Aria GN 6

by dm00

There's something about Alicia....

14 months after volume five, TokyoPop has brought out the sixth volume of the Aria manga.

Akari is spending her second winter on Aqua. Life has settled into a pattern of daily practice with her friends Aika and Alice.

This volume contains stories familiar to fans of the anime, and, I’m afraid the manga suffers a bit in comparison. The stories here are: Alice discovering Maa; Akari considering a ride on the Galactic Express; the Three Water Fairies reminiscing about their apprentice days (and how rarely they are able to take time to sit together over cocoa these days — a prospect that’s a bit daunting to their three apprentices); President Aria’s adventures in a gender-swapped alternate universe; Akari transports a gondola full of Neo-Venetian glass; and “What Makes Alicia So Magical?”.

Kozue Amano’s art is clean, and her principal characters are as lovely as ever. Still, the anime managed to bring more magic to most of these stories. Here in the manga, the Night on the Galactic Railroad story is a bit goofy (or perhaps I should say akary) the anime managed to make it just a little creepy (you give a little sigh in relief when Akari gives her train ticket to a cat forlorn at being forced to say farewell to its friends as they board the train).

The printing is okay — Amano’s lines come through crisply and clearly. There appear to be some monochrome reproductions of what were probably color plates in the Japanese editions, and these look a bit disappointing. Plus TokyoPop uses an ugly modernist font for the title of the book.

There is a preview of volume seven at the back of the book. Hopefully it will come out before 2013.

What to do while waiting for Madoka Magica episode 5

by dm00

Mahou shoujo has been subverted before

If you like what Puella Magi Madoka Magica is doing to the mahou shoujo genre, you should take a look at 2002′s Princess Tutu, which remembered the grim in Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Kyube could learn a thing or two from Drosselmeyer

The sweet appearance, the goofy cartoon duck, the pratfalls, Neko-sensei, and the ballet poses are a deceptive gloss on the dark forces, tragedy, and suffering that lies buried underneath. A bittersweet tale that doesn’t cop out — it obeys its internal logic to the end, when Ahiru makes the choice presented her by Drosselmeyer and is fully aware of what her choice means.

The series is also memorable for the surprising development that its major characters go through. The attitude you have three episodes in will not be the attitude you have at the end.

Oh, and director Juunichi Sato grew up to do Aria, so of course we’re fans.

Madoka 4 (no spoilers)

by dm00

Sweet dreams are not made of this

The music. The visuals. The direction. Perfect.

Winter Anime Season Initial Impressions

Again doing something a little different here, where in this post, some authors of DMAB will note quick impressions and, in some cases, unnecessary snap judgements of some of the shows that start this season. Long post will be long for sure. Since the opinions can be long and unwieldy, various authors will be color-coded to tell them apart (though it probably won’t be for your reading pleasure, now that I think about it), with Link in the normal everyday black, TheBigN’s opinions in reasonable orange, and dm00′s opinions in the other end of the RGB spectrum. Too make this even harder to read for many, pictures might be at a minimum here. Have fun!

Madoka Magica 1: I don’t usually do this but…

TheBigN

And no, I’m probably not going to do this for each episode. Probably. :v

Yeah, I was kind of like this after the first half.

Watching the first half of this episode, I felt like everything (the music, the character interactions, the situations, so on and so forth) save SHAFT’s character animations (!!!) was trying too hard to set up at least the normal life of Madoka. Being a fan of SHAFT X Shinbo, Yuki Kajiura and Aoki Ume, through that period I was thinking to myself “Calm down guys. You got this” as if it was a team that I don’t want to lose/fail. And I don’t, because I know what each can do when they’re at their best, and how often does a show combine things I like together? I’d watch this dream team’s result regardless of how it turns out, hopefully having more good vibes than not.

Totally unexpected mustaches. And great ones at that.

But after the initial Madoka/Homura conversation, the overall “feel” of the show seemed to calm down and go smoother. Even as things got WTF (gogo Gekidan Inu Curry) and awesome (gogo UNLIMITED GUN WORKS). More than likely because things got WTF and awesome.

And Tatsuya is so damn adorable.

Also kind of liked how besides Madoka, her family, Sayaka, Himura, Mimi and Kyube, no-one else’s name was mentioned. This despite a lot of relative screentime for characters like the teacher and that middle-class friend. Hope that sort of remains that way on purpose.

What *was* scribbled in Tsukasa’s notebook?

by dm00

 

Best performance since Yukino Miyazawa in Kare Kano

My guesses:

• Immanentize the Santachon
• Find some easily-manipulated doofus to be a boyfriend
• Meet an alien, time-traveller, ESPer, or slider