Author: Lenlo

Fugou Keiji – 9 [A golden key can open any door]

by Lenlo, posted in Fugou Keiji: Balance: UNLIMITED

Another week, another episode of Fugou Keiji! This week we confront Shigemaru, Daisuke pulls a Christopher Nolan and Modern Crimes finally get their time to shine. So without further ado, lets dive in!

Once again I have to say that Fugou Keiji could have done so much more. Whether it be playing up the serious drama with HEUSC or taking away Daisuke’s money. Show us how he has grown since the series started, show us what he can do without his technology. Have him grow to be self-sufficient like Kato, etc. Yes this takes away from the “Batman” or rich boy power fantasy Fugou Keiji started as. But the series itself has already moved away from that when it became more of a serious crime drama. However I am not here to be a debby-downer, because regardless of what more it could have done, I really enjoyed Fugou Keiji this week. From the consistent Batman references to the Modern Crimes shenanigans, everything was just a lot of fun, and I won’t complain about what we got.

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Gunslinger Girl – 12 [Simbiosi (Symbiosis)] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Gunslinger Girl, Throwback Thursday

You know, its still technically Thursday for me when I send up this Gunslinger Girl post, so i’m not really late. My own poor scheduling aside, considering how much more consistent it is than the other writers snap, lets dive into some cyborg children! Damn that sounds weird to say.

Getting into the episode, right off the bat I am going to say I wasn’t a big fan. Once again Gunslinger Girl is cutting back to the terrorist/politics plot, following up on Filippo’s information from prior episodes. They made a plan, used Claes as bait, things went wrong, etc. Everything you would expect from an episode about espionage. But my issue is that Gunslinger Girl is neither enough of an action show nor enough of a drama to make this work. Action wise, Gunslinger Girl occasionally has some good scenes, decent fights. But we didn’t get anything spectacular enough to really hold our attention this week. Meanwhile on the drama side, which can often carry lackluster action like in Re:Zero, there is very little emotional investment or catharsis. What do I mean by that? Well follow me after the break and i’ll talk about it.

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Fugou Keiji – 8 [Money burns a hole in the pocket]

by Lenlo, posted in Fugou Keiji: Balance: UNLIMITED

Hello all and welcome to a rather late chat about Fugou Keiji! I blame Crusader Kings 3 personally, I was a bit busy conquering all of Europe. That aside, this week we get answers to a few mysteries only to have a few more introduced. Cho goes the way of all retired cops and Daisuke gets an unexpected reunion. So without further ado, lets dive in!

Overall, this was a pretty lackluster episode of Fugou Keiji for me. Everything about it felt rushed, felt like it needed more time. More time to expand on the mystery, more time to build up the characters or explore various parts of the setting. Iin this one episode Fugou Keiji introduced and resolved multiple different plots/mysteries, burning through its plot. Take for example the Third Laboratory which Cho introduces this week. We learn where Shigemaru was working, where he met his wife, where the gas from the Presidents assassination attempt was manufactured. However instead of getting an arc about discovering where it is, how to break in, why it was removed from the records etc, its all shoved into this one episode. Kato figures it out from a photo, we immediately drive over and bust in, only to discover something we already knew. It’s wasted potential.

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Gunslinger Girl – 11 [Febbre Alta (High Fever)] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Gunslinger Girl, Throwback Thursday

Another week another late post of Gunslinger Girl! I can only blame the pandemic so many times before it stops working as an excuse, but here we are. So without further ado lets dive into the episode and see what Henrietta and Jose are doing on vacation!

Overall, this episode was basically just a follow up to the last, unraveling what all happened. For the slower members of the audience it outright stated what happened with Elsa, while for the rest of us it followed up on Fermi’s side of things. Following Henrietta and Jose to Sicily, chatting with each other and discussing the philosophies of the Agency etc. There really wasn’t much new here. Rather, Gunslinger Girl seemingly took the opportunity to reframe things, to make us look at it from another angle. As up until now we have primarily seen the story from the perspective of the Cyborgs, from Henrietta and co. This episode seems to want to zoom out and explore it a bit from the Fratello’s side though. Letting Jose discuss it with Fermi while showing us just how close Henrietta is to ending up like Elsa herself.

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Fugou Keiji – 7 [Money is the root of all evil]

by Lenlo, posted in Fugou Keiji: Balance: UNLIMITED

This week on Fugou Keiji we get flashbacks in flashbacks as Kiyomizu recounts the unsolved Kambe murder mystery! We have politics, intrigue, corruption and a dash of homicide. So without further ado, lets jump right in!

As far as the episode goes, it was rather weird. The whole first half was a flashback, complete with black bars and everything to make sure we knew. And while it was a good flashback, laying the groundwork for everything else, the 2nd half went off the rails a bit. We will talk about spoilers after the break but this is an example of Fugou Keiji’s identity issue rearing its head again. In the last few episodes it seemed that Fugou Keiji had decided what it wanted to be, a serious detective drama. However this episodes ending bit with the VR clashed with that. Except unlike previous instances of this, such as the old ladies and the boy-band, this one was actually used in a narratively important way. This wasn’t a throw-away absurd gag but rather a serious part of the narrative, and it broke it a little for me.

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Gunslinger Girl – 10 [Amare (To Love)] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Gunslinger Girl, Throwback Thursday

A day late on this weeks Gunslinger Girl, I know. Personally, I blame the pandemic because I have lost all sense of time, stuck at home all day. Enough about my excuses though, lets talk child assassins!

This weeks episode of Gunslinger Girl was a weird. Narratively it was all rather straight forward, and we will get to that in a bit. But in terms of direction I can’t help but think it was a mess. It felt like we were watching 3 separate timelines that were cut together without any real indication of which one we were currently watching. Is the Sicily trip the present? The murder investigation? Where does Henrietta getting a present fit into all of that, or Triela calling the investigators? All of these scenes look the same, so its impossible to tell when one occurs compared to the others chronologically. I get what they were going for, trying to run these threads in parallel so they can reveal information pertinent to another thread at the same time. But without any kind of indication, it just comes off as a mess.

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Lupin III The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – 4 [Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

Whew, its been a long wait since my last post on Fujiko Mine, but I have an excuse, I promise. I’ll let you know what it is when I think of it. In the meantime, this episode on Fujiko Mine we see the return of Lupin and Zenigata in a story straight out off the stage! So lets dive right in.

Right off the bat, this episode was nothing like what I was expecting. I figured we would start to see some team-ups, and in a way we got that with Lupin’s return. However the primary focus seemed instead to be on Zenigata and getting him properly introduced to the plot. We met him before of course, all the way back in episode one, but this is our first proper look at him. And what a look it is. This is easily the most misogynistic episode of anime I have seen in awhile, and I can’t tell if Fujiko Mine did it on purpose. So many of Zenigata’s interactions with Fujiko were demeaning or sexual in nature, really just nailing her with sexist jokes/actions over and over. There is probably something in there about lust vs love, considering the episodes topic, but Fujiko Mine really laid it on thick here.

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Fugou Keiji – 6 [Ill Got, Ill Spent]

by Lenlo, posted in Fugou Keiji: Balance: UNLIMITED

Come one, come all, to the week of Fugou Keiji’s metamorphosis! This week we have intrigue, mystery and a dash of murder. So without further ado, lets dive in.

Starting off, this week completes Fugou Keiji’s transformation from a comedic parody of rich superheroes to a legitimate detective series. Where once the money-based gags were front and center, they have since become the moments of levity between harrowing intrigue. And I am loving it. I said in prior posts that I preferred Fugou Keiji when it was a parody. At the time that was true. I wasn’t convinced at that point that the series could pull off a serious detective story. Daisuke was to ridiculous and the presentation to comedic. Which is I want to think its incredible just how well Fugou Keiji managed this slow tonal shift. Over the course of 3 episodes it toned down the comedy and dialed up the drama bit by bit. Until we got to where we are today, all without ever giving away the game until Daisuke blows up a car.

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Gunslinger Girl – 9 [Lycoris Radiata Herb (Cluster Amaryllis)] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Gunslinger Girl, Throwback Thursday

You all know the drill at this point, its another episode of Gunslinger Girl! We got guns, we got depression, and both are delivered by this weeks new girl Elsa. So without further ado, lets dive in!

Starting off, quick call out as Gunslinger Girl brought back its animation chops this week. Elsa’s opening firefight in the hotel was chef kiss, great. I will always love how fluid the series can be with the girls movements or the bullet casings falling to the ground. It makes the rest of the series seem stilted in comparison at times. Moving on though, this episode introduces us to another sort of “bad” Handler/Assassin relationship. Until now the primary example of that was Jean and Rico, with a very “Tool/Master” relationship. It was very professional in nature, with Rico knowing and being completely OK with this arrangement. Here though with Elsa and Lauro, we are shown a relationship of extremes. One of obsession and utter disinterest, both taking elements of prior relationships to terrible extremes. To be frank? It’s pretty damn interesting.

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Fog Hill of Five Elements – Animation Appreciation

by Lenlo, posted in Random Anime Recommendations, Special Articles

Hello everyone and welcome to a rather weird post about a Chinese series you probably haven’t heard of, Fog Hill of Five Elements. Now odds are you have no idea what I am talking about, and I don’t blame you. Not only are subs for this notoriously hard to find, but the ones you do find probably aren’t that good. A Graphic Design Service Subscription does not suffice in finding them. Part of that is just the difficulty of finding Chinese translators, since the Japanese translation scene is well established at this point, but another part is that no one really knows this show exists. And let me tell you, if for no other reason than the animation, the goal of this post is to change that. So lets dive in.

First up, a little about Fog Hill. As far as I can figure, Fog Hill was originally created by Hun Lin in this little 5 minute YouTube video here. Whether he made the whole thing, VA and music and all from scratch himself I have no idea. I don’t even know if Samsara Studio, the animation house behind Fog Hill, is his studio or just one he is working with. Since this is their first project and all the information is in Chinese, as an ignorant American I just don’t know. But what I do know is that 3 years later, in 2020, Fog Hill got a full 8 episode ONA season that is currently being released right now. Directed, Scripted, and Coordinated by Hun Lin, this is clearly a passion project. And even if I can’t understand the words, I can understand hype. And this? This animation is hype.

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