Rupee Shards

View Posts by Tag
anime, encoding, fansubbing, images, internet, manga, music, video games, youtube

Created By Desbreko

Mahoromatic: Something More Beautiful

As a continuation from my post about the first season of Mahoromatic, here's my take on the second season. This post contains spoilers about the ending, by the way.

I found season two to be very much the same as season one. The biggest difference is the addition of Minawa, another android who also ends up living in Suguru's house and acting as Mahoro's younger sister and apprentice maid. She fills the shy and clumsy girl stereotype almost too well, to the point that small gags are even made about it. Minawa adds another type of moe to the show but It's still simple, cute, fanservice-filled fun with some story tacked onto the beginning and end.

Sometimes I get that feeling too....

The story is a bit more interesting and dramatic (maybe a little too dramatic in some parts, given the tone of the rest of the show) than the first season. However, when there are enough episodes between Minawa's introduction and the point where things start moving again that you nearly forget she's a key plot point, it still starts to feel almost pointless.

The one part of the story I really cared about was how it would handle Mahoro's dwindling lifespan. From the start, I figured it would be one of three possible outcomes. 1) She'd actually just die and it would be sad, 2) they'd come up with a plan to lengthen her lifespan early on and the series would culminate with its completion, or 3) they'd throw in a deus ex machina to wrap things up at the very end. I was kind of hoping for the first outcome because it would've been the first time I'd seen it happen in this sort of show. Unfortunately, and as I mostly expected, they went with option three. In fact, I totally called it during episode 12 when Yuichiro told Mahoro, "You truly are Saint's soul." At that point I was practically sure how things would turn out, which didn't help the less-than-great ending at all.

Speaking of the ending, I thought the time skip forward, or at least the way it was handled, was completely unnecessary. The style of episode 14 clashed horribly with the rest of the series and made Mahoro's reappearance even less compelling. I'm a little baffled as to why they handled it that way because the summary of the manga's ending that I've since reading on Wikipedia sounds a lot more fitting. I didn't have high hopes for the ending to begin with but it still managed to be disappointing.

Like the first season, I can only recommend the second to people who are looking for something cute and funny (and a bit perverted) to turn their brain off and laugh at for a while. I'm not sure I'd call it more beautiful but it is more of everything the first season was.

Giga Bowser Was Harder

Just now I sat down and blew through all 41 solo event matches in Super Smash Bros. Brawl on normal difficulty, to unlock some stages and music. I gotta say, most of them were pretty boring. Melee had weird matches like the hyper speed dash along the Mute City track but the most creative they got in Brawl was making me KO a couple Yoshis while the Pirate Ship level was in the air. Most were basically just excuses to put me in 1v2 or 1v3 fights.

Event Match 41 was also pretty lame. I'm sure it's more difficult on hard but it only took me five tries to beat it on normal. And I would've had it beaten on my first try if I hadn't gotten screwed by items—I was about to KO the last one when a bomb dropped on our heads and I happened to fly off first. Even on hard I have a feeling it's still going to pale in comparison to Event Match 51 in Melee.

The more I play, the more I realize I only seriously care about a few things in Brawl: 1) unlocking all characters, 2) unlocking all stages, 3) unlocking all music, and 4) unlocking all stage builder parts. And I've already completed 1 and 4. Basically I just want to have everything for multiplayer matches available because that's where the real fun of the game is for me. I doubt I'm going to have the patience to grind through all of the challenges and unlock every single little thing like I did in Melee.

I has a Aria-shachou

It finally arrived! I had pre-ordered this Aria-shachou (aka President Aria) plush from ToysLogic way back in early December and it just kept getting delayed and delayed. But it's finally here and I'm extremely happy with it:

He's just under a foot tall and balanced so that he can sit up on a flat surface without support. (Heck, a slope might be fine too since you can tilt the head forward and back a bit to get the balance right.) Right now I have him sitting on my PC case, next to the Pokémon plushies lined up across my two monitors.

This is the first piece of anime merchandise I've cared to spend money on since the aforementioned Pokémon plushies that I got back when I was eleven. It kind of gives me the feeling that I've started down an irreversible path that will some day see my room filled with all manner of plushies and figures. But right now I'm finding it impossible to be anything but happy about my Aria-shachou.

OM NOM NOM NOM

I just watched Shugo Chara! ep20 while eating Cadbury Creme Eggs. Besides the amusement inherent in such a situation, it made me wonder if the heart's eggs are edible. I mean, they pass through the chest into the heart when re-entering people yet other times they interact with their surroundings as if they were normal, solid objects. So would it be physically possible to eat them?

If so, I think Amu is going about cleaning up the X eggs in entirely the wrong way.

Hahi~

I watched Aria the Origination ep9 a bit ago. I always get that warm, fuzzy feeling while watching Aria. But this time it went beyond that to a melty feeling. After a while it felt like I was in a puddle, dripping off my chair onto the floor.

Then I started noticing the hints as Alice guided Athena around. Suspense built bit by bit as I wondered if it was really going to happen. That, "Good luck," comment by the other undine passing by really drove it home. I was still feeling like a puddle, but a tense puddle, as if I were trying to pull myself back together again—only I didn't even realize I was doing it.

At the big moment I felt a kind of happiness that no other anime has managed to evoke within me. Then at the bigger moment I came as close to crying tears of joy as I've ever been. All the tension leading up to that was suddenly released at once and it left me with that slightly shaken feeling you get after finishing something big and stressful.

But, of course, it had to end with a laugh. And as the credits rolled I evaporated into bliss.