Author: psgels

Kara no Kyoukai – The Garden of Sinners – Remaining Sense of Pain Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kara no Kyoukai


The third movie of The Garden of Sinners takes place between the first and the second. It continues the tradition of the second movie by shedding light on the unanswered questions that the first movie left behind, as it shows another stage in Shiki and Mikiya’s life. The story is about yet another string of mysterious gruesome murders, but despite this, it was the best movie of Kara no Kyoukai yet in my opinion.

The antagonist for this movie is the biggest reason for this. This movie really looks into the question: “what could someone drive to commit these gruesome murders?” And it comes up with a fascinating character study with a bit of supernatural elements here and there. Shiki and Mikiya also benefit from the second movie, which fleshed out their characters a bit, so they too make this a highly enjoyable movie.

There are a couple of bugs in the storyline, though. I’m not sure whether it was a good idea to have the major antagonist turn out to be a friend of Mikiya, of all people. It makes no sense, could have easily be omitted without affecting the rest of the movie and the movie can’t seem to decide what kind of relationship the two exactly have. It feels like some sort of cheap plot-device, especially for such a short 50-minute movie. The ending is also a bit of a downer-ending, with its Deus ex Machina-ish plot twist.

The plot feels a bit weird, but nevertheless the characters keep improving with every movie. It’ll be interesting to see this trend continue for the rest of the seven movies of the Garden of Sinners. Remaining Sense of Pain isn’t the most visually stunning instalment of Kara no Kyoukai, and the mystery isn’t as impressive as in chapter 1, but it makes up for this with great and solid characters.

Storytelling: 7/10
Characters: 9/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 8/10

Bonen no Xamdou – 02

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: Akiyuki tries to make sense of his new body as the assault causes many casualties.
Highlights: Shows all the basics of good storytelling.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
I can imagine that if there ever was something like a “Basic Guide-Book to Telling A Good Story”, it would use Bonen no Xamdou as a major source of inspiration, or in any case the first two episodes. Everything so far has been done exactly by the books, and although this makes these two episodes predictable, it also makes them very solid. The setting for Bonen no Xamdou is huge, and so far we’ve seen the characters introduced and properly defined (and some of them already have evolved a bit), all the major parties have had their introductions, and yet the pacing has been frantic in order to keep the viewer interested.

I also really like the use of budget in this series. Bonen no Xamdou has a huge budget, but interestingly this isn’t used to create stunning backgrounds, like Porfy no Nagai Tabi or Macross Frontier, and instead it makes sure for a lot of detailed motions on the foreground. Very nice to see that for a change, especially in a series that’s as busy as this one.

And with this episode, I know for sure: it’s a pet peeves of the director to pay homage to some of the classics of anime. We saw this first in Eureka7, where Eureka’s three children were based off of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and here you can spot it too: Nakiami’s outfit is very obviously inspired by the costumes in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. On an interesting side-note: the children seem to return for Bonen no Xamdou as well, though this time there’re just two of them. Let’s see how these brats ended up on such an international war-ship.

Macross Frontier – 16

by psgels, posted in Macross Frontier



Short Synopsis: Grace uses Ranka’s abilities as Sheryl gets more and more jealous.
Highlights: Best soundtracks of the series yet.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Ah, of course. The reason why Grace went after singers like Ranka and Sheryl was for their deculture-ability, in an attempt to get rid of the Vajra. Apparently, the deculture didn’t work with Sheryl, so she tried Ranka instead, and this episode proved to be a success, as Ranka’s song created a fairly easy victory in a battle against the Vajra.

I must say that the soundtrack for this series is as huge as its animation-budget. This episode introduced even more new songs and tunes, and strangely they felt like they were the best tracks of this show’s OST I’ve heard so far. Especially Ranka’s song with a new instrumental track added to it, it’s amazing what a few different instruments can do to the tone of a song. It finally gave a sort of sci-fi feel that I’ve been missing in this series. But then again, this is just the opinion of a guy who isn’t a fan of j-pop. ^^;

The love-triangles are also getting heated up more than ever. While I find it hard to imagine that Brera would be going after his sister, the guy does create an awful lot of jealousy for Alto, in the same way that Sheryl’s jealousy continues to grow. It’s good to see that they’re both starting to realize that they’d better get serious if they want to prevent from losing.

Genius Party – 01 – Genius Party Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party


Ah, why not? Who cares, I’m just going to write a different review for each part of Genius Party. I’m also reviewing the individual episodes of Kara no Kyoukai, so why not Genius Party? It’ll be an interesting experiment, to see whether these compilation movies are best reviewed as a whole of by their individual parts. Robot Carnival, The Animatrix, The Cockpit and Memories have always been difficult to review, simply because the quality of the different parts can be so incredibly different. When I watched Memories, I ended up not writing a review about it, simply because I didn’t know exactly what to say about the combination of Cannon Fodder and Magnetic Rose, and my review about the Animatrix probably doesn’t do justice to the amazing Second Renaissance.

Anyway, enough blabbering, onto the review. This one’s more for completion’s sake, as it’s more of an introduction than an actual short movie. The honour of kicking off Genius Party goes to Atsuko Fukushima, which couldn’t have been a better choice, as she also did the opening and ending for Robot Carnival. The first movie is called Genius Party for a reason, as it basically serves as an introduction to the rest of the shorts. It’s probably the shortest of all the movies, and instead for a straight and concrete storyline, it goes for the abstract approach.

Genius Party was meant to be surreal, a piece of art in a way. It’s up to the viewer to give his own interpretation of what happened, and you may want to end up watching this several times in order to properly catch what the heck went on there. It’s a thought-provoking piece, that an have many different interpretations.

Obviously, there’s only so much you can do in just five minutes and apart from a great style and a cryptic story, this first movie hardly anything more than that. Alone this won’t leave much of a lasting impression, but as an introduction, it serves its purpose.

Storytelling: 8/10
Characters: 6/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 7/10

Kara no Kyoukai – The Garden of Sinners – A Study in Murder (Part 1) Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kara no Kyoukai


Apologies for the delay of this review of the second movie, I totally forgot about it until the third one suddenly popped up. The second chapter of the Garden of Sinners tells how everything started, and how Shiki and Mikiya first met with each other. It’s obviously a chapter that’s more about building up and establishing its characters than about its stories. Overall, I liked the first chapter more, but at least A Study in Murder Part 1 is a lot more solid.

The whole setting is a lot more down-to-earth, as the entire story is just about two rather strange high-school kids. The graphics look as good as ever, but that’s to be expected with a movie-budget, and the strange emphasises on different foods are still there. The best thing about this movie is the cast of characters. They’re well fleshed out throughout the hour of airtime and even though they won’t hit any heights, they remain enjoyable to watch, and add depth to their versions that we saw in the first movie.

The story is a bit hard to believe, though. It’s impossible to accurately describe this without going into spoilers, but let’s just say that this movie tells about a series of gruesome murders, and the motives of the eventual killer will feel rather strange, and especially the way that Mikiya reacts to this gives Elfen Lied-flashbacks. The message of this episode was a rather weird one: “it’s okay to murder, you won’t get put in jail for it, everyone will love you anyway.” Now that’s going to stop the children from stabbing their parents.

Nevertheless, the movie served its purpose: the characters are fleshed out now and they have a background, which makes them more than just a bunch of cardboard boxes. Now all that’s left to see is how the rest of the movies will use this.

Storytelling: 7/10
Characters: 8/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 7/10

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 16

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: It’s back to action and fanservice as this episode focuses at Souta.
Highlights: But what great action it is.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
The next episode previews are getting less and less helpful… they still give an indication of what’s to expect in the next episode, but they’re getting more and more cryptic with every episode. Still, that’s what I like about them. The reason why I don’t often look at these previews is that you’ll never know when they’re too spoilery for their own good. The worst offender that I ran into was Naruto, which once revealed the plot of an entire spoilerific episode in its preview. Still, RD knows exactly what it should give away, to keep its viewer wondering and not reveal any obvious spoilers. The preview for this episode, for example, considered of Souta and Holon fighting. And it was indeed an episode about Souta and Holon, but at the same time it also symbolized the romantic tension between the two, which was the main point about this episode. At the same time, the preview for the next episode features the entire same scene, with just Souta realizing why he keeps losing to Holon in training fights. It should be in the same vein as the current one, but we can only guess what it’ll really be about.

In any case, the current episode rocked. Souta, the guy who sleeps with the boss of his boss is actually secretly in love with Holon. This episode addresses the fact of falling in love with an android a bit differently than Chobits, though. This episode didn’t necessarily end with a happy ending, but rather with all the characters (except Minamo, perhaps) understanding what’s going on. There’s no cheesy confession scene, but instead a much more subtle approach was chosen.

There was one particular scene that caught my attention in this episode: it was where the evil android in this episode had just beaten Holon “unconscious” and threw her body away. That was the only time so far where Holon looked (and sounded) like an object, rather than a human being.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 16

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: A blind director gets murdered by a strange figure with a kabuki-mask on.
Highlights: Finally! Some quality characterizations!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Blegh. Here I am, criticizing this series for failing at characterization, and then it comes and puts down a cast of great characters for this episode to work with. This episode was much, much better than the previous one, simply because of its endearing and well-defined characters. I may not have understood everything of it, and yet I loved this episode, and it finally reminded me why I originally fell in love with this series.

This episode was probably the best in terms of random chatter between the members of the MRI-team. The guy with glasses should speak more often, because his chemistry between the rest of the members is really interesting. But then again, this was really an episode where he could get into his element, with the victim being a movie director, and this episode revealed that he’s a fan of movies.

This episode also had an interesting parallel with a certain episode of Real Drive: the one with the blind artist. Both episodes show the imagination of someone who has lost his or her sight. Himitsu shows literally what it is that he sees. It’s mostly darkness, but I can imagine how he would sometimes get visions like that.

Ultraviolet: Code 044 – 04

by psgels, posted in Ultraviolet: Code 044



Short Synopsis: An intermezzo, without much action, but much character-development and introductions.
Highlights: The new characters should prove interesting for the rest of this series.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so even though this was a quiet episode, it still delivered, as it made perfect use of the extra time for the characters to reflect upon themselves, and it also made 044 see how stupid she was acting considering her love. There’s no guarantee that when Luka wakes up, he’ll be in love with 044 too, and he’ll probably just return to his comrades.

In the meantime, she also removes the chip that Daxus II used in order to track her down. He’s just like 044 in a way: he too is obsessed over another human being, to the extent where she’s more important than his job, and he’ll use all of his influence to get her back. In the same way, 044 will use al of her powers in order to protect Luka, even though she hardly knows anything about the guy.

The new people introduced included some sort of cross between a gang-boss and a fashion-victim, who was after the reward put on 044’s head. This episode also introduces Luka’s comrades, who come and retrieve him at the end of the episode. It’s interesting how they seem to be connected to Mathilda somehow. Then there are some acquaintances of Garcia, who haven’t done much yet.

I must say that Madhouse is pretty much turning into my favourite production-company this year. They may have had certain flops with Allison and Lillia and Kamen no Maid Guy, but the majority of their series that aired this year all had interesting premises, looked fresh and had deep storytelling. The problems I’ve once had with the studio was when they kept disappointing me over and over with Kaiji, the second season of Black Lagoon, the finale of Akazukin, Claymore and Shigurui and the large amount of hiatuses and recaps from Dennou Coil and Saiunkoku Monogatari, but ever since the spring-season, these guys have been better than ever.

Mission-E – 03

by psgels, posted in Mission-E



Short Synopsis: The target of this week: a girl with her pet bat.
Highlights: Enemies get stronger and smarter as the series goes on.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I’m not sure who on Anime News Network found it a good idea to lump all of the staff of Mission-E all together as directors, but that information is obviously wrong. It takes some credibility away from the site, doesn’t it? In any case, it’s very interesting to see a series with so many high-profile people working on it (the original creator of Scrapped Princess and the directors of Simoun, True Tears, Niea, Shion no Ou and Full Moon wo Sagashite are all working on this thing), that doesn’t aim to be the best in any field, and instead just wants to put down a fun series.

In any case, this episode was clearly one of building up, especially meant to develop the bad guys a bit. They were faceless goons up till now, but this episode added a bit of personality to them, which is always nice. The main guy in charge of capturing the people with Type-E also seems to have a personal history with Chinami, as we see through a flashback in the beginning of the episode, where he got some sort of scar on his back from amongst the rubble. My guess is that this happened when that resort exploded, back at the end of Code-E.

Maori is also getting more used to her job, and isn’t afraid to talk to random people anymore. She’s still pretty much the outcast of her class, though, but that’s obvious, because she still hasn’t stopped distancing herself from everyone. The type-e case was rather mundane (I mean, a bat with type-E isn’t what you’d call exciting), but it did serve the purpose of showing that animals also can get type-E.

Persona – Trinity Soul Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Watching Persona – Trinity Soul is like walking through a desert, complete with mirages and all, only to end up at an oasis. It’s a supernatural mystery-series, based on the persona-games, and its favourite habit was teasing the heck out of its viewers.

And I’m not kidding when I say that. Despite the fact that this series is full of mecha-like personas, the pacing is sloooooooow. It takes ages for something to actually happen, and when something interesting does happen, a cliff-hanger follows and the next episode acts like nothing happens and starts building up again.

Even after the first half ends, there’s still no sign of a speed-up in the plot, and the pacing even becomes even slower than it already was, as it reveals more and more of the mysteries that lie behind this series. And I must say that the overall plot is definitely interesting; you can see that a lot of imagination went into it. If only the pacing wasn’t so god damn slow.

Another flaw that pops up after the second half is the obligatory background for the main characters. A major problem with them is that these play around with coincidences a bit too much. Seriously, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a character that grew up normally, and didn’t lose his/her parents in some sort of gruesome way.

In other words, as the series went on, my interest in it became pretty low, and I had almost given up hope on it, and then those final five episodes arrived. And it’s exactly here where the quality of this series increases dramatically: the pacing finally kicks in, and everything that the entire series had been building up for finally comes together and delivers a very enjoyable finale that changed my entire opinion of this series.

Overall, I’m not going to recommend this series, but if you’ve started it, then you might as well finish it because of the excellent finale. I think that this series suffered from two major problems: it’s too long and it could have fleshed out its characters a bit more. If this series was just one season long, it would be a total roller-coaster ride, and even if there were only 22 episodes, this series would already have been much more enjoyable due to the lack of quiet parts. The characters can be blamed for these lacklustre quiet parts as well. I don’t mind a slow pacing at all, but if that’s the case, then the creators do need to keep the viewer interested during these quiet parts. I just didn’t feel like I could care about these characters. Persona is a good anime, but it could have been so much better if it weren’t for these small annoying flaws.

Storytelling: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 9/10