Crunchyroll News

What up guys? (a moment of self-reflection)

So, summer break started for me about a week and a half ago. I've managed to avoid needing to take summer courses again. But I have not managed to get a summer job yet. =\ Trust me, I'm trying. >.> I have finished watching some anime series and also started watching some new ones. Overall though, I'm watching fewer anime series at once than previous summers (I'm watching 8 series right now). I'm really enjoying them, but ehh what can I say. Having a break from school is great and all, but it also gives me time to think about myself.

The impending thought of post-undergraduate life is always in the back of my mind, along with all the other life challenges that await. Grad school? Law school? Writing? Teaching? Getting a car? A house? Getting a wife? Raising children? Fulfilling my dreams and potentials (whatever those might be)? Lately though, I have thought a bit about my hobbies, and how much time I spend with them. Right now I have about 3 clear hobbies: anime, piano and video games. How would I maintain these hobbies if I really tried to get into grad school and became a professor? or if I started working full time? Or if I had a wife and kids? There's also the worry that I should be spending my time doing something more "productive" than spending time on my hobbies.

So now that the depressing part of this blog is out of the way, let's move on to some ANIME! *YEAH*

One Piece (ep 130): The great adventure continues!

I just finished watching episode 130 of One Piece (okay maybe about half an hour ago now) and DAMMMN. Alabasta, Vivi, you will be missed. I almost wanted to cry... almost. Not that making-someone-want-to-cry was ever a measure of how good anything was, but again I am impressed by the writing and story of One Piece.

About a year ago I wrote a blog about watching One Piece from duty of being an anime fan and watching one of the "Big 3". You can read my full blog here. I had just started watching One Piece and was on episode 22. So, I did some quick calculations, and that means I have watched roughly 108 episodes of One Piece in a year. Which evens out to roughly 2 episodes a week. Which means, if I keep at this rate of 108 episodes a year, then in 4 years I will be on episode 562 (One Piece is currently at episode 546). But at that point, One Piece will be airing episode 754! (assuming 1 episode is released a week). *dizzy face*

Like in RPGs, for now he's "Dude with Popeye arms"

Sometimes I look at screenshots of recently aired One Piece episodes and I think, "what the heck is that?" No seriously, why is Chopper wearing that goofy hat? Who's the dude with Popeye arms? What the heck's with these giant female snakes? If you're following One Piece, please don't answer those questions. I'm sure the series will let me know about it when it becomes relevant, and I'm sure it'll do a damn good job making me feel that it's relevant.

Right now I'm more interested in Nico Robin and where the Straw Hats are going to go now that they have left Alabasta.

One Piece: Pirate Warriors (GET HYPE): Also for those that don't know One Piece: Pirate Warriors for the PS3 has been released in Japan and it is quote "selling like hotcakes over there," (Crunchyroll). I can hardly believe that I am excited about a game based off of an anime. Games-based-off-anime usually fall into the same category of "games-based-off-movies", which are usually terrible. But I'm genuinely excited to see the Luffy and the gang in 3D! I hope it really delivers the same story punch as the anime.

Legal Streaming: One Piece is available to watch for free at Funimation.com. If you're thinking about checking out One Piece, don't be intimidated by the episode numbers. One Piece has a great sense of adventure and knows how to build up and tell it's story. Watch at your own pace and enjoy the world of One Piece.

Kids on the Slope (ep 4): Jazz piano, love and life

"Sometimes jazz music takes an unexpected turn." Was a quote from this episode. And that's what makes playing jazz so much fun. You can screw up and still make the best of it (you still have to know what you're doing though). Since I play piano, this series story which already has amazing characters and soundtrack, has hit me in a big way. Only recently have I discovered how fun it is to improvise on the piano.

Ritsuko, modest, caring and lovable

Kids on the Slope starts off with Kaoru, a male, a glasses-wearing, classical-piano-playing, high school transfer student from a rich family. He has trouble making friends, and it doesn't help that some of his classmates tease him for being rich. However he soon grows a crush for the female class rep, Ritsuko. Upon learning that Kaoru plays piano, Ritsuko introduces him to Sentaro. Sentaro has a reputation for getting into fights, but Ritsuko, who is Sentaro's childhood friend, assures Kaoru that Sentaro is okay. Soon enough his feelings for Ritsuko, and some other jazz-like incidences with him and Sentaro, lead Kaoru to start playing jazz piano. Yes.. I know that sounded very vague, but the anime speaks for itself, and I'd rather everyone watch it first hand.

There is some great plot development in this series, and it all feels very authentic. Maybe it's the jazz style of improv that makes it feel the way it does. At this point we have a variety of possible ways that various relationships could turn out. And I wouldn't be surprised if Kaoru never gets to go out with Ritsuko, but I guess that's jazz.

Legal Streaming: If you have not checked out Kids on the Slope yet, I highly recommend it to everyone to go check it out. You can watch full episodes with great quality and subs for free at crunchyroll.com. Here, just watch the trailer and tell me you're not sold! I DARE YOU, no just kidding, but seriously this anime is a real treat.

What now?! You mean you watched even MORE ANIME? - Conclusion

Yes I've been watching more anime than just these two, but I decided to just blog on the two above... FOR NOW *dramatic pose*. But, along with Kids on the Slope, I'm also watching and can recommend Space Brothers. It is also available on Crunchyroll. ;P

Thanks for reading, be sure to post any comments below. Anyone else excited for One Piece: Pirate Warriors, One Piece or Kids on the Slope? Finding it hard to manage your anime-watching habits? Maybe sometimes we just have to treat life like jazz, or an adventure, and give it our all.

All the best.

Unlike most of you, I am not based in the US. If you go a country south of the US you will find Mexico, where I live! That's why this piece of news particularly exciting for me! Because the piece is in Spanish I will directly translate the news:

As of today (04/13/12), anime fans from all of Latin-America (including Mexico and the rest of the Spanish speaking countries in Central and South America) will have access to the latest Anime episodes with Spanish subtitles and the original Japanese audio. The present season episodes will be available for free, along with news, one week after they have been broadcast by Japanese TV programming. With the premium membership, members will be able to enjoy immediate access to a simultaneous broadcast, all of the previous episodes of the present season, additional privileges like high definition videos in 1080p, and all of this without commercial interruptions

For the initial launch, the 2012 Spring Crunchyroll Season following series will be available with the broadcast of Spanish subtitles for Latin-America: Naruto Shippuden, Sket Dance, Bodacious Space Pirates, Recorder and Randsell, The Knight in the Area, Fate/Zero Remix II, Sengoku Collection, Saki: Episode of Side A, Shirokuma Cafe, Naruto Spin-Off: Rock Lee and his Ninja Friends, Nyarko-San: Another Crawling Chaos, Folktales from Japan, Hiro no Kakera, Space Brothers, Upotte, Yurumei 3D, Ozma, You and Me, Mysterious Girldfriend X, Kuroko's Basketball and Tsuritama.

A selection catalog of the series Bleach and Gintama will also be available with Spanish subtitles with additional simulcast by a series catalog that will be included after the launch.

All of the Latin-American viewers will be able to enjoy the present anime season series with episodes free of commercials with the Premium Membership along with additional access and privileges. Viewers can subscribe to the premium service for a free trial period of 14 days and they also have the option to pay with local currency, as well as PayPal (in countries with said option). The monthly Anime Premium Membership in the different countries is: Argentina: 20 ARS, Bolivia: 35 BOB, Chile: 2490 CLP, Colombia: 9900 COP, Costa Rica: 2490 CRC, República Dominicana 189 DOP, Guatemala: 39 GTQ, Honduras: 89 HNL, México: 69 MXN, Nicaragua: 109 NIO, Panamá: 5 PAB, Paraguay: 22000, PYG, Perú: 13 PEN, Uruguay: 99 UYU, and Venezuela 20 VEF.

The episodes can be accesed from Crunchyroll.com, free iPad and iPhone apps, apps for Android, Google TV, Roku, Boxee, Vizio VIA, WD TV Live, affiliated channels and other partners involved.

There you have it. If you live south of the US you can now legally watch anime with Spanish subtitles. What do you guys think of this breakthrough that Crunchyroll has achieved for the good of the anime industry?

Source: Crunchyroll (Translated by Yours Truly)

-- Geo (sora_thekey) 24/7 geek! -- Follow me on Twitter: @Geo_sorathekey

For the next couple of weeks I will be completely open and work free so I decided what better way to cure the boredom than to try out of a bunch of "new" anime series on Crunchyroll? After literally browsing through the entire catalog I settled on the following shows for a wide variety of deep and well thought out reasons such as I think I might have heard something positive about this from someone on some site at some time and this guy reminds me of someone from another series.

I'll be tackling them 3 at a time and seeing what sticks and what doesn't. I set a rule that I would watch no less than two episodes of a series before dropping it, but that got broken on the very first show. With no further ado...

GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class

What I Thought Going In I didn't have any expectations about this other than figuring that there wouldn't be an overarching plot and that it would be a bunch of mini episodes in every episode.

What I Got Lucky Star + Nichijou - Nice Animation. I'll explain that a little more. People ramble on aimlessly about art techniques and concepts in a way that's very similar to how Lucky Star characters might go for 10 minutes just talking about how they eat ice cream. If I was an art design student, that in itself might be interesting enough. Unlike Lucky Star, I could at least tell that they were trying to be funny and make jokes. Similar to Nichijou, the jokes fell flat 90% of the time.

What I Did I was super meh on what I thought was the first episode but I was prepared to stick by the two episode rule to see if maybe episode two would be more up my alley. That went out the window when the mid-episode commercial spot came up and I realized that what felt like 30 minutes had only actually been 15 and that I'd have to sit through 3 more of these. DROPPED

Watch @Crunchyroll

Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas

What I Thought Going In Based off of nothing more than the costumes in the picture above and reading in a Battle forum thread that someone has super illusion Aizen-like powers, I figured this would probably end up as a pretty low budget show with crappy looking fights but there might be at least one guy who does interesting stuff in these crapy fights. If I wasn't literally sitting at my house all day getting bored of video games, I never would have given this a shot.

What I Got Well, it kicked off with a full English OP, which was funny to me. I was most impressed by how high quality the animation was. The story is standard generic shounen fare, but there were some dark elements and characters that should be killing people and doing twisted things later on. By episode two I was pretty happy I gave this a shot. My attention span is low though.

What I Did If the story stays as mediocre as it is and they go for a few episodes without nice animation and battles, I will probably drop this in search of something better. But for right now it's more than delivering, especially since my generic shounen but cool fights series that I watch every week (Bleach and Naruto Shippuden) are in the crapper right now and will probably be there for another month or two. At the least, I'm probably going to be in it for 13 episodes or until the Aizen-power guy shows up, whichever comes first. PICKED IT UP

Watch @Crunchyroll

What I Thought Going In Well, originally I just watched this in hopes of being able to fall asleep to it so my expectations were crazy low. I actually thought this would be like those chibi Super Robot Wars games.

What I Got An intro that sounds like some late 80s or early early 90s power rock. That was awesome. After that, I got Gundam 00 but goofier. This show exudes G00 to an extreme degree, almost to the point that I think they might be related. Some leader gives a speech in a room that looks identical to one used in G00 and they even use the same font to tell you what location a scene is taking place in. Outside of the plagiarism/inspiration that rivals Fairy Tail, this show has been pretty kick ass in a silly way. The fight animation is on par or better than G00, the female mech has nipples on it (this instantly reminded me of Batman Forever), breasts jiggle at every possible opportunity, Aizen's voice actor is in it and he might be playing a shady snake in the grass character, and people get killed in awesome Gundamy ways.

What I Did It should be obvious that I'm sticking with this one. I haven't seen a mech series since G00 and this one is definitely scratching that itch. Plus, it's super awesome in all the right ways. It's interesting though, the silliness of Star Driver was initially a turn off to me yet this show is just as ridiculous yet that's the appeal. Well, that and Aizen being in it. PICKED IT UP

Watch @Crunchyroll

Announcement from the website

1. Would you be interested in buying professional quality DVD releases of our shows?  If yes, how much would you pay?
2. Would you be interested in a $199/year subscription service that gave you DVDs, merchandise, physical manga and other items?
3. Would you be interested in a $400 lifetime subscription that came with a care package?
4. Would you be interested in a feature that let you give money directly to series creators and/or production companies?  If so, how much would you be willing to give?

My Thoughts

1. DVD, Blu-Ray or AVCHD releases of CR shows is something I'd definitely be into.  CR has a lot of shows that may never get licensed or would take years upon years to see a release.  I'm still waiting on Saki, Time of Eve, School Days, Hyakko, Aoi Hana or Erin news from anyone.
2. I have a hard time dropping $200 at once for something when I don't know what I'm getting in exchange.  Even if they gave me an equal value to buying $200 - normal premium subscription and promised the additional content would be based off of what I watch the most so I'd get what I'd like, I'd rather pay in chunks.
3. This is similar to #2 for me.  $400 is a lot.  Plus, premium subscriptions are usually on sale for like $40, with maybe a one month wait until the next.  At $40 a year with the occasional month here and there that's close to 10 years just doing it the normal way before I spend $400.  CR seems to be doing good but whose to say they'll be here in 10 years?  Even if it was guaranteed that they would be, $400 is ALOT to drop at once imo.  I'd rather pay my $40 a year.  Maybe after 10 years I'd consider going lifetime.
4. They already pay creators and production companies a % of subscription fees and ad revenue so I took this as, "would you be interested in donating money to these people?"  I gave that a resounding no.  I have a pure consumer-producer relationship with them.  They produce, I consume.  When they give me free products I'll consider giving them free money.  Until them, haha, no.

So...why would this show be on CR? Was there not enough animated side-boob in their current lineup?
 
Sorry, don't have much else to say here, I thought this show could just stay buried but it won't. I'll come up with something better to blog about next time.