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My Anime/Manga of 2021

I lived the NEET life for a few months this year and watched/read so many things. This post will contain everything I’ve started/finished this year.

Note; this post is very long.

Anime

I looked through my list and realized that even if it’s a year with lockdowns, I barely have any titles to add here. So this year I will do something different and just comment on everything I started/finished this year.

Here goes!

Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya The Beginning Review – well, that was more entertaining than I thought

I’ve been a long-time Seiya fan, and when the live action was announced, I was both worried and excited for it. Movie adaptations of manga usually doesn’t fare too well (take Dragon Ball Evolution or Ghost in the Shell, for example. Only Alita: Battle Angel did pretty well as far as I’m aware), but I’m excited to see Seiya hit theaters.

I was the only one in the theater for that showing, which was not strange since I’ve had that experience with Violet Evergarden before lol.

One thing I enjoy about Saint Seiya is how different authors come up with different interpretations of the story that Kurumada-sensei wrote, so I gave the movie a go. I went in with no expectations, and to be honest, I actually quite liked it.

Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac) – overview, which to watch, and in what order?

Many of you Netflix people may have seen Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac. Maybe you’ve watched it, maybe you’re just curious. Or some of you may be here because of Saint Seiya: the Beginning AKA Knights of the Zodiac.

In this post, I will introduce the Saint Seiya series briefly, give an overview of the various spinoffs, and recommend the order to watch them. Note that I will not cover the ‘American’ version (Guardian of the Cosmos) as I could barely find any info.

Saint Seiya is a shounen action-fantasy manga written by Masami Kurumada, with various anime adaptations and manga spinoffs by various authors. The story centers around the Saints/Knights, warriors who wear super-armors called Cloths according to their guardian constellation, and fight alongside the goddess Athena to protect mankind from various threats.

If you like action-fantasy stories where characters in cool armors throw superpowers at each other with their cosmic energy and fight against gods, then you might be interested.

Overview

The ‘main’ or parent story of Saint Seiya is the manga written by Masami Kurumada. I will introduce the sequel and spinoffs with minimum spoilers, so feel free to read through.

Kousha no Ura ni wa Tenshi ga Umerareteiru – bonutzuu’s manga archive

TW: bullying, sexual harrassment, suicide, murder

My first thought after finishing all 7 volumes in one go: WTF, can’t you end on a good note?

“There is an Angel Buried Behind the School Building” is the story of… yeah, you saw the TW. Bullying. Nothing can compare to the WTF I screamed when I flipped to the last page of the first chapter. Judging from the title, I thought this was gonna be about a bunch of kids investigating a school ghost legend or some shit, not becoming the school legend.

Inorihime wa Sora ni Warau – bonutzuu’s manga archive

SO. MUCH. FLUFF.

Inorihime wa Sora ni Warau (The Prayer Princess Laughs at the Sky) is a 4-volume fantasy shoujo manga by Mizutani Yuzu and Kaede Tooru.

It’s pretty much a standard fantasy shoujo manga with all its common tropes, but I don’t know why I like it so much. Maybe it’s because Maritza and Azurite are soooooo cute together.

The plot is as follow. The Kingdom of Forestuana consists of the kingdom itself, and an island with a huge tower surrounded by the rivers, where the “Inorihime” (Prayer Princess) lives. The royal family of Forestuana is strictly forbidden to meet the Inorihime, or else it will bring ruin to the kingdom.

Maritza is the current Inorihime who inherited the “Inori no Uta” (Prayer Song), a melody capable of creating various miracles despite nobody aside from her being able to hear what it actually sounds like. (She sings it out loud but the sound waves are inaudible to regular people or something.) One day, Azurite came to the tower searching for his companion’s long-lost sister and ran in to Maritza, and the two immediately hit it off. Azurite became the first person to be able to hear what Maritza’s prayer song sounded like. However, it turns out that it’s because Azurite is the first prince of Forestuana, and now that he’s met the Inorihime, woe will befall their kingdom.

A lot of stuff happened. Turns out that Maritza’s best friend and handmaid is the long-lost sister kidnapped to the island. Maritza had to escape the head priestess who wanted to abuse the Inori no Uta and went to Azurite for protection. The two grew closer and met many different people and gained more perspectives on the current situation. Maritza and Azurite realized that they fell in love with each other and wanted to find out why their meeting was forbidden.

The kingdom of Forestuana was actually founded by… people from space? Anyway, this spaceship fell in the middle of the island and the residents got stuck there. (The “tower” is actually the spaceship that dove nose-first to the ground.) The people argued on what they should do. One side wanted to abandon hope that they could fix the spaceship and go out to explore this new place. The other side wanted to stay and protected the spaceship. The two leaders of the ship then had to separate these two groups before conflict gets any worse. The male leader went out and became the founder of the Forestuana Kingdom, while the female leader who stayed behind became the first Inorihime.

The two leaders were in love with each other, but had to separate because of duty. To prevent further conflicts between the sides, they set up a rule where the royal family must not meet the Inorihime at all costs.

Flash forward to the present, it turns out that Maritza is a clone of the first Inorihime. The head priestess gave up trying to manipulate all the clones for her own goods. Maritza and Azurite’s meeting did not result in the fall of the kingdom, but to a new era where the royal family and the tower’s residents lived together in peace.

If you like a light, fantasy story with a cute relationship between the leads and their friends, then I recommend this manga. I really like it and I like the concept of the story. I got this fluffy feeling when I finished the manga and I think this story deserves more love.

Watashi ni XX Shinasai (Missions of Love): Yukina’s endgame? – bonutzuu’s manga archive

I started this thing on Jan 2013 and finished it Feb 2023. The reason it took me so long to finish was partially waiting for new release and partially just me forgetting about this manga.

Soooo I’ll keep this review short.

Watashi ni XX shinasai (Missions of Love/XX Me) follows the story of the “ice queen” Yukina, a stoic middle school girl who’s actually “Yupina”, the popular online novelist. She finds it difficult to write romance, so she blackmailed Shigure, the school’s most popular boy, into doing missions of love with her so that she can inject some romance into her writing. However, Yukina’s cousin Akira became jealous and confessed his love to her. And then we have (in JP Beaubien’s voice) a love triangle!

Basilisk: Ouka Ninpouchou (the Ouka Ninja Scrolls) – bonutzuu’s manga archive (manga vs anime?)

Let me start by saying this: I did not read or watch Kouga Ninpouchou. I did not know this manga was a sequel until I bought all the books and started reading, so I have no point of comparison lol. I could understand the story without reading the prequel.

Plot:

The Kouga and Iga ninja clans had been enemies since forever, but they made peace ten years ago. Kouga Hachirou and Iga Hibiki, a pair of twins born from the union between the Kouga and Iga clan, lived a seemingly peaceful life in a secluded ninja village. However, that all changed when the Joujinshu, a rising clan backed by the Jesuits, came to the village and slaughtered their family. Its leader Joujin dismembered Hibiki and turned her into a puppet, but Hachirou managed to grab his sister’s head and run away in time.

Xiaoli Feidao – Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword (Duoqing Jianke Wuqing Jian) – bonutzuu’s wuxia archive

[This post is half reminiscence and half praise of the book, just to give you a heads-up. Anyway, on with the post.]

[Just to note that I read the Thai translation, which transcribes all names and honorifics in Tae-chiew dialect. I will be using the Mandarin names in this post just for ease of the readers looking up more info, and I apologize in advance if I get any names mixed up.]

In my previous post on Cang Hai, I wrote about how I wasn’t that impressed by my gateway novel into wuxia. Although I enjoyed the books, I thought that maybe wuxia isn’t for me. It wasn’t until I found this one book that changed it completely.

That book is the first novel in the Xiaoli Feidao series, Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword.

Turn A Gundam Episode 1-15 Review : Loran on a Roll

The Witch of Mercury is the talk of the town right now, but before the Witch of Mercury, there was Turn A.

Here is the story on how I discovered this 1999 anime in 2022:

I was listening to Yoko Kanno on Spotify. Specifically, I was listening to her Ghost in the Shell SAC soundtrack albums. I was just listening to Hiroyuki Sawano the other day, so my Spotify recommendations were full of anime/mecha stuff. And then this popped up:

I was like: wow, this looks like a cover art for some futuristic fantasy anime like Last Exile or maybe Suisei no Gargantia! Then I read the album title: Turn a Gundam Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

I was like: Ok it’s a Gundam series, but WTF does that even mean, turning a Gundam? What?

takt Op. Destiny Ep. 3-5 review – to New Orleans!

We got 3 solid episodes of Takt dissing everyone he came across.

In these three episodes, we follow Takt and co as they begin their journey to the New York, while defeating some D2 along the way. We get some fun interactions with ‘Destiny’ and Takt, where we see the beginning of the running gag where she bursts through walls and developed her addiction to calories. Watching Takt and Cosette gradually learn to work with each other was pretty interesting.

Amnesia Memories: Toma Good Ending (Day 21-24)

More of Toma’s cage.

MC recalled how Toma was happy when she told him she has a guy she likes. I guess she was disappointed that he’s so oblivious about her feelings. Although MC had been remembering all these love advice she got, she still got no clue who she actually liked. Orion thought it may be Ikki, and that’s what caused Toma to snap.

Toma claimed to have woken up from a weird dream, and was surprised to see MC in a cage (WTF?). But then he remembered that he did all that and was like ‘oh right, but not like I can stop now.’ Later that night, Toma talked about what he’d do if Shin found out about the cage thing.

MC found out that the cage had a weak spot and can be forced open. She did so, grabbed her phone, hid it in the puzzle box that Toma gave her, and replaced the cage bar seconds before Toma came back to the room. Toma noticed almost right away that her phone was gone, and tried calling it. Luckily, she already turned it off and got away with that one. It was the first time MC and Orion managed to get away with fooling Toma…maybe. I had a feeling he knew, though.