In Random Curiosity’s endless pursuit to distract you from real-world productivity, we’ve devised another way to hopefully make your summer days a little less boring. Introducing…monthly power rankings! Pachi pachi pachi. Those who follow sports will be familiar with these – sites like ESPN typically have weekly power rankings to track teams’ progress throughout the season. If anything, it’s just fun to compare things. The difference with the anime rankings and those in sports is that we’re trying to compare things that pretty much fall in completely different genres, and don’t even go head-to-head against each other any sort of way outside of TV ratings, which we don’t have access to nor really want to bother with, since Japanese people have strange tastes anyways (who the hell watches crayon shin-chan). June 2007 Rank (LW) Title Comment 1 (1) Gurren Lagann Even (especially) with the unheralded loss of Kamina, GL grabs the top spot with its ability to maintain its distinct wackiness, feverish action, and likeable characters. The addition of flowery Nia to brighten up the gloom was a brilliant move – which begs the question, Yoko or Nia? 2 (2) Denno Coil DC is a lovable series because it dares to dream, and yet doesn't get greedy. A great premise coupled with solid animation and upbeat action, together with an uncertain yet anticipated ending – all the makings of a great show. After a strong showing in episodes 1-3, an epic episode 4 bumps it to the second spot. Who would've thought, such a special show came so late in the season. 3 (3) Seto no Hanayome I was a little surprised that the whole show moved to a generic school setting, but my doubts were cast aside as SetoHana keeps hitting us hard with uproarious humor and falling sakura petals, at the same time introducing several more interesting characters. Weird thing is, one of them is a Haruhi clone, the other an Akira-sama clone. Points for having the most unique beta-male character in recent memory. More after the jump....
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[ Episode 11: Simon, remove your hands.] GARLOCK released! SHIMON! BREAKTHROUGH TO THE HEAVENS! This. Episode. Was. Awesome. After two episodes of Simon mopping around in the shadows he has finally dug himself out of that rut and grabbed onto his own kind of cool. His self-introduction was very interesting and I thought he did well with [...]
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[ Episode 10: Who is this Brother?] Nia: “OBJECTION!!” And so, Simon continues to angst over not being able to do anything and not being able to become like Kamina. Ok, I understand him not being able to become exactly like Kamina but he should make himself awesome in his own way. Hopefully he gets over this [...]
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[ Episode 9: What is a person?] With Kamina gone, Simon, Yoko, and the rest of the Dai Gurren Dan try to cope…and along the way, Nia appears! Well, well, they went and changed the OP sequence. Not that I didn’t expect it but they did more than I thought they would. Even the episode title screens [...]
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Summary: The Great Gurren Brigade is led by Kittan into a trap set by a turtle. But the turtle is actually one of the Spiral King’s Generals: Grahm.
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Finally the moment we’ve all been waiting for, where Simon stands up to inherit the gar mantle of Kamina in all its glory. I got chills when Simon assumed the Gunbuster position for his epic speech. Nice to know that Gainax still remembers its roots.If you do not know where that pose came from, then [...]
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Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve had a load of other stuff to attend to but now I can start on my viewing backlog again. Initially I was worried about how TTGL would fare after the (in)famous episode #8 but it turns out my fears were unfounded. Make no mistake, the loss of Kamina [...]
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[ Episode 8: Farewell, comrades!] FAREWELL KAMINA! MAY WE MEET AGAIN IN THE HEAVENS! *cries manly tears* And with this episode, amidst all of the wonderful scenes of destruction we lost an irreplaceable member of the Dai Gurren Dan: The leader himself, Kamina. Somehow, I still can’t believe it but he’s gone. Even so, he didn’t go [...]
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[ Episode 7: That’s what you’re gonna do!] Big bad Viral is back! Explosions here and there and everywhere! The action-level of this episode was stuck on madness the entire time! Everything looked so awesome and I must tip my hat to the animation team for managing to keep the animation crisp and clean even during all [...]
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