I recently finished watching an anime series called Classroom of the Elite. It was an anime series recommended last year on Twitter through the Free Anime Alliance. When I saw the visual art for this show, I thought it was going to be something like Danganronpa or Assassination Classroom. But upon finally watching it, I wasn’t expecting what I thought it was.
(more…)
The following was published back in 2009 after this game in the Blue Dragon franchise was released in North America, and with many thanks to the marketing agency RocketXL for making this possible, I was able to get a hands-on review! Blue Dragon Plus for the Nintendo DS is the sequel to the Xbox 360 game created by the father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi, music from the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, and character design by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame. It is the perfect alternative for fans of the Blue Dragon anime who have yet to play the first Blue Dragon game.
(more…)![Read more about the article Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Frozen Teardrop [Novel Impressions]](https://centakumedia.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/gundam-wing-frozen-teardrop-20200407_1.jpg)
This post was originally published in June 2013. In honor of 2020 being the 25th anniversary of Gundam Wing, here is the republication of my review of the novel sequel to Gundam Wing, Frozen Teardrop.
Important: since it’s been so long since I read what was translated in the novels, I made a slight error that was pointed out by a commenter on the previous blog. I still have the comment somewhere in the massive MySQL file that I managed to save, but it’s buried in my to-do list of other things I got caught up in. Please feel free to (constructively, politely, please) correct me in the meantime!
(more…)
On March 2nd, Square-Enix surprised us with a demo of the upcoming, highly anticipated revisit of the beloved entry in the franchise, Final Fantasy VII Remake. It’s cool that Square is giving fans a little gift considering the game was pushed to April. Despite the huge following, will fans accept the modern changes when it comes to the mechanics?
(more…)
This is the third and final installment of the Gundam 101 series. If you’ve been following this, then I thank you! For the newcomers… the Gundam 101 is a “Crash Course” into the world of Gundam for potential fans or for Gundam vets are not up to date with what’s going on.
Welcome to the second installment of the Gundam 101 series. In case you were wondering what this is all about, it is a “Crash Course” into the world of Gundam for first time viewers, or Gundam vets who are not up to date on their “Gundaming”.
On Monday, Part 1 went over Gundam series created from 1979 to 2000. Today, we will go over series made in 2000 to 2009. Friday will conclude the series as we take a look Gundam Movies and OVA (Original Video Animation) series.
Back in 2009, I was approached by the original founder of our local anime club, Scenic City Anime & More (at the time known as Boogie BAM Anime Jam Club when we met weekly at Books-a-Million), wanting to know more of the Gundam franchise and to share with other members, especially to watch in the order that I have watched them, to make sense of the 40 year-old franchise. This eventually led to sharing my love of the franchise in the form of panels at Anime Blast Chattanooga and Connooga. Enter: Gundam 101: Anime Crash Course series.
Working on the presentation, I discovered that there were too many series and movies to explain in one day (the meetings ran for roughly an hour and a half), so I had to split them up into 3 weeks of content. The first week focused on the TV anime series made between 1979 to 1999. The second week covered TV series made between 2000 to 2009. And the third and final week concluded the presentation series with a guide to the Gundam movies and OVAs (Original Video Animation).
In the time since I published the series, Bandai Entertainment discontinued home video releases of all their anime titles, including the Gundam franchise. It wasn’t until a few years later, with the release of the Gundam Unicorn OVA series, Right Stuf stepped in and rescued every Gundam series released by Bandai, even a few that was skipped over due to fan “demand”, such as ZZ Gundam. As we enter 2020, nearly every Gundam series has been released for purchase in North America on DVD and Blu-ray thanks to the efforts of Right Stuf!
To those curious about Gundam, and/or missed the previous presentations from back in the day, as well as the original series on the original CEN.TAKU.ME blog, this is a reboot of the very same series I worked on, originally clocking in at about 10 pages! It will be explained in the same order as in the meetings–and in the original article series–along with any extra information I might have forgotten, including the latest TV anime, movies, and OVAs that have surfaced in the years since. Following the conclusion of the republication, there will be an additiona post in this series of essential TV anime, movies, and OVAs released in the 2010s.
This review was originally drafted in December 2012, but I do not recall if I actually published the review! This was around the time when I ran myself into a writer’s block, then other things happened that I had to take care of, until the rebrand under Centaku Media a few years later. As with most of the #ThrowbackThursday posts, these are the original posts that have been edited for typos, as well as combined from the first watch review of Future Diary. Enjoy!
