DonKangolJones’ Images of the Week: March 23rd (Because after Dark Souls I need something to make me feel better.)

Off my ass again to do another images of the week post.  My excuse for the delay this time?  Mass Effect 3 and getting my curb stomped by Dark Souls over and over… and over …and over again.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m making progress, but you can’t play that game without suffering, despair… and a healthy dose of spontaneously cursing because you screwed up, or the game screw you.  So when all is lost, I completely shut down the PS3 & boot up the anime.  Games nowadays have a way of telling you you’ve been playing for too long.  They tell you you need to stop and get out of the house.  You don’t need that with Dark Souls.  Granted you haven’t spiked your controller, you’ll walk away on your own, eventually.  But enough about that.  Anime and  manga, that’s all I’m concerned about right now.  Here are my usual, but hardly consistently weekly anymore, images of the week!

Anime Images of the Week

It’s become habit, I get in a groove only a few weeks into a season and realize what I’m actually entertained by and going to watch.  Though this season it’s a bit different because I’ve actually attempted to do some episodic blogging for once.  And it’s not going too badly.  Though I’m sure a few of my fellow anibloggers will hardly call my inability to keep a consistent deadline “episodic”.  I blog when I feel like it, and it shows.  But this time it’s a good thing.  Apparently I feel like blogging Rinne no Lagrange, Bodacious Space Pirates, Gundam AGE, Symphogear and Nisemonogatari episodically.  And those are the shows I’ve most enjoyed this year.  The top of that list is Gundam AGE.

Flit is the damn man!  And twenty three episodes into the season and one and a half “ages” into their existences, he’s yet to be eclipsed and has hardly been challenged.  Honestly, if it wasn’t for the assumed lack of political interest, I’d think that Flit would be ruling Earth right now.  But it’s more than obvious that his hatred of the Vagans is what really drives him.  I just hope everyone’s guesses and desires to see him go all Gihren Zabi on us don’t come true.  I really like him, and I’d hate to see another great Gundam figure lower himself due to hatred (Char Aznable).  Honestly, he seems more like an amalgamation of Amuro and Char than anything in my eyes.  The combination of piloting skill, charisma and surprisingly underestimated engineering skill is just insane for one character to have.  I suppose hatred may be his only weakness.

But the show isn’t called Mobile Suit Gundam: Flit, so let me not go on about him too much.  The rest of AGE has been keeping up with the awesomeness that is Flit, too.  The Federation forces for the first time that I can remember proved themselves competent when they weren’t evil.  Usually the Feddies look like hot garbage most of the time, the “garbage” part being punctuated by their grunt mobile suits getting bodied in one on one competition by the opposing grunts in droves.  This time with Flit’s capable leadership (I promise I’ll stop talking about him soon) managed to knock the supposedly superior Vagan forces on their ass, and on the run.  And even better, Zeheart got an ear full from his elite subordinates.  It’s about time someone recognized what a sh*tty commander he was.  Everything seems to proceeding smoothly.  Well everything except the situation known as Asemu.

He was doing so damn well, the one loss lead to another, he discovered that he didn’t inherit his father’s X-Ro—-  NEWTYPE abilities (a pretty brilliant turn of events if you ask me).  And now he’s just making dumb, ignorant, angry decisions.  I can’t understand for the life of me why in the hell he would leave the ship and walk INTO the war zone.  I make plenty of concessions for Gundam AGE because of its apparent “kiddie show” base, but that’s inexcusable.  Even a young Amuro would probably wonder what the hell his problem was.  Oh well, hopefully he’ll come out of his funk soon.

I’ve gotten a surprising amount of enjoyment out of another “mecha” anime, too.  Once I’d adjusted my perceptions and expectations towards Rinne no Lagrange, I began to accept it more.  The latest episodes seem to have gotten a bit more serious as well, giving the normally obnoxiously genki Madoka the chance to show some range.  One of the things I like about the show is that she doesn’t just stay super happy and sweet.  She gets emotionally beat up from time to time.  And apparently that’s a big problem for the machine she pilots.  It’s not too deep, but there’s a bit of depth in the show, yet.

I think I can finally stop complaining about the lack of action and exciting plot movement in Bodacious Space Pirates.  It’s clear that this show is about big adventure done in a suprisingly interesting way, with lots of quick, big decisions for Marika.  I’m loving how the show can be smart and exciting simultaneously.  It’s very nerdy in its own way.  I think some Star Trek fans may get some enjoyment out of this series.

Nisemonogatari.  Oh Nisemonogatari.  I’ve said most everything I need to say about it in my final blog post for the show.  It’s advanced anime for veteran anime fans, even more so than its predecessor Bakemonogatari.  Some may not have enjoyed all the perviness, the recreational progression and focus on plot, or how the series rather anticlimactically ended, but I wouldn’t want it to change a bit.  I just want more.  More Senjougahara especially.  And a bit more Kanbaru (I loves my lesbians).

Unfortunately, I haven’t hit up Symphogear in two weeks.  I have no excuse.  It’s a casualty of all my video game playing on the side.  Hopefully I won’t make that mistake for a third week in a row.

Manga Images of the Week

Sometimes it’s good to get back on the manga bus after being off of it for awhile (about a month).  It gives you a real sense of progression when you can read a few chapters in a row.  Something that’s a common complaint among people who read manga from week to week.  It’s easy to get disappointed, though in all honesty you’re eagerly anticipating a mere fourteen to twenty pages a week.  Some series like One Piece make it worth your while every time.  Other series like Bleach make you wonder why you’re in such a rush to read something that seems to take only two to three minutes to devour.  It’s perception that colors your idea of what seems to be a fair reward.

I was able to get in a lot of manga this week, though I can never get in all the series I have in my queue on a week to week basis.  I’m enjoying One Piece most of all for the pure, confusing insanity that is the what I will call “Punk Hazard” arc.  Turns out that you can’t have two admirals compete with each other without ruining an island… forever!  I don’t really know where all this is going, but I can’t wait to see it animated.  There are some nice surprises.

Naruto continues its zombie fueled arc, though it seems there are less zombies now.  It’s just that one of them is one of the third most powerful shinobi who has ever lived.  Yeah, good luck with that guys.  Madara Uchiha is pure hax!  Leave it up to Kishimoto to over do it, that’s just his style.  The other end of the spectrum is a battle long in the making, with a twist.  Sasuke and Kabuto are squaring off, but it looks like Sasuke came to him… with Itachi!  I don’t know how Kabuto plans to survive a battle with two top-class Uchiha, but he’s pretty confident.

I don’t have much in the way of words for Bleach.  I can’t say I love or hate where this supposed final arc is going, but I belatedly heard about the Bleach anime’s cancellation.  It’s also being replaced by a Naruto spin-off show, too.  Oh the irony.  That said (I’m going on a small rant here), I haven’t watched the Bleach anime in over a year.  There’s no continuity.  It was constantly being interrupted by fillers.  It was the definition of watered down.  And even if it did stick to the main manga story, not a lot of people liked it.  It was like some watered down AND bitter beer.  Pure shame.  It’s amazing and sad how much Bleach has fallen off over the years.  To think they couldn’t even keep it going long enough to let it finish.  So be it.  That’s a combination of many things going wrong.  But I don’t feel bad at all, they lost me two years ago.  I’m glad that Hunter X Hunter is back.  It will help give me another consistent series to keep up with.  Though as any long time HxH fan knows, relying on that series can be a risky proposition.

Finally for the shounen anime, Hajime no Ippo seems to be coming to the conclusion of a decent battle between the Itagaki and one of Ippo’s old rival Saeki.  It’s gone on a bit long, but I look forward to the conclusion, and I look forward to the repercussions after the match even more.

After that I was left with Nana to Kaoru (which seems to be starting to get into butt-play) and Yuria 100 Shiki.  You can expect pervy things from those two series, and that’s enough out of me.

Pervy Images of the Week

I tried my best not to make this all about Nisemonogatari, but it sure was hard.  I didn’t need a standard ecchi anime this season simply because Nisemonogatari was IT.  You couldn’t top it.  That said, I included some standard anime boob-grabbing from Rinne no Lagrange.  I got some pervy trinkets from Nana to Kaoru.  And I can’t even begin to explain what’s going on in the Yuria 100 Shiki pic.  Also be careful, if you look closely there’s some nudity in there, too.

It’s been a pleasure getting to do my images of the week post again.  I feared it would forever get lost in the shuffle, because of all the episodic posts I had been doing lately.  I plan to keep that promise of catching up (or technically finishing at this point) Symphogear.  I also picked up an old tennis anime, Aim for the Ace that I don’t know if I’ll be blogging episodically, but I plan to watch on a regular basis.  There’s something surprisingly delightful about that old animation and the style of narrative they tend to use.  It reminds me very much of the melodramatic acting from Hollywood’s golden age.  Anyway, see you next week guys!  Don’t get too bogged down in your hobbies like I do!