Author: psgels

Hunter X Hunter – 56

by psgels, posted in Hunter X Hunter

That. Was. Awesome! I mean, I rarely rewatch series for the reason that I’d much rather spend my time on stuff I haven’t seen before, plus that the impact of watching something again is just not as good as when watching it for the first time. And yet I was completely thrilled when watching this episode.

I mean, what can I say? This episode just showed so well why the Spider Troupe is my favorite organization for a shounen series. This time they really act as a team and they are acted so well, and they all make so good use of each other’s powers. This is also where Gon really shines, and does something that no other main character would do: sacrifice himself so that his friend would not get noticed. All of these characters worked incredibly well together, and I’m so glad that this series has also managed to capture that.

The music also was just perfect. I mean, in the past I criticized this show a lot for not using its soundtrack right, but the scene in which Squala died, it was just perfect. It really sent chills through my spine. That scene also showed one of the strengths of this show: from out of nowhere it can take a random side character and make him or her ten times better from out of nowhere in a realistic way. I loved just showing him taking care of his dogs, and his problems of trying to feed them all. I loved how he just has a completely normal girlfriend. THAT was exactly what was missing in the Hunter Exam arc, and the creators actually found it again!

On top of that, I’m just completely fanboying over my favorite character. And yet again I’m not telling who it is until the arc for this person is over for the sake of spoilers.
Rating: 6.5/8 (Amazing)

Uchuu Kyoudai – 33

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

First of all, I’d like to share this xkcd comic, just because it just fits this show so well: realistic depictions of spacecraft with tons of dry humour.

Now, this episode was about the moon landing: Hibito finally reaching his dream of setting a foot on the moon, and this was even better than what I could have hoped. This is where everything came together, all of the build-up on Hibito came together, and finally we get to see the moon, but the way in which the creators depicted it was also just amazing: they just showed everyone living towards that moment. All the characters, from the NASA staff, to the JAXA staff, to the major and minor characters, including a brilliant opening of the episode done by Mutta and Hibito’s father.

What also was awesome was that we got to see the creators poke fun at the moon landing of Neil Armstrong. I loved the scene where Mutta found out about the sentence that Hibito uttered as he first stepped on the moon, and how he could have seen it coming from miles away. On top of that, his video message using Apo also had me in stitches.

After this we’ll probably start focusing on Mutta again, but with the pacing of this series you’ll never know. There are just so many great characters that this show can do something with, but on top of all I love how Hibito’s launch has basically been one giant awesome red herring for Mutta’s final exam. These are all tropes that spice up this series even more, and it already was incredibly good.
Rating: 6.5/8 (Amazing)

Star Crossed 7 Year Anniversary

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Hell yeah! Seven years already. A lot has changed over the past year, most notably for my personal life being much more active so that I lost a lot of time that I normally had to keep up to date with everything. The past year has definitely been a year of experimentation for me, and I’m definitely not planning to quit anytime soon despite having a few backlog issues. In any case, every year I celebrate this with a few statistics. I’m not doing funny search terms this year unfortunately, simply because of how much time it takes to compile them and make them good (seriously, this involved looking through tens of thousands of different search terms, spotting the odd ones amongst them…!)

In the past seven years, I have written 5361 posts, spread over 268 categories. A total number of 47525 comments have been submitted to this site, and that doesn’t even count the shoutbox. That one has 33355 comments already (in less than a year!!). Here is a list of the top commenters for the shoutbox (yes, I can get to my database with this site, so I can gather more useful statistics):

#20: Sei – 311
#19: Jak – 323
#18: Anonymous – 346
#17: imredjimmy – 381
#16: Raggers – 413
#15: kero – 444
#14: TheUltimateReaper – 502
#13: Ninja – 537
#12: Airies – 705
#11: psgels – 874
#10: dango – 877
#9: Juno – 1112
#8: Kaiserin Emma – 1295
#7: Jalapeno Bagel – 1331
#6: Anca – 1382
#5: Armpit – 1439
#4: wicked – 1895
#3: AidanAK47 – 1906
#2: Bunny – 2949
#1: Kaiser Eoghan – 7580

I’m just amazed at how much Kaiser/in Emma/Eoghan has been able to produce for the past year, especially considering how long his comments usually are. In any case, here is the list of the people who left the most comments on this site. And yes, this goes all the way back to the beginning of this site:

#35: reverse – 167
#34: Perrin4869 – 167
#33: senerikfred – 170
#32: Windspirit – 173
#31: Westlo – 173
#30: WatcherZero – 174
#29: Tan-Tan – 179
#28: chounokoe – 182
#27: PL – 183
#26: Wyrdwad – 186
#25: Joojoobees – 189
#24: DmonHiro – 193
#23: Hogart – 211
#22: AKI – 214
#21: c160 – 225
#20: totoum – 229
#19: Anca – 232
#18: m – 239
#17: Anon – 241
#16: Kero – 248
#15: Frost – 254
#14: chris – 261
#13: Alec – 271
#12: windy – 273
#11: Scruffy – 276
#10: Machi – 291
#9: Denizen – 328
#8: Puran – 329
#7: kim – 338
#6: AidanAK47 – 353
#5: Firechick – 360
#4: wicked – 384
#3: Solaris – 531
#2: MeOW – 647
#1: psgels – 2522

This was also the first time I looked at these numbers, and I must say: thank you all for leaving so many comments. I had no idea how many of you provided so much feedback until I actually saw this. Anyway, as for viewer statistics: in total this site has gotten 17294328 page views (that’s 17 million), and 9723537 unique visits. Yes, we’ve nearly reached the 10 million. I unfortunately cannot do a list with the most accessed posts since google analytics screwed up since changing sites, however here is a list of the most common search terms (aside from variations of ‘psgels’ and ‘star crossed’.

#30: kekkaishi review
#29: black lagoon review
#28: overdrive anime
#27: best anime 2007
#26: ergo proxy
#25: top ten anime
#24: hakuouki
#23: xxxholic rou
#22: shigurui
#21: heroic age review
#20: casshern sins review
#19: clannad after story review
#18: bakumatsu kikansetsu irohanihoheto
#17: baccano review
#16: angel beats review
#15: kaze no stigma (this is one from way back; I once wrote a really bad first impression of it and it somehow landed high on Google; it kept haunting me for the next year afterwards)
#14: mahou shoujotai
#13: seirei no moribito
#12: toward the terra
#11: clannad review
#10: blassreiter review
#9: eden of the east review
#8: dennou coil
#7: school days review
#6: mouryou no hako (I love how people were actually looking for this one; it’s still generating traffic, although not as much as a few years ago)
#5: saiunkoku monogatari
#4: aoi bungaku (I did not expect this one to generate so much traffic as it did)
#3: top 10 anime
#2: that anime blog (I still like how people basically come here looking for the wrong blog)
#1: darker than black review

Eureka Seven Ao Review – 87.5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Eureka Seven Ao



The original Eureka Seven is a classic. If you like teenagers and mecha, then by all means give it a chance: it has a very rocky start, but has so many defining moments. And so, six years after its end, Bones came with a sequel. It’s quite an interesting series: you really need to have seen the first series in order to enjoy it, yet it is nothing like its predecessor.

The series takes some of the core concepts of Eureka Seven, it takes its defintion of Trappar and Corallian, it grabs the son of the two lead characters of Eureka Seven, puts him into a completely different location and even time, and just goes with it, trying to explain what the hell is going on as it goes along. Where Eureka Seven focused on showing children’s naivety, this series instead turns this around by forcing children in the center of conflict, while emphasizing that they do not belong there in the slightest. With these themes, it tells a story that with one crazy amount of plot twists.

After a bit of a warm-up period, this show just delivers plot twist after plot twist after plot twist. It’s a really good mystery series, with a lot of interesting ideas and twists that come from out of nowhere and give completely different turns to what the plot was before. This obviously has its advantages and disadvantages.

I mean, back with Un-Go, that was a series that had perfect control of its fast pacing. Ao does not, and there are quite a few plotholes. On the other hand though, there are plenty of moments that might seem ludicrous, only to make sense when you start thinking about it. A lot of the plot twists aren’t explicitly explained, or require the viewer to constantly pay attention to what’s going on: this is one series that does not plan to hold the hands of its viewers, and you definitely cannot watch it when you’re tired, otherwise you’ll miss stuff.

Anyway, I have seen plenty of people turned off by the plotholes, but I personally loved what this series tried to do. It’s all about the suspense of disbelief for this series, and let me tell you: if this suspense of disbelief holds, then there is a lot to like about this show. Helping are the characters, who may not be as good as the cast of Eureka Seven, but still are very likable, diverse and entertaining, and this show is also full of unexpected character-development.

What I really encountered here that this show does like none other, is how it treats the old characters of the first series. Out of all the sequels I have seen that focus on different characters than the first, this is BY FAR the best use of the old cast. They are used at the exact right moment, and this show pays homage to them, yet also shows their flaws, it shows who they turned into after the end of the series, and it gives them their own storylines that are more than just “let us old guys just watch over you new guys”. It’s fanservice, but I appreciated it so much.

This is a very ambitious series. You can also see this though the production values, which were some of the most consistent of the year for an action series, containing a lot of fluid and fast-paced action scenes and a really good soundtrack. The plot twists and characters on top of that made it a really fun and entertaining series for me, although this ambition does have its prices to pay with the rushed plot that is easy to get bored with.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Love the ambition of this series of delivering as many plot twists as possible that attempt to weave a whole storyline together. Great mystery, though the rushed pacing and plotholes will be a turn-off for some.
Characters: 8.5/10 – Briliant use of the old Eureka Seven cast, Enjoyable and gripping cast of both main and side characters, although the cast is too big for every character to really show his/her best.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Great production values, excellent soundtrack, really fluid animation at times.
Setting: 8.5/10 – Takes the setting of Eureka Seven, expands upon it, turns it into something completely different and completely changes what it stands for. Might be hard to swallow for fans of the first series hoping for the same.

Suggestions:
– Darker than Black – Ryuusei no Gemini
– Un-Go
– Noein

Eureka Seven Ao – 23 & 24

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao

Hmm, a lot of you will probably disagree with this, and I’m currently double-checking to make sure of this… but this episode was pretty much amongst my top 5 endings of the year (along with Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Chihayafuru, Natsume Yuujinchou and Sakamichi no Apollon for those of you who were curious).

Why? It just went all out, tried to do a ton of stuff in just 50 minutes and managed to wrap itself up really well for the circumstances, and the way its plot ended up focusing on Renton, Eureka and Ao was just the icing on the cake: the thing I’ve been waiting for for so long, and this show delivered on it. It gave plenty of character to Renton, Eureka finally got some closure, we finally know what happened to Ao’s brother.The entire episode was erratic as hell, and the huge amount of time-skips made it quite hard to follow everything that went on, but that has always been the selling point of this series for me: not holding your hand, and just delivering plot twist after plot twist. And my suspense of disbelief has always been high enough for the characters to not want to bother with the plotholes.

The ending itself, for Renton to not be able to be with his parents… I liked it. After the entire series was building up the themes that children shouldn’t be in the battlefield, and that adults should try their best to support them, Ao entirely turns that around by just trying to do everything himself. This could be his coming of age, or just that he got what was coming to him. I mean, it’s not like this show tries to portray its main characters as right: they too have their flaws, and I really like that Renton wasn’t portrayed in a positive light in this episode, rather than glorifying him way too much.

And the production values were also just awesome. There were lots of gorgeous dogfights and action sequences, and Bones really made use of their time to deliver a feast for the eyes, but the ears as well. The techno soundtrack here really caught my ears and made this an adrenaline rush from start to finish for me.

The thing I like about Bones’ sequels is that they don’t sell out. The creators could easily have made some shallow copy of the original series. I believe that this is what happened to Last Exile’s Fam. Instead, the creators decided to do something completely different with Eureka Seven Ao, and you can see that with all of their sequels: Darker than Black 2 was miles away from the first season. The Full Metal Alchemist and Eureka Seven Movies were also completely different from the TV series, FMA Brotherhood had a completely different style from its first season despite having the same set-up, the Wolf’s Rain OVA went into a drastically different direction. I used to hate this, but as time goes on, I have to say that I really like this: they try to experiment and they’re ambitious with different styles and premises, rather than milking out the same over and over. It is this ambition that I’ve been longing for for quite a while now, and Ao just answered it perfectly. It is both fanservice for the original Eureka Seven, and something completely different at the same time.

Review will come up tomorrow. Too late for that now, unfortunately.

Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Psycho Pass – 06

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

This episode ties everything together, and I like it. What psycho pass has basically been doing is gather tropes, and taking a look at them through the mind of a psychopath. Last arc this was about online communities, this time we have this series’ rendition of Maria-Sama ga Miteru. What would happen if one of the characters there was a psychopath, and given the opportunity to commit murder?

This episode really tried to give a strange sense of beauty and aesthetics to murder, taking the elegance of what you’d usually expect in a catholic all-girl high school, and using this in its story really well (also making this the second show this season to quote shakespeare). In this episode I also really could spot some hints of Naoyoshi Shiotani. I can’t exactly put my finger to why, but the style of direction in this episode reminded me of Tokyo Marble Chocolate. Still, I’d say that he’s quite a bit more restrained compared to the episodes and OPs that he has directed in the past. But that I guess is to be expected, considering how much more people are involved in the making of just one series, compared to a single episode or opening for which you have much more freedom (which is probably also why Sayo Yamamoto keeps doing the direction for OPs like what she did for this series as well).

Also, alcohol. Love seeing it used again. Not just for the sake of alcohol, but rather that it can show totally new sides of the characters. Also, it’s good to see the female lead not get instantly drunk. There are very few female leads I’ve seen doing that. And I’d say that this episode was particularly good at fleshing out the cast, on top of telling its story, and I liked the small scene where the female lead still tried to keep up with her friends, and where we revisited one of the culprits of one of the previous episodes.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Robotics;Notes – 06

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

This episode had some interesting developments: it’s turned into a bit of a murder mystery which I really liked. There are so many unanswered questions about this Kou Kimijima, about the things he created and left behind. His story is getting more complex and intertwined with the characters with every episode.

Then there was the end of this episode, that explained why Subaru has been acting strange over the series: his father. I feel that perhaps the creators could have just shown him, looking at the robot and taking Subaru away, rather than throwing that entire over the top tantrum, but perhaps it was the creators’ intention to make him into a psychopath like that.

Apart from that, lots of slice of life and people interacting with each other. Overall, I like these scenes as they show the cast getting to realize their dreams, although I do have to say that Kona is getting more annoying with every episode with her leet-speak.

Also, the supernatural is a bit unfair to the cast in this series. Kaito gets hit, and in return he gets powers that allow him to experience time really slowly, allowing him to be one of the best pilots in the world. Subaru gets powers… to faint. Mizuka… loses the ability to walk. That is some really unfair karma there…
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 07

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

I must praise David Production for this series, by the way. When the promo art of this series was first shown, there was one big fear I had: how on earth are they going to be able to animate those character-designs? It’s a problem that graces many series of its kind: having character-designs that are so complex that they become hard to animate. And well… they did it. They found a way to make these character-designs work. Sure, the animation is not fluid at all, and this show is full of distorted faces, but the camera work is fast enough that this hardly stands in your eye. I’ve seen so many series with elaborate character-designs that look weird, just because the animation can’t keep up, so it’s great to see a show actually succeed in this.

One point of criticism would be that the creators were really, really heavily hinting at Zeppeli’s death this episode. It was over the top and glorious as always, but my favorite kinds of deaths are the ones you don’t see coming: the kinds of accidents that just come out of nowhere, like what you’d expect death to do in these kinds of action series. I understand why the creators did it in this way though; this is just a personal pet peeve of mine. Either way though, his death was just brutal, geting cut in half like that.

This episode also was full of crazy powers, with the zombie with the giant tongue and the sadistic Dio that forced a mother to eat her own son. Seriously? Did this really air in Shounen Jump? The gore scenes unfortunately couldn’t make it fully into the anime, which makes me wonder what the difference is between the censorship laws: are the broadcaster more likely to get into legal trouble? Or was this just something that the animators couldn’t handle? In this show that’s something that I actually doubt, considering the detail they put in the rest of the frames. I also love the elaborate and crazy poses that were shown throughout this episode.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Zetsuen no Tempest – 07

by psgels, posted in Zetsuen no Tempest

A romance episode, with the fantastic soundtrack that this series has. That’s quite something different for a change, but boy, was it good. This episode just continued to show the relationship between Mahiro, Yoshino and Aika. The pacing is much slower than I expected after the first episode, but the detail this episode brought in their relationship was really impressive, even without the soundtrack.

The subtle chemistry between the three of them was particularly great: each one of them had something of an edge: the romantic tension between Yoshino and Aika was great in how Aika kept teasing him, the awkwardness between Mahiro and Aika was great, and Yoshino’s mistrust compared to Mahiro’s trust was great too.

And then there is the way in which this series has been building up for the past couple of episodes with a really long background arc, and I must say, that it did this the right way: by making the build-up interesting, and the thing they’re building up for with a lot of potential: at the end of the episode I really couldn’t wait for the story to continue again, and yet I never once got bored during the flashback arc. The third thing that this show needs to do is actually make the build-up worth it. Ah well, that’s up for next week.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

From the New World – 08

by psgels, posted in From the New World

Okay. From the New World has surpassed itself yet again. I thought that as the start of a new arc would be quiet and moderately uneventful. However, the character development in this episode was already amazing, but what really impressed me were the things around it.

First of all, how this series expanded upon the setting. It was already hinted that the characters in this series would become sexually active, but the way in which they did it came with a bunch of big surprises. Most of all, how differently the society looks at homosexual relationships, to the point where all relationships are just between people of the same gender. And it’s not like straight romances are a complete taboo either: a few episodes ago we saw the beginnings of Saki and Satoru trying to mess with each other.

Also, the way in which these relationships were portrayed. Talk about different. Both in the small details (people looking at each other, subtle hints of people having huge crushes like buying the same necklace, trying to instill jealousy) to just cutting all the crap and just showing people, in a relationship, cuddling and playing with each other. Screw the awkward and forced fanservice you see everywhere. This was so much better.

And then there was the animation of this episode. As usual it did not shine though its consistency or fluidity, but there was this creativity in how the characers moved, and how they were drawn that really caught my attention. The way in which people moved their body, or changed their facial expressions was really imaginative. The creators were obviously on a tight budget this episode, and I’m quite impressed with how expressive they managed to make this episode look.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)