Phi Brain 03 – 02: Kaito, Rook: if you were in a giant room that was turning and moving around… you should have noticed that. I see that this series starts off well by pushing your suspense of disbelief to its limits. Everyone’s taking puzzles even more seriously here. The villains are basically “must… destroy… all puzzlers in the world!! All Puzzlers must die, so let’s beat them by using puzzles!” – I’m not kidding! But yeah, for the things that really mattered, this episode delivered. The characters were as fun as ever.
Ore no Nounai Blahblah – 02: Unfortunately a lot worse due to some bad direction and animation issues, but there still were plenty of good jokes in this episode.
White Album 2 – 02: Okay with this it’s definitely not like the first two White Albums. The whole belt thing was a bit weird, but you can see clearly what the creators are doing right now: setting up the love triangle. The attention to build-up is admirable, now the question is whether this show can make use of it, or whether it’ll just play the ‘boring’-card.
Little Busters – Refrain – 02: Okay, Little Busters, I have to hand it to you: this episode was amazing. I would not have minded at all if this were the ending of the series. This is wonderful as a conclusion. You can still ruin this by throwing in some harem-nonsense, but standalone this episode was the single best episode we’ve seen from Little Busters, BY FAR. Well, done!
Hajime no Ippo – Rising – 03: Awesome: Aoki has always been an incredibly likable side-character, so I’m trhilled to see that he got an actual arc dedicated to him here. That’s how I believe that the sequels are better than the original Hajime no Ippo series: it’s not just about Ippo. But yeah, tons of hilarity this episode on top of Aoki being really charming, and getting to fight the perfect opponent for him.
No words to spare for HxH this time? ok
Anyway have you seen Ippo’s Mashiba vs Kimura OVA? It’s essentially when of the good non-Ippo arcs you like so much.
Haven’t seen it yet, so no. 😛
Same for that OVA.
Do you mean episode 3 of Refrain, rather than episode 2? 3 was out by the time you wrote this, and seems to fit more with what you’re saying about it.
I haven’t seen episode 3 yet, this really was about episode 2.
“due to some bad direction”
>> Sometimes I really wonder if you actually know what you’re talking about or if you just write random stuff to have something to say about what you’re watching.
The directing of the second episode isn’t any more nor any less consistent than the first.
No seriously I’d actually like some detail on this : what parts were “less well directed” in the second episode than in the first?
Actually, the original Hajime no Ippo series focus on a lot of the side characters as well. Ippo gets the bulk of the fights but the arcs featuring a young Aoki and Kimura is one of the best and one of the most emotional. Even Umezawa gets an episode devoted to him and is also very moving.
The first half was dominated by Ippo though. It wasn’t until Miyata’s overseas match that the series delved into other characters