Of Swords and Parasols

yes, that's the actual title...

I seem to have fallen back into one of those non-stop anime phases of mine, though I think it's at least partly prompted by the fact that I just placed a relatively gigantoid order of anime.

This is the sequel to the uber awesome and cool R.O.D.: The OVA, and while it doesn't approach the sherr awesome and cool factor of the OVA(have I ever mentioned that Yomiko Readman is my anime heroine idol?) it was a pretty good followup, especially the second half(where Yomiko shows up)

The OVA is about Yomiko, a bibliophile who is a firm believer that you only pay rent and buy food AFTER you've bought up every book in sight.  She's a substitute teacher who's also a secret agent for the British Library and is a paper master, a person able to telekinetically control paper and use it to do anything, cut, make weapons, make a plane, rope, anything.  For the OVA, think a James Bond movie with this character as the lead, only a lot more subdued and elegant than most Bond movies are.

The TV series is set 6 years later and has a friend of Yomiko's, Nenene Sumiregawa, meeting three sisters, Maggie, Michelle and Anita, who are also paper masters(though, combined they aren't quite as powerful as Yomiko) who become her (extremely ineffective due to their tendency to be distracted by books) bodyguards.  Yomiko, it seems, completely disappeared 4 years ago after the Library burned down, and Nenene has been looking for her ever since.

The first half of the series has the sisters and Nenene getting involved in scattered adventures with hints about things after the OVA and glimpses of the supporting characters from it before taking care of what seems to be the problem.  The second half(with Yomiko! and Drake![poor lone male, aside from Junior...who almost looks like a girl]) reveals everything that happened after the OVA, as well as what was going on, and what happened with Yomiko.

It's slower paced than most of the anime that comes out over here...not to the point of Cowboy Bebop, which was often, at best, lethargic, more like Gunslinger Girls and Kino's Journey, with a sort of whimsical elegance.  While it's not the absolute best anime ever(though the OVA set nearly impossible standards to live up to, which likely influences my opinion) I liked it quite a bit, and highly recommend it.

Just finished the Cowboy Bebop anime, including the movie.  While I liked it well enough, I think it's like the Ghost in the Shell movie(but not series) in that I would have liked and appreciated it a lot more if it had been one of my earliest animes.  It was too much a case of style over substance for me, which I sometimes like, but when that happens, I prefer it to involve swords and/or insane amounts of pretty.  I rather liked what little there was of the main plot, and those episodes, as well as when it focused on Edward and Ein(very odd that 2 of my 3 favorites are the OCC and OA, as I'm usually neutral about them, at best)  I think  my favorite character was the very underused villain, Sid(Cyd?) Viscious, largely because he's one of the few anime villains who they just let be flat out evil instead of making him noble or tragic(not that I have a problem with those characters, as Kougaiji and Sesshomaru-if you can really call them villains-are my favorite characters in Saiyuki and Inu Yasha, and Darcia is my second favorite in Wolf's Rain, and Nakago my third in Fushigi Yugi.)  Or maybe it was the sword.

Still, it was worth at least one viewing.

It also seems to have put me in the anime mood, and I'm wondering what if the 3 in the backlog, GTO, ChronoCrusade, or R.O.D. The TV, I should watch next.  Of course, it's probably also influenced by the fact that I'll be ordering a few anime this week if ebay does well.  *automatically puts drealkulit down for GTO*