Claymore’s apparently scheduled for 50 episodes, and I’m torn on whether to follow something that doesn’t suck in theory, but doesn’t really do anything for me either, in practice. I’ve heard that it gets better as the manga goes on, but fifty? With a chance that it might get better because they didn’t want to get you into the plot at the very beginning? It’s a pity, but I guess it can’t be helped given the number of volumes they’ve got to adapt.

An issue I have with Claymore is that it reeks of a certain vampire anime some time ago, that had a major failure of an ending due to the writer of the light novels dying, God bless his soul — the medieval setting only makes it worse because while the amalgam of steampunk and post-apocalypse tech in Trinity Blood was at least made refreshing since there was a power balance, medieval just cries out SHOUNEN DYNAMICS due to the sole dependence on physical power, which means a lot of fighting, losing, training, and then winning before losing again to a new challenger. Rinse, repeat.

Late Nanoha fan here. Think it was the beginning of this year or around November last, when I kept on seeing a recurring face among the posts of /a/. Some hushed whispers about it being QUALITY, and there was all manner of Photoshopped pictures on blogs everywhere. After awhile I couldn’t stand it and decided to get the two seasons to see what the fuss was all about. It reminded me of Cardcaptor Sakura, what with the magical staffs and all.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Nanoha is the type of series that comes along ever so often and reinvents the genre wheel. The tag “post-mahoushoujo” comes to mind, because, like Touhou, the stigma that once came along with adoration of little girls with magical powers — it’s all gone now. Well, maybe the little girl part still is stigmatized, but it’s generally okay nowadays for a young adolescent male to go about singing praises of an anime rooted in the series.

…your latest gift to mankind, and we thank you. The episode’s moment came for me when Hei confronted Rui on the rooftop during the opening sequence — post-rock, in my anime soundtracks? You’ve come so far since your early days, and while Solid State Society was only last year, oh boy. Have we missed you.

I’ve always been a fanboy. Always, and almost all of it — The Vision of Escaflowne’s majestic classical compositions; Cowboy Bebop’s flightly jazz; GITS:SAC’s dystopian electronica; Wolf Rain’s melancholy acoustics. It was like the music drove the series to excellence, not merely supported it. Or maybe she’s been approached by more discerning studios who knows just what it is that their anime needs (definitely not Yuki “My-Compositions-All-Sound-Alike” Kajiura). I’d like to think she has a waiting list and that she can actually pick and choose, because I can’t picture her doing harem or slice of life.