Category: Finished Series: Action

Tiger & Bunny – 09

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



This show is a delight to watch, even when Lunatic goes on a holiday. Instead, this episode was about the Dragon Kid and like all of the previous that were meant to highlight a particular character, it gave a complete new meaning to her.

what’s more though: even in those episodes, the series continues to build the bond between the important characters, even when they’re not the focus. This episode was also about Kotetsu and his daughter, Barnaby becoming more open about his trauma. This was all made possible by a seemingly silly story at first: taking care of a baby. Because of it though, we even got to see the producer woman being put into a situation that would have been impossible to film (the son of the major getting kidnapped would be… really hard to explain), reducing her to a simple assistant, rather than someone who always gives out orders. All of that was really refreshing. This really was an episode where characters could relate to each other.

The only pity is that the main villains this time only played such a small role. Girls with those abilities deserve to be more than just child kidnappers. I know that it makes perfect sense for the three of them to team up, but they could have been featured in a story that took a bit more advantage of their abilities. Right now they were held back by the one major flaw in storytelling of this series: the way that the main characters are criminal magnets. I know that this series does this to prove its point about superheroes and all, but in this case it prevented a bunch of potentially awesome villains to shine even more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Deadman Wonderland – 07

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



It’s still a bit strange to have someone claim that she lost a stomach and all, but I liked this episode a lot again. For the first time it actually brought in a bit of hope. People started to treat Ganta kindly, and for once he wasn’t alone. It will be interesting to see how this series will develop this.

Beyond that, this was an episode of backgrounds as well: there were a lot of flashbacks or characters telling about their pasts and when or why they ended up at the Deadman Wonderland, tying in neatly with the ED. I didn’t like the ED for this series at first, and I still think that Nirgilis did a much better job on Birdy the Mighty and Eureka7, but it’s actually quite interesting to see images of the past of the cast.

I’m not sure what’s up with the priest in this episode. He’s weird in any case, and while he may not be as bad as the Olympic medallist, he still needs a lot of work at this point. Still, this series has a habit of only explaining motives after someone does something strange, so this should be fine. In the end I’m getting more worried about what was originally meant to be the biggest potential pitfall for this series: the length!

The thing with Manglobe is that there is no pattern whatsoever in how their sequels. Their original stories always get the right amount of episodes they deserve, but in terms of their adaptations: Sarai-Ya Goyou condensed the final chapters of its manga so that it could fit everything in. The World God Only Knows came with a sequel that was actually planned in advance, while Seiken no Blacksmith just ended with no intention to fully animate its story. It can be anything at this point, but as great as these past episodes were, episode 12 will be a very bad point to end this series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

X-Men – 08

by psgels, posted in X-Men




Here’s the thing: after eight episodes, I can pretty much say that X-Men has the best animation of the season. Sure, some of the slice of life series may have more fluidity, but they also are a lot easier to animate and keep consistent. The animation with the X-Men is wild, vivid, colourful and very diverse. C has this too, but at the same time it does have a lot of off-model shots and CG. Tiger & Bunny meanwhile also has the CG working against its otherwise great eye candy. Ao no Exorcist is animated consistently meanwhile, but it instead just looks too mundane too often. The X-Men, while it may not be amongst the Madhouse series with the best visuals, still stands apart with its consistently interesting visuals and excellent character designs. This episode again looked excellent. Perhaps only Nichijou has better animation, but I have seen too little of that to really say something about that.

Overall this turned out to be quite a solid action series: the action kicks ass and appears often, there is intrigue, the characters all have their issues that blend together quit nicely. It’s only the storyline that I’m not yet convinced of: at this point it still feels a bit too random and unconnected. What was the purpose of the U-Men beyond just kidnapping a bunch of people? They really could have used that time to focus more on the characters and real villains.

Apart from that, this episode was really meant to build intrigue, and I’m curious to see whether that will pay off or not. A lot of the series this season are very big on the build up, and most of them are doing a great job on that, though X-Men still feels a bit iffy here. I’ve said before that the main villains here are uninteresting. Wolverine’s ending worked so well because it had a really charismatic villain. What X-Men meanwhile needs to do is build a finale around Sasaki and Xavier on one hand, and Cyclops and Emma Frost on the other hand. It will be much more difficult than just “have battle to defeat the big bad”, although that part definitely must not be half-assed either.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Deadman Wonderland – 06

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



This series is crazy.I mean, this was already apparent and all, but this episode again was just completely out there. This episode was again disturbing and again in a different way than before.

The use of a cute girl for a fourteen year old boy… as if he wasn’t tortured enough already. It’s a good thing that this girl likes to make her victims suffer and all, but that act of hers was great on hindsight. Sure there was fanservice and all, but that was more like functional nude than fanservice. I’m not sure whether the manga had an explanation of why her brother found her at exactly the right time and all, but even then this was a ridiculously intense and crazy episode.

It’s just a shame that the animation in this series wasn’t up to the usual Manglobe standards. Because of that the distorted faces of that girl sometimes became a bit stupid. At the same time though, Ganta cursing his heart out at the end was just awesome.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tiger & Bunny – 08

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



This episode really took me by surprise at how good it was, and it did that multiple times, actually. I mean, holy crap, this episode just kept throwing twists and turns, and even the mood just kept changing throughout the episode. You’ll never know what this show will focus on next. This time, we’ve gotten ourselves an Origami episode.

I love how Origami turned out to be completely different from his Superhero persona. Before this, he always stayed in the shadows, but he seemed like another quirky guy, but it was almost cute to see what kind of a pessimist he actually was, on top of being the worst ranked superhero out there (also subverting another cliche of the lead character either being the best, semi-best or worst out there). On top of that, this episode also gave a different meaning to Lunatic by having him mot kill some random stranger, but instead an old friend of Origami (that guy also got some interesting development despite only appearing in one episode, by the way).

The parts at the superhero academy had me in stitches. This episode indeed confirmed that it’s difficult to become a superhero like that, but I did not expect to see these incredibly stupid and pointless powers out there, from being able to stretch out facial skin to sweating really badly. In a way, it does make sense: if people are born randomly with useful powers like in Tiger’s case, there also will be probably even more people born with pointless powers that are only good for a novelty act. Heck, Origami’s powers are completely different from what I expected: his powers are mostly just useless in this kind of setting. He should have been a secret agent or something.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Ao no Exorcist – 06

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



I really like it when a show packs variety, both in the short and the long run. Having said that though, this episode was just a bad idea entirely.

I mean… what was that? I encourage this series to try something different for a while, with its cliches and all, and I understand what this episode was trying to do. Heck, the only thing I liked about this episode is how it showed Rin’s passion for cooking. That’s fine, and a good way to make him more than your average shounen lead. But couldn’t they really have picked a better way to show this?

This entire episode was just lacklustre. The whole concept of the headmaster summoning a demon to secretly do the cooking for the two brothers just makes no sense, especially considering that Rin can cook for himself. And on top of that this episode also for some reason introduced these cardboard boxes of fangirls who wanted to make lunches for Yukio. There was so much wrong with this episode, from the headmaster summoning a demon who cooks his own students to Rin who just wouldn’t stop screaming in this episode. Even for his standards, this got annoying.

Here’s the thing: Hana-Saku Iroha’s third episode in comparison also was just weird and out of place, but it still retained the charms of its series: the characters were still interesting to watch despite its questionable subject material. Ao no Exorcist’s charms are that it takes the shounen formula and executes it well. Nothing of that remained in this episode.
Rating: — (Lacking)

X-Men – 07

by psgels, posted in X-Men



With this episode, this show proved that Madhouse’s Marvel Franchise isn’t going to be purely about action. The talk between Scott and Emma? That was some good drama there, and it had nothing to do with action.On top of that, there was this entire air of mystery around this episode that made all the build-up really intriguing. That’s what build-up episodes should be: they’re mandatory for good storytelling, but at the same time they do not need to break the mood. This episode instead just changed the mood, and I’m glad to see that it worked out well.

At the moment, there are two major pitfalls right now for this series. The first is its bad guy problem: they’re all boring and uninteresting. The two minions that were introduced in this episode? Who are they? The major bad guy? Why should I care about him? The sole salvation for this series at this point will be for them to turn that Sasaki teacher into a bad guy: this episode turned her into the by far most interesting villain here, her co-workers included. With an episode named “betrayal”, there were enough hints that the creators are actually planning this. Heck, screw the rest of the bad guys. Focus more on these guys!

Also, this episode confirmed my fears: Hisako is turning into a walking plot device. It also doesn’t really help her case that she has by far the worst voice actress of the entire series, but it’s also the way in which her only purpose in this episode was to prepare for her to run into Sasaki in the next episode. I still find it strange for the X-Men, who take care of who knows how many mutant children, would just insert her into the X-Men like that.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ao no Exorcist – 05

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



So this was the episode that the OP and promo art kept building up to: the episode that focused on the new classmates of Rin, and in particular the proper introduction of the angry punk-like guy.It was an episode that was bound to have annoyances, but at the same time it also did a lot of things right.

Rin who just kept dozing off for example was… rather annoying. The lead character flunking tests and not paying attention in class to the point of extreme has been a bit of a dead horse by now, and this episode did not offer anything new for that. What it did offer anything new for however, was the way the relationship between these two hotheads developed. I really liked how, when Punk Guy taunted Rin with a dare that was bound to happen with the way it was set up, Rin outright refused. That was quite good, and a breath of fresh air around the constant bickering of these two.

What also helped here was the bunch of other classmates. They don’t feel like cliches or stereotypes, and were actually quite likable in this episode. They’re all quite down to earth in their own way, and feel more than just necessary straight men for the main characters (that role was for Yukio anyway).
Rating: * (Good)

Tiger & Bunny – 07

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



It’s episodes like this that show that this series is excellent at creating action scenes. The gorgeous architecture really shined in the aerial battle of this episode. And overall, this was a really big episode for this series, as it showed the formal introduction of what really looks like the main villain here: a judge posing as a superhero who is firmly against the practices of the main cast.

The interesting thing is that this episode toyed with what his intentions might be. If his intentions are to pull a Light and to indiscriminately kill all bad guys, then his murders in the prisons don’t make any sense: they’re way too selective. While at the same time if he meant to silence people, then his actions seem way too random. It’s probably that his work as a judge has something to do with his real intentions.

Meanwhile, the part where Tiger and Blue Rose were forced to partner up for a while was also hilarious, showing that Blue Rose is an even worse team player than the two main characters. The way she just danced around Tiger and the way in which Tiger just let everything happen was just adorable. Oh, and that mechanic also never fails to crack me up. His voice actor is hilarious for one thing, but this episode also showed that he talks in a completely different tone in front of Barnaby. This episode was chock full of not-really-subtle foreshadowing, but that was a definite nice touch.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Deadman Wonderland – 05

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



Okay. That was just insane. This was by far the best episode of Deadman Wonderland yet.

You know how usually series blow their biggest budget on the first episode of a series? This episode showed that Deadman Wonderland was not one of those series. The animation was by far the best and most consistent of the series so far. Of course it’s still nowhere near Manglobe’s usual characters, but for once there were no distorted faces getting in the way, the action scenes all looked gorgeous and most importantly: the inbetween animation at times really brought in this extra bit of life out of the characters.

Usually the characters like Ganta are really annoying: the ones who don’t do anything. But heck, in this context the creators actually made his character work. He actually does try enough things, and yet every time he does he only gets pummeled down again by this series, which always manages to find some way to become even harsher than it already has. I mean, this episode was absolutely brutal, both for Ganta and the Crow Character. I really have to praise this show: gore alone gets boring really easily; the characters here are the ones who give it its impact and keep this entire series together. Of course they lack depth compared to other series, but they’re all great to watch, and especially diverse. The creators did an excellent job of getting us to sympathize with this fourteen year-old kid, the type of character who usually is really unlikable.

Now, the big flaw here still is the way in which the creators keep shooting themselves into the foot: yeah, the series is brutal, so it’s going to be really hard to keep Ganta alive. Still, this episode was nowhere as bad as episode 2, and instead was very shounen-ish. In other words, cliched, and we can thank the animators and writers for doing a really good job on it to generate enough suspense of disbelief to actually give it impact, rather making it tedious.
Rating: ** (Excellent)