Tag Archive for '12 days of anime'

[12 days] Day 10: Peace in post-apocalyptic Yokohama

Published by Fawkes on December 23, 2011 in anime and sccsav. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a four episode OVA that we watched with the SCCSAV Iyashikei Viewing group. A lot like ARIA, it’s devoid of a central plot line.

What stands out the most about YKK is the unique world that the characters live in. Post-apocalyptic settings are typically ones of despair and a struggle to survive. In YKK, despite the ecological disaster that has wiped out most of the world, life continues peacefully. Alpha is a robot who runs a small cafe and there are little stories like meeting another robot from a neighboring town and taking a long trip far away from home. All of it is surrounded by a peaceful, easy lifestyle of everyone we meet.

It’s sad that YKK was only a four episode OVA. I read through the manga a few years back, and through all the 140 chapters, we really got to know the characters. The two kids especially who make a brief appearance in the OVA are characters that we see grow up throughout the many years that elapse in the manga.

One wish I have for the future is that we’ll get a complete length YKK anime. It’s a world I would really love to visit again.

[12 days] Day 9: A girl becomes a god and life goes on.

Published by Fawkes on December 22, 2011 in anime and sccsav. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Ka---- Mi---- Chu~!

Early this year, we had just launched Iyashikei Mondays with SCCSAV. We had been watching Sketchbook ~Full Colors~ and ARIA the Animation when @vuc_ joined us and suggested that we watched Kamichu!. I have to thank him for introducing it to us, because it was something I missed back when it was airing in 2005 and I really loved it.

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[12 days] Day 8: Idolm@ster is just a lot of fun and Chihaya is the best idol.

Published by Fawkes on December 21, 2011 in anime. 1 Comment Tags: , .

In the spirit of Steam sales... (Source)

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started watching Idolm@ster. All I knew about it was that it was ridiculously popular as a game and the music was great. In my usual manner of “Hey, this looks cute, let’s check it out,” I dove right in. Oh yeah. This post contains spoilers.

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[12 Days] Day 7: Nekogami Yaoyorozu needs more love.

Published by Fawkes on December 20, 2011 in anime and touhou. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Nekogami Yaoyorozu was an anime that flew under the radar for most. It was airing at the same time as Steins;Gate and Nichijou, so it’s not surprising that it didn’t get as much attention as it deserved. What attracted me to it was that this was an adaptation of an original manga by FLIPFLOPs, the Touhou doujin artist that I wrote about earlier this month.

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[12 days] Day 6: Kino no Tabi

Published by Fawkes on December 19, 2011 in anime and sccsav. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

The whole post-a-week thing for Kino fell through, so here’s my end of the series retrospective.

We watched Kino no Tabi as part of the first group on SCCSAV that I started that didn’t spawn out of Iyashikei Mondays. I’m going to do a full post with my experiences with the SCCSAV group since that was one of the highlights of my year, but for now let’s focus on Kino no Tabi.

Kino no Tabi is a highly episodic series that follows the journey of Kino and her talking motorcycle Hermes. Each episode was an exciting visit to a new location. It excels at taking things that we’re familiar with in our lives and putting a strange otherworldly twist on them. A few examples come to mind. Episode 8 is called “The Land of Wizards” is an uplifting story where Kino helps a girl to build a flying machine against the opposition of the townspeople who believe that she’s better off doing something more productive. Episode 5 contains the story about what happens when mob rule is allowed to run amok, resulting in everyone in the country being killed over disagreements until there’s only one person left. Episode 12 is probably the most memorable. In every episode leading up to this point, Kino has demonstrated that her skills with her guns can get her out of any situation, but in this episode she’s can’t do anything as she watches two countries carry out a genocidal action. Kino no Tabi invoked every emotion from happiness and a longing for adventure to fear and hopelessness.

By telling stories filled with the entire spectrum of emotions of the human experience, Kino no Tabi succeeds in capturing its central message:

The world is not beautiful; and that, in a way, lends it a sort of beauty

[12 days] Day 5: Sometimes you don’t have to save the world

Published by Fawkes on December 18, 2011 in games. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Despite having only spent a few hours with Atelier Totori, I’ve already fallen in love with it. I’m not quite ready to declare it the game of the year yet, because it’s got some stiff competition from games like Portal 2, but it is a very strong contender.

The change of pace from having played so many games where the entire world was at stake was refreshing. The only other game I played in the series was Atelier Iris, which was much more strongly heavily focused on combat. In Totori, the combat takes a backseat to a character-driven, more immersive experience. It’s no surprise that this game appeals to the iyashikei fan in me with it being more of a slice-of-life story.

Totori and Ceci are also the most adorable characters I’ve met in a game this year. Ceci is the older, sometimes overprotective sister, while Totori is the younger one who dreams of being an adventurer. There’s scene that really touched me was after coming back from a long time adventuring, Ceci remarked how Totori has been away for so long and that she misses her. I’m looking forward to seeing Totori grow from being a fledgling, clumsy alchemist into a top-notch adventurer.

Ceci is also voiced by Asami Imai, so I hear Idolm@ster’s Chihaya whenever she speaks.

[12 days] Day 4: We need more things with airships.

Published by Fawkes on December 17, 2011 in anime. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

Last Exile’s first series was something that I watched and thought was kind of neat because it was the first anime that I watched that had a huge focus on airships. I’ve been enjoying Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing which started airing this Fall. I’m still not sure how I feel about the shift away from the large-scale airship battles that made the first season so much fun to watch, but I think having the story center on Fam makes it seem like she’s a more important and influential player in the grand story. Claus and Lavie seemed to me to be small compared to all that was going on around them.

Also Dio is definitely the best character in the series. He’s got a certain air of mystery and fun around him. But that’s not what I want to talk about today…

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[12 days] Day 3: Revisitng Super Mario RPG

Published by Fawkes on December 16, 2011 in fanfests and games. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This is a crossover that needs to happen. Source unknown.

Super Mario RPG was a game that defined my childhood. It was my first RPG, and I remember playing through it when I was in elementary school. Many, many years later, during the Super Mario RPG fanfest this past summer, I got a chance to revisit the game.

To this day, Super Mario RPG stands the test of time as a solid, traditional-style RPG. Everything from its humor, to its action-based battle system, to its lively cast of characters, to its diverse, upbeat, selection of music continues to make this a classic game that I’ll be revisiting years from now. Mario RPG followed in the footsteps of EarthBound by not taking itself too seriously, an atmosphere which was aided by its cartoony graphics that still hold up to this day. It’s not a particularly difficult game. When I was a kid, I dumped all my points into health points instead of raising my attack or magic powers and struggled with it, but I noticed that knowing what I was doing, the game was much less challenging these many years later. But it’s still enjoyable, especially the battle system. The timed-hits system remains one of the finest game mechanics introduced into RPGs that many games have since emulated. It provides the player an additional level of interaction that helped make the battles more exciting. Playing through it again and discussing with our friends was one of the highlights of my summer.

Oh yeah. The Mario RPG fanfest also spawned @DatValentina.

[12 days] Day 2: Two Faces of Gensokyo

Published by Fawkes on December 15, 2011 in anime, games and touhou. 2 Comments Tags: , .

This post is kind of something I’ve been wanting to write during the Fall but never got around to sitting down and doing it.

It was… 2005-ish when I got into Touhou. My first exposure to the world in a serious manner was through the doujin “Spring of the Residents of a Touhou Town” by FLIPFLOPs. I’ve since observed, especially now that it’s been over five years since I discovered Touhou, that this is one of those things where my first impression of the world colors how I continue to view it. FLIPFLOPs is one of my favorite doujin circles, and during this year I finally got around to catching up on their entire works for Touhou. I want to explore the two of the many faces of Gensokyo through two of the doujins that FLIPFLOPs has made. The first is “Spring of the Residents of a Touhou Town” and the second is “Two Scarlet Sacrements Under the Starry Sky”.

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[12 days] Day 1: Story of a Lost Sky Progress Report 2011

Published by Fawkes on December 14, 2011 in games and touhou. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

New title screen art (For 0.6.1) by Jamuko

Hi! I’m Fawkes. This is my second time participating in 12 Days of Anime. I tend to stray more into gaming than focus exclusively on anime since I’m somewhere between the two communities.

The Kino weekly blogging thing kind of fell through due to me getting really busy and not really having much to say. I’m planning on a Kino wrapup during the 12 days event however.

Same as last year, we’ll start off this event by reviewing the progress made in the last year on Story of a Lost Sky, our Touhou SRPG project. This year saw the release of 0.6.0 in January and 0.6.1 in August, the latter having our first appearance at a real life event, the AM^2 convention where we were represented by Jamuko.

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