I know what you mean about "try before I buy". Although there are a lot of shows on my 'Anime to buy' list it's puny in comparison to the total number of shows I've seen. Of course, the only ones I'm interested in buying are ones I liked enough to want to re-watch, and with my memory those are few and far between as I rarely enjoy a show as much the second time as I did the first (although if I do enjoy it quite a bit the second time I tend to enjoy it the third, fourth, fifth,...).
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ShawnHacaga wrote:


Really? It was actually fairly close to what I'd expected, not the same, but fairly close. Then again after watching shows such as Kaleido Star and Glass Mask I had a vague idea as to just what they might do with it.
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I did say if it's still there by that time. I expect that there are several series that I'm not going to get to see the rest of in the mean time, or that I've been interested in watching and just won't get to in general.
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HD just stands for High Definition, which implies that it is using a higher base pixel count for the image. One thing to keep in mind is that there are three HD resolutions, 480, 720, and 1080, and that the 480 resolution is barely any improvement over an SD (Standard Definition) image, mostly in that most HD stuff is in a specific signal format and the lowest resolution is regular non-HD stuff changed to that format. As such there is a lot of room for them to play with and still have it be HD. After all, if I'm right going by the artistic styles Vampire Princess Miyu is originally from the 1980's, which makes it nearly two decades older than HD and it's also available in HD, though again probably just a 480p resolution.

I hope that made sense, as I just woke up from only 4 hours of sleep and I'm needing to eat (and maybe watch some anime) before I go back to sleep.
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I've rather enjoyed Our Home's Fox Diety over at Hulu, and as I've been subscribing to the NISA newsletter since before they started localizing animes I've seen quite a few titles carried by them, but I know what you mean about their prices. Not that other companies are reliably much cheaper (try checking out the price of Cat Planet Cuties, still over 50% of that price, though it is available dubbed), which is why a friend of mine laughed when she found a pic that said "Anime, my anti-drug, because when you're addicted to anime you can't afford drugs."

Maybe someday I'll get back to trying to watch stuff over on Cruchyroll (I do have a subscription, their ads didn't like my desktop a few years ago), particularly as I do have Usagi Drop in my watch queue, if it's still there that long. I also have over 900 eps of various subbed series queued to watch over on Hulu, so at present I'll probably end up being able to afford the Rosetta Stone courses for Japanese before I get totally caught up everywhere, and then I can enjoy the subbed stuff while I game just like I currently do with the dubbed stuff.
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Okay, I've heard that TAN was originally associated with ADV, and has focused on carrying animes by the Neo-ADV companies since ADV went under, but I wonder if TAN has ever considered getting streaming rights to animes by other companies? I can understand TAN not trying to carry anything by Funimation, what with the mess with Funi and how ADV went under, but what about NISA? I'm not sure how many people are familiar with their anime localizations, but the one I've managed to see some of on Hulu I'd rather enjoyed, and since Hulu has aboloshed their channels it's a royal pain in the arse trying to see if they have any other NISA localizations, as you have to search by title. Not that I can't hit NISA's site for said titles, but after hunting up the title to one that sounds interesting, and then searching it only to find out that Hulu doesn't it doesn't take long for it to become frustrating.

I realize that it's probably rather unlikely TAN would ever try to license to stream them, which is why I didn't bother putting this in the suggestion box (no point making a suggestion that's going to get chucked as soon as it's seen) but I am curious as to what everyone else's thoughts are on it.
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Well, everything worked this morning, so I've finished watching the new dubs, but when I posted it was taking over a minute for even the forum pages to load. I don't normally worry about posting when the pages are loading with a reasonable speed but the videos aren't loading unless it happens over the course of multiple days. I'd say we had more than just a missing video server (and yes, Lumis, for subscribers TAN uses Amazon video hosting, for guests and members it's ran through Hulu instead). I'm glad to see everything working properly today. Now that I've got my dubs caught up over here it's over to Netflix for more fun with Ang and crew while I keep trying to make some more progress in Wild Arms 5 (my PS3 doesn't seem to like that PS2 title, very annoying when it does a 'half-freeze' in the middle of playing forcing me to have it reset the game).
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The Coffee God wrote:


Yeah, that transition is rather jarring, especially with the degree of quality difference on the fine details. I've seen the mix of hand and CG animation done much better in things like Xenogears and Blue Submarine No. 6, where they use the CG for mech scenes and the hand for character scenes.
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I've watched them and the series almost reminds me of Kaleido Star. They've got only the barest of similarities, but yet it still reminds me of it.
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Thanks. My friend and I really enjoyed the first season, but after trying to watch the first ep of F it was obvious that there was at least one season in the middle that was missing. I really hope that Sentai does make the effort for seasons 2 & 3, and eventually rescues season 1 as well for a complete matching set, especially since according to Wikipedia the license was dropped do to low sales. My friend hunted up information on it, but I still prefer to ask you guys as search engines and I have a tendency to not agree on what I'm looking for (particularly Google, and yet it still gives me what I'm looking for more often than the others I've tried, it's just that when it's off it's way off).
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As I've never watched New Girl I can't really say if it gets that much better or not, but the series doesn't really focus that much on the Shinsengumi, it focuses more on the girl and you rarely get to see anything that she isn't a part of. Of course, considering that, if I'm right, it's based on a dating sim for the PSP (same title, very similar opening events, and same character designs and names; yes, I've played said dating sim some, it's available for rent from Gamefly) I'd say it's a given that it was going to be more fiction than historical in the first place. It does eventually bring in some fantasy-type elements, but they don't seem to be a significant part until the tail end and the second season.
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Well, I don't know if anyone else has watched the first two eps yet, but if I saw what I think I saw in the Japanese creds (since I can't read Japanese unfortunately I'm not sure if I'm right, especially as they didn't carry it through to the translated creds) but it looked like the current members of AKB48 were involved in the production and lended their talents for more than just the songs. I could always be wrong, but it certainly looked that way going by ep two's closing animation.
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First:


Episode 02 is now LIVE!


(Sorry Coffee_God, but you hadn't done that post yet.)



Second:
Spoiler
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Well, although I don't know names It is going to stink losing Kanji's original English VA, that guy managed to portray Kanji-kun perfectly.

@celestial_being: Well, I haven't played Persona 4: Arena (I'm not a fan of fighting games in general, and the concept for it didn't click with me) I am fairly familiar with most of the Shin Megami Tensei titles, including the Persona series. If you could tell me the names of the chars from P4:A that you liked and haven't seen in P4 I can probably tell you where they are from, as I remember hearing that they had also included a few from P3. The only definite exception to that would be if they had someone using Orpheus/Orpheus Telos, as Orpheus is the MC's start Persona in P3 (Orpheus Telos is his ultra-powered form, and stat-wise the most powerful persona in P3), and for those who aren't familiar with SMT titles, the MC doesn't normally have a default name and P3 didn't break that tradition.
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Wow, now this series could get very interesting. I have a friend how used to be a hikikomori, and really if it wasn't for getting groceries and work I'm not sure she'd even be out and about on a weekly basis (except for summer, as she loves taking random wandering walks in warm weather, and her definition of warm weather is nearly enough to make me sweat just thinking about). I'll admit, if it wasn't for getting groceries, having a non work at home job, and returning things in the mail (Gamefly and Netflix) I'm not sure I'd be out and about as often as once a month myself, not so much because I dislike people, but because I have so many interesting things to do at home.
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Well, that at least answers my question, as far as it can be answered, and the series is still worth adding to my buy list even without that ep, it's just that here I usually wait until the last ep before adding a series (although exceptions have been known to occur).
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