Author: psgels

Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope – Week 30

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate, Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope



Nurarihyon no Mago – 30
Talk about a massive improvement here. There are the types of stories that should be slow-paced. Nurarihyon no Mago is not one of them. Another big disadvantage of the first season is how little time it spent on backgrounds, so right now this series is really catching up on that, with half of the second season consisting out of background and all. Junji Nishimura really did not fit this series: he should be busy with original stories. That’s where he really shines at. The snappy direction here is much better, especially in this episode. The art also looks much crisper. This could very well be the only actually good thing of Studio Deen this year.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 01
After many people recommended it, I re-watched the first episode of Steins;Gate and holy crap What the hell!? If you haven’t re-watched that episode by now: go and re-watch it. Don’t read the rest of this paragraph of analysis and just watch it. This episode did the opposite of what I expected and actually asked more questions than it answered. The big one is the message that Okarin sent to Daru: how the heck did that happen? How the heck did Okarin send a D-Mail when it hadn’t been invented yet? It’s going to be the key to save Mayuri, though: if Okarin never sent the message back to Daru, Daru would never have been able to warn Okarin, and CERN would never have been able to track them down. And holy crap, this show will also turn into a quest to save Makise Kurisu. I totally forgot that some version of Okarin actually tried to warn Makise Kurisu. Now… has the future Okarin created a freaking time-loop for himself? This plot just got even more amazing than it already has.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Sket Dance – 17
This arc was really strange. I really got the impression that it didn’t know what it wanted to do here: there was this huge build-up with the members of the Sket-Dan joining all different bands and having practicing for an upcoming school concert championship… and here this episode comes and throws in a bunch of illnesses and broken arms causing these bands to disband (no pun intended) immediately. It then turns into some moral life-lesson for a violinist as the three members just do the predictable and form a band themselves. I was really looking forward to see all of the different bands compete with each other, but instead this episode skipped across most of the acts for just a few seconds and the only one that we really got to see was this really cheesy J-Rock song in which Bossun suddenly revealed that he has the singing voice of a J-Pop Idol. This series always did so well in capturing school life, but to me, it felt like it didn’t really do this with the school concert. It all just felt too clean. The song that the Sket Dan performed was just too rehearsed (remember that these guys had very little time to prepare. I don’t care how much you practiced, you’re not going to get THAT good in that little time). It’s a bloody shame, because these school concerts are often very fun to watch. Especially because this one looked to be a REAL concert, unlike those silly unimpressive idol acts.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Usagi Drop – 04
Do note that I’m not guaranteeing to blog every series every single week in this kaleidoscope. This time I was merely late with checking out Usagi Drop’s episode, but there may be weeks where I just don’t have any inspiration about the latest episode. In any case, I like how the children in this series really sound like young children, rather than voice actresses trying to act really high-pitched. I also like that this episode introduced yet another single parent, with whom Daikichi can relate with. He’s by no means a perfect parent, but the tension between him and Rin is quite interesting to watch.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mahoujin Guruguru Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Ah, the nineties: a time where you still could make huge series based on a simple premise that aren’t kiddie shows. Mahoujin Guruguru couldn’t possibly have been made in today’s age: it’s a non-stop series of 45 episodes, devoted to nothing but RPG-parodies. And this review doesn’t even include the 38-episode sequel that aired six years later.

Let me tel you one thing about this series though: the jokes in Mahoujin Guruguru are quite brilliant. It may be that I’m a big fan of parodies and all, but even taking that into account I have to praise at how creative this series can get with its gags. This series is sharp, witty and has a great time poking fun at all kinds of RPG cliches. It goes far further than just having characters act silly or have them engage in quirky banter: this show is always looking for situations to make actual good and well thought out jokes and clever situations. This is definitely the biggest selling-point for this series.

The length also allows the creators to tell an engaging storyline that brings the characters to all kinds of places and worlds. The storyline here is pretty simple (bad guy evil. kill him), but the various subplots and side characters keep this series moving. There’s even a bit of character development, albeit nothing special, although it remains a nice twist to see that the creators actually used the RPG leveling-system for the two lead characters.

With the length also come a number of problems, though. The jokes of Mahoujin Guruguru are really good, but it does not have enough material for 45 episodes. The result? Running jokes and repetition, while refusing to repeat jokes that had the potential to be even funnier with more fleshing out. It’s not like this series suddenly features a dip in quality along the way: it’s pretty consistent with alternating its good jokes with its overused jokes and its jokes that just don’t work. That doesn’t prevent that from really weighing down on this series.

the mostt notable of the overused running jokes is the old man. This guy. This guy is beyond obnoxious: he will do everything in his power to annoy both the viewer and the characters. And he just. refuses. to. freaking. quit. In the same way there are a few more jokes that are used way too much, and on top of that there are a number of episodes that just aren’t interesting. I’d say: cut this thing down to about 30 to 35 episodes and you’d have a classic.

Right now, this series is fun, but long-winded. On one hand you don’t want to watch this if you’re looking for something exciting, because the good jokes are just a tad too far in between compared to today’s standards. If you want to watch a laid-back series and don’t care about time though, then this is a great recommendation for light-hearted fun. Most shows that claim to be just light-hearted fun hardly have anything that makes them worth watching. Guruguru however has plenty of them.

Storytelling: 9/10 – This show has aged: its pacing is a tad too slow for today’s standards. In terms of the joke department though, this is really, really good.
Characters: 8/10 – There is character development, but again: this is small for the standards of a 45-episode series. Then again though, it does have quite a likable cast that are fun to watch throughout the entire series. WITH a number of exceptions, though.
Production-Values: 7/10 – Again: dated. Very simple graphics and animation that doesn’t make use of this. Good Monster designs, though.
Setting: 8/10 – Has a ton of fun poking, subverting, averting and analyzing the RPG-genre.

Suggestions:
– Kero Kero Chime (This is what I’m talking about with more compact: the characters are a tad more annoying, but it is shorter and its good jokes to unfunny jokes ratio is a lot higher)
– Mysterious Cities of Gold

Blood-C – 04

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



Holy crap! The fights here just continue to get better and better. This episode once again upped the antes, with some stunning results. It really had me at the edge of my seat the entire time.

There of course was the danger of this series falling victim to the syndrome where the biggest budget is spent on the first episode. And I guess it is true that the animation is not as fluid as we saw in the first episode, but even taking that into consideration the action scenes are just stunning. This episode really surprised me at how far it went with its gore until the censors went crazy. The way the bodies of those fishermen (or whoever they were) moved when they were devoured was really well done, but the rest of the fight as well was just one giant struggle.

A big problem with this series is that the dialogue during the quiet bits isn’t that… interesting. Still, I don’t mind that at tall. One reason is because at this point I’ve got enough patience to wait until the good bits, but the other is that for me this series is really succeeding in building its atmosphere. The slice of life bits are really, really simple, but the atmosphere they create that way in combination with the contrasting dark parts of this series has really caught me in.

I also wonder: this series so far has really outright refused to share any background on just about anything that Saya has been doing. When will this be revealed, or is that going to be the task of the movie? At the very least Saya is something supernatural and that dog is no ordinary dog, but I do wonder when this show is going to start with its background. It’s rare for a series to have so little exposition in its first four episodes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouge Mono – 17

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



Oh god. We’ve reached the point now where Sasuke has become a Daimyou. A Japanese feudal Lord. He got his own area to govern over. An area he chose because its name sounded like “Olive” (the color, not the food). So now, he’s the Lord of Olive. If this guy isn’t eccentric, then I don’t know anymore. I can only imagine what he’s planning to do with it. Mind you: we’re not even at the halfway point of this series. There’s still so much that still has to happen (39 episodes for the win!).

Seriously though: some very interesting things have happened since the death of Oda Nobunaga: Sasuke has gradually been climbing up the ranks under the influence of Hashiba Hideyoshi. Under Oda Nobunaga he was just a messenger on the front lines, but with Hideyoshi things are completely different and he was able to grab much more influence by playing his cards right.

Heck, we see very little main characters like him, who actually end up having so much influence, unless we’re talking about nobles, royalty or other stuff that allows you to inherit everything you need from your parents or stuff like that. And most characters who do meet these criteria often try to keep it a mystery of how they made it to the point they are. Sasuke may be from an influential family, but the past 17 episodes really showed in detail that the biggest reason why he is at the place he is now thanks to his own abilities, connections and effort. His family only plays a relatively minor role, and his genes aren’t even hinted at.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mawaru Penguin Drum – 04

by psgels, posted in Mawaru Penguin Drum



Okay. That was awesome!

This really sends back memories to the episode in Utena, where Nanami tried out various plans to get rid of Himemiya. It was really bizarre and hilarious from start to finish, not to mention the hilariously over the top delusions that Ringo had. Finally there’s another series who does them right!

A date going wrong is nothing new, but this episode knew that and just went with trying to create the most bizarre and over the top ways for things to fail, playing around with things like “destiny” at the same time. Now THIS is what I consider to be a good romantic comedy: one with creative jokes that doesn’t just try to regurgitate the same things over and over again with characters who are basically just morons. The direction once again was just wonderful in this episode which made it all the more fun to watch.

The chemistry between these characters is also just amazing, and even when the characters aren’t doing anything there’s the penguins who fill in to keep things interesting; because of that there’s always something going on, and then this episode also brought in that skunk. With so many penguin references throughout this series it’s hard to guess whether it’s actually important or not.

Because that’s the great thing of the symbolism in this series: this series doesn’t just list a bunch of references; it actively plays with them, like the advertisement of the opera that sparked Ringo’s fantasies turning out to be related to her love rival, the penguin pictures, or how apples and trains keep returning in the actual narrative without any kind of forced plot device. Or take the train advertisements: the previous episode pointed to being smelly, and guess what? This episode has a skunk on the loose. Logically that must mean that the next episode will feature something getting stolen. The diary, perhaps?

What’s more, I’m also impressed that this show is already building up arcs, even though the current arc isn’t over yet. This episode suddenly revealed that Kanba has made quite a number of enemies through the girls he dated, and the creators are actually planning to turn this into a major plot point. I’m still really impressed at how good the writing in this series is!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

No.6 – 04

by psgels, posted in No.6



Okay, so this episode didn’t reveal the secret of Number Six. Instead, it went for character building. And it did that well.

My biggest surprise was at how much detail was put into Shion’s mother: I just thought that she was one of the token parents who was just set to disappear after the second episode. Here though, they went into her past, how she’s doing and had Shion contact her though Nezumi’s mice. Beyond that, we learned that Nezumi refused to talk about himself, but there were tons of hints to his character (and again a ton of hints at how his character change), the dog girl got some depth and overall this series still upholds its standards of pushing its story forward.

What I especially like here is how every episode so far has been significantly different in terms of themes and focus. This episode takes a look at the characters and the setting in a completely different way and it’s consistently changing and pushing its characters into different situations. With 22 episodes this really has the potential to become a classic. With 11 episodes it will probably be a very engaging series with a very open ending.

The animation also was really well done in this episode. There were very little still frames and a ton of movement, the background art was really well drawn, but also the people and dogs in the background were really well designed. Overall the question of the series with the best visuals is a tough one this season, unlike last Spring where the X-Men very convincingly took that award. In terms of fluidity and movement there’s Blood-C, in terms of consistency there’s Penguin-Drum, in terms of extravagance there’s Dantalian no Shoka and in terms of attention to detail and designs there’s this series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 17

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Talk abOUt a bloody moral dilemma here. Whereas the previous episode was all about Feyris, this one is all about Feyris. I had my doubts about her at first, but heck: this episode really gave her character a different twist by explaining what the message was that she sent back. Spoilers coming up.

So in order to save her father from being killed, Feyris sent a message to her father in ordedr to get rid of a bizarre coincidence that happened to her in the past. Or at least, this is what I made of it: she got kidnapped, at the same time that her father died in a crash. For some reason the kidnappers weren’t able to contact Feyris’ father in time, and my guess is that after that, Feyris probably used her inheritance to set up Akihabara.

Basically Feyris had to choose between her father and Mayuri. If she saved her father, he would still have had to deal with the kidnappers, and he would have gotten the message telling about the IBN5100. I have no idea where that one came from yet, but that is one message that will probably be impossible to erase. In any case, usually when anime pull something like this, they come with this convenient way that allows for both options to come true. Not here though: Feyris deciding to change the past back made all that happened into a bit of a dream.

I really have to praise the creators here by the way: this show isn’t spiraling out of control; it’s getting more and more entangled with itself. It’s currently trying to re-engineer the plot, to the point where the time machine never got made. This forces the creators to go back to all of the major events of the first half. Talk about an awesome plot.

by the same logic, the next episode should then delve into the gender change again. The episode ended with the IBN5100 still not present at the shrine, and this makes sense: it disappeared after the gender change, not after Akihabara’s change. We’re about to find out what the heck could have caused that to happen: why would the girl version of Ruka want to get rid of that machine?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Shiki – 21,5

by psgels, posted in Shiki



Throughout the Shiki series, there were these select times where this blue haired woman turned up. The last time was in a bathtub with a corpse, but we really didn’t know anything about her. This episode tells her story.

Having said that though, that particular story felt a bit too one-sided to me, and was the least interesting bit of this episode to me. I didn’t really “get” the insanity of this woman. Instead though, I loved just about everything that happened around her. This episode actually recapped the entire series from the eyes of some of the side-characters, tying things together in the process. It explains how the fire started, it shows a bit more about the family at the drive-by restaurant of the first episode (when that first episode aired I really thought that they would be important characters), we know who the asleep Shiki was in the house that Akira broke into. Oh, and the nurse also got stabbed through the heart. They didn’t show the process, but the aftermath was there.

What’s more is that Ozaki appears every now and then in this episode, and that surprisingly showed really well how his character developed through the series, and I also liked those tiny details like him trying to relax a bit after murdering his wife.

And so, Shiki is finally finished. There were a few plot threads that I would have liked to have seen a bit more of, for example what happened to Akira, or where that crazy occult woman went who once took over an episode, but overall it has been a wonderful series. Furthermore, I really wonder what exactly got this show 22 episodes of airtime in Noitamina of all things. What convinced the producers to go with what pretty much is a perfect formula if kept up with: Noitamina is big enough for this now.

I think it has a lot to do with the irony of Noitamina in Spring and Summer of 2010: it pretty much was the best half year that Noitamina ever had, delivering three utter classics with Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei, Sarai-Ya Goyou and Shiki, although unfortunately they pretty much flopped. My guess is that the producers are playing things safe for 2011 by not straying from the format they built up (which is something I can understand, after what happened to the Noise-timeslot), but I really do hope that 2012 will show more 22-episode series in the timeslot. That’s really something that can make a great timeslot even better.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 30

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



I glanced at some comments in the shoutbox that this episode was supposed to be amazing. Now that I watched this episode, I agree. The episodes of the third season have been continuously one-upping each other. And we’re only at episode four.

My memory could be wrong, but I think that this was the first episode where Natsume didn’t play the part of main character. Instead, we got to see everything from the point of view of a Youkai he once met as a child. And the way in which it did this was just sublime. It was full of those small encounters, and it really seemed to come from the mind of a youkai whose sense of time is different from ordinary humans.

The way in which the creators portrayed this youkai was just brilliant. Due to the nature of this episode, consisting out of a ton of small encounters, they were really able to nail her development and make her change gradually over time. Her inner monologues were also delightful to watch. It was nothing short of adorable.

It also seems that the creators are shuffling around chapters this time. That’s also the reason why I was so ecstatic when I learned who was going to be behind the series composition of this series: Sadayuki Murai. He pretty much was the best guy that they could have possibly gotten in terms of adaptations. For those too lazy to click the link: this is the guy who adapted the story for Boogiepop Phantom, Kino’s Journey and Mouryou no Hako, on top of writing the scripts for Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue. This guy is a GOD amongst scriptwriters. Natsume Yuujinchou San still is one of the most normal things he’s done, but even here it’s great to see how well the chapters to be animated have been chosen so far. This episode once again delivers a ton of development for Natsume and it falls perfectly in line with the previous three episodes. Heck, this episode’s message about Natsume growing up, changing and appreciating the things that he once found scary was really strong here. I’m really interested in what he can do with the rest of this series.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Ikoku Meiro no Croisée – 04

by psgels, posted in Ikoku Meiro no Croisée



Ah, Alice. This episode showed an episode fully dedicated to her… and I guess that she got better. It’s not like she’s an entirely typical spoiled brat, because she actually has a bit of a character beyond being conceited and all, but she still feels rather out of place. So I have to admit that I have no clue how the bourgeosie acted back in those days, but I really often feel like anime misses the mark while portraying really rich characters: they’re either perfectly flawless or conceited bastards with no middle ground. That lack of middle ground really is a problem.

This episode again was really adorable. For once we have a “running into bathing”-scene that actually makes sense and feels different from pure fanservice. Claude also is the first protagonist since ages who actually looked away as soon as he realized what happened instead of just gazing like an idiot. It’s a good way to show the differences in bathing. For more cultural differences, this episode also showed Yune introducing some Japanese food to Claude, after the previous episode’s onslaught of French cuisine.

And I guess that Alice does spice up this series a bit. As long as she doesn’t take over the series it’ll probably be fine. This, because I do wonder what this series has planned for the long run: how does it want to end? How far will the characters develop? Alice did do a bunch of great things to flesh out the main cast, and without her the whole picture of this series would be incomplete. Really the only problem with her that I have is the way she acts, not how she is.
Rating: * (Good)