The Rumble Fish’s Garnet and Yozakura Quartet’s Juri

They’re both nurses and both fight bare handed. I was wondering if Suzupin got the idea for Juri because of Garnet, because YZQ started in 2006 and The Rumble Fish was released in 2004. But then, I think Suzupin used to draw Juri and other YZQ characters on his old illustration website even before 2000, before starting up the YZQ manga. So maybe the guys at Dimps saw Juri and inspired themselves from her design and not the other way around. Dimps rehash their Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya games all the time so they’re used to recopying stuff. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.

As a similar note, unless Mari existed before the You Can (not) Milk More Money Eva movies, I’m pretty sure whoever designed her copied Kotoha. Back then Suzupin drew both together so he’s aware of it too. “Back then”. It’s been 6 years apparently since the second movie. Time goes so fast.

Speaking of Suzupin, I was pretty happy back when the new wave of Digimon games started and he was choosen as the chara deisgner. However now, I feel he gets too many jobs, and his characters are starting to look too similar. I don’t mean sameface, his characters always have the same expressions, and it’s not a bad thing. The girls he draws always have the smug smile, the guys always have the bored indifferent look. What I mean is accessory/fashion/clothing wise. There’s like 4-5 guys characters in total who wear a long coat with a hoodie or something similar.

Lastly about YZQ, I think the manga will end soon because of the new OAD and tv anime last year. They usually do this to bring in new readers before a manga end. I think it’ll end this year or 2016. Hopefully we’ll get a another new anime too. Zettai Karen Children did the same thing too, it’s ending soon so they made the Kyousuke gaiden anime. It worked on me. After watched the 1st three episodes, it made me read all of the manga and I’m a big fan now.

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 11

After 11 episodes Lila is finally here!! “Tane mo shikake mo gozaimasen” All dat crazy siscon yandere goodness.
It’s pretty cool how they showed some of the illustrations from the vol 13 limited edition calendar as OP cards. Thinking about why they made a new anime + OVA now always bring me to the conclusion that the manga may be ending soon (as in in the next 2 years). I gotta say this makes me sad though as this adaptation really made me remember how much I like it. That’s just random speculation from my part based on past experiences though, I have actually no idea how an anime adaptation of something gets decided etc.

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 02

THEY’RE ACTUALLY DOING OVERLAPPING STORIES LIKE IN THE MANGA. FANBOYING SO MUCH RIGHT NOW.
It’s pretty incredible how they’re doing Lila’s arc, while doing scenes and stuff that time wise happened before or after her arc in the manga, in order to explain stuff to newcomers.

The “we”ll only save humans yada yada” discussion with Shiina & Shidare happens after Lila’s arc iirc. In summary everything in this episode was in the manga but happened slightly differently and at different times. Not gonna blog it every week btw. Just wanted to say this.

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 01

That was pretty good. Like I expected they explained stuff and reintroduced the characters, by changing a few things from the manga. I like how they put tons of little details about the characters for the fans like Touka getting disappointed she won’t be able to meet Akina, Ao playing with that plane (why can’t I hold all that ryo-timo style animation) or DAT YAE. Seems like we’re in for good doses of fanservice without making newcomers totally lost. Just in case, I use fanservice as in everything made to please fans there, if I want to talk about boobs I say sexual fanservice. Lila is one of my favorite characters (well actually everyone is my favorite character in YZQ) so I’m really looking forward to this animating her arc.

The eyecatches and endcard were great too. Kinda suck they didn’t make the sponsor list disappear. I didn’t find a version without them on the net so I assume there isn’t. They didn’t write who drew it either…

Anticipating Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta –

This is the show I’m looking forward to the most next season. I’m a huge fan of Yozakura Quartet, fan enough to buy the volumes. It’s one of my favorite shonen recently, along with stuff like Bimbougami Ga (which just ended), or Shoukoku no Altair.

Zero in vol 11 + Yozakura Quartet vol 3 GET!!

Yes the photo is bad like always.

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

YQ Volume 1 GET!!

Yaaay finally got this!! Gonna try and buy all the other ones too to give Suzupin some of my money, even if I don’t have much myself but this is just too awesome.

At the bonus pages in the end, Yasuda Suzuhito says among others things that he got a lot of advice from friends, and one of them is Narita Ryohgo. It’s obvious they know each other since Suzupin draws the illustrations in Drr!! but it’s pretty cool that they’re friends. He also explains the reason why sometimes the chapters in the volumes aren’t in the same order as in the pre-publication magazine.  He started to think what would happen if this or that chapter would be before/after, and after asking friends, he decided to change the order.  He doesn’t say it directly but by friends I bet he means Ryohgo-sensei.
You can clearly see he got influenced by him in the slice of life chapters, especially how some of them overlaps time wise.

He also says Kotoha didn’t exist until the last revision of the manga, just before the magazine publication started. The editor told him it would be nice if there was a girl with glasses so he added her at the last moment. But now she’s his favorite character.

Yozakura Quartet final OAD’s PV

(The video contains spoilers if you haven’t seen the first two OADs or read the manga in case it’s not obvious).

At last, the final episode of these OADs. It’s been more than a year since the first one got out. The manga is still awesome as ever, I hope they’ll announce another animation project soon. These new studios, KMMJ and Purple Cow with their respective staffs made a great job. I guess it helped at lot that Ryo-Timo directed it. Gonna try to write some wrap up post when I’ll watch it. This final OAD gets out on the 9th of November, bundled with the 11th volume of the manga.

Yozakura Quartet’s manga licensied in France

First volume gets out in November. Yozakura Quartet is one the best manga I’m reading, hands down. Now I just hope they’ll catch up fast  to Japan (they’re at volume 10)with at least 1 volume every three months at best. Every six months or even more at worse, you never know…

What I know is I’m so gonna buy it.