almost unbelievable

I did some scanning!

Granted, not a lot of scanning, but "some" is, like, a million percent more than "none" isn't it?

I've also been continuing to watch anime fansubs. Some of this was while I scanned, but the majority was just randomly watched.

Guin Saga

Well I guess this show proves I haven't lost my disinterest in fantasy like I was afraid with Tear to Tiara. Guin Saga did very little for me.

It's a fantasy type story, in case you hadn't guessed, and, as far as I'm aware, it's another one based on an RPG and it again shows. But where Tiara had a bit of humour to lift it, this is played totally straight.

It's odd the parallels between the shows, actually - both involve royal siblings being saved/aided by people we're not quite sure about. In Tiara it was unclear if he was a good guy or bad guy, but in Guin it's more that it's unclear who and what he is.

Guin appears to have a leopard's head and has lost his memory. Unfortunately, the former makes him seem like some reject from a Mexican wresting match and the latter is a rather played out idea that isn't' given any real life here.

What I think I'm saying is that if fantasy is your bag then you might get more mileage, but it really wasn't for me. Oh, and whichever camp you're in, you need warning that the animation is pretty damn poor. It just about reached okay level during the fights, but otherwise it's really cheap stuff.


Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen

Now there's a title and a half to get your gob around!

I've honestly not got a lot to say about this.

I mean, it's a Go Nagai series, and if you like Go Nagai's giant mecha stuff I see absolutely no reason you wouldn't like this.

My own personal take is somewhat of a cool distance. I have no problems with Giant Mecha (indeed, many of the shows I'd put up the top in my personal rankings would be Giant Mecha shows) but I'm not such a big fan of these "original" style shows.

It's difficult to explain - I like shows like Godannar or Gurren Lagann that pay affectionate homage to these types of shows, and I like shows like Eva that bugger about with them, but the shows themselves don't quite work for me. I think it's because there too earnest.

A knowing wink and a some sort of acknowledgement within the show itself that the whole thing is bizarre/silly goes a long way for me. I've no problem with the things they get up to, so long as there's a flavour of the creators themselves knowing that what they're doing is daft.

Plus, often-times the writing leaves a lot to be desired. And if I'm brutally honest, Go Nagai's character and mecha designs leave me a bit cold.

But if you're good with all that stuff, then this should be right up your alley.


Slap Up Party - Arad Senki

And here's another one with a bizarre name.

Also, rather bizarrely, it's yet another one where it opens in the dark. All of the series I've sampled just recently have either had all of their opening episodes set in the dark, or they've certainly opened in the dark.

Tears to Tiara the first two eps were at night, Guin Saga, the first ep was at night, Darker than Black had loads of night-time stuff, Mazinger, about 80% of what I watched was at night. And this opens in the dark too... weird. Although, to be fair, it does then proceed to being in bright daytime.

Plus, to cap things off, I believe it's another show adapted from a fantasy RPG game. I could be utterly wrong on that, as I've done no research at all, but it certainly feels like it is.

And it also feels like a show that just isn't my cup of tea.

I've never really thought much about it, but I think it's the fact that they're all really similar these fantasy RPG things. They involve a group going on a quest, often with the group acquiring allies and enemies as it goes.

They're all just Lord of the Rings with a variety of different characters.

So I guess if that sort of thing works for you, you might like it, but for me, this was a non-starter.


Princess Lover

Now this shows was a turn-up for the books.

Obviously I've seen the pictures that have been in the magazines and they rather stuck in my mind, shall we say? I mean, how could they not, given the melons quotient?

What I wasn't expecting was that the show was really rather good.

Well, the other thing I wasn't expecting was that all the fan-service would be heavily censored. And I mean all the fan-service. In the first couple of episodes the fan-service doesn't run to much more than a few panty shots and they're totally obscured by heavy black shadows.

It's a little odd - especially as in the second ep the hero actually refers to the colour of three of the girls knickers and we can't actually see them, because they're in black shadow.

Now I'm sort of used to this, in that I've seen quite a few fansubs that obviously had stuff censored out in this fashion and then later seen the DVD versions with stuff on show. But it's usually more reasonable - censoring out nipples on the broadcast TV version is understandable, knickers isn't, given how much anime has them in.

Maybe it's something to do with the time of day the show is broadcast? Or perhaps it gets more extreme later on? Certainly the show is apparently adapted from a hentai game.

But anyway, the point is that the stories actually not half bad. Or at least, it's being done in a not half bad way - I'm not sure there's anything here that I haven't seen before, but it looks like some care and attention has been put into making the plot a bit more substantial than the usual rom-com fair.


Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou

I only watched the one episode of this as it was obvious it was a show very much aimed at young girls. Plus I've only seen 2 eps subbed on the listing site I use.

I guess if you're a young girl this might work for you, but for me it was way too much into that whole genre. It's sort of wrong for me to say it was bad, as it's just not even something that's even vaguely aimed at me.

Although, and not wanting to get too deep here, I must admit, I do wonder whether this sort of thing would be produced outside of Japan. The focus the girls have on being 'pretty' seems a little disturbing to me.

I mean, on one level it rejects it, but at the same time sort of re-affirms it. It's a little odd.

Also, the animation was weird - it looked like some sort of bastard love-child of CG cell-shading and traditional hand-drawn animation. It was very odd looking.