Author: psgels

Some Quick First Impressions: Gokyoudai Monogatari, Thriller Restaurant and Himitsu Kessha Taka Tsume Countdown

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Gokyoudai Monogatari

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters live together while their parents are away in America.
Well, I guess that not all kids’ shows can be surprisingly good this season. Gokyoudai Monogatari could indeed have been a cute story about two very young siblings (my guess would be that they’re both six or seven or something), if it wasn’t for the completely nonsensical scenario. Let alone that two kids that age are fully taking care of themselves, but the entire episode was full of the most ridiculous situations that didn’t make any sense at all: in the first half of this episode the lead duo gets chased by some sort of evil camera crew for no possible reason, while in the second half the boy gets chased by some sort of angry dog. Everyone really behaves in a completely implausible fashion that I guess is trying to be funny, but fails completely in the process. It gives off the impression of being rushed, and that the creators didn’t really think through the script. Catchy soundtrack, though.
OP: Nice enough. Surprisingly well and fluidly animated.
ED: This is the type of song that the kids who watch this today are going to hate once they grow up.
Potential: 0%

Thriller Restaurant

Short Synopsis: Our lead character visits a supposedly haunted restaurant building.
I must say, the kiddie shows this season are surprisingly good. This obviously is compared to most other kids’ series out there and I don’t mean in the way of the WMT, but in the same way I’d much rather watch an episode of Thriller Restaurant or Kiruminzoo than Fairy Tail, for example. If I had kids and this somehow got translated I wouldn’t mind showing this to them, because it’s a pretty nice horror-series for kids: it has a surprisingly good soundtrack, it knows how to build-up. It’s got a small touch of Japanese culture, and you can see that some actual creativity went into it. It’s not perfect. At a certain time one of the lead characters got possessed in too much of a Gakkou no Kaidan way. In essence, it’s just another grade school adventure, but if you compare it to some of the other shows that kids have to sit through these days, and it definitely stands among the better ones.
ED: Ghost disco… yeah. My biggest surprise is that it’s actually surprisingly good, especially considering the crap music that gets marketed towards kids these days…
Potential: 30%

Himitsu Kessha Taka Tsume Countdown

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is trying to take over the world.
Well, I guess that we’ve found the worst show of the season with this show. Here they take a series that would have been best as another one of those 3-minute series, and stretch it over 20 minutes of them. The show basically talks about two story-lines: one consisting out of strange shapes with stereotypical personalities who fight crime for no possible reason, and the second is about some sort of evil organization that’s trying to take over the world for no possible reason. The end result is an endless string of pointless and unfunny dialogue combined with the worst possible animation that I have ever seen. It’s trying too hard to be funny, it’s full of randomness just for the sake of randomness, and feels like a really half-assed attempt at creating an anime.
OP: Really dull J-pop, but at least there’s a nice visual direction.
ED: One of the only things about this series that doesn’t suck. At least there’s creativity here.
Potential: -70%

Kimi ni Todoke – 02

by psgels, posted in Kimi ni Todoke



As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– I have no idea what to write about Sunred on a weekly basis. Nevertheless, that Tempura-monster was hilarious.
– I have to give Yumeiro Patissiere credit: against all my expectations, the fairies did not give the lead character any powers whatsoever, and instead stressed the importance of hard work and preparation. Thumbs up. Nevertheless, the classmates are still a bit too stereotypical.
– Natsu no Arashi lost its subtlety in exchange for dull fanservice jokes. It can still get good but I don’t want to blog it while finding out.
– There are so many things wrong with Miracle Train that I don’t know where to start: ugly bishies, abysmal voice-acting, dull jokes, one-line background for each of the ladies, it’s already getting formulaic, every case gets solved with a dull monologue, pointless trivia, dialogue that’s just there to waste time. What the heck was Kenichi Kasai thinking?
– Sora no Otoshimono lost me when the panties started flying around.
– When blogging Basquash, I remember how I noted that something really weird had to happen for me to blog Shoji Kawamori’s next series. That did not happen, though such a cute and fluffy shoujo was probably the last thing I expected as his new series. And it’s pretty enjoyable so far in any case.
– Kobato is too one-dimensional: Kobato is just a moron who happens to be cute, her animal side-kick is just yet another subversion of the cute animal sidekick trope, then there are the stereotypical badass male tsundere, emo kid et cetera.
– Let me get back to 11Eyes when Winter Sonata airs. If that one turns out to suck, I’ll probably go for this one.

As for Kimi ni Todoke, well, you forced me all to blog it here. It’s an interesting choice, because I don’t think that I would have blogged this series on my own. I usually just leave shoujo romances like this for what they are, and this isn’t even one of the best ones. My problem with these types of shoujo series is that I’m still not able to determine whether they’re going to turn dull or not during their second half.

In terms of comedy, I’m hardly able to predict whether such a series will turn into a complete success as with Yamatso Nadeshiko Shichi Henge or Kodocha, or just a bore-fest like what happened to me with Ouran High School Host Club. For the serious series, how do you recognize whether a series is going to be awesome like with Bokura ga Ita, or just a complete disaster like with Vampire Knight from the first two episodes? The one time I actually tried blogging such a shoujo turned into a complete disaster: Shugo Chara descended into a filler-fest and still goes on three years later. While it’s nice on its own, I cringe at the thought of what would have happened if I didn’t decide to drop that series after 13 episodes…

Right now, Kimi ni Todoke isn’t the best, but also not the worst. At the moment it strikes me as a bit of a shallow emo version of Bokura ga Ita. The characters at the moment are a bit too exaggerated aside from the lead character: most of her classmates all are scared of her 100% of the time, her boyfriend is perfect without any flaws so far, so I really hope that the rest of the series is going to add a bit more depth to them. The lead character is off to a pretty nice start, however I do want to say that her constant chibi-version is really getting annoying right now.

I do have to praise the art. Especially the background art is absolutely beautiful, which is unsurprising considering the other shows the art director worked on: Eden of the East, Real Drive and Seirei no Moribito. Some of the backgrounds are probably filtered photographs, but they really work well along with this series’ unique art style. I think that right now, there are just too many series that go with a generic art style, instead of one with its own visual identity, and that really is a shame IMO.

Anyway, about the episode, I never knew that seat choosing was so serious business in Japan. I remember from the time when I was in high school, the only reason we had fixed seats was to give an easy time to the teacher, who had to remember all of our names. At the start of the year we’d usually just pick seats ourselves instead of having this strange lottery-thingy that the characters had in this episode.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Konnichiwa Anne – 28

by psgels, posted in Konnichiwa Anne



So, this was really the episode that would make or break this series: it was going to be the first episode of Anne, as she settled in the Hammond family, and visited her new school for the first time. The result is really a mixed bag, but I think that the creators are going to be able to make something out of it. At least, I don’t think that we’re going to get another repeat of the disaster of the Marysville arc.

First of all, Anne has grown again: she’s now ten years old, and you can see her development for the past three months that skipped: she has had no time to play around and be a kid, and really grown up in the meantime. But yeah, that brings us the the problems of continuity again: 10-year-old Anne is much more mature than 11-year-old Anne of Green Gables.

At a certain point in this episode, Anne also finds books of Shakespeare, and it’s actually very interesting to see her using these books and her own fantasy, in order to distract her from the reality she’s in. Like with the books she read in Marysville, she becomes entranced with them, especially because this time, she really has nobody to talk to. In Marysville, she at least had Johanna to talk to, Bert to relieve her worries to, and Noah, who she saw as her own brother because she had been raising him ever since he was born. But yeah, that brings us to continuity again: remember the beginning of Anne of Green Gables? Anne talked about a lot of girly things, but to my memory, she NEVER mentioned Shakespeare. This just again shows that there were a lot of red-haired Anne Shirleys walking around back in those days.

Now, as for the school. I absolutely loved the part in which the teacher was grading some tests by his students. That was really realistic. We didn’t actually get to see the students, because the schools were closed for summer break, but at least the teacher is much better than Henderson: he has this down-to-earth attitude towards teaching, and yet you can see why he decided to become a teacher in the first place.

Unfortunately on the other hand, the cheese is back. The drama in this episode was of the shallow kind again: Anne meets person, Anne talks to person and in the end the person completely changes into a different character because of the insights that Anne gave him. Especially the way in which the teacher said exactly what he learned and how it’s going to change his life just felt forced. I know that this is a kids’ show and all, but Porfy no Nagai Tabi faced the same problem, and that series again and again came up with great one-episode stories with plenty of well-written drama.

So yeah, overall this episode pretty much solidified as an inferior, though capable WMT-series, somewhat like Ie Naki Ko Remi (the 1997-version)’s sister-series. The two have a lot in common: both are spin-offs of utterly brilliant adaptations of literary works, but have drama that’s too shallow to really call themselves equal to the series they’re based on. And yet standalone, they’re pretty enjoyable. Remi had this with its excellent soundtrack (along with the best OP and ED of any WMT I’ve seen so far), strong lead and dark story about child-labour, while Anne did this with its dark attention to dysfunctional families, and a well-developed lead character Anne, who hardly resembles her original character.

Now that 2010 is getting closer and closer, I can only hope for an announcement of next year’s WMT-series to appear. Oh, I so hope that Nippon Animation is going to continue this franchise, despite its low popularity.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Some Quick First Impressions: Fairy Tail, Aoi Bungaku and Table Cat

by psgels, posted in Aoi Bungaku, Some Quick First Impressions

Fairy Tail

Short Synopsis: Our lead character destroys entire cities and ruin thousands of people’s lives with his powers. And is supposed to be the good guy…
Well, so here we have another one of those shounen fighting series. And to be honest, it feels like a rather half-assed attempt. You can really see that the creators are trying too hard for this one: at every single opportunity they get they try to be funny by an incredibly exaggerated facial expression. Some of those attempts are indeed funny, but in most of the cases they just lack comedic timing, feel lazy or just aren’t funny. The lead character also feels like any other 14-year-old shounen lead out there, without hardly anything that sets him apart. As for the fights, they mostly consist out of people throwing flashy beams and punches at each other until one party goes down. I’ve gotten bored of those ever since Bleach abused them. Right now, I’m a bit done with those shallow shounen series.
OP: Decent J-rock, but nothing special.
ED: Bad j-pop song.
Potential: 20%

Aoi Bungaku

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets the love of his life as he runs away from the police.
Ah, yes. It’s obvious that this is going to be the least popular series of the season. I suspect that this series mostly going to be ignored, if Mouryou no Hako’s reception last year is any indication. It’s going to surprise me if there are actually subbers going to be interested in this series. Nevertheless, this series has the best character-designs of the new season, it has the best atmosphere of the new season, it has the best graphical direction, the most complex and difficult to understand script, and very much my favourite first episode of the Autumn Season. I love the way how it slowly plays out, with the atmosphere only getting bigger and bigger as it goes on. It’s about adults, rather than a bunch of teenagers, and the fanservice for once feels mature, rather than stupid like most other series this season. I really like the concept of animating six short stories inside one series: it’s going to provide variety, and make sure that the series is never going to drag. If I had to describe this episode, it’d be Kurozuka minus all of the freakish action and plus some actually good characterization. It’s taken a while, but I’m really glad to see another interesting concept from Madhouse!
ED: Nice ballad.
Potential: 90%

Table Cat

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a bunch of talking cats and dogs.
Okay… this is the perfect example of “so annoying it becomes funny”. I think that anyone who watched this episode wanted to kill that freaking poodle. Her voice actress just would not shut up. In fact, this entire episode (three minutes, okay) was full of the most hyperactive dialogue since the Excel Saga, combined with some really weird and spastic animation techniques. However, I can’t deny that I laughed. 😛
OP: Very cheesy and pointless for an anime with only three-minute episodes.
ED: Again, just a cheesy song that takes fifteen seconds…
Potential: 20%

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 27

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



Recap.

We basically saw Hohenheim and some strange woman talk while the past twenty-six episodes were recapped. I’m not complaining however, because for a recap it was a very good one: it contained the best bits of animation along with the best soundtracks for an intense 20 minutes. Hohenheim meanwhile looks at people dancing around a campfire and has some sort of evil twin or clone or something show up. It then turns out to be a dream of his.

If this really wasn’t part of the manga, then I think it’s the creators’ way of foreshadowing. My guess is that they were forced to include a recap at this point, so instead of just boringly do an episode in which nothing happens, why not throw in a taste of the future? I must say, with the dancing children I’m beginning to see more why Hohenheim was supposed to be that kind man; he indeed doesn’t seem like the same guy as his white version.
OP: New OP this time, starts off well but then degenerates into generic J-rock.
ED: Another slide-show. The music is decent for a j-pop ballad.
Rating: ** ()

Cross Game – 28

by psgels, posted in Cross Game



Yeah, this was by far the best baseball match of Cross Game, in which Kou and Azuma finally get a real threat posed to them. The matches still are nowhere as intense and exciting as in Touch, but it’s getting there. If the second half of the series can further develop the fact that Kou and Azuma aren’t perfect then we’re in for a great series.

For once, Kou didn’t give away a point because he was playing around, lazy or otherwise intentionally not focusing. The way that Keitaro just whacked a home-run out of Kou’s pitch caught him completely off-guard and Azuma too for once just hit a regular pitch, instead of a home-run. I also like that Senda, despite his portrayal as a seemingly useless character actually gets to bases at times. That’s more to say from Akaishi: there’s this theme with him, never being able to score any sort of solid hit: he either hits very hard, only for the ball to get caught, or he just completely fails to hit the ball in the first place.

Aoba again acted completely different from how she usually does, and turned into a bit of a fangirl for Kou, which of course clashed a bit with her tsundere-side. Yeah, at this point the arrival of Wakaba-lookalike seems about right to develop their relationship a bit more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Letter Bee – 02

by psgels, posted in Letter Bee



Okay, this episode convinced me to start blogging this series. It had a bit of an uneventful first episode, but you can see that it was holding back. This episode showed a bit more of this series’ potential, and showed that it can very well write a nice dramatic scene. Lag is a bit too much of a crybaby in this episode, but thankfully: he grows up. Nevertheless, it still remains a question whether or not the creators are going to be able to pace the story properly, get the best out of the setting… and somehow solve the problem that they’re dealing with a still on-going manga…

The director is a new guy, as in he’s never directed an entire series before. This really can go anywhere, and at this point he seems decent enough. You can see that he’s not trying out or adding a lot of extra things, but the adaptation so far seems faithful from the perspective of someone who hasn’t read the manga like myself. He however was the technical director of Kaze no Youjinbo, which does show a lot of promise. Especially since Kaze no Youjinbo started off really slow and uneventful as well, and only became memorable as it went on. Perhaps this is the guy who can bring Studio Pierrot back to their standards before the Naruto and Bleach-era.

In any case, while a bit cheesy, that scene where Lag carried Gauche on his own was quite endearing. I like how the creators chose to start this series off with a young version of the protagonist: this way we can really get to know him. I just hope that he became less of a crybaby, but five years can change a lot of things. And apart from the crying, I liked how this episode really took its time to show the conversation between Lag and Gauche.

Apparently, there are going to be 7 DVDs. Since the first is going to contain the first two episodes, my guess is that the final six will each contain three, making for a total of 20 episodes for this series. Seems enough to get a nice story out of it.
Rating: * (Good)

White Album – 15

by psgels, posted in White Album



As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Out of the onslaught of moe comedies this season, Seitokai no Ichizon definitely stands out as the best and funniest. Nevertheless, I see no potential in blogging it weekly.
– Kuroko’s lesbian siscon fantasies in Railgun were just painful to watch. Even Index was better than this!
– For a while I thought that it would be fun to blog Blacksmith, with Manglobe behind the animation and an excellent soundtrack and all. But in the end, it’s just too much generic fantasy in which a band of teenagers has to go face an evil army of demons and evil adults. I want series that take risks instead of playing it as safe as possible.

Which brings us to White Album: love it or hate it, but you can’t deny that it was one of the most unique romance and eroge adaptations of the past years. While it has moe, it never tries to present the characters as such. Instead, it wants the viewer to hate its characters. Not through crappy scriptwriting as in School Days, but instead because of the characters’ actions, while still keeping a very solid script.

I mean, when you ignore the melodrama, the writing and direction is incredibly solid. The dialogue is meaningful and deep, the drama is often incredibly subtle and the creators really have an eye for detail. Just take a look at how Touya played with the condensation on the windows, or how incredibly well animated Mana was when she met Haruka on her bike. Choosing a generic fantasy like Blacksmith, in which the characters all act like caricatures and wounds magically disappear, over this one would just not sit right.

I really expect that this is going to be my hate/love series of this season, but I’d much rather have this series to rage over, rather than some badly written and lazy show that just feels stereotypical. I think the biggest problem with the first season was that it left an incredibly bad taste: it solved absolutely nothing, even for a show that’s supposed to be continued. Is it bad? No. Did it cause me to hate this series for six months? Yes.

As I watched this episode though, I was reminded more and more of why I started blogging this series in the first place. FINALLY Touya and Yuki get the chance to talk to each other for a good while, and it’s completely the opposite of the stereotypical way that I expected. They just hang out, albeit a bit uncomfortably with Yayoi being near, and then they say goodbye again.

2009 has been an excellent year for romance, so I might as well see and check out how this unique series is going to play out.
Rating: * (Good)

Some Quick First Impressions: Cheburashka Arere, Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini and Sasameki Koto

by psgels, posted in Darker than Black - Ryuusei no Gemini, Some Quick First Impressions

Cheburashka Arere

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a monkey that starts living with a crocodile.
Hmm, the kiddie-shows this season are surprisingly good. I wouldn’t exactly recommend Chebrashka to any adult, but for once we have a series that tries to be different from all the other kiddie shows out there. It’s actually a bit nostalgic, as it seems similar to the kiddie shows that I watched when I was only five years old (most notably, Barbapapa). One thing that especially strikes me is how good the animation is. The character-designs are simple, but they move really fluidly with hardly any corners cut. Interesting.
OP: Just a title screen, but original music.
ED: Very obnixious to anyone older than five.
Potential: 20%

Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini

Short Synopsis: Our lead character stopped getting haircuts.
It was quite a surprise to see that this first episode focused on mostly completely new characters, but yeah: this was the best first episode of the new season. It’s got the intriguing setting of the Book of Bantorra with a solid and intelligent execution that can’t be matched by any other series this season. The characters are well written, the attention to detail to the origami was a very nice touch, and the battles still rely much more on wits and intelligence than raw power. This episode really showed that Bones didn’t make a sequel just to milk out this franchise, but they’re really intending to give it some more depth. It’s a shame that there are only going to be 12 episode, but on the other hand that’s going to make this series short and sweet. 2009 really looks like it’s going to be Bones’ best year ever.
ED: Solid albeit uninteresting ballad with a slide-show of random landscapes.
Potential: 90%

Sasameki Koto

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a lesbian.
Sasameki Koto: a tad shallow, but definitely charming. This episode was one of the most emotional first episodes of the new season for me, because it was the best at combining subtlety and straight to-the-point drama. The soundtrack fits this romance series very well, and the atmosphere was pretty nice for this story. But yeah, that shallowness is going to become a problem for this series in the future. The dialogue felt not really very inspired, and the characters were a little too quick to cry. Nevertheless, after Aoi Hana with its mountains of subtlety, it might be worth watching a more direct lesbian series.
OP: A nice and calm song, although definitely not the best of its kind.
ED: A bit too annoying and poppy song.
Potential: 50%

Omoshi Magical Theatre: Risky Safety Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



When I posted my first impressions on Kobato, I noted how incredibly cute its lead character Kobato was. I then started watching Risky Safety, and suddenly Kobato looked more like Hamako from Gintama in comparison. Omishi Magical Theater: Risky Safety has got to be one of, if not THE cutest anime I have ever seen.

And it’s not like most series that attempt to go for cuteness, in which they try to make everything as brightly coloured and fluffy as possible with a lot of energetic overacting. The titular characters, an apprentice Shinigami and Angel named Risky and Safety respectively, have such a natural charm that’s near impossible to plan out. Nearly all of their quirks are just too cute to watch when combined with the incredibly talented voice actres of these two (why yes, they’re voiced by the same voice actress, who does a fantastic job portraying both of them). They’re the type of characters who make all of the scenes they’re in a joy to watch.

The ten-minute episodes basically consist out of the two titular characters helping out a kid with worries, but the storytelling is genuine enough to make something interesting out of such a simple premise. The stories are well built up, and are about serious themes as undecisiveness, love, good and evil that aim to teach simple moral stories. You can also see that the creators like to try out new ideas: sometimes they like to show a bit of what happens in the setting around the characters, like showing a random conversation between a few passers-by that has nothing to do with the story, or showing some sort of reference to an earlier story. It’s interesting how in this story, whenever something gets destroyed or changed, it remains changed. For example, the stuff that Risky breaks in one room still remain broken 24 episodes later.

Overall, this series shows that anime can also be simple, yet effective. It’s an excellent recommendation for those who are looking for a quick watch. It’s such a charming series from beginning to end, and surprisingly solidly produced as well with detailed animation that hardly cuts any corners. With an excellent dreamy soundtrack excellent voice acting and incredibly cute antics, I really enjoyed this little series. It’s a shame that we never hear anything from its production-company anymore, APPP. Around ten years ago they used to do a number of series with very neat ideas, but right now they only seem to concentrate on in-between animation jobs (but doing a great job at them nonetheless).

Storytelling: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 8/10