Saga of Tanya the Evil

It’s been quite a while since I last watched *Saga of Tanya the Evil* when it originally aired on TV. The show has been on my list of Blu-ray discs to purchase for a long time, and Amazon recently had it for more than half off during a post-Black Friday sale. So, I had to grab it and rewatch it. I had somewhat forgotten what an excellent story it had and how impressive the animation was. Although I wasn’t particularly fond of the main character's art style (odd lips mainly), it aligns with author's wishes to not make the character attractive to discourage romance speculation.

The story takes place in an alternate world equivalent to Imperial Germany, known as the Empire. In this world, World War I has been delayed until the 1920s, and magic has been incorporated into the military. To prevent defeat, the Empire deploys elite mage corps units to reinforce areas of the battlefield and take on special missions against the enemy. Our main character, Tanya Degurechaff, is a young girl and the platoon leader of such a unit, decorated for her abilities and victories in battle. Tanya soon turns into a ruthless soldier who prioritizes efficiency and her own career over anything else, even the lives of those beneath her. The story follows her exploits in battle, her backstory, and the challenges she faces from what she calls Being X.

The anime series covers volumes 1-3 of the manga, with the movie covering volume 4 of the manga. There was a season 2 announcement back in 2021, but no announcements or PR since then to confirm a release date.

I highly recommend this anime if you enjoy stories set in a war setting or with intriguing villain characters.

Also the opening song Myth & Roid - JINGO JUNGLE

Dan Da Dan is a wild ride so far (ep 4)

I have to say that Dan Da Dan is so far a really stand-out anime this season! I've so far watched though episode 4 and it's been a great story with some great characters, humor and excellent animation so far.

The anime is a story about a boy named Orarun who believes in UFOs, UMAs and similar things but denies that Ghosts and Spirits exist and a girl named Momo who believes in Ghosts and Spirits but denies  that UFOs and similar things exit. They both end up with believing that UFOs, Spirits, Ghosts and similar things are real as face adventures against said entities. There is a lot of great character interaction, humor and action as the two face their adventures together.

Besides Crunchyroll this show is available on Hulu

Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything with Low-Level Spells

I’ve been reading the light novel version of “Failure Frame” for some time and have grown to appreciate its story. Naturally, I was excited when the anime adaptation was announced. The anime is produced by Seven Arcs, a studio that, while not a powerhouse, has created some decent anime that I’ve enjoyed.

Overall, I thought the anime wasn’t bad. However, the first five episodes had a distracting tendency to switch back and forth between 2D and 3D character animation during conversation scenes. They also used 3D heavily for the monsters, but that wasn’t nearly as irritating. After the week break following episode 5, they stopped using 3D for simple scenes, and the overall quality seemed to improve.

The story isn’t groundbreaking, but it has enough twists on familiar Isekai tropes to keep it interesting, is essentially it's Touka's story of revenge against the goddess that thew him away.  I’m hoping it will get a second season, as that’s where the story really starts to shine.

Blue Protocol Cancellation Annoucement

A somber event has happened, it's been announced that Blue Protocol will not be released in the west and that the Japanese servers will be shutting down January 2025.  This article on Rock Paper Shotgun details the details.

Also Ginger Prime/Blue Protocol Central has a video about this.

I'm rather disappointed that I won't be able to play the game in the west. I did play for a while on the Japanese servers and won't be able to play may character in the game. I have debated trying to play again on the Japanese servers again, but the automated translation software I was using wasn't good enough to make it really usable.  That's the reason I was really looking forward to playing a localized version.

 I'm sorry to say I didn't really get to know any of the characters I had created in the actual game, nor any of them that were in the game except for Feste and few others.

Good bye my dear friends....