Azure Flame Reloaded

A normal day at Azure Flame.

It’s been a year of ups and downs, of anime gems and utter disappointments- a year when I’ve alternated between craving more and feeling utterly fed up with the continuing deluge of episodes that take no account of the fact that people might have other things to do than stay in and watch all day. Nonetheless, in true years-end tradition, we must review all the new series in an Annual Round-Up, a project which I meant to periodically update through the year but ended up writing at the last minute again.

As always, red titles are those which were dropped, and blues are the picks of the year. Come back on Tuesday for the New Year Rumble, in which we take a look at the year in the life of Azure Flame.

Continue Reading »

Reviewed this week: Clannad 2, ef 2, Genshiken 2 1-2, Gundam 00 2, Hero Tales 1, Higurashi Kai 14, Kaiji 2, Minami-ke 1-2, Mononoke 12, Moyashimon 1, Mushi-Uta 12, Rental Magica 2, SaiMono II 21, Seirei no Moribito 25-6, Shana II 2, Sketchbook 1

..and in manga: Elfen Lied 78, HxH 262, Tsubasa 169

Continue Reading »

It’s that time again, when I write about all the anime to come in the next month or so, ignoring the fact that everyone else does this already. I’ve given up on the whole predicting what I will or won’t watch, since it’s laughably inaccurate- let’s just get down to what will be replacing the spring and summer series on our viewing schedules.

Moonlight Mile season 2

I did try to get on with the first season of Moonlight Mile, but after a barely comprehensible opening episode and warnings of extreme MANLINESS ahead, I never did continue with it. I’m not sure if anyone (other than Kryptfo?) actually watched to the end of season one, but if they did, they’ll probably be ready for more STRAIGHT adventures with the manly men of space. Continue Reading »

Interested in yuri manga and other obscure titles? Since I don’t have much to say about the vast majority of the Comic-Con licenses, just make your way over to ANN instead.

This week, we are joined in the newsroom by El Cazador’s LA, who takes time out from talking Ellis to offer his unstable and often quite disturbing opinion on the events of the week. Continue Reading »

Hello and welcome to another edition of Sunday News Bites. This week, we are joined in the newsroom by Romeo X Juliet’s Tybalt, who kindly took a break from riding his HORSE to offer insights on this week’s breaking and not-so-breaking stories.

Do you hack .hack?
.hack fans should be pleased to learn that Tokyopop has picked up three of the four new manga series- GU+ (a companion to the GU games), GnU (a tale of minor characters in The World:r2) and 4Koma. Whilst GU+ was reasonably enjoyable and 4Koma ranged between the dire and the amusing, I haven’t read enough of GnU to form a proper opinion on it, although overall these three series don’t stand out enough for me to want to buy them. I may have once been a .hack fangirl, but with the coming of the second generation material, I’m more wary of buying every piece of merchandise with the .hack name on it. Continue Reading »