Anime and Manga Rush..kekekeke.

Hmm, since the exams are finally over, I can devote myself to reading Rave and watching Anime the entire day.

Goddamnit, I need a life =\.

However, it's good that I managed to restrain myself from watching/reading them, because if I did, I would have had time to study.

Rave

This is one of those animes which was spawned from the Manga, but lacked the budget, and ended up crashing half way. However, thanks to the anime (and AXN), the Manga became much more popular, as people would want to know what happened.

The story is something like what you see in Dragonball. This guy called Haru has to find all 5 pieces of Rave, and throw them together in order to save the world.

Yeah yeah. Been there. Done that.

However, what's refreshing from this storyline is the way the characters are developed. Time was placed for the storyline, but even more time was placed on developing the characters. Haru's companions all have their own dark past, and throughout the 35 volumes of the manga, their past is slowly revealed, bit by bit.

What I really liked about this manga was that it emphasised a lot on friendship and team work (and all the good stuff, of course.) Drawing strength from their friends, Haru and his company will defeat their enemies.

However, the only bad point of this manga was the sheer amount of enemies there are inside. After Haru and Co defeats a gang, another bunch will appear, and we get a whole new story once again. This somewhat makes the story draggy, because we all know that Haru will win (usually by drawing strength from knowledge that he has friends or something)

Still...

There can only be so many tear jerking scenes a guy can take, especially when you read it into the wee hours of the morning, 9 volumes at one go....

Damn. The ending was excellent, although I did not exactly like the build up. Thankfully, the parts before that were not too bad.

Overall, a pretty nice and decent Manga to collect.

Score: 8.8/10

Full Metal Panic

As I've enjoyed Full Metal Panic (FMP) : The Second Raid (FMP:TSR) a lot, I was looking forward to watch FMP after my exams. The fact that they were sitting on my shelf as CDs for almost 3 months did not do much to influence my decision to watch it at the closest possible opportunity.

First off, the reason why this was 24 episodes was makde known almost immediately. The character development started almost right from the start. From almost the 1st episode, you will find out that the main character, Sousuke, has absolutely no experience with normal life.

This was one anime which made me laugh insanely at times, seeing how impossible Sousuke is, and the way he acts towards the one he's supposed to guard: Chidori.

It had a great story, and great fight scenes. However, it lacks enemies. Unlike Rave, which had like a few billion enemies (and a few more), this one had just 1 main enemy who simply could not die. He was "killed" at least 3 times in the entire series (and he still reappears in TSR). Also, another disappointing feature of FMP was that it's ending was rather lame, and pathetic in a sense. While I was expecting a whole crate of dynamites explosion type of ending, it simply fizzled out like a birthday cake candle.

Hence, it had great potential, but it simply (once again), missed the spark.

At least the ending was a rather decent one, although no where near as well done as TSR. Still, the parts leading to the ending was all excellently done, and I found myself wondering how people were able to stand the wait when it was broadcasted in Japan.

I certainly could not.

Score: 9.2/10