Hyouge Mono & Thermae Romae

Completely unrelated picture by TCB.

Thermae Romae’s fifth volume will be released on the 22th of January. I read Thermae Romae for a while now and I have to say it’s great, it’s well done both on the historical side and comedy. You can tell the author, Yamazaki Mari did some research. There’s even photos of ruins of ancient bathouses in Greece at the end of chapters. Thermae Romae has been released in France for around 8 months now. It was even advertised in a popular newspaper with the line “Mangas aren’t only violence and big eyes”. Though a poor choice of words, it was still nice to see some love for it.
There’s also a live action film with Abe Hiroshi as the main character, my favorite Japanese actor (and the only one I know the name of) and I hope I get to see it someday. There was also an anime adaptation of it, though I haven’t seen it. it’s a shame that it’s a short episode format thing because a more conventional adaptation would have been great to make it more famous.

I also watch Hyouge Mono, however I do not read the manga. I still haven’t finished watching all of Hyouge Mono even though it’s been a while it aired, as it is subbed very slowly. The dialogue can get very complicated sometimes, unlike in Pretty Rhythm, plus I also lack the required knowledge of Japanese History so I cannot watch it raw. I often think about the two together, Thermae Romae & Hyouge Mono because not only they both have great historical settings, both stories have pretty much the same type of humor: the characters’ reaction to the situations they’re confronted to. Notably their facial expressions which are hilarious. I can understand that old Japanese men drinking tea and Ancient Greece men bathing doesn’t appeal to everyone but it’s a shame that those stories are dismissed because of that.

Two of my favorite things combined together

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This made my day.

Shine forevermore my beloved 2012 summer: Pandora no Tou

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I also started and finished it this summer.  It was really good. The whole game felt like a mix of 3D Zelda games (easy dungeons if you use the map), Persona 4, early Terranigma & Shadow of the Colossus (Racing against time, Towers, Saving your girl) and pre-4Biohazard (menus, papernotes about enemies and the story, limited inventory, fixed camera)

Ceres is voiced by Noto Mamiko. I’m not a big fan of her or anything but it sure felt like I was married to her, speaking to her like that every day and giving her gifts, it wasn’t a bad feeling. I grew really attached to Ceres, I didn’t let her transform once besides the game’s beginning. Meaning I imposed myself a smaller time interval between my trips to the tower and my retun to the observatory. Well the game is easy if you know what you’re doing. Reminds me about how I saved some people in P4 the day they got into the TV (most notably the girls characters), or like how you’d never let anyone die when playing a Fire Emblem. I just can’t leave them alone.

I got the S ending on my first try. It sure was satisfying. The guys at Ganbarion sure did a nice job with the story. After that, I watched the bad endings on Niconico/Youtube, they sure made my heart hurt. They’re pretty heart wrenching, especially the C one. And well, the D one is so screwed up it’s almost funny.That was a really great game. Too bad it doesn’t seem that popular. There’s like only 5 pages on fanart of it on Pixiv.

I wonder why there’s no manga on Chess

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Last time I was at uni studying. There was some students playing chess on the desk in front of mine. I never learned how to play Chess, I asked myself why. It never interested me. As much as it is portrayed both in real life and in fiction as the most intellectual game ever, it always seemed very primitive to me. In the end, no matter how complicated it gets, the only strategy in Chess is predicting your opponent’s moves. No more no less. Sure there’s different tactics, like the stuff I just read on Wikipedia about the Indian Defense and whatever, but it’s still about predicting.

After that, I started to look up if there was a manga on chess. And there isn’t as far as I know. Sure there’s some with Chess elements, and a lot of manga use it to show some sort of intellectualism possessed by the characters like I said in the first paragraph, but there isn’t a pure Chess one. Like you know, the typical shounen manga about a young boy who has a hidden talent playing Chess called La Main de Déesse and how his father left him a king piece before disappearing, the boy now plays Chess in order to find the truth about his father’s disappearance. It’s because you can’t do such a manga with Chess, or maybe you could but it would be extremely difficult. You won’t be able to make the matches exciting, make the audience’s blood boil, or make the boy pull off crazy moves that would make the readers want to learn them and use them themselves while playing, because such moves simply doesn’t exist in Chess. You can’t do the Yu Gi Oh or Saki of Chess.

After that, one could think it’s because Chess isn’t popular in Japan enough, being overshadowed by Shougi. Everyone says Shougi is the equivalent of Chess but as I don’t know how to play both I can’t really confirm this. Anyway, even then there’s only a few manga on Shougi. The only one I know of is Shion no Ou. And the anime was awesome, though I never finished it. I should do that and also read the manga someday.

I feel like it’s the first time I wrote a post that could be so full of crap, I’m nervous just like Wendy wearing a mini skirt. It was fun though.

Each other’s spoiler safety

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Maybe I’m too nice. Maybe I’m trying to look nice. But when discussing anime, I often avoid spoilers, not for my own person, but for the others that could see the discussion. These days on IRC, I keep asking people to use spoilers tags, not for me, but for others who maybe do mind getting spoiled. IT’s not because a show is twenty years old that you should spoil it either.

First round of the French presidentials

Pic by 剑皇

>Journalists keep talking 24h/24 about immigration, “insecurity”, and how every single muslim is supposedly conspiring to blow up something.

>Far right party makes an historical high score.

>All journalists suddenly go “OMG, how come something so terrible is happening??”

Saint Seiya Omega is so much fun for various reasons

Pic by 丈（たけ） (NSFW)

PRAD is ending soon

Pic by 佐奈丸

And it’s getting more and more awesome. I’m so happy I’m watching this. Since episode 39, the show went into it’s last phase, everything is coming together, the girls must each participate to various  prism show championships to be qualified for the Prism Queen Cup. I TOTALLY CRIED in ep 41 when Kyouko san broke into tears after telling her story. And then Aira hugged her, telling she will fulfill her dreams she couldn’t accomplish.  It was so DAAAAAAAAWW,  I haven’t felt so emotional since when I watched Tekkaman Blade last summer.
Now Aira is set, she has the eye of the tiger, she’s not the typical “everyone got their dreams and all, I still don’t know what to do in life, I’m so insecure” heroine anymore now. NOW SHE WILL FLY THE AURORA RISING FOR KYOUKO. YEEEEEEEEEEEES.

Pic by キクチ

And then that Valentines ep, Shou hugging aira KYAAAAAAAAA.
I like how Aira is surprised when Shou gave her chocos for valentines, he shatters one of the japanese beliefs and tell her that overseas, during Valentine’s day you can give gifts regardless of genders, as in it’s not only the girls giving choco.

Then there’s episode 45, Mion’s training in Brazil. Getting to see Mion’s parents was just icing on the cake. We got to see the parents of the three girls, they all have really good roles and character development. I hate to say things like this but: HOW MANY YEARS HAS IT BEEN SINCE I LAST SAW PARENTS DOING THEIR JOB IN ANIME??? I remember when at first it was Aira’s dad who wouldn’t let her do Prism Shows and was totally opposed to it, but now in ep 44 he’s the one who agreed to let her aim for the Prism Queen title and jump the Aurora Rising while her mom was strictly against it, after what happened to her friend Sona chan, who flew it too and lost her memories or something like that. That’s pretty much the only plot part left they have to explain now.

One more thing, they still pulled out new solo songs for Kanon, Serena and Chris when there was only 7 episode left!! They could have well just kept their money for the sequel. It’s really considerate of the staff. Now with this, every girl has her own song along their team songs. All of them along with the ops and eds will be released on a 3 CD compilation the 16th of March, there’s even a limited edition with a dvd containing the performances of each song. I’m actually thinking of buying a copy.

Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream is ending soon, I’ll be so sad when it does, I’m actually planning to watch the sequel Pretty Rhythm Dear My Future if it turns out as great as this. PRAD definitely is one of my favorite sports anime now along with Captain Tsubasa and some others, I’m not even kidding. I’m eagerly waiting for the ending.

Rinne no Lagrange Guessiiiiing!!!

Pic by げっとないん

I like guessing what happens in anime, whether there’s an original material or not. (Though most of the time with non original anime I tend to keep my speculations to myself to avoid being spoiled.) I like sharing my guesses with others, I post it here and the Foolz forum I frequent I guess.

I’m happy regardless of the outcome: Predicting stuff is fun. If it turns out right it just mean the plot was well written. if it turns out wrong, it means it managed to surprise me. Each entry is more or less related. I also like to criticize myself and say it if I think there’s something wrong with the guess.

You can’t gauge the quality of an anime simply by the studio behind it…

Pic by saitom (NSFW)

I’m not a fan of how people like to check what studio will do what anime before it airs as a mean to gauge it’s quality? It’s a fact, any studio is capable of doing great stuff as well as the worst thing ever. Just look at JC Staff, a year ago I loathed them for making indecent shows like Ookami-san, Yumekui Merry and Hidan no Aria and now I’m praising them for Kimi to Boku. It’s not the studio itself that counts, it’s the staff.

Speaking of staff, there’s almost the same issue with directors. Saying a show is bad or good because of a director is stupid. Everything isn’t his fault. I’m pretty sure there’s cases of shows where the director is not allowed to do what he wants (By higher executives/Shogakukan or whatever)  and cases where you can clearly see the particular touch of the director.

Pic by フタゴモナド  (NSFW)

A few examples: Aoki Ei, the guy who directed the first movie of Kara no Kyoukai is the same guy who directed Girls Bravo (If you don’t know it, let’s just say it’s some B-rated harem show no one remembers that’s not good but not bad either, well at least from my memory, I’m pretty kind, I bet it’s much worse than what I remember). Kara no Kyoukai is one of my favorite anime ever. He’s also directing Fate/Zero, which everyone says it’s awesome (I dunno if it’s true as I don’t watch it for now). Maybe he just gained experience in 5 years but still, going from directing Girls Bravo to Fate/Zero… obviously the director isn’t the main factor in determining a show’s quality.

A good recent example of where I think the director had a definite influence is the Redline movie (Koike Takeshi). That’s definitely what they call an “author’s work” in cinema or whatever.  He almost did everything himself.
Another less known example is Yozakura Quartet’s OADs directed by Ryo-Timo, you can clearly see his touch if you’ve seen some of his previous works (his .gifs, Beck…)
Shinkai Makoto is another great example.

Feel free to say so if you agree/disagree.

Unrelated: I guess I’m not the only guy watching Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream who also likes hot blooded stuff