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I'm about to move which will consume some time in my life so I thought I'd better get a blog post in. I'm still writing posts about older series. Today I picked Toshokan Sensou, or Library War, if you prefer that name.
Toshokan Sensou has a really unique premise, and you know how much I like a unique premise. This one is unique enough to be almost not believable. How's that for unique? In the world of this series, government censorship of the written word and media in general has reached an amazing level. This is way beyond your average book-burning fanatics. The Media Enhancement Law (MEL) is in effect, strictly regulating what people can read and watch and listen to. The Media Enhancement Law Commission is an armed force which works to enforce the law. In response, the libraries have developed a Library Defense Force (LDF). Yes, the libraries have their own armies. They use these forces to protect both the literary works themselves and the people who wish to read them. See? Unique concept.
This story follows a young woman named Kasahara Iku, who is a member of the of the Library Defense Force. Kasahara joined the force because when she was young an LDF member rescued a book for her from the MEL guys. She doesn't clearly remember the person but idolizes the "prince" of her memories, and wants to help other people read what they want, like the "prince' helped her. Her immediate superior in the LDF is Dojo Atsushi, who also happens to be shorter than she is - a fact that they occasionally use for amusement value as the series goes along.
This series is a love story and a story about fighting for what you believe in. The love story is between Kasahara and Dojo, who of course turns out to be the "prince" who rescued her book years ago. A little predictable there, but this series is fun to watch. It's entertaining and quirky and serious and occasionally worrisome. But the good guys don't die, which is always one of the most important things for me in deciding how much I like a series. The characters are all believable and interesting. The plot line is mostly about skirmishes between the MEL and the LDF, but there is enough subplot between and among the characters to keep things interesting. The animation and character style is great.
Overall, this short series (13 episodes) is really fun to watch and I place it firmly on the "yes, watch this series" list.
I thought I'd talk about an older series today. Rurouni Kenshin was one of the first anime series I ever watched and it still ranks up there among my favorites. Actually I watched the two Samurai X OVAs: Trust and Betrayal before I watched Rurouni Kenshin. It turned out I was glad I watched them in that order. It was nice to have some background on Himura Kenshin's past and subsequent actions, even if that past was actually created after the series itself.
Himura Kenshin was a world-class swordsman who left his swordsmanship apprentice as a young man to try to help people in the chaos at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. He became an exceptional assassin known as Hitokiri Battousai who worked for the rebels who overthrew the shogunate and eventually created a new government at the beginning of the Meiji era. During this time he accidentally killed the woman he loved, Yukishiro Tomoe. He swore that after the shogunate was defeated he would never kill again. He became a "rurouni" - a wandering swordsman.
This early part of Kenshin's story is covered in Trust and Betrayal. Kenshin and Tomoe are shown in this picture. The Rurouni Kenshin anime series begins with Kenshin wandering through Tokyo and meeting Kamiya Kaoru, the surviving daughter of the head of a dojo who has taken up her father's sword style and kept the dojo running. Kaoru takes him in and Kenshin stops wandering. They pick up a few other main characters, including a boy named Miyoujin Yahiko and a man who hates the Meiji government named Sagara Sanosuke. These four, Kenshin, Kaoru, Sano and Yahiko, are the core of the series characters and they are shown in the first picture. They spend the series trying to help people in need.
The series is broken up into a few story arcs, with random episodes of helping people interspersed in between the arcs. The biggest story arc revolves around a massive plot to overthrow the government that is put into motion by the assassin who took over when Kenshin resigned as assassin at the start of the Meiji era. That assassin's name is Shishio Makoto and he has pulled together a lot of bad guys to build his own government on the basis of survival of the fittest. Shishio happens to enjoy killing, so his superiors became afraid and tried to kill him in multiple ways. They failed. Shishio decided he would rule Japan and set out for some payback. The government asks Kenshin to stop Shishio and his minions. A very large part of the series is the story of what Kenshin-tachi must go through to stop Shishio-tachi
Since Kenshin vowed not to kill again, he still carries a sword, but it's a sakabato - a reversed-blade sword with the cutting edge on the sword's inner curve, so that the sword cannot be used to kill. Besides his amazing skill with a sword, Kenshin has super-fast reflexes and is extremely strong, despite being small and frail looking. Plus he has the support of his friends and these things all work to keep him going and allow him to come out on top in his battles.
A few other story arcs in the series include: 1) the meeting with Sano and Sano's past; 2) the rescue of a female doctor named Takani Megumi from a ring of opium producers and suppliers who are protected by a shinobi group called the Oniwaban and led by Shinomori Aoshi. Aoshi shows up again in the Shishio arc, etc; 3) stopping some renegade samurai out to create a kingdom and taking advantage a small boy named Yutaro; 4) stopping a group of Christians led by a man named Amakusa Shougo who has the same sword style as Kenshin's: and 5) stopping some foreigners from finding the secret of immortality.
One of the things I like about this series is that none of the good guys die. Since this was one of the first anime series I watched, I mistakenly assumed that was true for anime and only later found out how wrong I was. I also watched this one dubbed when I first watched it. Luckily, I bought all 94 episodes on DVD so when I came over from the dark side and began watching subtitled anime, I could go back and watch it subtitled. I still hear both Kenshin's voices when I watch it now. This series is worth watching. The music is outstanding. The characters have relationships and growth and the plot is interesting. I do recommend it, even if it is 94 episodes.
The Spring season of new anime started in April and there are a few that I've been watching. I think I've watched enough episodes of the new series now that I've formed an opinion of them, so I decided to give a brief look at my four favorites so far. So here goes:
The leader in keeping my interest this season is Jormungand. Seriously. This series follows the exploits of a totally whacked, or very smart, young woman arms dealer and her band of merry killers. The arms dealer's name is Koko Heckmatyar ("her name is Koko; she is loco, I say "oh. no."") At the start of the series she has recently added a psychologically warped, small boy soldier named Jonah to her band. Koko and Jonah are shown in this picture. Because of his past, Jonah hates arms dealers so the story of how he became a member of Koko's band is not fully revealed yet. So far the basic story line is following Koko and her group around the world and into and out of her arms deals with some of the scum of the world. I have no idea where this series will go, but I suspect it's going to be deeper than the surface story. And it's definitely keeping me interested.
My second favorite series so far is a crazy-fun series named Tsuritama. Tsuritama is about fishing. Yes, I said fishing. That's on the surface anyway. It's really about friendship and relationships, but it's going to be a hoot getting there. The main character, Yuki (red hair in picture), is a high shchool kid with zero ability to socialize. He is accosted one day by a self-proclaimed alien (uchujin desu!) named Haru (blond kid), and his life is turned upside down. Haru invites himself to live with Yuki, and convinces Yuki to learning to fish. Yuki and Haru are taught to fish by an unsocial boy in their class named Natsuki who has family problems. The three boys are followed around by an Indian guy named Akira who wears a turban and carries around a large white duck named Tapioca. Akira knows Haru is an alien and he is tailing him for an unknown secret organization, but he ends up being more part of their group. I don't know where this one will go, but it's going to be fun getting there. Many things here are just silly and make you laugh. Yet there's enough story line and emotion to keep you from getting bored.
The next series is Eureka Seven Ao. I had to try this one because I watched and liked the original Eureka Seven. This series is a sequel to the original, with the main character, Ao, being the original Eureka's son. Ao is an orphan who was raised by an old doctor named Toshio. The series takes place on earth, rather than whatever planet the original was on, but the infamous scub coral is here on earth wrecking havoc. It's a different manner of havoc than the scub coral in the original series, but havoc none the less. The scub coral uprisings are handled by a group called Generation Blue, and Ao joins a part of Generation Blue called Pied Piper. Watching this series feels a little like coming home because the animation style and characters feel so nostalgic. Ao and his childhood friend Naru are like a reverse Renton and Eureka. So this is a mecha series, but the original Eureka Seven didn't sacrifice plot and character development to show off the mecha, so I have some hope this one won't either.
The last one I'll talk about today is a series called Sankarea. This series is about zombies - a boy with a zombie fetish and a girl who is a zombie. Chihiro lives in a temple and has a zombie fetish. When his cat is hit by a car and killed he develops a potion that brings the cat back to life - or anyway into a zombie type existence. While developing the potion he meets Sanka Rea. Rea is a girl Chihiro's age who has been abused by her father all her life. She wants to die, as the only means of escape she can see. When Chihiro develops his potion she drinks it without him knowing. She thinks it didn't work, but later when trying to escape her father, she falls to her death, and comes back as a zombie. This series is a little fan-servicey, but still interesting enough to keep me watching. We'll see if that stays true. They're doing episodes right now of difficulties associated with living with a zombie and of living as a zombie. I'm hopeful the series will stay interesting.
So those are the four series I like best so far of the new season. I hope they pan out.
This post is about the series Last Exile: Ginyoku no Fam. I decided I liked this series enough to blog about it, although I will say I probably overall liked the first Last Exile (LE1 in this post) better. This series is a sequel to the original. It takes place on the homeworld where the peoples from the LE1 world actually originated. Apparently many centuries before the current story, people from this world emigrated to the LE1 world because this original world was too small to support the population, and the Guild led that emigration.
Like LE1, this series centers around airships and battles and the exploits of a young pilot. In this series that young pilot is Fam Fan Fan and she is accompanied by her friend and navigator, Giselle or Gisey for short. Fam was an orphan raised by Gisey's family who are members of a group referred to as the Sky Pirates. These folks live mainly by scavenging other air ships, until Fam involves them in worldwide politics. Fam and Gisey fly a small vanship called a Vespa. If you've seen LE1, a Vespa compares to a vanship from that series as a motorcycle would compare to an SUV. Vespas are small! One day going about their pirating business, Fam and Gisey rescue a princess named Millia when a treaty effort is betrayed and her older sister is kidnapped. They begin to help her and become involved in affairs of the wider world.
The back story here, which you don't get until late in the series, is that the previous Empress of one of the major nations tried to unite the whole world in friendship, and held a vanship race to commemorate the unification. Things went wrong and she was killed by assassins, despite the presence of her Guild guards who were unable to protect her. The role of Empress devolves to her baby daughter, and at the time of the series, young Empress Sara is guided in her rule by a number of generals of different nationalities. She intends to follow her mother's wish of a united world. Sara's main general is Luscinia who also happens to be one of the two Guild guards who couldn't protect her mother. Luscinia also wishes to unite the world for his former Empress, however he plans to do it by slaughtering all the nations that don't agree with him.
As it turns out, the Guild on this world is almost gone, many of them having immigrated to the LE1 world, however as a remaining Guild member, Luscinia believes the world is too small to support its current population plus the returning peoples from the emigration. His way to deal with that is to slaughter whole races, and he's pretty good at it, using Millia's older sister to control pieces of this world's Exile, and drop them from space onto resisting populations.
Like LE1, this series has a small battle ship which holds itself separate from the affairs of the other nations. This battleship is called the Sylvius (instead of Silvana) and it is captained by Tatiana Wisla, a vanship pilot in the first series. The Sylvius and her crew aid Princess Millia and try to stop some of Luscinia's excesses.
Dio Eraclea from LE1 is also a main character in this series. It feels great to see him, not only sane but really useful in this series, especially since at the end of LE1 he was insane, lost in the Grand Stream and assumed dead (at least by me). In this series he first appears as a friend of Fam among the Sky Pirates, but later proves to be involved with and perhaps of member of the Sylvius crew. He brings a pre-teen Alvis Hamilton with him to help deal with the Exile on this world and acts as her guardian, demonstrating that the fighting training he received previously stands him in good stead against this world's Guild.
Little Empress Sara has only good intentions, but her generals begin fighting each other and siding with the various nations when Luscinia wipes out 4 different races, including one that is the nation of one of the generals. Sara tries to bring peace and stop people from fighting, but nothing works. Eventually, after much destruction and killing, Sara is taken by Luscinia and the rest of the world unites against him and his plots. The 'rest of the world' includes the Sky Pirates, the Sylvius and crew, all Sara's remaining generals, Empress Sophia and Vincent from LE1, representing the nations of the new world, Millia's remaining people, and others. In the end Fam and Gisey rescue Sara, Luscinia dies, and the world has peace.
I liked this series for a number of reasons. Foremost was probably Dio being alive and well, and surviving this series too! It also has wonderful music and although I waited a long time to figure out the back story, I did figure out that they hadn't just taken characters from LE1 and dropped them into this series. They mostly explained or gave you a sense of how they could be there. Plus most of the characters survived the series. Along with Luscinia, two other generals die, as does Millia's sister. And of course the four races Luscinia effectively wipes out. Overall, it was worth watching, even if I do still like LE1 better.
If you watch much anime, you know what it means to 'level up'. I imagine the term comes from the gaming world originally, where it means you clear a level and get to the next one. But "level up" is used far outside the gaming world now. Anyone who in any way clears an obstacle and moves forward can be said to have leveled up.
A LOT of anime series contain plot lines which require their characters to achieve new levels of battle abilities. Some of these plot lines involve continuous leveling up and continuous growth of the character's abilities thoughout the series, and some of them only have the main characters level up one major time, or perhaps a couple of times
Bleach is a series that has its main character, Kurosaki Ichigo, undergo the most continuous level ups of any series I've watched. Ichigo achieves his first level up when he takes Rukia's powers in the first episode and begins to use shinigami powers. From there the process is continuous. His major level ups include: regaining his powers after his soul chain is cut, attaining bankai, mastering his hollow side and fighting masked, achieving the state necessary to bring Aizen down, and then regaining his powers using Fullbring. He also has a multitude of lesser level ups along the way, including each one he achieves as he fights Renji, Kenpachi, Byakuya, GrimJoe and Ulquiorra. The entire series follows Ichigo as he struggles to attain new levels of fighting skills in order to protect the people he cares about.
Inuyasha is another series that follows the relatively continuous growth of a single character's battle abilities. Inuyasha, the series main character, is a half human, half youkai who inherits a sword early in the series. Throughout the series the sword's abilities and his ability to use the sword continuously level up. He learns to use the sword's true ability along the way, gains the ultimate technique with it, gains an ability of the sword to break barriers when in a red-bladed form and eventually gains two more higher level abilities with the sword. Like Ichigo in Bleach, at each level he is faced with characters or circumstances beyond his current abilities and must level up to 'clear' the difficulty and move forward.
Some series have essentially a single major level up event, and examples of this type would include Rurouni Kenshin, D.Gray-Man and Nurarihyon no Mago. In Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin must work to attain the ultimate technique of his Hiten Mitsurugi sword style before being able to face his main enemy, Shishio Makoto. Achieving the technique is the major level up he does in the series.
Allen Walker in D.Gray-Man is left for dead by his enemies after losing his Innocence, and he must strive to regain his ability to use Innocence before he can resume his battles against the forces of evil. And no, that's not what it sounds like. If you haven't watched D.Gray-man, Innocence is a mystical power which occurs in a different form in different people and can be used by them to battle the evil Millennium Earl and his minions. Allen spends multiple episodes in this struggle before coming to terms with his Innocence and regaining its use. This is his major level up of the series.
In Nurarihyon no Mago, Nura Rikuo is a half human, half youkai middle school student who find himself as heir to his grandfather's and father's Night Parade of 100 Demons. Although initially he only wants to live as a human with his human friends, when his clan is attacked by other demon clans he eventually must do a major level up that allows him to learn his clan's secret technique and use it to win the battles against the other clans. Although Rikuo has a few smaller level ups along the way, the ability to use the clans secret technique is the one that saves him and his clan and his friends.
Level ups are also used in sport-based or game-based anime. A good example is Hikaru no Go. As Hikaru learns to play the game of Go and plays ever stronger opponents, he has to increase his own skills to move forward. Obviously this type of leveling up isn't quite as intense as the gaining of new skills just ahead of being destroyed that is seen in series like Bleach or D.Gray-man, but pretty much in all anime where this plot device is used, I still find myself thinking, come on, come on, level up!
A new anime season has started, but since I haven't watched enough of anything to talk about them yet, I thought I'd talk about an older series, Macross Frontier. I have to admit up front that Macross Frontier is the only one of the Macross-related series that I've ever watched, so I won't be comparing it to other Macross series. I'll just be talking about this series, and of course laying out the plot line as I go.
Macross Frontier is an awesome series, with only one flaw. I'll come back to that flaw later. The "Frontier" is a colony ship fleet containing people who are living their lives out in the colony as it moves through space to find a new planetary home. The main ship of the fleet is a huge city-dome. The story centers around a young man named Saotome Alto and his friends. Alto wants to be a pilot, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, and he gave up a career in acting to follow that dream. As the story proceeds he also finds himself the center of a love triangle between a young, out-going, green-haired girl named Ranka Lee and a sophisticated, worldly beauty named Sheryl Nome. Sheryl is a famous singer visiting the colony and Ranka is an aspiring singer who worships Sheryl as well as vying with her for Alto's interest.
At the beginning of the story, Sheryl comes from another colony fleet to visit the Frontier and give a performance, and while she's there the colony ship is attacked by their enemies, the Vajra. The Vajra do some damage, and during their attack Alto takes over a downed Valkyrie fighter and rescues Ranka. He is subsequently recruited by a mercenary organization called the SMS which is run by Ranka's brother, Ozma. He joins his two schoolmates, Michel and Luca, who already belong to the SMS, and as SMS members they fly fighters and generally help protect the colony fleet.
The story follows these people as they struggle to live normal lives amidst attacks by the Vajra. As the story progresses, Ranka is found to be part Vajra and Sheryl is found to be dying of a vajra-related virus. Ranka's singing alternately calms or enrages the attacking Vajra, depending on the machinations of another group of people, including Sheryl's manager, Grace, and Ranka's estranged brother, Brera Stern.
In the end, this series has a happy ending with the Vajra becoming not-enemies, Sheryl being rescued from death by Ranka's abilities, and Alto getting his wish of flying his Valkyrie in the atmosphere of the new planet that they discover and begin to colonize. The only flaw in the series is that Michel dies (yes, of course he was my favorite character). His death is a true token death in the worse sense. There was NO reason for him to die - it wasn't necessary for the plot, or to motivate one of the other characters. There was no reason at all, just a token death. It seriously pissed me off, which may be why I haven't blogged about this series before.
Other than the flaw, this series was an excellent series all around. Even for a mecha series, they kept the mecha to a reasonable level, focusing on the characters and plot development instead. The music . . . the music from this series is waaaaaay beyond outstanding. Thank you, Yoko Kanno! The music and the singers who do Sheryl and Ranka's songs are so amazing, it really just make this series. Along with that, there was enough plot to keep it interesting and lots of action, and of course it never hurts to have pretty characters. Overall, I highly recommend watching it, even if you are not a fan of mecha series. This one is more than worth it. You may have to alter reality to keep Michel alive though.
Yes, I know all things must come to an end, but somehow I never expected Bleach to end. I kind of considered it a perpetual anime series that would just keep going. Nope. 366 episodes and it's over. Owari. Can you tell I'm still coming to grips with that?
What can I say about Bleach? I consider it one of the all time great anime series, even despite my dislike of a filler arc or two. It had an absolutely unique plot, a totally massive cast of characters with a minimal body count, and decent music. Of course, one of my favorite characters did die (Ulquiorrra), but the main cast all survived.
Spoilers ahead for the final arc, and assumptions that if you're reading this you know enough about what Bleach is about that I can talk about the ending arc only. I started out not liking the final arc, mainly for two reasons. First of all, they switched character styles. I had a hard time getting used to the new character styles. Ichigo's sisters looked like they had aged about 5 years, and the rest of the gang was just different. On top of that, add the loss of Ichigo's remaining reiatsu resulting in a totally powerless Ichigo, and the new arc was tough to take at first. When he loses his final bit of reiatsu, he can no longer see and interact with Rukia and the other shinigami, along with being totally powerless against Hollows. Enter the FullBringers. Certain people (usually people whose mothers were touched by Hollows while carrying them) have the ability to manipulate the "reiatsu" of inanimate objects, and these people are called FullBringers. They approach Ichigo and tell him they can help him regain his lost powers in exchange for his help freeing them from their abilities. Although Ichigo has accepted his loss of power on the surface, he is desperate to regain enough power to protect the people he cares about. Thus much of the arc revolves around Ichigo working with the various FullBringers to regain and control his power.
While this is going on, one of the FullBringers has been attacking Ichigo's family and friends. This FullBringer, Tsukishima, has the ability to insert himself into a person's past once he cuts that person with his sword. So Tsukishima is becoming a part of the past of all Ichigo's friends and family. When Ichigo gains enough power to try to stop him, all his friends and family work against Ichigo and think he has lost his mind for fighting their long time, dear friend.
Once Ichigo regains all his FullBring and Shinigami powers, the true reason for the FullBringer's help comes to light. Ginjo, the head FullBringer, has the ability to take the power from another and he takes all of Ichigo's newly won power from him, leaving Ichigo powerless once more. This causes Ichigo to lose it briefly, but being Ichigo, he stands up to fight again, even with not a scrap of power to do it with.
At this juncture he is pierced from behind by a sword, and as he turns in shock, he finds the sword held by Rukia (who he can now see) and Ichigo regains all his shinigami powers and then some. It turns out everyone in Soul Society who he has ever interacted with contributed reiatsu to the sword to return Ichigo's powers to him. Rukia and 5 of them (Byakuya, Hitsugaya, Kenpachi, Renji and Ikkaku) bring the sword to deliver it, and fight the 5 FullBringers other than Ginjo, who is being fought by Ichigo. The results of these battles are foregone conclusions.
One other interesting plot element at the end of the series is that the 5 shinigami who came to return Ichigo's reiatsu are also there to act as observers to see what Ichigo will do. Ginjo was a former subsititute shinigami who turned against Soul Society, and during his battles with Ichigo he tries to turn Ichigo against them also. Ichigo makes a different decision, and the 5 shinigami witness it.
The final episodes are very satisfying. Not only does Ichigo end up more powerful than ever, but he has had an amazing influence on everyone whose life he has touched, including the members of Soul Society. Once complete outcasts under a death sentence, the members of the Visored who wish to, return to Soul Society, many of them regaining their positions as Captains in the places left empty by Aizen-tachi. Soul Society has changed many of it's most rigid laws due to Ichigo's actions. So the series ends up with a happily ever after ending that's really nice. Overall, it's a really amazing series. I'm glad I watched it all the way through.
Toshokan Sensou has a really unique premise, and you know how much I like a unique premise. This one is unique enough to be almost not believable. How's that for unique? In the world of this series, government censorship of the written word and media in general has reached an amazing level. This is way beyond your average book-burning fanatics. The Media Enhancement Law (MEL) is in effect, strictly regulating what people can read and watch and listen to. The Media Enhancement Law Commission is an armed force which works to enforce the law. In response, the libraries have developed a Library Defense Force (LDF). Yes, the libraries have their own armies. They use these forces to protect both the literary works themselves and the people who wish to read them. See? Unique concept.
This story follows a young woman named Kasahara Iku, who is a member of the of the Library Defense Force. Kasahara joined the force because when she was young an LDF member rescued a book for her from the MEL guys. She doesn't clearly remember the person but idolizes the "prince" of her memories, and wants to help other people read what they want, like the "prince' helped her. Her immediate superior in the LDF is Dojo Atsushi, who also happens to be shorter than she is - a fact that they occasionally use for amusement value as the series goes along.
This series is a love story and a story about fighting for what you believe in. The love story is between Kasahara and Dojo, who of course turns out to be the "prince" who rescued her book years ago. A little predictable there, but this series is fun to watch. It's entertaining and quirky and serious and occasionally worrisome. But the good guys don't die, which is always one of the most important things for me in deciding how much I like a series. The characters are all believable and interesting. The plot line is mostly about skirmishes between the MEL and the LDF, but there is enough subplot between and among the characters to keep things interesting. The animation and character style is great.
