Author: psgels

Star Driver – 21

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



This just dawned on me while I watched this episode, but… am I the only one who gets the feeling that the creators are planning the kiss scene at the drama to happen around the climax of this series? I mean, especially after the cliffhanger of this episode suddenly showed Wako volunteering to be on the receiving end of Takuto’s kiss, this has to point at something that the creators are planning for that finale. It’s a nice twist, though: Wako finally accepted here that she’s into Takuto here. This episode was definitely a nice way to take care of one of the love triangles in this series.

And as for the rest of this episode, the creators did create a pretty good climax here for the characters who were introduced so relatively late in the series. The two new girls have been quite strange villains: they didn’t seem to care at all about being correct villains, and instead seemed like just adrenaline junkies who kept seeking for thrills. A way to go to phase 3,5 that combines you with your Cybody is an interesting way to say goodbye to them.

Takashi returning meanwhile had it coming, but I ‘m glad that the creators indeed went there. Again, it shows promise and brings the Adult Bank back into the picture, with someone who can actually apprivoise. This also explains the relatively large amount of time that the creators spent on building up this guy, even though at first he seemed like a very insignificant character.

And on a side-note: why didn’t Head sign the paintings of Takuto’s mother with his usual “R”?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armored Trooper Votoms – Case;Irvine Review – 60/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Now, I am writing this review as a fan of the Votoms Franchise. If this movie had not been part of it, I probably would have rated it higher, but only slightly.

The reason I’m saying this is because of the following: I became a fan of Votoms because of the alternative it provided to your average cheesy and angsty giant robot series. Where series like Gundam and its ilk were full of angst and cheesy morals, it provided a mature storytelling that took both itself and its characters seriously, going beyond characters screaming and yelling melodramatically. And really, I’m all for going into different directions with your franchise, but Case;Irvine does everything that Votoms avoided so well.

In Votoms, the fact that people die in a war was taken for granted. That’s what allowed it to pull so much interesting drama. Case;Irvine meanwhile is all about “war is bad”, “thou shalt not kill”, “oh, I’m the villain so I kill people for no reason at all muaha” and “ooh, I killed many innocent people in the past. I’m very angsty now! And this just goes on and on. You remember that little girl in the promo art? Her entire point in this movie is to angst and remind the lead character of how he shouldn’t fight. This is not Votoms at all. Heck, it’s even too cheesy to be like Gundam.

I’m also am not kidding about that villain, by the way. Case;Irvine could have been at least a decent angst movie if it wasn’t for this guy. While the lead character still had his scenes in which he doesn’t angst, this guy absolutely doesn’t. He’s consistently yelling, sprouting cheesy morals and looking for a fight with the lead character. This guy is completely overacting for the sake of overacting. To make matters even worse, Votoms also stood out in the way that it didn’t have any custom built mechas besides slight upgrades or colour changes. This guy then comes out of nowhere and mounts these gigantic hands to his own mecha, making it look completely silly in the more realistic setting of Votoms. The entire final battle (which takes up a lot of the time of this movie) is reduced to this really boring angst-fest in which the umpth strange robot has to be taken care of.

The sole salvation of this movie is the music. It’s perfect, and really atmospheric and does a truly excellent job of building up the atmosphere. But seriously. Please let Finder and Koei Futatabi not be so ridiculously angsty. Or heck. This wasn’t even angst, this was downright emo.

Storytelling: 6/10 – It’s definitely different from the usual Votoms. However, instead of experimenting with a unique new style, it got turned into a generic super robot movie.
Characters: 5/10 – Pathetic villain, way too much angst and none of the characters make any impact at all.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Awesome soundtrack. The animation is there… but not really remarkable in any way.
Setting: 5/10 – Destroys some of the the core aspects of Votoms. Not good.

Suggestions:
– Mobile Police Patlabor WXIII (an example of how to correctly get a movie to take on new characters and a new direction).
– The Wings of Honneamise
– Jin Roh – The Wolf Brigade

Chirin no Suzu Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



In 1977, the people from Sanrio came together and determined that kids’ movies overall were a bit too happy and cheerful. So, with some excellent writers and one heck of a catchy theme song, they created Chirin no Suzu. A story that does exactly the opposite of what the cover seems to suggest.

Believe me, this movie is dark. It’s still aimed at children, but unlike the vast majority of the other movies of this genre, it refuses to dumb itself down for its audience. It starts out as your general lamb versus wolf story, but quickly steps away from all other stories that follow the same trope. It’s packed with mature life lessons and morals that other kids’ movies usually just gloss over, or refuse to even mention.

Let me tell you what makes this such a great movie, though: it’s a movie entirely dedicated to character development. It’s a character study, and a wonderful one. The movie is only forty minutes long, but it’s entirely dedicated to the lead character, Chirin, learning new things and changing significantly because of this.

It does have some flaws though. The only available version seems to be an English dub. Most of the voices are very good (especially the voice of the wolf is awesome), though the voice for the little lead sheep can be very hammy. This does lead to a number of very melodramatic scenes that really could have been done more subtle.

Now, the character designs are very simple. At first sight they may not look like much, but the inbetween animation is actually very good here. It’s very smooth, especially for an anime. Overall, if you don’t mind the melodrama and are looking for an old, yet different movie, this is a very interesting one to watch.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Dark and very violent for a kids’ movie, but packs a great story with many morals and life lessons. At times it’s overdramatic, though.
Characters: 9/10 – Great character development that is really well used.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Okay, so it looks dated, but the inbetween animation still is very good and the soundtrack is excellent as well.
Setting: 8/10 – Not the main focus of this movie at all, but doesn’t get in the way of what’s important.

Suggestions:
– A Tree of Palme
– The Dog of Flanders
– Oseam

Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu! – 08

by psgels, posted in Mitsudomoe



Okay, so the next episode is supposed to be not part of the second season, but instead it’s something like “the deleted scenes of season one”. I’m really not sure what the creators meant by that, but it looks like it’s going to be new content. Because of that I’m going to wait till reviewing this series until next week.

In any case, for the official last episode, this was an excellent one to close off the series with. Perhaps it wasn’t the funniest, but I almost have no complaints about it either. There was just one minute that didn’t work, the rest of this episode left a great aftertaste behind. I really enjoyed this series much more than I originally thought I would.

The first sketch interestingly actually fixed one of the annoying subplots of the first season: the endless misunderstandings between Hitoha and Yabecchi about the Gachi rangers, which was one of the most dragged out jokes of the entire first season. Finally Hitoha actually cleared up this misunderstanding.

Sketch two was pure comedy gold. It again made use of a lot of different characters in its jokes as the characters practiced for and participated in the relay race at their sports festival. Even here the creators still combined some of the things we already knew about the characters with new jokes. Chiba especially was on fire in this part.

Sketch three suddenly brought in a new character: a sweet potato seller. This also was quite fun, especially in the way that Hitoha mind-screwed him. It did go on for a bit too long, though. The sketch should have ended when the kids left. There was no need to get this guy to ask the ages of two more teachers. Especially since the latter gave the annoying female teacher more screentime. She by far was the worst character of the entire season.

Finally, the final part of this series wasn’t meant to be funny, but instead showed how the triplets and their father changed from when they were still four years old. A really great way to technically end this series with.

As for next week, I think that it’s all going to depend on what exactly got cut during the first season, and whether or not it was written in the production of the first season or the second season. Like, did they animate a bunch of sketches and were they redeemed inappropriate, or are they some manga chapters that were originally left unanimated? I mean, the series changed significantly between the two seasons, so it all depends on whether it’s going to be like the first season, or the much more balanced second season.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Letter Bee – 46

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



“Don’t bother chasing him. He’ll have no chance of getting in our way.”

Dude… no. Just no.

Overall, this episode was quite solid, but I feel that the creators could have taken more risks. The result is a lot of cliches that you usually see when a story is nearly over: once morally ambiguous villains turn evil, good guys who were tempted by the dark side turn good again and due to the absence of any sort of development from the government itself… it has turned into a good versus evil story. Bummer.

Now, it’s not like this episode was bad or anything. I mean, Cabernet versus the capital, this has been built up for an entire season now, so it was going to be obvious that the climax would focus on this. Lawrence’s decision to sacrifice the ones who didn’t become a spirit also has a perfect explanation when you look at the way he’s willing to sacrifice in order to get to his goals, even though he originally probably didn’t intend to sacrifice them. I’d just wish that he didn’t make it so easy for Gauche to choose which side to join.

And as for the lack of any info on the capital, it’s an interesting twist in any case. The fact that we don’t know anything about them is definitely left up to the imagination of the viewer. We can sort-of imagine why they made the decisions they made, but I like how it’s still anyone’s guess as to who they exactly are. So yeah; last episode: don’t ruin that by turning them into stereotypical evil overlords or something.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Bakuman – 21

by psgels, posted in Bakuman



Quite a strange build up at the end of this episode, when suddenly it turned out to be that some random J-rock idol decided that he wants to become a mangaka. Now, things can often get quite disastrous when people like that suddenly think that they’ve got talent and use their popularity to give themselves a boost in popularity, but there are of course exceptions. I wonder what kind of approach Bakuman will take to this, but for that we need to wait till next week.

In either case, it’s going to be bad for Moritaka and Akito because the fangirls will make it very difficult for them to rank in first in these manga power rankings. Most of this episode was really about fleshing out their goals of becoming the first: showing them work hard and missing sleep in order to catch their deadlines.

Oh, and that thirty-year-old guy also is making some progress, in quite a strange way, working together with this eccentric girl. The character designs of the latter probably point to the fact that she’ll be a major character later in the series. In any case it’s a bit late for her to make any impact on the first season, with only one month left.

Speaking of which, I wonder whether the creators are going for some sort of cliff-hanger, or whether the story is just going to stop for half a year (assuming that the second season airs next Autumn season). I do hope that at the very least, this thing is going to end with some sort of strange hook. Looking back, Bakuman’s first season has been quite good, but it still has a few too many episodes that were just too slow, but it’s not like it was like Nurarihyon no Mago whose first season was nothing but build-up. If the second season keeps up this pacing, it’s got quite a good chance to become a great series.
Rating: * (Good)

Wolverine – 08

by psgels, posted in Wolverine



This episode again didn’t put any supernatural powered opponents against Wolverine, but instead it spent a lot of time again on buildup (which now seems t be finished, though) and a fight against two random goons in some impenetrable… box. It was quite entertaining, though. They went through so much length to set up the perfect trap for Wovlerine, painstakingly install cameras and even entire machine guns, and he takes them out like it’s nothing.

I often complain against stereotypically evil bad guys. For Wolverine though, I really don’t think that the bad guys here are a problem. Now, they 100% evil, but what this show does right is the fact that it spends time on them. It shows a bit of their personalities beyond what we usually see from random goons and mid-bosses. What’s what made this episode work. It was quite endearing when these guys were waiting anxiously for Logan to find a way to break through that impenetrable wall of theirs.

Also, the drama around Yukio was great. The creators knew exactly that it should be used as background for her character, not the entire plot like Iron Man did. Yukio simply accepts that that guy is her grandfather, even though she left him due to the way he treated her. Nothing more, nothing less. Oh, and she’s actually forgiven for being a damsel in distress for nearly successfully trying to escape for once. It’s a shame that Mariko has to be so passive, but then again, if she was able to escape we wouldn’t have a story for this show.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 02

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Okay, so here I’m going to try and do the arduous task of trying to blog 22 episodes in a month and a half. Do expect some delays on some posts though, but I really want to try and blog this thing. It’s not perfect (the acting could have been better), but I still have a lot to like on this one. So far, it’s got terrific atmosphere, great build-up, gorgeous artwork and excellent climaxes.

We do seem to be dealing with an episodic series here, But the first two episodes have been quite well written. The stories have enough depth to them to make the episodic format work. I especially like how this series likes to present its story as fairly straightforward in the beginning, only to come up with a twist that gives a completely different meaning to the characters involved. Now this is how you should use build-up well!

For most of the first half I found this episode rather confusing. The two lead brothers kept talking about a lot of stuff that they seemed to have discovered off-screen. Especially when we suddenly got the information that they knew about the whereabouts of her husband all along, plus it was also rather strange that she was able to stay in the water for so long without… you know.. drowning. The twist that she had been dead for fifteen years though, it was an excellent one that really put things into perspective. On top of that, the creators also used their red herrings of the ghost couple quite well.

But yeah, the big flaw of this show so far is the stiff acting at times. It’s what you get when you have character-designs like this and try to animate them, without trying to make it look natural. The characters’ faces, whenever they move, move rather stiff and unnatural. At the same time though, the animation does make up for it during the climaxes, due to some really great shots and artwork.

This version I found of episode 2 had English voices on it, instead of the Japanese. Overall they did quite a decent job, with a few exceptions. Grealy’s wife for example was really hammy.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gosick – 08

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Oh, I have to admit that this show is shrewd. In the previous episode they introduced the most stereotypically evil characters for the story centred around Victorique’s background. Their personalities were so obviously out there , with a group of three random respect-less guys on one hand and this completely deranged maid on the others. I’ve been watching detective stories for so long that it totally didn’t occur to me that they could also be the culprits and that this was just a story in which everything was just as it seems. Har, har, very clever for this show to use an overused trope to its advantage. For once I can’t blame Victorique for refusing to explain how she found out about their identities.

This episode was well told, though. For once the two different murder mysteries in this arc proved to be quite effective red herrings for each other, and the atmosphere was actually quite excellent. Especially that bridge scene was well directed and shot and surprised me how I actually ended up caring for Kujou, of all people.

I also like how the creators wrote their stories into the European history. I mean, it’s not like Seyrun ever existed (or nothing with the same name at least), but this episode came with an entire background of how the village came to exist in the first place and where their ascendants came from. That actually worked very well here.

Oh, and the revelation that Cordellia was still alive only spiced things up even more at the end. This definitely was the best arc of Gosick so far. If it can keep this up, it’s actually going to become a pretty good series here. If not then it still has enough ways to become a total chore to sit through, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Fractale – 06

by psgels, posted in Fractale



This episode was completely saved by the last thirty seconds. The majority of this episode really was Clain, trying to see exactly how annoying he could be, and this just kept going on and on. I mean, we’re more than halfway through right now. At this point he really isn’t striking me as a good lead character for this series.

At the very least, this episode wasn’t as bad as the previous one. This episode thankfully went back to the Fractale system in order to flesh it out some more. I especially liked the way in which the antenna was able to catch the Fractale system even without the use of a balloon. It’s this discovery that’s part of the fun of adventure series. On the other side of the spectrum though, we have that new guy from the Lost Millennium introduced. The creators really needed to have been more subtle with this guy. He tried to be all ambiguous but it was obvious that he was a bad guy right from the start because of his character designs.

Overall, now that we’ve passed the halfway mark, I unfortunately have to say that Fractale has my least favourite first half of all Noitamina shows I’ve seen since Toshokan Sensou. I do have to add that I can’t comment on Nodame Cantabile’s finale because I haven’t seen that one, but unfortunately Fractale is suffering from very poor balance. Unfortunately the same thing that made Kannagi such a chore to watch, though not as bad. The thing is, this series spends so much time on randomly fleshing out the main characters… and yet it gives no time at all to give some character to the people from the Fractale system, the refugees, nor the other factions of the Lost Millennium. It’s the typical problem in which the creators have such an interesting setting… so they end up focusing on the least interesting part. In this case, Clain.

So yeah, I was glad to at least see that that old guy was Clain’s father so that we can at least get some good story on what happened to Clain’s parents. He could have outright told Clain that they were related, but I’m glad that the creators chose not to. Clain would probably have gotten even more whiny if he found out.
Rating: (Enjoyable)