Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

Has anyone with SciFi been watching Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

I know it's super cheezy and kinda low-budget but I like it anyway because unlike most reality shows, these people are encouraged to be at humanity's BEST. Yes, to a stereotypical, ultra-high degree, but isn't that what classic comic books are about? It's nice to see a lack of backstabbing, a lack of taunts, put-downs and emphasis on breast/dick size. It's nice, for once, to see some people who honestly (or at least halfway) try to be good people.

I know not all the contestants have been perfect or ARE perfect, and a lot try simply because that's what you have to do to win, not because they really want to put forth the effort to be really good people. But at least the principle is there. And that's what I like about it - and its something that has been coming out more and more as fewer heroes are left after each elimination.

Sometimes I get really pissed off at the world. Okay, most of the time I am really pissed off at the world. I get really depressed about it and snarky and angry and I can be mean to those closest to me. On the flip side of that, I like to think I'm honorable, I try to be nice, I try not to judge people and I try to give the benefit of the doubt. TRY. Something that brings me down is when I expect the same back from the world and I don't get it in return. I think, either the world is REALLY shitty or I seriously have way unattainable standards and am at risk for living in perpetual disappointment.

What a pessimistic, depressing thought.
I mean, just watch the news or look at global politics. Ugh! Humans are horrible! And I nearly daily read the posts about how rude and awful people can be over at the LiveJournal community customers_suck.

But, at that same community, every few posts, people mention a good customer that gives you hope. Something that maybe gets you through the week. Nothing too huge, just someone sticking up for a cashier who was just harassed by a previous customer, maybe. That little thing might of been the thing to save that person's job that day. That's a hero. And that person doesn't even know it.

So I watch Who Wants to Be a Superhero and I think that maybe I'm not alone in wanting to be better than I am and trying despite my weaknesses. That I'm not the only one who thinks people should be better and expects that before expecting the reverse. Heroes have a thankless job, so when we do things that are nice or if we've tried to be nice to someone who isn't, at least we put forth a good try. Maybe it's overly-hopeful to some folks the way sugary musicals are, but without those hopes and ideals...

Anyway... Just kind of nice...

Kasimasi ~ Girl Meets Girl

Just finished Kasimasi today. It's a romantic comedy about a boy, Hazumu, who is permanently turned into a girl after an alien spacecraft crashes into earth and destroys his original body, and how his friends deal with the change.

Hazumu is pretty feminine for a boy to begin with so he takes to being a girl easily. The first few episodes have humerous moments particularly with his tomboy friend, Tomari, who tries to teach him how to behave properly as a girl (like not spreading ones legs while wearing a skirt. And no, Hazumu is totally innocent about the entire thing - he was very feminine and genuine to begin with and is happy being a girl, so there isn't any of that "boy gets to be a girl so he can use the girl's locker room to get his jollies" or any of that happening.

The series is alllll about shoujo-ai. Yasuna is a girl who cannot see men -they appear as a static grey to her and so she avoids them. Nonetheless she becomes good friends with Hazumu, the two of them having much in common. When Hazumu declairs his love for her, however, Yasuna rejects him. (Which is when Hazumu goes to the mountain where he was hit by the aliens). When Hazumu becomes a girl, however, Yasuna is overjoyed because now she can see Hazumu and fully love her properly. Yasuna is cool, too, because although she seems like this quiet girly-girl - she's really not. She stands up for herself and can kick butt when needed. By far the most original character in the series.

But she's not the only one. Hazumu's childhood friend and protector, tomboy Tomari, struggles with the fact her friend is now a girl and struggles with her feelings for Hazumu now that she's a girl. Also, Hazumu's best friend, a boy named Asuta, suddenly finds himself attracted to his friend.

What is interesting is how the characters each accept Hazumu's love for another girl. Some say that because Hazumu was originally a boy and his personality is largely intact, it is expected that he'd still be attracted to girls. For the most part, though, the consensus is that love is love is love and it doesn't matter who you love.

There's some obnoxious elements - Hazumu's father is a pervert who has always wanted a daughter and you can imagine why. There's this random school teacher who serves NO purpose to the story at all except to constantly pop in saying how she's been single for 35 years, and then pines over one of the aliens who stays behind to observe the earthlings. And lastly, the spaceship was molecularly re-engineered into a humanoid girl who says "puu" all the time. Agh, she was annoying. Luckily they're not around that often. And there's a large "stupid-male" element which got annoying to a degree, too, but I've seen WAY worse so, meh.

The love triangle that forms between Hazumu, Yasuna, and Tomari, becomes very melodramatic but in a very realistic way. And it really keeps you guessing as to how this is all going to work out. Overall, the story (12 episodes) is so fluid that I never noticed the passing of time - it kept me into it and before I knew it, I'd watched it all. *pouts*

Overall, good humour, interesting character development with some realistic character interaction. There's several kisses and none of them felt fan-servicey, they felt genuine (yay!). The animation is good and the music didn't bother me, either. Thumbs up. :D

Dancer in the Dark [film]

Have you ever seen Dancer in the Dark? "The one starring Björk," is how a lot of people describe it. :D

(no spoilers)
It's the story of a woman, Selma, who dreams of being a dancer in a musical. She is from Czechloslovakia and is a single mother of a 12 year old boy. She works two jobs, one at a factory making ?sinks? and an at-home job putting pins into cards, one crate at a time. She's a dreamer but well loved by everyone. Thing is, she's going blind and won't tell anyone for fear of losing her job and place in a local production of "The Sound of Music". A LOT more happens but it'll spoil the film. The signature of it, though, is because Selma's so preoccupied with musicals, periodically, the sounds of things around her - the factory, a passing train, office scribbling - turn into a Bjorkish industrial musical piece, and everyone breaks into choreographed dance and sometimes help in the singing. Sounds weird but it actually works.

It was a compelling blend of documentary-feel camerawork, a story of humanity, a glimpse into a person's psyche and their view of the world as a musical (hence the musical moments)... Just... At first I thought it was kind of strange (the opening music bit with the never ending frames of random art splatters was wayy too long for me, but very much what musicals used to do), but the characters lives grabbed me. It was shot so intimmately with the hand-held camera work and the grainy film put it firmly in its era, making you really feel like you were back in the day (50's or so) - but still every shot was composed so beautifully... You knew when a musical bit was going to start because the camera became stock-still steady and the framing was super-composed, every single shot could be framed and hung on a wall. Colors and focus became sharper, too.

Be warned, though, as it is an extremely moving film toward the end. There is a violent scene (I dunno how bad - I didn't look) and a super sad segment. But just so artistically well done I am glad I saw it. :D

I thought the acting was very good - I liked Bjork's acting a lot, too. Not something I'd sit down and watch any day or often but if you're a film buff or want to see something new and different, then here you go. :)

Mai-HiME Soundtracks

I got this weeks ago but didn't say whether or not it was any good.
I actually obtained ALL of the Mai-HiME soundtracks, every single one, and not all of them are by Yuki Kajiura - same goes with the .hack//SIGN soundtracks, by the way. The only soundtracks I'm going to talk about, however, are those by Kajiura.

Chronologically, of Kajiura's soundtracks that I have, Noir is first, then .hack//SIGN, and lastly Mai-HiME. All three come in volumes of two, one for each 13 eps. Both Noir and .hack are very solid for the most part but I found there to be big gaps in Mai-HiME's soundtracks with songs that just... didn't fit.

Mai-HiME does sound like Kajiura's work - it has that ancient/new age/European sound that is especially envoked when the female vocals start in. Examples are "Canta Per Me" (Noir), "Key of Twilight" (.hack), and the "Ensei" songs (HiME), usually sung in either English or Latin. The good songs on the soundtrack are VERY very good. But the not-so-good songs on HiME's soundtracks are very very bad. More so than the other two series there are a lot of filler tracks, probably because HiME was not created by Bee Train - while Bee Train's director gives Kajiura free reign to do what she likes with the music for their anime, she probably had tighter restrictions for HiME.

Also, there is a WAY more lighthearted side to HiME, so there are a lot of those goofy, lighthearted sorts of songs that just don't withstand listening to outside of the anime environment. And perhaps the biggest thing that seperates HiME from Noir and .hack is the battle-tournament nature of HiME. While Noir has a MUCH higher body count, the gunfights were poetry and the music reflects this. HiME, however, serialized the fights and the music also reflects this with intense, heavy beat, electric-charged theme songs for the opponents. Also not quite withstanding listening to outside of the anime environment for the most part.

There are a ZILLION songs on these soundtracks, too! While there are 32 tracks between the two volumes of Noir and 39 between two volumes of .hack, there are 58 songs between two HiME albums. Again, much of it is filler.

What makes this set worthwhile, for me anyway, is the "Ensei" series of songs. I haven't seen HiME in over a year so I can't recall what it is the theme for, but there are 7 distinct versions of it between the two albums. "Ensei ~Omou Kokoro~" fits right in with the Noir soundtrack and indeed when I first started collecting anime music last year, I thought it WAS from Noir. Love this song! MMM! Also nifty is the "It's Only the Fairy Tale" instrumental version, without the awkward Engrish singing of the Alyssa Sears character - which can be endearing at times but sometimes you want to mix stuff together in a serious manner and this verison does the trick well, a classical guitar replacing the vocals.

So there you have it. While I still HIGHLY reccomend Noir above all else for soundtracks and .hack follows close behind, I found this set a bit disappointing for the amount of tracks there were, though there are a few jewels to round out any good Kajiura/anime soundtrack collection.

.hack//SIGN

No spoilers in this post. But do NOT read the Wikipedia article - it is FULL of spoilers. I will tell you what you need to know.

Basic Info
.hack//SIGN is a fantasy/sci-fi/drama/mystery/adventure made by Bee Train (Noir, Madlax, Tsubasa Chronicles) that ran 26 eps in 2002, followed by three episode-sized OVA's that act as tag-along episodes, from what I can tell. The music is by the ever famous Yuki Kajiura (Noir, Mai-HiME, Mai-Otome), considered by many to be some of her greatest soundtrack work to date.

Basic Story
The entire series takes place in a massive online multiplayer role playing game, sometime in the very near future. The World, as it is called, is extremely immersive that people use virtual reality headsets to play in. Tsukasa, around whom the story pivots, is mysteriously stuck in The World, unable to log out. We mostly follow the actions and conversations of a group of random players who come together over their concern/interest in Tsukasa's predicament. As the story unfolds, we slowly find out more about each character, including a little of their Real Live selves. To what extent is it "just a game" and to what extent do they take responsibility for their actions and for eachother as real humans? And how serious is Tsukasa's plight in The World - for him it's not much of a game as it is a Reality.

Other Commentary, Notes & Comparisons
.hack//SIGN could be the polar twin to Noir. While Noir has very little talking and TONS of action, .hack//SIGN has tons of talking and very little action. For being inside a video game, it is amazing at how little action takes place. Despite that, the element of the story taking place INSIDE a game is pretty novel. The game-slang is there, complete with acronyms (BBS - bulletin boards, PC - player character, etc) and the way people refer to the world around them verses the Real World.

That's probably the most interesting thing to me -- the divide between the game and the Real World. It's not so different from the Net world of LJ and email versus the "Real World". The circumstances between people meeting is different in both a game and the Net in general than from Real Life, but it all boils down to words and people, and that's the same no matter what the environment or mode of communication. This is something I think about all the time and it is a common theme in this series.

The story was a little hard to follow. I think this was largely due to the variety of subs I have in my episodes, though I downloaded all of them in one giant torrent. It may also just be due to the way characters say things in highly philosophical terms - characters in Noir were a little like this, kind of hard to follow in some of the brief things that were said or in how the plot was unfolding. Could just be a Bee Train thing. ;) The gist of it was enough to follow, though, so if you watch it, don't get too stressed out over missing a sentence or not knowing exactly what a character meant by such-and-such.

--Ohh, some fun trivia: one of the main-main characters, Mimiru, is voiced by seiyu Megumi Toyoguchi, our very favorite "Satou Sei" (MariMite) -- also "Meg" of Bakuretsu Tenshi, "Alti" of Simoun, and a ton of things most of us haven't seen. ;) I should of noticed as she uses her "normal" range, the same range she uses for Sei (she was unrecognizeable as Meg).

Yuri
There is VERY much an underlying yuri theme but it isn't a main focus or a fanservice element at all (there is NO fanservice whatsoever). It just happens to be there. I can't say more as it's toward the middle-to-end and I don't want to spoil. Just know it'll get there eventually. You don't see anything, nothing physically happens - nothing like that. But it is very human and that makes it that much more special. Brought tears to my eyes twice. :')

Music
In case I didn't mention, the soundtrack RAWKS. Miss Kajiura was allowed free rein on .hack//SIGN (and probably for Noir, as well). The director of Bee Train trusts her completely and just lets her compose whatever she wants - even with vocals, which is a rarity among in-episode soundtracks and she's one of the first to really do it, too. The result is that many of the tracks stand alone very well as just beautiful music.

Conclusion
Definetly a memorable anime. A second watch will probably reveal a lot more layers, particularly with the characters themselves moreso than the story. Has a ton of heart; isn't superficial at all or silly and though it can be dramatic it is never heavy handed. Kind of inspiring and uplifting. It's super heavy on the dialogue and light on the action and ALL about the mystery, which kept me hanging til the last second -- finding a place to pause between episodes was killin' me! Most certainly goes into my pile of favorite anime. :D

He Is My Master

(Make note that I was in a VERY lighthearted, VERY forgiving mood. I almost didn't keep watching this series, the use/abuse of the female characters is extremely terrible most of the time. Honestly, looking back I don't know how I could be so forgiving.)

He Is My Master is a 12-episode ecchi anime, based on a manga of the same name, about this rich perverted boy, Yoshitaka, who hires three girls to be his maids so he can get his jollies commanding them to do menial chores and spying on them with hidden cameras.

Sounds awful, doesn't it?
It was actually sort of funny. There's a lot of fanservice (nearly every ep has a nude bath scene), though not any of the jiggly-boob kind, which is the kind I hate the most. Basically a fanservice situational comedy with lots of ridiculousness humour, the humour making it entertaining enough. I hate to admit I got a few hearty laughs out of it.

The Story
Two sisters, Mitsuki and Izumi, run away from home in order to save Mitsuki's pet alligator, Pochi, from being put down. They end up in the service of Yoshitaka because a) they need a place to stay where Pochi can also live freely and this guy has TONS of land, b) Izumi breaks a bunch of stuff, thus owing Yoshitaka a ton of money so she's working for him to pay him off. Soon, a third girl, Anna, joins the cast as the third maid - originally after Yoshitaka himself, she becomes infatuated with Izumi and gets herself hired as a maid in order to be closer to her, even going so far as to learn Dutch and read up on the Netherlands so she and Izumi can run away there and get married. (This is the yuri content of the series - no, doesn't make it worth it).

Pochi is both disturbing as well as one of the more entertaining part of the series (we're being VERY forgiving). He's this giant cartoony alligator who does not speak. He is completely devoted to his owner, Mitsuki, and absolutely hates men and will protect the girls from them at all costs. Equally, he is obsessed with girls in skimpy clothes, especially Izumi, whom he loves to chase and rip the clothes off of. Which is totally disturbing, but it's funny when he "tastes" someone by chomping their heads/upper torsos. :D

Yoshitaka is obnoxious with his lowlife-ness and lack of decency, but what makes it better is that really, Izumi's younger sister, Mitsuki, the seemingly innocent one, is the person running the whole show. She thinks Yoshitaka's habits are silly and that anything can be fun, no holds barred - so it turns out she's using his inner nature against him for her OWN fun. O_O

The girls' parents are pretty strange. Their mother had Izumi when she was 16 and their dad is a total punk-rock lolicon. But whenever he gets out of control, the mom is there to whack him over the head with this strange statue/idol thing. The mom is strange; she thinks it's fine that the girls are living with a pervert, particularly if Izumi can marry into his money, but encourages Anna, saying to her specifically in one ep: "Anna-chan, love has nothing to do with gender, so go for the gusto, eh?" which is the greatest redeeming factor for the whole series.

Mitsuki is always having contests for things, which I got a little tired of. Izumi's protests at everyone obsessing over her got a little old, as did Pochi trying to rip Izumi's clothes off (which I never liked to begin with). Anna was great, though, in her die-hard chase for Izumi (there's one scene where Izumi tries to distract her and takes off her bra and tosses it, which Anna chases and gets, and we see her on all fours, drawn with dog ears and a wagging tail with the bra dangling from her mouth, all happy... It actually made me laugh).
~==~

Definetly not the deepest anime I've ever seen, though oddly definetly not the most shallow. It had brief flashes of heart (which Yoshitaka immediately shatters) but it's mostly about being silly anyway - I mean, it's SO over the top you almost forgive it for the awfulness. I give it 3 stars out of 5 just for Anna and Pochi. And Mitsuki - she was too diabolically kawaii. :D

Fight! Iczer One

So I've been going over and over the Shoujo ai anime list over at Wikipedia, looking for new stuffs to download. Iczer One is one of those that I downloaded. I figured, hey, it's only a 3 ep OVA, so who knows?

Yeeeeeaaaahhhh... it was bad. Mind you, this is basically a rundown of the entire plot. As if you're going to watch it, so it shouldn't matter, right? Anyway, spoilers ahead:

Visuals
As an anime from 1985, it certainly looks it. Kind of dark since it was all hand-done, lots and lots of lines and details everywhere, cheezy music, cheezy sound effects... it's OLD. One interesting thing, though, is that people are much better proportioned, particularly in the weight department. Our girls have a little meat on their bones - they look HEALTHY.

Story
The anime opens on some spaceship thingey on the far side of the moon. Everyone on board is female and apparently they are all named after colors. Two chicks, Cobalt and Sepia, are in a sci-fi bedroom area talking about a mission to prevent Iczer One from merging with her partner. Sepia tells Cobalt to be careful on her mission, and they proceed to make out. Oh yeah, they're buck naked.

So Nagisa is our main character, besides Iczer One. Nagisa is a schoolgirl, on her way to school when she spots Iczer One watching her from some trees. Nagisa comments to herself on Iczer's bizarre outfit before continuing on to school.

At school, Nagisa starts having daydream/nightmares as she's trying to take a test. This is when I realised this was a horror sort of anime as far s monsters go, something one should not watch while trying to eat squishy food. The kind of monsters with teeth and eyes and tentacles where those items should not be on a body. Really over detailed, slimy, and gross.

Later, Nagisa is surrounded by some masked students on the roof, falls off the roof, and is rescued by Iczer One.

Nagisa wakes up at home and the day starts as if nothing went wrong, except Nagisa's parents turn into those gross monsters like the ones from Nagisa's nightmares. I think the house turned into a monster, too, or something - I dunno, I was busy doing something else when it showed where the giant monster came from. Anyway, Iczer shows up and kills them all. Nagisa goes into a really idiotic fit about her mommy and daddy being dead and demands that Iczer give them back. Because, you know, you can raise people from the dead easy.

We keep getting scenes from on the ship on the far-side of the moon. Apparently, Sir Violet (a green haired woman with a man's voice) is in charge of the ship. She keeps talking to this giant wall of red, pustuley living tissue in the vague shape of a vulva with a really large golden transparent sphere where a clit would be. Inside the sphere is a golden female humanoid curled in the fetal position. Sir Violet does all the talking, we never hear what gold thing says.

As it turns out much later, the gold being is Big Gold (of course) and she, too, has a super deep male voice. She's in charge of this whole ship and all the beings on board. We eventually, excruciatingly, find out that their race are called the Cthulu and are very similar to humans and were apparently once part of earth before they left to... go elsewhere. Their planet is now dead and now they're back, though we dunno why. Big Gold's TRUE form is actually a building-sized super computer, as she is no longer alive. Iczer is a daughter of Big Gold or an artificial being derrived from Big Gold and just called her daughter. Who cares.

So, back on earth, Iczer is running around fighting monsters. She can shoot yellow beams out of her fists and is pretty super strong and agile. She also keeps slipping into Alternate Dimensions. To Quote Iczer, "I'm in an alternate dimension. Oh no!" Which is really pointless and dull.

She keeps trying to convince Nagisa to merge with her and fight to save the planet. Nagisa refuses. Eventually, Iczer calls upon her giant robot, called Iczer Robo, and beams Nagisa inside. While Iczer is in a pilot seat with small pink hoses hooked up to her bustier, Nagisa has to float around in a seperate compartment, buck naked, in some breatheable green liquid, with the same little hoses hooked up all over her body.

Nagisa refuses to fight.

Until Iczer brings up her parents death and suggests vengence. Suddenly, Nagisa thinks this is a hot idea and bOOM, the power of Iczer Robo is complete. By saying yes to fighting, they are now "merged" and fight as one.

And they do. And they win against whatever it was they were fighting. Oh, yeah, they fight Cobalt, who is in another robot. They rip Cobalt out of her robot and crush her.

So Iczer drops off Nagisa in her old neighborhood. The whole country has been overrun with a virus or something that turns everyone into monsters, but somehow Iczer thinks Nagisa will be just fine. Nagisa is suddenly is wearing a flashier, skimpy outfit. She asks Iczer what's up with this outfit and Iczer tells her it will protect her. Yes, of course - less clothes = more protection. Didn't we learn anything from Xena?

On her own, Nagisa goes back to her own house and finds a little girl and her mother, whom she befriends. She goes upstairs to her parents room and finds that the bodies are all gone somehow. But suddenly, monsters come out of the walls and floors and attack with face tendrils, which Nagisa's bracelet fry to a crispy pile of dust. All is saved...
... except back downstairs the mother of the girl is now a bloated monster. Nagisa toasts her, too.

I don't remember what happens next. Sepia is super upset and distraught over Cobalt's death. But the Cthulu have made another Iczer - Iczer TWO, who takes Sepia as her partner. They go down to Earth in a super robot, Iczer Sigma, and fight Iczer Robo. They rip Robo's arm off. Then, Iczer Sigma stomps on the little girl Nagisa was trying to save. With Nagisa horrified by this, suddenly power beyond belief comes to Iczer Robo and they do something amazing and defeat Iczer Sigma.

And it turns out that Nagisa had given her bracelet to the little girl, so she survived after all. So to protect her, they take hte little girl far far away to the countryside to protect her. But while they're there, Iczer Two arrives with Blue and Red and kidnap Nagisa and kick Iczer One's ass.

Back on the mother ship on the far side of the moon, Iczer Two wants Nagisa to be her partner since she's so powerful to Iczer One (who, by the way, seems to be passionately worried about Nagisa all the time). Iczer Two has Nagisa pinned to a wall in a cell and tries to force her to become her partner by having some pod creature at Nagisa's feet sprout tentacles, which menacingly wrap around Nagisa and hover over face in a threatening bukake pose.

Interstingly, with as many tendriled monsters as there are, none of them were sexual at all the way tentacles ALWAYS are nowadays in anime. This was the only scene with even REMOTE "sexual tentacle tension" and it wasn't much at all. Which is fine, as I don't care for tentales, but anyhow.

Also odd, as desperate as everyone is to destroy and stop Iczer, all the monsters always corner Nagisa, the source of Iczer's power, and then just... kinda hover there and watch. They never DO anything! Stupid monsters!

So... Nagisa, threatened by Iczer Two and the tentacle pod. Nagisa says she'd rather die, kill me now. As the tentacles near, she screams out for Iczer One.

Iczer one is unconcious in a field. Iczer Robo appears, beams up Iczer One, who then wakes up and beams to this monolith thingey, destroying Iczer Robo in the process of smashing through the walls. Iczer One is now surrounded by monsters and fights and kicks ass, before Iczer Two appears and brings out Nagisa, who now has glowing green glazed eyes. Telepathically, Nagisa calls out to Iczer and tells her she cannot control her own body -- shoot me before I shoot you and kill you. At first Iczer refuses, she's crying and torn over killing Nagisa. But then she shoots her anyway. Nagisa thanks her, then dies and we see her spirit drift toward Iczer and apparently get absorbed because suddenly Iczer gets her second wind, has super super powers and destroys Iczer Two.

Then Big Gold kills Sir Violet And shows up to congradulate her. Now let's take over the world. Iczer One says, "never!" so Big Gold suggests they fight in their true forms. Nothing happens to Iczer One, so that must be her true form, while Big Gold turns into a gigantic pillar of golden light. Calling Nagisa's name, Iczer surrounds herself with a gold bubble, draws her blue light saber, and flies into Big Gold, which causes Big Gold and Iczer to merge into one being, but technically, Iczer is the dominant personality/apperance/etc.

Stuff blows up.

Iczer is floating around in space or somewhere over Earth, holding Nagisa's body. She's saying now she has the power of Big Gold, she's going to find the Cthulu a new home and watch over them (so they don't go bad again). She's also going to grant Nagisa's wish to put Earth back the way it was. Which she does. Next scene is basically the same scene where we first saw Nagisa, waking up and getting ready for school. And on her way to school, she sees Iczer again but doesn't recognize her, while Iczer stands there with a goofy sad smile and tears in her eyes as Nagisa takes off with her friend to get to school on time.

The end.


Conclusion
Really gross monsters, stupid-stupid dialogue, trite characters with no depth. Hated the animation, hated the music and HATED the sound effects. There was very little yuri. The very brief nude makeout scene at the beginning, and then Nagisa and people are naked often, but that's about it. Nagisa depends on Iczer for protection but doesn't seem to love her or anything, and Iczer is just weird. She seems randomly obsessed with Nagisa the way Najara was for Gabrielle but no good vibes necessarily.

The whole thing is a super drama, no humour at all, and no POINT at all.
There you have it.