The First Fullmetal Alchemist Adaptation Had A Shitty Ending

…especially compared to FMA Brotherhood, which had the best and most satisfying final arc I’ve seen in anime (just a bit better than Eureka Seven’s). But that’s hardly surprising, because Brotherhood is a vastly superior show in every regard; and that’s not surprising either, because that’s the whole reason it exists. I joked once that Brotherhood gave me an excuse to not finish the original show, but I never actually took it off of my on-hold list and, having waited until Brotherhood was far from my mind (over a year), I finally put the nails in that coffin.

Shit.

Here’s information: I never finished FMA before watching Brotherhood, so I didn’t go into Brotherhood with the same feelings about the show that other fans did who already knew one version of the story. Instead, I went into finishing FMA that way. However, it’s not as though I’m experiencing FMA for the first time: I was a big fan of this show when it was airing on Adult Swim in 2005, and had seen the first half (26 episodes) back then. Unfortunately, my family moved before the second half began airing, and we couldn’t afford cable anymore, so I never saw any more of the show. Besides watching the first ten episodes in Japanese a couple of years ago, I didn’t ever watch more of it until Brotherhood. Now, I finally borrowed the DVDs from a friend and marathoned the show in the past two days. It’s worth mentioning that I was already spoiled to a lot of the plot points, but I didn’t know how all of it comes together or anything.

Even More Awesome EDs, ~2011 Edition

More EDs! These ones missed the first list for one or more of these reasons: I forgot about them; I didn’t want to include two from the same show; I counted it as not awesome enough because I was being a lazy dick; I haven’t actually seen the anime it comes from but know the ED by reputation.

TO MAKE THIS LIST, if I can actually think of how the song or video goes, it’s got a good bet.

Awesome EDs, ~2011 Edition

A couple of years ago I posted my “top 10 unskippable EDs”—titled that way because I used to skip EDs a lot of the time. Now I don’t do that unless it’s really bad. Anyway, all the embedded videos are broken in the old post and I watched a *lot* of anime in the past two years, so here’s a new list of memorable EDs.

TO BE ON THIS LIST I had to like the ED as a whole, meaning song and video both. There are some ED songs that I liked where the video is unmemorable (think Mawaru Penguindrum’s “Dear Future”—amazing song, boring vid). Some also might be awesomely bad.

These videos are alphabetized by the shows they came from. And no, I have absolutely nothing better to do, and yes, I’m very tired right now.

Trying To Make K-On!! Songs Easier To Sing

As I’m sure you know, I’m very passionate about karaoke (if you don’t know, please familiarize yourself with these videos~). Being as K-On!! was one of the best shows of the year and was a show about music with a number of really good opening and ending themes (even some great B-sides!), it seems like perfect karaoke material.

Art by kurage http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=kurage

Or it would, were the songs not insanely difficult to sing. I pride myself on being exceptional at singing fast and complex songs—last Otakon, I did Shounen Heart, a rap song by Home Made Kazoku from Eueka Seven, almost without error (and those errors aren’t made all the time). But K-On’s music is a whole level above that.

OMG SPACE HANAMARU, GAINAX I LOVE YOU SO MUCH (Hanamaru Kindergarten ED2)

OMG. THIS IS SO AWESOME. I am going to do a post on Hanamaru Kindergarten episode 2, which was amazing in it’s own right, but I knew I just had to set aside a separate post for this.

Eden of the East is Overhyped, Overrated Bullshit, but I Guess it's Okay

Eden of the East is not a great anime. Almost every review I’ve read of the first episode has paraded it as the second coming of anime Jesus. I can’t say that many things have filled me with more rage. The same people who will insult more deserving, excellent shows turn around and treat this shit like a diamond. I can’t comprehend why. I don’t understand the appeal. Eden of the East is horrible.

K-On! Episode 1 – A Reminder of Why I Love This Genre

Now having watched the first episode subbed, I can safely say that I am extremely excited about K-On. This show already seems to be right up my alley in a great many ways, and it has the kind of qualities of a show that I’ll be likely to rewatch many times in the future. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even be surprised if I found myself watching this episode a third time before the next episode comes out just because I have so much fun with it.

K-On Episode 1 = (Hyakko – Negatives) + (Manabi x (Lucky Star)^2) [RAW]

Disclaimer: I don’t do screen caps. Be glad I’m blogging episodically at all.

K-On episode 1 fully lives up to my expectations, and those expectations were pretty high, so I’m already loving this show. Which is saying a lot since I watched it raw and therefor understood the bare minimum of the dialog. However, I’ve seen more than enough anime and KyoAni shows to know how things work in a slice-of-life comedy, and thankfully KyonAni’s highly animated characters emote more than enough to tell the story with their hands. Indeed, this may be KyoAni’s most hyper-actively animated show yet, with clothes and hair ruffling all over, but it never gets to the point of retardation like Kannagi did (constantly).