An manga/anime series about making manga isn’t exactly what you’d think of as an action-packed sort of topic for writing a story about. It was, however, rather rare and deserving of a look-see, so I jumped in and found myself enjoying it quite a bit.

The story is, as of seven episodes in (of a 25 episode show), rather light, and actually passes through quite a bit of time. It’s about two junior high school students, Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi who team up to create manga in order to have one of their works be turned into an anime. The hook (for me, personally) is the fact that Moritaka ups the ante of this whole deal of becoming a manga artist and getting an anime adaptation by proposing (rather haphazardly I might add) to his long-time crush Azuki, who wants to become a voice actress, that should they actually get an anime adaptation of their manga they would get married.

SHE AGREES, and they’re all like “OMG” and I’m all like “Damn… this is so weird but I want to see how it turns out.”

And so, I’ve been watching the development of Moritaka and Akito’s attempts at making manga, from learning how to use pens are write the stories, to submitting their first manuscript to Shonen Jack, the manga publisher of this universe. During all of this, we watch the rather cheesy, yet utterly romantic, exchanges between Moritaka and Azuki, who have not spoken to each other verbally since the day he proposed his deal.

As of episode seven, they are now sitting next to each other in class, sending each other written notes or doodles to know each other better. Also, it appears the manga-making duo now have a rival from another province to deal with, as well as a deadline to catch up to if they want to send an entry in for the Tezuka Award for Manga, a real-life manga award.

If you’re interested in a bit of romance with your manga-making, or at least love the premise of slice of life anime, you’d do well to look for this show online or through whatever means you can think of.

Second Image credit: Japanator

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZO-b8ni1ZY]

Doing a 180 from the happy world of Digimon, my second anime recommendation for the day would definitely have to be High School of the Dead.

The premise? Worldwide zombification pandemic. You’re in High School when the poop hits the air conditioning device, and the outbreak reaches your school from the front gate. How do you survive?

Well, if you’re a team comprised of a well-meaning high school kid with a baseball bat, a girl who’s good with spear martial arts, the class genius, a gun nut, the captain of the kendo club and the school nurse, you’re bound to find a way out of your zombie-infested school.It’s everything that comes after getting out of school that’s the problem.

Now, High School of the Dead is pretty depressing fare. People will die, and some of the living will turn on their friends just to try and survive, but will die anyway. Thing is, it’s compelling because the zombie outbreak scenario hasn’t been done from a school angle, as far as I know, and the high production values of this anime make it a must-see if you like horror, action, and  nail guns being turned into submachine pistols.

They’ve currently got three episodes aired so far, and it’s been quite intriguing to see what’s been happening to the people in the show. I won’t spoil anything else, but suffice it to say that zombies are only one pesky problem in the show.

Feel free to watch the opening sequence above, and then look for the anime online. Cheers!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjoDnJdH_3g]

It’s been a while since I did an anime recommendation, and with a new season of Japanese anime upon us, it seemed like a good time to focus on some pretty interesting series.

My first recommendation from my current viewing roster is Digimon Xros Wars, which is a new anime set in yet another alternate Digimon universe. It began on July 6, 2010, and currently has three episodes so far, with all of them being quite good, production value wise.

The story follows the adventures of a new child, Kudo Taiki, chosen by some mysterious force to carry the power of a new Digimon evolution device, called a XrosLoader (said as Cross Loader). With the XrosLoader, Taiki can evolve his stable of digimon by combining them into stronger forms. These DigiXros combinations give the fused digimon amazing power, and allow them to defeat the current baddie of the series, the Bagura Army.

Together with friends, rivals and his partner digimon Shoutmon, Taiki resolves to grow an army of digimon with which to fight the Bagura Army, ultimately allowing him and his friends to find a way home.

The premise is fun to imagine, since Xros Combinations would be very cool if you had an ever-increasing stable of digimon to help you out in battle. Like a little kid, I look forward to Taiki shouting, “DigiXros!” and seeing his digimon combine into awesome forms. It’s not a very deep series, but if you’re looking for something light-hearted and action-packed, it’s not a bad way to spend 23 minutes of your life.

Summer Wars

by Victor Stillwater

It’s been a while since I last made an anime recommendation post, and that’s for good reason. While I do watch quite a bit of anime in my spare time, rare are the instances when any piece of media makes you want to watch it more than once. Luckily for me, I found Summer Wars to be an enjoyable film that I’ve already seen thrice.

The story of Summer Wars can be summed up as a boy-helps-girl, boy-accused-of-crime, boy-fights-giant-evil-Artificial-Intelligence-with-math. Of course, that’s an exaggeration, so let me give you a more extensive overview of Summer Wars.

The story begins innocently enough: We are introduced to the virtual world known as OZ, which is essentially the equivalent of internet on crack. People can do everything on OZ, from play games, buy commodities, create custom avatars, and even access individual special areas, such as the accounts of public officials that manage water and power, etcetera.

We move onto the people of the story.[The main protagonist, Kenji, volunteers to help out the school idol, Natsuki, during her trip back to the countryside to attend her grandmother’s 90th birthday. Without his approval though, Natsuki announces him as her fiance to her grandmother, who figures out that something is fishy.

The juxtaposition of OZ and the family story occurs when a rogue AI called Love Machine (yes, I laughed when I first saw it too), wreaks havoc on OZ by stealing the accounts of users, creating havoc almost on a worldwide scale not only through the acquisition of the accounts, but also by manipulating important accounts to cause trouble for everyone: from faking fires to stopping traffic, Love Machine did it all.

As it happens, Kenji and Natsuki’s family try to stop Love Machine from escalating his attacks to include large-scale casualties, and that’s where all the action happens.

From CG fighting to amazing flying scenes, this movie delivers amazing animated CG and hand-drawn work. Of course, without a story, it means nothing. Summer Wars is a treat to watch, mostly because of the struggle of the family to find a way to work together to save the world, even while dealing with problems of their own.

Out of everything I said, you’d expect that I’ve already spoiled the movie for you. That, however, is not the case: the good parts are still well-hidden, and you’ll be surprised at how Love Machine looks, as well as how the rogue AI escalates his “games” with the rest of the world, leading to a climactic showdown between the family and Kenji versus Love Machine.

As for how to get a copy of Summer Wars, it should be out on Blu-ray now depending on where you live. Barring that, of course, there are “other means” available, if you wish to watch it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMe78OwJbuQ]

I don’t normally like fighting games, but I do like anime, hence a little bit of anime geekery here.

I found a report on Angry Zen Master saying that there will be a new Street Fighter anime coming out, and this time, it’s based on the upcoming Super Street Fighter 4 release, with a special emphasis on Juri, one of the new additions.

In any event, the production values look good, and it’s exciting and all. There’s just one thing: it’s exclusive to Japan at the moment.

Sadness.

From the Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 Credits

These past few weeks, I’ve been following a very different sort of anime series from what I’m used to. It wasn’t action-packed, it wasn’t all hopped up on giant robots or pint-sized alchemists. Instead, it was 11 episodes of three people trying to get back home after an earthquake of historic proportions hits Tokyo.

The recently concluded Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 follows the story of siblings Mirai and Yuuki as they try to make their way to Setagaya with the help of Mari, a courier who was also at Odaiba at the start of the tale. As it happens, they encounter the fallout of a Magnitude 8.0 earthquake hitting Tokyo, and face both emotional trauma and physical peril as they make their way back to their respective homes together.

It’s definitely a drama series, and you definitely have to watch the entire series without blinking to get the most out of it. I won’t spoil anything here, but I will say this: the ending made me cry, and if you remotely feel love for any of the characters in this series, you’ll end up bawling before reaching episode 11.

As for finding it, you should be able to get episodes on YouTube, or you could pick it up through various subbing sites. My personal recommendation would be to try bssubs.net because of their speedy work in handling the series. Enjoy!