Author: psgels

Ao no Exorcist – 10

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



So, with the season almost ending, it’s time for the short series to conclude and for the long series to raise the stakes for their halfway climax. Ao no Exorcist instead takes a detour into the story of a cat, with next week looking to be a beach episode. Okay, I did not expect that.

While I hold my breath for that beach episode though, this episode was really good. It was both something different, surprisingly heartfelt and found a very interesting way to focus on Rin, Yukio and their father again. It’s a simple and quiet episode that has a really small focus, but it really made things work.

Plus, that cat was just adorable. Its story is just that it’s sad that its master is gone, but relating this to Rin, added to some undeniable charm to it. It’s going to be interesting to see what it can do as Rin’s familiar.

Also, this episode had some of the best chemistry between Rin and Yukio so far. Compared to for example Soul Eater, the latter may have been funnier or more enjoyable in its first episodes, but it just had no content, and quickly got boring once the characters’ novelty wore off. With this, the creators are taking their time, but right now, it’s starting to pay off more and more.

However… beach episode. You’d better know what you’re doing!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Karigurashi no Arrietty Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Oh heck, Studio Ghibli did it again. With this, they created yet another must-watch for all ages. If you like family movies, it really is a must-watch.

Now, Ghibli makes two kinds of movies: epic adventure movies, and slice of life movies that often have fantasy adventure themes. Arrietty belongs to the latter, as it shows how a young boy meets a fantasy creature known as one of the borrowers: tiny people who borrow small stuff from humans in order to survive. That kind of set-up is common, but rather than “boy meets fantastical creature”, this movie makes it “fantastical creature meets boy”. Unlike the vast majority of these kinds of movies, we follow Arrietty, how she lives, where she lives, and what she does. And dear God, this movie is good at that.

This movie is meticulously detailed in order to make its setting come alive. Nearly the entire movie just takes place in one house in a small forest, but the creators put a ton of small ideas and detail into just about every scene. The amount of things that these borrowers create from the stuff that they borrow from the humans is immense, the movie is full of all kinds of different kinds of animals, ranging from bugs to mice and birds. It’s a lush movie that just sparkles with life wherever it goes.

Also: the animation. Let me say that out of all of the Ghibli movies not directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, this one has the best visuals. The backgrounds in particular are just gorgeous, but what feels unique about the animation is how the creators succeeded in showing the difference between large and big. I mean, the main character is about ten centimetres high. When big things are around her, they really look BIG. Especially the way in which humans are animated next to her: that was done in such a way that I have never seen before.

There’s only one major weakness in this movie, and that is some forced conflict near the end of the movie. I’m not talking about the actual ending (which really was great), but the climax before that, in which this movie suddenly turns into one of those preachy environmentalist movies for ten minutes with a conflict and villain that just don’t fit the mood at all. It’s an act that feels like it doesn’t belong in the movie in terms of tone and themes, not to mention that the ‘villain’ is pretty pathetic.

The rest of the movie is environmental, but not at all preachy. Instead it focuses on the subtle tensions between coexisting species, not pointing a bad finger but rather letting everything resolve itself naturally. It’s got some wonderful characters to back this up with (again, the animation really brings these guys to life) with really good voice acting. Despite that one hiccup near the end, it’s a wonderful watch.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Down to earth, well paced and mature, with perhaps one forced bit near the end.
Characters: 8/10 – There may not be much interesting development, but the acting is excellent, and the characters really come to life. It’s got a bad villain, though.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Gorgeous artwork, detailed beyond belief, not to mention the wonderful soundtrack.
Setting: 9/10 – Immensely detailed in describing the life and environment of the main character. There are a ton of ideas in just about every scene.

Suggestions:
– Kiki’s Delivery Service
– Furusato, Japan
– Porco Rosso

Deadman Wonderland – 10

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



I’ve heard that the anime skipped a lot of content, so where exactly are we at this point? Have we reached the halfway point of the manga, or did this thing race so fast through the story that we’re already at the end?

I don’t read any manga, so I can not comment on how good that manga must have been, but at this point I consider Deadman Wonderland to be a good adaptation. I disagree that cutting out a lot of material makes it a bad adaptation: that’s just something that was unfortunately inevitable considering the difference in length of both mediums. Instead, I’m much more interested in whether the creators actually managed to tell a story, or whether or not they’re just randomly copying and pasting events without thinking of how they’d translate over to animation. What Manglobe is currently doing with TWGOK, for example, or the way in which Yumekui Merry tried to resolve itself last season, or an even better example: Togainu no Chi; those are what I consider to be adaptations who seriously missed the mark. They just don’t come together at all. I do admit that this series doesn’t show Manglobe at its best, though: they really need to make another original story again, because that’s what they really shine at.

Having said that though, this episode wasn’t as good as the previous ones due to Ganta being a bit too emo through its course. And angst on its own isn’t bad or anything, but it rather prevented him from doing anything. The beginning of the episode also created drama using failure in communications, which really aren’t my favourite. I can understand that it wasn’t obvious to everyone that the microchip was bugged: they clinged to it as their ticket out of the hellhole that is Deadman Wonderland, and with everything that was thrown at them, an extra explosion doesn’t sound weird. But why didn’t Shiro just say that the chip was bugged? There would have been much better ways to keep her out of the scene that followed it, although that bit of tension between her and Ganta was really good.

Also, surprisingly this episode did what I hoped: it brought life to the surviving members of the resistance. It didn’t show their background or anything, but in the aftermath scene this series surprisingly treated them not like disposable test dummies, but rather as actual characters. The kind of people you can have a nice chat with.

And really, apart from Ganta and perhaps that information leaking dude (who lost his mind a bit too much here), I enjoyed all of the characters here. For me, they’re a huge strength of this series, remaining genuine despite the madness that gets thrown at them.
Rating: * (Good)

X-Men – 11

by psgels, posted in X-Men




Hostages are a very common trope, but then again it’s no big surprise because it’s often the most logical thing to do. You have a bunch of people who don’t want to listen to you? Just threaten to kill their best friend and they’ll squeak differently. With all tropes, there are a ton of ways to do this, whether good or bad. The first half of this episode of the X-Men showed a bit of a strange version though.

The guy with liquid powers could have killed Cyclops, Sasaki and the others that he caught easily if he wanted to. the result was that Storm and Cyclops just stood there while they easily could have zapped everyone, and the only one who did something was Hisako, being the only one stupid enough to not understand the implications of her actions.

This is where Wolverine (the TV-series) stands above the X-Men. Wolverine’s storyline was simple but effective, and was really just a bunch of powerful men duking it out for the sake of romance and stopping at nothing until they achieve their objectives. In the X-Men, the plot is dictated by teenaged emo. That’s just… less impressive.

Having said that though, this episode once again looked absolutely gorgeous, and the adults here were as good as ever. In terms of building up this series only manages to increase its tension and atmosphere, exactly as an action series should. Compare this to Sengoku Basara Two, which spent a ton of time building up to a final episode that ultimately was a let-down. Despite its plot issues, this show remains engaging and well told.

Oh, and this episode also showed a new trailer for Blade, and unfortunately it seems like the acting is going to be a problem again. That’s the thing with Madhouse: they always have great and unique visuals and character designs, but because of that they get really hard to animate consistently. The footage was only a few seconds long, but that was enough to show that the animators didn’t avoid this and the show will be full of stiff acting again. It’s a shame, because the X-Men avoided this really well.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gosick – 22

by psgels, posted in Gosick



When I first saw that Inspector de Blois guy, and I really thought that he would be just this silly side-character. Especially the way in which he behaved in the first half of this series. But whoa: he’s actually become a great villain here. This episode just showed that he resents Victorique quite a bit

In any case, the creators chose a fitting backdrop for the finale of this series: the legend behind it is fully devoted to the bond between Kujou and Victorique, playing with the prophecy from that old guy, plus the stakes here are the involvement in the second world war. It’s good, epic and not too mundane for the sake of epicness, so it’s definitely a good start for the finale of this series.

I also liked the quiet bits in this episode. Christmases in anime tend to look a lot like each other, so it’s interesting to see all kinds of new rituals and traditions here. The dress-up party was especially nice because for once everyone just forgot their prejudice to Kujou and Victorique. It’s more symbolic than that it actually makes sense, but it’s definitely a nice touch.

Overall, I really like adventure series, and Gosick’s second half really fueled that interest for the past season. As a series overall it definitely has its problems, though. The second half introduced wondrous stories, interesting legends and all sorts of interesting ideas and places. In the first half, there were only two arcs that did that too. The others were just uninspired. I can understand the characters taking their time to grow (but even there their stupidity’s absence would have made this series even better), but what was the reason of not using these episodes in the first half to experiment a bit? Tell imaginative and creative stories, rather than just waiting for the second half to arrive. In fact, most of the build-up was done by the two major arcs of the first half: the ship arc and the village arc. The others just fleshed out the cast, and that’s something that they could have done much better.

Overall though, against my expectations Gosick was worth it in the end. The wait was very much rewarded by these past arcs. The ending is probably not going to be the best part of this series, but I’m nevertheless intrigued in how far this series is willing to go.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouge Mono – 11

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



What the hell? Another new OP?

I could understand the first OP change, after the break up of the band who performed the first OP. The second OP was a pretty logical choice seeing the time constraints. The third OP though… is just pure madness. It’s like the creators went “ah, we’re doing these random songs anyway, so we might as well roll with it”. The new song is just completely bizarre and random. Talking about something completely different. This really sounds like they let a cat walk over a keyboard and constructed a nice melody around it. And yet for some reason I like it a lot. It’s been a while since an OP this pleasantly surprised me.

Anyway, this episode continues with the aftermath of Oda Nobunaga. It’s clearly build-up, but it nevertheless retained that great atmosphere, and did a great job of getting everyone to prepare for the inevitable chaos and run for power that will ensue. Mitsuhide realizes that his position is very frail, and Sasuke meanwhile gets a new position offered by his brother. I couldn’t exactly pick up what he’s going to do because the dialogue is so freaking complex, but I understood enough that this could very well become the glory that he always hoped for.

Also, more wtf-news on this series: it just distanced itself from the manga it’s based on. What the hell? Wasn’t this supposed to be an incredibly accurate adaptation? From out of nowhere, the official site lists the manga author credited as “original scheme”, instead of “original story”. They refuse to say exactly why, so did they get into a fight or something? I mean, I can understand why Clamp got angry at them for Tsubasa Chronicle and all, but with such an accurate adaptation?

The weird question right now is of course: what’s going to happen to this series? Will it just continue adapting the manga like it has always had, or will it in a few episodes go into its own direction? It’s here where those 39 episodes really are going to be interesting, because it’s got plenty of time to resolve all of these issues. With Bee-Train, it’s definitely going to be interesting.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – 10

by psgels, posted in The Money of Soul and Possibility Control



Yup, the ending is going to be really important for this one: how will this get solved? That’s the big question. That will be the biggest factor in whether this show will leave a bad taste or not. The thing is that Mikuni is not one of those stereotypical villains who are evil for the sake of being evil: he made the decision to drastically alter the country and tighten the grip of the Midas Money on Japan, because the alternative would be even worse. What can Kimimaro and the information broker offer to prevent bankruptcy?

If it hits the right marks however, then this will end up as a really good series. The interesting thing with C is that we were all obviously expecting the same directional style as with Mononoke and Kuchuu Buranko, and yet it was very different. And yet, the direction in this episode was once again really good. The use of music got even better than it already was, it kept changing and keeping things dynamic while at the same time keeping things together and developing its plot in one direction. This climax so far has been rushed, but not random, and yet it was packed with neat ideas worthy of a climax, rather than just let everything devolve into just “more power!” like anime often pull this.

I am still surprised that this show hasn’t self-destructed yet, though. Lately, I’ve gotten very sceptical of series that try to stuff too much in too little. Especially adaptations suffer from this (Togainu no Chi, Yumekui Merry, Kuragehime, Sengoku Basara, Durarara), but also original stories like Fractale and Sora no Oto tripped up pretty badly in their final stretch. Interestingly, the cause of this seems to generally be half-assed pacing: the shows misuse their time, plowing on slowly and forgetting to build up vital plot points, or suddenly force a huge increase of pacing when they suddenly realize that they need to end on something epic, ending up with too little time to actually pull that off. C doesn’t have that, or so far at least.

It will depend on the next episode to see whether the creators really knew what they were doing, but so far I can see the layout of this series: first it took its time to flesh out the world with its random cases, showing a different part of is concept with every episode, while it actually started in time gaining momentum for its finale.

I mean, this show has still flaws: there’s a lot of stuff that came out of bloody nowhere, and that lack of ability to explain this stuff is unfortunate due to the short length. That black card in particular came out of nowhere and while it’s understandable that that clown would have some sort of trick like that, it would have been nice to have seen that announced beforehand. This episode also again has Kimimaro winning against all odds and I’m still not sure how he exactly did it. This was a flaw that had it coming from the beginning, and unfortunately wasn’t avoid. But those action scenes looked damn cool though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai. – 10

by psgels, posted in Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai



What a wonderful penultimate episode. Everything is just culminating to that final climax of this series. Once again, this episode was just full of emotions and it continued to push its characters forward.

It was clear that the fireworks arc was going to be an anti-climax: there was no way in which that really would be Menma’s wish, but damn: this episode nearly made me believe that ti was. The build-up to the eventual launch was really quite sad, especially with Jintan not wanting her to go away. Yet at the same time, his personality would never have made him actually stop the launch. Beyond that though, everyone was somehow deeply emotionally involved in the launch. The climax, now that Menma didn’t disappear, is looking out to be amazing.

Overall, I’m going to wait until next week before claiming whether or not this was my favourite show of the year. This season also has a lot of series that go past 13 episodes for once, so I also can’t say yet whether it’s going to be the best series of the season. But what I can say is that it has the best eleven episodes of the past season. It left no moment wasted, it always sought to give more depth to its characters and the characters always made sure for hard-hitting and confronting drama. It’s exactly the kind of story that belongs in Noitamina.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Steins;Gate – 11

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Looking back on this season, I really have to say that its big strength is storytelling: showing interesting stories, and deliver them well, ranging from the wonderful pacing of Ano Hana, the impeccable timing and dialogue of Hyouge Mono, the great ideas of Tiger & Bunny and C, the outrageous Deadman Wonderland and Kaiji, the action-packed X-Men, the really well detailed Hana-Saku Iroha, and of course Stein’s Gate with its excellent delivery of its plot twists and atmosphere.

This episode took a step away from this focus in order to focus on one of the main characters, Christina, and show her background. At least, or so I thought until Okabe got that phone message out of nowhere, followed by a very artistic and stunning piece of animation about him running back. Seriously. That was good. That’s how these artistic animation bits should be used: instead of random clutter they bring out even more out of the characters than what conventional animation would be able to do.

Really, the ideas of this series rock. It’s also the way it gradually became clear at the end that Cern (I still refuse to call it Sern) pretty much let themselves get hacked (probably using its data as bait in order to find out about the microwave). I also like how this show is being really vague on who exactly is from Cern, and whether or not that mysterious message sent to Okabe was from one of them. Also, did Okabe check the number where it came from? It didn’t look like it came from anyone he knew, or there must be characters in this show using multiple cell phones.

As for the annoying parts in this episode, I’m not going to list the “accidentally walking in the shower”-scene because it was well built up for once. It’s just about the most terrible twist you can pull right now, but at the very least I am glad that at least the creators put some meaning behind it as an anti-climax. Seriously, this is more than just about any other show that pulled this crap during the past number of years. Instead, what annoyed me about this episode was the point where the characters started talking in various internet memes I didn’t understand up to the pint where the dialogue became hard to follow due to all of the random rambling.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Shiki – 20,5

by psgels, posted in Shiki



This episode wrapped up the stories of some of the side characters of this series. None of the main characters made any appearance, and I can understand why it was cut for the sake of the TV-series’ main characters. Yet, it’s great to see this part animated and that the creators somehow managed to find a way to squeeze this in, because this episode once again was just amazing.

One of the strengths of Shiki was that it didn’t just make its main characters come alive: it did this with the whole village. It’s because of that that this episode worked so well; they even introduced a new central character whose context in the series only makes it even richer. With the Awesome Beard Guy out of the way, the squadron that hunts down the remaining Shiki all have their own way in which they go on their rampage.

On top of that, the blue haired Shiki also received an amazing end. It’s especially her development that works well here, especially considering how she used to be one of the major side villains in the first half of the series. She completely changed now that none of her family members ended up rising back up.
Rating: *** (Awesome)