To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater

In the End, It Doesn't Even Matter

2010-03-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

Now, that the end of my reviewing schedule has come, I have to review myself, and talk a bit about the things that I went through. Sounds like fun? Well it might be for you, but it's kind of a pain in the ass for me. What's with you getting off on my suffering?!

Okay, so since this is the last post I'll be doing here for a while, I'll try and make it a happy affair.

When I set out do this project... I had mixed expectations of the outcome. I wasn't sure if it was going to end up being easy or hard, it I'd learn anything from the process or not, and a whole bunch of other conflicting circumstances that even I don't know how to articulate... real and imaginary.

As time went on, I found that the order that I had chose to review the shows in was a little flawed, I kind of wish now that I had done Toradora! a bit earlier, but it was still there in the end.

All in all, when I had finished the Fate/Stay Night review... I was kind of fed up with the whole reviewing process, but mainly because I ran into more than a few roadblocks on how to explain all the shit that's going on, and what made Fate/Stay Night even more interesting to me was all the stuff going on in the background that the anime didn't tell you (or need to tell you, but I did anyway just to confuse and piss you off. Fun.).
I found quite a few cool animes while I was doing the project, though I generally picked only the animes that I had heard of before. There were ones that I thoroughly didn't like (Gankutsuou being the main one), and there were one's that I'd already decided I loved, so I tried to make sure that they balanced out nicely.

I also discovered that I'm pretty picky when it comes to music. There isn't much anime music out there that interests me, or maybe I'm just watching the wrong genre of anime...
Maybe I'm just not into Japanese music as a sound in general, who knows? Well, I should, but there you have it, I'm incompetent.

I don't know what else to say, mangas are usually better because they allow for more freedom of image and character, and are also a lot fuller than the animes, but animes are fun to watch because some jokes just don't translate well on paper... and Japanese puns hardly ever translate into the English speaking mind.
Accept it and make you own decisions. If you choose to go with anime... then always remember that Japanese is better than English, and I'm having a hard time finding even the exception that proves this rule. There are English versions that aren't bad... but Japanese are always better. And it's better to get used to it, because thousands of animes haven't been worked on by the English speaking world. Are you just going to foresake them because you have a problem with subtitles?!
A warning; be careful if you're going to eat while watching subbed animes. I've been training for a long time, but all you amateurs out there will just end up frying your computer with soda or something.
If you are going to try... start with something on a screen away from any liquids that you are consuming. Trust me, near misses are still scary as shit.

So go out there into that vast anime world. I've given you (semi)direct links to several dozen animes that are worth watching, a couple of them are worth owning, and there are many others out there that you haven't even begun to think of! Go out into your world of options, my gentle viewers.
Good luck, but...

Fate/Stay Night

2010-03-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Name: Fate/Stay Night
Type: Television Show
Episodes: 24
Rating: TV-14
Runtime Per Episode: 30 min
Director: Yamaguchi Yuji
Produced By the Fate Project, Studio DEEN, and others
Year Produced: 2005

A widely publicized visual novel turned anime, Fate/Stay Night was reserved just for the ending because of my love for it, and no matter what happened, I wanted to end on a high note (for me, not you. I don't really care what kind of "not" you end on, so long as you read this far).

I guess you could call this a cult classic, but I don't think it would be right to do so. I do know that the term "GAR" originated from here, but that's about as far as it infiltrated public opinion in so much as internet jargon (and I'll explain GAR later).

The visual novel was produced by a company called Type-Moon. If you know titles like Tsukihime or Melty Blood, then you know Type-Moon. They make good stuff. Though my current non-existent budget only allows me to buy Fate/Stay Night at the moment, I'll be getting the other two when I have the time to strike it rich.
If you're interested in buying these, I'll provide you with a link to a place that I know carries the Fate/Stay Night titles. There's also Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, and Fate/Zero, which are the top two on my shopping list.

The thing that you have to know about visual novels is that they are like those picture books that you might have been interested in when you were a kid. The way their set up is that they tell you what's going on, then give you a couple of choices on what to do, and then the story modifies around your choices/actions. It's pretty fun.
That being said, there are numerous endings, as well as entirely different story paths in visual novels, and Fate/Stay Night is no exception, and the visual novel version of it has three scenarios; Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel, all of which have been semi-combined into the anime, meaning that there are parts of all of the scenarios in the anime, but there are also a bunch of parts that are not there.

Emiya Shirou is the adopted child of Emiya Kiritsugu, who died quite a while ago after saving Shirou from a soon to be grizzly fate. The whole reason Shirou was orphaned in the first place was that the block that his house was on apparently exploded for, killing almost everybody, and leaving everything else in fiery chaos.

Shirou is generally over it by now, and is now living with his adopted elder sister Taiga in what I would call a mansion. Shirou is a high school student who attends the same school Taiga teaches at... in fact, Taiga is his homeroom teacher! But that doesn't really matter right now. What really matters is Shirou has a cute underclassman named Sakura coming over to his house every day and making him feasts. I don't know why (except the obvious, and does this happen all the time in Japan, and if so, how in the hell does it start?), but I'll go with it.

There's an important thing that you need to know about Shirou... he's a magician. I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to try and sugar-coat it right now. His father (here meaning step-father) was a magician too before he died, and he's apparently taught Shirou a couple of things. Shirou's best at what's called "tracing", or determine the base materials that make up things, and using that power, he can find structural problems in appliances and stuff like that. He's also pretty decent at "strengthening" materials, which is just how it sounds.
He obviously keeps this a secret and nobody around him knows, not even Taiga.

All around the city there have been strange incidents that is beginning to scare people, people are passing out from suspected gas leaks, and the police obviously have no idea what to do.

One day, Shirou is staying late at school cleaning up when he hears something outside. When he goes to investigate, he finds two warriors battling each other with a lance and swords.
Unsure of what to do, Shirou is quickly found out by the warriors and is eventually chased down by the lance guy. After having seen the fight, it is some kind of law that Shirou can't be left alive... but a law for what?! And just like that, the lance guy kills Shirou.

End of Story? No. You might wish it was, but then you'd be missing one of the greatest characters of all time.

As Shirou is lying there in the hallway, dead, someone comes to him. His classmate Tōsaka Rin, the master of the swords guy (I realize that this is starting to confuse the hell out of you right around now, but all the more reason to watch the anime or play the game).
Rin is horrified by Shirou's death, and... somehow revives him. Freaking magic, man. Seriously.

When he gets back home, Shirou is still a little anemic, I mean, he got run through the heart, how could he not be?
When things couldn't get much worse, the Lancer guy, who's gotten away from the other guy (Rin's servant), finds him again. We don't know how, but we just accept the fact that this guy has a bug up his ass about Shirou, mostly because he saw something that he shouldn't have. The fact that he is a magician doesn't seem to earn him any points with Lancer, who eventually chases him down again into some kind of storage shack.

Just when Lancer is about to deliver the killing blow, something happens and a beautiful girl blitzes out a magic circle and beats Lancer back. She turns to Shirou and asks him if he's her master.
A "yes" would be an awesome answer here, by the way. If any cute girl comes up to you and asks you if you're her master... say yes. I know I will. Girls... since you're generally not considered to be as perverted or horny as guys, I don't know what you should say, but general consensus is that if it's a guy, it's up to you, and if it's another girl, guys will try to watch.

I loved this anime, end of story. It was nicely timed and well developed, and had a lot of awesome Taiga and Saber moments.

The plot line was a bit jammed in the beginning, to the point where I had to pause the anime a couple of times in the first several episodes to read the subtitles and the explanations that the subbers made.

The art was awesome. Among my top ten artists of all time. Woot to the max.

The animation was nice and smooth, and since there was a lot of action sequences in there, I had a lot of time to analyze it. There wasn't too much in the way of innovative animation that I could see, but that didn't change the base line that it flowed well.

Japanese is always the best. The actors that were in this weren't in a lot of other stuff that I remember noticing them from (but that means hardly nothing), but the actress for Saber was in more than a few things that I've seen.
And another thing... has every actor/actress that I've seen in all the animes that I've ever watched, played a part in a Gintama episode? What's up with that? Maybe I should just watch it already.

The music wasn't bad, but wasn't hard enough to keep my interest for too long. It was more long the whimsical side, which is okay for this anime I suppose, but I wasn't too interested in it. There you go.

Fate/Stay Night Mintheatre
Fate/Stay Night TV Reproduction

The second link is a link to something that they did after the final broadcast. They compiled all of the episodes into two 60 minute OVAs, and that's what's here. I don't really get it, and I didn't watch it because I was fine with the original versions (that and it was in parts... I hate parts), but it's totally up to you.

... and that is the end of this review, and the last review that I am going to be doing on this blog for a while... possibly forever. But if that's the case, I'll probably just shut it down, so don't worry.

Tune in tomorrow for a final thesis thing that won't interest you unless you're going to be wanting my final opinion on being a reviewer... which you won't.

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

I totally understand why you're confused, and I'll do my best to explain it to you without just totally wimping out and copying it off Wikipedia or something, so here we go!

What you need to know is that those warrior guys are Servants summoned by magical Masters to participate in the Holy Grail War, a "war" that consists of seven Japanese mages fighting each other conveniently in a single city... in Japan. The only flaw that I see here is that it's only Japanese people who are invited... what's up with that? They're summoning people out of European, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean myths, so why weren't they invited?

The Servants are heroes out of the world's mythology, as well as out of the world's future mythology, since the summoning system works weird and summons heroes from any time in the world's past, present, and all possible futures.

As you might have been able to tell, these Masters and their Servants are fighting to obtain possession of the Holy Grail, a mythical object that grants the holder's wish, so the Servant-Master relationship is mutually beneficial to both parties... assuming they both survive.

Now if the Servant dies, the Master is out of the game, and technically safe, but not all Servants play by the rules.
Speaking of rules, Servants are kind of obligated to follow their Master's orders, but since the Servants are basically still humans, they retain their own free will, and as such, make their own decisions. If the Master's don't like their Servant's decision, they can use a "Command Spell", which is something that all Masters are given when they summon their Servant. Every Master has 3 ultimate orders that Servants have to carry out, or 3 impossible feats that are bestowed upon the Servant. 3 whatevers.

If the Master dies, then the Servant, who is sustained in the physical world by a mana-link to their Master, will disappear unless something happens, I'll get to that later on, along with GAR.

When there's only one more Master left, the Holy Grail will... I dunno, fall from the heavens into their hands and viola!

Back to the real story. Shirou's just unwittingly become a Master to Saber, supposedly the best Servant to be chosen from (though she gets outclassed by other Servants in domains like Skill and Strength, Saber's the best probably because of her all-around balance at a pretty high level... and another reason that I can't explain right now).
Rin is also a Master to Archer, that sword guy from the beginning, not that that matters right now.

Saber saves Shirou from a second immediate death and begins to fight Lancer, and it's to the point where Lancer understands that he's got practically no chance with the battle going this way. He notices that Saber's weapon is invisible and he asks her if that's her "Noble Phantasm", but she doesn't respond, so Lancer decides to unleashes his skill; Gae Bolg, which is some kind of homing attack that strikes for the heart.
Saber managed to dodge most of it, but still got clipped, and Lancer decided to retreat under his Master's order.

When Shirou tries to help Saber, he soon discovers that he can't... not without knowing how to use healing magic, which he can't do.
Chagrined by this, Saber decides to crusade out again, this time to take care of someone else, namely Archer and Rin, who've come by Shirou's house under Rin's order to try and protect Shirou from getting slaughtered by Lancer again. Their too late to do it themselves, and then they get to meet Saber, who proceeds to beat the crap out of Archer, to the point where Rin uses some kind of special magic to make Archer disappear.

When Saber is about to kill Rin, Shirou stops her, and after a "argument" during which Shirou states the obvious and tells them that he's got no idea what's going on.
Shirou and Rin have a rather short talk about the Master-Servant relationship that I've already described, and then Rin decides to take Shirou to visit a survivor of the previous war (there's one every 10 years (since when?)).
Turns out this guy is some kind of priest that lives in a church nearby. His name is Kotomine, and he was a loser from the last war.

Kotomine proceeds to fill in Shirou on everything else about the war, including the way to win.
When Shirou hears this, he has some kind of panic attack, and states that he won't be killing anyone, but he'll still play. I don't know if this is admirable... or just stupid, but I'm pretty sure that this is the reason most people hate him. I don't, but I did find his antiques kind of annoying after a while.

On the way back to his house, Shirou, Saber, and Rin are confronted by a little girl with white hair... and a huge, fucking giant with a hardedge. Yikes.
Turns out this little girl, named Ilya (for short, I don't feel like typing her entire name), is also a Master in this war, and she's the Master of Berserker, the strongest Servant.
He's also Hercules out of Greek mythology, a fact which pisses Saber and Rin off, because Servants are supposed to guard their identities because it reveals something about their skills, their fighting styles, and their weaknesses, but there you go.

Saber charges out for some reason (I'd retreat), and what with her injuries and her lack of a decent Master, Saber gets totally owned, but refuses any help from Saber. Ilya, already bored with the game, orders Berserker to kill Saber, but Shirou isn't going to stand for that.
Shirou grabs Saber and hauls her out of the way, but gets whacked in the back by the hardedge, and goes down... hard... dead hard.

Ilya is surprised by this turn of events... I mean, nobody sacrifices themselves for their Servant... unless their Servant is Saber (in case you didn't know... I'm a Saber freak). She decides to call the fight off, and leaves with Berserker, telling Rin that she'll kill her next.

Somehow, a seemingly frail Rin and a hacked-up Saber (my bad, apparently Rin on her own) manage to haul Shirou's dead, bloody ass back to his, and upon their arrival, they discover that he's regenerating himself. Handy technique... especially after you get smashed in two by a gigantic sword.

The next morning, Shirou wakes up again, and finds Rin criticizing his tea choices. They have a rather short chat during which it is again recognized that Shirou is an incompetent Master.

Upon her departure, Rin warns Shirou not to think of her as another human anymore, since she's going to be trying to defeat him win herself. It's nice that she's trying to give him a chance, but it'll be hard for Shirou to see a girl as not human. That's what makes him a harem lead character. Hey, I'm the same way as him! Where's my house-full of hot chicks cooking me meals and sleeping with me?!

Shirou goes out and checks around the house, looking for Saber, and he finally finds her in the house's dojo (doesn't your's have one?).
He and Saber have a talk during which Saber gets angry with him for sacrificing himself to protect her. Saber is somewhat of a feminist (I guess you could call her that), and she's got a problem with people treating her like a woman/girl rather than a warrior.

Saber tells Shirou that the way their bond is right now, she can't act to her fullest potential, meaning that their mana flow is bad... real bad. There's another way to improve it, but it involves siphoning humans of their mana... essentially killing them. Both Saber and Shirou are totally against this, and they finally find a common ground... then they go to eat breakfast.

When they get to the house, Shirou decides that it's a bad idea to show Saber to the other girls that keep coming over to his house, who knows what'll happen. Saber agrees and goes to sleep... for the whole day. At school, Shirou's reflecting on his actions, and decides that treating Saber that way was pretty rude.

When dinner time comes, Shirou feels another pang of guilt and goes to fetch Saber from her room, introducing her to Sakura and Taiga. Taiga especially has a problem with this and ultimately challenges Saber to a duel using shinai, but it totally defeated... even after the fake shinai gag.
Still unconvinced, Taiga and Sakura decide to stay the night to watch over the two, and Shirou and Saber reluctantly agree for their own reasons.

The next morning, Taiga and Sakura are cool with Saber, and they leave ahead of Shirou, who is held back by Saber to have a talk. Saber understands that Shirou would be in even more trouble if she were to follow him around for the whole day, but she also knows that Shirou is very vulnerable while he's alone, especially since Rin goes to the same school as him, so she tells him that if trouble comes up, that he should use one of his Command Spells to summon her. Shirou agrees.

At school, the day is mostly normal... until later that afternoon when Rin attacks him, using her own magical skills (which are pretty cool). Shirou manages to evade them until he's chased into an empty classroom, which Rin then blows up.

Amazingly, Shirou is still alive (okay, so it's not all that amazing any more, but there you go). He staggers out of the smoking room to find Rin waiting for him. Rin proposes a deal to him, his Command Spells for his life.
Shirou refuses Rin's proposal, and prepares for death. Just as he is about to be executed (for a record 3rd time, you know, if they can't kill you on the 3rd try, they're supposed to let you go...), Shirou is startled by a scream from another classroom.

He and Rin go to investigate, and find a girl passed out on the ground. Her mana's been siphoned out, and she'll die if she doesn't get help soon. Rin (not a passive bystander) begins to tend to the girl, and as Shirou goes to close the door, something comes flying out of nowhere towards Rin's face.
Shirou reaches out and protects Rin against the flying... piece of rebar on a chain... what the hell?

Shirou (like the idiot even I, probably his biggest fan (sad, yeah? (but then again, if you're playing the visual novel, and you still hate him, you've kind of got a problem because... you're kind of him.))) decides to go out and investigate.

For some reason, he walks into a dreary forest, and eventually finds what he's looking for. Another hot chick, this on in some kind of dominatrix outfit with a chain and some... spikes, okay, that's not to sexy. Actually, I kind of lose my interest at the chain part, I'm not that into masochism.

Surprisingly, Shirou is actually able to match strength with this Servant, who's still better than him for quite a few reasons. For one, she's got him chained to her weapon since the beginning. She hauls him up a tree and is about to kill him when Rin busts in and cuts him down. The Servant retreats from the scene.

Rin and Shirou have a rather awkward moment where Shirou asks her if she's going to finish him off, and Rin decides to call it a day, and takes Shirou back to her house to tend to his wound.

Once there, they discuss the fact that there is obviously another Master at their school, an unscrupulous one at that, since he's using other people's mana to keep his Servant strong.

They ultimately get on the topic of a forcefield that was put up around the school sometime that morning. In light of this other more threatening Master, Rin proposes a truce, which Shirou accepts.
Over the course of the rest of the night, Shirou ends up telling Rin that he's not actually blood-related to his adopted father, and that he didn't pass his "Magic Mark" down to him when he died.
When Shirou mentions that his father was indifferent to Shirou's interest in magic or not, Rin gets pissed, claiming that a magician's duty is to pass their magic down to the next generation, and the fact that Shirou's father chose to do otherwise pisses her off, since her father obviously didn't.
With the chime of the clock, the night is over, and Rin orders Archer to escort Shirou back to his house, which Archer grudgingly does.
When they arrive outside Shirou's house, Archer asks him if he really intends on fighting the Holy Grail War without killing anyone. When Shirou says yes, Archer lays into him. I'm not a huge fan of all of Shirou's decisions, but I generally find that I agree with most of them, so to me, Archer was being pretty bitchy.
In the end, Archer bounces off, telling Shirou that his meaningless ideals will soon be destroyed by reality. Damn, that's not very nice.

The next morning, Shirou sets off to school. When Rin shows up to walk with him, Sakura, who was looking forward to that herself gets sad/embarrassed and runs ahead of them.
Rin and Shirou agree to meet on the rooftop at lunch, but when Shirou runs into Sakura on the way up the stairs, he takes the time to explain things to her... in other words, more or less lie.
Rin and Shirou finally meet and Rin explains things about the forcefield to Shirou. It's a diabolical field that when completed, will lock down the school and suck the life out of everybody there. Evil.
The good news is that it's still under construction, and if they can locate and destroy all of the pylons that make it up, then they can destroy the field. Good. And so they set off, using Shirou's unusually high awareness of magical presence, and Rin's mad magical skills.
At the end of the day, Shirou and Rin go their separate ways, but a couple of steps after he they do, Shirou gets plastered by an overwhelming feeling of a magical presence. Upon further investigation, Shirou finds a huge magic seal inside the archery... dojo thing. And he also finds Rider and her master there. Rider, by the way, is that chick from the forest, and her Master is one of Shirou's "friends", and Sakura's brother, Shinji.

Shinji takes Shirou back to his place and offers him a alliance against Rin, but Shirou refuses and decides to leave. As he is leaving, Shinji offers Shirou one last piece of advice. Seems that there's a witch living up on mount Ryuudouji, which is the home of a temple filled with monks... and Issei, Shirou's friend (one of his real ones).
Unsure whether or not Shinji's words are true or not, Shirou runs into Issei himself on his way back home. When Issei mentions the beautiful women that has suddenly moved into the temple, Shirou decides that Shinji's information, no matter how untrustworthy it might be, is still worth consideration.

Back at home, Shirou fills in Rin and Saber on the events, and when Saber says that they should charge out and deal with the witch atop the mountain first, Shirou rejects the idea, unwilling to charge willingly into what was probably a trap. Rin agree with him, and then asks where her room is.
... What? Another hot girl moving in? Well, let's see, we've got underclassman (Sakura), comedy (Taiga), emotionally detached, and probably deeply emotionally wounded (Saber), and now the much needed tsundere (Rin). Harem route activated!

That night, annoyed with Shirou's lack of willingness to go out and meet the enemy, Saber goes out on her own to Ryuudouji, where she finds the next Servant waiting to block her path.
Assassin (I need to tell you something about him later) and Saber have a fight, during which Assassin eventually is forced to use his Ultimate Phantasm, but ultimately fails to actually hit Saber.
While all this is going on, Shirou's woken up and realized where Saber's gone, and has gone out to find her, and Rider has used the commotion on the steps of the temple to break into the actual temple. When she gets there, she finds dozens of animated skeletons waiting for her.
When she kills them, she discovers another Servant waiting for her; Caster, who's ability is... casting spells. Actually, if you want to get technical, she's Assassins Master. Because of her ability and power, the Servant Caster was actually able to summon another Servant to her. Cool, yeah? Two for one. Bitchin'.

Saber and Assassin are about to finish their fight. Despite her weakened condition, Saber decides to unleash her Ultimate Phantasm, but as she is summoning up the power to do so, Shirou enters the general area, and his presence caused someone else to move around in the underbrush. A spy from another Master, checking on other Servant's NPs.
Assassin lowers his sword and decides to leave for the night, since the duel is pretty much over in terms of momentum. Back in the main temple grounds, Rider takes advantage of the disturbance caused by Saber's NP to escape, her recon work is done.
After Assassin leaves, Saber passes out from lack of mana and Shirou carries her back home where he finds Rin waiting for them.

When Shirou and Rin have their talk this time, Shirou is strangely surprised to learn that Saber's body can't really handle unleashing a NP. Since the mana connection between the two of them isn't very stable, and mana is only (supposedly) flowing one way, Saber can't even properly heal on her own, let alone fight on such a high level.

Shirou tries to yell at Saber for going out on her own, but it doesn't help when she counters his attack with one of her own. It really pushes her buttons when you treat her like a woman. I can understand a woman being annoyed when she's being treated differently because she's a woman, but when it gets to the point where they lose it because someone's caring about their physical wellbeing... I'm sorry, but I'm not sure to do.

Saber finally agrees to allow Shirou to do most of the fighting... so long as he'll agree to be taught by Saber from that point on.
The next day, Shirou and Saber begin their intensive training, which pretty much consisted of Saber beating the crap out of Shirou every time he tried to do anything. It was kind of sad, actually.

After they had been working for a couple of hours, Shirou asks Saber what she wants the Grail for, what her wish is. Saber tells him that she wants the Grail to fulfill something that she didn't finish in her lifetime, or maybe just go back and redo the entire thing.

After that uplifting question, Shirou goes out get something to eat. As he's leaving the store, he runs into... Ilya! Oh holy shit!

She hasn't brought Berserker with her today, and has snuck out of her mansion in the woods to come out on the town. When she meets Shirou again, she's happy that he's still alive, the kind of happy you are when you figure out a toy that you thought you had broken was repairable.
When she pulls out the moe eyes, Shirou is guilt-tripped into accompanying her to the park, where Shirou asks her a couple of worthless questions, but also figures out that she's actually not technically a magician.

On his way home (yes, he's still alive), Shirou decides that it'd be better to keep that day's meeting with Ilya a secret from Saber and Rin.

When he actually gets home, Shirou begins cooking dinner. As he does, Rin comes in and tells him that Shinji's approached her today and proposed another alliance, but she rejected him hands down.
Shirou is later hijacked by Rin to study magic. When Rin asks Shirou to reinforce a lamp... he breaks it. Rin makes him swallow a jewel, which somehow allows him to control his magic circuit, which is allows the magician to control their mana.

As Shirou is taking a break, Archer comes from... nowhere, and tells him that he's got no chance to beat any Servant. But then Archer tells Shirou that he must imagine what he can beat, and that's about it. Too bad for him.

As Shirou is trained over the next couple of days, Rin comes to the conclusion that he's more than just incompetent at reinforcing... it seems he can't do it. And that was his only skill, too.
Actually it's not. When Rin checks the storage shed, she finds a bunch of crap that Shirou's summoned out of thin air, an even better and stronger type of magic.

Shirou gets a phone call. It's Shinji, calling from school. He's got something to tell Shirou, but doesn't want Rin to know, so Shirou goes alone.

When Shirou finally gets to school, nobody's around. As he investigates the school, he is suddenly overwhelmed by some force, the same kind that he felt outside the archery place. When he looks outside, he sees that the entire school is surrounded by a massive magical barrier. The only person not being drained is... Shinji, what a fucking surprise.

When Shinji finally tells Shirou that he's not sorry about what he's done, and the fact that he's ended up kicking Taiga, Shirou somehow activates some hidden recess of magic and charges out against Shinji, who casts a spell against Shirou, but it doesn't work. Shirou keeps running forward, and is about to kick Shinji's scrawny ass when Rider comes down and stops him.

Shirou tries to fight Rider, but he can't keep up, and gets cut a bunch of times, and when Shinji asks Rider why she's screwing around, Rider goes in for the kill, but when she tries to stab Shirou, the blade snaps and breaks.
Only slightly surprised that she can't kill him with a blade, Rider takes the proactive approach to the situation... and kicks Shirou out of the window.

As he falls, Shirou finally decides to call Saber, using one of his Command Spells. When Saber tries to convince Shirou to back down for the day and let her handle it, Shirou refuses, saying that they both need to work together to free the school from the Blood Fort (that's the forcefield Shinji put up). Saber agrees and they set off together.

They soon find Rider and Shinji again, and Saber holds of Rider while Shirou chases down Shinji. When Shirou finally catches up with Shinji, he pins him down and chokes him until he releases the Blood Fort, but after he does, before Shirou can make him give up his Command Spells, Rider comes to his rescue and uses her Ultimate Phantasm to escape, but in the process, she destroys like... half the freaking school. Damn.

When Shirou and Saber get home, they have another talk with Rin. They end up discussing Rider's NP, and everyone who's not already familiar with the Grail War discovers that theres like... different classes of NP. Saber's is kind of a one-on-one thing that can be used many times, while Riders is like an all-in-one that she can use once since it takes up so much mana. The only reason she could use it there was she had amassed so much mana from the Blood Fort, she had some to spare.

Saber and Shirou decide to strike while the irons hot. To prevent Shinji from setting up another Blood Fort, they begin to chase him, but are having some serious problems finding him in the middle of town. When they investigate a factory in a secluded part of town, they are ambushed by Rider. Saber charges after her, following her up to the roof of the factory, while Shirou (like a lame-ass normal human) uses the stairs to climb... very slowly).

On the top of the roof, Rider unleashes her NP, which turns out to be this Pegasus thing that she rides around on. I don't really see the awesomeness of this, but I suppose the speed advantage plus the ability to fly would be nice, but ultimately useless if you bring her down to the street level where those skills would be hindered if not totally useless. That's what Saber should have done, but like an idiot, she decided to stay up in on the roof.

When Shirou finally arrived on the roof, Saber realized that he was in danger of getting slaughtered by the NP, and is forced to release her own, a wind-based attack where her sword materializes (her sword being Excalibur, making her King... Arthur? Rule 63. Awesome.) and she can fire this huge beam of mana, destroying everything in it's path.

Needless to say Rider is defeated, and Shinji runs like a little bitch... right into his worst nightmare. Saber is exhausted from the attack and passes out again, but this time it's worse, she's drained her mana, and is fighting to even remain in the physical world. Servant suicide... almost.

Rin tells Shirou that Saber will ultimately fade from their world if she doesn't replenish her mana soon. Since there is no connection between the two of them, the only way is to suck the mana out of bystanders, and neither of them like that (well I'm assuming that Saber's not too thrilled, she can't tell us straight out becuase she's in a coma basically).

Shirou goes out to clear his head and runs into Ilya waiting for him at the park. When he tries to tell her that he can't talk at the moment, she mentions that she knows that Saber's dying, and when Shirou looks back at her, she casts a spell on him, binding him, and then putting him to sleep.

Congragulations! You caught a "Shirou"!
Would you like to name it?
>Yes
No

Saber wakes up from her very long nap. She staggers around the house looking for Shirou, but when she can't find him, she goes to Rin, asking her and Archer for help. Archer refuses, saying that Shirou'd be a waste of time, but Rin's moved by Saber's concern for Shirou and tells Archer; "Tough cookies, you're going.".
It's like their married.

Shirou wakes up again, and finds that he's inside Ilya's castle in the forest. Ilya tells him that she'll spare his life if he agrees to become her servant (and all I could think was 'What, Berserker II?'), but Shirou refuses, telling her that since he's Saber's Master, he couldn't do that, and Ilya decides that she'll just follow her original plan... and kill everyone, just like she killed Shinji, and she leaves Shirou alone in the room.
Shirou, desperate to stop her begins to try and use his magic to get himself out of the ropes that tie him to the chair, and finally manages to get out just as Saber and the others bust into the room.
They've come to save him! As if they couldn't.

Too bad they're found out and caught in a corner by Ilya and more importantly... her maids Stella and Liz, ohm and Berserker too, but nobody really noticed him. Okay, so I lied. It was just the maids, since in the doujins they kick serious ass.

With Saber out of mana and barely able to stagger, they have no choice... but to make Archer become a meat shield, which Archer agrees to. Actually what was originally proposed was that Archer would hold off Berserker while the others got away, but Archer asked Rin if he could basically commit suicide and Rin understood, agreeing with it.
Archer gives Shirou one last piece of nonsensical advice and then blocks the path so Berserker can't follow them any further.

I have to admit that at first I didn't like Archer. He was excessively rude in my book and didn't have a lot of air time to redeem himself, but all that changed. During my second viewing, I developed a new respect for Archer's awesomeness, and even though he's not my favorite Servant (actually not in the top five right now), he's still pretty good.

Archer's skill is that he can create anything that he wants to out of thin air so long as he has a clear vision of it. And that's not even his NP! He uses a bow, several different kinds of swords, and a rocket launcher.
Archer fought Berserker for a while, managing to trick him into a couple of traps, but was ultimately beaten down. During Archer's last stand, he creates another weapon and throws it past Ilya's head, showing that he could have killed her, but chose not to. He calls her Ilya, and Ilya recognizes something about him suddenly, but ignored it and ordered Berserker to finish him off, but you know it was just another trick.

Archer summoned/activated/whatever Ultimate Blade Works, his NP (though it's not an NP if you want to get technical, which I don't, so there you go), an alternate universe in which all of his weapons and whatever are all right there.
During his last fight with Berserker, he manages to do something five times before he dies, but I won't tell you quite yet.
That's right, if you were an Archer fan, I'm sorry, but he's dead.

As Rin, Shirou, and Saber run, Rin recognizes that Archer's gone, but they can't stop for anything... until Shirou accidentally trips and they decide that the way they're carrying on sucks, so they have to take another course of action.

Shirou and Saber undergo a ceremony that will transfer a part of Shirou's magic circuit to Saber, allowing her to produce her own mana, and supposedly have a better mana link with Shirou.
When they wake up again, Saber seems a lot more shy than normal, but that's kind of a side observation.

With no other real choice, the group decides to make a stand against Berserker and Ilya. Rin's pretty sure that if they can bait Berserker in far enough, she can use a powerful spell to own him, and then that'll be the end of Ilya. Happy that someone has a plan, Shirou and Saber agree and then head out.

They find a nice place to ambush Berserker, and Rin and Saber, who both have skills that they can use, are surprised when Shirou shows that he's not so useless anymore, and can actually turn a branch into like... a 50 pound bow. Good for him.

Shirou and Saber are found by Berserker (Rin's hiding in a tree above them), and the fight begins. Saber's still obviously outmatched by Berserker's strength (damn, didn't she ever play strategy games? You don't go toe-to-toe with someone who's stronger than you, you use redirection and their momentum... all that judo stuff), and eventually starts getting thrown around.
When Shirou tries to help, he discovers that Berserker's basically one big rock. The really sad thing about it is that Shirou gives up after one shot. At least try to nail him in the eye one, you idiot!

Rin finally sees her chance and leaps out of the tree, bombarding Berserker with spells, but they are useless against him, and he just grabs her. Rin (being of the "My best ideas involve me leaping into suicidal positions" persuasion), planned for this and blasts Berserker's head off with another barrage.

To all their disappointment, Berserker's not dead. Far from it. His NP is something called God Hand, a NP that gives him 12 lives, one for every trial that Hercules was put through before he was made immortal (if you know Greek mythology, you'll understand this). So that was what Archer managed to do 5 times, kill Berserker. Okay, so 5+1=6 and 12-6=6, so that means that Berserker has 6 li... 7 lives left.
...? What the fuck? Someone on the writing staff must not be to the "Basic Common-Knowledge Algebra" part of their "Preschool for People in their 40's" book.

Now Rin's in a bind. Berserker begins crushing the life out of her, and when Saber tries to save her, she just gets swatted away. Shirou decides that he can do better. Go for it!
No good.

After seeing Shirou get totally owned like that, Saber decides that the only way out is for her to use her NP, but since she's still very weak, Shirou knows that the NP will probably just kill her, so he uses another Command Spell and stops her from using it.

Shirou gets up again and stalks towards Berserker, this time not charging in bare handed, but rather deciding to follow Archer's advice and imagine something that he can use to beat Berserker. Shirou decides on the unbreakable blade; Excalibur.

The first time Shirou manages to summon the blade, he manages to use it to slice off Berserker's arm (the one holding Rin), but the blade's composition was flawed, and it broke, so Shirou manages to summon another one, but doesn't have the magical ability to properly use it... but Saber does. Together they wield the blade and ram it through Berserker, killing him 7 times. So even if the math is fucked, they still manage to defeat him.

With that, the battle is over. Shirou stops Saber from killing Ilya (which is actually supposed to be against her code, I think), and they retreat back home, where Shirou takes a nap for a week. Not really, but when he does wake up again, he finds that Saber's been watching over him the entire time... the entire time Ilya was sleeping in the same bed as him.

At breakfast, Shirou has an argument with Saber and Rin about letting Ilya stay with them, and when Rin points out that just because she's lost Berserker doesn't mean that she's harmless, Ilya states that she won't accept anyone other than Berserker as her Servant... except for Saber if Shirou dies, but Saber's not going with that one.

With that cleared up, Rin has only a slight problem with Ilya staying with them, and eventually Saber loses interest in fighting to keep her out and accepts her into the house (in her way).
Loli added to the fray, harem route set. You've got everything that you'll ever need.

Despite the fact that they just managed to beat Berserker, the group can't stop. Someone is causing similar Blood Fort accidents all over town, and everybody's pretty sure who it is... that bitch up on the mountain, and so they decide to stop her. Ilya tell them everything that she knows about the Servants on the mountain.

First, there are two of them, that Assassin guy, and Caster, the one that Rider faced.
Second, Assassin wasn't summoned by a normal Master (you already know this because I spilled the beans earlier), but was summoned by Caster, a powerful magician herself.
Third, Caster doesn't theoretically have a Master anymore. When she was summoned, Caster killed her Master and used her own immense mana to sustain herself, and is now using someone atop the mountain as some kine of pseudo-master or whatever. Confusing, yeah? Not really.

With this information, along with the fact that Rin sensed another Master inside their school who wasn't Shinji, along with the fact that Issei (during a random visit) practically told them, the group comes to the conclusion that the Caster's Master (ah ha ha, how lame) is probably one of their teachers, Kuzuki, who's been living on the mountain for 3 years.

The group decides to test this theory, and goes out that night to find out the truth... which is that Kuzuki is some kind of epic Boxing Master with hands of iron. I don't know why, but that kind of pissed me off randomly, but that doesn't change the fact that he was amazingly good at what he did.

That being said, Saber gets kind of owned, and Shirou barely stood a chance, even after summoning Archer's swords using his tracing power, but before they could fight any further, Caster and Kuzuki decided to stop, proposing a truce, actually an end to the war.
They said that if enough mana was gathered together, then they could actually make the Holy Grail, and that was why they were draining the people around town. One or two catches though.
Everyone in the town will be sucked dry, and they'll need another magician to act as a vessel for the Holy Grail, another sacrifice. A steep price compared to (worst case) 6 Master's lives, I'd say. An amazingly selfish plan.

The group refuses in a second, and with no more time to waste there, Caster and Kuzuki retreat from the battle to find their vessel. It doesn't take them long to realize that she's probably after Ilya, so they head back to the house, Saber going ahead because she can.

When Saber arrives at the house, she finds Sakura lying on the floor. When she goes to check on her, Sakura rises up and stabs Saber with a weird jagged weapon called Rule Breaker, Caster's NP, since Caster's possessed Sakura somehow.
Ruler Breaker is a bitchy little thing that has more relevance in different routes of the visual novel, but what it does it nullifies sorcery, or steals Command Seals. The weird thing is that in this route, Sakura (a blood magician, though she doesn't know it) doesn't have enough mana to nullify Saber's pact with Shirou, but in Unlimited Blade Works, Taiga's mana is enough to steal Saber away from Shirou... weird.
Well it doesn't really matter right now. The point is that somehow, Caster's managed to steal Saber's NP.

Shirou and Rin arrive in time for Caster to tell them that she's taking Sakura (who, like I said, is a magician by birth, not by practice) and use her as the vessel. Then she invites them to come to her temple and watch, but they decide to go and save Sakura (duh, but it's getting late).

The group sets out once again, and on the way up the stairs to the temple, Rin realizes that the temple's just a big waste of time, and rather leads the others into the forest where she finds a secret door which leads them into this sort of town that Caster created using her magic.

Inside the town there are skeleton puppets galore, not to mention two Servants and an annoyingly good Master (Masters should generally suck at everything, right? Rin's an exception, because if you look at any game and I guarantee the girl's will be better than the boys).

The group cuts their way up the the temple where they find Assassin waiting for them... well not for everybody, just Saber. Shirou and Rin go ahead while Saber and the time-challenged Assassin face off.

Up in the actual temple, they find Sakura (wearing the true dominatrix outfit, I'm sorry Rider, but you're trademark has been robbed (but more realistically, why in the fuck would you dress her up in this case anyway?)) who's already been put in the middle of a magic circle thing, and is being turned into a vessel for the Holy Grail.
As Rin goes down to get Sakura out, Caster tells her that she probably'll have trouble doing that, seeing as Sakura might not want to go. When she tells Sakura that "the person that she's longed for" is there, then Sakura goes nuts (it's not quite as explained as Heaven's Feel (since this is kind of a reference to that) but there you go)), and starts attacking Rin.

There are now three fights going on. Saber and Assassin are evenly matched (though I notice that Assassin leans back an abnormal amount, more than is necessary to compensate for the angle, and Saber never gets high ground, what's up with that), Kuzumi's kicking Shirou's ass, and Rin's having a moral dilemma with beating Sakura up, but she finally comes to the conclusion that there's only one way out, and goes up and purges the Grail whatevers from Sakura, but takes a hit from a knife in the process.

In case you weren't psychic, I'll tell you that Sakura and Rin are actually sisters, and Sakura was sent off to another family because she wasn't needed in the magician's family. God knows who made the idiot decision to send her to another magical family, but there you have it.
This is supposedly the reason that Sakura's going ballistic, although I don't really get it.

Caster reveals her true plan, to use Rin as the sacrifice now.

Saber and Assassin are both running out of time and Assassin wants to actually finish this fight, so they decide to both use their NPs on even ground, which they do.
Assassin, no matter how awesome he was, still couldn't beat Saber, and Saber goes ahead.

Shirou isn't doing so well, in fact, he gets punched off the high rise and plummets like 50 feet into the pit, but still gets back up after a second or two... wow.

As Caster tries to kill Shirou, but Saber manages to make it in time, even though without her true NP, she can't beat Caster. Caster begins to muse on what to do, but when she tells them that she'll spare Shirou if Saber replaces Assassin, someone on the sidelines gets kind of pissed.

Yippee, it's a whole new Servant. The Golden King, Archer-class has an immense NP... actually, he has about five or six thousand of them, which the throws at Caster and Kuzumi for trying to take "his property", namely Saber.
And the reason he's an Archer is because of his projectile way of fighting, if not, I would have made him a Lancer... it's just something about him.

Caster and Kuzumi are both killed (Caster actually died protecting Kuzumi who she loved (natura-freaking-ly)), and the town collapses around them. Shirou and the others haul ass out of there, managing to leave before they're killed in the cave-in.

Back at the house, someone did the math and figured out that there were 9 Servants in the game somehow. 8 was enough of a pain in the ass, add one more... one more with the power of nine or ten thousand and things get really bitchy.
But, as you could probably tell, he's not normal. He's actually a remnant from the last Grail War, and not a resummon like Saber, but has actually lived in the human world for 10 years after obtaining the Holy Grail and using the wish he got to have a second life.
Even though Saber remembers him from the last war, she was never able to figure out his true identity, but she does know that he has many NPs all of which are supplied by his actual NP, Gates of Babylon.
Another thing. During the last war, he actually proposed marriage to Saber in his prick kind of way. Saber refused and is still pissed about the idea. Being treated as a woman was bad enough, but a piece of property! Fuck off!

Later on, when Shirou asked Saber if it was true that Servants could continue on in the human world after the war, Saber told him that she had no intention of staying, when she got the Holy Grail, she'd use it to reset the past so a better person could become king.
Saber also reveals that her previous Master was Shirou's adopted father, who destroyed the grail and betrayed Saber the day they obtained it.
Shirou's kind of pissed that Saber didn't tell him that she was his father's Servant, but Saber just says that she couldn't quite understand the shift in personality between her Master and Shirou's dad.

Shirou decides to take a walk to clear his head, and suddenly finds himself at the church where Kotomine is, and he goes in to talk to him. Kotomine tells Shirou that it's quite easy to make Saber a... not-Servant. Just make her drink from the Holy Grail and viola! Saber'll stay in the human world as long as her Master (which she won't have if Shirou uses his last Command Spell to force her to drink...).

When Shirou asks about the eighth (ninth, you fool, what about Assassin?), Kotomine tells Shirou that he'll look into the matter, and Shirou leaves.

Back at the house, Shirou has made another monumental decision. He asks Saber out on a date, which she confusedly agree to.

They spend the day together (awkwardly for Shirou, who's having trouble inciting the romance into the situation), and at the end while they are walking home, Shirou incites... a fight, but I still got where he was coming from.

Shirou is convinced that Saber doesn't really want to fight, but rather is so wrapped up in guilt over her failures as king, she's driving herself to destruction and not accepting her past.
Saber's... being Saber, and denying all allegations that she doesn't want to fight, since that was what she existed for, to obtain the Holy Grail.

Shirou tries to tell Saber to live for herself, and accept her past mistakes and look to the future, and Saber rightly points out that this is a massively hypocritical statement coming from he overly-suicidal Shirou, and things eventually escalate to the point where Saber suggests that they cancel their pact if Shirou can't deal with it, and Shirou says "That's fine by me!" and runs off like some kind of child, leaving Saber alone on the bridge.

Back at his house, Shirou takes an "angry nap", and even when he wakes up, Saber hasn't returned.
Frightened that Saber might have gone off to fight the other Servants, Shirou runs out to search for her and finds her still standing on the bridge.
Shirou grabs Saber and tells her that she should come back to his house, and even though he doesn't care about her, and won't apologize to her (I wouldn't either in that situation... to the latter, not the former, I just wouldn't tell her that), she still belongs at home.

On their... intimate way back, they meet up with the Golden King... again. Freaking dandy.
Shirou tries to give Saber the chance to run, but is mowed down in a second almost during an ironic line, and Saber goes freak, but is still not strong enough. When she asks the Golden King who he really is, he tells her. I'll explain it in a math problem because it's funnier that way.

Golden King = King of Heroes = Gilgamesh

... Okay, so it wasn't that funny, but there you go.

Gilgamesh and Saber both use their personal NPs; Excalibur vrs. Enuma Elish, but Gilgamesh's overpowers Saber's and fatally wounds her.
Despite all the shit he's been through, despite the new breathing hole he's got in his chest, Shirou still manages to stand up and use his tracing ability to create a sword, but Gilgamesh pulls some historic math crap on him and then practically slices him in two.
Saber tries to stop Gilgamesh, but can't bring herself to be turned into his property... well, more like she didn't have the choice. Shirou stands up again (what the fuck is this guy on?) and then imagines... Archer. I seriously thought he was going to summon him, but to my disappointment, he just made some stupid scabbard. You know, the one that prevents King Arthur from ever getting hurt?

Saber and Shirou plug the Excalibur into the scabbard and repel Gilgamesh's attack, and that was the end of that blood-bath.

When Shirou wakes up again, he tries to convince Saber one last time not to use the Grail to redo the selection of the king. When she gets angry with him, he finally officially tells her that he wants her to stay with him. He kind of said it during the Gilgamesh fight, but he'd lost a lot of blood, it could have been fatigue or something.
Then Shirou hugs Saber despite her muted tsundere reaction, and ends up kissing her. Afterwards, Saber tells Shirou that her mana's been replenished and she's ready to fight, in other words, nothings really changed. And if you don't know how her mana got replenished, then I'm sorry, but you'll just have to look it up for yourself, and if you do know how... you should be ashamed of yourself.
If you're going to look it up, just remember that this is an eroge game and let your mind follow the natural path.

Shirou decides to go back to Kotomine the next day and talk some more about Gilgamesh. When he gets there, he is ultimately led to a small room... full of corpses that Kotomine's been giving to his old Servant Gilgamesh to keep him alive.
... Yeah, I didn't see this one coming until Shirou actually got to the church. Pretty good. I also didn't expect Lancer to be his Servant too. That's two people with two servants (algebraically speaking). Actually, Lancer's not technically Kotomine's servant. He got Lancer by slicing off his original Master's arm and taking her Command Spells.
Lancer spears Shirou for the last time.

Back at the house, Saber's looking for Shirou, and when she sees Rin, Rin tells her about Lancer's Master's fate, then the conversation ultimately leads to the fact that only a Master could be a Master, thus it was either one of them (Rin or Ilya) or a survivor from the last war.
When Saber asks Rin where Shirou is, Rin suggests that he might have gone to the church, and when Saber investigates, she finds Shirou's owned body in the cellar. He's not dead, just got speared... again. Wounds from the Gae Bolg don't heal apparently.

Kotomine makes a grand entrance, saying that there was a loophole in the whole Grail creation. When there are only two Servants left, all you've got to do is sacrifice someone worthy enough (another vessel), and there you go, Grail Tiime.

Kotomine asks Shirou if he wants the Grail, but Shirou finally reveals the reason he's been so insistent on Saber not redoing the selection, the reason being that if you were to erase the pain and suffering, then it'd mean nothing. The whole purpose of life is carrying all that crap with you and living on.

Saber is then asked the same question and she finally understands Shirou's words, declaring that she wouldn't use the Grail, and that Shirou is more important than the Grail or redoing her past, and there you have it.
Saber purges the effects of Lancer's Gae Bolg from Shirou (for the time being) and they are introduced to Gilgamesh. Lancer's not too thrilled with the fact that this freak is actually another Servant.

Kotomine reveals that the whole apocalypse thing was his fault, and the fact that the Grail is actually some kind of freaking joke that grants the bearer's wish through destruction. Not a good thing.
Kotomine leaves the cellar and tells Gilgamesh and Lancer to finish Saber and Shirou off, and as Gilgamesh goes in for the kill... Lancer, being totally awesome blocks the attack and goes up against Gilgamesh, siding with his own beliefs. I swear, if Saber wasn't there, Lancer would have been the best. If Lancer was a girl, that'd be... I've got to find a Rule 63 on him, though I don't like the idea of him/her dying...

Lancer is obviously outclassed and rather quickly killed (but he still put up a good fight), but he gives Shirou and Saber enough time to escape.

They make it back to the house, both of them finally agreeing to destroy the Holy Grail, and when they get there, the place's been trashed, and Rin's dying.
Rin tells them Kotomine's plan... basically it's the same as Casters, only he's using Ilya... oh yeah, Ilya's gone too, taken by Kotomine.
The special thing about Ilya is that she's not technically human, but rather a big magic circuit that was turned into something like a human. In other words, perfect Grail summoning material.
Rin gives Shirou a present, a dagger that's been infused with mana for a long time, and thus is very powerful. It's the best bet they've got.
And there's only one place that'd be ideal for a summoning... the temple on the mountain, so Saber and Shirou head there.

Up on the mountain, Saber and Gilgamesh meet and Saber tells Shirou to go ahead and save Ilya, she'll take care of Gilgamesh.

When Shirou finds Kotomine, he's already begun the summoning process and poor Ilya is stung up like some kind of... well, sacrifice.
Somewhere down the line, Kotomine admits that the person who killed (eventually) Shirou's father was him, through a curse and the use of the sludge that is dripping down from the sides of the Holy Grail.

Epic battle happen on both sides, Shirou and Kotomine's is basically Kotomine throwing sludge from the Holy Grail at Shirou that causes massive pain, while Saber and Gilgamesh's is basically Gilgamesh winning, but Saber fights on.

Finally, the two manage to rally together seperately, and Saber converts all of her mana into one last attack against Gilgamesh, which lands close-combat before Gilgamesh can unleash his NP, killing him. Gilgamesh was a total asshole, but the sheer awesomeness of his combat and whatever earned him a place in the top 5.

Shirou finally catches on and learns how to dodge a pitch, getting in close enough to stab Kotomine with Rin's dagger, and then unleash the magic inside.

With everything over and the Grail before them, Shirou and Saber both know that they have to destroy it, so Shirou uses his last Command Spell to allow Saber to destroy the Holy Grail, and the war was over.

Saber returned to her time as Arthur (Arturia), and died peacefully after the battle with Morgan.

Ilya, Sakura, Taiga, and Rin, all of who suffered from near-death experiences all managed to stay alive somehow and are now living at Shirou's harem house together.

The End.

Sucky, yeah? I believe it's best phrased as a "kick in the balls ending", this is taken from someone else on the internet, I'm sorry, my friend, I can't rightly remember who you are.

There were a couple of things that I wanted to talk with you about.

First; GAR.
A term originating from 4chan, GAR was a mistype of "gay" when used to describe his feelings for Archer after episode 14 (the one where Archer fights Berserker). Today, it is used to describe characters who are so manly that you're totally overwhelmed by their presence. It's a compliment... unless you're describing a girl.

Second; Assassin is different from a generic class that was there before him, the originals, also known as True Assassins. They're a generic Servant that is exclusively summoned by the Matou family, only not in this story.

Kai Doh Maru

2010-03-18T01:44:00.000-07:00

Name: Kai Doh Maru
Type: Movie
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 45 min
Directed By Wakabayashi Kanji
Produced By Production IG and SME Visual Works
Year Produced: 2001

Not one of my favorites not to mention confusing as hell for someone not versed in Japanese mythology or symbolism, this movie (OVA, actually) had one or two things that I wanted to talk about here, even though it wasn't the best experience of my life.

Made in a dramatic color scheme, this is the story of a young girl who's entire family is killed by her uncle during a power-grab during the Shoreki Era (in 889 A.D.).
Kintoki was named successor by her father, and her uncle didn't like that, and so killed everybody, chasing Kintoki, disused as a boy, and her cousin, Ohni into the mountains.

They are finally cornered. Ohni is stabbed and Kintoki is about to be killed as well when a samurai lord Raiko saves Kintoki, but ultimately leaves Ohni behind.

Kintoki is then brought up as a boy, training to become a warrior. She eventually joins the Ministry of Defense in Raiko's specialized "Four Horsemen" unit.

At best this was a rushed anime. The character development was nonexistent, it felt like there was a prequel or some main story, and this is actually and OVA by many standards, but it's got no background, and that was annoying.

That being said, it was a massively interesting anime to watch. It had a couple of things that were cool about it.

First off, the way the characters walked was significantly different.
A pretty useless attention to detail, but if you watched the character's bodies as they were walking, you could actually see that the difference in their height was actually expressed, rather than keeping everyone on a track. Cool!

Another thing was the color scheme. The entire thing was produced with this kind of white film over it, which made it kind of difficult to see during some scenes, but everything was offset with a brilliant red blood color, it was pretty cool.

The plot left something to be... explained. Hell, I didn't know the real story until a couple months after I watched it originally, but I was just watching for the action.
... Yes, I did watch this before I reviewed it, and I wouldn't have chosen this to watch out of a pile of anime, let alone review if I had not. I watched it after getting bored at a video store. I don't know what inspired me to chose it, but the selection was slim and I was just getting back into anime.

The art was pretty sketchy. A lot of what looked like Samura Hiroaki, but it obviously wasn't. But it was pretty anatomical.

The animation style was very interesting. A lot of foreground and background variation, manipulating the various planes, keeping one unusually steady, and shifting the other wildly.
Same goes for the action sequences, the camera was thrown around a lot, moving with people. This was the main reason I decided that this anime was good enough to review. Never mind the story, I was fascinated with the animation!

Japanese or English, it doesn't matter. You don't exactly watch this for the story, so just pick for yourself which one doesn't distract you.

The music is the same. Don't really care. There's nothing in there you could even find on Youtube probably. Mostly some kind of fusion of old songs with a new singer or something. Not to my taste.

Kai Doh Maru English Sub Megavideo

I actually couldn't find this for download with my current patience level, so the best I could do is find a Japanese version on Megavideo (sponsored by Megaupload... or maybe it's the other way around...).

Coming up Next!

Fate/Stay Night!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

Okay, since this sure as hell didn't make any sense to me when I was watching it, I'll explain it to you.

Ohni isn't dead. She's actually become the lord that her father (the uncle) wanted to be through acts of sedition and treachery. She's hired some scrawny little guy who's awesome with a sword to do her dirty work. This guy is kind of strange. I don't know, nor do I particularly care what gender it is, but in the English version, it's probably a guy. At least it sounds like one.
In the Japanese version, it sounds a lot like a girl, but they could be doing that thing where they get a girl to play a young boy's part, but if that's the case, this one sucked.

Either way, Ohni's been possessed by a vicious oni (probably attracted to her by her name), and come back to find Kintoki and make "him" her husband, something that she offered when they were children, and Ohni didn't know about Kintoki's secret.

To do this, Ohni wreaks havoc all around the city that Kintoki and Raiko and the others are guarding. In the course of duty, pretty much everybody gets killed and one of the more favorable guys get mind controlled by a pair of random brats, when then use him against Raiko in the end of the movie.

In the end, Ohni manages to capture Kintoki, but since Kintoki's developed feelings for Raiko, she cannot return Ohni's, and Ohni is so distraught by this that she kills Kintoki and herself. Raiko also dies. Everybody dies, probably including that random monk who shows up near the end without any explanation.

What the heck?
And, oh! What does all this have to do with the Kai Doh Maru (or the Kaidohmaru, I don't know which)? Absolutely nothing. They mention it a few times in the beginning of the Japanese version, but then it like, disappears off the face of the show. What in the hell is the Kaidohmaru?! All I know is that Kintoki might be it, and that's not very helpful.

But like I said, if you go into this anime asking rational questions about the plot line, you're going to get blown out of the water... so just let it go and enjoy the ride. You'll find the animation style something different at the very least.

Elfen Lied

2010-03-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

Name: Elfen Lied
Type: Television Show
Episodes: 13, 1 OVA
Rating: Mature
Runtime Per Episode: 25 min
Director: Kanabe Mamoru
Produced By GENCO VAP
Year Produced: 2004

A Serious Warning:
This is a very graphic anime, no matter what anyone might say, me included. I may make jokes about situations, but this is not something that should be taken on lightly (unless you're a gore junkey).
There are more than a few things in this anime that are beyond the pail for an average, unprepared viewer, and I implore anyone not 100% sure about it to not take the chance (unless, as I said before, you have a high tolerance for gore, nudity, and other inhumane scenes/implications/situations).

That being said, I'd also like to downright state that this story is something that should be experienced, so if you don't think you handle watching it, then I'd recommend reading it (I'll provide a link or two at the end). I'm afraid that it's not a story that you can appreciate by looking at a summery on Wikipedia... or here (duh), and because of the overall message that it sends, you'd do well to understand it. I think I'll read it again too, actually.

Despite what some might call excess blood, gore, and nudity, ElfenLied is what I call a must-see, and not just that, it's also anabsolutely a must-read. The manga by Okamoto Lynn is extensive andutilizes an art style that is unique and strange for these genres ofanime (those being horror and alike).

Now the anime covers about half of the manga, taking bits apieces out of the later halves, and then resolving with a differentending.

For obvious reasons, the anime was not aired inthe U.S. as far as I can tell, despite the fact that there was a strongdesire to by the Programming Director (look at Wikipedia or whatever ifyou want to know more), though it was later released.

In a quiet, island research facility, something terrible has happened. For some reason, a test subject has gotten free of her restraints... and doesn't seem too happy about being restrained in the first place.

Using some strange kind of power, this test subject, named Lucy, is now roaming through the installation, trying to find her way out.

She's the quiet type, but that doesn't stop her actions from being loud... and... red.

Now I'm no doctor, but that's too much blood to be coming out of three people (trust me, it's three people).

Emotionless and very deadly, the facility's staff use everything they've got to try and stop Lucy, but can't even scratch her as she cuts through them.

When she finally gets to the front door, they box her in, but someone in the control room (also filled with dead bodies for unknown reasons) unlocks some kind of emergency, way too convenient side-doors, and Lucy goes out into the open air.

...What the hell?

... where she is hunted from afar.

Vectors?

The sniping attempt fails to kill Lucy, just blasting the helmet off her head, and her unconscious body falls into the ocean below.

Back on the mainland, a college student named Kouta has just arrived in town.

While walking up some stairs to his favorite place to watch the ocean, he is called to by his cousin Yuka, who's been looking for him at the train station.

As you might have been able to tell, Kouta has been here before, when he was a child, but that hardly matters right now. What's more important is that Yuka, who's had a crush on him since childhood, drags Kouta down to the beach for a trip down memory lane.
But what they find is a little more interesting than some rather depressing memories of Kouta bulling his younger sister.

... um, hello?

Are those... horns?

Why yes they are! Not in the conventional devil sense, but rather in the kind of cute, kitten way. Nyan!

With an obvious head wound, and probably severe trauma, this naked girl was the beginning of a very interesting road for Kouta and Yuka.

Different from what I was expecting it to be, this anime was more than I bargained for, then again, it was my fault for watching it at night. I just got sucked in and ended up having a monstrous headache from the sound piping into my skull.

The character development took a more hasty approach than I probably would have normally liked, but I knew that they needed to cram a lot of information into a short period of time, so I'll let it slide.

The character development was not so great to one of my favorite characters out of the manga. In the anime, they only took him a little further than his starting place (I'll tell you who it is during the spoiler part).

That being said, if you go into an anime expecting the in-depth detail you'll get out of the manga, then you'll be disappointed at the least.

The art was a lot different than the manga. Elfen Lied was Okamoto Lynn's first manga, and it's easy to see his progress as an artist through the story. The anime had a different approach, it kept the moe-ness that Lynn started off with (one of the things that made this manga unique was it's lighter art style combined with the heavy storyline and scenes).

As far as I'll say, there were at least two animation styles combined into this anime (or at least into scenes of it). I don't know if it's right to say this, but there you go, I already have.

There was the normal animation style for pretty much everything, but during the fight sequences, there was a special style that was preformed to create the vectors.

You should stay with the Japanese version on this. Although it managed to get an English cast, it wasn't anything exceptional.
Actually, you should make a point to watch the Japanese version, at least of episode 12. The creator Okamoto Lynn makes an "appearance" as "Special Guest", whatever the fuck that means. If you can figure it out please tell me. The best I can figure is he's the SAT member who actually says something.

I'm betting it's the guy who says this, since he the only irregular in the list of people who spoke during the episode.

The beginning theme was something opera, and therefore, not to my liking. It was also repeated endlessly through the course of the anime. It's not a bad song I suppose, the melody's melancholy, but kind of interesting. I just wasn't thrilled with it, that's all.
Another thing about the opening was that those images are adapted from a painter named Gustav Klimt. I don't understand the significance of that, so don't ask me.
That being said, I did kind of like the ending theme. It was a cool riff and stuff like that is usually more important to me than the words.

If you still want to watch this, please do, but refer to the opening section of this post again, just to make sure.

Elfen Lied Minitheatre

Coming up next!

Kai Doh Maru!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

With no other relevant idea, they take the mysterious girl back to the house (more like mansion) that Kouta's going to be staying in.

What a deal!

It is unanimously decided (and by unanimously, I mean Yuka was the only voter) that the girl, henceforth dubbed and named by Kouta as "Nyu" (or Nyuu, it doesn't really matter) will be staying with him for a while.
When inside, Nyu suddenly has to go to the bathroom, but since she doesn't have a vocabulary beyond "Nyu", she can't relay this information, and since she's basically a child in an adult body, Nyu has an accident.
After Yuka cleans up Nyu (and Kouta cleans up the floor), they sit down and have onigiri, although Nyu can't eat them properly, and when Kouta tries to teach her... he ends up feeding her.

... Cute.

Back at the research facility, things are developing into a rather shitty state of affairs for the entire project that they've been working on.

Oh, but of course... otherwise there wouldn't be a story!

To hunt down the rouge test subject, the staff have been training a group dubbed SAT (yeah, like the test). The SAT are like most other special weapons teams, but they do have a black sheep in their ranks.

Bandou (that's the guy) is overly violent and extremely sadistic who obviously joined SAT for their access to weapons and situations where extreme or lethal force was permitted. Similarly, he has no regrets or qualms about striking or even killing women, and is functionally paranoid of his surroundings (meaning that he's got "Soldier's Intuition" or whatever you want to call it).

Specially selected by Chief Kurama, the only explicit survivor of the "Lucy Incident", Bandou and his SAT buddies are sent out to track down and kill Lucy.

"Explicit" because Lucy obviously had the chance to kill him.

At the mansion, Kouta is pulling stuff out of his bag when he comes across a shell that his little sister Kanae found on the beach (after finding all of those regular ones). Recalling Kanae at that time made Kouta nostalgic and a little sad at her departure. When he mentions that it Kanae died of a disease, Yuka is confused.
Nyu takes the shell away from Kouta and then breaks it.

Kouta flies into a rage and orders her to leave, and even though Yuka tries to stop him, Nyu begins to cry and runs out of the house into the rain.
As Yuka reflects on what happened, she voices the fact that Nyu probably broke the shell because it seemed to cause Kouta pain, and she wanted to help. Yuka leaves to go and search for Nyu, leaving Kouta behind at the house.

There is a chopper flying down towards the mainland from the facility. The helicopter is full of SAT members, including Bandou, who's getting bored with the ride.

Nyu is back down on the beach where she met Kouta and Yuka. She's digging through the sand looking for something as the waves wash up the beach.

After exchanging a few words with the mission commander, Bandou orders the helicopter to land so he can go out and hunt down Lucy already.

Back at the house, Kouta's waiting for Yuka and Nyu to return, and when there is a knocking at the door, Kouta is surprised to see two "police" officers asking about a young girl with long, pink hair and horns.

Kouta lies to them, telling them that he does not know her, and they leave quietly. Kouta patience with waiting for Yuka to return and heads out on his own.

As Yuka and Kouta are running around town looking for Nyu, Bandou and some subordinate are searching the beach.
On the very same beach, Nyu has found what she's looking for.

Yuka, while searching through the town passes by the police station. When she goes inside, she passes the two men who visited Kouta, who are passing around the picture again.

Kouta has found Nyu on the beach, and as he tries to help her up, Bandou cracks him on the back of the head with his rifle. Kouta tries to protect Nyu, but is eventually beaten down, and Nyu is kidnapped by Bandou, who's looking for some "fun". Please bear in mind that his definition of fun and yours... are probably lethally different.

Yuka, back at the police station remembers a place where she might find Nyu and hurries back there, only to find Kouta unconscious on the sand. When he tries to get up to search for Nyu again, be (probably) blacks out and Yuka is forced to call an ambulance.

Nyu is dragged into a secluded part of the beach, and once there, Bandou tries to get her to fight him, but only ends up scaring her into trying to run away. When Bandou sees her try and hide something, he hits her on the head, knocking her unconscious on the ground.
Bored with the event, Bandou orders his subordinate to kill her, but before he can, something blasts a hole through the soldier's chest, and then slices off his arm and head.

Ow is an understatement.

Bandou opens fire on Nyu... no, Lucy, but all of his attacks are useless before her invisible defense. As Bandou tries to kill Lucy, she slices a boat in half and then something (that Bandou probably can't see) comes out of her back. Things that look like hands.

Vectors.

They smash the ground and smash his helmet, and when he gets behind cover, begin to throw shit at him.
Lucy's vectors (or Ultimate Weapon as far as Bandou is concerned) have a 2 meter radius, but even so, they can still throw a pen hard enough to spear through someone's neck (it was actually a guards back at HQ). They can also throw boats. Fun.

At least Bandou thinks so. I don't know about you, but when something that I can't technically see starts throwing shards of wood and boats at me, I'd be a little scared.

All the commotion outside wakes up a runaway girl and her dog, who are hiding inside... somewhere.

As he hides, Bandou formulates a surefire, do-or-die strategy to defeat Lucy. He'll shoot the frag grenade on his dead partner's belt when Lucy steps close enough. Bandou listens to Lucy's footsteps, and when he hears the decisive footstep, he comes back up.

Well spoken.

Too bad Lucy's picked up Bandou's partner's gun.

Everybody else's got this picture, so I figure I'll conform.

You wouldn't think so, would you?

Lucy guns down Bandou and proceeds to slice off his right arm, and break his left, and when he threatens to hunt her down afterworlds, Lucy gouges out his eyes. Lucy then claims that Bandou is no fun anymore and starts to choke him with her vectors.
As Bandou begins to flail around, he brushes her hand which is holding the thing that she (she being Nyu) was searching for in the sand and protected against Bandou. When Lucy sees what was in her hand, she has a breakdown, and Lucy regresses while Nyu resurfaces.

Frightened at the sight of Bandou's defeated (and pissed) state, Nyu gets scared and runs away, running past the little girl who was hiding from the rain.

The girl's name is Mayu, and when she looks over and spots Bandou, she (being a good and caring person) dashes over to help the... flailing, decapitated, bloody, and very pissed Bandou. What is she, on crack?!
She treats his wounds and then calls an ambulance for him.

Kouta wakes up in the local hospital with Yuka watching over him. As he regains consciousness, Kouta is welcomed back into the world of the living by Yuka... and those two "police officers", who shunt Yuka out the room and have a chat with
Kouta about his experience on the beach.
Kouta tells them what happened to him, but they seem less than willing to believe him, and when Kouta asks them what happened to Nyu (though not in those words), he is answered with a chilly and pretty creepy answer.

... Yeah, sure, if you says so, Mister.

Kouta gets discharged, and he and Yuka take a cab back to Kouta's house. Along the way there, Yuka notices that Kouta's having a real problem accepting the current situation.

The cab drops Kouta off, and then leaves, Yuka promising to return the next day. When Kouta arrives at the top of the stairs, he finds Nyu waiting for him at the front gate.
She opens her hand and presents what she was searching so hard for on the beach.

Kouta takes the shell and thanks Nyu.

In the cab on it's way to her house, Yuka remembers her last meeting with Kouta, the same one before his sister died, eight years ago. In the memory, Kouta promises to return to the town next summer, saying that he likes Yuka.
For some reason, she suddenly remembers that she spaced out and forgot to give Kouta his key (or spare key or whatever) to the house, and she asks the cab driver to turn back around.

Back at the house, Kouta is searching through his bag for something, and when he gets to thinking about it, he makes a moral declaration.

And good luck with that.

Kouta and Nyu have run into another problem. Nyu's clothes are soaked, and she's probably going to catch a cold. Since Yuka (being a girl) had been there, changing Nyu wasn't a problem, but Kouta, being a gentleman (though he is lacking in more than a few areas), is faced with the dilemma of changing Nyu's clothes.
He surprisingly manages to get Nyu half into a new shirt using a rather retarded method, but when he gets to the pants, he runs into another problem.

Uh... hello.

I'm assuming that the following scene was too bloody to be recorded even in anime.

At the facility, Kurama has been informed of the SAT failure, and has decided on another course. He arrives at the holding are of Number Seven, a.k.a. "Nana" (seven in Japanese). Inside, he finds another test subject.

Nana begins calling Kurama "Papa", which he seems fine with. He asks her to head out to find Lucy, calling her "another Diclonius", which means that whatever this Diclonius is, Nana's the same. Actually, she's got the horns too, so duh.

After seeing Kouta with Nyu, Yuka begins to leave the house, and when Kouta catches her, she asks him if he remembers the festival from eight years ago. When he more or less blows off the question, she becomes very angry and slaps him, leaving the house.
At home, Yuka pulls out a box of...

... okay, I don't know what these are, but they're apparently some kind of summer festival game where you carve them out of a plate using a needle.

Back at the house, Kouta's caught a cold, and Nyu's intent on helping him, though she doesn't manage to bring him exactly what he needs.
Like, he asks for water, and Nyu brings him...

... this. Though her heart is in the right place.
Yuka returns to the house with groceries, but can't bring herself to go back inside, and when Nyu comes dashing out looking for water, Yuka is dragged back into the house and ends up caring for Kouta.

When Kouta tells her that he can't remember much of that entire summer that they spent together eight years ago, he also tells her that it's probably because of the trauma of losing both his father and his sister in such a short amount of time.
When Kouta again mentions that his sister fell to disease, Yuka leaves the room, stopping by the sink in confusion.

This is important, you should probably take note.

Kurama visits Bandou in the facility's hospital room. Bandou is told that unless he gets a castration surgery, he'll die in that room, probably meaning that he'll be put down (like a dog).
Bandou goes quiet and then asks Kurama what he had fought against, and Kurama proceeds to explain to him about the Diclonius. When the subject gets around to vectors, Kurama tells him that they are not just weapons, but rather were probably mutated for a different reason.

When Kouta wakes up again, he and Yuka end up having a talk about Nyu. Kouta is resistant to the idea of taking her to the police (because of their performance in the last incident), and he instead invites Nyu to stay with him in the house. Yuka, who's been doing some thinking of her own, decides that it's not a good idea to leave Kouta alone with a woman. Two women would be much better.

And so Yuka moves in.

Kurama sees Nana off, promising to fulfill her request for a pat on the head if she does well.

In the house, Yuka's settled into one of the vacant rooms, and in the course of unpacking, she's come across something that she's brought from her house to give to Kouta.

In the main hallway, Kouta is cleaning the floor while Nyu watches him, and Kouta begins to reflect on the joy of having women in the same house as him.

... Well it is going harem.

When Nyu voices her desire to help Kouta clean the floor, Yuka leaves to get her a rag. As Nyu moves in to get a closer look at what Kouta's doing, he accidentally brushes her chest with his elbow, and Nyu is sexually aroused and decides to go with it, taking Kouta's hand and putting it back on her breast. Kouta is caught and slapped before he can go too far though.

After Yuka left to get some groceries, Mayu, the young girl who saved Bandou comes to the front door, carrying the umbrella that she found on the beach. She is dragged into the house to talk about what she saw on the beach that night.

Yuka returns to the house and is slightly mortified that Kouta has attracted yet another girl to the house, but when Kouta tells her that Mayu saw what happened that night, Yuka calms down.

As Mayu is telling them what happened, Nyu is happily cleaning the floor. She pauses and finds the box that Yuka was going to give to Kouta, and she starts fiddling around with it, trying to see what it does.
As she is walking around thinking, Nyu slips on her cleaning rag and falls on her head. Nyu undergoes her transformation to Lucy, who attacks Kouta, but stops when she has a memory of some little boy screaming at her to stop.

Lucy turns around and leaves the house, and Yuka picks up the music box, but when she asks Kouta if he remembers anything about it, he has trouble with his memories again, and can't, and Yuka gets depressed again.

As Lucy sits on the steps alongside a road, Nana walks down to her side. She asks Lucy why she didn't run or something when she sensed Nana coming, but Lucy just gets up and starts walking away, telling Nana that she won't kill her because they are of the same breed, that being Diclonius.
When Nana tries to convince her to come back peacefully, Lucy sticks a bunch of vectors into Nana, claiming that if she moves, Lucy will kill her.

As Nana tries one last time to convince Lucy to stay, Lucy smacks her into the wall. Nana gets back up and attacks Lucy, throwing her into a cemetery. Lucy notices that Nana's vector's are surprisingly long, longer than hers, which means that Nana actually kind of has an advantage.

Back at the house, Kouta decides to head out to look for Nyu, and when he says that, Yuka starts shouting at Kouta for always worrying about Nyu, even though she's been waiting for him for a long time. Yuka hits Kouta when he tries to comfort her, and then runs away.
As Yuka is walking down the street, she remembers being at the funeral for Kouta's father and little sister. She remembers everything that the people around her were saying, including the fact that Kouta was in the hospital and unable to even talk after the trauma. Yuka tells reminds herself that it's Kouta who's been having the hardest time, but Yuka can't help feeling the way she does.

Back in the cemetery, Lucy is being choked by Nana's longer vector's, but Lucy's vectors are much stronger, and as such, she manages to break out of the hold and then they face off again.

On her way through town, Yuka runs into Mayu walking out of the bakery, holding bread scraps. When Yuka tries to talk to her again, Mayu runs off, leaving Yuka even more confused.

As Lucy and Nana fight, Lucy's strength proves to get the better of Nana's reach, and Nana can barely cope with the pressure.

Back down on the steps, Mayu is eating some of the bread, but when she hears and explosion from the cemetery, she goes to investigate.
After being beaten down, Nana and Lucy square off again, and Nana uses her advantage to get a vector in Lucy's leg, and is about to severe a nerve when Mayu comes running in, begging them to not fight, and when Nana tries to stop her from entering the combat area, Lucy takes the advantage and pretty much slices Nana up, very sadistically.

Amazingly, she's still conscious.

When Mayu starts screaming, Lucy chucks her off into a tree and then walks over to deliver the finishing blow to Nana, but she is stopped by a bullet hitting a tombstone behind her.

Kurama walks up to the cemetery entrance, finding Nana and Lucy. As Lucy is distracted by this, Nana takes the opportunity and sticks a vector into Lucy's forehead.
Lucy recovers from the attack and then tries to kill Nana, but no matter how hard she tries, she can't summon her vectors.

Kurama defies the 2-meter rule and walks over to Nana, then, in what counts as a rage for Kurama, he slaps Lucy, who, still unable to hit back, runs away.

Yuka has had a talk with the lady at the bread shop, who voices the idea that, since Mayu comes in the same clothes everyday, she might be a runaway. As Yuka is thinking about this, she notices something to her side, and when she turns her head, she finds Nyu, on the verge of tears. Yuka takes care of a small cut that Nyu's got on her arm, and then decides to take her back to the house.

As Kouta is waiting for someone to come back, he gets a phone call from the hospital. It's about Mayu, who was found along the road with a slight head wound. Kouta signs her out of the hospital and takes her back to the house to get something to eat.

Back at the house, Kouta is greeted by Yuka, who recognizes Mayu, and then Nyu, who's recognized by Mayu, but when Nyu looks at Mayu, her personality is too different from Lucy for Mayu to actually accuse her of anything. Mayu writes off the event that she saw that afternoon as some kind of weird dream.

After dinner, Mayu and Nyu take a bath while Yuka and Kouta talk about Mayu's situation. They decide to let Mayu stay with them (at least for the night). Kouta decides to tell Yuka everything about what's been happening to him the past couple of days, and apologizes to her for not telling her, because he didn't want to cause her any unnecessary worry. Nyu manages to interrupt their conversation.

Grand Entrance!

While escorting Nyu back to the bath, Yuka tells Mayu to stay with them for the night, and Mayu agrees.

In the Director's office at the research facility, Kurama has been summoned after the Nana incident. He is then ordered to kill Nana, ordered in the form of blackmail, more or less.

Kurama visits Nana in her hospital room, and oversees her injection.

The next morning, Yuka brings Kouta a letter that Mayu wrote before she left. Kouta and Yuka head out into town to search for her as you learn about Mayu's past.

Sick ass fucker. I would purge his twisted existence in a second.

After putting up with it longer than any normal human being, Mayu runs away from home, eventually finding herself on the beach, where she (I assume) tries to kill herself, but the barking of a stray dog, Wanta, brought her back to shore, where she's been staying since then.

Back in the current time, as Mayu is watching the waves and talking to Wanta, a woman comes by, and takes Wanta, calling him James. Mayu is rejected when she asks if she can visit "James" in the future, but tries to be happy for him anyway.

That night, as Mayu tries not to cry, she is discovered by a couple of cops, and she runs to avoid being brought back to her family. When she reaches the ramp, she is met by Kouta and Yuka who take responsibility for her and take her back to the house where they have a birthday party for her, and Wanta comes back too.

Some time in the near future, Mayu's going back to school, as are Kouta and Yuka. Kouta's rather disturbed by how fast Mayu's mother turned custody of Mayu over to them, but there you go.

To keep her from causing havoc at home alone, Kouta and Yuka bring Nyu along with them to college, where they teach her how to say "Yes" to keep her from sounding like a total weirdo, but they suddenly realize that if she can say "Yes" in the middle of class, they can get into a lot of trouble. A problem they figure out about three seconds too late, because Nyu volunteers to answer a question.

The professor, named Kakuzawa, is a little weird by anyone's standards at this school, and he knows something more than most people about Diclonius, and he recognizes Lucy from somewhere. Kakuzawa tells the three of them to stay after class.

Yeah, I'll bet.

He then threatens to take them to the police for kidnapping, but if they just leave Nyu with him, then he'll forget everything, and with no other obvious choice, Kouta accepts Kakuzawa's terms, turning to leave.
When Nyu tries to follow, Kouta says goodbye, and as he's leaving the room, Nyu calls out to him.

... and it's Kouta, there is no standalone H in Japanese.

Torn up by Nyu's desperate calls, Kouta and Yuka leave the campus, and eventually end up crying on the stairs beside the road.

Back in Kakuzawa's lab, Nyu's tied up to the ceiling naked, and Kakuzawa reveals his master plan for kidnapping Nyu/Lucy.

How about no.

He then injects her with some shit.

Kouta and Yuka are unusually quiet during dinner, not to mention the fact that there is no Nyu. Yuka voices the fact that the events of the day were strange, and then, after another awkward pause, asks Kouta if he would cry for her if she were to leave suddenly like Nyu. Unable to answer, Kouta brushes off the question and leaves the room.

As Kakuzawa is getting ready for... ahem, he suddenly realizes that Lucy's body is gone. When he looks around for it, he finds her awake, only not the passive one that he caught, but rather the cohesive Lucy.

That's Kakuzawa, and he's also a Diclonius, only not an awesome one. For various reasons, he doesn't have vectors, just these horns. Using his species as a platform, he renews his argument, but it doesn't get him anywhere with Lucy (who's got her vectors back).

Bandou's at the doctor's. He's agreed to the castration surgery, and in exchange, he's gotten new eyes and a new arm, for free because when the doctor tries to give him some pills. Bandou punches him out and escapes to go hunt down Lucy again.

Kouta decides to go out to talk to Kakuzawa, and when Yuka tries to come with him, he tells her that it's okay, then heads out.
Kouta arrives at Kakuzawa's office and meets his research assistant. When he asks where to find the professor, she leads him down to the underground lab. Along the way, Kouta tells her about the circumstances, and the woman replies that Kakuzawa doesn't have any siblings, and Kouta fully realizes that he's been totally tricked.

Inside the lab, they find the corpse of Kakuzawa, but Lucy's gone, out on the streets somewhere. The assistant tells Kouta to go home, and he semi-reluctantly agrees, leaving her alone to clean up the mess.

Out on the street, Lucy tries out her vectors on some passerby and is unsatisfied with the results, continuing on leaving the corpse on the street.

The next morning, Kouta decides to head out, and this time when Yuka asks to come along, he agrees, and Mayu then offers to go as well.

As Mayu is searching the beach, she runs into Bandou, who, after recognizing her, grudgingly asks her how he can repay the favor, and when she can't give him an answer, he gives her a little slip with his number on it, kind of like a coupon.

As Mayu is leaving, Bandou remembers why he's on the beach in the first place and asks her if she's seen anyone with horns around. When Mayu mentions Nyu, Bandou flies off the handle, grabbing her and almost beating the information out of her until...

... Owned.

Bandou throws her aside and stalks away, telling her to never show her face around him again.

Kouta and Yuka are searching some kind of shrine area/cemetery or something when it starts raining. They find a small house and use the porch as an escape from the rain.
When Kouta notices that Yuka's shivering, he grabs her and puts her on his lap to try help her warm up. Overwhelmed by the romantic aura around her, Yuka ends up asking Kouta if he likes her.
When Kouta apologizes for being unable to remember much about that summer eight years ago, Yuka gives in to her emotions and kisses Kouta.

After a couple of minutes of making out, the rain clears up and Yuka tries to get up again, but ends up slipping and falling off Kouta's lap.

A bit of fan service for those of you who don't like straight-out nudity.

As they head down the stairs again, Lucy comes up from behind them, and has a memory of that little kid again. As she turns to go, Kouta notices her and chases her.
When he tries to get her to come back to the house, she refuses using words other than "Nyu".

Surprised by her eloquence, Kouta is rather confused at what to do, and when Yuka takes Kouta's hand, Lucy smacks her, confusing everyone. When Kouta pets Yuka's head, Lucy remembers something from the past, that little kid petting someone's head... augh, I give up!
It's obviously Kouta petting Yuka's head. That and the fact that Yuka's wearing a yukata means that it must have been at the festival that they attended together eight years ago before the accident and Kouta lost all his memories! The boy from all those other times was Kouta too.

Back on track, remembering this, Lucy is on the verge of tears and turns to leave again, and Kouta catches her, but Lucy still refuses to go home with him and Yuka.

As Lucy breaks down and starts to cry, something happens to her again, and she reverts back to Nyu, and she's learned a new word!

God knows where she picked this one up, but there you go.

Back down on the beach, a pod thing has washed up on shore. Inside it is Nana, outfitted with new limbs, and a bunch of money. Kurama organized her escape when he was ordered to kill her, and set her up with enough cash to live for a while. He writes to her, telling her to leave town and go somewhere far away and not make any trouble. He asks promises that if she is good, he'll come and see her.
But that entire plan seems useless, because Bandou has just found her, and isn't too please with the horns on her head.
When Nana tries to not fight Bandou, he uses his new toy, what Jules Winnfield would call a "hand cannon" (.50 cal.) and tells Nana to give up Lucy's location.
When Nana again refuses, Bandou leads her down the logic path that humans and Diclonius can't live in the same world together, and tells her that he's going to kill her, exterminating a pest, if she doesn't tell him what she knows about Lucy.

Upon hearing this, Nana loses any cool she had, and goes into killing mode, chasing Bandou down the beach, and eventually getting to the point where she busts...

Rocket Punch!

Bandou is again laid out on his back with someone standing over him, but when Nana tells him that he's done for since he doesn't have his gun any more, Bandou whips out his other gun with his mechanical hand, but the blowback destroys the mechanisms, and he only barely grazes Nana, but the hit is enough to make her come back.
Eventually, Bandou and Nana make an agreement that Nana will call him if she sense Lucy again.

As Nana heads into town, she is ruined by the fact that she doesn't understand money, and therefore is pretty much starving, and eventually hides in the cemetery.

Mayu, who's taking Wanta on a walk, comes across Nana and recognizes her from the bout she had with Lucy, but when she sees that Nana's got all her limbs, she dismisses that thought again.

When Mayu wakes up again, she and Nana have a talk, during which Nana eventually asks Mayu to be her friend. After seeing that Nana's burning money, Mayu tells her about Nyu, and then agrees to take Nana back to her house.

Outside, Nana is perplexed by the fact that she can't sense Lucy anywhere, and just as she's bout to leave, Kouta comes out of the house, and invites Nana inside after seeing her horns.
When Nyu comes to the door as Kouta opens it, Nana recognizes her body and attacks her, throwing her around a bit until Mayu defends her, causing Nana to stop. Kouta slaps Nana for attacking Nyu, and then Nana, feeling persecuted for trying to help them, runs away.

Mayu chases after and gives her bag back to her. Nana explains that she's not the one who's wrong, then she tells Mayu about Lucy (not Nyu).

Kakuzawa's research assistant has flown in to the research facility to deliver her boss's head to his father, the Director, and is then shot because she saw Kakuzawa's head, and most importantly the horns. She was only grazed though, and she is put to work finding the man who came to visit Kakuzawa, the one who had an interest in Lucy.

Back at the house, Nyu hasn't woken up since Nana threw her around, and as Kouta and Yuka debate what to do, Nyu stirs, and then Lucy wakes up (this is kind of tiring).
Recognizing the aura from Lucy, Nana perks up and then dashes off to the house, with Mayu trailing after her.

Lucy gets up and staggers down the hallway towards the door, but she eventually falls down, and Kouta takes her back to the futon. Yuka leaves to get some medicine and Kouta stays with Lucy.
As she lays there, Lucy begins to have a flashback of her childhood.

She was abandoned in the woods, and picked up by an orphanage filled with sadistic, mentally-disturbed kids.

"Gifted" with her vectors since an early age, she didn't know what they were or how to control them. Needless to say, they scared the shit out of her.

She was picked on every day for her horns, and was down to one friend left in the world, a small dog outside of the orphanage walls. She would feed it and talk with it, but eventually, she didn't have enough food for herself and the dog.

One day, as she was being bullied, another girl around her age intervened and stopped the others, and told Lucy that if she ever wanted to talk or whatever, that she could come to her. Lucy eventually told the girl about her dog, and the girl volunteered to give half of her lunch as well.

The next day, while Lucy was trying to ignore another flurry of insults, they bullies brought in the dog, which Lucy's "friend" had "accidentally" told them about.

Conniving little bitch!

The other delinquents beat the dog to death, and Lucy finally lost it, giving into her basic instinct, and letting her vectors go.

Sorry, but I was happy.

Lucy buried the dog, apologizing for what happened to it, and she suddenly realized that someone was behind her.

Kouta is on a trip with his family, and even though he is a little weird, he finds Lucy's horns fascinating and very cool, asking her to be his friend. Though she refuses, he insists that he'll be at that spot the next day, and asks her to come too.

That night, Lucy breaks into another family's house and kills them, using their house as her for the night.

The next day, Lucy goes back to the grave, but Kouta's not there. Convincing herself that she came to see the the dog, she sits in the rain for a while with nowhere to go.
Suddenly, someone jams a hat on her head, and she looks up to see Kouta, who sneaked out of the house to see her. His father didn't want him to be going out because of the murderer (actually Lucy).

Kouta shows her a picture of the mountains, and then his music box, the same one that he ended up leaving at Yuka's house. He ends up scooting up closer to her to ward off the cold of rain.

That night, Kouta asks Lucy if he'll play with him again tomorrow, and Lucy agrees. Lucy goes off and kills another family, taking their home for that night.

The next day, she meets Kouta, who tells her that he's leaving the next day, so he takes her to the zoo for the rest of the day. They look at the elephants and giraffes, and eat ice shave. When Lucy asks Kouta when he's leaving the next day, he tells her that it's probably at night, since their leaving after going to a festival with his cousin.

While Kouta is looking for something else to do, someone nearby mentions the second family killing, and Lucy is horrified to find herself thinking about killing someone else. Lucy has a slight internal argument with some weird mummies, and when Kouta asks her what's wrong, she says she's fine.
They eventually go to a creek, and end up splashing around until their clothes get totally soaked.
As they are waiting for their clothes to dry, Lucy thanks Kouta and tells him that that day was the most fun she's had in her life.

On the ride back, Lucy asks if it would be too much of a problem if she were to come with him to the festival, but Kouta says that he's already promised his cousin.

While Lucy is thinking about this again, those mummies make a comeback and tell her to just kill him, but Lucy denies them, but when she comes back to her senses, she's choking the life out of Kouta. She lets go and starts crying.
As Kouta tries to console her, Lucy turns to him and asks him that, if she should ever start to kill many people, if he would...

Not quite as relevant in the anime.

When the finally part that night, Lucy asks Kouta if his cousin is a girl, he pauses and then tells her it's a guy. With that, Lucy is very happy and tells him that she'll see him off the next day.

The next day, Lucy decides to go to the festival to look for Kouta and tell him how she feels, but when she does, she finds his "guy" cousin clinging to him, sobbing, and then Kouta petting her head.
Overwhelmed with feelings of sorrow and betrayal, and then a whole bunch of anger, Lucy willingly gives into those mummy guys, and then proceeds to slaughter half of the festival's attendance.

Kouta and his family go to the train station and are sent off by Yuka, who Kanae does not like, especially when Kouta tells her that he likes her.

Lucy comes out of her dream and gets up, leaving the room while Kouta and Yuka are out doing different stuff.

As Nana and Mayu arrive at the house, Lucy opens the door and sees Nana. When Mayu tries to say something, Lucy swats her back, and Nana gets angry, yelling at Lucy, but Lucy just laughs at her, since Nana doesn't really have much of a chance against Lucy. Despite this, she throws Lucy across the courtyard into the side of the house.

Lucy and Nana square off, and as the vectors start flying, Mayu throws herself into the middle of the conflict, and almost get sheered in half, but it stops the fighting.
When Mayu begs Lucy to stop, she has a flashback of Kouta again, and then goes into relapse as Kouta and Yuka come out.
Nyu flings herself over Kouta, telling him that she likes him, which depresses Yuka.

Every ends up sitting down to dinner, during which Nana eats like a horse, and when Nyu offers Nana her bowl, Nana apologizes for attacked her (Nyu, not Lucy), and everyone finally agrees to let Nana stay.

Back at the facility, you finally figure out about Kurama's past. Basically, he was a researcher at the facility for a long time along with Kakuzawa. The facility was created to house Diclonius, and run tests on them involving hurling a lead ball at them at a certain joules rate (look it up, it's a physics term).

Needless to say theses tests were inhumane and very cruel by anyone's standards, but they were probably allowed because Diclonius weren't technically humans anymore.
These tests were performed to determine the strength of the vectors.

One day, the Diclonius in that picture broke out of her cell using disproportionately powerful vectors and slaughtered everyone on her way to find Kurama, the only person who showed any remorse for the actions of the scientists.

Before killing anyone else, the little girl stuck a vector into his forehead, and the forehead of his other research partner, then thanked him before she was shot by Kakuzawa. It was determined that she faked her power all along to get this chance.

When Kurama's research partner had a child, the child was born with horns, and it was ordered that it be terminated, and Kurama was selected for the job.
Over the next couple of years, Kurama performed the same task numerous times, until he finally had a child of his own.

This was the time when they discovered that there was a virus in the vectors that infected anyone who came into contact with them. The infected can only give birth to horned children, Diclonius.

Kurama then proceeded to kill his daughter, but he was ultimately interrupted by his ailing wife, who had ripped her stitches when she came to stop him, and she quickly bled out and died after making Kurama promise that he wouldn't hate their child.

Kurama made arrangements to have his child's life spared, and the Director held the life of his child over him for the next decade or whatever. Kurama never remarried or had other kids, in fact, he seems to take some kind of demented satisfaction from telling people the abridged version of his married life.

Now that child, named Mariko, is now called Number 35 in the facility.

In the possession of 26 vectors with a maximum range of 11 meters, she's theoretically the strongest Diclonius, and would be in reality if it weren't for Lucy. I suppose Mariko is more like a black sheep or something.

Either way, the facility had decided to mobilize her to hunt down and capture Lucy. They have devised a fool-proof way of controlling her.

Kurama up and leaves when the Director tells him all of this, but he shows up back on the beach where he finds Bandou, and ends up enlisting his help after fixing his busted mechanical arm. In exchange for that repair job, Kurama wants Bandou to kill a Diclonius that will be arriving soon, namely 35.

Back at the house, Nana, who's be unable to do anything else to earn her keep, has been chosen to take care of Wanta's meals. As they are discussing this, Nana notices the picture of Kanae, and Kouta explains to them that he said something awful to her before she died, something that he wishes he could apologize for, but she died before he could say anything else.

Seeing Kouta's face, Nyu tells him not to cry, and when he tries to explain what's going on, Nyu grabs a pair of scissors and dashes out of the house.
When Kouta finds her again, Nyu's cut her long hair and done up what's left with a ribbon like Kanae.

Becoming Kanae for the minute, Nyu forgives Kouta, but then begins to apologize to him. Kouta thinks it's for the shell that she broke back when she got there, but Nyu's not exactly talking about that. When she has a flashback attack, Kouta hugs her and says that he feels like he's known her for a long time... which he has!
Outside the doors, Yuka has been watching, and when she saw Kouta's look, she became very sad and ran away, leaving the groceries.

As Kurama's assistant flies with 35 to Kanagawa (that's where this has all been happening), she's trying to get a hold of Kurama, but no such luck. She also has a nice chat with 35 about Nana, consisting on 35 saying something. And that's it.

Back down on the ground, Nana sense the overwhelming presence of 35, and decides to sally forth on her own to meet 35, promising that she'd be back for dinner.

When Nana arrives, she finds 35 and a squad of SAT members. Nana is instantly outclassed by the totally sadistic 35, what with those 11 meters, it was pretty much over before Nana even left the freaking house.

Kouta becomes very worried about what's going on after talking with Mayu and decides to chase after Nana, and Nyu decides to follow him, against his wishes. When they get to a roadblock set up, Kouta somehow manages to get past while Nyu gets stranded on the other side.

After 35 is finally bored with tormenting Nana, she decides to kill her, but Kouta comes before anything can happen, and Nana begs them not to hurt Kouta, but 35 is infuriated by the fact that Nana has a friend while she can't, and so tries to kill her, but just before she can deliver the final blow to Nana, Nana uses her classic trick and shuts down 35's vectors, but then falls over the railing into the ocean.

As Kouta is reeling from the experience, Nyu, who's somehow managed to get past the blockade, is dashing towards him. As Kouta tries to go out to meet her, Kurama's assistant tries to restrain him, and the leader of SAT orders 35 to kill Lucy, but 35 refuses to, saying that the girl there is not Lucy.
Shortly after refusing, 35 realizes that she can't use her vectors, and she is reclaimed by the SAT.
With no other choice, the bomb monitor for 35 orders the SAT forces to open fire on Lucy, which they do, scattering warning shots around Nyu and Kouta.
They take lethal aim and Kouta pushes Nyu away, shielding her from the bullets, only Nyu suddenly changes to Lucy and just catches the bullets instead.

Kurama's assistant steps forward to tell Kouta what Lucy is exactly, but she takes too many steps and Lucy cuts her in half.
Seeing this, Kouta has a severe flashback attack, seeing the assistant being sliced in half brought up memories.

Lucy leaps over a divider, and the SAT squad opens fire on her, but she leaps into the middle of them and kills them all. Meanwhile, Kouta has his active flashback.

Kouta and Yuka are at the festival 8 years ago. They visit that carving game thing...

Yuka breaks down at the thought of Kouta leaving, and he comforts her, patting her on the head.
As they walk through the festival looking for Kanae, they hear some screaming behind them, and see people fleeing the area. Rumors of a bomb going off are everywhere, and Kouta's father finds them, telling them that they are leaving. After a couple of seconds of looking, they find Kanae, who's got a little blood on her face, and apparently saw what happened.

On the train ride, the subject of a "bomb" going off in the middle of a crowd at the festival is brought up, but Kanae, who saw everything, tells them that it was a little girl with horns.

Recognizing the description, Kouta becomes angry with Kanae for "lying", but Kanae sticks by her original story. While Kanae's emphatically stating her experience, she stumbles past Lucy, who hid herself on the train when it left.

When Kouta runs up to greet Lucy, she goes to attack him for lying to her, but Kanae pushes her down and tries to tell Kouta to run, but he slaps her for doing something like that. Then he tells Kanae that he hates her, the think that Kanae fears more than anything. As she is trying to beg Kouta to not hate her, she is sliced in half.

Horrified, Kouta screams, and his father gets up to see what's going on, but is killed quickly.
When Kouta asks Lucy why she did it, why she killed them when she and Kouta were friends, she tells him that she didn't kill him because they were friends. She then turns around and starts walking away, stating that her next target is "that girl", here meaning Yuka.
When Kouta realizes this, he leaps on Lucy, tackling her to the ground and shaking her until she escapes from the train, leaving him alone.

Back in the present, Kouta and Lucy look at each other. Kouta asks Lucy what she is, but Lucy doesn't tell him, because it doesn't have anything to do with him. Kouta says it does because she killed his family, and just as somethings about to happen, Kouta tackles Lucy again as a bullet ricochets off the railing.

Bandou's finally found Lucy again, and Lucy kicks Kouta away, drawing Bandou off and telling Kouta to meet her on the stairs that night.

It's night time and Kurama's managed to pull Nana out of the water. She tells Kurama that 35 is in the city, and that it was her that owned her. Kurama's quiet on the subject, stating only that he has to kill her. Nana doesn't understand why, and then Kurama tells her that it's because 35's his real daughter Mariko. Bandou's lost... again, poor guy. But Lucy doesn't kill him, just tells him that he won't see her again, then leaves.

35's been put back in a hospital room to recover, which she does in record time, killing her guards and rolling out to meet her handler. She tells him that Lucy's on her way to the hospital, and with that, all three Diclonius assemble in place, and no, I don't know where. A roof somewhere.

Lucy and Mariko face off, but Mariko's obvious superiority in reach and numbers in a stable environment outclasses Lucy's ingenuity and skill, and Lucy is eventually thrown into a railing and beaten until one of her horns snaps and she passes out (well think about it, having a tough, external bone broken off, it's got to really hurt).

Before Mariko can kill Lucy, Kurama makes his appearance, and Mariko is overjoyed to see her father, and tries to walk to be with him, but ultimately falls down.
When Kurama points his gun at Mariko, she starts crying, telling him that she's been looking forward to seeing him.
When Nana calls Kurama "Papa", Mariko flips out and pins her down, choking her, asking Kurama if he'll be sad if she were to die. After a couple of seconds, Kurama drops his gun and instead walks over to Mariko and hugs her.

Kurama apologizes to Mariko for everything and then picks her up, carrying her out to the bridge when the bomb in her stomach is activated.

After that, 35's former handler attempts to kill Nana, but Lucy, who's managed to haul herself down, cuts his head off, then leaves, telling Nana to go and live with Kouta in the house, to do what she could not.

On the stairs, Kouta and Lucy meet again, and Lucy explains what she is to him. She tearfully apologizes to him, and gets up to leave, but is stopped by Kouta.

Unable to forgive her, but unable to let her go, Kouta is obviously in a strange kind of love with Lucy/Nyu.

Together, they share a strange bond of sorrow, and thus are able to better understand each other's pain. It's romantic in a demented kind of way. Awesome.

Lucy leaves and is eventually cornered by the SAT, and in a flurry of gunfire, she loses her other horn.

A while later, everything is back to almost normal. Nana's living in the house with everybody else (save Nyu), and things are going normally. One day, they have an unexpected guest.

Now it is never explained who this person is, but being the hopeless die-hard romantic kind of guy that I am online, I like to think that it was Lucy, but you can never know.
If it was, then it would have a link back to the manga, which had a rebirth kind of ending. Not rebirth in the immediate sense, but rebirth in a second generation sense, where the main character's won't get together unless the guy's a pedophile, and if he is, then you're not exactly rooting for him to get the girl anymore.

K-ON!

2010-03-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

Name: K-ON!
Type: Television Show
Episodes: 13, 1 OVA, 6 Shorts
Rating: Any Age
Runtime Per Episode: 24 min
Director: Yamada Naoko
Produced By Pony Canon, Kyoto Animation, MOVIC
Year Produced: 2009

A must-watch for anyone who's a fan of J-Pop or weird song titles K-ON! is another one of my all time favorites, and as such, must be reviewed on this blog.
Adapted from a 4-koma manga created by Kakifly, this anime is cleared for a second season beginning sometime this year (that's to say 2010)!

Yui is just entering high school. She's uncoordinated, direction less, and a klutz, but she's excited about entering a new high school none the less.

Mad Skillz? Yes, yes they are.

Upon her arrival, Yui is bombarded with club applications and posters for dozens of various clubs and groups. Now I don't know if clubs are a required part of Japanese high school life, but there you go.

Unable to decide on her own, Yui is left in a quandary, and her childhood friend Nodoka's only advice to her is to find a club fast, or she'll become a NEET.

NEET is a United Kingdom (though it has obviously spread out to Asian countries like China and Japan) term for someone who stays at home and lives off their parents through their twenties. What it actually means is Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET).

Supported and motivated almost entirely by her younger sister; Ui, Yui is probably already half-way there.

That's Ui. She bears a striking resemblance to Yui.

Yui's not the only person who's having trouble finding a club, or should I say that Yui's not the only person who's having trouble settling for a club.

Ritsu is also a freshman new to this school, and she's got a plan. Since the graduation of the seniors last year, the Light Music Club (the "Keion" (K-ON) Club (roughly phonetically)) is going under.
Since clubs require a minimum of four members to continue being clubs (maybe it's a credit thing), the Light Music Club (with zero), is doomed unless someone can save it, and that someone is Ritsu... and her childhood friend Mio!

Too bad Mio's already found a club for herself; the Literature Club.

Rejected.

They are close friends, with a lot of history and... somewhat of a physically violent relationship.

Ritsu convinces Mio to abandon her original plans of joining another club, and gets her into the Light Music Club. Now all they have to do is wait for at least two more members, one or which shows up after only a day of waiting!

Mugi was on her way to join the Chorus Club, but was (like Mio) abducted into the Light Music Club by Ritsu... well, more like Ritsu's stupidity and Mio's reaction, which Mugi thought looked fun. One more!

In an act of Club Spirit, they decide to go home and create fliers, bringing them back the next day. Ritsu's is chosen from among the batch and hung up.

As Yui is walking through the courtyard, a poster catches her attention, the poster for the Light Music Club.

When she tells her Nodoka about her plans to join the club because the word "Light" implies easy, Nodoka isn't exactly sure what's in store for Yui. And so Yui submits her application, and the Light Music Club prepares for her arrival.

When Yui arrives at the LMC, she's made up her mind to tell them that she can't join after all... mainly because she can't play guitar... she actually can't play anything, but after a lot of sweets, they convince Yui to stay to watch them preform.

Burn.

Despite her opinion of their performance, Yui decides to stay because they looked like they were having fun.

And thus the Light Music Club is saved... for now, or at least until Ritsu forgets to turn in another vital piece of paperwork.

An upbeat anime with a funny story, it's from an area that I don't usually take interest in, namely, one that focuses around girls and girls alone. I like girls, don't get me wrong, but I'm a great fan of low humor; among those being physical humor... and sexual tension humor.
I also strangely like a little romance in animes and mangas. I may be a man, but that doesn't mean that I can't be sensitive too... I think I'll go and cry a little... too much? Okay, but I do like romance, since I'm girlie that way, and men should never underestimate the power a romantic movie has on a girl.

There are a few "Girl's Love" situations in there, but then again, Icould probably be considered somewhat of a deviant, and am probablyhyper sensitive.

The art style was cool. It's got the right amount of chibi to make me like all of the characters, not to mention a bunch of cool faces.

... now it may be a bit of a cliche, but I am a super Mio fan. I like long hair, and the fact that she's easily scared and embarrassed is super cute. Like in Episode 6, when she and Ritsu were kids, and Ritsu announced to the class that Mio was left handed. I nearly died of a moe attack.

Moe, moe, HYNGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!

That alone was enough to make me love this anime.

The music, was the best out of all the animes that I've reviewed, or probably ever will review. Even if you're not a huge fan of anything like J-Pop (a term that I don't quite understand, it's pretty much just rock and roll in Japanese), song titles like "My Love is a Stapler", and "Fuwa Fuwa Time" will make your day. Just think about it. Don't Say Lazy is also a pretty cool song, actually, all of them are.

K-ON! Anime Media (1-13, Shorts)
K-ON! Anime Take (14 (OVA))

I'm sorry that I broke it up, but I couldn't find it all together in one place, in the time that I was willing to spend looking, so here you go.
The Shorts (from what I can gather) are the shorts that are included after the anime show. Some shows have a preview of the next episode, and Slice of Life animes usually have these.

Coming up Next!

Elfen Lied!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

The rest of the series is a rather disjointed (true to Slice of Life) series of events that the LMC gets into. There are a few key points though.

Unable to afford a guitar on her own, the club bands together and gets jobs to help Yui afford a guitar, but when they go to the music store, the guitar that Yui has her heart set upon is a bit out of their price range.

Mugi, being from somewhat of an upstanding and well-off family, has always admired those who bargain, and has had the life-long dream of being asked "Do you want fries with that?".
Mugi sallies forth to bargain for the guitar, and when she arrives at the counter, her eyebrows are recognized as the same as the employees boss, for that is her father.
They "bargain" with her until Yui can afford the guitar.

The group, prompted and pushed along by Mio, decides to head out to a special training camp. Mugi offers her villa by the ocean, but is unable to get the biggest one, though it hardly matters. Mugi's actually from a very rich family, in case you couldn't tell already, and it is unknown how many more summer houses her family owns, but it's got to be in... well, the rich range, at the very least.

During the camp, they practice for... about as long as I actually spend working on homework on days between when it's assigned and when it's actually due.
Discouraged by the lack of seriousness, Mio plays a tape that she found in the Music Room to the others, showing them the skill of last year's LMC, somewhat of a... heavy metal band, thus screwing up my idea of Light Music even more.

After some more time passes, the group finds out that they need an adult supervisor, more specifically, a teacher. For various reasons, the group unanimously decides on a teacher named Sawako.

Unfortunately, Sawako has already agreed to be the advisor for the Woodwind club. As the LMC continues to try to convince her, Sawako notices Yui looking at her funny. When she asks what's going on, Yui speaks up and says that she was recently looking through the photo album of the old LMC.

Sawako goes an unhealthy shade of gray and asks where the album is. Breaking away from the group, Sawako makes an athletic dash for the Music Room, finding the album... but the picture is gone. The picture of her, decked out in goth-punk attire.

Sawako joined the LMC when she was rejected by a boy she liked, in hopes that the LMC would butch her up or something, but somewhere down the line, she passed the threshold of acceptably normal, and went into the... I don't even know what to call it, territory. She still got rejected in the end. This time for being too weird.

Ritsu, being of the more devious and cruel mind, decides to hold this information over Sawako's head, Sawako, who's trying so hard to leave her tortured past behind her, despite the fact that she won't stop bringing it up herself.
In the end, Sawako is desperate to keep this information out of the wrong hands, and agrees to become the club's advisor.

The group begins to prepare for the school's upcoming Cultural Festival (I told you!), and the LMC begins to prepare for it's first live show. One problem... Yui can't play and sing at the same time.

An easily understandable problem, I can't play bass or piano and sing at the same time... yet, though I can sing and play guitar or ukulele... or castanets.

Either way, Sawako, being musical at heart, decides to "teach" Yui, so she hijacks her for the night and ends up driving her so hard, Yui loses her voice and won't have it back in time for the festival. With no other choice, the LMC turns to Mio for the vocals.

Mio, as previously stated, is very shy, and I'm surprised she's willing to preform just playing, but since they are backed into a corner, Mio takes the lead.

The performance is a huge success, and gains even more infamy when Mio accidentally trips over a guitar wire and flips her skirt. Strips... *nosebleed*.
Mio soon after amasses herself and unwanted fan club.

And so the group makes it through their freshman year, and goes on to preform again at the freshman acceptance ceremony of next year. This time, their performance is so inspiring to a new student; Azusa, that she soon after asks to join the LMC, and she is immediatly accepted.

Azusa, a.k.a. Azu-nyan (like a cat)

The LMC isn't quite what Azusa was expecting. A guitar player practically from birth, Azusa is rather confused with the LMC's mad skills at live performances, despite their lack of drive during their free time.
When she voices these concerns, Mio tells her that the reason that they probably do so well when they want to is because they enjoy playing with a group, despite the fact that Ritsu and Yui are about a twelve on the Lazy 10 Scale. Azusa decides to stay despite her concerns/convictions.

The group heads out on another training camp that ends up pretty much like the last one, but still serves as a bonding experience. At a point, Azusa discovers Yui's unnatural ear for tuning.

In the face of the next school festival, the group prepares to play... and Yui catches a cold, similar to last time, but now she's debilitated. Mio can probably cover the lyrics again, but they need a lead guitarist, and Azusa, who up to this point has been rhythm, is nominated, since she's the only other option.

Azusa is disappointed with this, believing that she can't handle the job as lead. It's not a question of technical prowess, but rather of spirit, and Yui's the only person who can make those solos go well.

Yui shows up to school, all better, and during practice, has an unusual level of skill. When her identity is questioned (maybe she hit her head while she was sick), Yui fails to call Azusa by her proper name, Azu-nyan, and Sawako tells Ui to give up the disguise. Turns out Ui's good at everything.

The real Yui recovers in time, and arrives for the performance, but forgets her guitar at home, and Sawako fills in for her while Yui runs home to pick it up, making it back in time for the second (out of four) songs, and even makes an encore.

There is also an OVA which covers the LMC's experience at a Live House (a performance where bands get up and play for people at their own expense, it's not technically a gig, more of a publication in hopes that they'll get a gig).

See you soon!

Toradora!

2010-03-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

Name: Toradora!
Type: Television Show
Episodes: 25, 1 Short
Rating: TV-14
Runtime Per Episode: 24 min
Director: Nagai Tatsuyuki
Produced By GENCO and J.C. Staff
Year Produced: 2008

In modern-day Japan, there is a young man attending high school. His name is Ryuuji, and he's got more than his fare share of problems.

The first is that his father was a gangster... or Yakuza, if there's a difference. I kind of get the idea that Yakuza is an organization like the Mafia rather than a group of unorganized thugs... but I can't really say.

Thanks to his fathers... "profession", Ryuuji has been cursed with an unshakable genetic inheritance!

His eyes, man.

This kind of eye is a common delinquent trait... that and the coat over the shoulders, the scars, the cigarette, and the bokken. And the hairdoo is usually key.

Because of this unfortunate trait, Ryuuji is doomed to spend the rest of his school life being viewed as a delinquent, even though he is actually a calm, nice man... who can cook! That's like... 3 out of 4 (or whatever).

God dang it.

Living in a small(ish) house in the shadow of a huge, mysterious apartment complex, Ryuuji's clean-freak tendencies shine at home, but when he gets to school, he never really has the opportunity to prove that he's actually a decent person. All that happens is he says something and...

Doesn't sound too bad, yeah? Well it does to him, and I suppose if your moral character were being questioned to the point where everybody thought you were a total thug, then you'd lose patience too.

... But the way I see it, if they're not going to listen to you, keep the wallet!

Living with his working mother...

Absolutely!

... and an awesome one at that... not exactly text-book mother, but funny, Ryuuji is the man of the house since his father passed away. As such, he's learned how to cook (as previously stated), not to mention clean, sew, and generally take care of the house. Outside of the house, Ryuuji has a severe lack of friends... save one.

Kitamura

The only person who's had the courage to stay with him long enough to learn his "secret" (oh my God, he's nice!), Kitamura is also the only person that Ryuuji can comfortably talk to in school. Good thing he's in Ryuuji's class.

Ryuuji has a secret beyond his actual nature secret. He (like all teenage boys in anime), has a crush that he can't speak normally to. You might think that anime guys are lucky as hell for all the play that they get, but personally, I think that anyone who can't even chat normally with the person they like is kind of pathetic. Actually, they're probably worse than that.

... well I wouldn't go that far.

I can understand having a problem confessing, I've had some severe fails, but the best thing about it is that if you keep trying, someone'll say "yes"! Sounds like a pie in the sky thing, well, that's just because you haven't practiced enough. Love (although that's a pretty heavy word for asking someone out on a date) is a difficult thing to handle.

Anyway, it's the start of a new year at high school, and Ryuuji isn't looking forward to having to explain to a whole new class about his... not being a delinquent. On the way down the hall, he meets his crush... well, not meets, but sees again.

Her name is Minori, and she's... energetic to say the least. As my friend would describe it; "She's a freaking light particle!". She's also in his class (of 2-C). After having a brief encounter with her, during which the only thing he could manage to say was her name, Ryuuji turns away to catch his breath... and bumps into...

... Aisaka Taiga, apparently... who's not having a good day. While listening to the whispers around him, Ryuuji manages to remember where he's heard the name Aisaka Taiga before.
P... Palm... Palm...tree? No. Palm... top... Palmtop... Tiger... Taiga... Palmtop Taiga!

Cute nickname.

After putting all of the pieces together, Ryuuji gets... punched for his troubles. She must not like her nickname very much... either that or she doesn't like bumping into people.

Owned.

... she's in his class too... and she's friends with Minori! Suddenly thing's aren't looking as grand as they first seemed.

When the day is over, Ryuuji is called into the teacher's lounge and asked to fill out the career-choice form thing. I get the idea behind this, but I've never actually done one of these. I kind of want to, but I prefer those tests that tell you what you're best suited to become.

Jesus, even the teacher's fear him.

When he gets back to the classroom, there are chairs and desks flying everywhere.

... Huh?

As Ryuuji looks around, he notices the broom cabinet... tottering, and then falling. When it opens, a curled up Taiga rolls out, surprisingly managing to retain her original position.

Roll roll roll...

Choosing (wisely) to ignore her beyond the "Are you alright?" (a stupid reflex question, obviously not), Ryuuji goes and picks up his bag to leave. There's a stuttering from the corner, and Taiga starts asking him what he's doing.

When Ryuuji tells her that he's just picking up the bag, Taiga has some kind of attack.

Okay, so maybe she's not having an attack per say, rather, she's going to attack someone. Namely Ryuuji.

Guayahhhhh!!!

(I've got to have at least one per post)

After struggling over the bag, Taiga leaves the room, calling Ryuuji an idiot for protecting his personal property.

Later that night, Ryuuji remembers the career form that he has to fill out, and as he's searching through his bag, he finds a letter addressed to Kitamura from Taiga. A love letter... that comes open when Ryuuji is being an idiot.

Crap.

Well, not that it's open, I should... no, actually, in the interest of surviving, I shouldn't read it.
As he's trying to reseal it, Ryuuji discovers that it's actually... empty.
I've done bad, but this is an epic fail (as my friend would say).

Ryuuji goes to bed. After sleeping for several hours, Ryuuji's is woken by the sound of something in the house being opened. Since his mother's not supposed to be home yet, Ryuuji goes out to see what's going on.

As he ventures into the living room, he sees that the window is open. As he's wondering how it got so, he figures out. Something... small comes out of a room behind him and attacks with a bokken.

After evading being bludgeoned to death for a while, Ryuuji manages to turn on the light.

AISAKA!!

She's found Ryuuji and has come to cleanse the shame of the... thing that she put in his bag. And she needs him to die to do that, especially since he already knows what it was.

He he...

Now that someone knows what was in the bag, there is only one choice... well, two I suppose.

There's logic for you.

Taiga finally stops attacking after Ryuuji yells at her the fact that the envelope was actually empty... and then she passes out for lack of food.

During Taiga's dinner at Ryuuji's place, she yells at him that confessing is embarrassing. After she's finished yelling at him for being an idiot... she insults him for being a lower-class citizen. When he tries to yell at her for insulting him, Ryuuji is caught off guard by her expression and decides to show her his box of shame.

It's a box filled with a bunch of stuff that he intended to give/do with his beloved.

Um... no...?

But since he's never had the courage to tell her how he feels... none of it has, or probably ever will happen.
Ryuuji suddenly realizes that his mother's going to be home soon, so he frantically tells Taiga that he'll keep her secret, but Taiga doesn't exactly trust him.

Backed into a corner, Ryuuji tells her that he'll help her.

Ryuuji agrees... and then she says this.

I dunno about dog...

But Ryuuji agrees anyway and finally gets her to go home.

The next morning, Ryuuji gets a phone call.

Taiga demands that Ryuuji come over to where she is, and when he asks where Taiga, he is led out onto the veranda, and discovers that she's living in the huge apartment complex that's standing next to his house.
Ryuuji asks for some more time to finish the food.

When Ryuuji arrives at the complex, he discovers that there's only two floors. He goes and finds Aisaka's door and presses the buzzer.

And here I was wondering who "Ai Saka" was! Ha ha!

... I'm such an idiot.

Ryuuji discovers that the door is open, and when he lets himself in, he discovers a horrific smell. Upon further investigation, he finds the source of the smell.

A scene so horrific or pornographic that it was mosaic-ed out. That's bad.

Filled with the spirit of a true Filth-Fighter, Ryuuji is spurred into anger.

Ryuuji tears all around the house looking for Taiga, and when he finds her, she's sleeping again.
As Ryuuji looks around the house, he sees that it looks like nobody else is living there, which is true.
And so Ryuuji begins to clean.

After about 15 minutes, Taiga wakes up again, and when she goes to the kitchen, she finds the house is... actually clean. When she figures out it's Ryuuji (her dog) who did it, she yells at him.
Now, I don't know if "Forced Cleaning" is a crime, but maybe it is in Japan. Doesn't sound that bad to me.

And so they being their exciting school life together. Taiga has agreed to help Ryuuji get a date with Minori if he'll help her get a date with Kitamura.

Let me just start off by saying that when I was going into this project, I had decided that I'd review things in kind or a random order.
I knew that there would be a Miyazaki Marathon somewhere in there, and I knew that I wanted to do a couple of other things, those namely being Mugen no Juunin, Ookami to Koushinryou, and Gankutsuou (out of the ones that I've already done).
There was also this, and the upcoming four reviews, but I had arranged them in a kind of order that I like them in (except for the third one, which I just figured I needed a break from movies).

I have to admit that I have seen this anime before, and I have just realized that it is among my favorite five (if were talking series here). The other ones that I can tell you now because it won't spoil the surprise are Ookami to Koushinryou (as you have probably already figured out if you read my review), KissxSis, Zero no Tsukaima, and both To Aru Majutsu no Index and To Aru no Choudenjibou (for which this blog is named, and I just realized that I have not made plans to review it... shamed).

I haven't decided to review these in the near future. KissxSis because this is partly a school engagement, Zero no Tsukaima because I just discovered it, and To Aru Majutsu no Index and To Aru no Choudenjibou... I don't know why. There are also two others that I am reviewing in the future, but if I tell you now, it'll ruin the surprise.

That being said, I might be kind of biased here, but at least it's a positive bias. I know I hate negative biases.

In case you couldn't see it coming, I think this anime is awesome.
It's funny and I lose it for tsundere, height-sensitive girls, especially ones played by Kugimiya Rie. Taiga is one of my all-time favorite characters.

Close to being a typical school life anime, this was saved by the preferences and just the fact that the story (to me) was different than those typical high school love stories, and that made it cool. Actually, this anime has received the tag of "Love Rectangle" from several people. I didn't even know that was a thing. Damn.

Like I said before, Kugimiya Rie (Taiga) is one of my favorite Japanese voice actresses, and she's been in a lot of other stuff. She was the main character in the Zero no Tsukaima series, as well as the Shakugan no Shana series. She also got the Kouta part in Midori no Hibi, which I reviewed a while back (it's not hard to find, just look for the boobs).

I loved how Taiga and Ryuuji's relationship developed, and how their friendship affected Minori and Kitamura, not to mention the others in the class.

The drawing style was a bit more anime than the manga, but I still liked it because I read the manga, got interested, then got cut off because they haven't finished translating it yet. This is actually one of the few animes that I have actively looked for to find out what happens.

They didn't make an English version (thank God), but they did make a Tagalog version, so thank the Lord for that.
... Where is Tagalog? I don't know, but it's apparently a country of some sort. Either way, stick with the Japanese version.

The music was awesome. At least the opening song was, and that's good enough for me. Pre-Parade is a lot of fun to listen to, and even if you don't watch the anime, you should check out the song. Kugimiya Rie leads because she can sing, and has apparently done so for several other opening songs for the animes she's worked on.

The most important thing that I can say for this anime is to be sure to watch at least the last episode to the end. If you don't, you'll have an aneurysm.

Toradora! Minitheatre

Coming up Next!

K-ON!!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

I'llgive you the general lay-out of things because this is generally a long anime with a plot that can be simplified so you won't have to spend hours reading it.

As time goes on, Taiga and Ryuuji become closer, sharing secrets and... dinner. Ryuuji and Tiaga are often mistaken for a romantic couple because of their proximity in and out of school, not to mention their suspiciously similar boxed lunches. All this is not helped by the fact that both Minori and Kitamura are spreading rumors that they are a couple (especially Minori).

Turns out that back in... freshman year or whatever, Kitamura asked Taiga out on a date, but she panicked and refused him, as she is want to do. Shortly after that, she developed feelings for Kitamura herself, but never had the courage to admit something like that to him.

A new character makes an appearance; Kawashima Ami, Kitamura's childhood friend, and a model otherwise known as Ami-chan (but I'll be calling her Ami because it's easier and not a poser as Ami-chan).

Contrary to her "screen" personality, Ami is actually very selfish and self-centered, but does not admit it (unlike Taiga). She uses her looks to get what she wants, and acts clumsy and nice, though she's got an inner personality that's... selfish, self-centered, and a bit cruel.

Well thank you.

For this reason, and because of her relationship with Kitamura, Taiga... hates her.

Actually, she has problems with most of the girls that know her true identity.

Kitamura has known about Ami's personality forever, and has always wanted to do something where she won't have to lie anymore, and for that reason, he eventually enlists the help of Ryuuji and Taiga.

Ami quit being a model for unknown reasons for a while, but then Taiga and Ryuuji discovered that she was being, and is still being stalked by some creepy... stalker (stating previously stated information is getting annoying).

When they first figured out about this, Ami asked if she could stay with Ryuuji for a while, but Taiga managed to turn it around so Ami was staying in her complex. While Ami was there, Taiga forced her to imitate something like 150 professional performers, which she recorded and began to use as blackmail material.

During a trash-pickup, Ami and Ryuuji were put on a team, and during their route, they met with the stalker again, and the stalker met with Taiga, calling her a yokai. Taiga flipped out and attacked him with a trash bag. Ami is impressed at Taiga's lack of fear, and takes some of Ryuuji's advice to heart

Following Taiga's stunning example on how to deal with whackos, Ami confronts her stalker and beats the shit out of his camera. And that was the end of that.

Ryuuji takes her back to his place and during their conversation, Ami starts to make a move on Ryuuji, but is interrupted by Taiga. Judging by Taiga's reaction, Ami learns that no matter what she says, Taiga has feelings for Ryuuji, and that she's a little more than dependent on him. Information that she'll use later.

But things don't stop there, after that, their school has a pool opening, and Taiga (eventually) tells Ryuuji her two problems.

1. She can't swim.
2. She's... flat chested (smack)

Ashamed of showing her pedo body in front of Kitamura at the pool, Taiga becomes very stressed and Ryuuji takes pity on her and makes her a couple of super bra cups (which she loves)!

During the pool opening, Taiga gets chucked into the pool by Ami...

And enjoy the Ami-rear view.

... and (since she can't swim), she splashes around until Ryuuji can reach her, but she refuses to leave the pool because one of the cups has fallen out.
With other concerned classmates and the teacher (and big, bronze man with a weight-lifting hobby and Spedo), Ryuuji is forced to shove the cup back in. Taiga is not pleased.

Somehow, things turn around and Ami and Taiga end up having a contest.

If Taiga wins, she posts the pictures that she took of Ami during her "preferences".
If Ami wins, she takes Ryuuji to her mansion for the entire summer, leaving Taiga alone.
The entire class begins betting on the event, but are quickly found out by Ryuuji and Taiga... when someone accidentally passes the note specifically reading...

(Only in Japanese)

... to Ryuuji. Ryuuji bets on Taiga.

And so Taiga begins to practice for the challenge. Ryuuji helps her out, despite her lack of skill (can't even put her head underwater). During the course of the training, Ryuuji discovers that Taiga can go about a million miles an hour with a kickboard.
When Taiga shows an above average interest in winning, Ryuuji asks her what she's so worked up about. He thinks that it's about impressing Kitamura and beating Ami, but when things take a turn and the conversation becomes about him leaving, he thinks it's because she's worried what'll happen to her while he's gone.

Taiga looses it after that and tells him to fuck off (in so many words). I may be dense at times, but this guy is something else (or maybe he's just numb), even after that, he has problems figuring out why she's angry, but supports her anyway.

The day of the competition, things are looking good when Taiga shows up armed for war with every kind of floaty you can think of, only to throw them at Ami when the whistle sounds.

When Ami is knocked into the water, Taiga jumps onto her, and then...

YEAH!!!!

Taiga takes advantage and dashes ahead, but when she reaches the other side of the pool, she pulls her calf (like you do when you try and stand on tip-toe to fast or hard). When Ryuuji tries to tell her to stop, she refuses, and Ryuuji sends her off again.

As Taiga and Ami swim, there is a commotion behind Ryuuji and a couple of students fall off, onto Ryuuji, knocking him out.

He is presumably saved by Taiga who has an emotional break after she hauls him out of the water.

Ryuuji's fine, and they all go out to a coffee shop, at which Taiga forces her way into Ami's mansion trip, and when asked about her outburst, she claims that it's because Ryuuji's her dog, and she's his master.

And so they set out to Ami's mansion by the sea.

While there, Taiga tells Ryuuji that Minori is terrified by scary things, and so the two set out to try and frighten her, but in the process, they are played big time by Kitamura and Minori, who's interested in the things that terrify her.

On a side note, when Ryuuji tries to ask Minori if she has a boyfriend, he kind of... fails epically.

When they get back, the first thing that they are doing after the break is the always nessecary Cultural Festival (introduced by my favorite support character; Haruta).

Okay, and is it just me, or is there always a Cultural Festival in school life animes?

For the festival, Haruta has a plan to get all of the girls in cute costumes like a cosplay cafe, but since he's an idiot, the plan ends up bombing horribly. They end up deciding to do some kind of Pro-Wrestling play thing, with Ami as the hero, and Taiga and Ryuuji as the villains.
On a side note, there is apparently a kind of Mrs. High School kind of event, which Ami is nominated for, but since she's emceeing it, has to decline... but she's got a backup plan! Taiga!

And it's obviously during such a happy event... that Taiga's good-for-nothing father decides to come back into her life. The reason Taiga hates him is because after he got divorced with Taiga's mother, he remarried and ultimately became tired of Taiga, sending her out to that huge complex to live by herself. Yeah, I'm not too thrilled about him either.
Ryuuji, believing that a family should stay together no matter what (due to his previous and present lifestyle), tries to convince Taiga to go back to her father. He eventually breaks down in the middle of trying to talk to Taiga and lets a Freudian slip go, and Taiga goes back to her father for Ryuuji.

Taiga starts spending a lot of time with her father, and it gets to the point where he promises to come to the Cultural Festival and watch her performance, and Taiga asks (semi-nicely) Ami to switch parts during a preference of the play so she can be the hero while her father's watching. Ami agrees.

When Minori asks Ryuuji why Taiga's so happy, he tells her that it's because of her father's appearance back in her life. When Minori hears this, she goes quiet, then says she going to talk to Taiga about not seeing her father any more.

When Ryuuji stops her, tying to get her to tell him why, Minori can't (or doesn't), and when Taiga notices this, she comes over to try and stop them (since they're supposed to be gettin' it on right now, not fighting), but her well-meaning (but very poor) attempts fail, and Ryuuji leaves out of aggravation.

That night, Ryuuji and Taiga's father have a little chat while the man is unloading everything out of Taiga's apartment. Apparently Taiga's moving in with him, but Ryuuji can't confirm it with Taiga for extenuating reasons.

When Ryuuji and Minori actually talk again, Minori tells Ryuuji that Taiga's dad isn't coming. Since Ryuuji kind of trusts Taiga's father, he believes that he is, but can't convince Minori, who says that Taiga's getting all worked up to be disappointed.

During the Cultural Festival, it gradually becomes clear that Taiga's father isn't coming, and he even sends Ryuuji a text message during the beauty pageant to tell Taiga that he's sorry.

During her appearance at the pageant, Taiga (who's fully aware of the fact that she's been stood up)... trips and falls on stage. After this, she royally flips out... and after some awkward clapping becomes the toast of the school, winning the contest.

Afterwards before the wrap party, there is a contest for who'll be the one to put the crown on the queen's head (in this case Taiga), not to mention have a dance with her at the party.

During this, both Ryuuji and Minori go full force, burning the competition. In the final stretches of the race, they come neck and neck, and Minori finally reveals that Taiga's father has done this kind of thing before.
Minori sacrifices herself to allow Ryuuji to cross the finish line, but Ryuuji goes back and picks her up, and they finish together.

At the party, Minori finally tells Ryuuji that the reason that she didn't tell him about Taiga's father's past before this entire mess came to pass was that because Taiga shared things about her family with Ryuuji, which she hasn't done with Minori.

And as far as I know, neither Ryuuji or Minori had a slow dance with Taiga... but Kitamura did! That's a point for Taiga... I think, though I'm not really sure about her last comment (although since I know the ending, I can kind of guess, but I choose not to).

A smaller character in the series has her moment in the spotlight. The Student Council President (who's made a few appearances) is a senior, and is now leaving the school. Kitamura has been acting weird lately, and during the discussion of the election of the new Student Council President, Kitamura flipped out.

The next day, Kitamura came into school with... weirdo blonde hair. Yikes. After he was "arrested", the teachers were all asking why he was freaking out like that, nobody could answer, and Kitamura eventually left the school, later showing up at Ryuuji's house.

While there, he told Taiga and Ryuuji the reason behind dying his hair. He's wanting to distance himself from the Student Council, and if he has hair like... that, nobody will expect anything of him.

After a few more dramatics, the class of 2-C comes up with a plan to get Ktiamura back to normal. They'll have Taiga run for Student Council President as the quintessential nemesis bad guy, and force Kitamura to run to save the school. And so they make their opening campaign, things are looking good... or bad, I suppose.

Ryuuji gets a phone call about the current Student Council President. She's going abroad in a week, and Ryuuji's pretty sure that she's got something to do with Kitamura, so he goes to find and beat Kitamura.

Ryuuji surprisingly finds Kitamura outside. He's been hit by his father for his lack of moral standing, and that apparently made him think straighter.

He tells Ryuuji that he has feelings for the president (obviously), and then tells how that led down the road to this state.

The next morning, Kitamura comes to school with normal hair and takes over the vote... too bad he didn't turn in his forms to be able to run for election. After talking about how he came to join the council, Kitamura confesses that he's afraid to take the next step, to which the Student Council President (who knows how long she's been listening), responds with an inspirational beat down and a smack on the back of the head. Kitamura turns in his form, Taiga drops out of the race and he is the only other candidate.

At the election speeches, Kitamura shows the definition of Confession Courage and screams this into the microphone.

It's better in the anime.

... wow, man. He is then rejected, or more like, he's not accepted. When Ryuuji tries to figure out why the SCP didn't answer him clearly... she doesn't give him a real answer either. It's like her special skill.
Taiga, who's been having problems with this whole thing for numerous reasons, one of which being the fact that she cannot help or support Kitamura during this time, tells Ryuuji to go and be with Kitamura. She decides to go off and attack the SCP.

After an epic fight, the SCP says that she also likes Kitamura, but the reason that she didn't say so is because he'll end up following her instead of living his own life. This is... just kind of deciding for him (sarcasm), but there you go. In the end, Kitamura was listening to all of it, and they parted on good terms, and Kitamura won the election.

Then came Christmas. Taiga decided to be good for that month to try and get Santa to come to her house, and the class decided to put on an epic Christmas party. When Ryuuji finds a bunch of gifts addressed to not only some random children, but also her parents, Taiga tells Ryuuji that the reason she's doing all of this is because she truly believes in the Christmas spirit. The gifts for the children are actually gifts for orphans that she used to help take care of.

They got a massive tree that you make out of metal, and then Taiga brought in a crystal star to top it off.

After everything was finished and set up, a softball comes flying through the window and knocks the whole thing over, and the star breaks. Minori, who's been severely spacing out and avoiding Ryuuji for the past couple of days, comes in apologizing for what she did, and when she notices the star, she has somewhat of an emotional crack.

Minori gets down and starts to reassemble the star, rejecting help of all kinds, saying that she'll do it herself. Ryuuji ignores this and helps her anyway, claiming that he's doing it for himself.

As Minori is leaving after the star is finished, Ryuuji chases after her and tells her that he'll be waiting at the party, but Minori tells him that she will not be coming.

On the night of the party, Taiga got Ryuuji a suit and Ryuuji got some kind of hair clip thingy, and they decided that at the party, he'd confess to Minori (if she shows up).

The party is a hit and everybody's having fun...

Maybe just a little too much fun.

After a performance that Ami and Taiga gave, Ryuuji sees Ami again, and asks her where Taiga is, and he's told that she left already to go to Minori's house. Ryuuji leaves the party, realizing that Taiga's just trying to make everyone else happy.

After convincing Minori to go to the party, Taiga goes back home and sits alone in her living room, where she falls asleep holding onto Ryuuji's scarf.
She is awakened by the sound of thumping from her bedroom and goes to investigate.

I'd say "Dressed to Kill", but it's just a little too corny here... oops.

She arrives at the source of the banging; the window. After steeling herself, Taiga throws back the curtain!

...

AUGHHHH!! It's a creepy bear!

Taiga asks the totally creepy... bear hanging off of her window sill if he's Santa, and desperate to get inside and possibly rape her, the bear nods.

Once inside, Taiga asks the... bear if it's Santa, to which the bear answers yes. Delighted, Taiga hauls Santa into the living room and shows him her "tree" (a tree candle cover). When Santa approves of the display, Taiga jumps on him and they dance for a while until Santa falls over.

Taiga removes the bear mask from Ryuuji and thanks him for what he did. Taiga manages to shunt Ryuuji out of the door, telling him to go and meet Minori, seeing as getting Minori to come to the party was Taiga's real present, and Ryuuji finally agrees.

Forward, charge!!

After Ryuuji leaves, Taiga realizes that she forgot to give him back his scarf, and when she realizes that she's giving up not only her closest friend, but also her love, she runs after Ryuuji to stop him, but she's too late, Ryuuji's long gone. Taiga cries on the street as Minori, who's gone to the apartment rather than the party, watches.

Ryuuji waits for Minori at the party until she finally shows up. Before Ryuuji can say much, Minori rejects his feelings in a strange and confusing way, even if you've been paying very close attention to the plot line. A bunch of rubbish about UFO's and ghosts... it's a link to the summer vacation at Ami's villa.

After the rejection, Taiga decides to distance herself from Ryuuji to prevent further misunderstandings between Ryuuji and Minori. Back at school, the class is preparing for a trip to a ski resort, and Minori is acting like nothing happened.

At the resort, the group goes around having... an awful time skiing. A couple of the other classmates start having fights about their own romantic problems. Taiga's given Minori the hairpin that Ryuuji was going to give to her for a Christmas present, but Taiga didn't tell Minori anything more than the fact that it was a precious thing, and for that reason, Minori cherished it.

One of the nights, Ryuuji goes to bed early after having a depressing conversation with Minori. Kitamura and the others come into the room and fake him out of his fake sleep, getting him to talk about why he's so depressed, namely the fact that Ryuuji doesn't know why he was rejected, since he gets the impression that Minori likes him.

When they figure out what's going on, the others decide to go and ask the girls. So they barge into their room and... actually don't get into an ecchi situation. Wow. Instead, they go around, setting up for one. Looking through the girl's bags and stuff, and Ryuuji starts to clean.

They are obviously "interrupted" by a noise from the front door, but manage to hide before Taiga gets inside. Once she's inside of the room, Taiga hears a noise and is about to open the cabinet in which the guys are hiding, but when she's distracted by the door opening again, Ryuuji opens the door and yanks her inside, begging her to not say anything.

The rest of the girls have come back inside, and are starting to talk about "feelings" (ooh, what a scary word). It's somewhere around here where Ami goes into bitch mode and brings up Minori's rejection of Ryuuji. When Ami threatens to go and tell Ryuuji that Minori doesn't have any feelings for him, Minori gets more pissed, shouting at her that she can do what she wants.

After that, the other girls convince Ami to "apologize" to Minori, and Minori decides to forget everything. They set off to go and find Taiga, and the guys come out of the cabinet.

No Haruta, you are not.

The next day, Ryuuji spots Ami making a snow... mound, and goes over to talk to her. Ami apologizes for something that she said to Minori that might have contributed to Minori rejecting. Ami tells Ryuuji that she doesn't like Minori because she never looks her in the eye, and so she can't tell what's going on in her mind.

Suddenly, a sled with Minori and Taiga on it comes barreling down the hill, smashing into Ami. Ami gets really pissed and starts shouting at Minori, claiming that it wasn't an accident as Minori claims, but rather some kind of Freudian instinct (subconscious). Ami and Minori start fighting again, and it soon escalates to physical violence.

As Taiga and Ryuuji try to control them, Ami breaks free and punches Minori in the chest, knocking out the hairpin that Ryuuji was going to give her. Taiga watches as the hairpin goes flying into the woods beyond the safe zone.

When the teacher gets there, Taiga is off in a corner alone, looking down the ravine that the hairpin flew into, as the rest of the group starts to head back, Taiga goes beyond the barricade.

Back at the hotel, they realize that Taiga's missing, and as night falls and a hideous blizzard kicks up, Minori has decided to go out. When she says so, Ryuuji and shortly after Kitamura decide to follow her.

When they find the trail down into the ravine, Minori tries to go down, but Ryuuji stops her and goes himself.
On his way down, Ryuuji finds the hairpin, figuring out that it was what Taiga was going after. When he finds Taiga, she's smacked her head off a tree or something, and is hazy at the best.
As Ryuuji trudges up the hill with Taiga on his back, she fazes into consciousness and starts to mumble something.
Taiga's under the impression that Ryuuji's Kitamura, and under this illusion, she tells "Kitamura" that she can't stop loving Ryuuji.

Taiga is taken away from the resort by her real mother, and Ryuuji can't get in touch with her long after the incident. As time goes by, Minori and Ami have a chat or two, but nothing really gets solved, since Ami's pretty sure that Minori's just spouting hot air.
When Kitamura comes to ask Ryuuji why he's so out of it, Ryuuji asks Kitamura to pretend that it was him that saved Taiga. Kitamura agrees.

Ryuuji's been having trouble deciding what he's going to do after high school. Yaachan wants him to go to college, but Ryuuji's aware of their financial status and knows that she can't support him, and as such he wants to get a job out of high school.
Yaachan got another job behind Ryuuji's back, and Ryuuji decided that he'd have to do what he could to meet her expectations.

One night, Ryuuji finds the hairpin and puts it in his box of romantic failures, but as he is retiring it after it's many years of service, there is a knock at the door. When he flings it open, he finds Taiga.

Both of them feeling awkward for their own reasons, Taiga manages to get past it and go to Ryuuji's window. She's forgotten her key and needs to use Ryuuji's window to get into her house.
When Taiga finds the box with the hairpin on it, Taiga asks Ryuuji if he's figured out about Minori yet, and Ryuuji gets pissed because Taiga's worrying about him.

When they manage to get the window to Taiga's apartment open, Taiga asks Ryuuji about her injury. Ryuuji tells her that it was Kitamura who saved her, and that she didn't say anything while she was unconscious.

The next day, Taiga's back to normal, but neither she nor Ryuuji have turned in their post-secondary forms. They are sequestered to a room to finish them, but Taiga turns her form into a paper airplane and sends it out the window.
Taiga confides in Ryuuji that the thing that she wants more than anything is to fall in love normally. Ryuuji takes unconscious offense to this, and kind of pisses Taiga of too, and she leaves the room and Ryuuji finishes the form, stating that he wants to get a job after high school.

Ryuuji is told to chase down Ami, who's stormed out of the staff room after having an argument with one of the staff. Ryuuji catches up with her and asks her what's going on. Ami tells him that they want her to model the new uniform, and when Ryuuji asks her what's wrong with that, Ami says that she's not going to be there for much longer. Ryuuji convinces Ami that if she would leave, it would make many people sad, and Ami... gets pissed the way she usually does.

Ryuuji gets a call from Taiga about Yaachan, apparently, she's fainted from anemia after working so hard. Ryuuji sets her up in her bed and goes to get her some food, ignoring everything that Taiga says, so she chases after him with his coat and wallet.

Ryuuji tells Taiga to go home, but when Taiga refuses, Ryuuji breaks down into self-loathing, but Taiga (who's also having trouble dealing with Yaachan's condition) calms Ryuuji down.
Ryuuji sets off again, saying that he has somewhere he needs to go and Taiga follows him to the cake shop that Yaachan was working at. When Taiga sees Ryuuji losing it again, she volunteers to take over Yaachan's shifts, and Ryuuji also volunteers.

I don't need you to tell me that.

After selling a bunch of chocolate with the unwanted help of Ami, Taiga buys what is remaining of the stock and they leave, Taiga deciding to make chocolates for Ami, Minori, Ryuuji, and Kitamura for saving her.

The next day, Taiga brings in her chocolate and gives it to each of them in turn, and when she gets to Kitamura, she thanks him specially for carrying her up the hill. Kitamura looks at Ryuuji for conformation and Ryuuji suddenly realizes that he forgot to tell Minori about it too.

Minori stares at Ryuuji for a while, then asks Taiga what she is so embarrassed about, what she said while Kitamura was carrying her up the hill. Minori finally loses it for real, and grabs Taiga, yelling at her about trying to run away from her feelings. Taiga finally screams that Minori's hurting her, and when she pulls away, Taiga tries to escape from the classroom, but Kitamura and Ami block the exits. Kitamura asks Ryuuji if he thinks it's okay for Taiga to run away.

Minori pins Taiga to the wall again, and starts in again, asking her what she means to her. When Taiga tells Minori that she just wants her to be happy, Minori tells Taiga that she can make her happiness with her own hands, and not have it given to her. That's her thing. Taiga breaks away again and Ami steps back, letting Taiga out.

Minori asks Ryuuji what he's going to do, and after a couple of seconds, Ryuuji decides to follow her along with Minori.

They chase after Taiga, Minori admitting that she's always liked Ryuuji, but had decided to step down for Taiga's sake. She admits then that she was wrong to do that, that she was underestimating Taiga, and telling Taiga that her happiness relies only on her. Minori and Ryuuji reach the main entrance, but Taiga's already gone.

Minori fell down somewhere along the way, so Ryuuji takes her to the infirmary, and Minori admits her personal dream of becoming a softball champion and when she's at the top, declaring that the happiness that she's attained is her own doing. With that, Minori sends Ryuuji off to find Taiga and get his own happiness, and Ryuuji does.

Taiga heads back to the cake stand after a while, finding Ryuuji there. She tells him that there is something that she wants to say to him, and that if she should try to run, that Ryuuji should stop her.

As they are leaving work, they pause for a second in awkward silence, but as Taiga is about to say something, Yaachan, who's angry with Ryuuji for saying that he wants to get a job after high school.

As if that wasn't enough, Taiga's mother comes in as well, thanking Ryuuji for taking care of Taiga, but stating that she'll be living with her from now on. Taiga breaks away from her mother, shouting that she won't be living with her, "that man", an "that brat". Ryuuji, massively confused is then shouted at by Yaachan for violating the promise that they made, a promise that Ryuuji won't work and focus on his studies.
Ryuuji tells Yaachan to stop, stop expecting him to do what she couldn't do. When he actually calls her a "failure at life", Yaachan starts to cry (I would to, and a child shouldn't have the right to call a parent as awesome as Yaachan a failure at anything), and Ryuuji is shocked out of his anger. Taiga takes his hand and they run away, leaving Yaachan and Taiga's mother... and the money.

On a bridge, Taiga tells Ryuuji that her mother's gotten remarried and is expecting another child. Since the father is tall, the child is going to be tall too, and Taiga will be outclassed and forgotten in no time at all.

Ryuuji begins to muse on the idea that if he weren't around, then Yaachan could have done anything that she liked, and when Taiga hears this, she misconstrues it as some kind of suicide threat. She grabs Ryuuji and tells him not to look down on life.

Taiga "confesses" to Ryuuji that she just wants to be near him whoever he chooses to spend his life with, and that's why when he starts talking about not existing, it scares her. So she pushes him off the bridge. On accident, I think... NOT!!

Ryuuji tells Taiga that he'll be eighteen in two months, and until that time, he'll be running away from Yaachan and anyone else who tries to get in his way, and when he is of age, he wants Taiga to...

Only him, not me. If only it were me...

Taiga refuses to let him say that he loves her first because if he does, then that means that Taiga's breaking her promise with Minori to show her what she's got.

In the middle of their romantic declaration of love, Ryuuji gets a phone call from Kitamura asking him why Yaachan and Taiga's mother are looking for them. Before he can even have a chance to explain, Kitamura orders him and Taiga to go to Ami's house.

Waiting for them there are Kitamura, Minori, and Ami. Ryuuji and Taiga awkwardly tell them their plan to run away and get married, and even though none of them think it's a great idea, all three of their friends decide to support it. Minori loans them some money, Ami gives them the keys to her summer villa, and Kitamura gives them... something else. I can't read actual Japanese (I can kind of translate into romanji right now, yes, pathetic), so it could be money in envelopes, lottery tickets, execution orders, or train tickets. I'm personally betting on the last one.

After Taiga and Ryuuji leave Ami's house, Minori breaks down alone with Ami because she's lost both of them in one go.

Ryuuji and Taiga head back home to pick up clothes and stuff, everything that they'll need for two months away from home. When Ryuuji gets inside the house, he finds his grandfather's watch and a note telling him to go to his grandparent's house. Yaachan ran away. She's awesome, but that's pretty pathetic.

Ryuuji takes Taiga to his grandparent's house, and they all meet for the first time. It gets even worse I suppose when Ryuuji introduces Taiga as his wife. Nothing actually happens, but I'm pretty sure if I had someone come up to me, introduce themselves as my grandson, and then introduce what appears to be their 8th grade wife, I'd probably have a pretty hard time of it.

Ryuuji and the others set up a trap for Yaachan, luring her back to her parent's house under false pretext, and once there, Yaachan is reunited with her parents, though her dad's got a few choice words for her.

"No cookies!"

Yaachan really is just a child in a... really nice body.

That night, Ryuuji and Taiga have a wedding rehearsal, during which they share their first kiss.

The next morning, they set off for home again. Ryuuji will finish high school and they will receive their parent's blessing for their wedding. Taiga goes back home to unpack, but doesn't come over for dinner the next night. When Ryuuji goes over to find her, Taiga's left a note for Ryuuji, and left herself.

When the rest of the class figures out about this, they furiously begin texting Taiga, trying to ask her why she's gone to live with her mother. As Ryuuji leaves, Minori and the others follow him. Minori catches up with Ryuuji first, smacking him and asking him why he allowed her to go, but when Ryuuji tells her that if he could, he would have, Minori calms down.

When Ryuuji goes over to Taiga's place again, he finds a bag with her passports and stuff in it, then her notebook with the picture of her and Kitamura at the Cultural Festival wrap party, and then under it, the picture of her with Ryuuji during the Cultural Festival.

Taiga sends back a text message to everyone who contacted her, a picture of a single star that she took from her balcony before she left. Minori explains that this picture means that she'll be trying her best, and the rest of the class catches on.

After giving Minori a little trouble, Ami manages to get the class up and active with the goal of sending Taiga a reply, and so they set out to find the star that was on top of the Christmas tree during their party.

They finally find it to take the picture of everybody.

I want to know a Kitamura. I think we'd get along well.

Ryuuji promises that he'll work hard and wait for Taiga to come back, which she does during the graduation ceremony.

Ryuuji finally tells Taiga that he loves her, and is rewarded by getting head butted for saying something embarrassing.

The End.

Note: Make sure that you don't get psyched out by the ending credits on Episode 25, keep watching, unless you like the open ended thing (which I hate, as stated many times before).

There's also a special "episode" called Toradora! SOS, which is just like a 5 minute short with a chibi cast talking about spaghetti. It was pretty fun, but doesn't have anything to do with the plot.

Miyazaki Marathon Day 9: Howl's Moving Castle

2010-03-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

Name: Howl's Moving Castle
Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 118 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 2004

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a halfwatching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to. I didn't mentionthis last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Whisper of the Heart, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.

Today is the last day of this marathon (and thank God, since I was having trouble keeping up). After this, I'm back to regular animes for about... a half a week, then I'm going to do another movie. Not a Miyazaki, this is the last one for now, but a movie nonetheless.
Either way, I hope you enjoyed this marathon, and I hope that you'll watch all of these wonderful movies and make your own decisions about them. Don't you get aggravated when some stranger tells you what to like?! Why are you even reading this?!
... for the download link? Yeah, I guess so.

Based on the book of the same name by Diana Wyne Jones, this movie is set in the fantastic world of... you know, it gets really hard to review something when they won't even tell you where it's set. Fictional, I don't care, just fucking tell me!
This world is filled with mystery, magic, and strange, mobile castles that probably get about a foot to the gallon.

Worse than a Humvee.

The story is about Sophie, a eldest daughter to a hat maker who died a while ago. Believing herself to be plain, Sophie has taken over general management of the hat store, leaving her younger sister to work at a apparently more glamorous life at a bakery, and her mother to roam the country, buying as much useless garbage as she can, like this.

Are those cannons on the top?

You see? Who in their right mind would buy that kind of thing?!
Okay, the Queen of England's appeared in some whoppers, just like Prince Charles and... okay, so the entire English Royal Family... every Royal Family since the beginning of time, probably (I type as the S.A.S. busts in and drags me off to the Tower of London, and the guillotine. Save me, my loyal fans!! ...).

The entire town's having a royal military parade in anticipation of an expected war with some other country.

Goose Stepping. Not a good sign.

This country appears to be in the middle of a steam revolution, but since military technology is about ten years ahead of conventional technology, they are probably in the middle of an arms revolution, resulting in both air and naval battleships galore.

I'm just this side of positive that those wing's wouldn't support that.

The rest of the girls at the hat shop decide to head out to try and pick up soldiers (I presume), and Sophie decides to stay behind... but gets bored quickly, and leaves on her own to visit her younger sister Letty.
There have been rumors of a mysterious magician named Howl circling around, rumors like this one.

On the way there, Sophie bumps into a couple of overly affectionate soldiers, and is about to be... accosted by them when a young man wearing a very pink coat over his shoulders appears.

The man flips his finger around a bit and the soldiers are carried away against their will by their own legs. The man is obviously a magician who then offers to be Sophie's escort.

Along the way to the bakery, they are picked up and followed by a... bunch of blogs of slime in straw hats.

The young man apologizes to Sophie for having gotten her mixed up in his business (they're after him), and then takes a wrong turn. Boxed in! Gayahh! Good thing he can fly.
... What?

Yes! The dude with the effeminate pink overcoat (for lack of a better term right now) can fly!

Okay, Air Walk, not technically fly.

The man manages to escort Sophie onto the second floor of her sister's bakery without dropping her, and then leaps off the railing onto a safety net that is immediately pulled back and hidden for the wide shot (I'm onto their little tricks).

Inside, Sophie and Letty talk for a while about Sophie's experience, and then Sophie leaves when she realizes how much work Lettie has to do.
I personally don't really understand where Sophie gets the idea that she's not pretty. I think she's cuter than Lettie... and every other female character in the movie.

Don't you think? Well, it doesn't matter, since it's not you who's writing this.

When Sophie arrives back at the hat shop/home, the door is opened by a regular tub of lard in fur and a floppy hat (have these people had their fashion sense glands removed?).

See? No contest.

The woman acts a total bitch to Sophie and when Sophie asks her to leave, the woman reveals herself to the the Witch of the Wastes (the Wastes is a place in this world), and then owns Sophie, since I don't know how else to explain it.

The spell which she's placed Sophie under is one that has made her suddenly... old. Very old.

Now when I was talking about Sophie, I didn't exactly mean... this. The young one is cute. I don't know what best describes "Granny Sophie"... granny...

The Witch of the Wastes (henceforward referred to as WoW (no, not World of Warcraft)), departs, telling Sophie that the best part about the curse she's now under is that she can't tell anyone about it. The WoW then sends her regards to Howl and leaves.

Sophie has a panic attack and goes to bed in hopes that the spell will break, or this will all be a bad dream. Too bad it isn't.

The next morning, Sophie's mother bursts in (wearing the obscene hat), and when she goes to see Sophie, is surprised when she discovers that her daughter's now about six times older than she. Not. Sophie concocts some lie about a cold, and her mother stays out of her room.

A die-hard optimist, Sophie decides that she needs to strike out on her own to find the WoW and make her break the spell on her, and with that, Sophie sets out.

After going as far as she can to with the help of others, Sophie goes out into the mountains that presumably surround the Wastes (though the mountains could be part of/the entire Wastes right there).

During her hike, Sophie is suddenly struck by how much old age sucks. When she spots a branch sticking out of a bush, she decides that it'd make a good cane, and so hauls it up, only to discover that...

... it's a scarecrow... that can stand on it's own... and can follow her, how creepy is that? I'd probably burn it, wear the coat and hat and eat the turnip. I dunno what I'd do with the pipe though.

Well some good did come of being kind and non-violent, and the scarecrow (now affectionately dubbed "Turnip Head") brings Sophie a cane... and then this.

Howl's Moving Castle... dun dun dun. Despite the fact that it's allegedly the home of the most notorious killer in all of the world, Sophie still decides to hop on. What's waiting for Sophie as she sets off on this new quest?

The last of the Miyazaki Hayao movies that have (to this point) attracted my interest, this movie was more than I was expecting. Sure, it was a little melodramatic (or at least the English version was), but it was still epic, and a lot of fun.
I noticed that the vibrant colors appeared everywhere in this show. A lot of blue and red, and not the kind that you usually see, but the vibrant shades that make up a beam of light, cool.

I liked the music to this one a lot. No I don't know why, but I can tell you that I liked the song those star things were singing... or at least the first part. I'm not sure what happened to it after that, but it was still fun to listen to.

I again liked the English version better, and after I got finished looking at the credits, I realized that they've had a person from the most recent Terminators in it. Claire Danes was Katherine Brooster from Terminator 3 was San in Princess Mononoke, and Christian Bale; John Connor out of T4 was Howl in this one. Kind of weird. I'm not thrilled about the way he talks (no offense, but the kind of whisper thing distracts me or something), but it made sense for Howl.

I wouldn't discount the Japanese version. I thought that they did better, but since the term "Quiet only when absolutely necessarily" pretty much describes me, I liked the more loud, cluttered English versions better. And if you have trouble believing me (which a staggering amount of people do) you should know that I'm terrible. Even when it is absolutely necessary, I end up drawing with my friend or recite Eddie Izzard routines in my head and start laughing. Really pisses my more strict teachers off).

This movie backs Miyazaki's more humanitarian perspective, or maybe it's backing up Diana Wyne Jones' perspective. Since I haven't (or probably ever will) read the book, I couldn't tell you. If I had the... want, I could look it up on Cliff Notes or Wikipedia but... nah.

And thus, my dear reader(s), we are at the end of the Miyazaki Marathon.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Howl's Moving Castle Minitheatre

Coming up next!

Toradora!!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

Inside the castle, there is a fireplace... and inside that fireplace, there's a fire. Boring you yet?

Well, keep reading, because that fire's not what it appears. It's actually... one of those fake things that you use when you're too stupid to resist the urge to touch flames.

... Okay, it's a fire demon. Calcifer to be precise.

I don't know if this name comes from here, but I have the strange sense that I've heard it elsewhere, and that's kind of weird, but not weird enough to suddenly make me care.

After a quick chat, Calcifer agrees to break the curse that Sophie's under under the condition that Sophie break the spell that Calcifer's under... the one with Howl. So Calcifer is hereby demoted from "Scary Fire Demon", to "Fireplace Minion".

Despite his social standing, Sophie agrees with the bargain and falls asleep in a chair, which is a bad idea for anyone over the age of... just don't do it.

The next morning, Sophie wakes up to find that there's a midget with a beard walking around accepting letters from the mayor of a place called Porthaven, and the king (himself) of/from (because I don't know if this is a town or a country) Kingsbury, both requesting the master's (Jenkins in Porthaven and Pendragon in Kingsbury) aid in the war that's finally be declared.

Hot damn! Whoever lives here must be a pretty popular guy, but wait, doesn't Howl live here? And wasn't here out in the middle of the Wastes (or the mountains surrounding the Wastes? And who's this freaky, cock-eye cloak with a beard?

Howl?

Well no, and you actually won't be having these problems of deduction if you actually watched the movie, because that... thing is actually Howl's apprentice Markl, who's practicing his magic so that he too can someday consume the hearts of pretty girls.

And actually, they are in the Wastes... and in Porthaven and Kingsbury. It's all the work of this magnificent little knob/dial combo.

You turn the knob on the door handle, and it takes you to 4 exciting locations depending on which color you pick!

Green - Castle's Physical Location

Blue - Porthaven

Black - Unknown

Red - Kingsbury

Sophie plays around with this for a while until she's told off my Markl, who then decides to have breakfast. A nutritious, wholesome breakfast of bread... and bread, even though there's bacon sitting right there... right under that pile of shit that's head-high! Jesus, doesn't anyone clean here?!

Sophie decides to make herself useful and... have something more to eat than bread, and so she blackmails Calcifer (using their agreement of last night) into becoming a cooking fire.

To Sophie's surprise, the master of the house comes out of the Black door, looking like hell... in a pink overcoat. Yes, it's the same dude that helped her out back at her old town before she met the WoW... and it's Howl too! What disluck, unluck, lack of luck, cluck, cluck, buh-gock!

After inquiring who Sophie is (he doesn't recognize her because she's suddenly so old), Howl accepts her as the new cleaning lady, and then takes over cooking.

They sit down and begin to have their breakfast when Howl asks Sophie what's in her pocket. Despite the fact that she didn't put anything in her pocket, when Sophie searches, she finds a piece of paper.

When Howl asks to see it, the paper bursts into flame when he touches it, and then burns a message into the table.

After reading the message, Howl erases the burn and then goes to take a bath after requesting that Calcifer move the castle... how many ever miles in whatever direction, it's not all that important because you (or I) don't have any frame of reference.

When Markl insinuates/downright asks Sophie if she's the WoW, Sophie has an impossible time saying anything about her curse, and eventually gives up.

And so Sophie starts to clean. She even sweeps... the ceiling.

After cleaning everything else on the ground floor, she heads for the fireplace, telling Calcifer that she's going to scrape out all the ashes. So she does, putting Calcifer in some kind of jar, which he eventually falls into while she's emptying the ash.

Howl returns from his bath, pulling Calcifer out and giving the audience a brief and rare view (assuming that you don't have the "Pause" function on your player) of Calcifer's real form.

Howl breathes (literally) new life into Calcifer and then places him back in the fireplace. According to Calcifer (after all this is done), if he (he being Calcifer) dies, then so does Howl. Howl asks Sophie not to torment Calcifer any more, then leaves (through the Black Door) for the day. When Sophie asks what's through the Black Door, she's told that only Howl knows.

Now that Sophie's officially finished with the first floor, she heads up the stairs and finds the bathroom.

Has someone been paining in here?!

Sophie then finds out where they're going; Star Lake. As she stands out on a platform with Markl, they notice Turnip Head jammed inside some random crevice in the castle, and they pull him out.

When they arrive at Star Lake, Sophie continues her crusade, her Markl and Turnip Head hanging out the washing and then having lunch.

Inside the world of the Black Door, Howl's... some kind of bird with a human head. As he flies though the darkness, Howl peers down at the land below him, seeing the burning fires of villages and towns that have fallen victim to the war.

Suddenly, he spots a fleet of bombers and a fleet of fighters fighting ahead of him.

As he watches, creatures are deployed from the various ships. They are magicians/magician hacks who have sold themselves to the king for the war, and have lost their humanity in the process. Intent on getting Howl, but he slaughters them all, escaping into the clouds as the remainder try to follow.

Back in the castle, the dial switches to black and Howl comes staggering through. Being in bird form really takes it out of him, and when he gets home, all he wants to do is put up his... talons.

This is what they really mean when they say "Crow's Feet", so start worrying.

Calcifer reminds him that if he remains in that form for longer than a day, he'll never be able to turn back into a human. Howl manages to turn back into a human today, then gets up to take a bath. As he passes Sophie, he looks down at her and sees the girl that he met when he was in town that day.

Apparently, she reverts back to her original form when she falls asleep, but maybe that's not the only time.

The next morning, Sophie and Markl go shopping in Porthaven, picking up some things. As they do, a totally abused battleship comes chugging into port... haven.

During all of the confusion, Sophie realizes that the WoW's gloppy henchmen are out searching for her again, so they book it back home.

When they get inside again, there is a massive smashing sound and Howl comes barreling down the stairs, his hair a vibrant orange color.

He demands an explanation from Sophie, since she was the one who cleaned the bathroom and apparently screwed up all his potions and shit.

As he sinks into a chair, Howl looses all hope for living, saying this.

What a sad, spoiled little man he is. Sophie agrees with me, but mainly because she says that she's never been recognized as being pretty. She then storms out and cries in the rain for a while, but comes back inside to help Howl when she's got it out of her system.

Howl's got a bit of a problem. He's sunk into a really deep depression, even developing a film of sadness.

Nasty.

Sophie and Markl eventually get him up the stairs and get him cleaned up.

Once he's okay enough to lay in bed without drowning in a puddle of his own... mucus (I guess), Sophie brings him some milk, though he doesn't want it.

Howl confesses that he's a coward to Sophie, a fact emphasized by the fact that he still hasn't reported for duty to the castle, a fact that he realizes he can get around by sending Sophie to play the part of his mother. Still a coward.

And so Sophie sets off from the Kingsbury door. Howl's promised that he'll be following her in, but doesn't tell Sophie what form he'll be using, so she'll just have to guess.

Along her trip, Sophie decides that Howl's not a pidgin or a crow, but maybe one of the flashy soldiers cruising around on one of those flapping things (won't work).

When she's within the castle grounds, she realizes that she's being followed by a... I hesitate to call it a dog because of the legs, but that's the only viable explanation. By a dog.

Are you Howl?

Along the way, Sophie is passed by a carriage carrying the WoW, who (when inquired) replies that she cannot break the spell that she cast on Sophie.

The two reach the first step (out of a million) to the actual castle gates, and then begin the climb. Up and up they go (only Sophie has to turn back to pick up Howl and lug his fat ass up too). Sophie tells the WoW that she'd help, if only she were younger.

When Sophie finally reaches the top, she actually remains there, cheering the WoW on. Wow (not WoW, maybe I should have used a different term), what a nice person. If I were Sophie, I probably would have taken this opportunity to throw my cane at the WoW, be we've already established that I'm not. If I was, Turnip Head be gone too.

Sophie escorts the suddenly aged WoW into the castle, and then the first chair they see, the WoW snatches it up, what a bit... augh, never mind.

Sophie is drawn away from the WoW's side by Howl, who's leading her towards a secret room, in which she meets a boy who asks her to follow him.

Back inside the sitting room, curtains are rung up all around the WoW, revealing huge light bulbs, and when someone throws the switch, something begins to happen to the WoW, something apparently painful. That chair also suddenly looks very conspicuously placed.

What are those things?

Meanwhile, Sophie is escorted to an arboretum inside which sits Howl's old magic teacher, Madame Suliman... and that god damned dog. It wasn't Howl apparently.

Sophie tells Suliman that Howl's too cowardly to show up himself, and Suliman thinks for a while.

Suddenly, Suliman starts down this rant path where she tells Sophie (Mrs. Pendragon in this room) that Howl had his heart stole by a demon, and that he soon after quit his apprenticeship and turned his magic to selfish purposes. Suliman warns Sophie that if Howl's not stopped, then he will eventually turn into something like the WoW, and then she asks for the WoW to be brought in.

The WoW is wheeled in on one of those trolleys that you find at Costco or Home Depot (the ones where you can lay down on them and get wheeled around the store until your idiot friend drops a case of soda on your stomach), which I found very funny all of a sudden.

Suliman tells Sophie that they've drained the WoW of her magic and returned her to her real age (about 20 years older then Moses). Apparently, the WoW also made a contract with a devil that had consumed her long ago, so maybe they were killing the demon in that room with the light bulbs...

Sophie makes an impassioned speech, pointing out all of Howl's good points... I didn't know he had many. But the speech itself isn't very important, but rather what happens to Sophie as she's talking.

Interesting, yeah?

When Suliman points out the fact that Sophie's in love with Howl, she reverts back to the old lady, but I'm sure she was right. So she turns into her young self when she's actively (what a poor word choice) in love.

At that moment, the... king arrives on one of those flying things. He comes into the arboretum, telling Suliman that he's decided not to use wizards to fight the war. Suliman says that this is amazingly eloquent of him, but the jig's up when the real king (a boisterous man with a brain the size of... I don't know if there's anything small enough to compare it to) shows up, spewing rubbish about how they're going to own the competition with this new battle plan.

It's Howl... the first guy at least. When the two try and get away, Suliman casts a spell and traps them in an illusion.

All about them, stars begin flying past, and then they suddenly gather around, turning into little men and dancing.

Yeah, kind of like what happened to the WoW, but with no Edison light show.

Halfway through the spell, Howl starts to contort and turn into a avian monster like the one Calcifer's warned him about becoming.

Sophie manages to force Howl out of the trance that Suliman's put over him, and Howl manages to escape the spell before they are speared by flying Suliman staff.

Howl loads Sophie, the WoW, and Suliman's little dog too (this is kind of a parody of Wizard of Oz, but would work better if I had said it) onto the flying thing he rode in on, and then takes off.

Howl shows Sophie how to use a ring that he gave her as a tracing device for the castle, then casts a spell of invisibility over them and sends them on their way.

Sophie finally crash-lands into the castle's face, and then goes to sleep.

That night, Howl comes back. He's crossed the line and stayed out in his bird form too long, and now is beyond help.

Howl continues into his room, walking (and dripping) past Sophie who wakes up a couple of seconds later and follows him (still young).

Howl's room has turned into a twisted tunnel, which Sophie ventures into.

At the end of the tunnel, Sophie finds Howl, or what's left of him.

She tries to get him to tell her how to help, but Howl knows that it's too late, and he flies away, leaving Sophie calling after him... that is until she wakes up.

Actually Howl's just fine, and is even excited about a sudden move that has suddenly become necessarily after the army and navy busted down the doors to both Jenkins's and Pendragon's shops.

And so Howl sets up the spell, picks up Calcifer and they go super power.

All around them the house changes. New rooms are added and doors explode out of walls. Beds drop from ceilings and windows appear out of nowhere. When it's all over, they've left behind Kingsbury and Porthaven and settled in an entirely new town... well, not for Sophie. It's her old hometown, in her old shop actually.

In addition, Howl's added another room. The red color on the dial now leads to...

This is where Howl spent his summers as a child. As he shows Sophie around, she suddenly becomes worried that he's just setting them up before he leaves and gets himself killed, which is what he's doing.

Suddenly, Howl and Sophie spot a battleship off in the distance, and another one flying up behind them, loaded with bombs to drop on "the enemy". Howl (being somewhat of a peace at any cost/violent pacifist) decides to yank the plug on the battleship, crippling it, but not sinking it.

This invokes a herd of magician sell-outs who chase Howl and Sophie right to the door back into the castle. Howl drops Sophie into the door and then leaves to draw them off.

After all of that excitement, Sophie spends a little time looking around the new house, and when she ventures outside, she sees everybody leaving the town, which is apparently now on the edge of the war zone.

It's like a scene out of Gone with the Wind.

A car drives up to the store, and out of it hops Sophie's mother, who then barges her way into the shop and finds Sophie, but doesn't seem to be perturbed by her massive shift in age. After a couple of seconds of meaningless chitchat, Sophie's mother books out of the shop, leaving behind a little purse.

The WoW searches the purse and finds a peeping bug (the worm from Spirited Away) and feeds it to Calcifer, who doesn't think it's exactly delicious.

She also finds a cigar, which she lights and begins to smoke.

That night, Sophie tries to get Calcifer up and going, but he's not having any strength. When Sophie asks Markl to open a window to let some of the stench from the cigar out, the WoW warns them that what with Calcifer being in that condition, Suliman will be able to find them in no time.

But that's okay, because they've got bigger problems to deal with. They're being bombed randomly.

Just who in the holy hell would bomb such an obvious civilian area?

As the entire town is under attack, and Suliman's minions move in around the shop. Sophie manages to lock them out for a couple of seconds, but by the time they reach the courtyard, Sophie notices a bomber overhead.

The bomb-bay doors open up and deliver a payload, one of them flying directly towards the courtyard. Suddenly, Howl comes out of nowhere, grabbing onto the fins of the bomb and slowing it down enough (apparently) so that it doesn't explode when it hits the ground, but it still made enough of a ruckus to dent the walls with rocks.

Howl escorts Sophie back into the castle (who's been young since the bombing began), and deposits her in there, then after a short conversation with the WoW, leaving again to keep Suliman's minions busy.

After thinking for a while, Sophie decides on her own course of action. Since Howl's fighting to protect the castle's location, their only choice is to pick up and move, so Sophie switches the dial to the Wastes, then gets everybody out of the house.

Even out in the Wastes, Sophie can see the burning town. She notices a battleship and then sees Howl breaking through the ceiling of it, roaring and goring the monsters around him.

He's officially too far gone... but he looks cool.

She then picks up Calcifer and leaves the castle herself,t he whole thing collapsing behind them.

Sophie heads back inside and starts feeding Calcifer, telling him that they need to move again, but Calcifer says that he can't without something of hers. He asks for her eyes, but gets her braid instead. Even with this, Calcifer beefs up and starts to get the castle moving again.

Just not Howl's...

It's Sophie's Moving Castle.

The mini castle makes good time down the hill, and when Sophie compliments Calcifer of his performance, he replies that what he's doing right now is nothing, and that she should see what he could do if he had her eyes... or her heart!

And that's when the WoW picks up on the fact that the contract that Calcifer made with Howl required Howl to give up something like... his heart.

Yep, that's actually Howl's heart.

The WoW digs through the fireplace and pulls out the heart which causes the castle to start to collapse. The WoW is engulfed in flames and Sophie is forced to pour water on her, dousing Calcifer too, and possibly killing Howl.

As they look at the spectacle in stunned silence, the castle fractures and a half with Sophie and the dog splits off, falling down a ravine, and the other half continuing along the ridge.

At the bottom of the ravine, Sophie's half of the castle is in complete ruins. Sophie's remarkably unhurt, but begins to cry when the idea that she might have killed Howl and Calcifer sinks in.

As she's crying, the ring on her finger that guided her back to the castle after their daring escape from Suliman begins to glow. The ring guides Sophie through a random door that leads to Howl's gift to Sophie.

Above her head, Sophie watch as dozens of stars shoot through the sky and strike the ground in brilliant flashes.

In the light of one of the strikes, Sophie can see a young Howl walking along the field. She realizes that this must be some kind of memory or time warp or something, and Sophie dashes out to meet Howl.

Sophie doesn't arrive in time to talk to Howl. Howl catches one of the stars and after talking to if for a while, swallows it.

Star goes in, heart comes out, and now Howl's completed the pact with Calcifer.

The ring on Sophie's finger disintegrates, and the spell is over. The floor underneath her is sucked out, and Sophie and the dog are pulled out of this world, Sophie calling out to Howl to "find her in the future". Kind of a corny, but there you go.

Sophie emerges from the door she entered through and the door collapses behind her. Sophie finds Howl waiting for her, even though he's what I'd call dead (maybe just nerve dead, he can't move his face anymore, not even to return a kiss).

Sophie asks Howl to take them to Calcifer, which Howl remarkably does, despite the fact that he's missing a leg (I think. At least that's what it looks like). When they arrive at the other half, they find it still going. Everybody's still alive on it too, including Calcifer.

When Sophie asks Calcifer if he'll still be alive if she gives Howl his heart back, Calcifer's unsure, but sure enough (or tired enough) to figure it's worth a try. And so she does it.

Calcifer manages to get out in his star form and flies away. Unfortunately, they forgot to take into account that when Calcifer's gone, so is the force behind what's left of the castle, and the whole thing spills over the cliff, then starts to slide like a cheep toboggan.

This is Turnip Head's big moment, the one that he's been waiting for! Turnip Head valiantly rams himself into the ground ahead of the platform, digging into the ground and slowing down the fall, but every rock he hits, part of his pole snaps until he's just the top half.

Sophie gives Turnip Head a thank you kiss, and the thing hops up and turns into the prince of the "enemy" country.

Awakened by the kiss of his true love, the prince is disappointed to say the least when he finds out that Sophie and Howl are already in love. He decides to return to his home country and put an end to the war, but vows to return to make another attempt at Sophie's heart.

And with that, the war is over. Calcifer returns to them, and is given a new job, powering the new and improved...

Howl's Flying Castle! I didn't know Calcifer did work for free...

The End.

There's just one thing that I suddenly think you should know. In the English version, Turnip Head (the prince) was a lot more influential in the outbreak of the war. When he went missing, Sophie's country was believed to had taken him, and that's when the war began.

Now everything's cleared up, right?

... No.

Miyazaki Marathon Day 8: Spirited Away

2010-03-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

Name: Spirited Away
Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 125 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 2001

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a halfwatching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to. I didn't mentionthis last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

What's still to come are:

Tuesday - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, and Princess Mononoke, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.

Chihiro is moving. Or more accurately, she's being forced to move. Her parents have bundled her and all of her stuff into their car and set out for their new home. The only thing that she has a reminder of her old life is a bouquet of flowers and a farewell card.

On the way to their new house, Chihiro's father takes a wrong turn, but, being a man (We big and strong. Don't need directions or manuals, just meat and salt), he follows the path that he's taken... until he almost rams into a tunnel.

Chihiro's parents get out of the car and investigate the tunnel, finding that it is made of plaster. They decide to delve further into the area, but Chihiro isn't as enthralled with the idea, and tries to get them to get back in the car and go, but they decide to explore anyway. Chihiro, with her only company being the creepy statuette, decides that anythings better than staying in the car alone, and follows them.

On the other side, Chihiro's dad points out that the area probably used to be an amusement park, one of the many that were built all around Japan during the early 90's but all of which eventually went under. With that being said, the parents continue on, with Chihiro still trying to get them to go back, but eventually following.

Chihiro's dad, who's got a nose like a hound, smells something delicious on the air and eventually leads the family to an outdoor restaurant that's loaded with food convieniantly laid out in huge bowls. The parents dig in, the dad saying one of my all-time favorite lines;
"Don't worry, you've got Daddy here! He's got credit cards and cash!"

I like the English version of this line better, though.

Chihiro goes exploring around the area, and eventually finds a mammoth Bath House that also seems to be running.

Note the chimney.

Underneath her, Chihiro hears the sound of a train, and watches as it comes out of a tunnel. She runs over to the other side of a bridge to see where it's going, but notices somethings different about her surroundings.

Uh, hello?

The young man freaks out, telling Chihiro to leave immediatly, and when lamps suddenly start to turn on randomly, he pushes her away, shouting at her to go right now.

You can probably find this image just about anywhere, so I decided to conform. It's also an awesome picture, just a little overused.

As Chihiro is running, a bunch of... weird shadow sludge things start to open the doors of the shops and come out of the cracks, intent on buying things.
Sure now that thing's aren't exactly going great, Chihiro searches for and finds her parents. Or...

Oink?

Two pigs wearing human clothes.

Chihiro runs back towards the stairs that she and her parents had come from, but when she gets to the bottom, she ends up waist-deep in water. Chihiro clambers back to shore and looks out over the instant ocean.

I'm pretty sure that's where she came from.

Convinced that she's experiencing some kind of dream, Chihiro tries to wake herself up, but to no avail. Actually, it works to her detriment, and she starts to fade away.

Chihiro dashes away from a boat-full (literally) of spirits and runs to hide in a quiet place.

After a while, the young man who helped her back on the bridge comes and finds her, telling Chihiro that she needs to eat something from this world in order to remain in it, so he gives her a mint or a jellybean or something, and Chihiro gets better.

With no other choice but to stay in this new world until she can find her parents and arrange a way for them all to get out, Chihiro asks the young man what she needs to do.

In this film, Miyazaki's more whimsical. As far as I can tell, this movie wasn't made so the viewers would have psychologically taxing questions about the planet or human nature, but rather for them to just enjoy. It is pretty surreal, and my dad's only recollection of it was that it was creepy, but that's okay because I liked it.

Oh, and do you remember the soot gremlins from My Neighbor Totoro?
Well they've found a new home. Kamaji says that they're from the soot in his "office", but I'm not fooled.

Leaving...

In search of their new home.

... and then they have a party.

... and unless you've watched the movie already, you're totally lost right now. "Kamaji?"

The music was kind of like Princess Mononoke, though I didn't find myself humming it later. It was nice and kind of catchy, and it flowed well. Actually, if you were looking (and if I had mentioned it earlier), you might notice that Miyazaki's been working with the same guy on music for... ever. Hisaishi Joe and Miyazaki have worked together on every movie that I've reviewed, and even on Howl's Moving Castle, which is tomorrow.

I also listened to this anime in English first. I watched the Japanese versions, and I wasn't totally won over by it.
A general rule of thumb is that the Japanese is good, and the English version is lucky to reach the quality of Japanese voice acting. What I'm talking about here isn't so much the quality of the acting, both sides did well, but more my own preferences, which would have made for a strange mixture.

I liked the Japanese Chihiro way better than the English one (Daveigh Chase), but I liked most of the other English actors (especially the father as I already stated).
The weirdest thing about it was that I think that the English dialog/script was better (although Haku's spell sounded kind of corny. It didn't sound corny in the Japanese version because... I don't speak Japanese too well, so I can't compare it).

With more physical gags than his other works, Spirited Away is still considered one of the best movies today... I know, right? It's aways gratifying to see a relatively lesser-known form of art gain such recognition.

Think of it...
Citizen Kane
Gone with the Wind
A Streetcar Named Desire
Princess Mononoke
and...
Spirited Away

Bitchin.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Spirited Away Minitheatre

Coming up next (and last)!

Day 9: Howl's Moving Castle!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

The young man, named Haku, takes Chihiro with him to the bath house. While crossing the bridge, Haku casts a spell on Chihiro so that she will be invisible during the crossing, because if the other spirits figure out that she's there (she being a human), they'll... kill her. Unfortunately, Chihiro breaks the spell when a frog leaps up in their face, and Haku is forced to flee with Chihiro.

Once they're in a safe spot, Haku tells Chihiro to go to the boiler room and ask Kamaji, the guy who works there for a job. He warns her that Kamaji will try and trick her, and not to be fooled by anything that he says, just keep asking for work.

Chihiro manages to find and get to the boiler room, and finds Kamaji. He's not exactly how Chihiro pictured him.

When she asks Kamaji for the job, he says... no, and then tells her to get out. Chihiro insists, but Kamaji wont' be swayed... until food arrives, carried by Lin, one of the workers in the bath house.

When Lin freaks out about Chihiro being there, Kamaji sticks up for her. Chihiro gets promoted from "Human" to "Kamaji's Granddaughter"... quite an image shift.
Kamaji convinces/bribes Lin into taking Chihiro to see the owner of the bath house; Yubaba, a witch. So Lin escorts Chihiro to the elevator, and then distracts the others while Chihiro goes to the top... with the Radish Spirit.

The Elevator Nightmare.

When Chihiro gets to the top, she meets Yubaba, a cranky, greedy... proportionally-challanged witch. When Chihiro asks for a job, this is what happens.

But all that yelling made Yubaba's baby wake up. I don't quite know if it's hers, or her daughter's, or what, and I don't care, I just added this in because I always wonder it when I watch... so maybe I do care...

Unable to deal with Chihiro and the baby, Yubaba caves to Chihiro's request, giving her a contract to sign. Turns out that Yubaba took some kind of oath to give work to anyone who asks, so she kind of had no choice.

Chihiro signs to contract, and when Yubaba checks it, she peels off some of the characters, leaving only the one that is read "Sen" behind. Yubaba tells Chihiro that her name is now Sen.
Yubaba summons her apprentice... Haku, to take Chih... Sen to her new job.

On the elevator down, Sen tries to talk to Haku, but he tells her not to, and to address him as Master Haku, because he's got a Sadist thing going on suddenly.

Sen is turned over to Lin as a helper, who complains about it in public, but was secretly worried about her while she was meeting with Yubaba. Lin takes Sen to their room and gives her her new clothes. Sen experiences a wave of homesickness and starts to cry.

The next morning, unable to sleep for fear and... cold I guess, Sen is lying on her futon when the door opens, she pretends to be asleep. Haku walks to her side and tells her that he'll take her to see her parents.

Sen goes to the bridge where Haku is waiting. As promised, Haku takes her to a pig pen, telling her that she needs to remember herself which ones her parents are, or else she'll never free them.

Sen and Haku have some breakfast, and Haku gives Sen her old clothes, in which is her farewell card with her original name; Chihiro on it. Sen suddenly realizes that she had forgotten her name, and Haku tells her that that is how Yubaba controls people. He also tells her that Yubaba has his name, and as such, he can no longer remember it, but for some reason, he was able to remember Chihiro's name from long ago.
After their meeting, Sen turns back and sees a Chinese dragon flying away.

That day, Lin and Sen start working. Sen is on the clumsy human skill level, while everybody around her is not only a supernatural spirit, but also experienced at what they do, so they laugh at her.
In the course of working, Sen lets in what she assumes is a guest named No Face. Well, that's what the translators and other English-speakers say, but I personally like the idea of him being named Noh Face (as in those ancient and very traditional plays performed since the dawn of time in Japan).

No Face, Noh Face, either way, that's what it looks like.

Lin and Sen are assigned to the "big tub", a massively filthy bathtub that is only reserved for the most dirty of patrons.

Would you?

Quickly annoyed with the sludge, Lin tells Sen to get an herbal soak token from the foreman... but the foreman doesn't give Sen one right offhand. After begging him for a while, Sen notices that No Face has appeared next to the counter. No Face disappears, and a token floats out and into Sen's hands. Sen dashes off before she can be stopped.
The foreman takes a call from Yubaba, who's sensed something coming towards the bath house... something strange.

Sen returns with the token and gives it to Lin who shows her how things work. They start to fill up the bath and Lin leaves to get some food.
While Sen is waiting for the tub to fill up, she notices No Face in the corner, holding another handful of tokens. When Sen tries to say she doesn't need them, No Face disappears, leaving the tokens behind.

Sen is called to the front desk to greet the newest guest... a Stink Spirit.

Sen greets the spirit and escorts it to the large bath (now totally full). When it gets in, the spirit is apparently disappointed in the results, looking at it's... tendrils disappointedly. Sen goes and gets the next round of water ready, pouring it onto the spirit's head, but falling into the tank at the same time.

When she's pulled back up, she feels something in the spirit's side.

She tells Lin (who's come to help) about it, and Yubaba hears this, telling her right hand frog to assemble the staff downstairs, then dropping down to Sen's side. Yubaba tells Sen that it's not a Stink Spirit, and then produces a rope, telling Sen to tie it around the thorn.

When the rope is secure, they start to pull, and they manage to pull out...

Which in turn is attached to a whole bunch of other stuff. When Sen pulls out the last thing, the spirit deflates while ejecting what I hope isn't puss (although this was an infection, and it's the only logical answer).
The Stink Spirit is actually a River God (of the same shape as the dragon Sen saw flying away after her meeting with Haku), and it blasts out of the bath house laughing manically and leaving behind a pile of gold and a special present for Sen, it's savior.

That night, the same frog that freaked Chihiro out back on the bridge is skulking around the big bath, looking for any gold that Yubaba might have missed (not likely). Waiting for him is No Face, who has discovered a neat little trick.

Enticing the frog in closer, No Face snatches and eats him.
When the foreman arrives downstairs to figure out what's going on, No Face gives him gold too, telling him to start up the kitchen and the bath.

Sen wakes up from a nightmare of not being able to tell her parents apart from all the other pigs. She realizes that Kamaji's started the boiler already, even though it's too early for such a thing.

Sen runs into Lin who tells her the story of the rich customer, and when she invites Sen to come along, Sen replies that she's going to look for Haku.

Sen returns to her room and looks out over the ocean and then spots a dragon flying in towards the bath house, being pursued and getting owned by what look like birds. She calls out to the dragon, opening the door for him, and the dragon barrels through the door and into a wall, probably giving himself a concussion.

What's chasing the dragon are actually pieces of paper, and they try to follow him in, but Chihiro manages to keep them out (or most of them). When the paper fails to catch the dragon again, it de-animates.

Sen turns to the dragon, telling it to calm down, but the dragon rips out of the room again, heading for Yubaba's tower, so Sen decides to follow him. As she is clambering up the stairs, one of the pieces of paper reanimates and plasters itself to Sen's back.

Sen runs through the crowd of people waiting to beg for tips from No Face as he commutes, and then passes No Face, thanking it for it's help earlier. When No Face tries to offer her gold, Sen politely refuses, running away towards Yubaba's tower again.

As the foreman tries to apologize for Sen, No Face gets angry and...

Eats the foreman and an unlucky bystander.

Sen arrives at Yubaba's tower, but hides in a pile of cushions when she hears Yubaba coming down towards her. Little does she know that the baby that was making such a racket when she first got there is hiding in the cushions as well.

When Sen tries to get out, the baby grabs onto her arm, holding her back and threatening to break her arm if she doesn't play with him.

Sen uses the dragon's blood on her hand to scare the baby into letting to.
In Yubaba's room, the heads are trying to shove the dragon down a chute, and when Sen grabs onto the dragon, Yubaba's hench-crow attacks her.
Everybody stops when the baby comes out of his room and threatens Sen again, but the piece of paper gets fed up with this and turns into a... kinda hologram of Yubaba, only it's not, it's Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister, also a witch.

Zeniba turns the baby into a mouse.

From this...

To this.

She also turns the hench-crow into a fly, and then stacks the moi heads and turns them into the baby.
Zeniba's been chasing Haku since he stole her magic seal, and she wants it back. The seal has a curse on it that will kill whoever steals it, and that's Haku. Sen tries to protest, but Zeniba wants her seal, and is willing to take it by force.
Or at least she was, until the new baby started smashing around. Haku is woken up by the vibration and lashes out, smashing the paper-projector thing, and Zeniba disappears.

Then Haku falls down the chute, with Sen and the new mouse/old baby clinging onto him.
Haku manages to wake up in time to pull them out of the nose-dive, and then speeds down a series of tunnels before smashing into the fan that ventilates Kamaji's boiler room.

Haku's having a hard time as the dust settles, and eventually passes out. Sen, not knowing what else to to tries to feed him half of the... thing that the River Spirit gave to her.

Gag. On so many levels.

Haku starts to convulse and eventually spits up a black wad of sludge.

You can't control the barf reflex.

I noticed that this movie was a lot... thicker than most ofMiyazaki's other works. What with the Stink Spirit, this, andsomething that's about to come up.

Either way, Haku's coughed up Zeniba's seal, and with it, some kind of weird slug thing. Sen grabs the seal, and finally manages to smash the worm them. Gross.

Real location of this clip.

After they lay Haku to rest, Sen decides to take the seal to Zeniba and apologize for him. Kamaji agrees, and manages to find some train tickets that he's been saving for many years. The main problem being that the train only runs in one direction, but Sen still decides to do it.

Lin comes down to the room, and when she finds Sen, she tells her about what's been going on with No Face. Sen decides to do something about that first, and so goes off to find No Face.

When Sen meets No Face again, he tries to... bribe her again, I suppose, but Sen refuses the money, trying to get No Face to leave the bath house peacefully, but when he refuses, Sen gives him the other half of the medicine, and No Face... throws up... a lot.

Infururiated, No Face chases after Sen, through the halls of the bath house until he meets with Yubaba.

Yubabamehameha!

This does nothing more than make No Face throw up more (this is the other part that I was talking about earlier).

Sen manages to lead No Face out of the bath house (through the kitchen), No Face spitting up all of the food he's eaten as well as the three... spirits.

Lin is waiting for Sen at the edge of the bath house, and rows her to the train station, depositing her there. No Face is still following Sen, and when the train comes, Sen agrees to bring No Face with her as well.

Back at the bath house, Yubaba's furious. Sure, No Face left behind a pile of gold, but what with all the damage he caused, they're actually in debt. Yubaba believes that Sen's fled from the bath house, and decides to have her parents butchererd, but Haku stops her, claiming that Yubaba doesn't notice that she's lost something precious.

When Yubaba checks the gold... it's fine. But that's okay because Haku's talking about the baby, which Yubaba figures out when she breaks the spell on the moi heads.

Oh shit.

I love how she checked the gold first. Awesome.

Yubaba freaks out, ripping the baby's bedroom apart looking for him, but to no avail. Then she turns to Haku.

Haku tells her that he can get her baby back, but in exchange, Yubaba'll have to free Sen and her parents. Yubaba agrees, but only on the condition that she'll get to give Sen one last test.

When the train reaches Swamp Bottom, Sen and the others get off. They walk down the path until a hopping lamp shows them the rest of the way to Zeniba's house.

Turns out that Zeniba's much nicer than her sister Yubaba, accepting the seal and the apology. Zeniba invites Sen and the others to stay the night, but halfway through it, Sen starts to have a panic attack.

There is a rattling at the doors and the shutters, and Sen opens the door and sees Haku (dragon form) waiting for her.

Haku picks up Sen and the mouse, but No Face decides to stay back with Zeniba.

On the way back to the bath house, Sen has another flashback, remembering a time that she fell into the Kohaku River while chasing her shoe, and was eventually swept to shore while having the memory and sensation of riding on the back of a dragon.

When Sen tells Haku this, he remembers his full name; Nighiayami Kohaku Nushi, and is thus freed from Yubaba's control. I don't know, nor do I particularly want to research what it means, but Sen likens it to a god's name (which he is in the English version).

Haku delivers Sen and the others to the bath house, where Yubaba and the others are waiting with Sen's final test.

The mouse turns back into the baby, and tells Yubaba that if she makes Sen cry, that he won't like her any more.

The final test is to pick which one of 12 pigs are her parents.

Sen thinks about if for a while, then says that none of them are, and when she holds firm to her statement, her contract with Yubaba explodes, and Chihiro is free.

Haku escorts Chihiro to the stairs where the water was, and tells her to go on. Haku tells Chibiro that he's going back to end his aprenticeship with Yubaba and promises that they'll see each other again.

Chihiro runs out onto the field and meets up with her parents (normally) again, and they leave the area together.

Miyazaki Marathon Day 7: Princess Mononoke

2010-03-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

Name: Princess Mononoke
Type: Movie
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 133 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 1997

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a halfwatching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to. I didn't mentionthis last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

What's still to come are:

Monday of Next Week - Spirited Away (2001)
Tuesday of Next Week - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Whisper of the Heart, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.

During a more fantastic age in Japanese history (specifically the Muromachi Period), spirits were a more common sight than they are today. Sure, those soot gremlins out of My Neighbor Totoro appear randomly, but not around America.

In this time, everybody's heard of the "Spirit of the Forest", which is... the spirit of the forest, the very life of the woods of Japan, but that's not the point right now, the point is that there is a very small village in the extreme countryside of Japan that's having some kind of spiritual... scare I guess, although they could be freaking out about bandits or something like that.

Prince Ashitaka, the... prince of the village (and of the Emishi people (look it up if you care, this is semi-historical)) is riding out to the watchtower on Yakul, a red elk. He's going out there to find out what's got the village people so worried. On the way there, he passes his sister and her friends, telling them to return to the village quickly.

At the watchtower, he peers out into the forest and spots something moving behind the barrier placed there. As he and the old man on guard watch, a demon smashes down the wall and then... sneezes, I suppose. When it does, the things "skin" comes off in the form of a bunch of weird worms. It's a boar underneath... or at least until the worms fall back on top.

Achoo!

The demon spots Yakul and obviously sees a meal in it, and so charges towards the tower. Ashitaka manages to scare Yakul out of his stupor, but in exchange, he doesn't have the opportunity to get down, and so the demon rams and tips over the tower, so Ashitaka grabs the old man and hops to safety in a tree.

Ashitaka gets down, the guard shouting after him to watch that the demon doesn't touch him, less the curse be on him too.

Ashitaka gets Yakul and then dashes after the demon. When he manages to catch up with it again, Ashitaka tries to ward it off by... asking it nicely, since that's all you can do with a god/demon. But it doesn't work.

The two burst out of the forest, Ashitaka and Yakul dashing on, but the demon pauses and then notices Ashitaka's little sister. More food.

When it goes after them, Ashitaka gets in it's way, and when one of the little girls falls down, Ashitaka starts a fight with the demon, shooting it in the eye.

The demon gets seriously pissed, chasing after Ashitaka, and managing to grab onto his arm.

Ashitaka rips himself away, then fires another arrow, striking and killing the demon.

After the battle, all of the people run out to see what's left of the demon and their prince. The place where the demon grabbed Ashitaka is burned with some kind of evil mark now.
The wise woman is fetched and she tends to the boar god, asking it to pass on peacefully, but the boar's bitchy and doesn't agree, and actually curses all the human race. Wow. That's not very nice of him.

Later that night, the village elders all meet (along with Ashitaka. He is a prince, after all). The wise woman uses fortune telling to determine Ashitaka's fate. He's going to die. That mark on his arm will eventually consume his entire body and kill him. Kind of like cancer, I suppose.

Maybe because they don't like living with a cursed person, or maybe because of some ancient tradition, Ashitaka is forced/obligated to leave the village, which he does without complaining.
The only clue he's given is to go West. That's helpful. But wait! The wise woman reaches insider her robe and pull out this; a ball of iron, in case you're wondering.

Before he actually manages to leave though, his little sister runs out (defying village law), giving him a crystal dagger to remember her by.

This is important later.

And so Ashitaka sets out to the West to search for the answers that the wise woman was talking about, but he's going to find more than just answers. There's always been a shitload more questions than answers, believe me.

Like I said a couple of posts back, this was probably the first anime that I ever watched, and I'm pretty happy about that. I mean, it's got everything that a teenager needs; samurais, battles, blood... and that's it! We're easy to satisfy.

Miyazaki's naturalist theme is back with a vengeance, along with a humanitarian element that has been rather rare since Nausicaa (it was a lot more stressed in the manga, but you could still pick up on the small issues in the anime).
This portrays the natural element a lot more forcefully. It's presented as a battle, humans and technology vrs. the forest and spirituality. It's kind of sad how you can relate this to pretty much every one of the world's issues...

The music was nice. It wasn't to my specific style, but I found myself humming it quite a lot after I had finished watching it. Serious Japanese influences, mainly because this is a semi-historical film. The only thing in it that's not accurate is... you know, the flamethrowers. I don't think that you can do that with gunpowder.
... and if you can, please don't write a million comments protesting your insane knowledge of explosives and firearms, because I find it kind of creepy and... boring.

Actually, I listened to the Japanese version for the first time. It was really weird, amazingly. The Japanese version was a lot quieter than the English one. The Japanese voice actors were a lot more toned-down than the American ones, so that made is quieter, but there was also a lot of stuff said in the English version that didn't have a place in the Japanese one. That was kind of cool.
... and Moro totally sounded like a guy, only it's not. Kind of creepy, just like this.

Bwa ha ha ha ha!

It was my favorite one of all the Miyazaki movies, and in the unlikely situation that you actually agree with something that I've written here, you'll like it too. So watch it, if nothing else.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Princess Mononoke Minitheatre

Coming up next!

Day 8: Spirited Away!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

Ashitaka travels West. Along the way, he encounters a village that is under attack by some bandits.

When he tries to get through, they shoot at him mainly because he's riding through and might have money, you know how bandits are; assholes. At the opening of a side road, Ashitaka spots a bandit trying to hack a woman in half, but not doing very well. Nonetheless, it pisses him off and...

GUYAHHHH!

His arm starts to have a seizure. When he lets the arrow fly, it rips off the bandit's arms and leaves him standing there wondering why he suddenly feels so light.

When another bandit (this one on horseback) tries to stop him, Ashitaka fires back, taking the dude's head off. Cool. I remember this scene the best for obvious reasons.

I can see my house from here!

After managing to get through, Ashitaka stops and rests, discovering that the mark on his arm has grown more.
Ashitaka heads into a town where he tries to buy some rice using a gold nugget... but the keeper there doesn't really get the idea until someone points it out to her. Specifically this pudgy little monk named Jigo.

Voiced by Billy Bob Thorton in the English version. Cool.

The two have a friendly chat during which Ashitaka asks Jigo is he knows what the ball of iron is and where it came from. Jigo says that he doesn't, and that was that. The next morning, Ashitaka leaves before Jigo totally wakes up.

That night, in some different location, a Lady (as in Lord and Lady, I suppose, or it could be just a title) Aboshi is leading a caravan of rice up a slippery, muddy slope.
They are hoping that they won't be found out and attacked by the spirits that guard the area... well... that's a lie. Aboshi's kind of wanting too. She's got some kind of rivalry with Moro, the wolf-goddess that guards the forest in this area.

And lucky for her, they attack!
Along with two child wolves is the Wolf Princess, someone who looks remarkably like a human with a ceramic mask, but you can't really tell since they leave after they start getting shot at. And not with bow and arrow either! No way, Aboshi's moved out of the stone age and embraced weapons from the West! Rifles! Albeit huge, clunky, single-shot rifles, or should I say "sticks with a cannon on the end" instead?

Either way, the threat's passed, and everybody's calm. Until Moro shows up and slaughters like half the caravan. Aboshi pulls out a "space age" rifle (like a bazooka now) and shoots Moro in the chest.

Moro topples off the cliff and the caravan finally moves on.

Ashitaka's taking a shortcut down by a river when he finds a couple of bodies. He hauls them out of the water and then checks downstream for more, but doesn't find any human ones...

Instead, he finds Moro. Who kills him.
Well not yet. But he does find Moro, and watches as the Wolf Princess and the two wolf children kind of gather around her.
When he's found out, he gets up and asks them if they know any way to find the Spirit of the Forest.
The Wolf Princess tells him to fuck off.
Actually, they probably know where to find him, they just aren't telling him. What is this, some kind of frat?!

Ashitaka finds a new friend(s) when he returns to the bodies that he hauled out of the water. One of them's woken up, and there's a new visitor there.

When people tell me that they think Kodamas are cute, I just don't get it.

The Kodama is a tree spirit, and it signifies good luck. However Koroku (that's the human) thinks that they are evil and act like spies for the Spirit of the Forest. Ashitaka doesn't really know what to do with that information, so they just decide to go back through the "haunted forest" and find Koroku's town.

After a while, they manage to get through most of the forest, but decide to take a rest stop. Koroku warns Ashitaka that this is a bad idea. The place that he's decided to stop at is a place where god's hang out. It's their mall.

While Ashitaka's getting some water, he notices... something off in the distance. It's a herd of deer... and one freaky-looking one. Ashitaka's arm freaks out when the big deer looks at him, but quiets down when it goes away. Weird.

They finally manage to get out of the forest, and arrive at Iron Town, a fortress where Lady Aboshi has taken to mining all of the iron out of the ground and the mountains (hence the dispute with the forest).

When Ashitaka arrives inside the city, he is treated rather rudely, but Lady Aboshi still wishes to see him afterwards, so he is more or less forced to stay. He's also a chick-magnet in this place, so I'm sure that was very hard on him. Poor guy.

Yakul and the oxen don't care though.

At dinner time, the locals tell Ashitaka the story behind the feud between Lady Aboshi and the forest. Like I was saying earlier, there was iron in the mountains under the forest, so they tried to cut down the trees to get at the iron... and that's what inspired the conflict.

The locals at the time couldn't do anything about it, but then Aboshi came with her rifles and... flamethrowers.

She schooled the boars and effectively killed their leader Nago, who fled after being shot with a poisoned bullet.

When Aboshi calls Ashitaka, he confronts her with the evidence of his arm and the bullet that was found in the demon that he killed back home. I guess that demon was Nago.

Aboshi decides that Ashitaka's okay enough to show him her secret place... damn.

... oh! It's a garden. The fertile... augh!

It's actually a garden surrounding... a gun shop, more or less. A place where lepers are making guns for Aboshi's world domination.

After seeing this, Ashitaka's arm starts to spasm again, but he stops it from drawing his sword and killing Aboshi. Aboshi tells Ashitaka that the creatures of the forest are still trying to rebuild the forest, and then she offers an alliance with him. Kill the forest spirit and take the iron together. Ashitaka refuses and leaves the hut.

Ashitaka goes to the town bellows and starts pumping with the women to work off his stress.

As all this is going on, the Wolf Princess (San) and the two wolf cubs are sneaking up on Iron Town.

They hurdle down and smash against the wall, catapulting San up and over the ramparts. San dashes past the guards and heads for the center of town, and Aboshi.

Ashitaka notices that she's coming and tries to intercept her, but she gets past him too, so he follows.

When he reaches the center of town, Ashitaka watches as Aboshi and Gonza set up a trap for San. He tries to warn her, but San just continues on with her original plan.

And gets her head blown off.

Actually, she's remarkably okay. The ceramic mask absorbed the attack, leaving her face amazingly unhurt. Not even a scratch...

Ashitaka keeps the other villagers away from her as he tries to wake San, but when the girl wakes up again, she attacks him, then runs past him to fight Aboshi.

After seeing this, Ashitaka gets rightfully pissed off, and the mark on his arm grows again, feeding off the anger in his body. He starts to walk towards the battle, and the mark takes on a more physical image.

Ashitaka walks into the middle of the fight and stops both women, and when San bites him to get him to let go, his arm practically explodes in... blue, worm-thingies.

After pleading with the other villagers to stop the fight with the forest, Aboshi gets tired of hearing him preach, and tries to cut his arm off, but he whacks her in the stomach and knocks her out. Then he... I don't actually know what he did to San. Kneed her? Either way, she's out too.

She hands Aboshi over to some of the village women and loads San on his shoulders, claiming that he's leaving with her. One of the women with a gun tells him that he's not, warning him to stay, but Ashitaka turns around and walks away.

As he does, the woman trembles, and is startled into firing when another woman speaks.

The worst heart attack you've ever seen.

Mortally wounded, Ashitaka continues on, past everybody until he gets to the main gate. When he is stopped there because the gate won't be opened until morning, Ashitaka pushes against the door hard, managing to push the gate open.

Running down the hill are the wolf cubs, and Ashitaka convinces them to stay while he brings San to them. Ashitaka turns back and thanks the villagers of Iron Town before leaving.

Ashitaka and the Wolf Princess ride for a while until San wakes up and Ashitaka falls off. When San threatens to kill him, Ashitaka counters with the always surprising random "You're beautiful". Not that it's not true, but if you way it in that kind of situation, it's pretty unexpected.

San takes the passed-out Ashitaka to the pool of the Forest Spirit/Spirit of the Forest, leaving him laying there in the water with a sapling cutting embeded in the dirt just before his head.

Then the Forest Spirit comes. There are a couple things that I'll tell you about right here. As far as I'm concerned, the Spirit of the Forest and the Deer God are two different entities. Spirit of the Forest/Nightwalker by...night, and Deer God by day.

Spirit of the Forest

Deer God. So it's him you're praying to when you go "Oh deer God!"...

The Deer God heals Ashitaka's bullet wound, but not the mark that he actually came all this way to get healed. Kind of sucky.

Meanwhile, Jigo is staking out a mountain range for some reason, when he sees Okkoto, a boar god from another part of the country.

Fucking birds! Go away!

Okkoto's come all this way probably to fight for the Spirit of the Forest, and he's brought his entire tribe/clan with him for the fight.

When he wakes up again, Ashitaka realizes this fact and gets depressed, but that's okay because San's there to feed him... jerky that he can't actually chew. Mouth-to-mouth feeding; it's awright.

As they are eating, Moro and the boars meet, during which the boars ask Moro why San and Ashitaka are in the forest. When San replies that the Deer god healed Ashitaka, the boars have an aneurysm, shouting that the Deer God should have healed Nago, the original protector of the forest.

When Moro replies that Nago was afraid to die, the boars get angry at the dis and claim that the wolf clan must have eaten him, but then Ashitaka speaks up and says "No no no no. It was me who killed him. I'll just say this while I'm lying prone in the middle of a heard of boar demi-gods who hate humans."... what an idiot.

Okkoto comes out to be the walking lie-detector, but San thinks that he's about to eat Ashitaka, but when she figures out that he's blind, she, for some reason, believes him more.

Okkoto doesn't actually eat Ashitaka, but instead smells him arm.

"Hrm. Smells nasty. Must be a curse." is the ultimate conclusion. That and "Go away. If I see you again, I'll have to kill you.".

Thanks for the update.

When Moro asks Okkoto what he's going to do, he replies that the boars are going to put everything on the line for a suicidal charge with an understood 0% chance of victory or survival. The thing that he's banking on is the idea the humans will be impressed. Yeah, they'll be impressed all the time that they're cutting down those trees and mining the iron out, good plan.

While the gods are having the war council, the humans are having a war of their own. Aboshi is facing off with Osano's samurai over control of Iron Town. Too bad Osono's got no rifles.

Osano got his ass kicked to say the least.

On the way back to Iron Town, Aboshi spots Jigo waiting on a rock beside the road. The deal is this; when Aboshi was establishing her rule in the Iron Town district-area, she needed rifles and men to shoot them, and Jigo supplied them, but in return, he wanted help with something of his own.

The Emperor of Japan has offered a hill of gold to whoever can grant him immortality, and it is believed that the head of the Spirit of the Forest can grant such a thing. So if Jigo gets the head, he gets the gold, and that's what he want's Aboshi's help with. He wants Aboshi to kill the Spirit for him.

Aboshi voices her understanding of the situation and tells Jigo to call out his mercs that are hidden, and get them ready for the final battle with the boars.

That night, Ashitaka and Moro have a rather enlightening chat when Ashitaka figures out how San came under the care of Moro, and about how the boars are going into suicidal mode. Ashitaka tries to convince Moro to "free San", and to stop the boars, and this is what she did.

Ate him.

No, not really, though I'm sure the idea passed though her head.

Moro tells Ashitaka to leave in the morning.

That morning, Ashitaka is led out of the are by one of the wolf cubs, and he asks it to deliver his sister's crystal dagger to San in exchange for her care. The wolf cub takes the dagger to San, who's having a conversation with Moro.

Moro's officially decided that this battle is the epitome of retarded and is refusing to take part in it, but San has decided to go to ride with Okkoto to be his eyes.

On his way to... nowhere, Ashitaka is engulfed in a squall. When the clouds part and the rain stops, Ashitaka can hear gunfire in the distance.

Osano's attacked and laid siege to Iron Town in Aboshi and the men's absence. The women and lepers are holding them off with their rifles, but they need Aboshi to route the samurai. Ashitaka agrees to take the message to her on the frontline of the battle that is happening.

On his way there, he is seen as a messenger for Aboshi (and rightly so), and is chased by Osano's samurai. As he tries to flee from them, Yakul is shot in the ass. Incredibly pissed, Ashitaka kills three of the pursuing samurai before they finally leave.

When Ashitaka finds the battlefield, the battle's long over. Turns out that the men of Iron Town were just used as bait to lure the boars in while Jigo's soldiers dropped grenades down on top of them and pretty much blew them to hell and back.

Aboshi's already gone into the forest to go hunting along with Jigo and his men, not hers. Ashitaka tells the men to return to Iron Town.

In the slight distance, Ashitaka can hear the sounds of struggling. When he investigates, he finds one of the wolf cubs trapped under a dead boar. When he tries to help it out, Jigo's men try to kill him, but the villagers of Iron Town knock them out and then help haul the boar off the wolf.

Ashitaka tells the wolf to take him to the Spirit of the Forest, or at least that pond. That's where Aboshi'll be.

Okkoto's been owned.

Maybe owned is an understatement.

The guy's dinner.

They (here meaning San, Okkoto and the other wolf cub) are traveling to the pool of the Spirit of the Forest to get Okkoto healed.

As they travel, out of the woods come a bunch of floppy boars. They're actually dudes in boar skins using the smell to mask their own (because Okkoto's blind, this would have worked better if San wasn't there). They're Jigo's men, hoping that they will lead them to the pool of the Spirit of the Forest.

Okkoto smells his fallen warriors and charges through, believing that they have been revived from the dead. He demands that that Spirit of the Forest come out and give him the strength to defeat the humans.

En route there, San tries to get Okkoto to chill, but he won't. When Okkoto finally stops, he begins to turn into a demon, consumed with hate.

As San tries to get Okkoto to stop, one of the men in the audience slings a rock into the back of her head. San knocks out and is wrapped up in the worms. Okkoto gets back up and starts towards the pool of the Spirit of the Forest.

Meanwhile, Ashitaka's managed to find Aboshi, on her way to the pool as well. He tells her what's going on at Iron Town and then tries to tell her one more time to give up on hunting the Spirit of the Forest. Ashitaka runs off after saying that, but Aboshi can't leave because of her previous engagement with Jigo, so they press on as well.

Ashitaka finds the pool of the Forest Spirit, with Moro lying apparently dead in it, and then Okkoto. He tells Okkoto to stop so he can get San back, but Okkoto's... a demon, and has lost his ability to comprehend.

Ashitaka sees San's legs kicking out, and jumps on Okkoto, trying to rip San out of the mess, but Okkoto's got and itch and eventually flings Ashitaka off and into the pool.

Moro wakes up after Ashitaka falls on her, then confronts Okkoto herself. Moro chomps through the worms and pulls San out. Ashitaka wakes up and almost gets stepped on by the Deer God.

Suddenly, Aboshi... shoots the Deer God in the neck, but that doesn't stop it. The Deer God gets back up and keeps walking towards Okkoto.

Ashitaka follows it onto land, taking San from Moro's mouth and diving into the lake with her to wash off the sludge.

The Deer God, being the supreme being that it is, takes life away from both Okkoto and then Moro (Okkoto because he was a demon, and Moro because she was just this side of dead anyway).

After this, the Deer God begins to change into the Spirit of the Forest. This being the best/only time to kill it, Aboshi dashes out and tries to assassinate the Deer God, but it busts some growing magic on her rifle, until she uses brute strength to fire, at which point, she blows the Deer God/Spirit of the Forest's head off.

Biff

Without it's head, the Spirit of the Forest is nothing more than a god of death or, more specifically, a mass of extenuating circumstances. What it touches once dies/is brought back, it's second touch is ultimate death as far as I know. I figured this out when the blob touched Moro, reanimating her head which wiggled forward and bit off Aboshi's arm.

And now it's searching for it's head, which Jigo's taken to collect the gold.

All around San and Ashitaka (and Aboshi and Gonza), the forest is dying, being sucked of life by the rouge god. San has a breakdown and when Ashitaka tries to get her to calm down, she stabs him with the crystal dagger.

San calms down again and agrees to help Ashitaka get the god's head back to him.

They make a pass by Iron Town, telling them about the rouge god and about Aboshi and the men. As they are leaving, the sludge comes over the mountains, sweeping through Osano's camp and over Iron Town, sealing up the ironworks and essentially destroying the entire place.

All this time, the Spirit of the Forest has pretty much found its head.

It's been chasing Jigo and the other pallbearers around for quite a while now. They are waiting for sunrise, which will theoretically kill the Nightwalker, and then everybody's happy.

Ashitaka and San head off Jigo and manage to get him to stop. Only problem is that the entire area around them is surrounded by that sludge.

Ashitaka and San take the head out of the basin and offers it to the god to make it at peace.

Return it, or keep it as the best trophy ever!

The Spirit of the Forest takes back it's head, cleansing Ashitaka and San of the curse mark (that San... contracted when she touched the head). Then it fell on what was left of Iron Town.

In the end, the entire area was turned back into a new forest. Aboshi decides to try and find a more honest career, as does Jigo and his remaining man.

Ashitaka decides to go and help the villagers rebuild Iron Town, but San can't forgive the humans (what's that make Ashitaka then?), so she decides to stay and help the new forest, but since they'll live so close, they'll be able to visit each other all the time.

Happy End.

Miyazaki Marathon Day 6: Whisper of the Heart

2010-03-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

Name: Whisper of the Heart
Type: Movie
Rating: Any Age
Runtime: 111 min
Directed By Kondo Yoshifumi/Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 1995

The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!

This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a halfwatching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to. I didn't mentionthis last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.

What's still to come are:

Sunday - Princess Mononoke (1997)
Monday of Next Week - Spirited Away (2001)
Tuesday of Next Week - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Porco Rosso, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.

Shizuku is a typical Japanese high school girl. She gets decent grades and has a close circle of friends. Granted, she probably devotes a little too much time to a specific extracurricular activity than she should, but that's a teenage girl for you.
... It's reading! Jeez, your minds are in the gutter. It's a Ghibli movie, dammit!

That's always a bad sign.

Her friends are all members of some kind of choir/band or something. For some unexplained and uncared reason, they're doing Country Road by that dude John Denver. Only one problem though... it's in English.

So they've enlisted Shizuku to write them a Japanese version...

Yes, an armature song writer myself, I'd say you've got talent.

... but that's a side note.

The main story here is what Shizuku finds written on the library cards of some of the books that she's brought home.

... that reads as Amasawa Seiji, by the way, in case you were like me and had to read the subtitles.

So who is this "Amasawa Seiji"? What does he look like? What are his interests, his favorite foods, his hair color? And most importantly, why is he reading all of these books too?

These are just a couple of deluded questions that I'm sure were rocketing through Shizuk's head when she saw this, though she voiced only a couple.

The next day, she and her friend Yuko at their school. This is another concept that I suppose only people who care about their school success could understand... why are the school gates open on a... not school day (I don't know the actual date)?

Either way, she goes into the school library and finds a book that she's been looking around for... and guess what's on the inside of the cover?

... Donated.

Kind of anti-climactic of me, yeah?

... FOOLED (NOT!)!

The book was donated by none other than her knight in paper armor Amasawa... Seiji.

She goes outside and meets her friend Yuko, giving her the lyrics that she's come up, and Concrete Road, possibly the best song ever written in Japanese.

... But little does Shizuku know that their get-together was not just about the song, but also about (what else) love (kissy kissy).

... No, not with each other, that'd just be a little too over the top for Ghibli. Actually, Yuko has a secret crush that's only secret from the guy that she likes eventually. To make things worse, she's been asked out by another guy (oh, the drama!)

They're both baseball jocks, but the guy that Yuko's into is named Sugimura (who's in their class), a fact that Shizuku discovers when Yuko nearly has a heart attack when Sugimura starts talking to Shizuku. No, I don't know why this would freak her out so bad either, but there you go.

Yuko dashes off, and Shizuku follows her, dropping her new book and the sheet music as she does.

After a "Duh" conversation, Shizuku finally realizes what's happened to her stuff and dashes back to the school, only to find some creepy other high school reading the book.

... okay, he's not that bad actually. He's good enough to make wisecracks, and gave the book back without arguing or anything.

But then he went and said this.

WHAT, FUCKER?!

Pissed off for obvious latent-attraction reasons, Shizuku goes home and... reads some more. She also fantasizes about Mr. Amasawa some more too.

On a semi-unrelated note, Shizuku's sister who's come home after an extended leave has returned home for another unknown reason.

After a while, Shizuku's sister has her deliver their father's lunch to him at the library (he works there). So she sets off grudgingly, since almost nobody gets along with their siblings...

On the way there, she meets... a cat.

Now, I don't know where the fascination with this obviously strange cat comes from, and I don't understand why the cat didn't just scratch her face off like my old cat did to my friends (it was actually kind of funny).

Either way, at Shizuk's stop, the cat also ditches and Shizuku goes running after him, only to lose him at a crosswalk.

As she continues her walk to the library, she finds the cat again, and after violating several trespassing laws, manages to follow it into a boutique of antique collectibles and crap... and a clock with this on it...

Can you read that? It says Porco Rosso... does anyone get this? Is Porco the Dwarf?

While there, she also meets...

Zie Barron von Vaderham.

... just the Baron. I don't know who in their right mind would give such a title to a porcelain cat, but then again, I don't know why anime girls go into such a panic when the guy they like starts talking to someone they are talking too. Keep your cool, girls (although it's kind of cute. Unrealistic, and people looking for that are probably never going to get a girlfriend, but cute nonetheless).

After having a nice talk with the proprietor, Shizuku realizes that she's close to being late to delivering her father's lunch, so she dashes out of the store, inquiring if she can return again later.

Shizuku runs all the way down the stairs, a feat that is beyond many professional athletes, and arrives at the steps before the library... only to discover that she's dropped the lunch somewhere.

Just then, that guy who was reading her book back at school shows up, delivering her lunch to her before making another comment and riding off... singing Concrete Roads... good. He's been converted... or assimilated.

... and I'll just leave the rest to the spoiler section.

Okay, so you're probably wondering what's with the / in the director section.

Miyazaki Hayao didn't actually direct most of this movie. It was still written and produced by him and stuff, but actually that other guy; Kondo Yoshifumi directed pretty much everything.

It's a-freaking-live!!

Miyazaki directed the "fantasy" sequences of the movie, short though they may be, you could probably be see a little more of his style in there. Elements from Kiki, Porco, and even Nausicaa, not to mention an almost trademark freeness of camera and angles, though it's a lot easier to do when you've got people flying.

Like I've said before, the music was epic. Country Road in Japanese, not to mention Concrete Road, it just couldn't get much better. Throw in a My Love is a Stapler, a Fuwa Fuwa Time, and you've got the best anime score on Earth!

Yet again, go with the Japanese. There wasn't anybody outstanding in the English cast this time, but then again, it was a little-known movie. I didn't know about it until I researched Miyazaki to do this.

This was a pretty good show, especially if you like semi-depressing plot lines.

Ghibli 13 Movie Collection (Dual Audio) Nihonomaru

Coming up next!

Day 7: Princess Mononoke!

Alert!

If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

If you couldn't guess that the guy reading the book at the beginning/the guy who delivered the lunch/the guy who used to hate Concrete Road was Seiji, go away right now. I'm serious. I won't say predictable, but I will say that I could see it coming a mile off.

It all boils down to this;

Over the course of a set of tests, Shizuku kept going back to the old man's store to see the Baron again, but it was always closed.

Sugimura's asked by one of his friends to get a reply from Yuko, which throws her all out of whack, and then she yells at him (I probably wouldn't have gotten it either at first). Sugimura goes at asks Shizuku what's going on, and she tells him that Yuko likes him.

Too bad Sugimura's already in love with Shizuku. Kind of saw this one too. She says that they can only be friends.

Later on, Shizuku returns yet again to the store, finding her old cat friend there. She talks to him for a while, but the cat decides that he's not exactly interested in the whining of some teenage girl.

Seiji shows up (although you don't know that he's Seiji yet), and invites her into the shop, since it's his grandfather's. Shizuku checks out the Baron again for a while, watching it's eyes though a sunset, then heads downstairs and sees Seiji making a violin.

She eventually asks him to play, and he agrees so long as she sings. Well in the middle of the song, gramps comes back and it turns into a jam session (with more classical instruments).

No, I don't know what the fuck that one on the right is, but it's got an almost impossible number of strings.

After all that, she finally figures out that he's Seiji, but gets over it pretty quickly.

As he's walking her home, he says this.

A good goal. I've always kind of wanted to learn how to play a violin or a piano (and now I want one of those guitar things (it might actually be a multi-string guitar, but the shape looks wrong)), but I'm too poor right now. I've got a Kamaka ukulele (because I used to play that exclusively until I figured out "Hey, we need a guitar in here somewhere!"), and an acoustic guitar, and am saving up for an electric and all the shit you need for that.

The next day, Seiji shows up at Shizuku's classroom and tells her that...

He's just going for two month internship to see if he's got talent, and if he doesn't, he's back in high school. But if he does, then he's gone for ten years. TEN YEARS. What a romance. Talk about not just long-distance, but long-... wait I suppose.

They talk on the roof for a while longer (is the roof always open to suicidal teens in Japan?), during which Seiji finally reveals his master plan.

When Shizuku finally figures out that she seems to be the only one without a plan for her future, she gets depressed and goes over to Yuko's house to talk with her. While there, she gets inspired and makes her own decision.

She goes and asks Seiji's grandfather if she can use the Baron as the main character for her story, and he agree to it so long as he can be the first person to read her finished work. With no other choice, she gives in.

And so she goes full throttle on that. She more or less discounts studying for her high school exams and just write and writes. This worries her parents, but after a short talk, they decide to let her do what she wants, but accept the responsibility for her actions (it's not a great as it sounds).

Shizuku finally manages to finish the story, and takes it to the old man, begging him to read it.

His final conclusion is that it is a "rough" work, lacking discipline and conclusion, but I think that it's pretty epic that she finished an entire a book (no matter how incomplete) in two months. Most writers can't finish like, a chapter in that time.

They have some ramen to celebrate the end of her trial, and the old man tells Shizuku the story of the Baron; another love story. The Baron was part of a couple, and the original owner was reluctant to sell him without his mate who was being cleaned or something. That was it until the old man's "lady friend" suggested that they each take one, and then reunite them when the old man (then a young man) could return. The owner caved and sold the Baron to the old man.

The only thing stopping this from being a happy story is that WWII broke out after that, and what with him being in Japan and her being in Germany... let's just say it was difficult to meet again.

The old man returned to Germany after the war, but couldn't find either of them ever again.

The next day, Shizuku woke up to see this.

After catching an earlier flight, Seiji's come to pick her up to go to his secret place and watch the sun rise over the city. Things worked out for him over in Italy, and now he's going there for another ten years.

After saying that, he drops this bombshell.

They're in middle school, right?

Slightly inappropriate, but he's in love... and he's fourteen! But so is she, so she says yes. No matter how stupid, it still gave you that warm and fuzzy feeling. Since I'm like that, I kind of imagined that she somehow moved to Italy after she graduated, but Miyazaki left it open ended again, and again, I don't know whether to be happy or pissed. Oh well.

From what I can gather, this is based on a manga, but I haven't found it. I also haven't actually looked.

The movie was good enough for me.