Hello everyone,
Today I worked a little more on the RSS Aggregator. Before starting with this review let's say some thing about it.
First of all everyone is invited to join with their own blog, the only requirement is that your website must not be plastered with walls of ads or popup/popunder. Also, if you have a recent browser with javascript enabled, I've created a live search (pretty much like google) so you can just type and get the result in real time without any other interaction. (I'll get that feature also in the paging hopefully)
Now let's go with the review of a recent manga/anime that got two different adaptations as the title says "one bad and one good". I'm talking about Yozakura Quartet, a work written by Suzuhito Yasuda.
Let's start with a synopsis :
The story revolves around a quartet of teenaged heroes: A super-strong girl named Hime, a mind reader named Ao, a conjurer named Kotoha and an ordinary, powerless boy named Akina. The three girls and Akina protect the city of Sakurashin from supernatural threats.
A normal supernatural story from which you can't just expectat any kind of twist or deep story as you can easily read from the synopsis.
Most of the encounters are plain clichè found in many other series before this and there is just nothing to make this series stand out against the other countless out there.
The story differ big time between the first anime adaptationa and the manga (that is what the second adaptation is following right now) and to be honest I found the first adaptation to be too much focused on the friendship concept between the three. (Hime, Gin and Akiha)
From what I read in the manga Hime doesn't even know about Gin at all and many other things are pretty different. (Like the fact that Hime is a dragon incarnate is discovered a lot later in the series)
The characters are mostly likable even if during the first adaptation (at around half series) they start to get emo over anything and everything leaving you raging against the monitor shouting "just tune him already and be over with it!!!"
I have two favourite character in this series. The first is Hime Yarizakura (main heroine) with her "tsundere" personality and her rigid behaviour when following her traditions.
The other is Ao Nanami, loved her cuteness and her generally good personality (or innocence we should say?) compared to the rest of the cast.
She's also the sister of Gin, the guy that got possessed by the main evil and her emotional struggle when watching and fighting her new brother is one of the nice part of the series.
The graphical quality of this series is quite good and I loved the design of the girls. (especially the manga one) The animation has been mostly consistent, but there are some major screw up in the TV version of the series and I seriously hope they've resolved them into the dvd.
The sound quality is mediocre, no one of the seiyuu involved created a particular voice that attracted me during the series.
Concluding this series is a mediocre one, with a first failed adaptation and a better second one.
If you're into supernatural anime and got some spare time give it a look, but don't expect too much.
See you soon,
feal87