Author: psgels

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 02

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



As for the series I’m not blogging:
– Kämpfer is just yet another stereotypical fighting show with no depth whatsoever.
– Nyan Koi had a really disappointing and shallow second episode. Plus, it’s obvious that the creators have never owned cats.

As for the Book of Bantorra, I think it was pretty obvious that I was going to blog this. Barring the sequels, it featured for me the best first episode of the new season so far and it looks to be another hit for newcomer David Production. This time, they might not have such a powerhouse behind the direction, but the premise has quite a few nice ideas thrown into it, there are lots of characters, all with different morals and values, and this episode showed yet again that it can deliver very nice action-scenes, even with its clearly limited budget. All in all, a very intriguing series.

The director didn’t handle any series I know, but this guy seems very experienced, with a lot of different series under his belt. I’m also very happy with the one who’s behind the series composition: Mari Okada. She wrote the script for a lot of the episodes of Simoun, and did the series composition for a lot of different series, including True Tears, Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, Canaan and Vampire Knight (which may have sucked, but I heard that it was the best possible adaptation that the really mediocre manga could have gotten). That’s definitely a plus when animating a series of light novels with such a big setting.

The art director is also an interesting one, because Shigemi Ikeda is an artist with a huge amount of experience: the list of series he did the art direction for just goes on and on, and the result show in this episode in the architecture. You really need a lot of creativity to come up with these complex structures. A job well done, if I say so. The soundtrack also is done by the Death Note soundtrack guy, who also composed the scores for Himitsu and Real Drive, which means an excellent soundtrack as well.

But yeah, the weakest point in this series really is the direction, in the way that the quality control tends to be a bit off at times. This episode most notably showed that in the sudden increase of the already huge cleavage of the director, or how the widow of the guy who was killed by Coolio’s friend suddenly chose Colio of all people to talk to was also a bit too coincidental. Nevertheless, when compared to Shangri-la last season there are far less assaults to my suspense of disbelief, so there shouldn’t be any major problems there as long as the creators continue to keep the rest of this series interesting.

Volken also seems like an interesting male lead: he’s an adult for one, and he’s an interesting combination of an capable commander with strong morals, and a naive subordinate with a lot of potential for growth inside of him. He’s able to stand out as the lead character, and yet he doesn’t hog all the screen-time for himself (in fact, that meat guy has gotten more screen-time than he did in this episode). Hamyuts also has the potential to become a very interesting villain, the way she has been portrayed in the past two episodes: as long as she isn’t going to end up as a static character, the creators can do a lot of great things with her. I especially like how she likes to do things herself, instead of sitting in her chair, looking evil.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 15

by psgels, posted in Umineko no Naku Koro ni



Holy crap! How many extra dimensions can a story get within just one arc? Turn the chessboard upside-down? How about reaching into a completely different dimension to find an extra side of that chessboard hidden!

With this episode I’m really starting to see Ryukishi07’s brilliance as a writer, and it was by far the best episode of this series yet. Where to start?Eva finds the gold, but instead of stopping the murder her second personality takes up a life of her own, goes after the gold and becomes the next Beatrice, the mysterious girl that we’ve been seeing in the OP? What the hell?

Screw trying to prove that the murders didn’t happen with magic. My theory still stands that the real murderer is probably some sort of illusionist and Beatrice and the other witches are pulling all sorts of illusions to confuse Battler. However, what does this mean for the entire nature of the games that Beatrice and Battler have been playing? Beatrice actually did not know that this was going to happen. Does that mean that for every arc, she just puts the initial pieces into place (as in, the magical servants and gives them the right instruction), and then watches everything play out like she wanted to? And what exactly does it mean of being in that “shadow realm” of theirs. It’s one thing that psycho Eva took over the title of Beatrice in this arc, but why did Beatrice also give up her name in that shadow realm? It destroys so many theories.

First of all, if she just did that to fool Battler, this would simply come to light at the end of this arc when everything gets reset again. Also, it also doesn’t mean that Beatrice simply wants power, because she just gave that up like it was nothing and didn’t even seem to be upset about it. Also, the way Beatrice and Ronove spoke about psycho Eva, in that “I’m not going to tell you because you’re not going to understand it anyway”-way was surprisingly genuine. There’s no reason for them to have said that if that were just part of the play, so more and more signs are pointing towards a whole dimension of magic not only in the “shadow realm” (by lack of a better name), but also within the island itself.

And then comes the final quarter of this episode in which Beatrice (or Beato, I guess) shows a completely different side of her. She really is an innocent child at heart, that laughing of her was just a way of her playing around, albeit in a bit of an extreme way. I’m not sure what exactly went on in her twisted mind, but she seems to have a complete lack of morals. This is just a guess from me, but even though Bernkastel and ΛΔ have formidable powers, they never actually went against Beatrice and Battler pretty much was the first one who slapped her in the face among her charade of various servants and furniture. And on top of that, the Beato on the island has also completely swapped personalities and is the complete opposite: mature, aware of her loss and while she still has pride, she says goodbye to her servants with her head held high.

Right now, my guess at who’s the murderer is also completely different. Eva is of course a huge red herring, as are Rosa and Beato. If we are to take from Higurashi, the killer is someone who has stayed in the background who seems innocent at first sight. That leaves the biggest suspects at this point Battler’s parents and Eva’s husband. These are the ones who have had the least amount of attention so far, and they do have their own sets of motives, to try and get rid of Krauss and become the inheritor/inheritor’s husband/wife.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
And remember: please refrain from mentioning anything that happens in the visual novel after this point…

Brigadoon Marin to Melan Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



I’m getting more and more impressed at Sunrise’s lesser-known mecha series. Sure, they have made plenty of series that just consist out of a string of random action-scenes without much substance, but on the other hand there also are series as Overman King Gainer, Zone of the Enders, Zegapain and Votoms, which all sparkle with creativity. Brigadoon is yet another one of those.

Brigadoon is one of those series with a cute and brightly-coloured outside, but a dark and lethal inside. It starts off pretty innocently, in which a 13-year-old girl suddenly gets hunted down by evil aliens and needs to be protected by some sort of combat android. The series is at these points fun to watch, and a very energetic action-series, but as the series goes on, the dark side of the series shows up more and more, and isn’t afraid to put the lead characters through hell and beyond in order to get its points across. The formulaic setting of the series is also completely abandoned in the second half, for a far more interesting plot with a lot of twists and turns along the way.

This series is especially good with its characters. Not just the main characters, but also most of the side-characters get their own share of depth that makes them engaging to watch. Especially Marin strikes as an excellent lead character for this series: she has plenty of flaws as a character, and yet her energy carries the series and prevents it from dragging.

This series also has a unique visual style. The animation during the light parts is very quirky, and during the dark parts it’s detailed and intricately shaded to get the best out of the seemingly childish graphics. The soundtrack is also unique, and has a number of very noteworthy tracks.

Granted though, this series does have its share of flaws. One of the most notable is the regeneration powers that the androids (called Monomakia here) in this series seem to have. I’m really not much of a fan of those sorts of powers; after all, why care about a character getting injured if he can easily be zapped back to good health. And yeah, because of this the characters get injured to near-death a few too many times. Not only that, but sometimes the regeneration rules also go inconsistent with their own inner logic.

This becomes mostly apparent in the ending, which really wants to bring everything to a happy end a little too badly. Revelations are pulled out of thin air, deus ex machina make sure that everyone gets to have the easy end, and all in all it’s just one huge rush-job that the creators didn’t put much thought into. Nevertheless, this remains a pretty good action-series. There are some really neat ideas stuffed into it. Sure, there is a bit of fanservice here and there, but it never gets in the way of what’s really important.

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

Some Quick First Impressions: Kimi ni Todoke, 11Eyes and Kobato

by psgels, posted in Kimi ni Todoke, Kobato, Some Quick First Impressions

Kimi ni Todoke

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is that scary girl from Hyakko. No seriously, the two are introduced with exactly the same examples!
Ah, finally we have a series that goes with its own art style, instead of one that has been copied from a thousand other series already. That’s definitely a plus. Kimi ni Todoke is a shoujo-series, which you forced me to blog back here. Overall, compared to the first episodes of other shoujo-series, it doesn’t really stand out: the humour hardly got any chuckles out of me and the set-up is pretty basic. However in this season it really has been the best teenaged romance so far. with those standards it’s of course not that hard to achieve this, but the female lead is nice to watch, and doesn’t feel like a stereotype at all. There’s a nice bit of drama that doesn’t try too hard and has a sense of subtlety, and overall it was pretty nice. Although the creators really need to work on making that male love interest less perfect, because right now it’s nothing more than your average shy girl’s fantasies of dating the hottest and most popular guy in school.
OP: Nice art, but the song is standard J-pop that doesn’t interest me.
ED: Nice albeit a bit dull, ballad.
Potential: 50%

11Eyes

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets woken up every morning by his childhood friend.
I swear, I’m getting dejá vus from all of these moe shows this season. This feels like the umpth time I’ve seen fanservice, childhood friends becoming lovers, obnoxious classmates and generic moe character-designs. Nevertheless, for these first impressions I mostly look at the execution, and for this series it actually rocked. The slice of life scenes were still pretty dull and cliché, but whenever this series gets serious it gets dark and brutal, and the creators are immediately able to switch from a light and boring atmosphere to a very tense and dangerous atmosphere with a small touch of horror and mystery, and I really have to praise this series for that. Now all that remains is to wonder whether the creators can keep this up, and whether this show has a premise that can really get the best out of this direction. Agh, I have no bloody clue!
OP: Actually one of the best OPs this seasons. Energetic, varied and fast-paced, fitting the dark mood of this series.
ED: Again, a very nice track that nicely ties in with the cliff-hanger.
Potential: 50%

Kobato

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has to help other people.
After watching X, this was about the last thing I expected from the next Madhouse Clamp series: a cute shoujo series. And granted, the lead character Kobato is sickeningly cute. There’s a nice dynamic between her and her stuffed animal side-kick what made this episode worth watching. However, the side-characters felt rather flat and one-dimensional. Seeing as this is going to be a series that’s going to focus on Kobato helping out other persons, it’s going to be a bit pointless if the creators can’t create engaging characters for Kobato to help. In this aspect, Miracle Train did it much better. Kobato also was portrayed a bit too angelic during this episode: she can somehow take the worst ingredients and make a delicious dish out of it, she can sing perfectly, etc. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable episode and knowing Clamp, at least you can be sure that the characters are going to be developed as the story goes on but based on first impressions both Clamp and Madhouse have done better in terms of cuteness.
OP: Standard J-pop song that didn’t catch my interest.
ED: Quiet song that again didn’t catch my interest.
Potential: 50%

Some Quick First Impressions: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu 2 – Purezza, Anymal Tantei Kiruminzoo and Shin Koihime Musou

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu 2 – Purezza

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to date the most popular, perfect and rich girl in school.
And yere we have yet another moe show: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu’s continuation. I’m not really interested in all of the otaku-ish hobbies, but I figured that I might as well give this show a second chance to get me interested, but ultimately it didn’t. By far my biggest problem with this episode was that the many attempts at comedy were shallow, not funny and often downright atrocious, a problem I have with a lot of the moe shows this season. As for the romance, I admit that that part was pretty cute. The love triangle is just a copy of any other love triangle out there, but the romance between the lead character and Nogizaka Haruka, despite cliché, was pretty cute. Though I don´t really think it was cute enough for me to keep watching this…
Also on a side-note: is Japan really such a xenophobic place in which you get immediately labelled as loser in middle school when they find out that you like watching cartoons? Strange country.
OP: A bit of a mock opening of Haruka’s favourite show, but did the creators really have to go with something so cheesy?
OP2: I remember how the OP of the first season was abysmal, so this is a very good improvement. Catchy J-Rock and an inspired visual style.
ED: Way too cheesy and badly sung J-Pop.
Potential: 10%

Anymal Tantei Kiruminzoo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can transform into cute and fluffy animals.
So yeah, this is a series aimed at kids. Just about everything in this show is designed to be as cute as possible, and it revolves around the premise of a bunch of kids searching around in their parents’ attic and finding a bunch of magical thingies that transform them into mahou shoujo. But really, for a kid’s show it’s actually not that bad at all. For once we have kid’s show that actually not as cheaply written as possible. The two characters are likable, and the episodes played out quite natural. What especially struck me is the surprisingly good soundtrack. This is probably a good series for the Shugo Chara-fans who have been turned off by how it jumped the shark with Party! As for the rest of this series, it could be a fun, relaxing series. If we are to believe the title, the girls are going to use their powers as detective. I guess that has promise as a light watch.
OP: It will never leave! It will never leave!
ED: Korean vocals, of all things, and again just too catchy.
Potential: 30%

Shin Koihime Musou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a “honorable warrior” in ancient China.
It’s series like Koihime Musou that ruined any chance of me, being able to take the Romance of the Three Kingdoms-saga seriously. One of the classic Chinese novels? It’s probably going to remain in my mind as a series of very stupid and girly stories you can only laugh at. This sequel of Koihime Musou seems to do exactly the same as its predecessor: it’s here to deliver cute girls, more cute girls, and in between even more cute girls. I doubt that I’m going to continue watch this one since it’s really not my type of genre, but if you like moe and boobs doing nothing you’ll probably enjoy the slice of life in this series. It’s just too stupid for me with little else that caught my attention, and in that it didn’t really seem to have changed from the first season.
OP: Spunky OP. Not exactly something I want to listen to again, but definitely not among the worst this season.
ED: Too much sugar and squeaky voices.
Potential: 20%

Gosenzosama Banbanzai Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Mamoru Oshii really is one of the most unique anime directors out there, his sense of dialogue is really unrivalled. Gosenzosama Banbanzai came from the period in which he was still in his experimental phase. As a result, this has been one of the most unique OVAs I’ve seen, there truly is nothing like it, even though it’s already 20 years old by now. It’s a unique take on the genre of series that focuses on long strings of dialogue, and gets the formula right.

The only way to get a really good impression on what this OVA is about is to actually watch it, but to give an attempt to describe this thing: the setting is incredibly simplistic. Every episode takes place for about 90% in one single room, with only a select number of cameras that it feels like a stage. In fact, the creators often use stage-lights to confirm this. On these stages, the anime shows all of the different characters engaging in seemingly endless dialogues and monologues, often about things that at first sight don’t even seem to matter.

In this OVA, Mamoru Oshii brilliantly manages to tell his story through this dialogue, in which he loves taking his arguments to the absurd while making them seem like they make sense by creating a context in which they seemingly do. The dialogues and monologues are brilliant at messing with their own logic and taking the piss out of themselves, and yet at the same time they manage to create a serious story with quite a number of interesting twists.

The visuals in this series also rock. Like I said, they’re simplistic: there are hardly any changes of cameras, but this has enabled the animators to really focus on animating the characters, and the results show. The animation is incredibly smooth and a lot of effort has been put into making the characters move naturally. On top of that, the visual direction also provides plenty of strong shots, creative situations and simple yet effective action-scenes.

It’s really a shame that they don’t make anime like this anymore. There really aren’t many series that can claim to be as unique and yet as well produced as Gosenzosama Banbanzai. With an excellent soundtrack done by Kenji Kawai and a great stab at in-series advertising more than fifteen years before Code Geass came with its Pizza Hut, I really recommend this for those who are looking for something short and different.

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

First Squad Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



I remember how I watched the original First Squad Music Video, and thought to myself “this is awesome, they should make more about this”. Well, someone at Studio 4C must have heard this, because here it is: a full one-hour-length movie about Russia during the second World War. And really, they’ve done it again. First Squad yet again stands out with its absolutely gorgeous graphics and new ideas that the producers could try out in this movie.

Out of all the anime studios out there, Studio 4C see anime the most as an international medium, rather than just something for Japanese audiences. First Squad is probably the first Japanese-Russian co-production, as it shows a bit of WWII from the Russian perspective, combined with a fictional story of the occult, the realm of the dead, and packaging everyting as a semi-documentary with live-action bits of people from all sorts of backgrounds, who tell about their experiences during the war, and their comments on the story of this movie.

And I know that I talked down on live action during the past days, but here’s one who actually gets it right, and I think that this has been the best combination of animation and live-action I’ve seen: the live-action serves to add that bit of extra depth to the setting, while it never gets in the way of the animation. It’s a very neat idea, and really works.

And yeah, I just have to mention the graphics for this movie, which turn it into a visual feast. The character-designs are typical of Studio 4C, and they really make use of the advances in CG of today in order to mesh the two seamlessly. The animation itself isn’t as good as your average movie, but the sheer beauty of all of the different shots definitely makes up for it.

You can see that the story and characters take a bit of a back-seat in favour of the setting and animation, but they’re in no way bad. The story revolves around a typical plot to summon an evil demon to help the Nazis, but it’s well built up, and it slowly unfolds as the movie goes on. Despite its simplicity, the story is well told and will keep your attention. The lead character is a teenaged girl who somehow weilds a katana in Russia, but again: her background is nicely explored, and she serves her function. My only complaint here is that the story ended with a rather pointless cliff-hanger, even though the creators could have easily just ended it.

Storytelling: 8/10
Characters: 7/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 9/10

Konnichiwa Anne – 27

by psgels, posted in Konnichiwa Anne



Another dark and haunting episode for this series. At this point, I’m really doubting how to exactly rate this series in the end: the Marysville arc was very annoying to sit through and contained lots and lots of stereotypes, and yet the Thomas Family was very well developed, and the Hammond-family also is promising to be a very engaging family for Anne to get caught up in. This series is definitely the worst of the new generation of WMTs, but how much worse than Porfy is it?

But yeah, the original Akage no Anne already hinted at it: raising large families is hard, and the Hammond family at this point just shows how hard this is when you have a dysfunctional family. The father seems like he has the financial resources to take care of his kids, but he has heart problems that prevent him from helping his wife when he returns home. His wife right now was in the middle of her pregnancy, so there was nobody who could keep the children in check this episode. It’s a very real problem that I’m sure a lot of families had back in the days in which this series took place.

This episode also introduces a new character, Miss Hagaty, who is the local medical specialist and helps the mother through her birth in this episode (I’ve got to look up their names some day), and she really strikes me as a very strong character with a lot of experience in these matters.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Sora no Otoshimono, Miracle Train and Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-Chuu

by psgels, posted in Natsu no Arashi, Some Quick First Impressions

Sora no Otoshimono

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets his own god-mode android angel servant.
Well hello… fanservice. Well, at least this shows knows its target audience, but it still puzzles me why they don’t just turn these concepts into hentai-series. Here we have a series in which an android angel servant falls from the sky, and the lead character just happens to be at the right time and place to have her bump into him so that she makes a contract with him and fulfills every of his wishes. The guy is your typical teenager, so you can imagine how he ends up abusing these powers. The series has the typical flaws of a harem-series: lots of clichés (he gets woken up by a cute childhood friend, there’s a huge magical sakura tree near where they live, et cetera), pointless fanservice and a male lead of who you wonder why he’s even popular with girls. I think the biggest flaw of this series is the lead character himself. Sure, there have certainly been worse versions of him, but his attempts at being funny just end up as annoying and his voice-acting is pretty annoying to listen to. I liked the white-haired guy, but overall this is just a waste of a perfectly good budget.
ED: I presume that the animation is going to be filled in the next episode. The song is nothing special, but not particularly bad.
Potential: 10%

Miracle Train

Short Synopsis: Our lead character tries to help troubled ladies along with his team of bishies.
Aha, Iyashi-kei! It’s been a while since we had one of those. This episode really had that typical calming atmosphere of the Iyashi-kei series, but at the same time it also has a lot of issues. Most notably, the bishies. I like the idea of personified subway stations helping passengers through their worries, but did they really have to look like a bunch of ugly bishies with ridiculous hairstyles? Most of the time they’re acting like stereotypes as well, especially that yellow-haired guy was obnoxious. Especially the scenes in which they talk to each other are cringe-worthy. Nevertheless, when push comes to shove it does manage to pull off a nice down-to-earth story for the troubled passengers. If the future episodes can focus more on those passengers and less on the bishies, we could have something very interesting here.
OP: Cheesy J-rock. Move on.
ED: Slightly better, but still generic J-rock
Potential: 50%

Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-Chuu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is surrounded by lots of cute girls.
Like White Album, I’ve been heavily debating whether or not to blog the second season of Natsu no Arashi. Sure, the first season was very good, but this is Shinbo, after all. No matter how good the source material, I have this feeling that he’s going to take its style to extremes again while forgetting what’s really important. And really, it didn’t help that this episode was probably the worst of the entire series. It was a beach-episode, but the thing is that it just wasn’t funny. The whole episode was just a string of random fanservice-jokes, and lacked the wit or subtlety from the first season. Among the rest of the jokes were also lots of recycled ones (the creators are still going on about Hajime vs Jun, the salmon-thing returned yet again and the creators were even desperate enough to recycle a joke from Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei and the Samurai-Jokes from Pani Poni Dash!). Sure, this series might pick back up, but this episode just showed too many signs that the creativity of Shinbo has run out, and I don’t want to blog this series just for the sake of finding out whether I’m right or not in this. Also, why the heck are the creators hinting at a romance between Jun and Hajime?!
OP: Like expected from Shaft, at least it has a pretty good OP. Creative visuals and nice music.
Potential: 30%

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 26

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



Oh my god. Talk about an amazing episode, seriously. This episode contained so many plot twists and amazingly directed action-scenes. It really ranks among the best episodes of this series so far. I’m really beginning to understand why the story of the manga is so highly regarded.

To start off with, this episode really took me by surprise when those bodies on Envy suddenly started talking to Ed. I first thought that it was just another illusion by Envy, but damn, those are the souls of real people there, who once were sacrificed in order to create this homunculus. That fight scene also showed how scared Ed still is of ending lives. Common sense should have told him that those bodies were nothing like normal people, and yet he lost all will to fight for that moment.

It was a bit questionable that May Chang and scar were able to track down Al and Gluttony that easily, but there’s probably some reason for the two of them to be present in the next episode. To make up for it, we got some very nice build-up during the journey that Ed and Gluttony made to “father”, and some awesomely animated fights between Scar and May Chang and the various chimera.

On top of that, we get the back-story on king Bradley. He once was a human, specifically “bred” to advance the experiments on homunculi by “father”, and I guess that he was trying to create a homunculus from a human. I guess that that’s why every homunculus is different: they were all created through various means.

And what the heck, Al is actually still at that door?! That’s one hell of a twist, and yet it makes so much sense: it’s been made clear that bodies don’t simply disappear to the realms of god, so it still must have been somewhere. The same goes for Ed’s limbs: where did they get to? And is there perhaps also some homunculus walking around with the Izumi’s guts? In any case, this proves to be a major step forward for Al to get his body back. All they need to do now is make a truce with the homunculi, borrow one of their stones and have Al attempt human transmutation. The only problem seems to be to get the Homunculi to cooperate.

Also, on a different note, when I checked MAL, it suddenly came up with a total amount of 63 episodes for this series. This obviously hardly says anything, since at MAL they like to use any baseless rumour for these amounts of episodes, but at the same time 63 seems a bit too random to just have been pulled out of thin air. Is there some trustworthy source to support this claim? Or is this just the case of another noob who just went with a number that sounded right?
Rating: *** (Awesome)