angelsinthewindow's Anime
take a look at angelsinthewindow's MangaThis doesn't mean that they are the best of the best but they are ones that I like the story and many other wonderful things about them. At least to my eyes.
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Ouran High School Host Club (TV) This is a beautiful piece of art, storyline, and voice acting. Haruhi is calm, cool, collected; smart, and sometimes so much so that she seems almost dull at times when the host club is at their most crazy. She almost seems like she wouldn’t be the center of a reverse harem (those not understanding this, its when there are a group of guys for one girl instead of a bunch of girls for the guy… easy enough to get, right?) and pretty much not the type to be swooning over the boys. Well, your pretty much right but that’s what makes Ouran High pop out more then any other that came before. As for the men, well they are as shallow and van as rich, handsome boys can be with a whole matter of stereotypes. A fun thing with this is that they don’t really have every single male going after her, luckily, its more of the ones closer to her age and three get touched on while the forth really hides in the bushes to make way for the other. Yes, I am talking about Tamaki, Kyouya, and the Hitachiin twins Hikaru and Kaoru. Let’s touch the first three and then I will get down to my favorite and most logical choice after. Hikaru is the most headstrong of the bunch, the prankster and pretty much the one that gets Kaoru into trouble every once in a while. Kaoru is the one that’s more… well kind in all aspects. When he’s not with his brother, he seems sweet and good natured which might be why most of the girls swoon over the two when they go into their whole boy love thing… among other things… Kaoru always steps back and pushes Hikaru to go after Haruhi so that his brother can find love even though he does make it somewhat clear that he wants a bit of the action as well. Kyouya is the brains and mostly profiteer of the host club, looking for the money instead of having the girls have fun, although he is able to pull a fast one when it comes to getting what he wants out of pretty much anyone around him, including Tamaki. Yes, the relationship between Kyouya and Tamaki every once in a while does tend to swing in the ‘we are hot for each other’ way, not that the author isn’t quick to pick up on this fact and uses it to its advantage. There is a good reason why Kyouya is called ‘Mother’ in the host club although if it was for sexual reasons, he would probably be top. Nope, the reason is that I can tell that if he was a woman, he would be one of those girls that will flaunt it just to get anything out of someone. And last but not least, my all time favorite, Tamaki. Yes, he is an airhead… yes, he is quite clueless… yes, I know he sees himself as a father for Haruhi… uggg… now that freaked me out. No, I will not bring up that joke, he actually figures it out later why it’s strange for him to be calling himself that but no, the reason why I like him to be with Haruhi is simple and it’s one reason on top of many. It’s because he is just like her Father. I know that is crazy but think of it this way, she knows how to take care of someone like that, she knows he has a good heart under all that blond hair, and she knows how pure his intentions were form the start. From the vary start, The Hitachiins would tease her and sometimes even go beyond to harass her, Kyouya really was mostly in it for the money, it seems that the only reason why Tamaki put his heart in soul into making her come with them was mostly, because he liked spending time with her and no matter if he tried to make her into a fully fledged girl, he in the end always went about saying that she needed to be true to herself. (If you can’t tell, I can get into a lot of detail when it’s an anime I really freaken enjoy!) Now, on to technical merits. The artwork is so beautiful and bright that when they start going comedy, they seem to lost a lot of detail and turn somewhat chibi-fide creatures. And yet, to me it works. I am happy most of the story line doesn’t focus on all the customers that come in, letting the characters shine in their stereotypical designs although… how the hell is Hunny a martial artist? Ya, he looks nothing like it and the blond hair kind of pushes me off there as well. When the story starts to get dark is when most of the details start shining in a aposing danger is on its way, and the shadows mix well in to the details, making them stand out much more. Thoughout the show, there are a lot of roses and I do wish they wouldn’t have so many. Ok… so we know the rose is a symbol of love… we get it… you don’t have to flaunt it every freaken second that they are there for love. The voice acting is also well done for both Dub and Sub. They pulled out all the stops with Caitlin Glass having solid voice acting next to Maaya Sakamoto for Haruhi. They both gave her more of a cool hearted not caring attitude that made up her character. Even better when she was playing against Vic Mignogna’s rather overly fun character Tamaki. At first, I could not get away from how he sounded just like Edward from Fullmedal Achimest but I can see how the characters fit perfectly. Tamaki has the same style freak outs as Ed whenever someone calls him on something stupid he did or said that I couldn’t help from smile. Other Characters got voices like J. Michael Tatum as Kyouya, Todd Haberkorn and Greg Ayres did a unbelievable job keeping the harmony between Kaoru and Hikaru even when the two were speaking ‘with one voice’ as it was. They used Luci Christian as Honey and it worked rather well, pretty much perfectly for the cuteness, Monica Rial as the over Otaku girl Renge, and I could not stop laughing at Patrick Seitz’s depiction of Umehito Nekozawa. |
Excellent (dub & sub) |
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xxxHOLiC (TV) I do love this show a lot but there are some problems in it too. Inconsistencies between the manga and the anime make me cringe just a tad. Now I have not actually read the manga, but I have seen enough to find that some of the artwork is not right, but we will get to that in a moment. This is pretty much Pet Shop of Horrors with wishes and spirits; sometimes their good, and sometimes they will try to rip you apart. The story follows a fail of a boy named Watanuki. Pretty much everything he does, he messes up with and is always hunted down by spirits. He is the only one who can see them which makes him look like a fool most of the time when he runs around the town from spirits that seem to not exist. Now here is where some of the inconsistencies that I found. Almost every picture I have seen of him has two different eye colors but yet, the anime has given him both blue eyes. I am not sure exactly which is true but it’s what I’ve seen from the manga, it’s supposed to be the later. Yuuko is an interesting character and from what I’ve seen, they are actually alike between the manga and anime at least in looks. She has a way of getting what she wants with no worry as to what will happen to the other person although I believe she always knows it will work out. I never once saw her worried that something may happen. If Watanuki wears his emotions on his sleeve, Domeki is the exact opposite. Maybe that’s why they make a great pair. Domeki cancels all of Watanuki’s crazy antics, giving mostly a base monotone as he speaks. I wish he was actually in the show more often and given a bigger role because it was really fun to see the conversation between him and Watanuki (and the idea of them being a yaoi pair makes my fan girl in me scream for joy...) In fact, all the characters are pretty memorable as main characters except for one. Himawari is a little two plain and cheerful all the time. Sometimes I want to smack her hard because she just gets so annoying. There are many times that Yuko gives cryptic statements about her but it is never explained what is going on with her. I somewhat understood all that was being said but then some of what they talked about, I felt would only make sense to a Japanese person such as the game ‘Angel’ which seems to be a Japanese version of Ouija Board or Wigi Board. When they first talked about it, I thought that it was something else. Another thing that is bothersome to me is that no one takes her advice, which I understand, some of the reasons for it but then they get into problems and suffer for it and I just have to roll my eyes at it. The animation is alright but all the characters are much too thin and long limbed which makes it hard to watch sometimes. Even fluid movements would never make the shows good to me. There are many times when the artwork pretty much sucks for an anime, and really makes me wonder. It surprises me that such a low design could come from Clamp. In fact, the fact that there are references to other Clamp manga’s in the show is interesting if you take the time to pick them out. Sadly, the only details with this seem to be in the background except one or two things the characters end up wearing and the characters themselves are poorly lacking in detail and actual proportions with arms and legs going everywhere during freak outs. I also don’t like how their eyes are all blank. They have no high lights what so ever so it makes them look dead. I really like the English Voice acting, which to me, it’s much better then the Japanese. The English has more fluid movement in fact then the Animation and feels like a cloud of smoke to the ears. At least for most of the things Yoko says. The other actors are pretty good for them going with Shizuka’s monotone to the crazy way Watanuki’s voice gets with some of the things he gets in to. Really I do feel sorry for the boy. The music is also really well done, giving it a really nice mystic feel to it and the opening is rather fun. I would watch this for the story line but pretty much not much else. |
Very good |