Well, I just finished watching the first episode of レンタルマギカ over at Nico Nico Douga on my browser. They seemed to have done a pretty good job in terms of the production of this first episode. I didn’t really hear the music too well so I can’t really comment on that but the art was good. As an aside, I was a little surprised by how well it turned out on my browser, maybe the original raw was really good or something, but watching it online wasn’t all that bad. It looked a lot better than watching it on YouTube, maybe their Flash backend isn’t as good? Who knows.

Anyway, the voicing job didn’t really fool anyone. Everyone was immediately recognizable although Rie Kugimiya’s voice seemed to be slightly different than her usual tsundere voice (then again, I don’t think the character she’s playing here is a tsundere anyway). I had difficulties picking out Lelouch from Jun Fukuyama although a little bit of that slipped in after he ripped out his eyepatch.

Since this is just the first episode, it’s not really indicative of how the series will proceed. So, I really have on idea as to whether the series will work in arcs or in a “monster of the week” fashion. I’ll stick around for now to see how I like it.

Well, this episode was quite good. I would’ve liked to see more of Nanoha and Vivio fighting each other but eh, what can you do? There were a fair bit of badass Nanoha scenes anyway what with her blasting the crap out of Quattro and Vivio. I have to say that it’s a shame that Vivio’s back to normal now though. I rather liked her adult form and would’ve enjoyed seeing her do some more fighting, but I guess there aren’t any bad guys left to fight anyway. Since she seems to need the ship and a relic to transform, I don’t think we’ll ever see her in that form again. Will this mean that she won’t join the Administration Bureau in its quest for inter-dimensional peace? That’s hard to believe since we all know how they love to convert and employee former criminals to their cause. ;)

I really thought that Vita was going to die but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now. I suppose it’s a good thing since it wasn’t really being developed properly in that direction if they were going to kill her off. After all, killing off a character isn’t an easy task and any slip up in its execution tends to cause people to choke on their laughter than on their tears.

From this episode’s ending, it looks like the last episode’s going to end with a little bit more blasting of walls. It looks like the prediction that several of us may have had with regards to Subaru saving Nanoha is going to happen next episode. With both intelligent devices, I could see Subaru kicking some major ass although I don’t know how is Teana going to contribute here. I mean, I don’t even know how she and Teana magically recovered enough from their wounds to go out on another mission. I mean, Teana was literally limping her way towards Subaru when we last saw her. My only explanation for this is that Shamal had tended to them prior to their sortie. Then again, even if she didn’t, eh, whatever, it’s not like it’s a huge plot hole or anything anyway.

Nothing too shocking really happened in this episode. I must admit that I’m still having difficulties in seeing how this is supposed to all tie in with the main plot of the story. However, since the show has had an excellent record in keeping me interested and surprised, I’m sure it’ll all work out in the end.

I’m kind of intrigued by the fact that Satoko actually has a condition that warrants her fright. I just kind of assumed that she had some other disease that had to be treated by taking those shots. It kind of makes sense now with Takano’s picture game from “厄醒し編” as it really actually served a purpose for the sake of analyzing how she interpreted images. The game wasn’t actually just a useless “exercise”, per se.

Although Keiichi’s first go with his classmates didn’t align with my prediction on laughs from the last episode, his subsequent plea for assistance from the baseball pitcher certainly did. It wasn’t as funny as the third episode but it was still pretty cool seeing Keiichi rally all these dessert lovers to his cause.

Adding on to my previous entry, I found a larger image that encompassed even more of the new series that will be airing this season.

I might add 『神霊狩/GHOST HOUND』 to my plate since my brother said he’s going to check it out but that’s probably about it.

I just finished watching the first episode’s raw a little while ago. I do not plan on writing full episode reviews until subtitled releases appear but I just wanted to get my first impressions down for starters.

Looking at the opening sequence, if it can be taken as an indicator of what will happen during the first half of this season’s episodes (unlike Fate/stay night that betrayed us all with that Archer fight in the second opening sequence), I think that the chances of the anime series ending with the light novels is very high. I’ve brought the issue up before but the fact that the opening included the scene of Ike confessing to Yoshida (which occurs in the 14th novel if I remember correctly) really helps reinforce my prediction.

I like the new art style and the new theme songs although there were some hiccups here and there in the art department. Regrettably, my mental preparation from having seen screenshots of the episode didn’t really help. I am hoping that these will get fixed in the DVD release. From the preview, it seems that Mea’s arc will likely end by the second or third episode. This is fine with me because I’d like to get going with the original source material as soon as possible.

Many moons ago, I brought up the fact that I had no idea what the people at Port 25 did. Today, I was browsing a website when I was told that I had to manually install the Windows Media Player 11 plug-in for Firefox. The provided link brought me to Port 25.

I don’t know where the source code is or if it’s even available, but seeing this download page has cleared things up for me as to just what kind of work it is they do over there.

The site has been renewed although it seems to be loading very slowly. I mean, I’m on the school network right now and it’s still not done loading. Anyway, more details to follow if I identify anything interesting on the website that needs to be reported about.