For those of you not familiar with Yu Yu Hakusho and it’s protagonist Yusuke Urameshi let me tell you a little bit. Yusuke is a young man in his early teens. He is seen as something of a delinquent and is ostracized by many people because of this. He likes to fight and gets himself into trouble because of this. He isn’t particularly smart and he is very direct, often to a fault. Now drop out Yusuke and add Ichigo or Naruto and see if it fits.

The other characters around Yusuke even seem to fit similar patterns. He has a brainy companion who is a counterpoint to his direct and often foolhardy ways. Ishida and Sasuke both fill this roll in their respective series. He also has a friend who is very strong and direct like himself and who is used as a foil at times. Rock Lee and Chad fill these rolls in their respective anime. Ofcoarse there is also a woman who is of interest to Yusuke and must often be saved, like Rukia or Sakura.

Perhaps these elements are helpful in making up a good fighting anime? Someone has to be smart so we know what the main character is doing is so very risky. Someone has to be saved so that the main character cares all the more about the fights. Someone has to be a friendly rival to give the character someone to compete against. I don’t know. There are certainly other anime out there that don’t fit this patter as completely, like History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi or The Breaker, but there still seem to be these patterns.

I also wonder why the main character has to be the direct and thoughtless one. Is it more significant that he achieves what he does through hard work and being special that through thought or strategy? Is it more inspiring to see someone achieve through effort than through planning? Perhaps it is simply to make the main character more endearing, easier to connect to somehow.

Perhaps it is just a newer group that is unfamiliar or not as fond of Yu Yu Hakusho that watches anime today. Perhaps stories are just retold every generation in different forms. I know what when I hear a phrase that could easily has come out of Yusukes mouth drop from the lips of some newer character it makes me wonder about the similarities but if I have the urge I just pull out my old DVDs and have a watch at the classic. Maybe in a few years people will be commenting about how another anime is just like Naruto. Maybe I’m just thinking about this too much. Enjoy your Anime, folks.

This 2006 film was directed by the late Satoshi Kon and tells the tale of a machine that allows people to go into others’ dreams. When this machine is stolen and dreams begin to merge, the heroine, Paprika, is the only one who can help stop it. The movie is great for those who are fans of surreal movies as well as masterful animation.

Some scenes are just so well made that you might even be tempted to rewind and watch them again! In any case, this movie manages to be captivating with every viewing as the viewer is always able to spot more and more in each scene that they had not seen before. And with an amazing soundtrack, it’s always a pleasure to watch. Besides, who doesn’t like a parade headed by kitchen appliances?

Today I am blogging about the sudden rise in B-horror movies coming out of Japan. I personally love horror movies in all their splendor, but am finding the B style ones to be particularly fun as they can easily become a manga or anime. Most notably is “Vampire girl VS Frankenstein girl” and “Robogeisha” that have come out recently. Both are so bad their good and poke fun at themselves so you know it’s on purpose.

Don't let the cover fool you, there is no cleavage and lots of blood.

I’ll start off with “Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl”. This movie is about a vampire girl in High school who wants to have the cutest guy in school. The school snob wants him though and through a series of events becomes Frankenstein girl, yada, yada, yada. The true point of this movie is that the human body can squirt out 9 gallons of blood per minute for at least a good half hour and that black face takes on a different tone in Japanese high schools.

This is Afro-Rika she is japanese and wants to be black....she is president of a club of people trying to be black. Words cannot describe the weirdness.

The school is filled with a wrist cutting club, a “ultra super dark tanning club”, and the vice principal is also the bio, chem and science teacher. What this movie lacks in plot it makes up in sheer weirdness, breaking the fourth wall, and funnyness. I Personally would love to see it made into a manga or anime so artist out there! Get to it!

Next on our list is robogeisha:

Beauty and metal meet

Robogeisha though seeming to be even weirder than Vampire girl, actually has a plot. Not a strong one but still present. It also pokes fun at itself through the tengu girls who are part of a large corporation that wants to destroy the world. This movie is like the dream of a small 6 year old Japanese boy. Mix in 2 parts pretty girls, 1 part assassins, 1 part funny old people, 6 parts weirdness, and put it all in a transformers blender. Voila! You have Robogeisha.  This movie seems as if it has come out of a manga and I am frankly surprised it is not a manga. It features a easy pull towards many markets and a deep rooted sibling love that is being torn apart because of their stations in life. Comedy-drama robot genra anyone?

These are no sailor scouts

I truly hope more movies like this are brought out from Japan. They make great gory horror movies and even better B-horror movies. I also hope this will possibly make a rise in live action out of the awesome nation.

The beginning of the episodes starts out explaining the world. A place where beast men rule, the ocean is sand and the human and second class citizens. The story begins with in intro from a small bearlike creature. The bartender brings up the main focus of the series which is “The World Destruction Committee”.  We see our main protagonist, Kyrie Illunis, a beast men working in a local restaurant. He seems to have a negative outlook on the world destruction. He gets chewed out for bring the wrong order for a customer. This is our second main character comes in, Morte Urshela. She is presumed to be part of “The World Destruction Committee”, but is actually just someone who wants to destroy the world. “The World Salvation Committee” storms the bar looking for her and she ends up trying to take Kyrie as a hostage. She accidently knocks off his ears, revealing he actually is a human. The “The World Salvation Committee” yells to fire before the intro rolls in.

Morte and Kyrie escape the gunfire and our bear like character gets talked into getting a job to save a little kid’s sister. A local cat castle decides that they’re using a sacrifice to appease the gods of the sands and hopefully get good luck. Morte and Kyrie share their first conversation and introduce each other. The little boy’s sister is found and the village elder finds both of them. They’re both taken in and feed. We see that Kyrie is a very simple minded and very simple person. Morte tells of her plan to destroy the world, saying it’s a hypocritical place. She pulls out an item called “The Destruction Code” which is said to be able to destroy the world. The scene moves to the elder sacrificing Morte instead of the girl. The elder and the cats from before trade words about the sacrifice and instead of kidnapping Morte, they kidnap Kyrie.

The scarifies god is something of a two headed plant. The cat king is eaten by the plant just before Morte comes to fight the beast. “The World Salvation Committee” comes in and tries to capture Morte while the bearlike creature comes in trying to complete the mission of saving the boy’s sister who is now Kyrie. The god comes back and is now in the shape of an octopus. He bearlike creature tries to save Kyrie from the best thinking is the sister and get consumed in the idea that he’s a part of the committee. When Kyrie touches “The Destruction Code”, the earth shakes and they find their escape.

The bearlike creature along with Morte and Kyrie set sail on a boat after thinking they’re all part to the “The World Destruction Committee”. Thus the episode ends as the ship sets sail.

There’s nothing outstanding about the series and it seems to a be a run of the mill anime. More characters are introduced throughout the series and secrets are revealed about “The Destruction Code” It does turn up a provoking though about the world’s destruction, but other than that, there’s nothing really special. In the end I would give the series a 7 out of 10.

~Kitsune.

The three characters are introduced with Jade, Yugi, and Yusei. In this movie however, centers on Yusei more than anyone else. I’ve heard numerous remarks that not a lot of people liked Yugioh 5 D’s. I am also one of these people and can say that this was a bad choice of an idea. CARD GAMES ON MOTOCYCLES?! No, I don’t believe that would ever happen. The addition of Synchro Summon to 5 D’s was a stupid idea, but they added a new idea of summoning which lets you summon something as soon as you send it to the graveyard. This is the stupidest idea I’ve seen throughout the entire series.

The movie is all about Yusei overcoming his fears on not being needed or able to help others. I would have liked the idea of all of them trying to come together to fight the antagonist but he doesn’t even seem worth mentioning. Instead it’s a very long process of taking turns and defeating the boss with turns that seem to take twenty minutes. I seriously can’t complain about the movie more than that but I have heard that Yomacon has or had, depending on when you’re reading this, a fun time with the abridged version of the movie. ^^

Kistune

The first episode of Steins Gate starts off with out main character, the self-proclaimed mad scientist, Rintarō Okabe. He goes to a seminar with one his friends, Mayuri Shiina. They’re discussing theories of time travel, which seems to be the main idea of the series. Rintarō is distracted by something strange happening on the roof, but he gets interrupted by Mayuri who asks for spar change. She buys and then losses a small keychain accessory, which seems to be unimportant to the plot at all.

Later Rintarō gets into a fight with a teacher about time travel is pulled away by a girl named Kurisu Makise who explicitly states that he had met her 15 minutes ago, despite having never seen her before. He then proclaims that she is an agent and leaves. He phone starts to act weird and Mayuri tries to get Rintarō to find her keychain thing, which she says is worth a lot. He however sees it as funding for his research. They hear a scream and run around finding Kurisu lying dead in a pool of her own blood.

Rintarō hears a scream and sees Kurisu lying in a pool of blood. As he sends a text about it to another one of his research buddies, Itaru “Daru” Hashida, Rintarō has a strange experience, finding the street he is on has suddenly become deserted and a strange satellite has crashed into the building he was just in. The scene then transfers to a video log about Rintarō and his group’s goals and expectations. He pulls out “Gadget #1” which seems to be a TV remote, but the TV is broken and they go to get it repaired. They then move on to trying to get a remote-controlled microwave oven, which turns bananas into a gel-like substance,to work. It fails at whatever else they were trying to do with the oven and leave. Itaru tells Rintarō that the seminar he supposedly attended was cancelled, much to his surprise He notices his phone that had sent the text from earlier, actually was sent a week earlier, rather than earlier that day. He turns to see Kurisu alive, thinking that his message from the past saved her life. The episode ends there.

Now from the first few minutes I was intrigued by the idea of what was going on and I enjoyed it. After the next few minutes though, I became confused and lost. The show is hard to follow and leads to confusing subject matter. Time travel concepts are interesting to me, but this pulled it off in a very hard to follow fashion and for the first episode that’s now a good thing. It’s a very unique show but doesn’t quite know where it was going. It wanted to be something good and original but didn’t know how to do it. In the end I can only give the first episode a 5 out of 10. I’ve hard that the series is actually well done by one of my friends but the first should not have started the way it did and it drew me away from the series. If you like thought provoking series I could see this as something for you but realize that it does take a bit of work to understand what’s going on.

Kitsune ~ Mascot of Anime Club

This year, I’ve seen a number of shows that have caught my interest, however, nothing really stood out. That was until I found [C].

[C] The Money and Soul and Possibility is an anime that ran for about two months with only 11 episodes. Now while this is much shorter than Naruto, Bleach or FullMetal Alchemist, it makes up for in story and through provoking material. Funimation has acquired the home movie rights and plans to release the series in 2012. The company that produced the anime has been known for Speed Racer, Samurai Pizza Cats, and Gatchmia.

The first episode doesn’t describe much about what the series will be and the intro comes in after ten minutes of watching the anime, which is becoming more common. We begin the episode with a man standing in front of an ATM going through his credit cards and has problems with all of them. He pulls a demonic looking credit card out of his pocket and summons a car to send him to a place called “The Financial District”. The Financial District is an alternate dimension for the most part where battles take place for money and use money. Souichirou Mikuni is the first main character we see in the series and is contemplating money and how it’s used, both in the Financial District and the real world. He is interrupted by the controller of the Financial District, Masakaki who looks like the Mad Hatter.

The man from before at the ATM comes in and they are both told to fight to gain money. The man from before losses and the title of the episode comes in. We then head towards our Main Character, Kimimaro Yoga in a college classroom learning economics. I just need to point out that I’m somewhat trilled that this doesn’t take place in high school. Most anime seem to do that and it’s a change of pace. Anyways, He’s not the headstrong character such as Luffy from One piece or Ichigo from Bleach. Instead of wanting to make it big, he just wants financial security for himself and his future family. This causes him to be looked down on by others and seen as boring. The intro then plays, with the song Matryoshka” by Nico Touches the Walls who have done a few opening for anime, Naruto to be one.

Once the intro is over we see Kimimaro Yoga at his job where his friends ask him why he’s so uptight about money. He says he wants to make something of himself. We then move to his room where he’s studying for a test tomorrow. There’s a knock at the door, and when he opens the door, no one seems to be there. Masakaki appears and Yoga tries to push him out the door. Even after being kicked out of the doorway, Masakaki just teleport in… before being thrown out. He appears to offer the job of Entrepreneur to Yoga, trying to set him up for life.

Yoga doesn’t believe this until the next day he finds half a million yen in his bank account. He tries to take out 10,000 yen before the ATM seems to attack him and Masakaki appears tormenting him about money and how his female interest has a rich boyfriend. He is then given a similar looking car as the man from before. The episode ends we see the car from the beginning pulling Yoga and Masakaki into the Financial District.

Above anything the animation style and look of the series has to be noted. I just love it too much. I like that the main character has a realistic goal in mind as well and nothing about the plot is moving to fast. It actually moves quiet slowly at least until the forth episode. The characters are well done and the idea of Assets and Entrepreneurs intrigues me. The show later reveals Msyu, Yoga’s asset who takes the form of a young female imp. The connection between the two is amazing to build too and works well with the story. The only negative thing I could say is that it’s slow to start and short.

With the well put together character, amazing design and complex thought that goes into the story, I could give this anime nothing less than a 9 out of 10.

Kitsune~ Mascot of Anime Club

After, Rin’s secret gets out he is encouraged by a fellow Demon, Mephisto Pheles, to join the True Cross Academy and continue his foster fathers quest to defeat Satan. Once at the academy Rin makes friends who are equally committed to the defeat of Satan, the faculty does its best to maintain his secret. As Rin’s power grows, so does the desire to control him, from those both good and evil. Rin’s secret becomes known to his friends, yet they stand by him, as time after time Rin has shown his willingness to sacrifice his own health to protect those he cares about.

Blue Exorcist has yet to be completed online yet it does appear to be very promising. Compared to other Viz Anime shows Blue Exorcist has very few flash back segments. Blue Exorcist does contain some violence and religious references so is not for every viewer. But for those of you who can imagine how epic a fight between Satan and his son can be, this is the show for you. Personally, after 23 episodes I am still hooked and can’t wait for the next episode to be released.

Free Collar Kingdom Characters

Cyan originally belonged to a boy named Kokoro until Kokoro fell ill and his parents abandoned Cyan, leaving him to fend for himself in the basement. There he was first given an opportunity to join by removing his collar and thus becoming a Free Collar, but he declines and decides to wait for Kokoro to return. However, he soon realizes that he needs the Free Collars to survive and manages to tear off his collar. He joins the fight against Siam, a Siamese who was once a member of the Free Collars until her brother Puriam was killed by humans, and ever since then she has tried to take over East Ikebukuro and the world (she control West Ikebukuro). Siam has a nervous habit of licking her paws when she’s nervous or angry.

Scottie is a Scottish Fold and is an unofficial member of the Free Collars and lives in an apartment with her owner above, who is constantly getting her new dresses (sometimes Lolita style). She has an obsession with not stressing her self out for fear her folded ears will stand up forever and she’s always there to help out the Free Collars any way she can. Char is a Chareux who was once a member of the “Cat House Kingdom,” a household of high-class cats, but she left after feeling like the humans were using her; also has a love for music. Coon is a Maine Coon who has an obsession for cleaning things (from a joke, that coon translates into raccoon which can be mistaken for clean) and is a great swimmer. Rat, a Korat cat, is the go-to gadget cat and is great with technology, even building a vehicle for the Free Collars to use. Minky is a friend of Scottie and Cyan and is also a help to the Free Collars.

Scottie (Manga Cover)

Features
To each other, the cats look like catboys and catgirls, but to humans, they just look like cats wearing clothes. In their catboy/girl form, they feature the ears and tails of their particular breed, and will occasionally show fangs, and paws instead of hands and feet. In addition to showing the physical traits of their breed, they will also have some of the typical character traits of that breed. The members of the Free Collars (and Siam) have a scar around their neck where a collar was too tight from years of abandonment or neglect.

Cyan

Axis Powers Hetalia Main Characters

For those who enjoy learning a bit about historical actions between the World Wars, this show might be good. It’s a not a perfect representation mind you but it’s ok. I have to note that D-Day looks as if it’s a campout on a beach with Germany, Italy and Japan on the beach and USA, England, France, Russia and Chine are all hiding in the bushes. Within the series is a side series called Chibitalia, where all the countries are children, or most of them are, there are a few that are always older looking.

If you’re looking for something comedic and historical I would look here. My rank is a seven out of ten.