mDuo13

It's been some years since I watched the show originally, but I recently introduced a few friends to an excellent anime called Monster, based on the manga of the same name by acclaimed artist Naoki Urasawa. Monster is generally considered one of the best anime ever made (ANN #22, AniDB #48, AnimeNfo #24, MyAnimeList #27 -- and many of those ratings have fallen off its peak). Strangely, Viz only printed the first 15 episodes as a hardcopy box set, despite the show being a rather lengthy 74 eps long. I guess being 4 years late to the party and offering a small portion of the episodes didn't work out for them. I'd love to own a hardcopy, but it seems that's not in the cards. I hear you can at least buy the episodes in digital format on PSN and iTunes.

On a related note, I came up with a limerick inspired by the show. It contains big spoilers for the first 4 episodes only. See the full article to read it.

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Today I introduce my first Greasemonkey script for public consumption: Technika ScoreSeeker. This script is meant for users of DJ Max Technika 3's International version website, djmaxcrew.com. It provides a new "All" page in the POP Mixing Performance area, displaying all1 your results (NM, HD, and MX charts) on one page, in a sortable table, with scores highlighted according to how well you did.

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Inspired by the trend going around, I decided to post a collection of brief reviews of basically every anime I finished in 2011. I'm pulling from MyAnimeList, so it's possible I'm omitting a couple things that don't have "Date Finished" filled out, and I'm also intentionally leaving rewatches off the list. Ratings are out of 10, but skewed towards the higher end of the scale because I'm less likely to finish something I don't like.

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Tsunashi Takuto transfers to a high school on a small island in southern Japan in order to sing out the joys of youth and find his father. But the island holds a host of secrets: ancient traditions and inhereted super powers, a mysterious society, and marionette-like robots that could change the world if the four seals restricting them were broken. Embroiled in these conflicts, will Takuto find his father, find the strength to protect his new and important friends, and still find a way to live out a joyous school life?

Though I had seen a couple of preview images beforehand, my real introduction to Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto came from a friend after the first episode had aired. "Have you checked out Star Driver yet?" he said. "It's so fabulous!" He was, of course, not just using fabulous as a synonym for good, but rather as a way of describing the show's aesthetic. Bright, rainbow colors. Outrageous costumes featuring epaulets. Conditioned hand signals and long transformation sequences. Star Driver is a show that is defined by this aesthetic. It has catchphrases like, "Your galaxy, too, will surely sparkle!" But even so, to judge Star Driver by this aesthetic alone would be shortsighted.

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Studio Deen brings us a 12-episode adaptation of light novel series "Is This a Zombie?" about a high schooler, Aikawa Ayumu, who recently became a zombie, and the bizarre girls surrounding him, including Masou-Shoujo (magiclothes girls), Vampire Ninjas, and the mysterious Necromancer Eucliwood Hellscythe who raised Ayumu from the dead after he became a victim of the neighborhood serial killer.

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Fractale is an 11-episode series from A-1 Pictures, set in a future where everyday life is moderated by the "Fractale System" that provides for everyday needs and allows augmented reality projections worldwide. Clain is an ordinary boy who's a little disillusioned by the system, but after being visited by a mysterious girl, he embarks on a journey to find the truth behind the Fractale System and those who would oppose it.

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