2. Heiji received letter that claims one of Shinichi’s deductions from years ago was wrong, so here they are, ‘they’ being Conan, Ran, Kogoro, Heiji and Kazuha.
3. Conan has a really bad cold and accidentally takes Haibara’s prototype APTX 4869 instead of cold medication, leading to… Shinichi.
4. Conan therefore disappears, and the villagers find the body of a high school student floating in the river. He’s a Shinich suffering from amnesia. However, Ran behaves as if she doesn’t feel much for him.
5. They try all sorts of things to bring back Shinichi’s memory, but the result is Shinichi holding the murder weapon with blood stains all over him. Is he really the murderer?

6. And what will happen to Ran, who meets the much-feared spirit, Shiragami-sama, in the forest? 

Can’t wait for next week!

A closer look at the DreamWorks News section (as below)? Er… Huh? Astrid is… who? Fishlegs is… what?

I hope it’s just a typo, but what is going on? Who is Astrid? Is Fishlegs not Hiccup’s lanky, bespeckled best friend who needs floaters to swim? Is my memory playing tricks?

Maybe Harry Potter really was about a boy called Harry who goes to school and meets: Draco, a bully who thinks he should be the most amazing amazing thing; Ron, a wizard big in size but small in brains; and Asterickus, who partners with Harry in Gryffindor.

Note to self: don’t sweat the small stuff. Names are just names.

1. Jodie-sensei gets all excited about seeing Akai again (so do I, but at the prospect of a nice long Black Org arc), even though this Akai has lost all powers of speech.

2. The bank robbers (five in total) confiscate all the mobiles (though not Akai’s, because, as Jodie-sensei explains, he’s mute and doesn’t have one), then they split the people in the bank into two groups: ones there on their own and ones with friends. They then asked the ones on their own to tape up the other group’s eyes and bind their hands.

3. Jodie-sensei says she needs to go the the toilet and, er, see above. It’s OK. After that, the robber gets a proper knee in the face.

4. Jodie-sensei meets up with Conan and Co, and they talk about how strange it is that the robbers are using their own containers and only the manager has been told to fill them up. Not only so, the robbers seem to pay a lot of attention to the time.

5. Another two robbers investigate the toilet and Jodie-sensei gets the electric shock treatment. The robber she took out is out of action, so the other two decide to peel off his robber clothes and pretend he’s just a knocked out customer. So, down to four.

6. Conan and Co managed to stay undetected in a cubicle.

7. The police have surrounded the bank, and Haibara finds it weird that the robbers haven’t made any demands. Why else would they take hostages? She reckons they’ve got a clever escape plan. I reckon there must be some deeper meaning because this is not a filler arc.

8. The leader of the robbers complain about how little money the manager’s packed, then shows him a piece of paper and tell him to follow the instructions on there (or die!)

9. The robbers ask the customers who came on their own to tape up their own eyes, and they will bind their hands later.

10. The robber who got taken out by Jodie-sensei phones one of the others to tell him he’s woken up, but feels too unsteady to make it out of the toilet on his own, so the other robber (let’s call him Robber 2) agreed to go give him a hand, even though time is running out.

11. The robber in the toilet is actually Conan on his voice changer. Conan leads Robber 2 on a chase and knocks him out by pulling toilet paper from his feet. It’s better than banana skin.

12. Shounen Tanteidan plan to reuse their strategy and grabbed the phone from Robber 2′s pocket in order to find other robbers’ numbers. But instead, they get through to his girlfriend. They are unable to find more criminal contacts in his phonebook.

13. Conan realises something very important. I don’t.

14. Cut to outside the toilet: the bank manager finishes whatever he’s been told to do on a computer, and the main robber gives him an electric shock. He also says there’s not enough time to bother with the two in the toilet, so, let’s enter the last stage…

Thoughts:

1. It has to be a lot worse than a bank robbery, right? (See Conan’s face.) Are there bombs in the cases they brought along? But the robbers are in the building too. So maybe they’re after people in the building? Maybe they’re after Akai, who may or may not be Akai?

2. What did the manager have to do on the computer? He definitely wasn’t just scrolling through manga scanlations. Electronic transfer? Too easy?

3. Akai can’t be Akai. That’d be too straight forward. Maybe Akai is actually Bourbon, and this is his way of infiltrating the FBI? So Oyika may still be Akai? Or maybe that’s what we’re meant to think, so Akai really is Akai. I give up. Next chapter, where are you?

See the full version here.

Screenshots along the scale are from Gintama, Toradora, Lucky Star OVA, Saint Seiya Hades and Higurashi.

Now that the chara intro is on hiatus, Akikan! picks up a little, and there were a few amusing moments in this episode.

What happens…

1. Kakeru’s flashback, which later turns out to be from an incident two years ago where Najimi got kidnapped and he managed to wrestle the gun from the kidnappers. He shot them, but luckily the kidnappers where only lightly wounded. After that everyone avoided him and only Najime would talk to him. This is why he moved.

2. Kakeru thinks it’s bad that Melon stays at home all day and does nothing but watch telly. In order to avoid her turning into a hikkimori, he kneels down and begs Najimi (whose father can pull strings in the school) to let Melon transfer to his school.

3. Hidehiko Otoya (aka Creepy Guy) forces his way into Kakeru’s flat and explains that he wants them to join Akikan Elect, which is a battle between akikans to answer the question once and fall all: which is better, aluminium can or steel can? Kakeru refuses to let Melon participate due to anti-violence flashback effect.

4. Melon transfers to the school as Kakeru’s cousin from Denmark. It’s then just a case of school day, Najimi getting jealous and a little upset, meeting random friends, and Melon in annoying tsuntsun mode that brings a bad name for tsunderes for far too long. Oh, and they accidentally get locked in the cold room, but get out again fairly quickly (after enough time’s been given to complete the flashback scene).

5. Grape girl appears at the end to look threatening.

Thoughts…

1. Kakeru, must you always be half-naked when drinking Melon? It’s not like you don’t know that can’s going to turn into a girl and blast you with her melon attack.

2. Dear Creepy Otoya, I agree with you. It’s so boring having a photo of Kakeru in school uniform for filing purposes. You should definitely get Airin (Kizaki desu) to get you one of him half naked and flexing his muscles.

3. Najimi-sama S-mode? I’m happy to know it exists, though sadly we didn’t see it fully on in this episode.

4. Kakeru, you were only kneeling in front of Najimi-sama in order to look up her skirt, right? The camera angle never lies.

5. I’d like to see more of Yurika (spot the yuri in her name) and her experiments. Can we only live on vitamin suppliments? No. But this is a world where empty cans come to life. So maybe yes.

6. I have a feeling that Grape Girl is going to be really annoying, but hope I’m wrong.

 It took me over a year to read the first 50 odd pages of Twilight. What can I say? I prefer male leads who aren’t described so often as ‘perfect’ and chemistry based on more than what enters his nostrils. I also prefer female leads who pass the Howl’s Test: would I still like her if she were to turn into an old hag? In the case of Bella, it’s a resounding NO.

But now that the film is out and I can’t cross the street without seeing a zombie-esque Edward peering out from the side of a bus, seems like the time to finish the book has come. So it was that I brought it onto the plane, and polished it off on the way to Moscow. Well, it was better than the on flight entertainment, which may only be true because I was flying with Aeroflot.

Reading it brought back memories from shoujo manga marathon days.

Thoughts:

1. Most memorable words for Bella’s feelings for Edward: ‘obessed’; what she sees in him: ‘his perfection’; what she does in his presence: ‘[obey]‘.

2. Sai-dojikko-moe Round 1: Bella vs Matsuri. Bella: 1; Matsuri: 1000000.

3. Why was she not constantly dying in Phoenix before she met him? He only says her time wasn’t up then. Does that mean apart from him, she’s got another stalker who’s a shinigami? Will Shinigami-san (Shin-chan for short) resemble someone from Bleach or will she have Ryuk looking over her shoulder? Will Shin-chan be Edward’s rival in love?

4. Actually, it’s got to be Ryuk. Why else is there an apple on the cover?

5. I love the cover.

6. This book has nothing to do with love.

7. Oh look, pairing off. Real love is always linear in the end, so don’t taint it by making it two-dimensional with all that triangle and polygon stuff.

8. No sense of self-preservation? Edward, why so confused? Here, you don’t need to study Bella. You just need to read certain shoujo mangas.

9. Oooh, self sacrifice while worrying about him? Bella, you still have a long way to go, and the Queen of Doormats is still firmly in Hatsumi‘s grasp. Before possible assault by a group of guys, you were planning to fight, yes? Look to Hatsumi for the ultimate doormat answer: you should apologise to your attacker.

10. Yay! Fight scene! Oh, wait, she’s fainted, so no fight scene after all. Just the aftermath. Never mind. I’ll just imagine Edward vs Alucard in my head. … Er. Sorry Edward. RIP.

The story revolves around a typical high school boy named Kakeru Daichi and the can of melon juice soda that he bought from a vending machine. The can suddenly transforms into a beautiful but standoffish girl that Kakeru nicknames Melon, and more Akikan (empty can) girls appear. However, Akikan girls need to be infused with carbon dioxide from kissing to survive.

I thought I’d see it because:

1. it’s adapted from a light novel;

2. I need to know if it’s as bad as I imagine it being…

Sounds like a plot someone thought of when drinking a can of melon soda. “Wouldn’t it be great it it turned into a girl! All sorts of other things turn into girls! Empty cans should turn into girls too!”

Thing is, someone actually wrote this, and got published, and then managed to get an anime deal. There has to be a grain of good in that plot. Otherwise the world is a sad place.

However, any hope there was got dashed to pieces when I watched the OP.

This is what I learned from the OP:

1. the harem lead is an annoying lech-type normal boring guy;

2. the main female chara is a super annoying (and I hate to say this about a tsundere) tsundere type, and will have a super-natural equivalent of a paper fan hidden up her sleeve;

3. that professor dude with a female sidekick (who probably kicks) is probably the main ‘baddie’, and you can tell from the way he dangles his tongue when he licks his lips. He probably also has an element of Dear Kimura-sensei from Azumanga Daioh, but won’t be as funny;

4. the girl with the antenna hair has got to be a childhood friend, as she doesn’t look like an Akikan-girl. She will probably be stupidly in love with the harem lead, but the harem lead will still this he’s no good with girls;

5. there will be lolis and they will be annoying;

6. I will end on 6 because it’s a good number. Summarising the above: if Akikan is the world, then if a genie were to appear from an empty can and grant me a wish, I’d wish for the Apocalypse. OK, maybe spare the cat. Also, CLAMP School, anyone?

Additional things I learned from wasting an additional 20 or so minutes of my life:

1. there may be as much male nudity as Inukami, but it will be inferior because there are no elephants;

2. I may carry on wasting my life with this series if there are to be more yaoi scenes between Dr Creepy and the harem lead; there’s no hope for nice boat, but at least there’s hope for other forms of punishment, though I won’t be holding my breath.

By the end of the episode, I felt like I’d been trampled on by Izumi too.

Not that there weren’t nice fight scenes, and not that it didn’t have its share of Kemeko-in-a-crazy-outfit.

We even had Kiriko remove the Rei-patch only to reveal that it’s more like a Kenpachi power-up patch, even though we don’t get to see much of the powered up version. And we had a touching moment when Kemeko realised that Sanpeita never really saw her as his betrothed because… because… she’s just too sexy for him. But said in a touching moment way, of course.

But none of that makes up for the fact that this a last episode that can’t function without a season 2, or at least OVAs. We don’t get a resolution at all. We don’t even get the answer to:

1. Who killed the Chairman the the Mishima Group and why?

2. Who is the girl (saying she wanted to meet Sanpeita) who appears in the last few minutes of the episode?

3. Is Kyte (remember him?) the Renji to M.M.’s Rukia?

4. Is the above an insult to Ichigo, because that would equate him to someone who sprouts from his skull?

5. Why would something that breaks the first law of thermodynamics (the Nanoball) manifest itself as a plant? And how did it plant itself in Sanpeita’s head?

But most important of all, now that it’s time to say goodbye to the crazy OP and the oh so innocent-looking ED, the question I have to ask is: can I be bothered with the manga? Will it just leave me with even more questions after even more wasted hours?

Well, I just flicked through the first volume, and can say that at least it provides this answer on page one: the girl from 10 years ago gave Sanpeita the Nanoball and asked him to eat it, and said, ‘When this seed sprouts… When that happens… I’m going to marry Saipeita. It’s a promise.’ Dare I hope for more answers?

So it was that I caught up with the latest episode of the show. Sadly, episode 520, the last one this year, is Not Good in more ways than one. I can’t remember this episode’s manga equivalent, so am going to blame it on its filler status.

1. The wine tasting and wine cellar setting has been done before, so it was hardly exciting. I think it was in the Detective Conan: 16 Suspects OAV.

2. It was one of those ‘audience knows who did it’ episodes, though that usually comes with a ‘how did s/he create an alibi?’ or at least ‘where’s the body?’ But here, all we have is ‘yeah, we know what happened, but how is Conan going to expose him? Don’t tell me he’s going to turn Kogoro into Sleeping Kogoro and persuade everyone to go to Where The Body Is… In other words, really boring.

3. Since when does Ran see the scene in the top panel and just decide to leave it? And since when does Conan think it’s OK to leave it too, when his mur-dar is beeping on full volume? And since when does Ran say nothing when people ask if anyone’s seen the grey haired man? I mean, it wasn’t just Conan who saw him. Is Ran secretly evil? Or is she only secretly evil when she wears pink? Give me my Angel back!

Anyway. It will be manga only for the next few weeks, as the next episode won’t be aired until 19th January (a special!). Well, at least in the manga, Stuff seems to be Happening, by which I mean good on you, Takagi. Who cares about the Black Org when you have your moments with Sato?

Actually, more Black Org please.

Library War: A story of love and friendship between armed librarians fighting against censorship? A story about a girl who would rather go to prison than hand over her favourite fairytale growing into a young woman who dodges bullets to protect books and artworks, chasing the shadow of the ‘prince’ who once saved her favourite book?

No. It’s all about bears: a love story between a young woman who punches a bear and a man who once punched a bear.

Extra notes: For those who can’t get enough of Kyouko-sama’s voice in this season’s Skip Beat!, by all means check out Library War. The main chara, Kasahara, is also voiced by Inoue Marina. Don’t skip the OP if you do, because it’s something special!