Remember those items I was talking about last time?

As you can tell from the image above that was retrieved from this link (or not since onloy a few of you are capable of reading the Japanese text in question), the Matsuri edition has been sold out. So, if you take a hundred and multiply it by 500 USD, you will find that the result is 50,000. Now from there we multiple by two since it is only a matter of time before Aono’s edition is sold out and our end result here is 100,000. So you have a revenue of 100k USD right then and there before the series is even over.

My brother puts it all nicely with the line “well played japan”. Well played, well played indeed.

I had previously seen a screen capture and was under the impression that Matsuri would meet Aono this episode…but that didn’t happen. I guess the show would essentially have jumped back right into the main plot after that aside from the previous episode if it did happen. Theories aside, since Takeshi spotted Yorito before the episode concluded, something worthwhile just might happen in episode five to compensate for the nothingness that happened this episode.

So if nothing happened in this episode, were there any laughs like in episode three? No, nothing funny happened and there really wasn’t much character development to be had, well, maybe there was a little if you cared about Koyori, I sure don’t. At least the art quality seemed to have recovered a bit unlike what happened to StrikerS.

Critiques aside and all that jazz, I still that this series has the potential to be really good. Since Kanon dropped the bomb for me with its happy ending, I’m going to have to put my bets on sola to deliver me a sad ending. Something as touching as AIR or Chrono Crusade would be just fine. And oh, if you haven’t heard, ADV has licensed AIR, how about that?

Or has there been others? Regardless of whether other anime series has pulled this feat before, this is still really rather odd. Here, take a look at these two items in question. Yes, of course I know it’s in Japanese, but just scroll down and take a look at those prices.

What’s that? Is that a five digit number? Why yes, it looks like it says ¥60,000. For your information, sixty thousand yen roughly converts to about five hundred US dollars.

Yeah, that’s right, you heard me, I said 500 USD.

From my understanding, the specifications of this DVD set are as follows:

• all five DVDs (I believe it notes that the other DVDs will be shipped as the regular DVDs are released)
• A3 sized (297 x 420 mm, 11.69 x 16.54 in.) risograph (available in Matsuri or Aono versions), signed by Naru Nanao herself with a specific serial number, and no you can’t pick your serial number
• special telephone cards with the DVDs (in risograph form again, I believe it says?)

With five DVDs in this deal, they’re essentially asking for a hundred US dollars a pop. I think Naru Nanao’s art is great too, but I don’t know if an A3 sized and signed risograph is enough to make too many people fork out that kind of money.

How well will this sell? It’s a tough call, really. This is really a big problem I have with the Japanese releases of anime series, the timing is just plain bad. How can anyone be willing to lay down five hundred dollars when the series isn’t even over? Dude, you’re airing episode four tomorrow and you’re taking orders already? What if the ending sucks?

The first DVD ships on June 22nd right when episode 12 airs, which, according to Wikipedia, will be the last episode. This “barely” works out for shows that runs for one season but not for anything else, really. Okay, so you watch the last episode and cry manly tears on the last episode and head over to Amazon.co.jp to lay down your order but oh, of course, you can’t get the first presses / limited editions because all those psychic people that knew about the awesome ending already ordered it preemptively. Come on man, this is just low.

Well, they certainly cut backed on the tension and seriousness in this episode. They threw in a couple of cute little moments and lots of good laughs in this one instead. Like StrikerS, it seems it’s hit the budget wall as I noticed some dips in the art quality here and there although it was nowhere near as great of a drop as StrikerS.

In this episode, it is revealed to us that Aono has been sick since she was little (or maybe that was revealed in a previous episode and I just missed it). At any rate, this begs the question of whether my first theory about “what” she is from my review of the second episode holds or not. If it still holds, I guess she must be a new one that was picked off of the streets or something. Could she be weak because she’s still young? In the manga, we learn that Matsuri is actually 350 years old, so that might be it. There are enough possibilities about what her true nature is to make my head spin. I just hope it’s not going to be any of the ones I’m going to come up with as the series progresses because then the shock value would not be as great.

I’ve kind of watched this episode twice (well, when doing reviews I give it one run and then another run to take the screenshots, although not in its entirety literally since I sometimes skip a bit) and it still bothers me as to how easy it was for Mana to accept and allow Matsuri to live at Yorito’s place. Maybe she will come to regret this decision in the future if Koyori somehow gets involved and subsequently dies or is injured badly? Oh, this could get very good. ;)

Well, there wasn’t much of a fight really, but I liked what little of it there was. It was naturally not as awesome as the final battle in 『トロイメント』 (although surprise, surprise, NOMAD is responsible for the animation of sola and 『ローゼンメイデン』), but it sufficed. I have to say that I found it a bit odd that Matsuri had enough strength to jump on out of the church but she was somehow utterly incapable of even leaving the premises, merely sitting at a corner panting for her life. That was…well…badly played. It’s certainly different from the events of the manga. Given the differences that was present between 『ローゼンメイデン』’s manga and its anime adaptation, I guess I shouldn’t be expecting sola’s adaptation to follow the events of the manga?

Nothing has been revealed yet about our mysterious Rei clone, Aono, but it seems pretty obvious that she appears to know something about Matsuri and/or her pursuers. I think once her ailment has been revealed, a lot will be answered. I can see two possibilities here. Either she is a) a being like Matsuri, a yakabito, or b) is in her current state because of Matsuri or someone like her. If she’s the former, that means we might get our classic “I am not actually your sister and I secretly harbour feelings for you” stereotype, which would be a disappointment, to say the least, unless they execute it properly (there are always exceptions and I think I’ve been quoting this clause a lot).

Unfortunately, with no real previews, I really have nothing to go by as to what to expect from the next episode. As aforementioned on my review of the first episode, it’s possible that nothing exciting is going to happen until the very end, but let’s hope that it doesn’t have to come to that.

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.