Spoilers – Fullmetal Alchemist: Milos no Sei naru Hoshi (The Sacred Star of Milos)

Fullmetal Alchemist: Milos no Sei naru Hoshi (The Sacred Star of Milos) / 劇場版 鋼の錬金術師 嘆きの丘(ミロス)の聖なる星

 

Criminal Melvin, serving his sentence at the prison in Central City for robbery, escapes from jail, and heads West. Ed and Al chase him to the Milos City, where they meet mysterious girl Julia Criton, member of an organization called “Black Bat”.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Shounen

Aired 2nd July 2011

Directed by Muraya Kazuya and produced by Bones and FUNimation Entertainment

Rate NC16 for blood spamming

Official Website

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This is quite sad, but on Saturday night – for the first time ever, in my life – I watched an anime on big screen. Fullmetal Alchemist: Milos no Sei naru Hoshi was screened for only two days, and my brother immediately snapped up 3 tickets for us siblings – but even then it was half full. On the day itself, I was so excited to see that tickets were sold out. They even gave us a free FMA poster! Life as an anime fan is pretty sad for me, since there’s only one person in my life (who isn’t related to me) who holds a passion for manga and anime up to my level (hi chungky). Even then, chungky’s a shoujo fan while I’m a shounen one. Whatever it is, it was an unbelievably wonderful experience to be sitting in the cinema watching the movie with other fans, enjoying and laughing the movie together.

Okay, I live such a sad life I’m becoming sappy. Moving on.

I would write a review for this, but I have a feeling that not many out there have watched it. So I’ll be nice and just spit out what happened from A to Z. Bear in mind that I’ve only watched this once, and the highlight for the movie for me were all the alchemy action scenes so some details may be a little blurry. Some of the sequence of events may not be in correct sequence, and I may have omitted some of the happenings but I’m pretty sure I’ve got the gist of it. Also, the pictures in this post are really blurry and are kinda really almost ultra LQ since I just took snapshots from various trailers. So for all that may be wrong and unpretty, I’ll apologize here in advance.

The setting of the movie is at the border of the two countries, Amestris and Creta. Ed and Al go all the way there chasing a fugitive, and they get dragged into the whole political-terrorism whish whash between Creta and the people of Milos who want to take their country back.

If you’re planning on watching the movie sometime soon, you don’t have to worry if you can’t stay until the end of the credits since I assure you there’s nothing there. This was what made my movie experience quite sweet – even when the credits were rolling and the lights had turned on, hardly anybody got up from their seats. And when there was nothing after the credits, there was a disappointed ‘awww…’ from all of us. Ahh, the sweet experience…!

Spoilers start after the break!

One-Shot for the Weekend: Hibi Kira Kira (日々キラキラ)

Hibi Kira Kira | 日々キラキラ | Radiant Everyday

Manga-ka: Coga Mayumi

Genre: Comedy,  Drama,  Romance,  Shounen Ai

It’s summer holidays for Tomoaki and he is helping out at the daily morning exercise for kids. But recently, he notices that a young man living beside the park has been looking at the exercise group every morning. Is the young man a Lolicon that is targeting his kids, or is it entirely something else?

Serialised in Canna magazine and collected in the Blind of Mind anthology tankoubon, published by France Shoin in 2011.

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Whoa, M.W has been pretty empty this week. I’m actually working on a manga-talk post for a while now but it’s just using me a lot of brain juice…putting thoughts down can be so difficult…

Anyway, a 16 page Shounen-Ai one-shot for this weekend. I don’t venture into the Yaoi genre, but Shounen-Ai is becoming one of my favourites. I’m hesitant to use the term Boy’s Love since it seems to lean more on the Yaoi side of things which features more of the sexual aspect. One thing I really like about shounen-ai manga is that it has a more mature sort of story-telling.  From the titles I’ve read, they really concentrate on character development and their feelings. With this aspect in mind, it makes me as a reader think how sweet it is which is what this short one-shot did. It made me feel all bubbly inside. The one-shot is about one misunderstanding another. Meeting someone new through the most unexpected places, the least expected times, meeting someone who might just change your life forever.

Rating: 4.5/5

One-Shot(s) for the Weekend – Fireball Charming ( ファイアボール チャーミング)

Fireball Charming ( ファイアボール チャーミング)

A 3D computer animation about a female robot duchess named Drossel von Flügel and her guardian servant robot Gedächtnis.

Genre: Sci-fi, Comedy

Status: Completed with 13 episodes

Produced by Jinnis Animation Studios in conjunction with Disney

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I told chungky I’d try to have at least one post a week, but what with real life spamming itself into my face I was even hard-pressed to write up this one-shot. But I did promise – and honestly speaking I miss writing posts. So for this weekend when I really need the laughs after yet another tiring week, I bring you Fireball Charming – not just a single one-shot, but a dozen of them!

Okay so Fireball Charming is a bit of old news, being part of last season’s anime batch. It’s another one of those brief shows, and completely worth every scrap of time you can or cannot spare – it’s literally about 2 minutes for each episode.

Fireball Charming is no normal sci-fi anime, I assure you. It is different because of the comedy. And the comedy is different because of the sci-fi. And there is just something completely and hilariously out of this world about this anime that makes it a must-watch. The actions, gestures and interactions of both the characters are more than enough to make you laugh – the simply phenomenal seiyuu (Kawasho Miyuki and Ookawa Tooru) just makes it even better.The one thing I can never get enough of is of those robotic voices just talking. Even the top-notch animation seems to add to the overall joke of the whole situation through irony, in the way that despite all the comic and ridiculous situations, the animation is usually reserved for the kind of story with more – well – story.

After a whole week of not even getting enough sleep and anime, this is the definite must-watch!

Rating: 4.9/5.0

Monthly Lala 09/2011~

Been wanting to blog all week but my brain just keeps farting and I just come up with noob drafts. Anyway, behold, my mouth-watering friends – Takashi sparkles on the cover of Lala 9! It’s a very nice wispy cover! Kudos to Midorikawa Yuki! I’ve pierced together Lala 8 and Lala 9 together in the image below to show you lot that they’re actually connected!

One-Shot for the Weekend: Ability Shop

Ability Shop | あびりてぃ しょっぷ

Manga-ka: Tashiro Tetsuya

Genre: Fantasy,  Mystery,  Romance,  Shounen,  Tragedy

Toshiki is a below average student and often the target of ridicule. After he accidentally runs into a shop sign and breaks it, he enters the shop and finds out it will sell him abilities.. But these abilities don’t come cheap.

Published on GanGan Online in 2008 as a one-shot by Square Enix.

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I’m surprising myself by choosing so many shounen manga one-shots these couple of weeks. That continues this week with a simple story about greed.

The story itself is what one may call predictable; it’s about a boy being bullied and wanting to improve himself then goes too far and suffers the consequences. The idea and theme is very much about human nature which is particularly why I chose it.It’s a morality story and there are quite a number of stories of the same kind using the ‘shop – selling – something – funky’ idea(sorry, no idea what else to call it).

The story opted to be dark in the later stages of the story and though it didn’t exactly attain that aura it wanted, at the end of the day it got the message across – That we should not always take advantage of what is around us, and that we should trust ourselves to strive for better because from one end of life or another, we’ll not be alone.

Have a good weekend.

Rating: 3.5/5

You can read the Japanese version for free on GanGan Online here!

News: Visual Scene Magazine

Hello, everyone.

This might be of some interest to you:

It is acknowledged that the world is no short of Japanese culture enthsiasts out there, therefore, a new Japanese pop-culture magazine entitled ‘Visual Scene’ has recently been launched world-wide in English. The magazine was previously only available in Polish but due to demand, a global English version was introduced with the aim to unify all the Japanese culture lovers out there.