Author: psgels

Senkou no Night Raid – 08

by psgels, posted in Senkou no Night Raid



Okay, that’s it. You can pretty much consider me a fan of this series. This series isn’t among my favourites this spring season, but the past episodes have brought it pretty damn close. It really took some time and hiccups to get going, but after last week, I’m completely hooked to this series. It follows the classic “first half episodic second half continuous” format, and now that we’ve gotten to the continuous format I’m really enjoying this series up to the point at which I don’t really care about the Engrish (which actually was reasonably good with the native English people, and actually pretty bad with the Japanese and Chinese, like it actually should be).

However, at this point I was also very fond of Sora no Oto, but that was mostly because I was expecting a strong climax to come any minute, though it never really did, making a lot of its build-up pointless. Night Raid is different, though. While I can’t see into the future, I somehow feel like the creators know very well how to pace this show and what to build up for. The first six episodes were really meant to establish the characters and the setting: the episodic stories were also just meant for that, and to introduce the villains. Episode seven then dropped the bomb, and started off the real story of this show. It’s all signs that the creators spent a lot of time thinking about the series’ structure. At this point, I’m confident enough to say that if this show manages to indeed pull of that ending, I’ll call it superior to its Anime no Chikara predecessor.

Anyway, about this episode. It’s here where the series goes back to its roots as historical fiction. The previous episode did a wonderful job of establishing the historical roots behind the series, but this episode also made sure to remind us that we’re dealing with fiction when it goes back to the government-spanning plan of the villains. He really seems to be going for the intimidation element, detonating things that look like atom-bombs in front of a bunch of big-wigs. There’s no way that that could have happened in real life, however it does add an interesting twist to the whole story.

Criticism can sometimes be a weird thing. I just know that if it wasn’t for the previous episodes, I would have gone on about how the characters here weren’t careful enough like real spies, or indeed how overblown the villain is. This isn’t just a matter of development, but overall the series has really made up for these flaws for me. I think that it was the elegant build-up that did it for me, along with its risky but well fleshed out setting and the subtle bonds between the characters who take themselves and each other seriously. I really was expecting some cheesy back-story about Aoi’s girlfriend. But heck, the ending of this episode was a very powerful cliff-hanger when the two of them recognized each other.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Giant Killing – 08

by psgels, posted in Giant Killing



I guess it’s true that Giant Killing has a lot of shounen elements, although as a genre, I’d probably classify it as somewhere in between Shounen and Seinen: there’s not one genre that this series completely fits into (other than ‘sports’, perhaps). It’s of course a matter of tastes, but to me that in itself isn’t something bad. In fact, I’m glad to be able to watch such a good shounen series again. The key to a good shounen for me is to make it fun and whatever action it focuses on interesting, alongside the usual stuff as great characters and pacing.

Giant Killing brings us a very interesting twist on the ‘underdog’ trope. What we have here isn’t the usual story of a team of losers trying to become stronger and winning. It’s more like this series is about healing a broken team. The problem with the team was that it was unbalanced: it focused too much on defence and it wasn’t aggressive enough. The keys here were the two defenders and Murakoshi, who kept putting pressure on each other, so much that they didn’t allow each other to escape this visual circle. Tatsumi then came and divided the problem. Tsubaki turns out to just be a red herring: his backstory is nice, and with more experience he’s really going to make it big, however he wasn’t vital to the team’s survival.

On top of that, I just love the small details that the creators keep inserting. Take a look at the street and the people in the background: it doesn’t just feel like random people standing or walking past, but it’s drawn in such a way that it feels alive. It’s a shame that the creators had to use CG for that, but it really works. Also, in most anime when a character does something outrageous or weird in front of a bunch of strangers, you usually see these strangers just look, or utter a few “oohs” or “eeehs”. The guy on the bike went even further, though, with his brisk reaction to a guy who suddenly starts yelling out of nowhere. Also, is it me or are the stands getting emptier with every match here? They used to be full, however with the losing streak of the team continuing you can actually see less and less people showing up.

One thing I also loved was the moment at which the penalty was taken. The opposing player noted that he used to work together with Dori. Nothing more, but that line was enough to give both him and Dori a much more interesting character, by showing that they’ve done plenty of other stuff in their lives. A great way to flesh them out.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 07

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



“Muahahaha, I am the bad guy of this series, and I shall demonstrate this by dropping random glasses full of wine on the ground. Now that should keep those cleaners busy for a couple of minutes!”

It’s things like this that make it hard again for me to take this series seriously.

This series overall is a very mixed bag, and especially this episode showed it. I like some things about it quite a bit, while others still need a lot of work. Yuki? I like the kid, he’s interesting and compelling to watch. I also like Takashiro, Touko and Tsukumo, they’re interesting side-characters and I like how they show that they care about Yuki and feel guilty about the things they’re going to do to him, yet remain down to earth about it. Zess on the other hand… nah. This guy should get a life.

And then this episode comes and introduces a whole bunch of new characters, nearly all of them stereotypes. The worst of them was of course that bad guy (seriously, wtf), but the others also felt like cheap cliches. Here’s a washing-list of all the newly introduced characters:
– Twin bad guy henchmen who are eager to do bad stuff.
– Bad guy henchgirl who is also eager to do bad stuff.
– Zess’ freaking animal mascot (or ‘familiar’ as he calls it).
– The shy maid.
– The eccentric doctor.
– The energetic and harassing old guy (read: between 25 and 30 years old) with a hat that I reckon was meant to be stylish.

I mean, come on! Can you introduce any more cliches in just one episode? The worst thing here is that just none of them tried to set itself apart from its stereotypes, this was just overkill. A bit of development is probably able to save a few of them, but the cast of this show is already getting alarmingly huge. I’m especially worried about that bad guy.

I guess that the creators wanted to have a cast of interesting characters besides the lead ones. The problem is that they really should have spent more time into that. I’m not sure whether this comes from the anime or manga staff, but my guess is that most of the blame falls to the latter. This clearly was meant to be an arc to introduce the side-cast, but these are way too many cliches to just screw up. The anime staff is of course at fault too: they could have easily brought a bit of character into these guys.

A good example of this is Zombie Loan: it’s basically built around the same premise: a lead character meets a group of interesting zombie-hunters. While Zombie Loan was way too goddamn short, it did one thing right: the characterization. All of the side-characters were interesting to watch, and they all had interesting and charismatic personalities that kept you interested. Here, these side-characters couldn’t even charisma themselves out of a paper bucket.
Rating: – (Disappointing)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 58

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



This episode was very straightforward and much of what you’d expect, but the scenario was as exciting as ever. Right now, you can see that the creators are building up to the climax of the series (yeah, there are only five more episodes left here). It’s the small touches that impressed me the most in this episode, though.

The random soldier who actually managed to shoot King Bradley, from Father’s true form that doesn’t in the slightest bit try to be aesthetically pleasing. It was a very intense episode, with deaths (we get to see the two deaths of the previous episode confirmed), death threats, Al who suddenly stopped waking up and the old man’s monologues as he tried to get Roy to perform a human transmutation were also very atmospheric.

There’s one thing I didn’t quite get though: why Roy of all people? I mean, couldn’t father just get himself a human sacrifice to attempt the transmutation? I mean, with the effort he put into creating the Bradley clones, he also could easily have educated one of them to use alchemy to the point of being able to transmutate a human being.

In any case, we’re about to get to the ending, and that does bring me to one particular gripe about Bones that I had at the time that this series started: its seeming inability to create good finales. Back then, I was getting very tired of how Bones series always tended to be full of potential, but rushed through all of their endings, leaving a bad aftertaste in the end and this happened to nearly all of their series. In the meantime however, this spell has been broken by Tokyo Magnitude, which closed off its story perfectly, so I’m very interested in whether the creators can pull things off, and most importantly: pace the remaining manga chapters properly across five episodes. I’m not asking for a panel-to-panel similarity; there have been enough shows which had to cope with a rushed ending due to lack of time (Armed Librarians, anyone). All I want is these final episodes to capture the essence of the series and what the manga author had in mind about the conclusion that she spent years building up to.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Heartcatch Precure – 16

by psgels, posted in Heartcatch Precure



Perhaps one bit of criticism for this series would be about its battles. If Erika and Tsubomi have this all-finishing attack that returns Desatorians back to their original form, then why don’t they use it immediately? It’s also a bit formulaic that the bad guys always pick out a depressed kid that happens to be near our two lead characters. But still, those are just minor nitpicks. I’m happy enough with how this series has managed to breathe new life into the mahou shoujo-genre.

This episode was all about leadership. We get to see the captain of the school’s drama club versus Erika, the leader of the fashion club. This episode used this comparison to give a lot of depth to the drama club’s captain. The girl is very talented, and you can see that she’s a perfectionist when it comes to acting. As a leader however, she failed to take care of her team: make all of them feel appreciated, listening to them, et cetera. Erika in this episode shows how to do this well: she uses her energy to make everyone in the club comfortable: she cheers everyone on, gives hints and listens, and creates an overall great team spirit, even though her huge amount of energy takes a bit of getting used to.

Turning her into a Desatorian was also mostly necessary for her former teammates to see that she was willing to change. The girl very much knew that she screwed up, but her pride refused her to just go to her teammates and apologize.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Katanagatari – 05

by psgels, posted in Katanagatari



I’m pleasantly surprised how good this series has turned into. It’s a show that may have a bit of a formulaic formula, but it knows that it shouldn’t just do the same thing over and over. The episodes so far have been pleasantly varied and interesting. This episode finally introduces some romantic tension between Togame and Shichika, also answering my pleas for character-development.

Again, even though this was an episodes of more than half an hour of talking, I wasn’t bored at all. I’m really getting warmed up to this series at this point and I really have to praise both NishiOisin and the staff of the anime for pacing out the series well to make it interesting without becoming boring or tedious. And even though it’s nowhere near the best of the genre, this still is what I’m looking for in a “ton of dialogue”-anime.

It of course had it coming that a bit of chemistry would develop between the two of them, after having been this close for a relatively long amount of time. The only thing that was needed at this point was this getting through Shichika’s thick skull (having lived alone with his sister for more than a decade). The interesting question now is what the creators are planning to use this for. At the least, the romance has felt subtle enough not to feel like cliches or cheese, which definitely is a step into the right direction.

This episode also set itself apart with these weird tantrums of Togame… which were definitely fun to watch, especially with the weird background music that this series has been using.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Angel Beats – 08

by psgels, posted in Angel Beats



There are some things about this show that just don’t make any sense. It’s been established by now that Tachibana somehow managed to create all of her abilities out of self-defence. Why then did she bother to also create the ability to spawn an evil clone? Even if someone else was behind it, wouldn’t she have noticed when she logged on? Then there’s the pink-haired girl. I mean, what the heck was her purpose again? If she was just a random side-character, then okay. But was it really necessary to put her on the promo-art for this series, along with Yurippe and Tachibana? Wouldn’t it have made much more sense to put Otonashi there, so that you really get the three central characters there?

In any case, with this we’re two-thirds in. In the next episodes, this series is going to have to deliver. Angel Beats overall has been nowhere among my favourites, but it’s definitely been fun. Knowing Key however, they do tend to hold a ton of trumps that they only plan to use near the end, and if anything this episode very much hinted to that when Tachibana absorbed all of those thousands of clones. Now, there are two possibilities after this: Tachibana turns evil and makes everyone’s lives miserable, or Tachibana turns into the typical Kyoani Key female lead. Of course I hope I’m wrong with this and things turn out a bit more nuanced than that.

As for the humour, it’s very typical of the director: his humour either just works, or it just falls flat, and this episode was about fifty-fifty in that. On one hand, the heroic sacrifices were pretty funny, however it also kept reusing a ton of jokes, like that annoying pink-haired girl, and the former student council president’s double-takes over Otonashi also were used way too much.

In any case though, this series has been very varied so far, and that’s what I like about it. Even though this episode revisited a previous location, it’s very different from the second episode and I’m glad to see that the creators didn’t just delete it when it blew up. Again though, I feel that these final few episodes are going to make or break this series. It’s been fun, but it’s definitely been building up to something. I really suspect that whether I’ll remember this series fondly or not will depend on how well the creators are going to handle these final episodes.
Rating: * (Good)

Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei – 05

by psgels, posted in Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei



It’s of course easy to immediately start comparing this show to Kaiba, however I opted not to do this for the first four episodes. Simply, because that would not be fair. Kaiba was a stellar series, and amongst my favourites. Expecting the same would just be unrealistic. The interesting thing about anime is that beforehand you almost never know which shows will turn out to be the best. Even more, Kaiba had a stellar first episode. Yojou-han instead was completely focused on building up. Kaiba sold me with its incredibly creative back-story and its gripping narrative. Yojou-han instead has its dialogue, repetition and wit. With a series as Durarara, you can see that it tried to look like Baccano at times, however Yojou-han makes no attempt at trying to catch in on Kaiba’s… um… popularity.

This show is weird: we’re still stuck in those random campus life stories. In this episode, Watashi ends up in a hippie-cult full of peace-loving flower-children that look a lot like scienology. It’s another story of how he completely throws away his first two years at college, just in an attempt to fit in. It’s actually very similar to the third episode in which he couldn’t fit into the cyclist club because he wasn’t athletic, here too he couldn’t fit into the softball club because he wasn’t one of those people who always look at the bright side of life. Here things got carried way more out of control though, because Ozu was surprisingly absent here. He for once only caused trouble that helped Watashi.

What’s also interesting is that Akashi still is Higuchi’s disciple. Her role seems to be all over the place, it seems. Sometimes she ends up joining the same club as Watashi, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she’s straight-up his love interest, but this episode has him chasing after someone completely different. I think a key is also that she’s a year younger than him, so by the time that she gets to join college he’s also completely involved in whatever stupid club he’s involved in. I think a major theme in this show has been the contrast between Watashi’s image of romance, between the types of girls that he’s actually interested in. Watashi ends up in such a huge mess every time because his expectations of college life are completely different, and instead of choosing a club that fits him he instead keeps choosing clubs that fits the romantic image that he has in his head. He just is an anti-social character, and I’m beginning to think that Ozu and Akashi always end up with him because they too aren’t fond of socializing and doing regular college stuff.

I also labelled Watashi as a loser once, but that also doesn’t quite turn out to be the truth. He can be quite successful when he wants to: he can train and become very muscular, he can make a lot of money through jobs, he can put together an entire movie on his own. It’s not like he’s not good at anything, he just doesn’t use his energy at the right places and instead wastes it on stupid stuff that only make his life miserable.

In any case, what I’m trying to say here is that Yojou-han episodes have this weird effect. Especially this one. Overall this episode was enjoyable, though nothing special when you get past the styles. There were a number of interesting jokes, plus the critique at scientology also had its moments, but it’s nothing that I would label amongst Giant Killing and Sarai-ya Goyou as my favourite of this season. However the final few minutes in a Yojou-han episode are very often the best ones. We get to see the point at which Watashi snaps and turns back time, but the whole episode also comes together surprisingly clever. This episode even added to the previous episode (explaining that the 20000 leagues under sea novel and the globe actually were from Watashi and he thought that Ozu stole them).

The weirdest thing here was this future version of Watashi suddenly popping up. Was this just symbolism, or is this going to continue more often? In any case I must say that I was right in not expecting too much from the first few episodes of this, because after a few episodes that may not have been the most exciting I’m getting more and more excited about this series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ookiku Furikabutte – 34

by psgels, posted in Ookiku Furikabutte



And finally the real match of this season has started. To be honest, the previous ones did not feel as good as in the first season, with only three episodes dedicated to them. But yeah, they served their purpose well as build-up for the real meat. It’s here where every detail of the match gets under the spotlights.

And this match also starts out in a very different way from the other matches so far: this time the team isn’t the underdog, and has actually been researched. That pretty much results into them scoring four easy points. It’s a bit of a cliche in the baseball genre, but then again, what isn’t?

This episode also showed that the creators were really building up for Abe to become the weak link of this match, as his abuse only seems to get worse and worse here, up to the point where Mihashi gets more and more flustered when he tries to say something. But at the same time, Mihashi himself does try to speak out at lest. You can really see that his relationship with the rest of the team is getting better (like with the tickling), something that you can’t say for Abe.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Sarai-ya Goyou – 06

by psgels, posted in Sarai-ya Goyou




This series just continues to amaze me. At first the plot of this series seemed a bit mundane, about the every day lives of a band of criminals, but the situations here just sparkle with creativity here: everything just fits, and it takes full advantage of the fact that the characters here are criminals. They don’t present them as some kind of chivalrous thieves (even though they started out that way), and stress that the creators are fully aware of their actions. This especially shines through Masa, who still isn’t sure about whether or not to turn them down, especially since they treated him so genuinely nice.

I also loved how this episode comes to bite back at Ume, when the creditor of the guy of the previous episode started wondering where the hell he could get all that money from. I really love how the antagonists here aren’t stupid: they can think for themselves, and if it wasn’t for Masa he would have caused a great deal of trouble. By the way, I loved that shot in which Masa pointed his katana to his neck. That was so incredibly well animated.

Then Yaichi. He was a bit absent during the past two episodes, but the end of the episode came with a very interesting revelation: he and the old man knew each other. I suspected that something was fishy when it turned out that Yaichi never even once visited him, but to think that they were so much of an acquaintance. This does explain why he became involved with five leaves, though. Another very sneaky way.

I really like how this episode also forced Ume to think about his commitments to Five Leaves, especially since this indirectly caused so much trouble in this episode. At the same time you can also guess that Yaichi also put a lot of time into thinking whether or not to visit Masa. In this way, nearly every character here is forced to make certain choices.
Rating: *** (Awesome)