Author: psgels

Galilei Donna – 05

by psgels, posted in Galilei Donna

Oh… the fail. The huge, incredible fail. I was already flexing my muscles when I found out that this episode would be set in the Netherlands… but I didn’t expect that the creators got almost nothing right.

The only thing the creators got right was the names, and they spelled “voor” right.

Questionable but correct was the fact that it snowed. Heck, apparently it’s around January or February when the series takes place. We have periods in which the entire country is covered in snow. Way to go against the stereotypes, I like that. Although I do find it a bit weird that it suddenly out of nowhere started snowing. We’re not particularly colder than the rest of the world here and usually the snow just lasts two months, and even then it’s only a few days at a time. There’s also the way in which everyone just understood each other, but that’s something that all international fiction suffers from. Let’s just assume that everyone’s talking English.

And now for the gross inaccuracies. Let’s start with the architecutre: in the Netherlands, houses can basically be divided into two kinds: old and new. Old is basically the traditional style of housing, while the new is the calculated and well planned home, often built with reddish brick. None of the buildings shown in this episode fall anywhere close to that. I guess they were going for the old look, but they made one crucial mistake here:

Let me tell you, most cities in the Netherlands were built on swamp lands. When homes needed to be built, people would drive huge wooden pillars into the ground for the houses to rest on, because otherwise everything would just collapse on itself. This also meant that most homes couldn’t be built very large unless they have some very solid foundation, wihch is what most people couldn’t afford. Especially combined with the fact that it’s a country with a really high population density: especially in the cities there is not much room. Houses as huge as what we saw there: we only have that in the suburbs, and almost always they are built in a modern architectural style, not some oldish one that you see here. Even the largest houses in the old style are large because they are long. Not wide. When I go on a holiday to a foreign country, I’m always stunned by how big every building is.

Also, the church:churches in the Netherlands are mostly built in an old gothic style. All very old-fashioned, and a typical element of them is that the windows are slightly small. Not huge, like that giant stained glass window we saw here, nor do we have much churches in which the iron beams are plainly visible. Having huge open doors is also just a big no.

Then, the street view: our lanterns nowadays are much more modern: the old style you only see in historical centers like Amsterdam. Also, the creators cleverly managed to mask this with the snow and all, but Dutch streets are nearly always designed to be save: lots of traffic lights, very well defined pavements, lots of opportunities for bikes. I saw no hints of that whatsoever.

And here’s the big one: WHERE THE HECK DID THESE MOUNTAINS COME FROM!? Seriously? We don’t have those in the Netherlands. The single biggest hill we have is about 300 meters above sea level, and that’s in the southernmost part of the country. The other 11 provinces are pretty damn flat here. ESPECIALLY near the sea, which apparently this episode takes place in. Those fancy rocks you see at that beach? Yeah, the rocks we do have are really tiny. Nearly all of our beaches are sandy beaches, follwed by a few sand dunes.

All of this really made me wonder: why am I still watching this? Why am I still going for these kinds of series, when they’re so stupid that they can’t even manage the most basic of research. I mean, Kyousogiga and Samurai Flamenco: I can think of plenty of reasons to watch them. But this…. everything is just average. The drama is all pretty stupid. And I don’t just mean this series, but I’m starting to wonder this about every slightly “good” series. What makes them worth watching if the writers always put so little effort and thought into them?

I want to watch things that can challenge me, however I’m getting more and more the feeling that a lot of the writers are just idiots. Anime has over the past number of years made great strides in terms of animation, but in terms of writing… I’m afraid to say it but things have gotten downhill. There are only a few writers now who can deliver original screenplays, most adaptations are just done lazily. What really is good enough to really be worth your time and attention?
Rating: 2/8 (Awful)

Samurai Flamenco – 05

by psgels, posted in Samurai Flamenco

This episode was a bit awkward to sit through, because it was focused a lot on the characters having doubts about what they should do. An introspection episode in which most of the main cast had an off period and didn’t feel too good: Hidenori’s relationship issues, Masayoshi realizing that what he saw as heroes is just a produced TV-show, and Mari also feeling… something that isn’t exactly explained yet.

It’s all about expectations that aren’t met up, and especially Masayoshi starts acting a bit immature, not realizing that some things just don’t work when shooting a movie, like lots of rain, or the risks that come with using someone unqualified for stunts. Everyone’s sense of justice is different, and this lead to qite an early break-up between Samurai Flamenco and Flamenco Girl.

Nitpick time: when Masayoshi returns to Flamenco Girl when she’s in trouble: how did he find her? Did they agree to wear trackers or something in order to be able to find each other?
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Kyousogiga – 05

by psgels, posted in Kyousogiga

I scrapped the Storytelling, Characters, Production-Values and Setting-ratings from my reviews, but I still look upon anime, based on those four criteria. And really, Kyousogiga is one of the very few series that gets all of them right: it delivers everywhere, and this episode was a great example of that.

Storytelling: the second OVA is brilliantly used by changing the context of each episode and making the way all of the small bits fit into the series completely different. Everything now makes much more sense. With this the third sibling has also gotten his development, and the animation brings the characters alive wonderfully. The facial expressions say huge amounts of things about the characters, without putting them in actual words.

It’s also a great example of one of the reasons why I stopped splitting up my ratings: ideally all of these work together with each other, enhancing each other. Isolating one part is just silly, because the standout series like this one stand out because of the sum of their parts. It’s because of how many different ways the creators manage to think of to portray their characters, using meta-fiction like the one with the dog (symbolism!) to illustrate parts of the story from a different perspective, that enhances the characters and allows them to shine. In the meantime the characters develop by growing and thereby they change the story themselves. Plus, how do you rate it when a series has so much heart put into it as this series? These complex rating systems are completely pointless because you can never take everything into account. Therefore these simple ratings based on one scale are the best. What matters is the overall experience, and overall Kyousogiga is pretty damn awesome.

Another example: in this episode I realized how incredible the music here is. Alone it may have just been organ music. But it brought out so much emotions in the characters. I probably would get bored of it pretty quickly without this series.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Kyousogiga – 04

by psgels, posted in Kyousogiga

This episode, it’s Yase’s turn to get some fleshing out. Also with some material from the second OVA, but again it succeeds to add so many things. Whereas the second OVA was very cryptic, this episode really puts things into perspective, and really explains why Yase acts the way she does.

I’d also like to highlight something else here: a common pitfall for anime is to just take one episode to develop and give backstory, only for the creators to really not know what to to with the character in particular afterwards. That is not the case here. Even the side-characters feel dynamic: we see different sides of them and they all still feel alive, rather than just cardboard cut-outs after they’ve lost their place in the spotlights. That’s another sign of great storytelling.

Oh, and this capital is an awesome place, in which stuff can’t be destroyed other than letting it float away into oblivion. This episode was also about this concept, and how people who value stuff versus the people who don’t value stuff deal with things. This again ties in with the parents disappearing to form one big hole, even though this series at first seems completely random.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Kill La Kill – 05

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

The recent discussion on fanservice has gotten me thinking a bit, especially after I found this infographic about Kill la Kill. It’s true that the fanservice in Yozakura Quartet is just bad and distracts from what makes the show good or interesting, and the fanservice in Kill la Kill is much better because it objectifies everyone, and it has a reason behind it, and the argument you often hear is “it’s awesome so who cares?” – but still I see no reason to bring some more nuance in the discussion.

I mean, reason or not: Kill la Kill cashes in on the popular female empowerment trope. A woman kicks ass while dressed in skimpy clothing. Alone, this would be fine, but with how often this is done, it’s hinted that it’s almost a requirement that if you want to kick ass, you need to show some too. The good shows indeed build all sorts of symbolism around it, but does that make it right? Personally, I still prefer watching strong female characters who can just be empowered because of who they are, and don’t follow the cosmetic trends. Does having fanservice alone ruin a character? Nah. It’s just one part of a show. But the problem is that everyone reacts to it in a different way: for some people it weighs more heavily than others. And in my personal experience, the best shows are the ones that don’t care about the shounen or shoujo label, but are just catered to create a good story for everyone.

But I do think that Kill la Kill is among Hiroyuki Imaishi’s best attempts at this kind of nuance. I mean, Gurren Lagann was basically a sausage fest (the most badass woman: Yoko, who both fits the badass female character to a T and pretty much got a short end of the character development stick), and Panty and Stocking WAS a series that was partially based on making fun of female stereotypes. This show finally feels balanced, and it’s really enjoyable because of it. This episode was no exception by the way.

The same goes for the other way around, of course. I mean I’m also tired of the series that objectify men. Hajime no Ippo currently is a good example of taking that a bit far, with all of the current penis jokes and all. But also the series that go out of their way to make their characters bishies hereby alienate most of the male population just because they have nothing to watch it for. The truly good shoujo series have guys who are good looking, but who can appeal to everyone.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Great)

Samurai Flamenco – 04

by psgels, posted in Samurai Flamenco

The fourth episode here continues to push buttons. Here it introduces yet another celebrity who tries to play the hero, but this time she goes out of her way to use violence. Up till now she only used this against bad guys and she most definitely saved people by using it, but the lines are starting to blur when she showed the habit of kicking everyone in the groin when they’re already taken out. That’s the point where she goes from maintaining public order to executing her own personal justice. That line might seem slim, but the implications of this is huge, because with this we’re starting to get into nasty moral territory.

But in a way, all three superheroes have their own flaws: Masayoshi creeps people out at times, Mari uses excessive violence, and Joji is a media whore. On the other hand we have Hidenori, who is actually doing a fine job remaining neutral as a police officer. Although the creators love to use him in the different plot twists of the series. I mean, they’re building something up for him. First hinting at him dressing up as a superhero as well, and next making Mari develop a crush for him because he looks so good in uniform…something’s going to happen here.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Nagi no Asukara – 04

by psgels, posted in Nagi no Asukara

Okay, so everyone aside from Hikari: I really like them. Dramatic, perhaps, but they work really well together, and this series has a knack of writing compelling drama for all of them, and this episode continued that trend. This was some really good character buiding here: no character here is completely onedimensional and even the typical high school bullies have a point and purpose, rather than just being the same streetpunks who are inserted for cheap drama, like what you usually see.

And yeah… Hikari. This guy is complicated. Last week he got completely on my nerves, but this time it changed. I still cringed when he zerged those classmates of his whenever he saw the first possible reason to do so, but the thing is that his sensible side is starting to shine through more. Whenever he didn’t go into “angry bear”-mode he too was an interesting member to the cast who plays off very well with the others. He can sympathize with others when he wants to. The whole apology scene was weird, but definitely a step in the right direciton.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 04

by psgels, posted in Yozakura Quartet

Okay, I’m not going to defend this. This episode was just bad, and I really am not sure what happened here on the production-side, but with this episode this series suddenly lost all of its charm. There were too many signs that showed that the creators didn’t really put much thought into this episode.

Up till now the fanservice was tolerable, but the first half of this episode being nothing but a pointless pool skit? That really was nothing but an excuse to show the entire female cast in bikinis. It’s completely shameless and un-subtle. If you want to do fanservice: make it fit into the story. Don’t just randomly throw in a pool. I might care about the reasons that it was really hot, if only that those reasons were mentioned again, but mysteriously that extreme heat is never mentioned again.

The rest of the episode was just a mess. This kid who is running for major comes in, and thins just start happening for no reason whatsoever, and it’s all just so flimsy. There’s this random politician who yells a lot and the girl somehow gets assaulted by this mechanical thingy out of nowhere. And then Akina suddenly comes with this incredibly dry and soulless info-dump that apparently everyone already knew aside from Kotoha. It both baffles me that they couldn’t just mention this last episode (I mean, what was revealed was a pretty important detail there to just not mention…). Also, why was Kotoha not informed of this? Again, having demons flood into the city is pretty major. A mayor should have no reason NOT to know about this. The reasons the characters mention make no sense whatsoever.

Also, what happened to the background music? It was so well timed previously. And yet here we have this generic goofy music for the silly parts, along with generic broody music for the serious parts. Seriously, what happened?
Rating: 3/8 (Lacking)

Gingitsune – 04

by psgels, posted in Gingitsune

This episode of Gingitsune brought a new character, combined with a really annoying chibi-fox who pretty much acts like a cocky little kid despite being eighty years old. It was a really dramatic episode, with a lot of hammy voice actors. And yet somehow this episode managed to bring a few tears to my eyes. I have no idea how they did that…

Seriously, amidst all of the elaborate series this season, Gingitsune really shines in its simplicity. What was this series about? A bunch of kids who ran away from home. And yet, they pretty much did things right here. The guy in any case is a compelling character here: he defied expectatios several times throughout this episode, and he also didn’t waste any time to shed light on some of his backstory.

Gingitsune seems to focus on the saying “there’s more than meets the eye”. Not every character has that (the female lead in particular pretty much wears her heart on her sleeve), but there have been plenty of characters who hide large parts of who they are, either consciously or unconsciously.

With this episode, Gingitsune also took a big step away from Natsume Yuujinchou. What I mean by that is that the youkai in Natsume Yuujinchou have short childhoods, despite having a very slow concept of time. In Gingitsune meanwhile we have this kid of eighty years old running around. And yeah, it’s true that Natsume Yuujinchou is much more refined and polished than this series. But yet I just can’t help but empathize with these characters as well,much more strongly than I anticipated.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope – October 28th

by psgels, posted in Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope

Gingitsune – 03: Not blogging this episode because nothing much really happened, but still an adorable little episode to dream away to. I stand by my case that that fox is adorable. The turtle was a one-off character, but he did illustrate the concept of time really well, which is quite important for our white friend’s development.

Golden Time – 03: I was surprised by the weird cult that appeared out of nowhere, but I guess that weird obsessions are a theme of this series. However, what happened afterwards was quite interesting: two characters just sat down and had quite a long talk for anime standards, in which they got to know each other much better. Lots of interesting stuff happened there.

Noucome – 03: I just realized how hard it is to animate characters laughing. Most of the time you get these awkward squeals with blushes that feel incredibly forced. But yeah, another hilarious episode. Everything about this episode was just so wrong, but for once the show actually acknowledges this, which is something you don’t often see. Of course it then goes and pulls in some twists that are as bad as the things it’s parodying, but still, even the drama here is done tongue in cheek.

Yowamushi Pedal – 02 & 03: Okay, my verdict after the first real cycling match is that I’m not going to continue watching. The reason for this is that the creators are rather dragging them out, resulting in a lot of repeating lines that don’t really add anything other than padding things out. For cycling anime, the two Nasu OVAs do a much better job at portraying the sport than this.

Golden Time – 04: This episode. Did it really only take up 20 minutes? I mean how much can you stuff in one episode, especially for a regular drama series. Talk about things escalating quickly here. The good news is that there is great character development. The bad news is that we seem to be heading into a generic love triangle, so try to stay away from that, okay?

Hajime no Ippo – Rising – 04: Aoki’s fight actually got more episodes than Ippo’s. Perhaps a few too many penis jokes, but still this was a really enjoyable build-up and thankfully it set up the stage a bit better than with the first arc here that just boiled down to how deep the sea was. I like how this episode really shows Aoki in a serious light, yet didn’t shed away his goofiness. Lots of other anime have failed pretty badly in the past attempting this