Author: psgels

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo Review – 79/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo



Teenaged romance shows are a dime a dozen, so it has to take something special for a series to catch my interest. For that, the past Autumn Season was a source of gold. Kamisama Hajimemashita was awesome, Sukitte Ii na Yo was a surprise hit, and Sakurasou also seemed like the series to bring new life in the shounen romance genre. It kinda did, but if you want to stay with that impression, then don’t watch the second half.

Sakurasou really managed to set itself apart with its execution. From the outside it looked like an average romantic comedy, but when you started watching it became clear to me how good the chemistry between the characters was. The banter had a lot of comedic gold in it, and it was full of energy. Scenes were well set-up, and there were a number of really sharp characters in this series, whose lines pierced through all pretense. That made this series a roller-coaster of emotions that was actually really well balanced.

The level of writing really was good there, and consistently so. I can only recall one bad episode, which randomly introduced incest for no reason whatsoever). You’d expect this level of writing to get better as the series goes on and gets more chance to build up, but somewhere along the way it just loses its spark. Especially the final third just misses the energy and wit that made this series so addictive at the start.

The early parts of this series are about hard work versus talent, and working hard towards your dreams, and coming of age. The show ends with a love triangle and a silly subplot about a bunch of dorms being closed down. It totally lacks any kind of impact, and the series ends with a melodramatic ending that is too scared to really resolve anything. The only good parts about the final third is where the creators focus on the themes that made the first half so good, but there are unfortunately too few moments to really salvage the series.

It’s a shame, really. I really endorse series evolving and changing. Doing the same thing over and over gets boring. But if you want to change your attention, you have to make sure that you have something interesting and logical to follow up with. Sakurasou didn’t and just got bogged down in its genre conventions that unfortunately spoiled what could have been such a good shounen romance.
One-Sentence Review: If you are interested in Sakurasou, my tip is to watch until episode 16, and let your imagination fill in the climax, because if you do you’ll get a really rewarding and witty romance series, instead of having to sit through the downer climax that follows…
Suggestions:
– Kaze no Shoujo Emily
– True Tears
– Yumekui Merry

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo – 22, 23 & 24

by psgels, posted in Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

Okay, I’m going to combine these three episodes into one entry in order to wrap up Sakurasou. My impression of them is that Mari Okada overshot herself a bit here. Her strength has always been in the way she used melodrama, but the actual climax of this series… yeah.

So the idea of the final three episodes was simple: episode 22 resolved the romantic subplots, episode 23 handled the subplot about Sakurasou about to close and episode 24 was then the epilogue. The best was episode 22. Sure, it was incredibly predictable and had it coming for the entire series, but it was charming enough. I enjoyed that. Been there, done that, but charming.

Episode 23… dear god, what a bawl-fest. I mean, I can enjoy a good cry and all, but that was just too much. It’s in character for Misaki to just hijack something as important as the graduation ceremony. It’s not in character for everyone and his dog to be so emotionally attached to that speech. I mean, that was just total melodrama.

In the past, Mari Okada’s endings have always stood to me as endings that managed to deliver high emotions really well. They were overdramatic, but they were well built up, were believable, and had some variation: they weren’t a bawl-fest from start to finish and had quiet, funny or other moments that broke up the mood. That was like, “Whine whine whine Sakurasou is awesome, whine whine whine I love you all”. There is such a thing as too much love here…

Episode 24, I liked it at the beginning. Until it revealed its true colours as an ending that couldn’t pull through with the decisions it made. The sister didn’t enter the school? Hah! She actually lied to Sorata about her student number. Jin and Misaki go away in order to live their own lives? Hah, they just marry and conveniently start to live next to Sakurasou. What was all of the build-up for? What was all the growth for? I really dislike those kinds of half-assed endings.

So yeah, if I knew what I know today, I would have blogged Kamisama Hajimemashita and Sukitte Ii na Yo for the past autumn season’s Romance shows. But unfortunately, this was something that I just could never have seen coming. Sakurasou lured me in with its 24 episodes, plus its really strong start. It just did not make good use of its second half at all.
Rating: 3/8 (Mediocre)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 23 & 24

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

And here are the penultimate episodes of Jojo. And seriously, I loved the fights here. The creators really went to the extreme, while keeping true to their philosophy of putting huge over the top powers on one hand, and really delicate things on the other. One one hand you have Stroheim yelling like crazy, while weilding what is basically a giant lamp as a weapon. And the duel with Cars was also really good in how it used Lisalisa in such a painful position as a hostage.

Surpringly, the least interesting part of these two episodes was where Speedwagon started to explain what happened to Joseph’s parents. It’s not that it didn’t have any good points (I liked how one of the smarter minions of Dio worked his way up as an aviation commander in the Royal Air Force), but come on. You’re about to punch Cars to death. Don’t break up the momentum with that. Thankfully the actual finale promises to be epic.

My only gripe: Lisalisa didn’t really get a chance to stand in the spotlights, did she? I mean all other major characters got their chance to show off, but she has the bad luck to be immediately just brought to an inch of her life. Give her some credit, man. If she’s a ripple master, let her show this off!
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Zetsuen no Tempest – 22 & 23

by psgels, posted in Zetsuen no Tempest

And these are the penultimate episodes for Zetsuen no Tempest, with its finale about to air tomorrow. They weren’t about a mindfuck, but instead about a complete role reversal from what you’d expect: Hanemura gets to play the hero, while everyone else plays backup. It might seem insignificant, but I find this really refreshing to see: it isn’t trying to force its main characters into the spotlights. Instead it’s offering everyone his chance for this.

And I really like Hanemura by the way, for a character who got introduced in the second half of this series. He is a very good example of a wimpy looking character done right. First of all because amongst the cast, he was often the only one stupid enough to state the obvious. Plus, his little outburst in episode 22 was pretty damn cool for him. I really loved the irony there: this series prides itself with its focus on logic. And here Hanemura just coms and kicks some emotions back into the characters.

What also was really refreshing was the way episode 23 ended: when they were all rounding up those crewmembers on the boats, I was really wondering why everyone just complied like sheep. I mean, I know that they put bombs on the ships and all, but the way in which everyone just complied neatly felt a bit like they were all just plot devices. To think that nobody was crazy enough to try something… And they did. It’s not the first time Yoshino has been shot to near-death, but this is slightly different than before, with all of the build-up of “we’re not going to care about you or anything”.

Now, as for the actual ending… Zetsuen no Tempest really was an awesome series, but I do not think that it will have the strongest ending out of the “Big Four” of the Autumn Season (Psycho Pass, Tempest, Jojo, From the New World). Out of all of the penultimate episodes, I’d say that this one has the least hints that it’s going to become something special. But who knows? It might surprise us again. I’d love it if it did that.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Amnesia Review – 64/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

I wanted to get this review out as soon as possible because… I have to apologize. I’m sorry. I endorsed this series when it first came out. I just didn’t know. I had no clue what kind of a trainwreck this would be. honestly!

Okay, so to start at the beginning: I actually liked Amnesia when it first started. It had a concept that really piqued my interest: the lead female wakes up not knowing anything, and suddenly she is dating this random guy with a weird fashion sense and she has no idea what’s going on. Over the course of the series she experiences this multiple times, each time dating a different guy. That had the potential to be a very interesting mystery-series with the right execution. It’s just… the execution was not right. Not right at all.

And yeah, the storytelling may be awkward and the animation may not be special and all, but those are just mere details. I called this a trainwreck, and I mean it. By far the biggest cause for that is the cast of characters.

Usually I try to avoid spoilers, but to get a good grasp of what went wrong I need to give some vague hints of what happens in the story. You see, this series at heart is a harem: over its course it shows the lead female together with a number of potential partners that it thinks appeal to its audience. Or at least, that’s supposed to be it. Regular harems work that way in any case. If Amnesia was based on the same principle then the creators have got a really low image of their target audience because, bar one, every single character in this show is a total prick.

Seriously, there are not many series that have so many unlikable characters in them. There is a murder suspect, a guy with bipolar disorder, an obsessive stalker, an incredibly whiny ladies’ man. The worst is the obsessive stalker. When I watched his episode, I had to do a double-take before I realized what the creators just pulled. I really have to restrain myself from just typing that out loud here. Let’s just say that every sane human being would just give him a kick in the groin at what he did there. The lead female just doesn’t do anything. Everything in this series gets done for her. And she doesn’t even realize it, just walking away happily as if she was the one who did all the work.

Oh, and as for the mystery part of the story… yeah. The final episode features an info-dump that has a good story buried somewhere underneath. But yeah, the final episode rushes through everything in order to stuff in all of the required exposition, which only ends up forced as hell.
One-Sentence Review: A series with interesting potential to finally be a good Otome Game adaptation… only to fail horribly with some of the worst characters imaginable.
Suggestions:
– Matantei Loki Ragnarok
– Saiunkoku Monogatari
– Ashita no Nadja
Note: with suggestions I mean series that worth watching if you liked Amnesia. NOT the other way around…

Uchuu Kyoudai – 50

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

With this episode it’s finally time for Nitta to tell his story. We’re at episode 50, and he was already building up to this episode from the moment that the second exam started. Back in like, episode 13 or something. It only became obvious in the current arc, though. Nitta is basically the opposite of Mutta: the older brother, whose younger sibling is just a complete failure. A neet who refuses to do anything.

That cliff-hanger of last week indeed was really evil, but in the end what made it the most annoying was not the fact that I wanted to know what happened to Nitta’s brother, but that it ended just as it got really good (that’s something I noticed with a lot of other series with nerve-wrecking cliff-hangers). This episode just commenced to head for the most obvious solution as if it’s nothing. Of course, an astronaut should not be allowed to head into his own direction. That’s complete suicide. Sure, they will lose the challenge there and there will be some consequences, but in the end it was the only right thing to do here.

And with this we’re nearly one year in, and still going strong. At the start of this series I never imagined that this show would go on for more than a year. This would have been a crappy episode to end with by the way. “Yeah, we’re in the middle of the desert with a ton of potential left. Bye bye!”
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

From the New World Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, From the New World



Shin Sekai Yori, or From the New World, is a series that set out with a mission. Nowadays most anime adhere to their set of stropes. This is one of those shows that just said “screw conventions!” and it just went with an execution that just took so many different risks, taking almost nothing for granted, and ended up as quite a unique experience because of it.

Where most series that are based on something are based to a manga, visual novel, or things like that, with From the New World they actually set out to adapt an actual novel again, and it shows because the pacing is totally different from any other anime out there, including multiple timeskips that see the main characters grow up from small children to full grown adults. The story… makes use of this really well…

It’s hard to really talk about the story without spoiling, but let’s just say that you should not think that even though there are kids in this series, it’s kid-friendly. Shin Sekai Yori is DARK. It uses a lot of build-up to get to where it’s going, but when it’s there it makes one hell of an impact. It has created this unique setting for itself, and it takes a while to set everything up, but that also makes this series quite varied in its mood. The setting has got a lot of depth to it, and the creators actually managed to pull a ton of potential out of it.

The downside to this series is that it is not the easiest to watch, by far. Some episodes have animation that takes quite a few… “artistic liberties”. On one hand this had some of the best animation of the past half year in any TV-series. It can be absolutely gorgeous when it wants to. For a few shots each episodes. The rest of the airtime is full of inconsistent character-designs, weird camrea angles and jerky direction that makes it really hard to figure out what’s going on. It’s not bad or anything, but this will get jarring on some people.

It’s definitely not a show for everyone. Let alone the dark parts, this is a show for people who are looking for something experimental. A show that isn’t afraid to trip itself up over and over for its vision. And believe me: the vision that this series has is amazing.
One-Sentence Review: Taking a unique setting, along with a “screw conventions!”-mentality, Shin Sekai Yori delivers a storyline with a ton of depth to it for those with an open mind.
Suggestions:
– Bokura no
– Casshern Sins
– Strange Dawn

From the New World – 25

by psgels, posted in From the New World

So after Psycho Pass I figured that I had already seen the best ending of the season. Tempest and From the New World did have a small chance in being able to match it, but not much, or so I thought.

Shin Sekai Yori just delivered the best ending I have seen since finishing Monster. That just was phenomenal, and it’s really been a while since a series managed to drive me as speechless as in this episode. I really thought that the show was over after Squealer was captured and Maria and Mamoru’s child was killed. But this episode really made its impact when it started with Squealer’s trial. And even the fight itself was pretty damn awesome due to the incredibly fluid animation that they showed there.

The way in which this episode exposed the humans for what they did. It was brilliant. There was all this talk about humans, and being human. And then it turns out that even the main characters just helped slaughter what once were basically just humans. Squealer was an excellent villain, and the ending he got makes it all the more sad, despite the things that he did. This show really knows how to hit hard with its gore.

Shin Sekai Yori was awesome. A-1 Pictures took a huge gamble with it, and it worked! It’s one of the most unique series of the past year. And yeah, there were some parts in which the animation was really wonky, but damn: it just did not care about conventions at all. Those are the series that I really like. I applaud you for it.
Rating: 7/8 (Fantastic)

Robotics;Notes Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Robotics;Notes



After the complete disaster that was Guilty Crown last year, Production IG had to make up for something. They did so with Psycho Pass, that really was one hell of a ride. As for their other 2-cour Noitamina-series this half year, Robotics;Notes… it’s a bit more difficult. And don’t get me wrong: this is in no way as bad as Guilty Crown. It’s much better, but also very difficult to judge. This series is really ambitious… it just doesn’t work.

I actually liked Robotics;Notes in its first half. It had this ambition, yet at the same time it spent a lot of time fleshing out its characters and focusing on believability. It might sound weird to see this from a series that has a large robot on its promotional material, but that’s the point: one of the subplots in this series offers a bit of a deconstruction of Giant Robot building as it takes a look some of the issues of teenagers piloting these things that most other series tend to ignore.

Then there is a subplot about solar storms, a subplot about miniature robot fighting, a subplot about an evil conspiracy, and that list goes on and on. This is what I mean by the ambition: in the first half this show balances all of these subplots together that at first sight don’t seem to have anything to do with each other. This build-up for me was the best part of this series, and it’s always a question of what this show will focus on next… in its first half.

And then its second half comes, and it’s supposed to weave all of these subplots together… and it kinda fails. A lot. In many ways. There are some things that you’d think are related to each other, which actually totally aren’t, and the ones that are related to each other are brought together in such a shoehorned way that it breaks all suspense of disbelief that it has previously built up.

The show basically tries to run through a checklist of all stories that it needs to wrap up, without any care of making them flow into each other. Because of this entire subplots are conveniently forgotten until they are relevant again without much reason. But granted, the stories that it try to tell have some good concepts and ideas behind them. the character-development also works well enough and it has still enough to make it worth watching. And then the finale comes. I have no idea what happened, but things totally go wrong. All of the build-up just gets thrown out of the window and the show turns into a cheesy mess of plot devices. Talk about a let-down.

So yeah, solid show. Bad ending. That makes it really hard for me to recommend this series, because this series doesn’t just have a bad ending, it’s got a bad ending that invalidates much of the earlier build-up. Watch this if you want a different take on Super Robots. But then again, there are enough shows that also do that.
One-Sentence Review: Robotics;Notes is a very ambitious series that juggles around all sorts of stuff, which works well in terms of build-up, but not in terms of pay-off.
Suggestions:
– Bokura no
– Birdy the Mighty Decode
– Dennou Coil

Robotics;Notes – 22

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

Well, there you have it. The ending of Robotics;Notes. Did they seriously just do that?

I really dislike these types of endings. I was hoping that they would at least put the focus on the robot battles and all, but that just came second place. No, at the first place in this episodes were the attempts to talk the big evil monster to death. This is exactly why I dislike brainwashing: you take away all free will, and it’s just vague enough to conveniently stop working at right the exact moment. After all that build-up, this sure was a big let-down.

What did the creators really want to show with this series? What was all of the build-up with the realistic looking robots good for? Why did Kimishima Kou really want to wipe out the entire earth and what kind of point would that have made for the story? I think that airing this series aside Psycho Pass was also a bad idea, because of how well that series wrapped itself up. Here we have a solid build-up that eventually just ignores everything and goes to end with a cheesy robot battle… yeah. I did not like this at all.

Judging this one is going to be hard, because by far the worst part of this series is its finale. But yeah, I keep saying that endings are really important for a reason. Perhaps not in the sense of storytelling, but they are the last thing you remember when you think back to a series. Now, when I think back to Robotics;Notes, I will think back to that cheesy ending more than the other parts. It hurts even more that in the end, it never really used its best parts to their full potential (the mecha deconstruction and all).
Rating: 2.5/8 (Lacking)