[Anime Review] H2O: Footprints in the Sand

H2O: Footprints in the Sand {Romance+Visual Novel+Tragedy+ Mystery}

You may already realized, a lot of Japanese animes are first made into visual novels. Yes, these visual novels (or games you want to call them) are very popular in Japan. They are basically love stories that you can experience over and over again just by inserting the CD into your PlayStation or DS. In my knowledge, there are some free apps out there for Apple users as well, but I never really check them out... So, anyways, get back to the topic. Today I'm going to introduce/review/rate/chat about a visual novel that's been made into a TV anime -- H2O: Footprints in the Sand.

The story introduced a blind boy called Takuma Hirose moved from Tokyo to a countryside residency where his uncle lived. His mom got ran over by a train when she's trying to save a little boy, without a dad, Takuma decided to move in his uncle's house. He went to the school as a disabilitied student, everyone was very nice to him. Yet he found the girl who sat next to him seemed to be hated by everyone. Her name was Hayami Kohinata. One morning, when Takuma's walking from home to school, he bumped into this little girl of his age, who claimed to be his Promised Person, gave his ability to see again. Takuma didn't decide to believe her at first, but when he realizes he can see the bright sunshine again, he was amazed, yet the girl had gone with the wind. Takuma got to know Hayami more, even though she's trying to push him off and telling him to stay away from him. At the same time, the mayor's daughter, who's also the most popular girl in the village, Hinata Kagura, was forced to gain favor in Takuma's eye and eventually, marry him. Stuck between Hayami and Hinata, he could make a move. But just as he decided to stay and wait, Hayami seemed to give up on herself. And when Takumi fianlly confessed love to Hayami, he found out the death of his dearest mom has to do with Hayami's family.

It is an amazing anime. Be honest, I shed so much tear! But I do note that they could have made it better. For example, the third to last episode, or the second, really confused my how did Takuma traveled to another world then came back, I really don't get why does he have to raise the magic of the sword... anyways, good thing that it only covered one episode. The music is good, I really enjoyed it. I felt I became more sensitive after watching H2O, because it revealed the evil side of human -- segregation, stereotype...

Rating: ★★★★★★★ [VERY GOOD ANIME!]

[Anime Review] Ouran High School Host Club

Ouran High School Host Club {Comedy+School Life+Romance}

So I realized that the two animes I've been doing is both really old ones (I'm not that old, believe me...) so I just decided to do some up-to-date animes. I decided to do Ouran High just because it's different from other many animes out here.

So, as a tradition, I'll first do a summary of Ouran High.

There's been said that no one had ever gotten a scholarship to go to Ouran High School. It's a what we called a royal high school where only people with A LOT of money can go. Haruhi Fujioka was the girl that broke the saying, became the first ever student to receive a scholarship to go to Ouran High School. Her dad later founds out to be a cross-dressing bar worker (you dress up as the opposite gender) and her mom is dead. Haruhi was overwhelmed by how beautiful the school is, yet was surprised that people actually don't use the rich studious resources to study. While finding a quite place to study after school, she came to the ex-music classroom. She doesn't know that behind that door, is actually a host club. The club members mistakenly thought Haruhi is a boy due to her outfit: short hair (some kids stuck a gum onto her hair so she cut it), men sweater (she doesn't have any uniform-sweater so she borrowed her dad's), men pants (same reason), men glasses (her contacts broken and so do her glasses, so she borrowed her dad's). Surprised, Haruhi tried to get out from the room and accidentally scattered a VERY VERY expensive porcelain. Not able to pay the debt, the club president, Tamaki Suou, suggested that Haruhi can help with the host club to pay off. And soon he claimed that he found out Haruhi's potential to be a host, which will pay off her debt faster. Haruhi agreed and continued to be treated as a boy. Sarcastically, other club members start to realize Haruhi's true identity, and all fell in love with her (secretly,) yet Tamaki didn't realize that even though he's the first one fell in love with her. Not until they found Haruhi's student ID and admitted the fact she's a female. Tamaki wouldn't want Haruhi to go, so he used the excuse of the broken porcelain to keep Haruhi (more like threatens her...) close to him, afraid that if her true identity is revealed, that more boys will ask her out.

Ouran High really reminded me of Hanazakari no Kimitachi e, a drama, where the heroine pretended to be a boy and eventually the boy found out and fell in love with her. But before I watched it, I thought it is a yaoi (boy x boy anime) so I didn't watch it when it was first introduced. But after seeing the anime, I decided that it's a anime worth to watch.

Judging the art work and TV episodes, the art form doesn't change that much, but there are some parts of the original manga that have been cut off for the TV series, which was a pity. But seeing the result of the editing, the story still is complete and exciting. If you liked the anime, I do recommend you to watch the TV series, it's got the same art form and story line. However, the TV series actually boosted the funny scenes due to the hard work of the voice actors/actresses, you can experience more than just looking at the words of the manga.

There is a Japanese drama made base on the story line of the TV series. To my surprise, the drama is actually every good. Except that the actors are not good looking as they are in the anime -- I guess you can't really improve on that. Tamaki Suou played my Yusuke Yamamoto, and Haruhi Fujioka played by Haruna Kawaguchi.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★ [HEY! CHECK IT OUT!]

[Anime Review] Ranma 1/2

Ranma 1/2 {Action+Comedy+Romance}

Ranma 1/2 is another great anime by Rumiko Takahashi, who is one of my favorite writer, a.k.a the author of Inuyasha (I did a review of that as well). But Ranma's story line is more of a comedy than romance. This is another anime that I said earlier in Inuyasha's anime review,  an anime that adopted 99.99% of the original manga series. As good as it is, it wasn't all popular like Inuyasha. 

There an imaginary place in the Qinghai Province of China called Jusenkyo, which literally means the Springs of the Cursed -- because when someone falls into a cursed spring, they take the physical form of whatever drowned there a thousand years ago whenever they come into contact with cold water, but they turn back into their regular form when contact with hot water. Ranma Saotome (who is considered a hot and popular fighter), while training with his dad, Genma Saotome, accidentally fell into the Spring of the Drowned Girl, so he literally became bisexual. As the same time, his dad fell into the Spring of the Drowned Panda, which means he turns into a Panda when contact with cold water. In order to find a cure to their weird body reaction, they went back to Japan and meet up with Genma's life-long friend, Soun Tendo, who had three beautiful teenage (described in the anime) daughters. Soun Tendo owned the family Dojo (where they teach their family's kung fu), Tendo Dojo. It's been a promise that since Soun Tendo doesn't have any sons to take the dojo over, that Ranma is going to marry one of the girls to take over Tendo Dojo: Kasumi (eldest daughter, nineteen years old), Nabiki (second daughter, seventeen years old), or Akane (youngest daughter, heroine, sixteen years old, same age as Ranma). But as the story goes, Ranma and his dad actually appeared in front of their door with their altered form: a girl and a panda. Everybody thought Genma's "son" is actually a girl. Soun thought Genma tricked on him, but the girls seemed to have a good time with the girl Ranma, especially Akane, who has the same age as Ranma, although she's the one that strongly opposed the idea of marrying some man (she hates men...) to carry on the dojo. But later she found out Ranma's secret by entering the hot bathroom without knowing Ranma who's taking a hot bath -- in his real form. The secret was revealed and Akane hated Ranma for she  regretted to show her real, nice, girly side of her. Under Soun's arrangment, Akane is to marry Ranma and carry on the dojo, and she was forced to agree. As more character appeared in the anime, Ranma appeared to be rather popular, due to his father who made up several promises of marriage (for example with Shampoo and Ukyo...) While Ranma's trying to get away with these people, he also has to find the cure to his weird body.

The story line is long and funny, makes you want to keep watch it. But there are some part not very appropriate for children below ten. Arguably, there are some parts where Ranma is mistakenly treated as a girl, and even if you REALLY REALLY HATED BISEXUAL comedies, Ranma is still a pretty funny comedy to watch. Oh, and I do have to admit the sweet parts are like heaven! It's like you've been watching them fighting, flirting with other people, mad at each other for so long, yet suddenly, there is a love connection between the two (although Ranma always chose to be the party killer...).

There is, however, a live action movie made in 2011. With special star Yui Aragaki as Akane, Kento Kaku as male Ranma, and Natsuna Watanabe as female Ranma. The character make up was very good, but the fighting scenes were little bit retarded... yet if you look back at the manga or TV series where battle scenes are incredibly NOT possible to adopt in real life, the scenes are good enough. So if you have watched the anime, you'd want to check out the movie :)

Rating: ★★★★★★★★ [HEY! CHECK IT OUT!]

[Anime Review] Inuyasha

Inuyasha {Action+Romance+Adventure}

Inuyasha by Rumiko Takahashi is probably one of my favorite anime of all time. One thing that I really appreciated about Inuyasha is that, unlike a lot of other animes, the plot line of the manga and TV series are 99.99% identical. For a person like me who couldn't afford to buy the whole manga set, I can find free episodes online or through some applications and boom, you understand the entire story completely and you get to actually visualize the battle scenes which I personally think is an advantage of TV versions. Inuyasha is epic, the story line was very complete and the action and romance was well balanced; I've never seen another better time-traveling anime/drama/movie than Inuyasha.

Considering that some people, for whatever reason, haven't watch Inuyasha yet, here is a summary.

Kagome Higurashi is a fifteen years old Japanese school girl. Her family owns this old temple/shrine that has a well called The Bone Eater's Well. The time-traveling plot begins when Kagome's trying to get her cat out of the well house, and the well pulled her into the Sengoku Period of Ancient Japan, where demon and human fight. She eventually found out that she carried a special jade that can make anyone more powerful -- Sacred Jade of Four Souls, or Shikon no Tama. Therefore, all the demons were after her. As Kagome's escaping from the demon that pulled her into the well, she discovered a half-demon-half-human boy who got put into sleep by the arrow that went through his chest and onto the Tree of Life/God, later known as Inuyasha. Kagome unsealed Inuyasha and found out he recalled her smell as Kikyo, a dead young miko (or Holy Priestess), a.k.a. the girl who sealed Inuyasha onto the tree fifty years ago. In fact, after Kikyo's dead and the villagers burn her body with the Jade, she incarnated into the modern world as Kagome Higurashi. Under the command of the Kikyo's alive younger sister -- the new miko of the village, Inuyasha was bonded to protect Kagome regarding the fact that the Jade is with her. However, during a battle, Kagome scattered the Jade with her bad bow-and-arrow aiming. Now the jade's spread among the entire land of Japan. Because the Jade will make any demon more powerful, Kagome and Inuyasha (together with Sango, Miroku, and Shippo) will have to collect all the pieces and put them together. As the journey gets harder, the team members developed a unbreakable bond with each other, they are determined to defeat their common opponent, Karaku.

Even by recording the summary drive me crazy to watch the anime over again. As you can see, the plot line is unique and breath taking, with the epic voice acting and the detailed character setting, Inuyasha just stands out among other anime. In spite of the fact that it's pretty old, it's still a revolutionary anime in Japan's anime history.

I personally believed that a good anime, not only should have a good story line, but also should have its own views on the world, the society. In Inuyasha the Sacred Jade of Four Souls stated that the jewel can purify an individual's heart if that individual is righteous and innocent, but it could also greatly increase an individual's dark power if that individual has the careerism to rule the world. The holy and evil spirit are always fighting, and depends on who gets to hold onto them, one side would dominant the other.

It is certainly a pleasure to have Inuyasha as a part of my teen memories, it's an experience that I'll never have yet lesson-learning. People who haven't watch it, you must watch it! People who did watch it, watch it again! 

Rating:★★★★★★★★★ [MUST WATCH <3]