Author: psgels

xxxHolic – 27

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic


Before I start with the regular entry: I’ve decided to not blog Toshokan Sensou this season. I just couldn’t find anything to praise it for that other series this season didn’t do better, and the female main character already got annoying after the second episode. I don’t know, but it feels a bit too mainstream for Noitamina.

In any case, back to the latest episode of xxxHolic, and what an excellent episode it was! The second season of xxxHolic is really much darker than the first one, but it makes full use of the fact that the first season fully fleshed out the different characters. The Vestal Sprite was kind-of a strange character in the first season, who never really got anywhere, and yet her character developed so much during this episode.

Watanuki also really shined in this episode. His show-off against the spider queen had me on the edge of my seat. One thing that I do hope gets explained in the next episodes is what it means to lose half of your eye. Does your vision get blurry? Can you only see one part of it? What are the disadvantages of giving away half of your right eye that made Yuuko take so much time in suggesting that option?

Allison to Lillia – 03

by psgels, posted in Allison to Lillia


Such an eventful episode for this series. I must say that I’m pleasantly surprised by it. The screenplay in this series could have been better, but to make up for it, the creators have managed to tell a great story up till now. The question is now: how are the creators planning to fill in the rest of this series, now that the introduction-arc is over?

In this episode, Allison and Will head to the nearest military base of the enemy, in which the old man has apparently been taken to. We also get introduced to Treize, who’ll probably play the large part in the second half of this series. It turns out that he and Allison were acquaintances when they were young as well, probably when they were trainees for the military.

This episode also really showed that this will be an adventure anime, when Allison and Will try to break out the old man. This old man also turns out to be a war-veteran, and he encountered the treasure during one of his missions. Allison cleverly chose a rookie to guide her around the base, and she seems to have understood pretty well that the one thing that you need to be when under cover is to be self-assured, and make it seems like you know what you’re talking about.

The thing I like best about this series is the characterization, though. Allison gives a very interesting dimension to “the strong female”. She’s young and naive, but when she’s in her element, she really shines. Then something goes wrong, and Will takes up the role of “strong person”. In addition, even the small side-characters feel more than cardboard boxes.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 02

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


I’m amazed. I’ve now seen most of the second episodes of the major series that aired this season, apart from Kaiba, Toshokan Sensou, Nijuu Mensou no Musume and Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, and without a doubt Himitsu has been the best series of the season so far, and Kaiba is going to have to be really good in order to top it, but even RD, Kurenai, xxxHolic and Amatsuki didn’t match up to the awesomeness that have been the first two episodes of Himitsu.

The storytelling in this series is absolutely amazing. We first get a bit of background on the main character. He’s clearly a rookie (he still lives with his sister and parents), and he still needs to get used to the idea that he’s invading the privacy of the people he investigates. We then switch to the investigation of the murder of the president of America. The only clue (we don’t even get to see the face of the murderer) is a strange picture he shreds, just as he’s about to die. What is this picture, and why didn’t he want anybody to see it?

The irony is of course obvious: it’s the only clue that the investigation-department has, and they’re basically trying to find something that the president wanted to keep secret at all costs, even after his death. The rest of the episode explores this guy’s life as the investigation department tries to find the moment in his life where he got the picture. I think this post by Iwa ni Hana sums up why I love this series so much:

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is the typical pattern that Shimizu-sensei’s stories will follow. The first half typically presents the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and in the second half the action accelerates faster than you can react, and finally the story is brought to a climax and ends like a bang on a forceful note.”

It really makes me wonder why it’s taken this long for one of the artist’s mangas to get an adaptation. Especially considering how she (he?)’s been writing for decades now. You can also really hear that the music has been done by the same guy who worked on the music of Death Note. I’ve said it before, but it’s great to see so much great soundtracks this season.

Before this season started, I expected that my favourite animation-studio of this season would end up being Production IG, but now that I’ve seen every new show, I realize how wrong I was: this really is THE season for Madhouse. They made a great move to transfer all of their bad staff to Kamen no Maid Guy, because their other series really shine so far (okay, perhaps Chi’s Sweet Home shines a bit less than the others, but even that one turned out better than I expected). Before the season started, I was a bit angry at Madhouse because they kept screwing up their adaptations. Claymore’s ending got screwed up, Shigurui missed its entire final chapters in the anime, Dennou Coil’s ending was rather rushed, Saiunkoku Monogatari ran into budget problems for its final episodes, Kaiji disappointed, and let’s not start with Nougami Neuro and Devil May Cry.

But with this season, they really have the potential to redeem themselves. It first started when Mokke suddenly delivered an awesome ending. With Himitsu and Chi’s Sweet home being concepts where you can’t screw up the ending, and the director of Mokke working on Allison to Lillia, the only real fear for a screwed up ending remains in Kaiba.

Crystal Blaze – 02

by psgels, posted in Crystal Blaze


I’m really surprised with this series. At first look, it sounds more like a rather childish series with adult themes, but if you take a closer look, you’ll realize that this series is much more than that. I’m really surprised at how genuine this series has turned out, and I especially love the subtle chemistry between the characters. To be honest, I had my doubts about this series when I first saw the character-designs on the website, but this yet another example where you shouldn’t judge a series by its character-designs.

As a mystery-fan, I’m really glad at the large selection of mystery-series that 2008 has offered so far. I’ve said before that 2007 was rather disappointing in terms of mystery (the only series with really good mystery in my opinion were Dennou Coil and Bokura no, but these two turned out great because of other reasons than their mystery, especially compared to 2006, with Ergo Proxy, the first season of Higurashi and Night Head Genesis). That’s why I’ve got high hopes for Himitsu, Crystal Blaze and Kaiba, and Persona is getting better and better as well.

This episode of Crystal Blaze showed me how well it’s developing its mystery at the moment. This episode was an aftermath, and we hardly get any new information apart from a second glass girl, but this episode was mostly meant for the characters to catch up to all the questions that were raised in the previous episode, like how dangerous the enemies of this series are, and what kind of a strange woman Sara is, due to a constantly high body temperature of 42 degrees.

One thing I also like about this series is how the characters have a plausible reason to be involved in this story. We basically have a private investigation service that gets its jobs from a transvestite, and one of these jobs turns out to be a dangerous one. At the investigation-service, there’s one ambitious but naive intern, so obviously when she realizes that there’s an exciting job, she doesn’t want to abandon it and causes a huge scene (although I feel that nobody of the foursome is really willing to abandon Sara). It’s much better than all of those series that focus on teenagers who just happen to be on the wrong place at the wrong time by coincidence of have certain hidden powers that are just meant to get them involved in the series.

On a side-note: I feel pity for that voice-actor doing the dog’s voice, but he must be having the time of his life. 😛

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 02

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu


As usual, the shows I’m not blogging this season:
– I’ve heard many diverging opinions about the manga of Vampire Knight. The arguments against it say that the manga is just your average angst-fest, and how it’s nothing special. The only argument in favour of it that I could find was “Bishies! Bishies! Bishies!” Really, just as with Haruhi Suzumiya, it feels like the fans are hyping the wrong parts of the series!
– Monochrome Factor is really weird, though the main female lead gets really on my nerves.

In any case, it was pretty obvious that I’d end up blogging this series. Personally, I LOVE series with a high amount of imagination, and RD has along with Kaiba been the most imaginative series of the new season. It’s going to be difficult as usual to try and understand it, but I see this as an interesting challenge.

The OP also rocks, and the ED as well. In any case, this episode shows us more about the female heroine Minamo Aoi and it introduces the concept of cyber-diving, as the power of the house for the elder-care needs to be restored. Meanwhile, Masamichi is still an old man (I like how this series doesn’t play all of its trumps in the first two episodes, yet packs a punch).

It turns out that Minamo grew up in Australia with her grandmother, while her mother worked on the “Metal” in Japan. If I had to guess, then she came to work at the home for elders because of her brother (Souta) and her mother’s influences. But I think that the fact that her grandmother used to know Eiichiro and Masamichi also played a role. She also turns out to be someone who likes to learn a lot, although she is your typical girl who hit puberty. Still, she isn’t as annoying as some of her counterparts, and my only real gripe with this series is the really strange placement of fanservice. We get random crotch-shots, panty-shots that come out of nowhere. That’s not something I expected from Production IG and the director of Chevalier. I mean, they had nudity before, but it has always felt rather natural up till now.

There’s also one bit that I failed to pick up: why did Minamo’s grandmother age, while Eiichi still looks the same as he did, fifty years before? Is this because some people have access to better health-care facilities than others?

Soul Eater – 02

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


As for the series I won’t be blogging this season:
– Kanokon: Obviously not. Please Xebec, I know that you’re good at adapting mangas and light-novels, you showed that with The Third, but stop picking out these crappy premises!
– I apparently like Blassreiter a lot more than others do. Really, what’s so wrong with it? The plot has potential, the characters may not be the best, but they’re not the worst anyway, and the CG is impressive to look at. Still, I do admit that it still has the potential to fall apart.
– Zettai Karen Children spends way too much attention on its most boring character: the red-haired girl, voiced by Hirano Aya.
– Wagaya no Oinarisama has terrific music, but I’m still not sure whether it knows what it wants to be: just random slice-of-life stories or something with an actual plot.
– The second episode of Nabari no Ou is just boring.
– The second episode of Kamen no Maid Guy is even worse.
– Special A has great main characters, but I’m not convinced about the side-characters yet.

For Soul Eater, after the first episode, I was really doubting whether or not to blog this series. On one hand, it’s a 51-episoded shounen-series, but on the other hand I heard a lot of good things about this series, like how the characters abandon the subplot of collecting these 100 souls to become a death scythe rather early on, and it seems that there are 11 volumes of the manga so far. Seeing as that within a year, it’s quite probable for a twelfth volume to come out, and that should be just enough to fill up 51 episodes.

Still, that does mean that there’ll be a chance for this series to have a disappointing ending. But on the other hand again, the fact remains that this series has a terrific sense of style, great characters and an actually good soundtrack (that’s one thing I really missed in the previous Autumn-season: there were hardly any series with a really good soundtrack, apart from Gunslinger Girl, perhaps). There’s also the fact that this has been the very first shounen-series that I considered to have any potential at all to beat the Law of Ueki as my favourite shounen-fighting series. Overall, these are enough reasons for me to blog it. And if it does delve into fillers, I can always drop it like I did with Shugo Chara. It’s also good to blog a series that does not air on tuesday or thursday.

This episode wasn’t as good as the first one, but it was still a great one. This one introduces the second couple of weapon “meister” and weapon. Their main weakness turns out to be that the male (who is the weapon meister this time) doesn’t know the meaning of “subtlety”. Whenever he tries to sneak up to someone, he makes no attempts whatsoever to hide his presence. Their strength is that the weapon likes to change into more than just a scythe, and she makes use of lots of different weapons, instead of how the guy in the previous episode liked to be a scythe for most of the time. The end of this episode also introduced the third couple that this series will be focusing on. In their case, it’s the weapon meister who’s the brilliant one (the son of Shinigami, if I understood correctly), but his weapons leave much to be desired.

Also, on a side-note: am I the only one who actually liked the voice-acting of the main couple in the first episode? Really, especially the girl had a refreshing voice that didn’t sound over-rehearsed. So what if she doesn’t sound like a j-pop idol? Its great to hear different voices for anime and not the same squeaky voice over and over again. That’s why I also like the deep voice of the male weapon.

It’s also good to see that the director has experience with series that span 52 episodes: he did direct Ashita no Nadja (note to self: continue that one. It’s good!), and judging on Wyrdwad’s comments on that series, it never lost any steam at all. It’s also good to see that he worked on mostly shoujo-series before, so the chance of this one heading towards bleach is also minimal. The only fear for this guy would be the insertion of pointless fillers and a crappy ending, like he did with Ouran High School Host Club, but at least Soul Eater has characters with enough potential, that don’t just rely on their quirks, and characters like Honey are missing.

The guy behind the series composition (Akatsuki Yamatoya, who also wrote the script for the first episode) also sounds very promising. He may have worked on a couple of crappy series like Blue Dragon, Busou Renkin and To Love-Ru, but this guy really gets on fire when he gets to work with a series with potential: he worked on the script of Gintama and wrote the script of episodes 10 and 12 (both hilarious). So for now, I’m confident, although I probably won’t feel like checking out the late-night airing of this series to find out the subtle changes that were made. I heard that the changes that were made weren’t impressive anyways.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 15

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi


So now we know why Porfy started his travels. Finally, everything makes perfect sense. But the real highlight of this episode was without a doubt Mina. Never have I seen a character act so genuine as she did in this episode. The loss of her parents blocked out everything, apart from her deepest feelings. I’ve said it before, but the refugee-camp arc was just gut-wrenchingly sad. And to think that the real meat of this series has only just started.

Inside the refugee-camp, Mina is sitting with Apollo on her shoulder, smiling at the creature, while nearby Porfy and Zaimis are washing dishes. Zaimis wonders when he can go back to Simitra, though Porfy doesn’t want to go back to that place anymore (with his house being destroyed and all). Helena then takes over from them, so that Porfy and Zaimis can take care of their sisters. It turns out that Mina does have a few physical scars as well, but these will probably disappear completely when she becomes an adult. The same can’t be said from her mental scars, though.

A guy from the village named Lucas, delivering supplies for the refugee-camp then arrives. As he starts up his car to go back, it malfunctions. Porfy then runs to his and Mina’s bed (ignoring Mina’s greetings and leaving her behind, looking disappointed), and grabs his father’s toolkit, and fixes the car. Lucas then gives him his very first self-earned fee. When Porfy goes back to Mina to show this fee, she’s gone.

Porfy looks for her, but he can’t find her. He then runs into Zaimis and he also helps searching, and soon a lot of the people who take care of the refugee-camp are searching for her. Eventually, Porfy finds her behind a rock near the sea, singing the song that she used to like when her parents were still alive. Mina may have lost a lot, but it looks like she’s desperately holding onto her love for theatre. Porfy scolds her, and she suddenly looks much gloomier again, so Porfy tries to cheer her up a bit more.

It actually works, especially when Porfy tries to act out other parts from that play. Mina even joins him with the acting, looking very happy. Then, however, Porfy shows her the money he earned from Lucas’s car, and immediately Mina feels down again. I suspected this before, but it’s really true: Mina doesn’t like Porfy’s obsession with cars. I always had the feeling that she felt left out whenever Porfy started rambling about cars, and this scene indeed confirms this.

In any case, Mina is brought back to the camp, and falls asleep. A little while later, Helena passes out different letters to the refugees. Zaimis’s mother (finally I know her name! It’s Dori) also gets one, and it comes from her aunt (either that, or Zaimis’s aunt). It turns out that the two can live with her. Zaimis is shocked when he finds out that he isn’t going back to Simitra, but after all there’s no way in which they can go and fix their house just like that. Porfy tries to cheer Zaimis up when he finds out, but it’s clear that Porfy himself is also very unhappy with this turn of events.

It’s then when Barnes arrives, and he immediately goes to Helena, so that Porfy doesn’t have the time to greet him. Porfy then goes to eavesdrop on the conversation between these two. He hears how Helena finds that things aren’t going well with Mina, and how she doesn’t speak at all. Barnes then says that he’s find a very nice family for Porfy and Mina, though there’s one thing: this family only wants to take care of a girl. In other words: Porfy and Mina will separate, and Mina will go all the way to America!

This news devastates Porfy. He runs to Mina to tell her the bad news, and he suggests to run away from the camp. His plan is for her to run away when she’s taking care of the dishes away. Porfy will then leave the camp with his own excuse, and they’ll meet up later at a certain landmark. During dinner, they eat more than usual, to strengthen them for the trip, while Zaimis still laments the fact that they’re not going to see each other anymore. Porfy obviously couldn’t care less, because he has more urgent things to worry about.

Then, it’s time to carry out Porfy’s plan. Porfy, unfortunately, runs into Zaimis, and barely manages to come up with a good excuse, and is also helped by the fact that Zaimis is holding his little sister. Porfy then says goodbye to Zaimis in a cryptic way, and heads off.

The plan, however, turns out to be a disaster. Mina sees a nearby bicycle and gets fascinated by it (because there was a bicycle in the movie that they watched as well). The angry owner of that bike then turns up, however, and Mina runs away, terrified at what to do against such an angry strange man. Unfortunately for her, she runs towards a village, where all sorts of scary people walk around. Porfy meanwhile realizes that something’s wrong, and starts searching for her, guided by Apollo and the episode ends.

The amount of building-up that this series did in its first quarter is just overwhelming. More and more scenes that once just seemed to just fill time now turn out to have an incredible meaning. I don’t just mean Mina’s visit to the movie, and the scene at the theatre, but also in episode three, where Mina got separated from Porfy. That too lays a parallel to the events that happened in this episode: back then, Mina just played a prank, but in this episode, her fears are everything but a joke.

I’ve also began to wonder: where will Porfy and Mina sleep? How will they get food? I originally thought that Mina and Porfy would be separated from each other, but now it really looks like the two of them will travel together, which makes things only sadder. Not only is Mina without a doubt the best-developed character in this entire series, but it also means that Porfy is going to not only take care of himself, but Mina as well. I can see how he’ll end up trying to repair cars to get some money, but will people really trust their car with a small boy? And what will Mina be doing when Porfy is out there, trying to make money, even though she hates his obsession for cars.

Seriously, the more I think about it, the more I realize what an amazing amount of potential this series has. Spring may have come with a very good collection of interesting series, but even the BEST of them are going to have to try really hard if they want to be able to top this series.

1000000 Visitors!

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

And now for something completely different. It’s taken me nearly two and a half year, but Star Crossed has finally received one million pageviews! To be precise, as of 10:00, GMT, there have been 1884531 pageviews, 1000047 unique visitors, of which 631120 are first-time visitors and 368927 are returning visitors.

Okay, enough self-whoring. I’d like to use this post to thank all my visitors and especially the ones who stuck around, because I wouldn’t have been able to reach this milestone. Heck, I dout that when I started, I ever imagined to get this far.

Some quick first impressions: Golgo 13, Kyouran Kazoku Nikki and Nijuu Mensou no Musume

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume, Some Quick First Impressions

Golgo 13

Well, this turned out better than expected, but that may also be because I expected nothing from this series anyway. Golgo may have a laughable name, but it does have a certain style. The soundtrack is effective, though I feel that the manga-chapters don’t really fit the 24-episode formats. In this episode, the only thing that Golgo does is that he comes, he shoots, and then he leaves again. The creators clearly struggle with filling up the remaining 23 minutes of this episode so they just show a random sex-scene. I hope that the future assignments for the guy are a bit more challenging to overcome; otherwise it’d make a pretty boring series. Still, this series has no real flaws so far, apart from the fact that Golgo’s character-design makes it looks like he’s suffering from a bad case of constipation.

Kyouran Kazoku Nikki

Boy… the shounen-comedies sure are dull this season. I’m sick and tired of females that rely just on their energy and moe-ness to deliver comedy. Really, a series needs more than that to be funny, and still there are heaps of series that don’t seem to understand this. Kyouran Kazoku Nikki at least tries to add this extra substance though its side-characters and I guess that they do have potential, but really, how many times haven’t we seen male lead X being beaten up and abused by the female lead? Is it really that hard to come up with something original?

Nijuu Mensou no Musume

Ah, too bad. I had high hopes for this series, being animated by Bones and all, but in the end this one turned into a big mess. This series has nice action and screenplay and all, but it’s mercilessly shatters your suspense of disbelief within the first minute of this episode. This is indeed the problem with thief-series: they’re portrayed in a way too elegant manner. When you steal something, you’re supposed to be hiding in the shadows, making use of the flaws in security, not just use a zeppelin to lift the roof of a building. Again it’s just one character who ruins the entire series. I mean, Chico was nice to watch, the henchmen were very interesting, but that thief… I still can’t believe that the creators were serious with that guy.

Macross Frontier – 02

by psgels, posted in Macross Frontier


Ah, why not? I’m going to blog this series. Thanks to L.A. for pointing out that I missed this series. This series is basically THE powerhouse in animation-budget for this season, plus Yoko Kanno’s work is very impressive as well. The second episode was also much better than the rather underwhelming first episode, something of which I’m very glad. The series isn’t perfect: it still combines military with teenagers and characters tend to coincidentally run into each other (how often do you meet a famous pop idol that happens to be near anyway?), but I really like how the creators showed the fear in that female character’s eyes when she got dragged into the sky during the big fight.

The staff behind this also looks quite promising. The animation-company behind this series is Satelight. The thing with Satelight is that their most recent series have been really underwhelming. Their line-up from the past few years just consisted out of Shugo Chara, Kamichama Karin, KISS DUM, Angelique, Galaxy Angel-Rune and Glass Fleet. On the other hand, they DID produce the stellar Noein (which was absolutely beautiful), Chikyuu Shoujo Arjuna, and two series with rumoured excellent graphics, but which I still have to see: Aquarion and HeatGuy J. It looks like they’re really trying to go back to their old roots with Macross Frontier, back to their quality-series. I now know why Kiss Dum, Kamichama Karin and Shugo Chara managed to win me over when they first aired: Satelight definitely know how to make graphics look good, it’s just the execution that was really buggy.

The other staff behind this series is interesting as well, but my biggest worry right now is Shoji Kawamori, the chief director. I’ve checked his profile on ANN a bit, and he’s really worked on a lot of different series, but mostly as the mechanical designs. So, yes, he does know how to produce good graphics, but I was a bit disappointed to see the series he directed before. While I can’t judge on anything of Macross that he’s done, I have heard some things about how Aquarion was to be a series with great production-values, but hardly anything else. Arjuna also could have been much better in my opinion, Spring and Chaos was a disappointing adaptation of one of Kenji Miyazawa’s stories because it didn’t know where it wanted to go, and in the end the only non-graphical thing that I can really praise him for is his role in the creation, screenplay and supervision (but NOT the direction) of Visions of Escaflowne.

Luckily, the director of this series looks more promising. He did some pretty strange series as a hentai-one, Saint Seiya, but his repertoire also includes episode 15 and 22 of none other than Noein (especially the last one was nothing but awesomeness), he directed Black Heaven (talk about something completely different) and strangely enough he was also behind the key animation of episode 11 of Ergo Proxy, which was without a doubt the trippiest one of that entire series.

So, yeah, this series can go both ways, but I’m interested to find out in which direction this series will go. This also means, however, that my Thursdays will be absolutely packed from now on. I’m not entirely sure on which other shows I’ll be blogging this season, but if Toshokan Sensou also has a good second episode, that means that I’ll be blogging SIX shows on the same day. I think that some kind of new personal record. So, you can indeed expect lots of activity from me around Tuesday and Thursday, while the other days will end up relatively quiet. Seriously, why do all the good shows air at the same time?!