Author: psgels

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 07

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Natsume meets a young fox-spirit.
Highlights: That fox-spirit was SO adorable.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Seriously, this series just keeps getting better and better. I couldn’t call Kurenai among the best that Brains Base has produced, but Natsume Yuujin-chou is definitely among their best work, along with Baccano. Incidentally, they were both directed by the same guy, the one who also directed Jigoku Shoujo. The result is an excellent characterization that really makes this series come alive.

The little fox-spirit was so incredibly adorable in this episode. It yet again enforced how one meeting for a youkai means much more than what it does for a human, and the fox-spirit, even though she’s so young, is brave enough to come and look for Natsume (who lives in a different town) to make sure that he isn’t lonely. That’s so sweet.

It’s a huge shame that there only seem to be 12 or 13 episodes, considering that this series is occupying Vampire Knight’s timeslot (which will be taking over the timeslot again when October starts). It’s too damn short for such an awesome series. It’s a shame that Brains Base series are only one season long, because this series has enough material for 13 more episodes.

Mission-E – 07

by psgels, posted in Mission-E



Short Synopsis: Chinami and Maori “try” to retrieve hacked information from the foundation.
Highlights: Outsourcing ftw.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
That was an interesting fight-scene, and it looked actually really nice. A changing animation-style can either work really well or completely flop, there’s no in-between, but it looked very nice here. Mission-E’s artwork is perfect for a bit of experimenting, and I hope to see more of it.

In any case, there was a lot of good stuff in this episode. First of all, it turns out that the woman from Osaka and Mils Brimberg were two very different persons. Mils seemed to have suffered serious brain-damage from that accident at Amazawa village, and still remains at the hospital. Well, I guess that makes sense as to why Adol wants revenge for Chinami, although I wonder where the woman from Osaka fits in all of this.

Maori running away and running into Adol was perhaps a bit forced, but I do like how Maori can use her head, and be critical of the situation. I do wonder whether the creators are going to pull a Wellber and make her go back to Chinami, or that she’s going to be eloping with Adol. It’s probably going to be the first option, but I’m secretly hoping that the creators will pick that second option.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 17

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume



Short Synopsis: The old guy reveals his connections with Nijuu Mensou
Highlights: Deja vu?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
This episode started out excellent: Chiko is being accompanied by Nijuu Mensou’s former research professor, and Ken gets attacked by one of his minions when he tries to follow her. One thing I love about this series is how brutal the fight scenes are. There are supernatural elements, but it knows full well that superpowers alone don’t make a good fight. The animation is subtle, but it knows where to be detailed. I’d much rather watch a fight scene of Nijuu Mensou than one of Soul Eater, for example. These are fights between people that can get wounded very easily, and don’t have some sort of plot-device that automatically heals their wounds/makes them able to block a sword with their bare hands.

But as the episode went on and the focus got back to Chiko, I got a strange feeling… didn’t this already happen before? Someone from Nijuu Mensou’s past? Check. Grudge against Nijuu Mensou’s betrayal? Check. Hostage? Check. Nijuu Mensou appears from out of nowhere? Check. Everything just sounds awfully familiar to the doll-arc, apart from how the scientist doesn’t have any powers and so has to use two cyborgs. What exactly is this arc planning to add?

The other big difference here is that there was a huge emphasis on Chiko, thinking for herself. The doll clearly wanted revenge against both Chiko and Nijuu Mensou, but the professor (what was his name again?) wanted Chiko to side with him for his goals. Still, what could the creators be planning for that next episode. This series’ strength was how its plot often took 180-degree twists, but this turn it looks more like 360 degrees

Telepathy Shoujo Ran – 08

by psgels, posted in Telepathy Shoujo Ran



Short Synopsis: Having never heard of privacy, Ran involves herself in a romance between two of her classmates.
Highlights: Surprisingly down to earth for this series’ standards.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Aww, what a sweet episode. The story was small enough for just one episode, but it so made up for the fact that this series took a break last week. It tells the story about two of Ran’s classmates (both rather outcasts) who get separated from each other. It looked a bit shallow at the start, but for some strange reason it turned out really enjoyable. On one hand, this show is so incredibly childish, but on the other hand it does have an awesome cast of characters. ^^;

The moment that stood out of course was when Ran and Midori tried to talk to the guy using his stuffed alien animal. What would you do if an alien suddenly started yelling about your loved ones in Kansai-ben (or any other dialect)? It was so awesome to see Midori lose patience and forget about her accent. ^^;

It’s also interesting how at first sight, this was a rather standard episode about bullying, but at the end of the episode, this turned out to be a bit deeper. Bullying is after all an often used plot-device in order to create sad characters, so I’m glad that the creators put more thought into it than just that: the girl was insecure and never had the courage to make friends and so an easy target, while the guy never got bullied in the first place: he was just frustrated when he heard that the girl was moving away.

Tsukuyomi Moon Phase Review – 65/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Ugh… what a mess. Before watching, I already had a hunch that watching Tsukuyomi Moon Phase wouldn’t be easy, but I decided to have faith in Akiyuki Shinbo, its director. I’ve loved most of his other works so far: Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Pani Poni Dash and Soul Taker were excellent, so there would be a good chance for Tsukuyomi Moon Phase to be good as well, right?

Well, I’d like to thank this series for destroying my faith in Shinbo. While it’s not utter crap, Tsukuyomi Moon Phase is dull, annoying and just not worth it.

Let me start with the good part: character-development. Surprisingly, the part where Shinbo screwed up at Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is one of the better points in this series. The cast of Tsukuyomi Moon Phase isn’t static, and it changes notably as the show goes on. Unfortunately, all the character-development in the world isn’t going to help if you can’t care about these characters, and that’s the big problem with this series.

Bluntly said, just about half of the cast of this series is incredibly annoying. Hazuki is a whiny brat, Koukei is a lacklustre male lead, Kaoru has the depth of a paper bag, Art is a shallow, dull and predictable main villain, and so on. The interesting characters do try to brighten up the mood a bit, but they’re almost always overshadowed by the dull ones. The central theme in this series, the chemistry between Kouhei and Hazuki (the two main characters) also feels fake. It felt to me like they were arguing for the sake of arguing, rather than that their personalities were clashing.

If that wasn’t enough, I also have my issues with the storytelling. The entire story is full of plot holes – both large and small. According to this series, the best way to clean out an oil-stain in your clothes is to enter a hot spring for a while. The ending also leaves too many things unanswered. Apparently the manga went on after that point, but Shinbo could at least have tried to wrap them up a bit.

Then there are the fights, probably the most blatant part of this series. On paper, it looked good: the combat system combines vampires with Shinto-styled spells and magical seals. The different characters receive a number of interesting powers that are perfect for forming intricate strategies against the enemies. The problem, however, is that for nearly every major fight, these strategies fail and eventually either Hazuki or Kouhei ends up saving the day with some hastily explained convenient godmode-power that basically renders all of these carefully thought-out plans useless. I can understand how a series would want to make its main characters a bit stronger than usual, but the powers that our main couple receives borders the ridiculous and they feel just downright lazy.

But well, at least since this is a Shinbo-series, the art and animation-style at least look great, right? Well, even with that I’ve got problems. The animation style indeed is typical Shinbo, with nice poses and camera-angles, but at the same time it pales in comparison to the visuals of both his previous and his later works: Petit Cosette, Soul Taker, Pani Poni Dash and Zetsubou-Sensei all looked ten times better than what was shown here. The animation for Moon Phase is inconsistent and all over the place: sometimes it’s normal, at other times it’s Shinbo’s typical style and yet at other times it looks like a desperate attempt to save budget. It can’t seem to choose for one proper style.

At least I can be positive about the music: while nothing special, there are a number of very sweet tracks that especially pop up during the climaxes. Overall, though, I just can’t recommend Moon Phase. It has its decent moments, but it never really stands out at anything. It went too far at trying to be “moe” that it rather lost sight of what was really important for this series, so much that I even couldn’t understand what it was trying to achieve in the first place.

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

Birdy the Mighty Decode – 07

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: A certain someone with long dark blue hair starts killing people.
Highlights: Whoa, is this really the same Birdy the Mighty?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Really, this series is looking ten times better after that second season announcement. Everything finally makes sense. By far my biggest problem with this series wasn’t that it was bad, but rather its questionable use of its limited time of only 13 episodes. Five consecutive episodes did nothing but take their time to build up, and it often got distracted on things that didn’t really matter for such a short series. With 26 episodes, it makes perfect sense, though. With that kind of format, it makes perfect sense that the first episodes would focus more on building up.

Something tells me that that second season is going to rock. The director really has a knack for memorable character-development (ever since finding out that this series would only have 13 episodes, I kept wondering how he’d pull this off with such a small time-frame): both Noein and Escaflowne really began to shine once they hit their second halves. And now I finally realize the parallel of Birdy’s outer-space arc with Noein: that too showed La’Cryma surprisingly early in the series.

Incidentally, this episode also rocked. It’s the best episode of Birdy yet – at least since episode one – as it tells about a serial-killing android who bears surprising resemblance to Nakasugi. It turns out to have been infected by a bug that went wrong, that caused her to hug her victims too strongly, strangling them. Ever since, she’s been “hugging” everyone who looked like her original creator. Birdy’s rival ends up bringing it to the Indian-ish guy (I need to learn these people’s names) and the two seem to have made some sort of alliance.

Macross Frontier – 19

by psgels, posted in Macross Frontier



Short Synopsis: Ranka’s popularity has skyrocketed as she gives a concert at Alto’s school.
Highlights: Back to the love triangle again, animation was a bit off at times.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
In this episode, the plot took a step back (all we saw of it is build-up for the next episode, in which we’ll see whether Leon’s coup will succeed and the mysteries behind Ranka’s fluffy partner will be revealed) and instead this was all about developing the love-triangle between Ranka, Sheryl and Alto. A good love-triangle should be like a good tennis-match, and not with one of the players grabbing the ball and running off with it, and the creators have done an admirable job to keep it a bit ambiguous about who Alto will end up with.

This episode ended with Sheryl in favour, but the question of course remains whether Ranka will give up or not, after having seen the two together. I hope she doesn’t spend the next few episodes angsting over what to do, though. This episode kept hinting at how Alto is the big reason for Ranka to keep singing, and Ranka has never had the courage to take Alto away from Sheryl in front of her.

There were unfortunately a few scenes where the key animation frames and especially the characters looked off again. Like, Ranka’s face was too stretched out, etc. Normally I don’t have a problem with that, but this is Macross Frontier, with its huge animation budget. Most series don’t have an unlimited budget, so it’s only natural for the animation to be rather inconsistent, but Macross Frontier doesn’t have this excuse.

Bonen no Xamdou – 05

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: Ignoring her orders, Nakiami pays a visit to her former comrades.
Highlights: Mostly building-up again, but that’s exactly what this series is good at.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
This episode continues to shed new lights on the world of Bonen no Xamdou. It seems that Nakiami joined the Zanbani when she was just young. If her country (I think it was called Tessik) wasn’t attacked for whatever reason that’s still undisclosed, she would be its leader, or at least the princess, since we don’t yet know what happened to her parents. I guess that when they lost their country, she and her comrades went their own ways, where she joined the Zanbani and the others went into the black market. I wonder, by the way. Could Tessik Village be the place where that old woman who is behind all of the Xam’d lives?

This episode yet again showed how much damage the attack of episodes 1 and 2 caused. The death toll is already at 1300 and still rising. It also confirmed that humanforms were originally just humans, as this episode shows how the scientist of the OP transforms the girl who lost her family in the previous episode into some kind of mismatched humanform. The interesting thing was that Haru stood right next to her. This might be a reason for her to become more involved with the war, now that she’s seen one of her friends as such a humanform.

This episode also featured some strange props that Nakiami’s former comrades had with them. A strange ghost-like thingy that’s supposed to protect an airship and some kind of thirty-year-old seed. Now let’s see what it’s purpose turns out to be.

Oh, and for some strange reason, I really liked Akushiba in this episode. He may be cold at times, but I don’t think that he just went to deliver Haru’s letter, just to defend his nickname. ^^;

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 32

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: This episode had an onsen-sequence. Now that’s going to attract some viewer (not).
Highlights: That Carlos is a walking time-bomb.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Sarcasm aside, this episode rocked. I expected this series to go back to lacklustre travel arcs again, and instead we get a Mina-episode. There’s not even one scene where Porfy appeared, and instead this episode was all about developing the trio Mina, Isabella and Carlos. Oh, and what a wonderful job it did.

The episode starts at a bar in the evening, where Carlos screwed up and his deceit was found out by one of the people he played against. Mina and Isabella try to get away unnoticed, while Isabella’s father stays behind. The next day they take the train to the next city. Carlos tries to blame Mina for distracting him, but the fact does remain that he was the one who screwed up. Carlos then asks Isabella whether she plans to carry Mina among with her forever, though Isabella doesn’t know what to answer.

In te next city, Carlos notices many rich people, while Mina looks interested at the cars (notice how this is the first time she’s ever done that. Before she had no interest in them) and Isabella tells her that there is an “onsen” in the city. Usually an onsen means a hot spring, but in this context, I think “sauna” fits better. In any case, Isabella promises to take Mina there if business goes well.

When Isabela and Mina are working, a young boy approaches Mina, introducing himself as Heinz. Mina gets scared, though, and runs away. Heinz tries to follow her, but he suddenly gets trouble breathing. Mina gets Isabella away from one of her customers in an attempt to get help, and Isabella shows her how to fix his breathing problems (I wonder how she first found this out).

Heinz turns out to be the son of a count, and so when the count arrives, he pays quite a bit of money as a thanks of saving his son. Isabella grabs the money away from Carlos when he wants to use it, saying that it was her and Mina who saved the son, not him. The two of them use this money to go to the sauna. In there, they meet one of the customers that day (the one that Mina interrupted), though she doesn’t seem to mind after hearing what happened to Heinz. She also compliments Mina about her great voice. Isabella introduces Mina as her daughter. She later apologizes for that, but Mina doesn’t seem to mind.

When they return, Isabella’s father seems to have returned, and is happily drinking with Carlos. Of course, the two have to break up again because Mina needs to sleep. In the middle of the night, Mina wakes up (probably from a nightmare, but we don’t get to see what exactly she dreamt) and looks at her mother’s watch, and then at Isabella, and then smiles as she falls asleep again.

The next day, the count arrives again, and he wants to borrow Mina for one day, as it seems that Heinz has taken a liking to Mina. Isabella tries to disagree, saying that Mina isn’t a toy, but she ends up agreeing in the end (and Carlos doesn’t seem to mind after he gets some money). They go to a funfair, and for the first time Mina leaves Isabella, in order to play with Heinz.

When they return, it seems that Carlos and the count had a little talk, and the count seems to be willing to adopt Mina, so that Heinz finally has someone to play with. It seems ideal for Mina: she gets enough food every day, proper education, a warm bed. When the deal seems closed and Heinz wants to take Mina away, Mina resists, and runs back to Isabella. Heinz and his father try to convince them otherwise, but Isabella’s father (I’ve got to find out his name someday) explains that Isabela cares about Mina, just as the count cares about Heinz.

Heinz asks that when he meets Mina again, whether they can play together or not. After the answer is yes, he leaves, while Carlos is visibly angry, saying that Isabella’s going to have to take care of Mina and the episode ends.

I really hate Carlos right now, but then again, you can understand why he’s getting angry. Before Mina arrived, he had all of Isabella’s attention for himself. They were lovers once, so seeing Isabella getting taken away from him (and by none other than an unknown kid) must indeed be annoying the hell out of him.

Oh, and on a totally unrelated side-note: this was my 2000th post. Damn, I didn’t realize that I’ve been posting that much.

Tenchi Muyo! – Ryo-Ouki Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Okay, to be honest I decided to watch the first OVA of Tenchi Muyo!, the mother of all harem-anime, more as a fan of Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, rather than expecting anything worthwhile to come out of it. Still, I guess there had to be a reason why this caught on so much in the first place. This six-episoded OVA isn’t perfect, but it does have its enjoyable moments.

Obviously, it remains rather questionable for so many cute girls to move in at the house of the male lead, but at least the creators made sure to create an alien subplot in order to explain where these girls came from, and it’s at least plausible why the most important characters fell in love with this male lead. At the same time, the story about the aliens is also interesting enough to keep the viewer busy, I guess, and at least some effort has been put into it to make it a bit coherent and original (for its time, anyway).

The characters are a mixed bag: like expected, Sasami and Washuu (the short part we see of her anyway) were awesome. Ayeka and Ryo-Ouki were also pretty interesting. Ryoko (the main female lead) is hilarious when she doesn’t take herself serious, though gets rather dull when the comedy’s gone. Mihoshi, however, was just too annoying that what was good for her (how did she become a genius detective with that attitude anyway?) and the main villain Kagato is your stereotypical Norio Wakamoto-voiced bad guy without much depth to him, and his only purpose is to explain where Ryoko came from.

The result is also a rather mixed bag of a series. The first half is really enjoyable, where especially the chemistry between the different characters stands out. Mihoshi, Kagato and Ryoko’s serious side do rather ruin the second half, though. I think the biggest mistake that this series made is the ridiculously stretched out final battle against Kagato. It takes 1,5 episodes (that means 45 minutes) before the bugger finally dies. Especially for an OVA, that’s precious time that could have been so much better spent to develop and flesh out the characters.

Okay, I should be cursing this OVA for spawning and popularizing a genre that lives on seeing who can rip off each other the most, but nonetheless Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ouki is a nicely written story (for the most part at least). It’s got a bunch of well-defined characters (and also a few annoying ones) and there are a few interesting ideas included for the OVa. I’m not sure whether there really is enough material for 78 television-episodes and a truckload of more OVAs and movies, though…

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