Differences From the Manga and Anime

I recently bought the manga, I don't mind the chronological order being mixed up, but switching characters is very glaringly obvious. Especially episode 6.

	Some unknown judgment girl has been switched with Konori Mii during the searching scene. They are also searching at a bridge instead of a tree. I can understand a tree, but why a bridge?

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To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 06

What? A doll being sucked inwards?


What was that?

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To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 05

That is Kuroko alright, but she looks younger than we know.


Push-ups (Uiharu is at the far left and Kuroko is left of her)

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To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 04

This is a real story of my senpai's boyfriend: He was walking through a park on a hot summer's day when he came across a pale-looking woman. The woman asked him how to get to the (train) station. As he gave her directions, the woman raised her hand and, in a flash...


*gulp*

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Minor stuff noticed in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

Those drinks... they look familiar... where have I seen them before? Let's have a closer look at the drink.


Curry Soup? Soup of the bear? Well, I don't remember the name, but I know it had that design.


Ah! It's one of the drinks that came out that had earlier swallowed Touma's 2000 yen note in Index.


The covers appear to be based on actual magazines, but let's focus on the bottom of where Mikoto is standing at.


Wait?! "Denki Daioh" with the cover of Shana??? About the Shakugan no Shana S OVA that just came out this month???


Speaking of Shana, this scene in the same episode reminds me of the Shana Anime when the Fuzetsu is activated.


These two images are of the same place, with the 1st image being chronologically later than the 2nd. However, there is no closet in the first image. (Note: Kuruko is on Mikoto's bed)


Let's zoom in at the study desk behind Kuruko's bed. Railgun makes the place look smaller than Index. The fridge is still there but the gap on the left-side of the bed is a lot narrower and where did the bed go in the 2nd image of this set?


Speaking of Saten and Uiraru, these two girls did make a cameo appearance in the opening and some scenes in the main episode (quite rare) of Index. Btw, who is that guy in the 2nd image?

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 03

It feels like someone's following me, but I don't see anything.


What?! I am stunned? How can that be? I could have sworn I didn't see anyone behind me just a short while ago.

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To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 02

Mikoto appears to be running for some reason. Is she late, or is chasing someone else?


Why, it's our dear Touma from To Aru Majutsu no Index! Why is Mikoto chasing him anyway?

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To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 01

Mikoto drinks soda at the bridge railing.


Suspicious guys approach her. A nearby couple spots the trouble and contacts. the Judgment.

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Autumn 2009 Anime Preview

(cross-posted from main blog)

Related: Summer/Spring review, Spring 2009 review

Forgive me for having this out quite late. (Kämpfer ep2 would be airing in a few hours.) Let's just get it started as this is a continuation of the previous Spring/Summer anime review post.
(Note: Screenshots may not feature the main character or suggestive scenes in the anime.)

"This library is the best place to fight"

Kämpfer
けんぷファー

Rating: Medium-High

Description: Senou Natsuru is your normal, everyday high school student. However he´s been chosen to be a Kampfer, who´s objective consists on fighting other Kampfer with either guns, swords or magic, however, there´s catch; first you can´t chose if you´re a Kampfer or not, and second, you must have the body of a girl to use your powers.

Comments: Haven't seen a Male-to-Female transformation for quite a long time. When was the last one? Simoun? Kashimashi? Ether way, it was a long time ago.

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2009 Spring/Summer Anime Review

(Cross-posted from main blog)
Related Links: Winter 2009 review, Spring 2009 preview

Hmm... I forgot what I had watched since I didn't write a review for Spring or preview for Summer despite Autumn just started.

Where did I put it....


Oh here it is. I would like to put images from the episodes, but I don't have them. Umineko is the only exception among the dropped anime with screenshot since I just dropped it at the time of typing.

Oh, I did hear that anime that I had highlighted in bold is quite good, including those that I did not watch.

Anime I didn't watch at all

Well these were anime that were stated to air for both Spring and Summer seasons, but didn't watch them mainly due to lack of interest.

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Theories of a possible new Haruhi season

There was the original Summer 2006 14-episode and the renewed Spring 2009 28-episode of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱), along with The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒちゃんの憂鬱) on YouTube shortly before the 2009 renewal.

At the time the renewal was announced, people thought that it was a repeat broadcast. However, people noted that it was aired in chronological order with some networks airing The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00 (朝比奈ミクルの冒険 Episode00) or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Part 1 (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱I) first, along with extended scenes from the DVD. Even then, people still ignored it. It wasn't until 8 episodes later when Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody (笹の葉ラプソディ), a new episode with a new ending theme (there was no OP in that episode), that people started to pay close attention to it.

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Bakemonogatari OP1/ED1 lyrics

(Japanese/日本語)

Opening Song: "Staple Stable" by Saitou Chiwa
(Full version not yet available)

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K-ON! - Episode 13 (Final)

It's nighttime at Mio's house with her bedroom windows appear to be covered by something. She's working on writing with the lyrics. It seems that the cold winter has arrived.

On a morning, Tsumugi rides the 1-car train at a deserted station terminus.
Ritsu walks along sidewalk, but stops for a while to look at 2 girls from the same school who walked past her before continuing on. She turns around to see another pair of girls together and walks again.
Azusa walks across a bridge and finds a white cat, but when she tries to pat it, the cat hisses. So she walks away.
The Hirasawa sisters are walking together on the way to school too.

OP

Everyone is in the clubroom table having tea, but not talking with each other. Yui walks in and joins them, complaining about the cold. Yui suddenly placed her cold hands on Ritsu's cheeks. As payback, Ritsu does the same thing to Yui.

番外編　冬の日！

The cold makes it hard for Yui to play the guitar. She tries to play it with the gloves on, but the pick keeps slipping off. When she does manage to get a hold of it, it keeps getting stuck by the strings. Ritsu says that that is obvious and asks Ritsu if she agrees, but is staring blankly. Yui then asks everyone to have hotpot at her house on Sunday, but sighs filled the room: Tsumugi has something to do, Ritsu had promised her younger brother to see a movie, Azusa has to stay at home. By this point, Yui is already disappointed. She asks Mio too, but she can't too as she's writing a new song and blames Yui and Ritsu for distracting her and shows her a notebook full of scribbles as proof. There was a slight pause before those two apologized to her. In the end, Yui would have it with just Ui (and Gitah).

While everyone walks home, Tsumugi suddenly calls out that she has to leave and runs towards the fast food restaurant (the very same restaurant featured in most K-On episodes), leaving everyone puzzled as to what she was up to, like meeting up with a boyfriend. Ritsu feels uncomfortable when the word "boyfriend" is mentioned. At that point, Ritsu & Mio and Yui & Azusa go their seperate ways. Not long later, Azusa says that she has some shopping for "some toys" to do near the station before heading home, but doesn't want Yui to come along and excuses herself from there.

Meanwhile, Mio asks Ritsu about something, but Ritsu suddenly stops and turns around. Mio wonders if there is something wrong.

Yui walks out of the convince store with hot meat buns in her hands.

Morning has arrived. A girl is seen opening the sliding door with her legs while she shivers in the cold. She walks out of the door and takes the newspaper from the mailbox. She looked at the mailbox closely, but finds nothing else in there. She looks around for something before walking back in and closing the door.

At Azusa's house, she took out something she bought earlier. The gray cat in the scene belongs to her classmate (who is seen mostly with Ui in school) whose grandmother was supposed to take care of, but caught a cold. It's still a kitten, so she's afraid to leave it by itself. However, Azusa has never raised a cat before. She takes it in anyway as there was no one else who would do it.

Tsumugi is in her work uniform and punches in her card. Mio is on a train, bringing her notebook along. Yui has only just began to wake up.

Ritsu lies on the bed, reading a sheet of paper that sounded like a poem. On the line "But I want to see how you look with your bangs down" made her deep in thought. She removes her headband (that unknown girl from earlier was her), added some hair cream, and looks into the mirror: she looks weird. Her younger brother called if she was ready go head out. Ritsu puts her headband back, grabs a coat, and heads out of the room. She enters back a short while later to take her mobile phone.

Azusa is sitting on the couch with the cat curled up while taking a nap. The cat meowed as she patted it, With that, she names it "Azu-nyan #2".

At the restaurant, Tsumugi is serving a customer, with a Trainee tag on, repeating their order. A colleague reminded her to smile.

Mio walks along the cold rocky beach with a canned drink, finding a nice spot to sit on to come up with a good song. The place has dark clouds, strong wind, and strong sea waves.

At the dairy section of the supermarket with Yui, Ui is disappointed that nobody is coming. Yui came up with the idea of creating a new style of hotpot that would be used when everyone comes. She suggests marshmallow soy milk hotpot and chocolate curry hotpot, but Ui doesn't think that it would work. Yui argues back by saying that they might be tasty. On that, Ui suggests strawberry milk.

CM

At the beach, the cold and the strong winds made it hard for Mio to come up with anything and wished that she should have just went to Yui's house for hotpot, but everyone else had something to do and wonders what they are up to.

Ritsu and her younger brother has left from the movie theater. All of a sudden, she touches his cheeks and finds them worm. The brother (named Tainaka) is horrified by this but is saved by a friend who is on the way to Suzuki's house (Wonder who's that? Ui's friend?) and joins him. After Ritsu's younger brother left, she looks at the reflection of herself in the glass window.

At Tsumugi's workplace, she placed a cup of cola on the tray, but the customer ordered coffee instead. At that she takes the drink away, but bumps into her colegue and spilling the drink onto her. Although the latter apoligized, Tsumugi panicked and deeply applogized repeately.

Azusa woke up from her nap and finds out that the kitten is unwell and is chocking out something.

Back to Ritsu, she is reminded with the mysterious piece of paper placed in the mailbox and belives that it's a love letter. It was at that moment that everyone received a message from Yui asking if they would rather have a marshmallow soy milk hotpot or a chocolate curry hotpot. Everyone is puzzled as to what the message meant.

The Hirazawa sisters are now at the vegatables section. Yui wonders why nobody is replying, before she receives a call from Azusa. Azusa said not to send weird messages at "times like this". Yui did not understand what she meant by that. Azusa explained that the cat a friend had she had been entrusted with is not feeling well and there is no one else at home. She's at a loss at what to do.

The Hirazawa sisters are now at Azusa's house with the cat sleeping. Azusa didn't know that cats coughed up hairballs. Yui then feeds Azusa with a marshmallow and says that it's better to have it as it is. She checks her phone to find that everyone has repiled to her.

Everyone is now gathered at the restaurant where Tsumugi works at. Jun, who gave Azusa the cat, has now collected it back. Mio did not come up with anything to write. Yui is amazed at how they could do things by themselves and leaving Yui behind to become adults. At that, Mio asks Ritsu about the lyrics she had handwritten and left it in her mailbox. Ritsu was shocked when she said that: all the while she thought that it was a love letter from a mysterious sender. She feels uneasy on the thought of having a same-sex relationship before strangling and said not to do things the old-fashioned way. In defense, Mio said that she had informed in advance, but Ritsu continues on.

At the clubroom, everyone wonders why Tsumugi is playing the keyboard as usual while everyone else is having difficulity playing theirs. Yui touches them and finds them warm. Ritsu and Mio joins in. Tsumugi has a high body tempreature.

Everyone is having a nice warm cup of tea and some cakes. She would be working at that restaurant until the end of the year (How long is that? 1 month? 11 months? Has Christmas and New Year's alerady passed?). Yui then wonders if it's expensive to rent the Budokan, as they can't do a live performance if they don't. Tsumugi comments that it's good to have big dreams. As they are not professionals yet, they could do with some practice.


ED

[insert "大正野球娘。" episode 1 trailer here instead of the usual "Next Time" trailer here]


The whole series in 7min 17min (basically, a collection of the 36sec summaries up to episode 12)


Overall review of the series: "K-On!" is a great series to watch as a whole and meets almost all of the requirements that would have me to look forward to it and watch it to the end. It has nice character design and a great storyline to go with it. No offense, but most of the other anime I had watch either have great storyline, but questionable character design, or very moe (萌え) characters, but horrible storyline. It's strange how I can write a lot based on how little there is in this special. I started writing this on Friday, but the Spring 2009 anime review and the news of MJ's death delayed it further.

I was thinking of doing Haruhi too, but I already had trouble doing this already, and multiplying what I had done for "K-On!" by 2 and add another 2 episode is torturing if not willing to do it. You might have probably have seen some kind of pattern on the way I wrote. If I start now, I would have 13 episodes' worth to catch up with. However, the time spent doing this could be better spent doing other things like my stories on my main blog, which I have not put up anything (not even in draft) for quite a while. On top of that, I have to head off to somewhere from July onwards, with more details on my main blog. Since I'm writing this like out of leisure, it has been great. Due to me being away, I probably won't be able to watch from 10th July onwards and maybe the 2 days before that as I need to do some packing and sleep early. (The time of this post tell you how messed up my sleeping hours are.)

K-ON! - Episode 12

Yui has yet to recover from her illness and is resting at home while Ui takes care of her. (She's having a dream about Tsumugi's eyebrows...) Ui takes care of her so much that she herself risks being late for school.



OP

In Ui's class, she talks to Azusa that she's still too ill to probably come to school the following day. The problem is that the school festival is just 4 days away. Ritsu suddenly barges the door at that moment. Mio hits her for scaring their juniors.



最終回　軽音！

Mio listens to what Ui said about Yui's condition. As to how she got it, it ranges from catching Ritsu's flu (episode 11), or some days ago when they were trying out various costumes for their upcoming performance. (Ritsu don't seem to have the flu at that time.) Yui liked the yukata so much that she wore it the whole day. On the possibility that Yui might not recover by then, Mio asks Azusa to practice for the lead guitar.

That evening, Ui reaches home to see Yui holding the guitar with used tissues next to her while still lying on the bed and uttering random words to describe delicious food. Ui is worried for her.

The following day, the club practices as Mio teaches Azusa. Yui drops by the clubroom with the implication that she did not go for classes earlier and they practiced together. Everyone felt that something was different: Yui played the guitar with the rhythm being too accurate. Upon Yui addressing Azusa, Ritsu and Tsumugi as "Azusa-chan","Ritsu-san", and "Tsumugi-san" instead of the usual "Azu-nyan", "Ricchan", and "Mugi-chan" respectively. It turns out that this Yui is actually her younger sister. Sawako is not fooled by this as Ui's breasts are larger than Yui's. (Come to think of it, Ui is wearing red indoor shoes instead of blue.) She tries to deny it, but it's quite obvious from the voice now.

Ui changes back (with the blue ribbon and pantyhose still on) to her usual self. They commented on how much she really looks like Yui to the point that everyone didn't notice it at first. At that point, the real Yui drops by but is not really recovered. (She's holding a box of tissues) Yui is happy to see her guitar there, runs to it, but collapses due to the weight of it and her being weak.

Yui lies down on the couch with her fever still up with Tsumugi taking care of her. Yui knows that she's still too sick to play and counts on Azusa to take over her role. Azusa doesn't want to, as not having everyone there is as good as not performing at all and starts running out, crying. Mio stops her and advices Yui to not come to the club until the performance to let her rest.



CM

It's 12:30 of the day of the festival, half an hour before they are scheduled to perform. Yui has not yet appeared, but had messaged Tsumugi that she would make it on time. Azusa still doesn't want to practice without Yui around. Nodoka enters to tell them that the performance would be delayed by 10 minutes, but to head there as planned.

(With the sound of Yui's castanet in the background,) Nodoka recalls their time back in kindergarten where she would gather a lot of small lobsters and dumping a whole load of them into Nodoka's bathtub. She didn't know about it at first, but she did see Yui running back and forth several times. She was shocked to see those lobsters. The present Mio shivers in fear. The point of her telling this is that once Yui has her heart on something, she would go all the way. Nodoka believes that Yui had forgotten about having a cold.At that point, Sawako brings in Yui with the Yukata on and apologizes for making Azusa worried.

Yui wonders where her guitar was as she though she had left it in the club room. Turns out that Ui had brought it home and place it in Yui's room, but is too sick to notice that she did back then. Yui worries about what to do. Sawako offers her guitar, but Yui can't play on guitars besides her own, so she rushes back home to grab it.

Everyone is excited about the performance with the light music club about to perform. Everyone is in their yukatas and in Yui's place, Sawako takes over. Meanwhile, Yui grabs the guitar at home and rushes back out. As she rushes back to school, she remembers running like this back on the day of the opening ceremony (episode 1) and telling herself that she had to do something, but doesn't know what that would be and worried about growing up without doing anything.





劇中歌①：「ふでペン ～ボールペン～」

Yui made it back just as they were done with the first song. The audience were heard cheering. Yui climbs onto the stage and thanks Sawako for taking over her. She reintroduces the club to the audience also apologizes to them for being late as she had forgotten her guitar. She explained that the club has a goal to perform at the Budokan and worked hard together to buy a guitar, drink tea everyday, have training camps. She add on to say that the stage they are on is their Budokan. Yui starts off the next song.





劇中歌②：「ふわふわ時間」
(Yui's singing this time)

At the end of the song, Tsumugi suddenly continues playing on the song with the rest following suit. Yui then continues singing from the chorus and exclaims to everyone that she likes music.

They ran out of time just as Yui wants to sing more.



おしまい
(The end)

ED

Note: Sad to see them go at this point, but there is a winter special next week. Credits seems to mention that Tsumugi was the one who composed the music. The animation during the performance (except Yui's running) looks weird...