After a six-week hiatus, a new episode of Ergo Proxy has been translated into English. This one carries on with the recent trend of Proxy vs. Proxy battles to the death. As with Episode 14, Vincent’s opponent utilizes a rather unusual method of combat, putting our protagonist in a sitution in which he must reach 1,000,000 points in a quiz contest.

The first of the “answer” arcs is supposedly retelling the Watanagashi story from a significantly-different perspective. We originally saw this story from the perspective of Keiichi in episodes 5-8. This time, it is from the perspective of Shion Sonozaki, who is in a far better position to know what’s going on. The story again resets to before Keiichi arrives in Hinamizawa, this time approximately one year before.
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Episodes 14 and 15 comprise a short “time wasting” arc that takes the focus away from Keiichi and his classmates, starting this time before the construction site murder in Hinamizawa and focusing on a young investigator from the PSIA investigating the abduction of a young boy. The change of pace here is palpable. From the previous 13 episodes, we have no reason to think that this protagonist is about to be slaughtered by a vengeful mountain spirit or murderous townsfolk, which provides a big shift in the tone of the story. This shift itself is a bit unsettling in the context of what came before it, but the “time wasting chapter” is more of a police drama than a creepy thriller.
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Basic premise here is that Samashirou Kamiyama is a regular high school boy who just happens to be the son of God. He isn’t sent to Earth to save everybody’s souls, but rather to simply learn about normal life so he can grow up to be a great God himself.
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I saw some excited previews, rave reviews, and some detractors of this title, so I gave it a shot. I think I can see why folks liked it: good production quality, sci-fi premise, lots of smart characters, lots of gunplay and explosions, and so forth.

Alas, it also has twelve assassin androids wearing maid costumes parachuting into a prison and shooting up the place. Assassin androids in maid costumes? You’re kidding, right? By the time they showed up on the screen I was already a bit leery of the premise (crack government agent tracking down arch-criminal), but come on! What is this semi-retarded fetish doing in my sci-fi action crime drama? No, it’s not like getting chocolate in my peanut butter.

Add in the lack of a likable main character, and this looks like a high-budget recipe for disaster. I’ll be keeping an eye on some other folks’ reviews of future episodes in case it takes a turn for the better, but right now I think I’m stopping at episode 1.

Two years ago I picked up a fan-translated comic called NHK ni Youkoso. I liked it enough that I ended up volunteering my skills, poor as they are, at editing it for the translator. Since then, that person has stopped translating comics, and the title has been sporadically released in English to the tune of some 24 issues. Now it has been transformed into a made-for-television animation by Studio Gonzo, and is being met with some rather positive reviews.
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A few months ago I saw an animated GIF on some website. It was a terrified-looking girl in a bunny outfit shooting an AK-47. Clearly it was from some hokey cartoon, and I dismissed it out of hand.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is one of those titles that goes a long way towards validating the often-insipid world of anime blogging and the overwhelmingly-crass world of imageboards like 4chan and iichan. Were it not for sites Blog 好き and the blogs that it chronicles (Anime なの didn’t exist at the time), I would have never given this series a real chance.

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The “Curse Killing Chapter” (Tatarigoroshi-hen) was a bit of a turn away from what I had come to expect from the first two Higurashi no Naku Koro ni plot arcs. Keiichi may well have been a victim of a curse in this version of the story, but he’s most assuredly not the target of a psycho-killer.
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I somehow caught episodes 11 through 13 of Ergo Proxy all in a flurry. Previous concerns that my original suspicions were correct gain ground steadily. I think the term “raison d’être” is used at least 30 times between these and the previous episode.
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This week saw the release of the 24th and final episode of Type-Moon’s Fate/Night Stay. Spoilers follow.
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