And here we have the other of the two anime, being produced in fully cell-shaded CG. While FREEDOM consists out of a few episodes, Catblue Dynamyte is a standalone movie of about 40 episodes. Another interesting thing to note is that this one is entirely in English, with Japanese subtitles. It reminded me again of one of the reasons why I hate dubs: the American accent just doesn’t work. Still, when compared to other English dubs, this wasn’t really bad to listen to. The only annoying part was that Blue’s voice actress didn’t match her character too well.

When I first found out about this anime, I suspected that this anime would be all eye-candy with zero substance. And indeed, we have lots of eye-candy. When compared to FREEDOM, the characters move a lot smoother, especially during the fight scenes. Blue’s character indeed is very cute, seeing as she once was a cat. Everything looked quite well. The only thing is that the costumes of the goons looked rather hilarious when I first saw them.

About the substance… well, let’s say that it turned out better than I expected. The concept of a cat, turning into a person by drinking its master’s blood and being able to see and talk to ghosts is interesting, Bill was interesting with his doubts of Blue and her “talking to ghosts”, this was resolved quite nicely and Robbert and his idea to take care of things were nice to see. He also was good for a narrator, with a serious tone with your occasional sarcastic remark. I also liked the way that this anime omits some things that are taken to be obvious.

Still, the fact does remain that this anime follows the Hollywood action-movie format, which means that it goes from one action scene to another with your occasional focus on characters. While the action scenes are nice to see, they don’t really add much other value to the whole picture. While this OVA was interesting to watch, it’s definitely nothing amazing. It’s got an interesting art style, if you like experimental art styles in anime, it might be worth checking this one out, though if you’re more into your casual art style, stay far awaaay from this.

Okay, so what if Naoto awakened again without a good reason? This episode was damn awesome! This is one of the reasons I love shows with lots of mystery. There are just so many things you don’t know, and if they’re revealed in a good way, the results can become awesome. When a show combines good mystery with good character development like Night Head Genesis does, the results become even more awesome!

One of the reasons this episode was so good was because it deeply delved into the minds of its characters. Both Naoto, Naoya, Mikumo and Sakie. Naoto truly had become pitiful in the past few episodes. His power just was one source of destruction, and he was more and more running after Naoya than the opposite. This continued, until Mikumo made him crazy and he died. Then, for a while it seemed that Naoya would indeed take care of Mikumo, and we indeed see him actually go crazy when Naoya doesn’t do what he thinks he’ll do, and he goes berserk. But even then, he executes his plan and takes Sakie away, who just saw her sister with a knife through her stomach, causing the entire neighbourhood in a radius of 25km to delve into chaos.

But then, Naoto actually wakes up and takes care of the guy like it’s nothing. It may have been a one-sided battle, though these kinds of battles can also be great if they’re timed well, just like this one. Okuhara played a role in this as well, when she suddenly realized that Naoto indeed has become a wild element and goes crazy.

Also, the driver with an actual personality was greatly appreciated. You hardly see any goons who don’t look like each other. Most just are bunch of clones with different haircuts, while all they do is follow orders. They’re perfect employees, though not really interesting and realistic. Though making this guy actually comment on the things that have happened, the creators put him aside from all of these other goons.

So, in the end, Mikumo is killed. And before he dies, he has his moment of weakness where he tells about his past. A bit directed, but greatly appreciated. I love it when we see the histories of the different good and bad guys. It gives them so much more perspective.

Then, the final part of the episode features Okuhara, contacting Naoto and Naoya, who are about to wake Sakie. She finally reveals why she did the things she did, and if I had to say so myself, it’s a better reason than you usually see. At least she wants to improve the world, instead of your usual power-hungry guy on crack. Then we se the scene in which a person raises his/her finger into the air again, and some rather unexplained events begin. Okuhara mentions a Great Consciousness, and Naoto and Naoya also have stopped being wild elements in her prophecies. We then switch back to reality, and see a scene which does suggest that Okuhara has died. If I had to guess what happened, then she finally saw a true prophecy about the two brothers, which possibly has to do something with the sparkling ball up in the air. This prophecy had made such an impact to her, that she didn’t mind taking it to the grave. So what exactly did she see?

Also, there’s one more thing I’ve been wondering.

What the heck happened to Shoko?!

When I first saw Misa, I doubted whether she could be a large challenge to Light, though after watching this episode, I have to say that it’ll definitely be interesting to see how Light will deal with such a huge idiot. She actually mentioned the existence of the eyes and shinigami on a tape which got sent to the police. L also reacted quite strangely when he heard about the shinigami, this does suggest that there’s some kind of connection between him and the death gods, which suggests that there will be a point in which his childhood will be shown. :)

I also keep wondering the meanings of Ryuk’s maniacal laughter. Like shown before, he laughed when Naomi gave a false name. Was there also a reason why he laughed when L asked Kira to play Kira, or did he just laugh because of the irony? He’s smarter than he looks, after all, he did trick the king of the shinigami-world to give him a second Death Note. In any case, it’s good for light that he was at the scene when L watched the tape, otherwise, L would have pulled his own conclusions. This episode showed that L does listen to Light’s words.

Ah, so they went back to episode thirteen, where the five girls had to conjure up a flower, though this time, it’s a bit more extreme, when it’s Kanbu who has to be calmed. Unfortunately, my lack of japanese didn’t manage to pick up what role Kanbu actually plays, unfortunately, and why he’s so imprtant to the story. Still, the things I did understand were a nice watch as usual.

The major episode basically focuses on giving some life back to Kanbu. Sasami, Misao and the others hold hands like before, which causes them to be able to communicate with each other through thoughts. Like before, they ahve to make their minds one in order to properly functionate, though this time Misao disrupts things a bit, or rather Anri, Tsukasa and Makoto’s annoyance with her. It’s a nice discussion. Especially Tsukasa surprised me, seeing as she showed a more serious side than she ever has.

At the end of the episode, we also learn who’s going to be the final enemy in this anime. The head priestess seems to have unsealed the other Aamitabu. I’m still not sure why she did that *kicks lack of Japanese*. In any case, Amitabu’s look, at the end of the episode when Sasami brings him some food was priceless. ^_^

Still, I’m afraid to say it, though this anime seems to have lost its spark a bit. The height definitely was from eps 5 till 17. At those episodes, the characters were the most touching and funny. Though now, it’s trying to make a good finish.

Whoa, I just got some stable internet again, and the first thing I see is my shoutbox, in which Impz congratulated me for being accepted in the 9Rules-community. It’s something I didn’t really expect, seeing as when the first rounds of submissions featured such high-quality sites, I rather gave up hope of ever being accepted. Guess I was wrong. ^_^

And on top of that, this also seems to be my 700th post. Great, only 300 more till I hit the milestone of 1k posts.This also seems a good moment for a few statistics, seeing as I hit a rather large amount of other milestone in the past few weeks.

Total amount of comments: 1012 (Yay, more than 1k ^^;)
The top three commenters are the same as the previous time when I made this list (back when I made my 300th post), just a different order. Anga has made the most comments (54), then comes Cos (52) and Hopeless is still third (28, does anyone know what happened to him?).
Total amount of visitors: 104039 as I write this. Finally I managed to hit the 100k milestone, though I’m getting a bit worried seeing it took me 13 months, while others got their first 100k visitors in only three months ^^;
The largest amount pageviews in one day: 1554, back in April 30th, just before Blogsuki kicked me out.
Amount of series finished blogging: 16
Series with most posts: Jigoku Shoujo (30)
The largest amount of posts made on one day: still 12, during both my christmas updates 2005 and 2006
The longest episode-post I made was that for Higurashi 19, a massive 3973 words. I don’t think I’ll be topping that one soon. ^^;