The House of AnimeJB

There’s been a lot of debate going around about subbing groups encoding things with SoftSubs or in MKV format. I used to hate those things too, but now I find that they’re pretty awesome, especially for taking screenshots! So I did a little research and put together a little guide to get things looking pretty on Windows and Mac, displaying subtitles the way the group intended for them to look.

To see what I mean, check out these screenshots:

VS.

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Episode Summary

In 2012, the world was ravaged by a climactic change that came to be called the Equatorial Winter. In 2035, the United Nations sought to control a war-ravaged world by suggesting the Wisest World War. The idea was passed unanimously, and the world started a war that was unlike any it had ever seen. A war with Giant Robots.

A boy visits his parents grave, telling them that he won’t be able to visit as often since he has to move to Tokyo. He is interrupted by a voice from behind him. As he turns around, he finds that the voice belongs to a cute girl, and he doesn’t hesitate to comment on that. After the girl gets embarrassed, he explains that he has a bad habit of blurting out things that he thinks. He speculates that the girl might be lost, and offers to help her with whatever problem she might have. After seeing a vision of a Giant Robot’s head, the girl asks of him: “Please, fight… and win.” He responds easily by saying that’s not a problem, since it’s better to win than to lose. The girl smiles and thanks him, which causes him to turn around in his own embarrassment. She’s even cuter when she smiles. He ponders about what she meant, thinking about the Gigantic Formula finals that he’s taking part in soon. When he turns around again, the girl is gone.

After being seen off by his teacher (?), the boy (now identified as Shingo) heads for Tokyo. Meanwhile, people scramble to make preparations for the fact that the next Wisest War is about to start. Even though some people didn’t believe it, it seems that Japan has a Gigantic to fight with this time. As a result, when Shingo gets off his train, he is greeted by a rather empty street. After visiting city hall, Shingo muses about how it doesn’t seem like a metropolis on his way to visit his new school. He realises that he probably should’ve gone to the stadium first, and decides to take part in the Gigantic Formula finals from a remote location at the school, even though he will be at a disadvantage due to lag.

The cute girl from earlier heads into a back part of the stadium, shows a guard her id (her name on the id is Kamashiro Mana), and is saluted on her way through the door. Inside, we see the scrambling people from before. It seems that they’re in a hangar. A younger girl taps away at a keyboard and tells her that since they’re in the middle of pilot compatibility testing, it’s not the time for her to be infatuated and wander so far away. Mana denies her infatuation with Shingo, and the younger girl says that she meant it in a general sense, talking more about wanderlust than anything else. Mana is appropriately embarrassed.

The Gigantic Formula finals begin, and elsewhere someone is planning an attack with a Gigantic of their own. While they deploy their robot, time skips ahead a bit to the end of the finals. It seems that Shingo has won it, even though he was at a disadvantage because of his location. The people in the hangar seem pleased with this, and change their tune when a warning buzzer goes off. It seems that the attack is coming. As the enemy attacks, the Gigantic in the hangar, identified as Susanoo, gets up on its own. On the way up, Mana deftly jumps into its open cockpit, ready to go and fight. She comments to herself that this has never happened before, and wonders what is going on.

Susanoo still acts on its own, running away from the enemy Gigantic. It runs to the school that Shingo is at, and is stopped just outside. Fighting happens between Susanoo and the enemy Gigantic, and Susanoo loses one of his arms. Even still, Susanoo stops fighting long enough to save Shingo from would-be assassins who know he’s the chosen pilot. Susanoo then brings Shingo into the second cockpit. After seemingly synching, Susanoo and Shingo take the fight to the enemy. Susanoo rips off the enemy’s right arm and uses it to replace the one it lost. At the sight of that, the enemy Gigantic makes a full retreat. Just after it does, the enemy’s arm (that is attached to Susanoo now) glows and takes the shape of Susanoo’s arm, and the repair job is complete. It is then revealed that the enemy was from China, and that the Wisest World War has officially begun. Shingo then finds out that the other cockpit was occupied by the girl he met in the cemetery before he came to Tokyo.

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I decided to do a review post with thoughts on each series I’ve seen now that episode 3’s are out and done with. These will be long posts, and each series will have about a paragraph of thoughts as well as some screencaps. I’m watching so many different things that are at different periods of release that I’ll be splitting up my thoughts into a few posts. Eurkos will be doing his own set of posts like this also.

There are 7 series covered in this post.

Claymore

I’m still really into Claymore’s universe. Although Clare is supposed to have her emotions tampered down, she’s proving to be a very interesting character and possibly very different from how the rest of the Claymore are. Episode two early on addressed how Claymore need to be slain after they can’t control their yoma powers anymore, which was way earlier than I thought it would happen. Episode 3 was a monster-of-the-week type, but showed us a bit of Clare’s skills that I didn’t even stop to think that she had, though it’s obvious in hindsight. Definitely still in my 6-episode test stage.

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Episode Summary

Hiro’s sister, Suwawa, has finally obtained a job as a live-in maid and has written to Hiro so he can come stay with her. Hiro arrives in town and finds that the mansion at the address he has is boarded up and has a creepy atmosphere. He decides to go into town to look for his sister.

While in town, he sees a gigantically-loaded cart pulled by a little kid. On top of the stack is a throne, and on the throne is a blond woman with red eyes. One of the wheels on the cart breaks and she gets down to take a look at it. The wind blows, and above the blond’s head a pulley holding steel beams breaks and is about to fall on her. Hiro sees it and manages to push the blond out of the way, only to get crushed under the beams himself. The blond remarks on what a nice corpse he is as he falls unconscious. The pair get to the house, along with Suwawa, and start moving everything in.

Hiro is pronounced dead during his surgery, and the blond arrives at his corpse and performs some sort of spell that resurrects him. She’s gone when he gets up and he realizes he’s in the morgue. He stumbles out onto the street and sees that the lights are on at the mansion, so he walks towards it. On the way, he notices a pack of wild dogs going there also, and follows them.

The wild dogs - or maybe wolves, arrive at the mansion and it turns out they are being led by a werewolf. The werewolf used to work for the blond, but now works for her brother. The wolves attack the blond but the strong little girl - who we find out is an android of some sort - defends her. As the werewolf himself decides to attack, Hiro arrives on the scene and finds himself running in front of the blond to take the blow again. The blond takes this opportunity to kill the werewolf.

The blond grants Hiro life again and tells him that he’s lucky he’d make a good servant and therefore can stay with her forever. The spell wears off after a few days so she’d need to renew it constantly. She introduces herself as Hime, princess of the monsters.

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Episode Summary

We start off with a brief history of the bike race called the Tour de France, then a reporter tells us that a Japanese person is in first place of that race at this very moment - it’s Shinozaki Mikoto.

Flashback to before he became a bicyclist, and we learn that Shinozaki Mikoto is clumsy and a bit of a dorky pushover when we see that he has trouble riding a motor scooter and has been sent by a group of guys to buy them all lunch. He ends up eating lunch by himself afterwards and reflects that though he is in high school now, he doesn’t really know anything about what he should do.

He stays after class to work on a painting of the girl he likes, Fukuzawa Yuki, when she walks into the room. After some awkward conversation she figures out he likes her, and puts him off by saying that she has a boyfriend in college with a car, though she is stretched out on his desk while she’s saying this. She tells him that rumor has it she likes more than one guy at a time, and if he changed himself a little she’d think about dating him.

As she’s about to walk off, Shinozaki gets the courage to ask if she would model for a painting. She agrees and while he’s painting her, he gets really caught up in the moment, painting wildly and standing on the desk. She’s amazed at his seriousness and his expression reminds her of someone named Yousuke. She ends up throwing the painting out the window because he drew her in a bikini.

Before she leaves, Yuki asks Shinozaki if he wants to join the bicycling club. He has no idea what she’s talking about, but then follows her out to a shed where she wheels out a bicycle. She starts saying all these things about how it’s a passionate heart that makes you a good rider, trying to convince him to join the club. Embarrassed, he tells her he can’t ride a bike and runs away.

That night, after waking up from a strange dream in which he was riding a bike perfectly and Yuki was riding on the back of it in a bikini, he gets up and goes to the school even though it’s still dark out. There he finds the bike, and for some reason it looks a lot more appealing to his eyes than it did before.

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Episode Summary

A seemingly desctructive interstellar war is errupting as it probably has been for some time. On the bridge of a certain warship, a frantic crew desperately tries to keep the systems online. An obvious hotshot member of the crew simply sneers, clutching a small object that looks like a drill. “Don’t lose your cool. C’mon… let’s show them just who they’re messing with!” The hotshot moves outside the ship (I’m not sure how he was breathing in space. Maybe it’s not in space, but at night?) and shouts “Gurren Lagann! Spin on!” Afterward the warship transforms into a giant robot. We are then left with the title screen.

After the energetic opening, we’re moved to a less energetic underground town, Jiiha Village, where a digger named Simon does a voice over to explain his situation. His job is to dig with a drill and expand the town, but he really does it because you can find treasures in there. He finds such a treasure, and it looks remarkably like the drill object that the hotshot guy on the battleship had. While he makes a necklace out of it, a group of girls comments on the fact that he’s a dirty loser.

While walking, he bumps into someone he knows. A guy named Kamina. Kamina tells him that the drill object looks good on him, as the drill is his soul. He then announces with exhuberance that his drill is a drill that will pierce the heavens. It quickly becomes obvious through antics that Kamina and his group, the Gurren-dan, dream of reaching the surface. It seems that others do not share their goals.

The Elder winds up locking Kamina in confinement after his failed attempt at getting to the surface, warning him that there’s nothing up there anyway. Kamina claims that he’s already seen it with his father, but is met with accusations of lying. They think his dad was crazy.

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Episode Summary

Yorito has left his home while it’s still dark out so he can take a picture of the sky as the sun is rising. As he sets up, he notices a girl kicking a drink machine as it has ate her change. He tells her why he’s out so late as he tries to get her drink from the machine, but by the time he gets it out, she’s disappeared and he misses his picture, and is left holding her tomato bean-paste drink.

That day he relays the events to his friend, Mana, and tells her he can’t give up taking pictures of the sky because the sky is always changing. After school, they both go out to buy a cake and a gift, and visit his sister, Aono, who is sick in the hospital. Mana’s sister, Koyori, is also there. In the middle of their get-together, Yorito peeks out of the blinds and runs outside to take a picture of the setting sun against the church.

Later, Mana scolds Yorito for abandoning his sister and sends him to the store to buy ginger. On the way there, he gets caught in the rain and encounters the same girl as the night before. Her money is stuck in the machine once again, and they get the drink out once again. She gets him to taste the weird drink and as it thought it tastes awful, though she thinks it’s good. She gets him talking about the sky again when she shows him a picture, and as he does she really gets into it.

Suddenly it seems as though the girl is transported into a clear, sunny field instead of the rainy night that it is, though it seems to just be her imagination. As it fades away she’s left crying. She tells him her name is Matsuri and she leaves her sky-print umbrella with him as she runs off.

The next day, a middle-aged man, who we see looking for someone earlier in the episode and found her (a little girl) curled up in a box, has returned from a convenience store with food. She asks if he found their target, and when he says yes she asks if she can meet it this time, to which he replies, “Probably”. Yorito scans his own picture collection and realizes that the picture he took of the sunset and the church the other day is a close match to Matsuri’s from last night.

The scene shifts to the church, where Matsuri is sleeping, and someone has obviously just entered it. It’s the man we saw earlier, and he draws a sword on Matsuri and attacks, though she manages to keep dodging. Outside, Yorito hears the commotion and runs to the church. As the man is about to kill Matsuri, Yorito enters the church and sees the scene, recognizing Matsuri immediately.

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Episode Summary

Ikuto runs away from home due to relationship issues with his father, and while on a boat during a storm he falls overboard and is given up on by the crew. It seems like he is drowning, but then he wakes up on an island where a cute girl - Suzu - is trying to “save” him. She ends up making him worse and bringing him back to her grandmother’s house. Suzu’s Grandmother tells a story of how a boat of Japanese people were shipwrecked on that island and named the island Airantou after the ship.

Ikuto is put in Suzu’s care and the two travel back to her place where they are attacked by Ayane, who wants Ikuto for herself. Suzu thwarts Ayane’s efforts and the two arrive at Suzu’s, where Ikuto takes a bath and she joins him, causing him more than a little discomfort. When his pervert-induced nosebleeds subside, Ayane kidnaps Ikuto and runs away from him, only to be tripped by a waiting Rin, who gets all shy when she tries to talk to Ikuto about going back to her place. Yukino shows up with Kuma Kuma and tries to get Ikuto to go on a date with her. This irritates Rin and Ikuto escapes as Rin and Yukino fight.

As Ikuto passes through the village he thinks about how he needs to escape as soon as possible, and is very wary of women at this point. He runs into Chikage, who he thinks is a nice girl at first, but then she gets close to him with a scary expression and he runs away from her, only to almost be shot by a miko-girl hiding in the bushes.

At this point Ikuto is now running away from pretty much the entire village, but before he is caught Suzu jumps out and stops their advance. Her grandmother shows up and explains that he’s the only man on the island. Appalled by the notion of man-hungry women, he runs away again.

Ikuto tries to escape the island over and over again, driven by memories of his father’s taunts, but the whirlpools surrounding the island are too much for him. He finds a gap between two whirlpools, but is blocked by a whale and eventually learns that beyond that gap is the biggest whirlpool around the island. Saved by Suzu, he lays on the back of the whale and accepts he can’t leave the island, and then gets a nosebleed as he realizes how little Suzu is wearing.

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Title: Differences
Series: Mai-HiME
Rating: G
Pairings:Takumi/Arika
Genre: Mild fluff, introspective, oneshot
Warnings: Series ending spoilers

Summary: Akira and Takumi reflect on their easy relationship, how they got there, and how it might be in the future.

Author’s Note: This was written for himitsu_santa for prpl_pen.

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Episode Summary

Amami Haruka auditions to be an idol singer, and even though she was extremely nervous and her voice was scratchy, she made was accepted to go to Tokyo to become an idol. As she cheers, a silver and gold trinket flies out of her envelope into the air. In Tokyo, a blue-haired woman lays flowers on a grave, and another blue-haired woman similar in appearance to the first is riding on a boat with a small blond girl. The second blue-haired woman has Haruka’s profile on her cell phone, and frowns at it.

At the train station, Haruka has a phone conversation with her friend, Yayoi, because her Yayoi can’t come pick her up in Tokyo. The reception goes out because of the interference from the asteroid belt surrounding Earth, and in her haste to catch her train she drops her Trinket. A girl by the name of Hagimara Yukiho returns it on the train, and has the same trinket. The two decide to go to their dormitory together. Haruka notices her trinket glowing, but gets distracted from mentioning it.

In Tokyo, Ritsuko, apparently an Idol pilot, cajoles another purple-haired Idol pilot into meeting Haruka at the station. Yayoi also shows up at the station wearing a penguin costume for Haruka, but when they call each call Haruka they find out that Haruka has already left the station and is pretty much lost in Tokyo. Yukiho is with her.

In some sort of base, an alarm is going off and they confirm that a “drop” is happening - when an asteroid from the belt surrounding Earth is going to crash into Earth. They send out a giant mecha (known as an Idol), Nebule, piloted by Makoto, to destroy it. Haruka and Yukiho are in that area and run to see it. Haruka is fairly impressed, and notices her trinket glowing again. In the background is the first blue-haired woman from earlier, watching them fondly. Elsewhere, the other blue-haired girl, now known as Chihaya, and the blond child are coming ashore.

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