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babelfish is always funny. great source of humor.

This is a region-0/hk-bootleg dvd-review. The anime hasn't been licensed in Region-1. It's currently +ACQ-30 for 3-discs/12-episodes. My copy is of AC. Scores: -- Art [*] A : A pretty good Mahoromatic-esque character art here. -- Video [*] A : Colors are bright and vivid. Animation-level is standard. here're some snapshots of child Warukyure: adult Warukiyure: Warukyure and Katsuoto: -- Audio [*] A : good stereo mix -- Voice-acting [*] A : pretty good Kanon-esque vocals. -- Subtitles [*] B- : Fansub-quality, with some spelling-typos here and there in some episodes. Seems that Warukyure's and Haidori's were in translated Chinese-names ( Flower Akirei and Edla, respectively). Grammar structure gets a bit engrishy in some places. It's easily followable. -- Story and Presentation [*] A : The story is a sci-fi romantic/drama comedy. -- Fanservice: [*] B : There was a goodly amount of fanservice here being set in a public-bathhouse setting. Catgirls in maid-outfit. Naked human and anthropomorph girls. Lolicon-heavy. -- Verdict: [*] B : as long as you keep your lolicon-bias in check. Otherwise, it'll be a C-grade because of the lolicon-fantasy premise. : This is a very interesting series, to say the least. It's chockfull of fanservice. It's lollicon-heavy with some pedophilia-vibe that the series acknowledged itself. Despite it all, the series is funny and engaging. High-schooler Tokino Katsuto inherited and runs a public-bathhouse from his grandpa. He's managing it with his sister. He gets pretty much gets killed or mortally-injured in the first two episodes establishing the story. Warukiyure's the reason. She crashlanded her ship on the bathhouse and gets him killed/mortally-injured again while playing hide-and-seek. Warukiyure imparts to him part of her soul for him to survive. The consequence is that Warukiyure becomes a kid and Katsuto becomes her legal-guardian. Haidora's seems to be related to her and was fighting her until Akina (Katsuto's shinto-priestess childhood (girl)friend) put a spell on her and transform her into a child. It gets a little awkward, to say the least. Beware: The critical misgivings I have for this series was Warukyure's character-premise of child/adult transformation. It's a little unsettling as it conveys pedophilia-fantasy, despite the innocent understanding/acceptance of high-schooler Katsuto as the main lead guy in the story. That stuff pretty much distracted me at first viewing while trying to enjoy the series as it pretty much got to my head of "WTF?! That was too blatant!". Oh, well. I'm not sure if I'm being a little too overly critical of this series, even tho I enjoyed it. I just didnt appreciate the subtle implication of trying to justify lolita complex thru the Warukyure's transformation. Despite that critical misgiving, the series is really enjoyable. --treatment--

This is a region-0/hk-bootleg dvd-review. The anime hasn't been licensed in Region-1. It's currently $30 for 3-discs/22-episodes. Some shops sell it up to $40 (not worth $40). There are several bootleg-versions of this show. My copy is of MI (Manga). You'll be better off getting it from the fansub-circuit. Scores: -- Art [*] A : A pretty good updated tenchi-esque character art here. -- Video [*] A : Colors are bright and vivid. Animation-level is standard. here's a snapshot of Shao-rin: -- Audio [*] A : good stereo mix -- Voice-acting [*] B : pretty standard tenchi-esque vocals. Ruan's vocal is Ayeka of Tenchi. -- Subtitles [*] B+ : Fansub-quality, with some occassional very minor spelling-typos here and there in some episodes. Grammar structure was pretty good for the most part in the early episodes of disc-1. Then it gets engrish-heavy in the last episode (the ruann cat-training episode) of disc-1. Disc-2 seems to start off with good grammar-subs again. -- Story and Presentation [*] B- : The story is about some variation of the Genie-myth. Very kid-friendly fantasy comedy. A little boring in the earlier episodes. No fan-service. -- Verdict: [*] B : This is a variation of the Genie-myth/story. You guys seen the 60's live-action sitcom I Dream of Jenie, right? Basically the same stuff, but set in the anime-standard high-school setting. Tasuke's dad sent him some Chinese artifacts that contain the moon-spirit and sun-spirit guardians. You got Shaorin as the moon-spirit and Ruan as the sun-spirit competing to be their master's, high-schooler Tasuke, only guardian and have his favor. Shao-rin becomes a student and Ruan becomes a teacher. They pretty much trash the high-school building (again and again) with their fights. The series drags along in the earlier episodes and really doesn't get interesting until Izumo (pretty boy adult shinto priest) got interested in Shao-rin. Ruan's an adult, too, btw. Tasuke's two buddies have crushes on Shao-rin and Ruan, respectively. I haven't finished all of this series, yet. I'm a little dis-interested with it at the moment. --treatment--

Exactly what jsarclight said above.

meh! I'm gonna wait for AoD's actual review of this upcoming Mangle-package. I ain't gonna pay twice for the same crap as Mangle's Plus-movie. --treatment--

I'm assuming the 1/60 Strike will be the Roy again and not the Hikaru, right? Anyway, any info on any improvements on the 1/60's?

Uhmm, Valkyrie's are a multi-role weapon? I mean, the destroids seems to be only good for static/limited-movement ground combat, i.e. traditional tanks and missile-boats. And, yeah. Valkyries are friggin' kewl!

SWEET! Can't wait for ep-3.

choose yer poison... [*] FLCL ^_^ [*] Golden Boy ^_^ [*] Mahoromatic [*] Samurai X Rorouni Kenshin Trust and Betrayal OVAs [*] Ranma 1/2 1st tv-season and Nihao My Concubine movie . [*] Cowboy Bebop (Best Sessions and Movie) [*] Chobits (in japanese-dub!) [*] LA Blue Girl and LA Blue Girl Returns. and the best recommendation is.... [*] AZUMANGA DAIOH !!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup. It's rated T 13+. Whatever that rating means. Anyway, I really suggest checking it out from your local barnes-n-noble (or any bookstore that allows in-store reading in your area) before making a decision to purchase. Imho, Osaka's humor was basically ruinned with that stupid establishment of the Bronx/Brooklyn shenanigan of a localization in this initial volume. I'm now alot more scared of ADV's upcoming english-dub of the AzuDai anime. The only consolation of this manga was that the rest of the characters were pretty much similar to the anime.

review: Well, I bought the manga today. It's $9.99 for about 160+- pages. Manga's not cheap, no? Anyway, I'm just halfway thru reading it. The translation starts off a bit slow and quite dry. Yukari's teaching Spanish language for some reason. She's an english-teacher in the anime. And Osaka was presented as having a nu-yohkah akcent: fuhgeddaboutit??? yo, how _you_ doin'? ???? WTF?! Geezus friggin krizt on a bike! That's the most horrible representation of Osaka's character. Osaka would've been better accepted/translated as having a Georgia or Tennessee twang, rather than a weird Bronx or Brooklyn that they wrote in on the manga. Other than those above, it's ok. The manga humor was a bit slow on the start. Then it gets better about 20 or so pages into it. If you'd seen the anime, that is. Verdict: -- is it worth it? --- [*] Only if you're a manga-fan/manga-collector or a casual Azu-fan. [*]Otherwise, it's a maybe. It might entertain you while you wait for the Azudai anime release slated for early next year. ---- I have no idea why the average price of manga (not just AzuDai, but the rest of US-released manga) is at $10. They should be priced at $8 or even $5. Calvin and Hobbes books are still a better buy. edit: seems like invision screwed up the format of non-alphanumeric characters. weird.

One important aspect to note, however, is how many of MWers got their yammies in either list -prices or sale-prices. That aspect will somehow make the avg $953.73/collection a little invalid dollar-figure. For example, I got my 1/48 for like $88 and a couple of my 1/60's under $29. Of course, my first yammie (1/60 1J/FP) did cost me $100 before I ever found out about MW and HLJ sales.

Hmmmm. Link me to a pic... The only Hikaru DYRL 1S toy I have ever seen was the one made by Bandai, and that had a BLACK heatshield. Don't forget the Bandai 1/72 HCM VF-1S Hikaru, that had a red heatshield! And of course, even Bandai later made a correct red clip on heatshield for the 1/55 VF-1S Strike Valkyrie. See here. Banpresto made an SD VF-1S Hikaru with red heatshield and removable Strike Armor a couple of years ago. Graham ok. dagnabbit! now i want that SD VF-1S Hikaru.

is that true? last time i ordered from hlj, they were still using ups and it always took a week or so. i'm a little discouraged with this SAL-stories.

Dunno if some fansub-circuits still have 'em. On the region-0/bootleg front, the best one (FX-perfect) is totally gone off the market and the remaining MI/MAC boots have totally crap engrish from what I've read. You're better off getting it online in official Region-1 at DigitalEyes (they have the best prices). Here's the price and ordering page for volume-1: http://www.digitaleyes.net/Details.cfm?info=DVDEV001 They're also selling the Eva-boxset for like a hair under +ACQ-100, too. It'll be expensive (avg +ACQ-30/per volume) if you buy it locally on retail like in Suncrap. --treatment--

Well, no. Not animefiend-bad. It's just the same art and animation that you will find in another anime titled Colorful. edit: fwiw, it's just one episode and I'm leaning on that they did that episode that way intentionally.

Actually, it was Musashi that got killed. Again.* (*Musashi was killed at least once in the original series and on nearly every Getter Robo theatrical feature.) I confused those guys' names again.

Definitely agreed! The plot went out the window somewhere in ep-1 or something and it was all bad-ass old-fashioned ass-kicking action from the Getters. The death of Benkei still kinda makes me wonder why it was necessary to do so, tho. The ending was a little too corny, tho, imho. Overall, Shin Getter Robo is total fun old-school robot-action with enough angst and more than enough action to make it worth the purchase. --treatment--

Yes, there's one episode late in the series where the animation and art went primitively bizarre. I'm not quite sure if it was intentional since the whole episode was dealing with the grey-area emotional issues of one of the lead characters (won't tell u who. ) or if the animation-house just went on strike or something.

Bummer, dude. I'm in Southern Cali. SD. The marketplace is called Mitsuwa Market. I dunno the name of the store that has the EVA-Renewal box, but is inside of Mitsuwa Market. Is the mitsuwa market place your talking about in LA, or is it in SD? I'ma have to check the LA mitsuwa anyway. I just wanna look at it in person. No way am I shelling out 425 for dvd's like that. It's gotta be made of platinum for me to even think about buying it. The one I saw was in SD and only had one copy. Maybe the LA store has more copies or something.

Bummer, dude. I'm in Southern Cali. SD. The marketplace is called Mitsuwa Market. I dunno the name of the store that has the EVA-Renewal box, but is inside of Mitsuwa Market.

So yesterday (9/10/03), I was checking out the local japanese market to buy pocky almonds and, as always, wandered into manga/dvd/audio store inside. There I saw, still in it's still-sealed brown packaging-box, with pretty much an un-noticeable profile until you stop and try to read and then realized what the label on the box was stating: Neon Genesis Evangelion Renewal boxset. The swanky uber-kewl red-foldout Region-2-only release that I've only seen pics. I can't believe it. It's supposed to be sold-out in Japan and not available here in the States. Yet, there it is. Still sealed. Since there was only two customers there at that time (including me) and the other dude was busy pre-ordering some Japanese music or something, I asked the other clerk, non-chalantly, how much the brown box-package (the EVA renewal box) was. The clerk looked it up, checked his price-table on it, and shake his head to me with some hesitation. I was expecting an answer that it's already sold or is not available for sale, but the answer was neither: I'm not sure if the Renewal-box package is still there today. But I passed on it. I feel kinda weirded out about it, but I just can't afford that much on it. I'm still saving up for the 1/48 FAST-packs and other stuff. Would any of you other EVA-fans pass on it, too, given the $425+tax price?

and Ishtar!Don't forget Ishtar! And Isamu Dyson. The most bad-ass pilot since Max Jenius and Roy Focker, not to mention the best bad-ass enigmatic devil-may-care-attitude character before Spike Spiegel. btw, Plus also introduced and gave to most of us Yoko Kanno's excellent music-compositions. All the Plus music are still golden to this day! hahaha! true, true.

I'm still heavily bothered by the new Galactica having Starbuck as a woman. Lt. Starbuck was one of my (and alot of others' I know of) early heroes when I was growing up. The way he hits on and conducts himself among the women was just _the_ irreplaceable mark of Galactica to me and to alot of other boys who grew up with it. It was total sacriledge to have Starbuck dishonored by turning this classic sci-fi character into a woman. Why can't the writers of this new Galactica on Sci-Fi just friggin add an additional strong female-character into the story instead of desecrating the memory of Starbuck? Just way beyond comprehension, i tell yah.

For shame! Starbuck was played by none other than the Faceman himself, Dirk Benedict. Now for your pennence, I condemn you to watch the second season of Buck Rogers, Hawkman and all. Edit: You edit quickly, my son. But not quickly enough. yeah. rol! for some odd reason, i was thinkin Starbuck's/Face's name was Baxter instead of Dirk B. hahaha! I feel so old now. hahaha! --treatment--