I love gender-bender anime and manga. ^_^ Notable examples of such are Hana-Kimi, Ouran High School Host Club and W Juliet. Having been converted into a Mayu Shinjo fan, I just had to try out Blaue Rosen when I stumbled on it in a bookstore. The cover art was H-O-T but I had qualms because the intro wasn’t exactly that awe-inspiring. The guy is a princess in his school and the girl is a prince? Yawn. But Oh.My.Freakin.Lord.Of.Manga…. three pages in and I fell head over heels in love with this manga series! Read more…
Oha-lucky!
I absolutely *heart* this series. While Lucky Star is a non-heavy, humorous slice of life anime, it’s managed to catch a huge fanbase in Japan because of its quirky, lovable cast. I’ll be reviewing this anime in a bit but to pique your interest, just in case you have not seen a single pixel of this great anime, here’s the anime’s opening song lyrics translation which is so cute and funny!
Take It! My Sailor Uniform Read more…
Argh! It always takes forever to get fansubbed movies or maybe it just feels that way because the way I look at it, The Diamond Dust Rebellion, Bleach’s second attempt at the box office looks to be amazing! And hello, Hitsugaya-taichou front and center, woot woot!
While the first movie, Memories of Nobody failed to even make me go fangirly, I have higher hopes for this movie because obviously, the studio has caught onto who fans really like in this phenomenal series, last I heard, Hitsugaya-taichou grabbed the number one spot in the Bleach popularity polls in Shounen Jump while Rukia Kuchiki nabbed the second place! Wow! I totally love those two characters so I’m hoping they get a lot of screentime in this movie.
Here you go, enjoy! Read more…
Hands Down: The Story Behind the Anime and Manga
Award-winning mangaka Harold Sakuishi is the mind behind BECK, a testament to his great love for rock music. In the anime, the lead singer of Dying Breed even says, “Your music won’t save anybody,” and this becomes a subtle theme all throughout the anime and manga as to what music really is for people. Beck was originally published by Kodansha in Monthly Shonen Magazine before its manga volumes got licensed by Tokyopop. The series has also spawned three guidebooks before winning the 2002 Kodansha Award for shonen, a feat shared by Hajime No Ippo (Knock-Out) in 1991, Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO) in 1998, Love Hina in 2001, and more recently, Air Gear in 2006 and Dear Boys: Act 2 in 2007. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad the television series was first aired on Japan’s TV Tokyo from October 2004-March 2005. It was animated by studio giant Madhouse—one of the best animation studios around and the one behind crazy awesome anime like Death Note, Claymore, Devil May Cry, Trigun, and even shojo favorites like NANA and Card Captor Sakura. Osamu Kobayashi, the director of Paradise Kiss (another Madhouse anime) directed this series which received critical acclaim. Rockstar: BECK Mongolian Chop Squad
As I mentioned earlier, music and growth as a person is the central theme to this whole story. In fact, music is the main catalyst for the changes that have ‘rocked’ the life of Yukio Tanaka or Koyuki who is just an ordinary 14-year old student who is the protagonist of the story. Read more…
I love vampires and sadly, there’s not a lot of hot vampires running around in anime-dom as compared to say, the world of Christine Feehan and Anne Rice.
Thankfully, the much-loved shoujo mangaka Matsuri Hino (author of MeruPuri) saw that there is so much potential in making a vampire/action/romance manga. So shoujo fans have a lot of reason to rejoice (and drool over) the wonderful characters and artwork of Vampire Knight. There’s a slightly gothic feel to the whole manga and you really have got to love the boys of Hino-sensei. They’re hot, hot, hot! Vampire Knight’s protagonist is Yuki Cross, a vampire attack survivor who ironically, gets saved by a pure-blood vampire–the mysterious and aristocratic Kaname Kuran. Zero Kiryuu is another important character, he gets taken in by the same man who adopted Yuki and Zero bears a deep hatred for all vampires because they killed his entire family. It’s an oh-so-tangled web of love and mysterious pasts as Yuki tries to figure out a way for Vampire and Humans to coexist.
Read more…
Irrashaimase minna-san!
Welcome to Otaku-Shrine, the new home of the other half of certified otaku chicks, the fairyfuries. Jo-chan desu! Yorushiku negaishimasu!
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved anime from local TV’s Super Boink, Sailormoon, Gachaman, The Adventures of Saint Tail to then VHS copies of Ranma 1/2. Fast forward to now where over a decade later, I’m still hooked. Friends have actually dubbed me the “anime chick” and I have an assortment of anime moves that’s bound to weird out non-otakus.
But I think that anime is timeless and its ageless, I still enjoy Ruruoni Kenshin, I still laugh over the antics of Slamdunk and I still cry buckets whenever I catch the episode of Nuriko’s death scene in Fushigi Yuugi. What I really love about anime though is the stories– amazingly rendered characters who’re usually more complex than the ordinary good and evil, the love stories that never fail to send thrills down your spine, humor that knocks you out of your seat, the drama that resonates weeks after the final episode and yes, the amazing imagery that opens whole new worlds for fans. Read more…
Wow, after a long hiatus, I’m so glad to see so many reviews and comments to this day. *bows* Domo arigato minna-san!
So what can I say? I’ve bee busy writing about anime in a magazine, I’ve been busy writing about games but even after all this time, anime is still my number 1 love!
So we’re moving Otaku Shrine to http://otaku-shrine.com– and take note, since Michiko is busy with the magazine, this will be a one-man– ehem, woman show. So I do hope you guys drop by!
More anime and manga in that site!
If I ever had to choose my favorite among the many superb and truly fascinating j-music tracks around, I’d definitely and unhesistatingly choose Olivia’s “A Little Pain” from the soundtrack of the truly wonderful anime NANA.
Adjectives cannot even sufficely describe my extreme attachment to this song– it pulled me through some harrowing moments and still gives me inspiration to this day. A friend who is not even that fond of anime music totally liked this song because not only is the melody heart-stirring, Olivia’s voice totally soars and touches the hearts of its listeners. Here’s the video *heart-heart-heart-LOVE*
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60vVQSL3I84]
For the complete English translation of ”A Little Pain” Read more…
There was a time when I totally gave up on Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. While the fillers were a huge turn-off, BeeTrain’s animated rendition of TRC was a far cry from the CLAMP’s mouthwaterinly artistic manga. And I have to admit the theme song played whenever Syaoran battles someone to get Sakura’s feather gets old after a while. And the flashbacks to meeting Yuuko are not at all invigorating. So I stopped following Syaoran and Sakura’s story for months.
Two days ago, while in hot pursuit of Beck’s manga scanlations, I stumbled upon the latest chapters of TRC. I opted to read the chapter 145 which was the last update. Holy good lord my heavens! The very first page hooked me with an all out battle between Syaoran and Hikaru (Angelic Layer). Warning! Spoilers full speed ahead! Do not read if you don’t like S-P-O-I-L-E-R-S! CLAMP is a freakin’ genius for all the amazing plot twists and cliffhangers they throw at us slavering fans! This is the front cover of one of the latter chapters– good lord– two Syaorans!?! Spoilers Ahoy!!! Read more…
Words cannot describe the utter excitement I felt when I first stumbled on this site. I was only following a lead on Beck’s newest manga chapter when I found out that OneManga has an archive of great manga titles like Bleach, Eyeshield, D-Greyman, Naruto, Death Notes, NANA– all the great anime you can think of in one sweet website. It’s an otaku goldmine that is extremely user friendly–with all the latest manga chapters. Read more…
