Category: Finished Series: Action

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 10

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

This show. This show is crazy. It’s completely out of its mind!

I mean, we knew that this show was over the top beyond belief. However, with this episode we see Jonathan Joestar’s grandson. And this guy is even manlier than his grandfather. His entrances in this episode were just nind-blowing beyond belief. I mean, there is doing the unexpected, and there is pulling a Joseph Joestar.

Just about every fight scene in which Joseph got himself involved in screamed awesome. They all just took being cool to the absolute ridiculous in their own ways: first by using such a silly thing as a coke bottle as a weapon, then by predicting his opponents moves so well that it gets scary, and then just pulling a freaking tomgun from out of nowhere without warning. I mean, this is awesome. Why did nobody make a full fledged series of this before?

But then again, it’s also David Production’s work on this that just makes this extra special. I mean christ: they came with a completely new soundtrack for the second part of this series. It’s completely different and composed by a completely different person. This time it’s done by Taku Iwasaki. And you know what? This is perfect. This is how you produce a series like this, and this is a cue that Madhouse really should have taken with their adaptation of Hunter X Hunter: make the first arc awesome to watch while you build up for the second arc. Make a soundtrack that fits the first arc perfectly and one that fits the second arc perfectly, rather than making a soundtrack for the second arc and using the leftovers for the first arc.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 09

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Just… what the hell, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Here I was thinking that this would quietly start off the next arc and another over the top clash between Jojo and Dio, and here they come and pull this episode. In just 20 minutes they go over 9000 again with this bizarre talking head of Dio, only to kill off the two most important characters in the series. What other shounen series does that?

This show really lives up to its name. What I especially like here is how helpless Jojo was: he was instantly disabled, hardly being able to use his ripple, and most of this episode was Dio monologueing about something, or zombies being evil. What a contrast with the previous episodes. Dio by the way was hilarious as talking head. The way in which he also used his veins as a weapon… how did they come up with that idea?

And then there is that zombie that on its own made that ship blow up, Elina who survived in the bomb-proof coffin that Dio brought on board both carrying a random child and being pregnant, there was just so much awesome stuff going on in this episode. I can only imagine how many chapters this part took, which makes it even more amazing that the creators managed to condense it to just 20 minutes. I really wonder what would have happened if David Production were handed the rights to remake Bleach ten years from now… it probably would not be as awesome as this series, but most definitely much more bearable than the normal Bleach series.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 08

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

I love what this show does to its hencmen: it only shows the battles against three of them in detail. Apart from that, all of them are instantly just slaughtered by Jojo as he refuses to waste any more time on this. The result was that this episode showed yet another incredibly over the top battle with Dio and Jojo.

And again, the adrenaline between those two. The incredibly crazy gore that this show has is just amazing. Usually when people with over the top powers and strengths fight, it just doesn’t have the impact as when the fights were done realistically. And yet here this show comes with such extreme details in its gore. I mean, did Dio really just pull out a bunch of arteries from Jojo’s neck? And then there are bizarre contraptioons that were supposed to be zombies. Seriously, the author of this thing had one sick mind.

But yeah, the past episodes have pretty much been Jojo punching zombies to death in a ridiculously elaborate fashion. If the rest of the series wil have this as well, it will get old fast, although I’ve heard enough times that the second arc will be completely different, and actually better on each level. Can’t wait!
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Rinne no Lagrange OVA

by psgels, posted in Rinne no Lagrange

So yeah, for those who haven’t noticed yet: K and Little Busters are dropped. K was just not interesting enough: it’s beautifully animated and there is nothing inherently wrong with its story, it’s just way too unambitious and it’s not interesting to talk about that. Little Busters meanwhile has the problem that the male characters are much more interesting and better portrayed than the fmeale ones, and yet it focuses on the latter. Both of these shows gave me quite a good excuse to cut back on the shows I’m covering weekly. I noticed that I’m way too busy to catch up with every show lately in order to be able to cover other stuff, and I really want to also be able to cover OVAs like this, or do the occasional manga review, which just wasn’t possible with my current schedule.

Now, as for Rinne no Lagrange’s OVA: if you have watched the first season, but haven’t watched the second season yet: watch this one first. It’s there to fill in some of the gaps, and flesh out the cast before the second season starts. While it didn’t fix the flaws of the series, it did improve on it.

I mean, the characters in this series remain well portrayed, and clocking in at 44 minutes, it was quite charming slice of life. The overall theme of this episode was that everyone is apart now, doing their own thing, yet they miss each other, and that’s quite solid for an OVA to cover, albeit unspectabular. Madoka’s birthday also was a nice touch.

But there was one thing that this OVA did, that the series didn’t cover at all: life on the planets of Lan and Muginami. It always kept bugging me how empty those planets felt because we never saw anything from them except a bunch of spaceships. With this we got to see the people who live there, and what they look like from the inside (including that they’re just as corporately selling out as what happens on earth). I mean, compare this with a series as Birdy the Mighty Decode: right in the fourth episode they already went to the alien planet to show what it was like. That was like, the school example for me on how to do the alien planet subplot right, and Rinne no Lagrange… I kept waiting for it but it only focused on Kamogawa. The setting never felt as big as it could have been.

Eureka Seven Ao Review – 87.5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Eureka Seven Ao



The original Eureka Seven is a classic. If you like teenagers and mecha, then by all means give it a chance: it has a very rocky start, but has so many defining moments. And so, six years after its end, Bones came with a sequel. It’s quite an interesting series: you really need to have seen the first series in order to enjoy it, yet it is nothing like its predecessor.

The series takes some of the core concepts of Eureka Seven, it takes its defintion of Trappar and Corallian, it grabs the son of the two lead characters of Eureka Seven, puts him into a completely different location and even time, and just goes with it, trying to explain what the hell is going on as it goes along. Where Eureka Seven focused on showing children’s naivety, this series instead turns this around by forcing children in the center of conflict, while emphasizing that they do not belong there in the slightest. With these themes, it tells a story that with one crazy amount of plot twists.

After a bit of a warm-up period, this show just delivers plot twist after plot twist after plot twist. It’s a really good mystery series, with a lot of interesting ideas and twists that come from out of nowhere and give completely different turns to what the plot was before. This obviously has its advantages and disadvantages.

I mean, back with Un-Go, that was a series that had perfect control of its fast pacing. Ao does not, and there are quite a few plotholes. On the other hand though, there are plenty of moments that might seem ludicrous, only to make sense when you start thinking about it. A lot of the plot twists aren’t explicitly explained, or require the viewer to constantly pay attention to what’s going on: this is one series that does not plan to hold the hands of its viewers, and you definitely cannot watch it when you’re tired, otherwise you’ll miss stuff.

Anyway, I have seen plenty of people turned off by the plotholes, but I personally loved what this series tried to do. It’s all about the suspense of disbelief for this series, and let me tell you: if this suspense of disbelief holds, then there is a lot to like about this show. Helping are the characters, who may not be as good as the cast of Eureka Seven, but still are very likable, diverse and entertaining, and this show is also full of unexpected character-development.

What I really encountered here that this show does like none other, is how it treats the old characters of the first series. Out of all the sequels I have seen that focus on different characters than the first, this is BY FAR the best use of the old cast. They are used at the exact right moment, and this show pays homage to them, yet also shows their flaws, it shows who they turned into after the end of the series, and it gives them their own storylines that are more than just “let us old guys just watch over you new guys”. It’s fanservice, but I appreciated it so much.

This is a very ambitious series. You can also see this though the production values, which were some of the most consistent of the year for an action series, containing a lot of fluid and fast-paced action scenes and a really good soundtrack. The plot twists and characters on top of that made it a really fun and entertaining series for me, although this ambition does have its prices to pay with the rushed plot that is easy to get bored with.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Love the ambition of this series of delivering as many plot twists as possible that attempt to weave a whole storyline together. Great mystery, though the rushed pacing and plotholes will be a turn-off for some.
Characters: 8.5/10 – Briliant use of the old Eureka Seven cast, Enjoyable and gripping cast of both main and side characters, although the cast is too big for every character to really show his/her best.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Great production values, excellent soundtrack, really fluid animation at times.
Setting: 8.5/10 – Takes the setting of Eureka Seven, expands upon it, turns it into something completely different and completely changes what it stands for. Might be hard to swallow for fans of the first series hoping for the same.

Suggestions:
– Darker than Black – Ryuusei no Gemini
– Un-Go
– Noein

Eureka Seven Ao – 23 & 24

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao

Hmm, a lot of you will probably disagree with this, and I’m currently double-checking to make sure of this… but this episode was pretty much amongst my top 5 endings of the year (along with Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Chihayafuru, Natsume Yuujinchou and Sakamichi no Apollon for those of you who were curious).

Why? It just went all out, tried to do a ton of stuff in just 50 minutes and managed to wrap itself up really well for the circumstances, and the way its plot ended up focusing on Renton, Eureka and Ao was just the icing on the cake: the thing I’ve been waiting for for so long, and this show delivered on it. It gave plenty of character to Renton, Eureka finally got some closure, we finally know what happened to Ao’s brother.The entire episode was erratic as hell, and the huge amount of time-skips made it quite hard to follow everything that went on, but that has always been the selling point of this series for me: not holding your hand, and just delivering plot twist after plot twist. And my suspense of disbelief has always been high enough for the characters to not want to bother with the plotholes.

The ending itself, for Renton to not be able to be with his parents… I liked it. After the entire series was building up the themes that children shouldn’t be in the battlefield, and that adults should try their best to support them, Ao entirely turns that around by just trying to do everything himself. This could be his coming of age, or just that he got what was coming to him. I mean, it’s not like this show tries to portray its main characters as right: they too have their flaws, and I really like that Renton wasn’t portrayed in a positive light in this episode, rather than glorifying him way too much.

And the production values were also just awesome. There were lots of gorgeous dogfights and action sequences, and Bones really made use of their time to deliver a feast for the eyes, but the ears as well. The techno soundtrack here really caught my ears and made this an adrenaline rush from start to finish for me.

The thing I like about Bones’ sequels is that they don’t sell out. The creators could easily have made some shallow copy of the original series. I believe that this is what happened to Last Exile’s Fam. Instead, the creators decided to do something completely different with Eureka Seven Ao, and you can see that with all of their sequels: Darker than Black 2 was miles away from the first season. The Full Metal Alchemist and Eureka Seven Movies were also completely different from the TV series, FMA Brotherhood had a completely different style from its first season despite having the same set-up, the Wolf’s Rain OVA went into a drastically different direction. I used to hate this, but as time goes on, I have to say that I really like this: they try to experiment and they’re ambitious with different styles and premises, rather than milking out the same over and over. It is this ambition that I’ve been longing for for quite a while now, and Ao just answered it perfectly. It is both fanservice for the original Eureka Seven, and something completely different at the same time.

Review will come up tomorrow. Too late for that now, unfortunately.

Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 07

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

I must praise David Production for this series, by the way. When the promo art of this series was first shown, there was one big fear I had: how on earth are they going to be able to animate those character-designs? It’s a problem that graces many series of its kind: having character-designs that are so complex that they become hard to animate. And well… they did it. They found a way to make these character-designs work. Sure, the animation is not fluid at all, and this show is full of distorted faces, but the camera work is fast enough that this hardly stands in your eye. I’ve seen so many series with elaborate character-designs that look weird, just because the animation can’t keep up, so it’s great to see a show actually succeed in this.

One point of criticism would be that the creators were really, really heavily hinting at Zeppeli’s death this episode. It was over the top and glorious as always, but my favorite kinds of deaths are the ones you don’t see coming: the kinds of accidents that just come out of nowhere, like what you’d expect death to do in these kinds of action series. I understand why the creators did it in this way though; this is just a personal pet peeve of mine. Either way though, his death was just brutal, geting cut in half like that.

This episode also was full of crazy powers, with the zombie with the giant tongue and the sadistic Dio that forced a mother to eat her own son. Seriously? Did this really air in Shounen Jump? The gore scenes unfortunately couldn’t make it fully into the anime, which makes me wonder what the difference is between the censorship laws: are the broadcaster more likely to get into legal trouble? Or was this just something that the animators couldn’t handle? In this show that’s something that I actually doubt, considering the detail they put in the rest of the frames. I also love the elaborate and crazy poses that were shown throughout this episode.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 06

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

After watching this series, so much has suddenly become clear. The influence that this series has had is unmistakable on some other series. Perhaps there has never been another series like it, but I really recognize its “anything can be awesome”-mentality. For example, something tells me that Death Note’s chips-eating scene took some of its inspiration from this series.

In the second half of this episode, it showed that even something as simple as opening a door can have impact if you just put enough passion into it. That scene was amazing due to all of the build-up it has gotten, and how badly everyone wanted to open that door (“Let me try to punch this iron door in!”), and how it caused Poco to do something.

Then there were things like turning a bunch of leaves in a large magnetic hang glider. Just… how did these guys think of this? I also love the ridiculously overblown symbolism, like when Bruford was defeated and suddenly flowers started growing around him. When pulled half-heartedly, this can get so incredibly cheesy, but here it just becomes awesome, especially accompanied by Speedwagon’s overly emotional and elaborate ways to state the obvious.

Though turning luck into pluck… that is one of the most bizarre uses of Engrish I’ve seen in a while…
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 05

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

The soundtrack for this series… I remember at the beginning of the season that I noted that the best soundtracks of the season were from Zetsuen no Tempest and Psycho Pass. Here’s the thing: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’s soundtrack was awesome as well, but over the past episodes, it has actually improved, whereas Tempest and Psycho Pass mostly stayed with the same tracks. This episode also had a new track for the ED to work with. I’m amazed at how much work was put into this, because out of all the series this season, this is the show where the soundtrack plays the most prominent role here.

Also, the powers of the different characters just rock. Here is a kid who launches himself with a catapult, the ripple energy that can be used to tiptoe over water, a guy who uses his hair to attack and the most gigantic sword I have ever seen in an anime. It’s all so ridiculously overblown on one hand, yet so detailed on the other with fingers being the single most effective murdering weapon in the entire series. Or that “Let me heal your frozen arm with my burning body heat!”-scene. That was so ludicrous that it became awesome again.

This episode also brought back two famous figures from history back to life as incredibly badass zombies. Even their backstories were over the top, and I love the way how this was portrayed. It was another one of those moments where I nearly had the urge to yell along with the characters. It has been so long that I’ve seen an anime that had so much manliness in it. The previous attempt, Kaiji was horribly dragged out. This is the complete opposite: perfectly paced and I’m not feeling like I’m missing anything.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 04

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

This episode put the “Bizarre” in “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure”. Jojo fights someone other than Dio this episode in this crazy serial killer that Dio brought over to the dark side. Even a minor villain like this guy is done completely over the top, with knives appearing all over his body, not to mention his ultimate weapon that is this gigantic row of scissors tied next to each other. And this came from more than 20 years ago.

I’m really beginning to understand why this series was so influential. I mean, this manga started two years after Dragon Ball, and aired right next to Dragonball Z, which looks even more boring in comparison here. It’s obviously inspired by Fist of the North Star, but even then it was its time far ahead.

Also, the basics behind the powers of this series really are imaginative, and I loved how over the top this episode was with something as delicate as breath control. I’ve practiced Karate for 13 years now, so I know how important breath is in fighting: it can make a world of difference in terms of the impact of your attacks. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure takes that concept, and just brings it over 9000 by giving it all sorts of powers and magic sparkles.

In fact, this huge power with delicate things seems to be a very big theme in this series. This episode also had that magician guy do all sorts of fancy stuff with his pinky finger, the behind Dio’s powers is also something that can probably be easily broken. And the way in which that magician used pepper when he was first introduced (and sneezed himself off the fence in result) probably also has to do with it.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)