text:
What kind of drawing format is this? Pictures with litle box on top left
Sometimes I find art like these on Pixiv

Sources:

https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=29538975
https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=51254835
https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=60499300
https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=63393567

The little box on the top left is usually blank and something is written in the square box next to it - sometimes it's the artist name and sometimes it's not. And usually the picture's title starts with 'C' and is followed by a two-digit number, although not always (see links).
What kind of drawing format is this? What's the little box on the top left for? And what's the meaning of 'C..' in the title? And what does the number stand for? Sometimes the title starts with 'C..' but doesn't have the same format, like this.
Note that two of the five links I provided are from pro artists. They are Akio Watanabe, the character designer from the Monogatari Series anime and Shinobu Shinotsuki, the illustrator of the Youjo Senki light novel.

What kind of drawing format is this?

It's a "Circle Cut".
In this context, "Circle" means "Doujinshi circle", and "Cut" means "Cut-out". It's exclusively used in a doujinshi market place such as Comiket, Comitia, etc to be used in the catalog.
The format is:

A little box on the upper-left: Indexing/Stall location (to be explained later)
Text inside the box on the upper-right (or none): Circle's name
The rest of the area: Free image, can be a unique image for identifying the artist, or anything related to the circle's current merchandise

What's the little box on top left for?

The little box on the top-left is used for Indexing/Stall location. Inside the catalog, there's a list of circle-cuts with their stall location, as shown for example in the Comiket 90 catalog:

Catalog for Comiket 90, date 12 (Friday), East Hall 4-6. Left page showing stall モ43-モ60, right page showing stall ヤ1-ヤ17
For reference, this is the map of Tokyo Big Sight for East Hall 4-6:

Map of Tokyo Big Sight, East Hall 4-6

And what's the meaning of 'C..' on title? And what does the number stand for?

It's the identification of the n-th Comiket.
As mentioned before, it's used in a doujinshi market like Comiket. Comiket is done 2 times per year (summer & winter) and each event is always identified by its serialization/number, such as Comiket 92 (C92) in this Summer 2017.

Reference:

What the heck is a "Circle Cut"?!
Comiket Event Report Part 2 - Guidelines for Comiket

I hadn't realized the catalogues were so big until today. Do you have any idea how much they tend cost for a print version?

@ZashaFaith for the print version, 2000 Yen (direct sale)/2500 Yen (bookstore). For DVD-ROM, 2500 Yen (from Japanese Official Comiket Catalog page)


text:
Does anyone know about the photo on Lis's wall?
In episode 7 of Sword Art Online, we get to see Lisbeth's smithy. On the announcement board, there is a pinned photo of her with three other people, but in that photo, she is a little kid.
Does anyone know how this happened?

It's supposed to be her old crew where she worked as a blacksmith. However, as the series went on, a lot of people died, so I suppose those 4 or 5 people were the ones who died.

Yea i can understand that... Maybe i didnt ask correctly... I wanted to know how can she be a little girl in that photo. Only 2 years have passed since they were transfered into the game

I would guess something along the lines of a background program that can guess aproximately what you looked like in the past based on your current age, developmental growth, physical attributes, etc. Not that difficult of a program considering the technological power of SAO.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Is the manga in Episode 3 of "The Everyday Tales of a Cat God" based off a real manga?
In episode 3 there is a manga about a girl who moves to Tokyo after a string of bad luck only to find that her roommate is a death god who seems to just mooch off her. I am wondering if this is based off of another manga.

You can find more examples in the link in the comments. I think that's a large enough sample to determine if the manga used in the anime is based off any other manga.

I uploaded some screencaps to this imgur album. If anyone feels like picking out relevant-looking ones and editing them into the post, that'd be dandy.

The manga seems to be an original work of Yukina (by the duo responsible for the manga, FRIP FROPs). The details of the Yukina's manga in chapter 13 of the manga series are really shown so it's likely added in the anime to flesh things out a bit more.

кяαzєя's comment is right on the spot: Yes, it's from 大凶ちゃんとしあわせな世界 (Daikyo-chan to Shiawase na Sekai, Misfortune Girl and the Lucky World), a 2-chapter special spiritual one-shot by FLIPFLOPs on Champion RED magazine edition 2007-12 ~ 2008-01. It's also included in the 1st volume of The Everyday Tales of Cat God manga (Source:
MyAnimeList).

Image source

The story, as it has been mentioned in the question, is about

Kyouko, a test-taker who came to Tokyo and is living alone.
Shinigami Karin, Kyouko's roommate.
The story about their certain Sunday life.
Source (Japanese)

Here, we can see Shamo reading the RED magazine,

Image source

And here is the scanned page of the last picture in the question,

Image source

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Who are the 7 Heroines of Bonyari High?
I have come across this term and I wonder who exactly the 7 heroines are?
They are mentioned here in chapter 132:

And here:

Can someone give me a list of them?
I know of Chitoge, Kosaki and Marika. Haru seems not to be one of them.

I didn't actually get, what do you mean by 7 heroines

Some dude on chiebukuro finds himself similarly confused, and posits that, at the least, Chitoge, Kosaki, Marika, and Tsugumi count among their number, plus possibly Kyoko (the teacher). A different dude on chiebukuro adds Ruri, Raku, and Shuu to that list. Note that the word that is translated as "heroine" is 英雄, which is gender-nonspecific in Japanese. (Not that Shuu wouldn't make a splendid heroine.)

I've added pictures from the manga to help clarify the question;however, I'm not sure if all translations use this phrasing of 7 heroines here.

@senshin thats a good point, do you think the translator knew they were all girls and translated it that way oder did he possibly make a mistake? And thnaks for adding the pictures

The seven hero(ine)s of Bonyari (凡矢理高校七英雄, bonyari koukou nana eiyuu) were confirmed in a Nisekoi official Fanbook released in August 2015 (ニセコイ　ファンブック　トクレポ). The fan translation by Red Hawks being released more than one year before, the team probably assumed at the time that the seven people in question were girls without any solid proof (but they are seemingly right nonetheless).

Sources:
The actual list of the seven heroines is mentioned on this japanese blog, apparently specializing in Nisekoi trivia. The list is given additional credence by this other blog, which reviews the fanbook extensively and mentions, without expliciting all names though, that 5 of the 7 heroines fell in love with Raku, and that the other 2 didn't appear yet as of the writing of the review. The same list appears on the japanese wikipedia page of Nisekoi as an annotation to the seven heroines entry of the glossary section, and a number of other pages of people who asked the same question.

Trivia:
The seven heroines of Bonyari refer to 7 people of Bonyari High, who possess a unique talent or incredible popularity among other students of Bonyari. Even though she's not a part of it, Haru is mentioned to be a likely candidate for a "future" list of these seven heroines.
The seven heroines of Bonyari seem to be a cute variation of the "7 wonders of school" (学校の七不思議, gakkou no nana fushigi) in Japanese scary urban legends, which is also a relatively common trope in manga.

Onto the actual list:

The golden rose princess [golden rose], Chitoge Kirisaki (黄金の薔薇姫（ゴールデン・ローズ）)
The lovely lily missy [pretty lily], Kosaki Onodera (可憐なる百合嬢（プリティ・リリィ）)
The noble mountain arrowhead [noble amaryllis], Seishirou Tsugumi (気高き山慈姑（ノーブル・アマリリス）)
The beloved marigold [lovely gold], Marika Tachibana (愛の千寿菊（ラブリー・ゴールド）)
The gracious sunrise orchid [grace cattleya], Yui Kanakura (優美なる日出蘭（グレース・カトレア）)
The melody camellia princess [melody camellia], Roxanne Kyouko Gotou  (旋律の椿姫（メロディー・カメリア）)
The innocent turnip girl [innocent turnip], Hikari Saegusa (無邪気な菘娘（イノセント・ターナップ）)

Notes: arrowhead refers to the flower, not an actual arrowhead. Also, brackets denote names written phonetically in english in the original japanese text.

Note that, like the japanese review of the fanbook mentions, Yui was not introduced nor a teacher in Bonyari yet when the seven heroines were mentioned in chapter 132. It can be speculated that someone else occupied her place in the listing at the time, but it is not known who.
As for Roxanne Kyouko Gotou (後藤・ロクサーヌ・響子) and Hikari Saegusa (七草光), they were mentioned by name and both didn't appear yet in any work as of this writing. (Also note that the pronunciation of their names may actually be different than what I wrote. I'm fairly confident about their first names, but their family names, especially, may have a different spelling; I chose to write Gotou and Saegusa because they are common pronunciation for these.)


text:
Why Is Britannia often depicted as an almighty power?
Often in series revolving around wars, you will see a mention of Britannia.
More often so, they are depicted as an almighty power which is to be feared, or even one which has dominated most or all of the world.
Some of the most known examples would be code-geass where "The Holy Empire of Britannia" conquered most of the world, including Japan, which then became known as Area 11. Or a bit more obscure reference in nanatsu-no-taizai:

So why is Britannia often depicted as an almighty power? One who should be feared?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire

@Oded Might just screwed up my history lessons. The British empire used to be known as Britannia till ~50 AD. The British empire conquered most of the world, Britannia didn't. Hence my question/confusion

I just know that in Israel, the name for "Britain" is indeed Britannia - could be a similar thing.

Oh, just remembered this too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule,_Britannia!

"Britannia" is the Latin name for Britain, and was used to refer to the empire occasionally. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia.

"Britannia" in Nanatsu no Taizai is the name of the region in which the narrative takes place. It is not depicted as "an almighty power", and I don't see how you get that from the panels you excerpted in your question.

Based on your comments you seem to be drawing too much of a distinction between the words Britannia and Britain, as in fact both mean the same thing. Britannia is just the Latin (and ancient Greek) word for Britain.  While there was no Empire of Britannia (or Holy Empire of Britannia for that matter), strictly speaking there was also no British Empire.  That is just the informal name for what, at its height, was more accurately called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the various dominions, territories, protectorates and so on that it controlled.
So if you take the historical, but informal British Empire, and alter history by turning it into a real empire with a real Emperor/Empress and give it a more fanciful name by merging the name of historical Holy Roman Empire with the Latin name Britannia and you get what see in Code Geass. The name "Holy Britannian Empire" both invokes the might and culture of the British Empire while also clearly being something else entirely. Similarly, I'd expect any other reference to Britannia as a real country in anime and manga as meant to invoke Britain, but not actually be Britain.
Mind you can't find much evidence that Britannia, as distinct from Britain, being a trope in anime and manga. The two series you mentioned, Code Geass and The Seven Deadly Sins, are the only ones I can find that have a "Britannia". In the later series, it also doesn't appear that Britannia exists as a political entity, just a name for the region where the story is set.
Indeed, I'd say Code Geass is actually an example of the America Takes Over the World trope, as, despite the name, the Holy Britannian Empire is centred in America and doesn't actually control Britain.

Practically all kings and queens since Henry VIII used Defender of the Faith (or Fidei Defensor) in their official title and they have all been head of the Church of England, so a Holy Britannian Empire might not require adding the Holy Roman Empire (although I will acknowledge similarities in the title). Note that Fidei Defensor came before English reformation.

Basically art imitates life

Actually Brittania is Britain in both instances with the The Seven Deadly Sins version even showing a map which is just a copy of real word Britain nowadays, In Code Geass'es sense Britain owned a majority of the world around 100-200 years ago, It was the only superpower around as it owned India, Africa, And even America what everyone forgets is America was just a British colony the lands found by British sailors.

I mean, you're technically correct, but the answer which precedes yours covers the same ground with a lot more detail.


text:
Are the Symphogear activation chants translatable?
The activation chants (聖詠) for the Symphogear relics are somewhat peculiar. If you've heard them, you likely wondered what was being said. If you've read them (the "lyrics" were provided in the booklets accompanying the season 2 OST discs), you're probably outright bamboozled.

Ame-no-Habakiri: Imyuteus amenohabakiri tron [OST 1 #10]
Gungnir (Hibiki): Balwisyall nescell gungnir tron [OST 1 #3]
Gungnir (Maria):  Granzizel bilfen gungnir zizzl [OST 1 #6]
Ichaival: Killter ichaival tron [OST 2 #3]
Airgetlam: Seilien coffin airget-lamh tron [OST 3 #7 (Serena) / OST 6 #6 (Maria)]
Shul Shagana: Various shul shagana torn [OST 5 #5]
Igalima: Zeios igalima raizen tron [OST 6 #1]
Shen Shou Jing: Rei shen shou jing rei zizzl [OST 5 #5]
Also, the Zesshou (Superb Song / Swan Song / Climax Song):
Gatrandis babel ziggurat edenal
Emustolronzen fine el baral zizzl
Gatrandis babel ziggurat edenal
Emustolronzen fine el zizzl

Now, these don't look like any actual language (though I obviously can't claim to know all languages that exist). Yet, sites like the Symphogear wikia claim (or at least have, in the past, claimed) to translate the chants - for example, Ichaival's chant was given the translation "Evening draws in the awakened Ichaival".
Is it genuinely possible to translate the chants? If so, from what language or languages are they translated? (In the context of the show, Sumerian or some other old Mesopotamian language would make the most sense, because of Finé's connections to the region.)
Auxiliary question: if, as I suspect, they are not translatable, by what citogenetic process did these putative translations come into being in the first place?

I haven't watched this show, but I used to be a linguistics nerd, and I'm highly skeptical of the claim that these chants are written in actual Sumerian. I think they're just a mishmash of English and English-looking nonsense.
First, the case against the Sumerian theory. Disclaimer 1: I'm assuming that these passages are appearing as the creators intended and we don't have a case like the disaster in the Del Rey release of Negima Volume 6, where we had appendices full of complete nonsense being passed off as Greek because the translators had tried to transliterate the Greek into the Roman alphabet based on Akamatsu's transliteration of the Greek into katakana. Disclaimer 2: I'm no expert on Sumerian. But these passages don't pass the sniff test.
The phonology doesn't match the postulated Sumerian phonology
Let's look at a passage of transliterated Sumerian:

An adab to Bau for Luma (Luma A)
  1.  dumu an-na an gal ki gal-ta šag4 kug-ga-ni im-mi-in-pad3-de3
  2.  nam-nin kalam-ma-kam bi2-in-tum2-en
  3.  dba-u2 dumu an-na an gal ki gal-ta
  4.  šag4 kug-ga-ni im-mi-in-pad3-de3
  5.  nam-nin kalam-ma-kam bi2-in-tum2-en
  6.  den-lil2-le e2-kur za-gin3-ta
  7.  ki-sikil ama dba-u2 igi zid mu-un-ši-in-bar
  8.  /en\ dnin-ĝir2-su gal-bi mu-un-na-an-du7
  9.  kur gal den-lil2-le e2-kur za-gin3-ta
  10. ki-sikil ama dba-u2 igi zid mu-un-ši-in-bar

(From http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.3.1&display=Crit&charenc=gcirc# at Oxford University's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. The transliteration is described here)
Notice what's missing? There are no initial clusters, like we see in granzizel and tron. There are no dipththongs, as we see in seilien and raizen. There is no f, as we see in bilfen and coffin, or v, as we see in various, or o, as we see in zeios and shou, or w or y, as we see in balwisyall. There seem to be no doubled l's, like we see in kellter, or c, as in nescell.

[...] syllable initial consonant
  clusters were prohibited by Sumerian phonotactics [...]
— Aleksi Sahala, "Sumero-Indo-European Language Contacts", page 11.

(There is some argument on this point. Cuneiform is a mixed logographic/syllabic writing system—a little like Japanese, actually. Most sources state there were no initial consonant clusters, but Encyclopedia of Linguistics says that although the cuneiform system "precludes the writing of initial and final consonantal clusters, it is quite likely that Sumerian did have them." We know this is true of Mycenaean Greek written in Linear B, for instance—like English written in the Japanese system, a Greek word like khrusos is written in Linear B as kuruso.)

The vocalic system is quite simple: /a/, /e/, /i/, /u/. The possible existence of an /o/ vowel remains unsubstantiated.
— Encyclopedia of Linguistics, page 1046

And

To the
  best of today’s mainstream science, Sumerian consists of the following consonants:
  { b , d , g , p , t , k , m , n , ĝ , l , r , h , s , z , š , () }
— Ioannis Kenanidis, "Yet Another Suggestion about the Origins of the Sumerian Language", page 31

Because Sumerian is incredibly ancient—it's the first known written language—and so much of it has come down to us through Akkadian scribes, who kept using it after it was dead because they thought it was cool, and because of the difficulties with the writing system that I alluded to above, there's a ton we don't know about it. No one believes the reconstructed phonology is 100% correct, or even 90% correct. But what we see here is too far off base to be taken seriously as an attempt to write Sumerian according to a reconstructed phonology.
You can see where they cribbed from
Whatever language this is, it includes the English words various and coffin, as well as killter, which looks a lot like kilter, as in "off kilter". The word baral in the swan song looks like it comes from Hebrew בלל (balal), which means "to confuse" or "to mix" and is apparently the source of the word "Babel". It uses the English form of ziggurat; the Akkadian form is ziqqurat, while "ziggurat" comes from the Hebrew form זיגוראט (zygwrʼt).
That doesn't automatically disqualify it as a real language; after all, in the Australian language Mbabaram, dog means "dog". But, combined with the widespread use of English for mysterious and exotic things in anime, this makes me highly suspicious of any claim that the sentences are Sumerian or any other language.
Aside from that, the sentences conform remarkably well to English phonology. Almost all of these words are easily pronounceable to an English speaker. The ones that look a little weird, like zeios and rei, show some pretty clear Japanese influence.
Machine systems can't make heads or tails of it
I fed all the activation chants and the swan song to Google Translate and Translated.net Labs's language detector, both together and individually. I wasn't expecting it to translate them, but I was hoping it would detect what language they were.
As a side note, machine translation still sucks, but this kind of language detection is supposed to be pretty good; Russel and Norvig claim in Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach that computer systems can identify languages, even based on short texts like "Hello world" and "Wie geht es dir", with greater than 99% accuracy (AIMA 3ed., page 862).
None of these systems can detect Sumerian or Akkadian, but they can detect most modern languages, even some quite obscure ones. The general consensus was that the activation chants have a Germanic flavor (Google Translate pegged them as English, even after I deleted the words various and coffin, while another service took them as Frisian, a Germanic language closely related to English), while the swan song was taken as Indonesian. Google Translate insisted that both texts together were English, while Translated.net took both texts together as Sundanese.
For comparison, I took a passage from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and a few lines from The Who's "Call Me Lighting", shoved them together, and fed them to Translated.net:

so, so; now sit: and look you eat no more
  than will preserve just so much strength in us
  as will revenge these bitter woes of ours.
  marcus, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot:
  thy niece and i, poor creatures, want our hands,
  and cannot passionate our tenfold grief
  with folded arms. this poor right hand of mine
  is left to tyrannize upon my breast;
  who, when my heart, all mad with misery,
  beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,
  then thus i thump it down.
hey little girl who's dancing so lightly,  my xke is shining so brightly,  the noose around us is slowly tightening,  i'm gonna show you why they call me lightning

English, English, and more English. It defies my suspension of disbelief to think that if these passages were all the same language, there would be so much confusion about what language that was.
I have no idea what algorithm Google Translate uses; Translated.net seems to use some kind of nearest neighbors algorithm.
The "translations" are absurd
The translation of Ichaival's chant seems to have been removed from the wikia sometime between when this question was asked and now, which probably doesn't say much for its authenticity. But let's take a look at the one in the OP:
Killter ichaival tron -> Evening draws in the awakened Ichaival
Since all the chants end with tron, that has to be something that makes sense in every chant. Based on the context, I'm going to say that has to be "awakened"; it is an activation song, so it makes sense that they would all be "awakened". So Ichaival tron means "awakened Ichaival". So we can postulate that this language puts modifiers after nouns, like Spanish and Irish.
Then what does killter mean? It has to mean evening draws in. But this is linguistically absurd; it violates constituent structure. draws in is a verb, while evening is a noun. killter can't literally mean evening draws in in a real language (if it does, we've got the makings of a real whopper of a paper in theoretical syntax here—it'll be almost to theoretical syntax what those particles that traveled faster than light would have been to relativity).
killter therefore must mean either evening or draws in, with the other element implied or indicated in some way by the morphology. So we have a language where you can just say draws in, and everyone automatically assumes you meant evening draws in, or a language where you can just say evening, and everyone assumes you meant evening draws in. Some languages, at least in their poetry, do allow you to get incredibly terse like this. Still...I'm not buying it. It reminds me too much of Helge K Fauskanger's analysis of Auld Elvish from Bored of the Rings.
Conclusion
I'm not convinced these are passages from a real language, or even from a somewhat sensible conlang like the Hymnos language from the Ar Tonelico series. All my instincts are telling me they're just gibberish courtesy of the people who gave us a determination to fist. I wish I knew where the "translations" came from or why they spread around the online anime community, a community generally obsessed with the minutiae of dead languages, which surprised the Japanese production staff of Madoka with its determination to translate the runes.

@QthePlatypus Yes? Was I unclear? I meant that since almost all of them end with tron, then in this made-up language, whatever tron means, it must be a word that it would make sense to have in all of these chants. It also always comes after a character's name, so the other chants would be saying "awakened Gungnir", "awakened Airgetlam", etc.

Sorry what I ment to say that 'tron' could be more grammatical.  Such as a tense marker on the end of a sentence or a honorific for a name.

@QthePlatypus Sure, it could be. That actually helps the argument I made here—then killter would have to equate to "Evening draws in the awakened", with tron maybe indicating the tense or being an honorific. That makes the purported translation even more absurd; even more meaning is being packed into the single word killter, and it looks even more like yanqui unicycle ramar rotoroot in the Bored of the Rings analysis. Unless the language is polysynthetic—maybe k indicates a time late in the day, ill indicates drawing in, and ter is third-person, or something.

@QthePlatypus I was mainly arguing that it's not a real language, though. I'm not convinced that it's a decent conlang either, but I didn't argue very strongly for that position. Mostly it just looked nothing like Sumerian or Akkadian, and I wanted to argue against that idea.

It is some 6 years since the answer, but I've come up across it and really can't keep silent: unfortunately, I have to kill your comment at least on killter part, simply because of existance of a russian word вечерело (vecherelo), which would literally mean 'evening draws in'.
The problem might be not with the supposed language used in songs (which I do believe to be fake as well), but with the lack of expressive power of English language on that aspect.

@Senna Interesting, do you know how that word breaks down? Does it have elements that mean "evening" and "draws in", like maybe "vecher" means "evening" and "elo" means "draws in"? Or is one or the other element implied somehow? And is it a normal, everyday sort of word or something you'd see in fancy poetry?

Inspired by Evilloli's excellent answer, I decided to figure out where these "translations" came from.

After clicking through a lot of diffs on the Symphogear wikia, I was able to trace most of the "translations" back to wikia user Kanade2000 - diffs: Ichaival, Ame-no-Habakiri, Gungnir. When asked "I couldn't help but notice you post the translations for the Transformation lyrics and the Zessho. If you could, could you tell me how you translated them?", the user replied "using old norse dictionary that I found in my city library.i also have a skandinavian one and a latin one".
This answer does not inspire confidence in the user's linguistic faculties, particularly when you notice that the same user also tried to change the romanization of 絶刀 zettou to "zetsukatana" (only a rank amateur would consider combining the on-reading zetsu with the kun-reading katana).
These, I think, we can chalk up to a buffoon on the internet.

The translation for the Zesshou, however, comes from wikia user Sylphfarn12 , and linked G keyword 24 (絶唱 "Zesshou") as a reference. However, nothing in the text of the keyword page has anything to do with the actual text of the Zesshou. I have no idea how this user came up with their "translation". Buffoonery seems likely.
(A different buffoon in the comments of the page indicates - with a startling degree of confidence - that "Its Basque or Malay can't remember which". Another user rules out Malay in a reply. So it must be Basque, right? Mission Accomplished!)

This, I hope, serves as an object lesson in the dangers of trusting wikias.

So I doubt this will be helpful at all, but given the ties to the Tower of Babel legend in the first season and the fact that the relics are supposedly from this pre-Babel civilization in-lore. We could arrive at the assumption that the chants are words from multiple languages pulled together to create a "harmony" that echoes the "Original Language" spoken by the relic's creators. This is not a real-world, this is definitive answer, but just based on what I know of series lore so far and the rather extensive response by Torisuda this makes the most sense to me. Gibberish, but gibberish on purpose.

The symphogear wiki actually has the translation for the zesshou. But if I had to say for certain what language it is, I think the most likely is Sumerian. Kadingir, the tower Fine used towards the end of first season, was said to be an ancient Sumerian word meaning gateway to the gods. Fine built the symphogear and the tower, so it would make sense if both involved the same language, and there the unified language lost to humanity could very well be Sumerian.

Sumerian definitely makes sense from an in-universe perspective (now that you mention it, I was able to find a reference to "zizzl" in this book on text p. 189 / PDF p. 356; it appears to be a personal name). But if the chants/zesshou are indeed in genuine Sumerian or something like it, I wonder whether the translations that show up on the wiki and elsewhere are actually translations - the overlap between "people who watch Symphogear" and "people who know Sumerian" has to be vanishingly small.

I believe you're right that the word kadingir is Sumerian; dingir is Sumerian for "god", and ka has a couple different meanings in Sumerian, though I couldn't find "gateway" as one of them.

to be honest I believe that the idea was that there use to be a common tongue so what the creator ended up doing was combining some random languages to make a form of common language to fill the gap left by the fact that we couldnt possibly know what a common language would even sound like

This is avery interesting topic, and i bet it's a PUZZLE
the anime's lore is strongly related to the called "balal no noroi" or "the curse of balal/babel" so maybe the chants are a lot of different languages, modern, ancient and fictional, mixed together...
my educated guess for some, tron = forced activation, zizzl = natural activation... the names of the relics and some words for what they think of the relic...
for example, Maria says: seilen coffin = the coffin of Selena, the girl who died using that relic
Airgetlam = the name of the relic
Tron = forced activation of the relic made by the symphogear
the zesshou has that 'zizzl' word, which if i'm right, it's an activation without technology... as in kanade's and maria's gungnir activation... so they could be using fine's power to increase their own, or just the power of the curse of babel...
certainly all of this discussion is a mystery, but i believe it will be revealed in the anime at some point, since language and songs are very relevant to the lore...
Edit: more than "natural activation" i think zizzl is "wrong activation" of the symphogear, as if they are not supposed to use it, and they are not supposed to use the zesshou....

I'm pretty sure it's a mixture of multiple languages. The main one being Urudu. "Croitzal ronzell gungnir" In Urudu translates roughly to Calamity, Renaissance, and Guns. It makes the most sense out of anything else. Unless they're actually using Dovahzul, Tengwar, D'ni, Atlantian, or some other Tolkien-esque language that we're unaware of.


text:
How did Dio Brando survive the ship sinking?
In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part I Phantom Blood, in the climax ending, Jonathan sacrifices his life to defeat Dio and save Erina, his unborn child Jorge and baby Lisa Lisa.
Erina manages to save herself and Lisa Lisa by hiding in Dio's coffin, but then in Stardust Crusaders, another coffin with "DIO" engraved on it is rescued from the bottom of the ocean where Dio had been sleeping for the past century, having survived by stealing Jonathan's body.
Where did that second coffin come from? I've came back to this to try and make sense of it but I don't know if it's a plot hole or not.
I enjoy JoJo's Bizarre Adventure so much, and there are instances where it really stretches it too far.
Like some bizarre happenings have some kind of explanation in it (see King Crimson) but this one is the one that still evades me.
Is there an explanation for this?

Originally, Dio did die at the end of Phantom Blood, but when Araki decided to write Stardust Crusaders, he retconned the ending of Phantom Blood. These retcons were applied to the anime accordingly.
After retconning, the coffin had a second compartment that Dio hid in while Erina hid in the top compartment. After Erina got in the coffin, Dio ripped off Jonathan's head and got into the same coffin Erina was in. When Erina was rescued, they did not rescue the coffin, they let it sank, without knowing that Dio was within the second compartment.

However, an alternate explanation is provided in the novel Over Heaven, where Erina placed Dio and Jonathan's body along with herself in the coffin.

Chapter 79
Dio knows that Nukesaku is falsely guiding the Joestar Group, buying
  time for Dio, who uses that time to write in his notebook. He tries to
  recall the last moments before ending up in the coffin, but his memory
  is hazy. Despite having surely entered the casket, Erina had survived
  with the child. Dio suspects that the four of them were in the same
  coffin, but Dio admits that he would never have shared the casket with
  someone. Yet he did lose consciousness, so who put him into the
  casket? Saving someone she hated would indeed be in accord with
  Erina's character. Dio is now sure that Erina took pity on him and
  pulled him into the casket to protect him, and put him to rest at the
  bottom of the ocean. Dio's memories become more and more hazy and he
  ends up confusing Erina with his own mother.

I somehow thought they retrieved the coffing, still the Over Heaven explanation seems unlikely, as how could Erina get saved and leave Jonathan's body with DIO's severed, like, just hoping for him possess her dead husband body and become good, I hope that was DIO being too vain about himself.

The novel was written by Nisio Isin, not Araki Hirohiko, so maybe Isin had interpreted the characters differently from how Araki would have.


text:
What is the purpose for the art-style of puck changing by scene?
In some chapters or even as cover art in berserk puck is drawn fully with detail as shown here:

But in several chapters he is drawn like this:

Is there a reason for neglecting detail? I noticed that when he comes in as comic relief he seems to miss alot of detail like so. But is there some sort of artistic reason behind this choice that I am not aware of?

This is for comic relief purposes only. The technique is known as Deanimation/Cut-Out. Check more details below.

http://www.japanpowered.com/anime-articles/anime-facial-expressions

Here read the part about Deanimation cut out. Another one of the Top Manga (and Anime) which uses this is Full Metal Alchemist. The purpose is the same for i.e. Comic relief especially with the Elric Brothers.

Saying this is neglecting detail is kinda offensive to me cause the attention to details, the beautiful and horrifying art work is one of the main reasons many people still read Berserk even though it is a disappointment that the progress has been so slow.
Also google "Puck's Funny Expressions". I know it can be jarring but lots of people (me included) find the little humour in the dark and gruesome world refreshing.


text:
Who is the voice actress for the 'young' Nori-chan from the anime Kiznaiver?
Unless I am mistaken, it seems as if Nori-chan from the anime Kiznaiver has two different voice actresses. One for the 'young' Nori-chan and one for the main part of the story.
My question -
Who is the voice actress for the 'young' Nori-chan?

The young voice can be heard in

season 1 episode 1 at the start of the episode
and season 1 episode 10 at around the 21m:44s (timing includes opening song).

I'm sure I've heard this voice before, it is incrediby irritating.

If my answer helped your question, don't forget to mark it as accepted

They aren't played by the same person.

Who is the voice actress for the 'young' Nori-chan?

Teenage Sonozaki is played by YAMAMURA Hibiku, but child Sonozaki is played by 財前咲良 (probably read "ZAIZEN Sakura"). She's credited in episode 1 as "girl" (少女).

In episode 9, she's again credited, this time as "Sonozaki (child)" (園崎（幼少期）). Curiously, her name is spelled 財前咲来 this time. She has barely any internet presence, but judging from this page, I think the episode 9 spelling is correct. (The same spelling is used when she's credited in episode 10.)

I'm sure I've heard this voice before, it is incrediby irritating.

As near as I can tell, this is her first role in anime, so you probably haven't heard her before.
It does appear that she voiced young Cinderella in the Japanese dub of Disney's 2015 Cinderella, though, and I imagine she might've had some other minor gigs (commercial voiceovers, etc.) too.


text:
How did Light know that Hideki Ryuga is the real L?
While watching the Death Note anime, I noticed that there was one incident when Hideki Ryuga told Light that he is the real L. Well, at that time Light was not sure if he was the real L because he thought that it might be a trap from the real L to catch him.
So my question is: how he was able to deduce that Hideki Ryuga is the real L and not a fake?

His father confirmed it.
L when tells Light his real identity, he made it in such a way that Light couldn't kill him.

If Light tries to kill "Hideki Ryuga", he is not sure if he is the real L. If the fake imposter dies (Like the one on TV), Light confirms he is Kira
He might kill the real "Hideki Ryuga" by mistake and not gain anything while exposing himself.

But he plays L's game and finally ends up in the HQ of L's team where his father confirms he is the real L. Later when L realizes about the Shinigami eyes, he tells Light that he has made arrangements with his Father that if he dies in the next few days that Light is Kira.
Thus he didn't get a chance to kill L until he was able to manipulate Rem.
EDIT: Found the source. Light's father confirms this in hospital in Manga Chapter 22. Here is the screenshot.


text:
Is the "Ace" position in Haikyuu just made up for the manga/anime?
I've had a look online and can't find any evidence that the term "Ace" refers to a position in volleyball; the only definition I could find was that of a service ace.
Is this term solely used for the sake of the anime/manga or is there any evidence that points to its use in real life?

maybe they meant to say Libero .

Libero is a completely different position which refers to a player that only receives and can't attack (which is a well known position in real life). The Ace in Haikyuu is defined as the player of the team that is regarded as the most powerful hitter, however this term doesn't to be utilised in real life as far as I'm aware

i always think Libero is the Ace in volleyball though. If you can't receive opponent serve how would they attack ?

It's not a "position" in the same sense that "libero" and "middle blocker" are positions. That is to say, you probably aren't going to find any references to an "ace" as a position in, say, the Japan Volleyball Association's rulebook.
When Haikyuu!! refers to Azumane as Karasuno's "ace", that's in the usual colloquial sense - he's the best (offensive) player on the team. In English, this sense of "ace" seems to be fairly restricted to baseball (where it refers to the best pitcher on the team), but the Japanese equivalent (エース ēsu, borrowed from English "ace") is used fairly often in real life for team-leading players in other team sports as well, including (at minimum) soccer and volleyball.
As it turns out, this turn of phrase has made it way into other parts of Japanese volleyball lingo. A wing spiker (Eng. "outside hitter" or "opposite hitter") who focuses primarily on offense may also be referred to as a "super ace". But this is not the sense in which Haikyuu!! tends to use the term "ace".

The player who scores the most, being the ace, is an "opposite hitter" or attacker.

The opposite hitter is the player who most often scores the most points in the team.

This site pretty much explains the positions played in volleyball and it's easy to understand what they actually mean when they call him "ace", it's almost always in any sport that uses the title; the player who scores the most.

From the position stand points, the ACE seems to be the right-side hitter (in volleyball terminology) that is directly opposite of the setter.  They are the strongest blockers because they have to block the ”wing spiker” or left-side hitter which is typically their best hitter. They are typically left handed, tall, and able to run shoots, 9, and 7s (behind the back sets usually). If they are really good hitters, it’s a HUGE advantage to the team because the opponents will have a weaker block on that side, considering it’s only occupied when the setter is in the back row. But they also might just mean, most reliable hitter.

Please include relevant sources/references.

Ace may depend on country, but from what I gathered, it's actually the outside hitter that is the ace; meaning the position that is on the left-hand side.
I used to play volleyball and I know in America we don't use that term, but we do rely heavily on our outside hitter to get us out of a bind since they’re supposed to be the best well-rounded player as well as the best hitter. Americans don't have a term for it, but it's possible that the Japanese use it to encourage within the team.


text:
Why was the old man sent to the void?
In Death Billiards, the old man is sent to the void and the younger one is sent to be reincarnated. But why? What was the basis for this decision? It even contradicts other decisions in Death Parade. For example, the one shown darkness was the young man.

In the main series Death Parade, Decim had spoken on more than one occasion (episodes 7 and 10) of his respect for people who had lived their lives to the fullest (生を全うした人間を尊敬する). It was obvious that Decim considered the young man to be one such person, but what about the old man? The old man cited the reason he must win and leave that place as being

I've already decided that I'll eat one [pickle] right before I die

and that was exactly what he was last seen doing right before his death. Compare that to the young man's motivation:

I want to get out of here and apologize to her.

In other words, the young man wanted to do something differently with his life. What good would there be by sending the old man to be reincarnated, if a large chunk of his life could be summarized in 4 seconds in a boring GIF?

Reaching for the sky becomes blocking a ray of sunshine.
Then there was the thrill of being able to beat people up again, the "been a vegetable for the past few years" fraud, the fishy conversation between the old man and Decim, the hiss at 22 minutes and 26 seconds, and the evil grin as mentioned by Quill. Too many dark things about the old man that were only known to Decim.

It was pretty subtle, as is the show's decisions, or perhaps, Decim's decisions.
Right as the old man is about to head up the elevator he flashes an evil grin:

This suggests the old man might've manipulated the young man into believing he was a fragile, innocent elderly person when he wasn't.

Nice explanation but i will wait for more detailed answer. +1


text:
What is the background music from episode 50 of Hajime no Ippo?
What is the background music from Hajime no Ippo in Episode 50 from 16:10-16:36?
This is where Ippo is declared winner, if you are looking at different sources.

The Song is called "Stand Proud."

Welcome to Anime & Manga! If possible, can you add some references or evidence to support your answer? We prefer longer posts with details over single line responses.


text:
Who do the other names on the list of idols in episode 2 refer to?
In episode 2, the producer has a list of idols/groups scheduled for events, and pens the Hacka Dolls into one of the slots to fill space.

I suspect that all of these are references to other idols or idol-like entities. Going down the list:

まつだひじりこ "Matsuda Hijiriko" → Matsuda Seiko (kanji pun on 聖)
"u's" → μ's
"Sit Down Girls!" → Wake Up, Girls!
美少女ハリウッド "Bishoujo Hollywood" → Shounen Hollywood
でんじは組,etc "Denji wa Kumi, etc" → ???
ミス・カラフール "Miss Colorful" → Miss Monochrome
スーパーソニ男 "Super Soni-o" → Super Sonico
(Hacka Doll)
珂那ちゃん "Kana-chan" → the fleet's idol, Naka-chan
ワン子クラブ "Wanko Club" → ???
長森明菜 "Nagamori Akina" → ???
ゆりかおる "YuriKaoru" → YuiKaori
Square → ???

I haven't managed to figure out the referents of the four ones I've bolded above. Who all are being referred to here?

Isn't 明栞, Akari?

@ʇosɥıuonʞʎonʞo I honestly have no idea.

Here are some likely culprits:

でんじは組 →
でんぱ組.inc, Denpagumi.inc
ワン子クラブ →
おニャン子クラブ, Onyanko Club
長森明栞 →
佐保明梨, Saho Akari
(Unsure), maybe
長森佳容, Nagamori Yoshiro,
too
長森明菜 → 中森明菜, Akina Nakamori (singer) Credit to @Passed
Square → Circle (Unsure)

@Passed Good catch - that makes a lot more sense, and explains why I couldn't find any good readings for 「明栞」. The Square → Circle thing seems fairly convincing, too, so I'm going to go ahead and accept this answer. (I only just got the 電磁波/電波 joke. Doh!)


text:
Are Blessing Spirits mutants as well?
When Shun became a Karmic Demon, he realized that his powers were always leaking and affecting the world around them, mutating animals such as sea slugs into Minoshiros.
Considering that the sign that a child has gained their powers is the presence of a Blessing Spirit, this would be an indication that their powers are already leaking at this point.
So does this mean the Blessing Spirit is just another mutant? If so, what creature was originally a basis, and did they all end up looking the same?

Blessing Spirits aren't actually a physical thing. Rather, the agglomeration of bizarre phenomena that the people in the show describe as a "Blessing Spirit" is simply a subconscious/unconscious manifestation of the child's latent powers. To the uninformed observer, it looks like what we might call a "poltergeist" - but as we know from the narrative, the real explanation doesn't entail a separate physical being causing the strange phenomena.
I don't know why they refer to it as though it were a physical being. Perhaps it's a fiction the adults maintain to keep the children from understanding the true nature of their powers and the damage that power leakage can cause? (Keep in mind that the students are never taught in school how karma demons really originate.)


text:
What is the name of the ZHIEND song in the middle of episode 13?
In episode 13 of Charlotte, there is a ZHIEND song playing about halfway in the episode, just before Yu in insane mode starts stealing other people's abilities, such as the bomb ability.

related: http://anime.stackexchange.com/q/26242/

According to the Charlotte wiki article on ZHIEND, the song is
「Sinking Ship」.
This track comes from their first Album: 「ECHO」, released on October 14, 2015.
The CD can be bought through Japanese Amazon for 3780 yen.


text:
Why are post offices always a target for robbers in anime?
I've seen quite a number of anime where the targets for robbers are mostly post offices and not banks and or other places that could have money. Is this a plot device that started somewhere or is it actually a fact that robbers actually go for post offices in Japan? If it is the latter, can someone shed some light on why post offices are a favourite target for robbers?
Some examples of anime that have post offices robbed off the top of my head are Sword Art Online and Toaru Majutsu no Index. There are probably more titles where this happens that I can't remember.

In real life, robbers tend to favor gas stations, groceries, or ATMs. Bank robberies tend to happen in (Hollywood) movies mostly. The thing is, gas stations, groceries, or even jewelries can be robbed with little to no equipment. To rob a bank you'd need not only a highly specialized and experienced crew, but also all sorts of tools that aren't easy to come by.

@Nolonar It is not difficult to rob a bank. If you walk into a bank and slip a teller a note saying "I have a gun. Give me all the money you have.", the teller will likely comply, even if you don't actually brandish a gun. The hard part is getting away with it.

Japan's post offices are banks. And the Japanese postal banking system is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, in 2008, Japan Post Bank held more deposits than any other bank in the whole world!
It is hence unsurprising that shows set in Japan, like Index and Sword Art Online, might feature robberies on post offices. There's a lot of money to be had there!


text:
Manga where a daughter pays off her father's debt?
I remember reading it a few months back, I have forgotten the name of it and some parts of it are quite fuzzy to me now. Can someone help. It has been on my mind for a while and I have been desperately trying to find it!

The manga was about a young high-schooler girl whose father was in
debt. Her father basically leaves her to pay it off himself? Or
something along the lines of that by working on a boat but something
happens to his back as part of the plot in the manga.
Then, she becomes a live-in housekeeper for a writer/author as she
gets recommended to him by someone. She did so in order to help her
father with the debt. She also tried getting a part-time job as a
hostess/waitress at a place. However, she's supposedly underage but
lies about her age.
While she works she recognizes this boy whom she met and fought over some
kind of food product/rice at the grocery store when they were younger.
She finds out he is the son of the person who has hired her at the store.
Unexpectedly, the author/writer comes in with the person who
recommended her to him. The author/writer gets mad at her because
she's underage and working there. He asks if the money he pays her is
not enough.
She begs the boy to not tell his mother that she is underage? There's
also this part somewhere in the manga where her panties are stolen by
a weird man and the author gets her panties back for her. I also
think she realized she was developing feelings for this
author/writer.

The manga is also currently on-going as far as I remember!
Thanks in advance xoxo :) <3

The manga you ask about is Tsubaki-chou Lonely Planet.

You're welcome @x3kaye. ;)


text:
Why does Mikoto's Sword of Damocles break every time he uses it?
Why does Mikoto's Sword of Damocles break every time he uses it?

The Sword of Damocles is the direct manifestation of the Kings' powers and their state as a King. If they were to lose control of their powers due to personal emotions like Mikoto's rage of Tatara's death, the swords start crumbling. This is due to his Weismann levels raising as his compatibility as the Red King is falling. A similar thing is happening to Reisi Munakata, where due to him killing Mikoto, that burden of killing a king is causing his sword to start crumbling as well.

When Mikoto used his Sword of Damocles, it crumbled because of his Weismann levels were raising. His Weismann levels were so high because he had killed two kings at once. (The Silver, and Colorless king) His Sword of Damocles crumbles also because of his personal emotions, like his anger when Tatara Totsuka was murdered. He only died because his Weismann level went over it's limit, causing the Sword of Damocles to fall. Munakata's Sword of Damocles does crumble, too, but only because he had killed a king, as well. That king was Mikoto Suoh. (I'm not happy about that, by the way.)

Mikoto's Sword of Damocles got crumbled because of 2  cases.
Firstly, at the start of the series, we came to see his damaged sword. His swords is the most damaged one shown so far. His sword was in that state not because he killed a king, but because of his reckless use of power.
In the light novels, Mikoto states that he wants to release all his power and be free, and that is what Munakata calls reckless use of power. His clansman however, although he does love them, they are more like chains that hold him down, especially Tartara. Now that Tartara died, the biggest chain that was holding him down is gone.
Over the years, Mikoto's sword got damaged because of his reckless actions. As a result, he got weaker. He only lasted this long because of his clan that held him down.
The colorless king himself stated that Mikoto would have ended up dying even if he didn't prove him because of his mind set of wanting to release his power and be free.
The burden of incinerating the colorless king is what finally made his sword fall.


text:
Anime reviewers refer to "art" and "animation" separately. What does each one refer to?
I've read and listened to anime reviewers rate the art and animation of a given title, and I'm not clear which is which, nor specifically what they refer to.
I imagine they're referring to the quality of the visuals, but I'm not sure if the backgrounds are the art, the characters the animation, vice versa, or if I've got it completely discombobulated. Is there more to the visuals than the characters and the backgrounds? Conversely, am I oversimplifying it?
Searching DDG yielded a mess since the terms were too generic.

I upvoted senshin's answer, but to possibly add a little clarity, here's my take on it.
"Art" refers to the visual design of a show: how the characters and backgrounds look; the use of color, lighting, and shading; the way shots are framed; the angles and use of artistic concepts like perspective, proportion, and depth.
"Animation" refers to the process of stacking up frames to create the illusion of movement.
Whether a show has good art is subjective. Bakemonogatari is believed by many to have good art, because it uses perspective, color, and shading in a unique way and has visually interesting character designs and backgrounds. Pokemon, on the other hand, has very functional art. It uses color and shading in simple, pedestrian ways. "Simple" and "pedestrian" are value judgments, though; Pokemon is made for children, who haven't typically had as much exposure to art, so to its target audience, Pokemon's art is fine.
Whether a show has good animation is not really subjective. We can judge animation according to how well it succeeds at creating the illusion of motion. Shows that reuse a lot of animation or have static backgrounds or characters that move in unnatural ways have bad animation. Whether the bad animation is a net negative for the show or not is a subjective judgment, but determining whether the animation is bad is pretty simple and objective. Speed Racer, for example, has bad animation, because it has fewer distinct frames, less motion, and reuses a lot of sequences as compared with shows like Eva, Akira, Fate/Zero, or Cowboy Bebop, which have good animation. This can be objectively determined; hypothetically, we could even write a computer vision system that could count these things for us and tell us whether a show has good animation or not. We can still love Speed Racer despite (or because of) its bad animation, but unlike with art, there's no "quality without a name" that can make the animation of two shows incomparable. We can always make technical, numerical comparisons between the animation of two shows.
These two things do interact somewhat. The level of detail that things are drawn with is part of the art. But if the level of detail drops in some frames, that affects the animation. And although Bakemonogatari's limited animation was not an intentional artistic choice (the production of the show was plagued by scheduling problems, and some episodes were barely finished in time for broadcast), we can imagine that a show might use limited animation as a deliberate artistic choice.
The cinematography is another place where art and animation interact. In an animated show, we can consider each individual frame as a piece of art. We could take a frame of an anime and hang it up in a museum between a Monet and a Gaugin, and consider it as a painting. But we can also consider a sequence of animation as film, and judge it on those merits. Cinematography is largely artistic, so again subjective. But a show that fails at creating the illusion of movement in a convincing way will have a hard time being regarded as a serious piece of film.
However, for the most part, when anime reviewers say "art", they mean the show's use of color, lighting, and shadow; level of detail on the characters and backgrounds; and possibly the way shots are framed. When they say "animation", the just mean "how well this show succeeds at creating the illusion of motion".

I quite like how you've characterized a show's animation as being about how good it is at creating the illusion of motion. I never thought about it that way, but that really is one of the things that makes drawn stuff fundamentally different from filmed stuff.

@senshin Thanks! Also, thanks for introducing me to The Tatami Galaxy in your answer. Its simple, almost cartoonish art style paired with very fluid animation does make for an illuminating contrast with the elaborate art style of Bakemonogatari.

Anime reviewers refer to “art” and “animation” separately. What does each one refer to?

While I imagine there's variance in how reviewers use words, I would think that most would choose to describe "art" as being still imagery (backgrounds, clothing design, static pans, color choices, etc.) and "animation" as being, well, animated imagery (character animation, CG, combat scenes, sakuga, and so forth).

Is there more to the visuals than the characters and the backgrounds? Conversely, am I oversimplifying it?

Dividing the visuals of an anime into "characters" and "backgrounds" is not all that wrong (though it raises the question of how one ought to characterize things like mechas and non-static background elements). But it's a fairly artificial distinction, and one that isn't too useful as part of a critique of an anime. There are still shots of characters (for example, when the camera pans over a character), and there are animated shots of characters (facial animation, walking motion, etc). Likewise, there are still shots of background details... but some backgrounds are animated, too. Take, for example, this segment from Nichijou.
The distinction between "art" and "animation", on the other hand, is, in some cases, a useful dichotomy: it is frequently the case that the people who do the animation for a show (keyframers, tweeners, and so forth) are different from the people who do static art assets like backgrounds (background artists, 3D modellers, etc.). As such, I think it makes some sense to evaluate the two separately.
It is probably often the case that the perceived "quality" of the art and animation of a given show are fairly well-correlated - a studio that hires or contracts skilled background artists will probably do the same with their keyframers, and a studio that hires bottom-barrel animators will probably hire bottom-barrel painters.
But sometimes, reviewers will observe a marked difference in the quality of the art vs the animation. Consider, as an example, Bakemonogatari (not the whole series; just Bakemonogatari itself). The animation in Bakemonogatari is frequently very limited (or, in the TV airing, absent altogether, replaced by screens of text instead). But the art is often remarkably elaborate.
And going the other way, The Tatami Galaxy has fairly mundane-looking art. But when you see it in motion, you might find that still screencaptures of the show don't suffice to convey how fluidly the show is animated in many of its shots. (The "mundane" art of The Tatami Galaxy is clearly an intentional artistic choice, unlike the limited animation of Bakemonogatari, which probably isn't. I've used it as an example anyway since I can't think of anything better off the top of my head.)
Bundling "art" and "animation" into a single category called, say, "visuals" loses some of the granularity that would allow a reviewer to discuss the ways in which Bakemonogatari succeeds with its art whereas The Tatami Galaxy fails, and vice versa regarding animation. So I guess that might be why critiquers of anime would choose to evaluate "art" and "animation" separately.

"The limited animation of bakemonogatari is probably not an artistic choice" [citation needed]

Well, I mean, there was a lot more animation in the BD version. That strongly suggests to me that logistical constraints were the main reason for the limited animation in the TV version.

Art
The quality of work and visual glory, that we are basing upon.
Animation
The act of moving frames and motion.
-
That`s the way, I do things when I review anime on the website, I write on.


text:
Are floors 76-100 still untouched?
At the end of the Aincrad arc, Kirito faced Skull Reaper (boss of the floor) and found out that the Guild Master of the Knights of the Blood was the GM himself. After beating him, Aincrad was destroyed and floors 76-100 were still untouched.
At the end of the Fairy Dance arc, Kirito restores Aincrad so the people can explore it again.

I waiting for the story about floors 76-100, as well as the Ruby Palace (100th floor), but there has been nothing so far. Now that Kirito has begun exploring GGO (Gun Gale Online), are floors 76-100 still untouched?

Since they bought Aincrad into ALO, I'm sure the faeries are working to climb as well, but at a much more relaxed pace.

@Krazer You mean after the arc? Because at the begin till the end of the arc it was all about Yggdrasil no Aincrad. After the arc ended (anime related) with The Seed they rebuilt it so there is a possibility AFAIK that other players were exploring it even Kirito himself however I doubt it will be shown as an anime anytime soon. And I have not read the manga so I am basing myself on what have been seen on the anime.

Yeah pretty much, they basically ended up there.

@user13787 The next arc involves Gun Gale Online. Do you have any sources to back this up?

Still untouched in canon.  In the non-canon games Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment, Kirito and the others had to continue through the upper floors and the Ruby Palace.
It was established within canon that the floors of New Aincrad are being released 10 floors at a time.  The Mother's Rosario story arc begins with the update that opened floors 21-30 to begin clearing, notable because Kirito and Asuna wanted to reclaim their cabin on floor 22.  Since nothing has been said beyond Mother's Rosario, it is safe to say the upper floors still have not been released.

To add my own knowledge. In the light novel, post gun-gale there is another arc that is currently underway. So it may come up in the next book somehow. Though it's only speculation at this point.

I was only implied in the light novel and anime, that Kirito would like to clear Aincrad. It was not told in detail about it as after ALO (Alfheim Online), the story moved to GGO (Gun Gale Online). Too bad the online reference in Baka-Tsuki is no longer available.
Source: I read the book from volume 1 to 6, that is from SAO (vol 1-2) to GGO (vol 5-6).

There is no formal reference to this in manga/anime as far as I'm aware of, but chances are that it probably got cleared or in process of. Aincrad was revived and others are playing in it including Kirito (he commented how he would like to restart from level 1 and beat it properly this time). Unless he got bored, I'm sure he would only move on from the game after someone beats it properly.
The other probability is SAO II happens while he's still in pursuit of that goal.

In the last scene of Sword Art Online Movie: Ordinal Scale ...

 Kirito and his team are fighting the last boss on Floor 100, or the so-called Ruby Palace.

Can you add some more detail?

Based on traditional arc, the final boss on ruby palace are Heatcliff... also, if I remember correctly, on light novels the latest floors are untouched yet. Maybe, this scene can be a "spoiler" not based on the novels.


text:
Identification of a feudal era / demon protagonist manga
I'm gonna put in items what I remember

The manga is on the feudal era
The protagonist is part of a demon society, they constantly fight with the humans
The leader of this society is a giant frog, or something similar
The protagonist kidnaps a princess (or just a regular girl, don't remember)
The protagonist is respected by others, since he's one of the most powerful demons, if not the most
The protagonist respects the woman he kidnapped
In the final chapter, she die trying to protect him after the war stopped
I'm not sure but I think either the protagonist or the woman he kidnapped is named Momo, or simplified to Momo

May be really vague, but I can't remember anything more.
If I'm not mistaken, it's already finished.

in the second point by girl are you talking about the princess/girl the protagonist kidnaps?

the princess/girl is the same person, I just don't remember correctly if she was a princess or just a regular woman. And yes, it's the person he kidnapped.

no i was trying to confirm if the girl mentioned in the second point is the same as the princess/girl you mention gets kidnapped by the protagonist. if so the second point can be moved near to the bottom and reworded as something like "I'm not sure but i think either the protagonist or the woman he kidnapped is named Momo or simplified to Momo"

Found it: Shinobi no Kuni

Synopsis (MyAnimeLIst)
Based on a novel by Wada Ryou, "Shinobi no kuni" brings a story that blends history and fiction as it shows the struggles happening during the 16th century in Iga, a region famous by the Iga Shinobi, the ninjas from Iga.

The protagonist name is actually Mumon, not Momo as I said. Would be hard to find it with a wrong name.

If you feel that this is the anime you were looking for, you may answer your own question, and accept this by clicking on the check mark beside the post.


text:
How much of the manga did the Sankarea anime cover?
I just recently finished Sankarea anime and want to start the manga. How much of the manga did it cover?

The anime seemed to jump around a bit, especially the 12th episode of the anime.
However, till the 11th episode, the anime mainly covers the manga till Chapter 9, so you might want to start reading from Chapter 10.

The anime and the manga are almost like two different stories, content-wise.
The main plot is the "same" (so much of the story doesn't exist in the anime version, thus it's the same regarding the direction that the story is heading in, but the path is just a fraction of the original, manga's path), but in the manga, the story is finished.
The anime covers about 30% of what there is to the story (so if it wasn't already made obvious, know what little of the story the anime does cover, it's somewhat changed as compared to the manga).
The anime completely omits a large amount of things. One of the things that the anime omits is the main character. The main character, Darin-chan, is completely omitted from the anime version of the story (thoughts of dropping the anime at that point when I had realised that were quenched by my will/intent to finish what I start).
As the other answer says, the anime covers up 'till chapter 9 of the manga, and there are 56 chapters to it. I mean, the anime is logically basically a promotion for the manga, rather than a standalone thing (I don't think this is true, but it could be).
In conclusion, my opinion is that you shouldn't consider yourself as having experienced the story by just having seen the anime. The manga is the story, the anime is just... something less, with beautiful music. And the anime helped me personally to value the story more. In the manga, it was all a bunch of tropes (cliches) one after another. The anime helped me consider the story a lot more sincerely, the aspects of it that were present in and presented with the anime.


text:
What is the name of this romantic, comedy manga?
I read a Manga years ago that I really enjoyed but I cannot remember the name of it.
The story involved a guy, who is a student, slowly falling in love with the building manager, who moved in when he was about to leave. He ended up staying and tries to win her over but the other people in the building end up interfering. I remember they being really odd characters.
The manager is a widow. She had dark hair.
The genre was a romantic comedy.

The manga you're looking for is Maison Ikkoku.

The story takes place in Maison Ikkoku, a worn and aging boarding house where Godai Yuusaku, a 20 year old college applicant, lives. Though honest and good-natured, he is weak willed and often taken advantage of by the offbeat and mischievous tenants who live with him. As he is about to move out, he is stopped at the door by the young and beautiful Otonashi Kyouko, who announces she will be taking over as landlord. Godai immediately falls in love with her and decides to stay.
Later, Godai and the other tenants find out that despite her young age, she is a widow, as she married her high school teacher, but he died shortly after their marriage. Godai empathizes with her and endeavors to free her from her sadness.
He manages to work up enough courage to confess his love to her, and it begins to look like that a relationship between them might actually appear... until Kyouko meets the rich, handsome, and charming Mitaka Shun. Mitaka quickly declares his intention to court Kyouko and states that he is very patient and can wait until her heart is ready.

Thank you for your help. I can finally try to get hold of it again so that I can read it again.

You're welcome. It's an awesome manga. Have fun reading it.


text:
Whats's the order of K-project manga?
I want to read the K Project manga, but there are a lot of series. So what's the order for these series?

I have not seen/read K-project. Since you are asking this question, perhaps it might be prudent to specify if you want it in chronological order or release order (if applicable)

If you mean publication order, the K wikipedia article's manga section doesn't list all the publication dates, but seems to list them in publication order.
By serialization publication start date (end date included if applicable/known):

2012 ? (no later than November) - 2013 ? (tankobon release 2013 April): K Stray Dog Story
2012 May - 2013 July: K -Memory of Red-
2013 October - 2014 July: K -Days of Blue-
2013 December - 2015 April: K - The First
2014 January: Gakuen K
2014 June: K: Lost small world
2014 December - 2015 July: K: Countdown
2015 April - August: K: Missing Kings
2015 May - November: K: Dog and Cat
2015 September: K: Dream of Green
2015 October: K: Return of Kings

Sources: K Project wikipedia article and Anime News Network Encyclopedia.
Based on the various summaries and news articles, I've placed them in approximate chronological order (some of the stories overlap) using the anime series as a guideline.
Before K TV

K: Lost small world
K -Memory of Red-
K -Days of Blue-
K: Stray Dog Story

Adaptation of K TV

K - The First

After K TV / Before Movie

K: Dog and Cat

Adaptation of K Movie

K: Missing Kings

After Movie / Before K TV2

K: Countdown

Before and/or Overlaps with K TV2?

K: Dream of Green

Adaptation of K TV2

K: Return of Kings

Alternate story

Gakuen K (comedy spin-off where all characters attend high school together)


text:
A Manga About Four Princesses in A Kingdom around the Middle East
In my childhood (around 8-14 years ago), I remember reading a manga about a small kingdom located around the Middle East where the leader is not a king but a queen. The manga follows about four princesses. The four princesses are sisters.
Things I remember about the princesses:

The first princess (who later becomes the Queen) is married with the second princess' boyfriend. Later, they had a son. She reject her son since a boy couldn't inherit the throne in that kingdom. She has long hair and a tall figure.
The second princess married a nobleman from another country and left her Kingdom. Later, she was sentenced to death after being suspected of having an affair. She has curly hair and large eyes.
The third princess is waiting for her lover (which I remember is a slave) until she becomes old. She has long dark hair and plays musical instruments (I don't remember what instrument).
The fourth princess is loved by God of War and has have some problems with the kingdom. She is considered short by her sisters and has wavy hair. She is expelled from the kingdom though I don't remember why.

I couldn't recall the title of this manga. Please help me if any of you know about it.


text:
What's the name of the manga with a girl who has two bodyguards?
It's a fantasy manga and there's a girl who has two bodyguards who may have been brothers. They spend all of their lives together and even sleep in the same bed.
But then one night one of the two bodyguards kisses the girl in her sleep (which is not allowed) and so one of them confesses and is going to be put to death or punished and it's all very sad until you find out the one who kissed her was actually the other bodyguard and that he knew the other guy would try to defend him and take the blame
I think the to guards are orphans, also there's some element of magic I think- demons may or may not be involved- I'm not 100% sure on that

I'm almost dead sure what manga you talk about. The girl is some kind of shaman from an old family. The bodyguards are shapeshifting dogs, one black, one white. The girl will go out at nights to hunt some kind of monsters with a katana and attends highschool. but sadly I can't seem to find it... Could you confirm or deny the details I put in here? If they match up I can say for sure that the manga is "finished" though.

hat sounds about right but I'm not sure if she really attended high school cause I dont think it took place during present day The manga is definitely completed though Thanks so much for trying to help me out!

Brother bodyguards sleeping in the same bed as a princess ?
It really sounds like Time Stranger Kyoko (Arina Tanemura) to me

Princess Kyoko shares her bed with two brothers guards

She has a time base power
It's about people having power like time, flower, dragon
there are some demons too

 she even actually has demon ears...

the brothers are orphans
She has been kissed by one of the brother but thought it was the other one,

 then some revelations made the one who kissed her appart from them (so sad moment for them)

She attends to high school, but not in our modern world, it is a mix-up between ancient/modern/fantasy/sf world
BUT she doesn't use a katana but a talking staff

It's a bright, fun and adorable manga in my opinion

I don't know but it also kind of sounds like Heart no Diamond. It's about a girl who has a heart of a diamond and will hurt if anyone touches her. Then she befriends these two boys and they protect her when some body threatens to take her heart. You probably already found out what it was, so sorry that I'm late


text:
Manga about a city of murder between people with superpowers
Saw this manga one year ago, but I think it's not new, because when I starting reading it had already 70ish chapters, more or a bit less
Let's state what I remember:

In the beginning there's some chapters on a ship that is transporting the people (with superpowers) to another city, where they will fight (I don't remember if there's a prize to the winner or how the winner is chosen, by killing or such things)
One of them demonstrated his power, disassemble (or alike), and did that to a clock that he had with him (or someone gave it to him); His power did something similar to this
There's a girl that can pass through wall, but to do so, she needs to get naked
And then, there's one guy I believe is the protagonist, his power is something like the protagonist from Charlotte (receive the powers of the person he possessed), but he doesn't need to possess the others, just touch them; If I'm not mistaken, some of the people on the ship are afraid of him
There's a guy who can store almost anything in his pocket or his hair, because he stores things in another dimension
There's some type of organization that wear an Owl head, or it's actually their head
I remember another chapter where people get stuck in the walls of a building, action made by one of the "evil people with superpower" (I don't remember if it was a bad or a good character)

I'm not sure if the next things I'll state is about the manga I was talking above, I could be mixing with another manga

There's a doctor in this city, though much hate him, the people (with superpowers) need him, because he's the only one who give them treatment to the wounds of the battles
That doctor has a zombie assistant, a child

I don't understand what you mean with the dismount power and maybe you could describe the main protagnists power a bit more for people who don't know Charlotte? Otherwise, this is a pretty nice description.

I added an example about the dismount power, I don't know how to describe what his power did, but an image should explain better what I mean

Oh, so something like disassemble?

Yes, that's it, I will change the description right now, thanks

Area D - Inou Ryouiki?

One of them demonstrated his power, disassemble (or alike), and did that to a clock that he had with him (or someone gave it to him)

Satoru Ida

Watchmaker (Dismantling, 時計師, Tokei Shi) is the name of Satoru's Altered ability. With it, Satoru is able to disassemble or unmake any object that comes into physical contact with his hands. His ability is indiscriminate; it does not matter the object's size, complexity of composition, or whether it is living or non-living - if Satoru touches it, it can be dismantled. After accidentally dismantling his mother, due to lack of control, and killing her, Satoru keeps his hands wrapped in bandages in order to minimize any possible, similar situation. At present, Satoru still has difficulty effectively controlling his ability.

There's a girl that can pass through wall, but to do so, she needs to get naked

Rio Ibuki

Shadow Play (シャドープレイ, Shadō Purei) Rio can project herself in a two dimensional realm and travel across the surface of any object (walls and human skin, for example) just like a shadow, hence the name. It seems she cannot extend her powers to objects as she is seen naked when she uses it. Also, when she travels off of human skin, enough force is applied to knock someone to the ground.

There's a guy who can store almost anything in his pocket or his hair, because he stores things in another dimension

Kaito Yuuki

Kaito's altered ability is known as Deserted House (廃屋) . It allows him to store objects of his choosing within another dimensional space. However, in order to store said objects, Kaito must come into physical contact with the object he'd like to store. In addition, he can only store as many objects as equal to the mass of his body. Objects stored by Kaito's ability maintain the same condition as they were when they came into contact with Kaito's body, i.e., an arrow exhibiting the same momentum and/or velocity as when it was released and shot or a canned beverage that was initially stored in a freezer at cold temperatures.

There's some type of organization that wear an Owl head, or it's actually their head

My reference : http://aread.wikia.com/

Could you expand your answer to include why you believe it is Area D?

Edited my answer, quoted some of your states. My first post though. Haven't got familiar with this post environment. Sorry if you get the post messy


text:
What Anime is this about a Female Arms Dealer with a bodyguard who hates her?
I remember seeing this on an online store but I can't remember the name. I know that it's has 2 Seasons and I know it was released in the US but I not 100% sure who has the licenses, for some reason I get the feeling it was Funimation. I remember seeing it as a new release so it's somewhat recent, 2010's.
The 2 characters I remember is a Female who I seem to remember wearing white and has long white/silver hair. she works as an Arms Dealer and is well known for being ruthless but none the less successful.
She has a bunch of bodyguards but one in particular is a youngish boy who hates her because she's an arms dealer. I get the feeling he's a child solider and may be middle eastern because he has darker skin.

I believe it is Jormungand

The series follows Koko Hekmatyar, a young arms dealer who sells weapons under HCLI, an international shipping corporation and illegal smuggling operation. As one of the company's unofficial weapon dealers, she sells weapons in a variety of countries while avoiding both local and international authorities. Traveling with her is a team of bodyguards, mostly composed of former soldiers. Her latest addition to her crew is Jonah, an inexpressive and deadly child soldier who hates arms dealers.

As you can see from the Wikipedia Link Funimation licensed both season and the original run for the first season was in 2012.
The female you describe is Koko who is the arms dealer while the boy is Jonah which in the quote above (taken from Wikipedia) is a child solider who hates arms dealers.
This image bellow also also shows Koko and Jonah. Koko is in the middle with the white miniskirt and Johan is at the right end with the dark skin

and the cover of the manga on Wikipedia (can't post a second link) shows Koko, while wearing a black skirt wears a white coat which is like a trademark of hers.

Oh my god thank you this is it, thank you : )


text:
What are the swastikas on the car's navigation supposed to represent?
In episode 12 of Himouto! Umaru-chan there appear swastikas on the car's navigation. What are these supposed to represent?

I think this was answered somewhere else, but I can't find it at the moment. On Japanese maps, swastikas are used to represent the locations of Buddhist temples.

@LoganM The question is different, but your answer here does mention its usage on maps.

The first umaru question ! :D

@LoganM Skeptics.SE mentions that they're used on maps: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20067/are-swastikas-commonplace-in-japan

The Nazis did a great job at stigmatizing swastikas but the symbol has been used for other purposes before and still is. You can verify that this isn't particular to the anime by looking at the respective area on Google Maps for example. Or any other major Japanese city for that matter.

Due to it's use in Hinduism, you will likely find it associated with temples and the like. Tofugu has an article on it with a bit more detail. The Wikipedia article also goes into detail of the symbol's usage in asian cultures. Additionally, the version used on the Japanese maps is the clockwise one 卍, while the one used in Nazism is counter-clockwise 卐.
You are however not the only one confused, so to brace for the expected influx of foreign visitors around the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, Japan's mapping agency (the GSI) is planning to change some of the symbols to make the maps easier to understand.

These changes are only for the maps aimed at foreigners though, the Japanese ones will apparently remain unchanged, so you can expect anime car navigation to still look like this in 5 years.


text:
Why does Nora's darkness/corruption not affect Yato (or any other God that has named her, for that matter)?
Disclaimer: I've only watched the anime.
When Yato gave Yukine a name, he immediately started suffering from all his "sins" and eventually an Ablution had to be performed to save both's lives.
Then why is it that he is not affected by Nora's actions? Unless he un-named her, which hasn't been mentioned. Either way, why doesn't he seek to kill her and end all these side problems that emerge because of her?
I am not entirely through with season 2, but similarly Kugaha's case confuses me too.
If anyone has answers, I'd appreciate them. Also, I don't care about spoilers, rather the opposite, if possible I wanna understand everything beforehand. This show sure is good, but it makes some mistakes in regards to explaining basic logic.

@ton.yeung I'm not getting it :/

@Yokhen Basically, if the shinki thinks committing the sin is for the sake of the god and justice, like Kugaha, then he will not be blighted as he thinks what he does is just, unlike Yukine, who knew what he did was wrong but went ahead with it regardless. Therefore, in Nora's case, she believes what she does is for Yato's sake, so she is not blighted.

Want me to post an answer?

I don't see why not.

As ton.yeung and I have stated in our comments, the Blight forms based on the guilt of the Shinki, therefore, if the shinki was committing sins under the notion that it was wrong, blight would occur, like in Yukine's case of destroying the school windows and stealing. But in Kugaha's case, he believed what he was doing to be for Bishamon's sake as shown in this scene.

Therefore, in Hiiro's case, she believes all the horrible things she did was for the sake of Yato and therefore was justice, so she was not blighted.

I think what Astral Sea said is true that if the shinki was committing sins under the notion that it was wrong, blight would occur. But in Kugaha's case, I don't think that him not blighting Bishamon was necessarily only because he thought his action were for Bishmon's sake. I think the reason was that he had no remorse because he thought that he was doing the right thing altogether.
Look at it this way, Nora was literally manipulating Rabo and Ebisu and as such not really doing things for their sake. But she never blighted them because she never thought that she was doing some thing wrong. Thus, she wouldn't have blighted Yato.
Of course the theory that Noras can't blight their masters at all could also be true. Because if not, the father will have more ways of hurting others (not Yato as he already released her), by manipulating Nora into thinking she did something remorseful, in turn blighting all of her masters.


text:
Mecha anime with a "mind control virus"
Before I describe what little more about it I know, let me clear two things up. I will be referring to a "virus", but I don't know what it actually is. I may sometimes say Gundam instead of mech. That's because I just spent 30 minutes looking up Gundam, not because it's a Gundam anime (although it might be).
So, I know it's a mech anime. When they enter the mech, they pass through a circle that applies a form fitting suit that they use to control the mecha. (I'm actually not totally sure about this).
One of the episodes involved a conference and/or other group of people collected together talking about the "virus". One of the attendees is infected (and there's something about them they have to hide to prevent people from finding this out).
The "virus" bas stages (I think) eventually takes over the infected (while they are in a mecha), and the infected loses control (becomes controlled?). If I recall correctly, the inside of the mecha now looks like a fleshy hell pit created by the "virus".
I'm fairly certain it was on Toonami. I'm 100% certain it was on T.V. in the US sometime between 1998 and 2005.

Your anime might be: Mobile Fighter G Gundam

Firstly it was aired in Toonami in 2002, so it fits the initial bill.
Then in the wikipedia page, The plot section has this one specific fragment:

As they encounter Gundam pilots who had come in contact with the Dark
  Gundam, Domon and Rain learn of its unique cellular properties to
  regenerate, multiply, and evolve by infecting organic matter and
  causing violent behavior in living things.

So we know that this anime is about mechas and there is a virus thing, namely the Dark Gundam, that has abilities to corrupt organic matter and evolve in/with it (or something along those lines).
Then as I searched for footage of the anime, I came upon this video of the first episode which in its first seconds shows the character going through a circle in order to wear a suit, just like you also told.
I'm not sure about the meeting part, for I haven't watched it, but as for everything else you've told, it's a dead giveaway.

Thanks for the help. Looked at the opening, that's the suiting sequence I remember. Can't watch more to 100% verify, but marking correct for now.

Hey is it a series called Blue Gender? They had a full series, 24 or  26 eps Then later crammed that into a movie-type-event-ization. Here's the trailer for theFunmation dvds. I think u can still get it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3k_2jtkvnU

You should try to provide some additional detail about your answer and why you think this is what OP is looking for. Youtube videos are also great at going offline, making the answer less useful, so try not to rely on that too much.


text:
What does "K-On!" refer to in the series?
I have been watching the English dub of it on public TV and I haven't seen any mention of K-On in the series itself (with the exception of the OPs/EDs).
So I am wondering, what does K-On refer to in the series? If it refers to nothing, then is there a particular reason/meaning to the name K-On?

"K-On" is pronounced the same as the word 軽音 keion, which means "light music" (in the Japanese sense, not the classical sense). The main characters are, of course, part of the light music club, which is the 軽音部 keion-bu. The "K-On club", if you will.
If you had watched it with Japanese audio, you would have probably noticed the word sprinkled all over the place (since they talk about the club a lot, obviously). The eyecatches (I forget for which season) also have audio of Yui saying "K-On". I suppose they must have changed the eyecatches to something else for the English dub.

that eyecatch appears in both season with the english dub but i assumed Yui was just saying the series title like they do with the Eyecatches of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

Oh, okay. I just wanted to make a note of that since you said that you hadn't seen any mention of "K-On" besides in the OPs/EDs.

well to be honest i actually forgot about those until i saw the youtube video


text:
What character is missing from Lio Shirazumi's name to allow him be called Lion?
In Kara no Kyoukai, Araya comments to Lio saying that he just needed one character to be called a lion.
English-wise, this would be very correct, but given that these characters are talking in Japanese, I doubt that Lio needed an ン, and according to the Wikia, Shirazumi Lio's name in Japanese is 白純里緒 not シラズミ リ゜オ.
So in his Japanese name, what character is Araya saying Lio is missing to be called Lion?

Weirdly enough, Araya must, in fact, be referring to the fact that "Lio" is one English letter away from "lion". This has to be the case because "lion" in Japanese is 獅子 shishi, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to Shirazumi's name.
Of course, Araya should be fluent in English, having lived at the Clock Tower in London for some years, so it's not that weird. And Nasu (the author) clearly knows enough English to give us silly phrases like "blue blue glass moon" and "heavens feel", so I wouldn't put it past him to put a touch of English wordplay into Kara no Kyoukai
(Some guy on chiebukuro claims that it's actually that リオ "Lio" is one Japanese character away from レオ "Leo" as in the zodiac lion, but I think that guy's claim is dumb.)
(Side note about Japanese: English "lion" is pronounced ライオン raion, so you can't actually get Japanese raion from "Lio" with a single character in either English or Japanese. But you can get English "lion", which is why I say that that's what Araya must've been going for.)

リオ (Lio) could be one character away depending on how you order Kana but to my understanding the order is always a, i, u, e, o. so レ (Le) is 2 characters away from リ(Li)

@Memor-X The way Araya phrases it does not suggest that the character in question is one position away on the gojuuon chart. He only says something to the effect of "if your name were one character different".


text:
What anime is this girl kicking someone from?

I found this image on an AMV called ♪ Clarissa ♪ at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gje-xf8liWM. The girl appears at 1:43 in the video. I think she might be from Kiddy Grade, but I'm not sure.

I don't think this is from kiddy grade because she has longer hair

@Ikaros you shouldn't be too concerned about the hairstyle, this is the show where the protagonists reappear with completely different outfits, hairstyles and eye colors. :)

This is indeed an interesting question, especially because the appearance of characters in the KG-universe can change dramatically, even within the show. (1, 2)

 Cutbacks, clones and implanted false memories make it even harder.

First, did you notice that most of the material in the video is in 4:3 aspect ratio? The material we suspect to be from Kiddy Grade (KG) is in 16:9, though it aired in 4:3.
I asked myself, could it be from the sequel Kiddy Girl-and (KG-a) then? So I roughly skimmed through the episodes of KG-a in 10 second steps¹ and looked closer at sections that weren't about the main characters of KG-a, but I found nothing. Oh well, I could have avoided that by looking at the date when this video was uploaded, in 2008 and KG-a just aired a year later in 2009. However while investigating I found some scenes of Trixie that looked similar.

Trixie and Troisienne in episode 15 of KG-a
I also noticed that the animation quality is a bit better than in the original Kiddy Grade series. So what could it be? The compilation movies? No, these are 4:3, but let's not jump to conclusions. So I skimmed through these too. Nothing there.

Now watching the video more carefully there is this frame from what reminded me of an announcement of what would never be released as KG2. I now remember this because of this wallpaper on Ningen/Nattoli from back in the days.
There exists a KG2 "pilot trailer" of about 5-7 minutes playtime that was also released on DVD and Bluray of the compilation movies. I didn't care too much about this because it has no consistent story and at some point in time the announcement of KG2 on the official KG website just linked to KG-a, something that was at first glance not closely related to KG, but with reused material from KG2 concepts.
Before KG-a was released I mistook the girls in the picture above as Eclair and Lumiere, but the one on the right became Q-feuille² from KG-a, the other never appears in the anime and apparently was replaced with or restyled to become Ascoeur in KG-a. Coparing the KG2 trailer and KG-a both characters use similar weapons, have the same birthmark, fight what became the antagonists of KG-a and their clothes are also very similar.

Summary: The scene is from around 0:55 to 1:00 of the KG2 "pilot trailer" and the next frame shows what appears to be a more mature(!) Lumiere. You can already see parts of her on the left in the picture. The AMV also shows the younger Lumiere holding a 4-barreled gun which is in the trailer, too. I assume that all the KG scenes in the AMV are from the trailer. lord-trashheart's investigation was on the right track and very close.
Here is the complete scene:
http://webm.host/9ace3/vid.webm
size: 2,11 MB; resolution: 720p; duration: 10 s; audio: muted; codec: vp9; bitrate: crf16

¹ Could someone implement this please?
² I forgot to take a screenshot of the computer screen that displays Q-feuille's name in full.

Wow, this was (and is) a hard one to find but you made me curious!
TL;DR: It's Kiddy Grade.
The character pictured is indeed Éclair from Kiddy Grade. She normally looks like this.

However, this is a younger version of her, and it's really hard to find information on where she comes from - I wanted to find an episode number she appears in, but couldn't track one down, or even a proper screenshot.
This was the best I could do: via some reverse-image searching with various terms, I found this image, which has a filename equating to 'Éclair in Star Year 0318 - Kiddy Grade'.

It's pretty believable that this is the same character as in the screenshot, and you can see from the earrings that she may well have some relation to Éclair. I tried to find more pictures similar to this one that would provide more information, but though there are a few, they don't really help much.
On a whim, I went on pixiv and was able to find this in the Kiddy Grade tag:

Credit to this artist. I think you'll agree this is the same character. The picture is entitled '幼エクレール', or, in English, 'Young Éclair'.
Anyway, I think this has to be from Kiddy Grade, and hope this clears up why. She definitely doesn't look like this for most of the series though! If anybody who's actually watched the series would like to provide more details that would be great, but anyway, hope this helped.


text:
Can't find the name of this anime for the life of me!
The anime starts off with the guy in a hotel room, he turned on the TV and got a knock at the door. It turned out to be a girl that at the moment he didn't know but I think she turned out to be his cousin? They almost had sex because she seduced him and he thought she was a random call girl but he realized at the last second who she was I think and he kicked her out wearing no clothes lol.
Then, he started taking a bunch of college entrance exams failing all of them I think... he ran into some beautiful woman who I think went to the Tokyo U, or some kind of prestigious University that he couldn't hope to get into. But he went and took the exam anyway and that's about all I remember.
The art style was older, might have been late 90s early 2000's for all I know. Any leads? MC had longish black hair. I don't think it was a hentai or anything. I tried searching and literally nothing fits that description, so weird lol. Thanks in advance

The anime you're looking for is Sakura Diaries.

A Keio University (one of the top three colleges in Japan) exam candidate, Touma Inaba, is interupted when a cute young girl, Urara Kasuga, arrives at his hotel room door. She later turns out to be his cousin who he barely remembers from his childhood. Urara, who had felt something special for him (an other-than-cousinly-love), invites Touma to live with her since he has no place to stay other than the hotel room.

Exactly the one I was looking for! Thanks!