So if you haven’t noticed, I’m a tad bit lazy right now, and when I’m not, I have to tackle crap like homework and studying (haha yeah right.) Should you not expect posts anytime soon? Yeah. Even though I wouldn’t mind writing a few things, especially stuff like reviews, I just don’t feel like sacrificing a few hours of my time to crank out another post. Should you expect this blog to completely die? No. It’ll probably get some activity in the future. When? Your guess is as good as mine.

Logic battles, wolves and sheep, and Kanon uses his extra screen time to finger himself.

Beatrice, you might need glasses

After living the high life and singing karaoke and stuff, the Ushiromiya-butler brigade finally begins to worry about Kanon and Jessica. While walking to Jessica’s room, they once again encounter the first pentacle of the moon with the ability to open any door. Inside, they find Jessica’s corpse. The group gasps. Battler yells “Jessica!” And after that, no one really cares.

But Kanon is missing. With this in mind, Rosa quickly names Kanon as the primary suspect. Battler won’t have any of that though. Through the help of Gohda, he notes that when Jessica enters the room, she uses Kanon’s master key. When the group arrived at the scene, however, the door is locked. Nanjo knows exactly what Battler wants. He takes this as an excuse to feel around Jessica’s body. (Honestly, it takes him nearly 10 seconds to find the key: just how many pockets can a girl with a skirt have?)

Lo and behold, he finds Kanon’s key. The only way the door could have been locked then, is if one of the other servants used their master key.

Studio Deen, budget saving technique #57

In the parlor, Rosa decides to enact operation separate-the-wolves-from-the-sheep, also known as, every non-Ushiromiya needs to get the hell out.

In the kitchen, we discover that there seems to be a chessboard in every room in the mansion. Also, Kanon shows up. He’s bleeding a lot. But he isn’t Kanon. Or something. Shannon notices him to be an imposter, and through the guidance of her meido instinct, she runs off to find a spider web. The fact that she finds one just shows how much the maids and butlers suck at cleaning the mansion.

Back in the kitchen, Kanon is busy showing the group new skills that he learned with his fingers only to then be interrupted by Shannon and her ultimate weapon. Suddenly, Anakin Skywalker. Nanjo and Kumasawa fall to Kanon’s mighty lightsaber, but thanks to Gohda’s ramming ability and Genji’s hilariously powerful throwing arm, Kanon is destroyed.

Never apply a dirty handkerchief to wounds

Okay.

First of all, red truths for this episode (unlike Episode 8, all VN red truths are present this time):

The only master keys, or keys that can open any door, are the ones each servant holds, one per person.

There are a total of five master keys.

It’s also impossible to lock the door from the outside without using a key.

Beatrice also introduces a new method of trolling: refusal to repeat Battler’s statements not because they are necessarily false, but because she simply wants to confuse him.

With all of the above facts in mind, it’s hard to dismiss the possibility of one or more of the servants being the culprit. Of course, this is when Battler also flips the chessboard and questions why the servants would lock Jessica’s door. All it does is implicate them. Obviously, we also shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of reverse psychology here.

Kanon’s death being confirmed by Beatrice also raises a handful of questions. First and foremost, where the hell is his corpse? Secondly, since Kanon is indeed dead, should we presume that the final scene’s attack was actually a violent struggle from within the group? If this is the case, then there’s currently one obvious direction that can be taken. Assuming that Kumasawa and Nanjo were the culprits, then, well, the rest of the servants are good. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make sense with the “wolves and sheep puzzle” played throughout the episode in which wolves will only attack if they outnumber sheep. Thus, for any attack to take place, at least three of the original five should be wolves. By contradiction, this would incriminate Shannon, Genji, and Gohda.

Then again, this is all assuming that the wolves and sheep nonsense actually means something in regards to the real world. Not to mention, this also assumes that unless there are more wolves (in which case, Battler’s group most likely has at least one bad person), then the events of first twilight were carried out in bits and pieces. Such an idea isn’t too hard to believe, though.

And then there’s the possibility that the wolves and sheep puzzle is just a device that propagates a red herring.

Episode 10 Preview

Picture is unrelated.

Blogsome is cool and all, but it’s also been a pain over the past few months. I’ve had many posts and pages completely destroyed by the buggy interface, and while I always store copies in Microsoft Word and text, it’s still extremely aggravating. This is especially true when bugs simply involve incorrect spacing that can’t be fixed at all (requiring me to delete the page and create a new one), or the infamous "BOLD EVERYTHING BECAUSE I’M A DERP" shit where I do nothing involving bold typeface, and suddenly, everything is bold. Even stuff outside a post. Everything. I open the HTML script for the page, and I literally see thousands upon thousands of <strong> tags. If I pressed a secret button, please let me know, because that’s really stupid. Of course, there’s also all of the silly server crashes and stuff over at Blogsome HQ, but I don’t really care about those. If it weren’t for the bugs, I’d totally be tsundere for Blogsome. Seriously.

The stress I’ve gone through to fix pages has given me a rough time, so I think it’s about time I move on to a brighter future over at WordPress. It has similar features, but a revamped and nicer interface with some extra little nuances that make the whole experience that much better. In the process, all I’ll really lose is the random banner code I made here (I doubt I’ll figure out how to implement it in WordPress), the simplistic design of this blog, and the URL. None of that really matters though:

• Settling on a banner will be tough, but I’ll find something. In the mean time, I might just launch the blog before even choosing a banner.
• The blog will be less simple, but it’ll also allow me to use more intuitive stuff like tags and whatnot. This will make following a blogged series easier.
• The URL will have me stumped for a while. WordPress requires at least 4 characters in the name, and obviously, ‘bjw’ doesn’t meet that criteria. Oh the possibilities.

Oh man, I can’t wait wait for the copy and paste grind that awaits me. I’ll probably also need to resize a bunch of pictures since I’ll be opting for a wider design. Chances are, I’ll use the overused K2-lite theme–solid and versatile.

Picture is very unrelated.

So, Kanon is a jedi or a Protoss Zealot or whatever. He has some magical beam sword of awesome. On the other hand, we have Beatrice who can summon an army of goats with their own beam swords, and as was hinted several times before, the stakes of purgatory have human forms; in particular, Asmodeus (lust, killing Jessica) and Satan (wrath, killing Kanon) are finally revealed.

Of course, this entire battle is all for show—a metaphor of sorts. Taking the anti-fantasy route, there’s absolutely no way that any of these events could have actually happened. This is all just an illusion that Beatrice wants Battler to believe in, an illusion depicting Beatrice’s version of how the murders are going about. Likewise, we aren’t sure of everyone’s position at the time of Kanon and Jessica’s death. Out of the 18 people on the island, 6 are dead and 7 are in the parlor: Shannon, Genji, and Kinzo are all unaccounted for.

Kanon the Combat Butler

For all we know, the truth is that Shannon wanted to serve the guests sandwiches. Unfortunately, she ran out of sandwich toothpicks. Flipping through cabinets, she eventually comes across stakes, and being the MacGyver that she is, she decides to impale the sandwiches with stakes as a substitute for the toothpicks. While wheeling the cart of sandwiches into Jessica’s room, she accidentally trips and sends the cart flying at Kanon and Jessica. The cart flips over, and the stakes end up killing Kanon and Jessica. Because Shannon is close to Kanon, she runs to his body first and carries him over to another room seeking first aid; this is why Kanon disappears and not Jessica.

Second twilight is solved.

Rich people buy quicksand instead of carpet

First twilight is an interesting scenario. A bittersweet end for 6 of the 7 parents, leaving Rosa the job that Natsuhi had in the previous arc: wield a sawed off rifle. Hopefully mackerel cans will also be involved.

And as much of the episode explores, it seems to be yet another closed room. Meta Beatrice, adding the new rule that red text is absolute truth, responds to some of Battler’s claims: (statements denoted with an * are VN-only)

When I speak the truth, I will use red.

That which was inside the envelope I entrusted Maria with, was definitely the key to the chapel.
 
*When the door to the chapel is locked, it prevents any and all methods of entry or exit.

*Six people definitely entered through ‘this front door.’

*This morning, Rosa definitely took an envelope out of Maria’s handbag, and thereby obtained the genuine key to the chapel.

*The letter that I handed over to Maria and the one Rosa opened are the same thing.

Good thing our hero isn’t colorblind

But in making a logical argument, just as important here is what Beatrice cannot say in red, and this is shown at the end when Battler finally reaches a possible conclusion that Beatrice cannot admit as being true:

“In that case, until Aunt Rosa took the envelope out of Maria’s bag, no one was able to touch it.”

This may not come off as a surprise to you, however, if you recall the events of episode 7. At the very end, we see all of the parents in the chapel accepting the existence of Beatrice. Rosa included. And this is the very last event of the night, ushering in midnight, when we are to assume that the murders occur.

Interesting how Rosa is the one that gets away, isn’t it?

Episode 9 Preview

Aria the Animation is all about atmosphere: tranquil setting, pleasant personalities, and the simple pleasures in life. It’s a scenario that’s been seen countless times in the slice of life genre, but something about Aria makes it feel completely different. There never seems to be a sense of urgency. When there’s a struggle, the mood always remains positive and hopeful. Even comedy is a bit lacking in the general scheme of things. Although it’s popularly labeled a slice of life, Aria is a coming of age story at its core—a coming of age that follows Akari as she strives to become a professional gondolier.

But don’t get me wrong; Aria frequently employs elements of the slice of life genre in that it oftentimes utilizes no elements whatsoever. Characters simply caught in a conversation for entire scenes is far from a rarity in Aria, and much like its fellow genre-sharing brethren, Aria finds itself tripping and stumbling when it comes to keeping the attention of the audience.

Aria has a tough time picking itself back up, though. Take a frozen pond, natures’ very own ice rink surrounded by nothing other than complete beauty as far as the eye can see. Aria is the dimwitted first-time skater in the center of it all. No, there’s no schadenfreude here.

I’ll get straight to the point: the main trio of characters is boring. At times, terribly boring. The characters—individually—aren’t necessarily at fault. Akari, our faithful heroine working for Aria Company, is determined, optimistic, and cute to boot. Her two best friends actually work for rival gondola services: Aika plays the tsukkomi roll, hailing from Himeya Company; Alice is the misunderstood, reserved, and rather blunt rowing-prodigy working for Orange Planet. Their respective seniors not only happen to be the three most famous oar-wielding superstars in Neo-Venezia, but they’re also carbon copies of the three main apprentices. Oh, the foreshadowing!

The problem, as you can imagine, stems from their chemistry. Or lack thereof. The formula is intact, what with all of the recognizable archetypes; the result that it yields, however, is unfortunate for those who cannot fall into the rhythm of the show.

And while I may not have been able to fall into said rhythm, I can still easily respect it. Aria is quite the wonderment. This isn’t because of any single component, but rather, the summation of everything that Aria holds oh so very dear. Production values are a bit on the lower end of the spectrum, but with the utopia presented by Neo-Venezia on a terraformed Mars, the setting still proves to be gorgeous. Couple this with a fitting soundtrack that offers light melodies and simple tunes, and Neo-Venezia is seemingly brought to life.

This thickening mix of serenity is only made more intense (alternatively, calm) by throwing in Akari, her friends, and their daily training and adventures. Aria essentially becomes an anime turned into a backrub.

It really is something special.

It’s even better when Aria tells a story. These episodic plotlines range from mail delivery to complete fantasy, and while they can be a bit cheesy, they’re almost always filled with sweet and meaningful morals. Of course, Aria can’t escape from being cliché every now and then. Such particular arcs will keep you guessing up until the very end, but only because you’ll be repeating the same guess for an entire 20 minutes. Waiting for confirmation, or rather, an inevitable conclusion can be tedious.

What’s more tedious is when Aria decides to show boring antics instead, or worst case scenario, dedicate an entire episode to a character that embodies failed comic relief. And while I do wish that these dull moments were infrequent, they end up filling a lot of space.

As a whole, the dull moments of Aria the Animation definitely impact its warm and charming aura, but there are still enough strong moments to warrant a watch. With a light atmosphere that somehow manages to engage, Aria the Animation proves to be an impressive series despite its shortcomings, and that’s always a fun presence to behold.

I’m looking forward to watching the second season.

Rating: 3/5

My router burned out or some crap after only two years of use, so I was without an internet connection for the past 3 and a half days. Thanks to that, as well as lulz, August has been a bit void of activity in terms of blog entries, so I hope to speed up a bit for this last week. Hopefully I’ll be able to pour out an additional 4-5 reviews before this month comes to a close.

Where the hell did my summer go, anyway?