Paper Moon

( Behind the cut: Eureka Seven, Fate/Unlimited Codes, Fullmetal Alchemist, Kyou Kara Maou, Shakugan no Shana, Soul Eater, and PUPPIES! )

Hmmm, I think that's it for tonight's scanspam. For the record, I was going to go the extra mile and scan this piece of terrible beauty for y'all to enjoy...But then I got tired. And the darn poster is too wrinkly to make a decent scan of anyway.

So, the bonus drama CD that came bundled with the second Kyou Kara Maou sountrack...

Hehe, WOW.

I have to admit, however, I am always annoyed when major plot revelations like this are confined to tie-in media. I mean, if I'm watching the anime series, then I'm watching the anime series. I shouldn't have to buy all of the artbooks and soundtracks and other related media in order to piece together a huge freakin' part of the plot. I prefer it when tie-in media enhances the experience of the watching/reading the primary source, so to speak, but not when it becomes essential to understanding the primary source. Side note: Another reason why the Marvel/DC model of super crossover events annoys me, and that's also the major annoyance that I had with the Star Wars prequels. But that's a rant for another time.

On the other hand, though... squeeeeeeeeeeeee! ( Vague spoiler! )

Edit: As long as we're talking about plot bombs, try this one on for size: Code Geass R2 episode 5. Which perfectly distills everything that I love about this series, namely, it's unabashed awfulness. Money quotes from Jason:

Consider: this episode’s climax involved C.C. trapped in a tub of tomatoes (being used to make the world’s largest pizza) with Kallen (in an animal costume) desperately chasing after her. Shirley (dressed up in a waitress / swimsuit combo that the Umisho girls gawked at) is chasing Kallen, and the giant tub of tomatoes is being transported by a mecha piloted the third most awesome knight of Britannia (who apparently has nothing else better to do with his time). Meanwhile, the seventh most awesome knight of Britannia is chasing after a cat that almost got run over by said mecha. And I haven’t even gotten to the star of this show, because he ran out of breath and is on the verge of collapsing, his “brother” who has basically pledged to kill for the sake of their love, and mobile suit pilot turned housewife turned Duke turned teacher turned pin up model. And all of that connects back to Japan’s fight for independence from America.

Whew.

Code Geass R2 is awesome.

[...]

I’ve been thinking about the next level after train wreck. Code Geass R2 is definitely pushing that envelope. When one character wearing a ridiculous costume trips and falls because a giant pizza baking contest got screwed up and is seen by another character wearing a bikini and fishnets is considered a major plot point, it’s almost beyond train wreck status. Generally, a plot train wreck is something disastrous yet inevitable or awful yet fascinating. Maybe an earthquake? The G.W. Bush presidency?

I should stop myself before I quote Jason's entire entry.

Tsubasa is on hiatus this week. AGAIN.

Well, now where am I going to get my weekly dose of mindless entertainment?

Ah, kkm_rewatch provides.

(Yeah, I'd say that the first twenty or so episodes of Kyou Kara Maou are fairly mindless, but still entertaining. And the series turns a corner pretty soon after that.)

Blah blah blah, there's a lot of exciting news coming out of the New York Anime Festival. Code Geass on Adult Swim, so now you can ALL enjoy the trainwreck of trainwrecks! Kyou Kara Maou manga licensed, but will we ever see the novels, and will anybody rescue the anime from the black hole created by Geneon's collapse?

But the one thing that really caught my eye was this: An X-Men shoujo manga. No, seriously. Money quote:

The first, X-Men, was described as a shōjo title — "X-Men meets Fruits Basket or Ouran High School Host Club" according to one panelist — features Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning as an all-boys' school, with the only female student being Kitty Pryde. The work will be aimed at a manga audience; while the characters will be based on famous X-Men heroes, the manga will not require any prior knowledge of the original X-Men comics. The manga is scripted by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, with art by Indonesia-based artist Anzu.

Okay.

That sounds kind of terrible.

But, I dunno. If they're really going to go all the way and rip off Ouran, I hope they recast Wolverine as Kitty's tranvestite mother. I mean, if you're going to make a terrible manga, you gotta make a really terrible manga. That's why Code Geass is so good. If it were a bit less awful then it would be merely awful; but it's SO awful that it's actually incredibly entertaining.

ETA: The official press release has more information.

Okay, so Xavier's school is still a school for mutants. Why is it an all-boys school, then? How or why Kitty is enrolled in an all-boys school is not explained. Oh wait, the press release makes it sound kind of like Xavier's school just happens to have an entirely male student body, and Kitty just happens to be the first girl enrolled. (Is it because she's the first girl mutant ever discovered?) Eh, it's really hard to tell from the press release. So Kitty gets caught in a social war between the popular kids (the Hellfire Club, led by Pyro, apparently) and the misfits. And she sides with the misfits. And then the misfits band together and form the X-Men. Hooray!

Sadly, this does not sound anything like Ouran High School Host Club. Mmmmm, needs more male cross-dressing, elaborate tea parties, and lesbian theater productions.

ETA 2: The more I think about this, the more dissappointed I am that Emma Frost hasn't been mentioned so far. Now, we've only got one press release to work from, so that doesn't mean that she won't be in the manga or anything... But if she isn't, what a waste! She would have been perfect as the Queen Bitch Popular Girl who starts out as the heroine's nemesis, turns out to be more complex over time, and then eventually becomes the heroine's reluctant ally.

I don't know how convincing of a shoujo nemesis Pyro can be AU-ed into. Then again, if they keep the detail about him being a dashing romance writer on the side... That will be kind of cool. ;)

ETA 3: The Beat has pictures of the preliminary designs for Wolverine and Jean. They look good! I can't tell how old Jean is supposed to be, though. Is she a student, or an adult?