Author: psgels

Shinryaku!? Ika-Musume Review – 70/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Shinryaku! Ika Musume

The big disadvantage of having a successful comedy is that people want to make sequels of it. It sold well, so hey: why not try milking it out some more? What/ You mean to say that the first season already exhausted all of the possible jokes that could have been made? Who cares! People will buy it!

So yeah,Squid Girl 2 is much of the same. And in this case, this is a bad thing, because “much of the same” in a comedy pretty much means that the entire second season is derivative. There is no reason for it to really exist. This season doesn’t really advance the show or characters aside from perhaps a few minor details here and there that you could have made an OVA out of. And for the rest of the time this show spends repeating some of the jokes and scenarios of the first season.

It becomes clear very early on that the creators are struggling to find new material to fill 12 episodes. The creators at least try to squeeze some new jokes out of things, but this series never really introduces new characters, so its only option is to try some variations of some of the jokes we’ve seen so far. The result is that there are a few characters who just keep returning. In particular the crazy scientists are guilty of this: their crazy inventions are really often used to create random wacky situations for Squid girl to be in. Also milked to death are Chizuru, and worst of all: the crazy stalker. The stalker was completely horrible in the way that just REFUSED. TO BLOODY. GIVE UP. She tries to glomp Squid Girl more than five times every single episode, for god’s sake!

Thankfully the creators realized that there was no way for them to remain funny for 12 more episodes, so at least they tried to shift their focus a bit: they at leas try to make sure that the ending of each story comes with an original twist. For this, I can at least say that they’re hit and miss: sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. But at least they’re not as derivative as the rest of the series.

But seriously though: there is no real reason to watch this; over these entire 12 episodes, there was only one sketch that I considered to be genuinely funny. That’s way too little. Ideally if you’re interested in this series: watch till episode 11 of the first season. That’s all you really need, because this series has the really weird tradition of suddenly turning to a serious story for the final episode. And yes, this second season has this too. And yes, it’s baaaaaaad….

Storytelling: 7/10 – Repeated jokes and scenarios from the first season that while mildly funny, are not enough to sustain interest.
Characters: 6/10 – Only a few details are really added to the characters. That’s not good here, and it’s a good thing that the characters still have a bit of their natural charms left.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Still solid, but the animation too has gone downhill.
Setting: 7/10 – This show is completely derivative. Again nothing is added here.

Suggestions:
– Mitsodomoe
– Tentai Senshi Sunred
– Demashitaa! Power Puff Z

Ben-To Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Ben-To



To say that the moe genre nowadays is overcrowded is an understatement. I’m sure my bias against this genre wouldn’t be as bad if it wasn’t just so bloody everywhere, and I don’t even like most of them, and the comedies in this genre are no different. The exceptions for me are the ones who really put in effort. Not the ones who get lucky on one episode and then keep screwing up afterwards. No, the ones who try to be genuinely entertaining, week after week. Ben-To understood this.

This show just pushes the boundaries in the genre of the fanservice comedy. Gone is the copy and paste formula: this show just takes a crazy formula and goes to town with it: people fighting over half-priced lunches. There is a lot of neat stuff you can do with that, and this show realized that.

And the setting isn’t the only thing that the creators spent attention at. The animation and action are really meant to be as fun as possible. The soundtrack is actually the single best soundtrack of the past season in how over the top it is. The action scenes are excellent because of this. Every single one of them is really fun to watch.

And on top of that, this also is a very well told series. The build-up in this series is actually very good: it knows exactly how to lead its atmosphere into the food battles with a slow and subtle parts to increase the tension. The acting also is far from the usual you see in moe shows. Sure, it’s incredibly over the top like it should be, but at the same time the actors also know when to show restraint. The characters in this series are because of this much more colourful than usual.

Overall the story in this series also keeps it nice and tight, and both major arcs in this show are interesting enough to keep up with this series. It’s unfortunately not the most consistent series, and there are a few parts here and there that go off track. Especially in the second half the fanservice suddenly goes out of control at times, which leads to shows that are just too forced because of this. Thankfully this doesn’t involve the final episodes, so this show can still close off with a bang, but still. The fanservice in this series usually is subtle (especially for Yarizui), however at others the creators go completely overboard on the penis jokes. Thankfully these scenes are a minority, rather than the majority.

Ben-To and Dororon Enma-Kun. If you want to watch fanservice series that are actually entertaining, rather than completely lazy in terms of storytelling, these are the two shows I recommend above all others with on a third place Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. Especially the first two though: these two realize that pushing boundaries doesn’t mean trying to out-gross each other, but to try out new things in terms of storytelling and scenarios.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Really knows how to be entertaining. Great build-up, really fun food battles.
Characters: 8/10 – Nothing amazing, but this show still has some really solid characters that are surprisingly well acted at times.
Production-Values: 9/10 – This has the best soundtrack of the season, and while the visuals are inconsistent, they do know how to animate a good action scene with restrictions.
Setting: 8/10 – Thank you for being a moe show with an actual inspired premise.

Suggestions:
– Dororon Enma-Kun Meerameera
– Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt
– Hyakko

Ben-To – 12

by psgels, posted in Ben-To

Okay, so I had an entire post written up, only to accidentally delete it. *headdesk*

In any case, this was a wonderful way to end this series. This really was entertainment. The ultimate bad guy turned out to be much better than I expected. He’s not just this guy who is ridiculously strong and beat Orthros three years ago. With daily fights over food, that would be a bit against the point of this series. Instead, his psychological attacks were wonderful. Especially with his own theme song, the way he stepped on their pride was a very nice idea here. Sato also proved that he’s worth it as a main character when he actually used the same tactic as the villain of the first arc. Everything came together really well. It’s unfortunate that Yarizui wasn’t involved, but heck; she was sick. Finally someone’s being responsible here.

Overall, Kore wa Zombie Desu ka nearly killed my faith in an entire genre last winter. At that point, I was really consented with the idea that unfortunately, for a few great episode, we’d have to sit through hours of the creators not even trying to be entertaining. Thankfully, the rest of the year proved me wrong though.

I’ll just say it: Ben-To and Dororon Enma-kun were the best fanservice comedies I have ever seen. Ben-To may not have been the best show this season, but it did push the boundaries within its own overcrowded genre, and set the standards of it higher. I count that as a job well done for David Production. Let’s hope that they can do the same for Inu X Boku.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Fate/Zero Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Fate/Zero



First of all, for those who are wondering: Fate/Zero is a prequel of Fate/Stay Night. You don’t need to have seen Fate/Stay Night in order to enjoy this, although it would be wise to first read up on a bit of the terminology, because that is pretty much the only thing that this series assumes its audience to be familiar with.

Now that that’s out of the way: this definitely was a unique and interesting series to watch. It has a few flaws here and there, but on the other side of the coin we have a very original and well researched setting here. This series grabs many classic references and figures from all over history, ranging from Alexander the Great to King Arthur, and puts them all together. Chivalry is a huge theme in this series that gets looked upon from all sorts of different angles.

What’s also great here is that it’s really hard to pinpoint the actual main character in this series. Of course, in theory this should be Saber and all, but you’d be surprised at how little airtime and attention she gets in this series. The character development of some of the other characters is far more interesting, and she’s very often outclassed by the rest of the cast here. In particular Rider is just one of a kind. He’s without a doubt the best character of the bunch and his monologues are incredibly well written. But really: nearly all of the characters here are interesting and colourful, perhaps with the only exception of the rather one-sided Caster-duo.

The main flaw of this series is the pacing. Very often this show just doesn’t flow well. The first episode for example is 50 minutes of random people talking without giving the viewer any reason to care for them, and the battles in this series are often a bit understated because the characters keep interrupting them to talk to each other about their strategies and powers. Fate/Zero spends a lot of its time on building up for the second season. At times this goes at the sacrifice of its pacing.

Still, this is a show that definitely gets better over time, as you get to know more and more of its characters. The characters slowly reveal more about themselves and their backgrounds and motivations. It’s here where the dialogues in this series really shine, to the point where they become the thing to recommend this series for. Make no mistake, the script in this show is very well written here and when this script combines itself with the character development, it’s when this show is at its best.

So yeah, the pacing has issues but really: in a time when anime diverts more and more into teenagers, it’s great to see a series that fully focuses on adults, and actually delivers a really solid storyline here. Seriously, this was one of the most solid series of the past three months.

Storytelling: 8/10 – A few pacing issues, but excellent dialogue.
Characters: 8/10 – A rich and diverse cast that will take a bit of time to fully blossom. Also a lot of the development seems to be saved for the second season.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Yuki Kajiura perhaps doesn’t bring in her A-game for this series, but still pretty solid all around. The animation is very good too, with especially the combination between 2d and CG being very good..
Setting: 9/10 – Well researched, imaginative and quite unconventional.

Suggestions:
– Le Chevalier d’Eon
– Rose of Versailles
– Amatsuki

Fate/Zero – 13

by psgels, posted in Fate/Zero

Okay, so this was a bit of an annoying cliff-hanger to close off the series with. Nothing was resolved at all. We’re just going into a 3-month hiatus, which will immediately start with the fight against Caster.

The rest of this episode was building up, and it’s clear that the creators are holding on to their trump cards for the second season. The dialogue in the Rider parts in particular were very good (by the way, I could have sworn that Rider was the Persian conqueror Iskander, but instead he turns out to be Alexander the Great).
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Overall this series had some flaws here and there, but despite that this was my favorite Type-Moon adaptation aside from about half of the Kara no Kyoukai Movies. I’m probably one of the few who actually liked the Tsukihime anime, but in the end that series is inferior to the setting and research of this series, and none of its characters come close to Rider’s. It’s just better in a lot of different ways.

For the next season, I do hope that Caster dies off quickly, because the caster duo has been the least interesting pair of the series so far. It’s all just too standard, the fights against him were boring, his hobbies of murdering children never really paid off due to the censorship, and this episode pretty much sealed the deal and the creators just gave up on him, turning him into a giant blob in order to at least make it a bit of a challenge to bring him down.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hunter X Hunter – 13

by psgels, posted in Hunter X Hunter


I’ve said it before, but at the moment I’m currently really busy with moving in real life. I managed to buy my own house and right now, I’m finally moving out of my parents’ house, and I’m going to live on my own now, and I’m pretty overwhelmed by everything that you need to take care of. So with that in mind I kindof appreciate that this was a recap. That definitely helps to ease the workload a bit, especially on a day when two major series also end.

So yeah, recap. Nothing special: Gon writes a letter to his mother telling everything that happened. Yadda yadda yadda, nothing special at all. Next week will be the infamous new year break, so we’re pretty much into a two-week break right now. January 8th things will start again, and then it’s time for things to really get fired off.
Rating: – (Lacking)

Sengoku Basara – The Last Party Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Sengoku Basara

Okay, it may seem like a strange idea to watch and review the Sengoku Basara movie of all things on Christmas Eve, but I really have to say: if you finished watching the first two series: just watch this movie and enjoy the fireworks. It’s one hell of an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

You can definitely see that the creators wanted Sengoku Basara to end with a giant bang. Everything here is just completely over the top. Every single voice actor is having the time of his life, hamming up his role. And it actually works with such a series that’s so full of manliness. The first two series already developed the characters, and this movie realizes that it only needs to work a bit on the new ones. The result is that a far bigger portion of this series is devoted to the action than the second season, and the action is far better and over the top than in the first.

The downside is that this movie throws away all pretense. While the first two seasons had interesting storylines, this one has just has one goal: being over the top. We’re done with the complex plot lines, here is just an over the top and emotional epic ride. So yeah, when you boil down the storyline they used for this movie, it’s full of cliches and overdone tropes, packed together in a very simple premise. It may not seem so at first, but yeah. At a certain point, you’ll understand why.

And yeah, this movie is pretty much fanservice. I don’t mean that it suddenly grew boobs or that the characters suddenly start stripping for no reason, but I mean this in that this movie is entirely dedicated to pleasing the fans. Because of that it’s in no way accessible to those who haven’t watched the other Sengoku Basara-series, but this movie took the things that stood out the most in the TV-series, and built a movie around them.

At this point, I had been exactly waiting for this series to go all out, which is why I’m very pleased with this movie. It definitely washed away the disappointment of the ending of both TV-series, because they just weren’t epic enough for what this show promised. This movie finally delivered on that promise. I just can’t take this franchise serious anymore after this, though. Especially after the ED, which was all kinds of awesome, but just doesn’t belong in a series that expects you to take it seriously. Merry Christmas everyone, by the way.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Completely over the top and it works.
Characters: 8/10 – Makes good use of the fact that it already fleshed out its characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Solid as usual.
Setting: 7/10 – Please don’t believe that Sengoku Basara is an accurate portrayal of the Sengoku Era…

Suggestions:
– Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection
– Tailenders
– Shin Mazinger Shougeki Z-Hen

Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam – 11

by psgels, posted in Last Exile - Ginyoku no Fam

Interestingly, in this episode the Sylvius is victim to the same weakness that Fam&co have been taking advantage of: the way in which it’s actually quite easy to shut down a huge battleship if you know where to look. Thankfully this episode included this: it shows that Fam isn’t special, and things get a lot more believable when it’s not just the good guys who came up with this idea.

In any case, this episode did get one of the shorter straws on the animation budget, even though what happened here was quite important to the overall story here. First of all Alvis returns, but Lilliane, Milia’s sister, turning out to be alive, and a sudden ally to the evil empire marks a large turning point for this series. Combine that with the fall of the sylvius here, it makes this episode even more of a turning point. Next week will be the infamous new year break in which absolutely nothing airs, so this should have been a great way to close off the first half of this series. So why the budget wasn’t bigger here is beyond me.

The first half overall wasn’t as good as the first half of the first Last Exile, but it still had a lot to like. So far we’ve seen great characters that despite their young ages are quite likable, and the show already got some good drama out of them. The big weakness so far is the large amount of inconsistencies and weak points. Shangri-La had those too, but to make up for it it just had a crazy plot that just kept moving. Ginyoku no Fam’s story though is much slower, allowing these things to stand out more. I’m definitely curious about the second half though. That will be the point for this show to really evolve. If it can do that, it will get pretty memorable here.
Rating: * (Good)

Onigamiden Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

Um. Yeah… about this movie.

It already had an unusual staff behind it. It’s directed by the director of Spriggan, written by a guy who worked on all kinds of series from Element Hunters to Spice and Wolf, the character designs are by the same guy who designed the characters for Ghost in the Shell, Jin Roh and the Sky Crawlers, the storyboards are done by the guys who animated things like Cannon Fodder and A Tree of Palme and it’ produced by Studio Pierrot. Oh, and just a small detail: the animation director is freaking Shinji Hashimoto. If you don’t know who Shinji Hashimoto is, watch this. That’s just a small portion of the talent of someone who is amongst the best animators in the business.

If you’re wondering what good animation is: just watch this movie. The animation here isn’t necessarily flashy, but the fluidity and the motions are just incredible. There are so many visual ideas in this movie. There is so much motion in it, even for movie standards. This really is the first production in more than half a decade in which Studio Pierrot really got to show off their unique animation style if you don’t count a few random episodes here and there that just happen to have the right staff. It is great that producers still continue to give people like Shinji Hashimoto opportunities to oversee the animation of entire productions, because like this movie shows: the result just looks incredible. As for the rest of the movie though….

Look, the problem isn’t with the acting. The voice acting is perfectly fine. The pacing is also pretty acceptable: it’s slow, but it never drags. The choice of music is a bit weird for a series that is about Japan of 1200 years ago, but it ends up working very nicely. The setting is also something that interests me a lot. A time when Jesus wasn’t even a thousand years old yet is not something we get to see often. This would have been a very good movie… if it wasn’t for the story.

Because yes, this is a serious story about the history and heritage of Japan. And yes, it’s about a random boy who gets transported there and gets to command dragons for no particular reason. Whoop-dee-doo.

Now, this alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it all depends on how well it’s handled. Unfortunately, everything just goes too easy for this kid. All he has to do is glow a bit, and then suddenly he can command this huge dragon (who has no personality whatsoever by the way, even though he’s the titular Millennium Dragon). Because of this lack of urgency for him, he starts worrying about morals. The result is that he spends a large part of the movie whining and trying to convince everyone not to fight.

I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that he’s actually trying this, or the fact that the potentially interesting setting was reduced to such a farce to make this actually possible. This movie is completely shallow. At first things the sakes seem huge on this series, but eventually things degrade into a conflict because this kid has a trauma because his parents died. The only things that actually resemble this setting are the images. Apart from that it seems that the writers put in no research whatsoever into the setting they were dealing with.

This is the kind of children’s movie that dumbs itself down way too much, for the sake of appealing to kids. It’s such a shame, when the animation is so good, it just doesn’t have the story to back it up with. There are just fundamental problems with the writing staff here.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Solid storytelling, but there is hardly any substance.
Characters: 7/10 – Well, it has potential, but the main character is just too young and puts the priorities on the wrong place.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Really great animation, a ton of fluidity, a ton of animation ideas.
Setting: 7/10 – Interesting setting, but underutilized.

Suggestions:
– Yona Yona Penguin
– A Tree of Palme
– Kai Doh Maru

Mawaru Penguin Drum Review – 92,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Mawaru Penguin Drum



Revolutionary Girl Utena aired in 1997. When I watched it, it immediately conquered a spot on my list of favorite series ever, and still stands there. After that its director, Kunihiko Ikuhara, put out the Utena movie, and after that things became eerily quiet around him for more than a decade. Once in a while he did a random storyboard, but apart from that he really was strangely absent. So imagine my surprise when it was announced that he’d do another full fledged series again.

Right from the start it’s obvious that these two are from the same makers: this show is chock full of symbolism. Everywhere, the creators stuffed in references, cross references and visual symbols that only became apparent episodes after they appear. At first sight this is just random, but the great thing is that every symbol here has a meaning and place in this series. At first sight this series may seem like it’s complete chaos, but it’s actually surprisingly well structured on hindsight.

And yeah, this show pretty much has the best direction of the entire year. The way it combines the visuals, music and story together: no other show did it better during the past 12 months. The music does an excellent job of fitting within every scene it’s used, the animation really makes the characters come alive, the timing of all of the scenes flows really well. And the acting of the characters is really solid, especially considering the amount of broken characters in this series.

The excellent acting also leads to an excellent cast of characters. Just about everyone develops throughout the series. It also makes use of a ton of flashbacks and flash-forwards, to illustrate this, also giving the cast a ton of background in the process. The cast in this series really is dynamic, and engaging beyond belief.

And then there are the plot twist. This series really likes throwing plot twists, and being as unpredictable as possible. This makes for one heck of a plot. At first it might seem that this series is just throwing around twists for the heck of it, but nearly everything in this series is properly foreshadowed and hinted at on hindsight. The plot of this series is so tightly put together. This is an anime original series, so there is no need to be afraid of rushed endings or stories that just stop in the middle. The ending of this series is amazing and closes off this series wonderfully. This really is one of my top picks of 2011.

Storytelling: 10/10 – Great sense of timing and bringing out all different sorts of emotions. Really tightly written plot.
Characters: 9/10 – Excellent character development, very likable characters, although some take a bit to get used to (Ringo!)
Production-Values: 9/10 – Very solid and inspired animation, excellent soundtrack.
Setting: 9/10 – Penguin Drum is highly symbolic, and even its setting makes use of this. Because of this, things aren’t made 100% clear, but this is a very interesting way to get its messages across.

Suggestions:
– Revolutionary Girl Utena
– Simoun
– Noein