The world is in trouble. Everywhere in the world, Raaja start to appear along with the pollution, caused by humans and something needs to be done. This is the message that Earth Girl Arjuna tries to bring. It features a high-school girl who receives the power of the earth in order to protect it. Unfortunately, though, she remains a high-school girl, and so she also has her own problems.
And that’s where the problem with this anime lies. The two major focuses of this anime, the endangered environment and Juna’s personal problems don’t really mix together. They’re constantly trying to get the centre of attention, not to mention that the love triangle, that takes up quite a bit of airtime just gets nowhere because of this. The individual parts are good, yes, but this anime really had an identity crisis throughout its run of 13 episodes.
There’s also this matter of the rather disappointing ending, shamelessly ripped off from Nausicaa. If you’re looking for an anime about human pollution, Nausicaa definitely is a better choice, as Earth Girl Arjuna comes with a bunch of theories that just don’t make any sense at all. Also, we never really get to know why Juna got her powers in the first place. The closest reason we get is “there was no other choice”. It’s also a bit too coincidental that the “big boss” is caused by none other than Juna’s boyfriend’s father.
Still, Earth Girl Arjuna isn’t all that bad. One thing it did right was character-development. The cast of characters gets well developed and explored throughout the anime, and I overall had a good time watching. It’s just that now that I started writing this review, I’m beginning to notice more and more flaws and plotholes. You’ll probably enjoy this if you don’t get too much bothered by these.
The graphics look quite interesting, Juna’s designs are done with quite some creativity, and the entire anime sparkles with imaginative choreography. The music also is quite unique. It’s not really memorable, but I can see myself going after the soundtrack, as there are quite a number of interesting tunes worth listening to.
Overall, Earth Girl Arjuna is not a bad anime; it just has a lot of flaws. Let me just warn you to skip the final episode, though, as it’s the worst episode in the entire series, and the perfect example of a bad and rushed ending.]]>
Author: psgels
Hitohira Review – 88/100
Hitohira is going to be a rather difficult anime to review, since most of its major merits are rather spoilerific, but I’ll give it a try. Basically, it’s one of these rare high-school dramas done right. It features Mugi, an extremely shy girl who even has trouble speaking up at times, who gets recruited for the local drama-club. Why? Because her voice can be incredibly hard when she’s not holding back.
When I first read this description, I indeed was sceptical. After all, many anime have come up with similar concepts, and failed horribly. Hitohira, though, proved to know exactly what it was doing. There are no stereotypes, no excessive fanservice, no harem, and no artificial student council. Nearly all of the clichés that we usually see in these school-based shows are gone. Instead, this anime delivers characters that go well beyond the stereotypes. They’re rich and versatile, and each of them gets a great dose of development through the course of only twelve episodes, ending with an actually good ending.
Hitohira turned out to be surprisingly genuine, but it does take two or three episodes to get going and show its full potential. Nono’s case is beautiful, and I loved how this anime didn’t try to keep its characters together. Life goes on is a major theme of especially the later episodes and it’s done beautifully. I won’t say anything more than that that the major climax was amazing, and it was a definite highlight of the spring-season. Just go and check it out for yourself.
The character-designs are done beautifully and unique, making the visuals a real treat. The animation itself usually remains minimal, though you won’t see any distorted faces or strangely drawn bodies. The background music doesn’t stand out, but it still contributes to the scenes perfectly.
I really hope for this series to get subbed soon, as it deserves to be watched. This series really is one of the spring-season shows that went right. The only flaw that I managed to spot was that especially in the beginning, the drama was a tad too forced, though as the show went on this became less and less apparent. It’s a great choice for anyone who isn’t bored too fast.]]>
Wellber no Monogatari ~ Sisters of Wellber – 11
And Wellber no Monogatari is coming towards its end, with only two episodes left after this. You’d suspect a “calm before the storm”-episode, but instead it decides to develop its side-characters a bit more. This definitely was a Galahad/Jamill-episode and a great one as well!
Finally we get a bit more development between the two, and we finally learn how the two got together. Basically, Jamill was an excellent soldier, while Galahad was close to Guernia, and they often got put in the same missions, in which the combination of the both of them excelled like no other. After a while, they began to feel for each other. It’s nothing special, but it’s so much better than no explanation at all.
This probably was the episode with the slowest pacing of the series. Especially the later half is really focused, and with a good reason: Jamill dies! First she gets stabbed in the eye by Guernia, after he tells her how he killed his mother, who “cheated” on him. She then goes to search for Galahad, who ended up in a peaceful farming cottage. When she finds him, it seems that she’s still on Guernia’s side, as she tries to make him go back. When he refuses, she challenges him to a “shooting duel”. Galahad shoots anyway, since he’s seen her skills, and he’s in now way as fast as she is. Jamill, though, refused to shoot, and so she gets hit by Galahad. Great moment. 🙂
Now then, I do wonder wonder what this anime has in store for us for the final two episodes. So far, the best thing of this series has been the change to an actual serious storyline, but something tells me that the creators planned to save the best for last. So far, we’ve got three elements of the storyline left unsolved: the war, Guernia vs. Galahad and the murderer of Tina’s parents.]]>
OMG!
THIS is what I’ve been waiting for! The website lists the date of July 16, while Moonphase talks about autumn, but IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Arusu The Adventure, the OVA-sequel of Mahou Shoujotai has now gotten an official airdate! Okay, I may be the only person who enjoys this news, but I’m really getting pumped now! Studio 4C: show your magic! (yes, I know this probably is one of my most random posts, but I just had to make it ^^;)]]>
Bokura no – 10
I may be wrong, but I think we’re currently at the quietest part of Bokura no, in which the children whose backgrounds can be taken care of in one episode are featured. I think we can expect Kirie next time. Because of this, Bokura no has temporarily become a case-based show (a series which features one character per episode). The thing with the case-based show is that you’ve got the phenomenal and awesome cases (episode nine), and the normal cases (episode ten).
This episode was by no means bad, but the previous episode was just so incredibly good, that this episode just doesn’t live up to it. The episode features Mako, and we get to see the reason why she’s so shy: her mother works as a hostess. Because of that, all her classmates think that she’s some kind of weird girl, Mako got ashamed of her mother, and she started to get bullied. She basically spends the episode, trying to understand her mother a bit better.
One thing I did like was how Mako tried to be useful somehow, by making outfits for the different pilots. She only had the time to finish four of them, but I like how she turned out to be a very good tailor. Tana also made sure for a nice surprise in the end, when she asked Tanaka to look for Jun’s real mother. This does mean that the two of them have different parents, and that Jun’s mother divorced his father at one point. The father then kept Jun, remarried, and they got Kana. After that, they either died or disappeared. I didn’t expect this, though. A few episodes ago, Sasa noted that she might kill Jun at one point, but right now it looks like she’s trying to save him, despite the hard time he gives her.
I think that with this pacing, we can expect Bokurano to be either a 24-episode-series or a 26-episode-series. I’m glad to see that the creators realize this. We’ve got 14-16 episodes left, with eight pilots left. This means that there will be enough time left to give each character enough background without rushing it, and the fact that the creators are turning up the pacing already at this point must mean that they’ve got a rather interesting ending in mind. I can’t wait to find out. ^^;
Interestingly enough, this episode also cut back on the animation-budget a bit. Mako looked a bit weird during a few of her shots, and the fight was rather short and meaningless, when compared to the others.]]>
El Cazador de la Bruja – 11
Okay, screw what I said in episode 9. This series rocks, and that episode was just an example of a bad episode, not a bad series. El Cazador is probably the most bashed series of the spring-season, due to the fact that most people stick with it, even though they don’t like it. Still, I’m appreciating this series more and more, the suspense and mystery are excellent, and I love how each episode develops the small storylines that all centre around Ellis bit by bit. I think the problem with most people is that they’re all comparing it to Noir. To be honest, Noir suffered from its repetitive format in my opinion. El Cazador is handling this quite a bit better, due to all the different storylines and characters.
Another great strength of El Cazador, in my opinion, is its impact. Most of the airtime is light-hearted, but there definitely are dark elements in the storyline and history. It’s always nice, waiting for these dark moments to appear, making their impact bigger than in just any other series which constantly tries to get darker and darker. The incredible music also really helps in this.
The current episode was really worth watching, even without the chance of seeing half of the cast with nekomimi-ears. ^^; The story this time resembles the third arc of Ghost Hunt. A woman pretending to have psychic powers makes it big, and then gets discovered. A few years later, she came to a village, and she successfully made the villagers believe that she was a psychic who preached for the god Chappi, who in fact turned out to be her dead cat.
It’s surprising how this anime doesn’t pay any attention to the topics that are usually addressed by other anime when they deal with an episode where a person forces others into a religion. In fact, Nadie and Ellis never really criticise the fact that she deceives, and in stead the episode mostly focuses on the woman herself, and the pain she had to go through. People started to see her as a witch when she was young. It’s also interesting that she does have one power: reading memories. We also see her begging Ellis to stay with her, as Ellis is a girl who does have real powers, it’d be natural for her to indeed cling to her.
We also see her do something quite interesting: make a phone call with a certain “White House”, where she plans to tell them all about Ellis. Okay, she gets executed before she can meet them, but still, why would she do such a thing? Anyway, this episode also introduces some new important characters: the ones who shot down this woman, and their superiors. I believe that they’re on the side of Blue-eyes, and the reason for them to appear probably is because Blue-Eyes sent them the information she got from Rozenberg’s desk.
This was actually quite a difficult episode to understand, especially since these guys like to use big words, and they never really showed their intentions, they just spoke of them, like what usually happens in El Cazador. This makes it really difficult to understand, I may have to rewatch this episode subbed.
Despite this, though, I loved the climax, which showed a bit more of when Ellis killed the professor. Apparently, he had a gift for her, and she shot right through it. It was also interesting when Ellis looked at the pictures of some witch-hunts.
Regarding the other characters, LA is back, and Ricardo and Lilio still keep following Ellis and Nadie, though their role is minimal in this episode. Rozenberg, meanwhile, gets back from his trip to the desert, while he spots Blue-Eyes with the intentions to go there, based on the things she found in his office.]]>
Tsubasa Chronicle OVA?
this site, a Tsubasa Chronicle OVA has been announced! The animation studio to handle it is still unknown at this point. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops in the future. Obviously, an OVA won’t be enough to finish the story, as from the things I heard, the manga goes on for much longer. Still, this does show that CLAMP doesn’t give up after its debacle with Bee-Train. Perhaps we can expect more OVAs in the future, or perhaps even a third season.]]>
Les Miserables – Shoujo Cosette – 23
In this episode, Cosette and Jean move in to a neat apartment somewhere in Paris, but who cares! Eponine is back!!
Seriously though, for Jean and Cosette, the entire episode was just an introduction with nothing special. What happened when the two of them were out of the picture was interesting. Marius is really having trouble surviving on his own, and his job as a translator isn’t earning enough to pay for his current room. His friend then shows him to the cheapest area of the city, and he finds a room for only two franc a month/week.
Doesn’t that ring a bell somewhere? ^^;
Of course, it makes perfect sense for the Thenardiers to also be in the same place, since their money is gone and they do have a knack for finding the cheapest way possible. We finally get to see Eponine and Azelma grown up, and I have to say that Eponine was awesome. I never really stood still by it, but the fact remains that Cosette has been gone for nine years now, and someone had to take over her role. I guess that that someone was Eponine. Especially now that she’s grown up, and the Thenardiers don’t have the money to treat her like a princess anymore, she suddenly gets treated extremely harsh.
It also seems that the future episodes are going to work on a love-triangle between Cosette, Eponine and Marius. While most love-triangle are rather obnoxious, due to the fact that they just are horribly developed, I’m pretty much confident that this’ll actually be pulled off right in Les Miserables, due to the large amount of attention it spends on developing its characters. It also makes perfect sense for Eponine to fall in love with Marius. After all, she’s treated harshly, she lives in poverty while she was used to living without too much money-worries, and here a guy lives right next to her, in a tidy suit. Obviously, she’d cling to some signs of wealth, even though Marius is extremely poor as well.
Oh, now that I think of it, there was one interesting event regarding Jean: he’s as scared of policemen as ever. Even though it’s been nine years, it would be a miracle for someone to recognize him. But indeed, for the same matter it could be Javert.]]>
Some quick first impressions: The Skull Man, Devil May Cry and Wangan Midnight
The Skull Man
You know, this one started out well. Okay, it wasn’t as interesting as some of the other series that have appeared in the spring-season, but it was definitely a solid start, in which a journalist is investigating the murders by a guy, calling himself “the skeleton man” and runs into a girl who has ran away from home or something similar. The concept definitely had potential. That is, until the creators decided that it was a good moment for a friggin’ naked shower-scene. That really took a lot of credibility away from this series. Anyway, apart from this, the series is off to a good start, and it’s different from what I expected it to be. I imagined this being a dark and gritty show, but for the most part, most of its scenes were light-hearted. The characters introduced so far have potential, especially the side-characters. We’ll see where this one will bring us.
Devil May Cry
Now this one turned out interesting! Finally another actually good action-series appears that contains a great balance between action and dialogue. The action-scenes look terrific, and I absolutely loved the fight in the theatre. Another remarkable feature was that about 50% of the dialogue happens off-screen. While I can imagine some people getting turned off by this, it actually felt very refreshing and interesting to me. Anyway, Devil May Cry features Dante, a half-demon/half-human or something similar who acts as a bodyguard to protect people from ferocious demons… with his favourite food being a Strawberry Sundae. Nice touch. Overall, the animation is excellent, and the soundtrack features some interesting tunes. Okay, it will never match itself to the great names with its format, but for its genre, it’s doing a very fine job.
Wangan Midnight
Wangan Midnight, an anime about a guy who likes to speed-race on the highway. I can appreciate how he didn’t just find out about his passion for cars in this episode, like so many other anime of its kind do. What we’ve got here is just a guy who likes being reckless, gets defeated and runs into a really fast but dangerous blue car on the scrapheap. After watching this first episode, I realized that the action-scenes are mostly for the car-lovers out there, as they didn’t do anything to me. There were too many close-ups and too little real action. What did interest me, though, were the human aspects in the episode, most notably the main character’s recklessness. A lot of people are worrying about him, and I do hope that this anime will be realistic enough to show what happens if this continues. Another notable aspect is the really diverse soundtrack. It’s got anything: hip-hop, rock, j-pop. All it misses is some German folklore.]]>
Toward the Terra – 10
Woo! Jomie is back! And surprisingly, we skip another six years in time, since the previous episode. The biggest surprise has to be Swena, who turned into a journalist (no sign of her husband yet, did she divorce from him?), looking for the origin of the Myu. Finally I understand why she left, back in episode six, and I must say that it indeed was a better decision for her to leave Keith. After all, now she can act on her own, which will become much more interesting than just one of Keith’s henchmen. I really like what I saw from her in this episode, and she’s showing some great promise for the future! 🙂
Speaking of which, I wonder what happened to Sam. For the entire episode, we don’t see both of them. Keith has probably become the most elite of elite, though I do reckon that this wasn’t possible for Sam. Does this mean that Sam has left him, or do the two of them still have contact?
In any case, this episode also explains what the Myu have been doing for the past few years: wander around aimlessly. Jomie at one point suggested trying to contact the planet earth by sending various peace-messages. These messages just didn’t work at all, and when Jomie found out that they caused the death of a Myu (Shiroe), he stopped doing this. Now, ten years later, there still isn’t a sign of Earth. The interesting thing is that Physis seems to have abandoned the idea of going to earth, and predicted a red planet to be their saviour. Near the end of the episode, they reach it.
I’m not sure what it is, but this episode greatly increased my interest for this series. Especially after rewatching it, I realize how good this episode really was. There isn’t really much tension, but many interesting things happen. Seeing that Jomie still has contact with the youngest people on the “Moby Dick” (aka, the children we saw in the first episodes) also was really interesting. They’re still treated as children, even though they grew up, simply because there’s nobody younger than them.
These “children” actually come up with the idea to make children the “natural way”, instead of what has been the custom. It seems strange for him, to only think of such a thing after ten years, but it does make sense. After all, if you’ve grown up, knowing nothing about the subject, it’s not like you’re able to take the initiative on these issues. Near the end of the episode, we also see two of the children confess to each other.
To be honest, during this episode I kept comparing Toward the Terra with Heroic Age, and then I really realized how truly crap the latter is. Both anime feature exiles who struggle to survive, though Heroic Age had to come up with an unbelievably strong Age who keeps on fighting until there is peace, and that’s about all there is to the storyline. Compare that to Toward the Terra and its complex storytelling from three different parties.
Overall, the climax was just great. The next episode will probably focus on the exploration of the new red planet, and I honestly can’t wait. I do wonder, though, when we’ll see Keith getting in contact with the Myu. I originally believed that the previous episode would cause him to question Mother Eliza, but that seems to be not true at all, since he still remains an elite. When I first saw his picture on the OP, I thought that he’d also be some king of Myu, though I was totally wrong on that one, it seems.]]>