Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Garo - Vanishing Line (Series rating: 8/10)

Sophie is an orphan looking for her missing big brother. Desperate to find a clue she goes to a famous fortune teller for help. Little did she know that the fortune teller was actually a Horror; a monster born out of evil feelings. As she was about to be devoured by the creature she is saved by a huge, muscular man. He is Sword, one of the few Makai Knights tasked with destroying these abominations. The two form a close bond and travel together to unravel the mystery of Sophie’s missing brother and his connection to El Dorado, a place rumored to be the ultimate utopia.
This is the third series in the Garo - The Animation franchise. I honestly could not stand the first one, Divine Flame. Way too much angst for me. The second was far better, maybe I’ll get around to it someday. But this one is my favorite. Absolutely loved Sword: a hyper-masculine caricature of action heroes, with a big heart. The steak-eating, boob-loving oaf really grows on you as he does his best to help where ever he can. Sophie was great as well, seeing her grow more confident and close to Sword was really sweet. There’s more cool characters but I’ll let you see them for yourself. MAPAA did amazing work with the animation. Sadly, the clean OP and ED are DVD only as they were not found on the BD boxes.
The subtitles are from DDY.
http://anidb.net/anime/13390

Friday, August 30, 2019

Pani Poni Dash (Series rating: 8/10)

Rebecca “Becky” Miyamoto is the youngest every graduate of MIT, at only 11 years old. She takes up a job as the teacher of class 1-C. Hijinks ensue. Her school is insane. Alsmost everyone is nuts. There’s a cat in the vanding machine that might or might not be God. There are alines monitoring Becky.
If you think that my description is somewhat short, it’s because one can’t actually describe Pani Poni Dash using regular sentences. Here’s how the writing process for this show/manga must have went:
Editor/Producers: So what is the next chapter/episode going to be about?
Mankaga/Writers: Yes.
The show is bonkers. It throws so many pop-culture references at you, from both Japan and America, that you need a guide book to get them all. Thankfully they provided the guide book. Let me explain how the subtitles work here. There are three subtitle tracks.
1: Dialogue/Signs/Songs/Graffiti: This translated everything on screen. This is the normal, default track.
2: Dialogue/Signs/Songs: This does not translate the random background text. This track is for novices who think the normal difficulty track has too much on screen text.
3: Vid-Notes/Dialogue/Signs/Songs/Graffiti: This is the same as the default track except it also provides notes for all the references that take place. For advanced readers only. You won’t actually see much of the anime using this one.
So, this is a SHAFT show. But it’s an old school SHAFT show, so there aren’t any head tilts. Also, some people claim Pani Poni Dash is devoid of fanservice. It is not. There’s plenty of it, it’s just that most of it is in the segment illustrations, or only 1 frame long.
The subtitles are vobsubs, so you have been warned. As per my policy, vobsubs are internal. The OVA uses subs from gg, since there was nothing else I could use.Made it internal so to match the rest. I will keep regular releases with external subs.
Take note, the BDs weren’t great. I did the best I could. Hell of a lot better then DVD rips though. Enjoy.
http://anidb.net/anime/3298
PS: This release is dedicated to that festering ooze swamp called 4chan. Those nuts are the ones who convinced me to try this show.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

How NOT To Summon A Demon Lord (Series rating: 9/10)

Sakamoto Takuma, probably the strongest player in the MMORPG Cross Reverie was just minding his own business kicking ass in the game when he is summoned into another world. Of course he’s summoned as his charatcer: Diablo. The ones who summoned him were the elf Shera and the pantherian Rem. Both claim him as their servant, but sadly for them Diablo was summoned with all his in-game equipment inclusing a magic ring that reflects any and all magic back at the caster. So while they’re busy arguing about who actually summoned him the ring bouces the enslavement spell back at them making both of them Diablo’s slaves. Get sent into another world as an OP demon lord with two hot girls as your slaves? Why, that’s a dear come true. Too bad Takuma suffers from crippling social anxiety that makes it hard to talk to people and IMPOSSIBLE to talk to girls. The only way he knows how to communicate is through his demon-lord persona, so almost every word out of his mouth is chuuni bullshit. And he can’t stop himslef from talking like that. Want to greet an official from the city? “Bow down to me, peasant!”.
And so begins his quest to rule the world? Honestly, all he wants to do right now is figure out how to remove the slave collars from the girls. Usually the one who casts the spell can remove it. But the ones who cast the spell are bound BY the spell, so no luck there. Ooops.

This is one of my favorite isekai shows ever. I loved every damn thing about it. Diablo is a really cool character when he gets serious, and he’s actually kind of adorable while trying to figure out how to act like a demon lord AND save everybody. Jumping through mental hoops to make people think he’s evil while he’s saving their lives. What really helped is an early episode where is social axiety is show to stem form his childhood. It was not a fun story, and almost leads to him making a horrible mistake.
The two female leads are also fantasic and have quite some depth to them. Depth that’s usually now found in ecchi isekai anime like this.
Shera is your typical air-headed elf at first sight. Except that unlike most elfes she has huge breasts. She’s not really as stupid as she seems, and is one of the sweetest girls possible. As an elf, she’s a natural archer and even quite above most elves. But she choose persuing summoning becaue she’s lonely. Having ran away from her fellow elves, she just wanted someone to be with her so she learned summoning.
Rem is a tsundere cat-girl with a flat chest. Unlike Shera, she’s much more somber, but that’s because her backstoy is even worse then Shera’s. She’s burdened with a fragment of a demon lord dwelling inside her, and she fears that one day it will either kill her or make her kill others. For that reason she does not let anyone close. She took up summoning hoping to summon someone or something that would either stop her from turning evil or destroy her if she ever does.
While these two are great, the most adorable creature appears in the last third of the show, and dear (demon) lord, is it hard to find anything else as adorable as her.

The subs are from the last version of Asakura. Thank you. Be warned though, I removed the karaoke. I’m sorry… I hate karaoke.

Monday, August 26, 2019

Dororo (Series rating: 8/10)

The land of Daigo was in a dire state. Droughts created famine, bandits killed and pillaged, other armies invaded… it was hell. The ruler of the land, Daigo Kagemitsu, sick of waiting for the mercy of Buddha, goes to the Hall of Hell and maked a deal with the demons sealed there: he will give them whatever they want that he has if they will protect his land. What the demons wanted was his new born son. The 12 demons took parts of him: skin, nose, ears, eyes, nerves,spine,left leg,right leg,left arm,right arm and tongue. But before the last demon could take the final piece, his head, the Buddha statue that his mother prayed to sacrificed its head instead. So the child was still alive, compeltely non functional, but with the blessing of Buddha keeping him alive.
15 years later the land of Daigo is flurishing under the protection of the demons. But since the pact was not completed, neither is the protection complete. Dororo, a cunning little theif, makes a living conning people our of their money. She winesses a stange man kill a demon one day and decides to follow him around. That man is Hyakkimaru, the one who was eaten by the demons. He is on a quest to slay the demons and get his body parts back. Hyakkimaru can only sense the world around him by seeing colored souls: red for demons, white for humans, green for nature, etc… Most white souls just pass him by so why does this one keep following him around?
A remake/adaptation of Tezuka Osamu’s manga. This is a very good show. The charatcers are great, the story engaging and the battles exciting. But you have to keep somthing in mind. This show takes place in a time period where life was cheap. This makes the show quite brutal, since there is very little mercy going around. The anime also makes quite a few significant changes to the manga, which I all consider an improvement. First off, there are only 12 demons as opposed to 48 as in the manga. Second, Hyakkimaru cannot communicate at all for about half the show. In the manga he had some sort of BS telepathi that rendered his missing body parts kind of pointless. And most importantly: the anime has an ending. The manga just stops.
Subs from HS. http://anidb.net/anime/13946

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime (Series rating: 8/10)

Mikami Satoru was just an ordinary salary man. One day his work colleague invites him into town to meet his girlfriend.Said girlfriend was a famous actress with crazy jealous fans and one of those fans attacks Satoru’s friend with a knife. Satoru takes the hit for him and dies. But as he laid there dying a strange voice stated talking to him. He wakes up having been transported to another world. But not only that, the voice interpreted his dying words as requests. “I’m bleeding so much” meant he wants a body that does not bleed. “I’m so cold/hot” meant he wanted a body that is resistant to temperatures. As a bonus, his remark that he wished he was more aggressive with girls gets him the unique skill “Predator”, which lets him eat and copy the abilities of anything he eats. Put these all together and Satoru is not an overpowered slime monster. Join him as he befriends a dragon, leads a village of goblins and turns the little forests he lives in into a powerful alliance of monsters.

I loved this show a lot. While the OP protagonist has been done to death, this one was a tad more refreshing as the focus wasn’t really on battles. It was more about diplomacy and finding ways not to fight. Sure, there were a lot of cool battles, but the point was never to advance the plot through it. Hell, they even make you feel sorry for a few of the antagonists since at least half of them weren’t really evil. I had a lot of fun with this and I hope you will as well.

The OVA is not included, as there will be another one of those and should be uploaded separately. The subtitles are from Erai.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Bubuki Buranki (Series rating: 10/10)

10 years after the Earth was almost devastated by huge monsters that fell from the sky Kazuki Azuma returns to Japan to search for his mother. He is immediately captured by the rulers of Japan. His mother is considered the witch that almost ended the world and as her son, he is a possible danger. He is rescued by Kogane, an old friend of his and bubuki user. They join with Kinoa, Hiiragi and Shizuru. The four new allies are the children of Azuma’s mother’s friends, and they inherited their parent’s powers. Azuma has inherited something as well: the Heart of Oobu, the strongest of the buranki. With Azuma as the heart and the other four as the limbs they can summon Oobu and battle against the ruler of Japan, the dreaded Banryuu Reoko and her buranki Entei. But all is not what it seems. Why does everyone blame Azuma’s mother? Why can Reoko pilot a buranki by herself? Why are there no other working buranki hearts on Earth anymore? Join Azuma as he tries to find out what exactly happened 10 years ago.
This is one of my personal favorite shows ever. Yeah, it’s all in 3D, but the characters are very expressive and the battles are fantastic. The story is great as well. Take note, anime of today: this is how you write a story. A prequel, a beginning, a small climax in the middle, then you amp things up for the finale, deliver a fantastic ending and finish off with an epilogue. Also loved the characters. Almost all of them get some major development including the antagonists. Could not stand the Russian heart, but in the end he proved he could bee worthy of being a heart. Reoko’s four kinds may seem like standard goons at first but man are they ever not. Special mention of the designs. The bubuki are all unique and the buranki are fantastic. I mean, look at this sexy thing:
This show gets a 10/10 from me. I enjoyed it start to finish. The beginning was a bit slow, but the payoff was more then worth it. Subs from HS.