Anime: "Shinryaku! Ika Musume!"

Splice of life animes don't get more random than this one >.<

Ika Musume, loosely translated as 'Squid Girl', is angry with human beings for defiling the ocean and has come to the surface to invade them. After creating a hole in the wall of a shop on a beach, she was forced to work there to pay off the damages.

The whole anime is basically about life of a girl who has squid like powers. Her 'hair' are tentacles, the 'hat' she's wearing are her fins, and she can also 'vomit' squid ink. Unfortunately for her, (and quite expectedly for us), most of the humans she encountered were not normal and some have outstanding reactions towards her, usually much to her dismay.


As an anime that is driven by its characters, I'll just go through the main characters, WITH PICTURES UNLIKE THE WIKIPEDIA ONE! =D (There are side characters, but they only appear for an episodes or two )

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Ika Musume - Weird Squid Girl. Talented, genius but airheaded and ignorant.


Eiko Aizawa - Hot headed manageress of the shop. Very bad at studies.


Chizuru Aizawa - Sister of Eiko. Yandere, nuff said :p


Takeru Aizawa - Little brother of Aizawa family. Nothing special as pointed out by Ika.


Nagisa Saito - A girl who is actually scared of Ika and really believes that she is capable of an invasion...to a large extent. She loves Goto. Poor girl =/



Gorō Arashiyama - A lifeguard and childhood friend of Eiko. Loves Chizuru. Poor guy =/



Sanae Nagatsuki - Introduced as a cute, shy and polite girl, upon seeing Ika, she evolved into a really creepy stalker who is very VERY infatuated with her.


Cindy Campbell - Strange American(?) girl who works as an Investigator for some research department on alien species. She believe Ika is an alien and at a point of time, Chizuru too.

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It IS a rather strange and random anime, but suffice to say it delivered pretty well. I'm honestly not sure if the excessive use and display of Ika Musume's tentacles mean anything as all the episodes seemed innocent enough. Maybe it's just my over-imagination ^^;

Here's the PV:

Anime: "Panty and Stockings with Garterbelt"

I seem to be attracted to animes of total randomness more so than those with actual 'meaning'. "Panty and Stockings with Garterbelt" is truly a strange, disturbing, interesting and weird anime all at once, just as its title suggests. It took me a bit of courage to begin watching this. It's also incredibly vulgar and full of sexual references. I wondered how they managed to air this in Japan, especially with the anime ban just around the corner.

The first thing that catches the eye, other than the title, is the art. It's art style has the same heavy cell-shading/chibi theme as popular Cartoon Network cartoons such as Dexter and Powerpuff Girls, although from time to time, they switched to conventional anime style. Or even put in real life pictures. Somehow before everyone dies, the show will suddenly switch to a real life small model of the creature/person and it will subsequently get blown up:



The setting seems normal enough though. Basically angels known as the Anarchy Sisters, aptly named Panty and Stockings, were banished from heaven to Daton City on the surface due to their screwed up behaviors. To return, they have to kill 'Ghosts', and collect Heaven Coins to return. Wtf Heaven Coins. It's so stupid that I loved the concept.

That's not all though. If you have watched the very disturbing trailer (which I will embed below), you'll come to know that both angels have the ability to transform certain parts of their clothing into weapons that can be used to defeat Ghosts. Panty can transform panties into guns and Stockings can transform stockings into katanas...

They were sent to Reverend Garterbelt, some cool black dude with a huge afro that is somehow also supposedly a homosexual. Yeah, he's not normal either. Not by a long shot. But despite his madness and antics, along the episodes we know that he will ultimately the good guy in the series.

So here's a brief description about the main characters. Heheh, Brief.



Panty - Seems like some stereotypical celebrity blondie that just wants to make out with guys. She's actually pretty f'ed up. She's incredibly rude, vulgar and doesn't seem to take her Ghost killing duties seriously. She also hates sweets.


Stockings - Stereotypical goth loli. Loves to eat sweet stuff. She seemed to have a BDSM fetish with her at the receiving end.



Garterbelt - Godly holy black man with the most overpowering afro. He is indestructible. Or at least, he always reconstructs somehow. He always gives advice to defeating a Ghost. Also, he is gay for Brief.



Kneesocks and Scanty - Devil counterparts to Panty and Stockings. Like most random villains, they get overly ecstatic before ultimately getting defeated.

Brief - Some geek who loves Panty. Although his role is usually insignificant, it changed in the last episode. Also it is hinted that he might be the main character for the next season.

Chuck - Strange zipper dog thing. He also throws up (literally) Panty and Stocking's mission for certain episodes.

Despite the obscenity, it is a fairly good watch (provided you are of the right age). The episodes usually don't make much heck of a sense and sometimes the randomness can be overwhelming. There are also tons of parodies. For example there's an episode that's a direct parody of Transformers as shown by the pic below:


Also, the last episode parodies the old Leonardo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet. Sorry I just have to say it lol. I don't think many people watched that movie. Anyways below is the trailer:

This X'mas = 4 HRs, 3 animes, 2 otomos and a brand new LG handphone

It's really been quite some time since I actually watched anime or did any anime review. A week of my holiday somehow disappeared into a swirl of alcohol, shit talking, anime screenings and monster hunting.

Then I realized I just finished 3 half season and 1 full season animes in the whole week. Perhaps that's why time flew by pretty fast. Yet I know that it's still no match for other otaku marathoners.

Anyway, a bunch of animu reviews are coming right up. I think I have enough to flood the blog's front page. Merry Christmas everyone!

Finally, a breather!

It's been close to a month since the last update. The exams and projects have finally come to an end and the 3 week holiday has begun. I still can't believe a month has passed. Everything was incredibly hectic and busy. I haven't been playing much games for the past 3 months and couldn't find the motivation to review them, especially since I do not have time to complete them.

As for the game project, I really do not mind showing it to everyone, but I'm still unsure about the copyright issues related to it. I was told that it's okay to show by my classmates, but I would rather play safe I guess. But do look out for it! I've already passed it to a couple of people for them to try =)

I wanted to do many things during this 3 weeks, and I really hope it doesn't pass by too quickly. The Monster Hunter craze has started again with it's new game (Monster Hunter 3) and it's pushing everyone's priorities away, myself included. Finally all of us are desperate enough cohesively to play Monster Hunter together. It shows how sad MMORPGs are nowadays; there are just too many better alternatives. And Cataclysm is not helping.

On a final note, after observing my stats, I found that it is much better to write guides than reviews. So I will try my best to post more guides from various games and cut down on my reviews. I also find that it's much more productive that way. Speaking of guides, I might post maths/programming related stuff here, although to what extent I have not decided.