Author: psgels

Letter Bee Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Letter Bee




This is a bit of a difficult review to write. The reason for that is simple: Letter Bee is a series chock-ful of potential. That potential however, is only going to be realized in its second season, while the first season… is mainly dedicated to build up. You know, fleshing out the characters, giving the setting the right background, and building up the huge mystery surrounding this series.

While the series starts off with a very intruiguing opening, most of the rest of the series consists out of small arcs that involve Lag Seeing (the lead character) meeting different people. The people Lag meets vary from ridiculously cheesy to compelling and interesting, it’s really all over the place. In the meantime however, you can really see this series putting a lot of attention to flesh out the recurring cast-members, working on their development. Sure, Lag starts out as an incredible crybaby, but his development throughout these first 25 episodes makes him into quite an interesting character. Nichi on the other hand is just consistently lovable. The members of the main side-cast also all have the poihts at which they stand out.

This show also has quite a few fillers in its middle part. They’re used well, though. There are a few godawful episodes (when you get to the “race”-episode, just skip it alltogether), but also a number of surprisingly good ones. But most importantly: instead of being entirely pointless, they try to flesh out the characters a bit more, and give them a bit more character than what was present in the manga.

So yeah, this series served its purpose well: that second season has a lot of potential to rock due to the build-up that it has provided. Its voice acting is really excellent all around, and the few moments at which it does get to show some of the huge potential behind the storyline that it’s been building up, it’s truly an amazing and intriguing series, and it ends with one hell of a cliff-hanger. The highlights of this series are truly sad and melancholic; they’re just few and far in between, hence the relatively low rating.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Excellent build-up. Some not-so-excellent episodic stories.
Characters: 8/10 – Excellent main cast and voice acting. Hard to like lead characters. some underdeveloped side-characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Gorgeous images, inconsistent animation, beautiful soundtrack.
Setting: 8/10 – A ton of potential…. for which we have to wait until season 2 to fully see it.

Letter Bee – 25

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



Okay. So I was prepared for a huge cliff-hanger. What I did not expect however, was that Letter Bee’s first season would end with by far its best episode so far. How are we supposed to wait SIX MONTHS for the next episode, after seeing such an amazing episode?

Seriously, all of Lag’s build-up, both from the fillers and the manga-episodes, it just came together wonderfully in those final ten minutes. Most series usually take an episode or three for their mid-way climax. This show did it just in ten minutes, but those minutes did just about everything right. It’s such a short but gripping conclusion, which completely made up for the duller moments of the rest of this series. The attention this series has spent on fleshing out Lag has surely paid off!

As for the Honey Waters Arc, that one too was very heart-warming as it concluded. I especially like how the creators weren’t as conceited in trying to make the rest of the villagers have a change of heart either: these people have a deep seeded hate against the government. Just a few words of love and peace from Lag ain’t going to make them change that easily.

Overall, I’m glad to have blogged this series, as it definitely was an interesting ride, even though its beginning wasn’t exactly impressive. And hey, this show had the best ED of the past winter-season, its characterization of Nichi was excellent, Lag himself also grew into a fine young man, and the potential of the series’ back-story has only grown over the course of the series. Yeah, there are enough things to praise this series for.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Cobra The Animation Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Cobra The Animation




Cobra’s premise at first seems one doomed for failure. In a world where all girls walk around in ridiculously revealing clothing, an invincible superman walks around and pretty much succeeds at everything he tries. Characters should be flawed, but Cobra is one of those guys who is perfect in every single way. Noramlly this would lead to rather boring television, but the creativity that has been put in the stories, along with Cobra’s charisma make this into a surprisingly enjoyable series.

The adventures, and the different places that this series shows make for a perfect light-hearted watch. The stories are nearly all well told and while they may not make too much sense at times, they’re well paced and built up and manage to draw you into its atmosphere.

I probably like this show even better than the original Cobra series of 1982. While that one was more of an action-series that focused on killing bad guys, the 2010 Cobra puts a lot more focus on adventures and exploration and instead of Cobra killing hordes of bad guys, it’s much more about his interatcion with the side-characters that happen to be tagging along with him.

On top of that, this series can boast the best soundtrack of shows that premiered in the past Winter-season. Yoshihiro Ike is a brilliant composer, and here again he delivers an exciting and perfectly fitting soundtrack to accompany the series. The graphics all look solid, but the animation itself is sub-par.

The arcs that this series decided to show differ a bit in quality. The mountain climbing arc is by far the best, while the two longest arcs at the beginning and end tend to drag on for a bit too long than necessary, and their plot twist may be a bit too non-sensical than what’s good for this series.

Cobra isn’t a series you want to go to for depth or realism at all. The stories are all very simple and the characters are all more charicatures than that they resemble actual people. But here’s the thing: it knows what it is, and it does this well. Cobra the Animation was very obviously made by passionate fans of the original Cobra 1982-series, who wanted to do the source material as much justice as possible. And you know what? They succeeded.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Rather cheesy at times, but knows how to draw you in.
Characters: 7/10 – Caricatures, Cobra is god-moded, but they all have their own charisma.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Animation isn’t impressive, but the graphics are. Plus a fantastic soundtrack.
Setting: 8/10 – The Cobra-universe is full of interesting places and settings.

Cobra The Animation – 13

by psgels, posted in Cobra The Animation



Hmm, I’m not sure whether I actually get the plan of the major villain in this one. It’s a bit weird. First she invites thirteen people to help her retake Shiva’s castle from the Chaos Troopers, which was already in the hands of the Chaos Troopers anyway. Out of these thirteen people, she invites a bunch of other Chaos Troopers as well. She then immediately kills those Chaos Troopers off, revealing her own fatal weakness by stating how you can recognize one. Honestly, I don’t get it. Also, how did she know that Cobra had been to Shiva’s castle before?

Overall, my favourite arcs of this series were the short ones: the ones who just took up one or two episodes. This really isn’t the type of series that should drag on for long with elaborate story-lines, instead it should be a quick-fire series. This final arc… it could have been done in about half the time as well.

Nevertheless, I also pretty much enjoyed this episode for what it was. I’m still hoping for Osamu Dezaki’s next series, but in the meantime this was a nice enough substitution. As an adventure series, it did pretty much what it should have.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Durarara – 12

by psgels, posted in Durarara



And we’re half-way through. I’m really curious to the second half of this series, considering how well written the first half has been so far. This episode really hinted at a completely different focus with Izaya’s proposal to give that ‘fallen angel wings again’. Because Baccano was only 13 episodes, I have no idea what to expect here. And that’s one of the great things about this series.

And again, I really have to praise the creators for how well written this episode was. The dialogue was very inspired and even allowed the seemingly one-sided Seiji Yagiri to shine. Izaya’s ramblings were also better than ever. I’m not sure when it was that he found out that Mikado was the founder of the Dollars; I actually believe that Izaya helped a lot in making the Dollars big. it’s just something for him to go and experiment with it.

Celty in the meantime also developed a bit,which is always a good thing, especially considering this only is the halfway point. Apart from that, the characters in this series have been rounded in their background, but not so much changed as us learning more about them. My guess is that the creators are saving the bulk of this character-development for the mysterious second half.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 26

by psgels, posted in Armed Librarians - The Book of Bantorra



yeah, so there is no doubt that this show is getting cheesy. The thing is, however, that I’m much more interested in how this finale uses the build-up that has been provided by the rest of this series. In a way, I can understand the criticisms to this series: standalone the characters indeed aren’t the reason to watch this show.

I haven’t really been watching this show for its characters, though. The reason I became a huge fan of this series was because of its storytelling: the way it managed to weave so many storylines together. The boldness of the script and the way that it was able to write these gripping action scenes, simply with this plot that had so many interesting ideas stuffed into it, combined with its powerful and over the top soundtrack.

I really love it when anime decide to show off what they’re good at. The reason why I’m also such a big fan of Noloty and Volken was not because what they were, but what they represented. I really believe that every anime should focus what it’s good at, and this finale has been truly action-packed, throwing tons of plot twists and ideas into the mix and exactly what I’ve been looking for! While other series this season have more realistic characters, none of them really excell in the same magnitude that Bantorra’s plot has been impressing me with, week after week after week. THAT’s exactly why I already consider this to be a huge contender for my favourite show of 2010, even though we’ve still got three seasons to go before I can say for sure. it’s SO going to be a shame to see this series end next week, because I’ve been enjoying every single minute of it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Some Quick First Impressions: KissXSis, Koihime Musou – Otome Tairan and Ikkitousen Xtreme Xecutor

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

KissXSis

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live inside a house with two cute girls who pretend to be his sister.
Well… it’s porn. It’s as simple as that. Are people really going to check this show out for a reason other than the teenaged nudity? At the least, I do appreciate that the worst stuff in this season comes first. And yeah, this episode was pretty much even worse than the other shows in this post, and that has to say something. It’s full of the most ridiculous stereotypes that just about every fanservice show has. It’s been one episode and the lead character already has a harem of four girls who adore him for no reason whatsoever. These characters seriously have no lives. It did try to out-gross other fanservice shows with the pants sniffing and all, but seriously. With Chu Bra and Seikon no Qwaser last season, who’s it going to fool?
ED: Godawful J-pop and abysmal CG.
Potential: -20%

Koihime Musou Otome Tairan

Short Synopsis: Our lead character goes on an adventure to search for a bunch of random items to save some random woman.
Again: Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Again: find some other bloody novel to parody! In any case, the third season of Koihime Musou is exactly what this series has always been: realyl stupid slice of life. And seriously, these morons really take the cake when it comes to a lack of brainpower as they believe that someone with stomach cramps as pregnant. Well, i guess that stupid girls are really popular with otaku, which is why these kinds of shows keep getting made, and if this is your kind of humour, then good for you. but this episode felt so unbelievably boring to me. Slice of life series are great when the characters themselves are. With these stereotypical idiots however… ugh.
OP: Cheesy J-Rock
ED: Godawful J-pop.
Potential: 0%

Ikkitousen Xtreme Xecutor

Short Synopsis: Our lead character thankfully is completely absent in this episode.
Well, I’m at least glad that the worst shows of this season get released first, so let’s just get this over with. The only thing I’ve seen of Ikkitousen are the first episodes of the second and third season (both were godawful), so most of my comments here are about the execution, rather than the story that I know nothing about. Still, I do want to say that the thing I hate most about this season isn’t the fanservice or moe, but the truckload of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Seriously, pick some other franchise to parody. In any case, for Ikkitousen this was actually a decent episode. I expected the same kind of crap that the previous seasons became infamous for, and while the acting still is pretty bad, this actually was an episode in which you can at least shut your brains off and enjoy it as a random action show. The build-up was nice enough, and the lead characters this time thankfully were much less obnoxious as some of the other paper bags that this show has to work with. Nevertheless, the standards to which I’m comparing this are really low. This episode wasn’t abysmal, but one third of it was recap, the jokes were corny at best and the non-action scenes were pretty cheesy. Also, are these men really supposed to be high school students? I mean, how many grades did these punks repeat anyway?
ED: Boring J-Rock
Potential: 5%

Darker than Black – Kuro no Keiyakusha Gaiden – 02

by psgels, posted in Darker than Black - Ryuusei no Gemini



Ah, excellent. The Gaiden OVA is another one of those extra OVAs that aren’t just meant to be side-stories, but a vital part of the series. This episode yet again did a wonderful job of tying the first season to the second. It didn’t just explain what happened to Yin, but also some of the smaller plot-holes of the second season were explained.

The big question is of course: what the heck is that thing that took control of Yin? Izanami seems to be vital to this, and I guess that the entire point of the second season was to explore the possibilities of “Izanagi”. You know, that all just hints at a possible third season. There’s no way for the creators to have considered the end of Ryuusei no Gemini to be the end of this franchise.

I also stumbled upon an interesting article here (translated here), in which the general graphic director of Sora no Oto claimed the following thing: “People won’t be moved nor consented unless someone dies. Why aren’t they impressed by the character’s survival? It’ll be an easy job to create a war anime from now on. You can make a popular anime by letting the characters kill each other!”. To me, that’s not the reason of why I’m such a fan of Darker than Black’s habit to just kill off people. I’m perfectly happy with people surviving, as long as it’s done believably (which is exactly why I have no problems with Hei surviving all this time, because of how this series has shown how careful this guy works). It’s when creators start pulling Deus ex Machina to just keep a character alive that it becomes a big problem. It’s just as bad as them pulling a Deus ex Machina to just kill off a character. In the end it’s the story that should dictate whether characters live or die, not a desire to include more cheap drama.

I also have a small question about that Contractor destroyer thingie, shown after the ED. If that doctor knew how to increase the power of a contractor all along… then why didn’t he use it? And what exactly does it mean to become a more powerful contractor anyway? Will their abilities have less limits or something?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Eden of the East I – The King of Eden Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Eden of the East



After watching this movie, I’m sure of it: Higashi no Eden should never have been a Noitamina-series. The time-slot is perfect for those short stories that have a small but dedicated focus a la Tokyo Magnitude, slice of life stories like Hataraki Man and Antique Bakery or episodic series in the way of Kuchuu Buranko or Hakaba Kitarou. Series that want to tell a huge story are far better off with a regular time-slot of 26 or more. This is the mistake that shows as Library Wars and Jyu Oh Sei also made. The series of Higashi no Eden just jumped around too much to really allow the story to develop properly.

The movie’s pacing is completely different. It’s here where Kenji Kawayama has more than enough time to spend on telling his story. And that’s exactly what made it work for me. It’s a shame that the build-up of the first season left things to be desired, because otherwise it really would have been an excellent movie.

And seriously, I was expecting the two Eden of the East Movies to jump around just like the TV-series did. Instead, they focus on believability and realism. The background sounds are kept to a minimal. And instead we get to see long, long scenes of character-building that don’t attempt to cut any corners whatsoever. It really takes its time to let everything flow naturally, which makes for a very slow-paced movie, but the characterization is worth it. This really is just like Seirei no Moribito: not afraid to get boring in order to be realistic, which often has its uneventful times. It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to watch such an anime, and it’s without a doubt refreshing and I’ve got to admire the restraint of this movie, avoiding the use of overly cheesy monologues or over the top plot twists, while occasionally packing a punch where needed.

There are a bunch of weird things with this movie, though. While the TV-series did a surprisingly good job at handling the language barrier, the movie… um… didn’t. One scene shows Saki talk in English to an American with a really weird accent who uses really short sentences. A while later, we see Akira talk to the same guy, in JAPANESE. The American understands him and just talks back in English. Uh, why? How? There are also some of the side-characters that I still couldn’t buy. The comic relief of Saki’s friends… I’m still not much a fan of them.

Nevertheless, I have to admit: a lot of attention to detail was put in the atmosphere of a young company. I can very much relate to that (due to my current internship and all), and I must say that the creators caught it spot-on. And that’s really the great thing about this movie: the realism that you really don’t get to see in many other anime. Despite the hiccups, this movie was really refreshing compared to how the TV-series disappointed me. There are still a ton of questions that need to be answered in terms of the plot. But hey, with 90 minutes, Paradise Lost should be able to do it.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Much more focused than the TV-series. Really slow pacing allows for lots of realism.
Characters: 8/10 – Such a slow pacing gives a nice feel to the characters, but they still spend a bit too much time on exposition + badly portrayed Americans.
Production-Values: 9/10 – No significant increase in quality compared to the TV-series, but that one already looked awesome so there still is a ton of eye-candy.
Setting: 8/10 – I first want to see what Paradise Lost is going to do before celebrating this part: there is a ton of potential in this setting, provided that the next movie handles it well.

Ookami Kakushi Review – 72,5/100

by psgels, posted in Ookami Kakushi



Of course I was excited when I learned that a new series written by Ryukishi07 would premiere this Winter Season. His work on Higurashi and Umineko was brilliant. Well, as it turns out, the only similarity between Ookami Kakushi is a bit of a similar setting. Apart fro that, it’s completely different. And yeah, I agree that change is good, but it still feels like I’ve been wasting my time with this series.

And sure, there are some good ideas in it. The whole story about a divided town in the middle of nowhere, in which everyone acts so creepingly nice towards the main character who just moved in there. It has definitely potential to get somewhere, but this series never uses it and instead opts for a watered-down plot that gets less impressive with each progressive episode.

There are many culprits for this one, but my biggest problem with this series are its main character and main villain. Let me start with the former. Even though he’s the central character to the story, this guy… just doesn’t do anything. Seriously, every time something serious happens, he just stand there and looks. He never acts, he never tries to think of something, he never accomplishes something. He’s just… there. His central role in the series makes no sense and feels artificial at best. On top of that, the worst thing probably is that we never get to learn anything about him. At the end of the series, I knew as little about his life as at the start.

The villain, on the other hand, is ridiculously stupid. His motivations are cheesy and are just explained with one lazy line. His plans are full of holes and not clearly thought through. In fact, most of the adults in this series degenerate into complete idiots by the end of the series, just in order to have the various kids of the series in the centre of the conflict. As a result, the ending just makes no sense and is stuffed with a bunch of ridiculous plot twists.

The final nail in this series’ coffin for me was the acting, which was mediocre at the times where this series needed to deliver the most; especially the final third of this series suffered from rushed acting that failed to convey any emotions beyond the cheesy. While I feel like I cared about the characters in the beginning, but eventually they lost all believability due to the lukewarm execution. I guess that Ryukishi07 wanted to try out the shounen genre in this one, but he pretty much failed at it in my opinion.

Storytelling: 6/10 – Cheesy, never gets more interesting after its introduction.
Characters: 7/10 – Some characters have potential, but the lead character is useless, the lead villain is a paper bag and the adults are complete morons.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Hardly any animation errors, but nothing special.
Setting: 8/10 – The concept is nice enough. If the execution was right this could have had a lot of potential.