Spring 2011 Anime

[A Black Falcon]

Didn't think Sailor Moon would get mentioned here again, at least not on purpose. Yeah when I was younger I remember the whole "hero team made of unpopular teens" and liked how it worked. It didn't come across as patronizing as the other power rangers did to Billy a lot of the time, that's for sure.

There are a couple of reasons I'm watching it. First, some people from the GAF anime thread (who also have started an IRC chatroom I'm in sometimes) stream some anime online sometimes. They decided to show Sailor Moon, so I started watching some. As you can see if you count the episode numbers I've posted I missed several dozen episodes (after three or four hours I start to lose interest...), but still it is kind of interesting because it's not a show I've seen before; while I did see the last season, Sailor Stars, in anime club in college, I've never seen the first four seasons of the show before. I didn't watch anime in the '90s remember, and this wasn't something I'd gone back and watched. It's silly, but entertaining enough that I keep watching, and don't really mind it either... I can't help but be entertained whether or not I wanted to be. :)

Oh -- we are watching it subbed, not dubbed. It's so much better in Japanese... On that note though, and I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but Street Fighter II V is another thing I watched there, and that we watched dubbed. I think it made it more entertaining, versus the subbed version. That dub was pretty amusing at times. :)

As for "when", well I've kinda given up on that in anime spinoff movies. None of them ever seem to fit anywhere, with the one exception being the Pokemon movies. If you want big offenders, look at those Dragon Ball movies. Just about all of them are stuck in places that are simply impossible due to just how constantly busy Goku always was fighting one thing or another (or busy being dead, or recovering) in the series.

I don't know the details about Dragon Ball (that's not a series I've ever watched, or wanted to watch), but yeah, that is true I guess... they just make the movies, whether or not they fit in continuity. At least sometimes the movie is clearly in an alternate reality, like the Escaflowne movie which tells a completely different version of the story... but in cases like this, where it seems to be set there but it's pretty hard to figure out when it could have happened, it is annoying. I know I should just ignore it, but it is kind of annoying.

Hidan no Aria 11 - Is this almost over? I guess there's one major confrontation that's about to happen, anyway, in the coming Riko v. Aria/MC fight. As for this episode though, in this ep our stupid heroes believe Riko and go get a necklace that a teacher at the academy, who works as a researcher for one Vlad of Romania (who just happens to have a mansion in Yokohama), stole. I said last episode about how stupid it was they actually trusted her, and of course as I said above they were proven to have been foolish.

Still though, Riko is entertaining, so I don't mind TOO much... she's funnier than either of the main characters. :)

Oh, and of course in order to infiltrate the mansion and steal back the necklace, Aria and the MC take on the roles as his temporary servants, so he dresses up as a butler and Aria as a maid, with the usual anime frilly maid clothing. Cue Aria-as-maid fanservice. No pantyshots though, just some almost-pantyshot shots of her dress flutterin. What are they trying, "is she wearing underwear" again? I think they did that in ep. 1, but then they followed that one up with a bra-and-panty shot that isn't in this one. Whatever.

... Yeah, this episode was as much about fanservice as it was about anything else... also though, we do learn that our hero has some touchy spots he doesn't want to talk about, such as the girl who Riko disguises herself as (Aria asks who she is but he won't answer her). And also, Riko can be amusing. :)