Maria Holic episode 4

 

It’s really nice to see this start to move in an actual direction. Especially since we are 1/3 of the way through.

Clannad Catch-up – Smiles and Tears

Insta-catchup of episodes 11-15 in one sitting in the middle of the night, then 16 earlier today. I had been waiting on widescreen releases all winter break, but being stuck at ep10 while trying to dodge spoilers from the rest of the community was finally too frustrating. So I got myself caught up and naively expected just to watch one ep or two, then go to bed. But no, I went through all five, and then had to grab 16 ASAP today.

Maria Holic episode 3

The animation in this episode reminded me of a cross between Utena and Veggietales.

Hetalia Axis Powers 1

Due to a lot of drama, and now the episodes are being distributed through Animate and cellphones, the quality sucks. While yes, it’s not really their fault, blah, blah, blah, but wow, it’s really awful.

Show itself was fun though.

International Saimoe League 2009 preliminaries

Preliminary rounds for the 2009 International Saimoe League are in progress. After a fairly successful opening year in 2008 with Fate Testarossa taking the crown, the tournament hopes to achieve new heights of voter participation and community recognition in 2009.

Major changes include a move to a new domain, http://www.internationalsaimoe.com, a larger layout, and improved graphics. The structure of the tournament remains the same, though, with a round-robin tournament of 64 characters. Everybody is pitted against each other, hence the greater sense of a league.

Already passed is the Nomination Phase to select the 48 characters who qualify for the preliminary rounds. The prelims then narrow the pool to 27, and those will be admitted as contestants in the League. The other 37 were auto-qualifiers from last year plus winners of neighboring Saimoe contests.

The regular season is scheduled to start mid-March lasting through the end of August. Following will be elimination tournaments of the highest-ranked competitors (similar to a playoff) to determine the grand champion, winner of the tiara, the relic which all girls in ISML seek.

Times are busy as co-administrator. I really just stumbled upon the tournament last year and started doing some volunteer statistics work for the site. Little did I know, I’d slowly progress up the ladder, analyzing more and programming more until I became a vital member of the tournament. And now I do feel like I own part of it. It’s been great technical experience for me, and some teamwork experience is never a bad thing, too.

But I wonder if everyone in our blogosphere is aware of it. We don’t know if we’ll ever get as large as Saimoe Japan (with a primarily Western crowd, but we do have international supporters), but it’s a nice dream.

~Crisu

Poking Fun at Engrish Song Titles

A while ago, I was boredly checking out some of the drama CDs and OSTs in the Nanoha franchise, looking for more Nana Mizuki (and other seiyuu) goodness. Then I spot this song called ‘Snow Rain’ by the talented Ueda Kana… and my logical non-fangirl side brings my squeeing to a screeching halt.

‘Snow Rain’? Is that supposed to refer to sleet or something? Or were the songwriters just going for the most emo title possible? I lol’d a little and got back to researching.

Then it occurred to me that a lot of anime-related songs have Engrish in the lyrics, if not outright in the title. After browsing Gendou and my own MP3 player some, I discovered that I’ve subconsciously lol’d at several titles over the years. (LOL self, way to not fully notice them before.)

Chrome Shelled Regios 02

Deadly games of Capture the Flag make for interesting drama, I’m sure, but they’ll never be as interesting as the Engrishy OP song.

Index – 07 – 09

Shock and awe, I know, but I’m working on catching up on this series. And I’m glad I did, I really liked this pack of three episodes. So let’s take a little look at what’s under the hood.

Chrome Shelled Regios 01

THIS IS MOAR LIEK IT! If I only watch one Winter series, I think it might be this one. Maybe.

The episode opens with this buggy transport thing containing civilians getting attacked by this flying insect creature monster ugly frickin’ thing that looks like something out of Men in Black.

I kid you not. It was pretty awesome. And then the good guys show up and start battling the icky bugs, and this oddly high-pitched battle techno music starts playing in the background, and I’m like “Dude, this is cooler than Men in Black.”

Earl and Fairy final impressions

As we wrap up, there’s still one major problem with this…