Author: psgels

Casshern Sins – 06

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Dio is also out to kill Casshern, but it turns out that he knows quite a bit about him.
Highlights: The strange sort of sympathy from Casshern.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This episode gives a proper introduction to what are probably going to be the main antagonists of this series. Dio claims that Cashern was actually made by someone, in order to destroy all life within the world. There seems to be a guy named Briking Boss, who once saved the world as well, and Dio hopes to follow that guy’s footsteps.

The interesting part of this episode was how everyone around Casshern seems to view him in a different way: Lyuze bears a grudge against him, and yet this episode showed how she doesn’t want other to kill him, Dio wants to be the one to save the world, so he wants to kill him, the weaker robots want to be saved, so they beg for his death, the big robots simply accepted that they’re going to die anyway, so why not die with a small percentage of living, Ringo, even though Casshern scared the heck out of her in episode one, starts feeling a variation of the Stockholm-syndrome for him, and Ringo’s caretaker seems to not care, or he knows that it’s impossible to defeat Casshern no matter how he tries. So many different ways to look at Casshern, and that’s what makes this series so interesting.

What’s also interesting is that even though Dio claims to know all about Casshern, he doesn’t seem to know that he’s impossible to kill. Ringo’s caretaker (god, I need to know the name of that guy) claims that Luna was the same as he was once: she too didn’t die, and yet Casshern killed her, so he probably inherited whatever powers she had.

Mouryou no Hako – 05

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako



Short Synopsis: The fourth main character turns out to be a detective/psychic who gets hired to find Kanako.
Highlights: Too. Much. Dialogue!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This episode was an absolute nightmare for an inexperienced raw watcher as myself. During the previous episodes, I still was able to follow the general gist of things due to the visual drawings and stuff, but this episode’s different. For once, it focused on completely different characters (half of them new ones, as if the series hadn’t already enough of them), and nearly the entire episode, save for the few minutes in the beginning, consisted out of talking, talking and more talking.

So, let me see if I got this part correctly: the first part, before the OP, is always a scene from the novel from Sekiguchi? That makes sense in a way: he created his novels based on the boxed head he saw in the train (or was that part of his books as well?), rather than him, being the murderer.

The next scene was the most mind-boggling of all, since none of its characters had appeared in the series before. It centres around a professor called Fukurai Tomokichi and Mifune Chizuko. It seems to be Tomokichi’s duty to find out whether Chizuko is a psychic or not as she claims. At first, this seems to be the case, but the professor wants to do another experiment before believing this. In charge of the contents of the box that need to be guessed is a young guy called Fuji. Somehow he screws up, and lets someone break into his suitcase and take the note out of the box that was supposed to be read. Then something happens with a bit of film that I didn’t pick up, and Fuji somehow humiliates Chizuko in front of the media. This distresses Chizuko so much that she dies of an illness. Now… why would the creators bother showing such a seemingly irrelevant case?

The next scene finally introduces the final main character: Reijiro Enokizu, again a self-proclaimed psychic. There’s one guy, Noriyuki Masuoka who attempts to contact him, I’m not sure whether we’ve seen this guy before in the series, but he seems to be in charge of the case of finding Kanako. There was a lot of random chatter in this part because Reijiro refused to take Masuoka seriously, but the gist seems to be that there is another person looking out for Kanako’s body.

The final part of the episode goes back to Sekiguchi. At this point, I’m still not sure how exactly the guy is involved in the whole case, and how he (and Akihiko for that matter) can become a major characters when they’re primarily novel-writers. This episode shows how he gets visited by his friend Toriguchi, who tell him that Atsuko (apparently, Akihiko has a sister) did a bit of research into the building they ran into in episode 2, and found out that it was a medical research institute. Toriguchi seems to have come to Sekiguchi for a strange rumour he found out, and Sekiguchi introduces Toriguchi to a person who might be of more help than him: Akihiko. Akihiko ends the episode, pretending to be another psychic.

So yeah, this series was already very complex with subs, but it becomes an entire puzzle without them. I hope I got everything right, but a big theme of this episode seemed to be psychics, and whether or not they exist. It’s never confirmed nor denied, but I think that with everything that happened to Kanako, there definitely is some sort of psychic aspect about this series.

Kurozuka – 05

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: Kuro gets brought to the place where Kuromitsu is.
Highlights: Calm mood for a Kurozuka-episode, but still powerful.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Ah, a build-up episode. The series takes a bit of time to catch a breath, and uses the time to give the viewer a few more glimpses of the major bad guys. The pacing in this episode was very slow, but like mentioned above, I really liked how it slowly progressed, while providing a bit more background on what happened between episode 2 and 3, and making the viewer anticipate when Kuromitsu might turn up again.

And of course, the visuals were better than ever in this episode. This also really was an episode in which the art director could go all out, and the number of beautiful and diverse sceneries he created is astounding. It’s interesting: while Porfy no Nagai Tabi still stands as the currently-airing series with the best outdoor background-art, Kurozuka definitely wins the fight in terms of indoor-background art. The use of CG really works, and it actually made a CG-car not look out of place somehow.

Anyway, about the plot, I think the first part of the episode showed the boss of the bad guys. I’m not exactly sure what he was doing, killing all these random people, and why he’s still doing that after centuries, but he seems to be after Kuromitsu, explaining the attack that started at the end of this episode. It looks like Kuro’s new allies allowed him to meet Kuromitsu again, and although I didn’t pick up the exact reason either, she seems to be vital for their survival as well. My guess is that it has something to do with how she turned Kuro into an immortal being.

For the next episode, I want to see the gorgeous animation from the first episode back. The animators have already shown that they don’t lack any sort of inspiration, but what really would make this series is the combination between the awesome art that this episode had, along with the detailed animation of the first episode. Now that would seriously rock.

Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou Tou Review – 72,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



For the past few months, I’ve watched a lot of shows that I originally dropped which turned out to be surprisingly engaging. It can also go the other way of course: some shows are better off just being dropped. Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou Tou is such an example. It starts of with a really exciting episode with excellent fights, really neat animation and characters with potential. Unfortunately, that first episode is the only thing that stands out about that series.

What we have here is a typical series that blew away all its budget in its first episode, and then doesn’t have anything left to fill the rest of its airtime with. The overall animation is still pretty above average, but never does it meet the huge expectations it created with that first episode. The real problem is the plot, though. It follows the pattern of first half demon-of-the-week second half prevent Tokyo’s destruction. It’s a solid set-up, but for that to work you need to provide interesting demons-of-the-week to keep the viewer busy, and an interesting threat that can destroy Tokyo. And this series fails at both.

The thing is that the viewer is never given the chance to get accustomed to the characters, and never gets a reason to care about the main characters. Half of the characters lack a proper introduction, and never get the chance to establish their character, while members of the other half take turns into angsting about how cruel the bad guys of this series are and how they need to protect their loved ones. Obviously, this is mostly all talk and in 75% of the cases, they fail to protect, leading to only more angst. Especially that Aoi is guilty of this. She keeps on whining about saving others through the entire series, and eventually ends up as a brainwashed damsel in distress.

Because of that, the major climax ends just in one big disappointment. And yeah, I know that this series has a second season and all, but that’s no excuse to just go lazy and let the power of love solve everything. Overall, there are one or two subplots that do deliver some genuine scenes, but apart from that we just have a series that’s too caught up in its own angst and cruelty so that it never lives up to the interesting character-dynamics and action that the first episode promised. If you’re intrigued by the premise, just watch the first episode as a standalone story and then just drop the thing.

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

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 44

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: A certain character makes her reappearance.
Highlights: Every single scene.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10 (Fantastic)
This episode doesn’t need an elaborate summary. All that you need to know in order to understand it can easily be summarized into one paragraph:

Porfy continues travelling, but due to the loss of Apollo he forgets to take care of himself and just wants to go to Paris as soon as possible. In the end, he collapses due to fatigue as he nearly gets hit by Alecia and her father’s truck. Alecia tries to get Porfy back to consciousness, but Porfy only utters that he needs to go to Paris. The rest of the night, Alecia’s father then drives to Paris, while Alecia takes care of Porfy (SO INCREDIBLY CUTE). Porfy wakes up after having a good night’s sleep, and returns back to his senses. In Paris, he says goodbye to Alecia, and even though she wants to come with him, he declines.

First of all: PORFY YOU IDIOT! CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT ALECIA REALLY WANTED?!

Second of all, this definitely was the best episode of Porfy no Nagai Tabi since the earthquake-arc. Alecia’s return was every bit as good as I could have hoped. The summary is indeed very short, but the real power of this episode lied into the visuals, not the audio. After all, at this point, the series doesn’t need any more exposition. Enough has been said at this point, and it’s now really time for the characters to just do their thing.

Alecia was downright awesome, even though she only appeared in two episodes of this series. Her crush on Porfy was so incredibly heart-warming, and the scene of the two of them together, in the back of the truck was especially memorable . I really like how this episode also decided to go for subtle drama, and deliberately kept the mood of the entire episode dark and quiet, instead of upbeat and a bit extreme, like the previous episode.

It also seems that Mina finally returned to her senses as well, and she remembers everything that happened at the earthquake and how she saw Apollo in Rome. It really looks like the finale of this series is going to play in Paris (in other words, it’s going TO START IN THE NEXT EPISODE!!), and my guess is that the series’ big climax will be in November, where December will deal with the aftermath. My big question for that aftermath is Alecia: once everything is over, and Porfy and Mina are either together, or have split up again, will Porfy go back to Alecia. It’s just too much of a shame to leave such a beautiful romance like this.

Oh, and on a side-note: I just love how, at the end of every episode, the background artists decide to whore their awesome skills. I should have known that they’d go all out once they’d reach Paris. That bird’s eye view of Paris was downright awesome.

Blade of the Immortal – 09

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: The re-match between Manji and Makie.
Highlights: The huge psychological warfare that went on during the battle.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
With episodes like this, where one fight basically takes up the entire episode, I just can’t help but wonder why it felt so awesome here, and yet when series as Soul Eater stretch a fight-scene, with their far-superior animation, it feels like a chore to get through (for me, at least). I think the big difference is that the talking in Blade of the Immortal has a very important meaning to the fight, and this episode also shows that the psychological aspect is very important, while Soul Eater instead try to increase their length with an explanation that’s just good for a bit of background, and never adds anything to the characterization.

In any case, this episode was probably the best one of the series so far, mostly thanks to Makie and her fascinating character, who’s standing between her own values and her love with Kagehisa. This episode really showed me why she’s this series’ strongest warrior: not only is she very proficient with her weapon, but she also makes optimal use of the environment she’s in, compared to Manji, who’s just good at hacking and slashing his victims until they go down, and uses his persistence as his main weapon.

I also really like what Rin did, at the end of the episode. She’s very mature for her age: she realized that for her revenge, she killed many people, she acknowledges it, and yet she stands firm to her decision to avenge her parents and go through with the decision she made. This episode showed that she had a lot of doubts when confronted with it, but I really like that she was able to use this as another look at the spectrum, and went on to help Manji.

Fancy Lala Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Next-up in the category of underrated gems: Fancy Lala, a charming mahou shoujo from the late nineties. It’s understandable why not many people are interested in it: the premise advertises a girl who coincidentally meets up with two miniature dinosaurs, who give her the power to grow up and become an idol so that she can meet up with the guy she admires. It’s not exactly a premise that screams “Watch me!!”, and you really need to watch this series in order to understand its strengths. Fancy Lala is a definite recommendation for those who like slice-of-life dramas; it feels like a cross between Kamichu and Full Moon wo Sagashite, grabbing the best from both.

And really, this isn’t necessarily a series about idols; the premise would also have worked with construction-workers (although the end-result would probably end up a lot more GAR that way). In contrast to a series like Full Moon wo Sagashite, where the growing up was just a tool to get to the idol-part of the premise, Fancy Lala uses being an idol just as a tool to get to the growing up-part. The essence of this series is that it’s a look at adult problems through the eyes of a child, and there is so much potential for such a premise.

Basically, all of the good things in this series can be traced back to one thing: the awesome character of Miho. I gave the characters a rating of 10 for a good reason: she is an incredibly strong lead character for a girl of only ten years old. She’s able to carry both the weight of being an idol and the weight of the series and yet she remains an innocent child. We get to know her through and through, and it’s because of her that the major theme of adult problems works out so well.

The creators also make use of a lot of subtle drama, where nothing important is said, but you can see from the characters’ expressions that a lot is going on inside their mind. It’s because of this that this series never vetures into the world of cheese and melodrama, an oh so common pitfall of shoujo-series (and any other genre for that matter, I guess). This is such a genuine series, and you can feel that the characters are feeling down because of the problems they face, instead of acting down because of the creators’ wishes. Miho’s voice-actress also does a very admirable job: children in this series really do sound like children, rather than squeaky 30-year old voice-actresses.

And also let me say this specifically: Fancy Lala has the downright best ending of any mahou shoujo I’ve ever seen, and perhaps it’s also got my favourite ending of any shoujo-series for that matter. It’s a true example where realism works so much better than cheesy Deus ex Machina because creators are too afraid to kill off characters in the fear to upset said characters’ fans. Fancy Lala’s final two episodes are something that should happen in nearly every single mahou shoujo-series, and yet none I’ve seen so far even dared to address its topics.

But yeah, this really is a series about Miho. Apart from that, it doesn’t have much else to sell, as shown by the premise: the reason why Miho got her magical powers is just pure coincidence, we never get any concrete explanation of where those dinosaurs came from. In addition to growing up, Miho also somehow becomes incredibly proficient in singing, posing and acting, without any practice whatsoever. These things are going to make it a bit difficult to care about the characters in the beginning, though at least the series makes up for it with quite an accurate portrayal of the local idol-scene once it gets going.

Obviously, if you’re not into slice of life, you’re not going to like this series, but nonetheless it’s an incredibly genuine shoujo series with some adult themes. It’s got a wonderful lead character. And sure, the animation looks a bit outdated for those of you who are only used to series from the last four years, but nonetheless the character-art is very expressive, and tries to convey even the smallest of emotions, and it looks great in my opinion. Simply said: Miho Rocks.

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

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 30

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Celestial Beings visit Kataron in an attempt to team up.
Highlights: Well, let’s hope Saji has learned his lesson now…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Overall, I liked this episode quite a bit as it continued to push the plot forward, although I do have a large complaint about the way it ended. It just reminded me too much of Code Geass, in which the creators just too often tried to evoke sympathy by creating an as large bloodbath as possible. The big problem is that the lead characters that were so morally unambiguous in the first season turned into the clichéd “heroes of justice”.

In the first season, there were some evil parties, but no party was pure good. Everyone was in it for his or her own ideals and agendas, and especially the split world into three equally powerful parties made up for a lot of interesting politics, where the viewer got the chance to side for a lot of differently possible parties. Unfortunately, they’ve now merged together into one big glob of a country where only the characters from the first season seem to feel any sympathy.

It’s not a complete disaster, but this series really NEEDS to do something to prevent A-LAWS from turning into your stereotyped evil empire that needs to be defeated. The top-decision makers are the biggest problem, I think. They just aren’t fleshed out as well as the people fro the first season. It’s a shame, we’ve got a series with some wonderful characters across the scale of good and evil, and now they have to take orders from pure evil people.

Gundam Wing had the same in its middle part, and it managed to pull through when said organization fell apart. That’s what I hope that this series is going to do as well: just let the evil empire do its stuff for a while, and then around the episode 13-mark make it fall apart with a big bang. I mentioned this before, but the most important thing that this series needs to do is to give each of its characters an identity: a unique role that’s going to create a lot of different parties one could side with.

Strangely enough, I was more annoyed with Louise than with Saji in this episode. Saji’s behaviour felt natural: we already know that he’s struggling between every different party, and he’s not exactly someone who can keep a secret. However, it seems that Louise didn’t enter the army to grow, but rather to take revenge on the Gundams for her hand.

Speaking of stereotypes… what was up with Ali al Sarshes? Has he spent four years getting more and more insane or something? I would have preferred a less direct scene.

Jigoku Shoujo – 57

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A teacher is bugged by an overprotective guardian.
Highlights: You have to love the messages of this series.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh, how I love this series, although for a completely different reason when compared to the other seasons. The first season had some really nice stories in its repertoire about people who were pushed to the limits. The second season then started to move to lighter reasons to want to send someone to hell, and here the third season comes and it instead focuses on the darker side of being a teenager. Anime has a real tendency to overglorify teenagers, and I believe that this series has a very strong message against that, with the “Kids these days”-themes.

This episode already started to deviate from the usual formula. What we have here is a teacher, where one of her students has an incredibly overprotective aunt, who makes a fuzz over the slightest thing that happens to her niece, and makes whatever effort she can to make in order to make the teacher’s life miserable. In the end, it turns out that that student had been setting up her aunt against the teacher, just for fun. She figured that her teacher was a grown-up, so she’d just be fine, even though she had to deal with her aunt.

It’s strange. When you look at the themes, it almost seems like this series has been written by a bunch of old guys who downright hate everything about teenagers, and yet they make some very good points. Teenagers these days do cause a lot of unnecessary trouble for others and don’t even seem to understand what they did wrong, and even though the teacher’s method was a bit extreme, it was the perfect one to teach her a lesson she won’t soon forget.

Another point this series is trying to make is about the ease at which people are willing to send others to hell. It’s not just a sign of that people are losing faith in these “fictional” places as heaven or hell, but also at how they fail to look at the distant future (a very recent topic, with the economy, and huge amounts of people who failed to pay their mortgage). It’s a conservative series, and yet it’s also the series that’s got the most actual topics. It’s the first anime I’ve seen that included the Vista-cursor, it’s got IPods, as compared to most other series, which are still stuck in Windows 98.

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 19

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: It’s back to one-episode arcs as this episode shows the local school-festival.
Highlights: Finally! Character-development!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Those of you who’ve been following my posts about this series (all three of you) may remember how for the past episodes, I’ve been whining about the lack of character-development. Well, I didn’t think that the creators were actually going to listen to me. Sure, the episode was a bit cheesy here and there, but there’s no way that I’m going to complain about this excellent episode. It ranks both amongst the best and most hilarious episodes of the series so far, and right now it tossed my fears about this series losing steam in its final quarter into the trash bin.

I’m really glad that the creators decided to use the extra time of this series on character-development, rather than providing even more random stories (after all, that’s what the regular arcs are for). I can now also see the point that the creators wanted to make with Midori’s bad youth. In this episode, she fully realizes how differently she grew up from Ran (the background on Ran’s parents was also really appreciated), but the creators also pretty much set this series apart nearly every other mahou shoujo-series, by making Ran’s parents find out about Ran’s and Midori’s powers.

One thing that I also find strange is that a school-festival episode is definitely nothing new, and yet that never stood in the hilarity of this episode. I mean, it feels like 75% of every series that’s set into a school somehow has a school-festival that looks suspiciously like the other, but I guess that the fun comes from the different ways in which the featured classmates decide to solve their problems, and the different tasks that are handed to each other, making them still a bit unique, when compared to for example pool- and hot-spring-episodes, where there aren’t many different situations you can put your characters in…

Ran and Midori’s class couldn’t decide between a cafe and a haunted house, so they decided to go for a haunted cafe (which later turned into a haunted Kansai-ben cafe, due to an inside-joke from Midori). Especially Midori’s Medusa-outfit was awesome. It’s also interesting how her character-designs change, depending on her mood: when we first met her, she had evil eyes, she then went to a neutral/sarcastic look, and in this episode, her eyes switched shape to allow for a better dramatic effect. I only have to wonder where the animators were at that point. It’s such a shame that the budget didn’t work in the series’ favour at that time, and especially the part in the middle of the episode sounded like it was rushed at the last minute.

So, while I usually like to blog less light-hearted series, with complex plots or intense storylines, it’s also fun to once in a while blog such a light-hearted series, especially if it knows what it is and doesn’t get dull in its second half (which is kind-of why I don’t blog a lot of them. It’s one thing to blog a bad series with a complex plot, but I can imagine that it’s going to be exceptionally painful to blog a bad comedy-series, where you’ll run out of things to rant about after only two episodes). I’m not going to say that after this episode, I’m glad to have blogged this series. I did the same with Macross Frontier, also around this point in the series, and it went downhill pretty much instantly afterwards, so instead I’m just going to enjoy the final quarter of this charming series. ^^;