Heh, I’ve put off writing an about-page for a bit too long now. For those of you who stumble upon this page: hey, I’m psgels, a 20 year-old student of Computer Science, currently living in Amsterdam. If you want to contact me for some reason, you can use psgels{at}yahoo{dot}com (which also is my msn-address).

I started this blog back in November 2005, mostly because of two series: Tales of Phantasia and my all-time favourite anime Mahou Shoujotai. I loved both titles, but none of them seemed to be getting the attention it deserved. At the time, I was very much into experimenting and trying out new stuff, so Star Crossed Anime Blog was born, and gradually grew into what it is now. Back then, I was still on Blogspot, but after a few months I decided to move over to Blogsome, because I wanted more functionality that Blogspot couldn’t offer. (I remember the huge job it was to transfer all my posts from the old blog. One of the few bad parts about Blogsome is that it doesn’t do that automatically, so it had to be done manually -_-)

I tend to watch most shows I blog without subtitles, though I also follow quite a few shows subbed, since my Japanese level isn’t that good and I’m still learning. If you’re wondering where I’m getting the video-files for the latest anime out in japan: I get most of them through Tokyo Toshokan and the program called Share. If you can’t find these files yet, just have a bit of patience as they’ll appear eventually.

I tend to blog a wide range of series, both popular (Death Note, Claymore) and the neglected ones (Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, Mahou Shoujotai). My opinion is that whether a show is popular or not gives absolutely no indication as to how good it is, and that both popular and inpopular series have an equal chance of turning out good or bad. Hence one of the more important goals of this blog quickly became promoting the underdogs.

Apart from the most recent series, I also tend to blog older series, who have aired a couple of years ago. I started blogging most of them when I first started Star Crossed because they sounded interesting, but I always leave room open to praise some hidden gems that only now are getting subbed. At this point, there must be two criteria for me to consider picking up such a series:
- It has to be very neglected, nobody seems to know of it.
- It must have made a huge impact on me, the best example of this is Strange Dawn.

If I had to give a favourite anime-series, it’d be mystery. I love seeing a mysterious setting explain itself and gradually become clearer. There’s one genre I hate, though: the moe-shows, whose only purpose it is to show cute girls and please otaku. Do not get me started on those, as I’ll start rambling quite a bit about how their popularity takes the attention away from the neglected and really good shows. If you’re wondering about my favourite shows, I recently wrote up my Top 10 of anime, which can be found here.

Regarding the content on my blog, most posts will be episodic, with either a summary, commentary or a combination of these two, depending on my mood. Occasionally, though, I do tend to write special features. These are the most important ones:
Some quick first impressions: At every season, I try to watch the first episode of as many series as possible, before deciding which are good and which aren’t. Most of these episodes don’t really provide enough material for one post, but when I combine three series, and provide a small blurb about my opinion, it works out quite well.
Monthly Summaries: I watch more than just she shows I blog, and that’s one of the reasons I write up a summary at the end of every month about all the shows I managed to see, ranking them from worst to best. It’s also meant to list the new anime that have been announced in the past month and the individual episodes I enjoyed the most.
Anime Reviews: Inspired by Anime Academy. Before I started this blog, I was already an avid reader of the reviews provided at that site, and some of the writers have amazing writing skills. I just tended to disagree with their opinions way more often than not, so I decided to write my own. Most of the site here is filled with spoilers, but for the Reviews and the Monthly Summaries, I try to stay away from any major revelations.
Some quick second impressions: Basically a spoof of the quick first impressions. When I want to really say something about a show I’m not blogging, I use this category. Up till now, these turned out to be eiter underrated or overrated series.

Whoa, a whole episode without Jomie? Interesting. This episode was really meant to introduce Keesu (how the heck do you spell his name correctly) and bring Sam and Swena back into the story. I’m surprised that I’m actually the only one who remained blogging this series by the way. Ah well, that never stopped me from blogging. ^^;

Anyway, it seems that the children who turned 14 and passed the coming-of-age test are sent to a space-station. Sam, Swena and Keesu all ended up on the same station, but for a strange reason, Keesu lost his memory in the process, while Sam and Swena got to keep it. If I had to guess, then he failed his coming-of-age test.

The episode itself wasn’t really special, a ship carrying new recruits accidentally crashed into the space-station, and Sam and Keesu, who became friends fast, were just to embark on an exercise outside of the space-station, so they were the first who’d be able to reach them. Swena appeared to be among these new recruits, and they were safely rescued. Keesu, however, ended up in danger and Sam saved him. Swena afterwards started to fall in love with Keesu, and their rivals looked rather pissed. Still, there is potential for the future, especially since they’re going to have to be connected to Jomie, some way in the future.

Hah, no need for quick first impressions here, simply because I know I’m going to blog this anyway, and it would take to long till the next show starts to air. Dennou Coil was THE show for me to look out to this season, and when I have to compare it with the other first episodes that have aired during this series, then it’s safe to say that Dennou Coil so far has featured the most unique and imaginative first episode of the entire season.

Still, when you were expecting a show with high-budgetted graphics, then Dennou Coil will probably disappoint you. The graphics are kept very simple on purpose. The animation looks great, though. The backgrounds are brighter than normal, and they give off a strange feeling. Still, I love it so far. :)

The story: Yuuko comes to move in to a strange city, along with her younger sister Kyouko and pet dog Densuke. Her parents apparently moved to that place before, and now the two of them arrive in the city as well. So far, so good.

But now the concept: Dennou Coil plays in the future. I’m not sure exactly what year, but one major invention is virtual reality. At the point of the anime, this has become more and more integrated with real life, up to the point that you can have cyber-pets which only appear if you put on special kinds of glasses. Densuke is indeed one of these virtual pets. The strange thing is that you can actually hug him, even though he doesn’t exist for real, but when you drop a bag on it, it falls through him.

Naturally, every character in this anime wears glasses. ^^; They provide some handy features, such as a mobile phone, a gps, and a people-tracker. Also, once you have a pet, any type of glasses can see it, creating a real cyber world. I love it so far. Things get even weirder when there are even places in the virtual world that don’t exist in the real one. Special types of UFOs have been employed to destroy these places, and things that shouldn’t be in the virtual world.

One of these things is a mysterious dark speck, which hangs around in the neighbourhood, doing random things. Densuke ends up chasing it, even when it goes to a space that exists only in the virtual world, and ends up getting lost. Cue another main character: Fumie. She knows quite a lot about the cyber-world, and actually hunts for lost cyber-pets in her free time. Thanks to her, I’ve lost track of what’s real and what’s cyber. For example, she carries a pouch where anything can fit in, including a strange, wobbly creature she uses to track Densuke in the virtual world.

Two other characters introduced in this episode, but not much time has been devoted to them. One of them is a girl who probably knows even more about the cyber-world than Fumie does. She seemed to be either after the black speck, or cyber-cat that we see Fumie hunting later on. The other is a boy who seems to be either Fumie’s friend, or her rival.

Dennou Coil has been created by one man: Mitsuo Iso, and I have to praise the guy’s creativity. There are so many original ideas in this anime, I feel like the future episodes have something very interesting in stall for us. ^_^

EDIT: okay, never mind me saying that everything in this anime is brighter than usual. That was just the video-file that I downloaded. ^^;

Okay, my prediction the episodes would alternate between each of the four main characters was wrong. This was pretty much an Emily-episode as well, but nevertheless, it was a beauty, mostly because of the introduction of another character: John. He lives in a cottage on the grounds of the farm of the new moon, though he seems to have managed to claim it as his own property. Furthermore, he hates Elizabeth; if I had to guess then he’s one of her younger brothers as well, though I’m not sure.

In any case, at first Emily easily becomes friends with him, due to the fact that they both hate Elizabeth. His impression of her also was truly brilliant. It’s not often that in anime, characters do impressions of each other, strangely enough. Still, it works great, especially when the more serious characters are copied. I can really understand why Emily almost couldn’t hide her laugh when she talked to Elizabeth later on.

On a side-note, by the way, the trees already looked great during the summer, but now that the autumn has arrived, they really look beautiful, with their wide ranges of colours.

Anyway, back to John, he may be a nice guy, he also goes too far at times, and he clearly doesn’t know when to stop when he plays a prank, by leaving a note near a basket of apples which says that these were meant to get rid of the mice. When Emily came to his house after having a fit with Elizabeth (which resulted in her, burning her own notebook), she ate these apples without noticing this note only after about a minute. Because of this, she really believed that she was going to die.

While Emily definitely was a bit annoying at this, I can definitely see a little girl getting tricked by this. Especially since Emily is overly poetic, and she already was really angry and lost sight of her emotions when she ate these apples. She’s really become a unique character. Most characters of her age in anime are totally different, and she really shows the difference between Japanese storytelling, where you often see characters act more polite, and western storytelling, where characters are more often to speak their minds.

Still, the best part was when everyone found out that Emily was going to die. Perry got extremely worried, while Elizabeth immediately understood that John played another prank of his. When Elizabeth went to his house and actually told him this, he never really realized that this was his fault, and he never thought of apologizing. All he did was yell at Elizabeth. I believe that with this episode, this anime really showed that it knows what it’s doing. I’m hooked; it’s just too bad that so little people are watching this as well, due to the lack of good subs… the fansubbers seem to have something against shoujo-anime…

Whoa… this episode was basically just one huge dialogue. It’s hard to find a moment in which people actually didn’t talk about something. Unfortunately, that made things difficult to understand, but I can feel that this episode was building up to something great. We start with Shuurei’s meeting with the governor of the Koku-province, Kai. Kai shows her the books that Doushu gave him, and it seems that they’re all highly advanced medical books. Why did Doushu tell Kai to give these books to Shuurei and not to Eigetsu? Why was it so important for him to deliver these books?

Kai also informs Shuurei that Eigetsu will be dying soon. The reaction of Shuurei was marvellous, and I do wonder whether Eigetsu will she be alive when she gets back to the Sa-province (remember, the journey does take thirty days). Kai also tells him that when Doushu was about to die, he tried to get a doctor to look at him, though when he got back, Doushu already was gone. If my memory doesn’t fool me, he then went outside to die, under the shades of a tree. I think he wanted to have a bit of time for himself. Also, he gives Shuurei the final permission she needs to carry out her plans. ^^

The rest of the episode was a big puzzle for me, though, and I’m eagerly waiting for Impz and Usagijen to post their views on it. Eigetsu arrived in the town I assume was plagued by the disease. In there, he meets up with some kind of official. Shuurei shows the books to the medical staff of the palace, and they realize that they were written by some kind of legendary figure, who was supposed to be dead. And that’s about all I picked up.

Like mentioned above, I feel that this episode was building up to something amazing. The episode was very focused and detailed, and really took its time explaining. The next episode should prove to be a beauty. :)

I like it when Seirei no Moribito comes with an eventful episode. Not necessarily because of the action, but episodes like these are much easier to understand. The previous episodes were just nearly impossible to grasp for me, without looking at summaries by other people, but with this episode, I at least got the main points.

Still, that doesn’t mean that I understood everything. Shuga and his role still are one big mystery to me. Why is he so important? What kinds of books is he reading? And what relevance do these books have to the story? Even after reading the summaries from others, I still can’t understand this.

Anyway, the episode itself is about a failed attempt to run away by Barsa and Chaggumu. Chaggumu first gets his hair cut, and his earrings are removed. It pains him to lose the few items he still holds that remind him of his mother, so Barsa turns one of these earrings into a necklace. We meanwhile see all of the warriors from episode three, who are planning their next move. One of them still is wounded on his eye (courtesy of Barsa), another still has a cut on his face. Their boss was merely hit unconscious, so he has been able to recover. He takes the fourth guy with him, to go after Barsa.

Barsa, meanwhile takes off with Chaggumu and Torogai-shi. I also finally understood why she involved herself with Chaggumu in the first place. She foresaw a great drought, and this egg inside of Chaggumu seemed to be the source. The question now remains: what will she be doing in order to prevent this? I haven’t been able to find that one out. In any case, Torogai-shi splits up from Barsa and Chaggumu, probably to check and make sure nobody follows them.

The two assassins, meanwhile, demonstrate again that they’re superb trackers. I’m not sure what kind of reasoning they used, but they found Barsa and Chaggumu quite fast. If I’m not mistaken, then they noticed some horse’s hoofs which didn’t belong to a horse from the military. A chase follows, and Chaggumu notices that Barsa’s wound still hasn’t fully healed, and it actually starts bleeding again when Barsa starts pushing herself.

The purpose of the wolf also finally becomes clear: it’s with Torogai-shi. Just before Barsa is overtaken, it pushes the horse they’re riding on off a cliff, and through some kind of poisonous gas. Because it happened so fast, they didn’t breathe any of it, but if the assassins were to try and get them, they’d end up dead. At least, that’s what I figure, as they just let the two of them go. It’s strange that they didn’t just wait and see where they would be going, though.

Afterwards, we see that Barsa has gone back to Tanda, in order to rest again. I guess that’s her weakness: she’s so much focused on her goal that she thinks she can handle things, while she actually can’t. The fact that the prince cut his hair also made a lot more impact than I suspected. Or did these assassins actually think he died when he was attacked by the wolf? Ah well, they’ll find out soon he didn’t when they’re going to pick up his body and it ends up missing.

Finally, I remember noting that the music isn’t that special after watching the first episode, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. The music has been excellent so far, especially during the chase it consisted out of some great tunes. :)