Title: 陸上防衛隊まおちゃん (Mao-chan) Vol. 2
Artist: RAN
Creator: 赤松健 (Ken Akamatsu)
Book Size/Pages: Small B-6, 192pp., w/furigana
Original Serialization: Monthly Shonen Magazine Special 2/03-7/03
Rating: 3/4

The bonus in this volume is a few illustrations of the kawaii aliens that attacked earth in the previous chapters.

I think RAN's artwork, while using Ken Akamatsu's designs, are a little better than the original creator himself. RAN draws with a lot darker lines than Akamatsu, so the pictures some out a lot more solid and firm. Unlike many other comics, Mao-chan doesn't just regurgitate stories from the anime. These are original stories in themselves, just like the first volume. This volume is still very simple with an alien attacking Mao and gang, but nevertheless is a good read.

8. 夢現な防衛合戦です (Half-Asleep Defense): It's New Year's and the spies have disguised an alien sheep to be a bringer of fortune for those who touch it. However, those who touch it fall into a deep sleep and the only one not affect is Kagome, who was interrupted before she had her meeting with the animal. Through her ingenuity and brain wave machine, she's is able to call out to Mao et. al. in their sleep and have them defeat the sheep.

9. 宇宙人スパイはつらいです (Alien Spies are Cruel): Chinami has an alien who she is sure can seal up Mao and gang. While she's out, she tells Yuriko to mind the house and not mess her plan up. Mao comes to the house and Yuriko, being enchanted by her cuteness, offers her some treats. Later, determined not to fail, she tries to lure Mao to the alien, however, she herself gets swallowed up by the alien. The two of them spend some time inside the belly of the alien. Apparently, no one is supposed to escape from the belly of this alien, but Mao finds a way.

10. 小笠原防衛大合戦その１ (Big Defense at Ogasawara Part 1): The girls are to go do some special training on an island and are to find fruit with their clover logo on them. Misora finds her, which is a banana, but her plane crashes and she's attacked by a group of monkeys and loses it. She finds an injured baby monkey and is determined to take care of it, just like how Mao takes care of her. She saves the monkey from the her plane, which has been leaking gas, and returns it to its parents. She later finds an alien capsule.

11. 小笠原防衛大合戦その２ (Big Defense at Ogasawara Part 2): Silvia is out on the beach, not really worrying about the training. She meets Tarou, who is apparently looking for treasure on the island. He has the banana with the emblem and so Silvia follows him on the treasure hunt. They get attacked by a giant gorilla, Silvia gets knocked off a cliff and he goes and rescues her.

12. 小笠原防衛大合戦その３ (Big Defense at Ogasawara Part 3): Mao finds her banana, but is attacked and tied up by a gang of monkeys; the leader looks just like her grampa. This clan gets attacked by the giant gorilla (alien), the girls help fight and fend it off. Afterwards, the girls give all three bananas to the leader as he's the rightful owner and he uses it to unlock the hot springs on the island.

13. 桜の下の思い出防衛です (Defense of Memories Under the Sakura Tree): The three generals are at each other's throats again, this time worse than ever. An alien fox attacks and is uprooting all the trees, but the generals are still bickering and do not command Mao and them on how to defeat the alien. That is until the fox unearths a time capusle which invigorates the grampas into action and they defeat the fox. Turns out that the time capsule was buried by the three of them years ago.

14. エイリアンさんはお友達です（前編）(The Alien is a Friend, First Part): Riho, one of Mao's schoolmates has been keeping an alien pet that came up to her when she was alone and cheered her up. However, according to the two spies Chinami and Yuriko, that alien is the ultimate weapon and take it from her.

15. エイリアンさんはお友達です（後編）(The Alien is a Friend, Last Part): By feeding the alien, they make it grow and grow, eventually growing to the side of buildings and is destroying everything. At this point, the creature is no longer able to hear Riho. However, using the tanks to form words, she comunicates through and he deflates himself. Although she looks like a flat balloon, Riho gives him some mouth to mouth and brings him back to life again.

Title: いちご１００％　ドラマCD (Strawberry 100% Drama CD)
Original Creator: 河下水希 (Mizuki Kawashita)
Release Date: 2/10/2004
Catalog No.: SCD-905578
Rating: 4/4

After hearing this CD, I'm more excited than ever about this becoming an anime. Currently, the manga has 8 volumes with volume 9 hitting stores as I type this. Basically it's another many girls-one guy type store, but is well done.

The voices here fit the characters well. I didn't realize it until the end during the cast call when they each introduce themselves that there were some familiar seiyuu in there. Tojo is played by Mamiko Noto, aka Narue, Chizuru from Ai yori. Nishino is played Megumi Toyoguchi, aka Megumi from the Mahoraba drama CD and Paine from FFX-2. Nana Mizuki who is quite popular as she has a music career too. The tracks in here only cover some of the chapters in the first volume and includes two little short stories tracks which I don't remember from the manga. It also has a prologue and an ending bonus that have nothing to do with the main story. And lastly, I love the theme music that plays in the background during the prologue and cast credits. Fits the series very well.

Just for your info, the names of each of the 4 girls come from the 4 cardinal directions, north (kita), east (to), south (minami), west (nishi).

Bonuses include 2 postcards (included in all pressings, I believe). The case is a DVD case, but it's just a regular CD. Amazon Japan lists it as a book rather than CD, so that kinda sucks as shipping is significantly higher if you have books in your order.

1.　オープニング (Opening): Kitaoji and Tojo host the show where they have two roving reporters, Nishino and Minamito doing interviews with the male characters in the show. Nishino interviews Junpei's friends at school where they explains his obsession with strawberry patterned underwear. Minamito interviews Junpei at home and reveals Junpei's notebook with drawings of strawberry patterned underwear.

2. 第一話「いちご注意報」(#1 Strawberry Warning): This just covers chapter 1 of the manga. Junpei Manaka goes to the roof and sees a cute girl wearing strawberry patterned underwear. He discovers that her name is Aya Tojo, a classmate and apparently a very good writer. He befriends her wanting to make her story into a film, and eventually relies on her for some advice into wooing another girl, Tsukasa Nishino. She tells him that he should ask her out while doing pull-ups. Tsukasa agrees, but not before a nice laugh. This however, seems to upset Tojo.

3. 第二話　「教えてあげる」 (#2 I'll Show You): This title is actually the title of the 3rd chapter from the first volume, but has story elements from the second chapter also. Junpei is experiencing his first girlfriend, and of course, has strange thoughts when she does things like take out her lipstick. Meanwhile at school, he still talks to Tojo as a person whom to get relationship advice from. After school one day, he sees her taking to another guy and starts having doubts. The track ends with Nishino giving him her cell phone number.

4. 第三話 「Girl Meets Girl」: This covers chapters 4-6 in the manga, the title comes from chapter 5. That night, Junpei wants to call Nishino, but doesn't have the courage. The next day, he realizes that he's drolled on the note with the phone number and can't read it anymore. So the next day, he comes up with a plan to snag her cell phone for a moment to grab the phone number. Nishino notices that she's missing her phone, and Junpei thinks that she thinks it's Tojo, so when the two girls meet, he jumps in apologizing and not for Nishino to blame Tojo.

5. エンディング (Ending): The four girls have a little conversation in the hot springs completely unrelated to the story. Among the things they talk about is a comparison of each other's bodies.

6. SS1「NEXT YEAR」～北大路さつき～ (Short Story 1 [Next Year] Satsuki Kitaoji): This is a bonus track where Kitaoji enters high school (in the manga, she's not introduced until a few volumes later, hence the next year). She explains her first encounter with Junpei, who she doesn't really have a favorable impression of. However, she admits that she has some feelings for him even though she tries to deny it.

7. SS2「LAST YEAR」～南戸唯～ (Short Story 2 [Last Year] Yui Minamito): While Minamito doesn't move in with Junpei until later, this story is a flashback to when Minamito is washing herself and thinking about where she wants to go to school. One of big factors is to be with her childhood friend, Junpei, who she has a hallucination about (it's not just the guys).

8. クレジット (Credit): Each of the members say their name and their character. I love the background music.

9. おまけ (Bonus): It's in a TV style with an audience and Kitaoji has each of the characters try talk/confess with various accents from different parts of Japan.　 Each response elicits a laughter from the audience (they sound pretty ridiculous).

Title: TVアニメ成恵の世界　オリジナルドラマ (TV Anime The World of Narue Original Drama) Vol. 1
Original Creator: 丸川トミヒロ (Tomohiro Marukawa)
Release Date: 6/25/2003
Catalog No.: LACA-5182
Rating: 1/4

I've a big fan of Narue no Sekai, one of the first series where I finished the manga before I watched the anime. In fact, I believe that there were a series of drama CDs that came out before the anime. I'll probably get those soon enough. This CD specifically mentions that it's a drama CD based off the anime rather than the manga. The reason I got this one was because I got vol. 2 at 50% when Asahiya was closing, so in order to enjoy that, I need to get this first.

When I read that this was an "Original Drama," I thought it was going to be a few new adventures with Narue and Kazuya like with Ai yori, Chobits, etc... That's not the case. In fact, this sounds like they just ripped the audio from the anime and put it on a CD, combining two episodes into one (if you listen to drama cds as much as I do, you can quickly tell what's actually a radio drama as opposed to a soundtrack rip). That's very unacceptable. I really love this series though, so I'll give it one star.

I don't believe there's a first pressing edition.

1. 「流れ星☆」(TV Size) (Nagareboshi (TV Size)): The intro to the anime, TV sized. I love this song.

2. 第一話　ボクの彼女は宇宙人 (#1 My Girlfriend is an Alien): This track pretty much covers the first three episodes of the anime. We're introduced to Narue, Kazuya, Maruo, and Yagi. It basically sets the story with Narue dating Kazuya, Maruo and Yagi being childhood friends, and Yagi being skeptical of Narue. It cuts out a lot of the side stories with Yongo-chan and the fact that Kazuya is an otaku.

3. 第二話　年下のお姉さん (#2 My Baby Older Sister): This covers episode 4 of the anime where Narue meets her older sister Kanaka, who actually is longer because she's been traveling at the speed of light in coming to earth.

4. 第三話 恋はインパクト！ (#3 Love Impact!): This covers anime episode 6 where Rin comes from outerspace to check out Kazuya. In the process, she enchants everyone, including his family into thinking that she's a family member.

5. キャストクレジット (Cast Credits): Mamiko Noto (Narue's voice, one of my favorite voices) leads the introduction of all the cast members. All the seiyuu just say their name and characters, nothing too interesting.

Final Fantasy X-2 is one of my favorite games, not because of the depth, but it's just plain fun. Having played the original version almost a year ago, it was kinda nostalgic having to go on adventures with Paine, Rikku, and of course Yuna again.

First things first, there's a bonus FFVII Advent Children trailer on this game. While the CG is less impressive than that of the Final Fantasy movie from a few years ago, it'll still be interesting to see what they do with this movie-sequel to the game. From what it looks like now, it'll be quite impressive and meaningful for people who have played that game.

So for the game itself, it's split up into two parts. The first part is the English version of the game, the second is the Last Mission game which takes place a few months after the end of X-2.

In regards to the English version, it was extremely generous of Square to let people who played the original game to load it in the English game. My saved game in Luca after passing the game twice was valid, so I could see the cutscenes and videos to see how they changed without having to play the game all over again. This is actually the first time I've seen them since I skipped the US release since I knew I was buying this version.

Oh dear, what did they do to Yuna and Lenne in the "1000 Words" video? They re-rendered the scenes so that the lips match the English words and added a few new scenes in there, but they're just so poorly done. The re-renderings don't look like Yuna, nor Lenne, and the video brightness is dramatic between the new scenes (extremely bright) and old scenes (extremely dark). "real Emotion" wasn't too bad, but they did do a "fake" widescreen where they cut off 25% of the video. Overall the video was a little more blurry than the original (yes, it's noticeable, especially on a 100"+ screen).

The voices weren't too bad as I'm inured to their voices from FFX original. Jade from Sweetbox isn't too bad, but Kumi Koda does have a more powerful voice. So in all, English part was okay, but I didn't get it for that.

Last Mission is an expanded mini-game that leads you up 80 floors of a newly discovered Tower. Yuna, Paine, and Rikku all received letters to visit the place and to go all the way to the top to find something special. Along the way (i.e. every 10 floors), there's a cutscene where the three of them discuss what has been going on with their lives. They laugh, fight, and reminisce. While it didn't contain any big shockers, it was a nice conclusion to the FFX saga. You have to load a completed game to play Last Mission. Since I loaded my game with Tidus saved, I probably got something different than a cleared game that didn't have Tidus coming back.

Anyhow, good game. I'm biased, and it shows in my ratings.

Rating: 4/4

(Here are the notes I took while ascending the tower. I spent 24 hours playing that game, from the night of Friday 2/27 to early Sunday morning 2/29. I'm too lazy to clean them up, but if you want, go ahead and read them.)

Started at 11pm, Friday. Around the 10th floor, get fire-proof is really helpful. I forgot what the combination is, but I know it requires a gunner and white mage.

Oh, get the festival outfit as soon as you can. With it, you can have the ability to earn magic points everytime you defeat an enemy. Couple this with a white mage, and you'll never have to worry about running low on HP.

After 10th floor, cutscene where Rikku explains what's been going on. Rin and Shinra are working together researching underseas. Rikku's father and brother are entrepaneuring, taking cues from O'aka with the hot springs in Gagazet (LeBlanc, Sano, Uno come in here too but I forgot why). Kilmari is a bit worried about the whole ordeal. Clasko is helpless as usual and gets help from the kid group.

In the early teens, Ice-proof is invaluable. It requires Berzerker outfit and singer.

4:05am
Level 15 is a bitch: stupid cannot get the two seals unlocked. You need to beat five enemies and place two items down. Took me forever to figure that out. And I hate that bitch guy who comes and spirits me away, bastard.

After level 20: there's a cut scene with Yuna wondering what's the big somethign at the top of the tower. They conclude that the tower might be as old as zanarkand, which gets Rikku asking how Nooj, Gippel, and Baralai are doing. Paine says that it's been a while since she's talked to them, but after their factions split, they've been together contemplating.

Past out at 6am, floor 26

Woke up at 10am and started playing again.
Floor 30: You need to drink two items to unlock and defeat some enemies. The cutscene on floor 30 has the gang looking at a sunset and Yuna saying that the sun's always the same, but the people aren't. She goes on to say that she has a boyfriend who is in Bisaid, where she's staying now.

Now it's 1:52pm
I've finished 40th floor. The boss on the 40th floor was a bit tough, but I have the defeat enemy/magic increase, and also "protect all" for a few turns. Wasn't too bad, although I think I need to level up.

The cutscene here has the girls talking under the moonlight about what they've gone through (refering to previous games). Paine says they should leave it in some permanent form so it won't be forgotten. Rikku makes fun of Paine saying she's not the author-type person. Paine asks what Rikku wants to be, she doesn't know, but takes offense and starts complaining about Yuna putzing around in Bisaid rather than living the adventurous life as she does. The Yuna and Rikku start bickering and Paine comes in to break them up.

It is now 5:15pm.
Just finished up to level 50. Cut scene has Rikku not wanting to go further, but Yuna says go on. They start talking about who it could be. Rin? LeBlanc? But no, it was Paine. She said she just wanted to have some fun again since it's been a while (3 months) since they were together. Despite finding out who it is, Yuna says to keep on going.

It's 6:45
Just finished up to level 60. However, I need to play that over. The boss, Ultimate Weapon, kicked my ass so I got out by a hair. I think that if I play it again, it'll be okay.

7:15 all done.
Cutscene: The evening sun (evening already?) reminds Paine of when Nooj got possessed by Shuuin and shot her along with Baralai and Gippel and thinking of the dark times after that. THose memories shoudl have been forgotten, but they weren't. Rikku mentions that she had the same kind of feeling when she first went to Zanarkand (cutscene shows intro to FFX) and how she was half crying thinking about what was going to happen to Yuna.

10:03pm
campfire
yuna is anxious to finish. rikku is tired and in a seemly bad mood, paine asks, himitsu. Yuna guess correctly, Rikku want sto go back to the way things were with the three of them. They talk some more and resolve their differences. Yuna has move on! (yeah, easy for her to sya, it'll be another three hours for me).

11:57pm
Played until the final boss. Frickin' beserk status, Yuna stripped down to her underwear. So frickin' confuse. I decided to use a saved game and go back a few floors and get dark knight outfit which has confuse proof.

3:20am
Fuckin' bitch, it's a three stage boss (a hydra). Disproportionally difficult. Just gotta keep whacking at it.

After the battle, the girls talk and admit that even though they're different now than they were before, they'll aways be inseparable; and with that, they walk through the door to the top of the tower (user gets control back).

At the top, there's is an anticlimatic nothing (well, just a not-too-intereting rock statue that resembles nothing). Rikku starts complaining (as well as I) about having to fight monsters, having argued with the other girls, just to get up here and to find nothing. Sarcastically, Rikku asks what Paine meant when she wrote the letter that invited them to go atop. Even if others can't see, she can says Paine and they stare at the vista above the clouds with birds fliying and the bright sun.

Ending is a video with Yuna (Mayuko Aoi) singing "To You." Featuring video from FFX and FF-2.

"Someday, somewhere in the sky...may we meet again"

And from now on, I can watch the video as many times as I want since I cleared the game.

Title: 3. まほろまてぃっく: 過去に追われるメイドさん (Vol. 3 Mahoromatic: A Maid Followed by Her Past)
Artist: ぢたま某 (Bow D(z)itama)
Creator: 中山文十郎 (Bunjuro Nakayama)
Book Size/Pages: A-5, 172pp., w/o furigana
Original Serialization: Comic GUM 8/00-2/01
Rating: 3/4

There are bonus 4-panel comics on the covers underneath the dust jacket and a little summary of the story so far.

As much as I like the little episodes of Mahoromatic, it was refreshing to be able to have a volume that covers a decent story that extends past just one chapter. While it didn't have the signature Mahoromatic fan-service as previous chapters, it was still a refreshing read from the previous volumes.

1. トワイライト～Twilight～: A new teacher appears at Suguru's school as a substitute teacher, named 檮流河 (Tou Ryuuga). He relays the message to Mahoro who seems to remember this name. That night, Mahoro battles Ryuuga who is actually an alien and enemy seeking revenge on Mahoro.

2. サーチライト～Searchlight～: At school, Ryuuga is talking to all the students asking them what they know about Suguru. Mahoro accosts him again at school and tells him that Suguru should not be involved in their little battle. She intends to kill him right there, but that would involve the public, so she backs off. At home, Suguru takes notice that Mahoro has been acting strangely lately after Ryuuga arrived.

3. ムーンライト～Moonlight～： The next day, Mahoro has a party at her house with Suguru and all his friends, including the teacher. Ryuuga unexpectedly attends it. After some thought, Suguru concludes that he must be an enemy of Mahoro and informs him subtly that he knows. Later, Ryuuga and Mahoro make a date for a duel.

4. ライムライト～Limelight～： Mahoro takes Suguru to the amusement park and spends one last day with him before she departs for her duel, one which she thinks she may not come back from.

5. スターライト～Starlight～： The duel occurs and it looks like Mahoro's going to lose. This is apparently the second time they've officially dueled, the first time was years ago when Ryuuga was defeated, but spared. He's fighting now to settle the score. Suguru finds out where Mahoro is through Slash by invoking his Master status and goes to protect Mahoro. Ryuuga realizes that Mahoro is no longer a fighting machine, but just wants to spend the remainder of her time with Suguru. With that, he admits defeat.

Title: フルーツバスケット (Fruits Basket) Vol. 3
Artist/Author: 高屋奈月 （Natsuki Takaya)
Book Size/Pages: Small B-6, 192pp., w/furigana
Original Serialization: Hana to Yume (6/99-11/99)
Rating: 2/4

Time to catch up on some girls's comics. Bonuses for the tanks are some notes from the author (scribbled on the side at the beginning of each chapter, where they in the monthlies?) and some one page gag previews for upcoming chapters. All I remember is that the author has a facination with Final Fantasy. There's also a summary page at the beginning, but it doesn't cover much.

I didn't think that this volume was at all interesting. It basically takes place during Valentine's Day/White Day and pretty much just has Tohru, Yuki, and Kyou interacting and a few comments about how Tohru has been a positive influence on the cat and the mouse.

13. After winter break, a new school semester starts. There's a marathon and the school kids all participate even though Yuki is sick. While she's running, Tohru encounters a person sitting on the side of the road who sets a trap for Kyou. Turns out that he's also part of the Souma family, his name being 溌春 (Hatsu Haru, or Haru for short). He and Kyou get in a fight with Yuki and Tohru watching.

14. While those two are scrapping it out, Yuki explains that Haru can't win against Kyou. Yuki then passes out from his illness and Haru transforms into an Ox (with Tohru's help) and carries him home. There, Haru explains that he has feelings for Yuki because he's the mouse (from the story of the zodiac characters) and is the only one who respects him.

15. It's Valentine's Day and Kyou isn't in the spirit to celebrate despite having girls giving him chocolates. He discovers that Kagura has come to visit him and wants to spend some time with him. Shigure suggests that they go on a double date with Tohru and Yuki and arrange the date for tomorrow. Afterwards, Shigure pushes some of Kyou buttons, but Tohru consoles him.

16. While the kids are out on a date, Shigure goes to the Souma house to deliver Tohru's chocolates, even though his editor's in a rush for a story. At the Souma house, he and Hattori (I think that's his name) they discuss how Tohru has affected the people living around her. As then come back, Shigure has a visit by his editor

17. Momiji, who lives with Hattori, wants to return the favor by inviting Tohru to the Souma hot springs. While there was some resistance at first, Momiji recites the story about the stupid traveler.

18. The gang spends a day at the hot springs owned by another member of the Souma family, and a very eccentric one that that named Mesyoo. Tohru brings the picture of her mom to the hotsprings. Afterwards, they play some pingpong and Yuki gives Tohru a ribbon for White Day.

This is one of the movies where reviewers are irrelevant to me. This movie was recommended to me by a friend from Japan late last year. I remember looking for it on DVD on Amazon Japan, but couldn't find it, so I didn't pursue it until I saw it again at Blockbuster a few days ago. But now that I look again, Amazon Japan has both the regular edition and the deluxe edition (with more bonuses than the US version, and a DTS soundtrack). Very tempting.

The story is about a young girl who comes from the future to save the world from annihilation by aliens.

Many of the nay-sayers about this movie are correct: Returner takes a lot of ideas from different movies including Independence Day, ET, Back to the Future, Terminator, and Matrix. But SO WHAT. Almost anything in released now is a rip-off of something else (c'mon, how many times has the plot of "The Passion of Christ" been done on film? At local church plays?). It's how you weave it together and make it an experience for the audience that counts. By no means is Returner award winning stuff, on the contrary, it's just a fun movie to watch. Sometimes fun things don't necessarily need to be original. For someone with my interests and tastes (especially for well crafted time traveling movies), this was a very entertaining movie.

I'm too lazy to look this up, but Takeshi Kaneshiro looks a lot like Samanosuke from the Onimusha games. I don't know if it's a coincidence (like how Ben Affleck looks like the protagonist from the Final Fantasy Movie), or if they actually modeled the character after him. His acting is a bit stiff, but I didn't expect too much and actually was a good counter-balance to Ann Suzuki's part. I have to be honest and say I think she's cute, and that's what made this a 4/4 instead of a 3/4.

The action sequences in here weren't particular spectacular, but was a nice balance between traditional kung-fu fighting and some gun fights, all with common slow-mo and freeze frame camera work. There are a few plot twists in the movie which made it all that more interesting. At the end, I was almost going to give a bad review because it ended on a bad note at where I thought the ending out be...but then the movie went on.

I think it's just one of those movies you have to enjoy without prejudice. I don't know how the dub track went, but I hear it's okay. It's pretty nice that I was able to understand most of what was spoken in the movie without subtitles, including English, Japanese, and Chinese (although I did leave the subtitles on).

Rating: 4/4