Director: Hiroshi Watanabe
Series Composition: Miharu Hiromi
Character Design: Atsuko Nakajima
Animation Production: Studio DEEN
Monday – Friday, 17:40-17:50 on NHK Educational

Opening: “The Kitchen is My Stage” sung by Haruka Fukuhara
  

Main (that’s “mine”, not “main”) is an 11 year old aspiring idol that has a penchant for daydreaming. Today’s her big first job on stage and she’s pretty nervous about it, so her manager (and owner of the talent agency), Yuria, suggests that she imagine the audience as being cabbage. Thanks to Main’s overactive imagination, she bursts out singing a song…. about cabbage (　ﾟДﾟ)ﾎﾟｶｰﾝ So no more of that show for Main after that performance. However, there’s still hope — an audition for a show called Cookin’ Idol is coming up.

Meanwhile, in the land of cooking fairies, there’s warning of an impending danger of the dinner tables on Earth losing their power, so someone will have to be sent to make sure people enjoy eating again. That one happens to be Misanga, who falls to Earth to find a partner who is pure of heart and that can see him.

The Cookin’ Idol audition is Main’s last chance to make it… or else she’s fired. Misanga ends up at the studio thanks to jumping into a cabbage truck, and Main happens to find him — she can see him, so she must be it! Main goes off into her own world yet again singing about cabbages, while those around her see her dancing with a cabbage (　ﾟДﾟ)ﾎﾟｶｰﾝ However, the producer of the show seems to like Main.

–segue into about a minute of live action here–

…which I won’t cap since I’m only really interested in the anime part — no offense to Haruka Fukuhara-chan (10 years old), who provides Main’s voice and plays her in the live action cooking part. Her voice is pretty decent, actually, though perhaps the singing could use a bit of work. Ganbare!

Anyways, as y’all know this blog’s motto is “Kawaii wa seigi!” (It is?), and I like watching kids’ shows for a change of pace. Main’s plenty cute and her daydreaming gives potential for some amusing chaos, so I’ll keep on watching.

Added 8:29PM: Geez, guys, already doing fanart of Main? Well, yeah, the character design is very ooki na otomodachi friendly (that’s NHK quality for you there!). Here’s the tag on Pixiv (registration required to view large images, btw).

Minamike Okaeri

Story: 4
A move back closer to the feel of the first season of Minamike which makes up for what happened to Minamike Okawari. Respected the original manga, and the original parts were entertaining as well.

Characters: 5
Easily 5 for the lovable cast of characters… well, I don’t know if you’d call Hosaka lovable, but just his presence onscreen made me laugh. I was glad to see that Touma got some more screentime this season. Her stupid brothers, especially Natsuki, were funny as well. However, my favorite’s Uchida (then Chiaki).

Visual: 3
The one disappointing part of the show as the animation quality from Asreed was simply good enough most of the time. Naoto Hosoda’s part in episode 12 gets a 5+, though (his Uchida is much too cute). I’m sure Shinpei Tomooka would’ve done a better job in the B part of that episode if the schedule weren’t as rough as it seemed.

Direction: 3
Stayed true to the feel of the original manga, though rather average for the most part with nothing really standing out to me.

Music: 4
Excellent OP/ED, good music in show kept from previous seasons.

Overall: 4
I’m very satisfied with how it turned out. Hoping for another season after more stock of the manga is built up.

Total: 23

CLANNAD after story

Story: 4.5
“CLANNAD is life”, as a 2channeler once said, going farther than those other galge that simply end after high school. Engrossing from beginning to end. A bit off for the somewhat complicated “true” ending involving parallel timelines.

Characters: 5
Easily a 5. Tomoya’s growth from beginning to end was quite pronounced and shown well. Sanae-san and Akki were always amusing in some way. Heroines were all attractive in their own ways. I favor Fuko (which is probably no surprise to most of you). And, Ushio-chan kawaii yo Ushio-chan.

Visual: 5
It’s KyoAni. Just everyday work for them.

Direction: 5
It’s KyoAni. Just everyd(ry Had to reach for the kleenex more than once through the last few episodes.

Music: 5
Excellent OP/ED, and music (as expected from a Key game).

Overall: 5
Yes, I’m a Key fan, I bought the AIR and Kanon DVDs and will grab CLANNAD as well. Easily recommended for those that liked those previous works. I could grab the PSP version of CLANNAD, but I doubt I’d be able to get all the way through it (^^;;

Total: 29.5

Asu no Yoichi!

Story: 3
A good adaptation of the well-worn harem genre that’s pretty faithful to the original (that I quickly scanned). Good mix of comedy and not too serious seriousness.

Characters: 4
Yes, Asu no Yoichi!’s characters are pretty much the usual stock characters for this genre, but since they were well used, no problems. Wassan was especially entertaining. Wishing that Kagome-chan got more time in the spotlight.

Visual: 4
High quality animation every episode as is required for this genre (if the heroines aren’t cute, who would watch?). Good job, AIC.

Direction: 3
The usual for the genre, but solid nonetheless.

Music: 3
Nothing that stood out that much to me, but plenty good enough.

Overall: 4
I looked forward to watching every week. I have absolutely no problem with shows that aren’t “innovative” so long as they execute well.

Total: 21

Hi guys,

We’ve been working hard this week trying to get the video quality better. We were finally able to get the raws for Naruto Shippuden 90, so we re-encoded it and replaced the old videos. To the Anime Members, please give me some feedback for the HD versions! Since we have the raws, we’re able to use better telecine cadence detection to minimize blended frames and made the animation smoother.

We’re currently working on tonight’s simulcast, Episode 93. Hopefully we’ll have it encoded in the same way before the launch tonight! If we don’t finish encoding with the raw, we have a lower quality version as a backup (until the better version is ready of course).

A quick look at the 480p stream of today’s Naruto shows much improved quality with much less frame blending (and such). Though my Eee PC struggles to play it (^^;; Hopefully this week’s Shugo Chara! will show the same improvement. I appreciate that they’re working on things and keeping us informed of what’s going on.

For comparision, here’s my usual raw source:

I believe you can see the problems here. Some kind of chroma (the color component of the image) ghosting along with lower image quality than the raw. What you can’t see is the frame stuttering probably caused by a bad deinterlacing filter and frames dropping during certain sequences. (The badly upscaled non-720p “720p” doesn’t apply in this case since Shugo Chara! isn’t broadcast in HD)

What makes this worse is that the sample video provided by Crunchyroll exhibits none of these issues. It’s generally not good business practice to deceive your customers. Many are already complaining on the forums of the same issues and demanding a refund, but that seemingly won’t happen since the TOS doesn’t allow for refunds.

Now, with a new service, and certainly one gathering as much attention as this, I would expect there to be bumps in the road. I appreciate that Crunchyroll seems to be taking some steps to correct some issues such as site slowness. However, first impressions count, especially since this involves a high-profile companies like TV Tokyo and others offering access to shows legally. One would expect the quality of videos and subs from the producers of shows themselves to be better than that offered by fansubs, but that hasn’t been the case here so far. People won’t put down money for an inferior product, especially when they’re used to paying nothing for the alternative.

It really is disappointing since I would like to see Crunchyroll and its partners succeed in this experiment and prove online distribution (through a subscription model or otherwise) can be profitable. Anime fans get the shows they want right after they air in Japan, the creators and producers of the show get paid, everybody involved benefits. I am hoping that Crunchyroll and its staff will get their act together and take some action on these concerns soon.

Due to Crunchyroll changing things around again, it’s hard subs so I couldn’t turn them off and get clean caps. It’d be nice if they’d work on improving the video quality to match what they’re advertising before messing with other things, but oh well (^^;;

Anyways, back on track. Ikuto is still staying over at Amu-chan’s house, meaning more sleepless nights for Amu-chan, and more trouble trying to keep him a secret from her parents and everyone else. At the Guardian meeting there are rumors of a cat-eared person going around and making a fuss — someone from Easter, maybe Ikuto? After school, they find out that it’s actually a girl named Chiyoko (but call her Choco-tan after her otaku parents’ favorite anime character, Magical Choco-tan) that’s cosplaying as nekomimi heroine Cat’s Eye Ear, dealing justice to those who… don’t deserve it? Ooops. Turns out that Choco-tan’s doing it since she wanted to draw more attention than her usual quiet self gets.

Upon returing home, Amu-chan is greeted by the sight of Yoru and Ikuto tangled up in yarn… cats will be cats (^^;; Certainly doesn’t help things, as Amu-chan would prefer Ikuto out.. quicker the better so she can get a good night’s sleep.

The next day, Chiy.. Choco-tan is up to the usual as Cat’s Eye Ear, this time targeting someone drawing graffiti… or simply a street artist performing live. Oops. Depressed from messing up yet again, this is the perfect time for Lulu to(ry

And it’s Ran-chan and Amulet Heart this week… again… Not that I have anything against Amulet Heart (like the outfit), but c’mon, give Miki a chance once in a while, okay? (^^;; After Amu-chan’s usual lecture (thank goodness it’s not as long as Touma@Aru Majutsu no Index’s lectures), Chiyoko realizes that she’s been doing things the wrong way and goes back to normal cosplaying. The kids love it.. and so do the ooki na otomodachi watching.

Amu-chan herself realizes that she was making the same mistake as Choco-tan and comes home to apologize to Ikuto… but he’s not there anymore.

However, I’m not really complaining since Shugo Chara’s fillerish episodes tend to be cute and entertaining in their own way while throwing some of the main story progression in (you won’t complain about anything so long as Amu-chan’s cute, will you?). I would prefer if more episodes were done without the usual Lulu -> ? egg -> battle -> Amu-chan lecture -> x egg -> Open Heart (yeeesh, it’s still embarrassing to watch that), though. Well, they had to do something so they could sell more goods to the target audience… speaking of target audience, I wonder what the actual target audience (and their parents) would think of recent developments… a high school guy in the same bed as a 6th grader. Not to mention the key and hole thing from before (^^;;;;;;;

Next time, looks like another another fillerish episode. But the guest character seems cute, so all is fine (is that all you care about?).

…ah… I haven’t gotten volume 8 of the manga that came out last month (^^;; I still haven’t gotten any more of the first season DVDs besides the first boxset. I really wanted that Amulet Angel wallscroll that comes with boxset 3 (the one that comes with boxset 2 is a bit too suggestive… as in haitenai), but the boxsets are expensive to begin with and the exchange rate being < 90 yen = 1 dollar really isn’t helping out. Oh well…

As this year gets closer to ending, info on the new anime awaiting us next year has started to flow, starting with something of a surprise. Kyoto Animation will be completing their original OVA series, Munto, as a TV anime starting in spring 2009. Sorry Haruhi fans, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer. Those who haven’t seen the OVAs (yes, they are licensed) shouldn’t need to worry about being lost, as the TV anime will include a “director’s cut” of the OVAs with new content.

Next up, AQUAPLUS’s Tears to Tiara will be starting spring 2009 as well, lead by director Tomoki Kobayashi of Utawarerumono (also based on a game made by Leaf/AQUAPLUS) and animated by WHITE FOX. The cast for the consumer PS3 release of the game (including Yuko Goto, Mai Nakahara, Ai Shimizu, Rie Tanaka, and others) will remain the same for the anime.

The third season of Minamike will start in January, made by the staff of Minamike ~okawari~ studio Asreed, but with some changes — Hiroshi Ogawa will be director and Rie Koga will handle series composition. I’m hoping that it won’t be an okawari of okawari.

Other anime starting in January of next year include the second season of Tetsuwan Birdy: DECODE, a new Hajime no Ippo anime, Kurokami The Animation, Slayers EVOLUTION-R, and VIPER’S CREED.

[Thanks to MOON PHASE for the info]