Back from the dead again. I'm glad I still remember my account details. I'm glad I'm still alive.
What do I tell you? I've recently been to an anime showing, where I saw Full Metal Panic 2 (Ep 1), Ai Yori Aoshi (Ep 1), an Inu-Yasha movie, and Meitantei Loki Ragnarok. Did I leave something out? Well, I got a peek at Last Exile, but I didn't like the art [translation: no stereotypical cute babes] so I skipped out on it. I know: I'll give you a few-liner about each one!

Full Metal Panic 2: I loved the first, and I think I'm gonna love the sequel, no matter what my friend James says. Not liking a show just because of one character is stupid and is a mark of narrow-mindedness, but I guess that 3-pt Flaw balances the 2-pt Merit Tinker and the 1-pt Merit Trained Memory. Back to the series. :) SPOILER WARNING!!! The story takes place after 17-y.o. Sousuke Sagara defeats the terrorrist Gaul in a climatic battle on the deck of the Mithril HQ /submarine amid a raging storm. He is now enrolled in the same school as Kaname Chidori, the girl he was assigned to protect while serving under Mithril. There are rumors of the school being bribed just to admit our teenage super soldier with no civilian skills except playing basketball. In FMP 2, no terrorist hunting for a while, just the crew being normal students for once. Kaname for the moment forgets that she's a Whispered, and resumes the life she had before Mithril. I expect the other cast members of season 1 to make an appearance soon, judging from the opening and closing clips. The 99% assured enrollment of Tessa Testarossa, Sousuke's CO who confessed love for him to Kaname back in season 1(!!) has made me and my friend call FMP2 as "Seasons of the Sagara," a play on a classic JAST dating/ecchi game. Incidentally, according to my friend Ian, GONZO's pool of artists had some former JAST people...

Ai Yori Aoshi: Known as AYA worldwide, this is, as my friend puts it, mush. Good mush. I like good mush. The set-up: childhood sweethearts living under the same roof, with a bunch of other women in the household who aren't relatives. Sounds like Love Hina? It sure does. I mean, what other series has the lead female taking her clothes off in front of the camera in just the first episode? No wonder I like it. :) Not as sexually overloaded as Love Hina, but as I've seen on some sites on the net, the sex is still there, just buried beneath the rather serious storyline.

Inu-Yasha movie: Has the gang fighting two powerful fiends, Naraku, the main villain of the series, and another demon named Kaguya, who is masquerading as a celestial princess. Basically, a three-part TV episode. You have the usual Kagome-Inuyasha fights, the usual Sango-Miroku groping scenes, the usual cowardly Shippo...

Meitantei Loki Ragnarok: think Card Captor Sakura with a boy instead. Instead of a key that turns into a staff, Loki just conjures his using the time that Sakura would spend morphing her key. Instead of cards, throw in Norse characters, like thunder-god Thor masquerading as a fastfood cook, his mighty hammer Mjolnir transformed into a bokken. And yes, Loki gets a cute sidekick/pet, which he summoned by himself, and this pet has already been under a girl's nightgown. Lucky little cute bugger... :) Judging from the ending sequence, Loki will pull of a Yukito/Yue in the future, growing tall and sprouting wings.

That's it for now. I'm going to gloat about having foud some interesting AYA pics on the net and some H-game images now. Until then...