Author: psgels

Ookiku Furikabutte – 39

by psgels, posted in Ookiku Furikabutte



Excellent epilogue of an excellent series. Overall, I’d really rate this as high as the first season: both have their own points at which they stood out: the first season really had an awesome climax with the second match. The second season in its turn trumped it with an even greater attention to detail. It’s a shame, because it really would have been superior if it weren’t for the limited episodes.

In any case, this episode stood out in that conversation between Mihashi and Abe. It was very genuine, it developed the relationship between them, it showed what kind of development has occurred between them through the past season. It’s great to see that the creators really took their time to show that particular scene.

One part I also loved was the very end, at that clip show in which we see how every character spends his evening. I was surprised at how much it added to their characters by showing in what kinds of homes they live.

In any case, even though a third season will be unlikely, my eyes are still upon aniplex here, thanks to news messages as this. It’s very interesting to see a producer company being headed by the founder of an animation company, and this might bring in even more interesting potential for Aniplex’s future.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Sora no Oto – 07,5

by psgels, posted in Sora no Oto



Okay, so apparently an extra DVD episode was released for Sora no Oto. It’s numbered as 7,5, so I assume it takes place between episode 7 and 8. So, what did the creators decide to focus on? Was this episode meant to flesh out the setting a bit? Did a specific character get taken under the loop? Did it add some subtle details to the series as a whole? Ehm, no. It was just pointless.

I get the idea behind it, however. I really like that, because anime tends to be incredibly scared with alcohol. Especially when it comes to teenagers, while plenty of teenagers at the age of the lead characters are already drinking. I would really stand behind an episode that was dedicated to a drinking party between these characters. But the execution of this episode, and the context it took place in… they didn’t work at all for me.

So basically Kanata and Yumina find out about the distillery, so Felicia turns them drunk in order to make them forget what happened. It’s logical when it just remains to that, but the medieval paintball… what was the point of that? It could have been fun if the creators actually executed it well, but the way in which everyone started horribly overacting in a way that I don’t even think would be possible. Not to mention that it was incredibly annoying.

I actually don’t drink myself, so I can’t say this for sure, but is this really how teenagers behave after only a few glasses of liquor? To me, it feels like the creators were just looking for a cheap excuse to make the characters act really moe.

This episode wasn’t entertaining; it dragged on horribly at times, but I think that my biggest gripe would be that it didn’t really add anything aside from two lines of backstory from Yumina that didn’t really lead to anything. Everything that happened in this episode is just forgotten afterwards with alcohol as an excuse. And later, we found out that Kanata figured out about the distillery anyway, so there essentially was no point to this episode. I guess that you could say that this was the episode in which Kanata found out about the distillery because she simply did not forget what happened, but even then: out of all the things that the creators could have chosen, they choose to elaborate on something that didn’t really need any extra attention? There are a ton of stuff that the creators could have done here, to explain a bit more of that incredibly rushed ending, and in the end the creators pretty much waste it.

Overall, this pretty much reflects on my general opinion of Sora no Oto: it really has a number of terrific and excellent ideas that made me love how well they were making use of Anime no Chikara’s framework of coming with original premises. But some of the other decisions it made… were completely pointless.
Rating: – (Disappointing)

Rainbow – 12

by psgels, posted in Rainbow



These are my favourite types of episodes: those who completely blow my expectations out of the water. This episode was fantastic. I wouldn’t hesitate to put it among the top three most emotionally charged episodes I have seen this Spring season. The places this episode went… I never expected it to get this good. Obviously major spoilers are coming up, so do not read this entry if you haven’t watched the episode yet.

In my posts about the previous episodes, I always assumed one thing: An-chan would make it out alive. There was no way for the creators to just kill him. The previous episode’s ending seemed to confirm this, in the way that he was finally discovered again. It seemed that we would see another upcoming arc in which the lead characters again try to fend off that pedophilic doctor. And yet… he dies. Seriously, he doesn’t even last five minutes.

This episode also did exactly what I’ve been hoping that it would do: the time-skip! Everyone has grown up now, giving a complete new dimension to the story. Talk about character-development! I especially loved what Ishihara had turned into. It’s just fantastic to see that everyone has moved on now, even that doctor.

And that really begs the question here: everything looks set on wrapping the jail arc up at episode thirteen! We’ve still got an entire half left for this series, and here everyone is out of jail, everyone has grown up. Ishihara is gone, the pedo doctor will also probably go out of work in the next episode. That just leaves THIRTEEN EPISODES full of pure character-development. This is even better than I could have hoped for!

I know I often bitched against this series, but this episode just made up for everything. Madhouse, you once again demonstrate that you have BALLS.
Rating: **** (Fantastic)

Senkou no Night Raid – 12

by psgels, posted in Senkou no Night Raid



Hmm, this episode violently pushed the motives of Yukina’s brother into a different direction. A cliched one, I’m afraid. “I need peace so for that to happen I will blow things up.” (By the way though, this episode did blow out any hint of nationalism out of the water. For those who were still doubting the intentions of this series at this point: it features a Japanese guy who plans to send an atom bomb into the middle of Shanghai).

So let me get this straight: the blasts that the Englishmen saw were an illusion. That seems to be the power of Yukina’s brother. We already knew that he’s desperately trying to prevent the atom bomb to drop on Japan. So, what does he do? He sends an atom bomb into Shanghai! If I understood correctly, he understood that it was the atom bombs and the fear of them that gradually lead to peace: in the way that countries would begin to think twice to attack a country that could devastate entire cities with just one bomb.

As a stuck-up nationalist Japanese however, he figures that the way to prevent it is to show the world what an incredible force they are playing with, as long as it doesn’t affect Japan. There are… so many things wrong with that. Yet at the same time, was this what Japanese nationalism must have felt like back then? This is an incredibly radical decisions that was made not just by him, but also several lead characters: even Sakurai let’s him just do his business here.

I must say, this series has surpassed Sora no Oto with the way that it has been so thought provoking. The motives of the villains here are just wrong, and yet they remain interesting. When watching this series, I learned a ton of new stuff that I didn’t know about the Chinese history at that time, and it’s a bit of a shame that Anime no Chikara is going back to high schools and teenagers again in the upcoming season. There really need to be more series like this.

But yeah, it does remain noticeably unrefined at times. I mean, dude. You have a gun. USE THE BLOODY THING!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Giant Killing – 12

by psgels, posted in Giant Killing



I think that the only criticism I can give on the way that the anime creators adapted this manga (from the perspective of someone who hasn’t read it, of course) is the recap at the start of this episode. They’re getting longer and longer now, and this episode just went a bit too far with THREE MINUTES of recap. But then again, it could also just be a way to kill time. Just about everything here was very well planned out, and you can see that a lot of thought went into it. My guess is that when this arc was planned out, it didn’t fit into a full amount of episodes, so who knows whether, instead of dragging the individual scenes on, the creators just put a number of recap minutes at the beginning of each episode.

In any case, I now very much understand why the creators took so much time for the match against Nagoya, even though the rest of the pacing was so much faster. Due to the predictability of this match, they really NEEDED to take their full time to get their point across. And I must say that they handled it very cleverly: all of the previous episodes, while hinting at how this would be the turning point, also kept suggesting that Tatsumi was going for a draw here. Only at the last possible moment did he reveal his strategy, and Tsubaki indeed lived up to his promise by scoring in his signature way.

But even then that doesn’t mean that they won, due to that cliff-hanger: the episode ends with the former star player, dead-set on returning the favour. We here have a guy who is dead set on scoring a goal, which is also a thing that the creators have been building up through the past number of episodes: it’s still nowhere near certain that this will indeed be the ETU’s first win. This effect would entirely have been lost if the match was just played within one episode.

Another upside of this is that we get a lot of insight about the Brazilians here. They’re nowhere near the stereotypes that they were when they first were introduced, they really are formidable and have a lot of insight into the game. What’s also interesting is that this doesn’t even show them at their best: we never really get to see Carlos, the best of the three, shine, because Tatsumi is consciously avoiding him. Most other sports series would have gone for the entire opposite: draw out some sort of confrontation with the most skilled player at the center of the conflict.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 11

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



“Muaha, I am the bad guy of this series. I currently dislike this group of people with annoying powers who have been killing off all of my comrades and subordinates one by one, so they need to be taught a lesson. So what do I do? I shoot one of them with an energy ball. Hah, now that should keep their healers busy for a couple of hours! I am a genius!”

… I mean… I think we’ve found ourselves the most pathetic bad guy of the season here. Even considering that he did intend to kill Tsukumo and did not know about the crosses that Yuki made, isn’t it just common sense to just… you know… check whether the body really is dead? There’s a ton of magic in this series here that has unexpected effects, that energy ball could easily not have been fatal. So far, that girl at least has come up with a pretty solid plan to take care of the good guys. All he has been doing is trying to look cool, poking people and dropping wine glasses.

This series really has parts at which it’s very good, but others at which it leaves so much to be desired. I mean, the lead cast still is excellent: every episode so far has continued to add more to these people, and this episode was no exception in the way that it pushed Zess and Hotsuma to new levels. The soundtrack is still really good, and this episode added even more great tracks for this series, and it also knows how to create an atmosphere.

The bad guys however… nah. There’s also no originality here whatsoever (I mean, you can compare this show to a ton of other series and concepts and it only stands out in the way that it used the things it stole from all sorts of other stories.

But yeah, I have to give credit where credit’s due: I’m beginning to like Zess more and more. I first didn’t really like him, but the way this episode showed him all eager to get some action made up for a lot. He had this smug air of “I’m gonna kick ass and there’s nothing you can do about it, bitches”. In the quiet moments around Yuki he also was much calmer, compared to the obsessive stalker he was in the first few episodes.
Rating: * (Good)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 62

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



So this is it: the big battle against the final villain. The key is of course to get the plot to come together at the same time, rather than just showing a bunch of yelling and flashy beams for episodes after each other. This episode passed with flying colours. It yet again had my attention from beginning to end.

Interestingly enough, this has a ton of parallels to the ending of the first Full Metal Alchemist. I’m going to discuss those now, so those who have yet to see it: SPOILER ALERT.

In the first season, Al TOO sacrificed himself for Ed, also with a bit of help from a small plot-hole. In this episode: how did Al know exactly how to go to the gate all of a sudden? In the first season meanwhile, the concepts of the Philosopher’s stone was a lot more vague than in brotherhood. It was much more mythical and mysterious, rather than the strictly defined powers it gives you in the Brotherhood series. As a result, the circumstances here are much more detailed than the ending of the first season, in which Ed dies then Al offers his life to save Ed who then offers his life again for Al. Here, Al acts out of desperation, as a way to prevent Ed from getting killed by offering him his arm back now that Ed no longer has a reason to not have his arm (I guess that that means that it immediately returns the arm to the original owner).

You can also see this contrast between the two series in the portrayal of “God”: in the first series it was all powerful, it was always there to punish those who messed around with human transmutation but nobody actually knew who he was or where he came from. In Brotherhood however, he’s a gigantic eyeball in an eclipse who designed a totally logical world in which people get to travel to a gate dimension when they attempt to transmute humans. Ed’s arm is more like a sacrifice to get to somewhere (the truth), rather than just a punishment.

Aside from that, a lot of this episode was just about everyone, who could fight from long range, whether main characters, side characters or even nameless soldiers, hacking away at Father to try and break that guy’s barrier. I loved how this episode gradually played out and broke this barrier of his to the point where he eventually snapped.

I think that the one character with the surprising amount of airtime that I totally did not expect was Mai Chang. I mean, she has been a vital side-character for the past episode ever since they started fighting Father, even more important than Roy Mustang. I think that part of the reason why the creators made her decide to go back with Envy was a way to develop her for later, on top of getting her involved back with the plot and story. You can certainly see that she’s very alert right now, much more than she was at the beginning of the series. Still, I would have liked to see at least a bit more of her backstory in the earlier episodes.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Heartcatch Precure – 19

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



To all of the fathers who happen to be readingh this blog: Happy Father’s day!

While this episode didn’t outright state this, it was without a doubt a father-themed episode. Erika’s father played a big role here (and we even got to see the point at which he met Erika’s mother! Yay for character development!), while the story of this episode was very much about a father-daughter relationship.

It was about the point at which kids are grown up, and ready to leave the house, combined with the sentiments that are involved. The father here was a typical farmer, who probably will be all alone as soon as his daughter, who found a nice boyfriend she wants to marry with, leaves the house. This episode consciously chose not to show anything about her fiancee, because that was not what this episode wanted to focus about. This wasn’t about a choice between love and family, but rather a story of growing up and realizing your own happiness.

The first half of this episode was seemingly pointless fluff, but the incredible amount of energy made it just as good to watch as the serious parts. Plus, we also got to know a lot more about Erika’s family as well, for example in the way that Erika taught her sister how to effectively cut up vegetables, or how Erika was somehow afraid of tomatoes.

It was also an excellent episode for Tsubomi to show her passion. This episode showed that she’s really interested in nature and flowers, but she also has this habit of completely getting engrossed into new hobbies that she never tried before. This episode turned her into a temporarily photographer as she was having fun with Erika’s father’s camera. It’s all done very naturally, I remember how as kid I also used to get really excited with the random hobbies, only to completely forget about most of them.

And on a side-note: I noticed that the creators were really playing around with Erika’s hairstyle in this episode. It’s great to see series that noticeably put effort into even the small details like that one.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 01

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc



Well… that turned out to be different than I expected.

In any case, I’m very glad to see another series of Ryousuke Takahashi, but this episode was far more light-hearted than I ever expected. I can fully see the idea behind it, though, and this is a great one. The Phantom Arc is all about nostalgia. It plays twenty five years after the original series played, at a time in which it has been twenty-seven years after the original series ended. This episode was all about the side-characters who have all built up their own lives after Chirico left them, and this series shows them as they decide to go back to some of the locations of the TV-series out of nostalgia.

Like the Pailsen Files, these are very interesting and creative ideas as continuations that were produced decades after their original series. It’s a great way to add to your franchise. The disadvantage of course is that there is no way you can watch this OVA without having watched the TV-series. This one is entirely meant for the fans.

As for the actual content, this episode did well in mimicking the light moments of the TV-series, so there’s not much to say about the serious parts. All we saw of Chirico was a bunch of shady silhouettes, and he ended up stealing a mobile armour in order to fight Shaka in a battle to the death. No reasons were given of why he was there, what he was doing there, and why he picked that day of all possible days to do this, that’s left to the rest of the episodes.

I also wonder how everything is supposed to fall into canon, especially with the Brilliant Heretic. This could become a bit strange for the people who haven’t seen that one, as there is a crucial plot twist at the end of Brilliant Heretic that will cause you to really wonder what’s going on in the next number of episodes as soon as Chirico really shows himself.

On the production side of things, I was a bit surprised: this really goes back to the original series. Most of Ryousuke Takahashi’s series are animated with a great attention to detail, but this brings us back to the inconsistency of the 1980s.

Also, the character-development. I really like how down to earth the creators have portrayed them. Through the past twenty five years, the characters have changed subtly. You can really see that Vanilla and Cocona are a married couple now. In the TV series they insulted each other, but to balance that out they were also nice to each other. Here the insults feel harder, and instead of balancing these out with nice comments, they instead just are themselves without any pretension. I wish I could have seen a bit more about their six children, but on the other hand they were just made to show how the two of them spent their past twenty-five years.

At first I thought that this was a bit cheap compared to Ryousuke Takahashi’s other series, but a surprising amount of attention has gotten into these characters right now.

And really, the entire cast of this series is now in their forties or above. When was the last time we got an anime like that?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei – 09

by psgels, posted in Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei



This was just awesome, the way in which everything came together in this episode, and there still are two episodes left for Yojou-han’s conclusion. This episode took events from all of the previous episodes and wove them masterfully into one.

Very different from usual, Watashi ended up being a bad guy here, rather than joining a regular club. It was some sort of evil society that was responsible for the rounding up of bikes in episode three. I think that this was the first time he really made Akashi angry here. In fact, we get confirmation that she’s still a member of the same clubs as she’s ever been in, and we get more and more a confirmation that every episode is the same, aside from which club Watashi decides to enter. The previous three episodes were special in the way that he wasn’t too involved in these clubs (an English club and reading club… yeah), which allowed him to explore love a bit more, instead of getting all caught up with these clubs here.

In all of these episodes, he met Akashi in different ways, because they pretty much were in the same campus, and she happened to live next to Ozu. Ozu on the meantime… I really begin to suspect that he was involved in everything here, from the tennis club to being Higuchi’s disciple to being the captain of the lucky cat Chinese restaurant. The reason he was involved in the cult in episode five was because his girlfriend was that raven-haired maiden that Watashi was chasing after back then; that’s why he crashed that airship. This episode finally revealed all of his motivations.

There was one big difference here though, that doesn’t really fit into the canon of the other episodes: Watashi did NOT find Akashi’s Mochiguman, but instead Ozu went after it. Could this be a hint that Watashi is getting further and further away from her, and that he’s just failing to notice what’s right in front of him? This episode does show that now that he finally found wealth and power he still feels like he’s missing something, which was pretty much the first time he acknowledged this.

Also, this episode did NOT feature a rewind. Instead we just have Watashi sulking in his room. I think that out of all the conclusions this season, Yojou-han is the one I’m looking forward to the most. There are just so many ways in which it can go, and I really feel like the creators have been carefully building up towards that ending.
Rating: *** (Awesome)