Hanazakari no kimitachi e, or hanakimi, which it gets shortened to, is   not based on that original an idea. Mizuki Ashiya is a girl, who, due   to various circumstances finds herself transferring to an all-boys high school, and hilarity ensues. Well, I guess that the circumstances in question could be worth mentioning.

Basically, there’s this boy who’s a promising high jumper, Sano Izumi. During a training camp in the US, where Mizuki lives, Sano saves Mizuki from a bunch of thugs and gets injured in the process. Feeling guilty, Mizuki transfers to his school to make him high jump again.

So yes, I suppose there’s some little bit of side story that is high jumping related, but there’s not at alla where the main plot, if you can really call it that, lies. The focus is instead on the “hilarity ensues” part. You see, this boarding school is… special. Right, I guess I should mention that it’s supposed to be a school only for ikemen (good looking guys), something that seems to be important for some of the hijinks. Also, the school is divided into three dorms, the jocks, the actors/smart guys(?), and, uh, the rest, which I guess is a mix of the other two dorm characteristics. A lot of the episodes are about competition between the dorms. Noone in the show is exactly sane, either. It all makes for a cast full of odd personalities.

So, yeah, it really turns out like one would expect, girl ends up sharing rooms with boy, boy finds out the truth but keeps it secret, other boy also gets interested in girl, triangle drama ensues, and none of this without me watching and seeing how she’s obviously not a guy at all, and how the heck can they not immediately notice that. Because, yeah, it’s pretty obvious she’s a girl.

Anyway, if I were going to give any sort of thoughts on the show, I guess I’ll have to say it was pretty entertaining, at least worth watching once. I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, but I might read the manga by Nakajo Hisaya, which this series is based upon, as I heard it ends differently from the dorama, which in my opinion had a pretty weak ending. I’m certain that me being male doesn’t really put me into the target demographic either – this dorama is most likely more
appreciated by girls interested in watching cute young japanese men.

I might have something more to write about soon. Perhaps.

Now, this is a gem. I read and loved the manga the movies are based on immensely, and the casting for the movie versions is nothing short of perfect. They all look, behave, and act like I’d imagine they would from reading the manga. Urasawa Naoki, the mangaka behind it, has done a bunch of other very good stories, including Yawara!, Monster and PLUTO (a retelling of Tezuka Osamus magnum opus Astro Boy). I recommend reading the manga very much, as it is brilliant. The movies differ a little story-wise from the manga, but this first installment of what will be three movies is excellent.

I will try to not spoil too much, but the first movie is basically telling the story of the end of the world as we know it, with the epic climax being the use of biological weapons and a giant mechaish robot attacking Tokyo, with Kenji and his comrades trying to stop it all from happening, all the while trying to figure out the mystery behind the man known only as “Friend”, the leader of a weird cult that has been gaining in popularity. It has a lot of suspense, and like I said, I’d recommend giving it a watch. The whole trilogy has been licensed by Viz and they will start distributing them this fall, from what I’ve heard. The manga has also now (finally!) started to be available from Viz. Get them.

Well, what is there to say? The plot is basically the same, except this time Kurosaki is going after one of  the ones responsible for his own personal tragedy, as it really should be for a movie follow-up.

Unfortunately, the film isn’t very good. It has very little of what made the series awesome. In fact, I found the film boring, it took me about three days to watch it all together. They could probably have shaved at least 40+ minutes off of this 2 hours and 5 minutes long film, and it would only have served to make the movie less… bad. Too little plot in too long a movie, one could say.

Also, Tsurara makes almost no appearances, which also is a big step away from the series. A lot of the appeal of the series was, I think, in their interactions. So, yeah, this was a disappointment. If you’re interested enough to watch the series, you can spare yourself from watching this movie.

“By the time you notice, it’s already too late”…

Except I didn’t really like it. Don’t get me wrong, it could’ve been worthwhile to watch. It suffered a bit from poor execution. The animation quality isn’t really that great. I actually watched the show as it aired up until episode seven where I sort of lost interest in it (a decent story arc ended and I didn’t feel like keeping watching at that time), and then resumed to finish it a couple of days ago.

Look, it’s not good, but it’s not super mediocre either. The passes the characters make are pretty entertaining to listen to, for example. If I were to say something, it’d be that it’s watchable, if you don’t have anything better to do. It’s crap, I guess, but then again it is better than a lot of other crap. The manga or the light novels it’s based on is probably better. Go for that, if you must.

According to what is explained at the beginning of every episode, there are three kinds of swindlers; Shirosagi (white swindlers) who swindle for money, Akasagi (red swindlers) who swindle with emotions, and Kurosagi (black swindlers) that prey on the other swindlers. This series kurosagi, Kurosaki, is far from altruistic, of course. He’s emotionally distant and has a dark past and all that, thus not being very interested in romance with a poor university student such as Tsurara, nor anyone else, for that matter. Later on we get an awesome love triangle.

Kurosaki gets most of his jobs from an old master swindler who sells him information while sort of running a classy restaurant and being in generally crappy health. That guy also happens to be the mastermind behind the swindle that got Kurosakis family killed.

I liked the series. It definitely has moments of awesome, especially when Kurosaki carries through his heists. In many ways it also reminded me of another jdrama called “Liar Game”, which I might talk about more later. The show is about as long as what is normal for jdramas, eleven episodes. There’s also a movie that I have yet to watch, but I assume there’ll be more of a conclusion to it all in the movie, as the series did kind of end in the “reset ending” style, which imo is total bullshit every time I see it. It is not a bad idea to have definite endings, people! Or at least, make sure something gets accomplished… Anyway, for what it’s worth, it’s a good watch.

Air Master is based on a manga  by Shibata Yokusaru. and is basically about a 16 year old girl, Aikawa Maki, who turns to street fighting to pass the time after giving up professional gymnastics due to growing too large for the gymnast archetype. And yeah, she easily towers a lot of the other characters in the show. Speaking of characters, they are definitely the main draw of this series after the fight scenes (which are quite something, but I’ll get to that later). Apart from the normal (well, not so normal, really) friends Maki has, the opponents she meets are also quite colorful. Perhaps the most rememberable rival she has is Sakiyama Kaori, a wannabe model/idol who also ends up streetfighting and declares Maki her eternal rival despite getting the shit beaten out of her all the time.

But yes, the fights. They’re really well choreographed. Makis fighting style is very much based on her agility and her ability to jump (she is the eponymous Air Master, after all). It’s more or less like she’s flying during the fights. Her opponents all have different fighting styles and I’d say they all look pretty cool. I’d lie if I said it was realistic though. It starts out as almost plausible, but later on we get a guy who fights with two broken arms and two broken legs while not even being completely serious, and a guy in a freaking armored power suit (so that he can fight even with a broken hand).

As for the story, it isn’t really a strong one. It’s about Maki fighting just to feel the adrenaline rush she remembers from her gymnastics days. Later on in the series we get the mandatory tournament, too. Nothing worth really mentioning, really, but the awesome fights more than makes up for it.

If I were to sum this series up in one sentence, it’d be: The Initial D of street fighting. Yeah, because, really, it is a lot like Initial D, where we have Takumi driving around in the car showing off his totally awesome driving skills with “the galleries” oooh-ing and aaww-ing and discussing it. We have the same thing in Air Master, Maki and rival beating each other up while the spectators oohs and aawws. Which doesn’t make it bad, mind you. The fights outshines a lot of the competition, so to speak.

The ending disappointed me, though. Not that it felt terribly rushed or anything, it was just… odd.

Anyway, 27 episodes well spent.

Silver Fang, or Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin, which it’s also called, started out as a manga about an akita inu pup called Silver and a pack of dogs with a mission to kill the madly evil bear Akakabuto (“Red helmet”). See, I just summed it up in one sentence. Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, but it’s all very secondary. It’s the protagonists (Silver and the other dogs) versus the antagonist(s) (Akakabuto and his underlings). Ah, right, Akakabuto is trouble due to bullet induced brain damage which causes him to never hibernate.

The version I watched now is, like I said, cut-down. I imagine there is a lot that was left off, and it shows too in many instances. Going by the adcopy of the “special edition” (which is what they call the uncut, original language audio and subtitled version), episodes 9, 17, 18 and 19 weren’t even considered the first time around due to the violence. All in all, about 200 minutes were cut from the dub.

Speaking of the dub, one cannot call it great. The voice acting is  monotonous, and features a lot of “I have a lot to say and I need to say it very quickly and monotonous so that I don’t run out of time to say IIIIT!”. I’m pretty okay with that, about 1/4 of the characters are voiced by a pretty well-known swedish actor/tv host/singer. His voice is pretty unmistakeable even if he does some variations of it.

Also, there’s a bit of cursing in the dub. It is perfectly all right for a “family film”. What I don’t really understand is that they (on the covers) moved the story from Japan to Alaska. They don’t really say in the “movies” (as it was released cut up into four blocks of animation, I’ll call them “movies”) which country it is, but the names aren’t changed. I’m pretty sure names like Daisuke, Hidetoshi, Gohei, Benizakura and so on are more common in Japan than any american state.

Going back to the cuts, it’s only at the end of the show that it becomes bleeding obvious and confusing. I’ll risk some spoilers here by saying that in one scene a whole bunch of dogs are alive, and then they’re dead and one of them is making his dramatic dying speech. I mean, “huh!?”

All in all, I watched it mainly for nostalgic reasons, I can’t really recommend the dub to anyone. I know the uncut version should be available in some form even if you don’t know swedish, if you’re really that interested. Next up I’ll try and write something about the uncut Silver Fang, but that’ll probably be a few weeks due to vacation.

All in all, this series proved to be pretty good. I mean, it’s not like it’s the most awesome show ever, but it certainly had it’s merits. It kind of succeeded as well in “just one more episode”, so I watched through it all pretty quickly.

A common troll bait on the interweb seems to be “Code Geass is better than Death Note”. And well,  it may very well be so. I’ll at least say that Geass entertained me more, I didn’t even finish watching the Death Note anime (although I read all of the manga). That show also took a turn for the suck once L died.

I mean sure, both Kira and Lelouche had a whole casino full of Xanatos Roulettes, but in the end I guess they pretty much had the same goals. So yeah, the shows are very similar. But Death Note didn’t have any mecha. Well, not that a lot of the mecha stuff in Code Geass was kinda sub par, but there were a few good fights I guess.

Anyway, this post seems to get shorter than I originally intended. I guess I might come back to it at a later time, or just make a new post with more on this.