Sakura Kusakabe is a second year junior high school student, living an ordinary life. Well, right up until Dokuro Mitsukai shows up. She appears to be an angelic assassin from the future, sent back to kill Sakura for having offended God by discovering immortality.

Dokuro-chan decides that instead of killing Sakura, she tries to keep him occupied so that he won't have time to discover immortality. Due to her impulsive nature and superhuman strength she frequently beat him to death with her spiked club, Excalibolg, though he's promptly brought back to life again with her angelic magic. Because of Dokuro-chan's reluctance to kill Sakura, Sabato Mihashigo - another angelic assassin - was dispatched to finish the job.

Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan is hysterical, to say the least. It's bloody, gory and hillarious. I laughed my way through all the episodes, all jokes and obscene occurences make up for a great time.

Find it, watch it, love it. :-]

I decided to rewrite this post, because I felt what I originally wrote trivialized the intent and held me back a little in learning Japanese.

So, starting from the top, I have decided to try and learn to speak and better understand Japanese. I've been wanting to for quite some time, it's a pretty interresting language, but it wasn't until a while ago when a friend introduced me to the Pimsleur Method that I decided to give it a go.

Basically what you do is listen and repeat, it's not much harder than that. What's hard is to remember all the new words and phraces, and the way they build sentences in Japanese, it's a little bit different from English -- or Swedish, for that matter (though the course is in English).

So far I've gone through two of the lessons and I remember about 70-80% of what I'm taught (which is alright, concidering), but I still need to go back, repeat, and repeat again. Still have lots to learn.. :-]

We watched Cloverfield yesterday. What can I say? Blair Witch goes Manhattan..

Much like in Blair Witch, a videotape filmed by a small group in New York is recovered and we follow through the events that would eventually lead to their demise. At the start of the film we're informed that the camera was found by the Department of Defence in what used to be Central Park...

To sum the film up, a monster pops up in New York, seemingly out of nowhere. A group of people attending a farewell-party are trying to get out of the city, one of them carrying said video camera, documenting their every move through the city.

I like the loads of suggested fear that is presented to us via the shaky hand-cam; we're not always face to face with what's going on, but have to rely on what the camera is pointing at. The acting is very good and believable, and so is the cgi used in the film.

The only thing I can think to complain about is the ending. It's always the ending. Without giving away too much, it's safe to say -- you get no answers, period. It's either one hell of a cliffhanger (they've been discussing a sequel), or just poor taste in ending a movie. I'm kind of hoping for the former, but...

They wanted one right up there with King Kong and Godzilla, and I reckon they have it. If you're a fan of monster flicks, this one's pretty good -- I enjoyed it.

Saisho Heiki Kanojo or Saikano for short, is a story about love and disaster. The story revolves around Shuji and Chise, classmates and boyfriend and girlfriend.

One day when shuji is out shopping with his friends, unknown bombers attack the city. They all run for cover, but Shuji gets separated from the others. He spots a glowing object in the sky that shoot down the enemy bombers. As he wanders through the wrecked city, he notices Chise standing in the rubble with metal wings and a weapon seemingly grated on to her arm -- was she the one fighting of the enemies?!... She tells him that she has become the Ultimate Weapon, Japans last resort to defending against invasion by the unknown enemy forces. The weapon side is however taking over her body more and more, over time her heart stops beating and her body goes cold, the senses of taste and touch are dulled.

There were a couple of things that annoyed me to no end, especially the fact that everyone has red lines across their cheeks (as seen in this image). At first I thought "hey, they're blushing" but it later turned out that that's just the way everyone looks.....what the hell..?

While Saikano don't come with the greatest story and (in my opinion) a rather limited character development, apart from maybe Chise, I still enjoyed it. I thought it was really sad, not so much from the aspect of Shuji and Chise's relationship (even though that was pretty sad in itself), but rather because of the fate Japan (and the rest of the world) stand up against. The last couple of episodes were really touching and brought me to tears (and again, I'm a real softie, I cry pretty easy :'-] ).

If you're into weird romance with a "hint" of destruction, Saikano would probably be a good friend for a few hours. :-]