durendal

Ouch, yeah, the Chimera, that was actually pretty sad, and yes, it's part of the story. But that is also the reason why the Elric Brothers have been pushing so hard with their quest. That is one incident that they could never forget. Although I think that they downplayed it in the new series. You might say that is also one of the "emotional value" of the series. Nevertheless, I'm quite happy with the ending of the manga. The ending of the first series really left me with a "WTF" moment. With the way things are, it might take you a while to finish Dragonball. Because there are still a lot more story arcs to cover, like the Red Ribbon Army arc and more tournament battles, which I think there are 3 if I'm not mistaken.

Ryuki, the first FMA series were not exactly consistent with the manga, and several elements were changed. True, the first series was somewhat depressing, especially the ending. Additionally, they changed the story halfway that really degraded the story like . But I can guarantee that the second series FMA: Brotherhood is a lot better. For one thing, the new series includes the character Lin and a lot of characters that make the ensemble good. Sticks very closely to the manga. And lastly, seeing that the manga recently concluded, I'm pretty certain that the animation might near its end as well, so you won't be left hanging. With regards to Dragonball, what compels me to watch it was the development of Goku. Another interesting aspect of dragonball is that the fights are utterly unexpected. I mean there was a point during a match that a certain individual won because of a ridiculously funny reason. Of course these all depends on ones tastes.

By the way, just to add to what I said, you might not find the "emotional involvement" that you found in Naruto because Dragonball is basically an action anime and doesn't quite have the drama that are prevalent in current anime. The story concentrates more on the struggles of Goku and his development into adulthood as a martial artist.

I have seen the original dragonball and I did enjoy it, the pacing and the fights are very well animated. Although it gets tiring eventually (this is probably because I kept watching reruns over reruns of a same arc in local TV). The story does pick up in the tournament. You get to see how powerful the old perverted Roshi actually is.

OMFG! The FMA manga just ended with Chapter 108. That means the animation will be heading to the same direction. And here I was worried that they would do a lot of those filler episodes just to keep the show from catching up with the manga.

For those of you who are familiar with Saint Seiya, here's a nice transformers parody of the opening credits: And here is the original saint seiya opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px2zX-M2alQ

sorry durendal, I seem to have missed this part. I'm open to many different types of series. I've got a thing for some j-drama, enjoy series like densha otoko, ohitorisama, atashinchi no danshi, binbo danshi, zettai kareshi... I've never been able to get what moe really is, but I have watched and enjoyed mai hime, ouran host club, furuba, honey and clover, tenchi muyo, haruhi no suzumiya no yuutsu, ... are any of these moe? Ah, "Moe" is actually one of those shows with cutesy girls like K-on, or To heart. I won't consider any of those titles you mentioned as Moe, but more in the line of "adventures of a girl doing cute or hot things". It's not actually a genre, but more of a term used to denote a female character acting "hot", '"cute" or anything that would be attractive to men.

Ooh, that's right, Eether. Hokuto no Ken. That's another kickass series. What's not to love with a line "you're already dead", and boom the head explodes. It's really one of the long series with gratuitous violence. Considering that it was an 80's anime series, it's one of the pioneer series in the industry. Although you might not like the animation, the series is still good. Here's a funny clip for it: Like one of the comments said, in DBZ, it take goku 20 episode to kill someone, while on fist of the north star, when soneone see's Kenshiro, they're already dead. Cannon fodder fights are ridiculously short, while boss fights are epic.

I think that's just the first part you're watching because he was gathering his crew. As the series goes on, Luffy and the gang will face tougher and tougher opponents. Well, I can say that Luffy's naivete rivals that of Naruto, especially the determination. Just keep on watching, I wasn't that interested with One Piece at first, but as the story goes farther and farther, little did I know, I was already hooked. I guess it's the silliness that makes you think Pokemon.

No, Tenchi Muyo was originally created as an OVA. I believe that only Ryo-ohki is the only true Tenchi Muyo. Other spin off of the tenchi series and TV series was somewhat stale compared to the original. And if you want a series with hundreds of episodes, then you might want to check out Doraemon with 1787 episodes or Chibi Maruko chan with 757 episodes and still running!

By the way, might I add Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood? Don't watch the first Full Metal Alchemist anime as it skewed somewhere along the middle and turned into something of a fiasco. The new series, FMA Brotherhood is completely faithful to the manga. Speaking of FMA, you might also want to check out Full Metal Panic. Even though it involves giant robots, it's main focus is on the character Sagara Sousuke, who is a 17 year old teen who grew up in the Afgan as a guerilla soldier, trying to fit in a normal japanese class. The funny part about this is that he goes to school carrying his glock and interprets a lot of common situation as a terorrist attack. Imagine the chaos it involves. But the series has a serious side as it also covers a much more deeper plot twist involving international espionage and terrorism.

Rurouni Kenshin would have been great if they followed the manga faithfully. Truthfully speaking, the best arc was the Kyoto Arc, after that, the Amakusa arc left me wondering what happened to RK, then later arcs are completely redundant. I only later realized that the Kyoto Arc was the last final cannon story in the Rurouni Kenshin anime. Even if they released the OVA to cover the rest of the manga, it was a disappointment as it didn't feature the most awesome scene involving Aoshi and Saitoh working together, as well as the clash between Kenshin's side and Enishi's henchies. Not to mention the manga also features Yahiko's development into becoming part of Kenshin's regular battle group. As for Yuyu Hakusho, it was completely faithful to the manga. But the story still centers around Yusuke, and only in the later arcs that the past of the other 2 (Hiei and Kurama) are explored. Although the story were unique at the time, Yuyu Hakusho has become the template for other stereotypical anime. I really can't comment of Heroic Age as I have never seen it. There is one anime that I remember loving. Fushigi Yuugi, or Mysterious Play as they translated it. Story is something like an Neverending Story where the Heroine got sucked into a book while her friend reads her adventures. For the later parts, it has many tear jerker moments, and is only one of the few anime that actually made me cry. Don't get the wrong impression as it is not a drama anime, but more of a comedy with some action mixed in. But the drama surfaced later as the story reached it climax. And yeah, Classic Dragonball was awesome. It's refreshing to see little Son Goku gets his ass kicked and actually use tactics during fights instead of the usual pissing contest. Don't get me started with Dragonball Z.

V guyver: No, I still haven't created a boot disk seeing that the DVD drive has problems. Also, I fail to see how useful a boot disk would be if I can just turn the drive into a slave and copy everything off it. Well, here we are again. After less than a month of usage and another problem has persisted. This time it doesn't show me a BSOD. Just a simple "error loading operating system" appears. I swear, I'm getting tired of fixing that damned PC. Anybody ever experienced this before? I'm inclined to think that the HD is going bad. With the bad clusters that happened previously, I won't be surprised if that would be the case. So my question, do I throw that HDD away and buy a new one, or do you think it's still salvageable?

Ah, but the fun part has not yet begun. One Piece is about the crew of the Straw Hats Pirate. What you have seen is just the captain, and not of the entire crew yet. Perhaps you're mind might change once you see Roronoa Zoro the Pirate Hunter that uses 3 swords or Sanji the Cook with a kickass kick. It's the silliness that's quite entertaining and makes it unpredictable. I was also skeptical when I first tried reading One Piece, but as I progressed with the story, I got drawn more and more until I got hooked. By the way, if you decide to watch One Piece, don't watch the funimation version as they cut out a large chunk of the series, sometimes omitting an entire episode.

I've seen the animation of One Piece and fortunately it does not suffer the same drawbacks as the other manga to anime conversions. Storywise, it is definitely faithful. Although I've not seen any of the One Piece fillers, I have heard that they are quite enjoyable. I have some more other anime recommendations, but I doubt you'll like them since most of them have something to do with giant robots. Also, are you open to other genre of anime like "Moe" (Mo-eh) or the sorts? It's somewhat hard to confine yourself to the genre that Naruto is in.

One Piece. Definitely One Piece. How can you go wrong with Japan's number 1 manga which a single volume selling 2 million copies?

Yeah, Annihilation was awesome. And so was Conquest. But war of kings was a bit iffy for me too. The interesting parts about War of kings was the concept of the raptors. Wasn't able to catch up with Realm of Kings so i really can't comment on that. Civil War was awesome. Planet Hulk was awesome. But World War Hulk was somewhat of a "meh" for me. I guess it's the plot twist that killed it for me. How cool or rare is it when you get to see the Hulk kick the @$$ of every marvel super hero. I didn't quite enjoy secret invasion and Dark Reign. I actually hated Dark Reign. So Seige is a welcome story for me. You are right about DC though. They really do make good stories. I mean the Sinestro War and the next arc prior to the Blackest Night was good story telling. Although i have yet to read Blackest Night. What really impressed me about DC is their 52 arc. Who would have thought that the idea of throwing lameass third rate characters together in a big event would be so entertaining. I think it is actually the lesser known characters that pulls the story instead of the "Trinity" (Supes, Bats and WW). I haven't been keeping up with DC lately so I was wondering how the Last Stand of Krypton story arc fares.

Funny how boredom made me stop editing this and boredom caused me to resume editing.

Started reading again. This time, I'm up to siege. Interesting turn of events. Looks like this arc has been brewing for the past 7 years, and Osborn is finally going to get what's coming for him.

Well, I guess you could say that they were trying to prolong the series by a number of episodes whereas it should have ended for shorter. The heavy use of panning and pauses really destroyed the momentum and adrenaline of the story. I'm not talking about animation quality, but more on the storyboard quality. You could say that it was the pacing. I would have prefered that they made fillers than "dragonballized" the show. That was a point in the series where the anime was already catching up with the manga.

Well, I think the main difference between Mr. Takaya and Mr. Kishimoto is that Naruto is released weekly while Guyver is released monthly. The gap in between chapters might be a big factor as to the disparity of the two titles' quality. I would have surely appreciated the animated version, but I was so disgusted at how they animated the whole "Chasing Sasuke" arc prior to Shippuden that the same impression got stuck on me when I watched Shippuden.

Hehehe. I shan't say anything even if it pains me to keep what's going to happen to myself.

"Tai" [対] can either mean opposing, against or anti, depending on how it is used. "Han" [反] can also mean anti-, but "han" is usually associated with the term "rebel". So a "Han Chronos Seifu Soshiki" [反クロノス政府組織] is "anti Chronos Goverment Organization". Additionally, "Han" is a much more serious term as opposed to "tai". So labeling anything with a "han" is already considered on the level of being traitorous. Also, "han" is never used as "versus". Also, combining the two together and you get "Hantai" [反対] or "Objection" An example of this term "han" is used in the old chinese propaganda "Fan Qing Fu Ming" [反清復明] or Rebel against the Qing and restore the Ming, a term used during the Qing Dynasty in China. A lot of Japanese terms has similarities in a single english equivalent, the only difference is the severity of how it is used.

Well, Ryuki, considering that Itachi slaughtered the Uchiha's and left Sasuke alive definitely leaves one to speculate as to why. Regarding naruto, I'm thinking that his final clash with Sasuke will be the biggest trigger to his behavioural change. Recently, even though he is still reckless, he has shown more maturity as he continues with his battles. Spoiler warning for Ryuki, do not read as this has not happened yet in the anime

Well, regarding Naruto's rank as a Genin, it isn't really determined on how powerful you are, but determined on how you think during battle. In the chuunin exam, even though Naruto defeated Neji, and didn't even lose once, he wasn't promoted to Gennin. Also, a great example is Shikamaru, he lost, yet he is the only one of Naruto's peers to ever get promoted to chuunin. With all things considered, I think that the current Naruto has matured enough to pass that condition.