ANIME EXPO 2017: My Way!

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Walter Doty

I know I’m usually the guy that’s all about the DC Nation, but I got my start, as a writer, working in anime. I wrote the English scripts for a show called AMBASSADOR MAGMA. It was a twelve episode series about a giant golden robot, with long flowing blonde hair, who fought the forces of evil. With the help of a little boy of course. I wrote six episodes of that giant robot series, and also wrote the two-part finale for ULTRAMAN – THE ULTIMATE HERO. He was another giant superhero who fought evil. There were a lot of giants fighting monsters back then. But I digress. Every now and then I like to revisit my anime roots at a quaint little gathering called Anime Expo. I’m kidding, of course, Anime Expo was the huge anime extravaganza at the Los Angeles Convention Center that took place over the long July 4th weekend. There was Cosplay, cool panels, artist, celebrities, and a huge exhibit hall where they sold all things anime. It was awesome! And since it’s a slow news day, I thought I’d show you some pictures I took before my camera died. Enjoy, and get tickets for next year. It’s worth it. Continue reading →

Naruto Storm 4 Review

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Deacon

With the Arrival of Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 4, I have found myself extremely busy playing the game. I beat the story mode and adventure mode in a little under seven hours and would have put countless hours into online mode, but we will get to that. Side note. This will probably be a pretty lengthy article. I’ll leave a TL:DR at the bottom for you. I’m also writing this assuming the reader knows at least who the main characters are. Sorry, but I won’t be going over the whole Naruto lore for you. Look that up because I don’t have a whole year.

I have been a fan of Naruto since it first started airing in the US oh so long ago. I started playing the Naruto Ultimate Ninja franchise back when it first came out on the PS2. I have about 13 years invested into this franchise to say the least, so you can understand me wanting this game to be the best in the series. At the same time, I won’t let myself be blinded by my love and time investment . This game has some terrible parts to it, while also doing many things right. Just for the sake of ending on a good note, lets start off with the bad. Just a heads up. I’m not hating on the game or anything by starting out with the bad things first. I just don;t want to end the article on a sour note. And don’t get it wrong. I love ever one of the Storm games.

Typically when you get a new game, the first thing you are going to do is jump right into story mode right? Well be aware that if this is your first Naruto Storm game, then you are not going to have any idea what the heck is going on. In the past iterations, there has always been a kind of recap to catch you up if you don’t know what is going on. In this last entry to the Storm franchise, you are kind of on your own. Yes they try to give you a recap, but it is kind of cryptic if you don’t know what they are talking about. If you have no idea who the characters are, you end up thinking the story is about two different people than it really is. That’s ok. I can kind of forgive that if you make it up in the actually story right? I mean obviously you can convoy the rest of the story well in engine right? No. The whole first have of the game is nothing but a slide show. Imagine if you tried to animate inside of PowerPoint. Yeah. That is the whole first have of the game. I mean, I guess that isn’t the end of the world. Say you can get over that. This is your first time hearing anything about Naruto and the sideshow for the first have of the game doesn’t bother you. You are excited and ready to follow the story to see what is happening. Well, good luck keeping track of everything. There are some pretty big holes in the video game. Having watched the anime, there are some parts that are missed in the cut scenes and would leave you wondering “Ok. Who is that again and why does he look like that now. And how did they get there. I thought they were there”? It just turns into a giant mess after a while. If you can get over those three things, then this might be the game for you. Don’t worry. This game isn’t just full of things I find bad, and I can prove it right now.

Storm 4 was adapted into a game from an anime. If we use movies that were turned into games as a reference, then we know the adaptation idea doesn’t always work well, but Storm 4 did it very well. Having seen the anime, and manga since the anime hasn’t finished up yet, it stays true to the source material. I brought up the first half of the game being a sideshow. Well, the second half of the game if animated with the in game engine and looks very beautiful. This whole game is extremely pleasing to the eye. The particle effects. The bloom. The animation. Everything comes together and just makes this game looks absolutely beautiful. Don’t get me started on the amount of playable characters. Storm 4 has the biggest roster of any Storm game to date. It is so big, it is sometimes hard to choose. I find myself often times getting lost in the selection screen. Having the option to choose characters that are PTS (Pre-Time Skip) is a great option as well, which can make for some awesome team combinations.

All in all, Storm 4 could have been better, but that doesn’t mean it is a terrible game. I’ve spent about 12 hours in single player alone. I will be writing another article about online play. From my experiences in the past, I decided to give a little time to see if they could fix the coding and all of that. Do I recommend the game? Have you seen the anime or read the manga? If so, then I totally recommend it. Are you a fan of fighting games? Then totally get it. If you wouldn’t call yourself a fan of fighting games and if you have no idea what Naruto is about, then I would stay away from it. At best I could give it a 7/10, and that is being a little generous. Who knows. The season pass might help it out. Only time will tell.

Spoiler Alert: RWBY Volume 3 Episode 11

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Deacon

Spoiler Alert for RWBY is finally here.

We open up with Ruby on the airship the Roman ended up breaking out of thanks to some help from Neo. After killing a Grimm that tried to attack her, We see Neo take a picture and send it to Roman. He walks out to see what he can do about the problem.

While that is going on, Blake is now forced to confront someone from her past that I don’t think she is ready to face. Adam is running a muck in the cafeteria, he confronts her saying that they were supposed to spark a revolution within the world. Adam is about to kill an innocent person, but Blake steps in to stop him finally standing up to Adam. Will it be enough though?

With all the students deciding to stay and fight for their school, we see them all holding back the Grimm and the robots that have now been corrupted by Roman. It is amazing to see them fighting for their school, while some don’t even go to school there but also decided to stay and fight. At one point, Nora pushes Ren out of harms way and gets hit. Ren only gets distracted by the fact Nora was hurt, and ends up getting hurt the same way. Coco says that now is the time for Velvet to do her thing and we finally get to see what Velvets weapon is.

Well, it turns out that Velvets weapon has to do with all the pictures that she has been taking. She holds out her hand and Ruby’s scythe forms in her hand and she starts to use it. My jaw hit the ground when she forms Weiss’s weapon. Then Yangs. then Blakes. It keeps going and going from Coco’s to Sun’s to even Penny’s. It was amazing, but she is caught off guard and gets smacked by one of the robots. Everyone provides covering fire for her, but Weiss decides to actually protect her. She runs up in front of velvet and holds her rapier out to try and protect her but what happens? Weiss was finally able to summon, just like she was practicing earlier in the season with her sister. It may only be an arm of, what i suspect is the knight she fought in her trailer, but it is a start, and it was at the perfect time.

We cut back to Ruby on the airship. The fight with Roman and Neo commences and it looks like Ruby doesn’t stand a chance. Neo and Roman are just an amazing team giving Ruby no breathing room. At one point, Ruby is hanging on the side of the ship. She gets the chance to open up Neo’s umbrella and she gets marry poppins’ed and floats away on the wind. Ruby uses this chance to gain some ground on Roman, but it doesn’t really work. Ruby is beaten back and things are starting to look Grimm for her. See what I did there….ok. While Roman is in the middle of his speech about how he will always thrive in the world, he is eaten by a giant Grimm. And just like that, Ruby won the fight. She ends up taking the Grimm down into the airship and destroys it. As it falls out of the sky, all the controlled robots end up dying and making things a lot easier.

While Qrow and Glenda are protecting the city and killing the extra Grimm and robots that are still around, Ironwood shows up. He basically wipes the floor with everything in the area. After a small misunderstanding between him and Qrow, we learn what happened. Roman had token over all of ironwood’s machines with that black queen virus (what I am calling it). Ironwood says that he needs to get back to his ship for something and we then see his ship start falling out of the air.

While all this is happening, we see Juane and Pyrrha underground with Ozpin running to the fall maiden. With Juane asking all these questions about why this place is under the school, they finally make it to the chamber. Pyrrha jumps into the chamber while Juane stands watch. Ozpin starts the process and you see what we assume is Amber’s aura being taken out of her and put into Pyrrha. Once she starts yelling, Juane comes to check up on her. As soon as Juane moves, that is when Cinder comes and shoots Amber right in the chest. that is when everything goes to heck in a hand basket. Cinder absorbs Amber’s powers. Juane, probably knowing there isn’t anything he can do, attacks Cinder and is pushed back. Pyrrha forces the door off its hinges and tries to attack as well, but Ozpin stops her and tell her to bring Ironwood, Glenda and Qrow and that she would only get in the way. With that, Pyrrha and Juane leave to go get help.

With the robots defeated, Yang finds Weiss and asks if she has seen Ruby or Blake. She says she hasn’t seen Ruby but Blake went off in a different direction. Yang takes off to find Blake. Meanwhile, Adam is telling Blake that he is making it his life’s mission to kill everything Blake cares about. that is when Yang walks up outside the cafeteria yelling for Blake. Adam says he is going to start with her, and stabs Blake in the stomach. Yang hears he screams and goes super sayin. She jumps towards Adam without giving it a second thought. That is when Adam pulls out his sword and slices Yangs right arm off. A moment of silence for good ol’ righty. Blake jumps in from of her before Adam can do anymore damage and manages to escape with Yang…so yeah. that is episode 11. I know I am totally late on this, but thank you for being patient. These episodes have just been super crazy and I can not wait to finish up the series. Be ready because it is coming soon.

Spoiler Alert: RWBY Volume 3: Episode 10

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Deacon

Haven’t seen the episode? catch it here – http://roosterteeth.com/episode/rwby-season-3-volume-3-chapter-10

RWBY is just getting better and better with every passing week. We are getting to the point where I am no longer able to call what is going to happen from episode to episode and really am anticipating what will happen in the episode that week. When we last left off, Pyrrha had just finished off Penny and the grim are invading the school. No one really knew what was going on, and I think that is still true to.

When we start this episode, we see Blake and Weiss running through the fair grounds seeing all the destruction that the grim have caused already. Just when they realize what is going on, Yang calls them on their scroll. Yang lets the two of them know that the White Fang have invaded the school. The three of them decide it would be if they all go to the docks to see if they can try and stop them before they make it to the city.

We go back to the arena where Pyrrha is still confused about what happened. With Penny still in pieces on the floor and a Nevermore about to break into the arena, Juane jumps into the arena to try and get Pyrrha out of there, but both of them are blow away by the force of the Nevermore landing. Right when the Nevermore was about to attack Pyrrha and Juane, Ruby jumps in front to protect them and stabs them with one of Pennies swords. Sidebar, I feel like it would only be right if Ruby took one of Pennies swords and made a completely new weapon to use. Kinda like paying homage to Penny. The Nevermore is finally killed thanks to some help from the rest of the students. Everyone’s favorite is there from Ren to Flynt Coal. All the students make their way to transportation to meet with Ironwood. Ironwood tells the students that they have 2 choices. They can either stay and fight to protect their school or they can take a ship to safety and that no one would fault them for leaving. Naturally, they all decide to go to the school and fight to protect them.

We cut to Roman Torchwick in the ship he…commandeered last episode. With help from Neo, Roman now has control over the Robotic forces that Ironwood was showcasing earlier last season. While Ironwood is flying the ship, the knights turn on him and we see him falling out of the sky. When Ruby sees this, she jumps out of the ship and lands back in the arena. With all the left over lockers, she puts in some command on the keypad, and the locker takes off. She holds onto it for dear life as she lands onto the ship Torchwick is on. At that point, Torchwick tells Neo to go see what is going on. The question we ask our self is…Can Ruby beat both Neo and Torchwick?

While all this is going on, Blake and Weiss have been fighting White Fang members and corrupted knights. Once they realize that there is just too much going on, they split up to see if they can cover more ground and help more people in the long run. Blake goes towards the cafeteria and ends up seeing an old friend. You guessed it. She comes face to face with Adam finally. What is going to happen? But that is not it. While everyone is fighting, we start to see the ground tremble a little. After a little bit of time passes, we see a mountain start to crack open. A dragon…A DRAGON. A FREAKING GRIM DRAGON POPS OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN! Not only a grim dragon. This dragon drips black ooze that spawns more grim when it touches the ground. HOW DO YOU FIGHT THAT?! I say it every week, but I think it is more obvious this week but this has to be the best episode of RWBY yet.

Spoiler Alert: Kono Subarashi Episode 2

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Deacon

I know I am late with review of Kono episode 2, but I have just been super busy last month. Sorry about that. Lets get started.

Last time when we left off, Aqua and Satou both promised to take on a kill quest to try and start making some real income to live on. The quest the both decided on seems like a simple one. Kill five giant toads in three days. Seems simple enough doesn’t it? One of those quests you would take on when you first start an MMO or something along that nature. Turns out it is a lot harder than you would think. These toads are actually giant, spanning at least three or four times taller than Aqua or Satou. After getting eaten, Satou is able to to kill two and save Aqua from the giant toads. being done for the day and feeling defeated, they both decide to go back to the guild and regroup.

Feeling beaten and wondering if the two of them really can do it all by them self, they decide to put up a flyer trying to recruit some members into their party. Aqua thinks just because she is an Arch Priest, they can limit those who join the party to people of higher ranks. After half a day of waiting around, someone finally comes up to them. A little girl by the name of Megumin, who happens to be a Crimson demon, offers to join their parts. She talks her up as this wonderful Mage who uses explosive magic, but Satou and Aqua are taking it all as a joke and laugh her off. After yelling at the to get her point across, they finally take her serious and help her register with the guild and set out to finish that kill quest.

As soon as they get back to the field with all the giant toads, Aqua runs off looking to get revenge for yesterday and ends up getting eaten again. Satou is forced to go save her. While he is saving Aqua, Megumin gets down to business. She starts concentrating and focusing her energy on one toad. For a while, I assumed she was going to wiff the shot or something but now. This little girl proves that she is the real deal. The sky starts getting dark and this toad explodes. It was amazing. Unfortunately, she is only able to use that spell one time. After both Megumin and Aqua get eaten again, Satou saves them both and carriers Megumin back to the guild. Turns out, Megumin is able to use any magic type she wants, but she refuses to use anything other than explosive type magic and because of that, she is kicked out of every other party she joins. After making a scene about some obscene things in front of some other ladies, Satou decides to keep her in the party. After getting back to the guild, Satou learns he went up four levels and they each made 36,000 of…what ever the currency is. Not sure if that is a lot or not. No idea what inflation is like in that world.

While Satou is doing math in his head about how much they would need to start making progress towards their goal, this awesome looking high ranking female knight walks into the guild and takes a look at their flyer looking for high ranking people to join the party. She walks up to Satou and introduces herself as Darkness. Seh blushes and starts stuttering while she asks if she is still able to join the party. Episode over.

Kono if quickly becoming one of my favorite shows out right now gunning for my first spot. I guess we will have to see how the rest of the season plays out. We might have a new champ.

Spoiler Alert: Prince of Stride Episode 4

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Deacon

Prince of Stride episode 4. Here we go. Side note, I only discuss parts of the episode that I feel is necessary to the story. I cut out things that I think don’t add anything to the story. Don’t worry. I don’t cut out things that are crazy important.

So this was a Ayumu heavy episode. We saw him last week chicken out when it came to jumping over the obstacles in the race, so why not develop his character in the beginning of the season. After learning their opponents are the Mihashi Stride team, Heath demonstrates a technique called vaulting, something that we all must be familiar with by now. After Hozumi goes up and demonstrates a variation of the vault, Ayumu tries and barley makes it.

After practice, Ayumu asks Hozumi if he could stay a while longer and help him with learning to vault. Hozumi agrees to help him out. Try after try after try, we see Ayumu start to get a grasp on the idea of vaulting. Cut to the event. After walking the line of the race, everyone decides to go back to the hotel and enjoy the hot spring for the night. Everyone…except Ayumu who is now where to be seen. Turns out he found a shortcut for later in the race.

Now, the race is starting. Right before the race starts, Riku’s opponent turns to him and asks if he is Tomoe Yagami’s brother. Riku says that he is. When the race starts, Riku takes off, but not for long. Rounding the first corner, he enters a tunnel that is going up hill. By the time they come out of the tunnel, Riku fell to second place. This is pretty much the tone for the rest of the race. Up until we get to Ayumu, we have been in second place. When it is Ayumu’s time to shine, he is starting to doubt himself just like last time. The only difference is that he stops doubting himself. He knows that he has to pull through for his teammates. With the last push, he blasts through the uphill part of the race, and splits off from his opponent.

Now…If this was a conventional anime, He would make the dangerous jump with ease and have a four second advantage on the last relay…But no. This is real. We see him jump off screen and then we see blood splatter and then silence. After a couple minutes of no response, the other team things they have it all but won. Then, we have a response from Ayumu. All he can do is concentrate on making it to Hozumi. Hozumi takes off and sees Ayumu hurt. Putting aside his personal feelings aside for a moment, he realizes he can’t let Ayumu’s injuries be in vain. Hozumi speeds up to catch up to his opponent.

The race is all but over. With Hozumi sprinting like a bat out of hell, Honon Stride Club wins the first round and moves on to the next. Hozumi immidetly turns around and runs back to go check on Ayumu. As Ayumu gets driven away by an ambulance, the team goes home and rests up for the next race. And with that. The episode is over.

Spoiler Alert: Kono Subarashi Episode 1

Posted on January 23, 2016 by Deacon

Walking into Kono Subarashi Sekai ni shukufuku wo, or as I am going to be calling it from now on Kono, I had no idea what to expect from it. All I knew about it is what I wrote in my Winter anime to watch out for. As far as I know, this could have been just like Sushi Police, but we don’t talk about Sushi Police.

We open up on a young man named Kazuma Satou. He is our resident shut in for the show. All he likes to do is sits inside, play video games and watches anime. Sounds like a couple of people I know. One day, he decides to go out and pick up a new game that is releasing that night. As any die hard fan of a video game, he goes to the midnight release. When he gets back, it is the morning. While walking home from the bus, he see’s one of his classmates walking by. He turns back to double check if he knew her and there he see’s it. A truck driving down the street about to hit her. Without hesitating, he jumps out and pushes her out of the way of then truck. Unfortunately, he ends up losing his life, and that is where this anime gets interesting. He is dead, and he meets with this goddess informing him that his death was in vain. It was only a tractor that was moving slowly. He just overreacted because he never goes outside.

so the goddess, who’s name is Aqua, is telling him that if he can go to this other world and defeat the Devil king’s army, he can go back to the living world, and they will grand him anything he wants in the world. But, good for Kazuma, the gods are not going to send him to fight the devil king’s army empty handed. Aqua tells them they will give him one thing to take with him, and it can be anything he wants. While he is looking at the most common requests, Aqua is sitting there eating chips telling him that he should hurry up and pick something. Since she is being such a jerk to him, he decides that he is going to use this request to his advantage. Kazuma says that he wants to take aqua with him. Down comes another goddess telling that it is ok to take her with you. And off they go.

Once they get to the world, Kazuma’s gamer instincts kick in. The first thing they go do is try to join the local guild. Only problem is that they can’t afford the registration fee. Brick wall number one. After talking to some old man in the guild, Aqua got the registration fee. Both of them are now registered. Kazuma as a merchant and Aqua as an Arch Priest which is one of the higher classes. And with that, this anime begins. Cue the montage of working and bonding with guild mates. Right at the end of the episode, they realize why they are there. They were having such a good time bonding with everyone and doing work, they forgot they are supposed to be fighting the Devil kings army. Right then, they vow to do a kill quest the next episode.

Kono Subarashi is one of those anime I wish was a video game. So far from the first episode, it seems to be funny and sounds like the story line is thought out well enough to stand on its own. The first episode left a good taste in my mouth. I’ll continue to watch it and review it so keep coming back if you want to know my thoughts. 7.5/10

Spoiler Alert: Gate Season 2 Episode 2

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Deacon

Just a quick introduction. Spoiler Alter is the name of the articles I will give to them when they contain information about the most recent episode of what ever anime I am talking about. In this case, I am talking about Gate season 2, episode 2. So, when you see “Spoiler Alert” in the title, know it is essentially my review and thoughts about the most recent anime. Now, without further ado, lets get into this amazing episode.

When we last left off, we saw that they are having an earthquake, or as they like to call it, an “Earthshake”. Pina and one of her Rose Knights are cowering on the floor as all this happens until Itami walks up to them. Pina asks Itami why he isn’t scared for his life and he tells her that the ground shakes all the time in japan. You can’t blame Pina though. If you didn’t know what an earthquake was, it would be pretty scary during your first one. Once the ground stops shaking, Itami is telling everyone to get a status report from all the station locations. With Pina too scared to go check up on her father herself, she asks Itami, Souichirou, Shino and Kouji the Japanese ambassador to escort her to the palace. After some coaxing, the all agree to go.

Here is where the episode starts. If you read the light novel or the manga, you know what is going to be happening and my heard was pumping from the beginning. So, they all arrive at the palace. All the guards are cowering not asking anyone to identify themselves. Once they get into the palace, the JSDF members essentially “Wait out in the hall” while King Molt Sol Augustus gets dressed. As he takes his throne, Pina starts ordering the guards to get the high class people to the palace while the maids make up the guest rooms. Once the room is empty, Molt Sol Augustus takes notice of the JSDF members in the room and asks why they are here. Pina says she brought them to advise about the “Earthshakes.” After talking for a little, everything seems to be going ok, until Zulzal shows up. Remember him? Pina’s douche brother? Well he shows up demanding that his father Molt Sol Augustus go with him right now because someone told him that the ground shakes are going to come back. Who told him? Well obviously it was someone from Japan. As he brings out his prisoner, the group realize that she is Japanese and they lose it.

Itami runs up at Zolzal and punches him right in the face. Shino runs up and cuts the leather cuffs off her and and picks her up and brings her to safety. Out of no where, Itami turns on beast mode like nothing. Zolzan orders the guards to attack. Itami cocks his hand gun back and gives Shino and Souichirou the go to fire at will. This fight is all Shino all the way. She puts the bayonet on her rifle and just goes to work. She ends up taking out most of the guys who are not guards. Once Zolzan orders them to line up, she just lights them up with three mags. She tells the survivors throw down their weapons if they don’t want to fight anymore. With all that done, Itami asks Zolzan if he has anymore prisoners from when they invaded japan. He refuses to answer, so he is forced to get smacked around by Shino. Real talk? I would hate to make her mad.

Once he is beaten into the ground, Itami comes up to him and points a gun to him. He ask’s where the rest of the prisoners. In comes one of his prisoners to save him. She tells Itami not to shoot him. Itami then asks him to tell him where the prisoners again. Zolzan says the only other one that survived was sold off as a slave. At that point, the JSDF decides to leave and take the one prisoner back to Japan. This is the end of the vital information to the episode. This episode has been one of my favorite since I read the manga. This episode had the perfect amount of action. We have a reason to not like the other world beyond the game. We finally see the tension building up and with the coming tension. 9/10

Prince of Stride: episode 3 Overview and thoughts

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Deacon

Episode 3 of Prince of Stride is now here, and by my 3 episode rule, I am going to continue to watch it, so these reviews will continue along side the show. With that out of the way, Lets get into this overview.

Spoiler warning.

We open up where we last left off. Right in front of a concert. As I told you guys in the last overview, Galaxy Standard is the name of their first opponents who are highly regarded stride club members, but also an extremely popular Band. After watching them for a few minutes, the team decided to go into their green room. In the hallway, Takeru and Riku run into The members of Galaxy standard (Reiji, Shizuma, Bantaro, Tasuku, Asuma and Kuede). As some of the member’s of team Honan become star struck, they have a pleasant conversation about the old days and one of them asks about Riku’s brother. Can we just know more about him? So far, all we know is he is over seas and some pop stars know about him. One of the Gal-Stan members went all but crazy and asked where Kyosuke. Once that question was asked, they all went into the room and went over the running order.

Cut to being outside. Here are the line ups. First runners are Riku vs Asuma. Seconds runners are Hozumi and Bantaro. Third runners are Heath and Tasuku. Fourth Runners are Ayumu and Kaede. Finally, the fifth runners are Takeru and Reiji. Now that we got all that out of the way, lets get on with the race.

Right out of the gate, Riku has an advantage. He seems to be faster than Asuma. While jumping over the obstacles, they close in to the second runners. Even though Riku is ahead of Asuma, Shizuma, Gal-Stan’s relationer, tells Bantero to go ahead and take off. Out of no where, Asuma speeds ahead of Riku. With Riku finally showing up, Hozumi takes off being a couple seconds behind Bantaro. With Bantaro essentially holding the lead over Hozumi, they reach a zig-zagging bridge. At the last second, Hozumi jumps off of the hand rail to jump in front of Bantaro. as we come up to the third leg of this race, Heath takes off only to have Tasuku fire off what seems like milliseconds later. Tasuku forcing his way in front of, literally nudging Heath out of the way to take the lead, and will keep it the whole way to the fourth leg of the race.

As Ayumu and Kaede both take off relatively close to each other, a gap between them keeps building and building. As Ayumu starts to realize that the gap is building and building, he starts to think that he isn’t good enough and that he doesn’t stand a chance and wants to end the race and leave right there. Although he skips some obstacles on his way, he keeps up the pace and shows up to the final leg of the race. Being behind Reiji about 5 or so seconds, Takeru takes off like a bat outta heck. With Reiji turning the final corner, it looks like this race is all but done and over with. But with one final stride…well, I’ll let the time speak for itself.

Although they lost, Hozumi’s older sister shows up furious. Since they lost, they would have lost out on a sponsor, but since she heard that Gal-Stan’s sponsor is a rival clothing company of her, she decides to keep the sponsorship on the table for them. And with that, the episode is over and I am happy. This show has really got its claws into me in the little amount of time. I am keeping up with this show. I love it. So far I give it 8/10. Stop teasing me about Riku’s brother and just come out with it.

Gate: Season 2 Episode 1 Review

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Deacon

Season two of one of my favorite anime’s has started. It also made my list of anime’s to watch out for this season. Gate is here and I am pumped. I will not be going over season one. If you want to catch up, go check out season 1 on CrunchyRoll. Here we go. Spoiler Warning.

We open up right about where we left off in season 1. The negotiation are still being worked on so in order to try and speed things up, the JSDF (Japan Self-Defense Force) hosts a garden party for the senate. During this party, most of the head senators are taken to the side my Itami to show them just how Rifles and Mortars work. After seeing the devastating power, the senators want to engage in negotiations right away, but have to be evacuated. Zorzal, Pina older brother and next in line to become king, is on his way to see what this garden party is all about. When he gets there, he is confused and suspicious of Pina, but once he tastes the food, he takes what food there is and ends up leaving back to the palace. Once in the Red Light district (I guess every world calls it that), Recon team 3 set up base in a fairly big house.

Once there a member of Recon team 3, Mari Kurokawa, serves as the nurse for anyone in the area who needs help weather it be members of the JSDF or locals who are injured. During her time there, she meets a Harpy who is also a hooker. The Harpy basically asks for the morning after pill. After feeling like she can trust Mari and calling the office a safe place, she takes her leave.

Meanwhile, Itami and Pina along with Souichirou Kuwahara and Shino Kuribayashi arrive at Pina’s home. They decide to stay there for the night as it is late in the day and the negotiations are to start soon. While all this is going on, the dark elf back at the JSDF base is asking people how she can make up for the mistreatment of Itami and what he cares about. She is told that he cares about 3 people. That is all we hear from them. Later in the night, we are back in the medical office with Mari. We hear someone banging on the door. A soldier and Mari move towards the door with their guns drawn. Turns out it is the Harpy again with more anime lady…things. I have no idea what to call them. Turns out, all the animal girls are scared. Just like in real life, these anime people get scared before an earth quick. The ground starts shaking and episode over. If it is anything like the novel or manga was, it is about to get real.

And there you have it. Having read the manga issues, I am so pumped for this season. All for one particular episode that should be coming out next week, or this week. I’m not entirely sure, but you will know it when you see it. 8.5/10 Go watch it.

NERD REPORT

… MY FAVORITE!

Category Archives: Anime