TSUBASA – RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – Chapitre 216: The Point between Life and Death

Warning: Spoilers. I suggest reading the chapter if you haven’t done so. ;)

×××HOLiC and Tsubasa OAD Trailers – Zenpen Episodes

Ripped from the official website, uploaded, and I’ll probably get into poo poo for this ^^;. Anyway, enjoy the much-awaited trailers for the first half episodes of the two OAD series.

×××HOLiC Shunmuki

…Oh, dream.

Tsubasa Shunraiki

….With these hands, I will end it.

Goods Information

×××HOLiC Shunmuki Zenpen Volume
Bundled with: ×××HOLiC Volume 14 Normal Edition
Price: ¥3,700 (incl. tax)
Sale date: 17 February 2009 (Tuesday)
Estimated length of episode: 25 minutes

×××HOLiC Shunmuki Kouhen Volume
Bundled with: ×××HOLiC Volume 15 Normal Edition
Price: ¥3,700 (incl. tax)
Sale date: 23 June 2009 (Tuesday)
Reservation closing date: 23 March 2009 (Monday)
Estimated length of episode: 25 minutes

Tsubasa Shunraiki Zenpen Volume
Bundled with: TSUBASA -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- Volume 26 Normal Edition
Price: ¥3,700 (incl. tax)
Sale date: 17 March 2009 (Tuesday)
Estimated length of episode: 25 minutes

Tsubasa Shunraiki Kouhen Volume
Bundled with: TSUBASA -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- Volume 27 Normal Edition
Price: ¥3,700 (incl. tax)
Sale date: 15 May 2009 (Friday)
Reservation closing date: 25 February 2009 (Wednesday)
Estimated length of episode: 25 minutes

Opening & Ending Themes
×××HOLiC Shunmuki Opening – sofa by Suga Shikao (Listen to the full version here)
×××HOLiC Shunmuki Ending – CHERISH by AZU (Listen to the full version here)
Tsubasa Shunraiki Opening – SONIC BOOM by Sakamoto Maaya (Listen to the full version here)
Tsubasa Shunraiki Ending – Kioku no Mori (Forest of Memories) by FictionJunction YUUKA

Quality-wise, ×××HOLiC Shunmuki’s animation seems to be better than Tsubasa Shunraiki’s imho, even though they’re both done by Production I.G. but so far it’s hard to tell from the short clips alone. A week’s time and we’ll have Shunmuki’s first episode! :3

TSUBASA – RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – Chapitre 201: The Truth in the Ruins

Warning: Spoilers…though I’m a little late in hopping onto the wagon.

Random August Updates and Time to Catch Up

Just handed in my paper’s first draft so am taking a short break. Miscellaneous news underway, but all of them are old ones which sit with my foremost interests. Bet most people have heard of them already. ^^;

Tales of the Abyss

Anime PV

Game Opening
(FYI, more than half of the events in the Opening never occurred in the game, or never happened in the manner shown. It’s all for added service ^^)

I’m elated upon hearing the announcement a while back that NAMCO’s RPG Tales of the Abyss will be made into a TV series. It’s one which I look forward to the most during the fall season, along with CLANNAD After Story, Nodame Cantabile Paris-hen, ef ~a tale of melodies~, Mouryou no Hako, Skip Beat!, and Kannagi. Truth to be told, I’m an avid Tales gamer and an even bigger geek of the Tales series in which the original character designs were done by Fujishima Kousuke. I guess it’s one of those sentimental things for me since I grew up admiring and witnessing the evolution of his artwork. Those titles in which he contributed his talent to were the only ones I would make the extra effort of playing the entire game twice, if necessary, just to acquire each of the character’s special Hi Ougi. I’m glad all of the Fujishima-influenced Tales were made into animation, although Abyss will be the first to receive a well-deserved TV series treatment rather than an OVA. The project will mainly be undertaken by Sunrise instead of Production I.G. (who were responsible for the animated cut scenes in the game), so the quality is expected to be pretty good. The game’s story is already excellent as it is. I would gladly peg it as the best and most memorable among the entire Tales series, imho. If the writers are keeping majority of the original plot intact, I’ll be one very happy fan, never mind the fact that Luke will make for one narcissistic, obnoxious brat during the first half of the story. Heck, I’ll even watch it for Regret alone. She’s awesome (Itou Miki!! Itou Miki!!). Oh, and who could forget Jade and Guy :3. I seriously wanna play Vesperia but I don’t have an Xbox 360. （￣～￣;）
And as an endnote…

Fans who will miss Yukana’s C.C. might enjoy her commanding performance as Tear. An epitome of Woman Power? I definitely think so. Like teacher, like student. :)

×××HOLiC and Tsubasa OADs

The ×××HOLiC and Tsubasa OAD launch dates have been pushed back a month, with ×××HOLiC’s zenpen volume being released on February 17, 2009 and Tsubasa’s on March 2009. Although their respective summaries have not been officially released, it was hinted by Ohkawa Nanase (scriptwriter) that the OADs will directly link the two series together this time, and mostly explore the similarities and connections between Watanuki and Syaoran. Guess that’s already obvious in a way because with the OADs, they could pretty much scrape everything that was done in the TV series and rewrite the whole story from scratch. Now my question to fans who follow either only ×××HOLiC or Tsubasa is, will you be watching both of the OADs? Or only one of them depending on which Manga you read? :)

Lucky☆Star OVA
The TV commercial for the OVA can be streamed online from the official website. More Lucky Star is always good.

Other than that, I have a huge backlog of radio shows to catch up on. Started with two so far.

RADIO ×××HOLiC◆Kei

And it’s already over on its sixth episode. They didn’t even get Itou Shizuka as a guest. I was really looking forward to that ><! Well, they did invite her but apparently Shizu-sama had been busy tending to her other works and expanding her harem. Thought it would’ve been an interesting mix having Ohara Sayaka and Itou Shizuka on the same radio show. They’re both naughty devils in their own way, though when it came to mischief, Shizu-sama managed to get a one-up on Saaya-nee before when she scribbled some “supplementary words” in one of Saaya-nee’s scripts. Too bad Shizu-sama wrote them in the sound effects section instead of the main dialogs. Would be funny if Saaya-nee accidentally read out those words in the middle of recording. Can we have Radio ×××HOLiC◆Kei Returns sometime in the near future?

Speaking of Shizu-sama…

Yabou Jinja

I missed a whole month’s worth of Nabatame Hitomi × Itou Shizuka goodness, so it’s time to backtrack on Episode 76 which took place nearly a month ago on Naba’s 32nd birthday (August 4). No photo of a birthday chuu from the waifu this time, unlike last year

Nevertheless, Shizu-sama did plan a special corner to commemorate her “husband’s” birthday. Naba-sama was made to take a Hara Shunsuke quiz (she’s a huge fan of Hara, a former professional baseball catcher for the Yomiuri Giants) to win and receive her presents from the staff, with Shizu-sama personally judging whether she passes the test or not. She ended up having more incorrect than correct answers but of course, she still received her presents in the end – a catcher’s mitt and a baseball, as well as a bottle of sand from the surrounding areas of the Yomiuri baseball stadium. Itou didn’t bring her own present for Naba but promised she will later on. A rabu rabu-filled celebration from beginning to end but amusing enough, they opened the next episode with a bit of mock-quibbling in response to the show’s jingle.
Naba: How long are you going to be a good-for-nothing? I was waiting for you all along…
..
Shizu: Who were you waiting for!? *Slams fist on the desk*
Naba: You.
Shizu: *Gasp*
Naba: You philanderer!
Shizu: I don’t want to be told that by you!
..
Shizu: But you know, don’t I…properly “attack” you?
Naba: Sort of.
Shizu: I’m not a “good-for-nothing” then.

Their typical “husband & wife” quarrel about their “extramarital affairs” lol. Wonder how complex their yuri love polygon is going to get. ^^;;;

And as usual, Naba and Itou spent a good deal talking about girls or more specifically, girls’ legs, how girls are wearing short pants nowadays, and how the both of them couldn’t control their ossan desires to just stretch out their hands and touch those girls’ legs >_>. Naba-sama recalled she asked Shindou Kei whether she could touch Shindou’s legs (she was wearing short pants) but she probably didn’t succeed in placing her hands on them after the latter questioned her motives and Kawasumi Ayako, who was at the scene as well, likened the act to what a chikan would do. The waifu may have a better chance though. After all, Shizu-sama is a notorious flirt who prefers to employ a “no-talk-just-molest” strategy. Ask Watanabe Akeno, Kugimiya Rie, Sakai Kanako, and Makino Yui among her strings of many, many victims.

In a similar setting for Hangyaku Nikki two weeks ago, Ohara Sayaka (Milly) and Arai Satomi (Sayoko) were also discussing about women in short pants. True to her role, Saaya-nee was using her Milly Oyaji Vision on Yukana’s (C.C.) thighs because yes, Yukana was wearing short pants (referring to particular photos in her blog). Saaya-nee’s overall verdict -> “You know, Yukana-san… Her legs are nice, her chest is nice, and her waist is nice!” And as Satomin quipped “This is indeed a great era.” Can’t argue with the fact that summer is the best season, right? Short pants BANZAI!!

To round it up, may you recover to full health soon, Kawakami Tomoko! :)

I need to rest…and I need to cancel my Seigura subscription. The woes of being a poor uni student… I wish I have a higher grant. T___T

×××HOLiC to get OAD’ed?

Full credit goes to nokiirat for the announcement.

Whoa… Just when I blabbed without thought about the possibility of an OAD, it’s odd that it will actually come true. I reckon this will be done in a different fashion than Tokyo Revelations in which the HOLiC OAD is planned to have only two parts – the zenpen (前編)/initial part, and kouhen (後編)/latter part, similar to the Aa! Megami-sama ~Tatakau Tsubasa~ special if you’ve seen that. This is pure speculation on my side as the info is still very new. Good news may have it, we may even end up with more than 2 episodes. The first volume accompanies Volume 14 of the ×××HOLiC Manga as a limited edition DVD, and will be released on January 16, 2009. The figureheads involved in the project are CLAMP’s Ohkawa Nanase (screenplay writer and possibly executive producer for the OAD), Mizushima Tsutomu (×××HOLiC director) and Tada Shunsuke (Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations director); the latter two’s roles are unknown but I assume Director Mizushima will be the lead in handling the main directing whilst Director Tada may take up the task of being episode director and storyboard artist. Cast members are the usual group. Animation will be done by Production I.G., hopefully the high budget team.

What I’m curious about is how they’re going to approach this OAD. A Manga adaptation like Tokyo Revelations, with most of the Tsubasa references intact? Or a whole new original animation story? It’ll be interesting if they took the Tokyo Revelations path by setting aside everything that has happened in the Anime, and went ahead with using some of the older stories that were not featured in the TV series. The crossover with the Dream World arc from Tsubasa could be a good candidate, but that would probably mean redoing the Kohane arc. Or they could use the pure HOLiC only ones, which are kind of limited in numbers. With HOLiC Anime’s current situation, it’ll be very tough to produce a proper TV series sequel for it since every Tsubasa crossover was left out in the last two seasons, so it may be the best way to continue, and perhaps end the series with an OAD.

We’ll have to wait and see. :)

EDIT: Based on the latest news, Tsubasa will be getting an OAD sequel with the zenpen volume released on February 2009 together with Volume 26 of the Manga, a month after HOLiC’s zenpen release, which means Director Tada being listed in the staff credits would suggest that he handles the main directing for the Tsubasa side of the story. In other words, the possibility of a crossover and reference between the two series is very high.

TSUBASA – RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – Chapitre 190: Those Who Know of the World

Warning: The same as before…

And things just keep on getting MOAR confusing…

TSUBASA – RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE – Chapitre 189: Inherited Resolution

Warning: Uh huh… Spoilers.

Manga readers already knew what was coming……

Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations – Episode 3 (Finale)

Himegimi no Mita Yume/The Dream Envisioned by the Princess

The aftermath of a damning crisis.