Author: psgels

Giant Killing – 17

by psgels, posted in Giant Killing



One of the best episodes of Giant Killing so far. Everything worked so well here, and on top of that we finally got to hear some new tracks from the OST. This episode really did an amazing job in heating up the tensions between the three forwards of the ETU.

I love how they all have their own issues here. Sakai is old and past his prime, but nevertheless a veteran. Sera meanwhile has his speed to back him up, which landed him as a solid forward and a place on the team’s starters. Natsuki on the other hand can make some amazing goals, but he’s also a nutcase, and the creators have been hinting for quite a bit now at how his talent may have some unexpected drawbacks.

It’s great to see that now we finally got to see Sakai’s version of the story. His age here definitely gives a new dimension to this story, because at this point I really feel like all three of them deserve the position as forward, and aside from Natsuki’s personality, it’s not like any of them are extremes on the team: they’re all solid attackers who may not be able to score much, but Sera and Sakai have both shown that they can keep pressure forward. Natsuki in the meantime is nowhere as extreme as Tsubaki.

One of those tiny scenes I also loved was the one in which Natsuki looked at his wife with that endless optimism of his. Even though his daughter fell asleep, he still kept going with those inner monologues of him. This episode had surprisingly little attention to the supporters, but they were definitely all there, along with two new people who joined the group of older fans.

Part of what made this episode also so awesome was the background music. Interestingly, the creators had some Latin-inspired tunes, and instead of using it with the Brazilians in the previous arc, they chose for something much less stereotypical in making it symbolize Natsuki’s inner euphoria. My favourite part however was the tune that was played, just after the first goal was made, and everyone was making their counter-attack. It’s because of that tune that the goal afterwards came out of bloody nowhere. I also loved Tatsumi’s face when that goal was made: it was the face of dread, as he feared that Natsuki would get even more confident than he already was.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Sengoku Basara – 15

by psgels, posted in Sengoku Basara



Whoa, was that Ishikawa Chiaki who suddenly performed an insert-song in the middle of this episode? Awesome, the creators here are certainly making sure to make this one a spectacle. Usually I’m not a fan of overacting, but this burning passion was exactly what prevented the first season of Sengoku Basara from standing out.

In any case, I’m glad to see that the second season is so much better balanced here. This episode was all about Maeda Keiji (who seems to have been upgraded to a lead character in this season) versus the rest of his clan, as he tried to stop them from engaging into a pointless battle.

I think that what makes Sengoku Basara more interesting than your average action series is that even though there’s a clear villain here, it’s still a complete chaos, where a lot more conflicts are going on. On top of that, the characters themselves aren’t stupid fighting machines (that’s one thing that the first season did right), but instead things lie far more complex, and I like how even though this is supposed to be an action series, it still puts a lot of focus on this dialogue.

Also, I believe that this was one of the first fantasy series that has the balls of actually animating the fact that the bodies of the characters are strong enough to stop a freaking katana. It’s great to see this actually get animated, rather than the usual thing in which we see some sort of flash, but don’t really know what exactly happened, and why someone isn’t sliced to death when being struck by such a killing weapon. Sengoku Basara isn’t the best game adaptation by far, but it definitely has the right intentions. That swordfight in the middle was definitely well coordinated.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Heartcatch Precure – 24

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



As awesome as they look, I do hope that from now on the creators are going to limit the different transformation scenes in each episode. I mean, they were still fine when it was just Blossom and Marin, but now that Sunshine has arrived these scenes are starting to dominate the episode: in this episode, we had Sunshine’s transformation scene, the scene in which all precures announce their names, then there also was the part in which the heart seed was “born”, two times Sunshine’s special attack, then there’s Blossom and Marin’s special attack, plus another special attack of Blossom… it’s just too much. But I think that the creators realize this as well.

To make up for it, this episode featured the inclusion of a few new soundtracks for the series, and they really rock. They’re going to be great additions to the series’ second half. On top of that, this episode also introduced flying capes, so we’re probably also going to get a lot more aerial battles from now on. Sounds promising. Either way, I’m very curious to this second half: exactly how far will the creators go in shifting the direction of this series after the half-way point?

Anyway, about this episode: it was mostly meant to protect the Heart Tree, and prevent the bad guys from going after it in the second half. With this, we’ve also closed off the “Sunshine introduction arc”, and the next episode should give some hints about what the rest of the series will look like. The fight itself wasn’t the most interesting due to the above-mentioned transformation scene abuse, but this really was meant as an episode to introduce some of the new stuff here.
Rating: * (Good)

Break Blade I Review – 72,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Perhaps it’s because I’ve watched too much anime, but I found this first of six Break Blade movies to be totally unremarkable. Sure, I guess that the soundtrack is good, (especially considering the huge budget that went into that one), and there are times at which the attention to details is quite good, but apart from that it was just so… generic.

Any potential for the future installments of this series of movies fully depends on how much the creators are going to use the build-up of this movie. Standalone though… I just wouldn’t recommend it. It’s basically just a big collection of cliches. It’s set in a fantasy world in which two big countries are at war. The lead character happens to be friends with the princess and king of one of the countries (so he can feel special and famous without the responsibilities of these jobs), while one of his other childhood friends has become a general of the other country. Oh, and he’s also the only one who can activate the “great awesome mecha of doom”. It’s all got this “been there, done that” feeling.

With so many cliches, you need something to make up for it. Break Blade so far… doesn’t. I understand that it could be holding back some trumps here and there, but it doesn’t make the best first impressions. The mecha battles are just average and unremarkable, while the money shots just come and go without leaving much of an impression. To me, this movie could have used a better direction, with a better build-up and better dynamics between the individual scenes.

The director, Tetsuro Amino has me worried, though. I mean, what is he doing, working on three projects at the same time? There are enough other talented directors out there, so he could have just decided to focus on either Hutch, Break Blade or Shiki. I’m really not looking forward to another Chiaki Kon or Akiyuki Shinbo here…

Storytelling: 7/10 – It sometimes has a good attention to detail, but it also failed to catch my attention.
Characters: 7/10 – Characters have background, but this is all minimal. They’re not bad, but they are completely unremarkable.
Production-Values: 8/10 – For a movie it has quite a few still shots, but it has enough well animated scenes. The soundtrack is recorded by an actual orchestra, but not really used well.
Setting: 7/10 – Too many cliches.

Suggestions:
– Visions of Escaflowne
– Tales of Vesperia
– Tales of the Abyss

OVA Impressions: Black Rock Shooter

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions




So, Black Rock Shooter has finally aired. It was a bit underwhelming, but still a pretty decent slice of life OVA about a middle schooler and a friend she makes at her first day of school. Not a lot of stuff happens throughout these fifty minutes, but it was pretty good at fleshing out its main character, and showing the progression of their relationship over a bit more than a year’s time. In the end, the drama gets a bit cheesy, but it works. It’s a pretty decent way to spend 50 minutes.

Oh yeah, and it has random girls who fight each other.

Now that’s the part I’m a bit iffy about, because it was supposed to be the selling point of this OVA. Instead, you get to watch some pretty neat animation, but the story itself just feels tacked on at best. Its purpose only gets revealed at the end of the OVA, and even then I feel like the creators should have put more effort into either combining these two, or just splitting them apart entirely. As you can see from the screenshots: it really looks awesome. It deserves much better than being some flimsy background for a story that doesn’t even need it and would actually be better off without it.

I guess that the creators originally intended the slice of life parts as a sort-of background support story for those “black rock shooter”-scenes and all, but they ended up spending so much time and effort on the high school part that it completely dwarfs out these action scenes. What I rather would have seen was just fifty minutes of those girls who fight each other, and see what they’re doing when they’re not fighting, where they came from, and what is up with the interesting locations in which they fight; that kind of stuff. They don’t need a bunch of middle school girls for that.

Pros: Neat fight scenes, good soundtrack. Pretty good slice of life.
Cons: High school part completely dwarfs the action part. Action part doesn’t really fit in.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,5/10
(Yes, I’m still experimenting with what kind of format works best when reviewing OVAs)

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – 04

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu



Okay, so it was indeed impossible for this series to live up to the previous episode, and this episode indeed wasn’t as good as the previous one. Still, it completed the introduction of this series, sending Raina on the quest that we saw him at in the first episode, filling in some of the main gaps and questions we had (as in Shion becoming king).

But seriously, this show really likes its mood swings. The banter between Raina and Ferris is just silly. They make use of every moment to snare at each other. The contrast with the otherwise serious story has some interesting effects though. The way in which Lucile is basically using Shion from the shadows is definitely no laughing matter. On one hand, this Lucile guy is being set up as the villain, and yet Ferris still is loyal to him after the decapitation of the previous episode.

I was also surprised at how well the creators handled Raina’s time in jail. The conversations he had with his guard were quite interesting to watch. The way that the two became friends was quite charming, and they actually gave a character to this guard. Two entire years passed throughout this episode and you could see that the two of them got along with each other.

Kiefer Knolles (seriously, these people have weird names; just look at MAL: Ferris Eris, Iris Eris, Klom Claugh), I also really like how she just didn’t sit on a rock for two years, waiting for Raina to get released. And instead, she found her own way of dealing with having all her classmates massacred.
Rating: * (Good)

Shiki – 03

by psgels, posted in Shiki




A lot of building up was done in this episode, but it still had an excellent atmosphere. And I must say, for a studio like Daume, the art has really turned out to be quite beautiful here. The shots that use CG or strange filters are really well composed here. Character-designs like these are definitely a risk that was taken here, but it works out quite well.

The drama in this episode was a bit less due to the inclusion of some random emo teenager (or at least, that’s what he looked like). At this point, this guy is still a bit too extreme to be taken seriously, but I wonder what his purpose will be for the rest of the series. In any case this episode did a pretty good job of showing a bit of the every day lives of these people, and how they met each other, and I can very much see an extreme character like him pay off in the end. I can see that the creators were going for a bratty teenager here, so I’ll wait to see them show different sides of this kid.

Especially Natsuno showed a bit of a different side of him here. He was indifferent here, but now that he wasn’t bothered by some teen-aged girl here, he didn’t have this air of annoyance around him. His new friend also helped here, I guess.

This episode also was very much hinting at which characters we should watch out for. We finally get a good look at the owners of the castle, along what is possibly their daughter. The latter is so obviously featured in the OP and ED that she has to play a huge role here, and this episode pretty much set her up as a future antagonist. Also, the cat dude also seems to hold some secrets.

In any case, I love how the creators have been trying to include as many inhabitants of the village as possible, while giving EVERYONE distinct character-designs. Even all of the minor characters look unique, and are portrayed as people, rather than cardboard cut-outs (aside from a few old people in those rumour-scenes, I guess).
Rating: * (Good)

Kuroshitsuji II – 04

by psgels, posted in Kuroshitsuji II



To answer the most burning question of this episode: yes, Claude was in it. No, he didn’t do anything. He only had two lines and most of this was another Ciel and Sebastian episode, though the next episode shows promise.

In any case, this episode was clearly inspired by Baccano. It really was a step into the right direction here, and I like the concept behind it, creating chaos inside a train full of interesting characters that has a hostage on it. I just don’t agree with the execution.

I think the biggest problem with this episode was that it was a Kuroshitsuji episode. This episode went through a lot of trouble to throw in as many characters as possible into this episode, but in the end they hardly amounted to anything here. There was a point at which everyone was getting pumped up on working together to free the hostage, but then Sebastian came and just god-moded everything back to normal. In fact, this is a problem that I’ve had with with every episode that has Sebastian in it: in theory it would kick ass to have an uber butler at your disposal (and Alois really showed this in episode 1), but if you’re going to use him in this way, a character like him just kills all of the build-up.

To me, this episode felt like it just introduced a lot of stuff for the heck of it. It was a fun episode because of this chaos, but the episode just felt too forced. At times, the direction also seemed to skip entire scenes without any proper transition. Train episodes like this can be done to great effects, though. Wild Arms for example had a particularly awesome one. This one however… it was too unbalanced.

Now, as for the main storyline, with Claude’s appearance (without Alois, interestingly enough), we got a few new hints as to what is going on. We really seem to be back in the past here, or either at the end of episode one we travelled into some kind of other dimension. My guess would be the latter, since I can assume that Ciel in the first season never really talked about this mysterious “spider”. At this point, the question most on my mind is how Claude knew that Ciel was looking for revenge.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

OVA Impressions: Hen Zemi

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



I’ve been thinking lately about how to cover OVAs lately, especially after Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu, Tono to Issho, Kaichu and Darker than Black’s OVA. None of my review systems really seem fit for it, because especially with one-shot OVAs (that in a lot of cases don’t turn out to be one-shot at all), I’m basically just reviewing episodes. In a lot of cases I’m not sure whether to put them under “reviews”, “quick first impressions”, or to just write an episode post about the episode in question.

That’s why I decided to add them into a new feature: OVA impressions. Under this category I’ll cover all of the OVA episodes that come out throughout the year (and it also seems like a good place to put reviews of movies like Halo Legends and Genius Party). When enough entries have been written I’ll create some sort of index that lists all of the episodes I reviewed with their rating, and in the meantime I’ll think of something on how to include some of my older OVA posts.

Now that that’s out of the way: Hen Zeni. Oh boy. In this year, after Chuu Bra, Ladies Versus Butler, Seikon no Qwaser, KissXSis and Mitsudomoe, I didn’t possibly expect a series that would push the boundaries of taste any more further. I was wrong; the depths that this series reaches into are unbelievable. This series chronicles the lives of a bunch of university students… and it’s just wrong on so many levels. The length at which some of these characters go with their fanservice jokes is just unbelievable. One guy in particular… do yourself a favour and don’t watch this OVA right before eating. Seriously, you will lose your appetite.

Xebec… these guys baffle me. They’ve showed by now that they can deliver their share of excellent series, and yet they continue to dabble in these tasteless fanservice shows lately. The thing is however that this episode was quite well directed. The way in which the creators play with emotions (no matter how disturbing) throughout this was actually quite well done. The animation was quite excellent in certain scenes. The creators really managed to keep your interest here.

Anyway, as for the rating, I’m experimenting a bit with how to correctly rate these OVAs, since my regular rating system for series doesn’t really work with most of them (especially rating a one-shot OVA for its setting is just pointless). Here is how I’d rate this episode:

Storytelling: ** (Excellent)
Production-Values: * (Good)
Creativity: * (Good)

Combined Rating: ****
(Yeah, I’m really using the ratings I use on regular episodes on purpose, right now I’m really trying to figure out what kind of rating system would work best on OVAs). The combined rating is nothing more than the rating of these three categories added on top of each other. In the next weeks I’ll try to think of a better system here…)

Perrine Monogatari Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Perrine was created in 1978. And really, it’s amazing to think that already at that time, when anime was just in its adolescence and only fifteen years old, it already had its share of masterpieces produced. When thinking of the early WMT-series, usually you think of Isao Takahata‘s Anne of Green Gables and 30000 Leagues in Search of Mother, but Perrine also really belongs amongst them.

Perrine Monogatari has a great story, but I do want to say that I probably have never seen another series that spends so much effort into building up for it. To put things into perspective: the original novel by Hector Malot only starts around episode 20. Before that, it’s all original material, portraying the lead character Perrine and her mother as they journey from Bosnia to Paris. and even when the story starts for real, it still takes its time in order to really make Perrine’s journey as realistic and believable as possible.

And it works, because this series is meticulously detailed. All of the events of the series, bot the uplifting and tragedic ones, really come across as realistic, both in the dialogue, the scenario and the way in which the characters are animated (which really is impressive for a 53-episoded TV-series of its time; there really are very few still frames here), even simple things as buying bread are given plenty of time to signify their importance.

Needless to say, the character-development here is amazing. Perrine slowly grows into an amazing character, but also the side-characters are all very realistic, with both their charms and flaws, and even the characters who only appear for one or two episodes are portrayed as actual people, rather than a bunch of stereotypes. There are no villains here whatsoever, and instead the drama around the series is all created around the flaws of each character, while it explores themes as hard work and honesty.

Now, there are times at which this series plays around with fate a little too much, and the language barrier also gets ignored throughout the first half of the series, but the only reason why this will catch your attention is because the rest of the series is just so incredibly realistic. This obviously is not a series for those looking for action, but for the people who are interested in slice of life and travelling series, it’s an excellent recommendation. It never tries to force any artificial drama when this isn’t necessary and it always remains wonderfully down to earth. It’s the series like this that showed that anime can be refined and mature, and not just silly entertainment for kids, opening up the door to more and more anime aimed at older audiences.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Very realistic, very detailed, a ton of build-up, but note that it’s very, very slow.
Characters: 10/10 – Wonderful development, charming and realistic side-characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Quite good for its time, though a bit messy for today’s standards. Especially the sound quality will be hard to get used to.
Setting: 9/10 – A very detailed portrayal of the places that Perrine visits, from Yugoslavia to France.

Suggestions:
– Porfy no Nagai Tabi
– Anne of Green Gables
– Touch