New Anime Series- Appleseed XIII

First Episode Review for: Appleseed XIII

Summary : Follows the daily life of two members of an elite anti crime squad in the Utopian city of tomorrow, BASED on the classic manga series Appleseed

Animation : Now I was hoping for the same sort of animation that we saw in Ghost in the shell, something worthy of Shirow Masamune, and they nearly have it, they have got everything right EXCEPT the human (non mecha) forms which look like animation from the early final fantasy cut scenes, its jarring and feels cheap in a lot of places.

Plot Potential: As expected an excellent plot from the get go for both newbies to the Appleseed story and people who have read all the books,

Characters: Personally I think they have done an excellent job of transposing the characters to the small screen, job well done

Music: rubbish…sorry…. its was bobbins

Reminds me of: Appleseed Ex Machina (yes i know thats cheeting)

Overall: At last a proper series for Appleseed that is gripping an good fun to watch, unfortunately let down by some terrible animation

Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime’s that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

New Anime Series- Dantalian no Shoka

First Episode Review for: Dantalian no Shoka

Summary : A young lord visits his dead grand fathers estate, only to finds a young girl and a mystery involving phantom books

Animation : Good quality subdued animation, a pleasure to watch and really captured the English countryside well

Plot Potential: The Japanese obsession with the Elizabethan age meets their obsession with English Librarians , chuck in a load of magic and you have a fine time for all.

Characters: Excellent characters with both depth and a surprising amount of originality, nice to also see an Englishman portrayed in a way that I was not ashamed to be associated with.

Music: Nothing special, but a nice use of brass instruments, which wither intended or not matches the area in England it is set (looks like Yorkshire to me)

Reminds me of: Black Butler meets Read or Die

Overall: A definite one to watch, I was riveted to the screen.

Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime’s that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

New Anime Series- Nekogami Yaoyorozu

First Episode Review for: Nekogami Yaoyorozu

Summary : The adventures of a slightly delinquent cat spirit and other ‘small gods’

Animation : Simplistic animation, not quite ‘flash’ level but getting near there.

Plot Potential: Another ‘happy happy’, but ‘no plot’ job

Characters: Cutesy versions of classic Japanese spirits

Music: Standard cute music

Overall: Very much a background anime, classic chibi stuff. not much else to say really

Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime’s that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

Google Apps Google and the second class citizens

Now I’m a big fan of Google and it’s associated applications. But recently there have been a few cracks that are causing me to reevaluate them as a supplier. mainly to do with their treatment of paying customers, if you have recommended Gmail for domains to a client and they have moved lock stock and barrel on to it. The last thing you want is for them to phone you up six months down the line and ask why they can’t use some feature that they want to use, and I’m not talking about fringe stuff we are talking about

The android app store.
Google groups
Google+

Not only is this embarrassing when dealing with said clients, but those of us that have thrown our lot in with google can’t use our primary email /account with the latest features. so we either have to lag behind the cutting edge and wait for Google to fix the problem or we have to double up on the accounts which makes us look unprofessional (and don’t give me any rubbish about Google’s recent account consolidation exercise, all that did is screw up the secondary accounts that we had already set up forcing us to recreate our secondary accounts as the merged accounts were missing the features we needed)

So Google. I realise you’re not going to give a damn about this but please don’t treat your paying customers as second class citizens. We are your friends and the perfect people to release new features to first.
Because at the moment when presenting cloud mail/app options to a client, when talking about ‘google apps for domains’, under ‘disadvantages’ it will read ‘Google won’t care about you and you will be the last to get the cool stuff ‘

P.S. its still not as bad as being an IBM partner

Old Comments

Sjaak Ursinus(26/07/2011 10:17:07 GDT)

Well at least IBM listen’s to you  they just say they don’t do it because its not commercially interestingwh but at least they listen

Mark Myers(26/07/2011 11:10:12 GDT)

@sjaak Oooooo cutting

New Anime Series- Baka to Test to Shokanju Ni

First Episode Review for: Baka to Test to Shokanju Ni

Summary : School anime in which the leading male has a perverted sister who has banned him from making friends with girls, first episode has him and 7 other friends spending time at the beach (sort of like the 7th episode of most plot based anime)

Animation : Bright and colourful, makes a lot of use of manga hash tones (such as filling in the backgrounds with spots) I like the happy floating skulls when the old sister is angry, a fun touch

Plot Potential: None that i could see, short turn puns and quick laughs (that get quite dark by the end of the first episode) seem the order of the day, making this a very low stress anime

Characters: The full range of school types, but with enough variation to provide the odd unexpected action

Music: opening theme good, closing theme less so

Reminds me of: Doki Doki School Hours

Overall: plenty of none explicit innuendo and funny visual puns make this like an anime version of the ‘Carry on‘ movies , nice easy laughs though

Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime’s that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!