Author: psgels

xxxHolic – 38

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic, xxxHolic Shunmuki



Short Synopsis: Haruka gives a request to Watanuki, and Syaoran finally appears in xxxHolic.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Am I glad to see this series back or what? This episode was also everything you could expect from this series, and I can only hope that many OVAs will follow after this one. What I especially loved in this series is the first half, which discussed the character-development between the cast, and especially the explanation why Domeki ended up staying with Watanuki in the first place.

In this episode, he claims that he really finds the guy to be annoying and a loudmouth, but the reason why he became friends with him was because he saw Watanuki one day with his deceased pet cat, mumbling about how he was destined to be alone. He still is a huge closed book at this point. To think that he still doesn’t say that he likes to be with Watanuki, like you’d expect after the two of them went through so much. The way he said it made it really sound like he’s just with Watanuki because of pity. It forms a huge contrast with his actions, and the sacrifices he’s willing to take for Watanuki.

And like expected: Syaoran finally makes his appearance. I believe that when the second season aired, the creators were still sorting out the licensing issues between Tsubasa Chronicle and therefore were unable to include the proper references. At this point, I really have no idea what to think of Tsubasa Chronicle. On one hand, it’s going to be very interesting to see the new arc animated, but on the other hand I’m very wary about the rumours that have been going on, that talk about the downright ridiculous plot twists that it has taken recently.

Street Fighter IV: Arata Naru Kizuna Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Whoa, whoa! What the heck!? I so expected to just watch this thing to get it over with. I so expected to just write a quick review, about yet another mildly entertaining action-flick which would just feature a bunch of bulked-up guys fighting each other until the hour of airtime was over. However, this is no action flick. This is Studio 4C!!

I’m still surprised at this thing. I almost don’t want to spoil its big strength, which I feel is something that’s best enjoyed when you simply shut up and watch it, but without mentioning I’m almost certain that my review is not going to make any sense at all, so if you like surprises, simply close this window and watch the OVA.

I was really surprised when I found out that Studio 4C was behind this, especially since the character-designs looked way too plain and average. But as the movie progressed, the experimental nature of this OVA became more than clear to me. It takes pure GUTS to pull such a stunt, and yet it’s so simple that any idiot could have thought of it.

With a title as Street Fighter, you indeed don’t have much choices on what to expect from such a thing: fighting, fighting, and more fighting. Well let me tell you: the length of this OVA is an hour. The first fight only takes place, 30 MINUTES after the start. That’s at the HALFWAY POINT. The first half is spent purely on character-building, building up, setting everything right for the storyline in order to make everything run smoothly for when the real meat of the storyline does begin.

I’m entirely new to the Street Fighter franchise, and yet because of this I had no trouble at all getting used to the characters. And even when the fighting does begin, this series always remains the focus on the characters, and never on the action (which mainly consists out of characters punching each other). With this, this show manages to entirely avoid every single pitfall of the game based anime genre, which is so notorious for its crappy adaptations. The characters are simply excellent and continue to captivate throughout the entire hour of airtime.

What also helps is the music, which is absolutely fantastic. It knows exactly when to remain in the background, or when step in the foreground again. It continuously helps to keep the atmosphere going. My only real complaint here is the animation. This is Studio 4C we’re talking about, and the art just looks way too plain for one of their works. The animation is also nothing special, which can be a bit disappointing. Especially certain characters’ haircuts take a bit of getting used to.

But yeah, so what if the story involves yet another bad guy who needs to be stopped? So what if the ending doesn’t conclude the storyline? This OVA is sickeningly simple, when you look at it from a distance it’s got quite a few cliches, but for me it simply continued to push the right buttons throughout its entire airtime. It’s touching, yet never cheesy. The storyline’s has its problems, but never do these problem get in the way of what’s really important. The animation is simple, and yet it never looks cheap. It’s nothing deep, yet it’s an hour of excellent entertainment. Here you have it, the proof that any crappy concept can be made awesome with the right people behind it.

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

Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai – 06

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



Short Synopsis: Yumemi and Munto finally accept each other.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so much for “the OVA Recaps will end after episode 6”. There is no way that the cliff-hanger at the end of this episode formed the end of the two OVAs, so this episode must have inserted quite a bit of original content in order to prevent the OVA material from running out. My guess is that in the OVAs, the evil elves simply died when Yumemi and Munto zapped them, and here instead they remain alive for the rest of the series.

Still, the OVA material will certainly be up at the end of the next episode, and it’s there where the fun really begins. Now that Munto’s world has made so much of an impact on Yumemi’s world, I want to see the results of this: reporters and police and just about everyone needs to notice that something strange went on. Those whose homes were destroyed shouldn’t randomly disappear like they never existed. That’s indeed the big weakness of the OVAs: the setting just doesn’t feel alive. There are some very nice ideas put into it, but two hours is just WAY too little time.

Still, as a standalone episode, this remains a pretty good one, and it yet again puts more faith in my theory that the OVAs would have rocked if they were given more time. Lots of different characters got some attention in this episode, and especially Munto’s subordinates turned out to be pretty interesting and fun characters.

Now the big question here remains Gass. The guy probably died at the end of the OVAs (after all, after all that build-up, what point would there be to keep him alive at that point?), but with the TV-series, the creators might have other plans for him.

Hetalia: Axis Powers – 04

by psgels, posted in Hetalia: Axis Powers



Short Synopsis: Japan makes his appearance.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
One thing I don’t get with this series is why they’re bothering to make next-episode previews. I mean, what’s the point, the episodes are just random strings of sketches, why would you need a 30 second preview of something that’s only 5 minutes long?

Anyway, in this episode you really can see that the original Hetalia was just a string of random comics put together. This episode has about five of these, mostly dealing with Japan, but there’s also a short skit about Italy’s history, where it was ruled by Austria.

The reference from U-Boats to giant robots was quite nice, since the second world war probably played a huge role the popularization of he giant robot-genre, though I do hope that Japan in the future episodes is going to get a bit more made fun of. Apart from the U-Boat references, he felt more like another straight guy for all the Italy jokes (okay, and the penis joke, but that one didn’t work too well).

The history-lesson was nice though. I never knew about those long Italian wars which nearly completely destroyed the Italy which was thriving the renaissance. If I understood this correctly, Italy was in the middle of a war between France and Spain, and it ended up fighting countless wars with France, and eventually it lost its powers when France allied itself with the Ottoman Empire. After the wars, Austria came and took control over the country for a while.

Casshern Sins – 20

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Casshern finally meets Luna
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Casshern Sins has just been a string of awesomeness for the past few episodes. Especially this episode was one of those where everything comes together. Casshern finally gets the chance to meet Luna, and because the entire series has been building up to this moment, the results were nothing short of awesome.

So as it turns out, Luna doesn’t turn out to be such a sweetheart after all. In this episode, she shows that she hates things that are about to die, so because of that she simply kills them off. Dune’s reasoning seems to be that if they’d die, they’d make Luna sad, so it’s just better to kill them off so that this doesn’t happen. In the end, Luna’s just someone who’s been obsessed with her own status: she never dies, and if she were to, everyone would go with her. She continuously needs to heal others, and eventually she changed from a nice healer to some sort of obsessive guru-type person.

This episode also seems to explain why there are so many of those angry robots fighting. Before the ruin, they basically lived in a world where they couldn’t die: if they got hurt, they’d simply visit Luna in order to get healed. Because of that, they grew up in a society in which there was no fear of death, and the morals must have been pretty low on each other’s mind: nobody had to struggle for survival, because Luna was there anyway! Now that the ruin started, and everyone’s going to die anyway, they still can’t remember what it means to have your life lost, or to take the lives of others, since it’s so new to them.

She really is symbolic of the sun, in a much less overglorified fashion as usual: she’s there. Without her, everyone will die, but she never grants wishes, cares for anyone or helps those in need.

But damn, this series has now accumulated quite an army of villains: we already had Dio, Leda and Braiking Boss, and now Luna also joined their ranks. All four of them have their own agendas, and with only four episodes left in this series it’s going to be very interesting to see how all of their story-lines are going to be concluded.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 20

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume loses something as he and Taki try to get rid of the evil youkai.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, another adorable episode. It’s a good thing that Taki seems to be a recurring character, because there’s still so much potential left in her even though her story already took up two episodes. I’m especially hoping for a bit more romance (which really doesn’t happen often). It’s going to be interesting how she’s planning to make up for the time she lost, and spent without any friends whatsoever.

I was surprised when it turned out that the youkai had no intention to keep its promises. You don’t usually see that: most of them act very much according to a pattern, and promises are usually very important to them, but I guess that the malicious ones are different from that.

Now that the first half of the second season is over, I do have to say that I still like the series, but it does seem to be missing something when compared to the first season. I just can’t exactly put my finger onto what that is. Of course, the Tama-chapters and some others were awesome, but I don’t know… I just can’t call the second season on the same level of goodness as the first season…

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 44

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Blah blah, Saji Louise, blah blah blah…
Episode Rating: 6/10 (Disappointing)
Oh, and I so hoped that this series’ finale wouldn’t go into this direction. This episode was just one big bad sign. It just consisted out of a bunch of people screaming and going emo, and in the end most of the parties simply ended up retreating without still not saving anything. I really hoped that the finale would be more like Gundam Wing, rather than Zeta Gundam, but right now all the signs are pointing to the fact that the creators are going for an emo-ending, rather than a political one.

Saji and Louise obviously were annoying yet again. This episode was supposed to be one of their big climaxes, and with the huge build-up they already had it still failed to capture me. Afterwards, Saji yelling of “Stop! Revenge isn’t going to solve anything!!!1!!” also felt so out of place in this series. I can only hope that Soma Pieres somehow listened to the guy.

And the ending of this episode only increased my fears. Wang Lui Ming had a great plan: give Veda’s location to the Celestial Beings. This would be something that completely shifted Ribbons’ plans and finally give the guy a bit of a challenge. But all of this was ruined when Nena went emo and killed her and her brother. Ribbons in the meantime still is the evil overlord he was twenty episodes ago, and Anew’s “big twist” was just shallow at best. One big problem with these innovators as well is that they’re hardly fleshed out. I mean, what do we really know about these people, other than that they’ve strange haircuts and weird names?

Oh god, I so hope that my fears are wrong with this. This series went on such a good path for it to be ruined by such a crappy finale. My only hope is the revelation of Aeolia Shenberg’s ultimate motives. It’d better be something really good and innovative.

Jigoku Shoujo – 71

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A famous flower arranger calls Jigoku Tsuushin
Episode Rating: 8/10 (if only because of that awesome plot twist at the end)
Muahaha! Oh, this is going to be awesome! I guess that I should have seen it coming, but the end of this episode finally reveals the purpose of Yuzuki, something that the show has been building up for nineteen episodes so far: She’s going to be the next Jigoku Shoujo! Oh, this is going to mean two things:
– How the heck is she going to accept the revenges that she loathes? How the heck is she going to accept her job?
– If she’s going to take over Jigoku Shoujo’s role, then what the heck is going to happen to Ai!? Was she just brought back by the spider temporarily in order to find a replacement for her? Talk about cruel.

Oh, and here I thought that she was simply going to be the next Tsugumi. I guess that that now reveals that the final scene of the second season: it probably was a flash-forward (or whatever that’s called) to the future in which Yuzuki has taken up her role as Jigoku Shoujo. The finales of Jigoku Shoujo are always excellent due to the immense amount of build-up that goes into them, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how the creators are planning to instate her as the next Jigoku Shoujo.

Anyway, the rest of this episode was the standard though solid revenge. The theme is yet another one of the evils of society: heritages. Oh, those things can be real bitches if both parties can’t agree on what they want. If I understood correctly, in this episode two sisters try to respectively poison and send the other to hell because of it. The boyfriend was a bit crazy, though: why couldn’t he just point out that the drink was poisoned, rather than gobble everything up in order to prove his point?

White Album – 07

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: The identity of the mysterious high school girl gets revealed and Rina invites Touya to his own recording session.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
So in the end, this remains a harem, though it also remains a damn good one. I’m not watching this series to see how many girls Touya can screw, and I don’t care whether this series ends with Touya ends up breaking up with Yuki, making up with her, or even if he ends up screwing everyone and his dog (not exactly the most appropriate figure of speech to use here, but you get the point). Right now, I’m satisfied enough with the show’s execution and how well it captured the different emotions of the different characters.

If School Days was blessed with the same execution, I bet that I wouldn’t have hated it as much as I did in the end. Especially in the harem genre, where it’s WAY too easy to throw a bunch of girls together near one protagonist, making them fall in love with him for the shallowest reasons, you NEED this good execution, otherwise you’ll just end up with a copy of all the fifty or so (how many are there anyway?) harems that are already out there.

Anyway, the mysterious high school girl turns out to be the girl that Touya was supposed to tutor. It turns out to be an easy job, since she seems to be a very good student and her mother simply hired him in an attempt do do her daughter a favour. She’s a typical girl whose parents are always out, and stands out the most in the surprisingly direct comments she makes towards Touya.

I think that this episode also showed that Touya doesn’t believe he’s cheating, but simply was helping out a friend in need. However later, he does behave a bit obsessive when Rina suddenly pops up, up to the point where Misaki just walks out of him. Haruka also turns out to have feelings for the guy. We really need to see a bit more about her.

One thing that I feel like is missing here is other males. True tears did this quite well, where the female characters also had feelings for other males apart from the lead character, but here Touya is the only one for the female characters to fall in love with. Are there no other childhood friends for both Haruka and Misaki? How come we never see Yuki hanging out with other boys? Ah well, it must have been a conscious decision from the creators to not make this into an overly convoluted soap opera love polygon, but it does feel a bit jarring at times.

Birdy the Mighty Decode – 19

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: In order to save Birdy, Senkawa needs to learn about her past.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, it’s finally time to reveal Birdy’s past. Something that the past five episodes kept hinting at. Since her story couldn’t be squeezed into one episode, this episode is mostly building up, and setting up the basics of how she grew up and met Natoru. Not the most exciting episode, but definitely a necessary one.

So as it turns out, Birdy was really raised as one of the elite. For her entire life, she was trained to become part of the intergalactic police. Natoru turns out to be an Aruta of a much lower class, which explains how the two former friends ended up on the opposite sides of the law: they just happened to meet each other, but they grew up in completely different environments.

Interestingly, this also forces Senkawa to reveal to Birdy’s superiors that Nataru and especially his father are on the planet earth (and subsequently that his father died). This probably is going to mean that the intergalactic police is going to involve itself heavily in the final part of this series.

Overall, albeit uneventful this was an adorable episode, and a bit sad, I guess: Birdy was hardly given the time to grow up like a normal girl, or choose what she wanted to be because she seemed to have been specifically bred to be a weapon. I’m interested in what the big secret of her past is. This episode, along with all the other flashbacks are building up to something… I just can’t put my finger to exactly what.