The Professional Gamer - September 26, 2012

Proteus here with the first regular installment of The Professional Gamer.  What have I been up to in the last week?  Read on to find out.

Much of my free time this week was spent watching anime.  In the post NDK buzz, I had the time and passion to enjoy a few episodes of four different shows.  Two purchases from the convention were Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad and the first season of Lupin III.  If you listened to the podcast this week, you would have heard ZeldaQueen and I discussing the show at length.  For now, I'll give a very brief synopsis and review.  The show is mainly about a boy named Koyuki who meets up with some older musicians, learns to play guitar, and joins their rock band.  At its heart, it is a short about Koyuki finding out who he is rather than conforming to the expectations of those around him.  The show is very good: smooth animation, emotional voice acting, fun, realistic characters, and rockin' music.  Based on my viewing to date, I recommend this anime without reservation.

The first season of Lupin III is a bit hard to watch.  The show is old, and appears to have been made on a shoestring budget.  For a person whose only previous experience with the Lupin franchise is The Castle of Cagliostro, the characters seem rather flat and undeveloped.  I've only watched about 4 episodes at this point; therefore, I will continue to push through in hopes that the show improved during the season.

Two streaming anime that I have previewed and plan to continue watching are B Gata H Kei: Yamada's First Time and Chi's Sweet Home: Chi's New Address.  These series are available on Funimation and Crunchyroll respectively.  Yamada's First Time is the story of a high school girl who wants to have sex with 100 guys, because she thinks it will make her cool.  Her problem is that she can't find the first guy to bed.  Yamada meets Kosuda, a rather plain looking and shy guy in her class.  She decides that he is the perfect target for her first time and begins to pursue him in a herky jerky, sometimes aggressive, sometimes awkward way.  After watching the first two episodes, I am sold and will be tuning in to catch the rest of it.  Chi's Sweet Home is a series of short, 4 minute episodes about the daily adventures of Chi the cat and her family.  The most amusing part of this show is the disconnect in communication between the cat and the people.  The series is funny and super cute.  This is one that I have to watch with ZeldaQueen.

ZeldaQueen and I also purchased Mushi-shi while we were at the convention.  Despite all the other great series that I've talked about this week, this one takes the highest marks.  Watch it now!  it is available to stream on Netflix.

Video game time this week was divided between Skyrim when I wanted to play by myself and Starcraft 2 when I wanted to play with my brother.  On a related note, I introduced my brother to the new Doctor Who.  He seems to be rather enthusiastic about it.

That's all for this week.  Tune in again next week for the next Professional Gamer