Re-release madness - Rumbling Hearts

I noticed that I still didn't finish "Rumbling Hearts," so I figured I'd watch all the episodes.

"Rumbling Hearts" is a lousy, sexist romance anime, with women who are so dependent on their men and sex that it's just disgusting.

The plot revolves around Takayuki Narumi, some bumbling teenage guy who is a friend of Mitsuki Hayase, the top swimmer at the high school. One of Mitsuki's girl friends, Haruka Suzumiya, has a crush on Narumi, so Mitsuki hooks the two together. They become close friends, and they even have sex together. However, the love story ends tragically with a fatal car crash putting Haruka in a coma.

The second half of the story takes place three years later. Within this time period, Narumi has a romance with Mitsuki, who is now part of an insurance company. However, everything seems to change when Haruka finally wakes up from her coma.

Overall, the storyline is passable. However, "Rumbling Hearts" suffers from overplaying the drama. Mitsuki is a jerk, who really doesn't care much for her former friend who almost died in a car accident. In fact, Mitsuki spends half of the series worrying that Narumi will not love her anymore. She's so obsessed that she tries her best to keep Narumi's attention off of Haruka.

This story boils down to the voice actors and the story, which is extremely overrated on the Anime News Network and animenfo.com Web sites. Eventually, this anime revolves completely around Narumi's love relationships will all three girls in the story: even Haruka's sister. With so many girlfriends around, people will wonder why on Earth Narumi would want to focus on the selfish Mitsuki, who obsesses all the time about whether Narumi loves her.

Narumi claims that he doesn't want anyone to get hurt, but what he's really saying is that he wants to make sure Mitsuki doesn't kill herself looking for someone else to love her. The screenwriter is so self-centered in restraining Mitsuki to an overdependent relationship with Narumi. Honestly, women in Japan will never want to be this constrained to the servitude of other men.

In fact, the only likable character in this series is Haruka. Yet, even she keeps longing for a sexual relationship with Narumi after she awakens from her coma. Haruka is supposed to be the strong, independent girl who learns to fight to recover, but even she is restricted to relying on Narumi for all her support. Narumi is not trustable either: he always seems to be lying about his own relationship status constantly.

There's very little to appreciate about "Rumbling Hearts," which is based on an equally disgusting dating game. In fact, there should be no reason for it to gain so much popularity in America. However, the male audience of anime fans undoubtedly love this infantile orgy of adolescent sex and romantic overdependence. Honestly, they should know better than to watch this series, which is filled with a bunch of jerks fighting for selfish romance.

Image courtesy of funimation.com

DVD Review - Feeling a little Lucky...Star (part four)

Lucky Star is culminating into a comedy masterpiece, with the over-the-top store employees and Minoru Shiraishi's goofy ending songs.

I'm sure everyone already knows I've said that this series is okay and not the greatest I've ever seen. Yet, the art sequences and characters have some pretty funny sequences after a small lull in excitement on the third DVD.

For example, episode 13 is a humorous Valentine's Day episode. Konata and Tsukasa pull off some really clever dating game jokes, in which Konata fantasizes an entire scene in which Kagami runs off to give giri (obligation) chocolate to a guy she likes. She says, "Excuse me for the chocolate having a distorted shape," and the guy says in a romantic, handsome voice, "Silly girl, what's more important than shape is the fact that you gave it to me." Of course, this is all before we realize that it's all a scene in Konata's imagination.

Episode 14 introduce's Konata's little cousin, Yutaka Kotabayakawa. Yutaka is the tiny, shy new high schooler who just moved into Konata's home. She's very cute and she often gets more than a little creeped out by Konata's father, who leaves the bathroom door open when he's on the john. Yutaka also gets more than a little embarassed of her police officer cousin, Yui, who tells Yutaka that now that she's graduated, she should go out for a drinking party.

Just so you know, Japanese people really aren't like Konata's family. Still, this show is really, really funny.

This show also has plenty of fun April Fool's jokes. In episode 15, Konata tells Kagami that she's already finished with her homework, before saying, "April Fool's!" Really, Konata should just do her homework...

In episode 16, Konata's friends visit her working her part-time cosplay job at a maid cafe. Konata practically becomes their "servant" for a day and does a stunningly accurate impersonation of the grumpy Haruhi Suzumiya. It's especially fun to watch Konata's snobby impersonation and Kagami's strict attitude butt heads against each other. However, there's nothing more enjoyable than Konata's impersonation of the famous Haruhi Suzumiya ending credits dance. Talk about epic.

Meanwhile, Akira is getting very, very moody and mean in these recent episodes. It's still funny, although it has a dark satirical edge criticizing the honor system of film production in Japan. Akira especially goes postal when she's only given one short line in her script for the Lucky Channel segment. Thankfully, the producer gives Akira a special karaoke part in the next episode to cheer her up. Unfortunately, she only sings at a deserted karaoke room with no one except Minoru Shiraishi and a waiter serving drinks.

Boy, it's hard out there for a Japanese actress. Thankfully, the cast still has tons of fun shooting the live action ending clips for the show. Adventures of Minoru Shiraishi includes some of the fun video clips in which they run around Hokkaido with Super Soakers. They also film swordfights and wedding scenes...hm...

Lucky Star makes for a great anime-style sitcom show. Certainly, it's a little more grounded in the real world than Haruhi is, but it has plenty of great jokes involving Yu-Gi-Oh and countless other dating sims. It gets better and better as the series moves on, and volume four had the greatest variety of parodies, everyday jokes and cosplay dancing.

Image courtesy of moggling.com

DVD Review - "Shuffle!" presents a mix of boring anime romance

"Shuffle!" is not the best anime of the world. It is not even exciting. It is just a boring romance anime that travels nowhere.

The plot is very, very straightforward. The main character is a high school guy named Rin Tsuchimi. He meets two girls--Lisanthus and Nerine. The former is the daughter of a god and the latter is the daughter of a demon. The next day, he meets their fathers. They inform him that their daughters are in love with him and want to marry him. If he chooses Lisanthus, he gets the power of the gods. If he chooses Nerine, he gets the power of the demon world.

That's the plot. The rest of the story focuses on the two girls trying to get closer to Rin. As you can see, this plot doesn't make for very interesting episodes at all.

Since this anime is based on a dating simulation game, there are more than just two girls vying for his attention. There's Kaede Fuyou, his childhood friend. Her mother and Rin's parents died in a car accident, so Kaede is living with Rin. There's Asa Shigure, a member of the cooking club who slaps Rin on the back for fun whenever she meets him. Finally, there's Primura, a child demon carrying a stuffed animal cat. She's in love with Rin too.

Usually I don't mind anime based on dating simulation games. Although all of the girls tend to focus too much on one guy, some of these anime have gorgeous imagery, or dramatic, unusual plots. However, "Shuffle!" hardly has anything interesting so far. The most exciting parts of this anime occur whenever Nerime, the demon girl, blows up people who try to hurt the guy she loves. Yet, at the same time, she tries to be more ladylike by spending an entire episode learning to cook a lunch for Rin. As much as I appreciate the Japanese tradition of girls cooking lunches for their boyfriends, cooking alone doesn't make for a very interesting episode.

For some reason, there's also plenty of guys trying to beat up Rin for being engaged to the two girls. I don't know why they want to beat him up, but they do. They always appear in every episode to fight Rin, and by the third episode, they are as annoying as the villains Jesse and James in "Pokemon".

The girls don't even show very much passion at all. Compared to the heavily emotional soap opera "Rumbling Hearts", this series is dull. All the girls just try to grab Rin's attention, because of the romantic memories they had with him as a child. The story is terribly illogical. It should be disturbing that this poor guy gets so much attention. For some reason, Rin doesn't mind the attention at all after the third episode.

One of the girls, Asa, hides Rin under a table from the guys who want to beat him up. She then pushes Rin's head between her legs to see her panties. Why does she want to do this? Well, she's in love with him. That's the only reason why all the other girls are rushing to his side. One would think that these girls would be frightened to have Rin in such a position, but they're all mindlessly in love, like robots with nothing better to do.

If you see this anime, steer clear from it. It's boring and repetitive. It offers nothing interesting or new at all. I really hope I don't have to see any more romantic anime such as this one.

Image courtesy of kurogane.animeblogger.net