Author: psgels

Appleseed Ex Machina Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




They may look similar, but make no mistake: Appleseed 2004 and Appleseed Ex Machina (2007) are two completely different movies. They’re both action movies, but the former’s big focus was on its setting; the latter’s is on its characters.

Seriously, Appleseed has a great and interesting concept. Ex Machina doesn’t really use anything of it, and pretty much reduces everything to “humans, androids and hacking”. It doesn’t ask any of the interesting questions that the 2004 series did, and just takes its setting for granted, coming with a generic brainwashing thriller.

On the other side of the coin, the characters are far from as clumsily portrayed as the 2004 series. Oh, it’s still cheesy, but it’s nevertheless a major improvement. The characters actually developed a bit in between the two movies (though don’t expect any development in the movies themselves), and the drama between them is simple, a bit cheesy, but effective enough for the action to not become boring.

The 2004 movie also had its botox faces problem. You know, the faces that may look good in screenshots, yet look plastic as soon as they try to move. Ex Machina also has this problem a bit, but it’s much less severe. The cutting and camera work is much more skillfully done and this make the jerky and unnatural movements a bit more bearable to watch.

Basically things come down to this: the 2004 series had a lot of flaws and one thing that it was very good at (the setting), while Ex Machina doesn’t have any flaws that are as big as the 2004 movie, yet also doesn’t really have anything to stand out, and is simply a decent action movie to pass an hour and a half. Take your pick.

Oh, just one thing: this movie does have its share of Deus ex Machina. I mean, what moron really calls his movie “Ex Machina” anyway? You’re just going to draw extra attention to them anyway.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Well cut and unambitious, though nicely built up. If you ignore the Deus ex Machinas in the plot.
Characters: 7/10 – Not as one-dimensional as the 2004 movie, but these people have cheese.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Nothing special, but decent action and a solid soundtrack.
Setting: 7/10 – Loses a point by not using its setting in the slightest and making it really simple.

Suggestions:
– Wonderful Days
– Black Magic M66
– Catblue Dynamite

Durarara – 25

by psgels, posted in Durarara



Not as good as the first DVD-special, but still a nice little aftermath to the series. Like with the actual TV-series, the first special had all the events running through each other, and threw many flashbacks and -forwards at the viewer, only to have everything come together at the end, while this one had that a lot less, aside from one single scene at the beginning of the episode. The creators did succeed however, to put as much characters on the screen as possible.

Instead, whenever this episode had the chance it would show different characters, cleverly using Shizuo’s brother who was doing a live report and finally giving him the chance to show off his acting. This episode was full of these little details and subtle characterizations that ere also prevalent during the first half of the TV-series.

The least interesting parts of this episode were probably the subplots that were already dragged out in the TV-series: Mikado vs. Anri and Shizuo vs. Izaya. As dynamic as this show is, the relationships between these people somehow refused to really go anywhere throughout the series. After 26 episodes, Shizuo still is running after Izaya, and Mikado still is trying to tell Anri that he likes her. (Though granted, at least Anri behaved differently from what she would have done 20 episodes ago).

This episode also provided a few hints for an upcoming season in the form of some new characters. If that’s going to happen though, it’ll probably still take a while, because the director first is going to be busy with Natsume Yuujinchou.
Rating: * (Good)

Supernatural The Animation – 06

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Whoa. With the way that the previous episodes were building the back-story up here, I thought that this father of them left Sam and Dean to fend off for their own for more than ten years ago, in typical anime fashion. Of course, this isn’t an anime. This episode revealed that at least three years ago Dean was working together with his father, while Sam was still in college. Looking back, this explains why Dean seemed to be much more… passionate (if that’s the correct word) to any developments regarding their father: he always was the older brother who spent the most time with his father, while his younger brother was still much younger. This episode also hinted that Dean was always with his father, while Sam spend a few years away from him. A few episodes back, I remember how Sam said that Dean was their father’s favourite.

So, six episodes in, and this show is really good. It’s episodic, yet every episode has its purpose. In this case, every episode added new stuff to the main characters’ back-story. Six episodes in, and the pieces of the puzzle are starting to stick together. This episode also introduced the mysterious Jessica. She hasn’t died yet, but the previous episodes are really hinting towards the fact that the same thing that killed Sam and Dean’s mother killed her.

Also, throughout the past six episodes, I noticed that this show likes to use subtle humour once in a while. It’s often just one or two laughs every episode, like how in this episode Sam and Dean’s father delivers a few witty lines about why he didn’t tell Dean that Sam was dating Jessica, but they work surprisingly well. They don’t break the mood, but they nicely flesh out the different characters. In a series that is serious as this one, having a tiny bit of comedy once in a while gets an interesting effect.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 05

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



This episode seemed to introduce what looks like one of the major villains of this series. A vampire hunter, who know both the lead characters and their father in the past. At the moment he’s still a tad too one-dimensional for a villain, but with enough work he can get interesting.

Meanwhile, I like how this episode again managed to relate its story back to Sam and Dean’s father, and how it used this chance to again tell a small part of their past, and who their father was to them. In this episode we learn that Dean has received quite some harsh training from his father, and how he once got to the point where he really hated him after he got scolded.

On the technical side, it is a bit unfortunate that the graphics budget dimmed in compared to the first two episodes. The animation wasn’t as solid, and the climax didn’t look as amazing compared to a few episodes ago, and especially the vampires looked a bit uninspired. Also, what’s the point of including a recap of the previous episodes… on episodes that get released on the same DVD Box set. I’ve hardly ever seen previous-episode-recaps like that done right, and this unfortunately wasn’t one of them. It’s not the worst I’ve encountered, though.
Rating: * (Good)

Supernatural The Animation – 04

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



So, this is supposed to be the first of the original episodes for this series? Well, I’m impressed. It was a random story like all the previous episodes, but it did fit into them very nicely. There was a story about two brothers that nicely allowed us to relate this back to the lead characters, we learned something new about Dean (his car obsession) and the characters of this story were also quite good and inspired.

The story was quite interesting with the ghost of an innocent police victim, and the police officers’ attempts to cover it up, and how they’re still haunted by it after years. It’s quite straightforward, but worked out quite well.

The climax was the weakest one so far, mostly due to the CG cars that just didn’t look as good as the previous three episodes. Also, in terms of the continuity, I would have preferred to have seen Dean cleaning his car from the paint that Sam put on it, along with him getting angry over the damage that that climax caused.
Rating: * (Good)

Level E – 08

by psgels, posted in Level E



Aah, finally! Finally we have an actually good parody of the romantic comedy. Even without the awesome twist at the end, I just loved what this episode did and how it poked fun at the genre and how it made everything look ridiculous with its ever-sharp wit. There also was a lot of building up in this episode, but in the end, it was totally worth it. This is really what an awesome comedy should be: don’t just show a bunch of random jokes, but have everything build up for each other and create a whole picture that’s larger than the sum of its parts.

The interesting thing is how this was written more than a decade ago, and the things it parodies still are incredibly overused, and it just showed how timeless this episode was. I also love how there finally is a series that acknowledges that love at first sight is pretty implausible, and how it takes this to the absurd by putting the fate of the world hanging on it. The inclusion of Kraft only made this better: his energy and sarcasm were awesome to watch during the building-up parts.

Not to mention the awesome excuse that the creators found in order to leave Ouji uninvolved in this episode. The different combinations of characters for each arc are really dynamic here and instead of overexposing the same characters, the creators really try to give all kinds of characters their own time to shine, going both for the main characters as the new ones that it introduces. And again, the characters in this arc are fairly simple, and make writing good characters look so easy.

The revelation that the lead guy was basically a lesbian was the highlight of this episode. It gave a completely different meaning to the episode, plus it also left a very interesting cliff-hanger for the next episode, which just has to be different from the previous. But then again, this series has shown before that it loves to toy with expectations.

Also, this all took place at a Ski Resort. Take that, hot spring beach school festival pool episodes!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? – 08

by psgels, posted in Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka?



oh boy, this was a disaster. It was an episode that was doomed to fail, simply because of the decision of the creators to include the new girl into the cast of major characters. I mean… what exactly do they hope to get out of someone with such a terrible backstory? This episode could at least have been enjoyable if it wasn’t for her utterly contrived reason to fall in love with the lead character. I mean, is she supposed to be another parody or something?

This pretty much was an episode that contained nothig but character building, oly to come with some drama at the final minute. So, after having to sit through some completely generic dating scenes, what do we get? The lead female gets kidnapped. Ooh, we’re original now. Seriously, what happened? The drama in this show used to be so good. Cliches like these could be excused in the introduction of a series, to get the plot started. Not when you’re nearly done!

The only enjoyment in this episode was in the small details, like surprisingly smooth animation, the hilariously named “Mask Donalds”, good poses and facil expressions and the surprisingly good food jokes ehre, even though cooking girls usually are beating the same dead horse over and over again. Like I said: it could have been an interesting episode, but when the creators have such a terrible premise for an episode, what can really be done with it?
Rating: – (Disappointing)

Supernatural The Animation – 03

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation




Great to see that the third episode already tells about the background of the two lead characters. I mean, a dead mother is nothing new here, but usually when anime do that, they wait until very long before they come with the story that explained what happened to them. Doing this in the third episode really allows the series to go beyond that and use it in later episodes to its advantage.

And again: this episode mostly progressed like a normal ghost story, only for the climax to really get interesting. It’s a sign of great build-up, and if the creators are able to do this consistently shows that they know what they’re doing. Even when most of the episode is a standard ghost story, when you watch the episode back you can see the hints here and there that are all building up towards that climax.

This episode also showed the mysterious father of Dean and Sam for the first time. As a background, it’s definitely interesting. At this point it’s clear that something happened to that guy while his wife died. This episode seemed to suggest that she died by a mere poltergeist, but there’s probably more to it than just that. Oh, and I also liked that fortune teller.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

February Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

This month’s rankings of mine…. are nearly exactly the same as last month. Seriously, the only major surprise this month was that Fractale and Dragon Crsisis weren’t really good and that Kimi ni Todoke is finally going somewhere. Apart from that, every series pretty much continued on the same pace that it set a month ago. Come on, I’m expecting some good stuff here for March. Dare to evolve!

#16 (16) – Dragon Crisis – (6,75/10) – Alas, Dragon Crisis did seem genuine enough to get some good drama, but in the end it never really used this, and came with the most corny stories, one after the other. Any potential created by the good animation and dialogue ended up completely nullified by the bad acting and cheesy scenarios.
#17 (17) – Suite Precure – (7,25/10) – I appreciate that this series is trying to include stories that revolve around the main characters. Beyond that though, it’s a major step down from Heartcatch Precure. The execution and animation is nowhere as polished. The scenarios are dull, it lacks energy, the acting from the villains is horribly silly. At this point the characters still have the potential to become well developed in the second half, but I do not want to sit through 26 boring and badly written episodes to get there. This one is dangerously close to being dropped.
#16 (14) – To Aru Majutsu no Index – (7,5/10) – I think this month really summarized my problems with this second season. The last two episodes are a pretty good thriller. But did we really have to sit through two whole episodes of random goofing off in order to get there? The thing is, that I’m not enjoying these characters at all. They didn’t change in the slightest from what they were at the end of the first season. This series spends so much time on random scenes, but in the end it doesn’t really do anything with them and they’re merely there for fanservice.
#15 (9) – Fractale – (7,75/10)

This is coming from the director of Kannagi, so I already was fearing this show to be unbalanced. And unfortunately these fears came true. The thing is that this show doesn’t know what it’s good at, and instead spends way too much time on its very annoying lead character. It’s only eleven episodes long, and yet it spends way too much of its time on random undirected goofing off.

#14 (15) – Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? – (7,75/10)

In this month, Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka was either amazing, or a boring cliche-fest. Right now this all seems to even out, but I do hope that next month will focus much more on what this show is good at.

#13 (16) – Gosick – (8/10)

The Wolf-arc was the best arc so far. It’s a bit weird, but it used its red herrings well and especially Victorique emerged as a better character because of it. This show still has its problems, but this month was actually interesting enough to make up for it.

#12 (13) – Kimi ni Todoke – (8/10)

Finally! After thirty episodes, of this show not going anywhere, the romance between the lead couple has finally started moving. It’s still quite slow, but for once the characters are playing off each other, instead of simply refusing to develop. It still doesn’t excuse the first season, but at the very least this was by far the best month from Kimi ni Todoke so far.

#11 (12) – Wolverine – (8/10)

This month saw Wolverine balance between its fights and its exposition, and to be honest it’s doing quite a good job at it, keeping to the same philosophy as in January: be simple, but effective. The characters, both good and bad, all have something endearing, and the action is pretty decent. The stiff acting and simple characters and story will prevent this one from ever becoming something great, but as for entertainment, it’s doing a pretty good job here.

#10 (10) – Mitsudomoe – (8,25/10)

Yes: Mitsudomoe’s second season was clearly better than the first. The jokes were better, the ratio of bad jokes was smaller, it made sure not to milk its jokes out, and also put a lot of effort into portraying the characters as actual characters. The characterization also improved a lot, which also made this a bit of a nostalgic series that I found surprisingly easy to relate to at times.

#9 (11) – Showa Monogatari – (8,25/10)

Episodes 2 and 4 popped up at the beginning of this month, and they were quite good. What makes Showa Monogatari more than just another slice of life story about a random kid is that it also knows that it should pay attention to the rest of his family: all of them are interesting characters at this point, which is a good sign for the rest of the series, which will continue somewhere around the start of May.

#8 (8) – Bakuman – (8,25/10)

Well, it’s taken a while, but Bakuman is finally getting interesting here. The characters have plenty of development put into them by now, and they’re really playing off each other nicely. Even though the pacing is slow, you can still feel some of their energy. Especially the long dialogues between them are the highlights here.

#7 (7) – Yumekui Merry – (8,25/10)

The problem with this show is that that beach episode destroyed the flow this show was in a bit. In the end, it’s wonderfully executed, but doesn’t really have the most ambitious storyline to work with. This show can still deliver a great ending, but the creators really are going to have to try hard here.

#6 (6) – Letter Bee – (8,5/10)

It’s a bit of a shame, but this series could have taken more risks when it comes to wrapping up its main storyline. It’s all very solid, but not as amazing as this show once was. Whenever it focuses on the characters though, it’s at its best, and this month again was no exception.

#5 (new) – Supernatural The Animation – (8,5/10)

Okay, so it’s probably going to be an arduous task trying to blog this series, but it’s really worth it so far, especially the second episode was excellent and very well written. The graphics are also gorgeous, here’s one to look out for.

#4 (4) – Star Driver – (8,5/10)

The thing is that Star Driver spends a lot of time on the characters doing random things. Even now that the climax is so near, it still spends a lot of time on this school life. The balance it has struck with the actual plot and characters though, is excellent and I’m still enjoying these characters quite a bit, though it’s not going to be the classic I originally hoped it would be.

#3 (5) – Hourou Musuko – (8,5/10)

Two months in, and Hourou Musuko is still doing what it really does well: bringing life to large amounts of characters. The characterization is still excellent and subtly detailed, and the characters all balance their maturity and their childishness wonderfully, leading to some great characters.

#2 (3) – Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – (8,75/10)

This series is still continuing its string of excellent episodes. Jut about every episode here delivers and adds new depth to the characters; it’s a 13-episode series that fully knows how to use its time.

#1 (1) – Level E – (9/10)

This month for Level E was weaker than in January, but only by a small bit. It’s still my favourite series of the season due to its creative and sometimes outright mean scenarios and an awesome sense of humour. It’s always completely unpredictable and even though it’s composed of random stories, the acting, creativity and scenario all come together wonderfully and make this one of the best comedy anime I’ve seen.

Little Princess Sara Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




So, time for me to review another installment of the World Masterpiece Theatre. Little Princedss Sara tells about about a young, really rich girl who joins a boarding school in London. What happens after that though… let’s just say that I’ve rarely seen so much suffering in just one series. If you’re planning to watch this series, be prepared for a gruelling journey.

It’s hard to talk about this series withuot spoilers, but let me just say that Little Princess Sara has very strong messages against poverty and the hypocricy to which people look at it. It’s a long series, 46 episodes. In this time it delivers a haunting and very in-depth portrayal of poverty and neglect on children. Beyond that, ti also has strong morals and values that are delivered with heart, instead of cheese.

The scenario really helps by being wonderfully realistic. Seriously, a ton of time in this series is spent on very mundane tasks and nothing else. The creators strike an excellent balance between this and character development, leading to an entire cast of characters with a lot of depth and development, miles away from your usual stereotypes.

Like all good WMTs, it also really knows how to build up. It’s a very one-sided series, but the final climax is without a doubt a highlight of the entire series in which everything it built up to comes together. This show definitely knows how to do drama well, and even if the animation is dated at this point, it still manages to bring the characters to life with more detail than most series nowadays can.

I’ve got lot of praises for this series, but at the same time I also want to say that I do not consider this series amongst the best of the World Masterpiece Theatre. I’m going to be nitpicking a bit here, but the standard of this franchise is just so damn high. My issue with this series was that at times, it was a bit too “shoujo”, if that makes any sense. Some twists were delivered with a sense of shoujo-ific melodrama that definitely could have been done more subtle, and some characters spend a long time as cliched and boring rivals who do exactly what you predict them to do, and there is one twist near the end that is just… way too convenient. Sara herself is also way too pure. It’s like she could have been the love child of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa, or in that direction. All of this does not create characters as realistic, as some of the other WMT series, plus the one-sidedness of the plot also doesn’t create them as dynamic as the others.

At this point I’vwe managed to finish 10 WMT-series, so here I present an updated ranking of my favourite WMT-series to close off this reivew (the ones that I fully finished, at least), in the order of the ones I liked the least to the ones I liked the most. Little Princess Sara ranks fifth. It’s a wonderful series with amazing and unique characters, despite my above criticisms I really recommend it if you like the kind of children series that really try to tell an excellent story that takes both itself and its target audience seriously.
10. My Daddy Long Legs
9. Konnichiwa Anne
8. Tom Sawyer
7. Ie Naki Ko Remi
6. Romeo’s Blue Skies
5. Little Princess Sara
4. Anne of Green Gables
3. Porfy no Nagai Tabi
2. Perrine Monogatari
1. Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette

Storytelling: 8/10 – Realistic, detailed and down to earth, though a bit one-sided and melodramatic at times.
Characters: 9/10 – Realistic and full of depth and development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Dated, but very detailed. The soundtrack is a bit disappointing, though.
Setting: 9/10 – Excellent social commentary, themes and messages. Plus a wonderful portrayal of London of more than a century ago.

Suggestions:
– Perrine Monogatari
– Anne of Green Gables