Tales of Graces f Possibly Getting Localized

In what will come as surprising news to many fans of Namco’s Tales series, it seems like Tales of Graces f may be getting localized. It’s been over two years since a Tales game was released here, with the last one being Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World back in November 2008, and many fans have given up hope of ever seeing another reach these shores. But recent events have led some to conclude that Tales of Graces f is indeed on its way.

Anime Review: Trigun

There are a few series that older anime fans hold up as being classics. Truly great examples of anime from the good ol’ days before everything started sucking and moé took over. Since I’m technically a younger fan (even though I’m 20 years old, which is older than most of today’s anime fandom from what I can tell) I never had the chance to see these series when they first showed up, and these days some of them are out of print and expensive or hard to find. Well FUNimation recently re-released Trigun, a series that gets included in the previously mentioned classics. So I took the opportunity to finally check it out.

Trigun tells the story of Vash the Stampede, a lone gunslinger with an insanely high bounty on his head who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Meryl Strife and Milly Thompson, two employees of an insurance company, seek out Vash in an attempt to prevent him from causing any more damage. When they find him, they learn that Vash isn’t the man they thought he was and end up joining him on his journey.

Trigun starts out enjoyable enough as a kind of silly western. There are gunslingers, damsels in distress, corrupt sheriffs, and every thing else you would expect from a western. Everything is handled in a goofy manner, with Vash solving most problems through dumb luck and goofing around as opposed to shooting everything in sight and the series doesn’t take itself too seriously. Vash himself is an interesting character, having the ability to kill anything and everything around him, but choosing instead to solve problems through non-violent means. This is respectable in the beginning when the only thing Vash has to deal with are normal thugs with big guns who are barely a threat most of the time. Once it gets to the point where he has to deal with people who sometimes have strange powers and are entirely willing to kill innocent people to get to Vash, his pacifist ways make him seem more idiotic than honourable.

Antz’ 2010 Year In Review: Top 5 Anime I Watched This Year

Normally when someone is doing a list of this sort it’s about anime that actually aired during the year. Unfortunately I can’t do a list like that because I generally don’t watch anime as it’s airing. I’ve just never been fond of having to wait a week between episodes. I prefer to watch at my own pace, so I tend to wait a while and watch something when the whole thing has been subbed or it’s out on DVD. While you’re all talking about your Oreimo and your K-ON!, I’m over in my little corner talking about Trigun. As such, my list won’t be top 5 anime that aired in 2010, but the top 5 anime I watched in 2010. The list is limited to shows I watched for the first time in 2010, and TV series only.

#5 – Princess Tutu

When a well-known writer died, he left behind an unfinished story about a prince and a raven. Now the story has started to spill over into the real world, causing its characters to come alive and finally bring about an end to the tale. One of the things that drew me to Princess Tutu was how silly the whole thing can be. It’s a series about a duck who changes into a girl named Duck, who then changes into Princess Tutu and solves whatever conflict has arisen through ballet. And her ballet teacher is a cat. It’s all so strange and odd, but when you take into the account that the series is supposed to be a fairy tale, it all strangely fits. The random talking animals, the duck changing into a girl; none of it is really that absurd for a fairy tale. It’s a cute, and sometimes emotional, little fairy tale and despite me being not even a little close to its intended audience I still found it entertaining.