More roundup. Always more roundup...

Thought I had actually blogged these; guess I didn't. *Sigh*

"X" disc 2 -- I'm still kind of on the edge of this one... part of me wants to be really bored with it because the story, visuals and cinematics aren't really breaking any ground for me, and the other part thinks that a couple of the characters might be interesting enough for me to hook me into the story better. I'm still not really sure who's who; maybe that will shape up in disc 3.

"Samurai 7" disc 2 -- all of these were still retreads of the fansubs I've already seen, including the episode that's rather, uh, "raw" in style. Kind of like they had to rush an episode and dispensed with the 'tweeners and cleanup steps, and just hacked out 24 minutes as best as they could. Back when I first saw it, I was of the opinion that it had a bit of an "experimental" feel; now I'm not so certain of it. At any rate, the disc is otherwise decent enough quality, and the story doesn't quite offend me as much as it did back when I was just starting out with the whole "anime" craziness.

"Sol Bianca" disc 1 -- This one I have mixed feelings about. A direct-to-video OVA (redundant? yeah), the animation was pretty much awful in most spots. Just another hi-gloss moving manga. But the character designs and art direction were pretty good, I thought. The concept of a bunch of gun-toting pirate babes on a sleek super-ship, and the sci-fi universe it inhabits, has endless appeal to me -- that whole "what anime does best" impression I used to have way back when. Otherwise, I don't know if there's anything deeper in it for me than the entertainment value I get out of that. If the next disc opens up a little, I may even buy it. Heavily discounted, of course...

"Death Note" -- Meh. Sets itself up as a goth-wannabe's ultimate fantasy, but falls into dull monologue and dubious character motivation. All in the typical moving-manga style, and mostly void of anything uniquely imaginative. Not interested.

"Tsubasa Chronicle", eps up to 44 -- The "arc that was starting to get good again" did pretty well for itself. We see even more of Kurogane's tragic childhood, and we get to wander around in the half-completed stage that is Sakura's memories. The latter of which sets up some interesting tension with Syaoran, and eventually leads to yet another encounter with the mysterious evil-antimatter-stuck-in-a-tube version of him. Still mysterious, but not annoyingly so. But the slightly-annoying aspects return in ep 44 with a simple one-off episode, geared towards the "cute" factor. Actually, nothing was particularly awful about it, just a bit fluffy for my taste. I'll get over it.

".hack//Roots" -- got through to the end with it. And I guess I'm a bit annoyed. And dissappointed. Out of all the "//SIGN" characters they could have had cameos of, who shows up?? *Sigh*. That said, there was one little tragic bit that was unclear in 25, and actually explained (for once) in the end, about Phyllo. And a couple of other disclosures were made, but purely as factoids to set up the games. Otherwise, it was extremely anti-climactic. At least "//SIGN" had a genuine moment to it's ending of the core character storyline, even though spent just as much time setting up the games, and then going all deus ex machina all over the place. "//Roots" just relied on flashbacks of Shino to try and achieve the same effect, and it fell short for me.

Also, all the eye animations seemed totally different than the episodes to this point. I mean, really obviously off-model in ways that I can't quite pin down. I'm not sure what was up with that...