I just got through watching 2 more anime series. I'll give a brief review of each of 'em.

First off is "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya". This series is about a freshman high school girl who is everything but normal. She makes it clear on the first day of school that she is not interesting in ordinary humans. The story is told from the viewpoint of Kyon, another freshman high school student.

The series starts off with a brief intro, followed by Haruhi's declaration that she will make her own club. After trying every other club in the school, she's determined that this is the only way she can get what she wants (although it takes her about 4 episodes to even reveal what that is). The club, dubbed the "SOS Brigade", then begins to come to life, filling with nothing but interesting characters.

Plot summary aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the show. It has a very interesting storyline. In addition to this, the blend of adventure, supernatural stuff, violence, and... uhh, other stuff, was really well done. It looks like there might be a love story at the core of all this, but you wouldn't realize that until after you watched through about half of it. It also doesn't reveal itself more than twice in the hole series, so no "mushy lovey-dovey" scenes are present (even when that love story reveals itself).

A new season was recently announced, so you can bet I'll be checking that out. The anime is also dubbed in English by Bandai, so it's available all over the place. Be sure to check it out. Sure as hell beats American TV, at the very least.

Anyways, the second series I watched has a title that seems to change based on the site that's describing it. So I'm going to wing-it when I say it's called "Renkin San-kyu Magical Pokaan". I have no idea what that means in English, sorry. Either way, the thing that interested me was the fact that this is the series that features Liru the wolf-girl. Any anime freak should have heard of Liru some place, before. From what I've heard (heard, not seen for myself *shifts eyes*), she's also the target of several different hentai games. Not that I care, just... well, fyi. Yeah. SHUT UP!!!!

Alright, either way, I'm kinda iffy about this series. If you watched the first half of the first episode, you would say that it is definitely not a kids show. If you watch the rest of the first episode, you'd start questioning that statement. While the series is partially classified as "ecchi", it has a more of an appeal to children in a general sense. Yeah, it has it's moments when it's most certainly not for children (even Japanese children), but other than that, it looked more like a kids show.

The story does not follow a set path. Although the same story exists in each episode, they aren't exactly in a story "line". This means that you can watch the entire series backwards or in a random order, and you not be confused. The episodes don't relate to each other in any way other than the fact that they're in the same story. This is kind of rare in any TV show.

Speaking of story, allow me to sum it up. 4 princesses have come to earth from the Netherworld: an android, a werewolf, a vampire, and a witch. They are trying to blend in with the normal human live that goes on around them, but.. well, you can tell they don't know how to do that. There's also an evil scientist who's trying to get them. 4 mysterious girls and an evil scientist going after them? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty interesting story to me.

But anyways, it was hard to enjoy because I don't think it was targeted at my age group... in all areas. Some of it was, and that was fun to watch. But other than that, it looked like something I'd have enjoyed more as a kid. Kinda like Popotan, but not as "extreme" in the reason it's not for kids.

Now then, I'm off to go watch some more anime series. Sadly, my motivation to do any form of design has been lacking, lately, so I'm trying to beef it up by watching interesting Japanese programming. I think it's starting to work. Hopefully, I can get back to work on my newest skin, soon.