Yah, that's all. Wow, that was probably the shortest review I've ever done...

Episodes: 1-13 (full)

I'm not going to do a very deep, meaningful review on this since a lot of you will probably end up seeing it. So instead I'll just give you a kind of introduction to the characters.

What is "Leafe"?
Leafe is kind of like "chi". Leafe exists in everything living, and is its life energy. To take away all of someone's leafe means killing the person.
The Leafe Knights and Prétear make sure that the Leafe isn't depleted by the "worms" who work for the Princess of Darkness who uses the leafe to try to destroy the world

The Leafe Knights

Hayate

Hayate is the first Leafe Knight Himeno runs into. He is VERY hesistant about accepting her as the Prétear, even though he himself discovered that she was the Prétear. His relationship with Himeno is very rocky at first, as she thinks he's mean, but later on it becomes MUCH better. He even gets a jobt at her house so he can guard her 24/7. *smirks*
His daytime job: He works for Kaoru, Himeno's Dad
His specialty is wind

Sasame

Sasame is one of the Knights that Himeno grows very close to. He works as a shrink and is very understanding and helpful when Himeno is down. However, he's not all of what he seems...
His daytime job: He works as a shrink for the radio station.
His specialty is sound.

Kei

Kei is the blunt one of the group. He always says what's on his mind, even if he knows it will hurt the other person. He's also very self conscious, as he seems to have all sorts of pictures, key chains, and even a computer wallpaper of him at his office -_-
His daytime job: videogame company
His specialty is Light

Go

Like Kei, Go is one of the lesser characters. He takes care of the younger Prétear knights in addition to Himeno, and he also teaches Himeno how to fight. He speaks very oddly, almost sounding like he has a Kansai dialect. I don't think he does though.
His daytime job: restaurant
His specialty is Fire

Mannen

Mannen is one of the children, and you could say he's the leader of them. He's also the one who makes the most mischief, especially when it comes to teasing Himeno's family.
He wants to be treated like an adult, and gets mad when the older Knights treat him like a child, which they do a lot.
his specialty water

Shin

Shin is the "cute" one. He doesn't do much fighting; in fact, Himeno doesn't even merge with him at all. He creates the barriers in which they fight in, and he can even destroy some of the leafe monsters, though his power is limited.
His specialty is earth

Hajime

Hajime is another one of the lesser known character. He sticks with Mannen and Sin all the time. Like the other Knights, especially the kids, he cares a lot of Himeno and would do anything to protect her.
His specialty is ice

Titi

He is a sort of "pet" to the Leafe Knights. He's pretty much useless, though he did help point out Himeno's location in one episode

Himeno's Family

Kaoru

Kaoru is Himeno's goofy father. He used to be a writer, but now he's just a washed up novelist who does nothing but make plaster objects, mostly of Himeno.
Himeno and Kaoru have a great relationship, and it seems that Himeno is the adult in this situation instead of Kaoru O.o

Natsue

Natsue is Himeno's new step-mother. She married Kaoru because she is a big fan of his novels, though it seems that she really does care about him a lot.
She has a hard time coping with Himeno's behavior, especially since Himeno is so upbeat all the time, the opposite of herself and her daughters who are more...refined

Mawata

Mawata is one of Himeno's step-sisters. While her sister Mayune takes great displeasure in Himeno and delights in trying to torture her, Mawata decides to ignore Himeno. She is very quiet and shy, and always seems to be suffering.
Part of the reason Mawata does not like Himeno has to do with losing her own father. She and her father got along great, and so when he died she took it very hard. But she had to be strong for her family's sake. So she kept her pain hidden, and it grew, and grew, and grew, until soon it affected her entire life.
To make herself feel better, she writes letters about her problems to Sasame.

Mayune

Mayune is Sasame's older sister. She disapproves of Kaoru and Himeno, and is always trying to ruin Himeno's life by embarrassing her.
She also has a fondness towards men and is always trying to make them into her servants. X_x

Other Characters

Fenrir: The Princess of Disaster

Fenrir is the main enemy of the Leafe Knights. She sucks up the Leafe from the world, hoping to destroy the world and all the people in it to ease her aching heart.

Takako
Takako was the old Prétear. When she was the Prétear she fell in love with Hayate, though Hayate did not return her feelings.
This sadly led to her demise...

Mikage

Mikage is the maid for Himeno's family.
She is very sympathetic towards Himeno, and especially Mawata.

Tanaka
Tanaka is kind of like a all around servant for the family. He is obsessed with his hair and the fact that it's balding. He also has a huge crush on Natsue. When he's not busy groveling at her feet and fufilling her every need, he's taking care of the limo, carting Natsue or her daughters around, hunting for "darkness worms" with Himeno tachi, obeying stupid orders that Mayune gave him, or setting up traps around the mansion grounds.
He has a way with animals and keeps a managerie in the back yard. X_X

Himeno's Friend

Himeno's friend, whose name I never caught or never cared to remember, is pretty much comedy relief in Prétear. She is very interested in Himeno's family, especially in the crush Tanaka has on Natsue, and is very obsessed with romance novels O_o

Story
I was a bit disappointed at first, as it seemed the whole point of the show was to merge with everyone and for Himeno to grow stronger, but as the series went on it become more serious. Though a bit typical of the magical girl shoujo genre, the ending provided an interesting twist which made the series enjoyable.

Art
I'm not sure when this series came out, though it seems early 2000's. The art itself is cute, and doesn't lose its flavor through out the season. The art may not be as great in some spots, but there is little degradation overall.
Most of the character designs were okay, and it was interesting seeing all of Himeno's different outfits, but some of the characters looked so.....bad. Kei for example, looked like a GIRL. Give him a female voice and he could be a girl. I wasn't too fond of Hajime or Go's character design either, though they looked better than Kei.
the CG: You could tell there was CG in it, though it really didn't bug me too much.

The music
The opening was VERY cute, IMOP.
We really didn't listen to the ending simply because of the ending movie. It was quite...disturbing.
The music through out was all right, but nothing too spectacular. Most of the time I didn't even notice it. I did notice that they liked using the opening through out the series, which was a bit aggravating sometimes.

Things I liked:

+ the characters
+ Hayate and Himeno *smirks*
+ the Ending

Things I Disliked:

+ transformation sequences
+ some of the character designs
+ where her powers come from X_X

I got this simply to amuse myself. As never seeing a fandub before, besides redeath which doesn't count, and being familiar only with the first manga and not the anime, I found this sitting there by itself surrounded by packs of PoT episode packs. So me, being the good subbie that I am, downloaded it to amuse myself. And amused I was.
The opening song of the show was ruined, in my opinion, by the voice actor of Ryoma karaoking along with the song. This was really distracting and didn't need to be there, I thought. The ending song was also ruined by Ryoma's voice once again intruding in the song.

The voices....I laugh greatly at this. The main girl was done...badly..but being that I find her a ditz normally it worked. The grandma had a surprisingly similar voice, which I found amusing.
Ryoma's voice was by far one of the worst. It sounded wimpy, not at all calm and cool like I assumed he'd be. He really did sound like he was a little kid trying to be cool, but failing miserably. I really didn't think that worked well at all.
The main bad guy, whose character was so stupid I didn't even bother to memorize his name (in other words, I forgot it), had the most horrible voice ever. His yelling was pathetic. It was as if his parents were sleeping in the next room over and he was afraid of waking them or something. O_o Either that, or he needs voice lessons really, really bad before he can even attempt to read story books to his children. That's who bad it was. And I can't even go into how bad his two buddies sounded. That would be painful to divulge.
The most amusing thing about the PoT fandub was that they kept in the original japanese voices when the characters gasped. Now THAT was hilarious.

Good:
+ The english was pronounced pretty well
+ They actually pronounced the Japanese terms correctly. Scary
+They kept in the "mada mada desu ne"

Bad:
- overuse of voices
- the voices did not fit the characters
- too much speaker sound messing with the characters' voices
- "Ryoma" karaoking along with both the opening and ending *shudders*

So yeah. We all learned again, for the billionth time, that fandubs are bad. Very bad. They almost make crappy dubs look good. Almost.

Upcoming reviews:
1. Trinity Blood, eps 1-3
2. Mär
3. Trinity Blood, chapters 1 and 2 (manga)
4. Haibane, eps 1-13 (maybe)

I rate it low even though I like it. funny, isn't it? It's because I know it has imperfections, yet I still like it anyway. I think that's better than hating a movie because it's not "perfect"

Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 01:03 p.m.

Woah, so lately I haven't been buying any manga. Sadness.
I did see the incredibles about TWO times, so I guess I will comment on that.

For starters, the animation.
Disney's CG is getting a lot better, though they have yet to catch up with Japan. Anyway, the animation was pretty fluid, and the fire (which is hard to do in animation) was all right. The hair WAS good from particular angles, but on some characters- like the asian chick- it just didn't look good. I think it's b/c her hair just kind of layed there, dead. It had no body whatsoever.
Another thing that bugged me was the daughter. How in the world do you get an Asian looking girl out of a blonde haired man and a red-haired woman? I mean, unless he had an affair with his tailor or something O_o. I wasn't aware though that two caucasian people could make a girl with asian like features O-o
(Was it just me, or did the goldfish at the tailor's house look just a tad bit like realf fish? J/W.)

The story was all right. It was nothing spectacular, but it was pretty good considering Disney doesn't make the stories, they only take them from novels. Anyway, it was kind of interesting to see Incredible's past come to haunt him, and it reminds you to always THINK before you say, cause you never know when the kid you hurt next door will come back as a superhero and try to kill you O_o.

There wasn't much music, to my dismay. I liked all the singing in Disney, as annoying as it got sometime, and so I kind of missed it now that they took it out.

My favorite scenes, of course, were the Baby-sitting extra (gives sitters a whole new look at their charges) and the part where the tailor was showing incredible's wife the new costumes she had designed for them. Especially the baby's. I'd love to have a suit that could do all that ^^

Overall rating: 8/10

Worth the watch?: Yes, most definitely. I'd rent it instead of buying it though.

Tuesday, March 1, 2005, 12:31 a.m.

But here's some reviews on some of the stuff I've been watching with my cousins....

Four episodes into this show and I still don't know what it's about...
So far, we've had a dead girl talk to lain through a computer, another guy commit suicide after firing off a couple shots in a club, Lain rebuilding her new computer after finding a really valuable computer chip, and Lain becoming more of a social outcast.
But I still don't know what it's about...

Sorry to say this, but I don't really like Lain at all. The character, Lain, bores me because she has very little personality (she's like Tsukasu from hack, but worse); the art is decent, but I don't like how it's so dark, and I'm not fond of the character designs. The hair and eyes are okay, it's just their faces are kind of chunky. It's weird.

So yeah, so far Lain is wack. Just thought I'd let you know that.

We watch Bleach to cheer ourselves up from watching Lain. Though Bleach is not really a cheerful show, it has much brighter, bolder colors than Lain and puts us all in a better mood.

We're only up to ep. 2 or 3 so the plot is still developing. More word on that later.

We're up to episode 7 of Samurai Champloo and still no plot has emerged. There's a basic, overall plot of course, but mostly the episodes just seem to be fillers so far. It's kind of depressing, but at least they're interesting fillers.
I still don't really like SC's art though...Fuu looks so weird, as well as all the other Japanese. Jin and Mugen look okay, but everyone else looks like they're chewing cud or are going to throw up. It's disturbing X_X

And thus ends my anime spout. Enjoy!

Yes, I know Jen did it already. But is it so bad to hear two sides? *grins*

Summary: Yuugi is your less-than-average high-schooler. Due to his size and his "lack of maturity", he gets picked on a lot by older students. Two of these people are Jounouchi (Joey) and Honda (tristan), the Beautification Club Member (nani?).
When Yuugi brings his puzzle to school one day, Jou (cause I'm too lazy to write the whold thing) steals a piece, throwing it into a kind of river around their school (some kind of sewer thing, I think). He does this because he says that Yuugi is too immature and that really annoys him.

On the way home from school, Yuugi runs into the ever buff Public Moral Leader, Ushio. Ushio is basically like a student-principal (think Toudo from WK: Gluhen). He is in charge of stopping fights and making sure there is no subordination in the rules he makes up and etcetera. In fact, even the teachers are afraid of him.
Ushio decides to become Yuugi's bodyguard to stop the fighting, and beats up on Jou and Honda.
Yuugi is totally horrified at what Ushio has done, asking him how he could beat up his friends.
'Friends?', Jou thinks, shocked. Jou can't see how Yuugi could even think of him as a friend when Jou has been nothing but mean to him. But Yuugi does, and because of that,Ushio stops. However it's not over yet. Ushio insists that Yuugi bring in money the next day to "pay" him 20,000 yen for his fee of bodyguard.
Yuugi's distraught, because he doesn't have that kind of money. He goes home, and while he tries to think of that to do, idly works on the puzzle. Surprisingly, it's a lot easier than it usually is, and Yuugi gets it done....almost. There is still one piece missing.

Thinking he may have left it at school, Yuugi rushes to school, where Ushio is waiting. Ushio thinks Yuugi is there to pay up, and so when Yuugi says he came merely to look for something he's missing Ushio gets ticked. He then leads Yuugi off to some quiet place where he can beat him up.

While this is going on, Honda and Jou are heading home when they pass the river that Jou threw Yuugi's puzzle piece in. Jou remembers how Yuugi stood up for them earlier, calling them frienda and preventing Ushio from beating Honda and him up, and so dives into the river. He grabs the puzzle piece, and runs off to find Yuugi.
Honda sees Yuugi following Ushio, and he and Jou run off to try to help Yuugi out.
They catch Ushio just as he's finished beating Yuugi up. With concern, Jou runs to Yuugi to see if he's all right. Yuugi mutters how he asked the puzzle for "true friends", as the puzzle can grant wishes to those who finish it. Just before Yuugi collapses, Jou tucks the last puzzle piece into his hand, then gets up, ready to fight.

Jou and Honda get their butts kicked, literally. Ushio laughs as he walks away, warning them about defying him.
Yuugi "wakes up", finding his friends laying on the ground, battered. He wishes he could help them, if only...if only....
He finds the last remaining puzzle piece in his hand, and finishes the puzzle. To his surprise, a light flashes, and his shadow grows taller....

Ushio should have never walked home alone. Before he can even get past the school, a voice calls to him, and a rope is snapped around his waist. He looks to see who it is- Yuugi! Only he's...different? Yuugi's eyes are wild, and he himself is tied to the other side of the rope. He stands on top of a building with a sort of pillar, where the rope is wrapped around. He challenges Ushio to a game, telling him that if Ushio wins he can have the yen. If Yuugi wins, however....

The rules are simple, a line of cards are placed face down on the side of the building (how do they stay there? Super glue? *shakes head*) Flip over these cards. The person goes up by the value on the ard. ...The other goes down. The person who makes it to the top wins the prize (to the pillar).

After a long trial of card picking, Yuugi wins (duh!), but Ushio is not satisfied. Instead he cheats, climbing to the top of the tower to beat Yuugi up. Yuugi smirks, telling him that he knew Ushio couldn't obey the rules. Ushio breaks the rope in half, causing Yuugi to fall. But Yuugi grabs the side of the wall, hanging onto a pole. An eye on Yuugi's forehead flashes, and Ushio falls down too, only to be swallowed up by giant plants (they are illusions).

The next day Ushio is found on the ground in front of the school, curled up in a ball and yelling "Kawai yo!" (I'm scared!). It's so bad that he's taken to the hospital. Meanwhile, Yuugi walks to class, running into Jou on the way. Jou says he brought a treasure to school, and asks Yuugi if he wants to see it. Yuugi says yes. Jou replies that it's something you can see, but can't be seen. You can see it in other people, but you can't see it physically. (All the while he is yelling at himself in his head for being so corny.).It's friendship. At that moment, Yuugi's face lights up and he agrees. With that, Jou runs off to class, followed by Yuugi who runs after him holding his lost shoe (his shoe falls off).

Yuugi: i'm not going to go real indepth about the characters since most of us have seen at least one or two eps of Yugioh!. Yuugi's voice in the sub is adorable!! It's kind of girly, but it fits him really well. He has a very happy, genki voice, and he laughs a lot.

Yami Yuugi: Yami also has a cool voice. His eyes looked kinda psycho in the first ep, but the episode 2 gives preview gives me hope.

Jounichi(Joey): Jou, as I like to call him, is pretty much like he is in the 2nd season and manga. I think he looks a little better in the manga and 2nd season, but it's really only because of his hair. He has the weirdest hair in this ep.

Honda(Tristan): Honda is pretty much a minor character in this episode. He's Jou's friend, which means he pretty much becomes friends with Yuugi. He IS the one who sees Yuugi get pulled away by Ushio and the first to stand up to Ushio, however.
About his Beautician job. What's up with that? He does not do that sort of thing in the manga.

Anzu(Teá): Anzu has a pretty minor role too in this episode. She helps Yuugi out a bit when he gets teased, and suggests to Yuugi that he should stand up for himself when getting bullied. Other than that, she has no real purpose yet.

Random Girl: Because i'm too lazy to go look her name up, I'm just calling her RG for now. I've only read the first and second manga, so I may be wrong, but I don't remember anyone like her in the story. She COULD be Ribbon, a girl Honda has a crush on in a later chapter though. That's pretty much what I'm guessing. If so, she appears much earlier in the anime than she does in the manga.
She has no point other than getting Jou and Tristan to run into Ushio for the first time (That wasn't covered in the summary b/c all's it did was introduce Ushio).

Overall, there were a few changes to the anime. For one, Yuugi's grandpa had very little to do with the story, other than give you some information about Yuugi's puzzle. In the manga he gives Yuugi money to give Ushio, and gives Yuugi the last puzzle piece. Also, jou threw it in the swimming pool, then later retrieved it and gave it to Yuugi's grandpa, telling him not to tell Yuugi who gave it.
Also, Yuugi doesn't go back to look for it, instead he searches his room. Yami then comes out in his room and gives Ushio a call to meet him at the school around midnight. The game is different. Instead of cards, it's a knife game. Yuugi and Ushio lay the money on their hands (I think they rotate hands or something), and try to stab as much money as they can without cutting themselves. Ushio almost loses, but to ensure he gets the money, he turns the knife on Yami himself. In punishment, Yami gives ushio the illusion that a bunch of leaves and garbage are money, and ushio spends all night and next morning rolling around in it.

The art is similar to the 2nd season, though a bit different. Jou's hair is different, and the extra people are drawn a lot simpler. It's kind of weird, but you don't really notice it if you don't pay attention. Also, Tristan's kind of drawn simple, which is fixed up in the 2nd manga a lot. Oh, yeah, and Seto Kaiba's got green hair. The weirdo...

Yuugi was a cute series. Be sure to watch it if just to see the differences between the voices and art. also, the opening theme is sugoi!

I originally downloaded a random chapter of this when I was dead bored one day. It was chapter 30 something, and so I didn't really get it. However, due to my new manga hunger I picked this up from a manga site, forcing myself to read it.
And so, here's the scoop...

The story starts out with the main character, Randoh, seated on a bus, just coming back from a karate? sports tournament. He is pumped, gloating about his victory with his friends....that is, until he sees his crush, Rina.
So, Randoh takes the opportunity to have a little daydream in his head about her.....when the bus crashes ><.

A year later, Randoh wakes up, finding himself in a doctor's ward. The doctor explains that he has been in a coma for an entire year, during which the doctor, Manabe, performed plastic surgery on his face, which was badly damaged in the crash.
Randoh wants to see himself in a mirror, so the doctor gives him one....not a good idea. Randoh is stunned. His body is that of a man, but his face is like a girl's...exactly like the girl of his affections, Rina.
Randoh insists to know what happened, and Manabe explains that his face was unrecognizable in the crash, but he found a picture of Randoh in Randoh's clothes and used that as a guide. Randoh rips the picture away from him and yells at him, telling him that it's a picture of the girl he has a crush on, and that he's an idiot for thinking that Randoh originally looked like a girl. Manabe shrugs and tell s him that he was thinking of turning him completely into a girl...that is, before he woke up. Randoh, angry, yells at Manabe, telling him to turn him back into a guy. However, it's not that easy.
First off all, Manabe informs him that he's dead (or supposedly). Secondly, Manabe has no pictures of Randoh to go by. Manabe tells him that he needs to find a picture of himself first, so Randoh sprints to his house to get a picture. Only to find that it's gone.
Horror stricken, he asks a woman walking down the street where the house has gone. She replies that the people that lived there despaired after losing their only son (which is him), and so they packed up and moved far away, hoping that they could forget this terrible memory.
Depressed, Randoh heads back toward the lab, only to run into Rina along the way.... Randoh freaks; how is he supposed to explain to Rina that he looks exactly like her?
However,before he can think of what to do, Rina embraces him in a hug, calling him "onee=chan". It turns out that Rina lost a sister named Yuna a year ago, when Yuna ran off to go to Beautician school. Rina takes Randoh home, explaining to him everything that happened to Yuna, since she believes he has amnesia.

At Rina's home, Randoh finds a picture of himself. However, before he can run off to Manabe to get his face recovered, Rina's parents come in and ask him politely if he can be kind to Rina. They say that Rina's been terribly lonely without Yuna around, and now that Yuna's back, they just want to see the two of them happy. Randoh nods, promising. As Rina's parents leave the room, Randoh decides that he will become Randoh again, but not until Yuna reappears.
And so, concludes the next chapters, filled with Randoh getting into all sorts of embarrassing situations while trying to hide his identity and play the role of Yuna...

Randoh: Randoh starts out as your typical, "I can kick your arse" punk kid...for all of two pages. As Yuna, he is still very agressive, but he tries to hide it b/c it's not as acceptable for a girl to figh; and besides, he's playing Yuna, a girl who's not very violent.
He cares a lot of Rina, even pledging to stay as a girl until he can find Yuna, and cheering Rina up when she's sad.

Rina: Rina is your typical sweet girl. She cares deeply for her twin sister, Yuna, and feels responsible for Yuna running away. She also has a crush on Randoh, but never attempted to say anything to him because of her guilt over losing Yuna. She is also a very bad cook....

Manabe: Manabe is a doctor...this should tell you a lot. He's kind of like Watari, meddling in things he should not do. He likes Randoh as Randoh is now, and doesn't really want to change Randoh's face back into its original form again.

Story: The story is pretty typical; guy/girl gets transformed into a diff. gender or has to hide as diff. gender. I mean, this is about the fourth manga that I've read that's like this...Still, it is kind of interesting...but there is a bit of fanservice, as you can imagine, and I have a feeling there will be more to come in the future -_-

Art: The Art is all right. It's not totally awesome, but it's not bad either. I guess it's just the normal "big-eyed" girl kind of art...

Rating: 6/10 for a fairly predictable plot. It's not a terrible read, but it's not anything special either. Just another run-of-the-mills shounen manga.

Story
So far it's seeming a bit like FY, although Akane's definitely not as annoying as Miaka is (can anyone be more annoying than Miaka though?). She's aware of her powers, and at first doesn't really want them. However, by the fourth/fifth episode she really grows attached to everyone and wants to help out as best she can. Very good, Akane.

Music
The opening music is pretty good, but I'm not too fond of the ending. I haven't really been paying close enough attention to the music in the eps. Gomen!

Meine Liebe
Ep. 1

Characters
I've really only seen one episode so far, so it's kind of hard to judge the characters yet. Let's just say that so far I like Orphe (sorry, megan), like Ed's personality (though not his hair...yuck!), dont' really know what to make of the hakkai dude, STILL think Camus looks like a girl (I shiver everytime I hear him speak), think Lui needs bigger eyes and then he'd be really cool looking, and wonder who the heck the hippie is and what his role is.
In other words, I don't really know what to make of if yet. Guess I'll find out soon enough though, ne?

by Miki Aihara
ISBN: 4-09-130044-8
Publisher: Flower Comics
Length: One shot

Scanlation site: -Eden Scanlators-