Tonight the action-comedy series Chuck returns for its fifth and final season on the American network NBC with an episode called “Chuck versus the Zoom”. Personally, I can hardly await watching it and I’m really sad to see this show coming to an end.

the main cast of season 5

Chuck is an American action series that consists of dramatic and comedic elements in equal shares. It premiered in the fall of 2007 and was created by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak.
The eponymous protagonist is Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi), a former Stanford student in his late twenties, who now fixes computers as a Nerd Herder at Buy More, a chain of stores selling consumer electronics, after he got wrongfully expelled. He moved back in with his sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) and her boyfriend Captain Awesome. Among his colleagues are his childhood friend Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez) who developed a very sophisticated technique which allows him to work as little as possible, and Jeff and Lester, who also form a band called “Jeffster”. The two of them are as perverted as it gets and known as stalkers.

Jeffster!!! Does it shock you that 80% of their encounters with women have been without their knowledge?

One day Chuck’s life changes drastically, when his archnemesis Bryce Larkin who turns out to be a CIA agent that has gone rogue destroys a secret government super computer known as the “Intersect” and sends the only remaining copy of its data to Chuck. When he opens Bryce’s mail a series of encoded images pop up and embed the Intersect in Chuck’s brain. He is now in possession of the entire merged CIA and NSA intelligence and whenever certain faces, voices or keywords trigger the Intersect he flashes on related information stored in the Intersect database. That way Chuck reluctantly accepts his second occupation with the CIA, which by all means needs to be kept secret even from his closest friends and family members, and helps to thwart terrorist attacks and assasinations. Team Bartowski gets perfected by special agents Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski), who poses as Chuck’s cover girlfriend but soon develops genuine feelings for him, and Major John Casey, briliantly played by Adam Baldwin, who is best known for his role as Jayne Cobb in Firefly. Like Jayne Cobb Casey is badass and very cynical. He is unable to show affection for anything other than his country or his bonsai tree. As Chuck once pointed out so aptly, Casey has an “angry center” instead of the traditional “calm center”.

Don’t puke on the C4!!!

Throughout the series each of the protagonists undergoes comprehensive character development and more and more of the background story gets revealed while the team has to deal with varying enemies. Although many episodes are case-of-the-week every season has a strong framework plot in which they fit in perfectly.
The season four finale provided a massive game changer as for the first time Team Bartowski operates without patronage from the government.
Unfortunately, next spring Chuck will end after five seasons and a total of 91 episodes. The upside is, an established end date gives the authors the opportunity to write a real series finale that provides closure and no cliffhangers which would never be unwound. Sadly that has become a great rarity these days.
Chuck is one of my favourite tv shows of all time. What makes it so special are its unique characters, who are all very likeable although most of them would be considered nuts if you met them in real life, and its extraordinary sense of humour which is often augmented with scifi and pop culture references.
The series so far easily gets 5 out of 5 Kurisus.

In order to get attuned here’s a video that gives you an idea of Casey’s amazing communication skills:

TV Shows,

Comment

Illya is even cuter as an 8-year old

Iri with sad expression is still endless win

Sorry for the delay on this, but shit’s going on IRL :)

Fate/Zero episode 2 was most awesome again. Iri didn’t get much screentime sadface, but there is some sick master and an even sicker servant. Actually not much is happening this episode. Rider’s master gets chased around by his servant, some sicko somehow managed to summon an even sicker servant, both take pleasure in killing innocents.

This episode was a little low on advancement, but still pretty good, so this episode gets 3/5 Kurisus:

Anime, Fate/Zero

Comment [2]

Guilty Crown (Giruti Kuraun) is a scifi/action anime series. It’s about a high school student who gets dragged into a resistance group in Japan in the near future.

The story is set in the year 2039, ten years after a virus pandemic had driven Japan to the verge of its downfall. Unable to cope with the situation the government delegated its power to a multinational organisation called the GHQ. At the cost of Japan’s independence the GHQ declares martial law and restores order. Thenceforth the country is ruled by a military dictatorship.

the GHQ headquarters

The first episode starts with Yuzuriha Inori fleeing from government-owned mecha weapons after she stole something called “void genom”. Inori, known as the lead singer of the band “Egoist”, is a member of a resistance group called “Undertaker”. She also has a cloaking ability. After she has been wounded she hides in an old industrial building where she encounters Ouma Shu, the 17-year old protagonist who frequents the place to work on a school project.
After Inori gets tracked and captured by GHQ minions known as “antibodies” Shu decides to deliver the void genom to Tsutsugami Gai, the leader of Undertaker, mainly because he hates himself for not being able to help Inori. Soon after Shu arrives at the rendezvous point the GHQ attack which leads to an epic combat scene, in which the mecha forces of both regime and rebels clash with each other.

Once again the true nature of the GHQ becomes evident, when they don’t hesitate to shoot civilians who just happen to reside at the wrong location. Within the fight Inori manages to escape her confinement. At her following encounter with Shu the “king’s mark” appears on his right hand investing him with the “power of kings” that allows him to extract weapons from other poeple’s bodies. That way he reaches into Inori’s chest and some kind of energy sword sprouts from his arm enabling him to blow up his adversaries to kingdom come. Moreover it strikes me as mentionable that everytime Shu and Inori meet there’s a flashback scene of some kind which seems to indicate a mutual history.

I must admit after watching this episode I’m still a bit indecisive regarding what I’m supposed to think of it. Personally, I highly anticipated this series and I guess it didn’t completely come up to my expectations which on the other hand may have been a little irrational. Don’t get me wrong, Guilty Crown is not a bad show. On the contrary, it’s suspenseful and the plot strikes me as fairly interesting. On top of this the animation and the character designs are brilliant. However the story never seems to manage to provide something new and original. A boy with bad social skills joins the resistance to fight the evil empire after acquiring an overwhelming superpower? Somehow I’ve seen it all before!
All in all Guilty Crown promises to be an entertaining action series that captivates with great animation art. With reservations the first episode gets 4 out of 5 Kurisus.

Anime,

Comment

Since I am currently playing this absolutely wonderful old school RPG Wild Arms, which I got my hands on again thanks to the internet, I got to enjoy the very nice BGM of it once more. I never got to beat the game since my CD broke before I could. This will be corrected now :)

Wild Arms is also probably the very reason I am into anime today. I remember resetting the Playstation several times before actually continuing to play just to see the intro once more:

Games from that time still had their very own charm. Especially japanese RPGs. What they lacked in graphics, they made up tenfold with extremely sophisticated story and music, wonderfully developing characters and the ability to explore the game world rather freely. 5/5 Kurisus:

Games, Music

“Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai” aka Haganai is a comedy anime series based upon a light novel series by Yomi Hirasaka. The title translates to “I Don’t Have Many Friends” and basically that’s what the show is about.

The series follows the antics of a bunch of socially challenged high school students. One of them is Hasegawa Kodaka, a transfer student with outlandish blond hair, who due to some stupid misadventure is considered a violent delinquent who assaulted a teacher and extorted a schoolbook from a classmate. In one of the first scenes Kodaka walks in on Mikazuki Yozora who’s just having a spirited conversation with Tomo, whom she introduces as her air friend (the friend version of an air guitar). Soon it becomes evident that Yozora is equally solitary. They talk about how neither of them knows how to make real friends which gives Yozora the idea to found a club in order to recruit friends.

Without delay Yozora forms the “Neighbors Club” dedicated to no other cause than to make friends. Despite the fairly insubstantial concept it proves to be quite easy to talk a teacher into moderating the club as long as you refer to the “word of god”, especially at a Catholic school. As Yozora pointed out so abtly, religion indeed is simple!
The first new member to join the club is Kashiwazaki Sena who is both fanciable and scholastically fruitful but just the same desperate to accede since she turns out to be surrounded only by male admirers but has no female friends.

This is how desperate you need to be if you want to join.

Judging from the first episode Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai promises to be entertaining and funny and has an interesting plot. Hopefully the following episodes will provide a larger proportion of comedic elements once the point of departure has been presented. If the show sticks closely to the manga adaption that shouldn’t be a problem. Also, I have nothing to complain about the animation. Time will tell if the series manages to be more than just a guilty pleasure.
So far it gets 4 out of 5 Kurisus.

Anime,

Comment