mayoraasei | april anime (b)

Special A
Occasionally I quite like the manga that inspired this anime. The characters can be so quirkily adorable sometimes - the twins and their attachment to Ryu, Akira and her boyish aggression, good-natured Tadashi (who happens to be my fave XD), even Hikari's thick-skulled approach to anything remotely non-academic and non-sporty.

But for 10 volumes I've tried and failed to like Kei. Maybe I just find rich pampered kids from an unbroken family angsting about their loneliness uniformly annoying. I can deal with condescending characters, I can deal with perfect characters, I can deal with bad-natured characters, but somehow when those traits culminate in Kei, it ticks me off. I guess it's very hard for me to say I like the story when I can't stand the main character and the way he treats everyone around him. But anyway, that rant is neither here nor there.

The anime S.A. is so overwhelmingly shoujo that halway through the episode I began to reminisce of a time in the distant, distant past when I watched Fruits Basket. Like Host Club, I'm finding the comical timing a little off, so scenes weren't quite as funny as they might have been. The exceedingly shoujo nature of it (unlike Host Club, which was more openly satirical) also made it difficult to decide whether some scenes were going to be serious or tongue-in-cheek.

The only reason I picked up this manga in the first place was because of the art, which reminded me a little of Tanemura Arina's gorgeous watercolour-ish style. This series is another that suffered a face-lift during the transition, and it's not an effect that everyone will get used to. Still, if I can sit through XXXHolic, I don't see why I'd have problems with disproportionate limb lengths here XD

Overall, a relatively unimpressive first episode for me, although I believe it sets the tone quite well for the rest of the series.

Macross Frontier
Apart from Gundam, I'm not into franchises. I only downloaded this because someone online gushed "OMG THE SACRILEGIOUS BUDGET".

After watching it, I immediately sent a message to my "g00'dy", the gist of which was "OMG THE SACRILEGIOUS BUDGET!"

Surely it must be a sin to spend that much money on animation!

I mean, I thought Death Note had nice animation, but Macross F is a totally new level.

For someone used to seeing expanding pink cottonwool for explosions, imagine my awe when Macross F offers red and orange flames and glaring light and all that sort of stuff ♥!

I don't really like the character designs, and certainly not for the main character. Unlike Manying I don't like guys with long girly hair >__>;;; But it does bring a smile to one's face when one sees the voice actor list and recognise half of them as from Gundam 00 or Gundam Seed.........LOL.

At the moment the plot is nowhere to be seen, but that's sort of expected for a mecca series. Let's hope they left a bit of their budget over for a good script, instead of relying on simple wowing with 3D and dynamic animation and realistic game-like colours........

I liked the explosions though =D