A few anime recommendations

I have been watching a little bit more anime recently, because a friend of mine recommended a few series. So this is what I was watching.

Over Drive
I’ve always liked sports series so I was happy to find this one. This time it’s all about cycling. A young student joins a bicycle club at school and turns out to be a very talented rider although he says that he never rode a bike before. The club joins a race in Japan which drags on for almost 10 episodes. That’s basically it. It’s all about enthusiasm for something and following a dream. The usual anime story line. Because this series is about cycling I thought there might be some hints for performance enhancing drugs but that has been left out completly. Instead the Tour de France is the hot topic here and it’s still the pure and marvellous event it used to be.

JDrama: The season wrap up (fall ‘07)

Is it just me or was this season just a little boring. There weren’t those blockbuster star-packed series’ which usually are shown. Although one or two good ones emerged the overall impression is that this one was a let down.

Galileo
A detective/mystery series about a young detective (Shibasaki Kou) who has been assigned to solve very difficult cases which go beyond the normal imagination. She teams up with a weird scientist who helped her predescessor in his work. The setup usually is the same in each episode: there’s a mysterous killing which cannot be explained reasonably. The detective will meet with the scientist and he will come up with a rational explanation of the case.

Bundesliga: Day 18 – The winter break is here, but who cares anyway…

….FORTUNA IS ON TOP OF THE TABLE!!! That’s all that counts to me. Here are the results of the Bundesliga:

Energie Cottbus – Hannover 96 5:1
FC Schalke 04 – 1. FC Nürnberg 2:1
Werder Bremen – Bayer Leverkusen 5:2
Hertha BSC – Bayern München 0:0
Arminia Bielefeld – VfB Stuttgart 2:0
VfL Wolfsburg – Borussia Dortmund 4:0
Karlsruher SC – Hamburger SV 1:1
Hansa Rostock – VfL Bochum 2:0
MSV Duisburg – Eintracht Frankfurt 0:1

MLB: The Mitchell Report

I took a little time to read a few pages of the report about drug abuse in baseball which was conducted by Senator Mitchell and which was released last week. It is very pleasant to have the opportunity to actually read the stuff everybody is talking about in the media, something that rarely happens over here in Germany. When there is a report, it is handed out to the journalists and they interpret it for the readers and viewers in their respective magazines and shows.

Jonah Matranga + Ian Love @ Blue Shell, Cologne

Originally I was tagging along for this one since I am not the biggest fan of Mr Matranga. I saw him once or twice with one of his bands called New End Original at some Popkomm event in the “Büze Ehrenfeld” back in the days. Their record is wonderful but the live set was a little bit too hippie-ish. They broke down the atmosphere with too many slow songs and when Jonah started to blabber about love and “Liebe über alles” and so on that was really getting on my nerves. This must have been in 2001 or 2002 and all I can remember is that by the end of the evening I was pretty drunk. I then saw him play a solo set under the name of Onelinedrawing at the “Underground” in Cologne and that show didn’t move me either.

How crazy can you get – Bayern suspends Oliver Kahn for one match

Just as the Champions League matches get into the final minutes – and it looks as if Schalke will advance and Bremen will end up in the UEFA Cup – there is a special program on the German Sports Station DSF (German Sports Television) about the suspension of Oliver Kahn. These are the facts: the clubs suspended the player because of displinary reasons for one game and he will have to pay another 25.000 Euros. That’s it. Of course it’s a journalists duty to dig for further reasons which might have had an influence on the decision of the club. But the way those blokes of DSF do it it just gets way too hilarious. First up they show a report about the morining practice session of Bayern Munich in which goalkeeping coach Sepp Maier gives a rather enigmatic interview in which he tries to indicate that there was something going on which he knows what it is but he won’t tell the media. You get the picture.

Bundesliga: Day 16 – Struggles at the top … and FORTUNA WINS AGAIN!

1.FC Nürnberg – Hertha BSC Berlin 2:1
Bayer 04 Leverkusen – FC Hansa Rostock 3:0
VfB Stuttgart – VfL Wolfsburg 3:1
Hamburger SV – FC Energie Cottbus 0:0
FC Bayern München – MSV Duisburg 0:0
Eintracht Frankfurt – Schalke 04 2:2
Hannover 96- SV Werder Bremen 4:3
VfL Bochum – Karlsruher SC 2:2
Borussia Dortmund – DSC Arminia Bielefeld 6:1

Bundesliga: Day 15 – …but more importantly FORTUNA won!!!

Arminia Bielefeld – FC Bayern München 0:1
MSV Duisburg – 1.FC Nürnberg 1:0
VfB Stuttgart – Borussia Dortmund 1:2
VfL Wolfsburg – Eintracht Frankfurt 2:2
FC Energie Cottbus – Karlsruher SC 2:0
FC Schalke 04 – VfL Bochum 1:0
Hertha BSC Berlin – Bayer 04 Leverkusen 0:3
SV Werder Bremen – Hamburger SV 2:1
FC Hansa Rostock – Hannover 96 0:3

Minus The Bear @ Neue Werkstatt, Cologne

Visions Magazine is doing shows for quite some time now, but all of those took place in Dortmund, if I’m corrctly informed. Now they expanded their grasp on Cologne and so I went to see their 2nd so called “Visions Party” at a new club in Ehrenfeld, a hip part of Cologne. The club is your usual old and rundown small factory building which is turned into some disco thing. Nothing special, way too clean and boring and the beer is much too expensive. I saw Minus The Bear some time ago when they played at the “Blue Shell” and I remember I really liked the music back then. First I had to endure Escapado, a German band who put out their new record on Grand Hotel Van Cleef, a label from Hamburg which is run by lots of guys who come from the punk scene. Bands like Kettcar and Tomte are on their roster and Escapado fall out of line a little bit.