Reviews - Animefangirl!

Cherry manga review

Cherry is a short romantic comedy series by Eisaku Kubonouchi. I quit after one volume, then skipped to the end to find out it was all a dream… or was it? The story is about two young adults from the boonies who meet, fall in love “at first sight” and run away together to Tokyo to avoid a forced marriage.

At first Cherry seemed like it would be an interesting look at the difficulties of city life for a pair of outsiders with no money. Can they overcome the barriers, or will they be forced to go home in despair? Will Fuuko’s rich family come looking for her? Will the police? Where will they live? What will they do for money? What— stop worrying. Kubonouchi took the easy way out.

The couple almost immediately run into helpful people who give them a place to live, both Fuuko and her boyfriend find part-time jobs almost immediately, everybody loves the innocent, cheerful Fuuko, and Sakurabou’s only worry becomes “When can I have sex with Fuuko?” Every time he shows up, that’s all he can think about. I felt filthy just reading it, so I quit.

*spoilers for how it ends*
I skipped to the last chapter and it turns out everything was a dream. The house Fuuko supposedly lived in is ruined and empty, the people he “met” are probably people he imagined from reading about them in a magazine, and his ex-girlfriend is the one who runs from her wedding to be with him, not Fuuko. Fuuko never existed in the first place…or did she? There are a couple of problems with this:

1. This setup would have worked for a 1 volume series. After 4 volumes, however, the readers have grown to know and love the cast. Fuuko in particular has been shoved heavily down our throats, and now you say she never existed?
2. Several months must have passed in Sakurabou’s dream. In that time he must have fallen head over heels for Fuuko and forgotten all about his old GF (Meguppe who?). You can’t send him back to the beginning and tell him to re-fall for Meguppe, it’s not so simple.
3. Meguppe leaves her wedding to come see Sakurabou. But he still has no job, no prospects, no place of his own and no proper education. As long as he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, he can’t take care of anyone else. They have no future.
4. In the original timeline Meguppe turned into a skank who insulted and dumped Sakurabou very cruelly after leaving for Tokyo. Having seen this side of her, he’ll probably never be able to see her in the same light again. At the very least he’ll never trust her, so this relationship is not going to work.

In other words, “It was all just a dream” doesn’t solve anything at all! Thanks for that slap in the face, Kubonouchi. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! anime review

After watching what I could stomach of Darker than Black, I wanted to try something a little more lighthearted. I often download stuff at random, but this time I read the description and it sounded funny: Italian hitman who looks like baby trains Japanese high schooler to become Mafia leader. What could possibly go wrong?

I watched 10 episodes of Katekyo Hitman Reborn! before giving up, but I won’t say anything went “wrong” with it. More like something was right, so they took that something and reused it over and over again, thereby flogging it to death.

Basically each episode was like the one before it. The same things happened, the characters had the same reactions to it, it ended the same way, on to the next. Tsuna acts like a flabbergasted moron, Reborn is all-wise and all-knowing, Lambo is cute but annoying, Haru is also cute and also annoying, Kyoko is cute and clueless, Yamaguchi is an idiot who thinks everything is a game, etc, etc. You can tell what’s going to come out of everyone’s mouth before they even open it.

I found the first episode or two pretty funny, seeing all the crazy things Tsuna would get up to after being shot with the Dying Will bullet. But after that it was just “Bullet of the Day” ad nauseam, and Tsuna didn’t seem to be getting any brighter or more likable. Also I hate manipulative know-it-alls like Reborn. That smug bastard just pissed me off, episode after episode. If the two main characters suck so hard, there’s very little a series can do to redeem itself.

I hear eventually there’ll be some tournament-style fighting and some time travelling, and nothing could be less appealing to me, so I figured I’d quit while I was ahead. At least I laughed my head off at the Organ Block, so that’s worth something.

Darker than Black anime review

I watched a few episodes of Darker than Black just now, but it’s really not my thing. Firstly I’m not into series that take themselves very seriously, especially when they’re so slow and take forever to build up. Secondly the main character’s dullard act is a little too convincing. Just watching him bored the crap out of me. Thirdly the two arcs I watched weren’t very interesting, simply because there was no reason for me to care. Certainly it’s all building up to some grand storyline that will help figure out what Hell’s Gate is, etc etc, but at this point in time it’s just a bunch of whiners and vicious psychopaths beating the crap out of each other.

I asked myself “Give me one good reason why I’m watching this crap” and came up with zilch, so th.at’s was the end of Darker than Black for me. I won’t go so far as to call it completely horrible, though, since a lot of people enjoyed it. If you like conspiracies and mysteries and that sort of thing, you’ll probably get something out of this.

I think I need something either more light-hearted or more straightforward next time

All going well

I’ve been meaning to post for a while, but I always find some reason not to. As planned, I finished Teach Yourself Cantonese at the end of February, and I’ve been working on Colloquial Cantonese while listening to Cantonese radio and watching Canto TV, i.e. the ATV live stream. I guess part of the reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I felt I had to write a review of both books, but nobody reads this blog anyway so I don’t know what I was worried about.

Teach Yourself Cantonese was a pretty decent book, it taught me a lot of high-level vocabulary by the end, and it used hanzi all the way through so I could enter things into my SRS. Colloquial Cantonese is a near-total waste of money. It barely teaches anything over 15 worthless lessons, and barely teaches any characters at all. The one great thing I learned from the whole book is how to understand weather reports. And those Hong Kongers love their weather reports, they’re always going on about it. Now I can understand when they’re talking about clear skies, or relative humidity, or advising people to wear more clothing because it will be cold.

I was just listening to an announcer going on about it on RTHK 2 just now, and I was so chuffed when I understood every single word that I came over here to post about it. 😀 Up next I’m going to mine the Lonely Planet Cantonese guide for more sentences while continuing to grab vocabulary from Cantonese news broadcasts. I learn about 20 new compounds from each news broadcast, just by following the Mandarin subs closely while listening to their words. It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve studied Japanese and a bit of Mandarin before, it shouldn’t be too hard. I get the gist of each news item mainly because of that prior background. Here’s what I’ve learned today:

接力 zip3 lik6 – relay
走勢 zau2 sai3 – tendency
出現 ceot1 jin6 – to appear; to emerge; to arise
動作 dung6 zok3 – action; movement
表明 biu2 ming4 – to clarify
要求 jiu1 kau4 – request
估計 gu2 gai3 – to estimate
投資者 tau4 zi1 ze2 – investor
完全 jyun4 cyun4 – completely
薪金 san1 gam1 – salary; wage; pay
討論 tou2 leon6 – to discuss; to talk over; to debate; discussion; talk; debate
休息 jau1 sik1 – to rest; to take a break; recess; a rest; a break
答案 daap3 on3 – [n] answer
出發 ceot1 faat3 – to set off (on a journey)
海水 hoi2 seoi2 – [n] seawater
質疑 zat1 ji4 – call into question (truth or validity)
功能 gung1 nang4 – function
重開 cung4 hoi1 – to reopen
範圍 faan6 wai4 – range, scope, limit
輻射 fuk1 se6 – radiation, irradiation
反擊 faan2 gik1 – to hit back

Hayate no Gotoku manga review

Hayate no Gotoku! a.k.a. Hayate the Combat Butler is an anime based on a manga series by Kenjirou Hata about a debt-ridden butler and the rich young girl who saves him. The story is pretty straightforward: Ayasaki Hayate’s parents rack up a debt of 159 million yen to the yakuza and take off, leaving Hayate to handle it. After a failed attempt to kidnap Sanzenin Nagi (the rich girl) for money, he ends up working for her as her butler and owing his debt to her instead.

I started out by watching an episode sometime in November and really liked it, but didn’t have time to really dig in until earlier this year. I spent a couple of weeks blasting through both seasons of the anime and then read the manga from chapter 148 onwards. I’d like to go back and read it from volume 1, but I’ll save it for another time.

I tend to prefer character-driven manga to story-driven manga anyway, unless the story is really good. HnG has a number of interesting and likeable characters (Hayate, Maria, Nagi, Tama, Hinagiku, Isumi) and not so interesting and not so likeable characters (Sakuya, Wataru, Saki, Klaus), but even the less interesting ones still make for a few good laughs.

I enjoyed the constant spoofs of and references to other anime and manga as well. I actually got a lot of them, which shows I’ve been watching too much anime… That said, I thought the quality of episodes in Season One was really iffy. Some were good, some were not so good. Later on I discovered that most of the ones I thought were bad were actually filler, which just goes to show that Hata’s unique touch isn’t so easily imitated.

Anyway, after putting the anime behind me, I’ve finally caught up to the current manga chapter, chapter 309. That was a whirlwind ride, especially the Mykonos arc where Hayate ran into his old flame Athena. I like Athena a lot. This is may sound like blasphemy to Hinagiku fans (of which I was one until Athena showed up), but I think Athena fits Hayate better in a lot of ways. She understands that he has feelings, that he’s often in pain, that sometimes that smile is just a mask. Hinagiku still doesn’t really know Hayate, deep down inside. To be honest I think the main frontrunners for Hayate’s affection right now are Maria and Athena, with Hina in third place. Athena x Hayate forever!

That being the case, I’m rather pissed off at this whole Alice arc, wiping out Athena’s memory and turning her into a kid again for 3 months. That puts a halt on any romantic development for the next 200 chapters or so. Boo! Hiss! Hata’s also added another girl called Luca/Ruka to the mix, we’ll have to see what she can bring to the party. It might be time to drop this for a while and see how things work out.