The text below is a basic transcription of the romaji subtitles by Eclipse Productions for the insert song in the most recent episode of Rental Magica. I’d like to apologize in advance for any errors that may be there.

白い雪を駆けて
鈴の音聞こえる
どこへ森を抜け
橇が遣って来る
聖なるこの夜に
星に願い祈ろう

さぁ喜び歌おう今宵を
星は輝く照らす
楽しい鈴の音近ずく
柊のリイス目印にして

さぁ楽しく歌おう今宵を
星は導き照らす
聖者の子を信じ近ずく
樅の木のツリー飾りつけて
靴下には夢を詰めて眠ろう

さぁ皆で歌おう今宵を
星の夜空へ響く
サンタも歌うよこの歌
笑い声をメロヂイにして

さぁ一緒に歌おう今宵を
雪降るの地へ響く
歌声重なり広がる
込めて今日と心込めて
笑顔でまた過せるように祈ろう

I always enjoy transcribing romaji as it almost always helps expand my Japanese vocabulary. The main reason I did this though was really just for my own benefit as I tend to prefer “singing along” with Japanese lyrics over romaji lyrics (of course, I don’t actually “sing” since I suck, but anyway…). I also did this because I wanted to put in another jab at promoting this great episode to my readers. ;)

Not much really happened in this episode. I mean, really, so few things of interest actually occurred in this episode that I’d be hard pressed to really write anything meaningful about it. I will note that the bit with her father muttering the numbers was rather lame. To be honest, I can’t think of a better way for it to have been resolved myself, but man, was it cheesy or what?

Contrary to my predictions from the last episode, it seems that Koizumi really wasn’t actually a bad fellow after all. Since he was being so sorry and all in episode fourteen, I figured he was some sort of an evil person, but I guess not.

I had a quick glance at the previews and it seems that we’ll be back in modern time in the next episode. Of course, we could be getting more of this flashback with the preview for episode 16 actually acting as a preview of what is to come in episode 17. It’s quite plausible.

If you’ve given up Rental Magica or haven’t even watched a single episode, I highly recommend you check out episode twelve. It’s a nice little heart warming tale packed with lots of comic relief. You’ll get the jokes even if you don’t watch Rental Magica, so don’t worry about that. I’m really hoping that the Christmas carol that the casts sings in this episode will end up on the soundtrack next January. I don’t usually listen to songs sung by seiyuus on a soundtrack but this is definitely one of those rare, exceptional cases. Watching Itsuki conduct the singers was a little weird but it seemed like something he would do, being the incompetent leader that he is. At any rate, please do check it out as I dare say that this was probably the best Rental Magica episode thus far.

Lastly, I hope that all of you are enjoying your breaks, peace.

Well, it’s time for “祭囃し編” now. This is very exciting for me as this arc should answer any questions that haven’t been answered before (considering that this is the last arc of the original doujin game). If you usually skip the opening sequences of a show, it might be worth not skipping ahead this time around as they’ve made some additions and modifications to the opening sequence.

I should’ve seen this coming, really. Given the amount of episodes that we have left, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see them present more questions to the viewers over answering any of the existing ones. Could Takano’s mistreatment really have turned her into such a sadistic person? It sounds a bit unlikely. There has to be more than meets the eye. I also want to note that I can’t help but think that the old man that gave Takano that briefcase of cash wasn’t really an actual friend of the dead professor Takano.

I didn’t watch the previews personally so I have to say that I’m having difficulties figuring out how Takano’s going to get saved. She seems to be in a rather remote environment so it’s questionable as how she’s going to get through this one. Admittedly, she seems to have climbed over some mountain passes or something so she might have ended up in the orphanage over on the other side. Let’s see how this plays out.

It seems that two million people were asked to name their top anime of the year of 2007. The results are in, please see below.

1. sola

2. らき☆すた
3. 家庭教師ヒットマン REBORN！
4. おおきく振りかぶって
5. ひぐらしのなく頃に解
6. 銀魂
7. リリカルなのはStrikerS
8. ななついろ★ドロップス
9. さよなら絶望先生
10. ひだまりスケッチ

The Japanese list above translates to the English list below:

1. sola
2. Lucky Star
3. Katei Kyoshi Hitman Reborn
4. Ookiku Furi Kabutte
5. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai
6. Gintama
7. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
8. Nanatsuiro Drops
9. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
10. Hidamari Sketch

According to the article, sola had 340,000 votes, Lucky Star picked up 160,000 votes and Katei Kyoshi Hitman Reborn rummaged 130,000 votes. As you can see, there’s a large margin between the first and second place here.

For those of you that actually read my episode reviews, you’ll know what I felt about sola when I reviewed its final episode. Now for those of you that don’t read those entries, in summary, sola impressed me so much that it has earned a spot in my personal list of top ten Japanese animations ever.

In terms of anime tastes, I have a tendency to not share similar interests with people I personally know. How odd it is that I am actually with the majority for once.

Well, I went ahead with the raw today and I can’t say that it was a mistake considering that even someone that didn’t know Japanese would likely get what was going on in this next episode. Both the resolution of Nanaka’s story and the unveiling of Sana’s past caught me off guard. The concert was also a clever ploy since I was expecting to see what we saw in the opening. However, considering the twins’ predicament, I guess I should’ve figured that that wasn’t going to happen. I also thought that Sana would go and man the piano but that was also a no go.

In any case, I think that I’m quite satisfied with the ending. This final episode seemed a little rushed given the need to bring closure to everything but I can wave it off in this case in light of the big picture when examining the entire series as a whole. While there were some fillers in the series that weren’t exactly necessary for the advancement of the main plot (like Hinako’s episodes) that perhaps could have been replaced to add more meat to the story, I can’t say that I personally resented or yawned through any of those episodes. So while I wished the pacing could have been better, I’m not really going to complain too much here.

So, If you like romance dramas, a genre which I am very, very weak against, I would definitely recommend that you give this one a go. If not, then, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Let’s just say that while there are some clichéd scenes in this show typical of any romance drama, I think that the plot twists sets this one above the average fare. Also, I must admit that I have been pleasantly surprised by Myself;Yourself throughout the series considering the fact that I wasn’t even planning to watch it when the season started and I wasn’t really expecting anything when I actually started watching.

Anyway, that’s all for this entry, take from it what you will.

So, I noted yesterday that Final Fantasy XII’s battle system was different than the ones we’ve had in the past (excluding Final Fantasy XI, of course), and today I shall note that this battle system is surprisingly fun. It wasn’t really all that exciting to me when I was just fighting miscellaneous enemies but my opinion quickly changed during my second boss battle with the flaming horse in the sewers when I realized how engaging this system was. I was moving different characters here and there around the screen and issuing commands to them in real-time, it was simply a joy to both play and watch.

I haven’t really done much with regards to the customization of my characters’ gambits but I’ll be sure to blog again once I get a handle on it. I’m pretty comfortable with controlling my characters manually right now but I presume that that will quickly change once I start fighting more difficult enemies and bosses. Hell, every character that’s joined my party thus far, guest or otherwise, has always been higher level than my main party…which probably means I should spend some time leveling up. Alas, but I’d really rather get on with the game than to spend my time leveling up. ;)

Well, this arc certainly ended with a big bang. There weren’t really any “fights” since all these people just dropped down immediately but I still think that these “action scenes” were done quite well. The conversation of Rena with Takano was also very nicely executed. I simply must commend the production staff in their voice casting choices as they all fit their role very well.

There were a lot of sappy scenes in this episode with our group of protagonists dropping left and right but it didn’t really feel all that clichéd in my opinion. The bit after Rika died was kind of weird though with all that chit-chat about faith and trust in your friends. It seemed as if they were simply placing the blame of their loss completely on Hanyu, har har.

A new arc will be starting in the next episode and it looks like it’s going to talk about Takano’s life as a child which means many mysteries will be uncovered with new ones surfacing. I’m hoping to ramp up a bit and go through more episodes in the next couple of days since I’m rather far behind in this series (I mean, hell, the series just ended recently on episode 24). I haven’t spotted anything next season that I’m planning to blog about, so this should hopefully give me some leeway to play catch up.

Well, I received my copy of Final Fantasy XII and Luminous Arc from Play-Asia this morning courtesy of FedEx. Unlike my purchases with Amazon.co.jp, I did not have to pay customs anything for some reasons.

I’ve invested about an hour into FFXII thus far and I will say that it’s pretty fun. I’m not sure if I totally follow the battle system at the moment since it’s rather unconventional when compared with other traditional Japanese RPGs but I presume I’ll get acquainted with it in due time. I had actually thought that I would have more control over my party’s actions in battle but I was quickly proven wrong as I saw the characters swing their weapons at will. More to come later.

Yesterday night, I finished watching all twelve episodes of Myself;Yourself that have been aired thus far (I started on Thursday night). The show’s last episode will air this coming Wednesday, I haven’t quite decided if I want to watch the raw or not though. I don’t usually watch raws for non-preview purposes (like what I have a tendency of doing when a new season starts, I check out the first episode’s raw of some decent looking series to check it out), so this obviously means the show has left a good impression on me thus far (especially with the twist they pulled in episode 11, if you saw that one coming, tell me why, because I didn’t). In any case, I’ll report back in due time.