Smooth and Flat

And here we’ve got a new series by SHAFT, based on the original work by NisiOisin.

Yes, it’s SHAFT. Weirdness is guaranteed. The visuals are awesome, probably the best in this season. The soundtrack is… fine, as I didn’t really yet get an impression on it. Voice acting is pretty good. Facial animation is great. Character designs kick ass.

And Hitagi looks like Yomi from GA-REI -zero-.

Yes, it’s the 4th post in a row.

The adaptation of TYPE-MOON’s visual novel, -428-, is named CANAAN. Incidentally, it’s also the name of one of the heroines, who works as an assassin (or something like that). We’ve got TYPE-MOON character designs (which is a huge plus for a fan like me), and nicely animated action scenes (I hope they won’t fail with that later – like, doing the first episode using 50% of the entire series budget).

Can’t really say anything else as the plot remains a mystery to me.

This season’s Madhouse Studios project, a shounen/sentai series with superpowers, counter-superpowers, fanservice, and other stuff. Drawn in a style that reminds of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, with a nice opening video (and song) and not-so-nice song plus extremely fanservice-y video for the ending sequence.

The ‘main’ hero, Cruz, doesn’t look like he’s cool or kicks asses in any way, however judging by the nature of the series, he’ll probably get some upgrades along the way. And Eve truly kicks asses. Funny how both Blade and Eve seem stupid (with Eve being 10 times more stupid than Blade).

Eve’s last name owns.

Studio DEEN presents: Umineko no Naku Koro ni. The direct ‘sequel’ to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – both based on PC games of the same name by 07th Expansion.

No Hanyuu, though. Minus 50 points.

Maria. Plus 25.

We’ve got a family gathering at the mansion situated on a privately owned remote island with a storm coming. They are completely isolated and they have various problems dealing with each other. Not to mention that some of them (if not every one) are mentally unstable.

So, the new season is here, and even though I’ve been really lazy lately, I decided to give it a go.

Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~ by ZEXCS.

I really hope it doesn’t turn into a “Little Mermaid”-class story. I liked the first episode; the backgrounds are pretty, and the character designs are well done (while the person behind emuemu – Manly Masochism doesn’t think so, apparently). Note that the younger sister is voiced by Horie Yui (and is a pettanko).

As usual, an introductory episode. It ends with a sort of a cliffhanger and seems like the plot actually starts there. We have two girls – sisters – from under the sea, coming to the surface world to return a ring they found dropped into the ocean. From the looks of it, the sisters share a relationship similar to Ui and Yui in K-ON!, with the younger sister being responsible and a sort of a carebear and the other one going on with airheadedness and a carefree attitude, doing everything on a whim.

Above, they actually find the person who dropped the ring, or, rather, threw it into the ocean.

So the Spring ’09 season is almost over, and alas, K-ON! is over too.

The last episode was a bit weird, but overall nice. I should also note that I liked the series; I admit, though, that the plot was a bit weak and that the amounts of moe in the series are a bit over the plausible limit – but it was a fun ride anyway.

Overall, I’m not paying much attention to anime series lately; I’m planning to catch up with some series later… but I guess I might drop some of them due to lack of interest. Namely, Hatsukoi Limited or Hanasakeru Seishounen.

I’m also annoyed by the fact that Asura Cryin’ TV adaptation was kind of ruined. The episodes lack interconnection, the animation quality is average, and as a fan of the original novel series I feel ripped off.

Seriously.

They need to try better.

Animation quality was below even the ‘shit’ rank, the plot sucks, the development fails, and the lack of fanservice is pointless for a show like this one.

Only one episode left, though.

As stated in my earlier post, I’ve been quite busy at work during the last two months – and that calamity isn’t over yet as I’ve got at least one more 60 hours week (the worst thing about it is the schedule, where I basically have one 12 hour and two 24 hours breaks between 12-hour shifts). So I’m not really in a creative mood.

However.

I managed to catch up with Basquash!, the series featuring a brilliant and original idea of making an anime about basketball… played using giant robots. While it sounds stupid, it’s less dumb than it looks – but it was kind of hard to fight my way through the first three or four episodes which feature excessive fanservice.

The amount of fanservice drasically lowers in the following episodes, focusing more on Basquash’s highlight: street basketball. While I doubt that the idea of making robots wear running shoes would actually work, it’s overall cool. Especially when in the last two or three episodes Eclipse – the trio that sings the opening theme, nO limiT – enters the storyline with this dazzling debut of Rouge.

So far, my favourite characters are Flora/Alan (reverse trap; hey Haruka, question: if you really talk with feet, why didn’t you realise that Alan is girl yet?), Rouge, and Iceman (“Destroy! Destroy!! Destroy!!“).

Also in today’s Bunbunmaru issue:

I’ve managed to scrap up some parts for the server – since it needs an upgrade. Almost everything will be replaced, though, and one of the nicest parts about it is that I’ll use Intel PRO/1000 integrated NIC instead of this slightly laggy nForce4′s builtin one.

Currently, the server is an Athlon64-3200+ on a Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLi board – with a total of 5 hard disk drives (40GB system, and an assorted set of 200, 250, 320 and 500GB drives for data storage).

My plans are to use a Core2 Duo processor (probably the 3.0GHz one) on a Gigabyte Q35-based board, with 6 Serial ATA ports (instead of K8N-SLi’s four); and the drives will be replaced with the following structure: two 500GB drives in a GEOM_MIRROR array – hosting the system and the database files, along with static content and such stiff; two more 500GB drives in a raidz pool; and probably one 750GB drive for media files. The sixth port will probably be occupied by another 500GB drive, maybe in a pool – this time a stripe/RAID0 because I don’t need redundancy for the media storage.

The OS will also be changed; 7.2-STABLE used on the current server will be replaced with 8.0-STABLE as a fresh install. Yeah, it’ll take some time to migrate all settings and data, but it will be worth it. The new configuration is being stress-tested by me for the last few days and I’ve yet to see processes stuck in zfs I/O state which seems to be a common problem for 7.2′s ZFS implementation.

I’m finally finishing with Hidamari Sketch and Hidamari Sketch x365; so I’m watching this last episode, 13, of x365 and suddenly.

Episode 6 delivers some quality lulz. Starting from Shuri’s attempt at cooking by sexually harrassing Kanade and ending with this awesome transfer student introduction scene in the end of the episode.

The introduction went like this: