I feel that episodic series tend to be dismissed for the wrong reasons. “It has no story”? What do you mea, these series are filled with stories? Personally, I find that an episodic series needs to have two elements in order to really succeed:
1) Strong episodic stories.
2) Something to tie the show together.
Dantalian no Shoka has nailed one of them.
Basically, this is a show that explores various people who were given strange powers through what this show calls “Phantom Books”. These stories start off a bit clumsily, but amongst the episodes there are some real gems to be waiting. Some of the people highlighted are well fleshed out and portrayed, and when it wants to, this series can really create a great atmosphere to support them. These stories are all varied, interesting and aside from a number of duds here and there, succeed in telling their story. I’d say the ratio of episodes that don’t work to the ones that do is about 1:2.
Ironically, the main characters are some of the least interesting characters of the series. They feel more like plot devices that the show needs in order to be able to move from story to story than actual characters most of the time, and their development is just shallow, and they fail to really tie this series together or give it a satisfying conclusion. Especially Dantalian herself is just an annoying brat who spends every episode randomly insulting people and not really doing anything at all to contribute to the story.
Standalone though, the episodic stories and characters are more than enough to make this one worth watching. On top of that, Ganiax threw in a lot of eye candy as well, with some gorgeously animated action scenes (oh, ad Osamu Kobayashi also pays a visit to do one episode). The main couple is annoying, but this show has more than enough to make up for it.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – An excellent array of strong individual storylines, though this series’ attempts to tie them together doesn’t really work. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Dull major characters, minor character. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – Gorgeous visuals, animation that isn’t afraid to try out stuff. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – A bit far-fetched at times, and the phantom books in the end are just mcguffins, but when you look at each episode individually, their settings are well fleshed out and described. |
Dantalian no Shoka – 12
Well, that was a bit of an anti-climax… this show ends with the three main libraries… sortof meeting. Again, it’s the “let’s hope for the second season that’s most likely never going to come”-episode. The atmosphere was nice, but Huey’s near-death felt shallow to me, and in fact this episode didn’t really amount to anything, as I never really got what Dalian’s alter ego was supposed to be. At the beginning of this series I praised this series for Dalian and Huey having a solid chemistry where they both were equal to each other, compared to Gosick and Kamimemo. But here’s the thing: they never changed, making them end up the worst couple of the three. Is it also the worst series of the three? That’s something that I won’t say. Its individual stories were great enough to make up for that.
In any case, this marks the end of my Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope. It was an interesting experiment, though I won’t be doing a kaleidoscope for the upcoming Autumn season. At this point I’ve got 7 shows that I’m pretty sure of that I’m going to blog, while I’m still heavily debating about the final three,
Rating: * (Good)
Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji
This was a very bizarre ending in which especially Kaiji himself went completely out of character. I mean it had it coming that he’d get screwed over, but he started acting like a complete saint here, only to blow all of the money he had left on pachinko. This episode showed that over the course of 50 episode… he hasn’t really learned anything. Also, here’s the thing about manly tears: they work well when well timed. These past few episodes have been nothing but grown men crying over and over. I mean, show some restraint, people! At least the first season had a great ending, but this just felt weird.
Rating: – (Disappointing)
Kamisama Dolls – 13
This ending was better than I expected. Instead of going with some cheesy fight, this was almost immediately resolved and instead the entire episode focused on Kyouhei. Much more interesting to close this show off, even though the story is nowhere near finished. I know that the end of this episode hinted at a second season, but I’m not going to buy it until I see an actual confirmation of that. There have been too many series that pulled the same, and yet never came with a sequel. Overall when you look at the series that 
For a long time I wondered what happened to the good parts of Xebec. I mean, it’s been ages since they released anything. Now however, I know: they were working on this movie. This was one heck of a roller-coaster ride.
The Fafner TV-series set itself apart with the way in which it took the “teenaged mecha”-formula, and executed it well. Not partially well, like what Ao no Exorcist is currently doing, they really came up with a great setting, premise and storyline for their run. This movie carries on this tradition, with a significantly upgraded budget. This is a real feast for the eyes and especially the action scenes are just gorgeous. Oh, and the music kicks even more ass than it already has.
Heaven and Earth makes terrific use of its time. The TV-series did enough building up. Using this, it can really deliver climax after climax after climax, with a very good balance between the quiet scenes that never drag out. On top of that though, it does manage to push the themes of the TV-series further, like the enemy, who is trying to understand human nature, or the way in which the main cast uses children, just because they happen to have special powers.
This movie is an action movie, but it puts its characters’ emotions above all else. It successfully introduces a new cast of characters who manage to show themselves off, without taking over the series in favor of the main cast. The main characters themselves also have some great scenes themselves, while also giving plenty of time for the side characters to shine (another great point of the TV-series that managed to carry over). The creators really tried to turn this into an emotional roller coaster, and combined with some excellent character development, they really succeeded.
This has one downside, though: it refuses to explain most of the stuff that happens. I mean, it describes what happens, but as for the why behind everything this is a movie that really likes to leave its viewers into the dark.
Let me stress this to the people who haven’t seen the Fafner TV-series: watch that one first. Heaven and Earth is really meant as a continuation, not to mention that it’s filled with spoilers from the TV-series. If you have watched the TV-series and liked it however, then there is no reason not to watch this movie. It delivers an excellent emotional climax to an already excellent franchise.
This again was a pretty bizarre episodes, meant to extend the influence and fame of the main cast when Hashiba Hideyoshi opens what could be called an exhibit of all sorts of tea ceremony props. A museum was made with all kinds of ceramics that he collected over the series, and what seems like an entire village of tea ceremony houses.
Buy far the strangest was of course Sasuke’s tree-house, which inevitably crumbled (though in quite an hilarious way), but also the strange old man made an interesting reappearance.
What really sold me on this episode was how wonderfully Sasuke is enjoying all of the attention cast on him. At this point, he really is a famous character, even though he too still is in Sennou Soueki’s shadow. The acting was once again just wonderful: 24 episodes and it still hasn’t dulled in. The characters still are as sharp as they ever were. Also, who was that kabuki-player?
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
