Author: psgels

OVA Impressions: Kizuna Ichigeki

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Young Animator Training Project




Kizuna Ichigeki is… weird. I mean, on one hand it is a martial arts OVA with strange character designs (designed by the guy who also designed the characters of Mind Game, by the way), but on the other hand the context in which it happens is just so bizarre and random that I’m not even sure whether the creators knew what they were doing.

This short shows the debut of Ascension, a completely new animation company. Overall, this short mostly impressed me because of its visuals: those were really good. The big problem here is that they didn’t get themselves a good scriptwriter.

In between the fights are these silly dialogues between the characters that are what I suspect supposed to be funny and charming, but mostly just end up random blabbering. Especially the grandfather is annoying: he’s the kind of guy who keeps making jokes because he thinks he’s funny, while he’s actually really obnoxious. The bad guys also have the flimsiest reasons to actually try to fight the lead character and serve no purpose whatsoever beyond being meat for fanservice. Just about the only thing that the scriptwriter did right was portraying the themes of family: together the cast does form quite a happy and sincere family.

Also, the cat. That freaking cat. That was by far the biggest “what the hell” of this short.

The actual animation however is excellent. The fight scenes in particular are fun and exciting, and a lot of care has gotten into the choreography. The way in which people move around and react to each other, it’s all been done very intricately and the animation really brings the characters to life. I see a good future for Ascension. They just need to find a bunch of good writers.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,5/10

OVA Impressions: Ojii-San no Lamp

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Young Animator Training Project




The Young Animator Training Program is an initiative to create four standalone OVAs with the purpose of training new animators. Each short would be handled by a different studio, and each would get a certain budget for it. An excellent idea. Ojii-san no Lamp is Telecom Animation Film’s result. You know, the people from Secret of the Cerulean Sand, Uninhabited Planet Survive and Moyashimon.

For this OVA I was expecting this short slice of life story of Japan around 100 years ago, in which we would see a young boy and his grandfather’s lamp. You know, the kind of children’s slice of life that you see more often. As it turns out, I totally wrong about this. Instead, it paints a picture of the life of an oil lamp salesman. Only the first half of this OVA is about his childhood, the meat of this OVA is about him as an adult.

It turned out to be a poignant story, about the use of light in pre-world war Japan and the technological advancements. It’s not something you usually see, and this OVA actually has this great balance between its focus on lamps and the titular grandfather, with a strongly written ending. It may be a bit too dramatic at times, but this is nothing major.

As for the animation, we can expect nice things from the people who animated this in the future: the inbetween animation here is quite good and life-like. It’s perhaps nothing special for a seasoned veteran, but this definitely was a great start for inexperienced animators.
OVA Episode Rating: 8/10

Letter Bee – 49

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



You know what? There have been a lot of anime based on wonderful stories that unfortunately didn’t have enough time to animate these entire stories. Leaving aside the series like Giant Killing that managed to pick a logical point to end, and series that just ended up rewriting the entire source material, Letter Bee turned into one of the better attempts to wrap up its story. It’s obvious that the final quarter of this series isn’t its best, but at the same time: I can’t really fault it for anything here, aside from just not being as good (and perhaps being a bit sloppy in the adventure department at times).

This episode again: granted, it was pretty much a “now that we made up let’s all fight the big evil together”… but it just did everything so solidly. Everyone pretty much acted like you’d expected. Sure, it was a bit disappointing to see Dr. Thunderland turn good again, right after it was revealed that he worked for Reverse, but seeing the nature of Reverse I don’t really blame him to have a change of heart either. He probably had a few talks with the twins, who also had all the reasons to eventually step away from them. Also, Largo went in to get the help of Maka? I mean, why not? If there’s anyone who can stop that Cabernet it would be Maka, and after Nichi’s visit I don’t see them refusing a genuine request from someone like him.

Everything pretty much flowed into each other based on how pretty much the entire cast has matured over the series and stopped caring about these revenge plans that really harm more than are useful. Pretty much the only one who didn’t develop was Lawrence, who I liked the least in this episode. Next episode we’ll see whether or not that action of his was pointless.

The creators pretty much ended up wrapping up the story of Letter Bee by instead of having things spiral out of control, they tried to reduce the tension between the characters. And the way in which they did this… it was actually pretty plausible and worth the large amount of episodes they put into it. The plot is less exciting, but at the same time there also weren’t any cheap plot twists, rushed conclusions, or downright ass-pulls. The plot still plays around with morals, but the characters are brought together through this single evil entity of the Cabernet. The Cabernet alone is a pretty lousy villain of course, but as a plot device it did its job pretty nicely.

If only this series had more episodes, though.
Rating: * (Good)

Bakuman – 23

by psgels, posted in Bakuman



So, one advantage of that slow pacing is that the episodes that DO have a lot of stuff happening really end up standing out. This episode really caught me by surprise and it was one of the best episodes yet. The change of pace was really welcome, and it showed a ton of new stuff.

Basically the entire premise of this episode was that it showed the start of a whole bunch of new manga from nearly all of the important characters. Also, finally we actually got a good glimpse of what the stories were that they wrote were like. They were only short blurbs, but it’s great to see actually something more than some random pictures here and there of which we don’t know how they tell their story.

The reactions of everyone were what sold this episode to me, though. This episode was full of emotions. Mostly cheerful ones, making this a very uplifting episode. Ideally I would have wished that the entire series was this dynamic, but at least we’re seeing the build-up really pay off at this point now. At this pace though< i can really see the second season becoming awesome. If it makes good use of the build-up of this first season and remains as dynamic as its best episodes then it can become an excellent coming of age series. In any case, if it wasn't for that second season, then I this really wouldn't have been a good place to end this series... Rating: ** (Excellent)

Wolverine – 11

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



Yes, this is the underdog of the season. I’m really glad that I decided to blog it, especially after the disappointment that was Iron Man. It’s nowhere near the best of the season, of course and I know that it doesn’t match up to juggernaughts as Level E, Madoka Magica and Hourou Musuko thanks to the hammy acting. But in terms of series structure it did just about everything right here.

The thing with Wolverine is that unlike Iron Man, you can really see that the creators are having fun with it. They’re trying to make every episode into a spectacle, and they especially succeeded in that during the previous month. The series overall also avoided a lot of flaws that usually strike action series: the way in which they forget to spend time on characters, setting and build-up. The atmosphere in this episode was just excellent and it has been for episodes now. The only time in which this series took a break was in the middle of the series, and that was time it put to good use in order to lay out the background of that bizarre island they’re on, plus Yukio’s simple but surprisingly effective backstory (which again was used very nicely in this episode).

It’s also a matter of expectations, of course. I mean, my expectations for Wolverine couldn’t be worse, until I found out that it was being handled by the director of Himitsu and one of the scriptwriters of Kurozuka. After that, I pretty much had no disappointments from this series whatsoever aside from the hammy acting in the first episode. This probably would have gone completely different if Wolverine would have aired before Iron Man, but I still have to applaud the creators for delivering such a solid action series.

The key here is suspense of disbelief. The way in which there always is something interesting going on (the battles in the earliest episodes were long, but knew how to not drag on). I really noticed that during the fights with Shingen. The characters were acting pretty over the top, but I couldn’t help but love the voice actors during that scene. The voice actors delivered their lines with such passion that it just made it into a wonderful scene.

The series is still too simple and miles away to really stand amongst the best of the season; I mean, it’s not like the story has any depth or anything. There is one thing, however, at which this series IS the best out of the entire season right now: the use of its soundtrack. And yes, this is in a season that has two of my favourite composers in it, Yuki Kajiura and Hikaru Nanase. This episode in particular was a feast for the ears.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Aim for the Top: Diebuster Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I had my problems with the original cast of Gunbuster, but that was mostly because they didn’t try hard enough to step away from the stereotypes that they would later inspire. It’s also a bit of a matter of flat characterization, but overall I would not really call any character annoying.

Enter Nono, the lead character of Diebuster.

I’ll be honest here: the first half of Diebuster was a bit of a chore to sit through. Nono is not a likable main character at all with her one-sided overacted klutziness and stupidity, and the pointless fanservice actually gets in the way of the story. The drama in this movie also didn’t really impress; the major theme of this series is characters, refusing to grow up. This leads to characters refusing to accept reality, angsting quite a bit and and making a whole lot of dumb decisions. This drama is consistent (in fact, it’s about the only consistent part of this OVA), but it also just wasn’t interesting.

Nevertheless, this was written by Yoji Enokido. He shows this in the second half (and especially the final two episodes) by just going “screw being plausible, we’re just going over 9000 here”. The final two episodes are full of nice and awesome ideas that I very much suspect ended up as the inspiration for Gurren Lagann’s finale. Unlike the first Gunbuster, Diebuster doesn’t try to be physically plausible in the slightest, but that does allow it to to go with some interesting science fiction ideas.

Ideas which ultimately are reflected best into the graphics of this show. Seriously, the graphics look awesome here and are IMO the biggest reason to check out this OVA. They’re really imaginative and make excellent use of the creativity in the plot.

Above I mentioned that this is a very inconsistent series. That’s both a good and a bad thing. I mean, you don’t want to watch this for its cohesive plot, because the story is a bit of an undirected mess, not to mention the angst not being that impressive, but on the other hand this did make this OVA evolve through its episodes, and it prevented Nono’s annoying antics to ruin the entire OVA (she really gets better as the anime goes on).

Oh, and on one final side-note: I keep seeing everywhere that you need to have seen the original Gunbuster before watching this OVA, but I don’t really think that that is the case. You can watch them in any order really.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Not the best at drama, but when it’s on fire it really entertains.
Characters: 7/10 – Nono is annoying, and none of the cast really end up making this up.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Gorgeous, full of excellent artwork and ideas.
Setting: 8/10 – Not as interesting as Gunbuster or FLCL, but still full of nice ideas and concepts.

Suggestions:
– FLCL
– Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
– Wings of Rean

Kimagure Orange Road – Summer’s Beginning Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



After the perfect first movie formed a perfect ending for the Kimagure Orange Road franchise, I was really wondering how the creators would be able to top that with the second and final movie. And yeah, this movie is a step back. It brings cheese into the romance and it requires a whole bunch of random coincidences, just to get going.

Especially the first half of the movie brings back a lot of stuff from the TV series that made it so annoying. Kyousuke’s powers at this point are like the nuclear power you see in a lot of American comics: they do whatever is convenient for the plot at the moment. Kyousuke himself also has this tendency to narrate a bit too enthusiastically at times, saying a lot of things that would have been much better off when left unsaid.

Nevertheless, I really urge fans of Kimagure Orange Road to check this movie out. If you’ve managed to sit through the hell that was the TV-series, this movie offers a HUGE amount of character development, showing the entire cast in their twenties. Ironically, it’s only until the aftermath when things get really amazing, but it’s so worth the wait. Whenever this movie isn’t cheesy, it really delivers a wonderful romance, miles away from just about any overused stereotype.

The animation… is surprisingly mediocre for a movie. I mean, for me, most of the TV series even looked better. Most of the budget of this movie is wasted on a pointless dance scene. For movie standards, I really expected more of the animation.

Oh, and on a side-note: this movie links Madoka to Yuki Kajuira. That is just awesome.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Okay, so it uses cheese and some coincidences, but those coincidences make sure that it has an awesome premise to work with.
Characters: 10/10 – The characters already had excellent development. Then this movie comes along.
Production-Values: 7/10 – The animation is disappointing for a movie. On the other hand though: it features Yuki Kajiura’s debut. Years before she got big.
Setting: 8/10 – Stays true to Kimagure Orange Road, though a little too well perhaps.

Suggestions:
– The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
– Maison Ikkoku
– Umi ga Kikoeru

Hourou Musuko – 09

by psgels, posted in Hourou Musuko



The drama in this episode was just utterly brilliant. It’s where everything comes together, the build-up is really paying off and the characters start to change even more. Doi turned out to be a wonderful addition to the cast here.

This was a terrific example of the heights that subtle drama can reach. The entire episode was quiet, but so much was going on. The red thread was Nitori doing the impossible and coming to school in his girl outfit, being nudged by Doi in order to do this. It brilliantly made use of his insecurities as a girl in a guy’s body. It all culminated wonderfully until the climax of this episode.

Now, there still is the matter of that ending. This is a manga adaptation after all and I still haven’t forgotten the cheap way in which Kuragehime ended its run, but if that ending is good then this really is an excellent experiment of Noitamina to try and focus on series with a different group of lead characters (unlike Fractale for example). Noitamina is a very double-edged sword, but those who understand its limits (like the creators of this series seem to do) can use it to air some of the most wonderful series.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Fractale – 09

by psgels, posted in Fractale



It’s about bloody time, but Clain was finally bearable to watch in this episode. Yay for character-development!

Seriously though, this was a build-up episode for the finale of this series (there are only two episodes left, after all), but for once he doesn’t spend his time whining but he actually pushes the plot forward. A large part of this episode was about building up the tensions between the Lost Millennium and the Fractale system, which eventually came down to Clain, Phryne and Nessa being left behind. It was a moment in which the massacres of the early episodes came to bite the Lost Milennium in their behind and they finally decided to uninvolve themselves with the innocent Clain and his companions. It was a bit of a melancholic episode.

Naturally Phryne immediately goes back to the Fractale system in order to do whatever with her father, but even there Clain actually stood up and did something immediately. Overall this was a quiet but intense episode and I’m really glad to see that the creators managed to pick themselves back up here.

So yeah, Fractale does not belong in Noitamina. It’s just too rushed and unbalanced, and even two extra episodes would have been excellent to give a bit more depth to the story, but ideally this should have had 22 episodes. Right now this show tries to do a lot of things, but they don’t mesh well. I like how they ended up using the Fractale system in a completely different way than you’d first expect, but in the end it just got too little airtime. The concept of taking away touch from humans: that is actually a pretty original backstory, but when the analysis of this doesn’t really go beyond pervert jokes, you just have to feel that something is missing.

Of course, the good point about this is that this allows the viewers to form their own conclusion. This show basically is your standard adventure story that has the cast walking around this original and thought-provoking plot device. Whether that’s going to be enough, though…. that’s going to depend on that finale.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Aim for the Top: Gunbuster Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Okay, so I ended up liking Gunbuster for a whole different reason than I thought I would. From one of Hideaki Anno’s earliest works, I expected this fun homage OVA to the giant robot genre with excellent action scenes, but that’s probably not going to be what I’ll end up remembering about this thing.

Now, Gunbuster is definitely a homage, but it doesn’t really do much for the giant robot genre. It’s got a very typical set-up with a lot of cliches and fanservice, but ends up playing a lot of them a bit too straight at times. The result is yet another teenager who ends up saving the world multiple times on a giant robot that she somehow ends up piloting. There also is quite a bit of romance, but that also doesn’t really get anywhere beyond your average cheese shop.

Instead, this IOVA is all about the science fiction. Instead of coming with your usual explanations and backstories, Gunbuster interestingly weaves pseudo quantum science with fantasy into a time travelling epic. It’s also one of those stories that changes significantly with every airing episode, making good use of its unpredictability to spiral out of control, despite the large amount of cliches that are in the story and characters.

If you’re wondering where the science fiction is when you start to watch it: the best episode of this OVA does remain the sixth and final one. It’s here where the creators say “screw it” and abandon the cliches in favor of its neat ideas, setting and background, and yet another proof of how Hideaki Anno is in his element when he goes over-budget.

Speaking of the guy, of course Gunbuster is very well animated. I can’t fault this show for looking pretty, and especially for its time it has detailed animation and a pretty nice direction. I can imagine how this movie was a big trendsetter, but it’s just a shame that half of the trends it set ended up horribly abused during the past decade. Overall I don’t think that Gunbuster is anything amazing, but it definitely has its good points and I still enjoyed watching it despite its cliches.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Makes up for its cliches pretty nicely with its good direction and constantly changing story.
Characters: 7/10 – A bit too many cliches and cheese, though it does have interesting character development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Pretty impressive, though nothing amazing.
Setting: 9/10 – Great background stories and ideas.

Suggestions:
– Noein
– Macross Frontier
– Soukou no Strain