New Series - April 2014

I know, I know.  We’re already 6 - 7 weeks into the new season.  I’ve been sorting them out.  A lot of series start in April every year and I’m always excited to try the new ones, always on the lookout for the next great series.  So these are my current picks of the new season. 

Mekaku City Actors – This one is hands down my favorite so far.  It’s bright, colorful, and pretty much all the way through the first two episodes, totally incomprehensible.  I was intrigued trying to figure out what in the world the series was about.   Then in episode 3 they tie it all together so seamlessly, it’s jaw-dropping awesome, and everything sorts itself out perfectly.   Sou ka!  It’s about a group of kids with super powers!    Okay, that one sentence totally sells this series short.  The series has the potential to be an awesome series about a group of kids with super powers.   Plus it's just fun to watch.  I look forward to each new episode.

Mushishi 2 – I really liked the first season of Mushishi and this is simply a continuation of that.  If you haven't watched the first season, briefly, mushi are supernatural creatures who interact with humans and sometimes cause harm.  Ginko is a mushishi, a traveler who knows about and deals with mushi when they become troublesome.  This season seems like it may be a little darker than the first season was, with the mushi being more threatening, but  I’ll have to wait and see if that holds true.  I’m also hoping for a little more plot than just the individual cases of Ginko dealing with mushi, but I’ll be happy without the extra plot.  It would just be nice if it were there. 

Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushi – This is a feel-good series.   It’s  about an outgoing princess from a tiny country who happens to be able to control the weather, and who is stuck marrying the king of a large, Sun country.  This king turns out to be a small, arrogant, bratty kid several years younger than she is.  So far there’s all sorts of political intrigue as well as the mismatched personalities of the two main characters.  All in all though, it’s entertaining to watch, and it really is a feel-good series.   Both main characters are smart, brave and on top of things.  It’s also got some nice music and good animation style, so I’ll continue watching it for awhile.     

Sidonia no Kishi, or Knights of Sidonia – This is a mecha series.  I’m not sure exactly what attracts me to this series and keeps me coming back to watch it.   I do like the animation style and the music.  And certain elements of the plot are fairly unique, like: the main character is the only human who can’t photosynthesize – humans having developed the ability when most of their food supplies were destroyed by the race that destroyed the earth and that they’re fleeing from.   Other than those few unique details though, it looks like it’s going to be predictable: oddball main character flies older form mecha and is better at it than everyone in their new mechas, as everyone fights in a hopeless space war against vastly superior forces.    I’m not totally sure why, but I’ll keep watching it for awhile.  

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei – This series has so much potential and at the same time is so annoying that I’m torn between continuing to watch it or not.   It’s about kids who can use magic attending a high school where there is a sharp dichotomy between really talented, strong magic-users (flowers) and those who can barely manage to use magic at all (weeds).  The focus of the story is a brother-sister pair, both in the same year in school, the sister a flower and the brother a weed.   That’s fine as far as it goes, but the brother-sister thing is annoying.  The two act like lovers and frequently embarrass everyone around them.  In addition, and really more annoying, the sister becomes insanely jealous if the brother even looks at another girl, and that gets old really fast.  The only reason I’m still watching is that they have thrown in some interesting twists.  We’ll have to see if the interest factor is enough to keep me watching despite the annoyance factor.

So those are some of the series I’m currently watching.  I hope for good things from several of them and will probably post on them individually when they’re over.  

Wizard Barristers Benmashi Cecil

Wizard Barristers is a bright and colorful, yet highly weird, short series.  The story occurs in a reality where magic is common, but people who use magic are considered second-class citizens and are tightly controlled.   They cannot hold public office, and crimes committed with magic are dealt with severely, especially if a life is lost when magic is used.  Thus crimes committed by magic-users are tried in a special magic court.  Defendants hire wizard barristers, lawyers who themselves use magic, to help defend them.

The series follows the story of a very young wizard barrister named Sudou Cecil.  Cecil finished her lawyer training at 17, making her the youngest wizard barrister.  As the story starts she’s going to report for her first day of work at her new place of employment, Butterfly Law Office, which specializes in defending magic users accused of crimes.  Cecil actually fits right in with this group, as the members of Butterfly Law Office look and act so far left of center that they tip the universe.  This group could be used as the definition of a “motley” crew. 

The series begins by following Cecil’s involvement with various cases, but quickly brings in the back story, which is that Cecil became a lawyer because her mother is on death row.  She has been accused and tried for using magic to kill a person.  At her trial she was found guilty and condemned to die.  

The plot of the story is actually good, keeping you guessing about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and making you wonder what actually did happen with Cecil’s mother.  It’s intriguing enough to keep me watching, even through the annoying things.  And the biggest annoyances are the magic-users "familiars".  Cecil’s familiar is a lecherous frog creature, and the rest aren’t much better.  I’m not sure why the creators of this series felt it necessary to include these familiars because they don’t add to the story.  They have no obvious role and no point in the story other than to be annoying and detract from the series overall.  Can you tell I didn’t like them?

At any rate, the fascinating plot line comes down to this:  Cecil was killed when she was 6 years old and her father essentially made a deal with the dark forces to bring her back to life.  When all this happened, her mother tried to protect her and ended up getting pinned with a murder she didn’t commit when these “dark forces” needed to get rid of someone.  The “dark forces” encompass a group of magic-users who hate normal, non-magic users.  They plan to call Satan from Hell to make themselves vastly powerful and to destroy normal humans.  To perform this calling ritual, they need a powerful sacrifice, and they plan to make the re-animated Cecil that sacrifice.   So they drive her to gain more magical powers herself, becoming a better sacrifice for their ritual. 

At times in the series it’s difficult to tell who’s on whose side, with one of the cops turning out to be a bad guy and another law office who appeared bad at first, actually trying to protect Cecil.  In the end, Cecil and the good guys prevail and at the end of the series Cecil’s mother is going to get a re-trial.  A quirky addition to the overall plot is that Satan had already arrived long before the ritual . . . and joined the Butterfly Law Office as a clerk where he/she can watch over Cecil, who fascinates her.    

 So overall this was a quirky series that was mostly fun to watch and that kept me interested and entertained.  Without the familiars I would have liked it even better.    

Noragami

Noragami is a series adapted from a manga, and it’s about a god called Yato Gami, or simply Yato.  Yato is not your stereotypical god, wearing traditional Japanese robes, living in a shrine and surrounded by shrine maidens.  Yato is a poor god, wearing sweats and a ratty scarf, living on the streets and spray painting his cell phone number everywhere advertising that he does odd jobs for a living.  In fact, give him 5 yen and he’ll take on any job – from slaying demons to cleaning your bathroom.

At the start of this series Yato has taken on an odd job and he's searching for a lost cat.  In pursuing the cat, he steps in front of a bus.  He is pushed out of the way by a high school girl named Iki Hiyori, who is hit by the bus instead and should have died.  Her soul leaves her body, but when Yato makes her notice her body lying in the street, she returns to her body and lives.  Since Yato’s life was never in danger, he goes to the hospital to check on how Hiyori is doing, and the two begin to interact routinely. 

Due to the bus accident and essentially dying, Hiyori now has the ability for her soul to leave her body, at which point her body falls asleep.  She has a tendency to do this without intending to, leaving her body sleeping in various places, which her friends then have to deal with.  Her soul form looks just like her regular self except as a soul she has a fuzzy tail, which is essentially her lifeline to her body.   Hiyori blames Yato for this and demands that he fix her so she stops leaving her body.  She pays him 5 yen and he accepts the task.

Around the time he meets Hiyori, Yato is weaponless.  Gods take and name wandering spirits, who then become their “regalia” or shinki, and can then be used as weapons by the god.  Yato has just released his previous regalia due to personality conflicts with her, so he’s without any regalia.   Because he needs a weapon to fulfill some of his requests and to protect Hiyori and fulfill her request, he and Hiyori search for a new spirit which he can take on as a shinki.  Yato eventually settles on the spirit of a teen-age boy who he names Yukine in boy form.  When Yukine takes on weapon form he is called Sekki, and his form is a katana.    

This series is basically split into three arcs.  The first one introduces all this background and the characters and sets up their interactions with each other.  The second arc is Yato and Yukine coming to terms.  Yukine resents being dead and takes to lying and stealing, not knowing that whenever he does something bad, Yato’s life force takes a hit, becoming more and more defiled.  Eventually Hiyori rounds up Yato’s friends and acquaintances, who Hiyori has met, to perform an intervention on Yukine.  This ritual will either bring Yukine back to the good side and save Yato’s life, or to destroy Yukine in the demon form he’s become and hopefully save Yato’s life that way.

The third arc is related to Yato’s past.  Apparently Yato was once a God of Calamity, killing and maiming and just generally wreaking destruction as he went.  Another god of calamity named Rabou, who was at one time Yato’s friend, tracks him down and wants to fight him as Yato once was, a powerful god of calamity.  (yes, the old testosterone-filled ploy of ‘I-must-fight-the-strongest-to-prove-I’m-the-best’).  Because Yato won’t play, Rabou and Rabou’s shinki Nora (who was at one time Yato’s shinki) go after Hiyori, taking away her memories of Yato and Yukine and eventually taking her life.  Yato and Yukine of course ride to the rescue, but satisfyingly, Hiyori herself is as much a part of the rescue as the one being rescued.  It takes all three of them to beat their opponents.

This is as usual the bare bones of the series without introducing any of the secondary characters or smaller plot lines.  It was actually a fun series to watch, with good music and a good animation style.  I could have wished to know more about Yato – like why he went from a god of calamity to a good guy, saving teen-age boy spirits and granting wishes for 5 yen, but overall the series was well worth watching.

Nagi no Asukara

Nagi no Asukara is a slice of life anime series, sort of.  It follows the coming of age struggles of five middle school kids, but that’s pretty much the only thing that makes it a slice of life anime.

This series is set in a universe where there are people who live underwater in the ocean.  They can do that because of substance called “Ena” that they are born with.  Ena coats the surface of their bodies, making them somewhat sparkly and allowing them to breathe underwater.  It also does cool things like absorb the moisture from their clothes when they come onto land, so that they aren’t wearing wet clothes all the time.  However, it needs water periodically, so they cannot stay up in the air indefinitely without re-wetting their ena.  Other than needing to get wet every so often the sea folk can live fine on land also, and the sea and land peoples live side by side, the land people making their livings from fishing the ocean.

The story follows five kids, a foursome of sea kids who have been together since grade school, plus a land kid.  The sea kids are Hikari, Kaname, Chisaki and Manaka and the land kid is Tsumugu, who is a new friend they make when they come to middle school on land.  The story is a fruit-basket-turnover of crushes and loves between these five.  Along the way Manaka loves Hikari and Tsumugu. Hikari loves Manaka throughout. Kaname loves Chisaki, Chisaki love Hikari and then Tsumugu, Tsumugu loves Chisaki.  On top of the angst going on between these five, two grade school kids Miuna and Sayu have crushes on Hikari and Kaname, respectively.   And things get even more twisted because of the way the major plot line proceeds.

Hikari’s older sister, Akari, loves a land man named Itaru.  This is forbidden by the sea people because a child born between a land and sea person has no ena and cannot survive in the ocean.  Thus to love a land person causes one to be exiled from the sea.  But Akari follows her heart, like a lot of sea people before her, and leaves the sea for Itaru.  Miuna is Itaru’s daughter, and his first wife, now dead, was also a sea person. 

The sea god gets angry at all the sea people that are being lost and decrees that all the sea people must get ready to hibernate in their city under the sea, for an untold number of years.  Hikari-tachi don’t want to hibernate and the five kids work with the land people to re-instate an old ceremony called Ofunehiki in order to attempt to appease the sea god.    The old ceremony offers up to the sea god a wooden replica of a woman originally sacrificed to the sea god. 

On the eve of the beginning of the sea people hibernating, the sea kids and land people hold the Ofunehiki.  Akari takes the place of the wooden doll to aid in appeasing the sea god, but the sea god awakens and disrupts the ceremony.  He takes Akari, and then when Hikari rescues her, takes Manaka in place of the wooden woman, and all the sea people enter hibernation except Chisaki, who saved Tsumugu from drowning and was left on the boat after it was all over.

Five years pass.  The sea is ice covered, the climate is cold and snow is everywhere.  Chisaki and Tsumugu are following their individual careers, Chisaki living with Tsumugu and his grandfather.  Miuna and Sayu are now middle school age.   At this point, Hikari and Kaname wake up from hibernation and haven’t aged at all.  This means Chisaki and Tsumugu are five years older, and Miuna and Sayu are now Hikari and Kaname’s age.  Miuna and Sayu now go to school with Hikaru and Kaname and still have the crushes on them.  One night Miuna falls into the sea and discovers she has ena after all and can live in the ocean.  Tsumugu during this time discovers that he also has ena, as his grandfather, like Miuna's mother, was a sea person.  With Miuna's help, Hikari and Kaname find Manaka and have to return her to the surface to save her because she loses her ena.  

They discover that when the sea god took Manaka he also took from her her emotions and ability to love.  In an attempt to recover those things for Manaka,  Hikari-tachi hold the Ofunehiki again with the help of the land people.  It looks at first as though it will end like the first Ofunehiki with Miuna replacing Manaka as the sacrifice.  But in the end the sea god learns something from the land people, and everyone lives.  The sea people wake up, the seas begin to warm up, and all the children of mixed parentage gain ena and the ability to live on both land and in the sea. 

This series is visually gorgeous, all bright colors and pretty animation style.  In addition, the music is good and the plot is definitely unique.  Even though it was often pretty emotional, I enjoyed watching it and recommend it.   

Sword of the Stranger

Today I decided to post about another movie I liked, and for a change it’s not a Miyazaki movie.   It’s a movie called Sword of the Stranger, or simply Stranger.  This movie doesn’t have any deep truths to teach, except maybe about friendship.  It’s just a good, animated, action samurai movie.  Which is probably why I like it.

This movie follows a young boy named Kotaro and his dog, Tobimaru.  They meet a wandering ronin calling himself Nanashi, which means Nameless, referring to soldiers lost in battle.   Although Kotaro is suspicious of him at first, he comes to their aid when they're cornered by two soldiers and an odd Chinese, ninja-type character.   Nanashi and Tobimaru together kill these three but Tobimaru is injured with a poisoned weapon while protecting Nanashi.  Kotaro demands that Nanashi heal Tobimaru and escort them both to a temple where they have friends and will be safe.  Nanashi’s not so sure at first, but agrees to help when Kotaro “hires” him for a costly stone which he’ll get when he finishes the job. 

Pursuing Kotaro are a group from the Ming Court in China.  They include an old shaman, several ninja-assassin-type persons and a big, burly, blond European man named Luo Lang whose only interest is finding someone strong enough to be worth fighting.  When the Chinese are betrayed and attacked by their Japanese hosts, Luo Lang defeats the entire attacking cohort.

Some of Nanashi’s history comes out during the movie in the form of nightmares that he’s plagued with.  It runs out he has vowed to never draw his sword again, and although he managed to kill the first Chinese assassin without drawing it, he struggles to meet that vow, especially when he accidentally runs into Luo Lang.  He’s saved from drawing his sword that time because Luo Lang has places to be.

The basic plot here is that Kotaro was an orphan raised in a monastery who was to be sold to the Ming Dynasty.  It is believed that Kotaro’s blood can be used to create an immortal elixir to keep the Chinese Emperor alive forever.  A monk helped Kotaro escape to Japan before being sold.  Kotaro is trying to get back to this friend at a temple, and the Chinese are trying to recover him in time for the ceremony.  The ceremony must be held at a specific time of the year, at a specific location and using a large, wooden structure which the Chinese are just finishing and preparing for the rites.

Nanashi delivers Kotaro and Tobimaru to the temple as agreed, receives the costly stone which is in fact pretty worthless, and rides away.  Kotaro’s friend then turns him over to the Chinese in order to save his own life.   The local Japanese Lord Akaike meanwhile attacks in an attempt to take Kotaro away from the Chinese to hold him for ransom, and is himself captured by the Chinese.   Nanashi returns to the temple when he sees that a battle is occurring there and discovers that Tobimaru has been tied up and Kotaro has been given to the Chinese.  Akaike’s chief shogun with vassals and Nanashi with Tobimaru both try to reach the Chinese fortress before the ceremony, shogun-tachi riding hard and Nanashi-Tobimaru cutting across country.  

The shogun-tachi make it there first and in the ensuing battle clear out a lot of the Chinese forces.  Nanashi makes it later, but in time.  He breaks his vow, drawing his sword to protect and save Kotaro.  He kills the two final Chinese assassins and then takes on Luo Lang.  Nanashi and Luo Lang battle all across the compound, Luo Lang even killing his own shaman when he interferes in their battle.  Eventually both men’s swords shatter and they stab each other at the same time with the remaining shards.  Nanashi is saved by the stone which Kotaro paid him with, so eventually Nanashi wins, although he takes bad wounds in the process.

In the end, the creators of this movie  pretty much let you decide for yourself whether Nanashi survives.   The movie ends with Kotaro riding away, Nanashi on the horse behind him and Tobimaru following.  Nanashi is leaving a pretty major blood trail, so I suspect he may not survive that wound, however, they don’t end it with him obviously dying, so I can enjoy my delusion that he lives happily ever after.  So the movie has a good plot line, great action, decent characters, good music and the good guys live.  I highly recommend it.    

Darker Than Black

I really liked Darker Than Black – at least the first season of it.  So I’m going to focus this post on the original Darker Than Black season.

The setting is a post-apocalyptic time when a strange spatial accident has opened two “gates”, Heaven’s Gate in South America and Hells’ Gate in Tokyo, and altered the sky, replacing the known stars with a different star pattern.  The Gates are cordoned off by massive walls and are inaccessible to the public.  The spatial anomaly that opened them also introduced new, phenomenal powers to certain individuals who form “contracts” in exchange for the power.  These “Contractors” have specialized supernatural powers, but are no longer considered quite human.  In exchange for their powers, they seem to lose human feelings and also whenever they use their power, they must perform a ritualized, compulsive “punishment” which is part of their contract.  For example, chain smoking, eating a certain food or performing a meaningless task are all compulsions of the various Contractors.   Also each Contractor is somehow linked to a specific star in the new sky, which reacts when that Contractor uses his or her powers.  So the Contractors are also referred to by their star Messier catalog number.  Most of the Contractors are employed as assassins or agents for some government or shadowy conglomerate. 

This series follows the exploits of a man named Hei.  Hei is a Contractor, number BK-201.  In fact, he may be the original Contractor.  When he’s in Contractor mode he wears a mask and is known as the Black Reaper.  He is accompanied in his tasks by a cat named Mao who is a body-switching contractor who lost his original body, and a young girl named Yin who is actually a Doll, a non-human construct used for various purposes. 

The series follows Hei through a string of tasks for his employers, as well as through his interactions with everyday people, so it's set up as a series of mini-arcs.   Along the way the background is established.  Several arcs deal with the premise that Dolls can have human feelings and deserve a chance to live a life.  One of the deeper plots is that the spatial accident which made Hei a Contractor and created Contractors in general, also resulted in the death, or at least the disappearance of Hei’s sister, Pai, who he is semi-looking for throughout the series. 

As the series goes along, Hei-tachi begin to act against the wishes of their employer organization, The Syndicate.   Late in the series, the Contractors discover that the Syndicate is attempting to close Heavens’ Gate as a way of destroying all the Contractors.  Hei and the majority of the other Contractors band together and mount an attack on Heaven’s Gate to stop it being closed.  The story ends with only Hei and Yin actually managing to make it all the way to the Gate itself, and once there Hei must make a decision for all Contractors – close the Gate and end Contractors or keep it open and let them continue.  He leaves it open. 

This is where the first 26 episode season ends.  There is also a second season of 12 episodes and four OVA episodes that cover events that occur between the two seasons, but I liked the first season best. Hei is a likable character, and much too human to be a Contractor.  He always goes with his own sense of right and wrong rather than what he’s told to do by his employers, which is why he’s often in trouble.  Plus the series music is done by Yoko Kanno who is my favorite composer.   It’s definitely worth watching.

Pretear

I’m struggling a little to decide what to blog about, so decided to go with another old one.  Pretear is a series based on a manga.  It is also a combination or re-working of several fairy stories into one basic love story.

The main character of Pretear is a high-school girl named Awayuki Himeno.  Himeno’s father, Kaoru, is a poor, struggling romance author and artist who fell in love with and married a rich woman named Natsue.  Natsue has two daughters Himeno’s age, Mayune and Mawata, from a previous marriage.   Himeno and her father become part of the life of this rich family in their massive mansion.  Mayune actively hates Himeno and goes out of her way to make Himeno’s life miserable.  Mawata is so consumed with her own loneliness and sense of loss from losing her father, that she’s not interested in much around her and mostly ignores Himeno.

This is the state of affairs as the story begins.  And at this point, into Himeno’s life come seven “Leaf Knights”.  The Leaf Knights and their powers are:  Hayate : wind; Sasame : sound; Kei : light; Go : fire; Mannen : ice; Hajime : water and Shin : plants.  The Leaf Knights fight to keep life force (referred to as ‘leaf’) flowing in all living things.  They battle life-force-sucking creatures or demons who are controlled by the Princess of Darkness, Fenrir.   Three of the Leaf knights, Mannen, Hajime and Shin, are little kids because the original three Leaf Knights that held those powers died in their battles to seal Fenrir away.  Now Fenrir is breaking free and the Leaf Knights are looking for the “Pretear”, a girl who can combine powers with them and make both them and her more powerful in their battles against the forces of Darkness.


Himeno, of course, is the Pretear.  Hayate doesn’t accept her at first, feeling that they can fight fine without her, and you find out why he's so against it later.  Also, at first Himeno is unwilling to get involved with them.  So they take a little while to get used to each other and begin working together and combining their powers.  Hayate is the last to accept Himeno.  About the time they do begin melding, Fenrir breaks free and attacks in force.

At this point, Himeno finds out the big Leaf Knight secret.  Fenrir was at one time the Pretear, a girl named Takako.  She fell in love with Hayate, who didn’t return her feelings.  So, spurned, she fell into despair and vowed to destroy everything they held dear – she became Fenrir.   When Himeno learns all this, her own questions and inadequacies surface and she becomes unable to combine forces with any of the Leaf Knights.  They all begin taking a serious beating from the forces of Darkness.  In addition, Sasame admits that he has always loved Takako, even knowing she loved Hayate, so he deserts the Leaf Knights to side with Fenrir and become her right-hand man and a knight of Darkness.  Fenrir of course doesn't trust him and it's not until he's killed that she realizes she loves him also.

At the series climax, Fenrir has won all the battles and come close to destroying everyone and everything, including turning Mawata into a center and force for darkness.  All looks lost, with Sasame dead in the battles and Hayate soon to be dead.  But at the last minute, Himeno gains power from all the Leaf Knights and transforms into the White Pretear, with almost unlimited power.  In the end she saves her family, Takako, and all the Leaf Knights, including resurrecting Sasame.  She herself appears dead but Hayate wakes her with a kiss.  The series ends with a huge happily ever after, Sasame and Takako together and Himeno and Hayate together.  They all live happily with Himeno’s now combined and happy family in the big mansion. 

Yes, this is a harem anime, and a take-off of Snow White and the seven dwarfs and being awakened with a kiss, with elements of Cinderella and her evil step-sisters, but for all that, it’s fun to watch and entertaining.  And best of all, nobody dies.  It’s not at all a bad series to spend some time watching.