Author: psgels

Casshern Sins – 15

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: A Dune-episode
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Awesome colours!)
You know, it might actually be the case that Casshern’s random encounters are not going to appear in second half of this series anymore, and instead this series is now going to full-time focus on the most important characters. This episode was entirely about Dune, the next episode seems to deal with Dio and Leda again, and so it seems that the random episodes in the first half were really meant to flesh out the setting of this series. Now that that’s happened, it’s time for the characters to develop, and I can’t wait to see both the lesser and the better characters of this series change.

This episode also yet again provides a piece of the puzzle on what happened to Luna: Casshern did stab her through the heart, and she fell into a pool of some sort, and Dune witnessed this. However, nobody said anything about Luna losing her immortality: her body simply sunk to the bottom of that pool, and somehow Dune assumed that she wouldn’t survive it. The big question is now: why did he care so much about protecting her in the first place when she’s immortal? Why didn’t he dive after her to rescue her body? It’s now obvious that she survived, although I guess that it took quite a bit of time for her to recover. The question also remains where the ruins came from and how Casshern became immortal himself.

I also absolutely loved the art in this episode. The art director really went all out on this one, and the use of bright colours forms a huge contrast with the dark and gritty colours that were used in the rest of the series. This again symbolizes the new direction this series is going to take, I assume: the first half of the show was full of despair, so it was mostly filled with grey colours, and perhaps red. The second half, however, confirmed that Luna is alive, and is filled with hope instead, so that’s going to make for bright and cheerful colours.

But the landscape that this episode took place in was also fantastic and truly original. I’m still not sure exactly what it was… some sort of dried up ocean that was filled with semi-glass transparent blue salt, or something?

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 15

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume teams up with a bunny-youkai in order to get rid of an evil spirit.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
It’s really good to see this series back again, and I’m interested whether the second season will be able to top the first season. Unlike shows as Shikabane Hime and Birdy the Mighty, there’s no real clear distinction between the first and second season of this series, but this really is the point where the show is going to have to evolve.

I think that the episodic storylines have already hit their height with the Hotaru-episode, but there’s still plenty of potential left for when a big storyline appears, so I’m keeping my eye out for Natori. Until that happens, I’m going to enjoy the stories as they flesh out Natsume and Nyanko-sensei, along with the setting. And laugh at Nyanko-sensei’s antics, of course.

This episode definitely showed a side of the world that we haven’t seen yet: where do evil spirits come from? This episode shows that most spirits start out without any malicious intentions, but some sort of grudge can turn them into evil one. Just as how one act of kindness can have a huge impact on them, they’ll never forget an act of malice and these acts influence them very strongly. I’m not exactly sure about the difference between regular Youkai and things like Nyanko-sensei, who behave very un-youkai-like, though I think that that’s because he’d had a lot more to experience, whereas most Youkai simply stay at one spot.

This episode may have been a bit too cheesy at the end and one-sided on the environmentalism messages, but nevertheless Gen was an adorable character, especially since he spent most of the episode in the form of a snow bunny. ^^; I liked the comment that Nyanko made at the end of the episode: youkai aren’t as fragile as you’d think.

I’m not sure whether I’m going to continue with HorribleSubs’s releases for this series. Sure, it’s nice to watch this show with subtitles for once, but I miss Natsume Yuujinchou in HD. ^^;

Some quick first Impressions: Koukaku no Regios, Slayers Evolution-R and Ride Back

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Koukaku no Regios

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters a school in a world where people have strange powers.
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (Might be interesting)
You know, this may not be the best series, but this was exactly what I’ve been looking for this season: originality. Sure, this episode was full of clichés, but for every bad idea, the creators seem to have included a good idea, and I’m interested to see where the creators can take this. This episode took place on two different places: a desert city that’s attacked by a huge monster and a strange kind of high school, and I especially liked the former, and I wonder how it’s going to tie in with the high school setting. The high school itself had all the necessary archetypes present, but that female lead felt refreshing and much less one-sided than I suspected. It’s also a nice touch: if you live in a world where everyone has powers, then there are of course people going to abuse them, especially if they’re bratty high school kids, and you need a bit of extra effort to keep these guys in check. So overall, I like this: there are lots of different characters despite the clichés and a lot of potential. The soundtrack is pumping, though the OP is going to suck.

Slayers Evolution-R

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters meet a strange talking armour.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Not after that first season)
I really wasn’t looking forward to watching this series. I planned to just watch it and drop it to get it over with. And then this series came and delivered the best episode of the new Slayers so far. Okay, so that may not say much, but for once I wasn’t bored out of my skull, the talking armour was actually quite funny and I laughed more in this episode than during the entire first season. I really don’t want to go through the same pain as the first season, but if it’s true that all Slayers get better in their second halves, it might be interesting to stick with it.

Ride Back

Short Synopsis: Our lead character accidentally gets to try a motorbike-mecha-thingie.
Chance of me Blogging: 90% (Madhouse Rocks!)
Well, that’s Madhouse: here it comes and delivered the without a doubt best first episode of all the new shows this season. Sure, the lead character is yet another one of those teenagers who accidentally gets to possess a super-weapon, but apart from that everything about this episode was superbly done. The art looks excellent and yet down to earth, the soundtrack fits the series exactly and the series has a number of very likable lead characters. I was immediately a fan of the female lead character, but the rest of the support cast are also defined and varied. This is promising to be one of the highlights of the Winter-season if the creators can keep this up.

White Album – 02

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: Due to a stress, Yuki pays a surprise visit to Touya.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, why not; I’m going to blog this series. It’s going to be a nice quick series from a genre that I usually don’t blog about. I’m able to blog three new series this season, and for the final one I was doubting between this one and Kemono no Souja Erin (I think it’s pretty obvious what the other two are going to be ^^;). I was at first edging for Erin, but then I changed my mind: White Album, while it may have some clichés in it, it’s way better executed than Erin. The problem with Trans Arts is that they’ve got an eye for new and fresh premises, but they don’t know squat about actually making a good story. I’ve been disappointed by them one too many times, especially considering that none of their series went really right so far.

I definitely know that I’m not good at blogging romance shows. With True Tears I kept switching sides after every single episode, and my experiment of blogging Macross Frontier turned into a complete disaster. Still, I’m going to take this chance again because these two episodes have been really well written. The creators have an eye for detail, and manage to get the best out of their actors. This show has subtlety, of which I’m a big fan of. It also brings Hirano Aya back to a role that actually FITS her: a subtle one. The Yuki here is reserved and not very confident of herself, and far away from the energetic characters that she usually plays and fails horribly at.

My biggest fear for this series is that it’s going to turn into some cheesy harem along the way, but I’ll remain confident for now. There are plenty of male characters so far with their own distinctive personalities, and I’m especially intrigued by Rina: something tells me that there’s much more to her than what we just saw of her: here she accompanies Yuki to see her boyfriend, and then she starts hitting on the guy behind her back.

It’s interesting how this show doesn’t seem to have a director, or either the director is so obscure that he/she wasn’t even mentioned on the show’s promos. In fact, most of the important staff members of this series have relatively little experience. This can be either incredibly bad (they don’t know many of the major pitfalls yet) or incredibly good (new ideas that current anime staff can’t think off). I’m really edging for the latter with White Album.

Mushrambo The Movie – 1 Review – 15/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Note: this is a rant, and a pretty big one. Mushrambo, or Shinzo as it’s also been called, is one of the guilty pleasures that I watched when I was still in my early teens, back when Dutch children’s television had yet to descend into utter crap. My taste was pretty bad at the time, but I loved catching the latest episode on television despite the series’ very obvious flaws (the two biggest fights took up 6 and 10 (!) episodes respectively and the plot suffered from some pretty bad inconsistencies (what can I say, my taste was pretty bad at the time; I was fourteen…)). So when I learned about a remake of this series on movie, by none other than the director of Mononoke, I obviously got excited to relive my teenage memories.

Well, I’d like to thank this series for completely destroying them. The movie became nothing but a freaking recap. And a very bad one as well. It’s clear that there went absolutely no budget whatsoever in this thing, and I have no idea what the director of Mononoke was thinking here.

The problem with recap movies like this one is that they take series that have a slow pacing which they use to build up their characters for A REASON. Ultimately we now have a cut-and-paste job of the best scenes of the series that move way too bloody fast to prove any sort of credibility. It’s here where a capable writer manages to condense the story so that it can create a proper story within ninety minutes, but either the director had a really bad day when he wrote this series, or the producers were sleeping through the production process and only realized that nothing had been done a day before the deadline (because really, this is the kind of movie that you can easily make within a day, and I’m really not exaggerating here).

Nothing is explained whatsoever for the ones who are new to the premise. In fact, at one point it’s so bad that the characters look back at events that NEVER EVEN HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE. At one point in the series, for example, the lead characters get an upgrade in power. This upgrade is completely skipped in the movie, and yet the characters costumes magically changed themselves.

One of the things I hoped for in this movie is an number of very sweet graphics (because despite the clichés, I remember how a lot of very nice ideas were put into the setting and it would be awesome to see what they’d look like with a movie budget), but to my despair, the graphics look even more horrible than I remembered them. It’s one thing for a movie to simply look the same, but this movie actually looks and sounds WORSE than the TV-series. WHAT!?

If I had to mention the worst part of this movie, then it’d be the voice acting. If there’s anything that comes close to downright abysmal, then it’s the voice actors of the lead characters. These guys did the impossible: they made Dutch voice-actors sound awesome. I never knew that depths like these existed.

Overall, I watched this for the sake of nostalgia. There’s no possible reason why you should torture yourself with an hour and a half of this thing. I can’t believe that Toei put Mononoke’s director on such a large piece of crap when there’s so much potential left in the guy. I know that the original series wasn’t exactly good, but it was still pretty successful in terms of its entertainment value and it had some really neat ideas for a shounen series; it was nowhere near the levels of crap that the movie explores. I’d almost say that this is some kind of rickroll, but why would someone go through the trouble for such an unknown series, let alone find its raws?

Storytelling: 1/10
Characters: 1/10
Production-Values: 1/10
Setting: 3/10

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 39

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Gundam goes Macross as the Ptolemy needs to escape last episode’s battlefield.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Haha! I knew it! Sunrise is really planning to make this the next Gundam Wing: a coup d’etat is brewing inside A-Laws, and the way it looks like it’s actually going to be well executed. I remember how the rebel forces in Gundam Wing came from bloody nowhere, but in this series it’s instead carefully introduced, before it finally can hit its climax. At this point, I can only wonder how the creators can bring back Marina Ismael to the Relena-clone that she once was…

This episode was also great in terms of original content. I like the added bit of irony that Ribbons was the one who scouted Setsuna in the first place, and made him a Gundam Pilot. That also just show that innovators age a bit different from normal human beings. Either that or Rivonze was a very gifted child…

Then there’s of course the Macross-ish singing, which for once didn’t save a good guy, but rather kept a villain alive. I’m really not a fan of the invisible speakers that Marina somehow managed to conjure out of nowhere, but he idea is nice and I wonder how far the creators can bring it. At the moment, the Gundams are at the top of their abilities, and I don’t think that they’re going to get much stronger than they are now, so it’s now up to A-Laws (and the future rebels who plan the coup d’etat) to catch up with them in terms of technology again, and this episode showed the first steps to it, in terms of Mister Bushido’s new mobile suit. I have a strong suspicion that he’s one of the people planning the Coup d’etat, especially because of his connections with Zechs.

Also, there seems to be indeed a spy on board of the Ptolemy, but it doesn’t seem to be Anew Returner. It’s probably someone who’s been in the shadows for a while… how about the new girl who replaced Lichty in the second season?

As expected, this episode showed the new OP, while we have to wait an episode for the new ED. And as expected, it’s a nice song with nice visuals, but nothing really special. It’s a pity, since Gundam Wing was the one with the best OPs of any Gundam I’ve seen so far.

Jigoku Shoujo – 66

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A girl who misses her train calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Usual revenge, but Yuzuki is finally coming in action!)
And with this episode, everything suddenly becomes clear: Yuzuki was indeed meant to be the next Tsugumi, and she’s also going to play Hajime by trying to stop the revenges in the rest of this season because of what happened to her best friend. It’s definitely a better motivation than Hajime had, who simply was fundamentally against revenges. Yuzuki, instead, has a very good reason to hate Ai.

This episode played with the anxieties that the elite have about their reputations. I liked how the lead girl in this episode may have been a bright student with good grades, but she nevertheless was a normal girl. I’ve lost count of how many great students in anime have been portrayed as the perfect human beings, brilliant at every thing they do. While the lead girl did know how to avoid the biggest kinds of trouble, she did put her trust into someone who later turned out to be a criminal and ended up sending him to hell when a picture of both of them was taken that could have damaged her reputation. I actually had a lot of respect for the two of them before the creators went and showed the huge weaknesses of the both of them. ^^;

The interesting thing is how the creators are going to play in the future episodes, with Yuzuki trying to prevent Ai from taking her revenges. Compared to Hajime, she’s really shy and not very charismatic, and that guy failed nearly every time trying to convince characters that were a lot more sane than the people we’ve been seeing in the third season. I’d also love it if the creators threw in a bunch of psychopaths in front of her. Yuzuki has a lot of potential to grow, and I’m really curious to see where the creators plan to go with her.

Some quick first Impressions: Birdy The Mighty Decode 2, Major 5th Season and Kemono no Souja Erin

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode, Some Quick First Impressions

Birdy the Mighty Decode 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets assigned to track down a bunch of escaped convicts.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Hell yeah!)
Whoa, a bit theme of the sequels this season seems to be angsting over what happened at the end of its previous season: first Shikabane Hime, then Druaga no Tou, and now this one. Still, Birdy the Mighty did this the best of the three, simply because it had so many other things to do in this episode so that Senkawa didn’t have too much time to remember Nakasugi. And unlike the previous two, this series has yet to show what it can really do with its potential. This episode promised a grand story, lots of new characters were introduced and some characters who seemed as mere fillers in the first season show up again as well. The new OP and ED are also much better, there’s a brand new OST, so overall all signs point in the direction that the second season is going to be much better than the first. Just, what was up with that strange insert song at the end?

Major 5th Season

Short Synopsis: Our lead character spent the fourth season in a foreign country and finally arrived back home, it seems.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Yet to see the first four seasons…)
Seriously, is there no end to the sequels this Winter-season? In any case, I watched this episode in an attempt to get motivated to watch the first season. So, it’s a bit unfortunate that there was hardly any baseball whatsoever in this episode, but nevertheless I enjoyed the quiet mood of the episode. The characters were nostalgic about things that I obviously never saw, but it nevertheless was an enjoyable episode. I might try to follow this fifth season, depending on how long it remains interesting to me and whether it can prove to be significantly different from One Outs (since two baseball shows airing at the same time may be a bit too much).

Kemono no Souja Erin

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets is the daughter of a famous dragon caller
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (It would be 100% if it wasn’t for the producers)
Now this is what I’m talking about! This series is definitely the most creative and original out of the new shows that aired this season. I love the stylized look of the main character, or the very stylish animation when the dragons attacked. The slice of life moments in this series were also wonderful, though there’s one big problem with this series: its creators. I took a small look at the different staff members that are working on this series and it looks like we’ve got the worst people on the Production IG-arsenal working on it: Trans Arts. While I liked Wellber when it aired, I now see that it was way too cheesy, Toshokan Sensou was unbalanced and Chocolate Underground was just plain bad, and they still get to produce series? Why hasn’t Production IG simply fired them, and more importantly: what happened to their good people? Did they all quit at the same time to join Madhouse, or something? I loved this episode, but I can already see it going downhill: the series composition was done by the guy who did the series composition of Real Drive and Blood, and the production coordination was done by the guy who did the production coordination of Saiunkoku Monogatari and The Twelve Kingdoms: all excellent stories on themselves, but the former two were really unbalanced, and the latter two had no conclusion, and I have enough reasons to believe that these people were directly responsible for their series’ respective flaws. Just think what might happen once you combine them all into one series!

Tytania – 13

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Fan Hulic versus MISTER BUSHIDO!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
I very much doubt that Legend of Galactic Heroes was awesome because of the same reasons, but nevertheless I really can’t deny that Tytania has its own unique charms. I’m not sure exactly where on the way everything went right, but this episode was simply awesome and the characters of this series are so much fun to watch.

Ah, and to think that the creators only kept Alses alive for one measly episode, simply to flesh out the rest of the cast a bit more. I really thought that he’d become some sort of psychopath villain through the series, but in this episode it became apparent that he’s stopped being a threat whatsoever: he descended into a simple psychopathic coward. The only reason why he was involved in a battle was because Fan Hulic wanted revenge for Lyra’s death.

It’s great to see that Idris is now basically dancing on not only the grave of Alses, but also the one of his ambitious subordinate whose name I forgot. In the meantime, I’m also interested in how Zalish is going to deal with his mother, now that her favourite son is dead, and at the same time Jouslan and Ariabart are still happily drinking tea with Lydia. Let’s see how long that’s going to last. ^^;

Some quick first Impressions: Abunai Sisters, Druaga no Tou – The Sword of Uruk and Asu no Yoichi!

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Abunai Sisters

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a couple of “sexy spies”.
Chance of me Blogging: -50% (…)
Here’s an interesting one: I’ve actually been contacted by the company that produced this series, asking for me to review the first episode of this 3-minute 10-episoded OVA, animated by Production IG. While I’m excited to actually have been contacted by professional companies like this, it doesn’t stop me from being perfectly honest with this series: Abunai Sisters is bad. In fact, it’s the worst series I’ve seen in years; even Musashi Gun Doh features better writing than this thing. These three minutes were full of the most obvious sex jokes you can imagine. It’s nothing more than a bunch of air-headed celebrities (the Kano Sisters, in this case) who want to insert themselves into an animated adventure. Still, at least it’s got a bit of entertainment value: it really is one of these series that’s so bad so that it becomes somewhat strangely enjoyable again. Something tells me that the writers also had no intention whatsoever to take this series seriously, and they did everything they could to make the Kano Sisters look as stupid as possible.

Druaga no Tou – The Sword of Uruk

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters has been angsting about the ending of the first season for… six months?!
Chance of me Blogging: 30% (I didn’t blog the first season, but who knows with such a lacklustre season so far?)
Aaand yet another sequel. It’s a good thing that most of these sequels are from good shows, but the lack of new series really bugs me. In any case, I was a bit surprised that Jill has been doing nothing but angsting for six months after what happened at the ending of the first season, but it’s a pretty nice twist to see him suddenly hooked up to Fatina, who went through pretty much the same as him. The series also hasn’t lost its sense of humour, so there is a lot of potential for this series to be just as good, if not better than the first season. I’m just worried about one thing: please let Jill and Fatina be a real couple, and don’t turn this series into a sort of indecisive harem once Kaaya gets back.

Asu no Yoichi!

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters gets to live in a house with cute girls.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No)
AIC sure is lazy this season: first they try to rip off Gonzo, and now they continue to rip off every harem imaginable. This really is the wrong season to look for originality. In any case, the only thing I can be positive about is this series is the characters: they were likable enough for me not to get bored, and I guess that the main character who has lived in a forest for his entire life, getting accustomed to the modern world had a number of amusing moments, but the rest of the series was either mediocre or simply bad. The character-designs are unimaginative, what kind of pickpocket flees away upstairs, characters are stereotypes, and it’s never afraid to use the biggest clichés in the book. Still, the fanservice jokes were so incredibly bad that they became strangely amusing again, so it’s not entirely a dull series.