Author: psgels

The Third – 13 – Just Ignore the Horrible Art. ;)

by psgels, posted in The Third


Ah, so this was the infamous thirteenth episode. And indeed. The character art is horrible. It seems like we’re dealing with totally different persons now. That’s what you get when you let different animation studios handle different episodes. Once, you run into a garbage one, which ruins an episode. Ah well, let’s hope the creators noticed this as well, and decide to cut all ties with it.

In any case, I am SO glad that the fansubs of the Third are finally starting to come out at a fair speed. Thanks a lot to FnT, for bringing us this wonderful series. This episode actually was pretty good, if you ignore the horrible art (which is what I’m going to do right now). Ever since the previous episode, Honoka has been taking random jobs, like working as the bodyguard for a couple of scientists. Under pressure of Joey, she decides to take a vacation. Ikus and Millie will be joining her.

Two new characters appear during this episode. A strange man, who appears to be a desert eater, hunting for a desert fairy and not afraid to kill others. He should prove to be an interesting antagonist for later. The second character is a strange desert wolf, who appears for a few seconds. Why do I know he’s an important character? Because of the new ED. In there, you see a picture with all the important characters, among with the scary guy and the grey wolf stand. Apart from that, we have a strange mecha. I suppose that’s blue breaker. The desert fairy also appears, which suggests that we’ll get to see one of them soon. Gravestone also is visible, but there’s one character I don’t recognize. We see a strange woman, with long, tied up hair, looking at a certain direction. I wonder who that might be.

It was great to see Honoka, busy with her daily life again. Some pretty funny moments also happened during this episode. The desert punks talking, for example. Or when Ikus, Millie and Honoka were talking about skirts. She really is an awesome character if you look at it that way.

I’ve also taken a look at the preview for next week. The art is as good as it’s used to be, and by the looks of it, it’s promising to be an amazing episode. I really can’t wait! Millie really does add an extra bit of awesomeness to The Third. Especially during this episode, it becomes clear that her father’s death has left a huge scar on her.

Simoun – 24 – Not as I thought it would go. But awesome nonetheless!

by psgels, posted in Simoun


Okay, that was deep.

This episode went so incredibly deep. It’s so different from the direction I hoped for, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love it.

The major part of this episode deals with the fact that the Chor Tempest will be disbanded, which means that its members will have to go to the spring, which means that they’ll have to say goodbye to their previous lives. Topics like these always do well, so you’d wonder why so little anime are trying it. In any case, every member, except Aaeru, Neviriru and Yun, will be going to the spring. The way the creators displayed this was awesome. On their last day, they all have just a last bit of fun, before they leave. Kaimu and Aruti also get a bit closer together, and Paraietta was scratching something on the wall near the dormitories. We don’t get to see what exactly it was that she scribbled on it, though.

Aaeru and Neviriru stay on the Arcus Prima, however. Both still are unsure which sex they should choose, and Neviriru keeps bugging Aaeru to do the Emerald Ri Maajon. This eventually ends in Neviriru confessing to Aaeru. I think the two now officially are in love with this. We get to see the results at the next episode. ^^

Yun gets a very surprising role. Remember her during the previous episode? She keeps getting haunted by what she saw. In the end, she decides to leave the Arcus Prima, and accept Onashia, and forgive her for the sins she committed when she didn’t choose a sex, wishing to stay an eternal maiden forever. Onashia then disappears, while Yun takes over her role. The other members of the Chor Tempest find this out in a very interesting way.

Seriously, I never expected that the creators were going for an ending of this kind. You would expect a lot of action, though for the previous two episodes, there hasn’t been any fight scene at all. And due to the fact that peace has been made, I don’t think more action scenes will be coming. At first, I was a bit startled by this, though now I’m beginning to see how incredibly awesome it can become. We still have the problem of Limone and Dominüra. What will their role be in the final two episodes?

Popolocrois 2003 – 12 – Jan! Ken! Pon!

by psgels, posted in Popolocrois 2003


Haha! The best episode so far. Papu finally reveals his reasons for coming, the Seirei of Darkness is beaten and Luna comes with a very nice twist in the end. It’s like this: Papu really is the Seirei of the Moon. He’s the Seirei, overseeing all other Seirei. This explains why the Wind and Fire Seirei got so startled when they saw him. It’s always scary to see a superior coming without notice.

In any case, Pinon uses the power of the moon, combined with his own power in order to beat Yasm in Phantonesia. By doing this, however, Papu is forced to return to the moon while he transports Pinon, Luna and Marco to the normal world again, giving Luna the tip that her pendant is made from the power of the moon, thus able to defeat the darkness. The catch: it breaks. This makes Luna unable to retain her human form.

That is a very interesting development indeed. For the latter half of the series, we’ll be seeing Luna in her true, beautiful though different form. I’m not sure whether Papu comes back. At the end of the episode, we see him return to the temple, but I’m not sure whether that is a dream or not. I guess I’ll have to wait till the next episode to find out.

The second half of the episode shows quite a few very funny moments. The most memorable definitely was the Jankenpon. Punpun and Kotoro were funnier than ever during this episode. It’s indeed quite pitiful to be playing Jankenpon with a robot who only can do scissors. Kotoro also began to look more and more like his father a bit later in the episode, in which he has *cough* “trouble” while fixing his giant-crab-machine-thing. Punpun, meanwhile, shows that she accepted that Pinon has an eye for Luna, by helping the two get closer to each other. An interesting development, at this stage of the series.

Other funny moments include when we see the cook bake eggs in a very quirky way, with Pinon noticing the results afterwards and Lulu who messes up with her magic once more, turning Pinon in a very cute kitten. ^^;

Last big revelation: we get to see the one who named Yasm. The real bad guy in this series. Or bad girl in our case. It seems to be some kind of demon, sealed away and hoping that Yasm would free her.

Ergo Proxy – 20 – Two People in One Body

by psgels, posted in Ergo Proxy


This episode’s Proxy has the ability to delude someone’s mind. You could describe it as bringing its victim in a dream-world. In this dream world, The Usagi has arrived in Romdeau, after which Real turned Vincent in and hid Pino away. Afterwards, she was taken in by Daedalus and his assistant: Swan, in order to become a perfect citizen again. Vincent, meanwhile, turned into Ergo Proxy and was locked up. Real, meanwhile, felt bad for betraying Vincent, so she created an alternative Vincent in her subconscious mind.

The Real Vincent gets to be this alternative Vincent, while the Proxy gets to be Swan. Over the course of the episode, Swan tries to make him believe that he needs to kill Real. She tries to make him believe certain lies about his subconsciousness. I’m not sure what her goal was in doing this. I think that, if this continued on for much longer, Vincent’s mind would break, or something, allowing her to defeat him.

Swan also shows Vincent a bit of his past. In this, Real and Daedalus are brother and sister, Vincent works as the Chief of the Civil Guard with Raul as his subordinate and Vincent and Real who are about to marry. Obviously, this isn’t how it really went. But I wonder if there’s some sort of truth in this. After all, Vincent remembered a few details on his own, before this sequence started (the cup falling and Real cutting her finger on it). Of course, this could also have been the Proxy, trying to play with Vincent’s mind, creating the events so that in both cases, Vincent would naturally act the same way, thus creating a deja vú.

In order to confuse Vincent, Swan creates an illusion, within an illusion. But it makes you wonder what’ll happen once they actually reach Romdeau. The Proxy also made a few mistakes. Pino suddenly looked fancy again. Vincent didn’t know about the new Real, so there also was no new Real in the illusion. For some reason, Swan also gave herself and Vincent the two pendants. Proxy is able to move so fast, why can’t he dodge bullets like that? And why didn’t Real look for Monad? Still, it was a very nice attempt at fooling him.

While an interesting watch, this episode wasn’t really anything special. It was just another Proxy, playing mind games with Vincent. I think the bad thing was that this Proxy didn’t really have well-defined rules. Proxies like in episode 14, 15 and 19 all had certain rules they had to follow, which made these episodes very enjoyable.

Interlude Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Interlude is a dating-sim mystery anime. It’s an OVA, containing three episodes. It’s really one of these anime you need to think about in order to fully understand it. We’ve got our main character, living his everyday life. Until he meets a strange girl, alone at the station. Starting from that moment, he’ll learn that something huge went on in the past. Especially the first half is covered with small flashes in which our main character, along with his girlfriend lie mortally wounded next to each other, which is enough to keep you excited.

The mystery-part definitely was worth it. Especially in the first episode, when nothing is revealed yet. The background story slowly gets unravelled, and it’s full of creativity. In just three episodes, the storyline gets told, revealing a bit more every time. I have to say, though, regarding the flashes mentioned above. When their meaning gets revealed, it sortof lacks impact. It’s the case with most other revelations as well. Together, these revelations form a great concept, but individually, they aren’t really that exciting.

When the anime turns to the dating-sim-part, however, it goes nowhere fast. In a bad way. A large part of the second episode just consists out of our main character, trying to hit on a girl, and the first and third episode also contain rather boring romance scenes which didn’t really move me in any way. The creators also somehow found it a nice idea to throw in lots of useless fanservice, which didn’t really do this anime any good.

The characters themselves, however, are a major plus in this OVA, though not in the way you’d expect it. I have to admit, while watching the third episode, they became a bit annoying at times. But when the episode was over, and I began to think about the characters a bit (especially the side-characters), only then I realized what they’ve gone through. Only then I realized the horrors they experienced. That’s the strength these characters have. Especially Tama got my respect at that point. Still, this effect could have been bigger if some unanswered questions were answered. Some things just are never explained, which sortof hurts this OVA.

The character art used in this anime is most of the times very high-quality. Most of the characters have interesting character designs. The creators also liked to play with lighting effects, which gives an interesting result. Still, I’ve got one complaint. The main character just looks ugly.

Overall, I’m glad I’ve seen Interlude. It was a very interesting watch, which really requires you to think in order to fully enjoy it. A good example of an anime which has more than just what we see on the surface. Still, it could have been much better executed at certain points.

.Hack//Roots – 22 – The Meatball Brigade

by psgels, posted in .Hack//Roots


Seriously. I hope the creators are planning to animate .Hack//GU when this series is done. .Hack//Roots is just one big prelude, after which //GU picks the story up and continues it. It’s like the creators are expecting the viewer to play the game in order to fully enjoy the anime. Well, due to the fact that none of the .Hack games ever made it to Holland, I doubt I’ll be able to get the chance to play it.

The episode is a Meatball Brigade episode. The three goof around for a bit, until Touta gives them a bit of advice. When compared to the latest bunch of episode, I have to say that this one was above average. It had some interesting moments in it. Kuhn also plays a big role in this, when he is the second person to awaken. Wait… does this mean that Haseo didn’t awaken? In any case, there’d better be an extremely good reason to explain why Kuhn was able to awaken.

Kuhn telling his guild-members about his resignation was an interesting scene. I’m also actually interested whether the Meatball Brigade will actually be successful. If they continue to annoy Haseo, and continue to gain members, things could become interesting. But in order to do that, the final episodes had better feature a huge increase in pacing!

The Third – 12 – Awesomeness

by psgels, posted in The Third


This episode ends the Gravestone-arc, and what a great ending it is! I really adored this episode.

Honoka, Paife an Ikus all have an encounter with Gravestone. Ikus with Gravestone himself, Paife with a copy of Gravestone and Honoka with a copy of herself. Ikus tried to convince Gravestone to stop, though it seems that he decided not to force him to make decisions. He does tell Gravestone (and us) some details about the great war. It seems that a certain “everyone” died. Ikus would like to explain it to him, though he claims that he doesn’t have the permission nor right to tell him. This suggests that he works for some kind of superior. Ikus also tells Gravestone that he’s met similar cases. There are more people like Gravestone. While he tells this, we see weapons of mass destruction attack planets. It would suggest that Ikus witnessed all these events somehow.

Honoka, meanwhile, has a duel with her copy. Here it really seems that she can’t even draw her katana in order to defend herself. She just can’t cut another human. Her copy then tries to play with her mind, by trying to make her believe that she hates everyone else. In the end, Honoka finally gets her piece of character development when she realizes that all of this is nonsense. In the end, she meets Gravestone in person, and she manages to change his mind. Awesome.

Paife, meanwhile, finally gets the chance of trying out the plan she tried to use against Honoka, but failed. The Gravestone copy seems to be immune for guns and bullets, so she decides to use her fists and ki. Though even that proves to be useless. Her final trick is to use some kind of barrier, with one small opening. Force a huge amount of ki through that opening, and the pressure creates an explosion. This is too much for the copy, and it disappears. This is another reason why the narrator comes in handy. He actually explains the fighting strategies of the different characters. It’s a nice touch.

In the end, it seem that Gravestone was a young boy, who died during the Great War. His father was an important scientist, who tried to save his son by turning him into this. By letting him retain his child-form, he’d never have to fight or be used in the war.

I’ve also seen the preview for the next, infamous episode. Let’s just say I can understand the rumours. The art looks SO different. I’m glad that it’s just for one episode. Let’s hope it’s not too bad. This episode, in any case, was awesome.

Otogi Juushi Akazukin – 11 – Baru. In a dress!?

by psgels, posted in Otogi Juushi Akazukin


Ah, okay. Akazukin and the others weren’t heading for Cendrillion’s castle, they were heading for the magic school, in the hope that their teachers might be able to find out her location. This episode was a Ringo-episode, though almost every character played some kind of role in it. Except for Akazukin, perhaps. She remained in the background as usual, doing the things she’s supposed to do. I’m dying for an Akazukin episode.

In any case, Ringo has a problem. She can’t do anything. This becomes clear when she gets lost and almost gets killed by a wandering Nightmarian. She then asks Ibara, of all people, to teach her a bit of magic, so that she isn’t totally helpless. In the end, she doesn’t get very far.

Shirayuki, Akazukin, Baru and Souta, meanwhile have somehow ended up in the local school play (a festival is going on inside the school). Souta plays the prince, while Shirayuki, Akazukin and Baru (yes, you read that right: BARU) play as princesses. Randagio and Gretel also decided to invade the school festival, and then they notice this strange play. They decide to just play along with them. Well, in the end, this ends up in chaos in which Gretel hypnotizes Souta and takes him away.

Next, they’re on a roof, along with Ringo and Harmeru. Harmeru makes Gretel drop Souta, and Ringo jumps after him, thinking that she can fly. Of course, she can’t. Shirayuki get to be the one to save them with her magic, though Ringo believes that it was her own magic that did it.

If Ringo wants to learn magic, why doesn’t she start with the basics? Why doesn’t she try to start from the beginning? And why didn’t Ibara advice her to do so? I’m suspecting that there’ll be a moment in which she’ll actually learn some (seeing the length of this series). For some reason, she’s really reminding me of Eva from Mahou Shoujotai at this point.

There was also a lot of cosplaying in this episode. With a small exception of a certain wolf, every character looked so cute in their outfits. Especially Akazukin. ^^ Apart from that, there was lots of cute stuff in this episode. Shirayuki and Ringo’s fight over Souta, for example. And Randagio’s evil plans and seeing them fail.

Ergo Proxy – 19 – Smile!

by psgels, posted in Ergo Proxy


I loved this episode! It was another wacky one, but seriously, I kept smiling over the entire episode. Heck, I’m even smiling as I type this. Pino was SO awesome during this episode. Not to mention the huge wave of symbolism. If you ever need to smile for one reason or another, watch this episode!

The case is like this: we have a Proxy, in yet another dome. This one has created his own world: Smile World. It’s a world in which everyone keeps smiling continuously. But now, Vincent is approaching. In a last desperate attempt, he contacts Pino, in order to find out his weakness. Instead, she opens up his eyes with her smile.

Pino starts out in the local garbage dump. Smile World is full of all sorts of fun attractions, though the unpopular ones get discarded. In the garbage dump, Pino meets up with two discarded cartoons: Hanapeko and Pure. They’re incredibly happy and carefree, even though they’ve been considered trash. An interesting note is that they’re actually auto-raves. They then begin to make a wish, in order to get out of trouble: meet the creator of the world: Will B. Good, aka, the Proxy.

Something very interesting is a poster, advertising a movie about the end of the world, in which Vincent in Ergo-Proxy-mode is destroying a huge number of buildings. What if these prophecies actually have some truth into them? What if Vincent is destined to destroy the world? In any case, every Proxy seems to know Vincent, and his reputation.

Then, a strange cricket appears. He’s very serious and goal-oriented, in contrast with the care-free Hanapeko and Pure. His name is Hopper, and he tries to get Pino to dump her new-found friends and take her to Will B. Good. This doesn’t really work. The foursome escapes from the garbage dump, which gets filled with water afterwards. Hopper gets annoyed by the carefreeness of Hanapeko and Pure, as they seem to have changed their goals yet again: go to Will B. Good and find out the reason they were created. Interesting questions, coming from them. I especially like the way their personality seems to clash with that of Hopper’s. He just can’t accept that there are people who live for the moment.

Hopper then begins to ask Pino about Vince’s weaknesses, which indeed reveals that she’s with some kind of Proxy. What happens afterwards is Pino, Hanapeko and Pure discovering the surface, and they get to see the amusement park of the Smile World. As they’ve got no tickets, they’re in trouble and some dogs with very large heads appear. Pino has great fun evading them in one of the attractions. While she does this, everyone begins to notice that she has an incredibly sincere and real smile. Something everyone in Smile World is lacking. She was SO cute at that moment.

Later, the foursome has been captured after all. Pino also mentions Raul for a moment while Hanapeko and Pure change their goals yet again: become real customers and have real smiles. They then get interrogated by the same guards as before. For some reason, the reason for the dogs to have such big heads is that they were wearing masks. In any case, the interrogators are so impressed by Pino’s smile that they forget their initial reasons.

Hopper then loses his patience and sends them directly to Will B. Good. Will reveals that it’s extremely difficult to give people a constant smile. That’s why he needs total control, in order to protect this perfect smile. It’s ironic that all these smiles are fake. Each citizen of Smile World is ignorant about everything happening outside of the surface. That’s why they can remain to be “happy”.

Will then starts asking Pino about Vincent’s weaknesses, and his treasure. He does this by putting up a fake smile. His creations recognize the fakeness of his smile, after having seen Pino, and they turn against him. Will then resorts to his last option: beg Pino to stop Vincent. If Vincent and him meet, they’ll have to fight. When they fight, Will will lose, and everyone in Smile World will die. Including the friends Pino made. Pino then wakes up, and she manages to convince Vincent to stay away from Will. Especially the way the episode ended was awesome.

It’s a happy end, isn’t it? On the other side, the citizens of Smile World still have all of their freedom taken away. They still know nothing. They still keep smiling forever, with a fake smile. Unless Will has learned something from Pino. It’s interesting to wonder what he’ll be doing afterwards. I don’t think we’ll ever get to see what happens with Smile World after this episode.

Also, the fact remains that Pino is an Autorave. Just what is the Cogito-virus anyway? Why has it been released? If I remember it correctly, it was released to stop the Proxies, but it backfired. Still, Pino showed how the Cogito-virus can work effectively. She got love and care from Vincent. Iggy got ignorance from Real. That’s why they ended up the way they did. But to think that Pino would be so life-like. She’s actually making her own decisions during this episode. She doesn’t copy from anyone, like she did in the earlier episodes.

Ayatsuri Sakon – 11 – Kyouichi, Futaba, Miho and Shiho

by psgels, posted in Ayatsuri Sakon


I now realize that most people don’t really know how to obtain this series. The easiest way is through the link below, in which the Ayatsuri Sakon Project has provided downloads for episodes 1-10 and fifteen. Episodes 11-14 can be downloaded through regular bittorrent.

http://asp.dryfire.org

Anyway, about the episode. It promises to be a great arc once more. This time, it’s about a man with a mask, who’s been killing random villagers with a cursed blade. Sakon’s visiting the family who plays a major part in this murder drama. Let’s get on with the characters:

Sakon. He’s been rather cute at the beginning of the episode, when he got so much appraisal by the different members of the family. He remained a bit in the background this episode, in order to let the problem fully explain itself.

Shiho plays the role for the important side-character this time. She’s innocent in any case. Why am I so sure of this? Because she appears in the OP, alongside all of the other important side-characters. She’s the only one who believes in her brother’s innocence. I think this is because he used to play with her very often. She’s got a typical big-brother complex. She’s a bit rude to Sakon in the beginning, though this changes when she sees Ukon in action.

Kyouichi is the eldest brother of the four children of the family. He stole the sword, Byakko, crafted by the famous Muramasa, from his father and ran off with it. Afterwards, three murders on random villagers occurred and he never even returned. It’s indeed easy to label him as the main suspect, but I doubt that he actually was the one. It’ll be very interesting to see his back-story, though.

Akizuki Soushirou is the father of the family. What happened to the mother, we never know. He’s an old man with an obsession for swords, old weaponry and puppets. Around the middle of the episode, the message gets in that yet another villager has been killed. He then secretly leaves the house, rather nervously, to meet up with Kyouichi. This ends up with him getting killed by the killer. At the end of the episode, we find his body at a place, other than where he was killed. Why would the killer go through so much trouble to move a body?

Miho is the third daughter of Akizuki. She’s the one who suspects her older brother with the most enthusiasm. It seems that it’s been quite a shock when she found out what she did, and somehow, she convinced herself that her brother did it, and couldn’t be trusted.

Futaba is the second daughter of Akizuki. She also believes that Kyouichi was the murderer, but she does manage to stay a bit calm when she talks about him, unlike her sisters.

Kikuchi is Futaba’s fiancé. He’s the typical innocent guy who got caught up in events, and now is scared to death. I think he decided to at least find out what’s going on, so that he doesn’t actually get killed because of his ignorance.

Fujita Zenkichi is a reporter. Probably for a local tv-station. He’s got an overall laid-back attitude. An interesting fact is that he was supposed to show up at a performance of Sakon, at the beginning of the episode, but for some reason, he couldn’t find it. During the end of the episode, when everyone travels to Akizuki’s corpse, he also somehow forgot to take his camera along with him. That isn’t really professional behaviour, is it?

We’ve also got an unnamed maid, working for Akazuki. She picks up the phone, every time a mysterious person, thought to be Kyouichi, gives a call. Apart from that, she didn’t really have a big role.

Yoshida is a police-officer. He drops by in order to deliver the message that yet another villager has been killed, in the same way as a year ago. If that’s the only part in this story he has to fulfill, I’ll eat my hat. Especially if you consider what happened in the first arc.

Our main suspect, however, is Oki Katsumi. When you look at the silhouette of the murderer, he is one of the few who could be able to meet it. We also saw Akazuki getting killed. Afterwards, Oki barged in the room. When the phone rang for the second time, Oki was the one to grab it out of the maid’s hands. It’s never certain that he actually talked with Kyouichi in the first place. He also made a small mistake. He was so keen on guiding everyone to Akazuki’s body, that he forgot that nobody knew that he went to do something other than studying. He seems too focused at carrying out his plan that it’s obvious.

Another theory is that Oki and Yoshida are working together. After all, when Oki drove to the place of Akazuki’s body, he drove so fast and missed a turn. Someone who knew the area wouldn’t have done. This could suggest that Yoshida killed the guy and dragged it to the riverbank, while Oki distracted everyone. After all, someone had to be the one to make the phone calls.

And what was up with the guy with car trouble? Anyway, overall, this arc has started very promising. I really like the different characters it features.