Angelic Layer was rather cute. ^_^ (I did tear up a bit, though, when Shuuko and Misaki finally faced each other.) I really liked the final battle; I knew it had to be something big, and slightly more complex than Hikaru, say, shoving Athena out of the Layer. (Miraculously, I managed not to spoil myself on the ending, but I did figure that Hikaru would battle Athena, and win.) The image of Hikaru sprouting wings was pretty powerful, and surprising. Not shocking, really, but pleasantly unexpected.

I'm undecided on the relationships. Koutarou and Tamayo are cute together, but Oujirou and Misaki just seems ... odd, after finding out he was in love with Shuuko. Though this *is* CLAMP, after all -- and I guess the main character's love interest having a crush on her mother isn't as bad as the main character *and* her love interest both having a crush on the same guy, who just so happens to be the main character's older brother's in-the-closet boy toy. XD;; I do wonder how Tamayo and Oujirou get together in the manga, and if I'd prefer that pairing. It's not that I have a real problem with Misaki/Oujirou; but Tamayo/Oujirou is cute without that whiff of Oedipalness. o.o Anyway, I think Icchan and Shuuko are simply adorable. ^_^ Ogata and that technician girl whose name I forget seem to go well together ... so unfortunately, no Icchan/Ogata for me. ^_^;;

And onto Beautiful Life. (Spoilers for Kami-sama Mou Sukoshi Dake included. ^_^;) I cried *so* hard during the last episode. ;___________; I mean, really cried -- I was surprised myself how much I was affected. I admit, I'm a total wussy and will tear up virtually whenever any character onscreen cries; but in the final scene with Shuji and Kyoko, when he's making up her body, I had to choke back sobs so as not to get weird looks from my guy friends. T_^;; It was just so utterly poignant, because you knew Shuji was going to cry eventually, but just not *when*. Kyoko's actual death was rather quiet, and not really surprising, and when Shuji seemed to accept it, you almost believed he'd make it without breaking down. And when he did, it was almost subdued, without any unnecessary dramatics; little things, like Takumi crying as he watched Shuji, and Kyoko's mom saying "So she can walk in heaven," were what really got to me ... "Konya Tsuki no Mieru Oka ni" is going to make me cry now whenever I hear it, like "I For You." ^_^;; It won't be quite as bad, though, because the latter is an angsty song anyway. And Beautiful Life is different. It's a love story, but not really shoujo style; Kami-sama (much as I love it) most certainly *is*. (It's like the uber-shoujo -- it ends with a wedding, a baby, *and* death, all in one. XD;;) So instead of girlish weepiness, BL was more a quiet pain in your chest. In the final scene, though, Shuji with his hair slicked back reminded me loads of Kaneshiro Takeshi. ^_^;

And finally, Noir. At least this one didn't make me cry. ^_^;; What can I say? It was just cool. I could have easily been disappointed with the ending, but I wasn't. (Though I wonder, if I'd followed every bit of the storyline more closely, if I would have found something missing.) I love the way the show started out as a chicks-with-guns action plot, then led to a climax based more on the character relationships than anything else.

What surprised me, though, is how much of a Mireille/Kirika fan I am now. It's the first shoujo ai pairing I really support -- of course, there's always Haruka/Michiru, but I never knew enough about them to be a real follower. The Kirika x Mireille made itself clear in the last half of the series or so, but Mireille x Kirika really came in during the final episodes. Especially (duh) when she was begging Kirika not to kill herself. I figured it was there before, but Mireille has such a closed personality; at first, you think it's Kirika who does, but that's not the case. It's not that she hides her feelings, but that she's such a blank slate, she doesn't *have* them to hide. Whenever she feels something, you know it immediately. Mireille, on the other hand, projects an open heart when the opposite is true, which is rather interesting. I'm toying with the idea of a fic (just a short introspection, nothing major o.o), and was originally going to make it from Kirika's POV, but I realized that Mireille is the more intriguing character. So we'll see. It'd be my first shoujo ai piece, at the least. ^_^v

As for Chloe x Kirika ... I don't really see it. There were definitely hints of UST, especially with their tendency to be naked at the same time, but I don't feel it's in Chloe's character. She's such an innocent (odd, that I'm calling her of all people that ^_^;), her view of love would be as skewed as her view of Noir itself. It seems she looks at Le Grand Retour, not as a ritual to establish her position as a killer and affect an overthrow of Soldats, but just as a chance for her to be with her "family" and make Altena, her "mother," happy. Noir represents the world she knows and is comfortable in, not politics or killing or sin or righteous ideology. So any feelings she has for Kirika become more of child-like, perhaps sisterly devotion, than romantic ones. When she died, there was no evidence of the shock of a betrayed lover. Her last word, after all, was "Noir."

We also watched the first episode of some live-action sentai show ... in which the main characters are some ninja-in-training whose sensei is attacked by the bad guy, and saves himself by using his super-duper magic powers to ... turn himself into a hamster. X_x;; Go Japan.