Author Archives: Chris

About Chris

Chris (aka Kagami) cares for only two things; cars and women. As an engineer, he appreciates all things mechanical, such as hot rods and giant transforming robots. He also collects various anime figurines.

Working!! Second Season Announced!

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I don’t know about you, but April 1st always makes me twitchy. It is all too successful at drawing innocent yet naive otaku out of their shells, giving them a taste of the oh-so-sweet candy, only to fall over laughing as the aforementioned sweet explodes in the poor victims face. In this case, for me, the “candy” was news of a second season of Working!! (a.k.a Wagnaria!!), a delicious series that took me by surprise with its charm. Although I first believed it to be a prank, according to ANN the news is actually legitimate! Confirmation was posted on the official website today with a trailer.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gweDrEoeLSY’]
(Edit: Subbed version available! Turn on closed captioning)

In case you didn’t know, Working!! is completely centered around a family restaurant, staffed by hyperactive and funny high schoolers. While there is plenty of moe to be had, somehow there is very little blobbery, making it a very enjoyable series to watch. Also on the good news front; the first season will be released onto Blu-ray on August 24. Now that the hype around April Fools has subsided for another year, I can really focus on looking forward to watching this series, and less about being pranked. What about you?

OreImo 2 & 3 – Moe Done RIGHT!

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The claw is our master!

Okay, drop everything you are doing right now and listen up. I am watching only one series this fall. Yup, it has already come to this; my last ditch attempt to spin my fanboy generators to maximum, my last summoning of will to enjoy an anime series with every fibre of my being. This is in a way quite sad, as there are plenty of people enjoying this season’s other anime to their fullest. Samurai Girls, Iron Man, Sora no Otoshimono, Panty and Stocking, or whatever your vice is; none of these are doing anything for me. The fanboy generator room has instead become a place of quiet meditation and brooding. That is, until I started watching My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute. Thats when things finally started spooling.

Now Jeagle did begin to review this series a few weeks back, but has since become lost in his own little world. My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute (or OreImo for short) has quickly become my numero uno anime for this season. Witty writing and dialogue, interesting characters and a wonderful art style makes for pleasant and funny watching. I guess what makes it so out there for me is the story. Here we have Kyōsuke, the older brother, almost characterless and devoid of much emotion, at least to start off with. He is sick of being the neglected child despite being the eldest of two. Then there is Kirino, the star of the show, the younger sister, the teen goddess, and boy, doesn’t she know it. If the anime itself isn’t very pretentious, Kirino makes up for this in leaps and bounds, much to Kyōsuke’s chagrin. The catalyst that kicks off the fun is Kirino’s closet fetish for little sister eroge. Sound dangerous? I have no idea where this series is heading, but am along for the ride.

Read more after the break.

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Video Game Sequel to “Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya” Announced

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Don’t you think it’s been a while now since we had some real Haruhi news? I mean REAL NEWS, not like the odd fart about how some random cinema in Hawaii or California will be showing The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya months after Japan forgot about it. Since I’m not in Hawaii or California, that kind of drivel has no appeal to me whatsoever. The fact that I’m endlessly waiting on someone to give us a DVD release date for Disappearance is beginning to destroy what little interest I have remaining in the Haruhi series. Now I see on ANN that the production team behind the Disappearance movie are making a PSP and PS3 “wandering adventure” game oh-so-typically named The Reminiscence of Haruhi Suzumiya. It’s set immediately after the ending of the movie, and features all the original seiyuus. Hello? What about the DVD?

This annoys me. Us English-speaking folk haven’t even seen the movie yet and already there are sequels appearing on the horizon. All we know is that the Disappearance movie will be released on DVD sometime in the spring of 2011, probably AFTER the game comes out.

*sigh*

I guess I could go on and on about how the people controlling the Haruhi franchise have repeatedly, in my opinion, pushed the limits of the fanbase, but I know its just a waste of time. Besides, its all been said before.

So if you are a Haruhi fan, can read and speak Japanese, and have already seen The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, then you may rejoice; you will have a new game to play sometime next year. I’ll be the one probably still waiting to watch the damn movie.

Series Review: Working!!

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Here we are at the tail end of the Summer 2010 season, with hardly anything worthwhile to watch. As Bakacast listeners know, we at Project Haruhi are having a hard time finding things to like in the anime we review each week. It’s getting pretty desperate here, such that we no longer care if the flat, uninteresting characters in shows like Highschool of the Dead live or die. Thankfully that is where Working!! comes in. This lifeline of hope was thrown to me by a friend who knew my despair. “This should help! This is moe as we remember!” she said as I sobbed into her arms about my lack of faith in moe. I remember her smile was like a ray of sunshine, boosting my confidence. Happily, she turned out to be bang-on correct. Read on to learn why she was right!

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Love Hina Manga Returns!

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The story that inspired a generation!

Nine years after finishing Love Hina, Ken Akamatsu has decided to publish a small one-shot of the romantic comedy manga in the next issue of Weekly Shonen Magazine. The one-shot will include six colour pages featuring Keitarō and Naru, however any details beyond that are sparse. This will also coincide with the 300th chapter of Negima!, another of Ken’s works.

If you are anything like me, then you too are now reveling in acute feelings of nostalgia. Savour them, and try not to feel old. Although Love Hina started back in 1998, I was first given it to read in 2005 whilst undergoing my first year of university. Up until then, I was completely ignorant and skeptical of manga in general, not to mention anime. To say that Love Hina turned my world upside down would be an understatement, as from that point on I was 100% addicted. So that’s where it all began for me, and as such the manga occupies a very special place in my memories.

But enough with the history lesson! What is your opinion of Love Hina? Have you too got a soft spot for it? Or have you moved on completely in your life and couldn’t care less?

Yen Plus Offers Free Online Manga!

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Yen Press, the US publishing company that holds the rights to titles such as Yotsuba&, K-ON! and Highschool of the Dead, has launched the online version of their monthly anthology magazine Yen Plus this week, replacing their now-defunct print edition. To celebrate this event, the August issue of the magazine is free, while any ongoing subscriptions will be $2.99 per month. The fact that this move occurs in the same week as the death of One Manga is perhaps only a coincidence, however with other publishing houses like Square Enix also putting content online, we may be seeing the beginning of a major shift in manga content distribution. What’s your opinion: are you along for the ride?

More after the jump.

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Thar She Blows: One Manga Signs Off

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Well, it has finally happened. One Manga, one of the biggest scanlation hoarding websites on the internet today, is closing up shop at the end of this week due to ‘publishers recently changing their stance on scanlations’. It was only a matter of time before the popular website submitted to pressure from the multi-national manga anti-piracy coalition, which aims to reduce the huge amount of manga piracy on the internet. Indeed, the scalp of One Manga will be a big victory for the coalition as, according to ANN, One Manga was ranked #935 on Google’s 1000 most visited websites on the ‘net. This is quite a staggering thought; to think that a website that relies on such blatant piracy could rise to become one of Google’s top 1000. No wonder it had to go.

Do you visit One Manga frequently? I know I did, yet as I said in my previous article, and I say again now: lets pull our fingers out and start supporting the industry we love. Consider the death of One Manga the final wake up call.

Project Haruhi First Anniversary Contest Winner!

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Last week, Project Haruhi celebrated its first anniversary as an anime blog. We asked you, the readers, to help us come up with a witty and fun tagline that would suit this website. Well, congratulations to Kamanashi for the winning comment! Project Haruhi: We’re not interested in ordinary cartoons is definitely something Haruhi herself would say and captures the vibe of the website perfectly.

Kamanashi, please forward your contact details to ryoko[at] projectharuhi.net and we shall send you your prize, a $50 gift certificate for J-List. Once again, congratulations!

Kamanshi’s blog and Twitter

Honorable mentions:
Galen: I Can’t Believe Its Not Moe!
Starlogic: Because Sankaku Complex is NSFW
Zzeroparticle: Chocolate Cornets and Other Anime Musings; After School Tea, Cakes, and Anime

Figma Fever: Young Haruhi by Max Factory

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Have you always wanted that diorama of both young and older version of Haruhi kicking Kyon’s ass? Well, wait no more! Max Factory has added to their Figma lineup by releasing a younger version of Haruhi Suzumiya for your enjoyment. In case you didn’t already know, this loli-Haruhi is from the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody arc, one of the more pivotal episodes in the the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. More after the jump.

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Series Review: Angel Beats!

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First things first, I didn’t like Angel Beats!

This is totally crazy, I know. This is the show everyone in the interwebs is drooling over. Surely I must have caught some rogue virus that rots away the parts of the brain that enjoy moe anime. I mean, I don’t like K-ON!! either, so just what is wrong with me? You’d think since I enjoyed Clannad so much this new offering from the same writer would be just as good, or at least have the same amount of impact as its predescessor, right?

WRONG.

Looking back at previous Key series, it turns out I didn’t like Air or Kanon very much, so it should hardly seem surprising that Angel Beats! ended up on the disappointing end of the scale with the rest of them. Why is that? The tried and tested formulas were there: mysterious afterlife world, highschool setting, girls with guns, a bit of fun thrown in the mix with emotional reefs to run aground on, etc etc etc. Oh, and a lead female protagonist who looks like Haruhi. Yup, all the key ingredients were there to satisfy my brain, and by all accounts Angel Beats! should have been win… yet it wasn’t.

Find out why after the jump.

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