April 2005 Archives

I'm going to watch through this again so I'll be back with more detail and hopefully screencaps later, but I'll start with some brief notes (spoilers, naturally)

Keep meaning to make some notes on these.. just started watching episode 16 which has reminded me. The promised improvements have been showing since episode 14/15.. episode 14 also was the start of a new OP theme (or rather, a different part/rendition of the same one) and a new ED theme. I've really got no complaints to make about the animation at the moment which I guess means they're doing something right:) The most obvious change was the toning down of hair colours, most noticeble in episode 15 with the twins, they didn't feature in ep 14 and I didn't notice any other colour changes so I don't know which ep it started in (the opening animation hasn't been updated to reflect this either). The other major animation point of note was the Gankutsuou-style textures the made a surprise appearance in episode 14. Storywise, episode 14 followed the manga except I don't remember the 'drunk' Konoka stuff (although I may just have forgotten it). She did look cute in that kimono though :)) Episode 15 was new to me in it's entirety so it's either unique to the Anime or in a book I've not read yet. I've only seen a bit of ep 16 but they seem to have pushed forward the kiss contest that was supposed to be in the Kyoto arc (so we've not seen Chamo and paparazzi girl in cahoots and the stuff with Setsuna, Konoka and Negi hasn't happened yet so I don't know how they'll handle the stuff with the Pactio cards, if they include that at all and it'd be a shame to leave that out. Talking about cards.. they don't seem to have done that botched Konoka card)
Ah.. looking at ANN it seems the OP song has changed every few eps and I've just not noticed it till now..
OK, dekimashita. They have indeed written out the Pactio cards completely, they came up with a lame new way of cloning Negi (but missed the point of it all which was to make those fake cards) and Nodoka doesn't get her kiss (but then, she hasn't has her kokuhaku yet either)