Um… yeah. This movie…. I think I’ve just been trolled.
The first Macross Frontier Movie stayed very close to the TV-series, only in a much more streamlined version. It cut all of the unnecessary stuff that dragged out, and instead focused on the core of the series, which worked really well and I ended up really liking it (and this is coming from someone who was really annoyed by parts of the TV-series). The second movie is… different…
One of my problems with Macross Frontier was that some subplots took forever to get anywhere, and a lot of them were resorted rather half-heartedly, if at all. This movie isn’t like that. This movie wants to be exciting. This movie wants plot twists, and it delivers them no matter what.
It’s difficult to do this review without spoilers, but let’s just say that this movie wants to deliver plot twists a little too badly. Especially the second half shows this. The result is a story that has lots of twists and turns… that just don’t make any sense whatsoever. You are going to have to turn off your common sense if you want to be able to enjoy this. I did not, and was raging throughout half of them. This was in no way good storytelling! The creators just pulled whatever twist looked the coolest out of their ass, and completely disregarded narrative logic. And I’m not the strictest when it comes to not making sense, but what the creators pulled here was just deus ex machina after deus ex machina that only add to the style of this series, not the substance. Oh, and Shoji Kawamori shows his environmentalist side again. You know, the kind where the environmentalist messages are just shoved down your throat without any sense of subtlety.
*Ahem* when you do turn off logic, you’ll be rewarded by an utterly gorgeous movie. In particular the musical segments shine as ever. This is one part at which Macross Frontier has never disappointed, and this is o exception. The use of colours and camera angles shows how much budget and animation talent went into this. Both for the 2d animation as the CG as the backgrounds.
It IS a fun movie. Just don’t go into it expecting good drama, because the drama here is of soap opera quality.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – Well, it’s fun and engaging. It’s at least a great action movie. |
| Characters: | 7/10 – This movie does add things here and there to the characters, but I’m not sure whether they were good ones. The three leads do have extra charms compared to the TV-series… but there still are enough annoyances about them. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – Not among THE best animated movies, but it has stunning visuals nonetheless. Gorgeous for movie standards, but loses points for reuse of soundtrack. |
| Setting: | 7/10 – Makey no sensey. Also Kawamori’s environmentalist traits got old years ago. |
What is it with this show and suddenly changing characters’ haircuts for one episode?! I mean, seriously: first we had Hashiba Hideyoshi and Sasuke who both went bald for just one episode, and now that bald monk suddenly grew hair… only to shave it off again. I have been watching anime for too long. Hair isn’t supposed to change! *har har*
In any case, the sudden debut of new soundtracks, along with the introduction of armors again after god knows how many episodes are really telling me that the creators have interesting things planned for the final parts of this series. Heck, it was quite interesting to just ignore the warfare aspect of this series, just to focus on character development and esthetics, only to switch back again to the warfare that made the first 15 episodes so addictive. And unlike shounen series who try this, it had plenty of interesting stuff to replace it with.
Oh, and it seems that the characters haven’t stopped changing at all. Sasuke completely freaked out in this episode (being a daimyou probably made him a bit more wary about warfare than what hhe used to be). Oh, and Sennou Soueki’s new mansion. love how much creativity was put in the structures.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
I must say that Persona chose to go with a premise that is very easy to go wrong: its antagonists feed on angst. The most annoying part of the past episode, apart from that bear perhaps, are the speeches of “I am you! I’m actually not as perfect as you thought me to be!”, following by lots of denial. Again, it has to do with a rather annoying formula that isn’t just used by this series (if that were the case I could easily forgive it), but it’s the same kind of set-up that loads of other shows use.
I get what this series is trying to do: we all have our different sides. The lead characters all refuse to accept some of those sides, and those persona thingies will help them accept these sides. It’s a solid base, but I’m still missing something. That will be up for the rest of the series to fill in. Do some interesting stuff with this formula. These internal conflicts are great to give the characters background, but they don’t help in fleshing them out. The other selves are just too different from their usual personalities to the point where they nearly feel as different people.
The part in this episode that I liked was when the conflict was about to be resolved. For once the characters actually talk to each other to resolve their conflicts. These parts were quite charming. My big issue with this show is just that it depends on people’s ability to not think straight in order to create its antagonists.
Rating: (Enjoyable)]]> 
Right after episode 14 is a popular time for characters to come with their backgrounds. I just love the way in which this episode did it, though. Natsume’s background was awesome in its presentation. It was completely over the top, but it fits this series really well. It was a really hilarious episode, and especially Natsume’s dreams were hysterical.
What’s more is that there still is order within the chaos: you could really see traits that give no mistake that she and her grandfather were related. This episode did a great job of explaining her background, her role in the story (although please: couldn’t they have gotten a younger voice actor for the young Kanba?). Also, the penguin hat isn’t dead!?
Overall, in a way I can understand where the people are coming from when they say that this show throws random stuff at the viewer. I have this same problem with most Shaft series, like the later series of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei and Bakemonogatari: the creators there really seemed to throw in just whatever the hell they’d like based on shallow wordplay that eventually got way too predictable in its unpredictability. Penguin Drum however has for me achieved the perfect balance between chaos and order: everything is related, but the things it throws at the viewer are all very creative and imaginative, and yet all of it is meant to flesh out the characters. And the thing is that this show is continuously changing: it still has the same style and mood, but it keeps finding new ways to play with its scenarios in lots of different ways.
And granted, Utena WAS better at this. It was completely un-rivaled in how well it used its own repetition to create excellent drama. However, we have yet to reach the ending of this series. Overall it’s a bit hard to compare two series of different lengths at this point, but what I can say at this point is that Utena’s brilliance lied in how much it did with so little. At this point it too still hadn’t shown its trumps yet, but instead of trying to be the roller-coaster ride that Penguin Drum is trying to be, it really tried to go for an as elegant series as possible. And with that it ended up being un-rivaled.
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]> 
Ah, screw it. Guilty Crown is hereby dropped from blogging. I’m still going to watch it, but I don’t want to blog about it anymore. Here’s the thing with it: it’s perhaps not as bad as say Majikoi or Maken-Ki, but it’s Noitamina. Not only that, but it has been given the rare privilege of 22 episodes. It should be more ambitious with that. My standards for this timeslot are very high, and I unfortunately have to say: these past three episodes were the most generic opening episodes of any Noitamina series I have seen.
As for a replacement: I’m not going to do Bakuman because of how it’s shounen jump, and I have some rather bad experiences with Jump adaptations after Gintama, Sket Dance, Toriko and Nurarihyon no Mago… and in any case there is the rare slice of life series that’s not based on any kind of manga or original material, and has Sato Junichi behind it. It’s also a good opportunity for me to find out why I have such a bipolar taste when it comes to the “group of girls living their daily lives”-genre. Seriously, I like shows as Tamayura, Aria and Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru a lot, but shows as A-Channel, Nichijou and Working never caught my attention.
In any case, what really helps is how much time this show focuses on fleshing out its characters. It doesn’t just have its cast do random stuff, but always tries to put meaning to what they do, fleshing them out in the process. The animation on top of that is really good, bringing the characters surprisingly to life. This episode was the same, and it was dedicated to Mao. She got a lot of depth here, which is great to see.
What I really hope to see in the second half of this series is that this series will make use of its format of being anime original, to really play with some of the conventions of its genre. It has the staff to do it; Sato Junichi will be able to pull it off, so I really hope that the creators will try this. It’s already doing a great job here to bring its characters alive.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
Seriously, what is this show doing in Noitamina? I mean, if this was going to be an experiment for another 2-cour series, there would have been much better series for that: Chihayafuru, Fate/Zero or even Last Exile.
I know that series need time to build up. I’m not expecting series to immediately deliver right from the start. Instead what I’m looking for in the opening episodes of a series is hints that it knows what it’s doing: hints that it knows what good storytelling is, that its characters are well acted. Those kinds of things. I’m not seeing them here.
In fact, this episode showed even more that this show is wasted potential. There are two main reasons for that. First of all, this episode shows the main character running around and drawing weapons out of everyone. In the end, this just turns out to be him random props out of people and moving on to the next. This show doesn’t do anything with them. Or, take the point at which the male lead and his best friend make up and promise each other not to tell about each other’s secrets. The main character conveniently tells him that he did that, instead of the creators showing how he did it. It’s a pretty big point here, as only second later it turns out that the friend did screw him over in the end. That’s just lazy storytelling.
And yeah, then there was the fact that this episode was full of cliches. I mean, even Fractale wasn’t this bad. The fanservice was incredibly pointless, the jokes were the same you see everywhere (and of course the same old boob joke couldn’t be missing). Oh, and why did the female lead move in with the male lead again? I mean, what exactly has she actually done in this series? She’s been completely useless so far!
There really isn’t anything that really stands out in this series. The whole drama around Shu’s friend is very inconsistent: on one hand we have these terrorists who know perfectly well that they will be tortured to death if they get caught, and they act surprisingly calm to one of their comrades (who has vital information and weapons for their plans) gets too naive and gets caught. Shu meanwhile is a wimp in the bad way. To compare him with Mirai Nikki: there the lead is a wimp, but he knows he’s a wimp, and at the same time he has legitimate reasons for trying to survive. Here, I have no idea what it is that the male lead wants. On one hand he wants to be left alone, then he wants to help the terrorists again, but then he’s too scared to look people into the eyes… he doesn’t really seem to understand the situation he’s in.
The thing is also that I praised the first episode for looking gorgeous. The thing is, that even in this area this show can be eclipsed if it isn’t careful. Last Exile is well on its way to show better graphics than this series, Un-Go is well on its way with much better artistic direction, and the same goes for Chihayafuru. This show has the budget. It has the inbetween animation, but it doesn’t seem to want to do anything with it.
Rating: — (Lacking)]]> 
Oh, I loved this episode! In fact, I’d even argue that it was my favorite episode of all of the new series this season so far. The thing that this series has above all other shows this season, is how much details it has put into its stories and episodes. It’s incredibly creative; not just in its themes and setting, but also in how it sets up its stories.
This episode in particular was really well constructed, and it made perfect use of its time to play out; everything was perfectly foreshadowed. The characters involved were all interesting, and at the same time this series just continues to throw in interesting tidbits about its world. I like how the creators chose to evolve smartphones, and how people make use of technology after nearly the entire country has been demolished with little efforts to restore actual structures.
Smart androids are of course nothing new, but the context in this episode was excellent. I especially loved the ending of this episode. As the episode went on, I kept thinking: aren’t we nearly done yet? Why hasn’t this been resolved yet? The murder of this episode suddenly gets resolved in like 20 seconds and the episode ends. That was a very neat idea that really broke away from conventions.
Inga’s powers, I’m beginning to understand their appeal: at first sight they’re just a cheap plot device to resolve mysteries quickly, but they’re much more than that. This show really plays around with certainty: because of her, there’s always one thing that’s certain of each episode: the fact that her question will be answered in truth. It’s something that Osamu Tezuka also loved to play with.
The reason I’m a big fan of episodic series, is because they really have to create a compact and standalone story, for every single episode. They can’t just take one episode as a build-up or aftermath: they always have to be interesting and this format allows much more for experimentation than regularly paced anime. And seriously, Un-Go has been the best version of this in quite a while so far. Each episode so far has been different and very detailed. Every episode has been fun and interesting, to the point where so many details become clear only after a second watching. And in the big picture, it’s creating a very interesting post apocalyptic science fiction world, based on modern technologies. Which it then uses again as the basis for its individual stories.
This episode also was the first that wasn’t just standalone. This still was pretty much the story of one murder that got resolved at the end, but there still is the question of who originally murdered the father, and why the victim here got burned. That’s up for next week. I like this: instead of just focusing this week on build-up, the creators decided to deliver every single week, while building up at the same time.
The worst part of this series is its cast of characters. Most of the time my favorite series of a season has really dynamic characters that are fun to watch. In Un-Go however, they take a back-seat. They’re well acted… but pretty much static. They do their job so that the storytelling and setting can shine, and as long as they don’t get in the way of those, I doubt that I’ll mind them.
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]> 
The first Gaiden series was pretty much what you’d expect it to be: small and big side-stories focusing on Reinhart’s past. The second gaiden series promised to focus on Yang Wenli’s past (who by the way was my favorite character of the main series). It however did not turn out to be as I expected.
First of all, in Yang’s past there was always one event that really kept mentioned over and over again: the things he did on the planet of El Facil. It was one of the core themes of the series as it looked at what it means to be a hero. I expected a very detailed look at it, but instead the creators end up breezing through it in one single episode.
This is just a small nit-pick, though. Spiral Lbyrinth starts off with a huge 14-episode arc, and in that arc is invaluable for Yang’s character. It shows who he was as a kid and how he ended up in the military, along with how he grew. Where the big arc in the first Gaiden Series was typical LoGH, this one is far from it, and it turns into a historical analysis that’s very interesting to watch unfold. When the arc ended, I was really looking forward to see some more small back-stories of the guy to close off the series…
… and suddenly the show goes back to Reinhart again. In fact, Yang only appears in one more episode after that. It’s like the creators were thinking “No! The people want more Reinhart!” The last number of arcs of this series are still good, but overall they don’t match up to the rest of the series, especially when you compare them to the short arcs of the first gaiden series. They’ve got nice ideas, and especially the retriever has an interesting premise, but a little too often they just deal with Reinhart trying to deal with dumb nobles and officers. It doesn’t add as much as the first gaiden season. Thankfully the final two-episode arc is a great point to end the series with, and connect everything together.
Now, this series actually has a different animation team than a Hundred Billion Stars, A Hundred Billion Lights. The two Gaiden series were at one point actually produced right next to each other. The team behind the main series seemed to have taken care of the first, while the second has a noticeably different art style. This art style unfortunately is a bit less successful in hiding the animation flaws in the character models, and it’s also a bit too full of intrusive CG (yes, this was produced around the year 2000. 12 whopping years after the series started).
Overall LoGH can be divided into six major arcs, including the Gaiden series. Unfortunately, the final one seems the weakest one to me due to its reluctance to fully embrace its premise and how it didn’t set itself apart as much as the other arcs. I do have to say that the first half is a must-watch due to Yang’s background and I’d actually consider that one better than the big arc of the first Gaiden series.
I already suspected that the music in this series would be awesome when I realized that this show would have the same composer as Shion no Ou, but I’m really glad that in the end, this show did end up with an amazing and very strong soundtrack. This show is very emotional, and this soundtrack fits it perfectly.
Now, I have no idea why, but for some reason anime around board games in generally turn out to be amazing, so it took a lot of balls for Chihayafuru to try and challenge them. Overall, compared to Shion no Ou’s first four episodes it’s more exciting. However, Shion no Ou eventually turned into one of my favourite series thanks to its fantastic characterization. Compared to Hikaru no Go’s first four episodes, Hikaru no Go was better, but then again, Hikaru no Go did have some of its best episodes there, and became a bit stale in its middle part. Let’s see how this show managed to evolve once it enters its second half.
And god dammit that cliff-hanger! It wasn’t that it came from out of nowhere: you could see this twist coming based on the first episode. We don’t all stick with our childhood hobbies. That was a strong point it made here. In this episode, Taichi got pulled back in by Chihaya’s spirit. Arata however had something happen to him that made him lose interest. This episode gave no hints as to what that was, however. We’re going to have to wait a week for that?!
The big challenge for this show will still be to keep all of its matches interesting, and the relationship between the three main characters will be a key in this. This episode was still wonderful because of how it showed how Chihaya has grown. This series still needs to convince me what’s so great about Karuta. This isn’t a prerequisite: while watching Shion no Ou, Giant Killing and Hikaru no Go awakened my interest in Shougi, Football and Go, Touch, Ookiku Furikabutte and Cross Game didn’t really make me want to learn more about baseball. It would be a nice side-effect, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
Okay, I can see why people said that you shouldn’t pay attention to the plotholes in this series. If you’re trying to lure a terrorist bomber out of her shell, then don’t do it in a theme park full of innocent people who can get hurt!
In the first half, you could really see that this came from the same direcor as Shuffle (I have no idea why I fully watched that show). Heck, that fanservice scene was directly copied and pasted here. Here though, it was more than just a boring waste of time, because an episode like this was really needed to take a step back. The characters were nicely fleshed out, while at the same time the plot didn’t come at a stand still because enough went on with Uryuu Nenene. And holy crap that ending!
The gore in particular was disturbing, but in this episode we got confirmed what was hinted at in the first episode: that Yuno has killed before. Heck… since there is only one way in which “Happy End” could have been interpreted: if they started to live together, there is no way in whichi that room would have been unconcealed. She actually tried to kill her new boyfriend.
It’s good suspense and makes great use of its insane cast of characters. I also do wonder a bit about Deus ex Machina’s intentions regarding Yukiteru. I mean, from the looks of it he grabbed the most psychopatic characters he could find, and handed them the future diaries. So where does Yukiteru come in? I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually becomes some deranged mass murderer or something.
Rating: * (Good)]]>