Category: Series which were Dropped

Soul Eater – 10

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater

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First, I’d like to thank everyone for voting for Star Crossed at the Anime Blog Awards. While it was indeed obvious that Random Curiosity would dominate the category for “Best Episodic Blog”, I’m glad to see that I managed to walk away with the bronze award.

Anyway, about Soul Eater: this episode was another one o those building-up episodes. Tsubaki’s brother seems to be causing trouble, possessing his victims and forcing them to go on a killing-spree, so Tsubaki goes after him. The next episode should tell us more about why the heck he’s ended up doing things like that.

But really, is it me or is Black Star a bit too similar to Naruto? Sad past? Check. Shunned for things that aren’t his fault? Check. Acting highly energetic because of this? Check. Stupid haircut/outfit? Check. It’s good thing that he’s not involved in any rivalry, and his relationship with Tsubaki has done a lot to make up for this. I especially liked how he doesn’t seem to care whether Tsubaki uses him for her own goals or not. I’m still not impressed by the fights in this series, but the special bonds between the weapons meisters and their weapons have been getting better and better.

Soul Eater – 09

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


After the rather serious previous episodes, we finally get another comedy-episode, in which the strange fairy-like creature of the OP gets introduced. It turns out to be Excalibur, with a head so full of himself that it makes even Black Star sick. This episode was downright hilarious, with many thanks to the wonderful combination of Death the Kid and Black Star.

One thing I’m wondering: we see Black Star read an English comic in this episode, and yet he had huge problems with reading the word “Excalibur”. Small writer’s mistake?

In any case, what I’d like to see in the next couple of episodes is more about Tsubaki. For the past number of episodes, all she did was watch from the side-lines, do nothing, and clean. I’d love to see her in a situation where the writers make fun of her personality.

Soul Eater – 08

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


A pretty decent conclusion of the previous episode. It’s nothing deep or special yet, but it does the job of keeping my interest. Soul and Maka were bound to get saved somehow, and so Stein and Maka’s father pop up at the exact right moment (was it explained how they knew that Chrona would be at the same place as Soul and Maka? I couldn’t quite catch that in the raw). The Witch Medusa also is also one of those villains with the “Sailor Moon”-syndrome (just put on a different outfit, and nobody recognizes you. I can understand Maka and her father not noticing this, but Stein seems like a sharp guy; he could have easily recognized her).

My favourite part of this episode was without a doubt the scene where Black Star suddenly barged into the hospital room. Maka was about to get a bit too angsty for her own good, and his entrance was perfect to lighten up the mood, and downright hilarious as well. This show really is at its best when it focuses at the banter between the various main characters.

Allison to Lillia – 08

by psgels, posted in Allison to Lillia


Okay, that’s it. I’m dropping this series. I’ve had enough, the climax of this episode was just painful to watch. I’ll still continue watching this series for the Lillia-storyline, but I don’t want to blog this series anymore.

Owen Nicht is cornered. He’s about to get arrested, so he takes Fiona hostage. Okay, fair enough, I can live with that. HOWEVER, one of the main guards tries to stop Owen by charging directly into the guy. Owen stops him, not by pointing a knife at Fiona, but freaking stabbing the guy’s knee from such an awkward position!

And then it only gets better. Owen manages to escape (note how he didn’t retrieve his knife). The guy is screwed, so he needs to escape. So, where does he run to? The roof. The freaking ROOF. The highest point possible. Obviously, Benedict is the first to get there too, and Owen abandons Fiona to stab the guy, with another dagger that looks exactly the same as the one he just left into that officer’s leg. But here’s the best part: Benedict blocks it with his freaking watch. He didn’t evade the dagger, he didn’t try to disarm Owen. No, he moved his arm in such a risky position so that his watch would stop the dagger, with the danger that if it was only off by a few angles, it would bounce off and still hit him.

After this, I completely lost interest. I knew that this series wasn’t good, but I never imagined that the creators would resort to ZAIZEN JOTARO-plot-twists.

Madhouse, you’re a strange one: you’ve managed to concentrate all of best staff-members on Himitsu, Chi’s Sweet Home and Kaiba this season, and the worst on Kamen no Maid Guy and Allison to Lillia. It’s interesting: usually madhouse series are a strange combination between awesomeness and a bit of laziness. In this season Himitsu, Kaiba and perhaps to a lesser extend Chi’s Sweet Home are pure awesomeness without any apparent weaknesses, and Maid Guy and Allison to Lillia are among the laziest Madhouse Production that I’ve seen so far.

Ah well, now I can blog one extra series this summer, and it’s looking out to be quite a good season. Farewell Allison to Lillia. In a way, I do hope I’m wrong when I fear that the second half won’t be much better, but I don’t feel like finding out.

Soul Eater – 07

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


Well, we finally meet the major antagonist for at least the first part of this anime. The comedy in the fights was abandoned completely unfortunately, but thankfully the chemistry between Soul and Maka continued to be very enjoyable. At the moment, I can’t really place Soul Eater among the best series of this season, though. It’s good, but there are many better series in my opinion. I think that the biggest reason for this is that it spent too much time on flashy fights so far, while it could have used this time to flesh out the characters a bit more. But then again, because this series has 51 episodes, it does have much more time to do this than most other series.

I do want to say something about the use of thugs, though. Not just here, but many anime seem to be really lazy when handling them. They’re nearly all just a bunch of loudmouthed stereotypes, and unfortunately they too are just cannon fodder in Soul Eater as well. I think that that’s why the punk enemy in the Law of Ueki worked so well: he made this punk-stereotype completely ridiculous with his obsessions.

In other news, it turns out that the reason why we never see anything of Maka’s mother is because she divorced a month ago. Now I also understand why Maka’s father is so hopelessly fooling around with other women. Something’s telling me that he’s trying to forget her by doing this. 😛

Allison to Lillia – 07

by psgels, posted in Allison to Lillia


Oh, just great. I’m losing interest in this series, as much as I hate to admit it. It’s not the only series that started out rather unbelievable this season. Heck, Nijuu Mensou no Musume had a far worse start, but at least that one has been showing potential. At this point, the sense of adventure just isn’t enough anymore, and the way Allison just stole yet another plane didn’t sit right with me at all. Thankfully, at least the last parts of this episode seemed interesting again.

But then again… a peek at the preview showed how Owen Nicht shamelessly kidnaps Fiona IN PERSON. I have no idea how the creators are supposed to get a satisfying conclusion out of that. The guy has been horribly underdeveloped, and it doesn’t seem that he’s about to receive a huge amount of depth. I REALLY hope that this series won’t continue this pacing, where Allison and later Lillia will keep saving the world n forced manners.

It’s a shame. I expected much more from the director, but it turns out that he still needs to learn a lot. His style was perfect for Mokke, where every episode was quick and yet powerful. It seems however that he just isn’t as good with continuous story-lines.

Still, I’ll continue with this series for now. The thing I’m interested in is its future potential. What will happen once Lillia takes over? Will this series change entirely? Let’s hope that this series can keep me interested until that point…

Soul Eater – 06

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


Here’s a strange phenomenon I have no explanation of: due to the recent arrests, a large amount of the Share-users have stopped uploading their files by now, though the few that remain find it for some strange and inexplicable reason a good idea to release in a high quality video-file as possible. Suddenly, 75% of all new files are in some kind HD .mp4 or .mkv-format. So… yeah. If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been so slow for the past few days: my pc doesn’t support HD video-files.

In any case, I’m glad that this series is really taking its time exploring its concepts. This time, we see that not just any weapon meister can team up with a random weapon, even if the two of them are best friends. Their souls need to be in resonance in order for this to happen. The key is much more to understanding each other.

The thing I’m waiting for right now is to see Soul or Black Star, teaming up with Kid in a team-mission. Death the Kid really seems like a person who prefers fighting alone (or alone with his weapons). I can imagine how he’ll have huge amounts of trouble, trying to work together with the asymmetric idiots that are Soul and especially Black Star.

Allison to Lillia – 06

by psgels, posted in Allison to Lillia


So, this series is never going to become a classic; it’s a bit too sloppy for that (remember that girl from the last episode? Well, she happens to be a princess). Still, it knows how to tell a story and it’s got a charming cast. That’s enough for me. 🙂

This episode concludes the angry village-arc. I didn’t quite catch why they were so hostile in the first place, but the most likely reason seems to be that they just hate outsiders. A lot of secluded villages seem to have something against people from the outside, and this is apparently just a very extreme case.

So, basically Allison and Will escape and run into Benedict. They then get saved by that princess and Benedict’s smooth talking. Inside her house, the princess reveals her identity and says how she’s been living with her grandfather, though he died a number of months ago. The next day, as they try to escape (interesting tactic, by the way) they are found out, and the princess saves everyone by protecting Benedict, Allison and Will against the guns of the villagers.

This just shows how easily the villagers can trust someone they know. They just throw down their guns like it’s nothing. Ah well, I guess that it does mirror villages in real life in a way, though I wish that the creators would have spent a bit more attention to fleshing out these villagers. The thing I especially liked in this episode, though, was when the princess noticed Benedict’s gun, and asks him to teach her to use it. Benedict, however, refuses like the gentleman he is. Afterwards, when Benedict and the princess started arguing over the use of beds (there were only three of them for four persons), and Allison and Will just ended up sharing their bed was pretty fun as well.

I also only realized this with this episode, but the OP actually foreshadows the different arcs of the first half. The next arc will take place in a large city, probably where Will is studying. The final arc will then deal with some kind of train (am I the only one getting Baccano!-vibes from this?)

Soul Eater – 05

by psgels, posted in Soul Eater


Now this is more like it! This episode showed none of the weaknesses I spotted in the last episode, and delivered both an entertaining fight and good comedy. This is exactly what I look for in a shounen-series, because series of this type shouldn’t take their story too seriously. Soul Eater so far has managed to deliver a pretty good combination between serious and semi-serious scenes.

I’ve noticed that the creators like to use anti-climaxes a lot. They build up tension, only to go into a completely different direction when the tension’s about to reach its height. This should prove to be quite interesting once they start playing with it as the series progresses and develops. One thing I do hope that the creators realize is to not make the fights go on for ages. Kekkaishi did this well: only the big fights went on for longer than one episode, and even that felt too long. Fights are the best when they’re short and sweet.

Frankenstein has indeed proved to be an interesting character, who likes to perform experiments no matter what. He also used to perform lots of experiments on Maka’s father when he was asleep. 😛 So far, it also seems like he’s not totally dependant on this stereotype, and this sounds more like a part of the guy’s personality. A lot of comedies need to learn that energetic characters don’t need to be energetic all the time, ill-tempered people don’t need to be ill-tempered all the time, et cetera, et cetera. Showing a carefree person suddenly getting serious isn’t development, it’s just fleshing out the guy’s character.

Allison to Lillia – 05

by psgels, posted in Allison to Lillia


With this episode, I guess that we’ve reached the second novel of the original “Allison”-series. It does worry me a bit that the creators are trying to stuff 10 volumes of light-novel material into just twenty-six episodes (For the sake of comparison: Soul Eater with its 11 volumes has 52 episodes to work with, and Saiunkoku spent 78 episodes for 12 of them). Apparently, there are going to be six story-arcs in this series, with the latter ones taking up two volumes. This means that each arc will be about four or five episodes long.

While the chance for a rushed story is quite big, this short format does keep the story fresh. I’m really wondering whether the director will be able to pull it off. I think the biggest reason for this short series-length is the budget, which you can also see in the animation, which has always been not that special for this series. In any case, at least the director has already shown that he’s very good at characterizations, which should be more than enough to keep me interested.

In this arc, it’s not likely that Allison and Will will board some kind of airplane, and the story is actually quite similar to a random arc of Kino no Tabi: Allison and Will end up in a hostile town, in the middle of winter. This town seems to be very afraid of outsiders (especially if they come in a military car). In the meantime, Benedict follows them, because he’s worried that Allison and Will might have run into trouble due to an unexpected blizzard, after which he meets the mysterious girl we see in the ED. Also, throughout the episode, we can see Allison trying to find courage to confess to Will. She’ll probably propose properly around the end of this arc.