Author: psgels

Kuroshitsuji II – 07

by psgels, posted in Kuroshitsuji II



Hey, I’m back from holidays.

Anyway, I’m understanding the appeal of Kuroshitsuji now This episode was just so ridiculously camp and over the top that it makes for great entertainment. It’s obviously nothing really deep, but I’m having a hell of a time enjoying the creativity that has been put in these battles between Alois and Claude and Ciel and Sebastian.

Also, THANK GOD Ciel finally turned into someone more than a damsel in distress this time. Overall, I’m not sure whether the cast was any deeper in the first season, but one of my complaints is that aside from Sebastian, Alois and Claude (and perhaps that one maid of Alois), the rest of the cast is pretty interchangeable. Every episode here seems to have a bunch of different side-characters, but they all just look like each other. You could just swap all of them for the same character and it would not have made any difference to the plot. In the same way, Ciel had a pretty interesting concept with his revenge and all, but most of the episodes I’ve seen him in simply make him into someone who either does nothing or gets kidnapped.

Either way though, the side character of this episode, while he pretty much sucked as a character, really fitted its over the top atmosphere. I think my favourite pats here were when Sebastian impaled the triplet servants with a single spear, along with the actual climax of the episode. I’m not sure why, but the creators seem to be having a lot of fun with Alois. The way he’s animated, along with his facial expressions are completely different from everything else on this show. There are really a ton of characters that are overacting and chewing the scenery in this series, but he is of a completely different class here.

As for the mystery: well, it really turns out that Alois was the bad guy behind the bad guy, giving Ciel an actual reason to get another revenge. Only two major questions remain right now: why is Ciel’s soul so damn tasty? And under what kind of condition did Alois make a pact with Claude? They’re both pretty standard questions, so I doubt that this series is going to be making any more points with its mystery right now, so at this point the final number of episodes need to rely on these over the top battles, along with the interesting dynamics between the four lead characters.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Nurarihyon no Mago – 06

by psgels, posted in Nurarihyon no Mago



The first half of this episode was… annoying. Obviously that hot spring was the big blame for this. It’s a good thing that this arc was really trying to tell a story, so that it was just building up for the second half of this series, but it remains obnoxious to see creators grab every chance they can to put female characters in a bath and have some of the unimportant male side-characters talk about peeping.

Overall, I’ll be happy when the focus of this series shifts away from Rikuo’s classmates. At the moment, they’re just too one-sided. The second half of this episode on the contrary was pretty good. That trap felt pretty flimsy in the previous episode, but this episode showed that for whatever reason, Gyuuki made a hard decision here that could cost him his own life. Especially the atmosphere at the end of this episode was quite good, even though it was meant to be an obvious cliff-hanger.

Overall though, after six episodes, I do think that Nurarihyon no Mago lacks the charms of Junji Nishimura’s better works. While I like it much more than Kyou Kara Maou (or what I’ve seen of it anyway), it really lacks the refined characterization that made series as Simoun, Windy Tales and True Tears so memorable. He really seems to be a guy who can get the best out of his series when they’re original stories, instead of following an adaptation. But who knows, I still like Nurarihyon no Mago, and the manga seems solid enuogh in any case.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Some Quick First Impressions: Ring ni Kakero 1: Shadow

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Ring ni Kakero 1: Shadow

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is Japan’s boxing champion.
Guess who’s late here? Ring ni Kakero’s third season originally premiered during the past spring season, but after that you just couldn’t find anything of it. As expeted though, this turned out to be a ridiculously cheesy boxing series. In just the first episode we have this random bad guy who appears, kidnaps the lead characters’ sister and makes said lead character box against 100 of his goons in order to get this sister back. The acting is just ridiculously over the top and the creators are overly cheesy about everything (especially that scene in which the lead character receives the legendary knuckles of awesomeness). There’s also this terrible comic relief character (who somehow has the exact same haircut as the lead character). This is just one of those shows that goes through such excreme lengths to create tension that it only ends up backfiring horribly, making it look silly.
OP: Hot blooded GAR cheese.
ED: Cheesy j-rock
Potential: 10%

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin – 06

by psgels, posted in Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin




It’s just as I hoped! This episode really was awesome, and it had a really excellent direction behind it. With the comedy elements this really was different from the likes of Mouryou no Hako and Hashire Melos, but you could still see the traces of Ryousuke Nakamura and Mieko Hosoi. God… these people need to direct another full fledged series.

There were a ton of really well animated shots in this episode, with quite some fluid animation and imaginative camera angles. There were a few scenes that really brought these characters alive, and especially the diving scene at the end was just utterly beautiful. It’s also very interesting how two completely different types of artists worked on this episode and the previous one: the previous episode was very obviously drawn by Mamoru Hosoda fans, while Mieko Hosoi has a completely different inspiration (I’d love to know what that was, by the way).

As for the direction, I absolutely love how this episode played out. Throughout most of the episode we see this careful build-up that shows Maya investigating exactly what happened, combined with a number of quick but really good jokes. There were a few outbursts of drama, like the sudden point in which Kozue started crying, but that too was just used to build up to that final part, which worked really well with Bunmei’s life flashing before his own eyes. It lasted like what? 2 minutes. But they really were worth it.

Beyond that, they also made it plausible for Bunmei and Maya to make up. Thankfully they stayed away from any sort of romance, but rather Maya forced herself to see past her biases after having seen the future.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Daddy Long Legs Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



With this review I feel like I really need to explain its rating. Daddy Long Legs seems to be one of the most appreciated series of the World Masterpiece Theatre out there. At AniDB it is rated as the best of the franchise with more than 100 votes, so quite a lot of people seem to agree on the classic status of this series. I don’t, though.

If I sound harsh in this review, remember that I’m comparing this to the other World Masterpiece Theatre series I’ve seen. And really, you can see the influences. This remains a series that’s based on a novel, and so the characters are constantly growing up, are forced to come to terms with their flaws and really change throughout the series. It’s perhaps not the most original story, but as a story of growing up it does its job quite well. I just have some fundamental problems with how it was executed.

I think my problems are best summarized by that it follows too much from classic shoujo tropes. And of course, there have been quite a few other WMT-series in the shoujo genre, but they had a very solid execution to back it up with, while this one doesn’t. The drama in this series at times tends to resemble a bit of a soap opera, where the writers try to make the different characters clash a little too easily. Especially the latter half of this series is filled to the brim with romantic cliches that have been done better by many different series that appeared both before and after this series.

Because this is yet another one of those high school series that puts a poor person (an orphan in this case) in a rich environment, leading to culture clashes, it really needed something to make up for it and partially, this series did. Even though it sometimes likes to force its drama, the slice of life moments were well portrayed, and the creators did a good job at exploring the differences between the culture of the upper classes without devolving it into just a string of endless parties or snobbish, stuck up and spoiled children. Julia, one of the main side characters, is especially good at that, where you can see that she has been spoiled her entire life, and yet she behaves like an actual teen-aged girl with more sides to her than just that.

And really, for the biggest part of this series I really didn’t mind it that much. Sure, it wasn’t the best of the World Masterpiece Theatre by far, but it still was pretty good, and did what it was supposed to do, and I didn’t really mind the flaws I mentioned above. Then, however, the ending came.

Now, I have watched a number of series where the ending completely changed my opinion, causing me to rate it much higher or lower than I originally had in mind, and this again happened here. That ending was one of the most contrived, cheesy, Deus ex Machina-laden endings I have seen in a long while now. A huge part of this series is devoted to building up to this particular ending, which then completely trashes any kind of subtlety or charm that was originally introduced. The plot is made way too complicated for its own good and in the end this series collapses under all of the plot twists it made to make the ending as spicy as possible.

The reason why I’m such a big fan of the World Masterpiece Theatre is because how well it handles its drama. It’s all very genuine, its characterization is truly excellent. The final quarter of this series however reduces most of its drama to stereotypical teen-aged angst, and it’s not even good angst. Relatively smart characters also tend to behave like idiots when the plot demands it. I have a lot more plot-related qualms to the ending of the series, but that would be too spoilerific to discuss in this review. The characterization of this series is good, but not good enough to make up for the many issues I have with this series.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Solid at times, but tries way too hard at others.
Characters: 8/10 – Ignore the bad teen-aged angst and you’ve got a bunch of likable characters that are actually quite well developed.
Production-Values: 8/10 – there is no eye candy, but the animation is detailed and does what it needs to do.
Setting: 7/10 – Held back by just too many things that don’t make any sense, a high school that lacks any kind of life, and too much of a focus on shoujo cliches to really show much of America in… whatever time period this is set in.

Suggestions:
– The Trapp Family Story
– Kaze no Shoujo Emily
– Perrine Monogatari

High School of the Dead – 06

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead



Um. Yeah. I’m not going to blog softcore porn here…

Regarding the parts of this episode that weren’t part of High School of the Boobs, this episode created a new layer of chaos by finally showing the police being forced to take drastic measures, and actually kill people. It’s all a big build up to the second half of this series, and at least that part of the episode worked well.

This episode also introduced a really weird plothole with the dog. It was barking, it made noise, it was loud… and yet the zombies didn’t seem to care. I mean, these really are the most selective zombies I’ve seen, only responding to certain sounds while completely ignoring others. It’s a shame really. Zombie dogs would have been quite interesting here.
Rating: – (Let’s just move on here…)

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 18

by psgels, posted in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru



Whoa, Luka. This was quite an episode for him, and it had a really good atmosphere here. This episode shed a big light on what actually happened to this guy, and the relationship between him and his kin. The exact reason for this is still left for the flashback that’s going to show the past between him and Yuki, but this episode really showed his loyalty towards his decision to betray his own kind.

Interestingly this episode also explains why Luka kicks so much ass with his powers, and it turns out that in-breeding Duras only leads to stronger species, with him being the best example of this, safe for perhaps Reiga. I really suspect that he hated this kind of upbringing.

At a certain point the villainess also pulled the “I can create illusions and therefore transform into your loved one and you completely fall for it”-card. This was one of those few cases in which it actually worked. Usually you’d see completely through such a trick with enough common sense, but Luka did have his nostalgia to blame for falling for it. I mean, how many hears has he been waiting to see the girl Yuki back?

Also, I really want to praise the background artists of this episode. The use of colours and CG really made for some beautiful artworks. Elegy herself didn’t have the best character-designs, but heck, that could be just the creator’s intentions. All of the Duras have looked rather silly in this series, so it might just be that the demons in this series have a strange taste in fashion.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Giant Killing – 19

by psgels, posted in Giant Killing



Ah, yes. The creators are really intending this to be a major match. Just look at the huge amount of time that went into this episode, just leading up to the kick-ff of the actual match. Considering that we’ve only got six episodes left, this might just be the start of the climax of this series. If that’s true, then we’re really in for an awesome climax. Six episodes will be plenty of time to really build up the tension, and progress the match. This series has already shown that its attention to detail is superb, it’ll really be able to show this off with a time in which you can actually fit ninety minutes.

This is also one of those details, but I love how the Dutch people don’t have typical Dutch last names, like “de Groot”, “de Wit”. That isn’t needed either: there are enough Dutch people walking around with strange last names (or German for that matter). This really establishes that this series is dealing with actual people, and doesn’t really care about stereotypes, while at the same time they do make sure to establish these people as foreigners. The Dutch people really are freakishly tall for Japanese standards. Tatsumi’s question about the bikes is bound to have been intended as a subtle jab at this (and yes, for the people who are wondering: we do indeed have more bikes than people. Everyone and his dog seems to have one).

In any case, this episode didn’t feel wasted at all: it really established how the Osaka team is one of the nation’s favourites, with four national players, they’re the tournament’s top scorer and have yet to be beaten. But that’s the beauty of these stories about professional soccer: it doesn’t make them unbeatable. If this were a high school series, one loss would mean that they would be out of the tournament. Because of this, the creators really were able to play with this losing streak of the ETU where despite two wins, they’ve mostly played in a draw or a loss.

I also feel that this is one of those very few series that can end anywhere. Obviously I’m hoping for a second season for this thing, but the lack of ultimate goal here pretty much enables the creators to wrap up the story after any arc, since there pretty much can’t be an actual ending that closes off all of the subplots: life will always go on, and times will always be hard for the ETU. The more we get to see of them of course, the better, but I doubt that this series will leave that empty feeling that other series do when they suddenly stop with their manga still ongoing.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Sengoku Basara – 17

by psgels, posted in Sengoku Basara



This was a bit of the problem with the first season: it spent so much time on building up that it forgot to actually deliver. This episode was bugged by a bit of a problem: there were no fights at all. There was just one point where Masamune and Uesugi crossed blades, but that was more as a sign of friendship than anything else. Oh, and there were some cannons who destroyed a bunch of ships, but that too was just build-up for the next episode.

The build-up is nice and all but this is supposed to be a hot blooded action series that really needs its time of 12 episodes. I know that Sengoku Basara in total has 25 episodes, but it’s still a bit different compared to your regular 26-episoded anime. I really hope that the creators know what they’re doing here.

Either way, another reason why the first season was so boring was because the battles that it did feature were rather boring. I think the biggest offender here was the battle around Tokugawa. I mean, here the creators had the founder of modern Japan, but the huge fight around him never really was interesting. With all of the battles that this episode has been building up for, the next episode seems like the perfect place to make up for it.

And it’s not like this episode was boring in the way that the first season was. It’s just that we hardly learned any new information here: everything that happened here was just meant to flesh out the different subplots: rather than getting from A to B, this episode described the road between A and B. It’s cool, but the creators really have to use it in the rest of the series. The part I liked best probably was that scene in which we saw Masaune’s men take care of their own injuries and see then recovering. Now THAT’s more than just build up.
Rating: (Enjoyable)