Un-Go ep 1-2 first impresstions

This was what I thought when I saw certain points of the anime.

Episode 1

Burning car? What happened?


Huh? What's this?


Oh, the previous image is super zoomed from this, but why place it at the very start of the opening animation? It's long and making a viewer pause just to read this (which you can't while it is being aired) is bad. Also, the name of the anime comes from the given name of the main character.


His chin is quite sharp and angular. I wonder if you can cut things with it?


She may be the first character you see after the opening and appear in this episode the most, she's not the main character.


The man who could solve criminal mysteries, but he doesn't ever leave his chair. Father of the girl in the previous screenshot.


Yes, he's pratically glued to the chair. I never saw him get out of it. This is the only thing I remembered about this episode: the lazy smart guy who makes his daughter (and other people)  do everything for him.

Episode 2

Not this again.... and there's nothing right before this.


A new case: culprit is a cross-dresser.


While solving, the main character come across a girl who could sing well. Turns out that she's the victim's daughter of the case they were on.


There's a problem here: the episode and case has abruptly ended.

Possibly Dropped anime: C³, Kimi to Boku, Ben-To

Covering three different anime at the same time. That's something rare of me to do, but long time readers would remember that I would put up a longer list and a short summary of it, but that didn't allow me to write much.

C³ (Cube×Cursed×Curious)
So the father's protagonist sends to his son a mysterious parcel from overseas. Then a girl who seemed to lack common sense pops out of it like magic. Then the protagonist dares to leave her alone while she knows nothing about the world, resulting in having a house in a wreck.

I can't watch this anime: from the characters lack of intelligence, and character design. As for the opening and ending themes, you may like the song though.

Kimi to Boku (君と僕。)

I'm not sure why I dropped this. I watched it again and found nothing wrong with it. Maybe I'm just disturbed on seeing a guy with long hair...

I think I'll watch it again.

Ben-To (ベン・トー)

Another strange anime: it's about groups of people fighting over half-priced lunch boxes towards the end of the end of the day. There's even a club dedicated to this kind of thing.

Just looking at the opening alone, and the way girl's bodies are portrayed, it's obviously not the kind of anime for me. I rather watch Haganai (僕は友達が少ない) than this anime that doesn't even make sense.

Other anime


As of the time of writing, there are quite a number of anime on my watch list. Other anime I'm thinking of dropping, but not yet, are:

• Mawaru Penguin Drum: It's starting to become a girl's love fantasy drama who is rudely awakened to reality than a pair of brothers doing whatever it takes to prevent her sister from dying from a strange illness. I was expeting Ringo Oginome (girl in a green and white sailor uniform)
• Sakugan no Shana 3 -Finale-: I felt that the end of season 1 as an Autumn 2005 anime was the true end of it and my attention for it's future season, are just extensions of it. Also, as of the second episode, there's too much talk and little action. A deja vu of To Aru Majutsu no Index (season 1 & 2), which is also produced by the same animation studio.

Anime I could have watched: Tamayura -hitotose-

I had watched the OVA that was released months before the anime, and the first episode of the anime itself. It about a girl who had gain interest on taking photos with her late father's (analog) camera.

There isn't really anything wrong with this anime I should say, apart the image quality appearing up-scaled at 720p, suggesting that it was upscalled.

However, this anime is just... too normal for me to catch my interest.  I tried to watch this, but because it failed to catch my attention, I would find myself falling asleep. Possibly even more quickly than an anime that I would drop in later episodes.

Add this to the amount of anime I watch at the same time (e.g. Penguindrum, Mirai Nikki, Haganai), and the other things I do, this has fallen out of favour.

[Review] Kamisama no Memo-chou

This whole scene makes me go "HUH? What?"

As I was watching God's Notebook (神様のメモ帳), I sometimes question the intelligence and common sense of the characters. My impression of this anime has dropped by a lot since I wrote a post when it was still new back in May.

There is a lot of potential in this anime, but it seemed to have gone to waste. I see a lot of talking, physical fighting, and some scenes that just doesn't realistically happen in real life. I see the potential relationship between Narumi and Ayaka, but seems to be forgotten mid-way. In fact, it would seem that Ayaka is nothing more than an unimportant character in the background until episode 10. Like No.6, it's a potential main character that has gone to waste.

Episode 9: An obvious filter episode

Episodes 2-9 seemed very much like filter episodes that, except for 4 and 9 (sarashi thief and baseball episodes), don't seem quite obvious. This makes the last few episodes seems quite rushed, which makes up for only a third of the total episodes. Steins;Gate, which I was watching at the same time, had every episode related to the main plot and spaced out evenly. It also doesn't have annoying mini arches.

To be fair to the animation studio, these filter episodes and arches were also in the manga with the same name that was released earlier than the anime. For the chapters relating to the anime's episode 2-3, I could see that the story is expanded in the manga. Most of the parts in episode 1 are also an anime original.

I did say before that I had dropped Hanasaku Iroha at mid-point for this, and I'm kind of regretting that decision because, storyline-wise, is too predictable. I might reconsider watching it again, but I won't be writing about it when I do. Speaking of which, I have decided not to watch Ro-Kyu-Bu I mentioned a few days ago. Maid outfits are a huge turn-off for me.

By the way, how many anime features a female as the main character instead of a secondary/supporting character? Not much. One who also has intelligence and looks beautiful (well, more than what I had watched), but does not boast about it herself or not take place in some poor or rich/elite (especially the latter) place? Even fewer. Well, that's Chihaya...

Wait I'm going off topic here. This shows how much I want to forget about how bad this was.

In memory of Ayaka the forgotten girl, who, as of the finale, is still in hospital and unconscious.

[Review] Nichijou

From left: Yukko, Mai, Mio

Now, this is one of the few anime I keep looking forward to: Nichijou (日常). For the first 12 weeks as part of the Spring 2011 lineup, it was aired together with A-Channel, which is also a slice-of-life anime based on a manga of the same name. It's not fair for me to compare the difference between the two, since they are completely different and have nothing in common except the categories both fall under. What I'm glad about is that Nichijou did not have mention or exaggerated on girl's bodies, or have episodes heading to the beach/pool that most anime that seems very predictable. In fact, the time of the year things happen is not mentioned, but clothes people wear, and the plants in the background gives a not-so-obvious hint.

Misato's friend, though doesn't appear much

Each Nichijou episode is divided into several skits instead of a story that spans the whole series, though the skits are in chronological order. It features several characters that, may not know another character featured, and their friends too. Of course, the main characters (Mio, Mai, Yukko, Nano, Misato, Sasahara) are the more frequently shown characters.

As the episodes go by, I noticed that certain main characters don't see, or even know each other, even though the two have a mutual friend in common. Example: We didn't see Mio meeting up with Misato even though both knew Sasahara and Mio's older sister.

If you are looking for an anime that takes a break from action, fantasy, the typicality of other high school-based anime, or are busy and just want to watch without worrying who's who, what happened previously, this might be the one just right for you.

Anime I could have watched: Ro-Kyu-Bu

I have heard of Ro-Kyu-Bu (ロウきゅーぶ！) back when the summer anime lineup was announced, but did not pick up interest because it contains the following keywords that would have me to automatically not watch it:

1. primary school (小学校)
2. centres around a type of sport (basketball)
3. lolicon

What is having me reconsider is that I only have 1 anime to watch as most of the other anime have ended and the above music video relating to the opening theme song.

[Review] Yuru Yuri

Back in July, I asked if I should watch this anime, but never got a reply to it.

Honestly speaking, I wasn't really paying attention to this anime. I was watching it, but couldn't remember much about it at the top of my head. All I could say that it's about first year middle school girls feeling affectionate to each other. Sometimes one-sided and annoy others.

Would you believe me if I had watched No.6 at the same time as this? It's a whole different type of anime to begin with.

If Yuru Yuri was like this... but I guess not.

[Review] Bunny Drops

If you are looking for something family-orientated or heart-warming, you would find that Bunny Drops (うさぎドロップ) would be just the anime for you.

Bunny Drops centres around a single man, Daikichi, in his 30s. At his grandfather's funeral, he discovered that he had a child that is 6 years old. None of his other relatives are willing to take her in, so he took the initiative to do it.

As time passed, he realized how mature Rin is, but still has to juggle with work. It was difficult at first, but he found a way to get around it. Rin's friends, and staff of her school even thought that Daikichi is her father. Along the way, she made a new friend with Houki and grew up together.

If you had read the manga, you would notice that the anime ended at the chapter right before the time skip by ten years. I would say that it's a good point to end the anime as after that, it would be from Rin's point of view mostly, and I'm already too familiar with anime taking place in high school.

That's a lot of things to carry.

[Review] No.6

I have mixed feelings for No.6. It has a good storyline and visuals, but certain elements with the design of supporting characters (Safu was okay), episodes that progressed very slowly, and the behavior of the main character, makes it difficult for me to recommend or re-watch it as I dread happening.

When I watched it, I was thinking that Safu would appear more frequently than Nezumi, but the opposite happened. Explanation of the other cities, except for a brief moment of No.5 where Safu did her overseas studies, were not even mentioned.

What I could see about No.6 is that it is being run by a fascist government that spreads propaganda, conducts experiments on it citizens, and killing those who did not follow, or come across some truth that the government does not want them to know. How those bees got into people, or how it made them age rapidly wasn't explained. In fact, a lot of things weren't explained and leaving me puzzled about things.

Also, is there a significance with the baby Shion saved in episode 9? I fail to see how, and it appearing near the end of the final episode seemed unnecessary.

I never noticed it until close to the last episode, but I didn't realize that there wasn't a very tall wall in the first episode, or the slum in the desert on the other side of it used to have beautiful houses and green hills.

Safu really said that.

[Review] Steins;Gate

Note: This story centers a lot around the Radio Kaikan building in Akihabara, right outside the JR station. If you haven't heard, to damage from earthquakes, particularly the M9.0 in March 2011, and built at a time where building codes to withstand it are not as stringent as today, the building has been dismantled since July. It would be rebuilt with modern building codes by 2014. Most of its tenants has moved to 3 buildings nearby.

Steins;Gate centers around time-travel and "world lines" (different course of routes resulting from a particular action if something at a particular point in time happened, did not happen, or happened differently). It centers around Okabe Rintarou, Mayuri, Makise Kurisu, and Akane Suzuha. It mostly takes place at their "lab", which is just a rented apartment unit above a CRT store, but Radio Kaikan is an important place relating to events.

I liked how the anime was expressed, the suspense of mysteries and wanting to know more at the end of each episode. It managed to describe the complexity and paradox of changing the past. At times, I even found myself shocked of what has been revealed during the anime for the first time, if it weren't for the spoilers from the visual novel it's based on.

Steins;Gate is one of the best anime that I've seen so far for this year that ranks among anime like Purella Magica Madoka (魔法少女まどか), and Anohana (あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない。). It managed to stray away from the norm that are quite predictable, obvious filter episodes, and at the same time, has good storyline, and attention to detail. Character design could still be improved on, but is enough to overlook on because of the good storyline.

With regards to the paragraph at the very top of this post, I had to say it because phrases such as "since it can't change places while time machine, this time machine remained at the same spot" would conflict with a newer, taller, building in its place if referred to in real life, with about a 20 year gap of the time Suzuha came from.

In memory of Amane Suzuha (born 2017, died in 2001 at around 60 years of age)
[in one of the timelines; calculating age is complicated if time travel is involved]