To be blunt, this episode was not one of the best that Umineko has to offer. I think it was a needed evil to set up the fifth arc, but still…

Sakutaro is a pimp~

Go Mammoth, go!

We open with wrapping up with Ange, and seeing what caused her to snap and give up her magic. She seriously pissed me off in this scene. She didn’t even try to stand up for herself, or tell them to back off. She just starts sobbing and demanding the stakes to kill them. Great conflict resolution there. At least Mammoth tells her off and tries to talk sense into her.

Maria's outfit is really cute. 5 stars.

Then we wrap up Maria’s backstory, where we see all of Rosa’s violence against Maria is really nothing compared to this scene. It was very sad, and made me feel uncomfortable to watch Maria have to go through that. She doesn’t even have a village to go try to save her…

;_;

At least in the end of the episode, Ange actually has a bit of character development, and does something that makes her actually LIKABLE. Call the presses. She reconciles with the stakes, and even summons Sakutaro to try to reunite him with Maria.

GREAT facial expression.

Just…more magic next episode? Kthx. I think that this ends the backstory, so let’s move foreword with the actual story.

Kobato episode 5 was surprisingly dark, and rather well-done. After that, episode 6 was a bit of a letdown.

Hehe

The interesting part of the episode was the side story that focuses on Iorogyi, where we learn a little about his past life, and the rather interesting characters involved in it, as he searches to find what’s going with the nursery.

But the Kobato half of the story, while cute, was rather dull. Kobato can’t play hide and seek, and then a kid disappears for all of three minutes. Yawn.

Also, her new dress is pretty darn ugly. The fashion handcuffs go to Kobato.

Chibi Kobato is too cute.

One fourth of the show down, three fourths to go. And no, I don’t know why my screenshots are so tiny.

Last weekend, my awesome boyfriend came up, and we marathoned all 13 episodes of thes second season of Nanoha together.

I had previously watched the first season of Nanoha, and enjoyed it immensely, although I did have a few gripes. It took a little while to get started, and there was some really annoying filler. Luckily, the second season of Nanoha seemed to bring foreword all the positives of the first season, and leaves behind all the negatives. The series hits the ground running, and introduces us to whole new cast of new characters, and develops them very well while still focusing on the characters of the first season of Nanoha.

Nanoha, especially the second season, is one of those animes that I feels offers anything you could want in an anime. Cute girls. Cute boys. A complex, interesting storyline. Character development. Awesome fights fought with awesome weapons. Emotional depth, and the just right amount of cheesy and genuine emotions.

Overall, I feel Nanoha is one of those animes that fans should really give a try. While it does offer a lot, Nanoha is also different from the typical anime. Halfway through the fourth episode of the first season, this anime stops feeling like someone you’ve watched before, and starts to feel like something unique.

Honey Hunt is done by the same person who did Tokyo Boys and Girl and Hot Gimmick. It has been released up to volume 3 in the USA.

Truthfully, I’m a total sucker for shojuo manga in all shapes and forms, from ridiculously fluffy to overly dramatic, and this manga is no exception.

Yura is the daughter of a world-famous musician, and a beautiful and talented actress. However, both of them really suck in the parenting department, with an absent father, and the mother being an absolutely manipulative and selfish bitch. Furthermore, she got passed over in the genetics category, being a fairly ordinary girl with no noticeable talents.

Crap really hits the fan when Yura’s parents decide to get divorced, and Yura find her uprooted from her old life. Then she discovers her mom has been having an affair with her childhood friend that she’s had a crush on. Yura snaps, and attempts to trash her mother’s career with a public outburst about how much she hates her. This fails, but reveals to her father’s agent her possible talent as an actress.

With the agent, Keiichi’s support, and her burning desire for revenge, Yura decides to become an actress better then her mother. So the journey begins.

Oh yes. There are boys. Two in particular, Q-ta, a overly friendly famous musician who gets off on the wrong foot by admitting that he wants to marry her to be the son-in-law  of her father, but seems to honestly care about, and her surely brother. I wonder which one I ship.

I know this series sounds like a total rip-off off Skip Beat, but it’s not. I actually find it a better series, as I had a lot of issues with Skip Beat as a manga. But the characters are well-developed and interesting, and the drama doesn’t feel petty and weak, although it’s a little over the top. Even more so, this series doesn’t fall into the lull of boring, but stays lovely dramariffic.

This is Janette for Manga Monday, signing off.

Yes, it returns! I will be updating with this every other week to try to keep up better with my output this time. So without further to do, we present my representation of season 2 and the OVA.

I have a confession to make. I have not finished either, although I’m very close to finishing Kai. I’m watching it with my sister, so it has to be when we’re together. Still, I wanted to make sure I made a patch for them, and I felt the wheel of fate from the Rei theme song fit Kai perfectly. Kai is such a different and superior show to the first season of Higurashi, although it needs to first season to come together. The character development in every main character especially Satoko, Keiichi, Rika and Shion is downright beautiful, and how they all come together to save Satoko and then even solve the mystery, albit they were too late in that arc. I feel like season 2 in an anime that truly deserves to be remembered as epic.

The OVA is just good fun, a little something more for the Higurashi fan.

Oh, and MionxKeiichi all the way.

She did. Really. I wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of anything but a cynical grin.

PROOF!

The more Maria develops, the more I like her as a character. She changed a lot from that really creepy girl in the first arch. I now feel like I can relate to her. Seeing the backstory on Maria was also very interesting, and her journey into becoming a Witch of Orgins. While the anime doesn’t explain that very well, a Witch of Orgins is akin to a white mage.

Umpfth! I think Sakutaro is the cutest mascot ever. In Umineko of all things.

Maria definitely a member of Team Beato though. However, I’ve been struck by a moment of insanity and can’t help but wonder if there’s a lot more dimensions to this then Beatrice good, Battler bad. It’s just…when Beato wants to be nice, she’s so dang nice.

He just gets cuter as the episode progresses.

Especially as the world of witches seems much better then the real world. At the very least, it’s thanks to witches that neither Maria nor Ange end up completely alone. Of course, you could argue that it’s thanks to witches Ange’s alone in the first place. Maria’s situation is definitely a sad one though, especially as she’s so willing to overlook what Rosa is doing.

Maria makes a good point.

Another character, or rather set of characters, that I’m getting more attached to as they develop are the Stakes of Purgatory. What were merely killing machines have become actual characters with personality.

Apparently the stakes are suckers for anything cute.

I really like Sakutaro’s voice actor. Usually, I don’t really care about voice actors, but this one’s voice is so adorable.

The episode ends with a deal with the devil. Say no Ange! These always end badly, and you don’t want to damn your brother to an eternity with Beato.

While I don’t blog Cross Game too terribly often, I still watch it. For awhile I’ve just let it build up for a few weeks and then watch it in one go, but ever since episode 29 it’s been too interesting for me to bear the wait, on top of the fact that there hasn’t been too much else worth watching.

Cross Game threw me a curve ball(pun unintended) with the introduction of Akane, the Wakaba lookalike. Talking about episode 31 is hard; it was just too beautiful to even begin to put into words. I hope it suffices to say that a) that episode made watching the series worth it for me and b) will be remembered as one of my all time favorite anime episodes.

Episode 32 brought us back to the slice of life atmosphere, now with Akane in the mix. I do really like the addition of her, as I felt that the dragged out tension between Aoba and Kou was starting to get stale, and it’s nice to have someone to spice things up. Also, Akane is cute as a button, especially in her plaid school uniform.

I wonder if we’ll see a slip-up where the characters start expecting her to be just like Wakaba then encounter an un-Wakaba like action. It seems unlikely as the characters are being rather smart about the whole situation, but you never know.

Akane also seems to have the worst luck.

Despite her addition, I’m still thinking we’re going to have an AobaxKou ending.

Trapeze is an interesting show in that it’s pretty much an episodic story, but if you remove episode 2 from the mix, all the episodes have parallels between each other—as psgels of Starcrossed Blog pointed out. It leads that the feel that while it’s an episodic, it’s also an on-going story, and that the series is trying to give out a message that goes beyond one episode.

Being mostly episodic though, there’s not too much to say about the series, it’s pretty compact. I worry about this format though, it’s working for now, but will it be able to last the whole series or will it get stale and repetitive?

I’m really looking foreword to the next episode featuring an OCD character. As I’m personally OCD, I also look foreword to seeing how it’s portrayed.

Personally, I hardly read any manga at all, I prefer my pictures to move around with flashy effects whilst making noise.  So, the majority of what I’ve read are things that were thrust in my face by one person or another.  Heart no Kuni no Alice is no exception, and it came recommended to me by my friend Alex.

If you guessed that this manga is yet another adaptation of the Alice in Wonderland story, you would be right.  It’s also a bishonen adaptation, just to make it clear what you’re getting yourself into.  Alice lives in a world where she feels utterly unloved, while her sister seems to get all the attention.  She wishes beyond all else that she could be loved too.  Cue the appearance of Peter, the bishonenized white rabbit, who merrily whisks her away to Wonderland, where her dream can come true.

On the other side of the coin, being loved by everyone is definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.  Everyone wants her, and they are all cheerfully willing to kill to have her or die trying to keep her.  This doesn’t sit well with Alice at all.  This is where the author takes a sharp 90 degree turn.  Rather than being helpless and constantly bemoaning her situation, as most girls of this nature are wont to do, Alice thrusts into action.  She’s written as a relatively bright girl who is determined to keep herself (and everyone else) alive while trying to figure out how to get home and what exactly is plaguing this world.  She’s also definitely not above using others to her advantage, given her rather lofty position.

A lot of the charm so far has been watching the author slowly reveal the reimagined Wonderland and the characters within.  For example, the white rabbit is now a manipulative, conniving, and somewhat creepy chief advisor.  The Mad Hatter has received a proper gothic bishie name, Blood Dupre, and is now the boss of the mafia, and I can venture to guess what he traffics.  And really, who wouldn’t want to read a version of Wonderland with a mafia?

There are currently only 9 chapters translated, and while this is by no means the greatest manga in the world, so far it has been enjoyable.  It mixes parts of comedy, action, romance, and mystery, and while it does not excel in any area so far it’s achieved a balance, which is more than a lot of works can say.  If you want a bit of a change of pace for Lewis Carroll’s classic, give it a shot.

This episode was just a general, look we’re friends now! Although it got really weird halfway through…I mean, this show is usually weird, but this just went over the top.

LOL, Whut?

I just hope someone cleans that kitchen.

Very cute. I want to come home and having someone to serve me dinner...um, wait.

Not one of the best, it was pretty filler esque. Here’s to better next week.

Although the angelic choir here was perfect.