I hold in my sweaty little palms volume 3 of Welcome to the NHK!

I had just about given up on this given ADV's recent troubles but tonight I look forward to being as offended and appalled by this merciless expose' of dysfunctional otakuism and others at the fringes of society as I was in the first two volumes.

This show is merciless, but strangely touching and funny as hell...

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   This weekend I drove up to Maryland to see some friends and watch some of the new anime.

A few notes

Ghost Hound...

...has already been commented on by Don and Astro. It seems that it is going to concern a group of school kids dealing with the supernatural. Moody, dark and subtly atmospheric, the first episode starts quite slow but becomes very intriguing as it progresses.  By the end we all found it quite fascinating. I only saw episode one, but I'm quite eager to see more. The series has a feel reminiscent of Hammer film or British telephantasy from the 70's or 80s.. No actual horror occurs in the episode though some is hinted at via flashback. This one looks good. The only downside was that we only had episode one.

The soundtrack is quite good too...

Rosary and Glompire Vampire...

  ...has been commented upon by lots of people. It is actually an interesting high school romance/sitcom, but its likable protagonists, and good characterizations are somewhat undercut by the copious, over the top fan service.

Young hero gets sent to a new school. Unfortunately he discovers that an awful bureaucratic mistake has been made.

The school has 3 main problems.

1:It is a school for monsters...man eating shape shifting monsters of various types. (Our hero is not a monster)

2: The "bus" only comes once in a blue moon.

3: The uniforms are an outlandish shade of teal that go with nothing....unless someone has, say, pink hair.

 Fortunately he befriends a young vampire who is quite impressed both by his general decency and the fact that he is full of fresh human blood (a rare commodity at the school). She agrees to keep his secret and, it turns out has a few of her own. His other lucky break is that everyone is required by school rules to maintain human form. This is quite hard for many of them, but our hero is likely going to get an "A" in Maintaining Human Visage 101....if he lives long enough.

Spice and Wolf

Pagan wolf goddess is released from the village field to which she was bound and takes up in a bale of wheat (!?) in the possession of a medieval trader in the land of Psudohistorieurope....As paganism is on the wane, the Goddess, (whose human form is, unsurprisingly, a teenage human girl with wolf ears and a tail)....asks the trader to take her to the far north.

Our unlikely team go from town to town trading pelts for apples and apples for wheat and....generally give the audience a lesson in barter level economics.

Very dry show....but strangely engaging.

They are my Noble Masters

In order to escape an abusive father Ren Uesugi and his sister Mihato run away from home. They end up camping out in the city and Ren ends up saving a wealthy heiress. Taken to the mansion where she lives for a thank you dinner they try to get hired as servants, and, after getting into a fight with the wait staff, are allowed one week in which to prove themselves.

Mad scientist-lolis, maids, combat butlers, and various other horrors await our brother and sister team.

I laughed.

One funny thing about this obvious Hayate clone, they are quite aware they are the "other butler show"....and mock themselves for it. 

Minami-ke Okawari

Pleasant, understated and somewhat odd slice of life show concerning three sisters who live alone. Wonderduck will love it. It made Don uneasy.

The show is fan service free...but still ruthlessly mocks the censors....

 In other news Astro is not actually gone, he is blogging elsewhere..update your bookmarks!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:31 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Oddly, the bloom fell off the rose with Minami-ke and myself.  I haven't even finished the first series yet.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tue Mar 11 00:55:42 2008 (Hrqgp)

2 Wolf and Spice is wonderful. Don't listen to the haters. With that and Shigofumi this season has been surprisingly good.

Posted by: astro at Wed Mar 12 21:12:37 2008 (DSm6K)

3 I really liked it (Spice and Wolf). It is quite low key but interesting on a number of levels.

I'm in a minority though, I got the disbelieving stare when I asked to see ep 4 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Mar 12 21:26:16 2008 (6MFde)

4

Please note, for the record, that I'm still watching Spicy Wolf.  I just can't imagine a situation where I'd recommend it to anybody.  It's too dry.  GOOD, but dry.

Shigofumi, though... good stuff there, I just need to dig up some time to catch up on it.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Thu Mar 13 08:26:31 2008 (gwUM9)

5 I'd seen that shorter Spicy Wolf, but I didn't get it until I read this post.  Doh!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Mon Mar 24 05:05:04 2008 (PiXy!)

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Chun-Li turned 40 on Saturday!

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Fire...FIRE!!! 



More on this basket of win here and here.

Its available in the US here.

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