.  The relationship does go forward though.  At the end of the series Migi gives Shinichi back his right hand fully and disappears into Shinichi’s body and subconscious.  Shinichi struggles to deal with the loss of his “friend” but discovers Migi isn’t permanently gone, as he shows up to help rescue Satomi at the last.

This is a really unique series, and despite it being fairly bloody, I liked it a lot.  It got a little preachy at times about human hubris and being top of the food chain at the expense of everything else on earth, but overall it was very much worth watching.  

Kaichou wa Maid-Sama

Kaichou wa Maid-Sama is a slice of life anime series adapted from a manga.  It’s a romantic comedy centered around a high school girl and boy, Ayuzawa Misaki and Usui Takumi.  Misaki is an all-star student who is also the student council president of a rough, mostly male, high school called Seika High.  Seika High used to be male only, and has a reputation for being rough and unsafe.  Misaki’s primary goal as student council president is to rein the school in, making it safer for girls and less rough and tumble.  As such, Misaki is adored by the instructors and her female student friends.  However, she is mostly feared by the male student population as a boy-hating, rule-following, cold, demon student council president.

Misaki’s family is poor and she has a part-time job to help out.  Her personality is straight-forward and aggressive at school, and her secret is that her part time job is at a maid café where she works as a maid.   Because this job is so at odds with the tough, boy-hating persona she wears at school, Misaki keeps it a secret.  Usui discovers the secret in the first episode and begins to frequent the café.

Usui Takumi is a somewhat mysterious, good-looking, smart, athletic and popular boy, and he is attracted to Misaki from the very beginning of the series.  So basically this series is their love story, as he works to bring her around to accepting him.  Once he discovers her secret, he uses it to get closer to her, but he basically spends all his time supporting and protecting her. 

The story line is not much more than that.  It follows their everyday lives, including what’s going on in the maid café, at the school, and in the lives of their friends and family.   Misaki gains a following along the way and even when some of the boys learn her secret, they keep it for her.   Some episodes focus on Misaki’s family, some on Usui’s family, and some focus on things their various friends are doing.  And of course, during the series, a love rival for Misaki’s affection shows up.

There are some plot elements added by a rivalry with an upper-class high school and its snobby students.   Misaki is offered a scholarship to the upper-class school, which her friends worry that she will take.  Along the way, the upper class high school’s student council president, Igarashi Tora, discovers Misaki’s maid secret, and then tries to take advantage of her when he gets her alone.   When she refuses him and his school, he tries to force her.

This is one of the several times that Usui rescues Misaki.  In fact he spends a lot of time pulling her out of tight spots.  At the end of the series he finally gets her to admit that she wants to be with him, even if she doesn’t fully understand her feelings for him.  

This series is definitely not one with a fast-paced, intense plot line.  There are no cliff-hanger episodes, no twisty, unexpected plot devices.  It's just a nice, even-paced love story, following two main characters with fairly normal teenage lives.  The animation and character style is really pretty though, so it's nice to watch.  Plus nobody dies and the main characters get together.  As a slice of life life anime, it's worth watching.