Mashiro-iro Symphony

Mashiroiro Symphony: Love is pure white (ましろ色シンフォニー -Love is pure white- Mashiroiro Shinfonī -Love is pure white-?, lit. Pure White Symphony: Love is pure white) is a Japanese visual novel developed by Palette, and it was released in Japan on October 30, 2009 for Microsoft Windows PCs. Mashiroiro Symphony is Palette's ninth title. The gameplay in Mashiroiro Symphony follows a linear plot line, which offers pre-determined scenarios and differs upon the player's decisions, and its storyline focuses on the appeal of the four female main characters. Futago Minazuki has illustrated three manga adaptations serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Comp Ace magazine. Four drama CD adaptations titled Mashiroiro Symphony Original Drama CD Series were released by Lantis in 2010. A 12-episode anime TV series adaptation produced by Manglobe and directed by Eiji Suganuma titled Mashiroiro Symphony: The Color of Lovers (ましろ色シンフォニー -The color of lovers-?) began airing on October 5, 2011 on TV Aichi. The series released on six Blu-ray Disc (BD) and DVD compilation volumes between January 25 and June 27, 2012. Sentai Filmworks has licensed the series in North America and will release the series with on DVD with English subtitles in 2012.

Plot
The story of Mashiroiro Symphony primarily takes place in the fictional town of Kagamidai (各務台?), which consists of two distinct districts dubbed the "Old District" (旧市街 Kyū-shigai?), which primarily contains traditional housings resided by upper class families, and the "New District" (新市街 Shin-shigai?), which is generally inhabited by working class families. The town also houses two private academic institutions undergoing a merger: the Yuihime Girls' Private Academy (私立結姫女子学園 Shiritsu Yuihime Joshi Gakuen?), a notorious upper class girls' academy nicknamed Yuijo (結女?), and the Kagamidai Private Academy (私立各務台学園 Shiritsu Kagamidai Gakuen?), a coeducation school which Shingo, the protagonist whose role the player assumes, attends. As part of the merger, students from both schools are selected to participate in a test class at the Yuihime Girls' Academy campus, an act which is initially opposed by the female student body.

Hidan no Aria

Hidan no Aria (Aria the Scarlet Ammo) is a Japanese light novel series by Chūgaku Akamatsu with illustrations by Kobuichi. As of March 2011, 9 volumes have been published by Media Factory under their MF Bunko J label. A manga adaptation by Yoshino Koyoka started serialization in the seinen manga magazine Monthly Comic Alive on September 26, 2009. An anime adaptation begins airing on April 14th, 2011.

Plot

Tokyo Butei High school--- It was a special school where armed detectives, also known as "Butei" are being brought up. Tohyama Kinji is a sophomore student who has the unique body which activates a "super mode" when it was stimulated by "something". He tries to hide it to others in order to live a peaceful life. But trouble came to find him when he became a victim of a bombing incident, where he met the Butei high "Assault" department elite, Aria H. Kanzaki.

Characters

Kinji Tohyama

Protagonist of the series and a student at Butei High school. He was ranked Level E (lowest combat rank) due to missing the Butei evaluation exam. However, under certain "conditions" his level raises to the highest combat status of Level S. He is currently enrolled in Inquesta department. After the death of his brother, he now plans on quitting Butei and live a normal life by transferring into a normal high school. His weapons of choice are Beretta M92F (which was illegally modified to fire a three-bullet burst. He refers to his own gun as Beretta Kinji Model), and a butterfly knife.

Aria H Kanzaki

Female transfer student of Butei High school. An "Assault" department elite rank S (The highest rank), she wishes to recruit Kinji after their encounter. She can wield two guns or two swords at the same time, earning the title of a "Quadra". Her weapons of choice are M1911 pistol (also known as colt government) for guns, and two undersized Japanese swords known as "Kodachi".

Shirayuki Hotogi

Female student of Butei High school, Childhood friend of Kinji. Enrolled in Butei's special department known as SSR. Butei rank A. She's the current student council chairman. She is also a president of various clubs like the gardening club, handicraft club, and girls volleyball club. A perfect Japanese beauty according to Kinji, except for one flaw. For some reason, she turns into a berserker and usually assaults the girls that involves Kinji. She uses a Japanese sword named Irokane Ayame as a weapon of choice.

Riko Mine

Female student of Butei High school, friend of Kinji. She's also enrolled in Inquesta department like Kinji. Although known as the biggest idiot in Kinji's class, she seem to hold a lot of information including info on students of Butei High school. She is seen with a heavy inclination of customizing her uniform into Lolita style. Weapons of choice are double Walther P99 for hanguns and double daggers for melee. Like Aria, she also had earned the title of a "Quadra".

Reki

The Snipe department's ace. Butei rank S. Real name unknown. She's habitually taciturn, constantly impassive and indifferent in fashion. She's always seen with a large headphone over her head. Her signature quote is "I am a single bullet. It has no heart. Therefore, it does not think. It just flies straight towards its target", which she always say before she shoots her target. She can shoot anything without missing her target within 2km radius. Her personal weapon is a Dragunov sniper rifle.

Jeanne d'Arc

Jeanne d'Arc 30th (also known as Durandal or Diamond Dust Witch) is an ice ability user from EU (criminal organization). During the events in Volume 2 of light novel, she is targeting Shirayuki in an attempt to kidnap her and force her to join EU. She is successfully captured with the combined efforts of Aria, Kinji and Shirayuki during the season of Adseard. As one of the conditions of Plea Bargain, she was forced to stay in Butei High as a 2nd year international student from Paris enrolled in Informa department. As a reliable Informa student, Kinji most of the time, asks for her aid whenever he needs a supply of knowledge about a particular case he is involved at. Jeanne and Riko get along with each other very well.
     She is one of the few people that knows Kinji's secret. Her personality is serious and cool. Her first comment about Butei High's skirt is: "Unmarried girls shouldn't openly reveal their legs like this!". However, that notion was pretty much shattered because of Riko's strong influence on her, and she had grown a habit of secretly collecting maid dresses, lolita fashion or any other cute dresses.

Angel Beats!

Angel Beats! is a 13-episode Japanese anime television series produced by P.A. Works and Aniplex and directed by Seiji Kishi. The story was originally conceived by Jun Maeda, who also wrote the screenplay and composed the music, with original character design by Na-Ga; both Maeda and Na-Ga are from the visual novel brand Key, who produced such titles as Kanon, Air, and Clannad. The anime aired in Japan between April 3 and June 26, 2010. Key worked in collaboration with ASCII Media Works' Dengeki G's Magazine to produce the project into a media franchise.

Two manga series are serialized in Dengeki G's Magazine: one illustrated by Haruka Komowata, which began serialization in the December 2009 issue, and the other drawn by Yuriko Asami, which started in the May 2010 issue. A series of illustrated short stories written by Maeda and illustrated by GotoP were also serialized in Dengeki G's Magazine between the November 2009 and May 2010 issues. Two Internet radio shows were produced to promote Angel Beats!. 

Plot 

Angel Beats! takes place at a high school acting as a Purgatory, where students learn to give up any lingering attachments they still have from life before continuing to an afterlife or reincarnation.

While the injury or cause of death are gone, those in the afterlife school can still feel pain or other things as they did when they were alive, as well as dying again, only to awaken with no injures several minutes later. The story follows the main protagonist Otonashi, a boy who lost his memories of his life after dying. Upon awakening in the afterlife, he meets a girl named Yuri who invites him to join the Shinda Sekai Sensen (SSS) (死んだ世界戦線?, lit. Afterlife War Front), an organization she founded and leads which fights against God for the cruel fates the SSS members experienced in life. Their only enemy in the world is the school's student council president Angel, a being with supernatural powers who fights against the SSS. Yuri believes that anyone who follows Angel's orders and behaves like a normal student at the school will eventually disappear and pass on. However, those who fulfill their dreams in the afterlife will pass on as well. 

In the SSS, there are two sub-divisions which help in the SSS's operations against Angel. The first is a four-girl band named Girls Dead Monster whose objective in the SSS is to cause a diversion from other activities the SSS is engaged in, while on the surface appearing to be a normal all female band. This includes distracting Angel and a large number of "normal" students and teachers at the school Yuri deems "non-player characters" as they are not human, but look and act the part. Another organization in the SSS is the Guild, located far below the surface of the afterlife world, which serves to supply the weapons the SSS uses against Angel. Anyone in the afterlife is able to create anything out of dirt that they had memories of in life, and the Guild uses this ability to mass produce weapons.

Angel uses a similar ability to create her supernatural powers known as "guard skills", with the aid of a computer program called Angel Player. The primary one that she uses is called "hand sonic", a blade on one or both forearms that is capable of changing into five different forms. Other skills include but are not limited to: "distortion", an invisible barrier that deflects bullets or other projectiles away; "delay", which creates an after-image to disorientate an enemy in close range; and "harmonics", where a clone with a consciousness of its own is formed from the original. These abilities are activated by voicing their name; however, others like "overdrive", which gives her great physical strength, are passive and are always on.

The Guild is purposefully destroyed after Angel infiltrates the compound, but the Guild members relocate to the old Guild location, which Angel does not know about. As Otonashi begins to get used to life in the afterlife, the leader of Girls Dead Monster, Iwasawa, disappears in front of a crowd of people after a solo musical performance. The SSS find out Angel's real name is Kanade Tachibana, and after a successful operation, Kanade loses her position as student council president and the vice president Naoi succeeds her. Unlike Kanade, Naoi cracks down on the SSS and even uses powers of hypnosis to control NPCs to fight for him. Otonashi is able to stop him after acknowledging Naoi's existence and Naoi subsequently joins the SSS. Otonashi regains his memories with the aid of Naoi's hypnosis and agrees to continue with the SSS.

With Kanade a normal student now, Otonashi befriends her and invites her to join in on SSS activities. Kanade uses one of her powers to clone herself while engaged in combat, resulting in a violent red-eyed Angel. The clone replicates itself many times, but the clones are later absorbed back into Kanade after Yuri rewrites the Angel Player program. Kanade manages to overcome the personalities of the violent clones after awakening from the ordeal. Otonashi starts cooperating with Kanade to help the other SSS members move on after he fully remembers the details of his life and death. Kanade is reinstated as student council president in accordance with their plan. Otonashi and Kanade cooperate to allow Yui to pass on by fulfilling her wishes, but it is Hinata in the end who fulfills her final wish to get married that allows her to pass on. 

Mysterious shadow monsters appear and begin attacking the SSS. Takamatsu gets devoured by one, only to reappear as an NPC. Otonashi reasons with the other SSS members and many of them agree to pass on in lieu of becoming an NPC, including the rest of Girls Dead Monster, Chaa, and several unnamed members. Yuri notices that the NPCs are turning into the shadows, and her investigation into who is behind this leads her back into the Guild. After receiving help from Otonashi, Kanade, Hinata and Naoi, Yuri meets a boy who tells her he was programmed to activate the shadow program when love was detected in the world. The programmer himself turned into an NPC long before. Yuri destroys the computers responsible for the shadow program. Three days after the incident, Otonashi, Yuri, Kanade, Hinata and Naoi are the only ones yet to pass on. They hold a graduation ceremony where they thank each other for their support. After Yuri, Hinata and Naoi pass on, Otonashi learns that Kanade's regret was not being able to thank him for the heart she received from Otonashi after his death. Otonashi is heartbroken after she thanks him and passes on, as he has fallen in love with her, but he too passes on shortly after. In an epilogue, Otonashi and Kanade meet up again in the real world.

Durarara!!

Durarara!! is a Japanese light novel series written by Ryohgo Narita, with illustrations by Suzuhito Yasuda. As of January 2010, seven volumes have been published by ASCII Media Works under their Dengeki Bunko imprint. A manga adaptation by Akiyo Satorigi started serialization in the shōnen manga magazine Monthly GFantasy on April 18, 2009. An anime adaptation began airing in Japan in January 2010. The series is about a Dullahan working as an underworld courier in Ikebukuro, an internet-based anonymous gang called Dollars, and the chaos that unfolds around the most dangerous people in Ikebukuro. A game based on the series for the PlayStation Portable will be released on September 22, 2010. 

Mikado Ryūgamine is a young man who longs for the exciting life of the big city. At the invitation of his childhood friend Masaomi, he transfers to a school in Ikebukuro, Tokyo.

Masaomi warns him about people he doesn't want to cross in the city: a violent man dressed like a bartender, an information merchant, and a mysterious gang called "Dollars." And to top it off, Mikado witnesses an urban legend on his first day in the city: the "Black Rider," the supposedly headless driver of a black motorcycle.

The narrative follows all of the characters equally, showing how their lives intersect, creating a greater plotline from what each character knows about a common incident. 

An anime adaption of the light novels was announced in the wraparound sleeve of the sixth volume of the light novel. The anime is produced by Brain's Base and started airing on January 7, 2010 on MBS, TBS, and CBC. Crunchyroll is to simulcast the anime at 480p and 720p within 24 hours of its Japanese premiere. Other users can see the same episode in standard definition for free one week later. The anime adapts the first three novels. The anime has been licensed by Beez Entertainment for UK release in subtitles. UKAnime has also announced on it's Twitter that the US release for the anime will also be in English subtitles. At Anime Expo 2010, Aniplex of America confirmed that they have the license to Durarara!! and are planning to produce an English dub for a planned January 2011 release. 

Darker than Black

Darker than Black: Kuro no Keiyakusha, literally "Darker than Black: The Black Contractor" is an anime television series, created, directed and written by Tensai Okamura and animated by Bones. It premiered across Japan from April 5, 2007 on MBS, TBS, and its affiliated broadcast stations, with its satellite television premiere in Japan on Animax in May 2007. The music for the series is composed by Yoko Kanno. The series has also been adapted into two manga series, which are serialized in Monthly Asuka and in Young Gangan. The anime also was awarded Best Original Anime of The Year by GoGoplex, a popular magazine for teens.

Darker than Black was conceptualized by Tensai Okamura and produced by Bones and Aniplex. The series premiered on Tokyo Broadcasting System and Mainichi Broadcasting System's Thursday late night anime broadcasting timeslot, replacing the Sunrise series Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion on April 5, 2007, and similar to Code Geass incorporated corporate sponsorship of Japan News Network partners Pizza Hut and Nifty, where episodes of the series was streamed every week during the series' broadcast run. It completed its initial run on September 27, 2007, and received its broadcasting satellite premiere on Animax from May 8, 2007 to October 23, 2007. The series was also aired in English on Animax Asia, Animax's English language networks in Southeast Asia and South Asia from December 2008 onwards. The series has also been released in Japan by Aniplex across nine DVDs, each containing three episodes, except for the first DVD, which had only two. The ninth and final DVD included an original video animation, which expanded upon the romantic relationships between characters. The DVDs were released between July 25, 2007 and March 26, 2008 by Aniplex. FUNimation received the license for the series in Region 1 and has released one DVD compilation with two more coming in the future. The first English DVD was released on November 25, 2008 and the second and third DVDs were released on January 20, 2009 and March 10, 2009 respectively. Volume 4 was released on May 5, 2009 with Volume 5 released on June 23, 2009. Volume 6 was released on August 11, 2009 and is now available. In May 2010, Funimation released the entire first season in a complete box set; it was originally released in March, but was recalled due to a defective disk. 

The Blu-Ray Box was released in Japan on September 30, 2009 with a guidebook with several unreleased music tracks not available in the OSTs. 

Plot 

Ten years ago, an inscrutable and abnormal territory known as Hell's Gate appeared in Tokyo, altering the sky and wreaking havoc on the landscape. The real stars disappeared, replaced by false stars. During this time, people possessing various special abilities emerged, each capable of different supernatural feats - these are known as Contractors. Each fake star has a corresponding Contractor, which reacts to their activities. As such, Contractors are usually identified by their star's Messier catalogue number. Kept secret from the masses, these individuals are known to murder in cold blood, smothering unnecessary emotions with logic and rationale. Their incredible abilities, however, are gained at the cost of their humanity - Contractors are thus named because of an involuntary compulsion to "pay the price" each time their power is used, which can range from eating particular foods and completing meaningless tasks, to self-harm and having their bodies change in peculiar ways. Various nations and organizations around the world train and utilize Contractors as spies and assassins, resulting in violent battles for valuable objects and information.