Author: psgels

Allison to Lillia – 07

by psgels, posted in Allison to Lillia


Oh, just great. I’m losing interest in this series, as much as I hate to admit it. It’s not the only series that started out rather unbelievable this season. Heck, Nijuu Mensou no Musume had a far worse start, but at least that one has been showing potential. At this point, the sense of adventure just isn’t enough anymore, and the way Allison just stole yet another plane didn’t sit right with me at all. Thankfully, at least the last parts of this episode seemed interesting again.

But then again… a peek at the preview showed how Owen Nicht shamelessly kidnaps Fiona IN PERSON. I have no idea how the creators are supposed to get a satisfying conclusion out of that. The guy has been horribly underdeveloped, and it doesn’t seem that he’s about to receive a huge amount of depth. I REALLY hope that this series won’t continue this pacing, where Allison and later Lillia will keep saving the world n forced manners.

It’s a shame. I expected much more from the director, but it turns out that he still needs to learn a lot. His style was perfect for Mokke, where every episode was quick and yet powerful. It seems however that he just isn’t as good with continuous story-lines.

Still, I’ll continue with this series for now. The thing I’m interested in is its future potential. What will happen once Lillia takes over? Will this series change entirely? Let’s hope that this series can keep me interested until that point…

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 19

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi


Travelling-anime with random stories usually come in two categories: the saviour and the observer. The first one is by far the most common one: the protagonist arrives at a place where there’s some kind of problem, and at the end of the episode he or she has solved it. Examples of this are El Cazador, Mushishi, Mermaid’s Forest, Otogi Juushi Akazukin, et cetera. The second category is much rarer, and in there, the protagonist basically arrives, but his or her actions have no major influence on the places he/she visits. The only examples I can think of right now are Kaiba, Kino no Tabi and Perrine Monogatari.

And here Porfy comes and creates a totally different category: in this show, Porfy doesn’t save the people he meets: the people he meets save him. Such a young boy all alone on a journey obviously has a lot to learn, and thank goodness that Porfy manages to run into kind people who wish to help him further.

Porfy exits the ship on one of the trucks, and he gets dropped off at a local square as the truck driver mentions how hot the females are, although Porfy’s probably too young for that. He looks around a but, sees a bunch of punks and suddenly realizes that he hasn’t eaten anything since that morning. He runs towards a local fried-potato stand, after which a guy named Leon arrives as well. The stand owner comments on how he’s slacking off again, but as it turns out, Leon’s boss ordered him to get a bag of fried potatoes.

The woman at the stand then hands Porfy his potatoes, though she asks to be paid in Lire (Italy’s money before the Euro). Porfy gets all worked up when all he has is Greek money. A middle-aged man who happened to be passing by offers him to exchange Porfy’s money at the local bank, and Porfy does so, gullibly. While the man is away, exchanging the money and putting half of it in his own pocket, Porfy asks around for Mina.

The man returns and hands Porfy half of his money, though Leon quickly notices that the money he received is far too little and gets the remaining money out of the guy. The stand woman then tries to beat up the man, saying how he should be ashamed of himself to deceive such a young boy, as Leon walks away. Porfy quickly notices and runs after him, asking to return his money.

As it turns out, the punks were still there, and they had their eyes on Porfy’s large amount of money. Leon helps Porfy escape and the two exchange money and potatoes (which Porfy was holding when Leon confronted the old man). Leon warns Porfy, and asks if he has any plans of where to go next Porfy obviously hasn’t any, so he takes him along to his shop for now.

The shop turns out to be a car repair shop. The owner is a bit pissed off since he can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong with the car of one of his clients (and his potatoes that Leon was supposed to get were delayed), though this changes when he hears Porfy’s story. Unfortunately, neither he nor his wife has seen Mina. Porfy then prepares to leave, saying how he needs to find Mina. Leon however, says that he’ll get into big trouble if he just continues to search for Mina, his money will run out very quickly. Porfy says that he’ll manage somehow.

The store owner then offers him to work for money for a bit, since Porfy told how his father was teaching him to be a car mechanic. Leon mentions all of the dangers involved in travelling alone (he says this very bluntly, otherwise it just wouldn’t get through Porfy’s head). When Porfy has eaten a bit, the store manager gets a bit angry at how Porfy’s confidence in car mechanics. That’s why he brings Porfy to the car he himself was having trouble with.

Obviously, Porfy has a lot of trouble figuring out what’s wrong, with Leon watching from the side-lines. After a long while, Leon decides to subtly help him by suggesting that something might be up with the transmission. This is where Porfy breaks down, however, saying how his father didn’t teach him yet about that. What follows is a very touching scene, where Porfy gives up the strong impression eh tried to set up and starts crying, saying how he needs to find Mina. Leon assures him then that Mina is alive. The town they’re in is a small one, and a girl without anyone to take care of her will quickly be noticed.

Now that Porfy is cheered up a bit, Leon decides to help him some more by directing the problem to the battery, which turns out to be the culprit. When the owner of the car then comes to pick it up, he’s really glad for the work Porfy did, and gives him a little tip. Porfy then cleans up, and that night Leon takes a look at Porfy’s toolkit and gives him some pointers: it misses a few essential tools, while others will hardly be used at all.

Porfy then mentions the past World War. If I remember correctly, Greece never played a big role in it, though Italy was a major party there. As it turns out: Leon lost his family in that war. He hopes for Porfy to quickly find Mina. If she isn’t in this city, then he suggests Porfy where she might have gone to. He then gives Porfy a compass, in case he gets lost, and says that he ever gets lost, that he should use his brains, and the episode ends.

This was a really interesting episode, because for the first time Porfy came into contact with guys who were out to harm him. Porfy has never really been deceived by any stranger, so he had no reason to doubt the old man’s actions. This was really an episode, meant to make Porfy see the reality of his decision to start travelling. Sure, it sounds nice, but you have to take many things into account.

This is also why the store manager and Leon were so harsh to him at times. Porfy said full of confidence that he could fix any car, and so the store manager puts him on a problem which he knows he can’t fix, in order to teach Porfy to just say what he can do and what he can’t do. Porfy has been trying so much to be strong for his own and Mina’s sake that he started to ask the impossible from himself.

I must say that, when comparing the first nineteen episodes of Porfy to the first nineteen episodes of Les Miserables, then Porfy no Nagai Tabi so far has been better. But that’s only logical: Les Miserables only really started shining once it hit its second half, while Porfy’s height seems to have been the arc around episodes 13 to 17. Still, I’m interested in what the creators have in store for the rest of this series. Will it stay away from tragedy and instead focus on Porfy as he tries to find Mina, or do they still have some trumps left on their sleeve? Either way, it’s going to be awesome.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 06

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


Another very solid episode from Himitsu. Though it wasn’t among the best episodes of this series, it still had me glued at the screen during the tense moments. This episode kept a lot of things unmentioned. It never went into detail as to what Kinoko’s father, three friends and family did to her. All that we saw confirmed is that she was once abused by her father. Her father turned out to be obsessed and in love with her, and Kinoko knew this, so she used him as a scapegoat to take all the blame, which is why Kinoko didn’t kill him. He’d be sentenced to death anyway.

Still, I like series that assume that their viewer has a brain. There’s of course a fine line between left-out information and plain laziness, but I suspect that the creators knew full well what they were doing in this episode.

I think the reason why this episode wasn’t as good as the previous ones was that there were times in which we didn’t follow Aoki’s thought-pattern, but just jumped right to his conclusions, while the thing that made me fall in love with this series was the seemingly endless search for that one clue that helped to push the case closer to getting solved.

Crystal Blaze – 06

by psgels, posted in Crystal Blaze


Hah, I don’t care about the general opinion: this show rocks! It may be the most neglected series of the season, but for me it definitely belongs in the top-10 of the series that aired this season.

In this age of big budgets, it’s good to see that a relatively unknown company as Studio Fantasia is also trying its best to put down a classic. One of the things I don’t like about this season is that nearly every good series is done by the big animation studios, as Madhouse, Gonzo, Deen, etc. The studios that are relatively unpopular don’t seem to be even trying (for example A.C.G.T with its questionable Monochrome Factor).

I’m really glad to see that Studio Fantasia is trying to improve itself. Just take a look at their previous work. Before 2006, they only worked on silly shows which only seemed to focus on fanservice, though they pretty much surprised me with their solid work on Souko no Strain, and now they again managed to create a very enjoyable series that goes right where many other series have gone wrong. So yeah, there are a few low-budget parts in this series, mostly the art, but the rest really shines. This should send out a good message to the other lesser-known studios: you can create a good anime, even on a small budget.

Really, this is what a 12-episode series should be: no scene is wasted, quick development and good characterization. A 26-episode can afford to slowly build up for 10 episodes, but series like this one need to deliver quickly. Seeing a series that builds up for eleven episodes, with a climax of only two episodes is nice and all, but it remains mostly boring.

What’s more: the villains actually have some background to them. This episode actually gave the two of them some depth, beyond their stereotypes. It seems that the guy is obsessed with his own work, and is fascinated when he sees how HW-09 has managed to not turn into glass. The woman meanwhile reveals that she knew HW-09 before she became a glass maiden, and as it turns out: she loathed her.

Also, is it me or do the more low-budget series have a bigger tendency to feature good fights than high-budget series? Seriously, I can confidently say that the fight in this episode was better than what I’ve seen from Soul Eater and Macross Frontier so far, even though these series overflow with budget. It’s the same with Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino: the animation was bad, and yet the fights were amazingly directed. Somehow, it feels to me that the creators try to make up for the lack of budget by detailed direction, and it really works!

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 06

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu


To call Real Drive unconventional would be a bit understatement. When I went into this series, I expected a huge focus on technology and heavy terms, but the focus on Minamo ended up much bigger than I thought. This yet again was another episode without diving.

In this episode, a book that Minamo’s reading turns out to have parts cut off. She initially believes that this is some kind of message or love-letter. Holon, however, corrects her, and says that it’s probably a protest made when all the books got digitalized. Obviously disappointed by this, Minamo tells her grandmother about it (wasn’t she on Haru and Eiichiro’s team before Haru got his accident?) and her grandmother suggests her checking out a certain book called “love letter”.

Minamo starts reading the book, and although it’s a bit too “mature” for her, she’s quickly drawn in. Then, when she just reached the end, t turns out that the final page is missing. Haru then explains that that missing page has been blank all along, and the original purpose of the ending was for the reader to make his or her own conclusion. Apparently, this page was ripped out to write a letter. I’m not sure about the details (Holon is just too much of a walking thesaurus when she starts talking!), but I think that it was meant to preserve a message and to prevent it from getting lost in the digitalization of the books. I that that book kept its final pages blank on purpose, so that who read it could use these pages to write a letter to his or her loved one…

In the end, Minamo finds a name on that book. She’s died now, but as it turns out, she was a former colleague of Haru and Eiichiro as well, before the accident. In the end, I think that Minamo’s grandmother told her about the book, and she rented it herself. She then got inspired to write a small letter to Haru, though she never delivered it. The book then remained in the library for forty years until Minamo picked it up again.

I must say that this was a very interesting way to show something about the people that Haru left behind when he went in coma (at least, I assume that she wrote that letter after Haru’s accident, but I’m not sure. I can’t seem to find the exact date of it). As it turns out, that woman died two years before Haru woke up again. This yet again proofs how the director is a master of characterizations: he knows exactly how to develop them and make the audience care about them, as he showed in Tsuiokuhen, Chevalier and the recent Amatsuki.

I really must say that this is the series I look forward to the most each week. This really is different from your usual mystery-series, as we still hardly know anything about the concept beyond the basics. The thing with this series is that it likes to reveal its mysteries as little as possible. And personally, I love the way the creators decided to handle this.

Soul Eater – 06

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


Here’s a strange phenomenon I have no explanation of: due to the recent arrests, a large amount of the Share-users have stopped uploading their files by now, though the few that remain find it for some strange and inexplicable reason a good idea to release in a high quality video-file as possible. Suddenly, 75% of all new files are in some kind HD .mp4 or .mkv-format. So… yeah. If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been so slow for the past few days: my pc doesn’t support HD video-files.

In any case, I’m glad that this series is really taking its time exploring its concepts. This time, we see that not just any weapon meister can team up with a random weapon, even if the two of them are best friends. Their souls need to be in resonance in order for this to happen. The key is much more to understanding each other.

The thing I’m waiting for right now is to see Soul or Black Star, teaming up with Kid in a team-mission. Death the Kid really seems like a person who prefers fighting alone (or alone with his weapons). I can imagine how he’ll have huge amounts of trouble, trying to work together with the asymmetric idiots that are Soul and especially Black Star.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 05

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume


I do wish that the creators would show more of Chiko, improving her 1337-skills. Walking on a tight rope isn’t something you just learn overnight, and while I can understand that it’s perfectly possible for Chiko to learn this within a year, I’d much rather see her gradually mastering this skill, instead of vaguely hinting at this in the ED and assuming that the viewers will assume that she has been practicing a lot in the gaps between the episodes. I’m not asking for Dragon Ball Z-length training arcs (that would be pretty bad, actually), but right now this is the big (but also the only) weakness of this series.

Having said that, this series is really picking up steam now, though it does so very subtly. This episode finally introduces a pair of enemies that actually have the potential to cause Nijuu Mensou and Chiko some serious trouble, as they demonstrate by poking Ken’s eye out. That’s a twist I totally didn’t see coming at this stage of the series.

In this episode, Nijuu Mensou attempts to steal a large strange statue, under the cover of a circus troupe. He really demonstrates again how he’s an attention-whore, because he tries to create an as big spectacle as possible whenever he appears. In that way, he’s really different from Chiko, who’s a much more straightforward person.

Mobile Suit Gundam Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


One thing I like about watching a classic anime is to recognize the different anime that would pay homage to it in later years. Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky is another example of this. Mobile Suit Gundam (0079) brought the mecha-genre away from the cheesy giant robot-shows of Go Nagai to a more serious and realistic side, and traces of its influence can still be seen in today’s anime. Haro from Gundam 00 actually turns out to be one such example, and the three kids in Eureka7 have also been taken from the original Gundam.

After watching this series, I finally understand a bit why the post Universal Century-Gundam series are so shunned by the UC-fanboys, and at the same time I came to appreciate a series like Gundam 00 a whole lot more, but more on that below. The battles in Mobile Suit Gundam are indeed extremely realistic, and there’s one key element that made this possible: the great focus on logistics. With this, military bases suddenly don’t have limitless supplies anymore, and the fact that this series is mostly about just one battleship, instead of an entire fleet makes this one war-series that features some intense battles. It also never loses steam: every episode has at least one battle that fits in the story, rather than filling the audience’s need of action. And this intense attention to detail indeed seems to be missing in the other Gundam series I’ve seen so far (Gundam Wing and 00)

The second great strength of this series is the amount of attention it gives to the enemy forces. It’s not like they develop every single enemy soldier into a likable character, but this series gives a terrific overview of all the different kinds of enemies that you can run into the battlefield. All have their own priorities and agendas, ranging from low-ranked soldiers to high officials, none of them is ignored.

Still, the thing is that this series hasn’t been perfect. Based on the stories of the fans of UC, I expected Mobile Suit Gundam to be something like the epitome of realism, but this doesn’t turn out to be true, as it has a lot of points where it could have done better. The most obvious being of course Amuro, the lead hero. The guy just looks at a manual, and within three days he’s able to pilot a complex mobile suit like an expert and he also turns into a master tactician. Something that would take ordinary soldiers years of training. The reason this series gives for these abilities later on in the series is rather weak. If you want to god-mode your characters, you’ve got some good explanation to do, and the thing about Newtypes feels just like a lazy excuse to let a teenaged boy be the centre of attention.

Probably because of this, Mobile Suit Gundam also has a really weird difficulty-curve. In regular anime, the different enemies get tougher and harder to defeat as the series goes on, but here it’s just the opposite: during the first half, the enemies are all really tough and hard to beat. They come with interesting tactics and don’t let themselves get killed that easily. Then the second half hits and even though the enemies seem to get their hands on a more advanced mobile suit with every single episode, they also become a lot more stupid. At one point, they just become sitting ducks for Amuro to hit. I was rather disappointed by that, to be honest. When you realize that the enemies aren’t a threat anymore, the series does lose a bit of its tension. I think this is also the reason why the ending screwed up so badly.

Don’t get me wrong: Mobile Suit Gundam is a great series, but these flaws do remain. Of course, the following paragraph will be just speculation as I haven’t seen Zeta nor Victory Gundam, but I suspect that these two, despite whatever greatnesses they may hold, weren’t completely perfect either. The thing is that every Gundam-series seems to have its own strengths and weaknesses, and there’s no way you can be perfect at everything at such a large-scale series. Mobile Suit Gundam focused more on low-scale battles with a focus on logistics, while Gundam Wing on the other hand focused more at philosophy and large-scale politics. If you keep expecting the same thing as the originals, then you indeed will be disappointed.

That’s also what I find so interesting about Gundam 00, as only now I realize that it was partially an attempt to flesh out the areas in which Mobile Suit Gundam didn’t do so well. While the original series had a clear good and evil side with the Earth Federation and Zeon, Gundam 00 never depicts anyone as truly good or evil. Gundam 00 also never bothered to god-mode its characters, and instead only focused on upgrading its technology, and the closest things that resemble Newtypes have actually been explained well and don’t stand out too much. There also wasn’t really an explanation behind the huge level of technology of the White Base and Gundam on Mobile Suit Gundam, and Gundam 00 managed to find a pretty good explanation of a plot that took 200 years to prepare.

On the other hand, Mobile Suit Gundam shows more how the different battles affect the mentality of the pilots, it’s cast of characters is more dynamic. It also doesn’t have any characters that sit in their rooms for episodes after each other being emo, and whenever a character’s angsting, you’ll know that in the next episode that person will have already progressed past this angsting-stage. In this way, you can see that these two series complement each other pretty nicely. What you miss in Mobile Suit Gundam, you can find in Gundam 00 and vice versa.

Normally my reviews are geared towards readers that haven’t seen the anime in question yet, but in this case, I had too many thoughts I wanted to share. I tried to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but apologies if I ended up spoiling something. Despite its age, Mobile Suit Gundam is worth your time if you like war-stories. As it turns out, every war-anime is different and focuses at something different. Simoun had the religious influence, and showed what really happens if your technology is miles above that of your enemy; Heroic Age had space-battles of the highest possible epic-scale; series as Toward the Terra focused more on their characters and Flag was all about realism. I must say, that it’s a really diverse genre that you can’t possibly stuff into just one series.

Amatsuki – 06

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki


Well, we can already see the results of 92JeyRfcya, YS2YSUOe1cLtf, and YnXmHqtxqS being arrested. It’s been 24 hours, and there’s still no Amatsuki 06 on Share to be found. I can only guess (and thank) where the person who uploaded a version on Tokyo Toshokan got his from, but it seems that all other share-uploaders have become scared of being arrested themselves.

I’m not claiming that the illegal file-sharing is right. The reason why I still use programs as Share and Bittorrent is simply because they’re the easiest and most consistent ways to get anime. Once anime companies come with a way that can beat these, I’ll most likely switch to them. The thing is, however, that there are still people who don’t realize the irony of trying to solve illegal file-sharing with violence. Take this analogy: suppose you have a dog that doesn’t behave, and you kick it every time it does something it’s not supposed to do. Obviously, the poor thing won’t instantly turn tame, and instead you’re turning it into a wild beast.

There’s more to that than just that analogy, though. To quote Alafista, the three share-uploaders have been charged of uploading “anime like Macross, Gundam and Code Geass”. In other words, the well-known series. The thing with these shows, however, is that there’s a large enough fanbase for these shows for fans to find some kind of way to watch them in a safe, though slightly more troublesome way. Remember when that cease and desist-letter was sent to the fansubbers of Death Note? Well, I’ve never seen Death Note episodes being subbed as fast as those final two.

And indeed, Kanokon, a wildly popular show (gee, I wonder why…) arrived today on Tokyo Toshokan just as scheduled, while Amatsuki had to wait a day. And I guess that waiting a day isn’t that bad, but what about the series that are even less popular than Amatsuki? I don’t want to imagine how long the raws for Himitsu or Crystal Blaze will show up. Or the worst of all: Porfy no Nagai Tabi and Kaiba.

So, basically what the anime executives are trying to do right now is destroying a major source of international promotion for the more obscure and less mainstream series, who actually NEED this kind of attention, while the popular series are hardly affected at all and just sell themselves anyway. Imagine if the Japanese authorities would continue to smash down the illegal file-sharing circuit: all we’d get to see then are Code Geass and Kanokon, while all the other series die a slow death without ever getting the chance of being recognized. (no offence to those who love Code Geass and Kanokon, of course)

Anyway, please excuse this rambling. About this episode: Amatsuki has just kicked xxxHolic out of my top-3 of this season, and that doesn’t say that xxxHolic has become bad by all means. I don’t know exactly what it is with this series, but it consistently has me edged at the screen. There are hardly any weak moments. I really feel that the dialogue draws me in like no other, even though I only understand 50% of it. Amatsuki realizes full well that its main character is an idiot, and makes perfect use of that.

Kaiba – 05

by psgels, posted in Kaiba


This episode was surreal, even for a Kaiba-episode. I think it has to do with a guy named “Jamie Vickers”, who was listed in the end-credits. His previous work includes a few episodes of Kemonozume, and the animation of the ED of Tokyo Tribe 2. This guy’s sense of style is even messier than that of Masaaki Yuasa.

This episode was all about bodies, and how they’re discarded once they die. The previous episodes have never really shown what happens to a person if he or she dies from a natural reason, but I suspect that the mind and body die together, and the body can’t be used anymore by another mind, so it is discarded and destroyed. In this way, Kai’s body also gets destroyed accidentally. Oh, and Hyo-Hyo mysteriously disappears in this episode without any clue whatsoever as to where… “it” went, apart from the fact that it saw a huge load of Neiro-like bodies with “Neiro” written on them.

Kaiba this time runs into a designer of bodies, who has become quite famous. He’s of the opinion that people shouldn’t walk around with dull bodies, and his vision seems to catch on rather well. Nearly everyone walks around with some kind of strange body. His own body seems to be actually powered by electricity, and his servant, in the body of a dog, just needs to be re-winded once in a while. This dog seems to be a former woman who took care of the… “cat”, though she got too old at one point and separated her mind from her body, just as she was about to die. The two of them also share the same eyes: the designer can only see what the dog sees, and nothing more, and therefore he’s really dependant on the dog, and they’re always together. The dog also takes care of powering this designer.

In this episode, I also noticed a huge difference between this series and Himitsu ~The Revelation in terms of privacy. In Himitsu, Aoki is very much bothered by the fact that he’s intruding the privacy of others, and yet Kaiba just peeks into the minds of others without any second thoughts, in order to find out their stories.

I also have a theory. In this episode, we learn that Kaiba’s original body was some sort of hero, famous enough to warrant his own statue, though at the same time, nobody knows who this guy actually was. I didn’t totally understand the explanation, but it seems that we’re dealing with a king here. My theory is that Kaiba and Warp are two different persons, and Kaiba was just meant to protect Warp’s body as something happened to him, involving the terrorists and Popo. That still makes me wonder what Hyo-Hyo’s purpose was, because the mission of protecting Kaiba’s body clearly failed. Heck, we have no idea where it is now. Or is there more about the locket that it just being a pretty picture?