Author: psgels

Jigoku Shoujo – 75

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A boy who is bullied by some of his classmates calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
When talking about episodic series about a school setting, then the bullied kid is often a very popular storyline (or take any dark series set in school). I really have to say that this has been the best story about bullying I have ever seen. One of the most thought-provoking episodes of Jigoku Shoujo yet and yet again an awesome addition to the finale of the third season of this series.

Nearly always, these bullied stories are very exaggerated: the bullies are portrayed as pure evil, and the bullied one is entirely portrayed as the victim, or at the least the bullies are some sort of misguided villains. We should sympathize with the victims and hate the bullies, because that’s the politically correct thing to do. The best example I can think of right now is that episode Shigofumi dedicated to it. We could sympathize with the bullied one because he was just a good kid who only made one mistaken.

This episode showed that with bullying, people too often try to seek the problem with the bullies. The guy in this episode had enough reasons to be hated. He comes from a rich family, and is basically a spoiled brat, and yet he stood SO FAR away from the usual spoiled rich kids that anime has become notorious for. There’s this whole “I am better than you”-air around him, and that’s why he gets bullied, which only increases this air, spiralling out of control. Especially since the ones who bully him do so mostly because they hate how the guy is wasting money like he is. He continues to flaunt around with expensive tools, like very expensive watches, flat-screens and cameras, while the bullied guy has lost his father, has a sister who out of necessity needed to grow up fast in order to support her family because he himself is bad with the household chores.

Especially the scene in which Ai hands out Wanyuudo to the guy: he really expected himself to be the pure victim, even though he should be happy that he’s got so much money to spend. I think that he never really tried to talk things out with the bullies: whenever they start to threaten him, he’d just pay them off with money, or whatever gadget he was holding. It’s a very interesting kind of discrimination.

And damn… I could have sworn that we have seen one of the bullies before, but I can’t remember the exact episode in which that happened!

In any case, I’m surprised that the series is still going for revenges at this point, with only three episodes left. There was also hardly any Yuzuki in this episode, so I really wonder for what kind of climax the creators are going. It’s clear that they’re building up like crazy right now, and I’m not complaining about this at all, since the past few episodes have been absolutely amazing. And then again, the creators have had an entire season to fully plan in that climax of theirs, and they’ve also done a very successful climax twice before, so something really strange is going to have to happen in order to screw up the ending for the third season.

Tytania – 22

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Idris’ past
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Well, that’s a very strange place to start talking about people’s past. This episode really should have been shown much earlier in the series, and I can see really no reason to postpone it so long. This is supposed to be the start of the finale, the background should be done by now.

Still, it was a very welcome episode of course, that fully detailed Idris’ obsession with power, and where his ambitions come from: his dead father. I’m also surprised that Ajman only has been sitting on the throne for five years now. That just proves the point that the previous episode tried to make: Tytania is so caught up in inner struggles: everyone wants to be the one with the absolute power over such a large empire, and Idris as well. Jouslain is the only one who so far has managed to think beyond that.

And really, the mysteries around Lydia only continue to grow. The only thing she did in this episode was look sad because Balami (cursed Katakana that made me think that his name was spelled as BaRUami) would be away for a longer while due to Jouslain’s mission to clean up the mess that Zalish left.

Tytania – 21

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Now it’s Jouslain’s turn to go after Fan Hyulick (or however he wants us to spell his name).
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
While at first I thought that this was a relatively uneventful episode, but near the end, this series got a totally new dimension because of it. Tytania really has been a cat and mouse game with Zalish and Idris and their henchmen on one side and Fan Hyulick on the other. Jouslain? He’s just an observer. He doesn’t care at all about catching Hyulick, he only wants Tytania to thrive and takes the appropriate actions for it. He actually realizes that it’s not going to work to just kill off Hulick and get it over with. Eventually the empire will fall apart and Fan really is the perfect way to stabilize the empire by giving it a common enemy to fight at.

All his actions before probably were all done in order to get rid of the inner conflicts of the Tytania government, and something is telling me that his goal is to get rid of Zalish and Idris, in order to create a stable and unified Tytania, rather than one that’s ruled by a bunch of different people with all different ideas and ideals. that also explains why he hasn’t done anything against Ariabart: he has him on a leash right now. The guy is very weak and easy to manipulate, and for a Duke he hardly has any ideas or initiatives of his own.

Overall, the only real flaw of Tytania lies within the Fan Hyulick-storyline, in the way that the creators like to use Deus ex Machina in order to keep his plans smooth. Fortunately though, this flaw doesn’t get in the way of what makes this series good: the politics. It really has been awesome to see a series that’s fully dedicated to politics, and hardly anything else.

But seriously… there are only five episodes left… and still Lydia hasn’t done anything important.

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 09

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: The series skips ahead to the death of the emperor.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I’ve received some comments about how my summaries of this series (and others as well) are always rather ‘inaccurate’ and sometimes even don’t make any sense. I appreciate these comments, because there are enough times when I get a bit too lazy in trying to understand raws. It’s especially bad with this series, since there are no subs whatsoever and more people than usual are going to use these summaries of mine to find out what happened. This series also doesn’t make the job of understanding it any easier due to the large amount of feudal Japanese inserted, not to mention the large amounts of unintroduced flashbacks, dreams and time skips, but I’m going to try to deliver summaries that are at least a bit more accurate than what they used to be.

In any case, the main event in this episode was the death of the emperor, which leaves Lady Fujitsubou and many others as a widow. This means that a lot of things are going to change now. Genji’s kid is probably going to have to take up the throne as soon ass he grows up, and the incident also allowed Genji and Fujitsubou to talk to each other again for a bit (even if it was just during the funeral, and they indeed continue to avoid each other for many years afterwards).

But yeah, especially Fujitsubou has it tough. I really don’t know about the royal system at that time, so this paragraph consists just out of a bunch of guesses that seem the most likely to me (please DO correct me if this is wrong), but it seems that she is mostly caught up with what to do with her son: if she stays quiet, she’s going to be the king’s mother, keep her influence and status, but she will be putting a fake emperor on the throne (which must have been a huge shame at the time). If she does confess, then she’ll immediately lose her status and her child will probably have a really hard time growing up in the least.

In the end of the episode, we see how she cuts off all her hair, and becomes a female monk after saying her goodbye to Genji. In this way, she possibly creates a scandal on herself, but her son will be allowed to stay out of everything and just continue his lifestyle while she can repent for the sin she committed.

With two episodes left, Murasaki now really has to come to the foreground, and she will probably be the one that Genji turns to within his sorrow. I really wonder what kind of climax the creators have prepared for this series. How far are we into the original novels anyway? Has it been consistently one volume per episode, or has the pacing increased over the past few episodes?

Michiko e Hatchin – 21

by psgels, posted in Michiko e Hatchin



Short Synopsis: Michiko tries to find Hatchin as she’s chased by the police.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Oh, how I love this series. Why must there be only one episode left!?

In any case, this episode was very much about the dark side of Michiko e Hatchin as it prepared for the final episode… and finishes off Satoshi’s storyline. I must say that his time together with Hatchin made a lot of impact on me. Hatchin is such an awesome damsel in distress: while she pretty much got dragged along by Satoshi, she constantly tried to argue with him and run away. Even going as far as trying to throw rocks at the guy when he had his gun pointed at her.

Satoshi’s end was… amazing, but not in the usual way. His development in the end was so incredibly subtle. There was no “zomg look here I did something nice for a change”. She came to him at a time in which he was in trouble and alone as well, there was just his time hanging out with Hatchin, his constant arguing with her, and this one line in which he acknowledged her (when she tried to throw that rock to him). With that, his sacrifice made perfect sense. Anime has a bad track record of making bad-ass punks like him turn soft in an overly cheesy way, but there was no cheese whatsoever in Satoshi’s death. His demise was brutal, there was no crying, overacted sadness or anything. Just a couple of smiling punks that grinned as they finished him off. It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a cold death from one of my favourite characters.

The past two episodes were really about the Hatchin vs. Satoshi, but at the same time Michiko did enough to keep her side of the story busy. Hatchin really has a lot of influence on the people she meets, and the creators did such a wonderful job on making this assumable. Michiko, a woman who is supposed to be on the run instead of hiding focuses on trying to get Hatchin back, throwing herself onto the lions. We’ve seen thus far that the police are not exactly perfect in this series but you don’t want to be walking right into them or you’ll be screwed.

The new policemen also felt like they were supposed to be introduced at this point, not like Samurai Champloo which needed a bunch of villains for its action-packed finale. And oh boy, speaking of which: I was so sure that the creators were going to wait till the next episode to show Hiroshi, and yet the bugger already popped up right now.

The next episode… it really promises to become an amazing one. I love endings which don’t revolve around two extremely powerful people going at it against each other (after all, it’s just too predictable, we’ve seen those things many times before), and in the end it’s going to be a combination of a cat-and-mouse game with the police and that loser of a Hiroshi trying to justify himself in front of his daughter. The interesting thing is of course going to be that Hatchin really doesn’t care about whether she can meet her father or not, but she is essentially trying to find him for Michiko. With Fuu, her journey was pretty much over when she met her father, but for Michiko and Hatchin, there’s a whole more dimension between them and Hiroshi.

At this point, I’d definitely label this series at the top of the season, even above Casshern Sins which in the end didn’t live up to its expectations. Michiko e Hatchin more than did, and I’m SO looking forward to that final episode, and at the same time I’d just wish it were longer. You can pretty much consider me a Manglobe-fanboy at this point. Samurai Champloo and Ergo Proxy already were incredibly good, but Michiko e Hatchin far surpassed them.

Shikabane Hime – 23

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: Hokuto, Akasha and whatshisname (the bug guy) carry out their plan to destroy the Kougonshuu (that’s what it was called, right?)
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Great to see that even though the finale is near, this series has yet to show any signs of weakness. That’s what I like to see, and I really have to say that Shikabane Hime grew into one of the best shounen series out there. I’m still not sure who exactly was responsible for it: the director of Gilgamesh, Gainax or feel (although the latter seems unlikely, looking at its past record), or a combination of the three of them, but any fears I had over the second season were proven wrong, and it’s the definite proof that you can have a few overdone clichés here and there as long as the execution is right. Yes, you can put a bunch of teenagers in the middle of adult conflicts, but if you want to do that you really have to know what you’re doing. ^^;

What surprised me in this episode though was that there was no background on the final two members of the seven stars, and most of it was building up, meaning that their stories are saved for the final two episodes. I remember when Kekkaishi did this, it felt really out of place. It was like… “Muaha, the climax is about to begin… but first let me tell you about my past”. Still, Shikabane Hime might actually pull it off. Nearly all of the backgrounds of the seven stars have been huge revelations and juicy plot twists. I can see how they can be used to spice up these final two episodes, and I’m actually quite eager to find out about them.

I also liked how this finale has a deeper meaning than “all hell breaks loose so let’s just send a wave of zombies to make this even more apparent”. Because there now are so many shikabane out there, it was going to be pretty easy for all of the Shikabane Hime to gather their 108 kills needed in order to go to heaven. Since they think just like regular people, it adds an interesting dimension of staying versus saying goodbye while saving those around you and going to heaven in the process.

And I guess that even though the two remaining seven stars didn’t get their background, Akasha did. His final revelation is saved for the final two episodes (either that or I missed a very important part), but we now know that his Shikabane Hime managed to slay 108 Shikabane, and then something really bad happened. Is this the case for every single Shikabane Hime (in that case a lot of monks must have been screwed that way), or did something happen between the two of them involving the Kougonshuu?

And finally, Hokuto seemed more like a human than she ever did in this episode. Was this all because of her fight with Makina? Did she find her reason to continue to exist even though she lacks a grudge this way? I also like how the creators aren’t trying to make her into a sympathetic villain like most series out there. Sure, her past was fucked up, but she never tries to put herself into the victim’s seat.

And on a really final note: that background song rocked. Choirs FTW!

Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai



Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai, otherwise known as the Munto Remake or that show with the incredibly long name. The original Munto was a series of two OVAs that simply couldn’t live up to the huge story that they tried to create. That’s why it was great news that it was going to get a remake TV-version that could give the story the right amount of time that it needed to… and yet this series turned into my single biggest disappointment of the past Winter-Season.

The “remake”-part of the title is incredibly misleading. This series is more like an exact copy of the first two episodes with about an hour and a half of new material pasted at the end. There was so much promise for an excellent series, and yet the creators spent the first six episode blatantly copying and pasting and did hardly anything to fix the original problems of the OVA. But to be fair, I’m going to review this series from the perspective of someone new to the Munto franchise. If you’ve already seen the OVAs, then you can easily subtract 30% from the rating, skip the series and watch the movie that’s going to be released in the future because then this series has nothing new to add.

Well then, Munto tells the story about two worlds: one of them is at war and in huge troubles, and a random girl named Yumemi who lives in the other world has enough powers to save it from destruction. Well, that’s the basic premise anyway. The pacing is very fast and it hardly leaves any moment for the viewer to get bored of the show, and that’s one of the show’s biggest strengths: there’s always something going on.

The problems mostly lie in the incredibly short length of the series. The characters have got so much potential to grow into a memorable cast, but they’re not given the chance because the airtime only consists out of nine episodes. Especially Yumemi’s friends are pretty likable, but a huge part of the cast just isn’t fleshed out and developed enough. The result is that some characters suddenly start acting completely out of character in the final episode.

The same problem is there with the setting: Munto takes place in a huge one, with different countries with different alliances, but we hardly get to know anything about it, even the most important one which is lead by one of the main characters of this series receives hardly any attention at all. Because of this it’s hard to care about what’s going on.

Thankfully this is Kyoto Animation, so there is a lot of eye candy in this series. Especially the first six episodes (the ones copied directly from the OVAs) look awesome, and the new material, while significantly lower in quality, still have lots of nice movement and hardly any still frames. There’s a lot of style in this series, and most of the time it’s a feast for the senses.

But yeah, that doesn’t prevent the flaws from sticking out. The story was meant for 26 episodes; there is no way that you can squeeze it in only nine of them, and the creators indeed screwed up a lot here. Thanks to the addictive storytelling and animation we still have ourselves a pretty decent series here, but it could have been so much better.

Storytelling: 8/10
Characters: 7/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 6/10

Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai – 09

by psgels, posted in Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai



Short Synopsis: Yumemi uses her powers to instantly take care of most of the major conflicts in the series.
Episode Rating: 6,5/10 (Lacking)
Well, there you have it. There’s going to be a movie, which is going to recap all of the new material of the series (read: copy and paste) and paste the real climax of Munto after it. There was no point to the TV-series at all, and it really reminds me of the Death and Rebirth Movie of Evangelion: pointless and only there to squeeze some extra cash out of a franchise. It’s such a shame: if the creators only took the time to rewrite the original story and make it fit within 26 episodes, we would have had ourselves an absolute gem here. Instead, the series is merely a nice enough series for those who haven’t seen the original OVAs yet.

Having said that, though, this final episode left a lot to be desired, unfortunately. I would have been at least satisfied with a decent action-packed finale, but for some very strange reason Yumemi suddenly started acting completely out of character. She’s been this calm yet reserved girl up till now, and this episode transforms her into some sort of cheerful super-heroine of some sorts. Munto also turned into a completely different person after the climax ended.

But hey, at least we now know where the extremely short skirts from the ED came from: they were simply Munto’s strange sense of fashion. I’m still not sure why exactly he decided to give Yumemi and her friends those new clothes in the first place, and where the school uniforms came from…

In this episode it also really becomes clear that Yumemi’s power needed to be fleshed out much more than it already was. She simply zaps everyone and all the problems are instantly gone, and I also assume that she’s simply going to do the same in the movie. The creators have just god-moded her way too much throughout the series.

In the end, looking back now I regret blogging this series. I’m really going to have to be more careful on that with the upcoming Spring Season, and I predict that it’s going to take a looong while before I’m going to be blogging another Kyoto Animation-show again. Please, Kyoani: do SOMETHING that’s out of your comfort-zone.

Casshern Sins – 23

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Casshern vs. Luna
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Before I start with the episode, I’m going to have to say some negative things about this series. It’s one of my favourites of the currently airing series, so I’m not happy with it either, but I do want to say a few things about it. If the series had the luck to air half a year earlier, I probably wouldn’t have noticed this, but the past weeks some of the other currently airing shows have reminded me of the difference between an excellent series and a truly outstanding series. Ever since it aired, this series has been on this list of favourites. That creates some expectations, and in the past weeks I realized that in the end the series didn’t live up to it.

In the second half of this series, the show has become much more consistent and predictable when compared to the first half. It merely founds its pace, and consistently went along with it. It never hit any lows, nor did it hit any heights, and that’s the problem I’m getting to. In the end, my favourite episode of this series remains episode seven. In comparison, some of the other shows airing this season have truly surpassed themselves in the past month. For me, Michiko e Hatchin, Shikabane Hime, Clannad After Story, Jigoku Shoujo, Birdy The Mighty Decode, Druaga no Tou and Ride Back have been consistently getting better and better for their own standards, while Casshern’s level of quality has pretty much stayed the same, with the result that quite a few series have already caught up with it. At the end of February, I was fairly certain that my Top 3 of series that started airing in the past Fall Season would contain Casshern Sins, but at this point I’m not so sure anymore. For any regular series, it’s a real achievement to be able to produce an episode that is as good as your average Casshern episode, but this series already showed that it was excellent in its first quarter. For me, it did sort-of fail in meeting the stellar expectations it set in its beginning. I remember Himitsu faced the same problem, but at least that series turned significantly better in its final quarter, and it’s a shame that Casshern couldn’t follow.

But yeah, that doesn’t mean that this series isn’t getting any worse. This episode was yet again really good for a semi-final episode. What I especially liked was how Luna doesn’t have any combat abilities at all. That really prevents the ending from turning into a boring overblown fight between the main character and villain until one of them goes down. I also liked how many story threads were solved in this episode: Luna and Casshern both quit trying to make the other understand and went their own ways, Dio finally considered Leda, which is something which Leda really appreciated and saved her from her own darkness.

And finally we learn the cause of the ruin: when Casshern impaled her, her blood flowed throughout all the oceans of the earth. This transformed Luna from a goddess of destruction into a goddess of life. And indeed it sort-of makes sense that her new blood can be used to heal the effects of her old blood. Casshern then became the first one to experience the effects of her new blood, but as a side-effect he lost his memory.

The next episode is going to be a very interesting one, as it seems to be more centred around Braiking Boss and Luna than Casshern. The potential for an original ending is very good, so let’s hope that it’s not going to screw up. I remember how someone noted that there could be a second season, but I wouldn’t count on it: this is Madhouse, after all. They only very rarely make sequels (the perfect way to prevent you from milking out your own franchises). However, there is no way that that ending is going to wrap every single open thread in the storyline:
– What the heck was the point of the coloured rock anyway?
– What was the point of making Dio, Leda AND Casshern robots who could potentially reproduce? It feels a bit and unimportant to just include it for a small piece of Leda’s background. Apart from that it’s never really been used.

what I want at least in the next episode is the background of Braiking Boss. It would be a darn shame if he’d just impale Luna to make her blood flow across the rivers of the earth again and disappear. In this episode it became clear that he isn’t a bad guy after all, but he had just been searching for Luna as well, and making the right preparations to save the world. The question is however: what caused this change of heart? Wasn’t he the one who ordered to kill Luna? Of course he may have realized the mistakes of his actions, but I’d really like to see that confirmed.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 23

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume’s foster father tells him about Reiko.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Okay, so I’ve had my share of problems with the second season so far, but this episode was without a doubt the best episode of Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou, and not just because of the strange change in animation style (which did help, though). This episode really was everything that makes this such a good series, and FINALLY we get some more background on Reiko!

I think that one of the reasons why we’ve seen so little of Natsume’s friends and family is that he hardly ever hangs out with them. This episode felt like the first time he spent some quality time with his foster father (or however that’s called, I think his name was Shigire), and after all this time, he’s still having trouble to fit in. When at the end of the episode, he destroys his own room, seeing Shigire accept everything that happened, including Natsume’s very bad attempt at lying, it felt like Natsume had grown much, much closer to his family.

And I’m not sure who exactly was responsible for the animation in this episode, but it looked really good. At the expense of a bit of detail, there was lots of movement, and this worked especially well with the Youkai that appeared in this episode, especially when it tried to eat Natsume. That one would have failed completely if it was just handled with the regular animation of this series.

It also was very interesting to see Reiko from the perspective of someone who can’t see Youkai. When Shigire met her, she really looked like a strange girl who talked to trees, instead of the manipulative yet good-hearted girl that we’ve come to know her as. The choice for the boy’s voice actor also was a strange one: he nearly continuously screaming, but I guess that that’s where the realism comes in: real boys his age also tend to scream and yell when they get worked up.