What a surprise: a Deadman Wonderland episode that actually takes its time.
This was actually a very good premise of how an OVA should be done: this neither was pointless fanservice or random gags, but it also wasn’t just “another episode”. Instead we get to see the background of one of the side-characters: Senji. On top of that, this episode did not have the rushed pacing of the TV-series, and it actually gave ample time for Senji to show who he was before he ended up in the Deadman Wonderland prison.
What’s even stranger though is that the creators didn’t decide to show how he ended up in the prison, but instead focused this episode around the time when the prison got built (it was definitely a nice touch to see the setting of the TV-series still in its building stages by the way; that’s a neat way to flesh it out), focusing on how some of his friends got killed by some asshole who also happened to have those special blood powers.
This episode may not have been as interesting as the episodes of the TV-series, but it’s nevertheless a good source of background. The bad guys here were very stereotypical, but Senji got out of it as a better character. We also learn that there are more ways for people to get their special powers, compared to how Ganta got them in the first episode.
Here is the thing, though: Deadman Wonderland has completely bombed in terms of manga sales. Seriously, I couldn’t find sales numbers about this one at all, and that indicates that they were abysmally low. I’m much less bitter about this compared to Michiko to Hatchin not selling well, but the problem is Manglobe overall: they once were among the best animation studios out there, but they have really gone downhill since. Deadman Wonderland was their last chance, with the adaptation of a popular manga, but that too completely failed. With moe shows like Seiken no Blacksmith and TWGOK selling moderately well… the result is Mashiro-Iro Symphony. What a bloody shame.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Category: Finished Series: Action
Ao no Exorcist Review – 75/100
Shounen isn’t my favourite genre, but I have enjoyed plenty of the better series in the genre. Ao no Exorcist is a sneaky one though: at first it first seems to avoid a lot of the overused cliches that plague the genre… only to fall into them anyways.
What sets Ao no Exorcist apart is that it’s typical shounen, but done well. The main character is a hot headed brat, but he’s well fleshed out and has good development and reasons for his actions. The show inevitably ends up at an academy, but school assignments that the characters have to do are fun, interesting and lead to quite a bit of character development.
The big problem is that this series is way too epic for what it wants to be. On one hand it aims for high school hijinks and a look at exorcists in training, and on the other it is involved in an international plot involving to purge the strongest demon known to man: Satan. The main character may be Satan’s son and all, but the two parts don’t mesh at all and leave a terribly divided series.
The part of the series that suffers the least is the one that focuses on the high school. It’s not ambitious, but it’s fun, the characters are genuine and they have a great chemistry between them. The plot against satan unfortunately is horribly rushed, with in the end Satan magically forgetting to use a lot of his powers in order to actually prevent the main cast from not instantly dying. It’s full of bland twists and unoriginal plot devices that are way too constrained with trying to go for a “by the books”-ending. This series is based on a manga, but decides to go with its own storyline for its final third. While that isn’t immediately a bad thing, it just doesn’t work here.
A-1 has made sure of great animation, but in the end there are just many better shounen series out there. Ao no Exorcist was a nice attempt, but it lacks vision.
| Storytelling: | 7/10 – Does not know what it wants to focus on and ends up half-hearted. Tries to subvert shounen cliches only to fall into them. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Saved by a good chemistry and good development. Bad villains, though. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Solid action, though nothing amazing. |
| Setting: | 7/10 – Tries to deliver a solid setting of exorcists, but in the end there is hardly any gap between the best and the worst of them. |
Ao no Exorcist – 25
Well, there you have it. The only way for this episode to not have been bland is if the creators ignored Satan’s existence all together. They didn’t, and went for a predictable and very run off the mills ending. The only good part of this episode was the ending, which thankfully went back to Rin and Yukio’s parents. Although the runaway truck that followed after that… what was that supposed to be? That part was rather brought down by the random banter inbetween.
In any case, this episode portrayed Satan as a wimp, just as expected. He’s the most feared demon in the world, he’s killed thousands of people, and in the end he’s beaten by a bunch of kids who happen to be able to fly and lodge a sword at the right place. If they were able to fly, then most adults in this series would have been able to do it if it was that easy. This was a problem that was apparent with the series from the beginning, and I have no idea how the manga planned to even handle it. By making Satan too powerful in the first two episodes, they already wrote themselves into a corner. There was no way he could be a good villain.
Overall, this series suffered from modern anime’s fear of fillers that has been very apparent for the past years. I know that the final third of this series was entirely filler, but that’s exactly what I meant: the writers of the fillers seemed scared of what they had to write, and were too afraid to really think outside the box. You could see that their intentions were there with the episodes that were dedicated to just the main cast. In the end though, they just kept going back to the epic action and Satan, which just didn’t work. Compare that to Hunter X Hunter, whose fillers were an excellent and mature addition to the story and characters. This unbalance is something that I noticed with a lot of other series of the Prime Time slot.
There is a very nasty legacy from the Prime Time slot, that everything needs to be epic and action. I had hoped that it would have been broken with Sengoku Basara II, but unfortunately both this series and Star Driver would have been way better if they just took some more risks. Unfortunately the legacy of Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi still shows. For those who haven’t seen it: it was attempt to open up the prime time slot of anime to an older audience, with mature storylines, complex characters, and imaginative concepts that thought outside the box, and that for 52 episodes. Only for it to get canceled and cut to half its length. Before that series, all shows on the prime time slot were 50 episodes long. After, everything aside from FMA was split up in seasons of 26 episodes. Ao no Exorcist and Star Driver were the ones who could have done something bold and daring, especially considering that Gundam Age next season is only going to lower the target audience even more. Unfortunately, A-1, you let me down.
Rating: – (Disappointing)]]>
Ao no Exorcist – 24
I could have sworn that this show was only 24 episodes long. Ah well, with the state that this series is in now, an extra episode doesn’t really matter. And I know that I usually try to avoid spoilers in the screenshots, but this episode just had too many things that made me raise a proverbial eye brow.
This episode pretty much had the same problem as the Konekomaru arc: it is very difficult to properly portray someone getting possessed, without being overly cheesy. Here though, Rin pretty much ended up talking the monster to death. It worked a bit: the themes of Yukio always wanting to do everything on his own were what saved it in particular. But I have to face it: the suicide scene made me laugh. Just about the opposite effect that the creators intended.
Yukio: if you want to commit suicide: that’s fine. If that happens to kill Satan at the same time, then I can understand why you’d do it… but why the yelling? The thing is that in martial arts, yelling does have a very important purpose: By combining it with breathing, you can really deliver harder punches, et cetera. With Yukio however, he was trying to pull the trigger on a gun. That requires a completely different kind of concentration, so he just looked silly while yelling.
In any case, the final episode: it pretty much was the most cliched set up that the creators could think of. Throughout this episode Satan already got strangely weak whenever the main cast was around (remember: this is the guy who easily scorched the best exorcists around like it was nothing, and yet at those convenient points he simply forgets that he has that power)… but the point where the penultimate episode ends with all of the main villain’s plans exhausted and the only thing that still needs to be done is beating a ridiculously powered up version of him… it’s been done thousands of times before. Yeah, it’s good for the animation team: they can go all out, but can this series really set itself apart with such an ending?
Overall, the anime original material in this series wasn’t the worst. It sure as heck was better than in Yumekui Merry and it did stay true to its characters. But still, the creators constrained themselves too much by trying to go with a “by the books” ending. Instead they should have looked at what kind of ending would fit best with its constraints. Some series that did this well in my opinion were: Hellsing, Bokurano, King of Thorn, Himitsu -the Revelation, Hourou Musuko and Kuroshitsuji. This isn’t compared to their manga, but these are the series that instead of half-heartedly just animating a bunch of chapters until they ran out of time, really looked into how to make their anime adaptation story work best. These are the series that new adaptations who know that they’re never going to be able to fully animate their manga’s story should take a good look at and learn from.
Rating: – (Disappointing)
Ao no Exorcist – 23
I do want to stress that the anime original material isn’t entirely hopeless. There’s one thing that it consistently did well: the characters. Even the beach episode: sure, it made no sense, but it was fun.
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The majority of this episode was like that episode, really: it was rather far-fetched, but it did delve into the past of Rin and Yukio’s parents. It’s a bit strange to establish their mother as this mentally deranged woman who can’t seem to feel anything about the deaths of countless of people, yet who continues to fight for demon acceptance, although it was an interesting backstory that tied the past together with the present, albeit a bit forcefully. Satan having actual love was a bit awkward, but heck: we have seen so little of him that as a character it’s a twist that could make sense as long as you don’t confuse him with the traditional images of Satan.
The big question mark still is Yukio. The thing is that his character just derailed. Him being the bad guy is the twist that I just can’t accept. It had it coming for episodes now, but I still don’t like it one bit.
Rating: * (Good)
Tiger & Bunny Review – 87,5/100
The past years have shown a sudden influx of superhero series. It started with Ultraviolet and the Batman movies, then Heroman came and Madhouse had its Marvel series. The best of the bunch however, is Tiger and Bunny.
What this show did was quite special: it didn’t just pick a bunch of superheroes and had them fight crime. It constructed a very creative concept and setting around them: making them tv-stars. In the world of Tiger & Bunny, cameras follow every movement of the heroes as they catch bad guys, and they have been turned into a television phenomenon. By turning superheroes into celebrities, funded by sponsorships, this show is both able to celebrate, and criticize modern media.
The characters really succeed in making such an interesting setting come alive. One of the biggest strengths of this series is how fun the main cast is to watch. Especially the episodes that focus on just a few of them and explore their characters shine in their dynamics. This series is able to create very strong stories that are above all very fun to watch, making this one of the most enjoyable series of the past half year. Nearly every single episode delivers, and at the end of the series the cast has grown tremendously with powerful changes.
The format of this series is that it consists out of two halves. Each half starts off with a number of episodic stories that are meant to flesh out the cast and build up the story, after which a continuous story produces a climax. The plot of this series deserves praises especially because of how well it builds up. In fact, this is one of those stories where the build-up is actually more interesting to watch than the finales themselves. The creators throw in a ton of details as they slowly show more and more about the multi-layered storyline, while at the same time creating interesting individual stories for each of the cast members. it blends in seamlessly.
For me, the major flaw of this series was really that the finales went fairly straight-forward, and just not as interesting as the rest of the series. The cliches that were brilliantly used in the majority of the series in order to achieve some very creative effects suddenly became just… cliches. And that stood out a bit. The journey to the destination however was more than worth it.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 – Weaves various plot-lines very nicely throughout the story, is very well paced and above all really fun to watch. Albeit the finales are the least interesting parts of the show. |
| Characters: | 9/10 – Awesome cast, wonderful development. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Yoshihiro Ike’s soundtrack rocks, the CG works, but often moves jerky, and the 2D animation also has its moments of inconsistencies. It’s a very colourful and bright looking series, though. |
| Setting: | 9/10 – This series is very creative with its premise, and makes brilliant use of it. |
Suggestions:
– The Big O
– Zone of the Enders
– Mobile Police Patlabor
Tiger & Bunny – 25
Aw. To be honest, I found this to be a rather lukewarm ending. In the end, the best parts of this show were its build-up. This really was a series where it’s the journey that is important, not the destination. Both the Jake arc and this finale were the parts of Tiger & Bunny that impressed me the least. But hey, we’re getting a sequel.
The best way for me to describe this show would be “half-baked”. The creators kill off Kotetsu. Oh no wait, he’s just knocked out from the huge blast that conveniently managed to just destroy his suit. There are more androids! Oh now wait, there is a safety code now. Kotetsu is retiring. Oh no wait, he isn’t! Barnaby wants to live his own life now. Oh now, he isn’t, he’s just going to act like nothing happened!
I hate to call it, but I really think that the Sunrise executives had a role in this again. The thing with the sequel is that it wasn’t planned right from the start. The only single hint to that throughout most of the series was the fact that the entire city of Ouroboros was corrupt. My guess that originally the creators wanted to tie Maverick in with that. Instead, they were probably forced to leave open the option for a second season, which lead to the awkward plot twists in this episode that actually negated most of the character development for the different characters. These kinds of plot twists can be done well, but this was just too Ad Hoc and forced.. Because of that I’m a bit iffy about the announced continuation: I really suspect that the creators are going to have to write a completely new story on a really short notice. The last thing that happened was with Marie & Gali, whose second season was completely ruined by the inclusion of a scrappy.
Overall, I still love this show, but it didn’t make my favourite Sunrise series. My top 10 of Sunrise TV-Series probably looks something like this now:
10. Gintama
9. Seikai Trilogy
8. Witch Hunter Robin
7. Tiger & Bunny
6. Gasaraki
5. The Big O
4. Zone of the Enders
3. Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
2. Cowboy Bebop
1. Visions of Escaflowne
Rating: (Enjoyable)
Ao no Exorcist – 22
This series still had a chance of closing off well. But the ending of this episode pretty much ruined it. With that, Yukio showed that he was Letter Bee’s Cabernet: the major flaw of the anime original material.
For the majority of this episode, it didn’t feel 100% right, but at least I could finally understand what had been up to Yukio during the past episodes. Yeah, the potential to turn Rin back into a human makes sense for him to completely change in order to achieve this. Not telling his brother anything fits him perfectly, and it’s a good twist that he had been doing all of this behind his back. Him becoming a paladin was a bit forced, but ah well: gramps must have pulled a few strings behind the scenes.
So let me ask the creators this: why the heck did you suddenly back down? The twist at the end rendered all of his development useless. Having him deceived and turn into a demon himself… what an incredibly cheesy twist. If you wanted to do that, then build up for it. Don’t just indecisively throw a deus ex machina there in order to get a soap opera ending. At this point there was more than enough conflict between the two brothers. Yukio trying to save his brother would have made for a compelling finale. This however, just sucks.
Rating: – (Disappointing)
Tiger & Bunny – 24
Now, this episode did pull a bunch of cheese balls for its penultimate episode. With that, I mean common tropes and cheesy cliches that get pulled over and over. Because of that I had a few problems with this episode, and unfortunately it’s been the least impressive Tiger & Bunny episode I’ve seen in a while.
Basically there are two main points that annoyed me. The focus on the power of friendship had its cheese moments, but it was perfectly in line with this series. What wasn’t in line was the robot guy. The creators have such an interesting villain with Maverick, and here this episode focused instead on this stereotypical evil guy that the rest of the series did so well to avoid, and who also pulled a number of strange actions that made it a bit too easy for the main cast to just escape I mean, if you’re an evil genius, at least remember to have more than one guy in your security department.
The second thing that bugged me was the end of the episode, which pulled the dreaded “let’s pretend to kill off our lead character”-twist. This twist annoys me in particular because hardly any show who pulls that actually pulls through with it. At the very least though; this episode did put a lot of meaning behind Kotetsu’s “death”: the decline of his powers has been building up for ages. It was a nice moment for this to really show.
At this point, I doubt whether this series will really have one of the best endings of the seasons, but it’s still possible to end with a bang. It really needs to use the build-up of this episode, plus give a good part to everyone involved. A standard ending however isn’t going to cut it for me at this point.
Rating: * (Good)
Ao no Exorcist – 21
I’m not sure what happened here. These are just those points in a series that completely do something against my expectations. I’m not really sure what happened here, but the plot suddenly got really, really good.
The bizarre thing here is that I had completely given up on the plot, and here this episode comes and does just about everything right to bring it back to life. Yukio’s angst was largely going nowhere, so here this episode comes and throws in his grandfather. The teacher was boring, and here this episode give s him an actually engaging back-story. Shiemi had been reduced in importance, and here she actually stands up against Rin, proving that she’s much, much more than just another token female.
This episode was really excellent, but in the context of this series, it’s much more than that: it really managed to save this series, and brought it back out of its slump. The thing with the previous episodes was that they had been building up the wrong things: Yukio and Rin’s grandfather should have appeared much earlier, the Vatican should have taken up its villain role much earlier, instead of just returning over and over to an angsty Yukio. Either way though, this episode was better than even most of the episodes that DID come from the manga material. There was just so much packed into it.
As for the ending: the satan problem will still remain. At the very least though, the creators are trying to make it very action-packed, with the entire Vatican declaring a war on the demons. It’s a bit sudden, but heck, I can buy it at this point. Will it make up though for Satan’s complete and utter lack of development? Well, let’s find out!
Rating: ** (Excellent)