Awesome Anime

All work and no play makes Vinum a cranky artist. So to combat the stresses of daily living I've been playing sports and watching some awesome anime. The series Freezing I spoke about in an earlier post just ended and to be honest the manga is better than the anime. 

I've got sucked into watching Hellsing Ultimate OVA cuz I liked the first Hellsing series and wanted to see if there was a difference. The new Hellsing closely follows the original manga. It's aggressive, violent, gory (guro style) and damn good action. Hellsing (The Holy Order of Protestant Knights) is an organization that investigates paranormal activity in England. They deal with Vampires, Ghouls and any other unnatural threat to the crown. 

The organization is led by Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, a tough masculine woman with a sharp sword. Their secret weapon is the first and most powerful of all vampires, the vampire king named Alucard. He joined the Hellsing organization after being defeated by Integra's ancestor Arthur Van Helsing over 100 years before the series takes place.

The Hellsing organization finds out the remnants of a Nazi group called Millennium still exists and are intent on reviving the Third Reich by creating a legion of vampires. Millennium, Hellsing, and the Vatican section XIII (section 13) Iscariot clash in an apocalyptic three-sided war that encompasses the globe. 

There are ten episode of the series but only the first seven are released. What makes it interesting to watch (aside from the big guns and monsters) is the dialog and real historical tidbits about  World War II, the Vatican and the Nazi's they use in the story-line.

The only downer in the series is how they throw in juvenile humor at points to lighten the mood and make the complex subject matter and gratuitous violence more digestible. In my humble opinion the story doesn't need the comedy cuz its a poor distraction from the plot. I posted the trailer and a compilation clip of the first 7 episodes combined below.

AniManga: Trigun, Freezing and Basilisk

This post is for my anime addicted, otakus looking for the next anime series to keep you entertained. I recently returned from a conference in France where my hotel room had no cable. So at night I would watch a variety of shows and movies. Some of the series are still ongoing and some were remakes of older series and others are new. Trigun, Freezing (ongoing), and Basilisk are all series worth watching depending on your taste in anime.

Trigun - is a comedy action series about a gunslinger named Vash the Stampede who is known to leave a trail of destruction in his path. Really he’s just a goofy kid with amazing reflexes, who believes in peace over violence and making the world a safer place. He's followed by two Bernardelli Insurance Society employees who chase Vash around in order to minimize the damages caused by his appearance. Most of the damage attributed to Vash is actually caused by bounty hunters in pursuit of the "$$60,000,000,000" (sixty billion "double dollars") bounty on Vash's head. He is occasionally joined by a priest, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who, like Vash, is a superb gunfighter with a mysterious past. The show started as a manga and was adapted into a 26 episode television series in 1998. In 2010 they released a film titled Trigun: Badlands Rumble.

Freezing - is a SERIOUS, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Action Ecchi series that is ongoing. Set in a slightly futuristic world, Earth was invaded and is at war with aliens from another dimension called the Nova. In order to counter them, Pandoras and Limiters, genetically modified girls with super fighting skills and their male partners who use special "freezing" powers to limit their opponent's mobility, are made to fight against the Nova. The series focuses on Kazuya Aoi, a Limiter whose late sister was a Pandora, and Satellizer el Bridget, a powerful Pandora nicknamed "The Untouchable Queen," both who are enrolled at the West Genetics Academy. The story follows Kazuya's friendship with Satellizer, the students of the Academy and Earth's war against the Nova. The show is violent, sexual and fast-paced like High School of the Dead on steroids. It only has 3 episodes released but if you like action the rest is worth the wait. The clip below doesn't do the battle scenes justice.

Basilisk - Was a manga turned to 24 episode anime series packed with action. The story takes place in the year 1614. Two ninja clans, Tsubagakure of the Iga and Manjidani of Kouga, battle each other to determine which grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu will become the next shogun. The deadly competition between 10 elite ninja from each clan unleashes a centuries-old hatred that threatens to destroy all hope for peace between them. Its a cross between Ninja Scrolls and Romeo and Juliet because the grandchildren of the rival clan leaders are in Love and soon may have to face each other in combat. Take a peek.