“Unlimited gar works.”

The Origins

The first appearances of the term appeared on /a/nime section of 4chan, the famous imageboard (not for the best reasons). According to the story, one guy was expressing his (yaoi) love for Archer, the character of Fate : Stay Night anime and Ero-novels and wrote as a typo “I’m GAR for Archer”. Others account that the typo was in purpose, due the combination of the words (Gay for Archer). Nevertheless, the comment was expressed due to the heroic and macho last stand that Archer displayed during his fight with Berserker in the anime. Since then, the word GAR was spread as a meme associated to males who are so manly and badass that makes other males weep in joy and pure admiration for them ( or something like that….).

Virtus

GAR can be viewed as a modernization of Virtus, a Roman concept fairly forgotten in present times. According to Wikipedia , “Virtus was a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It does not mean virtue in general, but something more like valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth (perceived masculine strengths, which may indicate its derivation from vir, man). It was thus a frequently stated virtue of Roman emperors, and was personified as a deity.”

Hot And Cold GAR

“I’m too hot for my sunglasses.”

From this basic concept of GAR, several Anime/Manga communities diverged to two extreme visualizations of GAR; Hot Blooded GAR and Cold Blooded GAR.
Hot Blooded GAR is associated with characters who express their manlyness in the heat of the battle, able to stand up and face even the most dire of the situations. It’s a common feature among mecha pilots and as examples we have GaoGaiGar (which conveniently has GAR on it’s name) and more recent Kamina/Simon in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
In the opposite direction we have the Cold Blooded GAR, who express their badass attitute through their cunningness. They usualy plan ahead every moves before acting, in blatant contrast of the “Shoot 1st, think later” attitude of Hot Blooded Gar. As examples we have Colonel Mustang from Full Metal Alchemist or L/Light from Deathnote.

Other Kinds Of Gar

“I’m not gar! I want to die!”

As any evolving concept, GAR’s lack of a defining line has led to new variations of the theme. One recent variation is the Female Gar, with Claire from Claymore and Revy from Black Lagoon being the ephitomes. In spite of their female status, they can emanate a manly aura in their actions and attitudes that surpass the real males around them. Other not recent variation is the Laid Back GAR. Characters like Shunsui Kyoraku from Bleach or Ken Matsushiro from Yakitate! Japan have a very relaxed attitude, not looking at first worthy of the GAR title; but once they jump into action , they truly show their confidence in their skills and all the manly attitude they have. The last GAR style to be referenced is the pessimist GAR; Kyon from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Nozomu Itoshiki from Sayonara Zetsuboi Sensei show perfectly as an extreme pessimist and cynical view of the world and surroundings can lead to GARness.

Well I hope this clears some misconceptions of what is GAR or not. Let’s see what the future brings us in terms of GAR characters.

My focus now will be more about specialized articles related to the anime universe and less about episode reviews and current season shows, I’ll leave that for the other blogs.

So let’s hope the blog stays alive and kicking. Any comment of support is helpful, even if it’s only 1 or 2 lines.

Revenge is served cold with lolis as a side dish.

I must have a soft spot for stories involving helpless male to female transformations. I’ve read, played and watched a few sex change stories and they never fail to satisfy my curiosity. These aren’t your ordinary “I want to be a girl” stories though. They usually involve a male being involved in some sort of accident beyond his control and thus becoming (right down to the genes) a female. So make no mistake these new lassies are fully blown females… with a male’s thoughts.. memories.. and desires (for the most part).

+ The Lowdown +

“From the left, Hazumu, Yasuna, Tomari & Other Girl… orz”

The volume starts off with Hazumu sitting down at her desk and no one else around. Yasuna enters the room and makes her way to Hazumu’s desk. As she’s doing this Hazumu keeps saying “Um”, “Eh” & “Yusana-chan”. At this point I’m going “WOOOOOOOOO FREAKIN A! OMG OMG OMG YURI ACTION~”. Then they kiss @_@ and omg it’s a beautiful moment. Once you’ve read more of the volume it’s even sweeter. The last page of this intro ends with the Hazumu+Yasuna kiss and Tomari on the right side of the page looking on from the door in shock.

+ BEGIN T3H FLASHBACK~ +

Ok this gets slightly confusing but we find Hazumu in a forest around some Mountain and he has a flashback _within_ the overall volume 1 flashback. Hazumu remembers meeting Yasuna in the forest and getting all tripped over each other. You know the normal “oops I almost impaled you with my manhood, while you lie helpless beneath me” kind of trip. There is a kind gesture in there with flowers and a hint at Yasuna being a lesbian. Also we note that Hazumu likes flowers… NOT HELPING YOUR IMAGE DUDE. The flashback continues with Hazumu being hassled by his classmates. His best friend and also Tomari are telling him to just tell Yasuna he loves her and whatever. Other Girl comes in and is a bit of Kill Joy. Then there is a Yasuna montage in which we can assume that Hazumu had a party in his pants. It’s at this point that we find him telling Yasuna that he loves her. She then goes on to say

I’m sorry!

with tears in her eyes. Yup sucks to be Hazumu. Finally his rejection flashback ends and he appears to be slightly lost in the mountain, having wandered while deep in thought.

Now we are treated to his school buddies basically going.. WTF? OMGWTFBBQ where is he? Well this is actually mainly Tomari, she seems to know him well, guessing correctly that he will be up in the Mountain looking for flowers after being rejected.

It now seems to be night time and Hazumu is on the edge of some cliff looking out into space. He’s feeling rediculous for reacting the way he did to rejection. Then he spots a shooting star. OMG ITS NOT A STAR!

MOMENTARY RANT: I’ve found with Anime and Manga that if something is just slightly mentioned in the story, then you can almost guarantee that it has some significance further in the story.

We all of a sudden switch to some crazy space monitoring station where they are yelling about a non natural 2km long thing plummeting towards earth. They assume as we all would that it’s an alien invasion…. =_= my faith in the Japanese Civil Defence is unwavering.

Anywho we switch back to Hazumu who is SMASHED into by this object. In fact the imagery is that of a GIANT FREAKIN DRILL PUMMELING INTO HAZUMU! YAY. Find the dirty reference in that sentence. We now switch into a lovely dream sequence thing where we are told that Hazumu has lost his life but the aliens can return it. However there are some things they can’t return.

We switch to a bizarre scene featuring the parents crying over the fact that Hazumu isn’t home yet =.=! Funny moments abound and all of a sudden the WTF moment makes it’s appearance in the form of Hazumu’s Sensei. Sensei runs out the door to find and rescue Hazumu, only to fall into a freak pit. We see more hints at Tomari’s affection for Hazumu. We then see Yasuna stating that if only Hazumu was a girl she would have said yes. *YURI YURI FANBOY GADGET GOGO!*

All of a sudden this big ass spaceship which crashed into Hazumu decides to broadcast a message to everyone on a massive outdoor projector. Everyone recognizes Hazumu and it’s explained that the aliens had to make him into a her. Yasuna seems to be in joyous shock and Tomari catches Hazumu as she is returned to the family and worried friends. The chapter ends with Hazumu waking and saying “Good morning”. In my opinion it was a good ending to the intro but I wish there had been more of teh yuri.. orz.

+ END INTRO! +

Thus we come to a close of the intro. We met all the main characters and found out how Hazumu became a girl. All in all it was a good start and now the beginning scene makes a little more sense. The rest of the volume only gets better but as i’m wasted right now I don’t particularly feel like getting into that. Also of note is the seeming _lack_ of doujinshi for this most fantastic ever Manga. If anyone can link me to some more i’d love to hear from you @_@!

My overall rating for this comes to a 10/10. What more can I say, I love it. There is comedy, romance and some yuri, ;_; It’s a beautiful thing.

Same thing happens with learning how to blog. Since I’ve started my blog, I’ve ran through all kinds of mistakes,  from the mild inconveniences to the situations where the sh&t hit the fan. Several of them could be easily avoided if I had some previous information to avoid them. This post won’t be the perfect guide on how to be the best blogger but it will help new guys to have some basis and veterans to review their guidelines. Feel free to add any advice or remark you feel need to be spoken.

1.) Use Simple Themes. They may look pretty , but themes who rely heavily in several plugins, who have complex color scheme and layouts have the tendency to go haywire easily.

2.) Summaries Are To Be Short. The logic is to have a small description of the manga/anime so that readers can locate themselves in the plot. They don’t need a transcription of the whole dialogues (For that we have novels .) and besides the reader will read the post AFTER he saw the subject in question. (One exception is RAWs, where having a detailed description is useful, but don’t forget to mark clearly you are talking about a RAW.)

3.) Don’t Overflow Posts With Videos And Images. Used in a normal quantity, they add up to the post but if you flood it in needless pics and videos, you are just turning the post clumped and illegible and weighting the size of data the reader has to download.

4.) Try To Host Images And Other Files Outside Your Server. You will have more space for posts , a lower bandwidth consumption and a happier server provider.

5.) Save. But I mean regularly save all you do: posts, images, files, etc. in you Pc to prevent any accident that may happen.

6.) Check For Typos. It will help you have a better reputation and you would be surprised the amount of guys who flame you for typing Narato instead of Naruto.

7.) Review 2 To 3 Times What You Write. Not only what you wrote makes sense but if it shows clearly and bug-less in the Post Preview.

8.) Be Coherent. If you pick a series to start blogging about, try not to drop it on the middle of the season. The coherency will keep you a faithful base of readers.

9.) Write Posts Only When You Have The Mood. Blogging regularly is good but only blog if you have the will and the attitude to make a decent post.

10.) Don’t Steal. If you are going to use any content from other blogger or site, try to ask for permission first. Or at least do it in a way you aren’t easily caught :3

“….Hmm , Who Should I Kill Next.”

Summary

This time, the episodes start to focus on a Claymore known as Teresa, who was nicknamed “Teresa of the Faint Smile” due to killing all the Yomas she fights without using her Yoki energy and keeping a faint smile of enjoyment. During one of her missions she gets stuck with an orphan girl who doesn’t leave her side in spite of all of Teresa’s attempts of leaving her behind.

Eventualy, Teresa decides to take the girl as a travelling companion and search for a village for her to stay. Meanwhile, that girl enables to comfort and relieve the feelings of pain and sorrow that Teresa harboured. After that, Teresa gave the girl her new name: Clare.

After a while, Teresa left Clare on a village where she had cleared from a Yoma who was hiding there. When she was leaving from the village, a pack of thieves rushes into the village and Teresa realizes that Clare is in danger. Teresa and Clare had meet those thieves before in 2 previous ocasions: one time were they tried to rob Teresa and Clare, but were repelled and also cutting the hand of one of the thieves. (Was revealed also at the time if a Claymore kill an human being, she would be hunted down by their fellow Claymores and killed); the second time when the handless thief tries to rape Teresa and is also repelled by Clare and a very pissed off Teresa.

When she reaches the village, most of the villagers were already dead. Luckily, Clare was still alive but was badly beaten by the same handless thief. Teresa snaps and enter into berserk, killing all the thieves, even the boss who was using a falcon sword (a whip-like sword similar to Soul Calibur Ivy weapon ;Snake Sword; or Nanoha A’s Signum’s weapon, Laevatein).

For killing the thieves Teresa was to be killed by 4 other fellow Claymores, and Clare would have an unknown ending. But Teresa easily defeated those Claymore and left away with Clare on her side. So the observer from the Organization decided to summon Claymore rank 2-5 to kill Teresa.

Impressions

Teresa’s arc is how we expected: freaking great! It still has 2-3 eps to finish it but we start to see from here the real potential Claymore has. Teresa is incredibly Moe and GAR at the same time that its a walking oxymoron. Also the loli Clare is an impressive addition to the cuteness of this arc. Several scenes were actually improved from the original manga, specially the village town killing scene where the colour scheme maximixed the scene’s tension.

This may be the point where the Claymore haters can be converted. The whole flashback episodes explain the reason why Clare turned into a Claymore and why she gets a connection with Raki, since she views herself reflected on him.

5) Bokura No [Uninstall] by Ishikawa Chiaki

Bokura no it’s this season Mind Fsck show, and Uninstall makes a great job describing the general mindset of the characters. But it started a small meme effect in AB.Net IRC channel wherell someone starts shouting UNINSTALL!!! when he’s particularly emo.

4) Kaze No Stigma -[Blast of Wind] by Saori Kiuji

I’m not a usual listener of slow , calm songs unless they are techno or minimal, but Blast of Wind has grasped my attention. The animation sequence has that nice serene feeling into it and Saori Kiuji’s voice fits wells in the general setting, reaching some impressive high notes in the middle of the song.

3) Towards The Terra -[Endscape]- by UVERworld

Towards The Terra is a remake of a 1980’s OVA and the OP has a Retro style inserted into it. Combined with the fact that the song is performed by UVERworld (known by several song presences such as Death Note, Bleach and BLOOD+) the OP really justifies himself his top place.

2) Seto no Hanayome -[Romantic Summer] by SUN & LUNAR

At first, when I saw Seto no Hanayome previews , I thought it was just another love anime. But then I saw the OP. The comedic sequence, with a air guitar San and the whole family of gansgter mermans after the main character’s , complemented by the psychadelic image insertions and temprered with a bright and energetic summer ballad makes me smile everytime I see it.

1) Darker than BLACK -[HOWLING] by Abingdon Boys School

GAR. The whole OP reminds me of old spy action movies , where every corner had eyes in your back. You can almost physicaly touch the despair they tried to convey. For that matter it also helped the song from Abingdon Boys School, who had already made a great job with the OP of D.Gray-man. In general, this is my favorite OP from this season.

Ps: 5 minutes after posting this, there are already guys complaining about Lucky Star OP. Like I said, this is my opinion and even if Lucky Star OP is a favorite to most fanboys around, it doesn’t really click me on . ( I blame Haruhi OP :3 )

Anyways, moving on to the lyrics, we find an interesting … and seemingly unrelated set of verses and whatnot. Of course this is totally dependant on the translators and in this case a.f.k fansubs. Personally on the great wtfoMeter this OP hit number 8 when I first saw it. Not so much for the actual imagery. More for the lyrics, which in my mind equaled “innuendo”. If you’d like to view the screencaps then just click on each line of lyrics.

Otherwise read below for the craziness.

Around 3 cm! <-- WHAT exactly is 3cm?
Looks peachy, doesn’t it? <-- O____O
Supah?
Old-fashioned uniform! <-- *drool*
Turn-off, ain’t it? <-- HELLZ NO!
BOON!
Just work it?
And do it?
Don’t forget to catch and release yo!
I SAY!
And throw in a!
DARLING! DARLING! PLEASE!
*show logo*
Time for talking!
Something’s coming!
I love you so!
Oops!
I screwed one upsie-up! <-- KAWAII =3
A nail biter!
A steel beater!
Gourmet eater!
Cut that out already! <-- Damn straight .. a steel beater? O.o?
Is the new gal popular or what?
Since i’d call her a normal girl!
Wowzers!
Only for me?
Pork chops!
Firm noodles!
Fill ‘er up again!
DA-DA-DA-DA-DA!
*random girl chatter*
*random girl chatter*
*random girl chatter*
Cheerleaders! <-- YAYYAYYAY
LET’S GET CHERRY PIE! <-- Ehehheh >_>.. what? <_< eheheh
RAN! RAN!
Welcome party!
YOU’VE GOT A SENSATION! <-- WOOO! FEEL THE JIGGLE
HIGH!
Leavin’ an impression.
Scattering asteroids.
Crash!
Break into song! <-- Cos everyone's doing it.. darn you Haruhi!!!
SING AND DANCE!
Take it!
I’ll still be laughing in the end!
‘Cause it’s a sailor uniform.
Q.E.D.!
It’s only Monday and i’m already blue.
What to do?
I’d rather wear my summer clothes.
So cute!
3-piece uniform!
That’s a toughie to pick!
YAN!
Just work it!
To the limit!
MY DARLING! DARLING! PLEASE!

As far as introductions go into a series this OP hooked me. Fun upbeat music with a fairly cool dancing sequence makes for a lively introduction. All the main characters are introduced, with a couple of shots showing their dominate expressions.

After seeing this OP from numerous peeps espousing it’s greatness, I decided to watch the show and have thoroughly enjoyed it. So anyways I rate this OP a lovely 8/10. It would have got more but I found no panteh shots… =3.

Oh and if you haven’t seen it here it is all YouTubed.

“I Got An Impaling Fetish.”

Summary

This time, Clare received an unusual mission: she must hunt down the Yoma who’s benn killing the priests at the church of Rabona, the Holy City. Trouble is, no kind of unnatural beings are accepted, including Claymores (makes you wonder what other kind of unnatural beings exists….)
Thanks to some pills provided by her contact of the Orgarnization, she can conceal her Yoma nature and the trademark silver eyes, allowing her and Raki to enter the city as siblings selling antiques. Unfortunely , those pills also negate her Yoma tracking skills. At night, she makes contact with the priest who sent the request, Father Vincent and learns more about the current situation. But when she comes back to the inn, she is intercepted by 2 city guards, who fail to capture her.

“I Charge 20$, Want My Services?”

The next day, those guards come to the inn because they were the only tourist to arrive the city the previous day. Luckily, Clare had already taken the concealing pills and she passes as a mere ( and kawaii ) human girl. Later at nigh, Clare goes in another night hunt and is intercepted by the guards again. But the Yoma was heard at the same time so Calre and the guards go to the Yoma sighting place. Even with Clare’s warnings, the guards try to stop the Yoma and Clare gets impaled by him while trying to save the guards lives.

Luckly, the yoma ran away before more soldiers appeared, leaving behind an badly injured and unconscious Clare. The 2 guards, being grateful for being saved, take her into shelter and treat her along with Father Vincent and Raki for 2 days. After a short recovery, Clare and Vincent decides to gather all the priest in the church to check 1 by 1 if any of them is a yoma, while Raki waits in the baptismal hall, filled with the mummified corpses of past saints and holy men. When all the priest were illibated, Clare finaly concluded that the yoma had to be hiding as one of the corpses.

Clare Moe Mode

They (Clare and the 2 guards) sucessfuly saved Raki from being killed by the hiding Yoma, using their own flesh and blood to stop the yoma and sucessfuly kill him. But Clare, being so badly damaged from the previous attack and have used too much of her Yoma power, started an irreversible process of transformation, where her Yoma part you take over her mind and body. Ready to be killed by the guards, she was surprisingly saved by Raki, who managed to bring back the human side of Clare to control again. After another sucessfull mission, they leave the town and Raki got a sword as a gift from the guards, so that he could learn how to protect Clare in the future.

Impressions

These 2 episodes get alot more action sequences untill now and they start to show how the battles will be in the future. Raki got more protagonism here too but he is still a dead weight combat-wise. the most importan thing to mention is Clare’s Yoma outbreak accident: Normally Claymores control how much of their Yoma energy they use; the bigger the share, the stronger and faster they get. But they can only control that energy up to a limit, averaging 80% of their power. If they pass that limit, they lose control of it and become fully fledged Yomas. Factors like injuries, mental breakdown or repetive use can drop down those limits and that’s what happened with her.

Clare Furry Mode

But with the help of Raki she made something that no Claymore can do: she recovered from the unstopable yoma urge. While this accident seems nearly neglectible at the moment, this marks a turnpoint to Clare’s in future events and will lead her in next episodes.

But before those episodes we will have the Teresa of Fair Smile arc where we will learn more about Clare’s tragic past. Believe me when I say this arc will be worth it :3