This Weekend: End of Crest and One Outs

Anime of the Week: H2

Late post is late so no witty comments...
Post Content:

• This Weekend's Meetings
• Spring Student Activities Fair
• Officer Positions (IMPORTANT!)
  
• Blog Updates
• Anime of the Week

  This Weekend:
Time: Friday and Saturday 7pm
Location: Maryland 110

Friday February 17, 2012
Crest of the Stars (Seikai no Monshou)
Episodes 7-13
Based on a popular ongoing space opera science fiction novel originally published in 1996, Crest of the Stars (Seikai no Monshou) was originally adapted into an anime in 1999. The story follows Jinto Linn, whose life changes forever when his world, Martine, is taken over by the Abh, which is the largest empire in the galaxy. Jinto's father, the prime minister of Martine, peacefully surrenders Martine in exchange to be a noble in the Abh empire. As a result, Jinto is now a prince and forced to leave home to study the Abh culture and language in order to maintain his family's noble status. At Abh Education, he meets and somehow befriends Abh's ice princess, Lafiel. However, Jinto's new life was only beginning as he learns that Lafiel is more than who she appears to be and that they will have to fight for their very lives together. Yuka Imai (Renamon in Digimon Tamers, Yu Hayakawa in Final Fantasy: Unlimited) and Ayako Kawasumi (Saber in Fate/Stay Night, Megumi Noda in Nodame Cantabile) voices Jinto and Lafiel, respectively. Yasuchika Nagaoka (Seikai no Senki/Banner of the Stars, Godannar) directs, Aya Yoshinaga (Witch Hunter Robin, KURAU Phantom Memory) composes, and Sunrise (Gundam, Tiger & Bunny) animates.

Saturday February 18, 2012
One Outs
Episodes 18-25
43 year old Hiromichi Kojima is the cleanup batter of Lycaons in Japan's Pacific Baseball League. His constant training and practice eventually leads him to Okinawa where he meets Toua Tokuchi, a pitcher who can throw a 134 km/h (83 mph) ball and the king of baseball gambling. The gambling game is known as One Outs. Seeing Toua's skill, Hiromichi begs Toua to join Lycaons under the condition that Toua earns 5 million yen (about $45,000 to $50,000 US) for every out he pitches and loses 50 million yen (about $45,000,000 to $50,000,000 US) for every point he gives up. Hiromichi and Toua are voiced by Tsutomu Isobe (Dutch in Black Lagoon, Heinrich Lunge in Monster) and Masato Hagiwara (Akagi Shigeru in Akagi, Kaiji Itou in Kaiji), respectively. The show is directed by Yuuzou Satou (Akagi, Kaiji), composed by Hideo Takayashiki (Rainbow, Maison Ikkoku), and animated by Madhouse (Death Note, Card Captor Sakura).


Spring Student Activities Fair
For those who don't know Spring Student Activities Fair is Wednesday February 22 from 5-7pm at the Glass Pav. Everyone is welcome to come out and help support JHAC!


Officer Positions
As May approaches closer and closer, JHAC is looking for at least 2 undergraduates who will be willing to take on the President and Treasurer positions of the JHAC board for next year. While elections will not be held until the end of the semester, if you are interested or would like to learn more please email waw2@jhu.edu or come to one of our regular meetings to inquire. Do note, that if no one takes on these two positions, JHAC will lose its ability to fund our regular convention trips and other activities in the future and it will be difficult to regain status that has been lost.


Blog Updates
For those who are unaware, our website can be found at: http://jhu-anime.blogspot.com/
Comments are open to all for suggestions, recommendations and the like. We encourage members to share their thoughts on topics regarding the posts as well as anything anime, manga, visual novel, light novel, and video game related. Thoughts on current titles or past titles are also welcome. As usual, any suggestions for the blog itself or how meetings are run are greatly appreciated.

Anime of the Week
To make this section more useful, Image of the Week has been changed to Anime of the Week where a different anime title will be featured in each week's email. The point of this is to discover what may be lost gems, obscure titles, underrated titles, or buried treasure in the anime world. These titles may or may not necessarily be shown at future meetings. Each title will come with a brief background.

As promised, here is the Valentine's Day weekend part 2. Another romance show that involves less comedy and more drama than anything else. Many of you may recall Cross Game, which we previewed back in September, and some of you may even have heard of Touch, which ran from 1985 to 1987. Of course, amidst the 20-25 years between Touch (1985-1987) and Cross Game (2009-2010), one of Mitsuru Adachi's works was lost and to this day remains unknown to many; that title is H2, which premiered in Japan between 1995 and 1996. While not on the same level as the other two titles, H2 for some reason remains a lost gem to this day. For those who are unfamiliar with Adachi's works, he generally writes manga about baseball and romance. These have been recurring themes throughout his titles and for the most part, he has always conjured up an amazing story. If you do manage to get your hands on a copy of H2, I highly suggest you watch it. It's shorter than both Cross Game and Touch but still manages to pull off another compelling story. The story follows three childhood friends who loved baseball: Hiro Kunimi, Hikari Amamiya, and Hideo Tachibana. However, Hiro  is suddenly forced to give up his dream of being a professional baseball player due to an unforeseen injury and thus Hiro ends up attending a different high school from Hikari and Hideo and instead joins the soccer club. In high school, Hiro meets Haruka Koga, who is the manager of the school's unofficial baseball club. Due to a dishonorable defeat that the school's baseball team suffered over a decade ago, the baseball team is often humiliated by other sports clubs. Hiro is disgusted by this arrogance and thus suddenly quits the soccer club and joins the baseball club. Furthermore, Hiro's new ambition is to build a team worthy of the national championship. Thus begins a new story of high school students and their love for baseball.