Review: Seitokai Yakuindomo 2

Real men aren't afraid to cry.

From my last review, you can clearly see that I’m trying my best to give Seitokai Yakuindomo a chance. However, the second episode did little to improve my opinion of this show. That’s not to say it was a complete flop; there were some ups, and by that I mean “a few funny jokes.” Sadly, these jokes aren’t funny enough to make up for a complete lack of plot, unbelievably boring characters and humor that’s starting to wear thin. But without further ado, lets get to the review.

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Bakacast Briefs – The Saga Begins

Hey, look! It’s the debut episode of Bakacast Briefs! As always, you can download it directly, subscribe to our RSS feed, or let iTunes do all the work for you. So, what is Bakacast Briefs, you ask? Basically, we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that Bakacast will only update once a month. However, we wanted to give our audience something to listen to during that large gap of time. So we figured we’d try doing mini-episodes that ditch our typical news and in-depth review format; instead, Bakacast Briefs will feature Jon (aka Ritsu), Chris (aka Kagami) and me giving our brief thoughts on each week’s new anime episodes. Unfortunately, Chris is unusually busy with something called “real life”, so it’s just Jon and me in this episode. We discussed:

I was hoping to add Sengoku Basara 2 to this list, but Funimation still hasn’t put the first episode up (so much for a “simulcast”). I’ll talk about it on next week’s show, I promise. Also, this list is likely to change as we drop shows we’re not interested in. So by the time we’re a few weeks in, we’ll probably have narrowed it down to a few shows that all of us are watching. In the meantime, tell us what you think of the new style. It’s very much in the “experimental” stage, so we’d love to know what you like or don’t like about it. The music used for this episode is “Colour Television” by J. Arthur Keenes.

Haruhi’s Blu-ray Appearance Doesn’t Come Cheap

As reported by Sankaku Complex [NSFW], pre-orders for the October 22 release of the complete Haruhi TV series on Blu-ray have recently gone up on Amazon Japan. With all twenty-eight episodes of Haruhi in high-definition, extra content and English subtitles, it may seem like this is the release fans are waiting for.

But then there’s the price: 30,000 yen (or $338 USD). For eight Blu-ray discs.

The Project Haruhi staff has talked about Japan’s absurd pricing structure multiple times, but it bears repeating. What the heck are they thinking? Here’s a short list of other stuff you could buy from Amazon Japan for that amount of money:

Okay, you probably get my point.

What makes this frustrating is the actual release is great. It’s something I might like to own, and I’m not even that big of a Haruhi fan. The price, however, kills it for me. The even crazier thing is that, compared to the price of the DVD release of Endless Eight, this Blu-ray release is actually a bargain. Collecting the single-volume release of Endless Eight on DVD would cost the equivalent of $288 USD.

So, now the question is: how many people will actually buy the Blu-ray series? And if it sells poorly, will Kadokawa interpret this as disinterest in the Haruhi franchise instead of a rebellion against outlandish pricing?

Review: K-ON!! 14

SURPRISE! :3

From the tone of my last K-ON!! review, you may have thought I despised this show. But it’s quite the contrary; I love K-ON!!. It’s chock full of laugh-out-loud humor and entertaining characters, and this week’s show was a great example of that. After my disappointment from last week’s subpar offering, this episode thoroughly rekindled my love for this series. It was filled with enjoyable humor and charm, and was a sheer delight from beginning to end.

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Crunchyroll on the Road to Profitability

Earlier yesterday, ANN reported that Crunchyroll—the formerly illicit streaming anime site that went legit in January of 2009—broke even in May. This is huge news for advocates of on-demand and simulcasted anime like myself. It proves that Crunchyroll’s strategy can work, which hopefully means Japanese companies will be less hesitant to put their stuff online.

To put this in perspective, the enormously popular YouTube has yet to turn a profit, though this is likely because the service was largely ad-free for quite a while. Crunchyroll, on the other hand, supports itself by charging subscription fees for instant access to their newest shows and—for non-subscribers—including commercial breaks in their videos. It would be interesting to see what percentage of their revenue comes from each source, though it’s highly unlikely Crunchyroll will ever release that kind of information.

Whatever the monetary breakdown, Funimation and the Anime Network are probably feeling much better about the chances of their own streaming services. And if they succeed, us fans may finally get decent, legal alternatives to DVDs.

Review: Seitokai Yakuindomo 1

From what I’ve read on the interwebs thus far, most people seem to have a low opinion of Seitokai Yakuindomo. Although I enjoyed watching it, I find it hard to disagree with them. However, some are saying this is the worst of the season, which I believe is taking it too far. I mean, sure it was generic, bland and cliche… but at least it was funny enough to get a few laughs out of me.  I’m going to attempt to explain why I don’t hate this show. Hopefully, this won’t provoke people to hunting me down and slaughtering me.

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New K-ON!! OP and ED

The latest episode of K-ON!! has brought with it an entirely new OP and ED, replacing the much-maligned Go! Go! Maniac and Listen!! with fresh songs and animation.

Utau yo Miracle

No, Thank You!

I’m not too keen on the new OP; it strikes me as bland and forgettable. As for the new ED, I think it has promise, but I’d like to hear the full song before passing final judgement. I’ll have to wait, though, since the singles don’t come out until August 4th.

Review: High School of the Dead 1

Here is the basic premise of High School of the Dead. There are zombies. There are high schoolers. The high schoolers beat up zombies. Some of the high schoolers have big breasts.

On the surface, that should be a show I’d really like. As I said when I talked about Gunsmith Cats, I’m kind of a fan of well-developed women who kick lots of butt. Unfortunately, High School of the Dead (which I will now refer to as HSotD, because I’m lazy), is a mixed bag. While technically impressive and fast-paced, some of the content made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

And not in the way that horror shows are supposed to.

I’ll explain in detail after the jump.

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Review: K-ON!! 13

Let me say this now: the one real reason I started watching K-ON! at all was because everyone kept talking about it on Twitter. So I thought, “Hey! I wanna look cool, too! I should watch it!”  However, the second season has been a bit of a disappointment. It doesn’t feel like any major plot developments have come along in a while, and that’s reflected in this episode. K-ON!! 13 is doesn’t deviate much from the standard formula we’ve seen thus far.  There are a few different elements shown, but ultimately it’s just eye candy for the fans. I enjoyed it somewhat, but that was mainly because of Azusa in her swimsuit. But let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

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Series Review: Angel Beats!

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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