Well, this episode unfortunately wasn’t as impressive as the previous ones. It still was amazing for any regular series, but this is Tokyo Magnitude we’re talking about, which had been consistently awesome up to this point and it’s a shame that this episode broke its flow a bit. This episode was a bit too… “anime”, for a lack of a better description. It was the only episodic episode of this show so far, but especially the animation budget was considerably lower.
The creators thankfully kept trying to animate all of the on-lookers around, characters still are very much animated, but the faces in this episode were sometimes too distorted to take seriously. It works in some series that go with this all the way, like Birdy the Mighty, but here it doesn’t really work, unfortunately.
In this episode, Mari also catches a cold from sleeping without a blanket. She collapses a bunch of hours later, sleeps for some more hours, takes a few pills and after that is completely fine again.
That is not how colds work.
This really was my major beef with this episode. I’m not sure about others, but when I catch a cold I don’t immediately notice this. Of course it’s annoying and I feel terrible while having the cold, but is it really enough for people to pass out on? Where does the heavy breathing come from, and why do they disappear that often? I’ve seen this often in anime: people catch colds and nearly always pass out afterwards for dramatic effects. Or do the Japanese have different colds than the Western world or something? Especially in a show as realistic as this one, it stands out.
But apart from that, there was a lot to like in this episode and it really allowed us to show a different side of Mari. The aftershocks made as much of an impact as ever, especially when Mari, Mirai and Yuki, especially since they were inside a building (the building where Mari works, actually). We learn that a bunch of accidents have taken place at the place where Mari lives, and she suddenly becomes a completely different person as she tries to find out more about what happened back there. All we know from this episode is that there’s some sort of fire going on, but nothing on her daughter yet. We do get to see another bunch of pictures of her daughter and her husband though, along with a small flashback of how she and her husband fell for each other.
So a major part of this episode was spent on Mari, trying to decide whether or not to abandon Mirai and Yuki in order to check up on her daughter. Mirai and Yuki even go as far as borrowing a scooter from a person who managed to survive the earthquake without any major casualties (I loved that scene in which they tried to steer that scooter. So realistic). In the end, she just decides to take her time and go along with the two children.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Author: psgels
Pandora Hearts – 20
Okay.
That was awesome!
Whoever said that fillers are bad? Most of this episode was just random banter, but that’s exactly what made it so hilarious at this stage. Especially when Oscar brought out the liquor in the second half of the episode, the hilarity really started. And okay, I know I said filler, but it’s not like this episode was completely useless either. It did a great job of fleshing out the characters, developing them slightly and wrapping up the past arc.
But seriously, more anime should have drinking episodes. They almost often result in hilarity and yet you hardly ever see them. Obviously with shows about kids this is understandable, but with series where the characters are sixteen years or older, I don’t see much harm. This episode really showed some interesting new things about the characters, like how half of the members of the main cast are terrible at handling alcohol. Only Oz and Oscar seem to be fine with it, and Break only pretends to be drunk, but Sharon turns into an even bigger narcissist than she already was, and especially Gilbert and Alice experienced really heavy mood-swings.
Something also tells me that in this episode, the creators were having the time of their lives trying to come up with all of the different facial expressions throughout this episode. They were all very creative, and really funny.
As for the main plot, there was only about a minute dedicated to it, but the twist we learned was pretty big: Eliot is yet another guy who was warped into the future during the tragedy of Sabrie. In fact, he was the one who wrote Alice’s song, and something tells me that the creators had a very good reason to keep Alice out of the action during the past Ada arc.
There is some bad news, though: next week is going to be a hiatus. Damn.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Phantom – 20
Hell yeah! This episode was all kinds of awesome stuck together! Talk about a complete change of atmosphere.
The way this episode started out… out of all the things that the Japan Arc would be about, the last thing I expected was that the show would end in a high school setting. The OP… was so much different from what I expected and fitted these final six episodes so well. There’s a lot of chaos going on, and yet this episode has been more slice of live than this series has ever shown! That shows some awesome possibilities, and I know that Koichi Mashimo is going to be able to get the best out of this.
So basically, two years (!) have passed since the last episode. Reiji and Helen have travelled the world; they first came to the Philippines and now have moved into Japan half a year ago, and they’ve been pretending to be brother and sister, since it would have been a bit awkward if a teenaged couple suddenly moved in and started following classes. They’re also back again acting, like they did in one of the beginning episodes. Especially Reiji has gotten a lot better at it now.
But yeah, just about everything in this episode was perfectly executed. Reiji’s time spent with his potential girlfriend did exactly what it needed to do: show how he and Helen changed, and how they’ve come to live their lives now. It’s a perfect build-up, since we also got to know much more about them, and the setting which they moved into.
But the real moment of epic in this episode was obviously the point at which Cal shows herself. Typical of Bee-Train’s storytelling, but it works so incredibly well.
And to think that even in this episode, so close to the ending, there still are new background tunes being played, and they rock just as much as the rest of the soundtrack while at the same time being completely different in tone: the first arc had a really dark and melancholic soundtrack, the second arc was more upbeat and pimpin’, while right now we got more… colourful atmosphere, if that makes any sense. The soundtrack here has a lot more warmth than we’ve seen so far.
In any case, this is one of these rare series in which you can really see that the creators spent lots of time thinking of how to make it work in the absolute best way, and where it actually works out incredibly well. In 2009, I can only recall 3 other series which managed to do the same: Ristorante Paradiso, Tokyo Magnitude and Birdy the Mighty 2.
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]>
Basquash! – 20
Okay, so with episodes like this one it may have been better to have recalled the old director, because with episodes like this one you need subtlety, and the new director sure as heck doesn’t have any. The result is that we have an episode full of character-development that may have been a bit too straightforward for its own good.
So yeah, my guess would be that this episode was the new director’s way to just get the character background over with, presumably because the first director either forgot it or didn’t find it too important. We learn how Haruka decided to become a shoe designer because she saw giant footprints when she was still a child. She also dated James Loan for a while because he was the first one to believe in her story about those giants. We also learn that Miyuki had lost her father in an accident when she was younger, and that’s why her grandfather ended up taking care of her.
On top of that, Flora’s sister busts our two male companions out of prison (finally), Flora herself starts realizing that she can’t just follow Dan and the other around for the rest of her life: she’s had her fun, so what’s next? Rouge also finally woke up again from her slumber. Overall, in terms of continuity this was a very valuable episode.
But yeah, the CHEESE. This also was a big episode for the romance, but without the subtlety that this series used to have it was just an onslaught of blushing, embarrassed faces and very cheesy smiles at each other. Oh, and lots of angst in Rouge’s case. That definitely was annoying and not near as good as the romance between Dan and Rouge during the beginning of the series. This is just waaaaay to predictable.
I’m really not sure what to think of the finale, the way it’s being set up. With a finale that’s going to be a cross between Kiss Dum and Macross Frontier, it really can go either way; it’s all going to depend on whether the new director decides to focus on his manly action… or his cheesy romance. Please let it be the former!
Rating: (Enjoyable)]]>
Umineko no Naku Koro ni – 07
Okay, so after last week’s little episode of background, we’re back to the island and get another clue to what’s going on with this series. This series’ set-up is indeed a bit like Higurashi, but with slight differences. Most notably that Higurashi focused at different people with each arc, while in Umineko instead keeps on looping the same story with perhaps one or two slight differences that we’re not even sure of.
So this episode shows a bit more of what happened in the first half of the first episode, with the big difference here the appearance of Beatrice. At this point, it’s still not clear whether these events happened exactly the way they did in the first arc, or whether Beatrice conveniently inserted herself into the story to make it seem to Battler that she indeed existed.
Since Higurashi also was a really layered story, I also suspect something similar to happen here: the basic world has no magic whatsoever, but outside of it Beatrice’s power has free range, and her ultimate purpose seems to be to have everyone acknowledge her, and my guess would be that she tries to make everyone believe that she has magic, while in fact she doesn’t have any at all in the “real world”. This episode would then show that she managed to get accepted her powers apart from Battler, which is probably going to be the main focus of this series.
If this indeed turns out to be true, then that must mean that Beatrice is a very talented illusionist. The way that she seemed to make Maria close her eyes while turning the candy back seems to suggest that, and I assume that she used some sort of trick to prevent Maria’s mother from seeing it. While it’s a bit far-fetched, the butterflies then could be the product of some sort of optical illusion concerning holograms.
This episode also paid a bit of attention to Maria and her mother, and learn that Maria may have an issue of multiple personalities that run in her family. Perhaps Kinzou is also bothered by it, or his mysterious wife could be the key in this. It also could have spontaneously appeared with her, but in any case you could see that the two of them were related to each other in this episode. Maria’s mother at one time is the worried and caring mother, and the next moment she starts beating her own child. With that, it’s somewhat understandable for Maria to develop a split personality as well. With the way she seems to be closed in her own world, her ramblings about Beatrice could be blamed on her imagination running wild.
In any case, while this episode did build up, I liked it a lot. Beatrice could have been a bit less stereotypically evil, but overall it was a very nice episode. Oh, but one thing: I know that we’re not supposed to expect much from the graphics in this series, but could the creators in the future please try to give Battler a less constipated face when he’s angry? This isn’t Dragonball Z, or anything.
Oh, and to close off, I want to put a little disclaimer here: THIS POST IS ABOUT THE ANIME VERSION OF UMINEKO. If you want to say something about events that happen after this episode, then GO FIND A BLOG THAT COVERS THE VISUAL NOVEL AND PUT IT THERE.
I really hate to put up this warning, but I’ve personally gotten really tired of all of the visual novel fans flaunting their superior knowledge to us simple mortals who haven’t played the game yet. I’m interested in seeing the speculations of other people who haven’t played the games yet, and are also in the dark of what’s going on here. What’s the point of hearing the speculations of someone who already knows what’s going to happen?!
And sure, normally I’m not such a Nazi with this. A subtle hint of what’s going to happen next of course isn’t bad, but the problem arises with popular franchises as this one, when seemingly every single fan of the visual novel is keen to drop a small hint of what’s going on. With hundreds of “small hints” like these, it just doesn’t remain fun anymore. Not to mention the few not-so-subtle hints that float among them.
I know that I’m confused, but isn’t that the whole point of this series? Then what are you doing trying to clarify things that were meant to be completely mind-boggling?
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Spiral Review – 77,5/100
Spiral is a battle of wits. It’s set up in such a way that the lead character (Narimi Ayumu), who is a highly gifted teenager, has to face a number of opponents who rather than simply shooting him to death attempt to bring him down by creating all sorts of puzzle situations for him to overcome. Not really the most believable of all premises, but it does work.
Because I have to admit, these mind games are well created. They’re creative and not as ridiculously elaborate and far-fetched like you’d see in shows as Death Note or Code Geass. The creators really did well in keeping a balance between believability and ingenuity, and that’s where the fun comes from: the situations in this series are so created that a lot of them can be figured out by the audience as well. The characters make well use of their surroundings, and also carefully try to analyze the persons they’re dealing with and predict what kind of moves they might make.
The mind games and the psychology in this series is what makes it worth watching, and that’s a good thing because apart from that there really isn’t anything notable for this series. Spiral basically is a series that’s really good at one thing… but fails to stand out in any other way. The lead characters are serviceable: the creators are good at analyzing them, but they could have been fleshed out much more. The villains however are a real joke: we learn absolutely nothing about them: they’re just a bunch of paper bags with no motivation whatsoever.
But the biggest problem with this series it the fact that it leaves so many questions open. And sure, I’m not often concerned with this and I usually don’t mind if a series leaves a bunch of plot-holes open at the end. But Spiral takes this to a completely different level when it fails to answer just about every major question it asks throughout the series. Seriously, this series just stops at one point and nothing whatsoever has been solved. My guess would be that this is another series adapted from a manga that never got its second season due to unpopularity. Such a shame!
Anyway, whether or not you’ll like this series is simple: if all you want is a battle of wits, then this series isn’t going to disappoint you. Especially the first half of this show has everything that makes for a bunch of very interesting mind games. If you’re interested in something else though, then you’d better stay away, because this series sure as heck doesn’t have it.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 |
| Characters: | 7/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 7/10 |
Aoi Hana – 07
It’s episodes like this one that really make it unfair to wait for an entire week to see what happens next. Such a powerful episode even though it was nothing like your average dramatic anime episode. Aoi Hana really feels like one of the most realistic romances I’ve seen in a long time and it works incredibly well so far.
In this episode you could really see the distance between Fumi and Yasuko. It all starts with Fumi seeking refuge at Akira because of what happened in the previous episode, which is when she realized that Yasuko is still hung up over her past crush. In the meantime Akira finds out through Kyouko (who obviously has been researching on Yasuko) that Yasuko has four sisters, one of which previously taught at their high school.
The main meat of tihs episode however was about Yasuko, finally deciding to show Fumi her family and vice versa, and at that point we get to see a totally different version of Yasuko. At home, she’s really known as the spoiled princess. As the youngest, she often gets looked down upon by her sisters. You’d think that that would make her stronger, but because she’s seen as a role model outside of her family, she instead chooses to withdraw whenever her sisters or mother start to annoy her.
On top of that, Fumi makes a huge mistake of mentioning to her sisters how one of them taught at their high school, without ever mentioning that she had that knowledge to Yasuko herself. Fumi makes even more stupid moves, by actually taking the side of her family, rather than of Yasuko, and also mentioning how she previously was in love but got dumped.
That all leads to the end of this episode, in which Yasuko proposes to break up. That’s one very nasty cliff-hanger there. If the two of them manage to stay together like this and grow to accept their differences, they’ll probably get a lot closer to each other, however the chance of the two of them really breaking up is really big, and I’d really hate to see that happen. It’s exactly because the two of them are so different that they form a very nice couple.
I also wonder. Kyouko obviously got her crush on Yasuko because of her popular image, but I wonder whether she’d be still as enthusiastic about her when she learned that she also had a vulnerable side. In that way you can really see that Yasuko cares about Fumi: I don’t think that she’s ever willingly shown her weak side to anyone else, but Fumi at the same time is just so dense that it’s going to take a lot of effort for the two of them to fully trust each other.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class – 06
This show is schizophrenic! It may be called GA Art Design Club, but if it weren’t for that name you’d hardly guess that the main characters are indeed those five girls of the Art Design Club. This episode again was about the other art club, in which they turn their clubroom into a haunted house. Definitely not what I expected, but nevertheless this episode was a lot of fun.
This episode starts out a small skit about Tomokane chopping up a asleep Noda. Next up we get a little skit about Tomokane returning a game that she borrowed from Noda. It was surprisingly quick, so Noda wonders what’s wrong. It turns out that Tomokane’s brother got hold of the game, overwrote all of her saved files and got much further into the game than she did. Only now I realize that this was a clever little bit of foreshadowing.
The next scene properly introduces the real meat of this episode as we see the mysterious blue-haired boy, who turns out to have some sort of health problems, after which he enters the Art Club’s clubroom along with Yasumura. Uozumi also arrives. The clubroom seems empty, so Yasumura at first thinks that they have some kind of day off or something, but Uozumi reassures them that there are club activities that day. Which becomes all the more apparent when Awara is found under her box wrapped in bloody and nailed bandages. Yasumura doesn’t fall for it, though.
Bluehair however is quite startled, and eventually Mizubuchi also manages to scare Yasumura by suddenly appearing in a room full of skulls. It turns out that Awara and Mizubuchi found some nice material made by some former club-members, and decided to give everyone a nice scare. Those former materials also include a daily rip-off calendar (or however you call that in English) of the Mona Lisa, who slowly turns into an old hag. It turns out that in their first year, Awara and Uozumi also were scared quite a bit by their upperclassmen.
I have a lot of trouble following the names of this series around, because even the OFFICIAL SITE omits the first names of some of the characters. It’s therefore interesting to note that Yasumura(the red-haired guy)’s first name (or last name; Japanese names still confuse me) is Homura. Could be handy for the future. Anyway, it turns out that Bluehair wants to join the club, and Awara immediately jumps on him. A teacher then explains to some other teachers that Bluehair had a bad health and spent his first year with rather bad attendance records, so the nurse figured that it might help him to join a club somewhere.
Anyway, then we see some scenes of Bluehair getting introduced to the club, and the basics get explained. Then the idea comes to create a haunted house with the things that they have lying around. In the meantime Samecha (the blond teacher) gets lured into the new clubroom. Mizubuchi meets her own her way out, and guides her in and she immediately gets scared by an overenthusiastic Yasumura.
When Samecha goes outside, she runs into the Art Design club, who happened to be there. And they offer to get what Samecha was supposed to be taking when she visited the clubroom. It’s interesting that apart from Mizubuchi, the rest of the Art Club has no idea who they are. Anyway, next up they’re scared by some old ghost tricks like a wet sponge on a string. The haunted house continues for a bit, but the club members didn’t take into account that Tomokane wouldn’t be scared at all and instead would start to break everything. There are also some nice jokes, like Uozumi completely forgetting that he’s supposed to be a monster, and therefore trying to help Noda when she fell into one of the traps that were set up.
Eventually, Bluehair also manages to scare Tomokane with a bunch of fake bugs. Eventually they get to the exit, which has two doors. If I understood correctly, then Tomokane choses the wrong door and gets overrun by some of the old stuff from the Art Club, and gets even more upset and starts wrecking even more stuff. Eventually Miyabi manages to stop her with the help of her fingernails and a chalk board. Since they forgot what they were supposed to get for Samecha, they just take out a bunch of random items that in turn scare Samecha even more.
The episode ends with Bluehair’s official registration, and he turns out to be Tomokane’s older brother. Tomokane seems to hate him because he always beat her in whatever kind of game they were playing. By the way, it’s rather annoying that we never get to hear their first names. It’s going to be hard talking about them this way!
So I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t much art design in this episode, but it nevertheless was a cute episode with as much energy as ever. There’s hardly a moment that leaves you dulled in. I especially like Awara as a character.
Oh and on a side-note: I’m surprised that an OVA has been announced. It’s nice to see this show getting a bunch of extra episodes.
And on another side-note: the art in this series looks surprisingly good, and I especially notice that when I take screenshots. This series likes to put as much characters on a screen as possible, and hardly ever makes use of close-ups that just focus on one person. That really gives off an interesting effect, and it does really well in making the characters alive, rather than posing for a camera all the time like what you see in for example an average Shinbo-series. It’s subtle, but it works really well.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Aoi Blink Review – 77,5/100
You might be wondering what the heck I’m doing with something that looks like a weird bastard child of Astro Boy and My Little Pony, but this is actually the last series that Osamu Tezuka directed in his life, before succumbing to cancer. In fact, he sadly couldn’t live to see its completion. It was recommended to me by hairgreen, so I decided to give it a shot.
Aoi Blink really is a children’s adventure. It follows the lead character Kakeru as he travels together with a talking flying horse, two thieves, a princess and a bus driver in the search of his father, who has been abducted by the evil bad guy. Is it formulaic? Yes. Is it simple? Yes. Does it have very odd survival chances for the lead character? Obviously. Do I regret watching it? Nope.
The format of this series of course has a lot of problems in terms of believability. The side-character’s motivation is simply that they support Kakeru in his quest to find his father, and are hungry for an adventure. They don’t have a lot of history or background either, so they’re not the most complete characters out there. The basic format of every episode is also rather predictable: the characters arrive in some sort of town, have some fight with some bad guy who is causing problems in this town and at the end of the episode everyone is happy and the characters leave again.
Yet, this series does have enough to make up for this. The characters may lack background, but because they’re such an odd bunch travelling together it becomes fun to watch them; Osamu Tezuka has always been known for his ability to create lovable characters, and here too he creates a cast with a nice little chemistry together. He also stands out in his creativity: it’s amazing that at the end of his career, he still had more than enough interesting ideas stuffed into this series. A big reason that makes this series avoid the pitfall of most boring adventure series is that a lot of episodes, while their scenario is nothing new, they are centred around some interesting idea.
At first sight, this series does have a clear distinction between good and evil: evil people do bad things and good people are nice. However, despite the lack of a gray area between them, this series starts playing with these morals surprisingly often: sometimes people you’d think are good are actually evil, some good people come across as evil at first, some good people are brainwashed to be evil and one episode even has this reversed.
This especially becomes fun near the end. I’m not going to say much about the ending because of spoilers, but the final episode in this series was my favourite of the entire series, in which in a series which seemingly existed out of random episodes, everything surprisingly comes together in a truly kickass conclusion.
Aoi Blink is a flawed adventure series, which is why I rated it rather lowly. Kakeru, despite being a kid and all, manages to outsmart grown adults over and over throughout the series. But if you’re looking for adventure, then this series has it. The characters are simple and childish, yet they grow on you. Because of this, there are a number of episodes that are a bit tedious to get through, but if you’re into children’s adventures then this series has a lot to like. If you are not interested in this genre however, this series isn’t going to cause you to see the light.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 7/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
Shangri-La – 19
Hehe, and here I thought that the creators were going to save the bombing of Tokyo for the grand finale of this series. It seems that there’s still much more that’s going to happen after it: there are still so many problems that are left to be solved, not to mention that the creators still don’t seem to have played all of their trumps for this series!
The way this episode was executed was also something I really didn’t expect. With the entire city of Tokyo burning down, you’d expect them to create a huge action-packed spectacle out of it, but instead this episode had a much more melancholic atmosphere. It’s something completely different from what we’ve seen of this series so far, and it really works. That’s yet another reason why I’ve grown to be such a fan of this series: you’re never going to know what to expect.
This episode was surprisingly slow paced for this series, but because of that the impact on Kuniko, having to burn down the place she grew up in really made an impact. Her emotions were handled very subtly here: she didn’t break down crying, or she didn’t refuse to drop the bomb at the last possible moment like your average anime lead. She knew very well what she had to do to save the ones around her, because otherwise they’d just be overthrown by the Daedalus. This episode portrayed that feeling of saying goodbye really well. Kuniko might seem like nothing special at first sight, but you don’t often see a main character who has to serve as a leader like her.
Oh, and the eye candy! While not as gorgeous as episode 13, the visuals were nevertheless gorgeous as they showed Duomo going up in flames. You could see that especially the background artists were on fire in this episode (not literally of course), but also the CG looked really good during the fiery bits.
Now, the question is going to be: how are the creators planning on filling up the final quarter of this series. The Daedalus hasn’t fully disappeared: it’s still inside Atlas because that’s a part that can’t exactly be burned down. At the same time, the end of this episode shows Medusa finally losing control of itself, after Karin pushed him too far in her attempts to take advantage of the huge carbon emissions from the forest fires. and to think that for a moment she was like the richest person in the world. She was bound to overstep her borders at one point, but I still wonder what the creators plan to do with Medusa going out of control: is she simply going to lose Medusa, or is her entire fortune coming along with it?
It’s very interesting: for most series at this point, you’re going to have a good idea what its finale is going to be about: what the main goal is going to be to overcome. With Shangri-la, I have no bloody clue. Sure, there is busting Ryoko from Atlas, people are going to have to rebuild their homes, Karin is going to have to cope with Medusa, but which one is going to be taking the main focus? What is Ryouko going to do now after cooperating with Kuniko? There are still so many questions left open.
At this point, there are five episodes left. That’s enough for this series to wrap up everything with a conclusion, and let’s hope that everything isn’t going to end up rushed!
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>