Nopy's Blog

Since I had a little downtime a couple weeks ago, I decided to give some series from the last couple of years a second go. One of those series was Rio: Rainbow Gate, a 13-episode anime from 2011 about Rio, a popular casino dealer, and her quest to become the MVCD (most valuable casino dealer). A lot of people have already reviewed Rio: Rainbow Gate so I won’t go there. Instead, let’s consider if Rio really is a goddess of luck or if she wins through calculated risks.

The first two episodes deal with games where you can determine the probability of an outcome: poker and roulette. In the first episode, Rio plays one round of draw poker with her decency on the line. Each player is dealt 5 cards and they may discard any number of cards from their hand and draw the same number of cards once. When the players have all drawn their cards, they reveal their hands and whoever has the highest hand wins. Poker hands are ranked from lowest to highest as follows: high card, single pair, double pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, and straight flush. More information on what each hand is can be found on Wikipedia. To get a feel for how likely it is to get each hand, you can actually play the game at www.partycasino.com. Rio’s opponent was dealt a near royal flush, needing only to obtain an ace of hearts or a 9 of hearts to get a straight flush. His chances of getting a straight or higher were at 16.7%, but he opted to only keep a queen, hoping to get a 4 of a kind (the probability of which is less than 1%).

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It looks like Nanoha has some competition when it comes to appearances on Megami Magazine covers. This is the second time that Puella Magi Madoka Magica has been featured on the cover. The first time, in volume 129,  had Madoka in her puella magi outfit, volume 131 here has Homura in a black dress.

Posters follow below, ecchi images are linked.

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I was in for a little surprise when I opened up the March 2011 issue of Megami Magazine, also known as volume 130. Unlike all of the other volumes that just come with a pretty anime girl (or girls) on a dull cover, this one has SPARKLES! In this volume, Megami decided to embed some tons of bright, multi-coloured, sparkly stars in the cover. You can only see some of them in the picture because of the angle, but they fill the whole page. I think it’s rather fitting considering they featured the girls from Idolmaster on the cover this time.

Enough about the cover though, lets see what kind of posters they have this time around (ecchi images linked):

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It’s been two weeks into the new anime season, and that means it’s time to head to the chopping board. I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen all of the major new anime airing this season and have now decided on which ones to keep watching and which ones to drop. Here are my thoughts based on the first or first two episodes of each series.

Beelzebub

A naked baby that electrocutes everyone around him when he cries, and is raised by a high school delinquent sounds like a wild and crazy idea that would make a great anime. Unfortunately, Beelzebub just didn’t have what it takes to impress me. By the end of the first episode it seemed like the anime was trying to follow something along the lines of teen parenthood, but I just couldn’t take it seriously.

Status: dropped

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