Sam’s Anime Study

Another manga that I picked up recently was the third volume of Rozen Maiden. I read the original two in my local library however unfortunately, the store that I went to did not have any of the first two in stock. So… here is my take on the third volume of a very popular and successful series. 

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Pita Ten has always been a special anime and manga to me. It remains the first anime series that I ever watched all the way through and if memory serves me right, it was one of the first mangas that I read all the way through as well. This comes from the same collection of purchases that I made with Kon Kon Kokon and over the last week, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading most of it.

WARNING: Spoilers

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As quoted from [CM] Kaye at the link http://forums.iahgames.com/dragonica/showthread.php?t=2042&page=9

Hi everyone,

Thanks for waiting!
Please download your Alpha II client from this link here!
http://files.filefront.com/Dragonica…/fileinfo.html
We will update you once it is available at MMOsite.com as well.

 Well… the alpha II client is now up. Feel free to grab it from the filefront link above or check out the forums for a torrent link and the soon to be MMOsite download. Hope to see all the fortunate people who got into Alpha II ingame. For those that didn’t make it in, CBT will be around soon enough. Keep your eyes peeled at this blog for some ingame screenshots!

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From the updates I announced, I was unable to change to the theme that I wanted (It worked on a test blog of mine but not this one unfortunately). However, I did make a number of changes.

•  An archives page has been added, found in the menu link at the top of the screen. It is categorised by month.
• I have changed the categories system to run off the categories and not the blog-roll like I used to. Currently my sidebar isn’t perfect for it yet but I will change the settings around soon. It goes by Category>Topic>Posts. The Posts will run off the edge, for an accurate display, hover over the post link and it will show what one it is. This may be removed and replaced if I cannot get it working.

Just a quick message to all people who have made it into the Alpha II of Dragonica and have not heard the message,  Alpha II will be postponed a week until the 24th of July. This is to improve the quality of the Alpha before it is released, as IAH Games believes on releasing a good quality version, even of something before beta.

The Closed Beta test has been postponed for an indefinite time due to major programming updates which need to be updated into the current english version. 2,000 people were chosen for the Alpha II from the many times more people who applied.

I hope to see you on the game when it is open!

Anime: Strike Witches

Type: Opening Theme

Song Name: Strike Witches

By: Yoko Ishida

Review: Due to some problems with my file, my media player which I use to take screenshots didn’t seem to like it at all. However, despite this odd flaw, I really liked this opening, not the best, but it still was very good. The animation was very very fast (Which made it very hard to take screencaps) but was very well done and it is obvious that they put a lot of effort to keep people interested in watching the show, rather then thinking that it is only there to appeal to the loli fans. The song was also very nice and the animation was worked around the song so the timing between the two elements were very good. Read more

Over the next few days, I will be changing things in the blog so if there are missing categories, images in the wrong place etc, please disregard them.

Thanks

From the smiling girl above, you would never suspect that the series was another part of the “When They Cry” series. The third part of the “When they Cry” series titled Umineko no Naku Koro ni has currently been very popular in Japan, thus it has been recently announced that an anime adaptation of it will be released at an unknown date soon.

 I have played the two Umineko games currently released and they have great potential at becoming an excellent animes, althrough I don’t believe that it will be on the same level as Higurashi, but then again, Higurashi added a whole new level to anime for me.

 With only two of the visual novels and another one set to come out at a future date, it is not like Higurashi with the whole series planned out, alas there will be quite a number of unknown parts of the anime which is always rewarding in animes (So long as they don’t mess it up).

 Of course, we also have the three-part Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei OVA coming out soon which shall also be rewarding.

 Sources:

• http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-07-12/umineko-no-naku-koro-ni-tv-anime-officially-announced
• http://www.oyashirosama.com/web/umineko/index.htm

Since I am not planning on doing much blogging in regards to individual episodes, here is my review on just a few of the theme songs that I viewed while watching the anime of this season. No video links this time, internet speed is very slow until a few days so I will not be able to post videos here. Also note:

• Southern Hemisphere Winter Season
• Northern Hemisphere Summer Season

Anime: Sekirei

Type: Opening Theme

Song Name: Sekirei

By: Saori Hayami, Marina Inoue, Kana Hanazawa & Aya Endo

Review: I was hoping that something good in regards to opening themes would pop up this season, as there has always been one outstanding opening. This, is quite possibly the one I have been after. First of all, graphics wise, it is very high quality and very fast paced. They seem to have gone all-out with the graphical quality here as they seemed to put in as much detail into everything than possible. The song was also very upbeat that worked well with the fast paced animation. Definately not a boring point within the song and managed to keep my interest through the whole thing without me skipping through any of it. My only complaint here was a few seconds here-and-there of Musubi’s breasts being very evident as being big. (Especially Image 3). All-in-all however, a very high quality theme. Read more

To find this post at any time, look at the page Review Marking at the top of the screen. http://sam.animeblogger.net/?page_id=370

With the blog starting to be redone and restarted, I felt it was time to have a general making scheme that could be used when reviewing different types of things such as Anime, Manga, Music, Games etc. Read more

I have never been a big fan of racing games however when IAH Games mentioned that they were bringing Top Speed to the english speaking community, I was interested in it, especially since Mario Kart Wii was out around the same time and I was enjoying that. The beta began last Saturday (5th July) at 00:00 as it will do for the next few weekends. Here is my review of it.

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For the first of my reviews in my “revived” blog, I have decided that I will review some of the stuff that I bought while I was in a bookshop I recently found. Alas, I wasn’t expecting to buy anything but when I found the manga section they had (Rather rare to find large amounts of manga in Australia), I decided it was time to swoop and spent a fair portion of money on them. This title, Kon Kon Kokon was something that I had my eyes on for awhile but wasn’t able to find. Was it worth the money that I spent? Here is my review on it.

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While I did state that I most probably will not be blogging this season. Here are my picks that I will watch at least one episode of during the next season of anime in Japan. My problem basically was there was nothing that really interested me, although I hear there are some good series next season. Thanks to Moetron for the list of animes that they put up, which helped me make my selection. I was hoping to do this list a bit nicer but it didn’t come out the way I had hoped.

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I have always been picky with games. I have ended up trialing many games, however while every online game has its charms, very few have managed to keep me active for more then a few months. I have been working for IAH Games in the Community Crew (A group of people who volenteer their time to help out the community) as the captain. During my time, I got word of another game being released to the Asia-Pacific region known as Dragonica. It is basically a side-scrolling MMORPG which has some of the most astounding anime graphics which would make any otaku into cute stuff go crazy. I now also help out on the Dragonica forums as well.

The Alpha Test was released on the 14th of June and went for two days. During this time, despite being buggy (Obviously since it was an alpha client “Development–>Translation–>Alpha–>Closed Beta–>Open Beta–> Full Release) it had a charm that I had not received since I played Granado Espada. What is it like? Well let me tell you.

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I had a long think about what I should do with this blog as at the moment, nothing is keeping my interest for more than a few episodes and I am getting rather busy at school. So this is what I have decided to do for at least my next term at school:

• I will not be posting any series episode reviews unless something really stands out, then I will be doing it on a case by case basis.
• I will be mainly posting whole series reviews for old series which I think are either, good, bad or even just average in order to aid people in their choice in purchasing an anime. (This was my plan in the beginning for this blog actually).
• Also, I will be reviewing any interesting purchases I make in regards to anime, manga, otaku etc.

No doubt more stuff will come to mind as time goes on.

Just want to inform everyone that my internet is messing up a bit (Rather slow) so I have been unable to post anything at the moment. Images are all prepared so I hope to have them up in a day or so.

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Seen this happy and friendly looking image around on a blog, website or maybe even your own posts/webpages? This image means that a person has decided that instead of making their own images and hosting it on their own website, they have decided to leech off other peoples web hosting, in this case AnimeBloggers.

Maestro has kindly given bloggers like me a chance to host their own blogs as well as hosting the images necessary for it however, it is unfair if people from other websites decide to take away others bandwidth by simply copying and pasting image links to their own website.

Over the last month, I have noticed that there have been more leeching of my images than ever, and seriously, even through the IMAGE LEECHING IS BAD!! sign looks great, wouldn’t it be more rewarding actually having unique images made and hosted by you?

In other news… I have split the news section into two parts, Site News and Anime News. This should make it much easier to determine who news goes where. Althrough, I will not be changing over any previous site news to the new category :).