Category: Series which were Dropped

Kill La Kill – 10

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

With this I understand the purpose of the previous episode more. It really was meant as a build-up episode for what was to follow. We needed a “normal” fight, from which things could escalate afterwards. It was built up to be this really big deal, but in the end its biggest purpose was to show Senketsu that he could change shape. This episode has him experimenting with that, on a far bigger scale than what I expected.

It helped for the first fight of this episode to take so slow: that really brought back the pacing in this episode, and it also showed that Senketsu is already becoming close to over 9000. It also was a pretty hilarious fight and I think necessary for the overall balance: you have so many over the top fights here, you need one that is a bit silly. And it’s good that the creators didn’t use the token silly character for this, but instead a guy who just wasn’t fighting serious (note how he didn’t appear to be BIG to Ryuko at all).

Then the fight with classical music was glorious, and really entertaining. The fights themselves in this episode are more what I expect from the creators. Standard fight scenes in which there are only people hitting each other don’t work anymore. You need to spice things up, and this episode did exactly that. It probably also helped that the banter between the characters was better than ever in this episode. The student council really works well together with the rest of the cast.

But yeah, it’s episode 10. The point where things will spiral out of control has started. Something will happen, and the second half of this series will be completely different. Let’s see if they can pull this off.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Samurai Flamenco – 08

by psgels, posted in Samurai Flamenco

So after the previous episode dropping that huge bomb, the question of course would be what would be this series’ idea of how to follow it up. This episode on itself gave us some interesting answers to that. I’m not entirely happy with this episode, but I’m most definitely intrigued.

What I didn’t like about this episode is how it ditched some of the realism here, most notably one event: the one where Samurai Flamenco kicked that giant crocodile with metal armor outside of the bus. I mean, this series has always stressed that Masayuki has no superpowers: all of his powers come from gadgets. That is one part that they need to keep in this series, otherwise that will pretty much go against a lot of the build-up of the first seven episode. And that was some really great build-up!

However, what surprised me was how fast this episode went. You’d think that the creators would want to let things sink in and take their time for this, but instead this episode really developed Masayuki and having him change. At the end of the episode he already was consumed by his own fame and had sold out. He had already beaten like… four more goons from King Torture?

What most struck me about this episode was what it was building up for. The way with which most people have already forgotten about all of the policemen that died (and this show actually acknowledges it, rather than making it a writing flaw). Something is going to happen, and knowing episode seven, it’ll again be big. It’s now up to the creators though, to actually use this build-up. You can have such good build-up, but if the actual delivery in the end disappoints then you’re either way stuck with a nasty aftertaste.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Kill La Kill – 09

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

This will be the big test for this series: can it keep this tournament arc interesting? Previously the episodes were interesting with their variety: it presented itself differently every episode. With this, Ryuko seems to be fighting a different student council member every episode, all probably with their own power and personality. This is one part that made Gurren Lagann rather boring to me, so let’s see whether these guys can do better. What really helps is that this time, these characters don’t seem to be just killed off, because there are obvious hints that this won’t be the end of them. A thing it probably took over from Utena.

The symbolism behind this series was also really obvious in this episode: Kill La Kill really is a series about the teenaged struggles against what is expected of them. Gamagori trying to forcefully shove Ryuko in a literal mold speaks enough. What more: this series really likes to use heights: everything facing Ryuko is really big, and a lot of Ryuko’s struggles aside from kicking ass are focused on climbing. Satsuki meanwhile did everything that Ryuko is trying to do, but without the struggle and the effort. She’s the privileged and the immediately talented.

The fight itself was over the top and entertaining, but I’m also currently at the point where I’ve seen this already many times before. That wasn’t the interesting part of this episode, especially with the prospect of three more fights like this. In these cases the backstory really needs to make impact, but instead this unexpectedly turned into a building-up episode that sets up Gamagori’s character development for later. Surprisingly I found the previous episode more effective.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Samurai Flamenco – 07

by psgels, posted in Samurai Flamenco

Samurai Flamenco: you are awesome! This episode was glorious on all levels! If you haven’t seen the episode yet: close this browser at once and get to it! This is one episode you do not want to be spoiled on!

I had seen pretty much everyone freaking out about this particular episode, so when I sat down to watch it, I already had the mindset of “well this twist has to be pretty damn major here”. It was. At first I thought that it was about Masayoshi finding out that his parents had been mugged instead of died from an illness like what he thought. That already was amazing to watch, due to how it was revealed.

I especially liked how Masayoshi was in conflict about himself: his parents died when he was two years old. It’s normal for him to not feel bothered by tracking down those criminals (finally lhe’s doing something normal!). It conflicted with his desire to be a hero, though his version of being a hero focused on the part of protecting justice, not the parts of heroes that focused on tragic backstories and personal revenge. Also: small touches like the title of this series coming from Masayoshi’s grandmother who used to be a flamenco dancer. I love how these series explain their own titles and have them make total sense.

But yeah. The twist. I applaud this series for doing this. For being completely realistic without any supernatural powers whatsoever aside perhaps from a few far-fetched ideas for gadgets. And then going completely berserk with this episode when THAT happened. It worked so well: everything that happened there was of such a completely different scale than what we’ve been used to. It’s a brilliant twist that just would not have worked without all that build-up. That was a wonderful example of how you escalate a story!
Rating: 7/8 (Fantastic)

Kill La Kill – 08

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

So Kill la Kill? This episode really shows that it’s written by someone who DOES know what he’s doing. The balance is all there, and despite the simple plot, he knows how to use it. This episode for example needed to be a bit of an intermezzo inbetween the major fights in order to build up the atmosphere and tension. The big problem with these kinds of episodes though is that they’re boring and don’t really do anything. So the solution of this series? Just show a bit of character background. And with that you’ve got a perfectly fine building-up episode that was really fun to watch.

And the homages! The wonderful homages. This episode really managed to pay a wonderful tribute to school series like Utena, while at the same time doing them with a huge tongue in their cheek. Everything is taken completely over the top as usual, but the characters are also aware of this. The high school student being 20 years was a really nice addition: tons of high school characters in anime look way too old for their ages. This one actually has a reason for it. Another nice detail was the car, which at the end of the episode was completely wrecked. A big reference to Utena’s car symbolism that was everywhere, yet in Utena, cars fell apart at times. We never see them all dented up like here. This is a great example of taking ideas and cues from other series: sure, parts here have been done before, but this series uses them in its completely own way. This distinguishes the masterpieces from the ripoffs. It’s of course too early to tell whether Kill la Kill will become a masterpiece and it’s got a long way to go for that, but you get what I mean.

Ryuko’s past also didn’t add much extra, however it was also very much appreciated because we did get a glimpse of how she grew up, and why she ended up as the character she did. She clearly explained why she’s doing what she’s doing. This series really brings back the flaws that a lot of older series had, and fixes them. It’s combining the power of old series together with the power of new series. It’s full of these neat little details that make me quite excited to follow this.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Nagi no Asukara – 05 – 07

by psgels, posted in Nagi no Asukara

Well, so I thought that I’d check out what Nagi no Asukara was up to lately, so I set down to watch this. And boy, it actually took a long while for me to actually start the thing. Today I finally managed to finish the latest three episodes because otherwise I’d never be able to move on, but it did make me ask a question: why am I still watching this?

It’s episode seven, so at this point we have a pretty good idea of the nature of this show. For the past few weeks I really started looking at anime in a different way, and I asked the above question for a lot of other series. Is it really worth it to watch so many series that contain such lazy writing that contains so many glaring flaws, just for a few things they do well? The key again is balance. Does Nagi no Asukara have that? I’m afraid not.

The thing with drama is: you take a few ingredients, juggle them together and let them culminate into a powerful climax, with some mid-climaxees inbetween. What Nagi no Asukara does is having way too many of these ingredients, overcomplicating the dish. Every episode it finds some contrived reason to create as much drama as possible, ranging from a love polygon that’s triggered way too easily to people behaving like arrogant pricks who can’t use their head for one second. A bit of this is fine and all, but this just kept on coming with the drama, there was hardly any variation to what went on. It’s all just teenaged drama.

Especially now that Hikaru has developed, things should have been more bearable, since he isn’t annoying anymore and he actually tries to take care of his loved ones, and he actually can shut up at once, but… meh. It’s all just so gloomy. Episode seven with those fishermen for example. That came out of nowhere, but these guys acted just as bigoted as he did a few episodes ago. These three episodes consistently bored me because they had nothing going on here. Only episode seven had something noteworthy when Hikaru and his sister actually left their home. That was something different, but getting less and less sure whether it’s worth it.

I think Mari Okada overshot herself with this series. In this series, and with Sakurasou too by the way, she focuses too much on one-sided drama that is in most cases really quite stupid. Compare that to three series of her that did work: Hana-Saku Iroha, True Tears and Ano Hana. Hana-Saku Iroha knew how to spice things up. It might have been a bit boring around this point, but at least it used this time to show what everyday life is for the cast, so it could use that for some very effective climaxes. The sm-episode came out of nowhere, but it took guts and stood out. True Tears also had lots of drama, but it was calculated: slow paced and it knew exactly what to do to remain interesting, again with great characterization. Ano Hana also had tons of drama at a fast pace, but it also delivered many twists that really got the best out of the characters. The cast was well balanced and every character was different, and the drama kept moving forward. It had strange twists, but these twists went together with the characters. It didn’t throw in stuff for the sake of throwing in stuff like what Nagi no Asukara is doing.

The animation in anime is consistently improving: people are really innovating there to create graphics that are really gorgeous, and you see this more and more. That’s good. Now transfer that mentality over to the writing departments. Force them to think logically about what they’re doing. We need more people like Gen Urobuchi, who are celebrated for their writing talents. There doesn’t seem to be any glamour to the writing business and to be honest, the whole scene seems quite a bit closed off. Because of this you have one group of writers who gets picked over and over to write and adapt these series, and there hardly seems any incentive to attract new talent or cultivate it. That really needs to change, because as I see it, it’s the biggest thing holding anime in general back right now.
Rating: 3/8 (Mediocre)

Kill la Kill – 07

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

Okay, so I guess everyone is waiting for what that infamous episode 8 is going to do. Anyone who has seen Gurren Lagann knows what I’m talking about. However, I think that the twist isn’t the most important, and only a means to an end. I’m one of the people who wasn’t a big fan of that “twist” (not that the twist wasn’t good, but it didn’t improve things in the long run to me).

But yeah, this episode: I have no idea why but it worked. Again on paper it sucks: poor people taste the life of high standards and learn to appreciate being poor with drama, and at the end of the episode they revert again like nothing happened. If there ever was a whiplash episode, it’d be this one.

And yet, I liked this. Perhaps it was a combination between the premise being so ridiculous that it worked (which fits perfectly with the rest of this series of taking just about everything over the top), along with the actual context of this episode: the entire school is going to change and be rebuilt. I’m actually pretty excited for what they’re planning to turn it into. And at the same time they ended up giving a very good solution for the fears that everyone had been having of this series devolving into a formulaic monster of the week.

Knowing Hiroyuki Imaishi, there are two things that he’s probably going to turn up to eleven: the school and the clothing. On one hand this school will either drill into heaven, or will become the visual embodyment of hell times the power of infinity, and in terms of clothing everyone will end up either running around naked or with some of the most ridiculous costumes imaginable. I’m currently putting my money on 1 and 2 respectively.

Oh yeah, and am I the only one who thinks that the setting here is a big wink to Revolutionary Girl Utena?
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Samurai Flamenco – 06

by psgels, posted in Samurai Flamenco

Samurai Flamenco is a series that very cleverly keeps escalating. And this episode was a good example of this: the reward on Samurai Flamenco’s identity got bigger, he got more famous, the force used against him becomes more lethal, his gadgets get upgraded, people gang up on him more, more other superheroes enter the picture with the arrival of the other two flamenco girls. The only thing that doesn’t escalate is goto’s relationship with his girlfriend, which seems to have gone back to normal after their difficult time earlier. That’s an interesting development: a stable relationship. or at least one that looks like it so far.

At this point in the series it’s a bit too early whether this approach really works in the long run. For that we need a bit more time to see what it’s building up for. This episode’s main purpose was escalating and building up, even though a lot seemed to happen into it. Masayoshi in any case continues to stay true to himself with how he doesn’t doubt anyone on purpose, but the question is how long he can keep this up.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 05 & 06

by psgels, posted in Yozakura Quartet

You can really see that Yozakura Quartet is based on a manga that is quite old already: when people think of a high spot in the center of Tokyo, the thing that immediately comes to their mind is Tokyo Tower. Not the Tokyo Skytree. This also is a bit of an example of creators adhering a little too much to their source material. What difference would it have made to the story to update to the new highest building in Tokyo? And yet it would have added quite a bit to the immersion as a nice detail.

Also, you don’t need to foreshadow everything. If your character is like “Ha! I took your course of action into account and therefore I took the necessary precautions for it!”, then that’s awesome. When an old couple suddenly reveals that they’ve been holding onto this really incredible power for years that’s given to her just as she’s going to be beaten, then you really have to build that up well. You can’t just show a bunch of shots of that couple here and there. It indeed signifies that they were planning on something, but not that they were going to pull something so convenient for the plot out of their asses.

Now, this is nit-picking, so let me get to the point: I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a series great, and I’m pretty sure that the answer is balance: a harmony between every single part. And that’s not there for this series. On one hand you can see lots of attention spent on the animation, but not a lot on the script. The characters all have tragic backstories, but there’s not much variety in it. Everyone’s sortof vaguely bothered by “being a demon is annoying”, and lots of characters blend together because of weak characterization. The OVA was short, dynamic and to the point and therefore didn’t have that problem.

But I think a better comparison is with the second season of Birdy the Mighty Decode (not the first, because it didn’t have the incredible animation). Both series have a true master behind the action scenes, however Birdy uses this as a means, while Yozakura Quartet makes it an end. With Birdy the Mighty, you can mention a ton of other reasons to make it worth watching: the character-development, the incredibly dark turns, the way it brought its setting alive, the chemistry and much more. Yozakura quartet… eh… I mean the OVA is awesome due to the characters and the chemistry of the characters, but the TV-series doesn’t have that as much.

Sure, stuff happened in these two episodes, but I’m not really impressed to be honest. There was fighting… and more fighting, but I found the context of it to be rather weak. And it’s not like the conflict is too simple: Kill la Kill has that too. The difference, I think is that that series knows what it wants. It’s also deliberately paced, and knows where to add symbolism where it needs to. The episodes flow right and they know when to show action and when to show building up, instead of showing flashbacks right in the middle of a huge fight, or finding some weird excuse to have a pause in the middle of action (gee, it’s a good thing those monsters don’t attack us while we’re talking, being sentimental, and not keeping our eyes on them). I know, a lot of this is nitpicking, and alone these issues wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s the big picture I’m trying to sketch here.

Another interesting comparison with this series would be to White Album 2. Why? Because both series feature a director who previously was one of the best animation directors for TV-series out there. The big difference is that White Album specifically does not focus on its animation, but more on making the different parts work together. I haven’t completely caught up, but it seems to do a better job. Let me put it this way: if I had to pick one element of these two series that stands out the most, then it’s the animation of Yozakura Quartet. However in terms of the big picture, White Album has it beaten at this point.
Rating: 3,5/8 (Enjoyable)

Kill La Kill – 06

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

Apologies for the few posts lately, with rather weird content. I’m currently in a big introspective period. I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am, and why I watch anime. And I’ve also discovered one of the many evil websites on the web: Reddit. Right now I finally managed to be able to block this time eating thing that at the same time made me learn a lot about myself, so I should be sortof back now, though I’m still trying to figure out the best schedule that will also allow me to cover movies again.

In any case, why do I watch anime? Because of series like Kyousogiga, Samurai Flamenco and Kill la Kill. This episode was really good, despite being really boring on paper. I mean, how often have we seen an episode with this premise: “the protagonist and some mid-boss fight with each other but right before resolving anything something conveniently breaks down allowing both parties to escape unscathed”. This is of course boring, but this episode showed how far the right execution can get you.

This also showed that this show is currently developing characters for the long run. Even when ‘defeated’, this guy without eyes will continue to play a big role, probably. Ryuko meanwhile really got lucky with this, but this episode just showed how outclassed she gets when the enemies start getting cornered.

And the music! Holy crap, it got even better than what it was before. I mean, that’s what I at least assume: it wasn’t this good in the past, was it? And heck, it worked wonders: it brought out even more emotions than usual.

And with that I mean how everything comes together: characters, animation, music, symbolism, style, development, acting, personality. The creators were having a lot of fun making this, and that’s what shows. That’s what currently energizing me to watch more anime. Six episodes in and despite the simple storyline here, it remained varied and fun without any signs of slowing down.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)