Infinite & all paper-y

So in my waning days of exploring the enduring question "Is there actually any good anime left?", I took on a couple of suggestions and rented a couple of titles.

First up, disc 1 of "Silent Mobius". The first thing I thought was -- embarressingly enough -- "this isn't one of those hentai shows, is it?". Not because of any actual sexual content mind you... but the character designs and whatnot were kind of reminiscent of... well, the internet is a big place and sometimes a guy downloads something now and...

Oh, who am I kidding?? *cough*

Of course, it didn't help in the 2nd episode with that one demon critter and then suddenly "AND HEEERREE COME THE TENNNTICLESSSSS"... Heh.

No, really, this wasn't anything like one of those shows, except for all the parts that those shows were probably ripping off. It seemed to be decently written, and except for the rather silly episode #5, not particularly immature. Overall, though, it wasn't much more than moving manga. Better than some of the junk I've tried, but I'm not sure if I'll keep going with it.

Next was disc one of "Read or Die (aka ROD) TV", the series follow-on to the OVA I saw oh-so-long ago. I had caught an episode of this on TV a while back (dubbed), but it was pretty far into it and I didn't really think much of it one way or another. Starting from the top, I've got to admit that I found it entertaining. It wasn't particularly annoying, even though it tended to get a little silly, and there was quite a few moments that were very well animated. I mean, really, top-notch stuff there. The characters seemed alive and interesting. It's enough to keep me trying it for a while longer.

Earlier today during breakfast, I watched the latest raw of "Spider Riders" -- episode 4 -- and I really didn't get into some of the exposition I'm sure was going on in the dialouge. But on a purely observational level, this isn't all that bad of a show, if only to see how the shortcuts and tricks-of-the-trade play out in such a simple, clear, for-kids fashion. Not bad, or at least, I can find enough in it to be entertained at some level.

That reminds me, "Tsubasa Chronicle" season 2 started up this morning! I'm downloading the speedsub of it now, which means I can resume my Sunday morning tradition. Yay!

I watched a bit of the latest ".hack//Roots" for the eye-candy, but I really want to see the subs for it, because we're at the point where the dialogue is really getting into the meat of the matter. It's still awesome looking in HDTV, and I really find Ali Project's soundtrack growing on me, but without understanding Japanese, I'm still mostly lost, despite what the visual narrative is telling me.