What I watched in August

b Antique Bakery: Many scenes I was hoping to see were totally absent, and I will always like the storytelling in the manga better, but there were some great moments brought to life in the anime.  It was definitely worth seeing.

b Here Is Greenwood: All fun and goofy things must come to an end.  Suka-chan gets his happy ending, more or less, and now I want those missing out of print manga volumes even more . . .

b Infinite Ryvius:  Now I've finally seen it all the way to the harrowing end.  Wow.  I would not be nearly as forgiving of some folks.  A certain character earned his redemption the hard way, and he was never actually evil, but some people enjoyed toying with other people's lives as some sort of practical science experiment way too much.  Does this make things a bit more realistic?  Heck, yeah.  I mean, I understand why they maybe didn't prosecute certain people (they were kids, and they should never have been in that situation), but certain murderers and manipulators should not have been invited back for round 2 even if round 2 was unlikely to be anything like round 1 . . .

And the brothers?  Well, I have to stay I still kind of want to smack both of them upside the head, and it annoyed me that Juli didn't really step up.  I can't blame that on Juli, though; she had her reasons, and they were pretty realistic.

I remembered the music being a bit different from the norm, but I think it works, partly because it differentiates this from the other teenagers and robots anime that have soaring dramatic symphonic scores.  As if the content didn't differentiate it enough.

Oh, Rafra, I shouldn't look at you in a different light just because of the horrible things I learned about your owner.  You can't help who owns you.

b Madoka Magica:  Holy.  Cow.  Y'know, there's dark and then there's DARK and then there's Madoka.  You will love it or hate it; you probably won't be able to stay neutral if you watch it all the way through.

b Midori no Hibi:  Bittersweet ending. Awwwww.

b Rainbow: This one has to be watched in small doses because it is dark and violent.  I suppose that's why its ultimately uplifting nature shines that much brighter.  But there's a lot of darkness.  Part of me wants to have a DVD set, so I can just watch it all at once and not have the suspense be killing me, but I wonder what that would do to me . . .  This one's available at Funimation's website and for more information, check out this post from when I first heard of it, and be sure to read the review that got me interested.