Club-to-Death Angel Dokuro-chan

Club-to-Death Angel Dokuro-chan (Ep. 5/6, fansub)
The title and image above do a pretty good job of telling you all you need to know about this very strange and quirky, yet highly amusing show. I tend to be a fan of the more off the wall series, and throwing in copious amounts of gore into the mix certainly helps!

The basic premise is that Dokuro-chan is an "angel" living with the main character, Sakura-kun. I put angel in quotations as she and the other angels, such as her rival or a overtly gay punk angel, are a lot closer to demons in many of their actions. In particular, Dokuro-chan's tendency to get out her spiked club, Excalablog (forigve the spelling), and violently kill Sakura-kun whenever she thinks he is doing someting ecchi. Not to mention numerous other ways she accidentally kills him (for instance, in these episodes she also poisons him by putting mushrooms she found growing on the bathroom wall in his curry...)

The angel bit of her comes out in that she does use her powers to bring him back to life each time he dies, with a Magical Girl-esque chant of Pi-piru-pi-piru-pi-piru-piii!

As you may have guessed, this is not a show one is meant to take seriously. Each episode is only 13 minutes long, which works well for a series of this nature. Each episode is full of gore, ecchi, twisted humour, gross-out humour, and parody (episode 6 features some otherwise harmless characters from other anime cast into parody images of them as evil monsters in a forest - I always knew there was something evil about Doraemon). Overall, Dokuro-chan is a highly amusing diversion. The series is only 8 episodes long, which is probably perfect, as you can't keep this premise going forever. What is there is quite humorously macabre and bizarre enough, should you enjoy that sort of thing.

Content Ratings (out of 5)
Gore - 5: Lots and lots of blood and guts, of the cartoon, excessive, fun variety.
Ecchi - 3: A fair amount of fan service, typically as the setup for jokes and death.
Character Designs - 3: Dokura-chan herself gets a 5 - you can't help but think how kawaii she is as she beheads or disembowels Sakura-kun - but the most of the rest of the design are rather average.
Gross-out humour - 5: Just consider the fact that taking an angels halo away causes them to have explosive diarrhea, and you can see that there is going to be a lot of gross out humour. I am not a big fan of gross-out humour, but there is enough just plain bizarre and macabre humour that the gross-out doesn't detract too much.

Fansub Backlog list

I've a directory quite full of yet-to-be-watched fansubs. I decided to make a list for myself, and figured why not post it here. I am going to break it down into three sections: unlicensed episode 1 fansub, unlicensed fansubs that I've watched previous epsidoes, and licensed fansubs.

Some of these anime I have at least seen character designs, but many I have no idea what they even are - part of the fun of finding new shows ( ^ _ ^ ) If it is on the "watched previously episodes" list, then it means that it is one that I have found interesting enough to watch, so those probably have the highest chance of getting review.

If there is anyone reading this that is interested in hearing about any of the ones in the list, please feel free to leave a comment and I will make it priority to watch ( ^ _ ^ )

Unlicnesed Fansubs, episode 1
Air
Amaenaideyo
Canvas 2
Akazukin Chacha
Cluster Edge
Fate/Stay Night
Gakuen Alice
Gallery Fake
Ginban Kaleidoscope
Ginga Densetsu Weed
Ichigo 100%
Idaten Jump
Jigoku Shoujo
Kamichu
Kasimasi ~Girl Meets Girl~
Love Love?
MAdical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's
Magikano
MaR
Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi
Nurse Angel Ririka SOS
Paradise Kiss
REC
Sugar Sugar Rune
Shurato
Wings of Rean
Xenosaga
xxxHolic Trailer


Unlicensed, watched previous ep
Beat Angel Dokuro-Chan
Futakoi
He is My Master
Mahou Shoujoutai
Pani Poni Dash
Peach Girl
Pretty Cure
Rozen Maiden
Shuffle
Ultimate Girls

Licensed
Blood+
Solty Rei
Starship Operators

Life is Tetris

I found this unattributed passage on Slashdot today, and thought it was clever enough to post here as a random thought for the day. If anyone happens across the source, let me know.

"Apart from being a fine game, Tetris is also a perfect mirror of the human condition. For a while the game is entertaining, and we seem to have mastered it and are having fun. Then, something goes wrong -- a rash mistake, or an unfulfilled wish, and we're fighting to repair the damage, but we've been thrown off-balance, and everything is piling up. Blocks that were once orderly and harmonious are jumbled and filled with holes, and our cup is on the verge of running over. There's always a point at which we stop planning for the future, and realize that we don't have one -- all we can do is cling to the present and concentrate, focus our minds on what it's like to be alive, to play the game, before it's all over.

You were waiting for a four-by-one block that never came.

Sometimes we resist to the bitter end, moving blocks left and right without thought or care, just to hang on, and sometimes we accept the inevitable and pull the blocks down to us, smiling inwardly at the great joke. The rest is silence."

Magical Canan

Back with more fansub impressions, this time:
Magical Canan (ep 1, fansub)
If the title and screen capture weren't enough to clue you in, "Magical Canan" is another entry in that fascinating genre of Magical Girl. One episode in, "Magical Canan" follows the formula fairly well - unsuspecting school girl has magical abilities imparted upon her by/with the aide of a cute sidekick, and must begin to fight forces of evil, or something. So yea, nothing much original or new so far.

There are a couple indications that there could be more, or at least a little bit different, in this series. The threat of the cute sidekick getting dissected by school nurse, along with a smattering of ecchi (one focal point of the transformation sequence is the increase in size/roundness of the main character, Chihaya's, assets), indicate that this is not targetting the typical mahou shoujo audience, but is rather going for a male one.

The character designs are solid and quite enjoyable so far. Animation is average for a tv show.
There really isn't enough in this first episode for me to make any solid decision on this series. It was just setup for the main character; nothing that grabbed me, though. I will likely watch another one or two episodes before I decide if it is worthing continuing to watch.

Magical Canan ran a few seasons ago, and has not been licensed yet, so my suspicion is we will not see this one released in the West.

Content Ratings (out of 5)
Character Designs - 4: I find the designs to be pleasing and varied, including quite an elaborate and impractical bow on the school uniforms, but it still works.
Animation - 3: Normal TV animation - well drawn, but not too fluid or movement-rich.
Ecchi - 2: Maybe I am going down the wrong trail, but it seems the series may put some H in it - not much here, but a little, so it warrants the Ecchi label.

Here We Go, indeed!