Author: psgels

Wolverine – 10

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



This episode kicked ass! It was just simple action, but that’s exactly what this show is best at. Wolverine isn’t anything deep, but the things that it’s supposed to do, it does really well here. Ten episodes in, and it’s still consistently entertaining action that has shown very few, if any, unexpected weak moments. It pretty much delivered exactly what it promised. Nothing more, but certainly nothing less.

Also, in these types of action and adventure series, how often do we really see the creators killing off the cute moe character? Unless we’re talking about a mostly female cast, it’s always the older ones, or some of the guys that die in the middle of a battle. here in Wolverine though, the creators just killed off just about the only moe character of the entire series. The only teenager actually DIES here, due to her inexperience and naivety. That’s rare!

The strange thing about this episode is that it also flew by: I really got the feeling that it was less than 20 minutes of total airtime, that’s how it caught me up in its pacing. It’s again something that we’ve come to expect from this series: the battles are long, but not too long, and most importantly: they’re not drawn out but actually play out without characters just standing there and looking at each other for what feels like ages. Wolverine’s motto is “don’t talk, just act” and the anime so far has made great use of that.

Oh, and Yukio: she’s a great co-lead. For once she actually isn’t the romantic love interest for the main guy, but the way in which this episode had her both busy fighting the bad guys and fighting alongside her grandfather that she had many problems with, seeing the girl who replaced her die… that definitely was a nice touch for her character.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Junkers Come Here Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




There have been many slice of life movies about a young boy or girl growing up and the problems they face. Junkers Come Here is Sato Junichi’s attempt at this genre, created ten years before he would come with Aria. And really: it is among the best ones of the genre.

The thing with Junkers Come Here is that even compared to the other slice of life movies, it’s realistic (if you ignore the fact that it has a talking dog and all, but you know what I mean). This comes courtesy of an excellent characterization and a consistently detailed animation that causes the characters to nearly just walk off the screen. Hiromi (The lead girl) here just feels like a real teenaged girl and her problems are wonderfully down to earth.

On top of that, it’s also much more tightly paced compared to most slice of life series. Most of them follow the formula of first half random slice of life, second half serious story. With Junkers Come Here it’s only the first half hour that will be a bit uneventful. The movie has found a perfect balance between slice of life and character building: the events of Hiromi’s childhood that it focuses on all have a major impact on her and create a wonderful picture of her, coming together in an absolutely amazing climax.

It’s a movie with many truly heartfelt moments, even though at first sight it may be nothing more than a story about a girl and her talking dog. Everything here is very calculated, though, and it’s not just wasting time for the sake of wasting time. That’s the kind of slice of life that I personally really like.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Wonderfully paced. It’s really slow, but makes excellent use of its time.
Characters: 9/10 – even for a slice of life movie, the characters are believable with real problems. The characterization is just wonderful throughout the entire movie.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Very smooth animation that brings the cast to life.
Setting: 8/10 – Solid.

Suggestions:
– Anne no Nikki – The Diary of Anne Frank
– Aria the Animation
– Kiki’s Delivery Service

Some Really Quick OVA Impressions: Gunpla Builders, Ciel in Wonderland and Fortune Arterial OVA

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions

I originally planned to use the shoutbox for this, but unfortunately it’s down right now. Basically I just tried to watch a bunch of OVAs and failed to get through all of them. This isn’t really meant to be a full review in any way, but more a list of short explanations of why I couldn’t bother to finish any of these three.

Gunpla Builders

I already was not very motivated to check the Gunpla Builders OVA out. I lasted only two minutes with this thing. The reason for that was that in only the first two minutes alone, the characters managed to mention the word “Gundam” a whopping twelve times already. I know I’m biased, and the animation was very good here, but I really don’t want to watch this kind of propaganda!

Kuroshitsuji II: Ciel in Wonderland

This is an OVA that consists out of two episodes, putting Ciel in the Alice in Wonderland story (the Disney version). Here, I lasted until ten minutes into the second OVA. In the end, it’s just fanservice: Ciel gets put in a dress and all of the side-characters make an appearance and act weird. It’s full of the kind of humour that’s just random for the sake of being random. That doesn’t remain fun for a full hour.

Fortune Arterial OVA

This one was just terrible. The TV-series was pretty good, but the OVA is just a random side-story in which nothing happens with a climax at an obligatory scene of the lead guy walking into all of the females bathing. YET AGAIN. Stay far away from this one.

Fractale – 08

by psgels, posted in Fractale




The animators are really saving this series here. Seriously, that’s something I don’t get to see often with a TV-series, but I have to applaud A-1 with probably the best animation of the entire season. Eight episodes in and it’s still consistently fluid. Now that we’re into the action-packed episodes again, they especially deliver here. This episode didn’t look as good as the previous one, but even though I couldn’t care less about the story nor the characters at this point, they did put a lot of soul into the drawings and animation here.

When this show actually tries to deliver, it really succeeds. This episode was dark and disturbing and that worked out wonderfully well. It’s just such a shame that it sucks at building up. It’s dull and generic and completely ignores the interesting parts of the story in favour of the ever-boring Clain.

Here is something that dawned to me while watching the opening of this episode: this series is called Fractale, but if you removed the Fractale system and just replace it with your average fantasy science fiction setting, you don’t really need to change much, do you? The Fractale system was a nice idea, but it’s like the creators ignored it completely for a generic adventure story. Also, the creators really let a chance slip by by not trying to find some sort of link between the Fractale system and the fractals that it was named after. I mean, that’s what the OP has been hinting after again and again, and yet there’s nothing regarding this.
Rating: * (Good)

Yumekui Merry – 10

by psgels, posted in Yumekui Merry



This episode only affirmed the strengths and weaknesses of this series. It was a build-up for the finale (this series will have 13 episodes, by the way. It’s officially announced now), but it still showcased its rock-solid characters, excellent acting, and unfortunately not very ambitious backstory.

This episode revealed the backstory of some of the side-characters and while it definitely was interesting, it also felt like they were having a contest of who could have the saddest past. one girl’s parents died in an accident, another guy grew up with his younger sister in the hospital. Twists like these are powerful, but they shouldn’t be used gratuitous.

In the end, by far the biggest mistake that this series made however, was not making John Doe the villain. He’s a much more interesting antagonist than Elcres or Mistletain, who currently are trying a bit too hard to be mysterious and therefore not giving any of us the chance to connect with them. John Doe and his army of talking cats: you could have built an excellent story around that, while still using the unique setting of this series.

I’m a bit harsh on this series compared to others, but I am comparing it to much higher standards than usual. After all, Yumekui Merry is good, but still nowhere as good as Casshern Sins. It also doesn’t help that it airs right after Madoka Magica, which has some similar elements here. I’ve said before that series with a simple plot can be just as awesome when executed well, but here we have a series whose plot just has too little interesting twists and turns that really prevent it from being a masterpiece. Sana about to be kidnapped… I’m sorry, but I’ve just seen that a few too many times by now and this episode just spent too much time on trying to build this up, and it still hasn’t happened yet!

Anyway, enough with the negatives. I mean, Chizuru did get some much needed backgrounds, and she is really promising to be a key part in making plot of the finale less dull, standing somewhere in the middle of Yumeji and Merry and Mistletain and Elcres. And I also remain convinced that Yumeji is a great main character for a guy his age. Instead of doing nothing but angst, whine or look helplessly, he looked for ways to save Sana, and yet this episode also showed him preparing for the worst-case scenario of Merry having to send her dream demon back. Seriously, dream demons holding the dreams of their vessels hostage is something that this series overall used really well.
Rating: * (Good)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 10

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



Holy crap, what an episode. We’ve finally gotten to Homura’s past and BY GOD is is awesome.

This may be because I really like the kinds of series that deal with alternative dimensions, but the reason I love the stories like this is because they really allow creators to show different ways for characters to develop when done right (do note that it can be done poorly just as easily, though. Yes, I’m looking at you Yosuga no Amagami). The creators really put a ton of meaning in this episode

With this, I also understand why the creators said, prior to this series, that it would be the type of show that you need to watch two times in order to fully get it. I remember that first episode and how at first it seemed very much like Nanoha. The biggest reason for that was that scene in which Madoka saves Kyuubei from being attacked. Yeah, that suddenly gets put into a completely different perspective, doesn’t it?

One thing that was amusing during the past few weeks was seeing all of the crazy theories from everyone, ranging from speculating that Homura was Madoka to Homura being Madoka’s cat. In the end though, she just turned out to be a normal girl who just matured much more mentally due to the way that she always kept travelling back in time. Plot twists like “character x is secretly related to character Y in some bizarre way” are good, but they shouldn’t be used for the sake of just using them, otherwise they’ll just become forced.

This episode only left one major question: why wasn’t Madoka this awesome mahou shoujo when Homura first met her? This episode strongly hinted at Madoka getting more talent as Homura kept travelling back in time.

Oh, and the release dates for the final episodes are finally out: Madoka will only have 12 episodes. We’re actually ending this thing in two weeks!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

EDIT: holy crap, I knew by now that I needed to avoid that shoutbox before watching this week’s episode, but this is getting a bit out of hand here. Unfortunately due to my schedule I’m unfortunately not able to watch this series as fast as usual (combined with the fact that four of the shows I’m blogging air on thursday evening).

Next week, I’ll create a topic for discussions before the episode airs.

Hourou Musuko – 08

by psgels, posted in Hourou Musuko



This is something that has been baffling me for years now: why are romance shows so scared to show people in an actual relationship? I mean, the climax of 60% of all romance series is the confession, and 30% just refuse to end without anything happening between the lead couple, having them remain forever in this “yes we’re in love but not actually dating so that we can have harems and love triangles forever”-type ending. That, while you can definitely get some good drama out of a relationship, which is what this show is currently doing brilliantly.

Nitori vs. Anna made this into a really excellent episode. There is some uncomfortable tension between them, but it’s the healthy kind of tension that still leaves plenty of room for them to grow either closer or further away from each other. It’s not cheesy in the slightest, and it’s definitely been one of the most down to earth portrayals of romance in quite a while, even though we’re talking about middle schoolers here.

That little shot of Chiba, Takatsuki and Nitori together when they were younger was a great little addition, by the way. This really was an episode of nostalgia as well, with both Nitori and Takatsuki trying to move on in their own ways. Nitori by exploring other sides of romance, Takatsuki by growing her hair a bit and trying to make up with Chiba again. If I have to critique the creators for one thing, it’s that they show a tad to little of Chiba when she’s not near Nitori. In this episode for example Takatsuki told Nitori that chiba was behaving normally again, but we unfortunately didn’t get to see those scenes.

Instead, we got this former bully. Now, with the way in which bullies are usually portrayed in anime, this guy is a HUGE improvement. He’s bratty, but in a subtle way and he’s definitely having an impact on Nitori. Whether it’s wise to introduce a new character three episodes before the ending is a different story, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

OVA Impressions: Trava – Fist Planet

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions




Who is Takeshi Koike, and why is he directing Redline? With that question in mind, I set out to check out the other anime he directed: Trava – Fist Planet. It turned out to be a strange OVA, consisting out of four episodes of between 11 and 14 minutes long; it’s a science fiction story about two random guys having to perform some kind of survey on an unknwon planet.

It’s an OVA that’s definitely all about its graphics, and it definitely has a very skillful direction. Just about every shot in this OVA looks nice. It’s full of weird camera angles and it’s got some unique character designs that it puts to good use. There is a ton of eye candy here, and I can only imagine what Redline is going to look like when it has an actual movie budget.

As for the rest, the only other part that stands out is the dialogue. The characters bickering with each other gives them a nice charm. A lot of this OVA is just them nonchalantly insulting each other, which is enjoyable enough to last for the fifty minutes of total airtime. Beyond that though, the story is completely rushed, especially in the final episode, and the characters also all have just two or three sides to them, and nothing more. It’s enjoyable, but doesn’t do much beyond that. But who cares? The graphics and the direction make it a definite interesting watch.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,75/10

Bobby’s in Deep Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Bobby’s in Deep… definitely took me by surprise. I mean, at first sight it’s just a story about a teenager. With the vast majority of anime being about teenagers, I expected this to be some average romance movie. Nevertheless, after watching this I can say that this movie felt unlike any other anime I’ve seen. The animation, characters, direction and plot: they’re all totally unique.

The movie is a portrait of a 17-year-old guy who likes motorbikes. The thing is, that the way in which he is portrayed is what stands out here. The pacing is really slow, but this allows the creators to show who he is. His problems are wonderfully realistic and miles away from just about any cliche, all really helped by an excellent scriptwriter for the dialogue and narration. This movie knows exactly what to way, when to say it, and when to just shut up and let the animation speak for itself. Together with a very pleasant 80s soundtrack this creates a wonderful atmosphere and character whose realistic portrayal should have been an example for the future, which it unfortunately didn’t become.

And as for the animation: expect a lot of different animation styles here. The director for this one is excellent in the way that he blends all of them together. A lot of shots of this movie don’t contain any faces or close-ups at all, along with a few montages and quite a number of still frames. In contrast however, the animation in some of the other scenes is amazingly smooth. To come with a bit of an indication here: some of the Key Animators for this movie were Koji Morimoto and Takashi Nakamura. Believe me, this shows.

This is the kind of slice of life movie that I really like: instead of random events, every part of this movie is carefully planned out to try and give a complete view of the lead character and portray him for who he is, and do justice to some of the major events in his life. It’s all wonderfully compiled together with an amazing ending in which just about everything comes together with both a great subtlety and a power. This might be the first time where Madhouse really showed how unique they can be when they want to.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Terrific build-up, says a lot with both the dialogue and the nonverbal communication.
Characters: 9/10 – An excellent portrait of a teenager with many subtle characterizations.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not the biggest budget, but what it has is excellently used. Some of the animation is breathtaking. Excellent soundtrack.
Setting: 8/10 – Excellent backdrop of the way and place where a kid like him would live.

Suggestions:
– Gosenzosama Banbanza
– Hitsuji no Uta
– Nasu – Suitcase no Wataridori

Digimon Movie 3 – The Golden Digimentals Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




The first season of Digimon has a lot of sentimental value for me. I discovered it back in high school, when I was about 13 years old, and after Pokemon, it was the series that made me aware of what anime was, and how different it was from all the other cartoons that aired on television. And on top of that it had a great and very enjoyable cast of characters.

The second season, though… was a different story. Looking back, I have very little positive to say about it. It’s not really the ending that bugged me, aside from the epilogue, the final episodes were actually some of the few parts that did catch my attention, but overall it just covered boring and repetitive stories, while completely abandoning the few interesting subplots it introduced completely. The characters were nowhere as interesting as the ones from the first season, who were demoted into side-characters for very shallow reasons. It was overall just one big letdown, so originally I wasn’t planning on watching any more of the movies beyond the first two. Until I found out that Shigeyasu Yamauchi (the director of Casshern Sins and Yumekui Merry) directed the third movie.

And I’m glad I did. I mean, seriously: this movie is absolutely not what you’d expect from a movie targeted at kids. The direction of this movie is just unique for such a movie: it’s both adventurous, has gorgeous action and yet has many quiet and down to earth parts that make the characters wonderfully believable. This movie is without a doubt the best part of the second season.

The bad guy in this movie actually isn’t someone who is just out to destroy the world, or wreak havoc for the sake of wreaking havoc. His personality is simple, but he has a great backstory. The second part that makes this completely unlike most other adventure movies is the build-up in the first half. It’s nearly entirely dedicated to just showing the characters slowly travel from place A to place B, taking its time to bring them to life. There is none of the cheesy dialogue that you usually see in adventure movies, but instead the characters talk with each other believably, both verbally and non-verbally.

Now, the budget of this movie isn’t stellar, but still very impressive. The result is smooth animation during the quiet parts that really brings the cast to life. And as for the action scenes: they’re completely gorgeous. Shigeyasu Yamauchi knows like no other how to direct compelling action sequences, and this movie is another excellent example of this.

The flaws in this movie are in the details. Te most glaring is the one that has the characters hitchhike from New York to Denver. Now, I’m no American or anything, but is that even possible? Not to mention that the movie takes place in America, yet everyone talks Engrish. The cutting overall is a bit erratic. Sometimes this works great, but at others it feels like entire scenes are cut off. You especially need to watch the second half twice in order to really get what’s going on.

Despite these flaws though, I praise this movie for trying to be different from the original, its solid storytelling, its imagination and the way that it doesn’t try to spoon-feed itself to its audience. This movie has the mindset that I really wish more franchise-based movies would do nowadays, instead of just making movies for the sake of making movies. Yes, Toei, I’m looking at you.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Wonderfully told for a kids’ movie; great pacing, excellent climax.
Characters: 8/10 – The characters never really caught my attention in the TV-series. It says something for this movie when it actually made me care about them.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Shigeyasu Yamauchi excels in both the action and quiet scenes.
Setting: 8/10 – Dares to be different from the TV-series, though it does have a bit of a bad portrayal of America.

Suggestions:
– Digimon Movie 1
– Yumekui Merry
– Casshern Sins