Title: Hakaba Kitarou (Graveyard Kitarou) Studio: Toei Genre: Horror Ratings (out of 5): Story: ♥♥♥ Animation: ♥♥♥♥
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The story for this week was rather bizarre… Remember the little plant that grew from Dracula’s dead body in the previous episode? Well, Nezumi Otoko uses his breath to knock a famous singer unconscious and plants this plant into his right arm. After a while, the plant starts to grow and it consumes its host. [...]
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After 2 or 3 episodes, the new season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei seems to lead the pack, with true tears, Yattaman, and Shigofumi next, but far behind.Spice & Wolf, Persona, and Rosario to Vampire come next, with others strung out behind. It's hard to gauge how popular Minami-ke O-kawari is, since it is simply continuing the original series' threads (and is on its 96th).Here is a rough list showing which thread each show is currently on. Each completed thread represents about 1000 posts.Zoku Zetsubou Sensei 67 True Tears 17 Yattaman 13Shigofumi 11 Spice & Wolf 9 Persona 8 Rosario to Vampire 8 Hakaba Kitarou 7 KimiAru 7 ARIA the Origination 6 H2O 6 Hakuten Yuugi 3Major 4 3 Ayakashi 2Moegaku 5 1 true tears is getting the attention I think it deserves. Yattaman's popularity shows the effect of its long history. With all its faults, I enjoy Ayakashi more than 2channel does. Major and Hakuten Yuugi's low popularity are a further demonstration of 2channel's allergy to any anime that can be classed as shoujo.Moegaku 5 is more an educational variety show than an anime show, even though it has an anime element.A show or two may be missing since I included only the top 100 most recently posted-to threads.
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Last season, I initially planned to cook-up a comprehensive first impressions post on the fall animes I watched, but before I even got a glimpse of most of them, I already found myself joining the bandwagon of blogging Shugo Chara, KimiKiss, My Condolences Ninomiya-kun, and Suteki Tantei Labyrinth. In the end, my originally intended post never materialized. I dropped one show after another as time went by, leaving only KimiKiss (and the Shugo Chara manga, if that counts) in my current blogging schedule. I lost the passion and drive to blog Saiunkoku and Emily along the way as well, and up until now I'm still trying to rekindle that flame =__= This time around, I decided to take it slow, to delight in what the Winter '08 animes has to offer, before deciding on which shows to blog. Despite how several shows piqued my interest, namely True Tears, Persona, Porfy no Nagai Tabi, Shigofumi, Spice and Wolf, Hatenkou Yuugi, Hakaba Kitarou and KimiAru, I can't seem to bring myself to write about these shows. These animes struck a chord with me, but somehow, it wasn't enough inspiration for a write-up (the KimiAru deep frying I did isn't really a proper write-up, but just a random "lol"). <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer's_block>Winter's Block is making me feel like a sad girl in the snow. It's not you, winter animes, it's me. I've never been a good writer. If there's one thing that blogging has really taught me, it's that I should not have taken reading [English books] and writing for granted, during the "formative years" of my life. Sorry, mom, I now realize how foolish I am for not listening to your advice. But that's not the point. The thing is, with the lack of ability to articulately express myself, especially for shows I can't [fully] get into, I am not able to churn out a "worthwhile" post. With this, I come to the conclusion that the problem lies with me and my current <a href= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer's_block>Winter's Block. The most plausible and convenient reason I can think of behind this phenomenon is that, I left my heart somewhere else, in the season of Spring~ yes that's right. Deliberately or not, I found myself not wanting to become attached to the Winter shows, in light of what is to come in the next season. I feel like singing, "O Come All Ye Spring 2008 Animes" now, actually :P My Newtype magazines just made this worse, as it allowed me to do some sort of "time leap", and I became excited for what Spring '08 has to offer instead. I guess this also explains why I wasn't able to cook up a Winter 2008 Anime "Menu" / Season Preview? Though I think I owe much of that to laziness, procrastination, and loneliness (bunnies need company to be able to GIVE IT ALL THEY'VE GOT, after all) :P Having known the roots of my Winter’s Block, I obviously cannot go about proclaiming how the Winter season of animes suck. I’ve already lost the “right” to proclaim that with what I’ve mentioned thus far. If you’re looking for a guide for the Winter season of shows, I’m sorry to say that I cannot be a hermit bunny at this state of hibernation. And besides, there are other blogs out there which are more qualified for that, IMO. So instead of forcing myself to post about the current shows [halfheartedly], I'll just stick to what I've already been doing and continue to look at what lies ahead, while not losing focus of the present (aka watching Winter shows, and blogging what I’m supposed to). Allow me then to guide you into the world of Spring! Wai~ :D So yeah, all this lengthy introduction is just to tell you guys, that I'll be providing "Snapshots of Spring 2008" in the coming months, as I scan pages from Newtype / Animedia, for the greater good. ^^;;; Enjoy the pics~! Let's all be happy and look forward to Spring! =3
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And with Hakaba Kitarou, my schedule for the winter-season is complete. Seriously, this season has proven to be awesome. Monday: Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino, Gundam 00 Tuesday: Suteki Tantei Labyrinth Wednesday: Wellber no Monogatari Thursday: none Friday: Hakaba Kitarou, Ghost Hound Saturday: Saiunkoku Monogatari, Shion no Ou, True Tears Sunday: Shigofumi, Porfy no Nagai Tabi And depending on when the subs will come [...]
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Do you miss Mononoke? Here's a new horror anime to fulfill your needs, as Hakaba Kitarou (墓場鬼太郎) enters the stage, airing 11 episodes in the Noitamina block on Fuji TV, Thursdays at 24:45 JST.
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The visual style is really interesting; it looks like an animated comic (ie, it has the same colors as the only American comic I own, so therefore I’m an expert on it) and the Mononoke-like parchment effect over everything gives the characters just as much detail as the background, which is really unusual [...]
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Spice and Wolf So… this is what you get if you hand an award-winning novel to an animation-company like Imagin: an authentic atmosphere, interesting characters, and a main female lead who spends nearly the entire episode without any clothes whatsoever and basically ruins the entire series. Still, I do admit that this series turned out better [...]
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