Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon 1 [Impressions]
Man, I got better Internet. instead of downloading at a hundred kilobytes per second, now it’s downloading at over a megabyte per second (Speedtest.net says mine is at almost three megabytes per second). So, I downloaded Episode 2 of KYOUKAISENJOUNOHORIZON in SIX MINUTES. What’s the point of downloading an episode in six minutes when it takes twenty to watch the show?! I’m better than 86% of people in terms of download speed, but I’m worse than 99% of people in terms of anime-watching speed. It took me two hours just to watch this episode (with screenshots, blobs, notes, etc.) and another one three hours just to write this post (five in total)!
Expect no more half season reviews until I’m totally caught up with these three (Horizon, Ben-To, Majikoi) episodics – Shoka was my last currently following show of last season, as I’m not currently following Penguindrum and Kamisama no Memochou/Dolls.
Uhhh tl;dr, let’s begin (over 3000 words, be warned).
Angel Beats! 13 [Completed]
An announcement: There’s an Angel Beats! Wiki. @_@
What he has black and blue hair
Anyways, with the shadows and the one-time baddie gone, it’s time for an episode-long denouement.
After yet another suspicious lack of opening theme, it is revealed that…
...The zombie infection spread through the land.
Er, actually Yuri wakes up after a pretty long nap.
They decide to GRADUATE cause they have nothing else to do.
Yuri also becomes a Leadere
While walking, Hinata mention that Takamatsu has somehow MAGICALLY became a normal person and disappeared, even though before, they mentioned that NPCs will NEVER turn back. Yay for plotholes~!
Tenshi (why am I still using that name? I don’t know. Whatever) reveals that she’s NEVER GRADUATED BEFORE AND THUS SHE IS YOUNGER THAN THIRTEEN YEARS OF AGE
THE SSS REPEATEDLY KILL CHILDREN FOR FUN >:@
So they start the graduation ceremony with a sign that’s almost as bad as ours’ (albeit not with LETTERS ON PAPER PLATES >:| )
"C'mon, we have FIVE people in this world, FIVE PEOPLE. Do you expect us to have a large budget?!"
Because they have to, they sign their school anthem. It goes something like this:
In which case, the full song is:
“From the dead world in the sky,
We bring you a familiar number.
Eat some before you die:
Mapo tofu!
What the hell is this song?!
Mapo tofu!
What the hell is this song?!
Mapo tofu!
What the hell is this song?!
Mapo tofu!
What the hell is this song?!
Mapo tofu!
…”
But Key cut the full version of the song for production purposes. :/
They then get nice-looking graduation certificates that AREN’T TYPED OUT BY A COMPUTER EVEN WITHOUT THE PRINCIPAL’S PROPER SIGNATURE :V
Nothing witty here :/
Otonashi gives some sort of speech about how good Macrosoft Windings are compared to Applo Mics, while everyone else realizes that Linexs are actually the best.
"...that WILL BATES WOULD CREATE A BETTER COMPUTER"
They sing some sort of Japanese song praising their teacher or something-and-other, and finally, start disappearing.
"Of course I'm late, all of us are dead."
Everyone else leaves afterwards as well.
Suddenly, in a somewhat-surprising yet expected-because-this-is-Key turn of events, Otonashi confesses his love to Tenshi, who reveals that… she has his heart?!
You're so heartless, man
After Otonashi died, he donated his heart out by signing that form that was conveniently in his pocket, right? Well, it seems that Tenshi got that heart, so she could live, so she could die. Except she got there before Otonashi, which probably means something like this happened:
Red is Otonashi, Blue is Tenshi. SSS refers to the afterlife world, not exactly SSS.
They hug, and Kanade disappears.
Otonashi disappears too, and…
Well.
What can I say?
That was brilliant.
Well, of course the plot holes are there, were there, and always will be there, but does that matter?
To me, they do (not what you expected, huh? :P).
Firstly. Takamatsu’s disappearance. Why would they come to such a conclusion? They treat the everyday rules of life as minor things that can be changed. Shouldn’t people care more about those things?
Secondly, the time-twist. Where would Otonashi be lost at, if that were to happen? Some other “border world (where Yukari obviously does not exist)” between the SSS world and real life?
Thirdly, the programmer. Is nothing at all revealed about him? NOTHING? He’s some random anonymous person introduced, not even BY NAME in the PENULTIMATE episode? This goes again with my theory; the enemy changes every episode. Except in this episode there are no enemies.
Fourthly, the ending. This is debated quite a lot; how is the ending possible? Maybe Otonashi and Tenshi are both, merely players of a .hack-style MMORPG. In a vegetable state due to their near-death encounters, they are forced to emotionally cope with it while doctors physically attempt to cure them. This is one possibility. Another is that they are reincarnated; but they shouldn’t be reincarnated with their memories. That would defy all basic tenets of the universe. Yet, if they didn’t reincarnate with their memories, how would Otonashi know to chase after Tenshi?
Fifthly; how did the NPCs all go away? Were they merely NPCs, consumed by the shadows and then shot to death by the SSS? Or did they “disappear” as well? I find it highly unlikely that all the NPCs turned into shadows; if they did, Yuri would have no need to sabotage the computer-bot’s computers, as the sources of shadows would stop. Maybe the SSS just burned all of the NPCs in that incinerator?
Sixthly; how does the economy work? Where do they get those computers, those tickets, those vending machines, food, everything?! Probably “from another person” is the answer, but even so, SOMEONE has to make them. I find it highly unlikely that in all these years the SSS didn’t even bother to investigate such details.
Finally some minor things I would have liked to have seen:
Tenshi’s full backstory. What would make her be opposed by everyone in the SSS? Although the minor “oh yeah, I took your heart after you died” served well for most people, it didn’t reveal anything about why her personality would be like.. her personality. Though I agree, a full flashback would be inappropriate on the last episode, showing a full flashback earlier, or even just a broader, basic story in this episode would have been nice.
Secondly; the exploration beyond the school. Why has nobody even mentioned the possibility of going beyond the school to other places? There can’t be just this and endless miles of forest, there has to be something else. What kind of afterlife can hold 150k+ people a day, if it’s only THIS BIG?
In a small deviation, what’s the rising star in the background? Is it the soul of Otonashi transcending the world of choppy plotlines? Or just some random thing that Key wanted to add to make it seem more Key-like?
And you all know what the third thing is.
TK’s backstory.
There probably wasn’t enough time to fit all of this in; as Kurogane said, “Maeda sure doesn’t know what pacing is even if it was a 380-pound albino gorilla wearing the Brazilian jersey emblazoned with the words “PACING” and blowing a vuvuzela to each ear.”
Anyways, I think I’ve been analyzing a bit much; quoted from we love maids, “you have to turn off your brain to enjoy this episode.” I’m not going to turn my brain off as I haven’t turned it off since I was born (hence my dislike of most moe-blob shows), but this was an enjoyable episode nonetheless.
If there is a sequel, I’d look forward to it. It has no plotline left? Well, @ScarletStriker made me think of an interesting idea; that in the future, the Angel Beats! characters meet up /in real life/ to do something. As for that something, I don’t know, cause there obviously aren’t going to be any FMA-blade wielding angels in real life :P
In conclusion, Angel Beats! was an interesting show. It had an interesting premise, a satisfactory plotline, good execution and excellent characters. Its music was brilliant as well, which was fully explored in this episode. Arguably one of the best this season, and I fully support that.
Overall Rating: 6/10 (Amazing)
Angel Beats! 12
^ Completely unrelated but pure /awesomesauce/.
"I KILLED AWESOMEBANANADANCER"
…Yeah.
After a suspicious lack of opening theme, the rest of GirlDeMo (read: useless n00bs) disappear and everyone else sets off to bully the poor shadows :(
When headspinning down a flight of stairs, remember to wear a helmet~!
…Even (skinnier) Matsushita comes to terrorize the defenseless shadows… ;_;
"That's why you should drink the Acai Berry Diet Drink!"
…Because TK + Matsushita = Awesome enough, the trio of unawesome people proceed down into Guild.
Yuri’s already there with LITTLE AMMO
so Chaa gives her a gun with AMMO
…
Underground should be "Ground Level" and aboveground should be "Grass Level"
Then he DISAPPEARS because he can’t FIGHT cause he’s NOOB
…
Anyways, Yuri gets pwnt by one of the shadows and is teleported to learn about ASCII.
"Colon plus Close Bracket equals Happy Face"
She realizes that she’s a NPC and very HAPPY to learn about ASCII.
But then, she finds that she’s supposed to be EMO for the rest of her LIFE
so she LEAVES to her own crappy LIFE
…
She awakes to find herself with the trio of n00bs and Tenshi, so they continue down to guild to bully those shadows.
"The Shadow Bully"
Yuri goes off by herself to steal destroy eat do something to more computers and finds an UNNAMED CHARACTER
The UNNAMED CHARACTER reveals that the entire anime is just A PROGRAM written by A PROGRAMMER. The PROGRAMMER wants to be with some RANDOM GIRL but goes INSANE and turns into a NPC.
Dood, whrs mah iPads?
Because the entire school is just supposed to be one big EMOVILLE, if there’s LOVE in the school, then everything BLOWS UP. So the shadows were created to KILL EVERYONE
Yuri realizes she can become the real GOD (and make Naoi and Christ very sad), but doesn’t want to because that’d be hacking and she’d be banned. Thus she destroys all of the computers as well as the UNNAMED CHARACTER
...I'm pretty sure you could've just... you know... shut off the power...
Everything’s supposedly saved now, and Key decides to add in random Key moments at the very end.
…Thus ends what is basically the last episode of Angel Beats.
There’s an episode after this but that probably won’t have any plot at all, just a long goodbye. I mean, if they decide to introduce /yet another/ enemy in the last episode I’m pretty sure a lot of people would stab the computer screen in frustration.
…Angel Beats is… well, I didn’t think much of it, and still am not thinking much of it. There are plotholes everywhere, this bad guy is introduced and dies in the same episode without even being named, the programmer’s likely never to appear, and the entire background of the entire anime is shown in one episode.
It feels really choppy, as if someone’s trying to pack in 100 chapters of manga into a single season, or just making up the story on the spot. As I said countless times, the enemies constantly change, the goals constantly change, and people are reintroduced a bit too suddenly (Matsushita came back after so long and all he got was 20 seconds of footage? >_> Same with Chaa…).
Then again, it’s anime, and it’s only a season long. Nevertheless I’m looking forward to the ending just to see what gets revealed (the fishing dude was actually the programmer!)…
As a final note, honestly, I think they should have just omitted the entire background story and just said “Oh yeah, cause you guys were annoying I decided to create shadows to kill you. But now I have to kill you myself! [cue epic battle scene]”
Angel Beats! 11
…In this episode, both Naoi and Hinata found out about Otonashi’s justasplanneds, and want to HELP OUT
But
EVIL
SHADOW THINGS COME OUT
Get your sick fantasies out of your mind, that's not what he's talking about
And so they FIGHT it
YES CAUSE TK IS THAT AWESOME
Tenshi can hit it with both hands behind her back
They realize that the shadow-things
Are actually NPCs that have been turned into monsters.
Then, Takamatsu gets Devoured (+1 dark quantum yeaahhh)by a shadow and becomes an NPC as well.
Man, he must fail a lot of grades
So then Yuri, who knows all about Otonashi’s plan, tells him to announce it to the rest of the SSS. They are faced with a decision; to get Devoured and doomed to suffer the same fate as Takamatsu, or to disappear to somewhere else.
Other stuff happen as well;
Tenshi gets wings...
...I'd say yes.
...and Otonashi realizes she's not actually an angel.
…Finally, Yuri tries to find out who’s creating the shadows. So, she goes into the Computer Library Place Setting Thing, and finds OLD PEOPLE (who’s probably a NPC).
Macrosoft Winding XO
She finds that people were STEALING COMPUTERS from the COMPUTER PLACE THING WHATEVER. AND THERE’S A TRAPDOOR LEADING TO GUILD INSIDE THE ROOM.
I TOTALLY WONDER WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT BECAUSE THERE IS SUCH A SMALL POSSIBILITY THEY ARE GOING TO GO INTO GUILD I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN OH MY GOD
…
See, this again goes with my theory.
Episode 1: Fight against Tenshi to get meal tickets.
2: Fight Tenshi in Guild.
3: Iwasawa DISAPPEARS
4: Hinata ALMOST DISAPPEARS (Fight Tenshi in baseball)
5. Tenshi fails.
6. Fight Naoi
7. Fight Fish.
8. Fight Reisen Tenshi.
9. Flashback (Otonashi).
10. YUI DISAPPEARS.
11. Fight shadow people.
…See? There are no duplicates at all. There is no main boss. The fight shifts to different people EVERY SINGLE EPISODE (besides 1-4)
I like the variednesses of this, but it makes the story extremely choppy. There is no goal, no point. The story has no structure.
It seems like the Afterlife School or whatever really is in a video game. The 1s and 0s from Episode 1, the multiple references to gaming terms (“NPC”, “Guild”, creating “Software” for weaponry, etc.), and even the appearance of shadows to “prevent people from playing too long”.
I'm not sure if this is just a glitch on my computer though :/
And then this. The whole world is pixellated. It’s like .hack (excellent series of animes, BTW), except they aren’t really aware that they’re in a game (Unless Yuri already knows).
…I’m completely certain that the ending is going to be revealed as the people waking up outside of the game; maybe finding out that in reality, they suffered something extremely traumatic and were put into a new program to fix it, and eventually woke up with fewer injuries (emotionally, I’d presume).
…It’s sorta far-fetched now, but with these types of turns (the shadow was /completely/ unexpected), anything can happen with this anime.
This episode itself definitely had its highlights, specifically the battle (which you all should totally watch) and to some extent, the ending that showed all the remaining (main) characters. All in all, it wasn’t a very bad episoe, but the turns still make me feel :/
Angel Beats! 9 & 10
Yes, I'll just dump all my drafts into this here smoke-machine
Another anime-grouping post. It’s tsunday eh I have tiem
:/
So basically Otonashii remembers that OH MY GAWD HE DIDN’T DIE DURING THE TRAIN CRASH
..Being the doctor-student he is he tries to SAVE EVERYONE
But that’s impossible if you have something like
This O_o
But who cares, he tries that anyways.
So they’re stuck in a train tunnel and people start dying
I'm /pretty/ sure he's dead now...
…Eventually Otonashii realizes that HE HAS A CARD
IN HIS POCKET
that I assume the JAPANESE TRAIN COMPANY HANDED OUT
and it says this:
Notice; "when", not "if"
And obviously he dies right before the huge excavator thingy comes in to save them.
IT BURNSSSSSSS
Fast forward to the present (present being ep. 10), and you realize that Otonashii and Tenshi are now trying to make everyone disappear (so everyone can be HAPPY), starting with Yui cause she’s Yui.
Unfortunately, they severely underestimated the ability of a person paralyzed from a spinal cord injury and forced to watch Barney on the television every single day to create astoundingly impossible wishes.
Basically, Yui got pwnt by a car and stayed in bed. There she watched WRESTLERS and SOCCER KICKERS and BASEBALL HITTERS and BAND PEOPLE WITH GUITARS AND STUFF. She’s already a band person with a guitar and stuff, so the next one would be wrestling.
After slamming Otonashii into the ground too many times she wins, while all of you just lost the game.
Read the above sentence. Now read it again. Now read it again. Contradictory much?
Then she goes off to try soccer. Through Tenshi’s UBER CROSSBOW THINGAMAJIGGY WHICH SNIPES EVERYONE she manages to weave through liek 5 pplz and liek score liek a goalthing ololol
Me want :<
Finally she tries baseball but fails.
Atai Cirno~?
But then Otonashii realizes her last goal is actually to get married, as she was all paralyzed IRL (lululululul this is t3h interwebz). Obviously that would be an insult to his personal morale, however Hinata accepts and then…
she DISAPPEARS
INTO NOTHING
MASS-ENERGY CONVERSION FAILURE
D'awwww~
Angel Beats is getting better and better now (though it’s also ending in two or three eps, durr hurr). The time when they signed the brain-dead-I’mma-donate-mah-useless-organs-to-random-people-I-don’t-know form was actually moving (damn you Key), as was the final few minutes of Yui’s episode…
But then again, everything was just obvious from the beginning.
In episode 9, the one thing I didn’t expect was that he would survive. After he did everything was straight anime style; “I want to help out everyone so that they can live, I found out I have fatal disease/virus/sickness/injury/whatever, I do something inspirational, I die, a second after I die something comes to save everyone else besides me.”
:/
Episode 10 was… interesting. The scene where Tenshi grabbed Yui’s guitar and ran away was a bit too… obvious that
ITS A TRAP
er…
Anyways, I suppose Yui did know that someone was manipulating strings and such (the ball curved in another direction after it was shot O_o), but didn’t really care. Eh, believable.
All in all, stuff was interesting; Key likes to alternate light/dark scenes, so the next one’s probably about a certain person with a giant halberd…
Though the episode we’re all looking forward to the most is still TK.
j00 can't beat t3h onehanded headspin, yo
Angel Beats! 8
Why yes, yes it is.
In this episode, teh angel zombie apocalypse is well underway, as they realize that Tenshi has a technique that lets her make clones. A lot of them.
Enharmonic cloning
Yuri haxx0rz into Tenshi’s (unguarded?!) computer and makes a few modifications to her cloning skill while everyone else actually GOES TO CLASS (but obviously don’t pay attention)!
Japan, the home of cheap air conditioning
They hid the real Tenshi at the bottom floor of Guild that was firebomb’d a looong time ago, so they decide to go down and everyone dies, because it’s a
Ackbar would be proud.
At the end, only Otonashi and Yuri are left again, as usual, and they get Tenshi (to attempt) to reverse what happened, and so she does that with BULBASAUR-COPIED ABSORB
NO NOT THE BINARY
…Eh, not much to say this episode. Just found it sorta weird that since Tenshi was able to just jump and lift, like, 30 people 30 metres into the air, how is she not able to shake off one person (during the sacrifices into Guild)? I mean, even Naoi managed to somehow pin her. Not only that but she wasn’t even pinned most of the time, just her blade in their body, and thus she should be able to just take it out and continue stabbing other people, right…? Eh, plot devices, I won’t bother talking about them.
I can say that I’m looking forward to next episode though, seems that something either really good (Tenshi goes back to normal) or really bad (Holy crap I have so many evil clones now I have infinite powaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr time to kill everyone) will happen, but that’s next week…!
Yes I have 4 legs I am that awesome
Angel Beats! 7
Oh hey I'm copying team rocket
…So yeah, mah first anipost, I guess… (for some reason captions don’t look really good, might be because of POOR SITE DESIGN)
Anyways, for those of you who haven’t been watching Angel Beats!, I’m not going to summarize it; I’ll just ramble on and on. Go watch it. If you have, then read the rest of this post…
…So, basically in this episode, Naoi uses his REISEN POWARS to hypnotise Otonashi so that he can recover his memories.
Spread Sign (INVISIBLE FULL MOOOOOOOOOOOON)
Then we learn that Otonashi was an idiot in life who failed at school. Then his sister dies so he gets all emo and decides to learn MEDICINING so that he can SAVE people. Unfortunately just as he was going to go to University the train he’s on crashes and he dies.
The SSS then go out to fish because they were bored of blowing giant fans to suck tickets out of peoples pockets, and Tenshi manages to catch a monstrous fish that couldn’t possibly have fit in the river. In fact, it’s so big that everyone was almost going to be swallowed by it, until Tenshi uses…
Kage Bunshin no Jutsu Sign (I can copy both Naruto AND FMA)
As you can see, there’s actually a Tenshi /behind/ the first Tenshi – which means she’s PERFECTED INFINITE CLONINGGGGGGG
And with that she cuts up the giant fish. By giant, I mean GIANT.
This would seem normal if those dots in front of the fish WEREN'T PEOPLE
And so everyone’s happy and everything until Yuri gets STABBED by the other Tenshi.
SPREAD SIGN (WAIT I'M COPYING SOMETHING AGAIN)
So yeah.
IMHO this series seems extremely disjointed – first, they fight against Tenshi and “win” after just 5 episodes. For a long time, I thought she’d be the primary antagonist for the entire duration of the show, but she converts just halfway through. Then in episode 6 Naoi becomes an enemy, and so I thought he’d be another primary antagonist, being God and everything. Except he converts at the END OF EPISODE 6. If this continues, that means that Tenshi2 will become an ally at the end of episode 8, and two more antagonists would be introduced, which is already too much. Even at the very beginning I felt overwhelmed by the huge cast of characters (just like how you’re getting overwhelmed by this huge textwall, which in comparison to other aniblogs isn’t really that big). There were just too many people, and now they’re going to introduce even more?!
Well, I guess I can’t make any accurate predictions now – but Tenshi2 converting at the end of the next chapter is.. a major possibility. After all it’s a freaking CLONE of Tenshi. Maybe an epic clone war will happen [no pun intended, seriously].
tl;dr
Just watch the next episode >_>
Schtuffz
…So as some of you know, I’ve been recently watching anime..
…And so I finished watching the rest of Durarara!! and Angel Beats.. in a week…
…and this means I didn’t do anything else :/
Which also means I don’t have any links.
Thankfully, this means I might be able to start aniblogging or something when I want to. Unfortunately, I’m too lazy.
…Anyways, this was supposed to be posted approximately 17 hours ago, but… I’m posting this now.
Both this and the next post are fillers.
Mah Birthday
Yep, today is mah birthday…!
…So basically, I spent most of the day at home without my parents, which meant I was able to do anything I wanted to do…!
Which means I accomplished a lot, including getting to level 30 in MapleStory (more details tomorrow), watching the remaining aired episodes of Angel Beats!, and… stuff.
Instead of giving me a birthday present (to the best of my knowledge), my parents instead went to a friend’s house. Not that I’m complaining; only because of that was I able to do random internet stuff.
…Their friend had to move, so we looted a lot of awesome stuff, including a computer with a monitor, a desk lamp, a graphing calculator, 3 coffee tables, and 2 desks. @_@
Today was one of the better days of my life :D
Anyways, links and videos:
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/05/02/5-reasons-android-app-store-trashes-apple-app-store/
^ …5 reasons why Android’s app store is better than Apple’s. Honestly, IMO apple’s not going to survive for very long in their current industry; then again, they keep on shifting focuses…
^ …A composition by a… person. It’s in two parts, listen to the second part in the link…!
^ OH MY GAWD SEIZURE DANMAKU AND IT HAS MUSHROOMS TOO OH MY GOD AMAZING (SEIZURE WARNING OH MY GAWD)
O-New 