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So there was a new episode of Haruhi. I liked it myself, though I knew the story behind it. I just love how Kyon doesn't seemed to get phased by anything anymore. I'm really confused about the airing schedule though.

Yes, he was a very well done character who I had partially feared would turn into some stereotypical villain and I am glad he didn't. I thought it was quite the coincidence that Akiyuki eventually ended up spending time with the Captain's mother for a time, but I suppose there aren't any.

He was interesting to say the least and I agree that he had a terrific VA. It bothered me for a little while since I couldn't figure out where I had heard him until I looked him up.

Yes, I agree.

Hmm, I suppose it probably doesn't matter. It's all good in the end.

Ah, I see.

I've seen it before and I believe it was from one of the early R2 ones. I honestly don't care that much about it. And from what I can tell, none of them have been translated or at least I haven't heard anything about it.

There was one for either the last disc or the second to last that featured C.C. and Cecile mainly along with the others in Emperor Lelouch's group. They seemed to be talking about several things like Cecile's past and Lelouch and Suzaku. C.C. had a nice dress which I don't recall her ever wearing in the show, but seemed to be some sort of Empress outfit or something. She can also apparently play the harp.

I've been checking out some other series recently as well like Genkutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, which is an interesting take on the novel though I wish they had perhaps stuck a bit more to the book's storyline and messages.

I'm glad you liked it. Well, near the end I started to really like the "bad guys" exactly fro that very reason - they weren't bad in stereotypic villainous way. For example that Captain - can't remember his name now - he had a very realistic personality and was in a realistic situation. He was in a battle that could only be described as massacre. But than he was saved by a doctor, who only cared of saving lives and not what uniform his patient was wearing. And than something snapped in his mind. So much like what happens with real people who go through things that don't make sense - like war for example.

The Emperor was doomed from the beginning. I agree that the only thing I felt for him was immense pity. And what about that brilliant performance by Furuya Toru! Damn, I really like that VA. He did narration and Emperor here. You might remember him for his narration in G00.

But overall that realism did make the whole show better in my opinion.

I honestly have no idea what happened. Ending was extremely confusing, though really good and satisfying.

No, I only checked out Omni's summaries. I didn't had enough time to get around to actually watch FMA.

On the other subject - I just found an interesting pic on the net:
http://kallen.stadtfeld.cc/img/660.jpg

That supposed to be the rumoured incident at Amoyamiya or whatever that place was called. I wonder witch Picture Drama is that from. Now I really want to check out all the R2 picture dramas that already came out and were translated. ^^

Well, I finished Xam'd. I have to say I really liked it and it was a great experience even though there are a number of things I didn't understand entirely though some of this was because they didn't exactly explain everything, which was kind of irritating. The antagonistic characters were strange in that I couldn't bring myself to hate them entirely and overall I just felt immense pity for a number of them. I found I liked this though.

I was a little confused with the ending. Did Akiyuki change back from the rock because Haru went to it on what seemed a regular basis and seemed to tend to it or did he simply rediscover his name after nine years? And I couldn't exactly tell, but did he not age at all during those years and is thus sort of the same age he was before he turned to stone? I thought that final part with them simply telling each other they loved one another without any hugs, kisses, or intense bouts of crying was a nice touch.

And I have to say I thought the music was excellent. One of the most enjoyable parts of the series to me.


Out of curiosity, have you seen the first FMA series and if so, what did you think of it? I went back and looked at it recently and still came away with good impressions though in comparison to the manga I think the anime is much darker and more depressing.

Well, not exactly. The series is called SD Gundam Generation or something along those lines and has a number of entries for a number of systems. The one I remember looking at was one for the GBA that featured Gundams, Mobile Suits, Mobile Armors, and other things from every series up to SEED along with having a large number of pilots that I think can pilot various suits, but work best with their own. That one was a strategy RPG game, but I don't know if they are all like that.

Oh, well that makes more sense. I thought it was supposed to be for eternity or something of that nature and yes the price does seem worth it. I suppose the promise within Watanuki's name wouldn't make any sense if they were seperated forever. And yes, that sort of thing does seem like torture.

Well, the last chapter I actually looked at was where we learned that those in the tube were CCS!Syaoran and CCS!Sakura. I've been reading scripts since then so I'll probably have to take a look at the chapters themselves. I agree about Holic since it honestly doesn't seem like anything is going on at all.

Well, Scar could point out that he might have more of a right to killing Envy since he was responsible for starting the war, though that would probably anger Mustang even more. Riza seems like the best person for the job and one could also bring up that Hughes probably wouldn't have wanted Mustang like this.

I've gotten a bit farther and I see what you mean about being annoyed with how they keep bringing teenagers into the army and leaving things up to them. It would make maybe a bit of sense if their was some explanation like that younger people are the only ones who can pilot the suits well enough to be of use. I was annoyed with their response to when the Xam'd they were holding almost broke free. I would have thought it be a better idea to keep everyone on full alert until it was safely restrained along with actually having some ASP suits on standby in case such a situation arose.

Gundam simulator? ^___^

Well, CCS!Syaoran and CSS!Sakura only turned their time back so theoretically they have the doubled amount to live now. And if you are referring to the price being sealed within this weird bottle thingy, I'm not so sure that it was such a terrible price to pay. Firstly, they knew that sooner or later they'll get out of there and secondly they were doing it not only for their sons sake, but for the whole multiverse' sake as well - that's a good damn reason to go through some hardship, don't you think? Still it should have been excruciating spending days, months and years separated like that. I'd probably gone insane in such situation.

Also you really should read Tsubasa - all the important stuff happens there for quite some time. And after Yuuko disappeared it feels like Holic only serves to tone down Tsubasa. Everything major happens in Tsubasa at astonishing pace where as Holic keeps things moving very slowly and almost nothing happens there.

Well, it's definitely is a bad idea to nominate Ed for 'calming Mustang down' position. ^^ I'm not even sure that Scar can do anything in this situation aside from either straight forward fight Roy with nothing but lethal results or say some obvious things about how revenge and hatred consume ones soul and blah-blah-blah to no effect for sure. My only hope would be for Riza to calm him down somehow. I don't have the slightest idea how can she do it, but my bet is definitely on her.

Good.

You know, now that you mention it that does make a whole lot of sense. The sort of scenarios we saw here would have been quite good for a video game. You have all sorts of unique things and choices. I wonder what sort of game genre would have fit though. Strategy RPG perhaps? Actually, I think there is a series of games that feature gundams from all the series that is of that type. I suppose they were simply looking at this the wrong way when doing it.

Yep, everything pretty much went on as it had before. A few things had been made aware, but other than that it didn't seem like the world was suddenly bright and happy. I suppose tackling these sort of problems and doing it in a realistic sense can be quite hard, but they shouldn't have bothered dealing with such questions if they weren't going to bother answering.

Yes, it did feel quite strange. And then we even had that time skip out of no where. What is it with time skips these days. It seems to be such a common thing these days and while it can occasionally be done in a good way, oftentimes I find myself wondering more about what exactly was going on during the time in between. Like that four month skip in 00 or the two skips we had near the end of CG which were rather silly in that they occurred within the last five episodes.

Well, with me it seems to be that I find a new show to watch after it has been out for some time and is either over or near being over. Very rarely these days do I actually seem to start a show the same time it starts.

Same here. I've kind of fallen behind Tsubasa beyond reading scripts, but I have been keeping up with xxxholic. The two seem to be blending so much now that you can get some idea of what is going on in the other. Tsubasa was rather upsetting with what happened to the original Syaoran and Sakura as their price. Yuuko disappearing is also an upsetting prospect, but one I have been expecting for some time.

Yeah, FMA will go on for a while longer but I don't think it will go past 150 chapters in the end. We are reaching the end or at least we seem to be doing so, but there are still quite a lot of things to deal with. I'd be surprised if it doesn't end after we see the end of Father though. Latest chapter was quite good and Mustang was quite scary in his rage. I understand Hawkeye's position since she was told by Mustang that she was to shoot him in the back if she felt the need was there. In only hope they can talk some sense into him though. Granted, killing Envy seems the safest way of dealing with things given how dangerous he can be. I suppose we'll see.

Oh, and I'm up episode 4 with Xam'd and it seems quite good so far. It does have a very Miyazaki-like feel to it and I also get vibes of Eureka Seven here and there.

Yeah. You know, it just struck me - I know now how 00's story was build! It feels exactly like playing a game, a very good game. Like... hmmm... Diablo, for example! A game that's good enough that it makes you want to pay it again and again. I can't even remotely say how many times I killed Diablo in both games and after some time I still want to try to do that again. Gundam 00 felt similar to that - like the writers were trying to accomplish the same goals as game authors. I mean, if 00 was a game I wouldn't mind assaulting Memento Mori time after time - every time with new powers and abilities that I'd want to try out and all that jazz. If you look at 00 from gameplay standpoint everything comes together perfectly. But it wasn't a game. It was pitched as a serious show that dealt with serious questions - the very same questions it failed to address in the end.

Exactly. That's one of the reasons I liked Darker than Black ending so much - it didn't lie about the future being all wonderful and peaceful. Why pretend that all fighting really accomplished something when it didn't? It's like saying "the world is in more big shit right now, but we'll just ignore all that and be happy!" sort of reassuring propaganda. Witch only means that they simply are not facing the truth and it'll bite them right in a sensitive spot soon enough.

Yeah, character development wasn't handled really well too. It feels like it had a very slow pace through all of the second season with occasional fast forwarding jumps - like the endings. I mean, its like you are reading a book of a certain characters story and skipping pages from time to time and that after a huge battle you get tired of all this and skips right to the end.

Actually I'm exited about several shows that came out recently or will start broadcasting shortly. I don't have time to watch any of those though. T_T

On the other hand, I'm keeping up with all the manga that I'm reading. Clamp uses some crazy twists as always, Hojo-sensei's artwork is brilliant and storys unexpected as always and so on. Oh, and after reading the latest FMA chapter I'm absolutely sure that Arakawa-sensei won't be able to wrap up the story with only 8 remaining chapters. It will go on longer than 100 chapters for sure.

Hmm, now that you mention it that is true of a lot of Gundam shows, though sometimes it doesn't seem to be a space station all the time. Just some big area that I suppose could be good for a final showdown. I thought it was really cool how it was inside the Moon as well and seemed so massive too and I am confused as to why it seems to be in some asteroid now. I hate random retcons. I actually rather wish we had gotten some info on how Aeolia went about creating Veda, though perhaps things like that will be covered in the movie.

Very true. Honestly, it should be presented as being equal in difficulty to fix all these problems as how rampant and horrible they are. But for some reason I don't feel all that surprised. Maybe they felt it would be too difficult or something like that, though such a thing is hardly an excuse. Yet the world and the characters in the series do seem to be going on the right track. Its simply that the entire thing was done in a way that is extremely hard to buy and perhaps is being much too generous as to how humans so often are.

Well, I honestly found most of those things extremely confusing and they never did tackle what exactly that is going to mean for Setsuna's life and the human race in general with him changing like that. Is this supposed to be something that all of humanity will become in time or something? Marina and the children were just a complete waste of time. I'm honestly confused as to what exactly her purpose in this show is. What happened with Billi was way too simple and didn't feel developed at all (along with making his development pointless as you said). I thought Patrick and Kati getting married was rather nice to see, but I was a bit surprised. I never got the vibe that she actually returned his affections though she did seem to like him at least I suppose.

Yeah, that was it.

I will. That and FMA will probably be the shows I'll be watching when I have time.

I found it somewhat funny that the last novel came out the week before the last episode. That probably never happens. I saw Ryuuji's original design and I agree that it was much better. The series was quite sweet though the ending was different in several ways in how things got to where they were.

First episode of FMA was good. The OP featured quite a lot of Hohenheim and even showed what he looked like when young, which was rather surprising. I think it could be possible to finish it up with that many if perhaps the last few were extra long.

Nah, it's just that all Gundam shows had a bad habit of wrapping everything around a space station at the end. And not only Gundam shows did that. It's not really a cliché, rather a bad tone I would say. I mean, couldn't they came up with something a little bit more original? Especially when in the first season they had such a great idea - putting Veda directly on the Moon or should I say in the Moon? ^~ That was a great idea, it summed up the size of that thing right away - I don't know how others got, but I thought it was implied that Veda was located at the core of the Moon and was absolutely huge. Now they retconned this supercomputer to a laptop compared to the previous version. And that's right here is bad storytelling.

In my opinion, the most disappointing thing about overall plot is that it ended up totally inconsistent. On one hand they show all the atrocities that A-Laws committed, concentrate on the horrors of war and oppression and everything that's so diabolical about this world and than on the other hand the only way how to get things better that they offered was literally holding hands and singing a song. There is absolutely no justification to that kind of handling a story that you yourself gave so much depth. No reasonable viewer will believe that the world - not individual characters, but the world for witch they fought (I hope ^~) will be any better afterwards. From where I'm standing none of the more important questions and problems second season raised were ever addressed. I simply can't get how the authors could just live it at that.

What I wanted to do by mentioning what happened to different characters was to show how many people here don't get how much did 00 actually fail. I mean, okay characters and what happened to them are important, but who cares about characters when the conclusion of the main story is practically nonexistent?! Characters alone won't cut it. Yes, Setsuna became god-like (so what? it's not like we hadn't saw that coming), Marina and children sang (that's just WTF over and over again), Tieria became a living computer (someone call John Connor!), Sumeragi and Billi made up (witch completely nullified his character development), Patrick and Kati got married (the only good thing) and so on. So what? Do any of these things affect the fate of the world or the people living in it? Who is going to take care of this whole mess? There's a ton more questions like that witch simple were ignored. Even if the movie is to wrap these things up it still not good enough of an excuse for dropping the main point 00 was all about from the start - changing the world for the better.

Oh, yeah quarzilisation or whatever that turning-into-particles-thing is called. That was a great mechanic that should have been the main power for 00. Instead of cosmic sized beam swords and all other crap. We talked about it before.

I totally recommend checking Xam'd out. I was thinking about trying out Tytania - it looks really interesting, but I don't have enough time for it anymore.

Yeah, I got hooked up on Toradora! manga and partially novels way before anime was even announced. The writing is great, that's for sure. Sadly though I couldn't watch the anime. VA's sounded differently from what I envisioned and I didn't really liked Ruuji's design. Maybe I'll give it one more try later on. And I surely try to catch FMA on weekends. I'm not sure that it could end even with 10 or 15 chapters, but we'll see soon enough.

Thanks, you too.