Azumanga Daioh

Retail Price: 50.00$
My Purchase: 19.99$
DVD release date: Oct 14 2008
Program run time: 650 minutes
Genres: Comedy, High School, Slice of Life
Language watched in: English



Azumanga Daioh follows the story of a numerous group of girls and teachers, throughout their three years of high school. Originally I was going to review this show and write about it, but in the end it's just what the first sentence says. Instead I will write about my favourite characters, from Azumanga Daioh.


Characters

Osaka aka Ayumu Kasuga

I am in love with this girl! At the beginning of this anime I thought of her more of a nuisance, but she ends up being a big comic relief. The transfer student from Osaka, tends to stop everything she's doing, if in thought. A few quotes I love from her are 


"There will be lots of cute cats and dogs in the Cafe... and they're all dead." 2nd year culture fest. 

"[Osaka is telling a horror story]
Osaka: Sometime last night...
[Yomi, Tomo, and Chiyo each give a quavering, worried sound]
Osaka: I was all alone in my room... when suddenly, outta nowhere...
[Tomo gulps nervously]
Osaka: The smell of a fart that wasn't mine wafted into my nose
[The other girls stand in dumbfounded shock for a moment]
Tomo: [trembling voice] Spooky!
Osaka: Isn't it?
Yomi: [dryly] Really."

Sakaki

The Amazonian beauty Sakaki, is renown for her athletic abilities and cool look. She would trade it all to become cute and become beloved by all cute creatures. The reason I like her so much is because everyone assumes her to be something she's not and because of her shy nature, she makes an enemy, and becomes someone's dream prince charming?

Kimura

Perverted-How-Did-He-Get-That-Job Teacher is a lecher. All he cares about are high school girl, and them in their swimwear. He openly admits his reasons for become a high school teachers, and declares his love towards Kaorin (his student) even though he has a wife and a daughter. I love this character he makes me laugh all the time in this picture he sings "Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Kimuriiiin... Happy birthday tooo meeeeee"

Yukari

Miss Yukari, the classroom teacher of the main cast of characters. She's a single young woman, looking for a good time, any time is a good time to get her drink on! She not afraid to discipline her students, and she'll insist on driving her Yukari-mobile. If you can survive her driving she's all yours. She's quite the load of a woman, that's why I love her so much. Another reason why I love her is because she makes me think if Tenma were to become a teacher ... she'd become Yukari.

Yumeria review

Yumeria

Reviews
"This is one party you don't want to miss"
-Fineartmanga

Retail price: 40.00$

My purchase: 9.99$

DVD Realise date: January 7th 2009

Program run time: 300 minutes

Genres: Harem, Comedy, Ecchi, Romance

Language watched in: English

Yumeria's story starts off with self proclaimed "average normal high school male, with lower than average grades" Tomokazu Mikuri is living with his eldest cousin Nanase. On his 16th birthday Tomokazu has a dream of a purple haired girl in provocative purple spandex  clothing, fighting a monster. He wakes up to find the girl asleep next to him in bed. Through some events Tomokazu forms a team of girls to fight in the dream world "Moera" against the monsters "Faydooms" who are trying to cross over into the "real world" to take over.

Characters:

In Moera

From left to right:
Mone, a mysterious girl who can only say her own name (like chii).
Nanase aka Silk, Tomokazu's eldest cousin that he resides with, she's acts motherly but on some occasions tries to seduce her cousin.
Kuyou, Tomokazu's little cousin, who has a big brother complex.
Tomokazu, the main character of this story, who can "charge" the females in Moera with physical contact (which leads to perverted situations).
Mizuki, Tomokazu's classmate and later one love interest.
Neneko, Tomokazu's self proclaimed wife.

On Earth

Hmmm... what it makes me think of ....

The Faydoom remind me of the brigadoon monsters, although brigadoon's monsters are more complex. Also the fact that another world is trying to cross over onto the earth also reminds me of Brigadoon, although Brigadoon the two worlds are parallel and are in direct effect to each other. While Yumeria it's man's unwanted dreams.

A Harem of women, one man living with multiple females ... just... like ... Love Hina, Happy Lesson, Ah! My Goddess, Bravo Girls, etc ...

The way everyone is dressed in Moera reminds me of the Vandread outfits.

The whole "dream land" idea reminds me of After School Nightmare which the manga came out around the same time as the anime but after the video game. 

The ending ... it reminded me of Magikano and Clannad in some ways.

Did yah like it?

This anime lacked depth, the corners were cut everywhere in this anime, whether it was the characters, the plot, or the time management. The characters are bland, they all have attractions to the main character, which a perverted male. The plot is the unwanted dreams have transformed into faydoom who plot to cross over to the earth, Tomokazu and the assembled girls must defeat the faydoom to save us all. I don't know about you but, I'm pretty sure that people are still going forget memories and get rid of old thoughts. So isn't their quest kind of pointless? The fact the time wasn't managed wisely in  this anime is another turn off. I bet if they would have put more work in the actual plot line instead of the echii harem factor, it would have a wider fan base. What Yumeria tries to accomplish is try to cram an anime that should have been 26 episodes long into 13. I'm going to give this anime 2 stockings out of 5, it entertained me none the less.

OTAKU UNITE!

Reviews:
 The First Documentary About Anime Fandom.
"Comprehensive and Compelling" -FilmCritic.com

Retail price: 19.99$
My purchase :1.00$
DVD release date: March 7th 2006
Program run time: 70 minutes
Language watched in: English
Subtitles: none

Although this isn't an anime, it is anime based it also has a reversible cover. You actually get to see many views on anime and being an otaku. I personally don't think of myself as an Otaku, I find it refers to an introvert person who spends most of his or her days locked inside his room, who is also known to be creepy, and somewhat perverted sort of like Welcome to the NHK. Anyway this is a review to Otaku Unite!

A very fun view on the anime culture, we get to see how it all started with the all known Robotech, Speed Racer, Astro Boy and more. The uproar of Robotech and the treats that came with Carl Macek dubbing it. Although he took the opportunity to take an anime (Robotech) and make it his own to publicize the anime world so that more people would get interested in Japanese animation.  Fans also talk about the difficulty of how to find anime "back in the day". The first official american anime gathering was dated May 19th 1977. They're many arguments about being an Otaku, whether it's something to be proud of or something to be ashamed of.

This DVD is a great documentary about the anime/otaku world. The cover on the product is anything but appealing and I was skeptic whether to give it to a friend instead of keeping it, never mind watching it. Although I'm watching it for the 4th or 5th time today, I'm not implying it's THAT GOOD, but it's not too bad background noise, and don't judge the cover. I'm not too particular on the people that we follow in the documentary their very creepy and have some odd quirks to them. I love the fact that we get to meet voice actors, animators, directors, Con workers, etc.

All in all I'll give Otaku Unite! 3 stockings out of 5 very enjoyable