Laughing Man's Anime Blog

2nd Anime review To Aru Majutsu Index

2011-03-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

Most anime series these days seem to either have Science or Magic. To aru Majutsu Index is a series that combines both. The story mostly takes place in a city called Academy city a city that is 85% students from kindergarten to colleges. It is known for famously two things the fact that the city is30 years ahead of all things technological, and that most of the students have gone through what is known as the Power development program, the goal is to develop ESP powers in the students. All of the ESPers are ranked in terms of power with level 0 being the weakest and level 5 being the strongest.

The protagonist, Kamijou Touma, is one of the weakest a level 0 esper. Despite the fact he is considered one of the weakest ESPers his ability is unique in that it allows him to fight against even level 5 ESPers. Touma has an ability known as Imagine Breaker, anything supernatural like ESPer powers that comes into contact with his right arm is automatically destroyed, though this also seems to have an effect on luck as he often complains he is cursed with misfortune.

One day he finds a small nun on his balcony, the small nun calls herself Index and claims she is being hunted by magicians so that they can harvest the magic of the 103,000 magical texts stored in her mind. Soon afterward he is confronted by magicians that are surprised that Touma's Imagine Breaker also seems to destroy any magic that he touches as well.

Most of the story is told through small arcs where Touma either deals with science related problems such as Academy City's horrible experiments to pit the strongest level 5 ESPer in mortal combat against 20,000 level 2 ESPers in hopes of shifting him to become the first level 6. Or Touma deals with Magical problems such as a magician trying to cause an angel to fall from heaven which would threaten to destroy the world.

and even worse, as each arc goes on, the magic side and the science side threaten to clash violently.

Review

Animation: 8 The strength of this series is that the backgrounds and the character designs are fabulous, Academy city's backgrounds come from real life locations and the end result is amazing. The only down side is that some of the fight scenes are a little unimpressive, but still fun to watch.

Comparisons of the backgrounds of the seires and compared to there real life counterparts.

Sound: 9 The music for this series is catching and always appropriate, the voice actors also are spot on.

Plot: 9 Magic and Science mix and meet through the eyes of a boy who can destroy both. The only problem is that a there is a tad too much fan service as it seems that Touma's luck with the ladies is the only luck he has, numerous characters make reference to the fact that every single girl he meets for he most part at some point falls in love with him.

Overall 9: This is a great anime that caters to a variety of genres, it has something for everyone.

Japanese Relief Effort

2011-03-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

To all of those who have been watching the news the last 2 weeks, you have known about the recent disaster in Japan, to all of those people who love anime this came as a shock, but aside from a few selfish jerks I have to say I have noticed that Anime fan response has been amazing. While what we can do in the states to help japan is little, I fully encourage all of my readers to visit http://www.redcross.org/ and to donate whatever you can, every little bit helps.

My heart and my prayers are with you Japan.

First Anime Review : Summer Wars

2011-03-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

In 2009 the creator of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time introduced us to the wonderful world of OZ

only this OZ is not inhabited by flying monkeys and water allergic witches.

In the movie OZ is a insanely large and complex Online game where playes can do pretty much anything. from online shopping and board games to viewing news feeds and competing in fighting arenas. But one of the biggest draws is that OZ is host to one of the most most sophisticated internet security lock that almost all organizations, both public and private sector have alot of their infer-structure in OZ.

Kenji (left) Natsuki (Right)

We then cut Kenji Koiso a timid but brilliant math genius and part time OZ admin. He has been hired by is classmate/crush Natsuki for an unknown job that has him accompany her to her grandmothers home for her 90th birthday. Kenji finds himself out of place in Natsuki's large extended family, even more so when it turns out Natsuki's job for him turns out to pretend to be her fiancé. As he contemplates why he is going along with this, he gets a odd email with a 1028 character encryption problem with the words "Solve Me!" after working on it for 4 hours he solves it and then goes to sleep.

The next morning he wakes up to find that he is now an internationally wanted man as he is suspected as the person who over night cracked the OZ security system and subsequently started to vandalize both the online world and the offline world.

It turns out that a sophisticated AI program called Love Machine was behind a mass emailing of the OZ encryption protocol to everyone in the world, and once it was solved Love Machine went to work using everything that is connected to OZ, causing chaos everywhere, Kenji then sets off along with all of Natsuki's family to try to stop Love Machine.

So then my rating of this film.

Animation: 10 The visuals for this movie are superb both the real world and OZ are done with amazing backgrounds and absolutely stunning fight scenes.

Sound: 9.5 The only reason this is not a 10 is because that in the english version, Kenji's voice actor is the same as Dean Venture from the Venture Bros. not a huge problem but kinda weird for me.

Plot: 10 The only is the main plot amazing but the subplots in this movie are very interesting and important in their own way. You will remember this movie for a long time.

Overall: 10 This is truly a master piece and in my opinion would have won the Oscar in animation last year if not for Disney/Pixars monopoly on the award.

I hope everyone enjoyed my first review and I look forward to your feed back.

Welcome to my new Blog

2011-03-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

Hello to everyone that has entered my Blog. I am a 22 Year old College student that has always been interested in Anime and Manga. In this blog I will be doing reviews of series I have watched in the past and current reveiws of on going series. I look forward to any comments that anyone would like to post and look forward to hearing your feed back.