Author: psgels

Konnichiwa Anne – 15

by psgels, posted in Konnichiwa Anne


With this episode, I understand a bit more what’s wrong with this series: Marysville. Every single character introduced in the Marysville arc is dull, cliche and boring, and that’s why the previous episode was especially bad, because it was entirely centred around one of these characters. The Thomas family however, is a different story. They are the ones who make this series. With this, Anne has also shown that she doesn’t have the strength to carry this series on its own, and she really needs the Thomas family for this to make the series complete.

So, this episode starts during a lunch-break, in which Mildred is showing off her huge box of lunch. Anne’s lunch is small, so Randolf offers her a bit of his, but she declines. Mildred then mentions that for the upcoming pick nick she’s going to have an even bigger lunch. Anne obviously wants to join the picnic, but for that she needed to have donated to the church like everyone else has.

So, the question becomes how to get money in order to go to the picnic. Randolf comes with the idea of trying to search in a crow’s nest, but Anne thinks that it’s a better idea to ask Johanna. Johanna however, has just had a bad day because the well is giving trouble. She obviously declines giving money, since she believes that God isn’t there for the penniless.

Horace and Edward meanwhile are fascinated by a local tortoise salesman. When Bert gets back, he smells like tobacco again and Johanna scolds him again. He then comes with the news that he’s managed to get a promotion (or something similar that’s going to give them a bit of extra money), and his salary is going to triple in the process. Anne and Johanna are obviously elated when they learn of the news. They spend the dinner trying to figure out what they’re going to do with the money. When Bert asks Anne what she wants to do, she obviously answers that she wants to go to the picnic. This results into a fight between him and Johanna, who believes it to be a waste of money. Dinner ends with all four kids sitting outside because they kept yelling. At that point, Anne mentions how perhaps they can get stuff from crows nests.

A bit later, Johanna comes outside with the news that Bert has promised to stop smoking so that she can go to the picnic. Anne obviously is elated when she finds out. That evening Anne and Johanna spend a bit of time talking on how Johanna has never been on a picnic, and how she’s forgotten by now whether or not she ever wanted to go. Bert meanwhile gets the “brilliant” idea to wager the money he got in horse races.

The next day, Anne prepares to go to the picnic while Bert tells her that he’s going to bring her to the church, as he himself was planning to go to the horse races. Johanna however overhears him, and the two of them start fighting as usual. They get interrupted by Horace and Edward, who are stuck in one of the trees. Apparently they thought that crows really kept expensive things in their nests, but when they started climbing they got too scared and fell off. Bert manages to save them, but he hurts his shoulder in the process. He is okay in the end, but he can’t lift heavy things for a week. Yeah, that’s going to help with his work.

Everyone is down, aside from Anne, who still starts fantasizing about going to the picnic, but she quickly stops when Horace and Edward start crying about their tortoise. Bert then just shrugs everything off, and promises Johanna that he’s going to work hard to make up for the work he missed, and even for Johanna’s part. The family then spends the rest of the day picnicking at their own location, since Bert doesn’t need to go to work anyway. Anne then gets to see the sea for the first time and the episode ends.

The Marysville arc has been quite boring, though. It’s much lighter, but in most WMT series the slice of life parts are just as interesting to watch, but thanks to those brats at school it’s getting a bit tedious to watch. Still, in this episode we finally got a bit more foreshadowing of what’s going to happen in the future, and I just hope that once Anne moves to her second family, the annoying brats are going away too. I’d really wish to believe that, but the fact that they’re in the ED while Elisa wasn’t does worry me a bit.
Rating: * (Good)
Finally the focus is back at the Thomas family.

Genius Party – 10 – Wanwa the Doggy Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Well… what can I say…?

Wanwa the Doggy is… different. It’s… I’m still not sure what it is; all I know that it was really, really weird. The one who brought us this abomination was Shinwa Ohira, an animator. He worked on the animation of various big-hitting movies, but also on stuff like FLCL, Gosenzosama Banbanzai, Gundam and a few television series here and there. But none of it really matches up in terms of weirdness to… whatever the hell it was that I just watched.

The best way to describe these thirteen minutes are as a very bad acid trip. Shinwa Ohira just continues to throw weird stuff at the screen throughout the entire 13 minutes of this short, one scene more nonsensical than the other. I guess that it was about a kid’s worries as his mother is having a baby, but even children don’t have that kind of imagination.

The animation was as good as usual : there was a lot of movement, and you can see that the creators used lots of imagination for nearly all of the visuals here. Just don’t ask where the hell this inspiration came from…

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

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 15

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



And so, we’ve finally moved on to the second part and the point at which the two FMA-series have turned completely different. At this point in the original series, the creators were busy to turn Lust and Scar into nice characters. Brotherhood instead makes the setting a whole lot bigger by introducing a Chinese-inspired country that lies next to Amestris, which is apparently what the country that Ed and Al live in is called. It also shocked me how small their country actually is, especially because there are several other huge countries that surround it, including a huge country called Drachma (as in… the Greek currency?).

Anyway, this episode introduces a bunch of new characters from ChinaXing: Scar ends up with a young girl who can heal people and her miniature panda, while Ed runs into one of the country’s many princes along with two of his bodyguards, who are searching for the Philosopher’s Stone as well. This episode was mostly filled with their introduction, and a fight scene between those bodyguards and Ed and Al (which happen to be an old guy and a teenaged girl by the way… not exactly the most logical choice for bodyguards for a prince, are they?). It was a pretty fun episode, but nothing special.

This episode also had a new OP and ED, though both of them aren’t really my tastes. I’m not really a fan of J-pop and J-rock, and these two songs didn’t make it any different. For me, they didn’t really set themselves apart from all of the other OPs and EDs out there.

Rating: (Enjoyable)
Introduction episode for the characters from Xing. Finally this show is 100% different from the original series!

Canaan – 02

by psgels, posted in Canaan



Okay, so this season I’m going to be blogging Canaan. It’s supposed to be a short series, and I’m not going to be expecting the most amazing things from it, but instead what I want from this series is the things it did well in its first episode: fun and well directed action scenes. For that, it’s going to have to correctly develop and characterize the cast, have a storyline that provides interesting and creative situations and a setting that’s dynamic enough to prevent from all those scenes from looking the same.

Canaan doesn’t seem to be a true adaptation, but rather a sequel. This is a plus, since the creators now aren’t bound by the length of the original source material, and instead can go in their own way and plan the story over 13 episodes accordingly. With this, they should be able to wrap up everything properly.

I haven’t read the original source material, and I don’t really think that I’m going to do so in the future. I’m not sure for how many others this goes, but I do hope that the creators take account of the ones who are unfamiliar with 428, rather than assuming that everyone already knows everyone’s back-story. And at the same time they’re obviously going to have to include this back-story, without boring the ones who did bother to read through 428.

I’m interested in the director, because this guy did Sword of the Stranger, which was a great movie in terms of action. If he can apply the same thing here for Canaan, it’s going to be a pretty enjoyable series while it lasts. The guy behind the seres composition wrote scripts for Simoun, has written the progress of series as True Tears, Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, but unfortunately also a bunch of mediocre series, most notably Vampire Knight… I hope that with Canaan, we get to see his good side. And hey, the music is done by the composer of Noein and Phantom. That’s a plus too.

In this episode, we learn that for some reason, Maria and Minoru are now targeted, because they photographed something they shouldn’t have. Probably those strange infected people back then. The nature of the disease still is a bit of a mystery, because this episode shows an old guy with that strange mark on his face who can safely move in the open air.

My biggest fear right now with this series is that the creators are overplaying the chemistry between Maria and Minoru a bit. I can see them getting annoying quite fast if something doesn’t happen.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
Nice enough action sequence, but nothing special yet.

Genius Party – 11 – Toujin Kit Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



While there are other quiet shorts in Genius Party, Toujin Kit definitely feels to be the most down-to-earth no-nonsense movie of the bunch. At the end of the thirteen minutes, there is no doubt what the story is about: there’s hardly any deep symbolism, there is no over top action, and instead Toujin Kit is what it is, and because of this it definitely has its merits.

The director for this one is Tatsuyuki Tanaka, who is one of the lesser known names to participate in Genius Party. He’s one of Studio 4C’s key animators, and also worked on a few random other series. In Toujin Kit however, he definitely demonstrates that he belongs among the big guys. I remember Anonymous’s comments on the animation of Eden of the East versus Dimension Bomb, and after Toujin Kit I’m really starting to understand what he meant. Because of the attention to detail in today’s animation, animators are forced to cut a lot of corners in animation.

Toujin Kit has none of this: here characters are animated: they move realistically, and hardly ever stand completely still. The frame-rate is incredibly smooth, and the rest of this short is on purpose kept very simple and down to earth, in order to not have any cheap distractions from the animation. In fact, there isn’t even a soundtrack: just some background noises.

The characters and story however aren’t dull in any way either. Because they’re so well animated, they’re easy to connect to and well likable, despite the fact that none of them are really nice people. Some of their motivations are well explained, the others are easy to guess or imagine and together they form a very complete little story.

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

Anime nowadays is at a standstill. True or not?

by psgels, posted in Shoutbox Topics

Okay, so the discussion has been going on in a number of posts and shoutboxes, but the subject is interesting so I decided to make one post about it. Blogsome unfortunately doesn’t support the option to move comments, so I’ll instead quote what the different people have said about it. It first appeared in the shoutbox. Unfortunately the shoutbox stores everything in reverse order and the beginning of the discussion has already been eaten, but I’m too lazy to fix it.

Tracer: overlooked.
8 Jul 09, 22:33
Tracer: Also, PaTRiX’s point on not knowing a lot of the animes from the 80s and 90s is very true. Back then, fansubbing wasn’t as easy as prominent as it is now so the bad shows weren’t subbed and they were
8 Jul 09, 22:28
Tracer: Though regardless, like tealovertoma said, regardless of the low sales, someone will always make some creative and original series.
8 Jul 09, 22:27
Tracer: I’m not trying to say that all good anime sell well (for example, every anime by Yuasa is a failure in terms of DVD sales) but a lot more are successful than what people might think.
8 Jul 09, 22:25
Tracer: Baccano! sold on average about 2000 units per volume (decent numbers). Terra e was selling around 10k per volume. GiTS: SAC was selling near the 20k range. Mononoke was also about 8k-10k per volume.
8 Jul 09, 22:23
Tracer: I don’t think we have to worry about there being less innovative anime because they don’t sell. Believe it or not, some good anime actually sell quite a bit.
8 Jul 09, 21:13
PaTRiX: The thing about the ratio is probably true, but in the late 80’s and the 90’s we didn’t know about the crappy anime. So that makes it feel like there was more good anime.
8 Jul 09, 21:11
PaTRiX: and the animation style. That’s the main “problem” people complaining about “new anime” have even if they don’t even know it themselves. But the same is true form almost anything.
8 Jul 09, 21:11
tealovertoma: There will always be a market for creative and original ideas. Be it in anime, tv shows, movies or music. It’s not like it’ll die out, and I agree with Tracer, the ratio is higher. Great list btw.
8 Jul 09, 21:10
PaTRiX: But I’m going to repeat this, if you have watched anime for 10 – 20 years you have seen allmost all the stories that could possibly happen. The only thing that changes is how they are told …
8 Jul 09, 21:07
PaTRiX: And what people like reverse probably want to say is that some over the top 80’s or 90’s anime is still better than some generic harem anime. It’s a matter of taste probably, but I’m with them.
8 Jul 09, 21:04
PaTRiX: The last thing reverse said is true, the different and more interesting things sell less. So they are produced in lower quantity because they are harder to produce than say a generic harem anime.
8 Jul 09, 20:47
reverse: those innovative idea don’t sell well . so it not surprise, we will see less of them
8 Jul 09, 20:29
reverse: who you referring to tracer. yes we got innovative anime every year, i only disappointed that the anime consumer
8 Jul 09, 20:22
Tracer: It’s not like the ratio of good-to-bad shows is any less lower than befre.
8 Jul 09, 20:21
Tracer: We still get some very interesting and innovative anime every year like Kaiba, Kino’s Journey, Terra e, Nodame Cantabile, Samurai Champloo, GiTS: SAC, Dennou Coil, Baccano!, Mononoke, Gankutsuou etc.
8 Jul 09, 20:16
Tracer: I really don’t see some drop in quality in recent anime. It’s just that instead of the over the top anime of the 80’s and 90s, now it’s a lot of “moe” shows.
8 Jul 09, 20:14
Tracer: For every anime like LoGH, Rose of Versailles, Akira, Touch, you had some equally ****ty fanservice show or some horribly cliche super robot crap.
8 Jul 09, 20:08
Tracer: You’re simply being ignorant if you think the “good, old times” were full with masterpieces or some other ridiculous nonsense.
8 Jul 09, 19:15
tealovertoma: …companies. We still get the character development that old shows focus on, but more experimentation. But yes, there’s also a lot of bad shows.
8 Jul 09, 19:14
tealovertoma: … about old anime better than new anime; we’ve had loads of masterpieces in the past decade. Moreso than any decade before as far as I’m concerned. Plenty of creativity and freedom for production…
8 Jul 09, 19:13
tealovertoma: It sounds like you’ve just been disappointed by 2 (maybe a few more?) anime that seemed promising. Is that all? Cause we get several masterpieces every year. In that case you’re not really talking…
8 Jul 09, 19:11
Howling-kun: Hm, I gotta disagree with you reverse. Specially shows directed by Shinbo Akiyuki tend to have very weak first episodes.
8 Jul 09, 18:58
reverse: Howling-kun every anime nowadays have awesome first episode ( xamdd, eden ) just name it, the problem is their don’t deliver. anyway i will check Bakemonogatari
8 Jul 09, 18:44
PaTRiX: This happens with every kind of hobby you could have, the fact is that people complaining are probably people who have seen too much anime.
8 Jul 09, 18:42
PaTRiX: It’s not that anime nowadays is bad. In fact it’s probably better than before, but if you have seen, for example, 5 animes about football (soccer) how many new different ways can the story go after?
8 Jul 09, 18:39
PaTRiX: … That’s what I feel now. I need something that I really like (or that I am a fanboy of) or something that is really different to be excited about an anime.
8 Jul 09, 18:38
PaTRiX: … because the stories have not evolved that much. I say this because it happens to me. And even if I’m not searching anything fancy, just want some cool mindless violence I’ve kind of “seen it alll”
8 Jul 09, 18:35
Howling-kun: Bakemonogatari is out subbed. Excellent first episode.
8 Jul 09, 18:34
PaTRiX: I think that the fact is not that anime was better before but that the kind of people who watched akira on the big screen and dragon ball and dr slump on tv when they first aired are becoming bored ..
8 Jul 09, 17:59
PL: whereas, if the industry wasnt profitable, there wouldnt be any anime
8 Jul 09, 17:58
PL: but that leaves plenty of room for more artistic and intelligent shows
8 Jul 09, 17:58
PL: the best way to ensure an artform endures is to make it profitable, which unfortunately means you will have anime which appeals to the masses
8 Jul 09, 17:43
reverse: not to mention most anime fan don’t know what is a good animation even it hit them on the face. example anime fan are happy staring at unmoving pic for 5 second. none complain at that stuff in anime.
8 Jul 09, 17:28
tealovertoma: …anime try out some from the more experimental side. Yes, it’s true that a lot of masterpieces are overlooked and ****ty shows are popular, but it’s like that every where.
8 Jul 09, 17:27
tealovertoma: Easier to be pessimistic than optimistic, right? Stop being nostalgic about a time you weren’t even alive. We get more intelligent anime than ever before — if you’re tired of conventional harem….
8 Jul 09, 17:17
reverse: show like Sengoku BASARA sale like 10000+ dvd in a week. untalented people get pay more. anime industry is doomed i would say.
8 Jul 09, 14:13
Solaris: I also think nowadays anime are nice and flashing but are lacking of contents.
8 Jul 09, 08:54
psgels: I think the “empty of contents and spirit” is a bit vague. What does it mean for a series to have spirit? And isn’t this different for everyone?

The discussion basically began when Solaris claimed that anime nowadays is “empty of contents and spirit”, and reverse claimed that “now almost everything get animated. the standard sure is low.”, from which the above discussion erupted. It then continued in the Aoi Hana post:

“Bakemonogatari: Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes”
Maybe it was this i sensed when i watched Bakemonogatari’s first episode. It’s a fancy colored box with nohing inside.
Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 12:02
#

“Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig”

Lol @ this being applied to Bakemonogatari, NisiOisin isn’t considered the god of light novels for nothing.

Comment by Westlo — July 11, 2009 @ 12:25
#

@westlo.
I judge for what i watch to. Anime and novel are related only by topic. One could be utter crap while the other could be plain art.
My first impression on Bakemonogatari anime was negative, as they wanted to keep our interest with that flashing graphics, but that there wasn’t that much of a story to begin with.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 12:38
#

Solaris: nah. Bakemonogatari may be one example of a soulless series (which if we were to believe Westlo, doesn’t even seem to be true), but there are plenty of series with a soul this season (Aoi Hana, GA, Umineko, Tokyo Magnitude, Spice and Wolf and Umi Monogatari, not to mention the series from previous seasons).

I agree that the seventies and eighties had some wonderful series, but even those days had their share of disasters, which in most cases were even worse than the crap we see today. Glass Mask, for example, was a really bad series, and there are probably plenty more of those series back then.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 12:47
#

Well, anime has always been a media for the crowd. Anime production surely grew up since 60’s both in graphic quality and in number of products. It eventually became well known worldwide too. Now after 50 years of anime we are reaching saturation. Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately? Maybe is just a matter of quantity. We have little formats for anime and a huge amount of products now. We have too many products that resemble each other. We’re loosing originality. Soeone just told this before: now it’s no more a matter of creating new stories, but how well you can manage to tell them and how good you let them appear. So, focus is being biased from contenent to appearance. So it’s no more the matter of telling a story that it looks so generic, like in bakemonogatari. The matter is to capture the audience with good graphics, or moe char or whatever mean, but good storytelling. That’s the real issue.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 13:43
#

With “the amount of bad series has increased”, do you mean the total amount of bad series produced each year, or the amount of bad series in relation to the amount of good series? There are of course more bad series out there than twenty years ago, simply because much more anime are produced these days. Today however, there are still plenty of series with good storytelling IMO, also with a bigger quantity.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 14:00
#

The main appeal of Bakemonogatari is the dialogue and conversations between characters which is never wasted… which is what you expect from light novels.. Hardly something I would classify as a pretty anime with no substance.

“Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately?”

I’ll tell you why, can you name another show that aired in the same season as Evangelion did? You’ve had the best titles cherry picked from the 80-90’s without seeing the amount of crap that aired during the same time.

It’s pointless to say “Anime was consistently better back in the day” when you don’t even know the majority of shit that aired back than.

Here’s a list of what aired in 95

http://www.animenfo.com/animebyyear.php?pagenumber=1&action=Go&perpage=30&year=1995

Don’t tell me that’s better than 2006 or 2007 or you’re overdosing on nostaglia. Eva and GITS Movie are the only real notable shows from that year. Majority of 95 ranges from mediocre to crap if you look at it without rose tinted glasses.

Comment by Westlo — July 11, 2009 @ 14:04
#

I’m not saying that I like the old show better. but i do agree with solaris to some extent, almost everything get animeted now, the standard sure is low.

Comment by reverse — July 11, 2009 @ 14:29
#

Psgels i didn’t say that. I just say the amount of series overall increased, thus implied the bad series also increased. The question is, did the proportion between good and bad remained stable or not? I think it decreased a lot. That is to say you will find more bad series nowadays with respect to the good ones.

Westlo, if we take that is the real amount of anime produced in that whole year 1995, then notice that that’s average the number of series nowadays produced in a single season.
The question is, are there many more good series now with respect to back then? I think we have less, but luckily that’s my IMHO ;).

Of course whan we speak of good and bad we should make clear what we intend for. “good” is such a subjective matter. But this would generate another full thread, so let us it be by now.

I watched anime since 70’s. I could tell you a lot of what happened back then. The situation of 80’s was very interesting, as it resembled what it’s happening today. Back then the most popular format were Big Robots anime stile (not mecha) and magical girls show. After 10 years they exploited such genres there were a big lack of new ideas. So with the start of the new decade they searched new ideas and format to make anime. The market succeeded in renewing itself back them. New genres were made and the anime “maturity” also evolved. As anime public grew, there was the need of much mature series. It wasn’t anymore just a matter of kids show. Series like Sailor Moon or Evangelion also renewed the old magical girl and robot formats. Lodoss introduced western fantasy style and Tenchi Muyo invented the new harem genre. Now also these formats are coming to exaustion. Will the anime market be able to create new contents genres and stories in the future? From what i see now, the market is closing itself to those genres that are still popular and they know it will sell. There isn’t search for newa, just to wrap up something with a good container and sell that.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 14:57
#

That last paragraph is interesting, but at the time of the invention of these new genres, there also was a lot of bad stuff going on. Based on my impressions, if you look at 1995 the ratio of good to bad shows is about 11:27. Based on the same standard, the ratio of good to bad shows of the past spring season is for me 19:17, which is much higher. So I don’t agree that today’s anime lacks sould.

However, if you meant to say that today’s anime lacks originality, then okay, I can see more in that. The only series that really attempted to go beyond genres of the past spring season was Marie&Gali (Eden of the East, though impressive, was just another mystery-series in the end, although it did try). 1995 had Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, the beginning of CG, Memories and in a way also the Ping Pong Club (raunchiest fanservice ever in a TV-series at least) and Romeo’s Blue Skies (combining WMT with action). I agree that today’s anime should be more experimental, and daring to try out new stuff, but that’s not the same as today’s anime having lost its soul.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 15:35

I personally believe that anime could be more experimental and ambitious nowadays, but it has nothing to do with the quality: there are plenty of anime series with soul, and the ratio of good compared to bad series is much higher than it was twenty years ago. Still, I’d love to see what anime can evolve into.

So, what are your opinions on the matter? Are there too many harems and lazy adaptations of bishoujo games; is there an overload of moe in today’s anime market, or is it all just overly exaggerated and is moe underrated?

Aoi Hana – 02

by psgels, posted in Aoi Hana



You know, I said in my Umineko post that I’d be blogging Bakemonogatari… but its second episode was so underwhelming that I’ve nearly lost interest… I mean, the awesome OP was gone and instead we have a random J-Pop song about staplers, the entire first half of that episode was filled with pointless fanservice and the eventual conclusion was just… shallow. Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes. Hitagi’s story was so easily solved that they needed to waste the entire first half with Hitagi getting dressed and embarrassing that lead character. I’m not sure whether I want to cover this series every week. I’m still going to watch it, and it still can become very enjoyable, but at the moment it just feels like an inferior version of Shikabane Hime, and I’m just going to casually enjoy it instead of having to blog about it every week.

For now I’m just going to continue with a story that I’m much more certain of that it will turn out awesome: Aoi Hana. It’s really been ages since I’ve seen a good yuri-series. Its only flaw at the moment is its so called “everyone is lesbian” syndrome, but that’s just a first impression I got from it, and there are plenty of episodes to fix this one. What really stands out in this episode is the colourful characters. There are lots of emotions and creative yet realistic situations that can really get the best out of the characters, and take a look at that director: Kenichi Kasai, the director of the first seasons of Nodame Cantabile and Honey and Clover (yeah, yeah: some day I will watch that one). Sure, he also did Major and Kimikiss, but with the supposedly excellent source material, I see little that he can do wrong.

What I’m expecting of Aoi Hana is that it’s going to continue being such an excellent character-study, on top of the shoujo ai. The characters all feel like they’re living their own life, and they’re already incredibly colourful. The Noise time-slot has a limited amount of episodes, and this show will probably like Ristorante Paradiso only last for eleven episodes, and in that time-span it’s going to have to be able to pull off some believable character-development and make at least Fumi and Akira a couple of well-rounded characters.

This episode was mostly about the new clubs that the two of them joined: Akira went for the drama club (it would be nice if we could see her perform in the end. Stage performances in anime have always rocked), while Fumi whimsically entered the basketball club because its captain impressed her. Her running away from her past relationship with Chizu has been influencing her nearly non-stop, from trying to stay around other strong people, to simply hiding from Chizu herself as much as possible.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Subtle and charming episode. Aoi Hana definitely is among the top shows of the Summer Season.

Genius Party – 09 – Moondrive Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Moondrive is the oddball of Genius Party. It’s a full fledged comedy, much more than Shanghai Dragon was. It is really silly, and I got a great laugh out of it. The director of this one is a genius of aesthetics: Kazuto Nakazawa, who people may remember as the director of Comedy, one of the biggest visual masterpieces of the past decade. He also did the key animation for the OP of Ergo Proxy and the second OP of Blood+, the character-designs for Ashita no Nadja and was the animation director of Samurai Champloo. This is one guy who knows how to make things look good.

And it shows in Moondrive as well. The visuals in these fifteen minutes were absolutely fantastic. Don’t expect anything like what you saw in Comedy, but instead this time he went for a dark and gritty setting set on top of the moon. The character-designs are full of style and incredibly imaginative, and the animation is incredibly quirky: it knows exactly how to capture the comedic tone of this series, it’s quirkish and made to make you laugh at the black humour of this short movie.

So yeah, in terms of story and symbolism this short doesn’t match up to the other parts in Genius Party and a few of the jokes are rather predictable or repetitive, but the rest of the jokes and quirky characters really make up for it. This is another reason why I’m such a big fan of these collection of short stories: you’ll never know what’s going to turn up next, and you’ll never know when a short is going to make you roll on the floor laughing.

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

Phantom – 15

by psgels, posted in Phantom



The character-designs in this show kept bugging me. For some reason they looked different from usual anime, but I can’t exactly put my finger on why. It’s definitely something with the line art, though. In a lot of series, they’re shaded and coloured along with the colours around them, but in this series they’re all the same dark colour, and this series does nothing to mask or hide it. But then again, there are plenty of other series with the same, so that can’t be it. This effect especially stands out at some of the far away shots, where the line thickness is exactly the same as with the close-ups. The effect gives off something very old school, which combined with the modern CG shading and background art gives off a very down to earth feel for this series. It’s a very nice style for this series, although it is a bit of a pity that the animation budget isn’t as good as it used to be. The creators thankfully haven’t resorted to an increase of still frames, but the amount of distorted faces has increased drastically.

Anyway, about the rest of the episode: you can see that this series has changed A LOT since the Ein arc. While this of course is nothing new, it really doesn’t happen often for a series to have a really, really dark start, and then become much lighter in their atmosphere. There’s this warmth between Reiji and Cal that wasn’t there when Helen was still involved. Even when the characters are feeling down, it feels nothing like the tension between Ein and Zwei when they still were a team.

This episode was mostly light and quiet, but well worth that awesome climax of this episode, where the character-development really came together, and Reiji couldn’t shoot directly because he suspected the sniper to be Helen. He was about to both take revenge on the guys who killed Rose, complete a mission that would cause a lot of benefits for Inferno, but after being shaken up by Cal, the news that Helen might still be alive has really struck him. And ZOMG: Ein indeed is alive! I’m interested in how she survived: I could buy Reiji, but she was shot through the heart. That’s not something you can survive easily, can you?

Anyway, Cal obviously has the downside that she’s only been introduced a few episodes ago, and the majority of this episode therefore felt surprisingly light, but DAMN: seeing her crying when Reiji nearly got shot really was adorable. It was an excellent performance from her voice actress.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
A surprisingly light episode with some lacking animation, but chockful of character-development.

Pandora Hearts – 15

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



This series just continues its string of downright excellent episodes. This episode was much more about the characters than the mystery, but that’s also one thing that this series stands out at. The reunion between Oz and Alice was nothing short of adorable, and made the rather annoying cheese of a few months ago well worth it.

Alice, Gilbert and Oz work really well as a lead trio. All three of them try to fill in, for better or for worse, to fill in for each other’s flaws and weaknesses, and when you have such a setting as with this series to play with, it works really well.

We also learned something new about Break and his chain: it’s a chain, made to negate any influences from the Abyss, and so a chain made to hunt other chains, and for some reason this power is similar to that of Oz and B-Rabbit. This episode also reveals that Vincent is indeed trying to make Break do something: bring Alice’s memories to the real world. Since Break’s powers are very hard to beat in a fight, he indeed seems to have resorted to just manipulating the guy. This episode also showed that Break isn’t perfect, and flawed just like all the others. Now we just need to see some flaws of Vincent, but there’s no doubt that those are going to appear when we get a bit of a bigger look into his mind.

The end of this episode also had a nice little twist: why did the horse just take Alice and Oz with it, and leave Break and Gil behind in that collapsing dimension. Break was smiling, so there obviously had to be something else that saved them, but why was this so important for Sharon, and why the heck did she teleport them in the middle of a big meeting involving Oscar?

Also, I’ve stopped caring about the bad animation by now. This series just looks so damn good that I don’t mind the cut corners in the animation.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
An excellent character-based episode, after last week’s major plot twists.