Gundam SEED Destiny 24: Diverging Gazes

Watch Status : Subbed(Haro^2 Tori^2)

I had a lot of problems getting this episode due my dial-up failing for 2 days :P. Damn, I miss my broadband *sob sob*. Anyways, after the action last episode, it's time for the mandatory R&R/character development episode.One word here, Sunrise seems to be on CHEESE Mode recently so get ready for rolling eyes. And I might say, there's a "shocking" development of one character in particular.


After the conclusion of the battle, Minerva docks at the town of Tarcuius to finish her repairs. The Minerva MS team mourn the loss of Heine, with Athrun angry at Kira.Later, Rey is seen doing some file copying on a disc. We all should know that means, right ^_^.



Athrun then asks Gladys about the Archangel's whereabouts, saying he wants to talk to them.He gets permission to disembark from the ship to find them.Athrun then launches out in Saviour, leaving Lunamaria in puzzlement.



Meanwhile, Miriallia is taking a walk in a local market. Sunrise is taking every chance to put in Meer's version of Shizukana Yoru ni . Athrun bumps in to her coincidentally and they have a little talk, updating on each other's status. Eventually, Athrun asks her to contact Archangel so he can talk to them.



The scene switches to Archangel, also in a period of R&R. Ridiculously, they have an onsen on the ship, lol. So we get the customary fanservice when it comes to this places.I have to say, peace is really gettting to them.Onsens on ships?! This takes the cake as cheesiest part of GSD to date.Add that with Lacus doing the "water gun". What a faux pas.We're also getting too much flashbacks here, I swear that from 24 episodes of GSD currently, if the flashbacks weren't done, we'd only be at episode 15.And does anyone notice that in the eyecatch, Lacus's breast size is seriously increased? I'd almost think that Kira'll ditch Lacus and go for Meer instead ;p and that's what we're seeing in the eyecatch.

After all that, Shinn and Rey is being assigned a mission to check out a supposed EAF research facility.He's really funny here, with him forgetting about etiquette when asking Arthur and quickly adding "de arimasu ka" every time he speaks.We also apparently see that Rey's the one "ordering" the mission.



Athrun, in the meantime, has bunked up in a hotel.He's being watched by someone though, who turns out to be Lunamaria. God, she's a fanatic.I wonder how did she get allowed to stalk Athrun. Someone's gonna have a fit later.



Miriallia has successfully sent her message to Archangel. Kira and Cagalli decide to go meet Athrun to know more about the situation in PLANT and they leave the Archangel at their hiding spot for safety reasons.



After setting the meeting up, Athrun goes in Saviour with Lunamaria trailling behind in a chopper.God, she's fanatic.Meanwhile, Shinn and Rey are going off to the research facillity.



Upon reaching the site, Kira and Cagalli get a surprise when Miriallia reveals that Athrun has returned to ZAFT.Right on cue, Athrun arrives and they start to talk.Cagalli questions Athrun's return to ZAFT.Athrun questions Kira's actions with Cagalli fiercely replying that they were trying to stop ORB. She get scolded by Athrun instead for allowing ORB to sign the treaty and join EAF.Athrun further supports ZAFT and says that Dullindal is sincere in making peace.



However, Kira questions the fake Lacus and reveals Lacus's assasination attempt by the Coordinator Special Forces, suprising Athrun(and Lunamaria, eavesdropping).Kira states that he'll not trust PLANT unless he finds out the true intention of the attack.Meanwhile, Rey and Shinn are investigating the facillity, which seems abandoned. Both of them enter some room full of tubes containing human parts causing Rey to break down suddenly *hint hint*.The show ends on a slow and nice rendition of Life Goes On. I have to say, I quite like to get the differrent versions of Life Goes On.

Next episode seems to be revelations and some fighting involving Stellar-chan(yay!).Well, tommorow then, heh. I'll wait for Haro^2 Tori^2.

A quite revealing episode this time, figuratively and literally.Now we know what Lunamaria does in her free time when she can't stick to Athrun ^_^. Archangel's onsen was seriously cheesy and ridiculous.Lacus just got her score lowered with the water gun faux pas.

But seriously speaking, I suspect Lunamaria might not be eavesdropping just because she's infatuated with Athrun.I suspect that she might be working for Dullindal to notify him of Athrun's movements.Now that's she's discovered some shocking stuff, she's high on my list of candidates of people to die next, though a lot of people will not like it(Lunamaria fanboys for one).But then, when you get Maaya Sakamoto to voice someone, it's kinda hard for the writers to kill her off for the sheer name power, so I'll keep it to heart, but then Sunrise isn't forgiving so... and I wish that they'll snap out of CHEESE Mode soon. Their recent stuff is soooo full of it *coughMH26cough*.

We also get confirmation that Rey is another clone/artificial human. Hey, he's voiced by Rau's seiyuu, there's bound to be some connection.Neo's related to Mwu is already an open secret so I hope that Sunrise will reveal it soon, rather than waiting for episode 4x like in GS, making it feeling rushed.

I didn't really take too much screencaps for this one.Not that much are caption-worthy. I just take ones that are really funny and captionable ^_^.I'd suggest moy's life line by line entry for more pics, just a counter plug for his plug of mine for GSD 23 ;).

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Mai HiME 26 : Shining Days

Watch Status:Subbed(yesy)

Warning: Due to an inclusion of an unknown factor codenamed "Cheese",Mai HiME 26 may induce eye-rolling, nausea, vomitting and cases of corniness.

Finally, after 26 weeks of following one of the most intriguing, exciting and tragic(pre-MH26 days), Mai HiME finally comes to an end. I had expected a more...shocking ending, something with death in it, but Sunrise continues on their "shocking" part for Mai HiME and injects enough cheese in it to sway Mai HiME from my personal top 5 to top 10. Well, it should be expected when the episode title is "Shining Days".


The episode starts off with Miyu hitting the Anti-Materializer to maximum in the MIP pillars, causing a disturbance and breaking the crystal which Mashiro resides in.Mashiro then rises to the surface,emerging at the center of the school's atrium(i think that's what they call it).She releases a beam which changes the sky outside to become the same as inside the Kokuyougo and mentions that it's now time to break free from destiny.


Inside, Kokuyou no Kimi(KnK) states that the destiny of the star cannot be changed.Mai asks about the pillars to which KnK answers that this festival has 1 extra HiME(refering to Alyssa). After the usual melodramatic conversation of "why you're fighting" between Mikoto and Mai (what a waste of time), they start off the fight( yeah, now we're talking).


Back outside, Mashiro uses her power to conjure up HiME signs and sends them off to all the other HiME's appearing as ghostly representations of herself and we see of what happens(Finally!) to the other HiME's, who are in various states of helplessness and despair. She even resurrects the dead HiME's, well better than a reset I guess.Finally, at the pillars, a suspiciously familliar looking outline emerges.

Back to Mai vs Mikoto, Mai is not fighting seriously against Mikoto, only defending from her attacks, while their Child's,as usual, have different ideas about compensation for damage to public properties.KnK asks Mai for one last time to become his wife, but she refuses.KnK asks why, and Mai retorts back with a "A world the way someone wants it is disgusting."


Suitably pissed off, KnK draws his sword and as he attacks Mai, someone comes and deflects the blade away.It turns out to be Tate, resurrected from the dead and we enter CHEESE Mode.


Not enough with Tate and dead HiME's Mashiro promptly resurrects all the MIP's as well and we go on full CHEESE Mode here. Haruka and Shizuru rules this show.


Back to the main fight,KnK and Tate are having the pre-fight macho man banter with Tate uttering his coolest words of the show(sadly) here. The fight resumes with Mai vs. Mikoto and Tate vs KnK.Mai unsummons her elements and receives one of Mikoto's strikes as she embraces her and says she likes her, causing Mikoto to snap out of her trance, releasing her from KnK's control.


Back to Tate vs. KnK.Sunrise is using all the standard fight cliches here blah blah, so I feel lazy to comment.When a fight culminates with someone shouting "I love you!!!", you know it sucks.Poor Tate, he can be so cool and turn so cheesy in a few minutes.Mezame is sooo wasted here.


Apparently, Mikoto can't stand the cheesiness as well and attacks KnK, destroying the purple charm and releasing KnK's control on Reito.The real KnK, gets fits and proceeds to inhabit his "true" form, adding to the collateral damage on the way.After the cliched crap that's required of bad guys, when they get screwed, Mai summons Kagutsuchi to give him a nice tan but fails because the dagger on Kagutsuchi's mouth is under KnK's control.


CHEESE Mode comes in at this moment, as we get Chiisana Hoshi ga Oriru ~Piano Version~ and the scene changes outside to reveal the HiME's charging with their Childs to the Hime Star.It has to be said, that how can a dog, squid, horse, frog and spider fly? They've could've least made them run on land or something.Shizuru steals the whole scene with her "Kannin, na" though. And pity Midori, her scene gets stolen by Natsuki.To make a long story short, all of them ram in to the Hime Star, destroying it.


With it gone, Kagutsuchi proceeds to BBQ KnK. Nagi gets a splitting headache.And time miraculously flys to the next morning.CHEESE Mode rides high here and we see a "heart-breaking" scene between Mai and Mikoto. I had kept my hopes up here for Sunrise to redeem themselves after all that cheesiness but sadly my hopes are dashed. Kagutsuchi redeemed it a bit here though.


After the "Mikoto death" fiasco(bleagh! smelled it from a mile away),we get time skips again and it's spring with the graduation ceremony in full swing.The school is being rebuilt by Haruka's family, Fumi is the Board Chairwoman, basically everyone's well and in full spirits, which can only mean Comedy mode being engaged.I'm lazy to summarize, so I'll let the screencaps say for themselves.Sister Miyu and Sister Nao rules.Haruka, a riot as usual and Natsuki is sooo kawaii...


Finally, the show ends with Mashiro and Nagi, returning to some place and a pan out scene of the whole academy, The End.

Admittedly, I had expected more from Sunrise about Mai HiME's ending, but sadly,it didn't live up to my expectations.Apart from that, I felt that they could've changed the pacing a bit and put the MIP's revival later, after ol' KnK got incinerated. The comedy was quite out of place in the show at the fight scenes and the Hime Star destroying part.Comedy after is good but comedy during = bad.But still, it was quite funny, especially when Shizuru did her stuff.

Kokuyou no Kimi is also screwed up as a bad guy.Why can't they make good bad guys this days?!! Remaking the world is sooo cliched.Anyways, I digress.People should go read Artemis Fowl,now that's one great bad guy.

Sunrise also ruined Tate a bit. He turned from cool to cheesy so faster than you can blink,but it's at least better than "Mikoto Death", that was sooo corny, I could sense it from a mile away.Damn you, Sunrise.And Natsuki DID NOT deserve to utter the "Hime Sentai" line.

Overall, the ending felt like a rollercoaster ride, Sunrise ruined such good build-up with a descending ride to cheesiness.I'm not really against happy endings, but I would've liked it if they executed it a bit more better, without the cheese.

But in all, Mai HiME remains in my heart as one of the most thrilling and twisting anime of recent shows.Sadly, the execution of the ending leaves much more to be desired.But it's still likable and I'm hoping for a FMP:Fumoffu style spinoff, involving onsen trips, Mai "expertly handled" by Shizuru and Mikoto being "psychologically scarred" by a wild birthday bash ;),maybe titled as "Mai HiME:Kannin,na", heh.

Anyways, a review will be up soon.And it's quite a chore to label 66 screencaps :P. I really should stop taking 2 hours to write up.

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AIR : Series Review and Impressions.

Just finished watching AIR 12,ending off one of this season's most beautiful anime.T'was a bittersweet ending though and I didn't understand fully the ending.But in all, it was a good show nonetheless.

AIR was from Key, a famous game company in Japan that produces dating sim games(correct me if I'm wrong), so understandably, AIR also originated from it's game, which from what I've heard, has quite a fanatical following in Japan, so, news of the anime followed with a heavy promotional campaign which released quite a lot of previews,in fact, I've seen AIR previews subbed in September last year(from what I've remembered). The amount of publicity was what attracted me to watch it in the 1st place.

On watching the first episode of the anime, the first thing that instantly strikes the viewers is the awesome art(which Stripey aptly puts it as having the budget of the GDP of a small country) which encompasses the whole of AIR from the character designs to even the backgrounds.In fact, Kyoto Animation's background rendition of the sea, clouds and the sky(one of the hardest things to draw) are one of the best ever and most detailed ever seen for an anime.

Not only the art is good, it's also detailed and full of movement, unlike some animation studios which employ the still techiniques to reduce costs.I have not come across any usage of stills in the anime yet, with even mundane parts animated with movements.I was suitably impressed by it and AIR will definately hold the title of best & most detailed anime art for times to come.Kudos to Kyoto Animation for that.

AIR also features a superb cast which are all likable and cute.Yukito is definately a breakaway from the traditional stereotype of the protagonists in this genre.He exudes an aura of coolness yet he's very approachable and understanding.I definately liked him a lot, in fact, it was him that made me stick to AIR ;). The 3 girls of the show, as usual are cute and pretty, keeping up to standards of this genre of anime, but personallly, I like Tohru the most ;), too bad she's gone after Episode 6 :P (oops spoiler).

Which brings me to one the weakness of the anime, the pacing. It was quite sad to see that after wrapping each individual's arc, the girls will inevitably be left out of the anime :P. Understandably, in the original game, the players had the choice to choose which girl he/she likes and go on to finish the game with different endings for them.I understand Key's choice to only focus a bit of each girls and then proceed to the ending with the most popular one(Misuzu in this case) but it would be much better for the viewers to see what happens to the others as well. The pacing of the anime was also highly criticised in Japan, apparently because the plot was going on way too fast for their liking, but IMO(w/o the bias from the game), AIR develops quite good and manages to make me feel as if 1 episode were 2 instead, very hard to do,I assure you.

Plus, the anime isn't fully understandable, especially in the later episodes, for those not who have not played the game before. That definately took out some fun of the anime for me.The ending also is very biitersweet and quite unexpected, ending in somewhat a loop.Maybe a sequel in the works? I wonder.But as they say, sometimes the journey is more important than the destination and AIR is definately of this type, for me.

In all, AIR is a great show, a must watch for the great art in itself. Even though suffering from some setbacks and weakness, AIR still manages to entertain and awe the viewers.Those looking out for a nice romance drama will find AIR good enough to fulfill their needs with an apt doses of humour, joy, sadness and love in equal settings.

+Great Art
+Characters
+Good Drama
+Yukito-san
-Where are the other girls?? I need more of them!!
-Sufficient understanding of the original game is needed to understand some parts.

Rating : 8/10
Definately recommended for those to see the full potential of anime art.

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Gundam SEED Destiny 23 : The Shadow of War.

Watch Status: Subbed (Haro^2 Tori^2)


Continuing from last week, where Kira employs his CALM technique resulting in the the destruction of Minerva's Tannhauser positron cannon, shocking everyone.

The resulting explosion seriously damages Minerva and forces her to land on water.Archangel arrives at the scene soon after and Cagalli lauches out in Strike Rouge surprising everyone with this recent development.Cagalli demands that all the ORB forces cease fire and retreat.

While waiting for the answer, Cagalli flashes back earlier when they received news of the ORB attack.Kira is being awfully harsh to his sister here ^_^;; as he points out that this inevitably will happen when ORB joins with the EAF, making Cagalli to ask them all to help stop the battle.

Back to the battlefield, Jona(Yunna) is pissed off. Neo contacts him and asks the meaning of this.Jona finally claims that the he doesn't know who's that after being pressured by Neo,prompting the launch of Chaos,Gaia and Abyss to participate in the battle.

On the ORB flagship, Jona claims that the Strike Rogue is an imposter and orders an attack on it.Freedom easily counters the attack.The attack surprises Cagalli.

EAF takes the chance and launches a full-scale assault with their MS'es on Minerva.This sparks off a 3 sided battle between the ORB/EAF, Minerva and Archangel.Kira enters SEED mode and promptly pwns everyone in the battlefield(not killing them though) to stop all of them.

Heine's Gouf Ignited squares off with Stellar's Gaia.Heine's eletric whip weapon gives him the upperhand against Gaia.Heine is being positively evil here(I thought so!) as he fights with Gaia.Meanwhile, Shinn fights Abyss and Athrun fights Chaos(can't remember the other 2 names)


Cagalli gets her butt saved by Waldfelt in modified golden Murasame as she doesn't want to fire back at her own troops.

Kira and Archangel, then randomly pwns everyone in an attempt to stop the battle.Athrun tries to contact Kira to stop him but fails.The battle culminates with Heine pissed off with Freedom and tries to engage him but he gets attacked from the back by Gaia resulting in his death, shocking Athrun, not too far away.

The show then ends off with Freedom and Archangel retreating and both sides suffering significant losses.

Good episode of GSD with all the formulas that make it successful, war, MS action, death...Nothing much of plot development here but with Athrun being pissed off with Kira, it could be interesting to see what will happen when they meet next.

Heine meets a painful death, albeit a bit too fast. He's just only on for about 5-6 episodes, I think.But I have to say his Gouf Ignited is quite good with the arm gatling beam gun and the electric whip.The part where he faces off with Gaia reminds me of an animal trainer(lol :).

Freedom is still good as usual, doing his job of pwning everyone but reducing the death toll :).But I have to say, Kira has gone a bit harsh recently and he seems apathetic from his Gundam SEED times.I guess I would be like that after all that's happen, especially with meaningless wars being fought. He seems more mature and stronger now, compared to his days in SEED.

Next episode seems to be character development as Minerva gets repaired back at base. Athrun angst fest detected :). There's also emphasis on Shinn and Rey as well from the commentary.

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