Nyan Koi

Nyan Koi Opening credits

While chasing though links of various AMVs thanks to a certain Duck, I ended up running across some interesting shots from an anime that turned out to be Nyan Koi. Even from 2010, I was able to find the Coalgirls torrent and download it. Two episodes in, there are certainly aspects that would make it look like a harem, but I don't think it is. This could change. But it's been kind of fun.

Our hero, Kousaka Junpei is terribly allergic to cats. But his family has one, and as a family, they love cats. By accidentally defiling a shrine to a cat that saved his town in ancient days, he's now been cursed, and must perform 100 good deeds for cats or be turned into one - which he imagines will kill him through his allergy. A side effect of the curse is that he can understand cats (how else could they make their wishes known?). His enormous grumpy cat from home, and the shrine cat take the lead in driving him through a course of service to cats.

His childhood friend, Sumiyoshi Kanako is the first Ganguro girl I've ever seen in an anime (Specifically, she's a Manba type). Can't say I like the effect - on the other hand, she's stacked (fortunately, by the end of the episode she gives it up). Her role is the pushy, dominant, tomboy type, but there is no romance there. She appears in the second episode. A cat living by the school that she has been feeding wants to express her gratitude to her through him, but due to their personal chemistry (friends who fight all the time) it's not exactly something he can do easily.

By the way, he can't tell anyone about the curse, lest they become cursed too, and his curse accelerates.

The girl he's really after is Mizuno Kaede. She loves cats, but her family owns dogs. One of Junpei's first tasks is to get her to stop molesting the stray cats around her apartment complex. She was feeding them, but grabbing them and hugging and squeezing and loving them much to their distress. ("You mean a cat wagging its tail isn't the same as a dog?"). They actually connect at a few levels, but clearly it's gonna be slow going. Especially when she sees him being dragged around by Kanako and assumes they're a couple.

We shall see how the rest of the non-harem shapes up. There's a pair of twins in the queue who I would wager run hot and cold, good and evil.

Update: Episode 3 introduces a college girl, a Letter Carrier with a bad sense of direction, whom Junpei helps. She hits on him for some unknown reason. She is definitely a bit weird. Kaede sees him get hugged by her. His sister and Kanako also see him with her.

Episode 4, the Track Team captain, who loves beautiful things, including Kaede, challenges Junpei over her. But it turns out not to be like that.... After Kanako knocks this Senior out for fondling her boob (It's beautiful after all) the gang has to drag the unconscious person back home. Which turns out to be a gangster's mansion. Kaede is in heaven, she's got a thing for gangster movies. Junpei is really feeling under the sword now. But as the girls enjoy a bath, it's revealed that the team captain is the gangster's DAUGHTER, she's just very boyish, and she falls for Junpei because he doesn't mock her fear of lightning.

Episode 5: Nagi Ichinose, the track team captain and Senior, hatches a plot. She's invited Kaede to the amusement park, and given Junpei a ticket, and a challenge. He has to decide which of them he's dating. The answer being a no-brainer, Ichinose issues another challenge that he'd better be Kaede's boyfriend by the end of the day, or he'll have to marry her as a backup. By accident, Kanako has joined the crew because Junpei's ticket was a double. Now it turns out that the park is owned by the Yakuza, and the boss is determined to NOT have Junpei marry his daughter, and Ichinose is actually trying hard to push the two together. Kanako is just the opposite. Hijinks ensue, and it's actually one of the funnier bits of battle matchmaking I've seen in a while. It's complicated by the fact that Ichinose stacked the deck by telling Kaede Junpei likes her, but he doesn't get a chance to say so himself. Later at school, Kaede asks Kanako if she and Junpei are dating, but she swears that no, they aren't (Even though she was dragging him off at every chance in the park to get him away), they're just childhood friends, that's all, really. Ichinose shows up, and Kaede's innocent question (related to the letter carrier and boys hugging girls without caring who they are) puts both Ichinose and Kanako in a murderous mood. The teacher comes in and this leads to the exchange of the day:

Teacher (deadpan): "Fifth Period will be starting soon. Ichinose, back to your classroom."

Ichinose: "Heroes always arrive late, Sensei"

Teacher (still deadpan): "Then go back to your own planet."

There is some confusion over some doggie treats, and at the end, we see one of the twins, who has an ominous black cat, and she seems to know about the curse - and worse, Kaede overhears.

Episode 6 kicks off with a replay of the last scene, and where the girl asks him if he was cursed by the statue, he replies by turning tail and running (Right past Kaede who was hiding behind a car, worrying about Junpei talking to another girl she didn't know). After consulting with the cats, Junpei concludes that he needs to talk to her, but at school, his buddies speculate that he's going after the "Twin-tailed Junior" right where Ichinose and Kanako can hear (Apparently now they both favor the Junpei/Kaedo pairing). His buddy got the idea when he asked him about twin-tailed juniors, since he didn't know the girl's name. He's found by one who gives him a letter and disappears (it was immediately obvious to me it was the wrong one, but he doesn't know she's a twin yet, you can see the hijinks a mile away, can't you?) The letter's a love letter, and by the time he finishes reading it, the "Same" girl (with a different sweater on) angrily snatches it out of his hands saying it's a mistake. These Hijinks, they cover miles in mere SECONDS these days. (Kirishima Kotone is the nice one) Nasty twin does want to talk to him though, and says to meet at the temple. She tells him she's more spiritually sensitive and can see it on him. Then she blackmails him, threatening to hasten the curse, spreading the story, if he doesn't stay away from Kotone-chan. He still doesn't get that they're twins, until she punch-launches him and he lands next to Kotone, who admonishes her sister Akari. (BTW, Panty shots figure prominently here.) Kotone turns out to be more than a little twisted as well. "I'll put away my fantasy journal, but may I continue to stalk you?" She's into guys suffering misfortune. It gets a little complicated, they are the daughters' of the cat temple monk, their cat used to be friends with the temple cat, but they now hate each other. Junpei is tasked with getting them to make up. In the process he scares off Kaede (who was walking the four giant dogs her family owns), Kanako finds her crying and is after his head. The mail girl sees him with the twins, and when Ichinose and her gangster dad run into her looking for Junpei's house (WRONG person to ask) she tells them he's in the park with the twins. So now Ichinose is out for blood too. Two simultaneous beatings and a dog mauling later, Junpei gets a chance to apologize and explain. Yay. And Kotone is pleased to see his misfortune.

(Man, either these things are getting more complex, or I'm not able to remain brief....)

Episode 7: There is a Class Trip to Kyoto. Just before Junpei leaves though, the cats bring him another cat in need of his assistance. This one needs a lift to Kyoto, and so he gets to stow away in Junpei's luggage. Once there, Junpei has trouble enjoying the sights because this cat has told all the local cats about the cursed guy who has to help them out, and he is besieged. There is a traditional bathhouse scene in the inn, and amazingly, there wasn't really any "buy the BD steam" Guess they'd have to re-animate. There are a ton of coincidences in this episode. Ichinose is in town too, for a gangster meeting at the old homestead. And the cat who needed the lift was one they'd lost. Also, he helps a kitten who turns out to be the offspring of that cat. While helping the kitten home, the gang ends up at the Ichinose mansion. Kanako is in wanting to be with Junpei mode, when she doesn't want to strangle him. Ichinose is back to wanting Junpei too (the Coda at the end is that the family meeting was about finding her a groom in the gang, and she wouldn't have any of them).

Episode 8: The Misery Twins bring in a fat, lazy cat who wants Junpei to help train him so he can catch a sparrow to impress the lady cat he wants to be with. Junpei starts out okay, but eventually a chance to be with Kaede by joining her sports teams (seems she's in everything) causes him to ignore the cat. Pissed-off, the cat sneaks into the locker room and steals Kaede's bra and sticks it in Junpei's bag. In the middle of a mall, instead of returning the handkerchief Kaede had lent him, he whips out the bra, and he is ruined.... Point made, Junpei has nothing to do but help the cat, and succeeds in making him a buff bird (and lady)-killer. When Kanako and Ichinose find out about the bra stealing, they make a bee-line to Junpei's classroom to give him a beat-down (Although Ichinose is more pissed that he didn't try to steal HER bra, and at one point is about to whip it out) but one of Junpei's friends who is dating-sim obsessed mentions that he actually SAW the cat with the bra, and so it was all a misunderstanding. One side-line is that Kotone is so obsessed with Junpei's misery that she bugged his house and wants to have spy-cams to see his expressions when horrible things happen. Akari admonishes her not to use spy-cams until she is 21. Is this some odd point of Japanese law? I don't know.

Episode 9: Fan Service Special. Junpei's buddies propose a pre-exam study day. Only it's actually a break day, at the indoor pool park. Junpei and Kaede are stuck with rental bathing suits, but Kaede fills her two-piece out rather nicely, although nowhere near as well as Kanako does her bikini. The Misery twins are there too, by some coincidence. Akari is angry (Junpei accidentally unties her top while struggling with his buddies dunking him.) and Kotone snuggles up to him and says things that would be really nice if they weren't meant to be creepy. And further coincidence, Ichinose is also there (wearing an odd wetsuit kind of thing). Ichinose and Kanako have been getting into breast-pinching fights lately. They go at it in the pool, and Kanako ends up ripping down the zipper on Ichinose's suit. In the course of the fight, Kanako slams into Kaede, knocking her backwards. Junpei goes to catch her, gets smashed in the nose with Kaede's head, but at least in catching her, he gets to feel her up. Kanako is getting more into wanting Junpei, even though he's single-minded towards Kaede. Junpei goes in search of medical attention, and runs into a Cat who needs to escape from the pool park. Kanako catches him talking to the cat, but avoids worsening the curse by remembering something he said in #2 about cat empathy. She helps him toss the cat over the wall (outside, where it's snowing, in their bathing suits), and notes how kind he is and how much she enjoys being with him.

Later, he has a cold from his exposure. Kanako rigs it so that she is the one to take him his printout and take care of him. Junpei is oblivious to the fact that she cares for him (and obviously far more than Kaede does), it almost makes me root for her, but her forceful nature really turns him off. A fat, gluttonous cat ask him for help in avoiding the diet his owner has put him on, but instead he lectures him how the cat should be grateful that his owner is caring for his health. Only too late does he realize the parallel to what's going on at the moment with him and Kanako.

Episode 10: Part 1, Kanako fails her final, so she has to do a report on local history. But hey, Junpei knows the Misery Twins, who are daughters of the local Shrine guy, so she asks him to go to them for help with history. The whole gang goes along to help her research for her report. After being bored unconscious by the priest (while the shrine cats explain about the twins to Junpei outside), the twins are pressed into service showing them various mysterious spots, ending up by a Maeneki Neko statue with an odd face that somehow compels people to vandalize it. Kanako falls under it's spell and starts to draw whiskers on it, but the twins stop her, and perform a cleansing ritual on the statue. Being the weird girls they are, they're feeling a bit awkward by the gestures of friendship people are making to them for their help.

The opening introduced part 2. The twins are also Magical Girls, sort of. Akari has always had a strong spiritual sense, which made her aloof as a kid. She can fight demons. Kotone has more of a scrying power, and a transformation sequence into a sort of goth-loli-devil girl. The spirit of the cat statue is pissed from being vandalized, and is on a rampage, but the girls are ready. Junpei for some reason goes out to the convenience store late at night and runs into them, and helps them with their fight. Usually people are weirded out by witnessing this, they say, but hey, Junpei's cursed by another cat statue and talks to cats, so he takes it in stride. Akari has a momentary fantasy about Junpei and dismisses it by slapping his face. Afterwards, the butterfly hair clips Kanako bought Akari for her help somehow helps her make friends with some of her classmates. Freshmen are SO shallow.

Episode 11: It's Christmas time. Junpei decides to get a temp job at the post office to make a little extra money, while Kanako is selling Christmas cakes at the mall in a Santa suit. One day he has a delivery at Kanako's just as she's coming out. Apparently she won some movie tickets, so she demands that he go see it with her. She turns it into a date, although he's not really into it, probably because she can't suppress her harsh dominant instincts (Although the thigh-high sheepskin winter boots she's sporting aren't my usual taste, they're nice). By the end of the date, she's actually feeling a little guilty that she's betraying Kaede, but she decides not to confess to him. While doing deliveries, a cat asks him to help get her kitten out of a tree. Kaede is passing by the park, and overhears him talking to the cats and mentioning the curse. Oh dear, that means she's found out, so the curse is going to get worse, and when he gets back to the post office at the end of his day, he looks in the mirror and discovers he's got cat ears.

Final episode 12: Kotone has put a GPS tracker on Junpei, so she knows something is wrong because he's not moving. The Misery Twins set off for the post office to rescue him. They keep him holed up on the temple grounds wearing a hat covered with charms, but the moment the hat comes off, the ears come back. Kaede meets Kanako and tells her that she's worried about Junpei being cursed, so Kanako phones him up and teases him about it. Now they know how it happened, but what to do about it? Nyamsus, Junpei's cat, has a plan. They play on the curse of the Maeneki Neko to convince Kaede that THAT is the curse he's got, and the Misery Twins show up just in time to cleanse him of that. It would have worked too, if it weren't for the meddling Yakuza Princess who snatches his hat, showing off the cat ears. Junpei splits, but it's too late, the twins find a path of his discarded clothing (Akari has an embarrassing lapse with his boxers) and he's in the park, as a cat. Kaede went looking for him too, and finds him. Fortunately she remembers his advice from the first episode about being gentle, and picks him up. She decides that Junpei cares too much about cats to be cursed by them, and her disbelief temporarily lifts the curse, well, the transformation part, which ends up with him naked in the bushes. This of course is the perfect time for the rest of the cast to show up, and Kanako starts beating on him. There's a bit of a wrap up in the last part of the episode, teasing about whether or not there will be a second season. He's still cursed, Kanako is still wrestling with wanting him and letting Kaede have him, he's still wrestling with how to get close to Kaede, and Kaede is still clueless.

It always kinda bugs me in a series when a guy is relentlessly pursuing a girl, but can't seem to communicate his interest to her, while someone else pines for HIM and never lets him know. And that said object of his affections has no situational awareness that she COULD have a suitor makes me wonder, why is he bothering? The normal question of why bother chasing a girl who barely knows you exist when there's one who loves you right next to you always has to be answered by something that makes the second girl unacceptable. In this case, it's Kanako's dominant attitude. Why can't she recognize that calling Junpei her servant is really not endearing? Why can't she realize that they've been on the outs for years over a misunderstanding that was HER fault (This does get resolved, but she doesn't properly apologize)?

You see this a lot in the "Girl Next Door" in Broken Doll stories. Her character has some reason she can't be with our hero, usually because of the Doll stuck in his apartment, but she usually sublimates this by trying to help him get together with the Doll. Hence Kanako occasionally working towards getting Junpei and Kaede together, but she can't really follow through on it and play matchmaker because of her own, unexpressed feelings.

The story I'd like to see is one where said Tomboy realizes what she's doing wrong to drive her love away, and fixes herself, and steals the boy away from the Idol he's chasing. Somehow, I don't think I will ever see it.

Oh, and here is the AMV I mentioned at the top of the post. LANGUAGE WARNING

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Vividred Operation

Jumping ahead of the unfinished posts in the hopper (Damned overtime and home repairs)...

I just had an insight and here's how I think Vividred Operation is going to end. Below the cut.

more...

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Robotics;Notes Ep. 6

There was a minor scene in Episode 4 where Subaru tries to pay a call on Kona to try to get her to develop a Kill-Ballad interface for controlling his M45 too.  The doorbell asks for a password, which of course he can't give, and he is rebuffed.  This episode opens with him trying again.  This time he gets as far as a little word game with her, but again, he fails and is cut off.

After the opening, Kai and Subaru are hanging out at the Hangar.  Kai is contemplating the mysterious Report No. 1 Airi and Sister Centipede led him to, while Subaru works on his robot.  They are not getting along.  But in spite of Kai's minor bullying (after all, he's a grade senior to Subaru) it works well for Subaru to be doing his robot work there, since he had to hide it from his father.  Kai asks how it's going with Furugoori (Kona), and Subaru merely says the negotiations are "Ongoing."  Just then Juuna shows up, and Subaru assumes she is the heretofore unseen Furugoori, but Kai corrects him.  In spite of her shyness, she and Kai have a certain chemistry.  There are no indications of a tedious love triangle with them and Aki, and I'm sure at this point they aren't considering themselves any kind of couple, but you can see the possibility.

At the end of the day, they retire to the shop for sodas (Skal, the local brand) to toast their new members.  "Jun" joined after Aki begged her to.  When Kai asks her if she's okay with robots now, she says she doesn't mind the Gun-Pro 1, but Aki's suggestion of a visit to the Robot Clinic (Doc's store) scares her silly.  Subaru is a stick in the mud, announcing he's leaving "Three minutes of celebration is enough for me." As Aki chases him down, Kai notices Mizuka tending the store and recalls the night before, when he let her read the report.


That night, Mizuka asked him if he knew Airi.  Kai was surprised that she knew about her.  But they may be talking across each other, the Airi she knew was Misa's friend in grade school.  There's more to it, obviously, but she cuts the conversation short by closing the store shutters.


Subaru returns home, and his perma-scowling dad notices a grease spot on his shirt.  Subaru makes a quick excuse about it being his scooter breaking down, but dad doesn't seem to be buying it.


Kai breaks into the abandoned and empty Folk museum again looking for Airi.  She's a little disappointed that the question he wants to ask her isn't about the weather, which apparently is her specialty, but when he asks her about Senomiya Misaki, she replies the they're friends.  From the sound of it, she used to gossip to Airi about her day in school and about her classmates.  When he asks her about Kimijima Kou, she answers "My master!"  He's the one who created her. (So, Mizuka DID know.)


Suddenly, Kai hears some noise down the pitch black staircase.  Using his PokeCom as a flashlight, he descends the stairs.  Airi doesn't know what's down there, because the area hasn't been mapped.  At the landing, Kai finds a door, and looking through the VR of his computer, he sees another password box floating in the air.  The same password works to open the door.  To his surprise, the room has power unlike the rest of the building, and a giant computer bank, a cassette tape deck, and some other odds and ends.  The Cassette plays a tune that sounds similar to the music Japanese crosswalks use.  He asks Airi what the big computer is, but she can't see it, and tells him to ask Sister Centipede.


Sister Centipede knows the score.  The machine is an "EGI machine".  Well, that helps a lot.  Apparently it's a transmitter sending a signal into space.  What Kimijima was doing on the island: Classified.  How did he die: Murder.  Who did it: that data has been erased.

Subaru tries Kona's place again.  It would be a little too facile to say she's got Asperger's, but apparently she does compensate for her mis-socialization with a little program that reminds her it would be rude to not answer her door.  Still, it's clear she's not right in the head, more like a personification of 4-chan.  Seeing Subaru on the CCTV, she mutters "Boys with glasses are so moe," but then screams that he's a disturbing stalker.  She keeps threatening Subaru with reporting him to the police, but he will not be deterred, and eventually he gets through to her.  But there will be a price.

Kai is reaching a dead end researching the ownership of the Folk museum and any connection to Kimijima when Subaru finds him to tell him Furugoori has agreed to help.  At the hangar, the whole gang is gathered around to welcome her to the club as the newest member, only she's not actually there, she's attending via a PokeCom propped up on the table.  Aki isn't happy, but Subaru doesn't care as long as he gets his program.  That's when Kona announces her condition as being a naked photoshoot of Subaru wearing only his glasses.  Shy Jun is instantly scandalized.  Subaru stands firm that this was NOT the deal.  Kai is supposed to help her fight cheaters in Kill-Ballad.  Jun is STILL scandalized, imagining BOTH boys in a naked photoshoot with Cheetahs.  Kai straightens her out, but Kona, she's so far out in left field, she's out of the parking lot.


Buoyed by the increase in membership, Aki proposes another trip to the candy company, but only Jun comes along, and it seems worse than before.

72 hours later, Kona has a new program for the M45.  She worked continuously for 72 hours, because once she starts coding, that's how she goes.  She didn't do that for Subaru, if that's what he's thinking, she says as she closes the call to him.  Ominously, Dad may have overhead the call in the hallway.

The next day, they're trying out the program in the Hangar, and it's working well.  The girls come up, and apparently it actually went well at the candy company.  Jun's karate gi and a little demo apparently appealed to the perverted exec, and he agreed to sponsor them.


They stage a test battle, with Kai driving the M45, and Aki operating the Tanegashimachine 3.  It's hardly a fair fight, and Aki gets pasted.  Subaru is impressed with Kai's skills.  But then, Subaru's dad shows up, and seeing the robot in Subaru's hand, he walks up and decks him.  It goes downhill from there, and Subaru just gives in, abandoning robotics and the club.  He gives up his dream and will just be a fisherman like his dad.


The stress of this scene gives Aki another fit, a bad one from the look of it.

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Nekomonogatari (Black) Ep. 1

Some time ago I got my hands on Bakemonogatari.  I never did a thorough watching of it, but it was impressively bizarre.  It was most notable for fast flashes of pages of text related to the scene going on.  I do mean to get back to it sometime.

I just spotted the first three episodes of Nekomonogatari (Black) in my feed.  The title was distinctive enough that I figured I should see what it was.  It's a prequel to Bakemonogatari.  I don't really know enough about the story to give a good summary of the situation, other than the hero is an ex-vampire, and there are a lot of normal-appearing monster girls in the cast.  But this first episode wasn't so much about that.  Basically our hero, Araragi Koyomi, spends most of the episode talking with his younger sister trying to figure out if he's in love with this girl in his class.  He has nothing to compare it to.  Eventually they conclude that he is, until he mentions her very generous endowments and what he wants to do with them.  Then she concludes that he's just very sexually frustrated.  There's a brief scene with his other sister, which is somewhat surreal, and finally, he runs into the girl and the scene between them goes right into the gutter, and then takes a completely unexpected turn.

It SOUNDS like a big nothing, but what is REALLY stunning about this program is the staging.  It is very artsy, in a good way.  The dialogue is crisp, fast paced, and very clever.  If it weren't five thirty in the morning, there's probably something I could compare it to, but I can't remember at this moment.  The visuals though are also amazing, and come in just as rapid-fire as the dialogue.  The characters don't just stand there and talk, but often find themselves in dramatic postures.  Quick-close-ups and silhouettes abound.  (Maybe Madoka?  But without the mixed media.)  You could perhaps liken it to a fast-cut music video, but it actually makes a certain kind of sense.  There's a rhythm to it.

And as much as you are tempted, at least the first time through, don't bother trying to pause or frame advance to read the title cards.  That totally disrupts the rhythm.

Because of all the fast cuts, in spite of the interesting art, it wasn't so conducive to screen shots.  Or, my excuse is that it's time for bed (I work second shift, so my clock is funny to begin with). But perhaps I'll see what I can attach to this later.

Update: Found a PV, which indicates this isn't a prequel, but a connecting story. Seems there was an even earlier series Movie called, get this, Kizumonogatari. I'm not sure what a Kizumono is. Vampire? Anyway, it's not available from the usual suspects.

Working on Pics.  Creating new subfolders is... arcane.

And the Pictures:

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Robotics;Notes Ep. 5

Reviews without pictures may be faster to write, but they're not as fun. I'll put in the effort from now on.  But it would help if I could remember what Pixy said about FTP....

Before the credits, there's a brief recap of the end of the previous episode, where things might have gotten a little supernatural. Kai saw a girl through the camera of his PokeCom (Pocket Computer), and then after it rebooted, he got a strange email from "Sister Centipede" containing nothing but gibberish.  At school he overhears two girls talking about doing a "Test of Courage" at the supposedly haunted Space Hill Park, which was where he was that night. The girls mentioned they heard it from "That Karate Club girl", and thus another loop in the story is closed. A quick e-mail after the OP, and Kai has arranged to meet Juuna Daitoku, the incredibly shy Karate Club girl, up on the hill. This annoys Aki because she's expecting to meet at the clubhouse with the local paper to give an interview about their second place finish at the RoboOne competition. She wanted him there.


At the park, They discuss their similar experiences, although Kai's really got her topped. They discuss possible sources of interference, like this Russian shortwave station, "the Buzzer" that has been broadcasting this buzzer going on and off for 30 years. (True!) and they wonder if the nearby launch complex is broadcasting something similar that is causing the computers to lock up, since it is in the line of sight to the hill. That doesn't explain the ghostly girl though, so they wander around in search of the supernatural. And Kai cruelly startles her pointing at a mannequin head in the window that scares the bejebers out of her. In part he explains he did it because she was creeping him out by describing the legendary girl looking exactly like the girl he had seen. She pulls up a location of another sighting in a cave where she lives. He agrees to go, but ask if they can drop by the club's hangar on the way. She's not too thrilled with the idea. Apparently she's scared of, or hates robots, so they skip it.


At the Hangar, Aki is blowing it with the reporters, going on about the Gunvarrel project, instead of RoboOne. Subaru swings by with his Robot in hand, and the reporters instantly recognize it, but wonder why it's here. Aki nearly spills the beans, I guess the concept of a secret identity escapes her.

At the beach (I thought it was a cave?) Kai and Juuna don't find the digital ghost, although they do discover a dead whale on the beach, and she remarks that there have been a lot of them lately. They begin to discuss a lot of weird ecological phenomena around the world, a hot winter in Russia, snow in California, and some of the Nazca Lines were washed away by rain. Junna accidentally pokes him in a soft spot, by saying it's weird, like the S.S. Anemone incident, which I guess she doesn't know he was a victim of. At the end of their outing, he asks her about Karate, and she says that their season is over, so she's pretty much done with that. He then invites her to join the Robotics club, which she's not too thrilled with, but while she doesn't like robots, she wouldn't mind becoming better friends with Aki (hmmm?).


Kai drops by Aki's to find out what's going on at her end. The interview was a bust. Meeting with the candy guy about sponsorship was also a bust. She asks about what he was doing with Juuna, surious if she also managed to beat him at Kill-Ballad to get him to go with her, but he mentions that he asked her to go along. She embarrassedly says Hey, she doesn't mind if he dates Juuna, but it's unusual because he never really hangs around with anyone. (Does anyone think she really means that?)


That night, Kai returns to the hilltop to kill some time playing the game, and clearly to see if it will happen again. Just when he's about to give up, his PokeCom starts receiving again. He starts searching the grounds, using the PokeCom in Augmented Reality mode. Sneaking into an abandoned building, he makes contact, first spotting a password protected geotag, and then the ghost, who offers him the password. She's possibly an AI, rather than a ghost - would that be a ghost in the machine? She tells him to tap her on the screen, which allows him to talk to "Sister Centipede", and her voice and manner change. She mechanically states "Airi is a communications interface running on the Iru-O servers. Sister Centipede is a fully automated information gathering engine." It's nice to get some straight answers for once. Then, it gets a bit weird. Apparently he's been chosen as some kind of contact simply because he's been around the park so much, since he was a kid (when he was close to Airi's age setting) and they've been trying, 29 times in the last 8 years, to get through to him. Hell, Aki's known him even longer, and she can't get through to him either. Kai has NO real curiosity, no romance in his heart. His question? "How do I make you go away?" He pokes at the geotag, and Sister Centipede just coughs up the password for him. Now THAT'S security! It gives him full access to the Iru-O secret files. In particular, an "In case of my death" file written ten years earlier attached to the tag.


The file reveals that this guy knows that NASA has been hiding, since 2000, the discovery of Magnetic Monopoles at the south pole of the Sun. It leaked, but they make the leak of the truth look like a fake. He knows that this is a sign that the sun will explode, and has a schedule of upcoming massive solar flares. (This will probably ruin future RoboOne competitions).

Kai calls up Juuna, who confirms there are a lot of conspiracy theories about NASA and Solar Flares. She speculates that there must be a report #2 file to go with the #1 he read. And the dates he gave for the flares were accurate, she says. The aurora that's been oddly in the sky over Southern Japan has been there since the 2012 flare. And the crash that ruined the shop owner's legs was in '15. This comes to mind since he's making the call from the bench outside the mini-mart, and when she comes out to close the shutters, he mentions what he found to her. The name "Kimijima Kou" poleaxes her. She's on the verge of tears - something unusually for someone as hardened as she is - and wants to know where he heard that name.


Back at the evil Exoskeleton Corporation, Aki's sister gives her report on Kai to the CEO. She knows about his accident. And the episode leaves it hanging on that ominous note.

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Disgaea

It started with someone's LiveJournal Icon.  She was a very slender red-headed demon girl, with a DFC and kind of a kinky outfit.  It turned out her name was Etna, and there was a fair amount of fan art and Cosplay photos of her on DeviantArt (it's a really easy costume).  So I took a flyer and looked for a Torrent, and amazingly found one from 2010 that was still live (the show is originally from 2003), and after a very rocky start - fools, why turn off DHT and peer exchange? - it came down in a day or so.

I'm not going to say this is some neglected gem or masterpiece, but it is a little fun.

Meet Flonne, another DFC.  She's an Angel Trainee, sent from Celestia two years ago to assassinate the Demon Overlord.  She's not exactly good at the job, having been wandering around for two years without finding the Overlord's castle.  But no problem, it's been revealed that two years ago the Overlord choked to death on a dumpling ("of the damned").  She does run across a crypt/garbage dump with a coffin in it with the Overlord's Crest on it, and unleashes Holy Hell on it to open it.  Okay, her magical bow, dynamite, throwing axes, a steamroller and a missile launcher.... So you can tell what kind of series it's going to be from here.


Her efforts are enough to awaken this guy, Laharl, who is the overlord's son, and who was apparently poisoned and dumped in the crypt by forces unknown until halfway through the series.  Flonne is a little conflicted, because she doesn't really approve of assassination, but she was told to do it and had to follow orders.  Laharl doesn't really respect this, and tries to blast her, but his powers are severely weakened.  She's rather upset by the fact that Laharl is unmoved when they find out about the death of his father (from a conveniently wind-blown newspaper) but he explains that Demons don't know love, and thus they also don't know sadness.

A battle with guardians of the crypt ensues, but Laharl can barely fight them off, and that's when things go really gonzo, as a spaceship crashes through the wall, piloted by Captain Gordon, 37th Defender of the Earth, with his gorgeous, scientifically brilliant, and tremendously endowed sidekick Jennifer and loyal robot/giant cannon Thursday.


When Jennifer goes to comfort the "Children" they've just saved from the demons, we discover that Laharl's kryptonite is major cleavage, and we're talking original Green K.  The Robot scans him, discovers that he's been poisoned, and Flonne heals him.  The Humans are amazed to discover that they've saved an Angel, and upset to discover they've also saved the next Demon Overlord.  They draw on him, and he's about to blast them, when a glimpse of Jennifer bouncing knocks him back, ill.  Flonne shields him, and he buries his face in her (lack of) chest, and springs back.  With his power restored, he blows the humans, and the rest of the crypt, into the sky like Team Rocket.  This becomes a recurring theme.

One of the guardians isn't so dead, and a fully powered Laharl flattens him, and interrogates him trying to get to the bottom of his poisoning, but the creature ends up dead without talking.  Flonne abhors his violent ways, and makes it her new mission to either assassinate him, or teach him Love (no, not THAT way, it's a kid's show).  Unfortunately the pendant that allows her to survive in the underworld got stuck to the Robot somehow, and she collapses before she can make good on her threat.

Just as they're about to start fighting, Etna arrives and watches from a distance.  When Flonne falls, she reintroduces herself (Laharl knows her from the castle).  Etna expresses surprise that Laharl doesn't just blow away his helpless opponent, and wonders at him showing kindness.  Laharl nearly blasts her for the accusation, and insists it's actually because he wants her to die a slow death.  "Oh, I get it!  That's my prince!" she says, and they leave to go find the Overlord's Palace.


Etna is now one of Laharl's Vassals, but she has some Vassals of her own.  The "Prinnies" are the souls of sinners in these odd stuffed penguin bodies who have to work in the netherworld to earn a chance at rebirth.  Generally stupid, they're a whiny bunch, but usually productive.

Through a chain of events too long to go through here, Flonne gets back the pendant, and ends up attached to the crew.

They go on a number of short adventures on the way back to the castle, taking on other pretenders to the throne, and find out who poisoned Laharl. It was Etna, but she was under blackmail, and she was supposed to kill him.  Periodically they run into Gordon, who is determined to fight the demon prince, but is so simple-minded that Lararl actually uses him and his ship as a shortcut to get them to the castle.

Then, after half the series, an actual plot breaks out.  Gordon has unwittingly been a pawn of the humans, and in their travels, Thursday has been planting beacons that will help open up a gateway to the netherworld big enough to bring in a million-ship-strong space fleet from Earth  Earth wants to invade and wipe out the demons because they're demons, and because Earth needs more room for the population.

The Earth forces, in turn, have been pawns of the second in command of the Angels.  But Laharl is powerful enough to turn it all around, and after conquering everything... he abdicates and dumps it all on Etna, who at one point aspired to the throne, and now learns to be careful what she wishes for.

Technically, the files were encoded in an odd 3:2 aspect ratio, so I had to correct the screen shots, although after looking at them enough, I became unsure what was right.

In any case, I tossed a bunch more shots of Etna below the fold.

more...

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Robotics;Notes Ep. 4

The Island where our heroes live, Tanegashima, happens to be the home of the Japanese space program. (Yes, they have one). And this episode starts with a scene on May 21st, 2010, where a young Aki and Kai are with Aki's older sister in a crowd waiting to watch a launch.

At the end of the last episode, Aki proposed that they go to the JAXA (The Japanese Space Agency) for help. And it is revealed in this episode why she thinks of this. We come back from the OP with her making a presentation asking for facilities, assistance, and money from JAXA to help them build their robot. The director listens, but first "Your Father has to go to the bathroom." Yeah, her dad's the president of the base. He insists he's just a middle manager, but Aki will have none of it. Practically chasing him around the conference table trying to get him to give in. He even begs Kai to intervene. She's just about got him on the ropes when a call from her mother, who is far less of a dreamer than any of them gives him a chance to escape.

After school at the Hangar, it turns out they don't have access to the Robo-One prize money either. Kai gets a mysterious message while playing his game and leaves. But the location given turns out the be another building in the "Abandoned" complex. He arrives, but nobody is there, until their club adviser shows up in a mini-pickup, loaded with boxes. And from the top of those boxes emerges Frau Koujirou. Mitche, the adviser, reveals that her real name is Furugoori Kona. "What's Frau Koujirou? Your pen name?" Mitchie bitches about the principal making him help a student move in, which arouses Kai's curiosity. Kona says that she bought the entire place. In typical fashion, Kai gets ready to bail. "If you want me to help, defeat me in Kill Ballad." But as he turns to walk away, she grabs his hand, saying that he owes her, after all, she gave him the control code. So, thus it is revealed that she is the author of his favorite game.

As a character, I'm a little curious to see more, as she has a bit of a stutter, but also this twisted smile she makes. The credits seem to indicate she has a bit of a sultry side too.

Back in the hangar, Subaru is telling Aki all the things they should change about the robot, like removing the cockpit and making it remote control, and removing all the armor that makes it look like Gunvarrel. She refuses, citing the goals and history of the club which she won't abandon, and Subaru leaves.

Things get worse. Kai calls just then, bitching that he just found out this candy he eats all the time is made by a company owned by Mitchie's uncle. He hates that he's been giving that family his money. They should be giving some of that money back to the club, he says. This is a trick. Kai has been to the convenience store and taken Mizuka's challenge to eat this nasty passion-fruit dumpling she keeps on hand in exchange for information. (The first time was in Episode 2, where he eats it to find out about "Doc's" granddaughter, a classmate of theirs in the Karate Club. They wanted to use her to try to get a discount on the robot parts, but it didn't pan out.)

Kai shows up at the no-longer abandoned office building with some groceries for Kona. She thanks him, but apparently her manner of speaking confuses him. It's because she's saying TXT-speak out loud ("Thx", "TX", and "Facedesk" in Japanese are a revelation.). She gets even crazier from there, muttering about security, and how "They" shouldn't get at her "BL Folder", and refusing Kai's suggestion that a regular house would be better. And finally how the abandoned look is more Moe, and how he should get out, or bring her back a half-naked guy. "Time to fap," she says (I can't be 100% sure about this translation). Kai wonders about her parents, but all she says is that her dad is in Tokyo, and mom.... she doesn't say.

There is a brief interlude at Subaru's home. His dad, watching baseball, mentions that he heard about a robot tournament last week, but Subaru swears he had nothing to do with it, and that he's through with robots. He was a champion in Jr. High. The implication hanging heavy in the air is that dad must have a real hate-on for the whole robot thing. Mom being absent could be related?

Aki goes with Mitchie to the candy company to ask about sponsorship. It does not go well. The man is a vulgar creep (he trained his parrots to say "Hooters").

At the hangar, Subaru asks Kai if he'll team up with him to go the the first Robo-One world cup in Las Vegas next month. He refuses. Oddly, it's Subaru who issues the challenge to settle it with a Kill-Ballad match. Apparently after 22 wins, Subaru finally beat him, and so we next see him packing up the club's robot for practice.

In front of the hangar, they square off with their robots, and after explaining how M45 works, he asks Kai how it is he avoided the unavoidable attack. Kai doesn't want to talk about it, but says that it wasn't a gaming trick.

We get a flashback, which he narrates, how four months after they watched the rocket launch, on 9/11/10, some event on the ferry SS Anemone caused everyone aboard to faint. This included his class, on their way back from a school trip to Kagoshima. He and Aki were the only ones permanently affected. He calls it "Elephant-Mouse Syndrome" where their time perception is skewed. Aki's seizures result in her experiencing five minutes as if it were a second, and apparently Kai's is the reverse. This explains his incredible reaction times.

While sitting on a hillside in the twilight, about to play his game, he suddenly gets reception issues, and barely catches a glimpse of the lavender-haired girl. Then, as his game tries to reconnect, a voice comes through asking "Can you hear me?"

---

I had to go back to the first episode to check on a few things, and I noticed a few other things. The girl with the long brown hair (Aki's sister, Misa), the one watching them compete appears on a commercial for the Exoskeleton company. She's the one who provided the robotic leg braces to the girl in the convenience store (Irei Mizuka), who was injured in a crash 15 years earlier and has had the legs for 4.

I had forgotten about a scene at the end, because it didn't seem to fit with the conventional, plausible nature of the show. A girl with long lavender hair and a glowing ring on her forehead is standing there, holding a feather, apparently dictating a report, but all we hear of it is her reciting the date and time (June 13th, 2019 19:09) and that nothing has changed.

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Robotics;Notes Ep. 3

Finally got back to this.

We join our heroes on the way to the competition in Tokyo. In a flashback, we learn that the creator of the game gladly gave them to code to use the game's control system with their robot, and with a little help from the electronics shop owner, they were ready to go in a week.

Their first Robo-One match is against a previous winner, and fortunately, Kai's ability to analyze the enemy's moves really pays off, and he flattens him handily.

Mercifully, we are spared the one thing I hate in anime, the interminable fighting tournament, filled with spectators analyzing the action, and the contestants salvaging a win out of a loss by rampant rules lawyering. Instead, we get a montage, leading quickly to the finale.

The finale is against a suspiciously familiar person, dressed in a Char Ensemble :-) calling himself Mr. Pleiades. Kai instantly recognizes him behind the mask as their classmate Hidaka Subaru. This instantly puts his showmanship off balance, and he denies it. Kai even points out that Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades.

The match is a tough one, with the club's robot getting knocked down twice vs. once for M-45. What doesn't help is that Kai is apparently subject to the same kind of micro seizures as Aki, and we get momentary flashbacks to something horrible that must have happened to him as a kid on some ship. It nearly costs him the match, but he is able to pull off one last move. The toy has a mode where it sits down and wheels in the butt propel it forward, thus carrying both robots out of the ring. We're left for the moment with the impression that this might have won it for them, but no, it actually counts as the third fall for their bot, so they lose.

At the highshool, the vice principal gives them a day to clear their belongings out of the clubhouse, but Kai has one ace up his sleeve. He's managed to summon Subaru to the office, and hands him a cardboard copy of the mask, well, more like "forces on him" rather than "hands". Basically at that moment, he blackmails Subaru into joining the club (something Aki has been unable to do for the past year), and thus, the Robotics club DID win the Robo-One competition. Rules Lawyering saves the day!

There are some other elements. Aki's older sister is revealed to have been the Robo-One champion 9 years earlier. She's apparently not talking to anyone in the family, and she's working for some guy in a possibly sinister corporation (is there any other kind in Anime?) that is taking an unusual interest in the competition and our heroes.

And some celebrity girl named Frau Koujirou is on the plane with them as they return to their home island of Tanegashima, and a small handful of the press is there to quiz her about her arrival. The credits make it clear that she's going to be part of the club.

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Mysterious Girlfriend X Manga

TKTranslate just recently put up a big fat complete collection of the translated Manga through chapter 71 on the torrents. If you search Nyaatorrents for "Mysterious Girlfriend X 1-71 + Extras" you should be able to go right to it.  I just finished getting it, and it's very interesting to see just how closely the Anime followed the Manga, almost shot for shot in some cases.

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Robotics;Notes Ep. 1 & 2

Two episodes in, and it has a certain ... I don't know if I should say Charm, but calling it "Comfortable" just sounds odd.  Maybe warmth.

I hadn't even intended on watching it, but I pulled in the first episode, and decided to get the second. I need to check for the next WhyNot sub, since uTorrent's RSS and Favorites function is made of fail. ("Why didn't you match? It's RIGHT THERE!")

So anyway, I know some folks would avoid it because the lead-in makes it look like it's about giant robots. Eh, not so much. The series centers around Aki, a girl with a very healthy sense of unjustified optimism, and Kai, her polar opposite. They are the last two members of their high-school robotics club, which is in serious danger of being disbanded. Her dream is to complete the club's one big project, a full scale replica of "Gunvarrel", a giant robot from a cartoon a decade ago that is still somehow popular.  It's housed in a disused hangar at an even more disused airstrip, where they tinker with it after school. His dream is, well, all he wants to do is keep playing his robot fighting game, Kill-Ballad. He's already the 5th-ranked player worldwide, and he kicks the game's creator's ass so bad in a random-match-up that he is accused of cheating. The game is played on an iPhone-like device that seems to be ubiquitous. And any time anyone asks him to do something he doesn't want to do, which is just about anything, he says sure, if they can beat him at the game.

The Vice Principal who wants to shut them down demands a very detailed budget on how they can finish the project before the year is up, and it's a very big one.  She is dubious that the two of them can accomplish anything, even with the money, so she sets an impossible condition, they have to show some results.  There's a Robo-1 competition coming up.  If they can complete and win, she'll approve the budget.  Aki shows her guts and determination and agrees!

Then reality smacks her in the face.  They don't even have a Robo-1 Robot, nor the money for one, nor the expertise to compete.  But she's determined to make a go of it, somehow.  Kai just keeps his head down and plays his game.

Robo-1 is an actual robotics competition that's existed for a decade.  You may have seen YouTube videos of these 1-2' tall robots powered by hobby servos dancing, or doing obstacle courses, or even wrestling.  They're pretty amazing, all things considered.

But it turns out that in the legacy of junk their garden-shed clubhouse is stuffed with, they DO have an 8 year old toy robot from the glory days of the club, the days when her idol, the club president and her older sister were members and were incredibly successful.  It's old, and beat-up, and the battery pack is unsalvageable, but she manages to scrape together enough money and wheedle a deal with an electronic junk dealer to get something compatible.

Even with the toy working, she can't operate the thing well at all.  And with a week left before the competition, things look bleak.  But she thinks that with Kai's expertise at the game, perhaps he can control it, but the complicated R/C controller intimidates him.  But he DOES have the address of Kill-Ballad's creator thanks to the cheating accusation, and if he can get him to say, create an interface that will control the robot just like the game, they might have a chance.

That's the plot of the first two episodes, but that's not the story.  Why is Kai hanging around with Aki when he clearly doesn't share her interests?  Is it something to do with a promise to look after her he made to her older sister?  What was the accident that took her out, and left Aki with occasional petit-mal seizures?  There's more to this than just some low-tech Angelic Layer.

Yes, low-tech.  The year seems to be 2020, but there's nothing really stand-out advanced technologically.  Everyone's got a smartphone, and the girl at the convenience store has a leg exoskeleton so she can walk, but it's all plausible, even today.  Okay, the phones are powerful enough that Kai can use an Augmented Reality program to view Aki as a Cat-maid, but in ten years?  Plausible.  That they can win Robo-1 with determination and an 8-year-old toy robot, not so much.

So in spite of the opening, I don't think we're going to be seeing actual flying, blasting, energy-sword wielding Giant Robot Action, more likely they can just make the thing walk into the trade show, if they make it.  And that will be good enough.

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