Anime Review: Unbreakable Machine Doll

Happy Valentine's Day everybody! In conjunction with this celebration of love, I will be posting a review of the most romantic anime there is out there! :D

The happy face of "I just murdered several machines like an infernal badass"

Title: Unbreakable Machine Doll

What is it about: Overpowered 'dolls' destroying each other alongside buildings. Oh ya, I was kidding about the romantic part :P

Review: Once again, an anime that features dolls! And I like it! However, these dolls are unlike those of Rozen Maiden and the likes, and the so-called dolls in this anime takes on various forms such as human, dragons, dogs etc. which are by no means mechanical (except for the mecha dolls). These dolls even have blood in them (again, except the mecha ones), so they are actually more alive than merely a combat puppet.

Speaking of combat, I can assure you that this anime is highly action packed which involves human-sized dolls battling out with, say, a hundred-feet tall dragon. Not only that, the one thing that is very likable of the battle scenes in this anime is that they are very strategy-filled. The main character, though being overpowered, isn't exactly one that is powerful enough to match most of his way-more-overpowered opponents, but I do find him very admirable because he often assess the situation with a calm and calculative mind, and engages in combat with strategy to defeat his opponents. He's also a tough guy who manages to survive multiple life-threatening blows, which could be kind of unrealistic at times.

In terms of storyline, this anime does have an interesting and well thought out plot for a 12-episode anime. Though given the complexity of the story line, it is expected that 12 episodes isn't quite sufficient to convey in full what was introduced to the audience. As a result, too many unanswered questions arose in this anime. Speaking of which, this anime tend to introduce too many characters that are significant but somewhat random to the point where things get a little confusing, and this does contribute to some of those unanswered questions. Also, most of these characters are introduced to us a being extremely powerful, but they are never actually seen engaging in combat. Some of them merely appeared for a short while and not much are told about them. As such, a sequel is highly anticipated and given the popularity of this anime, I would say it is pretty likely. If there isn't, it is going to be one massive letdown, but I'm having my hopes high.

In conclusion, this is one of the few anime which I found to be really epic. The fight scenes are really enjoyable to watch, though I do admit that some supposedly really powerful enemy were defeated pretty fast. Epic battles aside, this anime is also a humorous one especially given that one of the main character's forte is sarcasm. I do enjoy the background music in this anime, but unfortunately not the opening and ending theme. Last but not least, I really enjoy watching this anime because.......... loli! XD

Rating: 8/10

Movie Review: Suspect X (The Japanese one)

My exams are finally finished and now is the start of my 1-month semester break, so I finally have the time in my hands to write on a review of the best movie (best Japanese movie at the very least) I've ever come to know. I've watched this movie quite some time ago actually, and I think I'm going to watch it again soon.

Title: Suspect X (Yougisha X no Kenshin)

(Not to be confused with Samurai X or Rurouni Kenshin)

What is it about: Who needs forensic science when you have physics? And who needs alibi when you have mathematics?

Review: What happen when you strike a steel ball with several steel balls aligned on a rail on one end? Obviously, according to the law of conservation of energy and momentum, the energy will be transferred and cause the ball on the other end to roll at the same speed. What happens then, when you attach a powerful neodymium magnet to one side of the line of steel balls and a ball is rolled towards it? It will cause an instant acceleration of the ball prior to striking the line, causing the ball on the other end to fire at a high speed. What then... if you put the steel ball on a seriously powerful superconducting magnetic accelerator? Well, according to the movie, it's really awesome! XD

Suspect X is a movie for those science geek out there who wants to see how physics and mathematics are applied in epic ways to solve criminal cases. Yes, the one doing the crime-solving is a physicist assisted by a detective. If you haven't notice, this physicist is Yukawa Manabu from the detective drama series Galileo. What makes this movie a lot more interesting, and longer than other cases he has solved in the drama, is that the adversary this time is a genius mathematician who happened to be Yukawa's best friend (and probably the one and only person who understands his physics mumbo-jumbo.)

For a little spoiler, the mathematician didn't exactly commit the crime, but assisted his neighbor to cover up a homicide she committed by creating the perfect alibi. If you haven't watch the Galileo series, Yukawa is basically a professor who has no interest whatsoever in anything but physics, and a detective often seek his knowledge in physics to solve various bizarre crimes. So, the drama is pretty much a Detective Conan style crime solving series which is rather repetitive throughout the episodes. However, in this movie, there is much more than that. This movie talks about some of Yukawa's past and his relationship with the mathematician. Being his best friend, he also had to deal with the dilemma of protecting his friends or unraveling the truth. The truth to the case is also extremely difficult for Yukawa to unravel and for the first time ever, he actually did mistakes in his deductions. Well, he is going against a genius after all. Also, in this movie you'll get  to see Yukawa being emotional which totally does not happen in the drama even if someone were to drop dead in front of him.

If you love physics and/or mathematics and you learn them in high school or university, you'll definitely like this movie. You don't have to completely understand them, though I doubt anyone can unless your name happened to be Albert Einstein. It's still pretty cool to see how these people do their reasoning and calculations. Of course, there are much more of these to be seen in the drama series Galileo, which brings me to my next point.

As much as this movie makes references to physics and mathematics, I must unfortunately admit that this movie has significantly less application of physics in the crime-solving process that it does in the drama. This is because this movie highlights the complexity behind the crimes rather than the methodology, hence more applications of logic is deployed. It also focuses more on story line rather than pure crime-solving. It is more on the characters being calculative in their respective plans and investigation, rather than their actual performance and demonstration of the theory and math. This is rather unfortunate, but I believe it is a reasonable sacrifice. If you would like to see Yukawa applying the laws of physics full force and solving impossible crimes like a boss (and shaming the cops in the process), be my guest and watch the Galileo series. Trust me, it's really not bad!

Rest assured though, this movie is definitely not a boring one especially given the complexity of the case. What detective movie is better than two great minds going head-to-head with each other? Also, while this movie could get pretty serious, it does also make you laugh at times. In other words, this is not the typical detective movie that involves nothing but crime scene investigation, illogical coincidences, yada yada yada, the end. There's actually a lot of story line in it, and they are interesting to watch. Last but not least, that girl is quite pretty! XD

Rating: 8.5/10

Anime Review: Rozen Maiden

Hello and once again it has been a pretty long time since I last posted anything on my blog. While reading what I posted last time I realized I had horrible English before and I did some grammatical corrections so that readers won't have too much of a headache trying to comprehend what I'm trying to say. Anyway, it will be a week before my end-of-semester exams begin, but I couldn't resist the temptation of watching an anime given that I haven't been touching my heck long list of anime folders on my laptop. So for the past two weeks, I finished two seasons of Rozen Maiden out of three, and the following will be my review of them. You could probably tell from my blog's background that I'm really liking this anime. In fact, my laptop and my Google Chrome is now filled with Rozen Maiden themes. All that's left now is to Rozen Maiden-ify my hand phone :)

Title:-

Season 1: Rozen Maiden
Season 2: Rozen Maiden: Träumend
Mid season 2: Rozen Maiden: Ouvertüre
Season 3: Rozen Maiden: Zurückspulen

Damn German names!

What is this anime about: Dolls. Gothic lolita walking talking fighting creepy dolls.

Review: Dolls. I love dolls. Dolls are cute. Dolls are creepy, and that is exactly how I was attracted to this anime. In this anime however, these dolls are not meant to freak you out. They are in fact rather human in nature with only their size differentiate them from human characters (and the fact they sleep in flying briefcases). Suffice to say, these dolls have supernatural powers which enables them to live and engage in combat. However, their powers are limited without the help of a human 'medium' which acts as an energy booster for the doll's power. Somehow that reminded me of Rockman, but it works differently. The powers obtained from their medium directly drains their life force away, though it is not at a serious rate.

So this story revolves around a boy named Jun who is a kid with serious school phobia as a result of bully. He is also a hikikomori which means anybody who prefers to lock themselves in their rooms and spend quality time with their computers. He is a guy who despises pretty much everything and is under the care of her sister Nori who is the complete opposite. Jun has a mad hobby of buying stuffs online and returning them before he has to pay. Somehow this leads to him encountering a strange (and pretty) doll in a briefcase. He awakens her and is forced to sign a contract with her to become her 'servant'. Soon, a few other dolls join him and his house shall be filled with talking dolls! Oh, did I mention how cool their names are? :D

Rozen Maiden has a really interesting storyline, though some of it may be a little confusing to the viewers. However, this confusion happens toward the ending of the series. From the beginning, this anime is pretty humorous and interesting to watch, particularly in the first season. It is very entertaining to see how the life of an introvert guy is messed up by these few noisy dolls. I can tell you, these dolls loves to scream, argue with each other like how kids does it, destroy windows and make Jun's life as miserable as they possibly could. The greatest contributions to these are a baby-like doll, Hinaichigo who constantly gets into a fight with her tsundere counterpart Suiseiseki (usually because of the fact that Suiseiseki loves to bully Hanaichigo).

It gets better when Jun is involved in all the daily comedy between the dolls, such as an incident where Hinaichigo wages war on Suiseiseki because the latter stole a strawberry from the former's cake and Hinaichigo got Jun on her side. Both of them could practically destroy the entire house. Rest assured though that these dolls apparently has the power to fix damages they cause. Bottom line, these dolls are incredibly adorable.

After some time, things took a serious turn. These dolls start to engage in combat for real. There are 7 dolls altogether, and their predestined goal in life is to kill each other to claim their life force, the Rosa Mystica, in a dangerous game known as Alice Game. The last one standing becomes the perfect doll worthy of being with their creator whom they address as 'Father'. However, most of the dolls are reluctant to partake in the Alice Game and fight each other as they consider themselves to be sisters. A few of them on the other hand thinks differently. Many of these conflicts and dilemmas gradually changes the life of Jun as well as the dolls which makes this anime a really interesting one to watch. All the concepts of this anime are quite thoroughly well thought out.

Sadly, that mostly apply only for season 1 though. Season 2 turned out to be a little disappointing. It attempts to be humorous in the first part of the series as season 1 managed to pull it off, but it didn't work too well for most parts (mind you though that there are certain scenes which are downright funny). Towards the later part of the story, it does get a little more interesting but sad at the same time. Here you will actually see the Rosa Mystica gets taken away and the dolls became lifeless one by one. I cried a little when Hanaichigo *ahem* 'died'. All the while I was hoping the ending will not be too bad as most of the dolls are gone. I was really hoping for their revival. However, the ending is a rather disappointing one. I am not going to spoil it for you any further, but it could have been more than what it is. The ending is not necessarily a bad one, but rather not a 'feel good' one as described by some reviewer. 12 episodes for the second season just doesn't quite cut it, and the ending is pretty abrupt and in a way, random. It does not give a full account of what really happened and it certainly does not feel like an ending at all. I hate endings like that. I took a glimpse of the first episode of the third season and it wasn't very promising. It seems to me like season 3 is a reboot, which I seriously hope it isn't.

In conclusion, Rozen Maiden is an enjoyable anime overall, season 2 included. It's just that season 1 is a far more exciting to watch than season 2. I don't have high hopes for season 3, but I heard that it does has positive reviews, so I'm giving it a try someday. If you couldn't care less for the story line, the dolls themselves are really worth your attention. It's what kept me going for season 2 and will keep me going for season 3. I really loves dolls! <3

Ratings:-

Season 1: 9/10

Season 2: 6/10

Anime Review - Date A Live

So once again I'm temporarily done with my uni stuffs and here I am stuck at home with nothing better to do than watching anime. Fortunately for me, I had recently went to an anime event and came back home with a stash of new anime DVD's. I started with the one anime I anticipated the most since it is a hot topic on Facebook - Date A Live.

Title: Date A Live

What is it about: How do date an alien with more-powerful-than-nuclear powers that could destroy the world.

Review: When I watch Date A Live, the first thing that comes to my mind is that it is comparable to The World God Only Knows (henceforth shall be known as TWGOK), but surprisingly Date A Live is slightly different. Let me explain. TWGOK involves a guy with no interest in the real world and real-life girls is forced to date many of them in order to so-called 'save' them. True enough, Date A Live is similar in that manner, dating girls to save them. However, in Date A Live, we are dealing with girls from another planet, literally, that has the power to annihilate Earth. This is a story of a contradicting approach to prevent such disaster - One organization tries to kill them while the other tries to appease them by having a guy date them (and make us laugh in the process :P).

TWGOK ends with a girl falling in love with the main character (Katsuragi Keima) after several episodes before Keima moves on to another target. Date A Live however, has a more complicated storyline which involves loads fight scenes. In fact, things get more complicated when two of the girls are the main character, Itsuka Shidou's sister. Other girls include two who always compete for Shidou's attention, and one who merely tries to eat him - as in yandere, which brings me to my next point.

The one thing I noticed is the creative introduction to the characters' personality according to the "dere" categories. I discovered that in this anime there is at least a character with tsundere, yandere, kuudere, dandere and deredere characteristic each. You should know what they mean if you're an otaku. Otherwise, i think Google will provide a good explanation. Generally, I hate yandere. But I liked this one in particular, not for the fact that she's a psychotic murderer, but for some reason I find her quite attractive one, which is kinda weird... Everyone else does too. That said, she is not my favorite character in this anime.

In conclusion, this anime is not the typical dating-sim anime where characters date one another and it ends there. Also, unlike most other anime, this one does contain heavy fanservice, but the ecchi-ness is under control. Last but not least, be warned that this anime ends in a cliffhanger. But don't worry, a second season is on the way.

Rating: 9/10

Nanoha: Gears Of Destiny

Hello again. I realized I haven't been blogging consistently for a while. You have to forgive me though because now I am a university student, and everyone have to go through that part of life where you have to set aside your passion for the greater good. Regardless, I am still a big fan of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

One particular thing I really enjoy is playing its PSP game called Gears of Destiny, abbreviated as GOD. Yes, this game is as godly as it sounds. Every character's a badass and in particular the final boss System U-D (later given the name Yuri). In case you didn't know, U-D stands for Unbreakable Dark. But this game being a Nanoha game, U-D is really a loli. Then again, lolies are not meant to be underestimated as I had learned the hard way throughout my gaming experience.

This game has kept me going for quite some time and every time I play it, I still find this game really challenging. Fighting U-D is fun but it can also be a real pain especially having lost to her many times over. The best part, or perhaps the worst, unlike many fighting games I've tried, the opponent memorizes your moves and strategies and tries to counter them. In other words, the AI is really intelligent.

Recently I've just found out that two characters in particular namely Fate Testarossa and Levi, can change their form from normal to Sonic form. In Sonic form, their speed and combo counts increase tremendously, so fast I sometimes can hardly tell the location of my Fate/Levi. However, Sonic form is a double-edged sword as you greatly sacrifice your defense. Worry not however because if you are skillful enough, you can dodge pretty much every of your opponents' attacks, and this is proven to work well even on U-D.

System U-D. Cute isn't she?

That's all for today. I'm still in the process of figuring the most effective way to defeat U-D, but no matter what I can guarantee it won't be easy.

Brand new lappy, brand new waifu XD

Hello fellow blog-readers. I know it's been like 10 years (or was it 3 months?) since I last updated my blog. I almost forgot how to make a new post.

Anyway, all these while I had achieved the impossible by living without a laptop though I'm partially with a life support known as smartphone, not that it's very useful to me. Now I have took a leap of faith by investing a large portion of my savings on a brand new Lenovo Y500 laptop. This is a mark of history for me because it is my first very own laptop which actually works! (I had a really bad experience with Alienware whereby it broke down on the day it as delivered to me.)

So far I am liking this laptop. The only thing is that it is not very well designed ergonomically and thus hurts my arm during long hours of typing. In fact it doesn't take an hour for me to feel it. Then again, I couldn't complain much because I bought this lappy at an extremely cheap price for a laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2GB DDR5 graphic card. In case you are confused, it simply means this lappy has good graphics. In the thermal efficiency viewpoint, it's not too bad, although I haven't start using it for hardcore gaming. Oh well...

So, while I was away for 3 months, I had been obsessed with Nana Mizuki. And that in turn made me obsessed with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. I recently watched two of the movies and I instantly fell in love with both of them. Why? Because from there I discovered that lolies can be highly reactive and can cause a nuclear explosion. The first movie was full of them: Little girls with badass weapons. And what do you get? Nuclear explosions. The second movie was better considering the fact that it even includes supernovas alongside nuclear explosions. All thanks to these two uranium-rich Gundam  loli nuclear reactor called Nanoha Takamachi and Fate Testarossa.

Fate was particularly my favorite character of all, and that's not only because she is voiced by Nana Mizuki. I'll describe her in detailed sometime in the future, but I can tell you now she is really cool. Nanoha ain't half bad either. Then there was one Fateful day where I so happened to participate an anime event known as C2AGE Slam. Not sure what it means though. Anyway, i was walking around when I came across this Fate Testarossa Sonic Form Figma which obviously I couldn't resist to buy it however expensive it may get. Fortunately the price wasn't too bad. The Sonic Form doesn't have the cool looking Dracula cape which she always wear, and also she won't be wearing a mini skirt (Owww...). But still, it looks awesome with all that wings on her glove and shoes, and not to mention that huge-@$$ scythe she weilds. Currently the Figma is still yet to be unboxed. Pretty soon it will be, and I'll be spending a good part of my free time posing my newly-acquired waifu and snapping lots of photos of it with my smartphone XD

Anime review: White Album

Title: White Album

Year: 2009

What is it about: School Days minus all the yandere.

My review: White Album is actually an adaptation of a visual novel, which is not and often not a good news. I was interested to check out this anime due to the fact that one of the characters, Ogata Rina (right), is voiced by Nana Mizuki and the other one, Morikawa Yuki (left), is voiced by Aya Hirano. I started listening to songs from White Album before I started watching the anime, and I found some of the best songs there.

And so, I started watching the first episode, and to be honest, I understand almost nothing from it. Fine, I thought, and I persevere to watch the second episode. Then things get a bit more interesting, but the fact remains that I could hardly understand the main storyline until I sought Wikipedia for help. Unfortunately, Wikipedia's synopsis for individual episodes stopped at episode 8. Coincidentally, it is from episode 8 onward that the storyline begins to fall apart.

First of all, please bear this in mind: this is quite the typical love story which you'll likely get from watching most melodramatic anime or drama series. See, this guy (Touya Fujii) has an incredibly beautiful girlfriend. See the girl on the left? She's pretty. So, for some reason this guy was separated from this girl for quite some time and then for some reason, they were not able to contact each other because they somehow are not aware of the existence mobile phones, one of the greatest inventions of mankind. So what does this guy do? He cheats on his girlfriend after being seduced by a lady much much older than him. Can you believe that? I mean, if I had a girlfriend as nice and pretty as her, the last thing I want is to lose her. Not only that, he also went for almost every other girl he sees throughout the series.

The one thing that pisses me off the most is the fact that a jerk like him eventually still gets the girl. He is also liked by a few others, and being a guy with overflowing hormones, he kinda made out with every single one of them. It was then that I realized something: This anime is exactly walking down the path of School Days. If you didn't know, School Days is about a sexually hyperactive guy who hits on every single girl he sees and was eventually brutally murdered by his girlfriend - yandere style.

I'd wish to say that some of the girls was able to avoid falling prey to Touya's sweet talk. It was pretty convincing at first to see how Touya was constantly being by several girls he tried to hit on. But alas, these girls eventually did submit to the temptation, including Ogata Rina who was protecting Yuki all the while from being played around by Touya. Seriously, what makes Touya so attractive that all girls just fall for him for no apparent reasons at all? That disappointed me very much and I stopped halfway through season 2 because I just couldn't take it anymore.

Well, to conclude, this anime is quite worth watching if you are able to ignore Touya's existence completely and focus more on the story of Yuki's rising stardom. The songs in this anime are definitely worth listening to. After all, it's Nana Mizuki and Aya Hirano who sang most of them.

Rating (out of 10): 4