I am SO jealous of the people who already saw Good Witch of the West: Astraea Testament. I just can’t wait for a fansub group to release the first episode. I’m dying to know about the first episode. The same goes for xxxHolic, which also just came out in japanese. Anyway here’s the next bunch of previews, this time featuring the yaoi-shows of this season. This has to say something about the immense amount of shows that’s featuring, as this is probably the first time that one season features three yaoi-series. Anyway, after watching these episodes, I began to notice a pattern: transfer students are amazingly popular main characters in anime. Two of these three anime has such a main character, which means that this entire season already features four shows of this nature. And I haven’t even seen the first half of them.

Princess Princess

Main character gets transferred to a new school in the middle of semester. Suddenly, all of the boys in the school start falling for this main character, including the most popular ones. The twist: this time the main character is a boy. Yes, I can’t believe how incredibly similar this story is to the opposite of Strawberry Panic. Though, it does have more elements than what I just described. Strawberry Panic decided to focus on drama and conflicts, Princess Princess decided to focus on comedy. And the comedy part just freaked me out. The fact is: out main character is a bishounen, the school is an all-boys school. One of the rules in these schools is that the bishounen get to dress up as girls, in order to make life for the other students a bit more exciting. I just loved the reaction of the main character when he found this out. There were so many horribly wrong scenes featured, it almost scared me.

Ouran High School Host Club

Here, we have a school for insanely rich people. Only the classiest of the classiest are able to study here. The Ouran High School Host Club is a club full of Bishounen in all different kinds of sizes, who try to win as many ladies as possible by playing “Host”. I know it sounds a bit vague. I haven’t exactly discovered how to precizely describe what it is that they’re doing. Just remember that it comes down to winning as much ladies as possible. Anyway, there’s one poor person who managed to get in the school. This person, of course, has no money for an expensive school-outfit, and only managed to get in the school because of the fact that she’s incredibly good in studying. Then she walks into the High School Host Club, and breaks one of their 8-million-yen vases. The chairman of the club makes her work for the club in order to pay it. The two nice things about these events are: 1. The members of the club are a totally weird bunch. One time, they act as the overdramatic version stereotypical bishounen, the other time they act as themselves, which isn’t really a step in the right direction either. I just loved the randomness of that. 2. Our main character may be a girl. She looks like a boy, resulting in the fact that the members of HSHC mistake her for a male. Of course, the fun begins when they discover that she has the cutest male-face ever. I’ll be watching this for sure.

Gakuen Heaven

We have this ultra-rich school (which of course, doesn’t impress me at all after seeing Ouran High School Host Club, but whatever), and out main character will be transferred to it. That’s weird, because he has absolutely no talents at all. He’s just mediocre. Apparently, the chairman of the school wants him for some reason. There weren’t any yaoi-scenes yet, but I’m suspecting that these will follow soon. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll continue watching this. There weren’t any things that stood out.

The Adolescense of Utena is the movie of the show Revolutionary Girl Utena, which I recently finished. It features a remake of the original series, stuffed into about ninety minutes. The characters were a bit remodeled as well. Most of the side-characters were also removed, including Nanami, for some reason. Shiori, however, plays a big role. Utena didn’t have any past with Himemiya or the Prince. She did, however, share childhood memories with Touga. The story Juri told in the last episode of the series also seems to have been integrated somehow. Miki and Jury are also much closer than they were in the series. And I’ll remain silent about Akio, as that might be too big of a spoiler. I also found it fantastic that the Kashira-girls got to play an active role in this movie once more. Not just for comic relief or symbolism, but they played an active part in the story.

The visuals remain stunning and full of elegance. The art of each of the characters has change a bit. Utena got a haircut and a different outfit, Himemiya’s hair has become more flat and less curly. And each of the other characters with long hair suddenly had her or his hair’s length increased by about twenty centimetres. The fun part is, that in half of these cases, it works. Utena looks amazing, especially with her hair. The same goes for Juri, Miki and Akio. For the other half of the characters, however, this new style seems to have taken a step back on the scale of awesomeness. For example, I liked Himemiya’s art more in the series. Touga and Sayonji also don’t look too well.

The first part of the story introduces Utena to the academy once more. She meets the Roze Bride, wins her from Sayonji, and gets to meet Himemiya. Basically, the first couple of episodes from the series. The relationship between Utena and Himemiya is different, though. Himemiya is way more inteded to “obey” her master, and Utena just doesn’t like this. Anyway, after two interesting duels, the move takes a huge leap away from the series, and starts with its own storyline. That was the part that I really liked about this movie, even though it may be bit far-fetched. But still, Himemiya totally steels the show in these scenes. If you combine this with the incredible music that was bombarded during these scenes, if makes for some awesome moments.

Overall, this was an awesome movie. Still, I have to say that I liked the series better. 90 minutes is just not enough to include the incredibly deep characters the series contained. Still, if you have seen the series, I totally recommend the movie. Especially the last part is incredibly unique.

Final Rating: 87/100

And another bunch has come in. This round is a bit meh, though. But ah well, I’d have a problem if every single series had some awesome points. Especially in this season. Anyway, here are some previews:

School Rumble, Second Season

What we have here is the second season of the popular series school rumble. I’ve seen up to episode 13 of the first series. Anyway, the main theme of this anime certainly involves misunderstandings in relationships. Person A likes Person B, but Person B likes Person C and believes Person A loves Person D while Person E loves Person D as well, meanwhile Person F also loves Person A. If this goes on, I’ll be running out of letters… Anyway, I don’t think I’ll continue watching this. There were some funny scenes, but it’s certainly not the best of its kind. I think I’ll stay with the utter randomness of Pani Poni Dash and Haruhi Suzumiya for my school-series.

Strawberry Panic

Main character gets transferred to a new school in the middle of semester. Suddenly, all of the girls in the school start falling for this main character without a reason, including the most popular ones. The twist: this time the main character is a girl. There’ll probably some heavy shoujo-ai in this. I don’t really like this, though. Everyone acts without a reason. Nothing really is explained. I’m not too big of a fan of the huge amounts of hair from the characters either.

Digimon Savers

Okay, this is just plain stupid. We have a fourteen year-old boy, who runs into Agumon. After a small fight, this boy happens to be the first person ever to acknowledge him. So Agumon decides to make the boy his master. Then a cute girl arrives, of course of the same age as the boy to stop the both of them, which doesn’t really work. The girl appears to work for some kind of organization, and she isn’t really doing the best of a job. You’d wonder why she was even hired. Anyway, a big digimon arrives, and because the boy is so awesome, he manages to knock it down with a single punch. Agumon evolves for a bit and sends the digimon back, happy ending. Blegh. I’m going to stay away from this.