My Lover is a Sniper

Japanese title: 恋人はスナイパー　劇場版
Rating: PG
Running time: 112 minutes
Now out on DVD!

Some info:
1) AsianMediaWiki
2) IMDB Profile
3) Official Site (Japanese)

From the title, you might think this is leaning towards a love story type of movie, but it is actually mostly action/crime based, with dealings with criminals and snipers threatening the Japanese. But of course, the movie still did spend some time on the love aspect, where the main female lead, a police officer, was (and still is) in love with a Chinese sniper who has been sentenced to 250 years of jail term.

Through a rather different kind of ransoming/threatening of the Japanese government, the police force decides to enlist the help of this prisoned sniper to battle against those of his specialised area, more snipers. Lol. Yea, of course it thus creates a chance for these 2 people to meet and work closely together. This is where the movie can find some opportunities to include some of the emotion-type of scenes and scenarios that would actually bring more meaning to the title.

Sniping scenes wise, it didn’t seem all that impressive to me, but at least it’s there to pump up the feeling of the movie. There are also some close combat fights, which might actually be more exciting than the shooting scenes sometimes. Heh. Oh well, at the very end, the loving sniper sacrifices for his police officer loved one so that she won’t be implicated in any negative manner. I suppose it’s supposed to be the touching aspect of the show.

Overall, it turns out that the movie isn’t impressive and the packaging and presentation didn’t turn out to be very good either. My take: 5.5/10

To Aru Majutsu no Index

Japanese title: とある魔術の禁書目録
Number of episodes: 24

Some info:
1) ANN
2) Wiki
3) Official Site (Japanese)

Set in a futuristic setting, Academy City houses many espers, who have some sort of superpower, be it to manipulate electricity, vectors or whatnot. And the main character has possibly one of the most unique powers, which is negating any kind of powers with his right hand. Yeah, his right hand is like the most important object in the entire show. Lol.

And Index is a little girl who houses 103,000 books about magic in her head. Tsk, of course not physically storing the books, but rather she remembers all the contents of those books. I thought that it will have more of things involving her, since the title has her name in it, but it turns out that it’s not always about her. In fact, I felt that there was a portion of the series where she kind of became a small character/role in the show. Lol, but judging how the series ended, there’s probably more to the story, which I’m not sure if there will be a sequel to continue where things left off. I only know from watch the series that there will be an OVA of sorts which is a side story for one of the characters. Hopefully that side story is interesting.

Anyway, this series has a fair amount of funny moments and interesting battles seeing the various powers clash. And of course, seeing how the main character uses his negation powers to win against seemingly incredible odds. Though he’s supposed to be ranked the lowest of levels in the City, when your opponent’s powers get negated, it’s useless no matter how strong they are. Lol, at least something not so rampant in the series I’ve come across so far.

While it is quite a different focus from what I had expected, I think that this series is still pretty enjoyable, though I would really like to see the story develop more, with Index as a core. Let’s just wait and see if there will be a sequel of sorts in time to come. Hic.