Category: Currently Watching:

Some Quick First Impressions: Grisaia no Kajitsu, Trinity Seven and Inou Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:

Grisaia no Kajitsu

Short Synopsis: Our protagonist joins a school that has five troubled girls in attendance.

AidanAK47’s impression: Grisaia has all the elements to cause many to write it off as a typical harem anime. Protagonist who only wants a ordinary life? Check. Joins school with several female beauties? Check. Panty shots? Sigh…check. The usual line-up of haremettes such as the loli, tsundere, maid and kuudere? Double check. However beneath the shallow premise lies something a little more interesting. For one, despite our main character edging close to gary sue, it is delightful to see him brush off harem clichés with cold indifference. Any man that walks in accidentally on a girl changing and says “Who called me a stripper? Its not my birthday today.” has my respect. Plus props to the girl for not shouting baka, not resorting to abusing the man who only walked in because of her negligence to lock the bloody door and even laughing it off. The end of the episode also hints at darker things to come. I for one hope it proves to be something more than harem show no.56302.

Potential: 60%

Trinity Seven

Short Synopsis: Our protagonist goes to hogwarts.

AidanAK47’s impression: Nothing new to see here. While it did have some mild interest going in the beginning with the black sun, soon it used every cliche in the book. School setting, protagonist who happens to have huge potential for power, haremettes, accidently grope, the walk in while girl is changing/bathing… You have seen it a hundred times before and likely a hundred times again. I say if you need a time waster this season it’s not a bad show to settle on but frankly there are shows more worth your time. I would also like to point out that trinity refers to three, yet there is seven people in this so called trinity. So the title is contradictory.

Potential: 25%

Inou Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de

Short Synopsis: Our protagonist is in a club with cute girls with superpowers.

AidanAK47’s impression: You would never guess this was studio trigger. Yes, that studio trigger. The makers of Kill la Kill, little witch academia and worked on Gurren Lagann. Here is their next show and it’s about a guy in a club with cute girls. Alright I wouldn’t give Trigger grief for this one. If it’s one thing that trigger needs, it’s money. Kill la Kill suffered because of a lacking budget so I certainly cannot condemn these men for making something for the money. That said having watched it I can say that I didn’t hate it. I am ashamed to admit that I may have even enjoyed it. That said I thought that one of the main draws of this club stories is how the club gathered and was created. However here the club is already created and our members gathered. On top of that they all seem to be romantically interested the protagonist. I honestly question how they will fill up the rest of the season when they have pretty much cut out the starting material. Well all I can say is that I hope this makes a ton of money, so trigger can put it forward to something more worthwhile. (Like say….Lucifer and the biscuit hammer, hint hint.)

Potential: 35%

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Bladeworks – 01

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Bladeworks

First things first. To those of you coming into this anime from the prequel anime Fate/zero I suggest that you do not expect another fate/zero. Fate/zero and fate/stay night are two different beasts. If I was truly pushed I would say that Fate/zero is the more mature series whereas Fate/stay night was the more shounen series. However that does not mean that the latter is weaker than the former. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and it’s best to enjoy what you get rather than lament what you don’t. If you intend to experience this as a different kind of story then you can get the most enjoyment out of it.

So to recap. This is not a remake of Studio Deens 2006 Fate/stay night. The original visual novel had three routes. These routes could be considered alternate tellings of the same story. Same characters, same setup but a different way that things turned out. The routes are named Fate, unlimited bladeworks and heavens feel. This is the unlimited bladeworks route so our main heroine has changed from Saber to Rin. To provide a simpler explanation, think of the 2006 anime as Full Metal Alchemist and this new anime is Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Both may start the same but end up completely different stories. Our episode begins to retell the events leading to the climax of the prologue. However this time from the perspective of Shirou Emiya, our main protagonist. (Yes I am sure many hoped it would stay with Rin but bear with me.) The first thirty minutes deal with Shirou’s daily life of helping fixing broken objects at school, cooking at home, and small touches foreshadowing the things to come. To new viewers this may not be very interesting but to those of you coming from the visual novel or prequel anime, the slight subtleties are bound to interest you. Then upon witnessing two figures fighting at school our main is quickly stabbed in the heart and left for dead. But thanks to mystery helper from last episode manages to heal and walk back home. But his previous killer is coming back to finish the job.

Lets talk about Shirou for a minute. He’s been called a sexist pig, a stupid idiot and a outright annoying useless whiner. To those of you coming from the source we know these things are simply not true. This is a misconception spawned by a lacking adaption and…by some questionable things in the source itself. Withhold your gasps and outcries my kin. This is coming from someone who is currently re-reading the source. And yes there are some rare questionable “stay in the kitchen” moments that no amount of monologuing justify. This moments are only present in the fate route however and seeing his actions in the other two make Shirou being sexist not add up. The reason I bring this up is because gentlemen this is UFOtables greatest hurdle. Of this anime the main, if not most important element is to fix this years held misconception of Shirou. Because this is his story and if you do not care for this character then all the pretty animation in the world won’t get you invested.

How are they doing so far? I say, fair. The fact is that a lot of his character is in monologues and those are things which do not mix well with a visual focused medium such as this. There are moments where they are attempts to turn his inner monologues in dialogue though I argue that the result is a little bit unnatural. Considering what was omitted from the visual novel I say one of the most important ones was the battle between Lancer and Shirou. This was bypassed pretty fast. A pity as it was a strong character moment. Speaking of Lancer I am fond of the business like manner displayed when killing Shirou. In another anime this would have some psycho hyena with a half moon smile yelling how awesome killing is and how he can’t wait to get home to drown kittens, punch babies and worship satan. But with Lancer there is none of this. Just a bored sense of duty firmly disappointed in having to perform the act. It’s nice and shows that he is not someone without a heart. His second attack was also notable. At first trying to end the kids life quickly but seeing him put up a fight giving him a decent chance to defend himself. I like that. And do I even need to speak on the Lancer vs Saber fight? It’s UFOtable level animation, quite frankly it speaks for itself.

Lastly, one thing I find rather irritating is that if you judged this based on the opening then you would assume that Saber is once again the main heroine. She isn’t. Sabers had her story and she shouldn’t be so prominently featured in someone elses. But once again Type moon seems reluctant to change their poster girl. By the way I know my kin well so I will say this. Guys keep the talk of future events and lore out of the comments. No spoilers, even if they are asked for. Because gentlemen we didn’t need someone at our side shouting how awesome this series is to recognise it’s value. Let them see for themselves.

Some Quick First Impressions: Akatsuki no Yona and Donten ni Warau

by psgels, posted in Currently Watching:, Some Quick First Impressions

Akatsuki no Yona

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a young princess of an important country.
Impressions: I started out as a fan of the shoujo genre. That unfortunately changed after the entire genre suddenly deteriorated after a point. I’m not sure what happened, but at a certain point, all shoujo series just became dry, one-dimensional and bland; full of fanservice and pandering. Only once in a while you had something like Kamisama Hajimemashita, but even that in the end boiled down to a romantic comedy, instead of series that packed real punches like Ashita no Nadja, Glass Mask or Kaleido Star. With Akatsuki no Yona though, we finally have another seemingly good shoujo adventure. At the very least, it manages to push a lot of the right buttons in its opening episode: it starts off with a younger version of the lead character and shows a bit of character-development right from the start. The acting for once isn’t bone-dry but instead the characters are fun to watch. I especially want to give the creators props to the way they portrayed the female lead character: the way in which they delivered the energy that goes on inside the mind of a teenaged girl, including how she feels about love, was quite addictive. The show does look sloppy right from the start, which is why I fear that a lot of people won’t give it a chance, but that changes pretty quickly once you see it in action. Now: keep this up! Have a story to tell that fits the pacing of an anime, instead of goofing off for too long. This episode didn’t introduce all of the side-characters yet, but make them count.
Potential: 80%

Donten ni Warau

Short Synopsis: Our lead character ferries criminals during the Meiji-restoration.
Considering that this is only a shounen-series, I can see that there’s something good buried underneath. This episode itself was sloppy, but for a series of its genre I’ve seen much worse. The thing is dhat Donten ni Warau opened with an episode that had absolutely nothing to do with its plot. Or at the very least, the beginning of the episode and ending of the episode threw around hints of this epic storyline, and yet most of the episode here focused around the usual shounen brat acting on his own, and this really weird piece of comic relief in which a character who seemily had nothing to do just started cross-dressing for no reason. This was meant to be a character-building episode for the three main characters, but their problems are all pretty basic: you have an older brother who is really strong, a middle brother who wants to be acknowledged but who is weak (and who probably is the main character here), and the youngest brother who is just still a kid. You can make quite a few predictions based on this set-up. Where this show scores points is its setting: for the villains to be the samurai who are discontent with pretty much losing their identity after Japan’s westernization: that’s actually a very good base for a villain. It’s something different from those “I want to save the world so I need to destroy it first”-villains.
ED: SO many characters appear here who made no appearance whatsoever in this episode. The ED itself is also not bad either.
Potential: 35%

Seasonal Anime Podcast – First Impressions – 2013 Fall Anime Season

by psgels, posted in Currently Watching:

Hey everyone, I participated in a podcast again, together with Deadlights (Deadlight’s Anime Blog) Flawfinder (Standing on my Neck) and Slashe (Behind the Nihon Review)
with two new members, Landon (Mecha Guignol) and Tom (Nigorimasen)

Today we talked about the past Fall season. You can find the link here, enjoy:

http://deadlightanime.blogspot.nl/2013/10/seasonal-anime-podcast-first_12.html

About Our Site

by K-Off, posted in Currently Watching:

Welcome to Star Crossed Anime Blog! The site originally started out on Blogsome in 2005 by Psgels, where he gained a dedicated following that allowed him to grow the site into what it is today, and move the site into his own domain.

Since 2014, the site has expanded into a multi-author blog, with writers who carry their own interesting insight into the medium we all know and love. We reject the idea that all anime are infallible, and whether it be in our episodic reviews, Seasonal Previews, or even with non-Japanese animated films, we try our best to bring insight to the greatest and latest anime because it’s fun! Psgels is currently in hiatus owing to a particularly malicious writers block, but we wait for his return!

Current Writers

psgels

Hey, I’m psgels. I live in the Netherlands and I’m the founder of this site. The idea of the site started back in 2005, when I was a really big fan of series’ like Mahou Shoujotai, but couldn’t find any blog that covered them. In response to that I decided to create my own blog in order to vent my opinions. It started rather silly, but eventually it grew much larger than I ever thought it would.
My taste is weird. I look for series that dare to screw conventions. The ones that are ambitious in their storytelling, and dare to go off the beaten path. Anime is an art form, and it should behave like that.

SuperMario

Unlike most anime-fans, I did not grow up watching anime – yes, I had read some manga and had watched some anime when I were young, but I have forgotten mostly those now. Instead, my love from anime came from my passion for films (I consider myself more of film-nerd than anime lover) and my absolute appreciation for the medium of animation. Anime seems like a brainchild between those.

AidanAk47

An Irish Anime fan. Though well versed in Visual novels, manga and video games. If it’s got an anime adaption chances are I have seen the source. Quite fond of the works of Kinoko Nasu and Gen Urobuchi. I don’t really have a favorite genre though I am not really fond of slice of life or sports. Well, lets have fun shall we?
Profile picture of SuperWooper

SuperWooper

I’m an educator and avid consumer of both music and anime. As a former English major, characters and story structure are my primary areas of expertise, though I’m learning to appreciate visual direction more and more. Not a fan of anime’s tendency to paint by numbers. Odds are I’ll blog just one series at a time, but I hope to lend a big hand for seasonal first impressions and yearly roundups. Thanks for having me!
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Lenlo

Your everyday average Renaissance man. I Box, Fence, paint/wargame 40k and I work my 9-5 as a Software Engineer. What can I say, I like to keep busy. I got into anime on your normal Shonen of Yu-Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, and Naruto, and to this day they are near and dear to my heart. Since then though I have branched out, falling in love with darker, more tragic works such as Berserk or Vagabond, focusing on more Seinen works. I hope you enjoy my writing, let’s go find a series that can make us cry!

K-Off

K-Off checking in. I’m formerly the main resident technician of the site since Psgel’s hiatus. I write the occasional game reviews, and when I’m not working on the site or writing a review, you can find me keeping up to date on my favorite manga and games.

Other Writers:

Ninjarealist

LightningBolt

HelghastKillzone

afgm

OVA Impressions: Kurenai – 02

by psgels, posted in Currently Watching:



Why was this made? I mean, apart from completely raping the Kurenai TV-Series, perhaps? If I were someone who reads manga, this would totally take away any motivation I would have had to buy and check out the manga. Please, someone. Tell me that the manga is more than just this endless string of silly and pointless side-stories!

The past two episodes have just been strings of random stories, without everything tying them together aside from a bunch of badly written characters. In the first segment there is this violent blond girl who is really depressed and somehow ends up making friends with Murasaki and hugs Shinkuro out of nowhere. The second segment sees all of the main females discovering a porn stash of the tenant that lived in Shinkuro’s apartment before he started living there, and the third was just a bunch of girls randomly talking about Shinkuro.

The worst thing about these OVAs is the terrible acting, though. What once was a mature series has now been reduced to a silly harem with stock characters who can only think about silly romantic misunderstandings. Murasaki ends up climbing a tree in order to search for Shinkurou at school, everyone obsesses endlessly over that porn stash of Shinkurou; it’s all just pointless.

And the weird thing is that Kou Matsuou is still responsible for this OVA. Why didn’t he give it the same treatment as he gave the Kurenai TV-series? He could have could have made some great filler like with the musical episode. Heck, he could even have created the start of an interesting story, that doesn’t fit into two episodes. EVERYTHING but this.
OVA Episode Rating: 5/10