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Massugu Straight! will be moved to a new address, where all anime bloggers gather. The URL is:

http://manabi.animeblogger.net/

Please be advised that there will be no more posts on the Blogger site anymore, so to my loyal readers (all three of you ^^) please redirect your interest to the animeblogger site, which should be up in a few days' time. Thank you for your continued support.

Your Seitokaicho

The Ultimate SD anime

Hidamari Sketch ep.3: I think it's safe to say Hidamari Sketch has the funniest (and most frequent) SD-looking characters I've seen in a quite a long time. Case in point: Yuno brings white bread as erasers for her charcoal painting work (wow, really? I never knew that; you learn something new everyday, even in anime), but they are quickly treated as fodder for Miya-chan:





The weird thing is, this happened a few times (she ate the whole bag) and Yuno just lets her eat it like that (see second pic). I wouldn't feel so comfortable if someone is trying to devour my stuff and my hand ^^" She also manages to guilt Yuno to give her half of her lunch.

I like Miya-chan though, she wins with her super-weirdness and appetite (have you noticed how big-eating girls in anime are never out of shape?). She tries to pose as the principal to win Sae's onigiri lol


Sorry Sae, you shouldn't have. Ooh speaking of Sae, I love how Ryoko-san is doing this role, it's so different than her usual voices. Very nice to see Ryoko-san taking a new approach.

I wonder when the character singles/vocal collections are coming out for this..?

~~Seitokaicho Style~~

Negima!? > Negima!!

Negima!? ep.17: More good old randomness from Negima, it kinda feels like I'm watching Pani Poni Dash again, especially with Konoka's expression, which is completely identical with Ichijou-san. Speaking of which, the Konoka x Setchan pair really creates some unforgettable moments. Ahh... Secchan you are so naughty:

Secchan: "Aaa, Kono-chan no kaori da"

Secchan, stop smelling Konoka, even though we all know how kawaii she is!! You are now on par with Mikan-chan in terms of yuri-ness lol

On an unrelated note, Massugu Straight will soon be hosted on Animeblogger.net. Yay! Will notify everyone when the move happens.

Also, I've been given some comments regarding the blog, apparently there are tons of anime review sites out there, so I'm thinking of doing something a little different. Please leave a suggestion or two in the comments.

~~Seitokaicho Style~~

Seitokaicho genki modoru yo!

Back from this short one-day hiatus, my back is better now after acupuncture (that part didn't feel all good...) and some meds.

TokiMemo ep.16: How come the Amamiya in this anime is not as cool as Amamiya Manabi? I guess coolness doesn't run in last names lol. But ya, Sayuri is starting to get pissed because Riku is now suddenly all popular because he does so much work for the bunkasai (good for him, but apparently that won't score points with Ms.Perfect ^^"). She goes all wagamama on us and goes into the (mistakenly) huge obakeya, and a whole team of male students search for her in the sorta haunted house (I've never known someone in school who's that popular, but then again, I didn't go to school in Japan). She comes out unscathed, despite the fact that she is wearing a full-length dress for the play, but the others (who have guns?) are ambushed by the "ghosts". At this point I'm like WTF already, but it's pretty funny and all. The mess should clear itself up in the coming episode.

I must say, TokiMemo has really surprised me so far. I thought it would be another corny, boring romantic comedy, but it has its charms and the plot unfolds nicely. It's kept me watching for 16 eps. and that's not bad in itself ^^

One Piece manga 442: I'm gonna start reviewing manga too, just to branch things out a little.

The crew is on a new adventure, and they pick up a mysterious package from the sea, and indirectly summons a ghost ship. The captain of the ghost ship is a skeleton. A very funny skeleton. When he compliments Nami on her good looks, she feels bashful and a little embarrassed (huh, rarely do you see this side of Nami, kinda cute, actually ^^). Then he suddenly (and politely) asks to see her panties??! She kicks him in the face and he says, "Owww..! You really laid me out! My bone is bruised, even though I'm only a skeleton." All the while Luffy is listening to this nonsense, then he asks the skeleton if he can take a dump!?? Sanji interrupts and says this isn't the right time, but the skeleton quite accordingly obliges and says he is able to crap LOL Sanji and Nami are now all pissed (the others are still on the Thousand Sunny, new ship for those who are unfamiliar), when abruptly Luffy asks the skeleton to be their nakama and he agrees!??? This is how 442 ends...

I'm pretty sure people don't join the crew so easily, but Oda has had a lot of surprises for us before, so I wouldn't rule anything out. It would be super awesome, though right now we have no info on wth that thing is haha.

~~Seitokaicho Style~~

Back pain = no posting

My back/shoulders hurt like crap. I've been staying home for two days (at least I get to skip work lol), just relaxing and all that. Not much anime though, so that'll have to wait till tomorrow I bet. Gomen gomen.


~~Seitokaicho style~~

Manabi Straight = heavenly 2x

Manabi Straight ep.3: I just can't get enough of MS, it's so much fun to watch! Ep.3 just reinforces my opinion that this is definitely the best anime of the current season, and who knows, maybe for the whole year? (though I'm hopeful that there will be some other awesome stuff coming along)

Anyway, we start off with the group in the seitokaishitsu getting their act together about the inter-school dodgeball tourney, when it is suddenly revealed that Mucchi's friend is bailing out. The group frets:

Fortunately, the tsundere-ness of Mee-chan gets the better of her and joins the squad. She gets smacked around a couple times even though she was "coaching" the others. Oh well the match wasn't important (though funny ^^). After the tourney, the seitokai's of the different schools get together and had a little chat; Manabi-chan's unprepared state left us with one of the sweat-dropping scenes again ^^ The group retreats to a ramen-ya afterwards, and Mikan-chan is rather worried about Manabi-chan burying her head on the counter, when Manabi-chan suddenly raises her head without warning, freaking out Mikan-chan:

Minna-san: Ooh!
Manabi (not pictured): Shoyu iccho kudasai~ na! (Gimme a shoyu-ramen please~!)

I had to put the thing on rewind a few times just to enjoy that moment again and again ^^

After that, Manabi thinks the best way to get ideas for the gakuen-sai is to ask the other school's seitokaicho, Takako. The yuri-ness kicks in when Mikan-chan gets too enamored with Takako:

Mucchi and Momo waste no time to poke fun at this situation:

Mucchi: (whispers) Koi, desu na?
Momo: (whispers) Koi, desu yo..

OMG you girls can't get any funnier!!!!

Manabi-chan, when she returns, shuts herself out in her room and misses dinner, which would freak out any healthy-eating onii-chan. Takefumi's (onii-chan's name) expression says it all:


When she finally figures out what to do, Manabi immediately calls out everyone to the school and meets up with them late night (why do they still wear uniforms then..?). With her vivid imagination Manabi-chan paints a picture of what she has envisioned, but not before she turns into some kind of angel in her vision LOL


I just find this completely random and also very funny. But as long as it works for them, it works for me! That was it for ep.3. Mikan-chan takes a lot of spotlight in this ep. because of her priceless expressions and chou-kawaii loli/yuri-ness. I don't know if it's actually for an anime to be better and better every ep., but so far MS is pulling it off. Can't wait for the next ep. to come out!

~~Seitokaicho style~~

Winter Garden = heavenly

Winter Garden OVA: Would someone please make this a full-length series? I can say I have never been more surprised by an anime; to put it in another way, I did not expect Winter Garden to be a small piece of treasure like it is.

It starts off with the normal and rather over-used lonely girl on a snowy Christmas eve. There she is, our heroine, sitting in the park with her crushed cake (that snow can be slippery!), when suddenly a guy comes up and offers to exchange his perfect store-bought cake with this lousy box of mushed goodness. Seriously, who does that!?? I kept my patience and kept watching, and our lady in distress brings back the cake to share with her younger sister (who has no problem chowing it down). Imouto-san smells romance in the air and makes fun of her sister by way of instant-drawn yon-koma. This cracked me up:


Through different chances, our heroine managed to "accidentally" bump into the guy again, and now it's the guy's turn to come visit her at work, just cause he "had nothing better to do". Oh well, we'll take the cheesy romantic plot. Imouto-chan makes more smarty-pants remarks regarding her sister; pure gold, people. The first episode ends with the relationship beginning to blossom and the two go on a date, as the credits roll and the ED song comes on, and what do I see as the main characters' names but Dejiko and Puchiko?!?!?!? Oh WOW!!! Turns out Winter Garden is an OVA of the Di Gi Charat series where the two lives in sort of an alternate universe where they're normal human beings, aged approx. 20 and 16 (my guess). Of course, they are voiced by none other than the originals, Asami Sanada and Miyuki Sawashiro!! OMG just kill me now lol.

Off to ep.2 (now they actually start mentioning their names ^^"), and Dejiko is dating the clueless guy. Puchiko is off to work at a McDonald's (a real one too, talk about product placement lol), where she is bumbling around the place, but no matter, says the manager, the customers are all there to check her out anyway. The scene when she steps under the counter and the crowd returns to normal, and when she steps up they get all hearty/googly eyes is just priceless. She works there to raise money to buy herself a guitar for performing at her gakuen-sai. Dejiko's coworker sees her boyfriend being close with another girl, so when news got to Dejiko, she assumes the guy has moved on. No matter, she had to return to her old family to run the ryokan business anyway, so it was just as well. It was kinda sad to see Dejiko like that (and the plot actually becomes credible), but in the end there was closure since the mystery girl was just the guy's sister. A bittersweet end to an excellent OVA, and it has me clamoring for more.

Unfortunately these are usually one-off things so chances are slim that there would be new ones, but at least I'm enjoying the soundtrack and OP/ED songs. The best part was seeing the return of Dejiko and Puchiko. While Dejiko is more reserved and deredere, it was refreshing to see her in this way rather than the rambunctious and destructive Dejiko in the good old days. On the other hand, Puchiko (in this form) must be one of the funniest characters ever; her sarcasm is unmatched and well-handled by Miyuki-san. I am left speechless by Puchiko.

Manabi Straight ep.3 is watched and will be reviewed soon. In a battle of Manabi vs. Winter Garden, I wouldn't know what to choose ^^

~~Seitokaicho style~~

Corniness +1

Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora ep.3: I gotta start doing some screen caps; Kuu deserves it for her over-the-top corniness. It's so bad to a point that it starts to just get really funny; she always talk to this "prince" that she apparently writes a log to, and everything she sees in life is all news to her (okay, I'll admit having Setsuna kissing you while bathing together is not a normal event...). I don't really like her that much, but the monologues are just too funny. Setsuna is my favourite, partly because it's Yuki Matsuoka (Eva from Negima, Tsuruya-san from Haruhi), and she's also much prettier than Kuu lol. In today's episode, we all think that Setsuna should probably just smack Kuu around coz she sucks at cooking and is trying to make a move on her man/master (whatever their relationship is). And omg please no more Tarurotte, I've had enough neko/kawaii types.

One Piece ep.294: Honestly, I would be pissed if I'm not a loyal fan of the series, because in the anime it just moves too damn slow. If only they could fight in every ep., then we'd all be happy audiences. But today we are treated to 20 minutes of nonsense about Spandam using Buster Call on Enies Lobby, and about 1 minute of Luffy and Rob Lucci fighting. Fortunately, I read the manga consistently so all this is old news, I just wanna watch this for the animated part. Next week, Nami kicks some CP9 secretary ass, should be awesome.

~~Seitokaicho style~~

Loli-ness = Goodness..?

Saint October ep.3: We're getting interesting here; finally Natsuki-chan gets her own henshin scene, which is, side-by-side, as weird as Kotono-chan's (why do they have to drink that unidentified liquid coming out of those funny-looking balls?). Today, we see Natsuki-chan's jealousy over her love of Kotono-chan against Yuan. She's got tons of pics of her (which she kisses good morning ^^ lol for cutie loli-ness) and a bunch of Kotono dolls, so I guess you win. Poor Koshiro is usually stuck in the middle of all this crap; that's what you get for being a poor (on his car's license plate, it says "binbou" lol!) PI, otherwise known as.. oh forget it. Though the seiyuu's are generally unknown (to me anyway), I must say Kotono-chan is rather charming, so it's all good.

Venus vs. Virus ep.2: Here we go with the weak girl struggling to control her power and wanting to return to her "normal" life. Alas, Sumire could not and shoots herself towards the end of the episode. Oh wait, the series is not over yet. When she gets those anti-biotic bullets in her, then she transforms to a crazy berserker mode and kills the virus guy. Meh, this was a Sumire-heavy episode. I wanted to see Lucia more than her anyway. Yousei Teikoku ED FTW!!

~~Seitokaicho style~~

More new anime

As I said, there are two new ones I watched and here is a brief review of them both (well, more like one and a half):

Les Miserables - Cosette, I got one word for you: "boring". If I wanted to be bored by another story about how a poor girl is forced to work in harsh conditions, I could just watch Cinderella and save myself of countless hours of who knows how long this will last. I relieved myself of this bore-fest when I hit the 10 min mark; maybe I should've given this more of a chance, but I watch anime for entertainment, not to bore myself till my back hurts.

Hidamari Sketch - At least one out of two animes that I watched was good. Originally from a yon-koma, this cute anime brings some warm and fuzzy randomness that's good for a few laughs. Miya-chan's SD form has to be the most kawaii SD I've seen on TV lol. In fact, the characters spend about half their time in SD anyway. Hiro-san is voiced by Yuko Goto, otherwise known to you Haruhists as Mikuru-chan. Sounds exactly the same too, but I'd rather like her rendition of Yamada in Kujibiki more. Then you have Ryoko Shintani, or Milfeulle, as Sae-san. This is a breath of fresh air from Ryoko-san's usual roles, and I am enjoying it. Miya-chan is done by Kaori Mizuhashi; I haven't heard her much except back in Futakoi Alternative as Sara, but that was so long ago (it seems) that I have completely forgotten anyway. She was also Pepper in Snow Fairy Sugar (omg, it's Pepper, how could I have forgotten... but then that was a long time ago, more than 5 years now)! No one knows about the seiyuu of Yuno, funny that they hand out lead roles to unknowns, but it's gotta happen sometimes. Too early to pass judgment for now. Anyway this anime seems like something I can watch so that's one more added to the daily library.

I'll bring myself to watch that Winter Garden OVA some day, I promise... ^^"

~~Seitokaicho style~~

Back in business

Escaping from the clutches of Smooth Moves (single player can only get you so far, waiting for the weekend), I am back to good old anime watchin'.

Tokimeki Memorial Only Love (Ep.15) - A rare episode of TokiMemo that's not focused on any of the students; a nice change of pace, really. This episode deals with the life of Haruka-sensei, how she copes to be a late 20's working single female and the pressure that surrounds her. The students celebrate her birthday, which is kinda sweet, and got her teaching enthusiasm back. Actually this ep strikes a familiar chord since I'm a sensei too ^^ I also forget that Momoha (Manabi Straight) = Mina (Tokimeki), though there is an obvious different tone to the roles.

Meitantei Conan (Ep. 460) - Kobayashi-sensei (why do these eps all seem to centre at sensei's today?) sets up a detective game for the class. Conan is soon removed since his intelligence solves the problem too quickly for the class to enjoy. Not the greatest ep (partly due to Conan's absence) but one new student, Maria-chan, is chou-kawaii~~ and in the end of the day, that's enough to justify the 22-min ep lol. I still prefer to watch 2- or 3-parters on Conan much more, gives it much more airtime to develop the content/plot.

Les Miserables is next, I think, and Hidamari Sketch is also on the block. Will be back tomorrow to discuss them.

~~Seitokaicho style~~~

Oops, not today..!

I know I said posting every day, so I'm keeping my promise. But then today I didn't get to watch anything because I was too busy playing with my new toy, "WarioWare Smooth Moves" on the Wii. Definitely the best game out for the Wii right now. I barely had time to go on the comp to post this. Anyway, I'll leave you at that, seitokaicho ashita modoru ne!

Grand Opening!

Step back, you are entering "Massugu Straight!"

Welcome to the grand opening of Massugu Straight, an anime blog started based completely on whim and for me to have something to do in between episodes of Manabi Straight (lol).

Not coincidentally, Manabi Straight is the one anime that we're gonna look at. Since the January season started, this (along with Saint October) is the one that really jumps out and sets the tone as the season's best anime.

Honestly I didn't know what to expect when I watched episode 1 last week. Loli cuteness ^^ + a huge seiyuu cast sold me. Come on guys, it's the revered Yui-sama in the lead role, you just don't say no to that. But as I watched on, I found much more than the oh-so-cute loli-ness. Manabi's personality just radiates and her cheerfulness cannot be missed. One episode was not enough, I soon wanted more.

Then came episode 2. Manabi's first week as seitokaicho (student council president) and how she inspires everyone (even the tsundere Mee-chan, voiced by Haru--- I mean, Aya Hirano) to help out on renovating the council room. The plot seems simple enough, a girl with endless energy and enthusiasm transfers into a school with school spirit on the decline, and she aims to change everything. But there's just an element of cheerfulness and everything that's nice and right in the world, that you could do nothing but smile when you see these girls. Since Haruhi I haven't watched anything that I've looked forward to this much every week, and not since Mahoraba ~Heartful Days~ have I watched something that comes close to this touching (an incredibly amazing and underrated series, by the way. Watch it if you can). Let's hope the series keeps going straight towards greatness!

On to the logistic side of the anime, things look good so far. Voice casting is the obvious strong suit of this series. You can never go wrong with Yui-sama in a lead role, and she does very well to capture the energetic feel of Manabi-chan. Mikan-chan is voiced by Ai Nonaka, who is quickly becoming one of my favourites as well (Ichijou-san in Pani Poni, Konoka in Negima). And we can never forget Aya Hirano as the lovable Mee-chan. I would say this is a mix of Tequila (not the drink... Tequila from Galaxy Angel Rune ^^) and Haruhi. Gotta love the flexibility of Aya-sama (second to only Megumi-sama, who might as well do all the female voices in anime lol). Mucchi and Momoha's seiyuus are less known, but they sound suitable for their roles. ufotable seems to do a decent job with the animation; they're no Kyo Ani but then again who is? I'm not complaining so it's fine.

Another great thing is that the character image singles have all come out by now. So far, we've been treated to a number of memorable songs, with Mee-chan's "Rule de my chitsujo", Mikan-chan's "school days" and Mucchi's "Tomodachi kurai janai mono tanai" being the best ones (Manabi's was surprisingly average, poor Yui-sama gets stuck with the crappy songs; I have yet to listen to Momoha's).

Personally I can't wait for the new episodes to come out. The other new series are good, but right now nothing compares to Manabi, therefore, in light of this revelation, this site shall now be known as "Massugu Straight" and y'all can call me Manabi ^^

~~Seitokaicho style~~