I skipped over three episodes when I realized that this one was from the unreleased-in-North-America seventh volume of the manga.
Episode 17: Kyoya gets trapped in a department store with no cell phone or money after the Club guys drag him there while he’s half asleep. Fortunately he runs into Haruhi and they do some bonding over fast food, vendor stalls and melon snacks. It was neat seeing his personality change when he’s not at school or in the club. I’m not going to do a lot of screen caps here (because it’s late) but here are a few of my favorite moments:
Kyoya wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. And as my mother refused to wake me up in the morning for years because she claims I was ”abusive” I can totally relate to this. (BTW, I deny the abusive charge. I just get grumpy.)
Kyoya spends much of his day in a bad mood. It’s pretty funny to see him lose his cool so often.
Aww! Tamaki’s pretty! Seriously though, I included this shot because I always get Sailor Moon flashbacks whenever they do Tamaki montages of him being sweet or gathering the club guys. He’s totally the Usagi of the group.
Next episode, Hunny’s little brother Chika shows up!
Just in case everyone hasn’t seen it yet, here’s a cover for the “season eight” Buffy comic in the works from Dark Horse and Joss Whedon. It’s sooo pretty! I don’t think there’s an exact release date for it yet, but I’ve heard early 2007.
I just saw a “Global Manga” on Newsarama that’s coming out in February from Tokyopop called My Dead Girlfriend. This looks really cute! Or, spooky, or whatever. I’m going to keep my eye open for this next year.
This morning I finally got around to digging out the movies I brought with me on vacation and watched a Japanese movie called Swing Girls.
A group of underachieving girls in a summer make up math class take the chance to ditch for the day by offering to deliver lunches to the school’s brass band, which has left for a baseball game with no food. Since they’re fooling around and miss their stop the lunch boxes go bad and fells almost all of the band. Only the percussionist is left standing and he must recruit a new band to play at the games… so of course he blackmails the math class girls into signing up. Because of their low numbers (and two rock chicks signing up with their guitars) they decide to form a big band jazz group instead and begin learning how to play. They’re reluctant at first but start to get into it after finally making it (badly) through their first song. The girls are ready to play for a crowd, but just then the original brass band gets out of the hospital and takes over again. Crushed but now determined to play, the girls must get jobs to buy new instruments, learn how to play properly and figure out how to swing together as a band.
They didn’t spend a lot of time on the girls learning to play, unfortunately (and a friend told me that the actors in the movie learned to play while filming, which may or may not be true) which would have been interesting to see. And it was a bit odd to have the slacker part of the group show up later in the movie and play as well as the core group does (which was what happened in Waterboys as well **see below**) but it was still entertaining and cute. I laughed a lot while watching it, which is saying something since I had just woken up and am not at my best first thing in the a.m.
I found out afterwards that it’s from the director of Waterboys, which explains why I spend a lot of the movie thinking, “Hey, this is kind of like Waterboys!“ :) Another funny movie, if you’re looking for something to watch, but this one is about a group of boys who join synchronized swimming to get close to the hot new swim coach only to have her quit immediately after. Then they’re stuck learning on their own. Their reluctant new coach keeps trying to ditch them, which backfires because the swim team would always learn some sort of valuable lesson and think the coach did it on purpose. Another movie I put off watching for a while then really liked it when I got around to it.
My nephew insists I blog for some reason tonight, so despite doing nothing but lying on the couch for the past few days, reading, rewatching some anime and offering commentary for his battles while he plays Soul Calibur III, here goes. Just for him.
(And speaking of Soul Calibur, he was losing one battle rather badly, then… KO! He won! Apparently the character has a suicide move. Those are the kind of opponents I’d need if I played fighting games - suicidal ones.)
Last night I read Gorgeous Carat Galaxy, which is a continuation of the regular Gorgeous Carat series. (Only click on the “Gorgeous Carat Galaxy” link at the DMP site if you want major spoilers for the manga.) I admit I’m a bit disappointed in this book. I found the plot to be really, hmm, loose? Basically the author could have told the story in half the time if she had tightened up the plot a bit. It kind of rambled and made little sense in places. The art was similar to the regular series, but I didn’t like Noir having a cigar clamped in his lips for most of the book. It got tired pretty quickly and looked a little goofy. There also didn’t seem to be much point to the story. It was a fairly standard murder mystery with a couple of twists thrown in, but didn’t do much to advance the characters of either Florian (the perpetual victim) or Noir and especially didn’t do much for their relationship.
Ever since Florian was “bought” as a payment for a debt by the infamous phantom thief Noir of Paris, the two have been in each other’s company. One day, the two encounter a murder mystery at the castle surrounded by “The forest of the sacred beast.” An unsuspecting Florian is in grave danger…
We also went to see My Super Ex-Girlfriend yesterday, which gets a rating of “glad I saw it, don’t need to buy it.” Today we went all the way downtown so I could buy the new Teen Titans comic. Robin and Wonder Girl kissed in the last issue (not a romantic one, an emotionally traumatized one) and I was kind of looking forward to seeing what the fall-out would be. But… but… it didn’t come out today. Teen Titans Go! did, damnit! I ended up buying Batman instead. (There’s much angst on the DC boards tonight about Batman chucking a wounded Joker into a dumpster instead of, oh I don’t know… kissing his boo boos better?) :P
Now, back to the couch! I’m on vacation darnit! We’re listening to the theme from Strawberry Marshmallow again tonight. I think we’re in the triple digits on this song now. It’s on A-B repeat on the dvd player and just keeps going and going and going and going…
Follow the lives of Nobue Ito, her younger sister Chika, and her friends Miu and Matsuri - these cute girls try to solve problems and help each other out in the most adorable ways! Whether it’s helping someone to quit smoking or organizing a sleepover at a friends’ house, these girls always remain a joyful treat in the slice-of-life delight!
Sounds cute and innocent, doesn’t it? It is, for the most part, but there’s also a sly humour to it. Yes, Nobue decides to quit smoking, but when Chika decides the price is too high to pay (there’s a bet involved) she does her best to sabotage her older sister’s efforts.
That’s from the first volume of the manga, which features the four girls mentioned in the blurb, and volume two will introduce a new girl named Anna (who shows up in the second episode of the anime), a British girl who has lived in Japan too long and has forgotten how to speak English. This doesn’t stop her from trying to fool her classmates into thinking she’s a proper British young lady who doesn’t understand Japanese.
(BTW, I clicked on three different manga links on the new Tokyopop website and didn’t get a list of their manga on any of them. Should it be that annoying to find information on one of their series? Boo to Tokyopop!)
I don’t think I like the term “slice of life” but I confess to not having a better way to describe it. There’s no story arc that unites all the episodes. It’s just a group of five girls who have little adventures in Chika’s room and around town. Chika’s defining characteristic is that she has no defining characteristic, Miu is loud, tactless and boisterous, Mitsuri is shy and quick to cry and Anna is quiet and cute, but determined to carry off her charade. They’re all watched over and teased by big sister Nobue (who is older in the anime than the manga for some reason). This is an incredibly funny series - both verbally and physically - there’s a lot of slapstick type humour, with Miu in particular getting knocked down, falling and just being her over-excited self. And yes, there is much uber-cuteness. You’ve been warned. If you’re a fan of Azumanga Daioh, you should enjoy Strawberry Marshmallow.
The character designs are very cute - the girls all look younger than they actually are (11 and 12) but more so in the manga. I read the manga first and was a little confused at first by who was who. There is an introductory chapter that goes to great pains to introduce each girl, so I did my best to fix them all in my head. Then, in the next chapter, two of the characters switched hairstyles. It took me a bit of flipping before I figured out there was a time change and it wasn’t just me. :)
I was watching the first few episodes of the anime while I was on the bus travelling to the Soo and it was pretty hard not to laugh out loud. There was one scene in particular in Anna and Matsuri’s class where the boy who sits behind Anna seems to be the target of some sort of grudge by their teacher. The teacher points to a list of words on the blackboard, asking what one meant. The boy lifts his hand, only to hear from the teacher, “You’re boasting, aren’t you? Go stand outside.” It kept happening… if he knew the answer, if he didn’t, if he looked up from his book… It’s a recurring joke in the show and it cracked me up every time. Poor kid.
And, finally, since I’m listening to this OVER and OVER tonight because my nephew has decided that the opening theme to Strawberry Marshmallow is his new favorite song… here it is:
Update: I found the manga listings on the Tokyopop website. You have to ignore the two manga links and the manga serials link and click on books. ::eyeroll::
The headline says it all, I guess. Tokyopop has a new flashy website running now that’s really… busy. They seemed to be pushing for customer/public participation lately, and there are a lot of new categories, like blogs, art, video, etc etc. I guess if I’m going on vacation today I’ll have time to check it out.
Since I’m currently brain numb from work anyway, I thought it would be a good time to tackle the episode of Ouran that stopped my screencapping in its tracks. Episode 9. Basically a bunch of reaction shots that boggled my mind when I thought of trying to pick out some appropriate scenes. I’m not aiming for a great job here, just trying to point out a few things. Also, please note that I am doing this instead of a) sleeping, b) packing for my trip that I may or may not be leaving for tomorrow, c) cleaning or d) doing the ILL’s I brought home from the library. It’s that kind of night.
Episode 9: Ouran has some sort of joint celebration with the the Saint Lobelia’s girls school. Some girls from the Zuka Club show up and want to “rescue” Haruhi from the evil clutches of the Host Club. The boys fight back!
This wasn’t one of my favorite chapters in the manga, and it’s one of my least fav of the anime. That said, it did make me laugh, even if it was in horror.
A shadowy, dancing menace arrives at Ouran High School.
Obligatory shot of the twins when they were younger. Here for the cute factor. I love the hair!
Apparently Haruhi is becoming desensitized to being groped by strange people.
In lieu of having characters eating bananas when a pratfall is needed, the writers of the show decided to introduce a monkey.
The women of Lobelia outdo the Host Club by not only wearing layers of clothes for more dramatic costume changes, but also by having a really bad musical number.
I adore Mori’s expression here.
The horror! (Please also note that Kyoya is still hot as a woman. I think it’s because he’s the only one who knows how to wear makeup without looking like he belongs in a brothel.)
The monkey is back! And living underground with Renge?
Monkey in drag!
Thank goodness that’s over and done with! When I get back from vacation I’m going to tackle some of the other episodes. File that under better late than never, I guess.
