Author: psgels

Kurozuka – 09

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: The attack on the headquarters of the bad guys.
Highlights: Turtle dude rocks
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
You know, I really consider this episode to have the best action-scenes of the entire series so far. Okay, so they still weren’t as well animated as episode one, but they were one thing: incredibly fun to watch. Really, so much went on, and more especially, the major characters involved showed their best sides. It’s strange, the fights definitely weren’t the most well animated, or intense, or had the best fight coordination out there, but they kept my interest throughout the entire episode.

This episode felt so out of place in this series, but yet it worked. The car-chase-scene, the motorbike, it all fitted, and just about everything in this episode was really creative. The characters aren’t deep at all, but they’re fleshed out just enough to make us care about them. And I think that that was why I enjoyed this episode so much.

The problem is of course where this series is going to go after this point. The fact remains that the two characters who made this episode so much fun to watch are dead now, and we know hardly anything about the big bad guy. Seriously, WHO IS HE?! This guy seriously lacks fleshing out. I really wonder where the creators can be able to take him as such a stereotypical evil overlord. But then again, I do have high hopes for the reunion with Kuromitsu, and the deaths of the final two partners of Kuro (I mean, there’s no way that those two are going to make it to the end of the series with this pace ;P).

Mouryou no Hako – 09

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako



Short Synopsis: The killer’s identity is confirmed, Yoriko’s mother is in despair and a rather big spoiler happens that you don’t want to find out before you’ve seen episode eight.
Highlights: Talk about a change of pacing!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh, how I love this series. It’s not like other series, where the emotional power of the characters is huge (Casshern Sins for example). In contrast, this is a very quiet series, even during the fast-paced parts like for example this episode. But the writing is so incredibly solid that I’m regarding this series as one of the best series of the season. The creators don’t aim attempt awkward drama that feels forced, but instead have really succeeded in creating a very subtle atmosphere. I don’t know about others, but I personally love it when anime uses subtlety. The more the better.

The big event of this episode was of course Yoriko’s death, although we never actually get to see her die, it’s more that her presence lurks over the episode like a very gloomy ghost. As it turns out, the real killer is a friend of Sekiguchi: Kubo Shunko. It was pretty interesting how Eno simply walked up to Kubo, asking him about Kanako, about an hour before he went on to take Yoriko with him. We also saw Kubo from a very different angle in this episode, when Eno showed him a picture of Kanako, suggesting that there’s much more to this mystery than just Kubo being a serial killer.

What I also like in this episode was that they showed the exact same footage as in the end of the previous episode, but this time from the perspective of Eno and Sekiguchi, where it’s Yoriko who’s acting strange. It was also awesome to see that the two of them (especially Eno) went on to raid her house right after she left, finding her mother about to commit suicide. It seems that she’s much more than just the delusional mother we saw in episode two and three: she really feels guilty of calling her a Mouryou (apparently she did this by mistake, I believe that it can all be blamed on an eye-problem of hers(?)

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 48

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Mina finishes her parts of the recordings and Porfy gets into a bunch of fights.
Highlights: Finally it’s time to address the Rose vs. Tiffany subplot.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
I must say that the World Masterpiece Theatre series have a unique sense of endings. While you would expect the final parts of a 52-episode series to be full of tension, where everything the series has built up for comes together, the endings I’ve seen so far do something completely different: Akage no Anne’s climax only popped up something like four episodes before the end, completely unexpected, and Les Miserables’ climax ended seven episodes before the series was supposed to end. Porfy’s the same: I really expected a continuously sad final arc, much like what happened at the earthquake arc. Instead of that, it builds up, features a big climax when Porfy runs into Alecia, and then goes into a completely different direction with a final arc that starts with a very careful and quiet build-up. It really does feel like Porfy is only going to meet Mina in episode 52 this way.

Anyway, summary: The waiter is counting the money for the day, and something is missing. He immediately blames Porfy, who obviously never took anything. He threatens with the police, but the cook comes in to the rescue by pointing out that the missing coin is in one of the beer glasses, apparently a few customers did this to re-enact a scene from a certain movie.

The waiter then looks strangely at Porfy, wondering aloud why he’s in the wrong: money was missing, he didn’t know about the beer glass, so it’s obvious that he suspected Porfy for it. He then starts randomly complaining, and eventually insults Porfy’s father. Like always, Porfy can’t take this at all, and would have attacked the waiter if the cook hadn’t stopped him. Porfy quits immediately. When he asks for his pay for the day, he gets denied again, because he dirtied his apron in his rage. When Porfy comes home, he’s obviously in a bad mood, but initially doesn’t want to talk about it. When Rose asks further, he starts crying and Rose tries to comfort him a bit.

Mina meanwhile is still in a totally different world. Mina asks whether the filming of the movie gets completed that day (I can only guess that a few weeks or months have passed since the previous episode), and Tiffany confirms that. Mina then gets excited, thinking that the movie is already ready to be broadcast, but Tiffany then explains her that it takes much more to reach the final product.

The final scene that needs to be shot is one where only Tiffany is needed, where her character gets poetic a bit inside a field of corn. Mina makes for quite a cute action by forgetting that Tiffany’s supposed to be on stage and standing right next to her like a little sheep. The production crew cal her back a bit, since her job is already finished by now. The scene gets shot, and the entire production crew celebrates that the shooting of the movie has finished, Mina and Tiffany get flowers and the whole crew goes out to have dinner that next evening.

Porfy meanwhile has been cleaning for two evenings because he doesn’t have anything left to do. Because of that, Rose offers to take him to a roller-skate park after she’s taken a shower. During that time, Porfy looks at the picture again, and manages to confirm his suspicions that the other person with Rose is Tiffany. Rose then comes out of the shower, and Porfy starts talking about that picture, though this falls really wrong with Rose, and she starts yelling at him. Porfy doesn’t know when to quit, and eventually Rose kicks him out of her house, refusing to let him back in.

The rest of the episode doesn’t really need a summary because hardly anything is said in it, though in the end Rose is finally about to tell why she hates Tiffany so much. I’ve been waiting for this: Tiffany has been portrayed as such a perfect woman, that I’m eager to see her more darker parts. She’s most definitely an ambitious woman, but how ambitious exactly that is, we have to wait for that one more week.

One of the things that I’m impressed about with this series is how the creators decided to handle the weaknesses of the characters. Usually in anime, characters only have small weaknesses, no weaknesses at all, or the weaknesses are so exaggerated that they become either annoying or stereotypes. It really takes skill to portray a character with serious weaknesses, and still maintain the characters interest as to not delve into a hopeless emo-fest. After all, flawed characters are interesting to watch when you first meet them, and they only start to shine as they develop and learn from their flaws. Porfy and Mina are really good examples of good characters with serious flaws: Porfy doesn’t know when to stop talking and completely flips when his parents get mentioned, while Mina can hardly think of her own, and always needs to be near an adult or mother-figure. Their flaws feel real, provide some nice conflicts and yet they don’t appear too often to overshadow their entire personalities.

Blade of the Immortal – 11

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: Rin vs. Kawakami part II
Highlights: Excellent fight.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
It’s episodes like this one that convince me that Bee-Train can still make good fights when they want to; especially when backed up by such an excellent manga as this one. I’m beginning to see why they chose such a strange manga-series to adapt this time, because it’s of course perfect to experiment with in terms of artistic direction. The fights in this series aren’t impressive because of their animation-quality (which in fact still rather sucks), but because it turns simple fights like this one into pieces of art.

I must say that it must have taken a lot of guts to make such an excellent manga into a sort-of experimental anime like this. But on the other hand you have to wonder why for ten years nobody had stepped up to adapt it before Bee-Train did. I mean, I’ve seen comments about this series that it would have been best when in the hands of the Madhouse animation studio. And while I sort-of agree with it, I do think that if Madhouse really wanted to adapt this series, they would have done so already.

In any case, the use of music was typical Bee-Train in this episode, and yet it wasn’t like most of their other series. The whole episode had a huge contrast between silence and fast-paced music. It’s been like this for nearly the entire series so far: there are silent moments at very strange parts of the fights, and it definitely has an interesting effect. But then again, Bee-Train has always been known to play up-beat music at very strange scenes as well, so I guess that it was only a matter of time before they would go the opposite.

And regarding the story, it continues its thought-provoking look at revenge, and I really liked how Rin was about to create a kid, just like her by robbing him of his parent. Even though she changed her mind about killing a father like him. She solved it in a pretty interesting way, by pretending that she had killed Manji afterwards for the guy, so that he wouldn’t become like her.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 34

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Ptolemy launches into space again.
Highlights: Mostly build-up, but solid build-up.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
And so the Ptolemy is back into space again. Most of this episode was spent on building up, and a few small fight, like Tieria vs Ali al Sarshes. What especially striked me was that Tieria is turning from the most mature member of the four Gundam-pilots into he least mature one. At this point, he’s the only one who is still being driven by negative emotions as revenge: Setsuna grew up, Allelujah got rid of Hallelujah and met Marie, and Neil got replaced by Lyle, who was even more mature than himself.

On other news, my fears got confirmed in this episode by showing the male version of Nena (ugh… guys with pink hair should NEVER be allowed in anime). My guess is that there are eight innovators in total, where the final two are the new pilot recruited by A-Laws and the mysterious man or woman in the preview are the final two. The question still remains where they came from. With the original Gundam-series, this was explained by a simple genetic trait that only pops up very rarely, but with every innovator having a male and female version, you have to wonder whether Nena’s brothers were her genuine brothers, or that she simply was adopted. It’s also interesting that unlike newtypes, innovators don’t have improved physical abilities, but instead have “The Third”-like powers, of being able to hack into any machinery you’d like.

November Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

I must say that the current Autumn-season has been a really good one so far. There are lots of promising and charming titles, with a wide variety of different styles.

#25 (32) – To Aru Majutsu no Index – (7,5/10) – I originally dropped this series, but after I found out that it was going to be 25 episodes, I figured that I may have quit it a bit too easily, so I gave it a second chance. Two episodes later and I dropped it again. This just isn’t a series for me, I just can’t get to like the fights. The animation is used in the wrong way: lots of flashy graphics, but when it comes to the people involved it’s very inaccurate (when a character receives a cut, he doesn’t even flinch), and characters blurt out their life stories at the slightest opportunity they get.
#24 (23) – Junjo Romantica – (7,5/10) – The story between Misaki and Usami is going really nowhere. What the heck is up with all these implausible love triangles? This should be a series about being in a relationship, not a male harem for Misaki. The other stories have been painfully absent so far, so I fear that the second season isn’t going to be as good as the first one.
#23 (24) – Kannagi – (7,75/10) – This series sometimes is brilliant, but at others it just drowns in its own fanbase. The series’ fandom is simply annoying (getting angry because a character may not be a virgin… these people need to go outside more often), and there’s just too much fanservice. I can understand how to a fan of the series, seeing Nagi into these poses is like ‘da bomb’, but I’m not a fan yet. I’m just trying to casually enjoy this series, and the creators sometimes make it rather hard for me to do that.
#22 (6) – Gintama – (7,75/10) – Lack of subs have left me in desp… wait, wrong show. In any case, it’s been so long since the last episode that I can’t really remember what it was about, hence the low score.
#21 (16) – Tytania – (8,25/10) – It’s nothing special yet, but still Tytania has been a solid series with some nice focus on politics.
#20 (12) – ef ~ a tale of melodies – (8,25/10) – I want to thank Coalguys for giving me another reason to avoid fansubs and go with raws instead. Anyway, it’s starting to look like melodies isn’t going to be as good as memories. Everything just feels too extreme, the subtlety is lost. Why didn’t anyone call the police in Yuuko’s story? Shaft seems to be trying too hard on this series, but it can still redeem itself in its final third.
#19 (17) – Telepathy Shoujo Ran – (8,25/10) – I don’t think that there are many series where the characters are actually developed during the filler-parts. In any case, in a way I’m glad that in this month, the creators seemed to have decided to forsake the original novels completely and just went with their own stories. The mystery-stories may be a bit less complex, but the banter is consistently hilarious.
#18 (20) – Ga-Rei Zero – (8,25/10) – Well, I can now understand why the creators decided to put the climax of this series in the first two episodes, because otherwise the start of this series would have been so dull so that nobody would have stuck with it. Right now, this series is shaping up a very solid storyline, so let’s hope that in its final third, it can make the promises that it’s made in these first two episodes true.
#17 (10) – Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – (8,25/10) – The only really annoying thing about this series is Saji. Apart from that, it’s building up pretty nicely with some nice action scenes. We’ll need to wait a bit longer to see whether it actually knows what it’s doing, but so far I remain positive.
#16 (9) – Nodame Cantabile – (8,5/10) – The second season is nice and all, but comparing it to its stellar predecessor is inevitable in this case. Right now, I feel that it’s missing the magic that made the first season so much fun to watch. It’s still an enjoyable series, but it doesn’t live up to the first 23 episodes.
#15 (2) – Jigoku Shoujo – (8,5/10) – Something tells me that the creators of this series are having loads of fun, trying to come up with all the different kinds of stories. The new series isn’t as varied as the older ones, but it’s a very entertaining and thought-provoking one nonetheless.
#14 (14) – Kurozuka – (8,5/10) – Kurozuka so far has been a very solid action series without any obvious flaws. So the story could have been a bit more complex, but the air of mystery and horror keeps the series going smoothly.
#13 (8) – One Outs – (8,5/10) – After Omo’s wise words I changed the way I looked at this series. One Outs is really perfect for baseball noobs, who don’t have the patience to sit through one entire game. The pacing is much faster than I expected. And to be honest, it’s not really the baseball that has sold me on this series. I’m happy enough to see Tokuchi pwn everyone in the entire series, regardless of the content.
#12 (5) – Blade of the Immortal – (8,5/10) – Not the best month for this series, but nevertheless the Makie-arc was a great one, and especially very nicely artistically directed.
#11 (21) – Clannad – (8,5/10) – I really hope Planetarian is going to be considerably different from Key’s other works (after all, with their lack of trying out new things, there is now way that Kyoani aren’t going to adopt it at some point), because my only criticism so far is that some of the stories here seem strangely familiar: sick girl, animal turned human, etc. Nevertheless the second season has been very well told and very enjoyable.

#10 (19) – Chaos;Head – (8,5/10)

My big fear of this series would be that the harem roots would take over too much. Well, as it turns out they did. Nevertheless I’m really enjoying this series and its paranoid aspects, and it’s good for those who are looking for some convolution in their anime.

#9 (13) – Hyakko – (8,5/10)

Call me a guy with a strange taste, but I’m really enjoying this series so far. Its sense of humour is hilarious, and at the same time the few serious moments haven’t felt dull so far. There are lots of characters in this series, and the creators made optimal use of this by really making an entire classroom come alive, rather than just a group of four or five friends.

#8 (22) – Tales of the Abyss – (8,5/10)

The storyline’s getting pretty interesting at this point, and I’m starting to see what people meant by Luke and his character-development. Let’s hope it can keep this up.

#7 (18) – Shikabane Hime – (8,75/10)

Shikabane Hime has been a really entertaining series so far, with lots of exciting fights and a male lead who somehow doesn’t suck. The series has a great sense of characterization and that makes it a very engaging anime.

#6 (3) – Skip Beat – (8,75/10)

The bitch-fights of the past few episodes were nothing short of awesome. The characters continue to develop, they’re deep and well defined. This could very well be the best shoujo series of the year.

#5 (7) – Porfy no Nagai Tabi – (9/10)

Okay, so I don’t think anyone could have predicted that huge twist in the plot and the focus of this series at the start of the finale. The realism’s gone now, but it’s promising to really take the best out of the characters so far. But the definite highlight of this month was obviously the awesome Alecia-episode.

#4 (1) – Mouryou no Hako – (9/10)

This series really took a unique turn in the past month, with two entire episodes dedicated to nothing but people sitting in one room and talking. Still, I like shows like this that decide to take a little risk like that, and the series still is really solid and very intriguing, and it’s remained one of my favourites of the Autumn Season.

#3 (11) – Bonen no Xamdou – (9/10)

The hiatus was most definitely annoying, but ever since this series returned, it’s been more solid than ever.

#2 (15) – Michiko e Hatchin – (9/10)

Ignoring the very strange broadcasting policy, this series is pure gold. Both Michiko and Hatchin are wonderful characters with their own past and problems, and the situations they end up in are nothing short of a delight to watch.

#1 (4) – Casshern Sins – (9,25/10)

Okay, so this isn’t a series for those who hate fillers with passion, but nevertheless it’s turned into one of my favourite series of the past series, simply due to the huge quality of the scriptwriters. They never waste a single second in an episode and the writing in every episode is simply amazing.

Jigoku Shoujo – 61

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A girl who believes she can use Kokkuri-san takes this obsession to the extreme.
Highlights: Interesting take on bullying…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so this was one of the most disturbing episodes of the third season so far. The sheer level of stupidity in this episode is truly unrivalled, and yet it somehow remains down to earth in a very creepy way, and it shows what can happen if a teenager secludes herself too much from others, and suddenly gets the power to kill people.

Unlike what most anime try to teach you, most teenagers who are given these powers aren’t going to end up using them for the forces of good, but raher for their own personal gain, including getting rid of annoying teachers, or just having fun by bullying the weak who are too afraid to stand up to themselves, which has pretty much been the general message this series has been trying to convey.

This episode takes the whole concept of this show even further, by making the lead character of the episode send someone to hell that she barely even knows. With people you’ve got a direct grudge against, it’s somewhat understandable, but sending someone to hell in a desparate attempt to become popular, while you don’t know anything about that guy.

There’s one thing I’m missing in this show, though. Because it’s set at a school, it’s got much less variety. Of course, there are enough idiotic adults walking around there, and I’d love to also see a few episodes dedicated to that. And again, the finale of the second season did have enough of them, not to mention the number of very disturbing episodes in the first season.

Speaking of that first season, do you reckon that Hell Boy is going to make his comeback somewhere in this series?

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 23

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: Ran gets called by a wooden statue who turns out to contain the spirit of an ancient Japanese dude.
Highlights: What was up with these strange fantasies of Midori?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Well, so this was one of the more nonsensical stories of this series. From out of nowhere, Ran gets called in the library by a strange statue. This turns out to be the spirit of a guy who once left his war struck country in order to search for a princess fit to rule his country. The episode eventually ends with the past coming alive again, and the guy saving everyone by labelling Ran as said princess. So, yeah…

Still, the banter was as awesome as ever, so I’m not the one to complain here. For some reason, Midori’s sudden mood fluctuations whenever Rin gets mentioned remain hilarious. It was also nice to see some breaking of the fourth wall, when the spirit contacted Ran, and Midori went “oh, here we go again”.

It’s interesting how the creators decided to end the series with short stories, instead of two-episode arcs. I originally thought that the final four episodes of this series would be spent on the final two novel volumes, but it actually looks like the creators are going for an anime-original ending. Either that, or the series will end with a bunch of forest animals rampaging…

Tytania – 08

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Zalish is sent out to destroy the rebels.
Highlights: Finally Lydia gets something to do!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Well, so this series continues its path of solidly building up. This arc was really meant to show a bit of the side of the rebels other than Miranda, and how despite having lost the battle against Fan Hulic, the Tytania family is definitely something to watch out for. Zalish completely wiped out the pirates in this episode without any bit of effort. Fan Hulic meanwhile, seems to finally feel a bit like fighting again, so who knows where this series might take us.

I’m also glad to see that Lydia finally gets to do something, rather than hang around in a random garden. As a naive princess, she offers herself as a hostage to prevent Tytania from taking some vital resources that can be found on her planet, and basically labelling her country as bankrupt. The impact she’s going to make on these Tytania-guys must be quite severe, for her character to be such a major character in this series.

Shikabane Hime – 09

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: A couple of high schoolers explore an abandoned building.
Highlights: The cat! (I shouldn’t be reminded of when saying that…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
A more quiet episode, but those are needed too. This one is especially useful, as it gives Ouri some development, sheds some light on the cat, and contributes a bit to the world that this series is set on. It’s a small detail, but very useful: with people shooting with machine guns at zombies, it was only a matter of time before people would start stalking Makina.

So as it turns out, Ouri isn’t Keisei’s real brother after all, but I guess that probably explains why the guy moved out of the house so early. While I shouldn’t be surprised at this point about this, he turns out to be adopted, and was leading god knows what sort of life before that. He arrived at Keisei’s house with complete memory loss, and took ages before learning everything. He finally got motivated once he made friends with a little kitten he picked up.

At one point, the cat died, though something strange went on with its spirit, and it returned as a ghost that only Ouri could see. Or talk to anyway, since this episode reveals that Makina can see it as well. Thanks to the support of this cat, I think that Ouri was able to fully recover from his trauma and lead a good life. And I guess that because of the cat, he’s been treating Makina and Minai as real people. Makes sense.

The slapstick was really weird in this episode, but what surprised me even more that I found myself laughing at those boob-jokes and horny classmates. It was cute, and didn’t feel annoying at all, even though similar attempts in other series have made me edge to ALT-F4 more often than not.