Author: psgels

Hyouge Mono – 15

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



Might as well start catching up with Hyouge Mono’s latest episode, and really: it’s again great to see how elegantly this series creates its drama. This really doesn’t aim to be the most exciting series, but it brilliantly uses its subtle and slow atmosphere and characterization to deliver its drama… only to follow up with its facial expressions. Oh, those facial expressions: they’re still priceless after fifteen episodes.

The interesting thing is that they really feel apart of this show now, as in they’re not used as anti-climaxes or anything: I’m not sure how, but both the really well detailed facial drawings as the distorted faces contribute to this series. They’re often funny, but along with the pacing, music and direction they really bring out the best of these characters. This episode showed that as well, with a ton of talking, but perhaps just as much non-verbal communication.

It’s building up, but this again was the kind of build-up that doesn’t just try to stall for time until the next exciting bit, but also really tries to deliver a really good story. This episode both built up the tension between Sasuke, Hashiba and Senno, and already used this tension between them with great results. And of course we still have that black guy. On one hand he is a bit stereotypical, in the way that he again is this tough no-nonsense guy, but at the same time he is really well used with Nobunaga’s death.

Oh, and in terms of the tiny details: I like how this series actually keeps track of the hair of its characters: it actually grew back for both Hashiba and Sasuke. That’s rare, because usually when a character cuts his/her hair, it always stays the same length, even though significant time passes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

I’m Back

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Hey everyone, I’m back from my holiday to Germany. For those intereseted, some highlights include:
– Being completely overwhelmed by the Castle Neuschwanstein and the most beautiful views I have ever seen in my life.
– Meeting a ton f great people, including a Spanish couple, some architecture PHD students, some Belgian travellers, Dutch Students, English students,, a Vietnamese fashion designer, Americans from Oregon, New Jersey and a guy from Seattle travelling together with his daughter, a member of the Australian women’s soccer team as they were about to play the quarterfinals of the world bup, but most importantly Sasa, ChobitsChi and liangchaos. You guys were awesome and it was great to actually meet you in person.
– Walking outside of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, only to realize that I left my bag in the train. Having to travel to Rostock of all places to get it back.
– Completely randomly bumping into this huge building chock full of grafitti and indie art. I usually don’t like art museums, but this was one big exception and very impressive.

Overall: Germany. Awesome country. Awesome vacation.

In any case, for the next number of days I’ll try to catch up tot he anime I missed, and the comments you all posted, along with deciding which series I’m going to end up blogging this season, and how. The big question being which of the excellent series this season I’m not going to cover weekly.

Hyouge Mono – 14

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



The first half of this episode was nothing special, so I thought that this episode would take a break after the “action-packed” previous episode. Okay, so that turned out to be wrong. This episode was sublime. The acting in the second half of this episode was once again wonderful. Spoilers down below, for those who haven’t seen this episode yet.

Things obviously got hilarious once Sasuke showed up again. Seriously. This guy as a leader is just awesome, and Mitsuhide’s move on him had me in stitches. Not to mention his new look. Oh god. that came out of nowhere. It;’s going to take a while to get used to that…

But this episode really shined because of Akechi Mitsuhide. I’m really not sure what it is, but this series has an amazing sense when it comes to the death scenes. Yes, Mitsuhide dies in this episode, and I love how much time the creators took out in order to show this. This really allowed them to put in a ton of detail, from between his defeat, to him fleeing his castle, to the point where he eventually gets slain. And finally we get to see one of those scenes where someone takes forever to die, done really well. Akechi’s death is slow, but you can really see him get worse with every second. The visuals again were really good, and the voice acting once again was rock solid.

Seriously, with the Summer Season, Thursdays are going to be crazy: Noitamina, plus Penguin Drum, Blood-C and Hyouge Mono. It’s a wonderful line-up. It’s difficult to compare everything because the series this season are so incredibly diverse. There probably won’t be a series with acting as good and refined as Hyouge Mono: this show is just too good for that. However, there are plenty of other ways to stand out. Penguin Drum has its characters, Blood-C has its animation and pacing, Usagi Drop has its realism, No.6 has its setting, and in this way I could go on for the entire season. I have no doubt that this is going to be an awesome ride.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Showa Monogatari – 12

by psgels, posted in Showa Monogatari



So here too we’re nearly at the end. Unlike what I expected, it’ll focus on Kouhei’s father. It makes sense: it’s what this entire series has been building up for, but that does mean that his brother did not really get the time to show off his character. I really thought that he too would get an arc like Yuuko’s, but it pretty much stopped after his date failed.

This episode was build-up to that finale, along with Kouhei’s best friend suddenly announcing that he’s moving far away. That’s the thing with this series: every character’s story is linear, apart from Kouhei, whose is episodic. The stories around him are the least coherent. It’s an interesting mix, that would have worked if the acting was better.

The same acting also got in the way of this episode. I mean, having a friend move far away again is a situation that a lot of people can relate to. The acting during the goodbye scene though was just really bad. Especially Kouhei hammed it up, but the other kids also delivered cringe-worthy performances, and this is both in terms of the voice acting and the animation. What was meant to be a tearful goodbye ended up looking rather silly.

This episode also may have dropped the sickness bomb a bit too often when it kept hinting to both Kouhe’s father AND grandmother’s health. His father was the first to collapse, but I’m not sure what Grandmother’s health is really going to add at this point. I do like how this series keeps fleshing out all of its characters while building up to the finale, though: this episode again left no character really ignored. That’s pretty good, especially since it has been doing this consistently.

Father’s sickness has potential, though. It’s obviously a bit forced, but with the right character development it can make for a nice finale. But do give Kouhei a small role. That yell at the end of this episode felt so disinterested that I’m pretty sure that his voice actor is being forced by his parents to perform this and would rather be doing something completely different.
Rating: * (Good)

Some Quick First Impressions: Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Ni, Mayo Chiki and No.6

by psgels, posted in No.6, Some Quick First Impressions

Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Ni

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an idiot.
Oh god. The creators just completely gave up. I dropped the first season quite early on, but I refuse to believe that it was as bad as this first episode of this second season. This was completely dull in every single way. For some reason, the creators decided to introduce the new season with a beach episode, and a completely uninspired one at that. If this is supposed to be setting the standard, then I really don’t want to know what the rest of this season is going to be. Really, this episode somehow accomplished to not get even a chuckle out of me during the entire episode. It was just random unfunny banter, characters abusing their quirk that already was established in the first episode of the first season and the main characters trying to hit on girls while screwing up miserably. This seems to have been one of the most anticipated series of the season. Why? This was just like any other moe show, aside from perhaps some Shaft-esque visual ideas in the banter that looked suspiciously much like budget cuts.
OP: Boring song, but not the worst, and the visuals at least try out something interesting.
ED: A really bad joke.
Potential: 0%

Mayo Chiki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a cute girl who pretends to be a guy.
Now this was just stupid. It’s your standard bad fanservice comedy, but with the worst parts only enlarged. The result is a first episode that makes even less sense than usual. The entire premise of this series hinges on this girl pretending to be a guy, where for some reason it’s really bad if even someone found out about her. The problem is that this disguise is utterly terrible and yet this show tries to tell us that nobody figured it out by now. Heck, even when the main character catches her in the toilet (Locks? We don’t need no stinkin’ locks!) he still doesn’t get the hint, and needs to bump into her causing her shirt to burst open (no, really) in order to finally get the hint. The rest of this episode was filled with those bizarre leaps in logic, not to mention that the main characters is overly sensitive to females, making his nose bleed whenever they touch him. Who the hell found that a good idea?
OP: Why do these generic moe shows always need to have the exact same terrible OP?
ED: Again stolen from “Generic EDs 101”
Potential: 0%

No.6

Short Synopsis: Our lead character runs into a fugitive.
If there was one genre that I’d have to label as my favourite, it’d be the adventure/mystery genre. By far the most of my favourite series hover around those series, so because of that I was quite looking forward to this series. As it turns out, Number Six is an adventure series that’s really well acted. Against my expectations it takes its time to show the two main characters get to know each other, and as a result they’re both miles away from stereotypes, even though at first sight they may seem a bit cliched. With that, we come to a bit of a problem though: the pacing. This is a show with just 11 episodes; 12 if it gets lucky. At this point it’s impossible to say whether it knows what it’s doing due to this being a manga adaptation. However, if it can use its slow pacing, yet mysterious setting (that also was well portrayed from the eyes of a teenager by the way, and this episode only skimmed the surface) to actually build an 11 episode story, this can really turn into something special. It’s got the potential, a lot of attention has gone into both the characters and the setting, the soundtrack kicks ass: it has the ingredients. But yeah: manga-adaptation.
OP: Another good song that fits the show quite well.
ED: A simple ballad. Nothing special, but nothing bad.
Potential: 80%

Some Quick First Impressions: Mawaru Penguin Drum, The Idolm@ster and Usagi Drop

by psgels, posted in Mawaru Penguin Drum, Some Quick First Impressions

Mawaru Penguin Drum

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a sister with poor health.
And in the end, this was a wonderful first episode. There was a ton of different stuff that stood out here, but the most important part is that on top of having a ton of neat ideas, this also has an incredibly charming cast of characters. The acting isn’t as subtle as with Kami-sama no Memo-Chou or Usagi Drop, but the characterization is so well directed and colourful that these still are some of the best characters of the season. The different characters play off each other wonderfully, making actual good use that they’re siblings and know each other for their entire lives. Now, on top of that it has a smashing soundtrack, the best background art of the season (and it knows this), it has very strong direction, makes excellent use of repetition, it’s actually got a number of new visual ideas, the transformation sequences kick a ludicrous amount of ass, the plot twist in this episode was an awesome and unexpectedly delivered way to start the story off and the final second… just the final second. This series really knows how to combine its mostly light-hearted and enjoyable mood with dark plot twists. This. Has style. And what’s better is that there are still 23 episodes left.
OP: Perhaps a bit too mellow, but greatly stylish.
ED: Weird visuals and a great song
Potential: 95%

The Idolm@ster

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a cyborg Frenchman wearing a frog suit and riding a unicycle for all we know.
Unlike Uta Prince, The Idolm@ster actually tries out something new. The problem is that I have no idea whether that new idea it’s trying out is actually any good or well executed. Here’s the thing: this series takes the format of an interview: we have a guy with a camera running around, asking questions of all of the idols in this series in order to establish everyone. The guy with the camera is completely bland and doesn’t even speak (seriously: all his lines are just subtitles), and in this manner this series tries to show its huge cast of characters. Now, there are several problems with that. First of all: this series isn’t really clear what shots are shot by an in-story camera and which ones are out-of story shots: the guy walks around, you can see the girls talk to him and answer his questions, but the view jumps around so much, even to shots that are just completely impossible to film with an actual camera. This series doesn’t establish which ones belong to the camera guy and which ones don, unless the lead character also possesses magical teleport powers or something. Second of all: this show has a huge cast. There are like, 20 different characters. This show tries to give character to all of them, AT THE SAME TIME. This first episode is obviously nowhere near enough to make them anything more than blatant stereotypes, and the voice actors didn’t really make things better, as they pretty much acted out the exact stereotype that their character was meant to represent. And yes, there are quite a number of annoying characters here. Still: this is something new and I at least appreciate this series for going in a bit of a different direction, and the chaos of this episode did have its charms beyond the annoying bits. I’m a fan of series with large casts when done well, but the IdolM@ster is really going to have to put in effort to make everyone step away from their stereotype. It isn’t impossible though: there is still hope.
ED: Unfortunately, this one turned out to be nothing more than generic J-pop.
Potential: 50%

Usagi Drop

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is forced to live together with his aunt.
Usually introduction episodes are meant to give a taste of what’s to come. With Usagi Drop though, things are very different from usual: it starts off with a funeral. It shows people together who normally would never be together, it shows them in mindsets they usually would never be in, and most of the people we saw here in this episode are likely to never appear again. It’s definitely an interesting way to open up a story, and this episode really showed some nice things you can do with that format. There already was a lot of implied character development, plus the characters played really well off each other. This was realistic. The drama was really subtle: there was none of the overacting you usually see in anime. This episode especially rocked in how it let everything play off naturally: it didn’t force anything: it just established its characters and gave them the opportunity to let things play out themselves. In the next episode we should really see the direction where this series wants to head for, but this episode sold me already. This is solid like Noitamina should be. Now all that’s left is to actually create a full story for 11 episodes. Plus, this series does deserve plus points for again including a main character who isn’t in his teens or twenties.
OP: Finally another series that goes back to Noitamina’s tradition of weird OPs. It’s quite a charming one.
ED: Relaxing song with pretty neat images
Potential: 85%

Somne Quick First Impressions: Nyanpire, Kamisama Dolls and Morita-San wa Mukuchi

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Nyanpire

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a vampire and a cat.
Gonzo is back! Unfortunately, I do have to say that this is Bad Gonzo. This was just… very poorly produced and it looks more like the commercial for a crappy j-pop band. Here is the thing with this series: its episodes are only 4 and a half minutes long. Only 3 minutes are actual content. The rest consists of a 90-minute live action music video that’s supposed to be the ED. That’s 33 percent of this series! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a big percentage completely devoted to OPs and EDs, but the worst part is that the ED is pretty much the worst ED of the season. The dancing and choreography are all terrible, in the “we try to be funny but totally aren’t”-way. As for the actual content… it was pretty dull. It’s understandable that the animation is very simple, but the acting was really bad as well. The entire episode was the main cat looking for food, but any attempt of it to be cute didn’t work thanks to bad voice acting and timing.
ED: Live action mixed with traditional animation doesn’t necessarily have to be bad. But here it’s utterly terrible.
Potential: 0%

Kamisama Dolls

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a sister who can summon a god.
Here’s a show that realizes that it’s only got 12 episodes to work with! Dear god, it put a ton of stuff into just this one episode without feeling rushed (it does have very large mood-swings, though). It established the main cast, it gave them depth, it showed their background, it fleshed them out, it introduced the main villain and made him one heck of a force to be reckoned with, it did romance, comedy, action, mystery and adventure all together. This entire episode felt like a strong standalone thriller. The writing was rock-solid and the animation courtesy of Brains Base was excellent, the action scenes were awesome too and the few cliches that were there were made up by great characterization. It’s a bit of a shame that the promotional material only showed the main characters’ little sister: she’s like, the only teenager in the entire series so far, with the rest being adults.
OP: Holy crap, what a song! Ishikawa Chiaki’s vocals are amazing, the track itself is very inspired with this latin-ish theme and the visuals are based on a great visual idea.
ED: More traditional for Ishikawa Chiaki, but still a great song. Spoiling the next episode is a bit less of a good idea, though.
Potential: 90%

Morita-san wa Mukuchi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is shy.
Ah, that figures. Morita-san’s episodes are only 3 minutes long. I was really wondering how the heck the creators were going to deal with this TV-series when the OVA already was ridiculously poorly produced. Having short episodes makes this slightly more bearable, but this remains a gimmick series: it’s entirely about the lead character being shy, and this episode just consisted out of a few typical scenes where shy people have problems with. Being shy myself, I can understand where the creators are coming from, but it all just feels way too shallow. It just lists these scenes with predictable outcomes, its comedic timing misses the mark completely and the characters are just one-dimensional stereotypes who are entirely dominated by their quirk. It had its charms and at least this was much more bearable than the OVA, but I still fail to see the point in watching this.
OP: Really feels like it was thrown together at the last minute.
ED:
Potential: 10%

Fafner in the Azure Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Fafner in the Azure is another one of those series where a bunch of teenagers pilot to save the world. Unlike a lot of other series of its genre though: this series is actually aware of how many things are wrong with that, and actually provides a number of very good reasons for it, making it one of the core themes of this series, up to the point where this becomes a character study first, and a mecha series second.

If this show does anything right, it’s the way in which it explores its themes. This series is about so much more than just the atrocities of war: it’s about using children to fight for you, it’s about existence, and how other life forms view humans. The villains, the Festum, seem like your average brainless monsters at first, but as the show goes on they take on a very interesting role in the entire series. This show, is inspired. It knows exactly what it wants to do and delivers one heck of a tragedy.

As a character study, this series also really delivers on its characters. The cast is quite big, but this series makes sure to give everyone the time and opportunity to show off his character and develop. Soshi is a great main character to make this happen: he has presence as a main character, but at the same time he also gives his co-stars plenty of opportunities to stand in the spotlights. This doesn’t just go for the major side-characters, but also the minor ones: every named character has a very clear and inspired purpose in this series.

It’s a series that’s wonderfully crafted together. Now, it does use some techno babble at times, so some of the twists that depend on this may come a bit abrupt on this, but heck: this is the kind of series that looks generic on the outside, but has so many great ideas on the inside. If you’ve never watched a mecha and would like to know what the genre is about, this is a very good one to start with.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Well told, nicely paced, very good delivery of its plot twists, though a tad too much techno-babble at times.
Characters: 9/10 – A really well developed cast all around, ranging from the main to the side-characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Made in a time when 2D and 3D really did not mesh well, but the animation and visuals still are solid and look quite good.
Setting: 9/10 – Tons of great ideas and inspired themes and backgrounds.

Suggestions:
– Bokura no
– Bonen no Xamdou
– Star Driver

Steins;Gate – 14

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Okay, so I do think that Okabe was overacting a tad too much in the first half of this episode. This stands out more than usual because the acting in this series was always so great, but that’s where the melodrama got a bit too much, especially because it caused him to not think of the obvious solution of using the time machine to travel further back in time. I also think it was a bit cheap for this episode to just “announce” that Okabe tried every possible way to save Mayuri: I understand that it was for time issues, but I would have liked to have seen Okabe to try some more and exploit other possibilities.

On the other hand though, this episode got right back on track when Christina returned to the main picture. Her level-headedness was exactly what Rintarou needed, and the plot turned really interesting with the actual introduction of leaping beyond the 2,5 hours of the previous episode. The big twist at the end that Suzuha turned out to be John Titor makes perfect sense. The prospect of severely altering time in the next episode also makes yet again for one hell of a cliff-hanger.

I do have to wonder what Suzuha meant with that the Y2K problem was one of the moments where world lines greatly converged based upon the choices made. Of course I was only 12 when it happened, but was it really as important as the Gulf War? I rather would have guessed that 9/11, the invention of the internet or the birth of social media would have counted as that.
Rating: ** (Excellent)