(L) Shikabane Hime Aka

[Solafighter]

Originally Posted by Solafighter

Any news about, that people from EU(for example Germany) can watch this series subbed?

Forget about that earlier. I found a way, already.

[serenade_beta]

The amount of comments on the actual anime clearly shows how amazingly popular this is.

Spoiler for ep5:

Sorry, but the more I watch this, the more I start considering this a gag anime...

I mean, for heaven's sake, a THIRD monotone/crap voice actor character! They weren't satisfied with just two, but a third one. Thanks to that, a lot of things went to waste. And were kind of hard to hear at times too.
For one thing, the whole car ride with the three bou-yomi characters was just... Well, let's say that I was laughing when I knew that the next scenes will contain these three characters conversing in those voices...
And it was hardly convincing when Yamagami pulled out the games and talked with that voice...
Feel sorry for the manga-ka... Story-raped and character-raped...

Anyways... Putting that tragedy aside, the story is... still rather uninteresting. It is moving, for one thing, but it's rather slow, and just a bunch of random monster killing. This time focusing on a evil car.
And to top it off, Yamagami's weapons remind me too much of Makina's.

Well, at least this episode tried to teach us that we should not steal cars and drive in the middle of the night.

And Ouri is still the random idiot who gets swept from place to place for no real purpose.

The ED changed visually... With one look, it looked cool. Looking from the other side, it was just a fanservice ED.

Preview: ...Those two new characters... and more bou-yomi (*laugh*)?

[Furi-Yuri]

I will give credit to Funimation as they replied to my Email I sent via their only public address trying to help me "fix" the issue I have with the First Episode and being locked out of what I paid for. What they suggested didn't work as the Files I needed to "delete" before I could force things were not where they were expected to be.

Microsoft DRM is pretty bad as everyone knows, unless it can phone home for permission you don't get to view your files in WMP 11. It apparently uses ActiveX to do this and unless you can upgrade this you are locked out after you update WMP. It seems I can't upgrade this.

I know that computers and their operating systems are not toasters but stuff should "just work" and the DRM Funimation chose doesn't "just work".

[Shiroth]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

The amount of comments on the actual anime clearly shows how amazingly popular this is.

Spoiler for ep5:

Sorry, but the more I watch this, the more I start considering this a gag anime...

I mean, for heaven's sake, a THIRD monotone/crap voice actor character! They weren't satisfied with just two, but a third one.

I don't see what's wrong in giving fresh new seiyuu's a chance as main characters.

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by Shiroth

I don't see what's wrong in giving fresh new seiyuu's a chance as main characters.

And? Doesn't change that the voice acting is completely ruining any tension the show manages to produce.

The following statement is false:
New voice actors=No complaining from the viewers

[Shiroth]

I'll admit i was a little meh with their acting in the first episode, though that's given because we're all not used to a new fresh voice like the ones we're hearing. Upto episode five, and i can easily say i'm used to them. I don't see what the trouble is.

[Guido]

As incredible as it was to me, I was able to understand about one-sixth to one-fifth of the dialogue throughout episode four.

Hence, for anyone who understood the fourth episode, please, tell me if I got my conclusions correct or not.

Spoiler:

Right away I identified Osaki as Shikabane since her dead eyes were an obvious giveaway.
1. Osaki desire to come back to the living was to continue composing her songs and make sure that everybody else listened to them.

2. Anyone disliking her songs meant a gruesome death at her hands.

3. Osaki's manager found out and already knew that she was dead, that became a Shikabane, but he hid that fact to keep on promoting her in the music industry.

The interesting thing is that the mysterious sect showcased in the shadows in the OP sequence is starting to interfere with both Keisei and Makina's job at hunting the shikabane.
1. The Doctor's assassin from the previous episode contacted by phone Osaki's manager to warn him about Shikabane Hime coming to get Osaki.

2. For me is safe to assume that the manager at the last moment decided to heed the warning.
Osaki had either already expected or an idea about Makina's coming, hence, Makina was unable to pull out a surprise attack and was met with thugs.

Is the cat entity part of the sect's group or is it a third power? The cats' motives at getting Ouri involved with Keisei and Makina's mess still remain ambiguous.
1. Ouri continued to research about the fire that happened at the Hoshimura's home years ago.

2. What I understood of the dialogue at the orphanage is that the head of the Hoshimura family, the father, was Keisei's senpai.

3. Ouri arrived at the remains of the burnt-down, Hoshimura manor and found the family's grave with Makina's name written on it.

4. A chance encounter with Makina, injured from her escape, at the graveyard; Makina explained to Ouri that her family and she were murdered. I'm quite not sure about the rest of the dialogue after that, but Makina further commented that she's the Shikabane Hime, and her reasons for coming back still linger in mystery.

Keisei deliberately wanted Ouri not to be involved, that's why he tried his best to keep Makina's existence hidden from the latter.
1. When Keisei found out about Ouri being with Makina at the phone, he realized how futile his effort were to conceal the truth and, hence, he showed up before Ouri at the scene of the battle.

2. What I understood is that Keisei is Makina's contractor.
Given my scarce knowledge of the language, Makina returned as the Shikabane Hime through means of a contract.

It was a decent episode because I applauded when Ouri slammed that sleazy manager; Makina as always kicked butt with that personal roughness of hers; and Keisei made a smart move playing Osaki's music to distract the Shikabane.

[Bathory Area]

I just finished EP3.Sub Eng is so lately.

Spoiler for EP 3:

This was the best episode of this show so far.We get learn the
origin of Makina.The plot surrounding mixing Shikabane and
humans is interesting.

[Deathkillz]

Yea...it is a shame that this series still isn't getting any better even after 5 episodes in. One can only hope that it will pick up further down the line but first, we need to bear with the under average "monster of the week" episodes so far.

Episode 5 does introduce an interesting pair but I can't see them adding much to the story other than being rivals for Makina.

[serenade_beta]

I just realized, but Makina in the OP's beginning is no-pantsu...

More importantly, why are the characters in this anime so idiotic?

Spoiler for ep6:

I mean...
In the scene where Yamagami was fighting the man. He pulled out that box and was about to do something. Guess what the Glasses guy did. Just gape. OHMYGOD, pretty box!
Then we have the scene with the priest with one of the few good voice actors against that evil man. During the whole fight and when he was in danger, what did the gallery do? Gape. The whole time.

That was horrible to put the cool OP song as an insert... I couldn't stop laughing.

The episode was average, as far as this anime has gone. Not much happens, a little development, idiocy, the usual.

ED added that new pair of Shikabane+Priest. Another bou-yomi...


6 episodes in:
Let's see here...

Voices:
No good. Besides for the select few, the main characters are all bou-yomi. Hard to hear at times, no tension, turns scenes into gags. Not only that, but the main characters too.

Story:
...Er... 6 episodes in. I guess there is still hope here...? The story is a bit awkward, but at least there has been some development so far on the evil man. Lots of random meaningless fights though. The random and buggy power chart is...

Characters:
One of the weaker parts...
Makina is quite unlikable, just a mass of angst. She always lets her guard down in battle, and only acts "cool" when she will win. Let's look at episode 6. The car enemy was beating her up the whole time. Then, when the car is half-dead and can't move, she gives a "cool" act and finishes it off.
Ouri... The most useless character in this anime. Six episodes in, and all he has done was wonder here and there and get in the way. And even now, this "protagonist" isn't doing anything.

Animation:
Probably the only redeeming point, but the art quality has gotten awfully strange recently...

Mah, I'm sticking around because the story is somewhat interesting, I guess. It isn't Toradora-level painful/annoying, so it's perfectly tolerable. Plus, whenever this anime does something wrong, it's more funny than irritating.

Preview: The evil man's past?

[Sinestra]

Well iv been quite since Shikabane Hime Aka started figuring i would give it a chance to pick up and after 5 episodes i feel like every episode is the same. I just dont get excited and some of the scenarios and how the characters react to them are just awful. I really dont want to give the series since im proud of not dropping animes but honestly this one is started to hurt me in places i didnt think could hurt. I thought episode 5 was terrible but im going to stick with the series its got to better RIGHT?

[Deathkillz]

ep 6

Spoiler:

I have a massive urge to yell out "ANIKIIIII!" at the end of the ep just for the sake of it...

There goes one of my favorite characters from this series

Ouri is just useless...very useless, plain, boring and a meddler. Just disappear.

And I have to agree with Serenade on how stupid the characters are...countless times they had time to attack mr red box but they didn't. Likewise with mr red box, he had countless time to kill everyone else but decided to 1) let the captured girl be uncaptured and 2) allow aniki to grab the box. Muhahaha

Makina is also useless...guh >.>

[darkchibi07]

Are these developments consistent with the ones in the manga?

[LazySpiral]

Ive read some of the manga myself not too far into it but some far im not seeing any correlation except the main characters lol. Also that kid i havent seen either, but like i said im not too far into the manga only finished chap 2. Im hoping that they intend to use this as a introduction sort of and then move into the main story. Ive only seen up till ep 3 or 4 (dont remem) I believe in gainax and will trust them till the end.

[Guido]

Several of the scenes when the new-transferred girl was shooting against the rogue monk look awkward. In fact, they remind me of the art and animation employed in certain episodes of Gurren-Lagann.

The dialogue exchange that I understood between the rogue monk and Ouri was...

Spoiler:

That in order to go to heaven the Corpse Princess, Makina, must slay 108 shikabane.

[Molenir]

So, 4 episodes in, I'm still enjoying the show. Yes, I realize everyone else is talking about episode 6, but since I'm not watching the raws on this, I'm stuck waiting for the subs.

Having said this, I have one gripe about the series. Ouri's not wearing his pants high enough! I mean, they're barely past the belly button, they definitely need to be armpit level right.... right? /sarcasm

More seriously, guess I'm saying that the character design for Ouri just sucks. Wish they had spent a bit more time on it.

[Thingle]

Monster of the week = phail.

Must see character development.

[DangerMouse]

4 episodes in and I find they are being very successful at drawing me deeper in with each episode as Keisei slowly reveals more information and knowing that the scale of their mission is growing beyond what they will be able to handle alone.

Despite spoiling myself a bit I was compelled to skim the ep 6 raw after reading the character spoilers and the developments make me extremely pleased,

Spoiler:

Keisei better not be dying this soon though he's interesting and still needs to make a stronger mark on the series (this was a good start), not only is the story expanding beyond the monster-of-the-week (as long as it doesn't go right back into it after this) as I fully expected from a Gainax series, but with the confirmation of multiple Shikabane Hime/Guardian pairs all in action together against a bigger threat (no simple-immature rivalries between pairs so far for artificial drama either), the show appears to be going to continue to expand in ambition and scale beyond it's humble initial premise and narrow scale.

Originally Posted by Deathkillz

ep 6

Spoiler:

And I have to agree with Serenade on how stupid the characters are...countless times they had time to attack mr red box but they didn't. Likewise with mr red box, he had countless time to kill everyone else but decided to 1) let the captured girl be uncaptured and 2) allow aniki to grab the box. Muhahaha

Makina is also useless...guh >.>

Spoiler Ep.5-6

Spoiler:

I'm going mostly off blogs/raw since subs aren't out yet but what I get out of it is that Makina's not being useless there, all she can do is attack the Shikabane from the ground, as the traitor priest is living, she can't harm or attack the priest himself and neither can Itsuki (hence why her bullets didn't harm him in ep 5, she must have shot around him on purpose trying to make him atleast back off with intimidation which would work against most people but as a former monk he knew she couldn't actually shoot him) so they can't really attack him directly and he knows it. Makina does what she can, blowing away tons of Shikabane and freeing Itsuki. Until the final pair showed up, other than Keisei, the archer guardian with the glasses is probably the only one who can wound the priest at that moment but once the cube spell was done the seemingly endless amount of Shikabane surrounding the priest would probably block any arrows and the priests can't kill shikabane. The cube might have also done something against his arrows so maybe that's why he didn't shoot before the priest finished casting the spell, that's my only questionable moment since he's not bound by Hime rules, though I don't know enough about his character since I haven't seen him in the subs yet. As for the cube, judging by the rogue priest's reaction until Keisei was shown to have used the potion allowing him to endure enough to move the cube into the path of the blade, he wasn't really worried about anyone touching it since it would have been too much for even Keisei had he not drunk the potion which others have written had earlier dialogue in the episode about having severe side-effects so I doubt the rogue priest expected him to use it.

Serenade, I'm not a big fan of Ouri so far either since I usually hate his type of character that always shows up (atleast the spirit cat makes it believable and mysterious, I want to know more about that cat, and not stupid coincidence like in most shows) and gets in the way especially since Keisei is much more interesting so I'd rather see more growth of Keisei than see Ouri take a more prominent role. But, I don't really have much issue with his design as I'm actually not totally surprised by Ouri's rather clean design, many of Gainax's "initially normal guys" have had that type of style. Ultimately there's still plenty of time (like 20 episodes, most of the series) for him to grow out of sucking, but for now he's frustratingly in the way.

Originally Posted by Thingle

Monster of the week = phail.

Must see character development.

If you're on episode 4, it looks like monster-of-the-week is about to end with episode 5-6 as more of the main cast of characters are getting involved and episode 6 looks to have some good developments.

[Shiroth]

Being the huge angela fan that i am, the full version of Beautiful fighter is everything i expected. Beautiful and epic.

My Story is quite fitting for the ED, also a beautiful song & Diary is a wonderful plus.

[Deathkillz]

For me, the ED > the OP.

But make no mistakes, both tracks are amazing! Angelaaaaaa!!

Then we have the extra track which is quite the contrast to the fast paced OP/ED. Not quite as good but still lovely