Well, if you talked to me at all prior to this blog post about StrikerS, you’ll know that I’ve been complaining about the drop in quality of the art, primarily centred around the faces of the characters. DamagedGoodz’s encoding came out really nicely in my opinion, so part of it might have just been a bad case of raws. I downloaded two of the four raws that I could find, and both was bearable for viewing purposes, but was pretty bad otherwise. Of course, since I’m an impatient person, I’ll keep downloading the first raws that come out even if it’s in the flv format.

So, we got a bit of action again this episode, although it’s really got nothing on the first episode. I didn’t think I would’ve thought too highly of Erio and Caro, but they seem to be aright. So really, the only person that sucks right now is Subaru, and given how she has been portrayed in the episodes so far, maybe this was what the writers intended from the start. ;p

Since this series is going to be twenty-six episodes and the next episode is called “First Alert”, it leaves you wondering whether it (or this potential “mini-arc”) will really has anything to do with the actual plot. With the past two seasons, there was really no time for filler episodes (though they still threw a few in in the first season), so the ball got rolling pretty quickly (or instantaneously, in the case of A’s). No one likes filler episodes, but if done correctly (like most things in life), they can add some more bang for your buck. When it comes down to it, as long as I get plenty of Hayate and Reinforce II, I think I can forgive them. Crappy endings, however, are generally unforgivable, but let’s not go there because I always get pretty riled up when talking about endings.

I think these statistics speaks for themselves. ;P

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go back on IRC. ;)

I just finished this film and I have to I have to say that this film was surprisingly good. The premise itself should be sufficiently interesting enough to draw your attention, really.

The ending was well played, really. It could’ve gotten really tragic, but it didn’t go that route. I think you guys should know it means a lot to me when I compliment an ending for not being “too tragic”. I might have had to shed manly tears if it did. Well, okay, no, but still, it would’ve been a real downer.

I had no intention of watching sola originally when I was going through the list of new releases this season, but here I am now bothering to spend some time to tell you people about it.

The first thing that caught me about this series was its art and animation quality. While the picture of Matsuri at the front page of the official site is nothing to cry home about, the show itself is surprisingly good. Of course, one could argue that you have to have good art in the first episode to draw in some viewers, but I was just pleasantly surprised overall. While its animation quality was not as up to par as with GONZO’s first episode of Romeo x Juliet that I watched with Sam two (?) days ago, it was certainly up there. In fact, GONZO did such an awesome job in the first episode that I am already expecting its quality to deteriorate visibly on the second episode onwards. ;p

The characters seems alright to me except for the main guy which is giving off too much of the “I’m your average clueless anime male lead surrounded by good looking girls” aura. However, since it’s only the first episode, I guess I can give him a little lee way. I don’t intend to give him much nor put any money down on this because it just generally doesn’t turn out this way when you’ve got this generic type going in the show.

The plot itself seems okay but it was the ending that suddenly picked up that really got me going and prompted me to bother blogging about it. I mean, I was really expecting some kind of slice of life show (a genre that I have a soft spot for) but it doesn’t look like it’s going to come to that. Of course, they could be pulling a 『真月譚 月姫』 wherein nothing really important happens until the last couple. At any rate, since this first episode’s really pulled me in and I’m really interested in seeing Matsuri fight (well, I hope she can, because if she’s just some hopeless female lead waiting for the male lead to suddenly discover his hidden powers to save the day, that would just be really lame), I shall continue following this show.

I probably complain about this every single time I’ve had to move…so…here we go again. Like most things in life, it’s not as bad once you get the ball rolling, but looking at the mess in front of you generally tends to make you want to worry about it later.

I have just returned from my ECON 102 final. There were some tough questions lurking around, but I think I did okay. I’m hoping to blog more now that I’ve got more free time, and of course, to appease all my readers of varying interests, be on the look out for recent ECF-related development, blog entries for StrikerS and possibly sola, and the chronicles of me packing things up as I move out of Waterloo to my brother’s place in North York.

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to KOTOKO’s Re-sublimity and agony, the opening and ending tracks for 『神無月の巫女』 respectively. Having just given the two a whirl again (and wow, I’ve forgotten how awesome these two tracks were), I realized how the beginning of agony was somewhat like Love Planet Five’s 『天壌を翔る者たち』 in the sense that both tracks didn’t get going with the lyrics until over a full minute has passed. Upon closer inspection, I realized that both tracks were actually composed by the same person, 高瀬一矢. Seems like the fellow also composed Suppration-core-, an insert track for 『神無月の巫女』, and here we also have this one minute opening of full techno before the lyrics rolls in.

So what does this all mean? Nothing in particular, really, I’m just trying to avoid studying for the ECON 102 final. I’ve actually had thoughts of blogging the first episode of sola today but have not done so because I figured my time would be better spent on preparing for the final. I guess I have not lost my sanity and sense of priorities completely since those entries always takes a while.

Well, I’ve got my last final for this term tomorrow for ECON 102 at 1930 - 2200. There are actually five sections of ECON 102, but only Larry Smith’s sections’ final is going to be two and a half hours long, the other three sections’ finals will only be two hours long.

This is actually kind of funny because ever since the examination schedule for this term was posted, he has been hounding us every single class to write his final and his final only because we are not writing a common final. So technically, you might get kicked out at two hours when you might’ve been under the assumption that the final was two and a half hours.

Not having all ECON 102 students take a common final makes perfect sense if you’ve had him because I doubt the other professors would be able to replicate his lectures. This isn’t to say that these other ECON 102 professors “sucks” (since I doubt I’ve ever had them), I’m just trying to say that Larry’s material and lectures is unlikely to be reproduced in any form unless he was the one that presented it. So, they don’t, and they present the material differently, and so we don’t take a common final. Don’t believe me? Take his course and find out (oh, there I go recommending you all take his course again).

If there’s one thing that I remember most clearly about this episode after having watched it four times (besides how amazingly moe Reinforce II is), it’s got to be how amazingly badass Hayate has become. To be honest, I really hated her in A’s because of her Kansai-ben. Times sure have changed though, especially when you consider that she currently outranks both Nanoha and Fate with a rank of SS (whereas the other two are at S+). I don’t particularly like her barrier jacket, but if the opening animation is any implication of what’s going to happen later (unlike Fate/stay night), I’m going to be seeing Hayate order people around a lot (which is exactly what I want because she was really cool in the airport scene). I will note that the “transformation scene” that occurred as she ran away from the truck was really cool and I will heartily approve more of that.

This episode appeared to have gone on the wayback machine, playing some familiar background music of the previous seasons in addition to hinting at one of the events in the manga where Nanoha came close to dying. There’s a lot of potential in this material although the actual outcome will obviously depend on their execution. If they’re going to have Nanoha in a life-and-death situation or some psychic breakdown, the obvious saviour that’s going to hit the scene is going to be Subaru. This is of course clichéd and expected, but if done properly, it shouldn’t be that bad. An alternative would be to have Nanoha actually die (yes, literally die) directly or indirectly because of that past injury. This of course has an adverse effect of there not being anymore Nanoha series to sate my undying lust, but I would give it a nod if done right. Doing it “right” would entail not having her come back to life. “People die when they are killed”, as Emiya Shirou noted in Fate/stay night, let’s keep it that way. Given how the resurrection bit turned out in the first season, things just might go my way for once.

As you can see below, former characters from A’s have reappeared. I don’t know when they’ll give some screen time for Amy or Yuno, but there better be some. What’s interesting to note at the end of the series is that Vita, Zafira, and Shamal were actually fighting against machines. In the past two seasons, there has been basically zero fights against machines besides the last bit of the first season when everyone rushed into Precia’s little “spaceship” (or island?). It seems like we’re going to see a lot more mechanical critters if the opening actually means anything (oh, here we go again with this opening foreshadowing business). Only time will tell as more episodes of StrikerS is aired. Damn I wish I had a time machine and could just go off into the future when the whole series has aired already. :(

Google has managed to crunch out the results before the day’s end, well done! While I’m not officially mentoring anyone, I intend to hang out at #eclipse-soc and provide assistance to anyone that needs to if able. Here’s to hoping for another successful year for the Eclipse project and a great first year for the Haiku project, peace.