Code Geass

TERRIBLE WAY TO END THE FIRST SEASON But I suppose it's appropriate. Almost makes me not want to have finished it, but I needed to free up room on my harddrive.

An EXCELLENT series, one that I supremely love and nominate as best anime for this (or last?) year. Unlike what others (including my friend) may think, I can define this as one of the most "hotblooded" series of the year, if taking into account "hotblood" is the definition of the feeling of excitement and anticipation. For me, the excitement and anticipation lies in the planning and ingenuity of Lelouche, most likely the most impressive character I have ever met. While having a slightly annoying ego, his intelligence greatly makes up for it and can be classified as one heck of an awesome character. What's most intriguing is that all his hopes and efforts are for his sister, in his efforts to find revenge to the one that did her sister harm and to have a world where him and his sister can live in peace (obviously, highly idealistic). For someone to work out plans so logically and base them on something so human... this is the human rationale. All of logic, whether from math or science, originates from ideals and imagination, an entity that does not truly exist. There is no such thing as a dot, or a line, as they can all be traced into being either a circle or an extended rectangle. Yet because we are able to establish a "dot" or a "line", we can define things like circles and rectangles. Idealogy is everything in reasoning, and part of Lelouche's character reflects that.

Additionally, another great factor of Code Geass is that no matter how great his plans were thought out, something always falters and fails. If none of his plans gets ruined, then it would just look highly unrealistic. But even if his plans fail, he manages to take advantage of whatever the situations that come up. Only in VERY FEW events does he rely purely on luck, and in that case, its quite forgivable (hey, this is anime after all, isn't it?).

Aside from Lelouche being the coolest male protagonist I think I have ever seen, other characters are fairly interesting in their own ways. Lelouche's good friend, Suzaku I believe, is interesting in his own respects. A kind guy, albeit a dangerous pilot. I was entertained how his movements were predicted by Lelouche after a while. Overall I didn't concentrate too much on him because there was obviously someone much cooler close to him that I was trying to figure out. As for some of the girls, I find that Euphemia and Shirley were both reasonably cute. C.C. had her own style of "cuteness", if more appropriate termed the word "hot" although I seldom use the word and don't like to use it often.
Slight spoilers though if you are reading this you either a. don't care or b. already watched Code Geass already. Not like anyone reads these blogs anyway... BUT
I find it really interesting that of all the ways that Lelouche's plans get ruined, the one that seemed to deal him the hardest blow was by his sister Euphemia. That was one twister I really liked. Another was shortly after how he accidently manipulates her to conduct a genocide, ultimately putting things in his favor once again. What's interesting about that is how he regretted his decision, but continued to move on. An amazing show of persistence, even if despite the fact that he is sacrificing one of his relatives to "save" another. (Needless to say his logic begins to falter, but there's so much other things going on that I never really had time to develop and think on that).

Orange-kun is strangely entertaining! He is similar to one of those guys everyone loves to pick on just because he gets angry, and he gets angry because he gets picked on. A lose-lose situation on his part, but oh well. AND HE PILOTS A GIANT ORANGE LATER!! How entertaining is that :V

The music... overall I enjoyed the intro to the first half of the show, ending to the second half of the show, and the intro to the last episodes, the other OP/ED was not as much to my tastes.

With that I believe I have said most of what I wanted to say in Code Geass. There has so far never been as an exciting of an anime as Code Geass. Code Geass and Sola are the anime to watch this season! Go for it! :D

Planetarian

Lately I haven't been writing significant posts, particularly reviews on anime and other related material. This is mainly due to the fact that I had to take Writing 340 over the summer which resulted in me not feeling like writing up anything. This is not necessarily due to the fact that I haven't been watching any (decent) anime (on the contrary, Sola was a very good anime that I would suggest to others, but have not yet written a review yet). However, presently I have just... (Played? Watched? Read? insert appropriate verb here) Planetarian, the Reverie of a Little Planet, and, like any otaku fan that knows of Key, the work was spectacular.

I have to admit, similar to how when I first watch Haruhi and AIR, the work seems to be pure eyecandy. I can't deny that I enjoyed most of the visual novel because of how cute the Planetarian girl looked, because personality wise I (until the very VERY end) did not find her any more exciting than an AIM bot dressed nicely. VERY nicely. In fact this makes me worry, in the event that in the future people will design advertising bots just like her and possibly warp the minds of many into this monopolistic world of fantasy... but I digress. This visual novel isn't, of course, about the mindnumbing cuteness of the main heroine and it's theoretical possibility of brainwashing poor fools into buying things just because they're cute. It is an entertaining story, sometimes fun, sometimes sad, overall very moving and heavily touching.

Following this point there will be spoilers.

The part where she is attacked and begins "dying", so to speak, was not particularly moving in that she got shot and is dying. This the authors (ie, Key?) probably realized, even though, yes, the death of a cute character like her is indeed sad. What made the entire scene so touching was her memories that she recalled. What's moreso about it is how throughout the entire visual novel, she mentions the concept of memory here and there, and at the very beginning only briefly mentions her holographic replay feature. It almost hits like a brick when they finally reveal the emotional link of her memories to her character. Yes, admittedly, when that part came, I had tears. I was not crying, but it could not be watched without some emotional movement within yourself. But alas, this is probably what makes the novel so great.

The little charm music, of course, helped. In fact, music was done VERY nicely to portray an appropriate mood in Planetarian. This novel is, indeed, a masterpiece as many have already said many times before, therefore, I need to blab you no further on it.

Instead I should be telling you about Sola, which is also a good anime, but for the time being I must finish up this obsession over planetarian.