When I started an account at Netflix so that my girlfriend and I could watch Heroes1 via streaming to our TV2, I figured I could use Netflix to also watch older anime series that I had passed over when they were available on fansubs. As such, this has been a pretty successful venture, as there were quite a few series that I could watch (Such as Girl's High3 or Gankutsuou4) legally without having to worry about purchasing the entire series or even leave my house. Even more, I didn't mind that most of the anime available on Netflix stream were only available with English dub, which meant that I could play stuff in the background without having to pay much attention to it if I wanted.

I figured I'd eventually find the occasional gem this way, and though I'm not sure I'd consider it a diamond in the rough, Kurau: Phantom Memory did manage to keep me hooked and had me caring for the main protagonists throughout the run of the series. I had never heard of this 20045 series before, and I wasn't expecting much from Kurau when I added it to my Netflix Instant queue, which Netflix estimated my rating for it to be 2.6 of 5 stars, while the general populace rated it an average of 3.9. Turns out that the general populace is more accurate than what Netflix thought it would be for me. My own impressions might have been exaggerated due to my lower initial expectations, but I ended up quite enjoying this BONES series.

1. 1. BTW, the first season was definitely the best. We lost interest in the series in the middle of the third
2. 2. At first, via the XBox 360 we were borrowing from a friend. Now we use the Samsung BD-P2550 Blu-ray player to stream Netflix to the TV.
3. 3. Dropped this series after the first episode
4. 4. Watched to the end, but I am unsure how I feel about it. I the series was good, but not good enough to buy
5. 5. A year that was rather good for anime

A few weeks ago, I had caught wind of a animated samurai movie by BONES was being run at a few theaters in neighboring cities, Being that it would be at least an hour and a half drive either way, I basically texted a friend in New Orleans about Sword of the Stranger showing in two theaters knowing that he might be interested in it and promptly forgotten about it. Well, he gets in touch with me the day before the premiere and mentioned watching it at a theater in New Orleans, and I ended up taking the two and a half hour drive to the city to meet up with him and go to the AMC Elmwood Palace 201.

What I was expecting:

1. Samurai Action
2. Nice Animation
3. Crappy Plot and Characters

1. 1. which was showing it on a pretty impressively sized screen