Author: psgels

Aku no Hana – 12

by psgels, posted in Aku no Hana

You could see that this was a calm before the storm episode, right before the conclusion of the series, but even then it was very well done. It didn’t focus on the atmosphere or disturbing psychology as much as usual, but still: the creators made it a really personal episode, centered around Nakamura.

I loved the way she just completely ignored Kazuga, but also how we finally get to have a look at her family, and how they react on her behavior. Seriously, the way her father dealt with it was really interesting: you could see he was an adult, but he had no clue how to get a grasp on his daughter, and they just grew apart like that.

The best was the ending of the episode though. It promised one heck of a final episode! Throughout the entire series, Kasuga mainly managed to show his deviant-self because Nakamura pushed him, save for the moment where he stole the underwear. Here, he finally does something out of his own again. He didn’t do it for Nakamura, he did it out of his own curiosity.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Chihayafuru – 48 & 49

by psgels, posted in Chihayafuru

The second season of Chihayafuru was the obvious middle part of the story: lacking a beginning and end. While for Chihaya herself, it may not be the most important in terms of character-development, it definitely has its parts where it can shine above the other seasons. One of the biggest ones really became apparent in the conclusion: the fact that Chihaya can step down as the main character for a bit, to allow other characters to shine.

I forgotten about it, but I love it when the main character just spends a bit of time as a spectator. A time where the matches don’t revolve around building up a match for her, but instead are important in their own way. Episodes 23 and 24 were about matches that shouldn’t have been overshadowed by Chihaya. Taichi’s advance to Class A, and the match between Arata and Shinobu. These two things have been built up for so long now. They needed to be fully put in the spotlights.

All three characters were awesome. These matches didn’t serve to particularly develop them, but rather, they highlighted their development: they showed how much they had grown to this point and how well they prepared. This also looked so well into how their karuta works, and the difference in their playstyles. The focus on Karuta was the icing on the cake, by the way: to close off the season with what a play between two of the best players looks like. It made the sport even deeper than it already was.

So, what about this hypothetical third season. Let’s suppose that it gets made. The strange thing is that the creators are building up Arata as the ultimate rival for Chihaya, and not Shinobu. When looking at the chronological events, this has to be the case if they want to end predictably: Chihaya will beat Shinobu in the Queen’s match, and she’ll then be up against Arata during the regular finals for the actual climax.

The problem with that will obviously be predictability. The creators will have to pull out all of their tricks to spice things up and pull away focus from this predictability. The first steps were made for this by giving Shinobu a cold in this episode. That was very clever, because it still is a mystery who would win in a fair match where both are at their best. Also, Suoh will need to be developed really badly there. He will probably be dethroned by Arata. The trick is to give this as much depth as possible.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Shingeki no Kyojin – 11

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

It’s probably no mistake that I love series that know their build-up; the series that really manage to prepare, and use this preparation, rather than just going into random directions. Shingeki no Kyojin showed with this episode that it really knows its build-up. The climax of this episode was amazing, and in a very different way from what you usually see.

Nearly the entire episode was about hope: trying to convince everyone in this series that the best course of action would be to send Eren to plug up the hole in Wall Maria. There were a lot of uncertainties, and so the characters had to resort to using hope: this can work. There were so many people in doubts in this episode. If it works, then this will be the first time mankind has ever won from the titans. This will turn the tide and we can actually start to fight back with Eren that way. It will be worth all of the sacrifices! And then Eren just started to smash in random walls. Oh, the despair! It was awesome.

As for the budget, this episode showed that this is really a manga adaptation: there were quite a few still frames, that looked like they came right out of the manga. And that, combined with some beautiful money-shots of Eren and Mikasa flying through the city. It’s clear that the best animator of this week’s episode worked on that city, and it’s the kind of action scene that really is unique to this anime.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Aku no Hana – 11

by psgels, posted in Aku no Hana

Every season, there is one series that in one way or the other reminds me why I still love anime. Aku no Hana is one of them, and this episode only established this even more. Even this late in the series, it still pushes the boundaries of television series, and tries to see what it can get away with. This episode took guts. It could so easily have been incredibly boring, and yet they pulled it off. This was just art.

I mean, when you look at synopsises of this episode, there is one thing you’ll realize: nothing happens! Yeah, I guess Kasuga and Saeki formally break up and all. But take a look at most of this episode: long stretches of Kasuga just walking around, long stretches in which absolutely nothing is said. And yet these parts were so full of emotion.

Is that what teenaged angst feels like? Is that what it feels like to be in a completely hopeless situation? Heck, this episode was about the emptiness in Kasuga’s heart, and it did not portray this through dialogue, or plot. But rather through just animation and sound. The nonverbal communication was absolutely fantastic here. The atmosphere! I can’t believe how well it was carried throughout the entire episode!

Also, the climax. Perfect use of all that build-up!
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope – June 18th

by psgels, posted in Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope

#1: Yahari Blahblah – 09: The main character’s pessimism: I’m really surprised at how well that has been done in this series. It really has depth: he’s not just wise-cracking his way through the series, nor is he wallowing in self-pity. He is who he is, and he is happy that way, even though his life could be so much more fun if he didn’t think the way he did and he wasn’t so cautious in avoiding disappointments. And even that part gets developed in this episode. This is the first light-novel adaptation with a stupidly long title that I actually liked, but even then this has exceeded my expectations.

#2: Majestic Prince – 09: The plot in this series is nothing special. The characters still show off their clichés. The villains are boring, the setting is standard. Yet why do I like this? Why do I find the characters so enjoyable to watch? Why do I find their quirks funny? What’s going on here?

#3: Hunter X Hunter – 83: What I really like about the Chimera Ant Arc is how well it explores the ants themselves, and how they gradually learn from their mistakes. They’re smart… for ants. That unfortunately is also why I don’t yet consider this to be the best arc of the series so far. At this point the ants have nothing on the Spider Troupe yet and the fights still are boring. Will that change or not?

Wtf of the week:

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San Z – 09 & 10: What on earth did I just watch? What was that? Why, Japan? Why!?!

Worst episode

Valvrave the Liberator 10: Oh boy. I’d like to talk a bit about the series from the “Code Geass”-school, or to be more accurate: the products of Ichiro Okouchi and Hiroyuki Yoshino, because I’m deeply concerned with what these two are doing. Hiroyuki Yoshino may not be involved in Valvrave, but the general trend is definitely visible. The two of them are prolific writers who get assigned to do the series composition of a lot of high-profile original anime, yet their philosophy favors sensationalism over everything else: they write series with shock value in mind, while at the same time having storylines that don’t even bother hiding that they’re ridiculous.

I say that it comes from the Code Geass-school, but I believe that this started with Mai Hime and Mai Otome. Mai Hime was actually a very good series that actually did a very good job at shock twists, but something happened in the transition to Mai Otome, which started to sacrifice good storytelling and likable characters for said shock twists (really, what happened there just did not make any sense!). Ever since that point, our lovely duo proceeded to write original scripts that just threw in shocks for the sake of having shocks, even though they are either really convenient, or just didn’t make any sense at all (and before this point they didn’t do that: these are the guys who wrote Planetes, Overman King Gainer, the adaptation for Angelic Layer) and indeed Mai Hime. A downside is that they use that to also drag down some really good directors in the process: Tetsurou Araki, Goro Taniguchi, Matsuou Kou, even Shoji Kawamori (in a less noticeable way though, probably thanks to Shoji’s ego). They’re all brilliant directors, but none of that brilliance shined through when they had to work with these guys.

So yeah, the rape. Let’s just say that I disagree with how it was used here. Valvrave is supposed to be this fun over the top and crazy series. With this, you just made it way too serious. I understand that they wanted to show that Valvrave can turn people into monsters. But don’t try to combine that with a student council election. That’s very bad use of irony, not to mention that I find that it looks very much down on rape and rape victims. With this episode this series also really started to take itself seriously. Why? Also, I glimpsed at a few of the reactions people had after this episode. And god. It’s times like these where I want to disassociate myself from the anime fandom…

Random Anime Recommendations

by psgels, posted in Random Anime Recommendations

Hey guys, I’m currently experimenting with a new format, inspired by the podcast I did together with Deadlights, Scammp and Juno. It inspired me to do a bit more with podcasts, but instead short ones. I’ve always had the idea of writing some kind of recommendation post: I mean I’ve written a lot of reviews at this point, but for most people looking for new stuff to watch it can be very intimidating to search through everything, so in these podcasts, instead of discussing the new shows I thought it’d be an interesting experiment to just recommend some older series that I’ve watched.

What I did, is that I’ve created some random generator of all the series that I’ve seen. After deleting some obvious sequels that list totals 964 series, movies and OVAs together. For each series I get, I’ll give reasons why it is recommended, or why it’s not to be recommended. I have no idea what series will come out of it, so it’s going to be completely improvised. Yes, I like to torture myself sometimes.

Also, I apologize for my accent. I’m Dutch, but even then I know it’s terrible. ^^;

These are the series that came out of the random generator this time, in order:

– Akira
– Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu
– Melody of Oblivion
– Love Hina
– Dororon Enma-kun Meerameera
– Kowarekake no Orgol
– She and her Cat

Also, apologies for ending so abruptly. I screwed around while cleaning up and accidentally removed the last few sentences. And feel free to discuss the series that I’ve mentioned. 🙂

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet – 10

by psgels, posted in Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet

Aah, the build-up. The thing is, this episode on its own was really good. Here you can really see that Urobuchi Gen wrote this, in the cold way he analyzes his settings, and he really has a character who is as objective as possible, setting aside any personal bias you might have. That part on its own ws really well written.

Gen loves to use this cold, realistic and objective character on one side, and a naive (but not stereotypically naive) character on the other. The fact that this character is not stereotypically naive is important: this prevents cheese. Ledo went from this cold-hearted guy to someone with a lot of empathy. The thing is that I have trouble buying that he changed so radically. He was very well able to think rationally: the fact remains that the Hideazu have threatened the existence of humankind. I can understand that he would feel conflicted about killing humans, but he didn’t even try to consider both options. That was a missed opportunity I feel.

I believe that Gargantia would have been best if it was about a season and a half long. As weird as it sounds, the creators should have had more episodes like number 6 and 7, dedicated to explain exactly why the characters in this series changed, the way they did. Right now the character-development is great, but a bit out of left field. Pinion for example: he was this normal guy until last episode suddenly revealed that he has this big trauma with his lost brother, and now suddenly he’s leading his own ship that takes over pirate ships and… stuff. Note though: these are nitpicks. Overall I like this series a lot.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Uchuu Kyoudai – 60 & 61

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

Something weird is going on here: ever since Mutta became an astronaut, his climaxes have been a bit mellow. I mean, at the end of the first, second, and third exam you could cut the build-up with a knife, and the resolutions were all really well developed and had a ton of personality behind them. Here it’s like “Oh, you became fifth”. It’s all very straightforward, and while things were done to spice things up with the rain and mud and all, I still feel like I’m missing something. This edge, some sort of wit, that made the first year of this series so incredibly addictive.

Not to say that this is bad though. I’m not looking forward to Space Brothers in the way that I used to, but these two episodes again were very realistic: they took the build-up of the previous episodes and with that in mind, things happened exactly like you thought it would. Everything of the past three or four months was leading up to these two episodes, and so much preparation has been put into it. Yeah, there was very little that could go wrong.

And I don’t know whether these episodes were special or not, but the recaps at the beginning were cut down significantly. Now keep it that way! I mean, the pacing in these two episodes was perfectly done. Also, the animation and particle effects were also very well animated on Hibito’s reentry.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Shingeki no Kyojin – 10

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

Shingeki no Kyojin is addictive, it’s just as I hoped, even in episodes like this when there isn’t any action. This episode instead was all about paranoia, and panic, which is what it used to create its atmosphere. I deally the pacing could have been a bit faster, but that’s just a minor nitpick. This still worked really well and because of that it actually made sense for that commander to be stopped by his superior, because he took so damn long to give the order to fire.

Armin was the one who got the most development in this episode. And heck, his performance in this episode was over the top crazy, but that definitely grabbed me by surprise. He’s really slowly growing out of his stereotype as well, and he’s shown quite a few times that he knows how to think and come up with bold plans.

The strange thing here is transforming: usually when a character transforms he just grows, shrinks, turns, or just generally morphs into a different shape. Eren though, he just grows 20 times his size, he regrows his limbs, and stays inside the titans like it’s some sort of flesh-puppet.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Aku no Hana – 10

by psgels, posted in Aku no Hana

This show. This show seriously continues to amaze me. Last week’s episode ended with Nakamura and Kasuga ran off. This entire episode dealt with that aftermath. The pacing was incredibly slow. That leads to either lots of dragging on, or a really personal episode.

For me, it’s the latter. Holy crap, the characters got their chance to really act out their emotions here. Finally, both Kasuga and Saeki were completely honest with their feelings, and they actually dared to speak their minds. And with this, it has become clear that they haven’t done so throughout the entire series. I can’t believe how many series have done this wrong, and yet here is a series that gets it right!

The problem with indecisive characters is pacing. The feeling of “Just get on with it already!” when characters take forever to confess to each other, it’s just not interesting to watch. Aku no Hana is different, though. First of all, it really sets itself apart by insisting that it’s not another one of those “will they won’t they”-series: that’s far from the point of this series. It’s about teenagers feeling empty in society, it’s about the layers that people put up in front of each other. The love triangle is just a plot device to explore that, rather than the other way around. That’s how I usually like my romance: as a side-dish with substance, rather than a full on main course that overpowers everything.

Also in romance, things have to be brought believably in these kinds of things. Last week I wondered why Saeki fell for Kasuga, and well, the reason turns out to be one that gets very often abused in romance series: coincidence. She fell for him when he asked her out, because she’s young and nobody has done that before. And she fell for him HARD. I actually buy that, probably due to how good the acting has been (try to pull that with a cardboard cut-out character and I will be raging).

And holy crap, that climax. That climax was amazing, the awkward silence in which everyone agreed to part ways, the knowledge that everyone pretty much disappointed everyone, and yet all three of them were unable to leave due to the police showing up. The police was absolutely wonderful as a wake up call for everyone to realize what just happened, and let things sink in. Thank you for ending the episode not on the cliff-hanger of Saeki’s acceptance that things weren’t going to work out, but dragging things out a liiiittle bit longer. Seriously the atmosphere in this show is just brilliant.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)