Category: Finished Series: Action

Shingeki no Kyojin – 06

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

While watching this anime, I realize how devious it can be to compare the anime and manga adaptations to each other. They may have the same story, but the anime and manga of Shingeki no Kyojin are completely different in terms of atmosphere and pacing. The manga moves ridiculously fast. The anime on the other hand takes its time. At the beginning of this series, I made the mistake of expecting the exact same feeling as what I got in the manga. No. That’s impossible to create. The anime just needs to shine in its own way!

And it does, actually. This episode was nearly entirely dedicated to Mikasa and Eren’s past (although the prelude about Armin was also really good). This is the sign that the two of them are very much not normal. Especially Eren: what other kid just straight up murders people by pretending to be innocent? At first he was just your regular bratty kid who wants to fight, but with this, he became more than just that. An extreme version of that trope.

Another big theme here is: people in power are assholes. The question is what this show will do with it. At the moment it feels a bit typical, but this series can really shine by pushing this into the extreme: what if that extreme bigotry of the elite would really get tons and tons of people in trouble and killed? More often than not this trope is used to create cheap drama (because hey, we hate rich people being an ass!), but there is some gold lurking underneath that crap.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Shingeki no Kyojin – 05

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

When I read the first chapters of Shingeki no Kyojin, it really struck to me that this would be impossible to animate. Thankfully Production IG got Tetsuro Araki to make up for a lot there, but even with him behind the reigns there are scenes that just are so difficult to translate right. The biggest example of that is at the end of the episode.

We see Eren lie on one roof. Across the street there is a giant who swallows Armin whole and closes his mouth after that. The next scene Eren suddenly is on top of that giant’s mouth pulling Armin out of it. That scene is so complex, but it worked in the manga because there was no animation, so also no real timeframe in which everything happened. I see no way in which this anime would have been able to do that scene right, while also keeping as true to the manga as possible. The solution would have been to just rewrite it to make sure that it works.

Nitpicking aside though, the rest of this episode was just wonderful. I mean, the other scenes in which the giants just completely slaughtered Eren’s team were done brilliantly. It was a total chaos, and yet the giants just kept appearing from out of nowhere to crush everyone. It was so different from normal anime that also feature battles against really big things, that just stand around doing nothing and waiting for the heroes to make their move.

And don’t get me wrong here: the end of this episode was the point at which I only really got addicted to the manga. Before that it was also just building up and I wasn’t really sure what to think of it. And Eren becoming lunch for that giant, it worked really well. That was one heck of a cliff-hanger that you really don’t see often!
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Shingeki no Kyojin – 04

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

Okay, so for clarity: the creators are pulling some of the later build-up chapters right to the beginning. I like that though, because even though I know the storyline, I really got startled there by the sudden appearance of that really big giant again.

Having the build-up chapters scattered through the story, or just having one big build-up arc at the beginning: there is no right way. Both have their merits. The former is more varied and has material to vary with during the heavy scenes, while the latter has a solid character base to start off with. We can only wait and see which is the best for this kind of story. Either way though, this episode did what it was supposed to do: take the characters and add to them. They had to do this with more than 10 characters, and they actually succeeded very well there. I especially like how it highlighted the paradox that the better you become, the less likely it is that you’ll fight the titans.

Also, thank god! Tetsurou Araki got some freedom again, compared to Guilty Crown in which I just couldn’t detect his influence at all. During the heavy scenes you could really see hints of Death Note and Kurozuka. I really encourage anime creators to put something of themselves into their adaptations. It makes them more unique. Especially if it adds something good.

Shingeki no Kyojin has this unique way of shading is characters during the heavy scenes (lots of shadows around the eyes). Strangely this was also played for laughs (Sasha…). It’ll be interesting whether they will keep that up or not.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Shingeki no Kyojin – 03

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

I already know what’s going to happen for the first couple of episodes in this series, but this episode was a bit of an exception, in which the creators went into far more detail during the training arc. I guess that in that way, I still prefer anime over manga. It’s probably something really personal, but in animated form, I can get a better feel of who the characters are, making them easier to relate to. Eren really benefitted from that in particular.

On the other hand, the creators did spent an entire episode training, which is not the most interesting practice to watch. This episode was really interesting for the character building. It made characters stand out without using cliches, and showed a good combination of characters who were just there to live the easy life, to do something exciting, or determined to exterminate the titans. The cast is large, but everyone has his own identity. We’re going to have to wait a bit longer to find out whether the creators nailed the big strength of this series though.

This is the balance between build-up and delivery that you need to strike right. I think that that will be a very big challenge for this series: getting the pacing right to fit the story into 25 episodes. With this episode they chose for a solid base on the characters, at the expense of taking a bit of a step back. Now let’s see whether the animators can make the wait pay off!
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Shingeki no Kyojin – 02

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

So I think that it was obvious that I was going to blog this series. It is undoubtedly the epic of the season, not to mention that it feels so unique. I know what will happen up to a chapter or ten or so, but even then these first episodes had me fired up. The thing with the manga is that I only got invested with the story at the point of episode three, at which it gets really, really good. The anime really put in some effort to make the build up very detailed and engaging.

What matters the most is the next few episodes. This series is incredibly polished. But the manga was more than that. It had something extra with its presentation. Let’s now see whether the creators can capture that as well.

This episode mostly stood out with how dark and grim it was about the consequences of the outer Rose Wall being breached: there just was not enough food for everyone. People were abandoned and eaten, but on top of that people were now in a situation in which the entire population just would not be able to survive. It only adds up more to how incredibly screwed humanity is, and I really like that.

Then the presentation: the creators really gave a very worthy attempt to bring life to the titans. The big titan that breached the gate in this episode really had presence thanks to some very good animation and direction. It’s because of scenes like this that I called this series nearly impossible to translate well to animation: The giant designs are really detailed and they all just look incredibly intimidating. You need to keep this up consistently if you want to be able to retain the same epic atmosphere.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Review – 89/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure



There are a lot of ways to adapt something. Shounen battle series tend to very quickly fall into a very dull variation of that: really slow pacing that goes on forever with long boring drawn out battles that all look like each other. David Production looked at them, and just said “we can do better!”

They grabbed one of the most popular shounen series that hadn’t been fully adapted yet and gave it a kickass treatment that just screams epicness that fits the story perfectly. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure on its own is already a completely crazy story, but this anime actually throws in everything it has to amplify this insanity. The voice actors all yell out their lines with an incredible amount of passion and energy, the animation is full of weird and over the top poses and trippy colour effects, the soundtrack is completely epic with many different tracks (including even dubstep), the pacing is incredibly fast, yet nothing feels rushed. All dedicated to make the adrenaline rush as high as possible.

The plot of this series is basically a bunch of incredibly muscly guys punching zombies to death. That could have been so dull so fast, but beyond the incredibly over the top execution, the actual contents of the action scenes are really creative and fun to watch. This show knows how to keep itself fresh: every character is varied and unique (and really likable by the way, the best being Joseph and Stroheim), every villain has different powers and methods of fighting, and this show loves to use all sorts of props and powers to remain interesting. This series in particular loves to give huge powers to very tiny and weak things, to prevent things from being just one superpower after the other. It keeps fights with random goons really as short as possible, so that it can focus on the characters who actually matter.

Of course, this series is not for everyone. It is for those looking for over the top action, and in terms of shounen action it pretty much offers the best you can get. Having said that though: it is pretty simplistic at times. Some characters are quite one-sided and only work because the presentation is so good. Don’t expect the most complex character-development here, but instead huge heaps of energy and manliness.
One-Sentence Review: An excellent adaptation, full of incredibly over the top shounen action with a very creative plot and really likable, albeit simple, characters.
Suggestions:
– Baccano
– Shin Mazinger Z
– Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 26

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Oh Jojo. What an ending. I did not expect what would happen here at all. Perhaps the ending was not as impressive as with Psycho Pass or From the New World, but still this is every way in which a shounen series should end. You hear that, other shounen series? Watch this for how endings should be done!

Still, the climax of this show was so over the top that it just could not have been made today. It’s just so completely bloody random to suddenly have the volcano erupt this giant rock into the stratosphere that blows Cars into outer space. It’s completely impossible and really inconvenient, but in terms of creativity and as a plot twist it just made for the perfect over the top ending. Yeah it makes no sense, but this is so much better than just the characters sending beams to each other until one side dies. Plus there is the irony: the perfect human being on earth is completely useless outside of it.

It was also really fun to just see this series take the piss out of aftermaths, and poking fun at so many tropes before they even existed. Joseph hooking up with Suzie Q was hilarious, and how many times have we seen an actual divorce here? I can count the amount of series with divorces on one hand (Noein, Xamdou, Zone of the Enders, uhhh…).

Bringing a character who was thought dead back to life is a dead horse. But I can forgive this show for it by how it did this, and how much it poked fun at this.

So, as for any possible continuations. The ending of this episode was a sequel hook, nothing more. Until we see an official confirmation it is not clear whether the producers can gather enough money to make it. Now, as for the actual chance that they will succeed in this: I’d say it is pretty damn good. Take a look here and here. A little bit of math shows about 22109 sold DVD and blu-ray copies. That’s a lot!
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

AKB0048 Second Season Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in AKB0048, Anime Reviews



The first season of AKB0048 was a big surprise for me for taking such a silly premise, and actually creating something good out of it. Here is the second season, and was it as good as the first? Nah. Still, it’s worth watching if you watched the first season.

The direction for the sequel is slightly different from the first. The first had a lot of fun with criticizing the idol business next to telling its story, showing its darker sides. The second season takes this the other way around, by celebrating it instead. everything here is glorified, instead of played down. It’s got an interesting effect, and it is great to see these two sides of the coin together. But standalone it does miss something.

Mostly because I find idols to be incredibly cheesy, and this series just goes all out in glorifying them (like, what I was afraid of that the first season would be). That’s a bit of a bummer, because it does make the series a lot less interesting in terms of its plot.

So it was up to the characters and the music to save the day! They did partially. There is a lot of good character-development in this sequel, and the rather large cast has a lot of moments for even the side characters to show off themselves. The series has a really large cast, and unfortunately it does look like a bit of a mess because of it, but the advantage of this is that this series can come from out of nowhere to deliver something heartfelt and genuine.

The disadvantage of such a messy cast of characters is that some characters just don’t work. For variety’s sake this does not have to be such a big problem, but it kind of is when one of those characters is the main character. She never really knows what her role is in this series until it gets forced upon her in an entirely non-subtle way.
One-Sentence Review: AKB0048’s sequel is not as good or interesting as the first season, but it’s still quite an entertaining, albeit messy, animated musical.
Suggestions:
– Macross Frontier
– Simoun
– Mouretsu Pirates

AKB0048 – 23 – 26

by psgels, posted in AKB0048

So, the finale for AKB0048. I’m going to combine these final four episodes in one entry.

Episode 23… did not start out well. I have no idea what happened here, but this episode felt really weird in which the characters suddenly detoured in this weird mushroom world for no reason other than to stall time. And I can understand building up for the finale, but when the characters randomly started singing with these weird creatures I can only imagine Shoji Kawamori poking his nose into the script here demanding some Macross references or something.

Things got much better in episode 24 which surprisingly focused on the fathers of Nagisa and Chieri. That had a surprising amount of depth to it, especially from Nagisa’s father, and I really liked that. The creators also with this dropped the whole Chieri’s father being evil-subplot, so I’m glad that the creators did not intend that as the eventual climax.

What they did intend as the climax became clear with episode 25, as people started diving into the other world: the AKB48 Theater. It really does symbolize well how this series has changed. The first season of AKB was all about criticizing the idol business. The second season however, is about celebrating it and all of its weirdness. The way in which it showed where AKB started was a really big hint to that for me. Personally I like the first season over the second because of that. But this was not bad either. There is plenty to like in the second season, just not as much. I mean I quite liked how the people from Akibastar changed as well with Des getting more on the foreground again.

Episode 26 had something to live up to, because my favorite episode so far was the final episode of the first season. So did the second season live up to that? Well, it spelled out its message a bit too literally. “Please don’t hate entertainment.” That message alone would have been incredibly cheesy out of context, unfortunately. Within context, I can see what they’re getting from, but I do feel that it lacks substance compared to the first season.

I also feel that Nagisa becoming a successor…. came a bit from out of nowhere. Suddenly they’re like “oh, here she is now!” It’s too sudden and forced for someone who used to be unable to do anything for a very long time. The ending was cheesy, though I did enjoy the part where Chieri just dived into that spaceship as if it was nothing, to tell everyone to stop fighting.

I think that this was a case of Mari Okada taking up too many series this season. AKB, Sakurasou and Zetsuen no Tempest all had endings that could have been more and lacked a bit of creativity. If she had more time then she could have done something interesting with them. With this though, she was oveworked. Ideally, she needs to work on two series at the same time, and no more. She has shown that she’s able to handle those and deliver some really great things. Three is too much though…
Rating: 4/8 (Enjoyable)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 25

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Okay, so I thought that this was the final episode so I was ready to go all out. And then at the end of this episode there was this “To be continued”-message. Yeah, I was confused. But boy, am I glad, because it means that there will be one more episode of Jojo. They managed to squeeze one more into the airing schedule. David Production also did this with the Armed Librarians. And seriously, these guys have with this earned a spot amongst my favorite production companies out there. The way they handled this adaptation was just fantastic.

I loved the final battle against Cars, because it was more than “let’s just send a huge beam towards the angry monster until it dies”. No, instead Joseph managed to hijack a plane and turned this into a cat and mouse chase. Future action series should really take this episode as an example for their penultimate episodes, because this: the fight had so many interesting things in it. I also loved the small details again, like the meat eating squirrel.

And Stroheim. God, I love this guy. He’s completely one-dimensional, but his theme song ever since he became the terminator is just awesome, and he always appears at just the right moments, doing the craziest things surpassing even Joseph in this. Last episode was already glorious when he apparead with his squad of lamp-weilding guys, but in this episode… to think that he had been hiding in the plane for hours, waiting for the right moment to arrive.

All of the main villain of this series so far have had their dying moment: an episode dedicated to their final trump when they’re near death: Dio had his head, AC-DC was reduced to a brain, and Wham also had his episode dedicated to his final moments. They really seem to be doing the same to Cars as well, but knowing this series, they probaly are intending this one to be special. And it will be between Cars, Joseph and Stroheim on a burning volcano. Oh my god, so much manliness.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)