FFor me, this was the best episode of this series since the move to Marysville. I really expected some emo cheese-fest in this episode, with Noah randomly getting sick and all, but as it turns out the creators had very clear ideas on what this episode was going to be about.
Unlike what I thought at first, this episode really wasn’t about Noah. It’s sad and all that he got sick to the verge of death, but I really don’t care about this kid enough to really call his near-demise engaging. What instead caught my attention was how his accident completely jumbled up the Thomas Family: we suddenly got a complete different image of what everyone was like, and a couple of characters actually got some development out of it.
I mean… when Noah collapsed, it was Anne who took him out of the hands of HIS OWN MOTHER, in order to take care of him, while Johanna was instead following Anne and assisting her. You’ve got to fail pretty badly as a mother if you let a nine-year-old make decisions for you that affect the life of your children.
Horace thus far has been your typical child: always goofing off, however in this episode he slowly began to see that he was the oldest. Of course his attempts to show this failed pretty badly, but I think that he reached the point at which he’s going to start to mature, rather than goof around all of the time. Edward meanwhile kept staying with Harry: he’s starting to become a big brother to him, even though before he was just mimicking Horace. I suspect that from now on, Anne is going to have it much easier to try and take care of the house, simply because with this, the Horace/Edward combo has finally been broken.
But the biggest focus of this episode was of course on Bert. In a way, this guy is actually developed better than Anne. While on one hand that’s a bit wrong in a series called “Konnichiwa ANNE”, but on the other hand it allows a really in-depth look at a type of character who hardly ever gets this much attention in today’s anime which is all about moe and bishies. We hardly ever get to see this much attention to a character who is as flawed as Bert, and in this episode you really could see the fruits of all the mistakes he made in the past: what the doctor’s mother said may have been very blunt, but it was how just about everyone in the village saw him as: a good for nothing drunkard who never works. Because of that, he never gets the chance of another job, keeps drinking and just continues the vicious cycle.
The scenes around Noah recovering were a bit too cheesy, on the other hand. I’m surprised that even though this series really knows how little kids behave, they really only seemed to have focused on their every day behavior. Not what they’d be like during a crisis. But then again, that of course is pretty hard to study, since you can’t just sit by a sick kid and observe what his family is doing.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Author: psgels
Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 22
Hmm, this episode was a bit of a step back for this series. It had a great potential, but in my opinion the creators wanted it to make an emotional impact a bit too hard and so the episode featured a bit too much overacting and clichés.
The fight between Lin and Wrath was great: it really showed yet again that this is a series in which nobody is just going to get himself killed that easily. The fight was inspired and dangerous, without overpowering the characters in your typical shounen-esque series. It really showed that Lin’s performance for the past few episodes was indeed very much an act, and is a force to be reckoned with.
But yeah: then we cut to the fight between Ed, Al and Scar. In order to buy some time for Lin to show up (of course not knowing what happened to them), Ed and Al start talking about philosophy. Ed then mentions Winry’s parents, just at the moment which Winry chose to show up in order to check up on him. So she gets emo, grabs a gun that happened to be lying around, and fails to shoot the guy who killed her parents. I’ve never really been a fan of her, and I really feel that her voice actress was really trying too hard in this episode.
It’s a shame, because Scar was really good in this episode. His background is much like in the first series, but a lot more brutal and realistic. He feels sorry for what he did for Winry, but at the same time his mindset is not idealistic enough to just drop his guard and try to make up for her loss in every way he can.
But yeah, I really do wish that the creators are going to make Winry go back to Resembool soon, because she really doesn’t belong as a main character in this series. Once in a while she does something slightly useful, but the show often gets too angsty with her around, with this episode as the epitome. If I want to see angsty teenagers, there are plenty of other shows I can go to.
Rating: (Enjoyable)]]>
Cross Game – 23
Okay, so now that this series has also delved into baseball for all-female teams, I just can’t help but hijack a part of this post for some comparisons on that other baseball show that’s airing this season: Taishou Yakyuu Musume, because this episode pretty blew all of its focus on baseball away.
In a way, Taishou Yakyuu Musume and Cross Game are quite similar: both are slice of life series at heart, with a bunch of characters who just happen to play baseball. TYM plays in the 1920s, while Cross Game takes place in what I guess are the 1980s (due to the lack of PCs anywhere…), and both are feminist in their own ways, without shoving “women rock” down the viewer’s throats.
TYM has one advantage over Cross Game: none of the characters are naturally born talents, destined to be among the nation’s best baseball players. Instead, what keeps the team together is the passion of the central characters to make the team they compiled together, and show that girls can just as easily do sports that were meant for guys.
But yeah, Cross Game pretty much owns it in every single way in terms of development. I’m still not sure how the girls of TYM became this good at baseball within only one year of training, considering how they started with absolutely nothing. Cross Game meanwhile first establishes its characters as people with extraordinary talents and then develops them utterly flawlessly.
This episode really had the best baseball match of the series for me so far: we know that Aoba is extraordinary talented, and she worked hard to hone her talents all through her childhood. And yet this episode showed that she’s not alone, and even though she’s able to bring an entire team together and significantly improve its performance, this episode really showed that there are many other different kinds of talented players out there.
I remember how Major also tried to do this, but instead of creating formidable foes, it instead came with a bunch of shounen-esque villains: a bunch of one-trick ponies who only had one thing they were good at and that’s it. And in that way, Taishou Yakyuu Musume does shine: even though it has lots of characters, it does care for its characterization and uses its limited time to move its characters away from their stereotypes, instead of the overblown melodrama that turned me off at Major, where I really didn’t like the overly cheesy drama.
Anyway, long story short: this episode rocked. TYM pales in comparison, but still is pretty nice slice of life.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
My Dilemma with Gintama
I have a question for the people who have been keeping up with the latest episodes of Gintama. As some of you may know, I’ve been keeping up with Rumbel’s subs for the series. Now that Horriblesubs have released the final missing episodes between Rumbel’s and the start of Crunchyroll’s, I decided to slowly marathon up to the latest episodes. Right now, I have just finished episode 124 and am seriously considering to drop the series altogether.
My question to you is: is Gintama really going to improve?
Because seriously, my patience at this point has entirely run out. I have heard that around episode 140, this series gets serious again with a bunch of good episodes around Kagura’s past, but is that really going to be worth it if the creators are going to delve into boring fillers again? Is it really going to be worth it, watching a dozen episodes, just to get to one good one?
Ever since the new director took over at episode 101 for me, this series has lost all of its charms, but I had faith in the series, hoping that it might pick itself back up. However, then I reached episode 120, which was the funniest episode ever since this guy took over. So what was the best joke in that episode? A rip-off of one of the best jokes of the first director. It was at this point that I realized that it was getting pointless to watch this series.
I truly rate the first 100 episodes among the top comedies I have ever seen. Sure, it also did have its share of weak episodes, but those were vastly outnumbered by the number of awesome and really well written episodes. The new director however just failed to live up to it in every single way. The penis jokes for example have become way too obvious, and that’s just the tip of the ice-berg.
Another pet peeves of the new director is that he tries to stuff in as much references to other shounen series as possible. I’m always in for a good parody, but that’s the problem: instead of parodying, the new director is simply listing a bunch of references without making fun of them. After a while this becomes really, really boring.
Then there’s also the matter of the increase of lengthy arcs. In the first 100 episodes, the only arcs that took up more than 2 episodes were the ones that mattered: the ones that developed the characters and made optimal use of their length. Right now the long arcs are just dragging on beyond belief, often wasting entire episodes with things that can be solved within only 10 minutes. The biggest example of this are episodes 121, 122 and 123: what the heck was the point in dragging this on for three episodes? The entire story would have fit into just a half of an episode, and instead it became an utterly predictable bore-fest that just would not end.
A more fundamental problem however is that the quality of the script-writing has gone down a lot. The first 100 episodes were really good at tugging at my heart-strings, not through its characters, but because of its subtle writing that knew exactly what to say. Especially the long monologues of the characters were deep, meaningful and really got the best out of the characters in the serious moments. That’s completely gone now as well. The dialogue has become uninspired, cheap, and way too much focused on over the top violence in an attempt to make up.
I’m really beginning to feel that I’m just watching the show for the heck of it, which is a shame because there are many better shows at the moment that I’d rather spend my attention at. In the end, there really seems to be a curse on shounen series that go beyond the 100 episode mark: Dragonball Z would have been fine if it just ended after 26 episodes; it would have been a nice action series that way. Naruto was pretty much a good series until the start of the final Chuunin Examinations, after which it dragged its story on and on beyond belief. Bleach was also a very entertaining shounen series for its first 30 episodes… until it descended into a bunch of boring and predictable fights around the Ichigo the Marty Stu. Gintama lasted longer than the others, but in the end, my enthusiasm for the first 100 episodes is just completely gone at this point.
So yeah, if I do end up dropping it (which is pretty likely at this point), what do you want me to do? Write a review about just the first 100 episodes, or is that review not really necessary?]]>
Pandora Hearts – 22
Well, since the manga is going on way beyond the end of this series, which is going to come in three more episodes, I’m not expecting too much from this series’ finale. Sure, the final episode may end up to become awesome, but the story isn’t going to come together like with most endings, and it’s probably going to keep me hungry for more until that second season gets announced. If it ever gets.
Nevertheless though, this show just keeps surprising me. Some of the flashback parts in this episode were utterly demented, not to mention that just about the entire episode was dedicated to Break’s past. We also learn about how Alice and the Will of the Abyss used to be twins, somehow strangely connected through each other in the Abyss. When Alice got killed, I assume that the Will of the Abyss remained in the deepest parts of the abyss, while Alice herself was just cast into the regular Abyss, where Oz ran into her.
Thinking back though, this series did miss out on being a classic. Now that this series has nearly ended, I’m beginning to understand why: compared to the other series this season, the cast of Pandora Hearts didn’t grow on me as much. This series has always excelled at two points: the complex storyline and back-story behind everything, and the demented style of storytelling that just keeps the surprises going. But it also excelled at these points incredibly well.
In the end, Oz ended up as a bit of a flawed character: he works when the focus isn’t on him, but when this show focuses on him it starts focusing a bit too much on his cheesy self-retrospection. As for the rest of the characters: the thing that made them awesome was this series’ style of storytelling: the people from Xebec did a great thing of translating the style from the manga to the anime, and give it as much impact as possible. But in the end, the cast members on their own just aren’t as interesting as the cast of Guin Saga, Phantom, Shangri-la, Full Metal Alchemist, Cross Game, the New Mazinger and some other shows.
Nevertheless, where as the spring season of 2008 brought some truly inspiring science fiction premises and the autumn of 2008 brought lots of new things to the table for the horror-series, the spring of 2009 excelled at the fantasy-premises. The new Full Metal Alchemist, Guin Saga, Pandora Hearts and Shangri-La (which walks a bit in between fantasy and science fiction) and if you include the winter-season Kemono no Souja Erin all came with great and inventive premises that really contributed to the fantasy genre.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Phantom – 23
Okay, the calm before the storm episode. Most of this episode was very quiet, and yet at the same time a lot of things happened, were built up and had me glued to the screen.
With the biggest event being Lizzie’s death. At this point, it wasn’t meant to be a shocking plot twist, but rather to symbolize how much has gone wrong with Drei. Throughout the series, she has always been the most solid and stable character: she had no hidden agenda, and instead she worked with a mindset with a healthy balance between friends and money. She was the one who watched Cal train in her Drei-form, and in this episode you can really see that now that she has found out what drove Cal to be an assassin, she really regrets to see what she turned into.
In this episode, the inevitable indeed happened that Drei was forced to shoot Lizzie. She really doesn’t care at all about her job, as long as she gets to kill Reiji, and in this episode we see her kidnap Mio, to prevent him from running away. In the end though, Helen takes the bait. The next episode is going to be awesome, I can feel it. But yeah, this episode still rocked. At this point, the characters can be drinking tea and I’m still going to love them.
Also, how large is this soundtrack anyway? This episode introduced yet two new tracks. I’m growing into more and more of a fan of Hikaru Nanase. At first I believed her to be some sort of one trick pony, with Noein’s soundtrack and all. But after watching this show, and finishing Zone of the Enders, I really have to take that back: Hikaru Nanase really is an amazing composer, but she does need a great show to draw out her full potential.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 – 09
Oh my god. I’m just… at a loss for words after this episode. This episode was just beyond sad. I’ve been a huge fan of Noitamina for years now, and I have watched every single of its shows aside from Honey and Clover. But damn, this series has a good chance to be the best thing that Noitamina ever brought forth…
Now that we’ve finally arrived at the last part of the story, it’s time for all of the build-up to pay off. IE: it’s time for this series to get back to the amazing quality of the first five episodes. Mari gets home this time, and starts looking for her mother and daughter. At first sight, they appear dead, but eventually they turn out to have survived in one of the most heart-wrenching reunions. Usually when anime try to play around with “is he dead or not”, this feels rather cheap, but within the context of this series it becomes downright scary. With so many people dead, and at the same time so many survivors left not knowing what happened. There’s no way of telling who might have survived or not. Heck, are we even sure that Mirai’s parents survived?
Speaking of which: OMG at the cliff-hanger at the end. Mirai and Yuuki have actually decided to travel to their homes ALONE!? Taken into account what happened to Yuuki in the previous episode… how the heck are the creators going to end this?! Probably the most evil thing of this episode was that even though Yuuki is most likely SPOILER just about everything kept Red Herringing around him.
I now see why I was so disappointed with episode 6 and 7: with such an amazing start, I expected the rest of the series to be also this consistent in quality, while in fact they were meant as a calm before the storm: they were meant to build up, and take it easy a bit for the finale. I’ve indeed been incredibly stupid thinking that this series was going to jump the shark in its second half. This episode was utterly amazing, and the final two episodes… wow… just wow.
Rating: **** (Fantastic)]]>
Basquash! – 22
Okay, I admit. This episode was pretty much fun to watch. The plot still is one big failure and mish-mash of clichés, but I don’t think anyone cares at this point about whether or not Dan is going to succeed in saving the world.
For an episode with such a cheesy premise, I really enjoyed this episode much more than I thought I would. In any other anime, an episode in which the male lead finds out that his love interest has had her mind wiped, and manages to get her memory back through the power of love, it would have been an incredibly cliché bore-fest. But with Basquash, in the end I couldn’t really expect anything else. The same goes for the climax of this episode in which the creators try to be smart and seemingly “kill off” Dan. Sorry Kawamori, but after Macross Frontier I’m not buying that anymore.
And granted, it seemed to have been the entire plan of the bad guys to have Dan come, play Basquash with Rouge and then trigger the events for the apocalypse, or whatever is similar to that, so I guess that this show is excused at this point. In any case, this episode finally had another fun basketball match again, and in combination with the concert, it delivered for me. It’s also good to see this series briefly return to its themes on fandom, which is something I remember praising this series for before it jumped the shark and somehow completely abandoned these themes.
Just one thing: something really weird is going to happen for me to blog Kawamori’s next series…
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Urban Legend Story Hikiko Review – 65/100
Okay, so apparently Urban Legend Story Hikiko was an OVA, released about a year ago. It’s a fully CG-Rendered movie done by some guy who also seems to have worked on Catblue Dynamite. Since I’m always in for a bit of good horror, especially since the past spring and summer season didn’t have any of it, I decided to give it a shot. So, did this movie do its job and give me a good scare?
Well, it did give me a good laugh…
This OVA is THE example of why 3D-rendered movies have a looong way to go at this point. While in theory, it seems like a logical thing to do: you can get smoother animation, there is more detail, you can get a more dynamic background and a more realistic set of character-designs than the drawings of traditional anime. It sounds all nice in theory… but this movie just looked so incredibly fake.
It’s a shame, though: this OVA does have a very neat story: there’s plenty of build-up, a deep main character, a nice set of plot twists. In traditional 2D animation, it would have been a pretty good horror OVA. The big problem however is that the characters’ expressions and motions look incredibly unrealistic. So unrealistic that they’re nearly impossible to take seriously. This may be because I’ve been too much used to anime, but even though there’s plenty of animation in this, but all the animation feels jerky, and especially the facial expressions of the characters look nowhere near accurate and more like a bunch of puppets.
There’s a saying in art that goes as follows: “if you can’t make it, fake it”, and 2D anime has become very good at this. It knows that its artwork is very detailed for animation standards, and that there’s no way to continuously animate everything in drawings, and so over the years they’ve perfected the art in simulating movement even though there isn’t any. As long as it doesn’t stand out as “fake” or “too much” in any way, these cinematic effects really work.
3D animation has yet to discover these techniques, and instead just try to… animate. The thing is, that unless you’ve got the budget of a small country or the imagination of Hayao Miyazaki, there is no way to perfectly emulate every subtle nuance in human movement, and this movie especially fails at it. The few attempts it makes to make up for the lack of movement are some of the most pathetic cinematic techniques all around, like a couple of cheap but loud sound effects during the intense part, and lots of shaking the camera around while looking at the characters with extremely scared faces.
The thing that 3D animation is going to have to learn is the art of cutting corners. American 2D-animation does this by extremely simplified drawings, Japanese animation does this by trying to limit the number of frames that need to be animated. At this moment, there’s nothing wrong with the artwork: show any still frame in this movie, and it looks gorgeous. Combine them… and they don’t.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 2/10 |
| Setting: | 7/10 |
Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 10
According to tealovertoma, this episode was supposed to be mediocre, but I can’t see why. It yet again was a standard episode for Umineko, but the mystery yet again deepened, it gets harder and harder to explain everything with simple logic, which is exactly what the witch wants, and the situation gets more hopeless with every single episode. Sure, this show isn’t as good as Higurashi at this point, but what exactly is turning this series into a disappointment?
I mean, seriously: what the heck is going on here?! At a certain point in this episode, the characters split up: Maria, Battler and Rosa go off in one group. Gouda, Sharon, Genji and George go off to the other room. At one point, Genji stays behind because he has to keep alert for any requests of his master. After that, Gouda, Sharon and George get attacked by the supposed “Beatrice”. Rosa, my prime suspect behind the murders, could not have done this, because she was with Battler all this time. Gouda (who I also suspected as the culprit) at the same time could have done it, but he got killed off at the end of this episode. It could be a big illusion, though. At the same time, we have Genji, whose whereabouts are unknown. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t have been the killer because he died in the first arc. Either that, or that was an illusion as well.
But then again, there’s a good chance that the murderer is some sort of a magician. He could have pulled a fake body in any of the occurrences. What about Kinzou? All we saw was his dead body, but he at the moment is the only one who has the freedom to move through the entire house without being detected. He’s the one with the master key, right?
It’s also interesting how the Battler in this universe is the complete opposite. While I called Natsuhi unstable at one point, she was like a sweet little kitten compared to Rosa. Because of this, I think that he gave in to the witch in this case. Or that could have been yet another illusion by Beatrice to get him to break down. I have no idea what’s real anymore: we know that the red texts are true, but is there any other part that we can really trust?
I’m really starting to see the appeal of the Umineko series: it really builds further upon the first arc of Higurashi: mad, twisted, and nothing is really what it looks as things start looking more and more impossible to have happened without any sort of magic. Sure, this series isn’t anything amazing as of yet, but hey: we’ve still got tons of episodes left. Right now this series is quite likely building up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>