Playing Catch-up – 12 Moments of Anime #8 + #7 Moonlight Sonata

I hate ketchup. And catch-up is pretty hard, too. Anyway, time for some more of those 12 moments in anime!

12. K-ON and general moe

11. PVC figures

10. Doujinshi

9. Fate/Stay Night

8. Touhou violin

I love the violin. This is no secret. I mean, why do you think I chose the handle “stringedsonata”? Also Touhou is a new thing for me, but I’m slowly getting into it, and I love the music. So when I learned of the existence of TAMUSIC and their Touhou violin CDs, you can bet I instantly thought “that is a really good idea!”, followed by “where can I get these?!”. I proceeded to download all 9 of them and listen to them like crazy.

I still listen to them quite often, though the tracks from Perfect Cherry Blossom get played more than the others because I’ve actually played Perfect Cherry Blossom, which is not something I can say for any other Touhou game. I’ll play them all eventually, though!

12. K-ON and general moe

11. PVC figures

10. Doujinshi

9. Fate/Stay Night

8. Touhou violin

7. Vocaloid

Previously, I never really cared much about Vocaloid. I saw it explode in popularity, but I didn’t quite get it. Then a friend of mine had me download a song for her. The song was “From Y to Y” by Hatsune Miku. I fell in love with it. From there I researched Vocaloid music, and came to fall for Megurine Luka. Both her design and her voice became my favorite pretty damn fast.I’m not as crazy about Vocaloid as some people are, but I certainly do like it.

Yes, I do have the nendoroid Luka on preorder.

That’s all this catch-up round. I’ll have more again ASAP. And my Le Chevalier D’Eon review. Though I need to actually finish Le Chevalier D’Eon first.

Apologies, Might Have Beens

I just want to give a big thank you to http://www.anigamers.com/ for giving me Le Chevalier D’Eon to review for http://www.reversethieves.com/‘ Secret Santa project. I am absolutely loving it, but I still need to finish it. I’m so sorry for the delay.

Also my apologies for dropping the ball on that 12 moments of anime project. I’ll finish it up in one post tomorrow or later tonight.

Happy Holidays to everyone reading!

12 Days of Christmas: 12 Moments of Anime 2009 #9 – Night of Fate

I may have skipped a day, I don’t know. If I have to I’ll do another double update on Christmas.

12. K-ON and general moe

11. PVC figures

10. Doujinshi

9. Fate/Stay Night

I wish I could be gar for Lancer

I’ve been curious about Fate/Stay Night for a few years now, since I saw the anime a while back and mostly liked what I saw. It wasn’t until this summer that I actually started playing the game, though. As you may guess from my previous review of the Fate route, I like Fate/Stay Night quite a bit.

I love how the game tackles such issues as immortality and whether it would truly be so wonderful, and whether wishes can just be granted by a magical vessel without any work toward the goal from the person making the wish. Fate/Stay Night explores quite a few deep themes like that, and I find it fascinating.

Of course there is also the cute girl aspect, and I do love me some Rider and Caster. And Saber. And Rin.

Also Lancer is just so cool. Why is everyone GAR for Archer? They should be GAR for Lancer for goodness sake! Also why is there no scale figure for Lancer? Or Taiga. Or Caster? Or…damn it I love Saber, but there needs to be more scale figures of pretty much any F/SN character that isn’t Saber.

Over the course of the year I’ve gotten mildly addicted to Fate/Stay Night. From quoting things like “People die if they are killed” to friends for no apparent reason to even going so far as to look at mythology books on Cú Chulainn in Borders because Lancer is just that awesome, Fate/Stay Night is definitely something that’s present in my mind a lot.

12 Days of Christmas: 12 Moments of Anime #11 and #10 – On Why I am Broke (Double Entry)

Wow, I’m actually following through with this. Go me? These two are a related topic, so I’m just posting them together in one post.

12. K-ON and general moe

11. PVC figures

So, as should be pretty clear from the Eri Sawachika and Yuki Nagato figure entries, I have a figure collecting problem. Just how bad am I?

do I fail yet?

Does that speak for itself? If not, how about the fact that I have a Saber Lily waiting wrapped up under the Christmas tree and about 10 more other figures as either standing preorders or hidden Christmas presents? I love these things.

I got started with figures officially in May 2007 when I purchased Yamato’s 1/8 Seras Victoria alternate color version at Anime Central, but things didn’t start spiraling out of control like this (aka ordering figures online) until early 2009. I blame the Hetalia One Coin trading figures and Alter’s rerelease of their maid Saber for this nonsense.

My favorite company is a tough question to answer, but I might say Good Smile Company, even over Alter, based on the quality I’ve seen with my personal collection. I do adore Alter, though, and they are a close second.

I have a lot of beauties on their way in 2010, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them. It ranges from big deal limited figures like Alter’s dark maid Saber and Clayz’ Tony Taka original character catgirl maids, to Kotobukiya’s interpretation of Osaka from Azumanga Daioh in a swimsuit and the nendoroid o f the Vocaloid Megurine Luka. And of course, the figure everyone has an order in for, Black Rock Shooter. Argh I am so annoyed with GSC for delaying her FOUR TIMES. She’d better be GORGEOUS when she does arrive.

12. K-ON and general moe

11. PVC figures

10. Doujinshi

Doujinshi, aka the other reason why I am broke, is something I’ve collected for a while. My getting into D. Gray-man and Axis Powers Hetalia have boosted my collection.

my most recent additions to my doujinshi collection

I mostly have yaoi doujinshi in my collection, but Hetalia has introduced het and het H doujin into my collection now as well.

While the majority of my collection is Hetalia, I do have other series in there, and I love all of my collection. A real gem in there is my lone Gankutsuou doujinshi. Note to self; obtain more Gankutsuou doujin.

I mostly buy from Mandarake (http://www.mandarake.co.jp/) or use different smaller and more personal middleman services like Mitarashi Dango (http://wareta.net/akatsuki/mitadango/) to obtain my doujinshi. I hope to have someone on LJ that’s running a Comiket pickup service get something for me at Comiket 77 at the end of the month. Fingers crossed!

12 Days of Christmas: 12 Moments of Anime 2009 #12 – Moe Moe Kyun~ K-ON and the moe bug

I too am jumping on the 12 Moments of Anime bandwagon (http://m3.dasaku.net/the-twelve-moments-in-anime-project-2009/1367/) I’m a day late due to ignorance of the subject, but  I’ll do a double whammy for one of the days and get caught up that way.

12. K-ON and general moe

So once upon a time, I was a girl that loved super serious anime. Fanservice was a witch’s brand, and moe was the sign of the devil. In 2009, my feelings on the matter began to gradually shift. I believe this started when I decided I’d give in and give The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya a chance. I liked TMoHS, which came as a surprise to me. The premise had sounded like trash for years! But I found myself loving it. Thus, when K-ON came around in spring 2009, I was willing to give it a chance.  End Game wanted me to try it, and I thought it sounded potentially interesting because I am a music lover. While my music geek side was sorely disappointed with how little of the series actually had anything to do with music, my fledgling moe fan side fell head over heels in love.

One thing that always put me at edge about moe was how cookie cutter the characters seemed to be. You’d have your tsundere, your yandere, and your total moe blob, all beings without a real personality. So when I watched K-ON, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the girls all had actual characterization beyond “she’s the tsundere, she’s the deredere, she’s the whatever else you call these moe characters”, and they all had development. Even Azusa, who wasn’t present for a good half of the already short series, developed and grew. K-ON and Haruhi both taught me that moe isn’t just about girls who can’t tie their shoes by themselves, and there really is something in it for people like me.

Throughout the year, moe has grown on me in various ways, thanks to K-ON especially. Rock on, K-ON, you have opened my eyes.

I have a secret that I haven’t told you…I’m a magi

I am so horribly behind on the times. It took me up until this past July to finally stop being lazy and start playing visual novels, after End Game spent the whole summer poking me to play Umineko. I refused to play Umineko since it wasn’t completely released yet, but all of her poking did convince me that it was high time to start playing VNs. So where did I start? Where else? Fate/Stay Night.

This was the most epic battle in the entire Fate route

I had watched the Fate/Stay Night anime when the American DVDs were released here. That had a lot to do with my choice to play Fate Stay Night. I enjoyed the anime, especially at first, but towards the end it started to get insanely confusing. I was hoping the VN would explain things better, which it did. Read on for a proper review. Heads up, though; the idea of porn starring Shirou Emiya was not something that sounded too appealing to me, so I installed the anti-ero patch that covers the Fate and Unlimited Blade Works routes.

Okay, I should probably start with a quick terminology lesson for anyone that doesn’t know much about visual novels before getting into the review. A visual novel is kind of like a video game, usually for the computer. However, instead of controlling a little sprite that walks around and fighting enemies, all you do in a visual novel is read text and make choices. What choice you make affects the outcome of the game. They’re kind of like those pick your own path books from the 90’s, only more sophisticated and detailed, and yes, they actually are fun. They’re especially nice for people like me that suck at video games. I also mentioned the term “routes”. In this case, I’m referring to the fact that Fate/Stay Night has three different versions of the game, so to speak, and you play them in order. They’re Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven’s Feel. As I’ve only just started playing UBW, this review obviously only covers Fate. From what I understand, “route” can also refer to the choices you make affecting which girl you end up with in dating sim VNs, too.

So, the basic premise of Fate/Stay Night is…not simple at all. Every 10 years, the Holy Grail appears in Fuyuki City, where the story takes place. 7 magi each summon a “Servant” from 7 different classes (Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Berserker, Assassin), and proceed to duke it out in a battle royale for the right to possess the Holy Grail and obtain a wish from it. The only problem? You play as Shirou Emiya, a pitiful excuse for a magus with no idea what’s going on.

The game starts with a prologue from the perspective of another major character, Rin Tohsaka. If only the whole game was that way. Sigh. The biggest problem with Fate/Stay Night is that Shirou is so annoying. I’ve heard that this gets better in the later routes, but I’ve yet to see. You probably all know who Shirou Emiya is regardless of whether or not you’re familiar with Fate/Stay Night. You probably know him because he is the great philosopher of anime that told us “People die if they are killed”. Yeah, you get to play as that guy. And trust me, his Fate wisdom extends beyond that. He also lets you know that you can’t catch lightning because it is lightning. There are plenty of these and I should have written them down, but now you can discover them for yourself by playing the game. As annoying as Shirou is, this game really is worth playing.

The best part of Fate/Stay Night is to get to know the Servants. Shirou, despite being pathetic, somehow manages to summon Saber, who is regarded as the best of the Servants. Note, the Servants are all epic heroes; historical figures or mythological characters that have become legendary. So as you go through the story, each Servant’s identity is revealed. Saber is the Servant that gets the most development and screen time, but all of them are fascinating. I still have a soft spot for Caster left over from the anime, despite her minute role in the Fate route. Rider is awesome on many levels, as her battle against Saber displays. Seriously, Rider and Saber  scale a skyscraper while they have at it. Is that not total badass? There’s even a Pegasus involved. Towards the end of the Fate route, Lancer is just plain badass and wins at life in order to go out with a bang. It’s tough because you get attached to almost all of the Servants, but only one can survive to the end, and none of them can stay…unless you count the second Archer.

Sometimes people are horrible and fuel a servant that has drunk from the Holy Grail. The fluid within the grail keeps the Servant sustained in the human world after the War is over. They’re fueled with souls. This is how a second Archer happened. End Game keeps referring to him as Girugamesh and making me unable to unsee really bad things involving the second Archer and Sakuracon and Vic Mignogna.

Also, Taiga is hilarious and made of win. The Tiger Dojo sequences that follow a bad end choice are hilarious, as is any scene with Taiga involved. If you’ve seen Azumanga Daioh, Taiga is comparable to Yukari Tanizaki. They might even be the same person in secret, but I don’t know because it’s a secret.

I can’t do a lot of compare/contrast stuff yet, since I’ve only played through one route, but I can definitely recommend playing Fate/Stay Night. It’s a good visual novel and definitely worth your time. Do yourself a favor, though, and don’t try to use the Studio DEEN TV series as a shortcut. Maybe use it as a litmus test for your interest in the Fate/Stay Night franchise, but otherwise it’s best to avoid it and just play the game.

I’d give Fate/Stay Night’s Fate route high marks, but it’s still not the best story I’ve ever read. Hopefully Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven’s Feel will be more interesting. I’ll probably do reviews of those as well when I finish them.

Figurefaggotry #2 – Max Factory Yuki Nagato

Hadn’t done one of these in a while, so I figured now would be a good time to post a figure photoshoot. I picked up this particular iteration of Yuki Nagato at Ikasucon 2009. She has some other options for arms and torso and accessories, but I didn’t feel like messing with that.

I thought the leaves and pumpkins made a nice setting for this iteration of Yuki, considering the witch costume. Don’t you think it works well, too?

For some reason I couldn’t seem to get many shots that weren’t a bit washed out-looking in her face and such. I wish this one had come out better, since the angle came out good, and it could have better shown how bright her eyes are.

This one gives you a better look at her eyes, as well as her skin tone and hair coloration.

This shot’s just kind of silly.

This is the best shot I managed to get of her. All in all, she’s a really nice figure.

I did take her hat off for some pictures. Most of them didn’t turn out, but this one’s good.

A parting shot.

If you’re curious about this figure, her Tsukiboard page is here: http://myfigurecollection.net/figure/54_nagato_yuki

If you’re a fan of Yuki Nagato, I’d certainly recommend this figure. It’s an especially nice one if you want her in a canon outfit as opposed to the Extravaganza version that Max Factory also put out, which is just an outfit based on some official art, or any of the other figures of her in things she never wore. I paid about $60 for her and I don’t regret it in the least. She’s over 2 years old, now, though, so she may not be easy to find outside of con dealer rooms. I’ve seen her at least twice at cons since I got her, though, so she shouldn’t be too hard to track down, either.

Random Ramblings – #1 – My Thoughts on MyAnimeList.net

Here’s a blog post which is mainly just disjointed theorism that I don’t think I can actually prove or disprove, it’s just from my own experience. Basically, I’m just rambling. Which is going to begin a probably never-again used mini-series of posts of mine – Random Ramblings? It’s not a particularly creative name, but I think it gets the point across, so I’ll roll with it.

 

So…you might wonder. What exactly does MyAnimeList.net do to an anime fan?

 

And yes, part of the reason i’m making this post is….lol, I don’t even know anymore. I just want to update with something, rather than nothing. I could do series reviews-but eh, I feel like Stringed is doing a good enough job of that already, so I should focus on various other random things. But this is like, a good idea and stuff, so I’m going to write about it, and you will like it. Hopefully.

 

Anyways, to bring you to the main point. Keep in mind that, aside from the factual things I’ve mentioned, this might not hold true for everyone, but they’re just general trends I’ve noticed.

 

MyAnimeList.net, if you don’t know, is a site that documents one’s anime-watching habits. There’s other sites that do this too, but I don’t use any of them and I don’t really think they have quite the same effect anyways, but MyAnimeList is generally the most prevalent and the most commonly used of all of these sites, and by the looks of things, pretty much everyone who considers themselves an anime fan will have one by some point not too far off in the future, unless of course they’re dead-set against it.

 

However, MyAnimeList does not offer only offer listings of what you’ve watched-with several sections to denote whether you are currently watching a show, completed it, have it on-hold, or dropped it, but the site itself has other sections as well, such as a manga list, a profile where you can be left comments, forums, and clubs created for just about anything that anyone on the site would want. In fact, MyAnimeList is much like a cross between a traditional site that would merely list one’s anime-watching habits and a facebook-and it’s that extra aspect of MyAnimeList that both makes it so popular, and has an interesting effect on people’s anime-watching habits, for many reasons.

 

Have any of you ever heard the old adage about powerlevels? Save for Goku, whose powerlevel is equal to or greater than 9000, (well, according to Vegeta, at least) powerlevels are quite comparable, and since there’s a lot of anime out there, there’s a lot of variation. And people like to compare their powerlevels with other people, much in the way that Xbox Live players do. However, now, with MyAnimeList, there’s a way to do something similar to this. Only, instead of being related to video games, this is related to anime-and how much you’ve watched, what you’ve watched, and what you thought of what you watched.

 

This has both positive and negative effects in several ways. While some people can use this as a gauge to honestly judge what they’ve watched, and to see what others have seen in comparison, there are many other people who will go directly to their friends’ profiles and despair that they don’t have absolutely flawless compatibility with them. (Although…oddly, because I didn’t think our taste in anime was really that similar, Stringed and I don’t have that problem at all. Lol amazingly high compatibility get?) So, their taste in anime will end up either changing in a dramatically fast period or time, or they will watch more anime, and otherwise, end up watching so much in a period of time, that many things can occur.

 

Even if people don’t suddenly wonder about their friends’ anime-watching-habits, they start to notice themselves migrating over to other, relatively-anonymous people’s lists (there actually is a ‘Random List’ button somewhere on the site, I can’t remember exactly where, I think it might be under one of the search pages, but I really don’t care to look.) Even so, though, there are a lot of people on the site, and a lot of people who you can compare yourselves to, so eventually, one day when you’re really bored, you just start profile-surfing and randomly end up at a profile of someone who you have massively high or low compatibility with, and you end up either laughing at their poor taste if you have unusually low compatibility with them, or you’re like “oh, snap.” or something equivalent if you have a higher compatibility with them.

 

Now, this can be good or bad. Typically, sites like MyAnimeList have lots of recommendations and similar shows that you can look up, so ultimately, upon joining a site like MyAnimeList, you realize the brunt of shows that are out there, waiting for you to just sit and watch, and then you watch them. You watch a lot of these shows, and ultimately, you end up spending 2+ hours of your day watching anime, when you should have probably started on that paper or done your laundry or something else that’s moderately productive.

 

Now, this can be good or bad-but it’s probably pretty bad for the anime industry. I’m not saying just in America, I’m just saying throughout the world, even in Japan, now. You might think that the shows are showed on TV, but in many ways, things like second seasons are largely dependent on DVD sales. While there are many people who watch anime legally, there are also many, many more people who do not. With a site like MyAnimeList, where you feel compelled to watch as much anime as you possibly can because you’re simply exposed to it, you tend to care less about legality. And if you haven’t noticed, the anime industry hasn’t been doing as well lately, and normally entertainment isn’t affected by recessions, so basically to America: you don’t really have a good excuse. I think it’s fine if you live in some deadbeat place and don’t want to pay $329012321 in import fees, however, even then, I think you should still buy something. Something is always better than nothing.

 

Not to say that all of the series on MAL are necessarily licensed, however, so despite debatable legality, there’s less of a negative impact on the localization of anime. Furthermore, by noticing trends in shows that are popular among a (generally, at least, I’ve seen quite a few people from foreign countries on the site) english-speaking community, companies will get a better idea of what shows to license because of the number of people who view certain shows and their overall thoughts. While this was also possible in the past, MAL is a more consolidated place to do so-and that’s why the site has over 200,000 members.

 

But, you might wonder then-what’s the point of MyAnimeList? When you think about it, though, sites like MAL are catered towards a different crowd than sites such as Gaia Online, which generally seem to be a socializing crowd for people who passively have watched a little bit of anime and want to spend a whole bunch of money on getting some silly-looking avatar while trying to gain prominence in the forums. Instead, MAL was created to cater to the people who have more than just a passing interest in the culture associated with anime and manga-and even to the people who have watched so much anime, they wouldn’t even be able to keep track of it unless they had a site like MAL (or of course a word document/pen and paper, but MAL is a bit easier, and it sets it up to look neat, so what’s not to like?)

 

Even though it probably encourages piracy in several ways, I still see sites like MAL as being a positive influence on the anime and manga community, rather than a negative one. It encourages people with similar tastes and helps them discover anime/manga that they may have never even heard of, and it brings together anime/manga fans from across the world, while at the same time not being too forum-focused, and hence focusing less on silly things that many people don’t want to bother with, such as postcount, items, and prominence. There are even clubs where people can post just about anything-and although those are generally forum-based, they are not always based on forums. Furthermore, the structure of MAL as a psuedo-friend-networking site allows for a generally unique experience that you can’t really find on any other site on the internet. Say what you want about it being stupid, but I think that MAL is awesome-and that’s the end of my random rambling-at least for now.

 

Tune in next time-it’s not going to be a random rambling, but instead, I think I might review an anime! I’m keeping it a secret what one it is (even from Owari, but she could probably guess anyways. Hmm.)

Fall 2009 Update #2: Armed Librarians: Book of Bantorra and Kimi ni Todoke

What’s this? Two updates so close together! Preposterous! I’m going to actually try to keep this thing updated somewhat regularly.

The subject matter this time around is my first impressions on my other two fall 2009 series, Armed Librarians: Book of Bantorra, and Kimi ni Todoke. I’ll start with Armed Librarians, since I watched it first.

I really like the tanned girl <3

The basic plot of Armed Librarians is a bit hard to summarize from just the first episode, because it did a lot of throwing terms at you and not explaining them. From what I could gather from ep. 1 and the preview guide, it’s something like this: The Church of Drowning in God’s Grace has a lot of power, and they are horribly immoral. They have started enslaving humans and turning them into “Bombs”, which is exactly what it sounds like. These people have pretty much given up on life. The group that opposes them are the Armed Librarians. They also guard “books”. In this series, when someone dies, their soul fossilizes and becomes a “book” that people can “read” by touching it. The Armed Librarians protect these and fight the Church.

Well, Katie, the other writer for this blog, had told me that Armed Librarians was crap, but I’d already downloaded ep. 1, so I figured I’d give it a shot anyway. She’d only gotten through the first half or so before dropping it, and I can quite honestly see why.  It was pretty depressing and pretty hard to follow for the first half, without really making you want to follow it. I can’t stand dropping something in the middle of an episode, though, so I kept going with it into the second half.

The second half got far more interesting. The first half was comprised mostly of a group of Armed Librarians on a boat trailing a ship of the Church. One of the bombs jumps overboard, and one of the Librarians goes to help him, but he explodes because that’s what bombs do. Then there’s a big bomb attack and a battle with a lot of usage of terms that aren’t explained, and a ridiculously emo scene with one of the “Meats” (which I assume are people that are being conditioned to become Bombs but aren’t Bombs yet) falling overboard as the ship sinks and not doing anything to save himself, not even grabbing onto something when he’s placed on it.

But the second half is drastically better. Stuff on the Armed Librarians’ side is actually explained, like the thing about what “books” are. And that really pretty tan girl showed up. I like her already. I don’t have much else intelligent to say about Armed Librarians, so in short, I like where it seems to be going, but I can’t say I’m sold just yet. I neither approve nor disapprove of Armed Librarians.

As for Kimi ni Todoke? I have not “d’awww!”-ed at an anime so much in the course of one episode in a LONG time, if ever.  It’s a shojo series, but a good one. The basic plot is that Sawako Kuronuma is an outcast in her school. Everyone thinks she’s creepy, can see and summon ghosts, etc. They go so far as to call her Sadako after the character from The Ring. None of this is true, though. Sawako is a sweet girl that just wants to get along with the others, but they misunderstand her. Well, all except for a boy in her class named Kazehaya. This boy makes an effort to be nice to her, and romance begins to blossom…

This is so cute. I love how believable the characters are. Even Sawako isn’t 100% isolated; she has a friend in a different class. The other students aren’t all total jerks, either. Kazehaya is nice, but not really perfect either. He’s too shy to admit that he likes Sawako, even though it’s blatantly obvious to the viewer. Good shojo is a bit of a rarity anymore, now that shojo’s Golden Age is in the past (The 70’s produced some amazing shojo manga and anime. Rose of Versailles, From Eroica With Love, etc…). Finding legitimately good, well-written shojo is a rare treat, and oh so very satisfied. Also the art style is unique and I really like it. The artwork and animation in the OP are especially gorgeous, hence why I included a video of it. I approve of Kimi ni Todoke.

We’re still here, I swear! Also Nyan Koi ep. 1

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Welcome to Powered by Sugar’s new home, by the way! A friend of mine recommended we do this, so I went with it. I still need to poke Owari/Katie/whatever she ends up calling herself when she signs up here to get a WordPress account, but she’ll be back, too!

So why haven’t we been posting? Well, Owari has the better excuse. She’s in college and has actual responsibilities that come before writing the blog. As for me? I haven’t really finished anything that I could write a good review on, I need to go put batteries in my camera so I can take figure pictures, I’m out of good ideas for rants at the moment, etc. I’ll still be rewatching Nodame…eventually.

But enough lame excuses out of Stringed. Here’s a proper update (kind of) for you all.

So I never really follow the new seasons of anime as they come out for whatever reason. I tried for the spring season, but got overwhelmed. Summer I didn’t even bother. But now it’s fall, my favorite time of year, and I feel energized to try again. I’m being smart about it and picked out 3 series to follow. No more, no less. The series I chose were Armed Librarians, Kimi ni Todoke, and Nyan Koi. I still need to sit down and watch the first episodes of the first two series, but last night I sat down and watched Nyan Koi episode 1, so here’s my thoughts on that so far.

The basic plot is that Junpei, the main character, is a boy that is allergic to cats, but his family loves them to bits. So does his crush, despite her being ain a family of dog people. He, however, just doesn’t get it. One day he kicks a can, which accidentally beheads the statue of Jizou, a cat deity. From this moment onward, Junpei is cursed. He can hear what cats are saying. If Junpei doesn’t do 100 favors for cats, then not only will he hear cats forever, but he will become one himself.

To be perfectly honest, Nyan Koi had me from the description on the fall season chart. I happen to be a cat lover myself with four of my own, so a series centered around cats?  Has major appeal for me. And so far this first episode does not disappoint.

For one thing, the main character, Junpei, is not your usual moe series hero. He actually has a personality from what I can tell. And the main girl, Mizuno, is cute, but not pathetic in the least. I found her dog owner mentality towards cats to be absolutely adorable. I’ve known people like that and it’s funny to watch them interact with cats and teach them the differences between cats and dogs.

My favorite character so far is easily Nyamese, Junpei’s family’s cat, though. She is adorable and her attitude puts me in mind of Garfield. The kittens in the first episode are positively adorable, too. I just wanted to cuddle them and tell them that everything would be okay~.

People, I beg you, don’t just watch the video of the opening song and assume this is just a moe show with nekomimi. This series really has potential, and no nekomimi actually have occurred in the series so far; just in the OP.  Stringed approves of Nyan Koi!