Animedragon

Yes, that clip comes from You're Under Arrest. But the two lady cops from YUA are nothing like the Dirty Pair, they don't blow up, destroy and otherwise wreck everything they get involved with.

The series with the Dango and the girl with a starfish obsession is Clanad. The one where the girl is always saying "Gao" is indeed Air. Kanon is a series with some rather weird storylines. When I first saw it I thought is was a good series, then a few years later I decided I didn't like it, now a few years later on again it's one of my favouries. Air is one of those series I really can't get my head round. It's a good story up to a point, I really don't understand how or why the main guy became a bird to my mind that ruins an otherwise good story. Then there's the second series that makes no sense at all. I think the main problem is that the series was too short to tell the story properly.

I've recently watched several of those already mentioned and would agree that they are forgotten gems. As my contribution to this topic I'd like to offer "Kurogane Communication" a series from 1998 which is made up of 24 episodes each running for 15 minutes. It's another of those "Post apocoliptic World" series where mankind develped sentient war machines that were so efficient that they wiped out their creators. The story centres around a young girl who is believed to be the last remaining human and is being cared for by a group of five sentient robots. Life is not easy of course because the war machines are still active and out to destroy anything thing they encounter. The story is well told and intersting to watch.

Welcome aboard. I hope you enjoy it here.

I've just been watching "Someday's Dreamers" a 12 part slice of life series from 2002. It's a series that's seemingly been forgotten over the years, which is a shame because it's a quiet peaceful series with a good storyline and great characters. This is a happy upbeat series but part of the last episode is going to resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one.

Someone knitted this amazing cover for the top of one of our local post boxes.

Just finished Kanon, I always enjoy watching this series because it has a good story and an interesting cast of characters. It tells quite a serious story but it's not without some amusing incidents and there's some really good banter between some of the characters, both in the dialogue and visually.

The whole discipline thing is a complex issue with so many variables; home environment, parents, peer groups etc. I don't think anyone has really come up with an effective way of both punishing people and teaching them to be a better member of society.

It was a bit scary, but it kept everyone in line. While I agree with banning the use of the cane I think the problem is that there was no suitable and effective replacement. A couple of my friends used to be teachers and said that without any effective form of punishment for wrongdoing the unruly students just looked at them and said "so what are you going to do about it?" knowing full well that there wasn't much the teacher could do.

I was in school during the 1960's and I guess things have changed a bit since then. Actually my old school wasn't a bad school, it just wasn't a very good one. Very few of the teachers were any good a passing on their knowledge.

When I was at school sleeping at your desk would get you into serious trouble and usually meant being sent to the headmaster's study. One of my teachers threw things at sleepers, usually whatever he had to hand, and his aim was deadly accurate! Sleeping anywhere else in the school was very high risk because the school bullies would do nasty things to you, or your stuff, or both, while you were sleeping.

Benches on a railway station.

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.... <checks calendar>.. Hang on, it's Wednesday today.

I've just finished Madoka Magica and the movie. The TV series is excellent. The Rebellion move rather less so. I think they vastly overdid the surreal graphics (have they not heard the saying "less is more"?). I think it would have been a far better movie if they'd concentrated more on clearly telling the story rather than all the weird graphics. But I guess that's what happens when you let a production team go for maximum visual impact rather than story development. The term "style over substance" comes to mind. I don't really see the point of the movie, unless it's extract a bit more cash from the franchise, because the TV series has quite a conclusive finale.

I don't have any tattoos or piercings, and I don't want any. Personally I don't understand why anyone would want a tattoo, I especially can't understand why someone would want their whole arm or body covered in tattoos, but it's their choice so I just accept it and don't make any comments. Then again I do things that some others wouldn't do and don't understand why I do, so each to their own.

As the Sun sinks slowly below the horizon two children stand at the water's edge to witness the end of the day.

Yes, the practicality of the merchandise on sale at the last couple of conventions I went to had dropped quite a lot. Most of the stuff I bought was more in the way of memorabilia of the series I liked, if I had a model, CD or art book it was like I had 'part' of the series. I have to say that I find the idea of a body pillow with a waifu printed on it just a tiny bit creepy. I think the coolest thing I bought at a con was the Totoro.

The anime merchandise available at conventions 17 to 20 years ago largely consisted of art books for various series which had some really beautiful pictures in them, all the text was in Japanese but that didn't matter the books were worth buying just to look at the pictures. Other items were original soundtrack CDs with most of the track lists in Japanese (sometimes I could find translations on the 'Net), enamel pin badges were also a common item. There was usually a small collection of character figures and model kits, the the size of the packaging meant that the dealers couldn't get many of them in their cars. One year there was a stall selling anime plush toys and I got a rather nice Totoro who stands about a foot high to the tip of his ears. 17 to 10 years ago the rot started to set in with more and more dealers selling locally produced stuff and not all of it was properly licenced, and some of the soundtrack CDs were pirate copies, some of which were really professionally produced and not easy to spot.

A while back I read somewhere that some anime studios produce series just to sell merchandise, they're not really bothered about the story just as long as its got cute girls they can sell models and other stuff of. The trouble is that if they keep doing that eventually people will get fed up with generic series and stop buying them. About 10 years a go I used to regularly atend anime conventions and I saw the contents of the dealer's rooms slowly change from quality original Japanese merchandise to items produced by Western companies who were jumping on the merch bandwagon. Some of the stuff was good, but most wasn't.

"Garnet" the wonderful ending song from "The Girl who Leapt Through Time".

I rewatched "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" yesterday, it's an interesting story. What would you do if you suddenly found you had the ability to jump back in time? Well, High School student Makoto Konno has the perfect answer, she'll leap back to retake those tests and improve her grades and avoid a few personal mishaps, then she'll set about "helping" her friend's relationships. But she soon learns that meddling with the past the change the present isn't quite as easy as it seems and can lead to unintended and tragic consequences.

Your first point is very true. Here in the UK anime got a VERY bad press due to the actions of some distributors (no names, no pack drill) if I'd read that before I actually saw any anime I most likely would never have started watching it. What hooked me into anime was the quality of the whole package. Artwork, characters (their design and personalities), the storylines and the background music and the way all these elements are blended together to create a whole experience. If you read a book by, for example, J.K.Rowling, J.R.R.Tolkien or Agatha Christie they go to great lengths to create the character's personalities and situations for their stories so it's easy to believe that Harry Potter, Gandalf and Miss Marple etc are real people and when you reach the last page and close the book you know that somewhere those people are carrying on with their lives and I get the same feeling at the end of an anime series. Someone once said that in Western animation the storyline dictates the character's actions, while in anime it's the characters that drive the storyline forward. It's a very subtle, but very important difference. I could probably waffle on about other aspects of anime that I like, but I've waffled enough for one post.

In 1996 I discovered anime by accident while channel hopping on my TV. One of the channels was showing what I took to be a cartoon of some sort, but after a few minutes I realised that it was nothing like any of the cartoons I'd seen before, the artwork and animation were far better and it was obviously part of a long running story so when the episode ended I took to the Internet, or the World Wide Web as it was known then, it wasn't as big as it is today and it was a lot slower. In those days access was by dial-up connection and even at 56K pages took a while to load, but at the end of my search I knew that what I'd been watching was called 'anime' and it came from Japan. Much to my disappointment the TV channel stopped showing this 'anime' thing after a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks after that I found out that a local record shop sold anime series on VHS tapes and one the the series they had was one of the ones I seen part of on TV, so I bought the wholes series, which was about 5 or 6 VHS tapes. The rest,as they say, is history.

One thing I don't quite understand about YouTubers is why do they speak so fast? Some of them gabble away so quickly that I can't keep up with what they're saying, in the end I just stop their video and go somewhere else.

Gunbuster.