The House of AnimeJB

Here are a few series that Eurkos and I can’t even do full reviews for, and will not be moving on to our ever-so-grueling six episode test. I’ll put up some brief summaries here so you aren’t totally lost as to why we decided not to continue on with them.

Though I’ll be writing the summaries, know that Eurkos either didn’t get through it also, or flat out refused to get them based on the fact that I couldn’t get through them - I have a slightly higher tolerance for retarded than he does.

Three shows this time around - read on for a few screencaps and very short thoughts on each.

Episode Summary

A voice over explains “Maxwell’s Demon”, which is a thought experiment created by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. (Read about that more here.) While the explanation goes on, we see what appears to be a flashback scene with a little girl crying next to a dead man. Shots of different parts of the room suggest that he was shot. The girl gets more upset, and things around her start happening. A wind picks up in the room, and the windows shatter.

The scene shifts to present time, where we see a sleepy redheaded girl getting a phone call. The call gets her on the move, headed somewhere other than where she is. We then find out that she is trailing another girl, who looks younger than her and is blond. She follows the blond girl to a fortune-teller’s house, whom the younger girl seems to know.

Once more the scene shifts, this time to a bar. A tall man walks in with the brim of his hat covering his face. A small girl with pink hair comes in behind him. After they order their meals, someone rushes in and whispers something to the rest of the people in the bar. They all leave in a hurry, which seems to please the tall man.

Episode Summary

Subaru narrates about how, four years ago, she was a crybaby who always relied on others to help her. When she was caught in a fire, all she could do was cry. Right when a statue was about to crumble and fall on top of her, she is saved by Nanoha. Subaru has always remembered how kind and cool Nanoha was, and she vowed to become stronger.

In the present day, a now-teenaged Subaru and her friend Tia are C-Rank Mages about to take a test to become B-Rank Mages, and maybe even serve under Nanoha herself. Reinforce is administering the test, while Fate and Hayate are watching over them from a nearby helicopter and Nanoha is watching from a screen in a presumably nearby room.

The two girls are easily knocking out all their targets, but eventually Subaru drops her guard and Tia sprains her ankle saving her. Instead of leaving Tia behind and finishing the test on her own, Subaru convinces Tia to use “that technique”, because she’s always been with Tia and doesn’t want to move up a rank without her.

Tia distracts the final “boss” target with dopplegangers and Subaru takes out the target by breaking through the wall from the outside and finishing it off. As they race to the finish line with Tia on Subaru’s back, Subaru is moving so fast that she can’t stop. Luckily Nanoha catches them with a net as they sail right over the edge of the building. Nanoha tells Subaru that’s after four years, Subaru has grown a lot, and that she’s happy to see her again, and Subaru is so happy she starts to cry.

Episode Summary

The show begins with a monster (known as yoma) making a meal out of a human. A girl with a sword appears, and as her eyes glow yellow, she easily slices and defeats the yoma.

We shift to a village, where the townspeople have found the remains of another dead body, making that 6 dead total. In a town meeting, it’s revealed that there is a yoma in the village, but once yoma have disguised themselves as a human, it’s impossible to tell who the yoma is. They start arguing amongst themselves, and then the head of the village says that he hired a Claymore to come defeat the yoma. The others at the meeting raise objections, but the elder says there’s no choice and that Claymores are the only ones who can detect yoma when they are disguised.

Raki is waiting outside for his older brother, who tells Raki that a Claymore is coming and that Claymores are half human, half yoma. Then someone shouts that the Claymore arrived and Raki runs with everyone else to go see. Raki learns that Claymores are only female and are called silver-eyed witches. As the Claymore enters the village a lot of people whisper nasty things about her and are met with her glare.

Everyone runs from her as she walks through the town except for Raki, who runs up behind her. She draws her sword on him but realizes he’s not a yoma and sheathes it. He follows her around and tries to have a conversation with her, and she is surprised that he isn’t scared of her. She tells him that her organization has no name, and Claymore is what everyone else calls them. Later in the day she sits to take a nap, and Raki tells her that his parents were the first to be killed and that she can defeat the yoma for him. She tells him she is not here to assist with his revenge. He says he understands, and leaves to go make supper. He introduces himself and asks for her name, but she tells him he’d just forget it anyway.

When Raki gets back to the place he’s staying at, he finds the family dead. His brother had been eaten by the yoma that killed his parents, and the yoma disguised himself as Raki’s brother afterwards. He tells Raki that he has to leave the village now because of the Claymore, but he’ll eat Raki first. Just when it looks like Raki will die, the Claymore appears and slices off one of the yoma’s arms. She reveals that she could sense the yoma on Raki, and so if she followed Raki she would find the yoma. She slices the yoma a few more times and defeats it, but the terrible scene and the Claymore’s glowing eyes terrify Raki and she leaves him huddled in a corner.

Episode Summary

In what is apparently a dream, a young Hayate asks Santa why he doesn’t get any presents for Christmas, and Santa tells him that it’s because he’s poor. Santa tells Hayate that if he wants to get anywhere he has to work hard, but even if he does he still won’t bring him any presents. Hayate decides to believe in Santa’s words anyway.

In the present day, Hayate is a very hard worker because his parents are bums and spend money frivolously or investing in silly dreams that always fall through. Though he has a good reputation and is known for his speed and resilience (and, unfortunately, clumsiness), he is fired because his parents went to his boss and told him that Hayate lied about his age. His boss gives Hayate’s money to his parents.

When Hayate gets home he finds that his parents already wasted his paycheck and have split town, abandoning him with a huge debt (¥156,804,000) that they gave him as a Christmas present. Yakuza come to collect Hayate and Hayate escapes. As he contemplates what to do he notices a girl complaining that the hot drink machines don’t take credit cards, and after a short internal battle decides to kidnap her for ransom. However, two other men try to do so first, and Hayate instinctively jumps out to protect her from them.

The girl - Nagi - is grateful and tells Hayate to ask for anything he wants, and instead of telling her he will kidnap her he bungles his words and says he wants her and will take her away no matter the cost. She thinks he confessed his love for her and waits as he finds a payphone to call her parents. He bungles the ransom call by using his name, loses his last few yen, and passes out from the cold in the snow.

Maria the maid makes her appearance and wakes Hayate up, lending him a scarf. In the distance they can see Nagi getting kidnapped again and Hayate tells the worried Maria that he will save her. As he’s hopping on his bike, Nagi is taunting her kidnappers and tells them that someone said he would take her away no matter the cost, so he’ll come if she calls him. She screams, “HAYATE!” Sure enough Hayate has caught up with the car. He gets hit by the car and lands on the roof, where he scares the kidnappers into handing Nagi over.

Nagi asks if he’s okay, and he says he’s fine because of his training. However he then collapses and bleeds all over - so badly that it apparently can’t be broadcast. Maria calls for a helicopter and Nagi decides to make Hayate her new butler as they need a replacement anyway.

Episode Summary

A short backstory reveals that there was a group of powerful beings known as the Golden Tribe. They called 3 other tribes (Silver, Bronze, Hero) to the universe. Before the Golden Tribe decided to move on to a new universe, human beings had made it to their current universe and were dubbed the Iron Tribe.

In the present-time, The Iron Tribe seems to be in big trouble. Their princess, Deianeira, has been using a vast amount of resources to find the ruined planet, Oron. She believes that the planet wlll hold the man that will become their savior, later claiming that he has more wisdom than any other being because he was raised by the Golden Tribe.

Indeed, on that planet is Age, a human who has been living there on his own. He crashed on the planet when he was a baby, and he calls the ship “Mother”. When Deianeira’s people land on the planet, he wonders if they are the people his father told him about.

The Bronze Tribe attacks the planet soon after Deianeira makes contact with Age, and they destroy Age’s ship. Outraged by the death of his mother, Age turns into (or calls?) a giant mecha-type monster and annihlates the enemy force’s mother ship in space. Deianeira refers to it as the last Nodos, and says that inside it is the one kept by the Hero Tribe that they were searching for.

Before We Begin

I’m doing this review on my own because Eurkos refuses to touch it, hehe! I wanted to warn you that as compared to other reviews we are doing, the summary for this one is long since there are a lot of things going on. But that’s usually the case in magical-girl-type shows, right?

Episode Summary

Karin is using the light of her ring to walk through a wooded area, and finds the seed of chaos she was looking for. It attacks her, and Kazune jumps out and takes the blow, seemingly unfazed. He and the two other boys in the group transform and attack the seed, but this seed is stronger than the ones they faced before. Karin transforms when the boys’ attack doesn’t work, but hers doesn’t work either. Then she says that the Chronos Clock is acting strange, and she disappears in a flash of light.

Karin finds herself back in the past and doesn’t remember what she was just doing. She turns to see the grave of her dead cat Shii-chan, and cries because he was her best friend and now she’s all alone. Kazune enters, meeting Karin for the first time, and manages to insult both her and Shii-Chan. She punches him in the face and yells at him, and he leaves.

The next day Karin literally bumps into Himeka and the two become fast friends. Later, Himeka introduces Karin to her cousin, who turns out to be Kazune. Karin punches him gain, and Himeka is surprised they know each other and asks Kazune if Karin is the Goddess he was looking for. He says there’s no way it could be a girl like Karin, and she goes to punch him again but he catches her arm when he notices her ring. She grabs her arm back and tells him not to touch her ring, and it starts to glow pink. She accuses him of doing something to the ring, throws her bag at him, and runs off.

At school the next day Karin notes that she feels more confident, and is acing tests, playing the piano properly, and generally doing extremely well in her classes that she was failing at earlier. When gym class comes around, she wishes that a storm would come up so she wouldn’t have to run a marathon race again, and to her confusion, one does come around even though it was gorgeous outside.

Later that day, Himeka returns Karin’s bag and tells her she will be leaving now. Kazune tells her that “He” might be coming after her now that weird things are happening to her, so if she ever needs help to call him right away. That night, while Karin is visiting Shii-chan’s grave, a shadowy figure of a man does indeed approach her, telling her that he has been looking for her for a long time.

Before we begin…

The Spring 2007 Reideen is a remake of Yuusha Raideen from 1975, which has another remake called Chouja Reideen from 1996 Rah Xephon was heavily inspired by the original Raideen, which is why they are so similar.

We are approaching this as if we haven’t seen any of the previous versions, because…well, we haven’t. No spoiling the entire plot for us, now!

Episode Summary

Saiga Junki, protagonist and math genius, is having weird dreams about piloting a giant robot. When his long-time missing father is found dead, he and his family go out to the research site where he was found. While going through his father’s notes, he comes across something about “The Great Warrior Raideen”, and when checking out a cave on the site, he finds a weird hole, looks in, and faints. He wakes up with a gold bracelet in his hand.

That’s when a meteor crashes into the earth and beastly giant mecha shows up, smashing through the nearby dam. Instead of escaping on the helicopter with his family, Saiga runs back to the site to get his father’s belongings and gets caught in the massive rush of water escaping from the dam. His bracelet glows, matching the words his father had written, and Saiga says “Fade In”. He is now inside The Great Warrior Reideen, facing off against the beast mecha as he was in his dreams.

Everyone else is making this post, so why can’t I?

This isn’t so much one to review, I’m not good at that, but I figured I could make a list and see what other people think they’ll look at this season.

Claymore - A mostly female cast of half-monsters that sacrificed their humanity to kill the full monsters, pretty much. It seems pretty dark based on things like, as the Claymore become more and more monster-like, they ask another to kill them, or will get sent on a suicide mission, and such. Despite what people are saying about it being typical shonen fare - I think they are sadly mistaken. It’s animated by MADHOUSE (Death Note, Chobits, Metropolis, Boogiepop, Gunslinger Girl), so should be pretty high in quality, too.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS - Season 3 of Nanoha, set 10 years after The start of A’s (and I believe 4 years after the epilogue in A’s). I’m a little worried with this one since everyone’s in the 18-20 range and I really don’t want them to still be acting like children, but I’m a huge Nanoha fan so I’m really anticipating this. I just wish she didn’t have that stupid side-ponytail. There’s an episode out that’s of dubious quality, so I’m waiting for a better one before I download it.