Find out who were the best characters, opening and ending sequences after the jump, as for the rest, it’ll come in part 2 in a few days.

First comes the best of the best character-wise. This year we kept the non-human award, but we decided for a serious choice instead of something like last year.

Male Character

What makes a good character?  One could write a whole book on this topic.  What we picked for the best guy had to include a degree in badassery, had a way to either make us laugh, think or just really show a lot of courage.

Winner: Adam Blade (Needless)

Why: Adam Blade is a priest. It’s never explained why in the anime though.  He’s also a clone of God/The Second Christ and is kind of badass, though his fights are usually more frustrating than impressive.  More important than anything else though is that he’s good at making us laugh and that he’s a completely incurable lolicon.

Runner-ups:

Takizawa Akira (Higashi no Eden) 

Ushiromiya Battler (Umineko no naku Koro Ni) 

Lockon Stratos (Season one’s twin) (Mobile Suit GUNDAM 00 Second Season) 

Female Character

Female characters can be cute, charming, sexy, tsundere, dominating, etc.  Just that alone isn’t enough to make a winner out of one or another.  There needs to be depth to a character for it to stand out.  That’s why our winner is…

Winner: Hitagi Senjougahara (Bakemonogatari)

Why: Well yeah, technically, Bakemonogatari isn’t totally over, as there’s still two unaired episodes.  But it’s TV running has ended earlier last Fall, so we decided to include it this year instead of 2010.  So why her? The truth is that she would have killed me if I hadn’t picked her.  Yeah, she’s the most completely crazy character we’ve seen in a while that had a lot of depth in her.  The way she handles her relationship with Arararagi is quite interesting in itself too.

Runner-ups:

Golden/Endless Witch Beatrice (Umineko no naku koro ni)

Shizuku Sangou (Kämpfer)

Ogata Rin (Rideback)

Non-human

Like I said before, this time, we went with actually something that isn’t as silly as Kannon’s hat. So we went with characters that aren’t humans and not “things”. Here we celebrate the furries and such!

Winner: Wise Wolf of Yoitsu Horo (Spice and Wolf II)

Why: Why not? Sure she’s “female”, but she’s a wolf goddess that’ll rip you a new one if you’re not on her side.

Runner-ups:

Kyoko’s little devils (Skip Beat!) 

Spanky (Basquash!) 

Guin (Guin Saga) 

Best Couple

What makes the best couple in an anime is up to interpretation. No doubt though this year would be a debate between two specific ones though. Yet the winners are…

Winner: Taiga and Ryuuji (Toradora)

Why: The romance of the tiger and the dragon was a touching one. How they both grew to love each other even though they were only friends helping out each other getting closer to their original “crush”, was as touching as it gets. Heck, it almost went on the Romeo/Juliet ending scale near the end.  Meanwhile, Tomoya and his daughter’s relationship is one of the biggest tearjearker out there, as well as the one he has with Nagisa.

Runner-ups:

Ushio/Tomoya as daughter/father (Clannad After Story)

Nagisa/Tomoya (Clannad After Story)

Senjougahara/Araragi (Bakemonogatari)

Overall Cast of characters

What makes a great cast of characters will always be how much the bunch of them are interesting, how they grow as a whole and how they interact with each others.

Winner: Toradora

Why: Characters growing through a series is a dominant theme in most anime.  But rarely do they have characters grow so much in such an interesting way as in Toradora.  And the way how they interact with each others, including minor characters just helps Toradora’s cast stand out that much more.

Runner-ups:

Taishō Yakyū Musume 

Basquash! 

Soul Eater 

Now it’s time to present the best Opening and Ending animations.  These takes into account both the song and animation.  A lot of great ones were omitted because they failed in one or the other category.

Best Opening (song and animation)

An opening theme ideally needs to be good enough to suck you into the world of its series.  This is exactly what this one did for us when we watched it.

Winner: resonance (Soul Eater) by T.M.Revolution

Why: The animation in this is fantastic.  The background is redrawn on every frame and gives us a great feeling of depth in Soul Eater’s world.  Its pacing is fast and frantic which goes hand in hand with the series itself and the song follows suit with it.  This wins hands down.  I loved some of the runner ups more than this one, but they lacked the technical side to match up to this.

Runner-ups:

Falling Down (Higashi no Eden) by Oasis

Silky Heart (Toradora) by Yui Horie

Chouhatsu Cherry Heart (Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu Purezza) by Milan Himemiya and Chocolate Rockers

Best Ending (song and animation)

While the Opening animation draws us in, the Ending animation is somewhat of a cool-down and doesn’t usually requires as much movements in its animation and there’s opening for more variety in song types.

Winner: Don’t say “lazy” (K-on!) by Yoko Hikasa with Aki Toyosaki, Satomi Satou and Minako Kotobuki

Why: It’s not the first time I bring up this one on TSP, and while the runner-ups (all 4 of them) all present something great, from fan-service to awesome paper animation, this one has a visual style that just resonates too well with my taste.  Mio is awesome and the whole Internet agrees with this.  If you don’t, then just find yourself another Internet.  Anyway, the song is also some of the greatest J-Pop I’ve heard last year, not that I listen to that much of it though.

Runner-ups:

Aggressive zone (Needless) by Needless★Girls+

Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari (Bakemonogatari) by supercell

Futari no Yakusoku (Basquash!) by Eclipse

Futuristic Imagination (Higashi no Eden) by School Food Punishment

Well that’s all for the first part of the Best of Anime 2009. Expect the rest in a couple of days.

Share/Save

Figthing games are back in force this year. Last year’s Soul Calibur IV and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix have set the path for this year’s Street Fighter IV, Tekken VI, Soul Calibur PSP, Fate/Unlimited Code, Kings of Fighter XII and I’m surely forgetting some. In this wave of franchises whoring, comes Blazblue: Calamity Trigger.

Developed by Arc System Works, the guys behind the original Guilty Gears game, and published somewhat miserably some will say by Aksys Games, Blazblue features a whole bunch of content on its disc.

I managed to snatch a copy of the Limited Edition back in Late June/Early July when it was first released, a feat that not many Canadians had the chance to do, since the very limited number of copies distributed by Aksys in Canada, and even in the USA.

Read on to find out if the extra wait most of the people interested in the game had to suffer through because of the low distribution was worth it.

Developer: Arc System Works
Publisher: Aksys Games
Date of Release: June 30, 2009 for the Very Limited Edition / Late July, 2009 for the Standard Edition
Platform: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Arcade

Genre: Fighting
Players: 1-2

Looks and Sounds

The game features 12 anime style characters drawn and animated for a 720p resolution.  As far as details goes for 2D sprites, I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a console game anything better, upscaled on a 1080p 52” TV, the characters were still pretty sharp and didn’t look pixelated from where we were sitting when we tested it on that TV. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t argue about how much this game looks beautiful.  The 3D-rendered backdrops in the multiple arenas with crazy details are just stunningly refreshing the first few times you see them.  When a match begins, the camera usually starts off somewhere inside the background, zooming out to the layer where you’ll be fighting, but you’ll be surprised how much details were put in such small areas of the background, just so that the level’s intro looks really cool.

Arc System has put a lot of time on polishing the game, and it shows, not only on the character and level designs, but also on the music side. The heavy toned soundtrack of the game, which also came with the Limited Edition has a 2 discs set, puts up the right mood for brawling with your friends, offline or online.  While the music hasn’t engraved my memory yet as much as Guilty Gear’s did, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.  Nonetheless, the music as always been something important in fighting games, at least for me, and no one beats Arc System at this.  I mean, is it just me, or music really makes you better at a fighting game if you can get into its beats.  I just flow through a fight much better when I’m caught in a musical rhythm.

As for the characters’ designs themselves.  Well it’s obviously more aimed at the anime fans than anyone else, as they really fits archtypes characters too well, but they still hold, most of them a little bit of originality, in personality and design.  My favorite character on the design side, is definetely Taokaka.  She’s a goofy more or less cat-girl with hilarious lines, match intros, win poses, moves and especially one special move, called “I’mma beat the crap outta you!”… In terms of who I play though, she falls on my third choice, but I haven’t really got any good with her.

Story

I’ll just quote Wikipedia’s plot description here.

Prior to the events of BlazBlue, humanity was on the verge of extinction from the “Black Beast”, a creature of Darkness. The world was saved by six heroes who wielded magic. They helped humanity create “Armagus”, a fusion of magic and technology, to defeat the Beast.

After the war, the Novus Orbis Librarium Armagus (the Library or NOL for short) was created to govern the world with the use of Armagus. A great deal of dissent was caused by the Library, partly due to Armagus’ use in nearly every facet of society, and the widening socioeconomic gap between those who could and couldn’t use Armagus. This dissent would eventually form years later into The Ikaruga Civil War, when the Ikaruga Union openly rebelled against the Library. After the war, the Library imposed a harsher rule on the world, punishing any rebellion against the Library with the death penalty.

In December A.D. 2199, several years after the Ikaruga Civil War, a branch of the Library was utterly destroyed by an SS-class traitor named “Ragna the Bloodedge” also known as the “Grim Reaper”, in an attempt to destroy the entire Library. The Novus Orbis Librarium Armagus, hoping to stop him, immediately put the largest bounty ever for anyone who could capture him. Interestingly, Ragna possessed a powerful form of Armagus known as the “Azure Grimoire” (Grimoire of the Blue in Japan), also known as the BlazBlue. This led the Librarium, as well as the Ikaruga Union and other fighters, to hunt Ragna not just for his bounty, but also his grimoire.

So there you have it. It’s pretty much standard fare for Fighting games.  Background story there pretty much to have your characters fight each other.  Of course each of them have their own set of storyline that you can discover by playing the story mode.  Speaking of which, there’s tons of content to go through in Story mode.  Each characters basically has his multi-path story with fully-voiced text dialog, pretty similar to your usual visual novels, to those that don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s pretty much like those dating sims games, without the sex scenes, but with fighting when conflicts arise.  The mode is pretty distracting and interesting, but I have yet to do most of the characters.  To note here, is that you can make wrong choices and get a bad end, if you can call it so.  I thought that was a really great feature to add to the game’s longetivity. There’s also a bit of story bits in the Arcade mode.

Going through the story and seeing everything about it requires multiple play-throughs with each character, as you can get different endings and events after battles depending on if you win, win with a Distortion Finish, or lose the battle. So there can be a lot of gameplay done in this one mode, as there is a lot of content in each story.

Again in the story mode, there’s this bonus feature called “Oshiete Litchi-sensei!” or “Please Teach me Teacher Litchi” that you unlock as you play the story mode, it’s like a mini-theater where Taokaka and Litchi where you learn more about the game’s universe and gameplay.  I haven’t watched much of it yet, but I really liked the part I saw.  But it’s aimed at people that are into this kinds of things I guess.

Gameplay

Now on to the meat of the game, how does it do next to the other big 2D figthers?

Well, first things first: the Guilty Gear comparison. The game’s basics are very similar to those of Guilty Gear. But now you get to use 12 brand new and incredibly original characters. Some might have similarities to characters from other games, but overall they’re all really unique.

So, the gameplay. The battles play out in usual 2D-fighter fashion. Each character attack each other with combos until one of the 2 dies, and the one to win more rounds wins. You have 4 attack buttons: A, B, C and Drive. A is light attacks, B is medium and C is heavy attacks. You can get a variety of different attacks with those 3 buttons if you do quarter/half/full cicles or different directions. Basic fighting game stuff. You can also guard, and pressin certain buttons while blocking puts up a barrier in front of you, which reduces chip damage and pushes you back to open up combos. And pressing a bunch of buttons will do a “burst” thing like in guilty gear. But this is a once-per-round thing, and using it reduces your defense for the rest of the round.
The parts that are different from other games are the Drive attacks. Each character has it’s own variety of Drive attacks, and those attacks are completely unique for each.

Noel can initiate various multi-hit combos with her drive, Jin can freeze people, Ragna has life-sucking attacks (to compensate for his low defense), Taokaka has a dash attack that can be used to close distance, Litchi can place or recall her pole as well as use it to initiate attacks and trap enemies, Bang uses a special attack that combines both a guard for the first few frames and an attack afterwards which boosts a special meter of his (which is used for his BGM-changing buff special), Carl can control his puppet with his drive (which is really hard but quite rewarding if you can actually do it right), Arakune curses your opponent (enabling you to shoot annoying bug projectiles for a limited time, or until you get hit), Tager’s drive magnetises your opponent (making them get close to you during certain attacks, and enabling for massive combos and MAJOR SOVIET DAMAGE), Rachel can control wind to control certain of her special attacks and affect your movements and your opponent’s as well, V-13 (Nu) can summon a variety of swords and stuff to hit your opponent and Hakumen has a counter attack. The drves definitely make every character unique, though their normal attacks and specials make them different from other characters in other games. Added to that are Distortion Drives (which are basically supers) and Astral Heats (similar to the 1-hit kill “Destroyed” attacks in guilty gear, with tons of conditions to do them), which are unique for every character. Other than a few exceptions, the basic gameplay for each character revolves around using their drives, which makes them all unique.

The gameplay is fast and furious, just as I liked from Guilty Gear. Comboing works great, especially if you know what you’re doing. Combos are quick and impressive, and very fun to watch and perform. Most attacks can be done after most other attacks, and you can free-style your way through, though some attacks link better to others, so learning the ins and outs of each character is a must if you plan on getting good with any of them, and implementing their drives is a must. A Rachel player not using wind will get destroyed by anyone. I put time in learning how to play as Tager, for example, so I perform a lot better with him than any other character. I learned how to implement his drive in combos and how to use the magnetism effect his drive gives to get more out of his normal attacks. Lrarning each character is a game in and of itself.

Overall the gameplay is fast and fun, and each character is unique(how many times did I say this). The roster might be a bit on the small side, but the characters are so well done that it’s forgivable, and its a new game in a new series, so only 12 characters is frankly not too bad(i mean, Street Fighter 2 only had 8 playable characters at first and only got more when later revisions came out).

Overall
With 12 very well done characters, awesome gameplay, a deep story mode and great online (which should be mostly lagless), BlazBlue is great for any fighting game fan.

Add in the awesome soundtrack and incredible graphics and you have a winner that stands very well with the rest of  the newer 2D figthers, if not above them.

One problem with the game: We know it’s gonna end up being a game with tons of revisions, just like Guilty Gear. I’m hoping revisions will include new characters, though we already know some new characters are on the way (for the Europe release at least). Can’t wait to play Super BlazBlue XX Slash #Reload Accent Core HD Remix Plus Turbo 2.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Great characters
- Fast and fun gameplay
- Great graphics
- Great soundtrack
- Fun story mode
- Great online system with rarely any lag
- Relatively well-balanced cast

Cons
- I guess I’ll say that the low number of characters is a con… even if it isn’t that bad
- Limited edition might have been a bit too limited
- A few balancing issues(a good Nu will easily destroy a great Tager, for example)

The Save Factor
With a starting price of 60$, the Save Factor for BlazBlue is:

Limited Edition:
70$ (if features a great 2-disc soundtrack, and a very good tutorial DVD/Blu-Ray(while it could be a bit more advanced, it does show everything you need to know to start mastering every character))

Normal Edition:
50$ (fun and deep, any fighting game fan should try this out)

Share/Save

The Bleach DS series is a weird one. The first 2 games were straight up fighting games. Really well done too. And made by Treasure. There were some balancing issues, of course, but overall they were quite good. The third game in the series was a Strategy RPG, and made by Sega. And now this new one is a Beat ‘em up. 1 series, 3 genres. Really strange.

So, is it a good beat ‘em up, or is it just a lame cash-in on the Bleach name? Read on!

Keep in mind, this is a Japanese game, and I have no Japanese knowledge, so there are certain things I can’t explain/know. (and this is a pretty shot review too)

Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Date of Release: August 6th 2009
Platform: Nintendo DS

Genre: Beat ‘em up
Players: 1

Looks and sounds
The characters look really good, they’re completely recognizable from the series and their animations and attacks look quite good. But one thing to note here is that the sprites are mostly just recycled from the previous leach DS games, or just mildly changed from them. The enemy design is lame at best. There’s just a few enemy types and some are just upgraded versions of older ones, either bigger or with different colors. The environments range from random areas in Karakura village, some random areas in Soul Society and… randomness! Nothing inventive and not much that really has to do with the series.

Sound-wise… It’s nothing great. The voice-acting is fine, using the same actors from the show. The music is very forgettable, and the sound effects are either completely normal “hit” or sword sounds. Don’t expect anything ground-breaking, of course.

Gameplay
It’s a platforming Beat ‘em up. It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Y attacks, pressing different directions change what attack you do. B jumps. X does you special attack, and if you press X and Up at the same time you do a bigger special that takes more SP. A uses your currently-equipped assist character. Holding R pauses the action and let’s you change assist character if you have multiple in your deck. L let’s you stand in the air. It’s useless(or at least i never really found a use for it) and takes up SP. Double tapping a direction makes you dash, and pressing an attack button during the dash, no matter the direction, makes you do a special dash attack.

So the basic flow of the game is ” Select a level, See a conversation, Go to the end of the level, Get a Rank up to S depending on various variables, Repeat”. It gets repetitive after 2 worlds, and there’s 8 worlds in total. Levels play out in a simple “kill everything that gets in your way” manner. Heck, you can skip most enemies. There are some sections in stages where you have to kill everything that comes at you, but the rest can be skipped. At the end of each level, you get one of 2 things: a boss battle, or a “bonus stage” where you have to attack some… flying ball with tentacles, which gives you money for the shop.

The difficulty level is pathetically low. There’s only one level, based on platforming, which was able to kill me. The rest of the levels, even the tougher bosses, are really easy to beat. The only “difficulty” is finding everything. Each levels have 1 collectible to find: Hell butterflies. They’re hidden through the levels (1 per level), and they give you a boost to your SR meter. Also, getting S ranks everywhere might offer just a little bit of challenge (though I never got under an A rank so it’s really not that tough either).

A different element here is the Support Deck. Using cards you either find in stages, or buy in Urahara’s shop, you set a deck of sorts, in a grid. Each card takes either 1, 2 or 4 spaces in the grid (and you can get extra grids for different kinds of decks, i guess).  From what I understand, the ones that take 1 or 2 spaces are stat boosts of sorts. And the 4 space cards are assist characters (which I explained earlier, they all have different effects like healing, protection, or attacks).

Oh, and the character list is a bit lame. Ichigo, Rukia, Uryu, Renji, Hitsugaya, Yoruichi, Byakuya, Young Byakuya… Why is Byakuya in there twice? Aren’t there enough Bleach characters not to have to use the same one a second time, but younger? Not a big problem, but it’s a bit strange.

One thing I have no idea about is the SR stat (under SP), and I have no idea what Oversoul is (when the SR meter goes at 100% or above). I know higher SR gives you more points in the end of a level(which makes it easier to get a high rank), and if you get hit by an attack that knocks you down your SR goes down to 50, or lopwer if you’re at 50% or below.

Overall, the gameplay isn’t bad. But it’s awfully simple. And there’s little to no difficulty.

Import-friendlyness
Can you press buttons? If so, you can play this game. The basic gameplay is really simple, and just randomly fumbling around the menus you should be able to shop and build support decks without much trouble. There’s not much of a big community for this title, but you can surely find places on the web where people can help you out here. It is Bleach after all.

Oh, and for modes, Ichigo (and i guess you can change the character) tells you what each option in the main menu is, so the menus are simple enough to navigate.

And you’ll miss the story, but you can fast-forward through the conversations so it’s not a burden to the gameplay.

Overall
It’s a competent enough Beat ‘em up. It’s incredibly easy, but it works. But if you’re not a Bleach fan, skip on it. Heck, even if you ARE a Bleach fan there isn’t much of a reason to get this. If you can read japanese, the story is just random filler junk so you’re not missing much here. It’s pretty much a cash-in on the Bleach name, nothing more.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Nice Graphics
- Simple gameplay
- Import Friendly

Cons
- Way too easy
- Could use a bit more character variety, the only character that plays different from the others is Uryu
- Get repetitive FAST, there’s no gameplay variety at all

The Save Factor
With a starting price of $48.90 on Play-Asia, the Save Factor for Bleach DS 4th: Flame Bringer is:

$10 (only for big Bleach fans)

Share/Save

We're all so sad too Mikuru, we're all so sad too...

OK.

We’re in August (8th month of the year), it’s the 8th episode of this “arc”. So is this enough KyoAni?

So, to those wondering… what’s going on? Well, there’s this  anime series called Haruhi suzumiya no yuutsu, which aired back in 2006, it was quite popular and fans have been expecting its sequel season since then.

So after starting a second season this summer in the middle of a re-airing of Season 1, making events happen chronologically, making a questionable direction this will give toward DVD releases.

Let me explain this first. At the very least, in North America, the Season 1 episodes were released in chronological order isntead of their airing orders, which kind of ruined part of the plot not even half-way through airing. You see, the anime originally did like the original material, the light novels, and put the events happening in disarray.  It wasn’t actually following fully the novels’ order, but it followed the concept.  And now, with this new season, we’re seeing episodes that are aired in-between season 1 episodes.  The first new one was in-between season 1 episodes.  Are they going to re-release the whole series together or are they going to sell the new episodes separately? Well, I was hoping for the latter. But at that point, it wasn’t such a big deal, really.

Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, that first new episode was quite good and revealed a ton of interesting information about the story and the characters.  So we were expecting a lot of the second new episode.  But it wasn’t quite the case, that episode, titled Endless Eight was the beginning of a lot of Haruhi fans’ nightmare.  It starts on August 17th and ends on the 31st of that same month, covering many activities the SOS Brigade (Haruhi and friends’ club) from going to the swimming pool to an evening at a festival to a part time job, etc.

Well obviously it wasn't... (though notice the K-on! art style here)

Well, the next week, the episode starts at August 17th, and covers the same activities the SOS Brigade went through the previous week.  The difference? The animation was re-done, the angle shots were different, the dubbing was re-recorded and the clothes they were wearing were also different.  The most obvious difference though, is the revelation that they have gone through the two weeks of this episode 15,498th times, with slight variations of events.  And only one person of the group completely remembers what happened on each iteration. That’s about 595 years of time spent doing the same things over and over again. That person must be bored to hell. Fast-forward to last week and we went through the same episode with slight variations 7 times. Yes. 7 times.  And tomorrow (or today in Japan), the 8th loop will start, hopefully with a solution to break out of it.

Actually, you still have to watch at least 2 more to get this achievement... (The achievement should go to KyoAni for trolling its fanbase so hard, though)

KyoAni and Kadokawa must be financially suicidal.  Who will buy DVDs for 8 episodes that are the same thing happening over and over again, with slight variations.  Consider also this.  Anime DVDs in Japan are sold with usually between 1 and 2 or 3 episodes on each. So 4 DVDs, with 2 episodes each of the same damn thing? I doubt a lot of people will buy into this, especially given the price of each Volume being more expansive than what we pay over here.

Yuki has been bored to no end for the last 595 years, and we've been bored for the last 8 weeks... WE GET IT NOW!Â

While I’m not personally enraged over this, a lot of people are.  I mean, they’re probably trying to give us the feeling of boredom Yuki (that person that remembers everything) has been going through. But most people didn’t get through the boredom and gave up after 3 episodes of it, probably at average.  I mean, that would have been plenty.  From the look of it, unless there’s some other plans to keep going for a long time with more episodes than what was announced for the whole second series, we’re not left with much more important and interesting content to cover in the few episodes left to the airing attributed to Season 2. There’s 9 episodes left I think to air, 4 or 5 of those will be of season 1, 1 is the conclusion of Endless Eight. That leaves us something like 4 episodes to cover other content, not much to look forward to.

Anyway, I’ll end my somewhat pointless rant with the question I started with. So is this enough KyoAni? Or are we going to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content? So is this enough KyoAni? Or are wegoing to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content? So is this enough KyoAni? Or are we going to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content? So is this enough KyoAni? Or are we going to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content? So is this enough KyoAni? Or are we going to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content? So is this enough KyoAni? Or are we going to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content? So is this enough KyoAni? Or are we going to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content? So is this enough KyoAni? Or are we going to wait until August 31st to go by before seeing some new content?

Bonus content: Hitler explains what the hell is going on…

Share/Save

But enough chit-chat, read on for my top 10 upcoming Anime Series I’m looking forward to list.

#10 Dragon Ball Kai

- What’s this Vegeta? What does the scouter say about Dragon Ball Kai?
- It’s over 1079P!!!!

Ok enough running this joke through the ground. Dragon Ball Z is being re-aired starting this month in glorious HD. Does this mean completely new animation or just the old ones remastered? I was hoping for the former. The DBZ anime wasn’t too great. It was well-known for dragging out fights because it was following closely the manga which was still being serialized at the time. But the manga version was nothing short of epic back in the days. And Toei confirmed that Kai would be edited to follow more closely the manga. It’s still remastering old animations though. Nostalgia puts this at #10.

#9 Evangelion 2.0 (Fracture?)

I’m not too sure about that one. I saw this mentioned on only one site, which referred to the official Japanese website. There you can see the date June 27th 2009 mentioned and an image labeled Evangelion 2.0. What is this? A movie, a new series? It could simply be a new novel or something, so I won’t get too hyped up on this one, but curiosity and hype kept as low as possible puts this on #9. Note: After a bit more research, this is the sequel to the first part of the remake that was made in 2007. I’m still going to take a look at it when it comes out.

#8 Hatsukoi Limited

The latest work from Ichigo 100%’s author is getting animated. I read all of Ichigo 100%, but have yet to touch Hatsukoi Limited. The TV series sucked, the OVAs were of good quality though. Curiosity more then anything here again, #8.  Let’s just hope it isn’t half as repetitive as Ichigo 100% was.  But outside the fact that the setup is in middle or high school, it’s bound to be mostly different, being that the protagonist is a female character.

#7 K-ON!

A story about 4 girls who wants to save the light music club, but don’t know how to play any instruments too well and can’t read music sheets. The art style of the manga’s cover is actually what grabbed my attention at first.  It’s based on a 4-koma. Did I mention Kyoto Animation is behind this?

#6 Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu reruns

The whole world rejoiced a few weeks ago with the seeming confirmation of a second season of Suzumiya Haruhi’s adventures from an ad for a magazine on TV. Then people gets their hand on said magazine and realize that it’s a re-run of the first season. Good Trolling, Kadokawa, good trolling. While for now, we’re treated with Haruhi-chan webisodes (and the too cute Nyoron Churuya-san), which you should all watch, –well that is only if you’re a Suzumiya fan, otherwise, stay away– but in a month or so, they’ll start airing the reruns. Now three theories spawned from this. The first one is that it’ll actually be the second season of Haruhi that would start in April. Odds of this? No chances in hell,  in my opinion. Second one wants us to believe that the second season would start after the first one. While possible, I doubt this one would come true either. Kyoto Animation is currently working on Munto, wrapping up Clannad After Story and about to start on K-On!. Last possibility would be a new Haruhi season on December 18, a very important date for Haruhi. But none of this will happen and we’ll see KyoAni announce that the team working on Clannad will start working on Little Busters, another Key visual novel.

#5 Lupin III vs. Detective Conan

I know these two from name only, but an anime putting the greatest detective against the world’s most wanted thief got me wondering how this will turn out. I’ll make sure to tune in on that.

#4 Senjou no Valkyria -Gallian Chronicles
(Valkyria Chronicles)

We reviewed the game a few weeks ago. Now the long time announced anime version is about to air in Japan. How will this turn out? Will it stay in the shadow of the game, or come out on top, and actually get those that passed on the game at first glance to take a second look?

#3 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

Hagane no renkinjutsushi came out as one of the best anime series of 2004. It ended prematurely since it had caught up to the manga too quickly, and went around with an alternate development that led to the Conqueror of Shamballa movie. Five years later, BONES takes the series for a second ride, with a full reboot, keeping at the very least Ed and Al’s seiyuu. I’m really looking forward to this, though it’ll be somewhat of a pain waiting on the new content.

#2 Hayate no Gotoku 2

Nagi’s butler Hayate is back, after more or less of a year’s break. Watch this if you want a good laugh, that’s all I have to say, except that butlers are badass.

#1 Spice and Wolf II

Coming at number 1 is my favorite wolf-girl. Horo! Spice and Wolf is about a merchant and a wolf goddess who came to travel together after quite an interesting encounter. A bittersweet story with a somewhat slow pace, but not too much which had me waiting for more for almost a year now. Horo is my goddess, what about you?

So that’s my top 10 list of upcoming anime for now.   In retrospective, it made for quite a weird list, but my favorite shows are often those I didn’t know anything about before watching them.

Share/Save

Find out what’s the best and more after the jump.

Male Character

Winner: Hiraga Saito (Zero no Tsukaima Princesse no Rondo)

What’s the deal here: Saito might not have the intelligence of Lelouch, the 36 senses of KoGARashi, but what he definitely have is top luck when it comes to everything else. While he might suffer from time to time from Louise’s mood, he’s well surrounded and got summoned in a fantasy universe I’d like to visit any time before Middle-Earth and some galaxy far far away. Finally, well, he’s such a pimp!

Runner-ups:

Lelouch vi Brittania (CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2)

Lockon Stratos (Mobile Suit GUNDAM 00)

KoGARashi (Kamen no Maid guy)

Female Character

Winner: Mikamo Chizuko (Nijuu mensou no musume)

What’s the deal here: Here I went for the underdog. Nobody watched Nijuu mensou no musume (well, except us), and the fansubs aren’t even finished after so long. Chiko (her short name) is such a refreshing character. She’s in no way into fanservice, she started as a sickly rich-daughter targeted by her guardians and became such a badass even though her young age. She showed us her agility, her quick thinking abilities unlike any other characters this year. I want more Chiko and I want it now!

Runner-ups:

Shana (Shakugan no Shana Second)

C.C (CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2)

Nogizaka Haruka (Nogizaka Haruka no himitsu)

Non-human

Winner: Kannon’s hat (CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2)

What’s the deal here:

(Neo_NMO) who cares… it’s kanon’s hat

(ThePhantom) fo reals yo

Runner-ups:

Marchosias (Shakugan no Shana Second)

Alastor (Shakugan no Shana Second)

Haro (GUNDAM 00 s2)

Best Couple

Winner: Haruka/Yuuto (Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu)

What’s the deal here:

The secret of Haruka Nogizaka was a cute anime, with lots of lulz, lot’s of awwwwwwww moments that was fun to watch even if it fell deep into all the clichés. The only difference here from most anime is that the love triangle was barely a wall in Haruka and Yuuto’s relationship. They formed the too perfect couple, and that’s why we agreed on this one.

Runner-ups:

Saito/Louise (Zero no Tsukaima Princesse no Rondo)

Kotoko/Naoki (Itazura na kiss)

Tomoya/Nagisa (Clannad)

Overall Cast of characters

Winner: Hyakko

What’s the deal here: Call us biased here, but we completely fell in love with the whole cast of Hyakko. Ayumi, Torako, Suzume, Tatsuki and all of their schoolmates got us laughing over and over again, in quite a relaxing way. It fell mostly into mischief over deep plots, yet there was enough character development to care for most of them. And no one died!

Runner-ups:

Aria the Origination

CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2

Mobile Suit GUNDAM 00

Best Maid

Winner: Sayoko (CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2)

What’s the deal here: Ninja maid, nuff said!

Runner-ups:

Siesta (Zero no Tsukaima Princesse no Rondo)

Hazuki Sakurazaka (Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu)

Benisu (Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de)

Most badass Butler

Winner: Maidguy KoGARashi (Kamen no Maid Guy)

What’s the deal here: Ok, he’s a maid, not a butler, but you can’t compete with his level of manliness and badassness, EVER. And that’s what matters here.

Runner-ups:

Colonel (Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de)

Kojuro Takeda (Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de)

Ayasaki Hayate (Hayate no Gotoku)

For the 3 songs categories, I simply stopped at the winner and no runner-up. Why? Because there’s a ton of good ones out there, but it’s really hard to pick one over the other beyond my best choices.  Also, please note that we took the animation into account to make our choices for the OP and END, while for the insert, we took the context into account.

Best Opening (song and animation)

Winner: Discotheque (Rosario + Vampire Capu2) by Nana Mizuki

What’s the deal here: An awesome OP for an anime that fails the manga so much. The animation is very smooth and Nana Mizuki is a great singer.

Best Ending (song and animation)

Winner: Friends (Mobile Suit Gundam 00 END2) by Stephanie

What’s the deal here: Not much to say, this song is awesome, the animation isn’t too bad either.  With some candid shots of the characters and their past.

Best Use of an Insert Song

Winner: Nyan Nyan Service Medley (Macross Frontier) by Sheryl Nome (May’n) and Ranka Lee (Megumi Nakajima)

Listen to it, spoiler-less:

What’s the deal here: This was really a no contest here.  This song plays during the final fight and has Sheryl and Ranka singing it. This part in my opinion actually saved Frontier, which I found too short for it’s own good compared to its predecessors (SDF and 7).

Comedy

Winner: Hyakko

What’s the deal here: While some more interesting choices didn’t finished airing in 2008 (Toradora) and some were hilariously too philosophic for most of the population (Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei), Hyakko delivered on a great level in making you laugh with its barely not stereotypical characters. Although I wish they didn’t end it with a prologue, I believe it deserves this spot.

Runner-ups:

Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de

Hayate no Gotoku

Adventure

Winner: Nijuu Mensou no Musume

What’s the deal here: I really loved the runner-ups in this category, but The Daughter of Twenty Faces takes the cake and eat it too. I already mentioned Chiko (Female character of 2008), she’s the protagonist, along with her mentor, Nijuu Mensou takes us along for a ride reminding Lupin at first, then makes itself very distinct from the rest along the way.

Runner-ups:

Druaga no To ~the Aegis of URUK~

Hatenko Yugi

Spice and wolf

Mystery

Winner: Yakushiji Ryoko no Kaiki Jikenbo

What’s the deal here: I have yet to finish to watch this series, but there’s no question here, Ryoko-san is awesome and she just seems to attract the weirdest mysteries around her, and can handle them very well. I really loved the ambiance in this series too. Chaos; HeAD came close second here, but lacked in keeping up with the mysteries along the way.

Runner-ups:

Chaos; Head

KUROZUKA

XXXHOLiC Kei

Action

Winner: CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2

What’s the deal here: Is there really something to explain here? With an over the top plot, with unpredictable plot twists and a tension that kept us on the edge almost all the way through, CODE GEASS R2 made for some thrilling action.

Runner-ups:

Nijumenso no Musume

Macross Frontier

Ga-rei Zero

Fantasy

Winner: Spice & Wolf

What’s the deal here: This slow paced anime about a merchant and his traveling partner which just happens to be a cute wolf deity made us learn about the economy of an older time, with just enough fantasy spice to keep it interesting.

Runner-ups:

Natsume Yuujinchou

Wagaya no Oinari-sama

Zero no Tsukaima Princesse no Rondo

Harem

Winner: Zero no Tsukaima Princesse no Rondo

What’s the deal here: See why Saito won best male character.

Runner-ups:

Sekirei

Clannad

Rosario+Vampire

Best Fanservice

Winner: Koihime Musou

What’s the deal here: Something with more fanservice then Ikkitousen probably doesn’t exist in the year 2008. But in intensity, Koihime Musou will take the win easily. I’ll keep it to your imagination or curiosity as to why that is.

Runner-ups:

Ikkitousen: Great Guardians

Kanokon

Sekirei

Mecha

Winner: Mobile Suit GUNDAM 00

What’s the deal here: I always avoided GUNDAM series, they’re not my cup of tea. But after being cornered into watching 00, which is surprisingly easy to get in to even for people that don’t really care much for big robots, I can say that this one is probably good for any overall anime fan. It just couldn’t lose to anything else when it comes to Mecha either. At least in 2008.

Runner-ups:

CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2

Macross Frontier

Romance

Winner: Itazura na Kiss

What’s the deal here: Anime based on the mother of all romance shoujo manga. It couldn’t fail at romance, now couldn’t it? Too bad the mangaka died before finishing the manga, that always sucks when an author can’t finish its work (for the person itself first and close ones, then the fans). Good thing she had told her husband the ending before passing away or so I heard.

Runner-ups:

Ef ~ A Tale of Memories~

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu

True Tears

School Life

Winner: Hyakko

What’s the deal here: Hyakko was awesome in a few categories above already, it still is. No need to say more.

Runner-ups:

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu

S.A ~Special A~

Itazura na kiss

Science-Fiction

Winner: Mobile Suit GUNDAM 00

What’s the deal here: Looking for something sci-fi from 2008, but not sci-fi? Tough luck. The best of sci-fi is a GUNDAM. Well you can always fall back on Ga-rei Zero or Mnemosyne for some neat Sci-fi without the giant robots.

Runner-ups:

CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2

Ga-rei Zero

Macross Frontier

Best Seiyuu

Winner: Mamiko Noto

What’s the deal here: I just love Mamiko Noto’s voice. I love Kugimiya’s and Hirano’s too. But from Clannad’s Kotomi Ichinose, Zero no Tsukaima’s Tiffania Westwood, Nogizaka Haruka no himitsu’s Haruka and Mnemosyne’s Rin Asogi, she’s the winner here and I’m happy to see her appearing in many new series again this year. A big cheer for the runner-ups here too.

Runner-ups:

Kugimiya Rie

Hirano Aya

Fukuyama Jun

Best OVA

Winner: Mnemosyne – Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi

What’s the deal here: I actually just finished watching this and I must say it was plain awesome. I really didn’t see coming some of the directions this OVA took. Watch it now, I mean it.  (Although I should mention, this is not meant for people younger then 18 years old)

Runner-ups:

Mai Otome 0~S.ifr~

Zero no Tsukaima Princesse no Rondo (ep 6.5)

BUS GAMER

Best Movie

Winner: Kara no Kyoukai 3: Tsuukaku Zanryuu

What’s the deal here:

(ThePhantom) you got a movie category?

(Me) no.. I can add it..

(ThePhantom) i just need an excuse for kara no kyoukai 3 >.<

Runner-up:

Clannad Movie

Sleeper Hit

Winner: Nijuu mensou no Musume

What’s the deal here: This series really went under the radar of most people, I wonder if it’s the look of the screenshots on ANN and all. If you’re reading this, do yourself a favor and watch it.

Runner-ups:

Ef ~ A Tale of Memories~

Shugo Chara

Most unintentionnal lulz

Winner: Dragonaut – The Resonance

What’s the deal here:

(Mighty_Mouse) the story is so cliche

(Mighty_Mouse) kazuki turns on jin for the dumbest of reasons

(Mighty_Mouse) and wears panties on his head o_O

(Mighty_Mouse) and he wears this huge ass patch

(Mighty_Mouse) it’s hard to explain WHY it’s lulz

(Mighty_Mouse) but if you watch it

(Mighty_Mouse) it’s such a trainwreck that you can’t help but laugh at it

Runner-up:

Rosario + Vampire Capu2

Best of the Year

Winner: CODE GEASS Hangyaku no Lelouch R2

What’s the deal here: No surprises here, if you expected anything else, there’s probably something wrong with you. YES, the plot is somewhat messed up with contradictions, which I didn’t find too bad anyway, but R2 excels at what it does best: make your jaw hit the floor with plot twists that changed the meaning of everything, every single episode, or almost. Just turn off your bullshit meter and enjoy, seriously.

Runner-ups:

Nijuu mensou no Musume

Mobile Suit GUNDAM 00 Season 2

Hyakko

Share/Save

Finally it’s here. After 5 years without Ippo anime goodness, we finally get a second “season”. Last time we saw Ippo animated in the ring was in the 2003 movie Champion Road, and since then(unless, of course, you’ve been reading the manga), we’ve been out of the pure awesomeness that is Hajime no Ippo.

Now he’s back and badass as always. Read on for my impressions on the new season and some screenshots.

 The first episode drops you right in the action. Before going on with the story, you get to see the end of Ippo’s first Title Defense Match against medical student/boxing badass Sanada Kazuki. After a few of Ippo’s trademark punches, it skips to a bit of Ippo’s daily life, then some training at the gym where everyone is hyped up.
 

Over-the-top punch animations are back! ah yeah

Then you get the shower scene. Yeah, there’s always a shower scene somewhere in HnI. Where Takamura, Aoki and Ippo discuss Ippo’s relationship with Kumi, which of course leads to a bunch of weird sexual innuendo and penis jokes (what do you expect from Takamura anyways?).
 

Do I really need to comment this?

Afterwards, Kimura goes off to spar with Miyata, who is getting ready for a fight pretty soon, and is struggling to keep the weight limit for Featherweight (126 pounds), since he is at his limit, and he doesn’t want to change weight class so he can get to fight Ippo later on. This pretty much leads to discussion about the match, and the opponent’s(“The Crocodile”) coach reveals that the crocodile has a special attack named the bloody cross(which is probably crazy powerful).

Arnie “The Crocodile”, an expert in hooks with strength close to Ippo’s

After the weighing of the participants, it’s time for the match!… on the next episode. AND IT’S GONNA BE AWESOME.

What did I think?
Well… the animation is as good as ever, if not better than ever before. I find the overall look to be slightly more colorful than before, but it didn’t lose the usual Hajime no Ippo look from the previous Hajime no Ippo series and movies.
The characters are still awesome from the little we’ve seen for now, the “story” is still strong, the issues the characters have to face are great as always, and the humor is awesome.
This is still the same Ippo as before. Full of awesome as always and it doesn’t give you any bullshit. Straight to the action from the start, and a badass match coming up straight in the second episode.

If you have yet to see Hajime no Ippo, watch it now, or read it (if you have a LOT of spare time), it oozes awesomeness.

A few more pictures.

Ippo is so gay for Miyata….

Miyata struggling in his training to stay in the weight limit for featherweights… must be tough

Aoki imagining things between Ippo and Kumi and being very vocal and weird about it… creepy stuff

Share/Save

So here are a few thoughts about the anime now that it’s over and about the visual novel game that inspired the anime.

From beginning to the end, Takumi is a very interesting character to follow. While the twists weren’t as epic as I hoped them to be (I’ve been very spoiled by Code Geass R2), they sure were above your average anime series. Most anime series have endings that disappoints, for different reasons. Some make up some filler ending because the source material itself isn’t over, others just never followed the original material to begin with, others, well have original material over, but that original ending sucked itself. While far away from the worst ending ever, which probably goes to Kare Kano by default, since production simply stopped all of a sudden, Chaos; Head just takes an unnecessary spin the shounen genre with “power ups” and fighting. While in itself it isn’t half-bad, I was expecting some crazy ending more alongside Evangelion and Higurashi (season 1), which has you scratching your head wondering what the hell happened (both for different reasons).

Overall, it was a nice ride. The OP and END songs both grew on me and though something felt lacking on the production value side, maybe that’s just the surreal feeling of it all that gave me that impression. So my recommendation stands for the people that fitted in my “recommended for” part of my post in October. It’s only 12 episodes, so that’s not much of a time investment, yet you will likely not regret it. I’m definitely getting this on DVD, if only for collection purpose when it’ll get over here in North America.

As for the game itself, I only went through a small part of it, but it was quite interesting to see the implementation of some kind of stress meter at some points in the story that will decide if you have a delusion or not, and if it’ll be positive or negative. How is this working? Well while going through the dialogue, at times, you start hearing your heartbeats. On each side of the top of the screen, is the option to choose to view a delusion. You can ignore it or choose one of the two, one is red, and the other is green. What happens then will be affected by your choice on a short term the dialogue, but seems to always come back to the same result, from what I experienced.

As for the story, in major parts, seemed to be the same thing as the anime, with of course multiple branches that weren’t covered in the anime. Are you missing anything from just watching the anime? I can’t tell for sure, but I wouldn’t bother really with the game unless you usually play those to begin with. Anyway, getting it itself is already kind of a pain in the ass, since you need the Japanese-only version and the latest patch from the a certain translation group.

Whose eyes are those eyes? Find out by watching the anime!

Also look forward to my best of 2008 anime list.  Which I’ve been working on for a while.  (It’s really hard to make choices on those )

Share/Save

Though the story of Hajime no Ippo isn’t the most complex one out there, it definitely makes up with intense, badass boxing matches, and awesome characters. When I saw the DS game was released, I had to try it out. What I got was… a mixed bag really.

Is this game a knockdown or a letdown? Well, that’s what I’m here to tell you. Or at least as much as I can considering my complete lack of japanese knowledge.
 
Graphics
I must say the graphics are really good by DS standards. In battle, in Super Punchout! style, the camera is behind the character you control, and your character is transparent so you can see what your opponent does. The characters themselves look a lot like they do in the anime/manga, they really are nicely replicated. If there is 1 problem I have with the game, it’s the fact that the characters look scrawny and weak in comparison to the anime/manga. They’re all really thin and don’t look really muscular. That’s mostly due to DS limitations and not being able to push enough polygons to make believable muscle structures and such. Also, during training mini-games, the only character you see is Ippo, no matter which character you’ll be using in the next story fight, I think they could at least have made a few extra sprites for that. But overall the characters look like they should and and animation is smooth, as is needed in a game of the sort.

Gameplay
Training mini-games
In story mode(as well as the mini-game mode), you have the option to play a mini-game before fights. Those range from cutting logs to catching leaves, to a Beatmania style combo mini-game, to doing certain punches, to hitting that… ball thing i don’t know how it’s called, to evading rocks. The mini-games are pretty much all about timing. When you miss, you lose points, when you get it right you get points, and when your timing is perfect you get more points. At the end you are graded for you performance, depending on how many points you got. If you’re in story mode, getting good grades in the mini-games (which is relatively hard) gives you slight bonuses in battle. The Beatmania-like game fills up your special bar, the leaf game let’s you predict what hand the opponent will use to punch next and… I don’t know for the rest. Some might be power ups, some might make you dodging more effective, but I can’t be 100% sure.

The mini-games are relatively short and aren’t bad, just a bit of an annoyance, and if you don’t want to do them you can decide not to. The bonus they give can be useful for the following battle. Kinda fun, but ultimately you’ll just do them to get bonuses in battle.

Fighting
The fighting is relatively good. I’ll try to explain it the best I can.
Your boxer is always centered on the screen. The game is fully controlled by touch screen(I think there’s a button mode, but I didn’t want to screw around with the options too much). The screen shows 4 boxes of equal height and width, at different parts of the screen. The 2 top parts are green. I call those the “attack zone”, which is where you input your punches. The bottom part is yellow. This would be the “Dodge and movement zone”. By holding the stylus on a character and moving it around on him you’ll move his upper body to dodge punches. Moving on outer parts of the yellow sections will make you move around, and touching your character then dragging forward in the green section will make you dash.

You have a full arsenal of punches. Hooks with both sides, uppercuts, jabs and special moves. Jabs require tapping the screen, hooks require making a horizontal line, uppercuts require making vertical lines and specials use various “motions” that vary from going back and forth in some parts, or making big lines from the yellow to green zone. Special punches require you to have your special bar full. It fills up when you hit your opponent and goes down if you get hit too much.

Basically you’ll be trying to dodge attacks and attack at the right time to deal damage to your opponent. You each have an endurance bar, and when it’s empty you get knocked down. Hitting in the face might damage the eyes, making it more difficult to see, making your screen darker at certain areas, depending on where you were punched. As for knock downs, it’s all a matter of how much abuse you’ve taken as to whether you get up or not. So when you’re knocked down you just have to hope getting up before the count reaches 10, there’s nothing you can do otherwise.

In-between rounds, you have 3 options. You can heal your eyes if you can’t see, use your fighting spirit(I think…) to get some health back(heals the eyes just a bit) and get slapped in th back which I’m pretty sure makes your punches stronger. It’s all a matter of situation and strategy to decide which of the 3 you choose.

Overall the fighting works okay. I find it kinda annoying that you can’t properly dodge and attack at the same time, or at least as smoothly as you’d like, and the computer-controlled enemies are just a bit too good at the game at times with their near perfect timing.

Things that bug me in the game
1. The countdown
Other than the super annoying voice doing the countdown, the system itself is flawed. Even if you get up and in fighting stance within 2 seconds, the countdown will still wait up to 8 for the fight to start again. It can save you at times, but others it will make oyu lose precious seconds you could have been breaking your opponent’s face. Also, sometimes it’s just not working. I found myself in fighting stance just fractions of a second before the 10-count, but lost the match anyways. It doesn’t really work well at times.

2. Computers are too good
While some opponents are stupidly weak, sometimes they’re just too good. They can see exactly what you’re going to do in the first few frames of animation and have the perfect counter ready already, and their dodging skills are just a bit too good, makingthem way too hard to hit.

3. Winning is a matter of luck sometimes
That’s right. I found myself winning a lot of matches but doing the touch screen equivalent of  button mashing. Sometimes I destroyed the opponent, sometimes I got destroyed in seconds. But the strategy works and is valid. 

4. Some important fights are skipped in the story mode
Not asking to have ALL the fights of course, I mean, there’s 30 characters to choose from which is really good. But some really important fights are just skipped over completely, making the story mode feel a bit incomplete. And the “cutscenes” are merely the coach talking to you, which is kinda boring.

 

Overall 
The game isn’t bad. An Ippo fan such as I will definitely find enjoyment in this. The flaws though are quite annoying, and the fighting system might have needed a bit more polish. But for what it is, it’s a very nice game.
If you like Ippo, check it out, otherwise skip this.

Share/Save

One Outs is made by MadHouse and the same team who created badass anime series Akagi and Kaiji. Of course when I learned that that team was making a new series (this time, from what i understand, it’s not based off a manga like Akagi and Kaiji), I was really anxious to see what they were gonna do. When I saw it was a baseball anime, I wasn’t too sure about it, but just based on the people who are making it I still decided to give it a chance.

So is it any good? Let’s check it out

Story (at least what episode 1 covers >_>)

The story starts with Hiromichi Kojima, star batter from some fictional baseball team, training to refine his abilities. That is because, even though he won multiple awards for his batting prowess, he never won a championship, and he’s betting everything on that training.

During the training, the pitcher he’s practicing with hurts his hands, so the pitcher and the manager go out to find a replacement. On their quest they stumble upon a baseball field with lots of people on it, playing a game called “One Outs”, where the pitcher tries to out the batter, and if the batter can’t hit the ball further than the infield he loses. Simple enough, but being made by the Kaiji/Akagi team, of course there’s gambling involved. Now comes Toau Tokuchi, another pitcher.

Your average badass

After learning there’s gambling, the pitcher and manager looking for a replacement go in and bet 1000 on the batter. Then they become a bit obsessed considering the batters all lose and they think the pitcher sucks. So, after learning that they were actually betting US dollars and not Yen (lawlpwnd) the pitcher tries his hand at batting against Toua, who raises the bet to 4000USD. Of course, he fails as a batter.

At the end of the episode, Hiromichi Kojima the star batter tries to get in a match against Toua, who again raises the bet (this time to 40000USD) and… the episode finishes there.

Impressions
I’m impressed. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it’s nice to see how the Kaiji/Akagi team handle this. While it may look like “just baseball”, just like Kaiji and Akagi, they can get pretty psychological, with someone commenting on why, psychologically, someone is winning or losing, basically over analysing the whole situation (in this case it was a fat and ugly black woman).

HE'S IN DESPAIRÂ !Â

Overall the characters for now look average, except for Toua, who is really reminiscent of Akagi, with his overall badassness and doing daring bets and all.

The art style borrows a bit from Akagi/Kaiji, but is more… smoothed out I guess. Fans of the Akagi/Kaiji will like it, and people who didn’t like the art in said shows might still like it since it’s much smoother.

Otherwise the animation isn’t too bad, the soundtrack works really well with the overall feeling of the show.

Finally
I don’t know exactly where they’re going with this and how long the series will be, but I know for sure that Toua will join the star batter’s team, and lots of weird stuff will happen from then on. 
I can’t say for sure, considering not much happened in the first episode, but I say that anyone who liked Akagi and Kaiji should check this out, it seems to have a lot of potential. Psychological, dramatic, and just overall exciting, I think we might have a winner here.

Dammit, don't end the episode at such a climatic moment

 That’s it for now, but I’ve got a bunch of other stuff coming up.

Share/Save