I am pretty much in utter shock at how awesome this show was and how much I liked it. I almost decided not to watch it at all when the season began. I saw the description as just some show bout a student council talking about issues…While, that may TECHNICALLY be true, and in another way it couldn’t be further from the truth. I figured it would be some kind of slice of life show dealing with issues of students, but wow, it most certainly wasn’t and I’m glad for that.

This really was one of the best comedy shows I’ve seen. Some shows like Lucky Star get popularity because it was kind of different comedy at the time and had some fun characters, talked about quirky things, some shows like Minami-ke had great character chemistry and rode off that. However, this seemed different. On one hand it was kind of over the top, sometimes slapstick like comedy which usually turns out bad. However they seemed to make it work here. They didn’t try and hide this aspect of the show; they embraced it, which made it so much better. The main character stating how he wants a harem, making the character quirks over the top to drive the emphasis, it worked. Although they continually showed it, things like showing how Mafuya was obsessed with video games was a great part. Sure, we already knew that fact when they showed something with her the umpteenth time, but it didn’t seem stale, because of the characters and the context it just worked, and I thought it was hilarious.

I also have to mention the parodies. They were a huge part of the comedy of the show. I honestly have not seen a show have this many parodies in it. Sure shows like Hayate no Gotoku had a lot originally, but eventually that died off and compared to this show they were few and far between. It seemed like half the time, when this show wasn’t making jokes about how perverted the main character was or how much he wanted a harem, it was a parody, and that was it. It made for a lot of great comedy I thought. Sometimes they weren’t so clear, sometime they were latently obvious. However because they had so many of them I think it made it all the better. If they only had a couple it would have seemed forced, like they were just trying to use other shows popularity. However it seemed like it was a genuine part of the show to have these parodies, and it made it fit better and just be funnier.

Haruka invites everyone on an onsen trip.

Impressions:

I thought this episode was pretty good. It wasn’t anything special, as there are plenty of onsen episodes in anime, but this episode was just fun. I thought it was an interesting way to end off the series, by having this kind of fun episode after the big conflict they had. I figured that the whole idol thing would last until the end when I saw it at the end of the season, so when it ended last episode I was quite surprised. However it did seem like it nicely ended up and left room for this episode, which I very much enjoyed as just a fun episode.

Final Words:

I absolutely loved the first season of this show, and the second is no different. There’s just something about it that makes it fun to watch. I’ve said it several times throughout the episodes of this season but this show has this quality; it has these “blushingly cute” moments in it that will pretty much be the main thing I remember about it. Not to say there’s not more to the show, but these moments the show has are some of the best, and it does it better than I’ve seen in many other shows with the same situation I’m not referring to things where someone’s panties would be exposed in public and they would be all embarrassed and there would be this ecchi comedy to it, it’s something far more. There are just these moments between Yuuto and Haruka, both of them portrayed as really rather innocent and kindhearted. Moments between them when they get close, where one will say something to the other that just makes you go “Awwww…” They are sometimes cheesy, and predictable, but they are such great character you feel for, and have this great dynamic to this relationship between them. Times when they are together, saying how she’ll always want to be there for the other, it’s just hard to describe. Moments that are just very cute and adorable between these two characters.

This season really didn’t change anything too drastically, which is both a strong and weak point for it. On one hand, the first season was great. Adding in too many new characters or drastically having some character go though something that affected the show wouldn’t e good. However, while it didn’t change for the bad, it didn’t change a whole lot for the good either. I’m quite disappointed in the amount of relationship development overall the show had. While it still had these great moments that bade you blush when the two of them were together and said something to each other or something similar, nothing really happened. I mean, as I said in a earlier post it got to the point where whenever they were alone together and getting really close, almost about to kiss, I wouldn’t think “will they actually kiss this time” I thought “how will they be interrupted” it became almost ridiculous. With this season they had the perfect opportunity to have something happen between them. They didn’t’ have to spent time getting the two to be introduced to each other; they had a whole first season for that. They didn’t’ really have to worry about moving too fast, as they already had established a friendship by the time this season started, a friendship where the two of them spent a lot of time together and helped each other out, knew their secrets, etc. It would have been the perfect platform for something to actually happen, yet it didn’t, and I was disappointed in that.

Overall though, despite not a lot of relationship development, the show was great. It had some amazing character, they worked great together and seeing them was fun. While some episodes were rather fluffy in terms of any plot ore relation to character development, they were fun to watch. Overall, I really enjoyed this season.

There is something about this show that is hard to explain. While on the one hand it doesn’t really have a lot of plot to it, there is some comedy that comes from some pretty stupid aspects, and a lot of it doesn’t really lead anywhere, it’s one of the shows I’ve come to really like. It’s odd that something without any real focus on romance or relationships, no real drama amongst the regular characters, and no real over-reaching objective to stop a certain bad guy or anything like that, it still manages to be something I do enjoy watching. The characters are a lot of fun, small things like getting upset at each other over small things or getting embarrassed when one makes a joke was just fun. While they actually did seem to have more plot this season than in the last, dealing with helping get back a sword, and later the sisters, I think the show really shined when they were just doing normal things. It was while they were accomplishing these bigger plots that these smaller things really shone.

Now, that’s not to say the times this show did have bigger focus, like dealing with the three sisters, wasn’t good. In fact I was quite surprised that this show which I pretty much discounted as having any real plot to it did in fact have a plot to it. Now, it’s not like this plot was inherit to the characters or anything like that, it was just another event that happened, just a bigger one that they spent more focus on. I really did find it interesting how they focused on this story throughout the whole series. In doing that they actually developed this event before it happened. Just having the big event reveal itself at the end is alright, but you don’t care about the event as much as when they do it this way, which is why I did find it really interesting to watch.

Overall, I really enjoyed this season of the show. It kept the great same character quirks and squabbles that really made the first one fun, while not being as random as the first season was. That was one of the biggest problems with the first is that the character that showed up and the events that happened seemed so random, it wasn’t quite as interesting as when they had a better flow to it. It kept the good stuff about the first season and improved it, which was surprising. I really liked this second season, more so than the first even. It may not be one of the all time great anime, but it was a lot of fun to watch and I’m looking forward to season three.

I wasn’t too sure about this show. I usually find yuri shows to at least be fun to watch, even if they don’t have a lot of… quality to them. It seemed like this serious would be a mix of some serious elements and some comedic ones, which seemed at least interesting. I wasn’t a huge fan of the show when it started out. I thought it was rather boring and kind of bland. All this one character did was whine about not being cute like her crush preferred. However as things went along, it almost seemed to change directions. The show stopped being about the how Kazama was interested in all these other girls and Sumi just failed again to get her attention. Although that aspect of the show was still there, it seemed like it wasn’t quite the focus of it. It started to be more slice of life. It dealt with them hanging out, being friends with the new girls, and in general they just seemed to be having more fun, which was the better part of the show.

I do have to say, although they didn’t seem to place a huge importance on it after it happened, I lived Aoi’s arc. At first, I didn’t quite like her. Even during the episodes it seemed like she was kind of selfish and whiny, but they just portrayed it in a way that made it quite interesting. She really had no friends and being abandoned after placing so much hope into finding someone with similar interests only to get blown off was pretty bad. Although I didn’t really like her too much, and she wasn’t of vital importance to the show, I actually did care about what had happened to her, and I thought that showed the show did a great job of portraying her.

Overall the show was pretty good. It wasn’t anything too special. They really seemed to go back and forth between trying to focus on the relationship between Kazama and Sumi seriously or comedically and overall I think that hurt it. It wasn’t never quite super hilarious, because there was some seriousness there, and the seriousness was never as interesting because it was being broken up by the comedy. While that was part of what was interesting, that they had both sides to it, overall it did interfere with some things this show could have done better. However, in the end it was an alright show, fun to watch, but nothing spectacular.

This series was….really….odd. Now, I knew it would be a weird series starting it, a guy turns into a girl and uses weird powers to fight other girls, it seemed like something that would have this great amazing plot to it, but it was still not quite what I expected. This show seemed to go off in so many different directions, and changed those directions really fast and awkwardly. At first it seemed to be about dealing with being a girl, then it was about the fight against the other Kampfers, then it was about dealing with being popular in school, then it was about being in a harem, then it was about fighting against a new enemy, then it was…blah blah. It was all over the palace. Now, while most of these elements were present throughout the whole series, Natsuru was still dealing with the fact he was sometimes a girl, it wasn’t the focus. The focus of the show shifted and it was weird.

Really, for a good half of the whole series in the middle it was purely about this harem dynamic. Hell, the fact that these characters had super powers, and one of the was a different gender half of the time didn’t seem to come into play at all. Despite the fact they had powers, despite the fact they were supposed to kill each other, and despite the fact that the guy in the middle of this was a girl half the time, it still seemed to be a simple normal harem show. These girls fighting over him, one being aggressive, the other getting jealous and stepping up. It’s as if they had forgotten they actually had these other elements to the show. Even if they had remembered, and implemented these aspects into the show more, it still would have been this slapstick ecchi comedy, but it would have been far more unique and interesting. Not entirely unique, but still, different, which would have been better.

Overall, this show was alright. It was one of the more interesting shows in the department of harem/slapstick/comedy/romance department, but it wasn’t anything special at all beyond that genre. Even when they tried to get serious and implement interesting plot like Sakura being evil, they turned it into this weir bizarre thing with animals growing the size of buildings and singing a song while the characters powered up by getting more slutty….yeah….that was….yeah…..So while the show was actually very fun to watch, not in a way that made the show have a lot of quality to it. A show that was fun to watch, and an interesting one in its genre, but not one that manages to surpass its genre’s limitations as far as quality would be concerned.

This show has certainly surprised me. When I first started watching I really didn’t have very high expectations of the show and honestly didn’t care too much about it. It wasn’t my all time favorite genre and it didn’t seem enthralling form the premise or even the first several episodes, but I stuck with it mainly because all the other show I watched were of relatively the same genre and I wanted to mix things up a bit.

I’m glad that I did, because what started out as a relatively moderate and average show, with random people fighting random monsters with some basic and uninspired abilities, turned into something hat had a lot more depth to it. It wasn’t something that just remained a boring, lets defeat all these ominous bad guys in this strange world we were thrown into, they threw in things like how the bad guys which they had killed over half of were actually trying to stop the end of the world. Something like that just changes the entire dynamic of the show. These aren’t innocent people fighting against mindless monsters; they are people who are keys to the destruction of the world fighting against the good guys trying to stop it. The fact that there were effectively three sides to this, and not two made things just oh so much better. There was the super evil witch, who both the Dark Knights and the school kids wanted dead, but the Dark Knights wanted to kill the school kids so they couldn’t be used as keys to the destruction of the world, while the school kids just wanted to not die and not have the world destroyed. This back and forth of different alliances and motivators made a relatively average, if that, first half of the series much more interesting.

I did get very surprised at the last couple of episodes, but when things started going THAT bad I figured they would have to reset the world somehow, thought I didn’t expect that they would first say that pretty much most of the second to last episode was all a precognition. That was a bit weird, though even after that the meganeko and rebel guy were still dead, while it was possible they could have kept them dead, I still guessed they would reset it again which they did, and I’m fine with it. It was exciting and dark enough during the final episodes that bringing them back didn’t really hurt the show too much. Plus, I really loved the meganeko’s character. Overall, though the series started off weak, it finished very strong and overall I thought was a very enjoyable watch

That ends Umineko for now. This last round was pretty interesting for the depth it added to Ange and Battler.

Impressions:

The end for this was pretty strange in some respects. They gave all that background and even character development only to have her die. Really she didn’t seem like the type that was going to just fall out of things like that. Of coruse the pattern has continued with Eva-Beatrice going away and followed by Ange. Still it is sad to see someone who fought so hard for her family to go down like that. She did manage to accomplish something with snapping Battler out of his shock. Although the price that was paid for getting Battler’s fighting spirit restored was exceedingly high. Perhaps it was easier this way for her since she wasn’t going to get to stay with Battler. Even if Battler can get out of this the only one he can go home to is the Ange from his world. At least she managed to help him and gave him a strong reason to fight. Her death will be the reason to keep going since she died a painful death for him. Besides it reminds him that his sister is waiting and he can’t afford to lose.

Another major part of this was Battler getting a weapon to fight back with. His blue truth will be key to winning this. Before he could only throw out theories and Beatrice could just deny them. At least now he can attack. With those she has to respond and he might just find the way out of this. True it appears his latest barrage was useless, but it doesn’t mean he won’t find a way to win eventually. Still he will have to figure out better things than mini-bombs in the stomach. I suppose since he has the blue truth he might as well just throw every possible explanation out there. True it might leave him in a pinch if he sees all avenues refuted, but it’s the best he can do. Besides there is no chance he will give up.

It’s somewhat of a tragic position with Beatrice. I still don’t trust her after what happened before. Still it is clear she has no way to win. She’s gotten into a fight where victory is impossible. She wants to be recognized as a witch and yet she won’t. With what happened to Ange there is no way Battler is going to step down. He has to win and there is no other option for him. Can understand Beatrice just wanting it over. Still she isn’t allowed to just walk away from this. She started it and has a responsibility to see it to the end.

A crazy part of this was with Battler again. It’s at least confirmed he isn’t Asumu’s son. It’s a pretty shocking thing for Battler since his self-identity is attacked painfully there. Of course Ange is right that it doesn’t change that he saw the woman as his mother. Plus she does make it clear he is Kinzo’s grandson. No matter who his biological mother is it doesn’t change his relationship to the family. It could be that he actually is Kyrie’s son. The story from the previous round does open things up to speculation. We may not find out for a while, but I’m sure the answer will come out. I’m also wondering about Battler’s sin that was brought up. I can’t imagine a little kid could have done anything that could be called a sin. It’s obviously something that matters quite a deal to Beatrice considering how upset she got about it.

Anyways this arc was as magical as always in terms of the killing. We got more bunny girls and some magical fights. I mean even George was getting into it. It was kind of cool to see George take a stand, less for him and Jessica to own each other. Although if you are still trying to find the non magical reasons for the killings then you would ignore that possibility. Still I’m having a tough time figuring out what is going on. We did pick up that Kumasawa might have been working on the epitaph. Plus there is the weird thing about money being given to select families after the killings. It makes you wonder if someone was working with those people and were paying their families for their help. Obviously everyone died so it’s not like they were getting paid directly. Still might help explain something if they felt they would die anyways and at least they could help their families. It does add a very interesting aspect to this situation.

Also this round showed how messed up the family situation can be. Rosa obviously had a lot of stress and threw it at Maria. Ange got attacked by Eva after all that happened to her. That family definitely has a habit of taking everything out on those around them. The tragic thing is the messed up childhoods for Ange and Maria. The adults around them couldn’t keep it together and ruined things for those who were still young. I can understand that Rosa had stress, but hurting her daughter so badly was low.

Final Thoughts:

It’s somewhat tough to judge the whole series since the story isn’t finished. We got pretty well into it and can at least judge it to this point. From the start I wasn’t sure exactly what we were going to get from this show. Sure you expected some horror and deaths, but the magical level was pretty high. Eventually we got to the point where girls were turning into flying stakes and bunny girls were firing homing magical arrows. It just got more incredible as time went by. Things got to the point where it was difficult to figure out what the possible normal explanations were. If one was siding with Battler it was getting difficult to figure out just what was really going on. Sure you could start believing magic was completely responsible, but the big picture can’t be that simple.

There was a huge cast for this show that made it tough to figure everyone out. There was more depth than I expected for some. In the end though the large cast made it tough for everyone to get their fair share of character development. Plus the fact characters were dying so often didn’t make it easy to get close to them. Still the story is far from over so there is time for them to get even more depth.

Obviously something that stood out with this show was fan reception. Safe to say it got pretty ugly in places. Now I didn’t see the VN so I’ve watched this fairly fresh. Overall I felt the show was fairly good. Sure they could have paced things a whole lot better especially in the last episode. Still I don’t think it was nearly as bad as some were making out.

At least this series really got me thinking about the theories going around and what might really be going on. In a show like this the answers aren’t really obvious so you have to pay attention to what is being said and what is being shown to you. Hopefully they continue this on later so we can finally figure out what the truth is.

Well that’s the end for Asura Cryin. The last part of the series really just helped wrap up the conflict and put a conclusion to this story.

Impressions:

I thought this final arc was solid. They managed to show the character development for Tomo and helped tie up loose ends with many of the characters. I’m a little disappointed with Shuri’s survival if only because it seems weak. Anyone that took that level of damage should be dead. I’m waiting for Tomo1 to appear in the credits after showing just about anyone can survive. Not that I didn’t like Shuri I just figure if you’re going to go that far then leave her dead. If not then don’t have her get that hurt in the first place.

While some might feel differently I’m not that happy with Tokiya and Toru. I mean they pretty much get away with murder and attempting to annihilate billions of lives. How the heck do people like that deserve a happy ending? Probably just affected by looking at all that happened in season two. Tomo1, Kanade1, and Misao1 all die while those two live on. Things may never work out perfectly in the world, but that just doesn’t feel right to me. Sure they had their reasons for doing what they did, but the fact is they still took that path. Tokiya put his own happiness over the lives of a huge amount of people. He went and murdered Tomo1 and yet he is free and with Toru. I suppose you could say that he isn’t really happy, but that doesn’t seem good enough from my point of view.

Overall it worked out pretty nicely. Burial dolls were free and Misao was ok. For an epic final battle there really weren’t any casualties. I suppose they didn’t want to taint Tomo2 by having him do something like killing Tokiya. It seems even the demon abilities will be lost so there isn’t a risk of Tomo losing any of his feelings for Kanade.

That kind of brings me to the downside of the ending. It seems like Tomo regressed so they could leave the story open. They didn’t want to hit the Misao fans anymore. I mean Misao1 died and couldn’t be with Tomo1. So I guess they didn’t want to push it any further by making it so Misao2 didn’t have a chance. Perhaps the greatest tragedy was for Nia. I mean she spent years getting that older body and now has to suffer the cruel fate of waiting to get it back.

But have to consider the positives. Misao is alright which was a major concern throughout the series. Slowly she was being worn down by the battles so it was hard to say what was going to happen. Besides they had that pretty ominous ending for the second season which made you wonder how it would turn out.

Final Words:

Overall I enjoyed Asura Cryin. It actually turned out to be a pretty good show in the end. The first season left a lot of questions, but if you combine the two seasons it’s a solid story. You have magic, battles, and saving the world. All the pieces of a pretty good series. There were some downsides like who ended up happy. Things seem to work out perfectly for Tomo2, Misao2, and Kande2 while others have to pick up the pieces of their lives and move forward.

Still I’m glad that I picked this series up and followed it right until the end. While things could have been better there were some great characters and they really drew me in when things got pretty tragic. Not being personally satisfied with some things doesn’t take away from how good the show was. From the music to some battles with the Asura Machina the show did a nice job keeping it interesting to the end.

It is definitely a series that was worth watching. There might have been more support behind it if there wasn’t for that major break between the seasons. This second season helped wrap things up that people were constantly wondering about. The secrets of where the Asura Machina came from was all cleared up nicely.

Glad that I originally decided to cover this series and stuck with it right to the end.

I have pretty mixed feelings about everything that happened in the first world. It was a pretty good arc in terms of resolving things that had been in the background of the show from the very beginning. Yet leaves me feeling a bit sad, though I suppose that shows it did a good job of making me care about what was going on.

Impressions:

It really is a mixed bag with this arc. In a sense everything worked out and the first world was saved. At the same time the cost was pretty high. Tomo1, Kanade1, and Misao1 are all dead. Sure when you consider billions living in the world that might be a pretty small price to pay. But they all gave their best in order to save that world. Not to mention there are people like An who have to keep living even though the people they care about are gone. But I suppose that’s life. I can understand Misao1’s sacrifice. I mean really she lost the person she loved. What reason does she have left to stay alive anyways? At least she can help save the world in the process.

I have no idea how Tomo1 felt when he went back. It’s really not surprising he became an incredibly jaded person. He knew from the start there was nothing he could do and it was a suicide mission. But he had to go in order to have Nia come to the future to create the Asura Machina and not create some temporal nightmare. He knew when going back that he was never going to see Misao1 again and still went. Maybe we can cut him some slack in his death. If Nia told him then he knew that he had to die there. No wonder he was not that kind with Tomo2. If I was going to die pretty soon I wouldn’t be chipper either.

The world was saved and Tomo2 got a little stronger in the process. Got some power and made his choice. It must be odd for shippers. They get both pairings in a sense. But the end result is the TomoxMisao pairing dying and the TomoxKanade pairing living. Not exactly a happy ending at any stretch is it? On the positive Kurogane got an upgrade so it should be able to stand up to anything that comes it’s way.

Maybe a lighthearted side of this is the older Nia. Those years have been pretty good to her physically. Though she has her own burdens as to being unable to prevent the disaster and sending Tomo1 to his death even though she cared about him.

It just seems a little sad how that all worked out.

Yuuto decides what to do when he is faced with Haruka’s future as an idol.

Impressions:

I thought this episode was pretty good and actually got quite intense it seemed. God, there are just these blushingly embarrassing moments that this show is full of. The one thing I’ll remember about this series are those embarrassing moments almost making me want to not watch it’s so touchy, yet very good to have in the series. When Yuuto ran up to the stage in front of everyone like that just yelling out that stuff, it was too much almost. Still, although it was embarrassing to watch it was a very good scene I thought, as being ale to do that, making the characters so that I care, showed that the series overall wasn’t doing too bad in that account. I thought the way they wrapped everything up was pretty good. I’m glad the damn manager got somewhat humiliated for the lying and tricking. It was also big, not even in their context, but just the fact that Yuuto kind of blurted out, while not saying it directly, that he loved Haruka and she said the same back. However, with this show, since it wasn’t said directly, I doubt much will come from it.

Overall I was quite wrong with what I thought the pacing for these last episodes would be. I figured this whole idol arc would be drawn out from this episode and go into the last, but it completely wrapped up here so I’m not quite sure what to expect as far as what the last episode would be about. I would say that since the two characters basically blurted out they love each other it might have to deal with their relationship, but then I remembered what show this was and figured that even with that, they’ll go back to blushing simply by standing too close to each other and then get interrupted before doing anything more. Still, in what context that will happen in for the last episode I don’t’ know.