OH MY GOD A HIATUS WE'RE ALL GONNA DIEUm.Excuse me.Gearing up for some super special awesome features here at Eternity to close out December, so no posts until the 14th. That's two posts' worth of Shiori raving anime ranting, so to make up for it I'll post some random images that I've culled from imageboards and the AnimeSuki forums after the jump. (21 images. Isn't it sad, 56K?)Also more crossed out stuff.One (or two) pictures from each of my main image folders. I have far too many anime images but you have to have a good stash of pictures in order to dig up something completely irrelevant to a blog post.All credit to the original fanartists, wallpaper makers, etc.; all I do is drool and pass it on to you. The images, that is. So:Whoever invented this crossover is a genius. Genius, I tell you.Yotsubato anime. Possible? I think it'd be good.I'm really lacking in Tomoyo and Eriol images to be honest.Ryou needs an arc in Clannad, or else there is no justice in this world. Well, aside from the Justice in Doujin Work.I still feel vaguely wrong that my favorite Da Capo character is a cat-girl maid, but then the feeling passes. Maybe it was gas.This is Hanepin, not Mikuru. Although they are surprisingly similar...Best Ryoko mod so far. I don't care anymore. Just shoot me. There's no way she's got a knife behind her - ah, I don't even know the original reference of this, I just steal it from AoMM.Ayu isn't my favorite character, but this is a drop dead sexy camera angle.I actually do like vanilla ice cream, and ever since Kanon I've had an urge to find a tongue depresser and eat ice cream with it.If Hiyori was in this picture I could have distilled Lucky Star's awesomeness down to one picture. Or at least my favorite characters from it.Nothing to say about Aoi, yet...not until her evil mastermind plot is revealed in the closing episodes! Right! Right!? ;_;Yuuki from Nanatsuiro Drops, that one magical girl show I won't shut up about. Has some amusing magical-girl-for-dummies moments, and, well...megane override makes her auto-win. Although I consider Sumomo the better character.If I had one background (as opposed to 100. Seriously.), it would be this one. It's absolutely perfect as far as I'm concerned.It was hard to find a spoiler-safe School Days image. Is this a Lucky Star parody? I can't read the text.So I heard you like crossovers. Mm, all we need in here is Haruhi.Oh where, oh where are all the Sia images? Oh where, oh where can they be? I like the color arrangement on this one, at least. Was tempted to post up a megane-Nerine but realized I was going a bit overboard in that fanboy department.The full cast! I'm still looking forward to the second OVA of sola getting subbed. And wasn't there a visual novel as well?Lacking in images for this too because AnimeSuki thread for TokiMemo is huge and Danbooru has stupid porn ads. (hello, hit counter)More Spell Cards need to look this awesome in the Touhou games. I want to say this is Master Spark but it's Alice doing the attack; probably some yuri-induced training thing thing. My entire Touhou fanbase knowledge is based of IOSYS, so don't kill me too hard for all the mistakes in the last three lines.For some reason, Tsukihime has the most awesome character set. I can hardly think of one female I dislike - Arcueid comes the close. But Sacchin and Hisui are godly tier puddle-meltingly cute, Kohaku and Ciel are alternatingly intriguing and funny, and even Akiha manages to overcome her siscon tsundere status. I mean, wow.And close it out with a little Nagato. Perhaps not the best image but I just like the way this looks - the pensive look, the grass background, the realistic style, it seems to work pretty well.Well, so much for a short post.-CCY
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Who watches these shows anyway?Apparently, we do. Magical girl shows have a surprising reputation and an even more surprising fanbase - at least gauging the English anime blog opinion, there seems to be a lot of positive reviews of the genre, or at least microcosms of it - Cardcaptor Sakura is the classic, some of us (me) stand by more recent ones such as Nanatsuiro Drops, and now the latest hit, Shugo Chara.Admittedly the middle one was originally an eroge but what all three of these have in common, which is why I find this trend surprising, is that they are all 'pure' magical girl shows, unlike what I would like to dub "magical lolicon" shows which pander to more directly of a male base.Somehow, 'pure' magical girl shows have managed to gather quite the male audience themselves, despite being aimed at an audience half (a third, one-fourth, etc) the age and with twice the X chromosomes. I mean, look at it. (Link through Canned Dogs)Why is this?I know they say that fiction warps your views, but I swear I never saw this many girls with purple hair and yellow eyes before I become a Nagatoist.Despite the stereotypical viewpoint of most magical girl shows as overly feminine and simplistic, this genre is one that could theoretically appeal to a lot of people.Many viewers watch anime as a way to relax, and shows this sweet and happy-go-lucky fit the bill perfectly. Those looking for a show to relax about will enjoy the genre's easy-to-follow, contained (in a single episode) feel.Yet it's not beating you over the head with obvious in any case. More likely the carrot is dangling just out of sight. Perhaps there is more plot foreshadowing than the average out-of-left-field visual novel adaptation, but never is everything fully revealed.At least, that is the case with shows like Shugo Chara, where a large part of the picture is revealed, but all the important bits are still covered up. It's a sort of plot striptease, except with less negative connotations. You know that the clumsy teacher is actually a villain, you know Ikuto's a disgruntled gothic guy who just wants be loved, you know that an embryo does something magic and awesome, but there always are more questions. Why? Who's Utau and why is she so clingy to Ikuto? How will it all play out?Likewise, those looking for a touch of escapism won't find a world more pleasant, more happy-go-lucky than those of magical girl shows.It's almost impossible not to crack a smile sometimes with these shows. The fluffy, sugary, and teeth-cracking atmosphere in the magical girl genre may seem a bit excessive at times, but there always seems to be something to enjoy about the show.Maybe it's the comedy that many of the character provide, another staple of a genre that's close to slice-of-life at times. Maybe it's the feel-good atmosphere that the typical confident and/or optomistic ('zettai daijoubu!') projects. Maybe it's just the sheer ridiculousness of the 30-second transformation sequences and the incredibly hax "time to win" attacks and battles. Maybe it's all of that.But it's like the tackiest cliches; smile, and the world smiles with you. Maybe people are more critical of shows that want you to cry with them, but the bright attitude of magical girl shows is quite permeating, permitting that it gets past any defenses one might erect against "cheesy" feeling-shows.In that regard it's almost ironic that Shugo Chara's life lesson is to 'just be yourself' and to ignore what others think of who you are, how you act, and what mahou shoujo anime you watch.A third, more subjective aspect to the appeal of this sort of genre is the 'inner child' draw of these kind of things. If American movie remakes are anything to go by, going into the way-back machine and seeing what was entertaining as a youth done again, many years later, is something that appeals to many people.It's not always that these stand up to the tests of time; sometimes the newest version just doesn't capture the same magic, or sometimes one's passion has faded. But quite often these retro trips at least tilt the odds in favor of one enjoying something. I'm already, in my late teens, having cravings for Cardcaptor Sakura days of yore, and the spiritual successors in the magical girl genre as such are a good fix for me, offering some of the old with a bit of a new flavor as well.I wouldn't say in any case that I could survive solely off the cotton-candy-like substance that is magical girl, but it's something that I won't deny enjoying quite a bit - not for the stereotypical aspects that one expects from these shows, but for the spice; a different romantic premise here, an anti-villain there, a resonant message somewhere along the line, I find the genre as a whole to be a great mix of carrot (foreshadowing) and stick (plot).Not every anime has to be completely intellectually or dramatically engaging - as I commented elsewhere, as much as I like Key and as I like Clannad, 52 episodes would simply be too much of it for me to stand. Either the show would lose steam or I would die of tear duct exhaustion* before the end of the series. It's just too much to handle.And that's why I watch magical girl shows and can consider myself proud of it. Balance.Balance, I tell you!One thing, however, that makes me wonder. This could very well be a misguided thought; perhaps the large male, non-ten-year-old audience I percieve is due to the fact that There Are No Girls on The Internet (well, almost). Or that those that blog tend to be a pretty forgiving bunch; or that people don't talk about shows they don't watch.Maybe an ulterior motive, in that those who swear by Rule 34 can still find something loli to obsess about, even in 'pure' shows? Never doubt the fans...So an informal poll. What do you think of magical girl shows? Would you openly recommend them to other people? Are they as widely appealing as I believe they can be - or is this madness induced by one too many peppy, sugary J-pop songs?**-CCY* I didn't cry at the end of the Fuuko arc, actually. Or Ayu's. Not even Makoto's. I'm a godless communist, I know, I know.** Damn you, Shugo Chara OP. I swore I would not get addicted to you.
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Shugo Chara is a "pure" magical girl show that's receiving a lot of praise across the English anime blogging community, which either means that most bloggers are eight-year-old girls, that they're still embracing their inner child, or that this show has more merit than a first glance would show.So I gave Shugo Chara a try and I ended up waking up in a gutter the next morning with half my teeth missing. It was just that sugary.Granted there were a lot of appealing aspects that looked like they could be turned into something good, but the rest of the show was so drowned in Bishie Catguys, LOL Fangirls, and Hay Guys English is Cool abuse, that I didn't see them being able to overcome the flaws.Remember, coming from a guy who liked Cardcaptor Sakura and Nanatsuiro Drops.Naturally, however, since (with very few exceptions) first episodes never click with me I forged on with Shugo Chara into the second and third episodes and found things improved - or at least changed - to an extent.And my quick judgment would be that Shugo Chara is a passable show that's worth trying, especially if you - and even if you don't - have the fortitude to stand more pink than a barrel full of Kirbies."What do you want with my eggs?"Well, first off, one begins to wonder what exactly the target audience is; sometimes Shugo Chara goes into lapses of Moetan, at least to dirty-minded members-of-teh-interwebs like me. It's certainly strange, considering that a large part of the cast, and the audience, are probably elementary schoolers, but I suppose that these moments are innocent seeming and played straight enough (on the relative scale of anime) to be ignored.And the story that these moments bring is welcome, actually; Ikuto, despite being fangirl bait - complete with a cat-ears transformation~nya - looks to be a good type of "antagonist". While some shows like this paint it very black-and-white (i.e. Me Good, You Bad), a large number of them have refreshingly human anti-villians.Y'know how it is: they're not evil, just misunderstood. They just want to be loved. And while on paper it sounds tacky it's not something I wholly dislike; having two sides to every story is something that can really add depth to an anime.As such Ikuto's pent-up romantic tension combined with his casual and cool demeanor doesn't make him too horrible a character, but rather one I'd like to see more of, even if he does go around licking eggs.Amu, the incredible pink heroine, is very much the same way, and I have a feeling seeing the parallels being drawn between characters in Shugo Chara will be one of its strongest aspects. Amu is your typical young girl conflicted between her true personality and the face she wants to put on for the world; being romantic, friendly, or arguably anything short of Eriko Futami is something that she "doesn't" want to be.Naturally of course she has these inner urges to be romantic, and friendly, and everything, but since her classmates seem so attracted to her "cool and spicy" personality there's not much she can do.This is where the "Guardian Chara" come in, incredibly chibi figments of her imaginary, not limited by (imaginary) social constraints self. They each fit in with a different personality - or a different trait or something (there's cooking, drawing, and athletics). They have the power to change Amu's personality on a whim, which results in much moments where Amu will suddenly become a different person and say something completely shocking (we got a confession in the first episode, oh yes we did~) before turning back straight into tsundere mode.Tsundere mode Amu isn't too grating either, due to the fact that she is not completely baited by random pictures and info of her loved one. Overall Amu's character, as tacky and cliched as it probably sounds, is still one that a lot of people could relate with - any shy person who's ever wanted to stand out, any stand-out person who just wants to fly under the radar, anyone who wants to be someone they're not but can't, will find a lot to like in Shugo Chara.The downside of this all, however, is that being a show aimed at ten-year-old girls with a message like the above, Shugo Chara isn't very subtle and almost seems like it's beating you over the head with the "just be yourself!" attitude.I mentioned it in a comment once, in that while Cardcaptor Sakura projects more of a feel-good, warm mood that happens to maybe have an underlying meaning ("zettai daijoubu!"), Shugo Chara has this moralistic feel to it. This might be because we have little chibi things squeaking out the show's message, or maybe it's because of the whole theme of 'eggs' and 'X eggs' and 'never give up in your dreams' that rubbed me the wrong way.After the third episode this issue doesn't seem as bad as originally percieved, but I still feel that it has a little work to do in that department.Some other aspects give off a strange feel as well, like the school fangirl power of "Amu can do no wrong! Teeheehee!", but maybe that's just because I am limited by said social constraints of "pink is Not Manly, thus it is bad."So maybe that just means critics like me should need this show the most.I fully plan to continue with Shugo Chara but perhaps with a bit more subdued enjoyment than those singing the praises for this show. This show could swing one way or the other at the moment, it remains to be seen whether it will remain interesting for those looking for something different and mature in a magical girl anime.And by that, I don't mean all the dirty egg jokes.-CCY(No, not getting the OP stuck in my head. Ever. Nuh-uh. I won't accept it. Not going to hop step jump~ Gaaaaah!)
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Although, somehow I feel that I am tarnishing the reputation of Cardcaptor Sakura just be alluding to it in the same sentence as a obscurely-ruled, spiky-haired, localization-mauled card game show.Or at least, I cannot as fondly recall my two years spent watching Americanized Yu-Gi-Oh, which has a comparative lack of hanyaa~n.Cardcaptor Sakura is one of those strange enigmas of a show, in that unlike Haruhi, Azumanga, Kanon, or any other show widely considered by many people to be 'good', it lacks the haters, the anti-crowd that troll on a show simply because it's popular, or because it's unrealistic, flat, 2D, overly moe, unfunny, or whatever.Doubly strange when you consider that in the scheme of things, Cardcaptor Sakura is a 'low-level' show, in that many American anime fans can recgonize and go into obsessive mode over just like any hyperactive love interest worth their salt. As with most Clamp titles, it's as good a brand name at times as any of the shonen shows like Naruto or Bleach, or maybe even other romance-style supernaturals like D.N.Angel. Pretty much, if you can find it in a public library, it's probably a 'low-level' show.Yet, disregarding the fact that many 'low-level' shows can be good (as if this would prove otherwise), Cardcaptor Sakura lacks that kind of internet scorn given upon 'common' shows. It's not looked down upon in that haughty internet way, with nobody scoffing and going "why watch that when you could watch x?"Cardcaptor Sakura truly is nearly a shining pillar of untouchableness, one show that is nearly universally acclaimed. It really is amazing.Step aside, miss Suzumiya. This is the kind of reverence which at least I and some other people look with upon our goddess Sakura Kinomoto, and today I'm going to try to explore a bit into this years-old show and see just what makes it a classic.To be honest, I haven't watched an episode of Cardcaptor Sakura in about a year now, which is probably what is driving my sense of nostalgia for this show. It's a similar yearning as one would have for a significant other of times past, except in my case I can just reach up on the shelf and grab a DVD.(Incidentally, CCS going out of R1 print leaves me and my cheap region-free boxset in despair.)It's funny. Rewatches, when you're a relatively new anime fan, seem almost silly when there remains to be so much new stuff out there, and even the other shows I idolize like Kanon I've only watched two times through.Yet the Cardcaptor Sakura boxset lasted me in my earlier years for three or four watches - granted, there was no other anime at the time, but the fact that it never got old seems astounding nowadays, where shows go in and out the revolving door of obsession with startling speed.The fact that a show arguably aimed at people half my age would be so captivating for so long, and for such a wide variety of anime fans, really is something.Maybe I'm waxing poetic a bit too much, but Cardcaptor Sakura is a show that's deeper than it lets on; it's not just one for the preteens, but also for more distinguished romance fans as well.It's no mindgame thriller, and it's not very unpredictable, but CCS stands out perhaps from other magical girl romances in that it doesn't shy away from what some of us, at least on the American side, would consider 'bad' relationships.It has the teacher/student relationship (two of them, arguably), the same-sex relationship (definitely two), almost a sort of arranged marriage (hey, when you get engaged to your cousin in the single-digit years?), and more. CCS is a very 'pure love' show in that it almost says that it's not the circumstances that matter, it's not the type of person that matters, the only thing important is that the two love each other.The romance comes from all walks of life as well. There's the improbable love (Terada-sensei), the unrequited love (Meilin), the passive love (Tomoyo), the fatherly, maybe childish love (Sakura for Yukito), the protective love (Touya), and so on.While the main relationship perhaps is a little simple, in that 'blushing up a storm' fashion, there are so many other, perhaps more implicit, things to see as well. There are some great moments of raw emotion in the show, like Meilin's recgonition of her defeat (episode 60), or Sakura getting shot down and Syaoran comforting her in the park (episode 65).It's just such a heartwarming show as well. Like most pure magical girl shows (Nanatsuiro Drops was an good recent example), CCS has that power just to give you a ridiculous smile on your face, just because of the way that things turn out.The interactions between the characters range from amusing to aww-inducing (pretty much anything with the parent Kinomotos is a lock), the whole motto of 'everything's going to be all right' is so bright and radiant that combined with Sakura's (and, to an extent, a lot of the rest of the cast's) upbeat attitude that it's the kind of show that will rot your teeth and melt your heart, and you won't care.The main storyline isn't horribly shocking, being, yes, a magical girl show of the classic 'monster (card) of the week' fashion, but there are some nice twists and moments in there. The Yue fight was brilliantly executed, if only because it did that science-fiction 'alternate universe' timeline where Sakura was defeated. The Sakura Card arc was strong, with Eriol's excellent shiny-glasses manipulation powers of Sakura and Syaoran, and the focus on converting the cards, which, more than anything, was a facade for the emotional development of Sakura into a strong-willed character.If there's one big complaint I have about the story, ignoring any highly probable irregularities like Syaoran speaking perfect Japanese, it's that it's very typical romance in that the confession is saved until the very end.The very end.Like, last line of the series ever end, on Sakura's part.It's not completely bad; the buildup to it really does wonders for transforming a simple line into something that makes you thrust your hands in the air like a football fan, but sometimes one wishes that shows like these could deal with the time after the confession as well; the relationship between a new couple is something that's just as entertaining to watch.(Again, Nanatsuiro Drops for proof. Advertising has no shame.)Most of the rest of the relationships get 'conclusion' in building up towards the main relationship of Syaoran and Sakura; it was one of the things nicely done in the manga, how pretty much the last chapter or two showed all the couples (Chiharu/Yamazaki, Rika/Terada, Eriol/Kaho, and...well...Tomoyo.) happily together, urging Sakura on with her own relationship struggle. Again, a great buildup, only to end in 'OK, we like each other, all's good with the world.'Speaking on the manga as a whole, my memory of it is even fuzzier, but I hold the belief that the anime is better on three bases: 1) more of Sakura to love (70 episodes > 12 volumes), 2) I've always enjoyed animation more than stills (since I tend to power through manga too fast), and 3) Meilin. As annoying of a character she can be at times, she has some real moments and really grows on you like any other osananajimi fated to lose. Although she has some questionable entrance/exits (the trouble of inserting an extra character), what's in-between is worth it.Perhaps one of the more interesting theories for the success of Cardcaptor Sakura comes from it having a natural enemy in the form of its highly-ostracized English dub, Cardcaptors. Since Cardcaptors the dub is unquestionably Bad, the Japanese version is incredibly Good in comparison. This is not to call into question the actual quality of CCS, but rather to say that perhaps its image has been enhanced even more.Cardcaptor Sakura overall is an anime that I feel is more than what it seems on the surface. The characters do have more to them (i.e. while Tomoyo can be classified as The Stalker Friend, she has some much more appealing and arguably deep characteristics to her) than it originally seems, the romance is more than a straight one-relationship fight, and the emotional maturing of the characters really is something to be seen.I don't think there are very many people out there, at least considering the audience, who have not seen Cardcaptor Sakura or at least heard of it, and there are probably even less that would condemn it, but Cardcaptor Sakura is really a show that seems like the entry gate to anime fandom; if you haven't seen it, you're missing out on the magic.And that's not just trying to make a pun.-CCYSakura: Yukito-san, hey, Yukito-san!Sakura: Are there any Clow Cards left?Yukito: You captured them all already, didn't you?Sakura: Hanyaa~n
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Source: http://gs.dengekinet.com/magazine/index.html Cover Page: To Heart 2 Another Days Some Highlights: - Details of School Days: Magical Heart Kokoro-chan, the video spinoff from School Days. (WOOT) - Da Capo II writeups - Clannad for Xbox360 coverage - Nanatsuiro Drops for Nintendo DS preview - More writeups on upcoming Suzumiya Haruhi games for PSP/PS2. - PS2/PC visual novel previews (Myself;Yourself, あかね色に染まる坂 ぱられる, Pia [...]
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So I found out that UnisonShift was releasing a new game called “Alice Parade” which was the same people who did Nanatsuiro Drops and the art was also done by Itoh Noiji. Perhaps I should have read the game summary or looked at other reviews because this was NOT LIKE NANATSUIRO DROPS AT ALL. The premise [...]
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"It is a magical story of, 'A seven-colored first love that encompasses you.'"A Cardcaptor Sakura for the 21st century.At first glance Nanatsuiro Drops is one of your standard magical girl shows with a target audience age that can be counted on your two hands. In some aspects of it, it is exceedingly sugary and simplistic.But delve into the origin of NanaDrops, and you'll discover, curiously enough, that it was adapted from an eroge, which would seem to suggest quite the contrary to what one would expect from an anime of this type.Now of course NanaDrops still looks and acts like an anime that has nothing to do with its ero roots. But this isn't to say that it renounced its background altogether. Somehow it feels that NanaDrops isn't the type of eroge to be a mindless sex romp but rather one with more of an actual story feel to it, which just happens to have H-scenes.This isn't to say that NanaDrops is a deep anime, or a complex one. But it'd be wrong to call it a simplistic anime. It does work the magical girl formula in an innovative way and quite different than what one might expect.Rather than being focused on the magic aspect of it, there is a larger emphasis on the relationship between characters. It's a refreshing departure from the "let's take the whole series to build up to a confession" concept utilized far too often by a lot of romance shows.Nanatsuiro Drops really is a curious show in that it's a magical girl show with very little emphasis on the magic. The magical parts of the show really come across as more of a prop towards the development of the two main characters and their relationship together.And one can even detect a hint of tongue-in-cheek in the magical elements, in the sense that it really feels like Magical Girls for Dummies at times with a real feeling that given the setting, anyone could have been the magical girl, it's that easy.It will still be a series twenty times too sweet for someone who can't handle magical girl shows, and maybe even for someone who can; NanaDrops is the ultimate feel-good story that really has the power to bring a giddy, childlike smile to your face.The plot is something you've probably seen before in some fashion, but the strength in NanaDrops lies in it's power to throw you into the way-back machine to the good ol' days of shows like Cardcaptor Sakura; where the characters are pure, the romance innocent, and a mood shining as bright as the sun.If that's your thing, Nanatsuiro Drops really is an underrated, seven-colored gem.The magical aspects of Nanatsuiro Drops were understandably grating for those who don't like having their teeth rotted twice over with all the sugarcoated wand-waving and spell-chanting, but it's not really as horrible as it first looks.In the beginning parts of the show, it almost seems a bit satirical with the way Nona / Asparas is so insistent on Sumomo being a "proper" Stellar Spinner, and just how furious Nona becomes when she finds out Sumomo is no good at the typical magical girl trade.Yes, as you might expect, she doesn't know any spells, how to wave a wand properly, or how to act like a magical girl, but Sumomo is going to win you over with the Power of Love and Kindness anyway; which isn't as half-bad as it sounds.Firstly because the magic aspects are almost completely phased out by the end of the show, and secondly because there is a nice twist to the formula with Yuki, the standard Plush Animal Accomplice, and Haru, the Male Protagonist / Love Interest, being one and the same.Usually the stuffed animals serve as a sort of combined deux ex and comic relief, being funny until it's time for them to spill all the plot development. But here in NanaDrops, there really is an interesting dynamics in that Haru gets to see Sumomo in both her shy schoolgirl demeanor and her energetic magical girl demeanor, without her knowing.Not to mention Sumomo's constant raving about her crush on some guy named Haru to "Yuki-chan." Almost reminiscent of Kotori's power in D.C., how Haru knows too much, and so the plot benefits from the switching personalities of Sumomo and the switching bodies of Haru.Additionally, some of the Rules of Magic, as provided by the deux ex magic book from Kisaragi, allow for some dramatic, if not a tad predictable, plot developments. Yeah, it seems that every magical girl show has some plot twist to do with "loved one forgetting their feelings", but it's still a point that can be executed well again and again.The "restart" episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura (circa the Yue fight, I want to say around 50-something?) and Nanatsuiro Drops, where one of the main characters forgot who they were, are both very enthralling. If not because of the emotion of the plot itself, because of all the astounding parallelism between these episodes and the early times of the show, in showing how something's just not right with the character interactions. It's something awesome.It was a bit of a let-down how the magic competition was almost completely phased out at the end, after such a fierce fight from Nona. She still acknowledged defeat in the end in her own way, but kind of as a whole it felt like we could have used more from Nona. She had that sort of "I guess friendship is a good thing" development going on like Yuma in Code-E.Still, the stronger aspect of NanaDrops is not the magic in the romance sense but the magic in the romantic sense. Seeing the main couple together by the two-thirds mark is always a plus for me; watching the relationship dynamics between characters change after a confession is always much more exciting than watching a blush-fest of aborted confession after aborted confession.In that regard the interaction between Sumomo and Haru was, like a lot of the show, really sweet and smile-inducing. From the nervous time they spent falling for each other, to the tentative yet confident time they spent as a couple, to the sweetly melancholy last few minutes they spent together in the last few minutes before catching the final stardrop. And of course, the reunion.The characters themselves were reasonably likable as well. Sumomo, like a typical magical heroine, had strong emotional development; while she may have came off as a crybaby initially, by the end of the series she was fairly self-confident, and always had that bright smile on her face.Haru was a decent male lead as well. While he may not be as wickedly witty (sarcastic) as other visual novel leads, he wasn't spineless by any means. Perhaps a bit of a loner, but he comes across as kind of a cool guy; and certainly as YUki he was a supportive character who, like Sumomo, always gave his all.Side characters, aside from the aforementioned Nona, didn't get a lot of attention but none of them were particularly grating. It was nice to see the one other schoolboy in the show, Keisuke, be a nice, social personality despite his geeky look. And it was always amusing to see the nosey nature of Sumomo and Haru's friends trying to push them together.Nako, Sumomo's best friend, was very similar to Haru in a sense that she supported Sumomo 100% and seemed to always be there for her. Sometimes I wish that there wasn't always so much implied yuri between these kinds of characters (hello, Tomoyo) but this might be my own fault.Kisaragi took the place of the Adult Who Knows Everything with a typically cool and collected demeanor. Not much to say about him since he's a dime-a-dozen, but he didn't get on my bad side.Prodution-wise NanaDrops felt strong, with a lot of shiny and sparkly effects; there didn't seem to be too much canned animation for the magic sequences, as well. Not to mention the unique animation style in this show, with at least one random (and adorable) chibi sequence per episode. The music wasn't spectacular but the OP and ED songs were surprisingly catchy; they were just so upbeat and happy that sometimes you just can't help but hum them.Nanatsuiro Drops would sound by now to be the best anime since Kanonned bread (ok, that was just a horrible pun) and I must admit that's the wrong impression of the show. It's a great anime for those who don't mind being youthful, perhaps childish at heart, and for those who like simple, happy romance stories. Those looking for deeper or more serious fare, or who simply have an aversion to squeaky voices and magical aspects will want to stay far, far away.But this story should be one that resonates strongly with a lot of fans of both magical girl shows and of romance shows; to that sense it's almost a spiritual successor to Cardcaptor Sakura in points, and while it won't become as big a show as the former, those who enjoyed Sakura's adventure will find a lot to like in Sumomo's sweet tale of stardrops and first loves.-CCY
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This is certainly the most anticipated eroge visual novel that I have been waiting for. IF you are above 18 and enjoy the works of the famous Noiji Ito (いとうのいぢ) designed Shakugan no Shana and Nanatsuiro Drops, etc. YOU MUST definitely check this game out. Alice Parade (ALICEぱれーど) is officially released today - 12th October 2007. [...]
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The past Spring- and Summer-season came with many unique and original series. Okay, so this wasn’t one of them, but at least it’s worth watching, as it’s one of the very few dating-series that I’ve actually found watchable. It’s nothing special, but it’s a great choice if you need something to relax to. The entire [...]
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[Blog Updates] Before I continue, I would like to thank the following people from my heart. - kura (for the nanatsuiro drops blog banner) - NovaJinx (for the higurashi blog banner) - jellokun (for joining anime banzai! as a writer, and his posts) - the guest writers for their posts. - most importantly, you guys and gals for reading this blog. I [...]
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