animu holiday (well, not really)

As I noted I didn't get anywhere near doing all the stuff I wanted to over the holidays.

I did manage to get a bit of scanning done - I did the two megamis that I had, but I still have a newtype, animage and animedia left and the new ones will be arriving pretty soon.

The anime bits I watched while I scanned were:

• Nodame Cantabile: Paris was really rather good. This is actually a sequel, and I'd not seen the other series, so I only watched the first episode to get a flavour. I liked what I saw and may well look to see if it's purchasable (though obviously once I clear some other stuff).
• Jigoku Shoujo Mitsugane was also surprisingly good. Like Nodame this was also a sequel (in fact I actually thing it's a part 3 :/) to a show I'd not watched so I only took in the first episode. It seems quite dark and rather harsh in that eastern ghost story style, but then I've no problems with that. I know the first season of this is available, so I'll definitely be picking it up.
• One Outs was another one that was surprisingly good. Weirdly it reminded me of a show called Kaiji but it's not really got any real relationship to that manga/anime. It was more just the story style: heavy on the exposition, but in a thoughtful way. I was also surprised because it was about baseball (well, it's set in the world of baseball - it's not really about baseball, as such) and I don't really like baseball, but I still enjoyed this.

I also watched Maburaho over my holidays. It was, quite frankly, poor, but I'll do a proper review at some point, so I won't go on about it too much here.

I've also had two good pieces of news on the anime front. Firstly, a series I loved when it came out called Oh! Edo Rocket is going to be released by Funimation and secondly Baccano! is coming out on DVD this month, also from Funimation.

Both shows are really great and I'd recommend checking both out if you get the chance.