Lord Rahl of Clannad

It's been a while since I last posted here, and considering that I haven't really been very busy with anime as I would have usually been (I blame Game of Thrones for that though). I started off with Spice & Wolf, which I went into with somewhat high expectations for some reason, so I was somewhat disappointed. It wasn't bad, but there were problems. First off, this is yet another example of an anime which has no real ending, as it cuts off from a certain point of the manga; it's always very annoying when this happens because the overall plot line is never actually completed,though at least this one ends at a point in which the small arc that was occurring in the series at the time had ended. The plot also felt very slow in places in that there were often episodes where so little actually happened that it was hard to understand how it justified another episode. On the other hand, I suppose most of the focus in the episodes like that was on character development more than anything, which isn't a bad thing when all the characters are so well done. The series also has a lot of old-fashioned business and currency talk, which made a lot of moments in the series very difficult to actually understand. All tings considered, it wasn't too bad but I would have liked to see the entirety of the overall plot, which is why I am going to eventually read the manga of this series as well. Next I moved onto Btooom!, which I went into knowing that the premise as somewhat similar to Sword Art Online in one respect, and similar to The Hunger Games in another. As I have enjoyed both of those, I went into this with relatively high expectations. I wasn't disappointed. This series, despite its short length of 12 episodes, was excellent and I was always eager to see what came next. There was virtually no filler in the series, and I liked how they intersected character plots by showing what different characters were doing at the same time and how that leads to them eventually meeting and what follows from those meetings. Speaking of the characters, they were all excellently presented, and it was interesting to see how each of them copes with the situation they find themselves in. As with other series with a survival game premise (e.g. Future Diary, The Hunger Games), some of the characters involved are highly psychotic from the start, while others basically lose their minds in their desperation to survive the ordeal. Such a cliché is understandably used and is far more logical and useful than the cliché of the main character having highly convenient amnesia at the start of the series. There's also the cliché of a love story developing between two main characters involved in the series, but this is a cliché which I have no issue with. On a note different from endless clichés, I found it interesting how this series gave a new spin to the survival game scenario; this time more than one character can escape from the survival game, providing they collect enough gems from other people in the game (watch the series to understand what I mean). Overall, a very good series which leaves potential for a second series. Now it's a matter of what to watch next. I'm probably going to go with Steins;Gate, but nothing is decided as of yet.

This is an unexpected but pretty nice, particularly for the collectors among us. I personally won't be going for this offer but I'm sure quite a few others will.

Hudson Taylor - Battles

^ I'll admit that the first image I saw of the new version of Shredder instantly made me think of a cyborg, but when it look as brilliant as it does I cannot really complain too much about it. People can complain about the design of the Turtles for as long as they like for all I care, but I fail t see what issues people could have with the armour of the new Shredder.

That was me who forgot Carnage's true identity. If Carnage does end up appearing in a Venom spin-off movie, I would be entirely unsurprised to see us get a minifigure of him. However, I would say Cletus Kassidy appearing is unlikely for two main reasons: Cletus Kassidy is known to have an extremely violent history; LEGO don't often seem to produce the alter-egos of characters in the Super Heroes line (the exceptions so far being Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent from the LEGO Batman movie).

To be honest, the eyes make little difference for me. Neither set of eyes looks that great on the Raphael minifigure, though I do prefer the normal eyes to the ones on the official minifigure. At any rate, I'm just glad that these minifigures maintain a high degree of accuracy to what we will be seeing in the film (or so we can assume at least). Let's hope we see more of the other minifigures soon as well.

Hurts - Miracle

If we have them in the UK I really hope someone tells us where they are soon. We know as much as it is south coast, but that includes quite a wide range of places, and depends on what the poster meant by "south coast" (could be the southernmost coast or could be Suffolk or even south Wales). Here's hoping we get more information soon.

5 out of 8 for me Some of these are surprisingly tricky to figure out.

^ The problem people have with it (certainly in my case and assume others agree) is that they despise that version of Green Goblin, and hate the minifigure as well as a result. It may be accurate, but I couldn't care less about that when we could have got the vastly superior classic Green Goblin design.

Mantis Cosmo Machine Man

I'll be honest and say that the mouth thing confused me at first as well, and was part of my issue with the Raphael design before I noticed that the mouth was actually open rather than being orange. That certainly makes the face not look as bad, but I'm still not convinced that it has been translated very well into LEGO.

I've reached the decision to next move onto Spice & Wolf in my anime journeys, and will probably make a start on that later today. On an unrelated note, here is a trailer for the upcoming English dub of Toradora (for anyone who is interested): This will be my first time watching a dub of an anime after watching the subbed version. I've never understood why people often have such issues with English dubs of animes and why everyone says the non-dubbed version is always better, but I can somewhat understand where they are coming from now. Saying that, though some of the voice actor choices seem odd to me (having watched the non-dubbed version) this doesn't seem too bad. It could end up being very good actually. I guess I'll find out at the start of July or so.

Okay, I had thought that the Raphael minifigure looked good, but that face is absolutely horrible to look at. Not that it's LEGO's fault though; that's what the movie designers went for, for whatever reason. I'm sure it will look better in the movie though; it probably just doesn't translate into LEGO very well.

The good thing about that description is that it implies that the film doesn't make the mistake of the Michael Bay Transformers films: focusing on the humans rather than the title characters. Let's hope that the film does focus on the Turtles and give us a lot of epic ninja action.

However he appears, I'm pretty sure it's an inevitability that we will eventually get Coulson in a set at some point, seeing as he has become a major fan favourite as of late.

^ Someone is finally going to bring the Carnage story line to the big screen? Count me in for that; Carnage really needs some more love, and a film is the perfect way to raise his popularity.

Considering the MCU movies so far (particularly the Avengers) I'm not too upset about the lack of Spider-Man. For one, he wouldn't at all fit in in an Avengers movie, if the first one was anything to go by (he's a street-level kind of hero rather than large-scale as was seen in Avengers). Saying that, it would be nice to see some of Spidey's rogue gallery in action in the MCU.

I would think that sets based on Age of Ultron are a certainty; after all, Marvel will undoubtedly want to market it as much as humanely possible and will try to use TLG as one avenue to do so.

It's not relevant to the current thread of discussion, but I was wondering if anything has been said about a potential second trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy?

^ You raise valid points. I do admit that the heads being used are logical for the episode, but maintain the opinion that the moulded heads would have been equally logical seeing as it is meant to be a dream. Nothing will make it so that I change my opinion about the decision to use moulded heads, but I may be able to somewhat look past it if the episode is really good. As for your viewpoint, to each their own I guess.

I'll be honest and say that I simply don't understand the hype for any more Batmobiles when we have so many already. Don't people always complain about the lack of variety in DC sets? Yet now everyone is clamouring for yet another Batmobile and hoping for yet another Batman and Robin. I honestly don't understand it. Frankly, I hope TLG doesn't produce another Batmobile for a while and actually gives us a DC set that is even slightly unique, by which I mean I want a DC set without Batman for once. Is that too much to ask for?

James Bay - When We Were On Fire

^ The odds are hat I won't buy the book regardless of the minifigure, but it would be nice if the minifigure was something relatively unique rather than a variant of a character like Cragger or Laval. If they want to do character variants, it would be better if the minifigure was a variant from one of the new tribes being introduced in the Summer wave. My expectations aren't at all high, but TLG may surprise us yet.

Well I have finished Toradora just a few minutes ago (at the time of writing). I have to say, I was surprised with how much this ended up impressing me. It was another slice-of-life anime (I have found myself watching more and more of these lately) with romance involved as well. The genre of the series dictates the typical characteristic of a story which can, at times, be difficult to follow due to the flow of the story not always being entirely cohesive all the time (depending how events actually unfold). In this case, some episodes didn't seem to follow on well from the previous episode, but I have started to come to expect this from slice-of-life animes now. The story itself is very well developed, and I was impressed with the development of the characters within the show; even seemingly minor characters got decent amounts of development, which was nice to see. With that considered, I was impressed that they were still able to fit in so much time to develop the ever-changing relationships between the four main characters and how this affects the other characters. The last episode (disregarding the typically irrelevant OVA) started out in a really nice (for lack of a better term) manner before taking an unexpected twist which made everything rather sad (far from the sadness of Clannad, Kanon or Angel Beats though), before then having a scene after the credits which ended things on a happy note after all. I like it when animes end on a happy note, particularly if it is done in a believable way (unlike Kanon, which was plain ridiculous), so I enjoyed this. Overall, a very good series. I'm not sure what to move onto next. I know I'm going to watch an English dubbed anime this time (the last two have only been subbed but will soon have dubs), so I'm debating whether to watch Btooom! or Spice & Wolf next. Anyone able to recommend which of the two I should look at next?