Here’s another one I haven’t heard anyone talk about, or even mention for that matter. Kaze no Youjinbou is an obscure series that aired back in 2001, but seems to have become nearly forgotten over the past eight years, which is a bloody shame because it’s a really good series. Recommended for anyone who’s into a good mystery series.
This series is about criminal gangs in a small mining town, and the street-punks, corrupt politicians, villagers and police officers around them. Street-punks and yakuza in anime are very often incredibly stereotypical. They’re either a bunch of screaming and evil paper bags who appear just out of random and attack the lead characters in order to insert some random tension, or they’re portrayed as those cheesy thugs with a heart of gold and a strong sense of bushido. Kaze no Youjinbou however portrays them as ordinary people: not pure evil, but it also doesn’t try to glorify their greed, the crimes they commit and their twisted outlook on life. It tries to look into what drives these people to start horrible turf wars that involve entire towns. And I must say that they succeed in this very well.
But at heart, this series is a mystery-series, based on a classic film by Akira Kurosawa. The thing I liked best about this series is how it really takes its time to let the story introduce itself instead of rushing through the beginning: you won’t have any idea what this series is going to be about in the beginning, because it’s very carefully introducing every major character, while showing a very detailed portrayal of how they live their lives. You’ll never know when something is just meant to flesh out the characters or develop the plot the moment it happens and despite the very slow pacing, there’s always something small going on.
This series has really done well in making its setting come alive in the first half. When the lead character runs into someone, it feels like this someone was there because he’s part of the setting, rather than for the sake of the plot. Even when characters are out of the screen, you can feel tat they’re all carrying out their own agendas, instead of waiting for the camera to focus back on them. Unfortunately, this effect disappears in the second half, which becomes more like a straight-forward gang war and this show loses a bit of its subtlety. It’s because of this that in my opinion, the second half is less impressive than the first half: it’s another one of those mystery-series that’s better at asking questions, rather than answering them, but it nevertheless keeps your attention until the end, which does wrap up everything nicely.
The animation in this series ranges from really bad to really good. This means that there are some action scenes that are a bit hard to take seriously due to the incredibly cheap visuals (a certain scene of a car driving down a road stands out in particular), but in exchange for that there are plenty of scenes that have absolutely amazing visuals. The colour-palette is full of washed out and grayish colours that give this series a very cold atmosphere, but the direction is what really gives this series its own unique visual identity. There are lots of very creative camera angles, gorgeous shots and poses, awesome shading and some of the animated scenes are full of life and detail that make a huge impact when they need to. Especially episode 13 stands out in these downright awesome visuals.
It’s a shame, really. Today, I pretty much consider Studio Pierrot as the single worst of the big animation companies out there. However, before they found their cash cows of Naruto and Bleach, they were a really good production company, with their own visual style and quite a few excellent titles on their names. Ever since Victorian Romance Emma ended however, they seemed to have completely given up on trying to do anything creative with their talents, and that’s such an incredible shame. Series like Kaze no Youjinbou, Great Teacher Onizuka, Fancy Lala and Emma definitely show that they’ve got the ability to do much more than what they’re doing right now.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
This entry starts with a spoiler so you may want to look away if you’re skimming through this paragraph. Holy crap, they actually broke up, and this doesn’t look like they’re going to get back together at this rate. It’s a bit of a shame though. It’s a bit predictable that Fumi is going to end up with Akira after all, since I really liked how originally this series didn’t seem to go down the clichéd road of childhood friends becoming lovers. Nevertheless, this was yet another truly excellent episode for Aoi Hana.
Anyway, I have no idea what’s going to happen with this series. Everyone says that this series is only going to last for 11 episodes, but I really doubt this. The reason why Michiko e Hatchin and Ristorante Paradiso had so few episodes was because they had a really strange broadcasting policy: Ristopara had a bunch of hiatuses in the beginning, while Michiko e Hatchin had one of the weirdest broadcasting policies I’ve ever run into when it kept getting to hiatuses one week and air double episodes the next. With Aoi Hana however, every episode aired like it was supposed to, and I find it really hard to believe that it’s already going to be over in three weeks. Speaking of which, is it already known which series is going to be the next one to fill in the Noise time-slot, or is that even unknown? Because in the case of the latter, we might have ourselves a 26-episode series here….
Anyway, what struck me the most in this episode was the incredibly cold way in which Yasuko talked to Kyouko, who found out that Fumi was dumped through Akira. That was absolutely nothing like what I expected from her. She must have been really upset with her sister marrying the teacher that she was in love with, and so she vented all of her frustrations on Fumi and Kyouko. In that way, she’s even worse than Fumi in her sulking about her past crush. And it took me a while to realize how similar the two of them are. It’s really a huge shame that they broke up, but unfortunately it really seems that Fumi has lost her feelings for Yasuko.
Also, the drawings and animation in this series are incredibly good when two people are touching each other in some way, whether messing with each other’s hair, hugging, or just holding each other’s hands. Those are the scenes that you can almost feel coming to life.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
As if this series didn’t already have enough characters, this episode introduces even more of them! Is that a bad thing? Not really. It really goes along with the notion that you can really meet a lot of people at school, rather than only talk to four or five people and ignore just about everyone else like what you see in most anime. Anyway, this episode was about exhibitions, in which the lead cast visits two art exhibitions. And really, there was lots and lots of dialogue this time, including some pretty in-depth stuff about art…
But first the episode plays around with perspectives a bit. First we switch to the Art Club, who had to make a large drawing assignment that consists out of several sheets taped together. Awara and some mysterious new character created a surprisingly convincing drawing of a corridor which took me a few seconds to realize that it was actually drawn. You have to love how this series makes use of the fact that it’s an anime.
The rest of the episode is about the members of the Art Design, which carries further on the 
And so the finale for this series has begun. This episode was mostly building up, but as usual with this series it came with tons of revelations. And heck; the creators might actually be able to pull of a satisfying conclusion at this rate.
I’m glad to see that even though we’re nearly at the end, the creators still show a bit of what happened to the folks of Duomo after they were evacuated inside Atlas. With this, Kuniko also got her wishes through that every last bit of space in Atlas would be used for the people, rather than simply letting them be wastes of space.
In this episode something that rather gets in the way of my “Kunihito is Kuniko’s brother”-theory, when some actual romance starts to develop. Thankfully though, there wasn’t a lot of cheese among the two and the situations that made them realize their crush was pretty creative (Come on, Kuniko hugging Kunihito when she tried to find out where the sudden lights came from was really cute). It’s a bit disturbing though, because aside from the blushes, their “lover’s quarrel” looked more like the fights that siblings would have, rather than lovers.
And then the pattern with Atlas in the middle. It turns out that it was supposed to be the whole pillar that would make Atlas the most influential city of the world. When Nagiko and Sergei was younger, this was their motivation to construct Atlas. It was an attempt to escape earthquakes, but it failed. That’s why they created the Hiruko: young sacrifices that would end up stopping the effects of the earth on Atlas, and which is also what killed Takehito’s sister.
In the meantime Karin (apparently Akihabara was spared in the bombings) has been stalking Kunihito with her subordinates, and so obtained the final dagger. Apparently, this is going to make Mikuni the true heir of Atlas (so that’s what was the purpose of these daggers). Medusa in the meantime is getting rather out of control, though Karin realizes it a bit too late when it’s already planning to crash the entire market through Antarctica. Now that’s going to be the turning point for her wealth, it seems.
The whole deal around Titan confused me a bit, especially since we never actually get to SEE it, but we’re very much given the impression that it’s an aerial fortress of Titan came to Tokyo after Ryouko tipped them off that the person behind Medusa is in Akihabara. Because of this, it launches a pillar of light at Karin. She probably hasn’t died yet, because we’ve yet to see her actually die, but someone else did die: Hiruko, aka Miiko. WTF.
So wait… Ryouko actually meant to kill Hiruko?! And we only just learned that it’s Hiruko that prevents Atlas from collapsing under its own weight. What the hell could her purpose be? I mean, if she wanted to crash Atlas, couldn’t she just have used a bunch of explosives? With this however, the finale has really been set up. I have no idea what’s going to happen to Atlas right now, but it’s definitely setting up for some sort of grand finale.
I’m also really glad to see that at this point, the budget still hasn’t run out. The final scenes, in which Miiko showed her last moments, were really well drawn and they looked absolutely beautiful. It’d be awesome if Gonzo is saving the last remains of its budget to go all out on that final episode.
With four episodes left, this series has a lot cut out for it, but if it manages to do everything right, then this finale is going to rock. Right now, it really seems like Ryouko is going to be the final villain. She might or might not be planning to use Titan for the final episodes, but it’s now clear that she’s really planning something that really shouldn’t be allowed to happen, and four episodes seem just about right to flesh it out enough, after all the build-up that she’s received up till now. Karin and Kuniko are probably going to form the centre of her opponents. And also, what’s the carbon trade going to do in the final episodes? Is the market really going to crash, or will Karin be able to salvage enough of her money to set up a small army?
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
I went into this series quite a false assumption of what it was going to be about. With a title as “Yugo the Negotiator”, it sounded like a mature and realistic series in which the lead character Yugo would calmly negotiate himself through various circumstances. Little did I know that this is a series which tests the boundaries of what the human body can take, a series which tests the boundaries of credibility in its plot twists and a series which tests the boundaries of how much tension you can insert in a story with such a dull sounding premise.
So yeah, this series features two arcs, both of which are about Yugo trying to rescue a person who has been captured by really dangerous people. The key in is success is investigation: he always carefully checks the background of the people he’s dealing with and you can also see that the creators of this series have taken their time to give a very detailed portrayal of the countries that this series is set in (Pakistan and Russia). With such a detailed setting, you’d really expect that the rest of the series is also going to be very realistic and believable, but unfortunately the rest of the plot is really shoddy, ludicrous and often loses focus of what’s really important.
In the end, while it had a lot of potential, Yugo the Negotiator to me stands out as one of those series with an identity crisis. Its focus should have been the negotiating: getting hostages away from danger, but quite a few episodes are simply dragging Yugo’s body to hell and back: we see him being tortured by 50 degrees of heat, minus forty degrees of cold and some other of Russia’s cruelest torture techniques. And while this would have been fine on its own, it gets a bit hard to believe to simply see him stand up and walk away afterwards like nothing happened.
The ending of the series also carries this air that you just can’t take seriously, in which just about every plot twist in the final two episodes stretches the limit of suspense of disbelief. Add to that the mysterious reason why the creators have Yugo team up with a sexy woman who falls in love with him but is generally useless to the plot and the fact that most of Yugo’s plans leave an awful lot to a very flimsy lady fortuna and you have a series that simply fails at being credible.
However, don’t get me wrong in that there’s nothing to get from this series, because it is a very intense ride from start to finish. If you can accept the fact that there is no way that this show is ever going to make any iota of sense, then you’ll be thoroughly entertained by all of the different and creative twists and turns that the plot makes and the horrible things that the characters have to go through. In terms of storytelling, it fails; but in terms of entertainment it definitely isn’t a bad way to spend 6 hours.
So yeah, in the end Yugo is pretty much the epitome of a Marty Stu. The plot often doesn’t make any sense, but if you set your mind on zero you’ll be fine with this series. It has enough to offer to keep people in for an intense ride throughout the 13 episodes, but really… do not take it seriously.
This episode was a bit hard for me to understand, simply because so many things happened in it and a lot of characters I hardly even knew played a big role in it. It’s a build-up episode in which a lot of different stuff happens. While Remus prepares to take Parro back from the Mongols, a lot of other players are also putting their pieces in the right positions.
I suspect that a lot will become more clear in the next few episodes, but things are definitely looking exciting with that many players around. Istvan happens to intercept a secret message from the Mongols which makes him regret deceiving and killing the general, back in Nosferas, since his family is now looking for the one who did it.
With six episodes left after this, I wonder how the creators are planning to end this series. Are they going to rush through the current arc in order to get to the point of some big climax at episode 26, or are they simply going to keep up the same pace and just stop adapting once episode 26 has passed. If there is going to be a sequel, I’d obviously prefer the latter, but if the creators aren’t going to make a sequel then I’d at least see some sort of satisfying conclusion that at least wraps up the biggest plot threads.
Rating: * (Good)]]> 
Ah, thank goodness. I was fearing that Henderson would end up ruining the entire series, but thankfully I was wrong. This episode returned back to the darker roots of this series, and was absolutely nothing like the past Marysville arc, and it’s a great thing to see that this series is attempting to go back to the quality of the first ten episodes.
In this episode, we return back to Bert, who is being approached by one of his colleagues, who’s planning to rob the place he works at. He only finds out at the last possible moment, but at that point he’s already broken into the office and stolen the key to the valuable goods of the train station, with nothing there really is to do about it. The episode ends as he is suspected to be the one to have robbed it and gets taken away. This episode really showed that Bert is very easily influenced by the sight of money, and that even though he sobered up, he still hates his current life and wants to be able to spend money on something nice. His biggest sin however was trying to involve Anne with it. She probably is the member of his family that he feels the most comfortable with, but in this episode he really overdid it.
As for Henderson… okay, I’m not going to lie. As much as I hate that woman, she really had her best episode here in which she proposed to Eggman (who looks really different with his beard and hair shaved off!). I’d love to see her move away to a different town, but it’s good enough to see that she’s going to stop teaching and instead leave things to the new teacher.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
Sunrise and mechas go together like cheesecake and… well, cheese. They’ve been producing their mecha-epics for decades now, ranging from the immensely popular Gundam and Code Geass to the lesser known Overman King Gainer and Zegapain. Still; call me crazy, but out of all their mecha-epics I’ve seen so far (barring Escaflowne, if that one also falls under the genre), my favourite is this rather obscure game adaptation of the Zone of the Enders.
I’m surprised as well to see how well this series turned out. It’s in no way the most sophisticated series out there, but it really does a lot of things right where a lot of the other Sunrise shows have fallen horribly. It’s some good old-fashioned entertainment that hardly ever has a weak or dull moment, never drags and provides plenty of interesting situations, action and characters.
What stands out the most is the cast of characters. Anyone who has been bothered by the immense amount of shows that star whiny teenagers will rejoice: FOR ONCE we have a series in which the lead characters isn’t in his teens, twenties or even thirties! James Links is 49 years old, and even his kids are fully grown adults with their own careers now. I believe that the amount of series that can boast the same can be counted on one hand.
The creators really make use of this opportunity to develop the lead cast into a varied and lovable cast of characters. The story here is about a bunch of characters who are involved into the main plot because they were dragged into it, but because they all had different jobs at the start of the series, they all stand out in their unique talents and the series really makes use of every characters’ specializations and experiences. The lead cast, because they’re all adults, also have rich and inspired backgrounds and this makes it very easy to relate to them in the decisions they make throughout the series.
This series also has a lot to offer in terms of science fiction. This show takes place in a setting in which Mars has been colonized, and the creators don’t forget to spend enough time to flesh this setting out a bit, like explaining how the politics work between the Earth and Mars, how people grow food, what’s up with the atmosphere, the smaller gravity and how people travel between the two worlds. It’s not ridiculously complex, but it is believable and really gives this series a great backdrop to work with. And really, this was the first series I’ve seen that took care to address the matter of deceleration when it comes to high-speed outer-space travel. That definitely was a nice touch.
And the soundtrack! While the OP is a bit… weird (DANGAAAA! Give me more DANGAAAAAA!), the rest of the soundtrack is truly excellent. It was composed by Hikaru Nanase, who most people will probably recognize as the woman who made the soundtracks behind Noein and Requiem of the Phantom, and she again works her magic in this series, with especially one of the best EDs I’ve listened to in a long while. The animation is nothing special, but it does enough to bring the characters alive and not get in the way of anything.
There are a few small flaws here and there, but nothing that really should get annoying. The creators did a wonderful job of keeping the cheese under control, but there are a number of minor scenes in which the cheese becomes a bit too aggravating. A few of the characters are a bit too stereotypical and lack depth, but these cases are mostly about minor characters and scenes. The main storyline is a strong and entertaining one, and even the final battle is a very engaging one, rather than your typical dull Sunrise ending. Zone of the Enders is yet another example of why game adaptations don’t suck.
Well, that fatherly reunion surely turned out different from the first season. The Hohenheim there was like a burnt out businessman in need of retirement (but then again, who can blame him with the things he went through), but this visit was much shorter and businesslike. He just came to warn Piyoko to leave the country, and Ed happened to be there at the same time. You can see here that he regrets seeing what his son turned into, but at the same time you can see that he’s too busy with a lot of different things to be able to properly take care of his son.
And I think that that’s the biggest difference between the two Full Metal Alchemists: the first series was much more focused on the past, and how past events have influenced people, and how they’re still obsessed over them. It returned in just about every major character. The major villain there was just clinging too much to the past, rather than striving for world conquest. I guess that that’s why all of the characters were toned down in terms of strength: they weren’t of the type of a cast that simply goes forward and forward.
Brotherhood however is of this type, though. Even though the characters sometimes take detours, you can see that everyone is trying to move forward. Whether it is for Ed to find Al’s body back, the Humonculi to carry out whatever evil plan they are carrying out, Roy Mustang’s quest to catch the Humonculi. It’s much more straightforward.
Anyway, this episode was one for the character-development, with the biggest shock being that the “creature” that Ed and Al transformed back then wasn’t actually their own mother. It was just the body of a random guy. Who knows if the guy was actually alive at one point and the two brothers took his body from somewhere. Judging on how Al’s body was taken away, I’d say that it was, and there’s some sort of grown up Al walking around somewhere in the world. If that’s true, then what about Ed’s limbs? And Izumi’s baby? (that probably was the most emotional scene this episode: when she found out that she didn’t actually kill her own child).
Now, we all know why Hohenheim was involved with human transmutation in the first season, but Brotherhood still has a lot of questions lying around, the biggest being why the leader of the Humonculi looks like him. Is Hohenheim some sort of clone of this guy perhaps?
Anyway, when commenting, please refrain from mentioning events that happen after this point in the manga, because the spoilers have gotten a bit out of control recently and I’ve received a couple of complaints about them. It’s fine if one person gives off a subtle hint of what’s going to happen next. It becomes annoying when the twenty people next to this person get the same idea.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
This series just gets better and better doesn’t it? This episode probably featured some new record in terms of amount of subtle jokes and references for this series. There were about fifty hints throughout the episode about Kou’s feelings to Aoba’s childhood friend. On top of that, there were fifty more subtle plot points that ever so slightly developed Kou’s and Aoba’s relationship forward. Did all of that really just fit into 20 minutes?
Among the best parts between them in this episode was the way Aoba greeted her new “sempai” as she formally entered the baseball club, the point where the entire school found out that Kou and Aoba weren’t dating, and where the two of them used Akaishi to get each other to the infirmary when both of them sustained a small injury. What struck me the most was the surprisingly innocent way in which Aoba looked at childhood friend (yeah, forgot his name). Is he really going to be just a minor character? We’ve never even her even remotely similar up till now.
But yeah, this is really slice of life as it should be. Even without the subtle romance, those small scenes in which Kou and Azuma lived and trained together and the chemistry they have between themselves was really enjoyable to watch. The way they get on each other’s nerves when one of them slacks off is hilarious to see, not to mention how Kou succumbed to food poisoning in a certain part of this episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> .jpg){kind=link}