Author: psgels

February Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

As if this season wasn’t bad enough already: all of the non-sequel series that I did pick up this season did not improve, and got worse. Perhaps I chose the wrong series, but this season… it did not go well with me. It’s a good thing that the on-going series have such a strong line-up: there are not many, but the good shows that are there are getting really, really good.

#17 (15) – Little Busters – (7.6/10) – Here is the thing with Little Busters: I really like it… when it’s not too serious. When it tries to be too serious it becomes incredibly rushed, a complete info-dump and it gets incredibly forced. And yet I keep coming back to it for the moments when the characters are just having fun, or the small scenes with just a tiny bit of drama. Here is the thing though: this show likes to pretend that its core is these sad stories. It’s not really in its favor when that completely sucks.
#16 (11) – Amnesia – (7.6/10) – I still like the concept of skipping dimensions and dating other guys. But holy crap. That white-haired guy is a total prick. His arc was horribly contrived, and the blue-haired girl is one of the most forced villains I have seen in a long while. Talk about overreacting here.
#15 (14) – Kotoura-San – (7.75/10) – Kotoura-san. What was the reasoning behind having first a beach episode, and then a resort-episode? That’s like throwing your hands up in the air and giving up. Couldn’t you really find more interesting things for the characters to do? That made this show lose a lot of points for me, because I still like some of the characters here. Kotoura is great, the president and the vice president are also very nice. I’d just wish that this show would stop glorifying perverts. It’s not funny.
#14 (13) – Tamako Market – (7.75/10) – As much as I appreciate the details in this series, I have one big problem with it: I find the slice of life scenes to be quite boring. It’s got a lot of cultural information which is interesting, but the interaction between the characters just does not catch my attention. There is very little to the characters, and I find all of them quite dull. The bird in particular was fun at first, but has gotten quite annoying at this point.
#13 (8) – Saint Seiya Omega – (7.9/10) – Saint Seiya Omega made two really big mistakes this month: the first is using some of the biggest villains of the original Saint Seiya, and having the cast defeat them without much effort. The second is having such an incredibly cheesy background story for the main villain. So much for all the build-up, eh?
#12 (16) – Shirokuma Cafe – (8/10) – This show was going along its usual pace, still occasionally very funny, and most of all laid back, and then suddenly WHAM: Melodrama! I have no clue where all of that came from, but it really felt out of place, and quite weird for this show to suddenly be filled with tears. The change was waaaay too sudden and furthermore just about everyone started acting out of character… what happened?
#11 (12) – Magi – (8/10) – I’m really behind this, I’m sorry! But I do want to finish it. The thing with Magi is that it’s really well executed, but in the end the story just is not that interesting. It’s got some good elements about slavery, it has a good deal of emotions in it, but it’s a bit too shounen for such a setting for me.
#10 (9) – Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo – (8/10) – Sakurasou’s second half… just is not as good as its first half. The reason behind that is that everything has gotten more contrived: we have to have a lot of drama with the pointless love triangle, there has to be a lot of drama with Sakurasou closing down. It’s all too forced, and not as creative as the first half.
#9 (17) – Hunter X Hunter – (8.4/10)

We’re going through the Greed Island arc, and with this you can actually see that here, the Madhouse version is actually better than the Nippon Animation here. The fast pacing really helps here to keep things going, instead of getting bogged down by fight scenes that last for episodes. The thing with these series is that they need to learn when you need to be fast and when to be slow. You can’t just have one pacing and expect that to work throughout the entire series…

#8 (10) – AKB0048 – (8.4/10)

AKB really was well done this month, hard as it may have been to believe. It has taken a bunch of characters, and completely changed their role by revealing more about them. It’s still full of emotion and the music still is strangely great.

#7 (7) – Robotics;Notes – (8.4/10)

In this month, things went to hell for Robotics;Notes. It didn’t go entirely smoothly: the creators seemed too busy with following a checklist in order to squeeze everyone’s stories in without much flow, but the stories that were told were really impressive. The character-development that was there was quite impressive. The ride was really rocky, but interesting.

#6 (5) – Psycho Pass – (8.75/10)

Psycho Pass really went to town with its plot developments in this episode. The setting got a lot of developments, and you can now see that this series loves to play with it in its social commentary. The characters don’t have as much development as I would have liked, but they still remain interesting and solid. The animation is nicely inconsistent again, but hey: when it looks great, this series really looks great.

#5 (3) – Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – (8.75/10)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: watch this if you want to see incredibly over the top fights. This month delivered that beyond a doubt. A common problem with shounen series is that as the enemies become more powerful, the fights get more boring and epic. Here though, the fights get more epic, yet stay as interesting as they have ever been with very creative and bizarre uses of powers. And the acting. The glorious overacting!

#4 (1) – Uchuu Kyoudai – (8.75/10)

Zomg, an episode in which Uchuu Kyouda is not at the top 2 for me? It finally happened. The reasoning behind this is that this was a month with a lot of build-up, compared to other shows this season that really hit some heights. As much as I love Uchuu Kyoudai (and the build-up really was excellent, make no mistake), I have to hand it to other series this month.

#3 (4) – From the New World – (8.9/10)

Holy crap, From the New World really surpassed itself this episode with an incredibly sad turn of events. I still cannot believe how far the creators went with this series, but I have to give it to this series: it really has some of the best villains out there. Their backgrounds, their actions, their threat. It really delivered and came together this month.

#2 (2) – Zetsuen no Tempest – (9/10)

Zetsuen no Tempest, I love you! The addition of romance and comedy in the second half was an incredibly bold move, and yet it works so well! The show still is very intelligent and full of mind-screws, which makes it all the better with such a silly backdrop behind it. It’s awesome to see the adults in this series go crazy with the fate of the world being decided by a bunch of impulsive teenagers, and the creators are making brilliant use of it, not to mention that the series has become hilarious.

#1 (6) – Chihayafuru – (9/10)

Chihayafuru, holy crap. After a relatively quiet beginning, it’s just completely back in full force. In particular the team match in this month was really awesome to watch. The strength of Chihayafuru is that it somehow manages to develop a dozen characters in one single episode every week. That strength really shined here, and to think that the match they were playing was nowhere near the most important one.

Uchuu Kyoudai – 46

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

Time for this show to catch up on some of the developments for the characters that are going to be important for the new arc: the one woman who has previously had no background, plus the guy who will be the instructor for the main cast. Both developments that were really welcome. Yet again this show proves that it can be amazing when it just picks a character and somehow gives this one a memorable backstory.

Beyond that there were lots of small moments, like with Serika and her family, Kenji and how he analyzed that strange message that both he and Mutta got, it’s great to see some old faces back again and even some of the new characters who didn’t get any attention look really interesting to watch and I can’t wait before they too can get their own bits in the spotlights.

Oh and it’s been a while since Mutta made me laugh as much as what he did here. It’s both a combination of how he couldn’t be funny when Hibito’s life was on the line, and that this episode was just that hilarious. He did not have many jokes, but the ones he had made me laugh uncontrollably. I especially liked how he just went ahead and dressed as silly as possible, now that he was in astronaut jumpsuit anyway.

Also, about Ena: she has four siblings, and even the youngest is an adult. More series should do that!
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Zetsuen no Tempest – 19

by psgels, posted in Zetsuen no Tempest

Here is why I love Zetsuen no Tempest’s new direction: a second half transition is tricky, and most shows just head into the usual roads: be more dramatic. Zetsuen no Tempest however decided to add more comedy here. My question is: what’s wrong with that? As a story transitions and changes, it needs to use the build-up of the start and head into the most logical direction, while still being interesting. Nobody said that it had to be more dramatic or anything. In fact, Sakurasou is currently showing that that can also hurt a show in a way.

The point of Zetsuen no Tempest’s change of tone is not to just give it more romance. Instead, the romance is a tool to get the other areas to shine: Aika’s death is the center of the story. You really need this well developed. And the characters. I don’t know about you, but I find them hilarious. Their chemistry in this episode again was really fun to watch.

Also, here we have a series that makes excellent use of its main characters being teenagers. A lot of the charms of this series is watching adults go crazy by having the fate of the world dependant on the hands of a bunch of impulsive kids. And the big difference with the usual: despite all their hormones, they remain intelligent. Samon in this episode was hilarious again when he found out that all his plans were foiled again.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

From the New World – 21

by psgels, posted in From the New World

We were just talking in the shoutbox about episode ratings, and what they mean when I hand them out. I’ve been blogging a lot of episodes over the years, so my standard are pretty high with this: an episode has to be pretty freaking good to warrant a rating above 6/8. And here Shin Sekai Yori pulled it off, with what was without a doubt the best episode of the season. Holy crap.

People wondered why I didn’t rate the latest Jojo episode as high. The thing with that episode was that it was a pretty standard episode that was really well delivered. It was really entertaining, and it deserves points for that, but it did not amaze me. This episode in comparison completely shocked me. It’s here where the series finally reveals what kind of plan the queerats have had since the beginning of the series. And holy crap is it sad! And holy crap they go far here!

Shin Sekai Yori is for children? Hah. This episode showed what amazing villains the queerats are. This episode made brilliant use of how we previously saw the queerats as a simple folk with simple rituals when they start using those rituals on humans. It was slightly shocking when they did it with fellow queerats, but abducting human children in order to let them grow into fiends in order to take over the world and escape the oppression of the humans. Holy crap man!
Rating: 7/8 (Fantastic)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 20

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Awww. This show already has an awesome soundtrack, and to think that it has one of the best tracks saved for this episode. This episode was all about Ceasar, and as the episode went on it became pretty clear what was going to happen, but for what they attempted to do, the creators succeeded.

So the death of a major character. Another thing that has set Jojo apart is that really anyone can die, and they once again show this with this episode. It was over the top as usual, and the music really helped. The creators also made his death quick: no dragging on for ages, he was just hit once really badly, and that’s it. He did get to make a very elaborate farewell speech though, but it was well done with all of the symbolism there.

Wham was also a great guy to do it with dragging Ceasar inside the building with weird powers. Byusing them to block the sun they found a new twist to his powers. And it all happened in just one episode. Eat your heart out, Naruto.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Robotics;Notes – 18

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

And with this we have turned to the final arc of this series, in which we finally take a look at Aki and her sister. It brought in a sudden hint of romance as well now that Aki is in the main picture again (again, this could have been better balanced to take out the harem element because I don’t think it really contributes to much here apart from making Kai a less interesting character. That’s the downside of having a series with so many different plot threads, yet still wanting the main character to poke his nose in everything.

Still, Misa’s part in this episode is something I really liked. Kai really feels shocked by what happened to Mizuka and the creators used that well, only to move over to Misa herself, who seems to have betrayed her job or something…? The answer to that is probably something we’ll get in the next episodes. I really liked the cliff-hanger of this episode and how this showed the tension between Aki and her sister.

Lots of drama seems to have been created around Gunvarrel. This part did not work as well for me today, probably because it’s a part that has been a bit abandoned: how regular people think of Gunvarrel. It just felt too one-sided and forced at this point. I know that it has been stated before that Gunvarrel has had negative publicity, but for me it was a bit too much when everyone just walked away or when people started throwing with cans…
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Psycho Pass – 18

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

So I already read that the animation of this episode would have… issues. So how did it turn out? Well, it was definitely noticeable For some shots, it felt like the cleanup-animation work was not done, and I suspect it was a case of an outsourcing company that did not make its deadline. Still, it wasn’t that bad and this episode did get across what it wanted to do, and it was a building-up episode anyway. I have seen much, much worse, many times before.

The strongest scene of this episode was where Akane shot Kougami. It was a bit of a strange move in which the Sybil System lacked a lot of subtleties in hiding their true intentions, but still: at htat point they probably believed that nobody could do anything against them and it was worth the risk. Akane has grown much more than what I expected her to do and I loved how dependable she has become.

The inner politics of the police force were really interesting in this episode. And yet again, I have to wonder why the police force is so small and why it’s so difficult to get replacements? I mean I get that there is less crime and all, but society has to be pretty screwed if there can be hardly any capable policemen in the case something goes wrong (like in this episode, where an enforcer starts to think a little too hard). I mean that is the big fault with the Sybil System: it doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of insurance. Did Urobuchi Gen do this intentional?
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo – 19

by psgels, posted in Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo

Here is where you can see that the source material really has some problems: it’s revealed that the finale of the series will focus on Sakurasou shutting down. The big problem with that: it’s cliched as hell. I know it will lead to character development and all, but it’s just so standard. We’ve seen this and been there. It’s now up to the writers and animators to really make it stand out like what this series has always done. Did this episode provide a good start?

Um…. this episode had me very, very confused. It was just like the first episode… but without Shiina. Ryuunosuke made an appearance, even though he didn’t do that in the first episode. The weirdest thing is that this was a flashback in which nobody seemed to find it strange that things were suddenly incorrect.

This episode: it was a recap of the first episode, and yet it wasn’t. What the hell?
Rating: $#@!?/8 (Wut?)

Uchuu Kyoudai – 45

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

After what feels like months of watching Hibot struggle for his life, we finally get a “normal” episode of Space Brothers. For the series’ standards, it is an uneventful episode. It’s meant to build up for later, and introduce the upcoming arc, which will focus on Mutta again as he travels to the USA in order to meet the top astronauts out there. A teaser line-up showed quite a few different characters, so that really sounds promising here!

In the meantime they also took their chance to give Sharon some character with her husband. They’re two people with a great passion for watching the starts that came together. It’s a nice little detail, but nothing more. What caught my eye the most about this episode was how she reacted when she learned what Hibito went through: they didn’t provide the full details for the fear of confusion.

Still, this series has a habit of a lot of dead very inspiring people. There’s Brian, then there is Sharon’s husband, and didn’t Serika’s father also die? Death plays a very big role in this series, but in a different way from normal. And the thing is that I keep thinking that this will be some hint for the future, but in the end everyone manages to survive.. It’s quite annoying, but well played from the creators. Just know that you can’t keep pulling stuff like this…

Also, did they spell Nanba Mutta as “Namba Mutta”? Is that his official English spelling? It’s a bit weird to have that ‘m’ there in Romanji.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Chihayafuru – 32

by psgels, posted in Chihayafuru

And here this series comes and goes like “I’m sorry I haven’t spent much attention on some of the minor characters, let me make up for that.” This episode brought so much life to them. Not just Sumire and Akihiro, but also Chihaya’s parents, her sister, Kanade’s mother, Akihiro’s brothers, even some unnamed people from the school’s band club and some random teachers. The band and their performance in particular was awesome. Now this is how you should spend an aftermath!

Chihaya feeling down over the loss, you see it everywhere, and yet the creators managed to spice even that up with that focus on her parents, not to mention showing how she has grown (being able to tie her own kimono and how she has completely changed from who she used to be). The time she spent with her mother was also awesome. It’s a really personal time with someone she knows for her entire life. There are little other series that have managed to put the same focus there.

And then this show suddenly started to toy with the symbolism behind words and it actually was very interesting to follow how this all related back to the characters themselves.

Also, the budget. I have no clue what happened in the first two episodes, but for some reason the series looks as awesome as it ever has. The differences in animation are not noticeable anymore, and the drawings really look crisp again. Some budget issues at the start or something?
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)