Category: Finished Series: Action

High School of the Dead – 11

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead



I was expecting the worst here. I mean, at the end of the previous episode, the way that that demented teacher knocked on the door was like saying “Hello, I’m your endboss. May I come in?”

Thankfully though, this episode fully acknowledged that he was a disaster, and instead of the earlier episodes the creators chose a very restrained way for his story: we get a bit of his history, then we get to see what he did to Rei, then we get a confrontation and after that he’s simply kicked out. I really did not expect this kind of subtlety from a show that markets itself with zombies and boobs.

There were some parts I didn’t like, like at the start of the episode in which those adults refuse to cooperate (but then again, I also don’t understand the hordes of people who demonstrate for the most moronic reasons), but overall I like this change of pace. I already said that this series sets itself apart with its atmosphere, and there was this strange melancholy during that scene in which all those nuclear bombs were launched that I really liked.

At the same time, I like how the creators chose the climax of this series to revolve around rescuing the loved ones of Rei and Komuro. It’s down to earth, yet it’s bound to be exciting, there’s going to be an interesting deadline that the creators can use. The thing with this series is that its action may not be as good as Sengoku Basara, nor is its premise really refined or original not to mention the pointless fanservice, but it is much better balanced and varied than the other major action title of this season.

Edit: a small correction here: I just discovered that High School of the Dead will just be twelve episodes long. So yeah, it’s going to end next week, which makes it quite a strange choice for a semi-final episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Sengoku Basara – 22

by psgels, posted in Sengoku Basara



Now this is more like it. This episode was entirely building up to that finale again, but it also packed a punch when it comes to action. This really shows a number of things about this series:

– This series keeps its action scenes short and sweet: it wisely chose not to drag out the action for too long.
– This series knows that an action series isn’t just about action, but also creating a good setting and characters to carry this action are just as important.
– This series has huge balls and guts to let everything depend on the final two episodes.

I mean, I’ve said this before: this really is the school example of a series you can only judge after it fully ends. Out of all the series this season, this one really lets the most depend on its finale, even more than Occult Academy. And unlike Occult Academy, I still have full confidence that the creators know what they’re doing. All they need to do is give everything they’ve got, like what they did with the sixth episode, and that will make the entire series worth it.

In the meantime, I enjoyed the action of this episode a lot. It was well directed, and a pretty nice taste of what’s to come. I especially loved the parts in which Date Masamune was so cool that he could have entire conversations on his horse while in the air, in the middle of explosives. I also loved the rest of that explosive horse scene. The entire episode was just a ploy of Toyotomi and his allies to slow down his enemies enough for his main force, and I liked how all those plans seemed to be working.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

High School of the Dead – 10

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead



That’s… interesting. Three episodes before the end, this series suddenly decides to abandon its brainless action and fanservice formula for the duration of the episode in order to get some depth on the characters, and in that department this probably was the best episode yet, despite being not the most exciting episodes. It’s definitely going to be interesting if this series would decide to go into a completely different direction, if it wasn’t for that ridiculously over the top cliff-hanger at the end of this episode that showed that this was just a single episode mood-swing.

I have watched hardly any zombie flicks, so I don’t know how often they deal with topics like in this episode, but I liked it. The most interesting part here is that the main cast here was in the wrong: now that they have become part of this larger group of people who are trying to survive, they don’t fit in, they refuse to give up the valuable weapons they acquired, they don’t help others and instead of keeping calm they start fighting with each other. Still, this episode worked. I like how the characters in this series have the right combination between flaws and positive character traits.

But yeah… that nazi teacher will be back in the next episodes. Unlike the lead cast, he is a character whose flaws are ridiculously unbalanced within his character, up to the point where most of his airtime was just a string of annoyance, and the same goes for the students that he turned into his slaves. If anyone is able to ruin the finale of this series, it’s these guys.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Sengoku Basara – 21

by psgels, posted in Sengoku Basara



Boy, Production IG, you sure are planning to make a lot depend on that ending of yours, with yet another episode without much fighting. This episode again continued to build up, it continued to set the stakes higher (Toshiie Maeda now also turns out to have regrouped and will be part of the final battle as well). Most of this episode was focused on tactical plans, rather than actual fighting (which had little tactical purpose). And that with three episodes left.

One criticism to all this build up is that the creators could have told us more about the different characters, like give them more background, show them as they were younger, that kind of stuff. The characters all have their issues here, but I feel like the creators could have made more use of that if they were going to spend a lot of time building up anyway. Still, I admit that the creators did well in fleshing out their characters. While not the best, this show did put in some effort to show different sides of them, another one of the points at which I feel this series is superior to the first season, even though the first season had much more action.
Rating: * (Good)

High School of the Dead – 09

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead



Well, I guess we all knew what this episode was going to introduce: the LOVE TRIANGLE. Generally, I hate those things because A) they’re annoying, B) go nowhere and C) they way too often get in the way of the real plot. It was a good episode overall, but at this pace I do hope that the final four episodes will remember that this series is focused on horror and fanservice. The romance should just be there to get the best out of the characters.

Either way though, it’s episodes like this that make High School of the Dead into more than just a gore and boob fest, because Saeko did get quite a bit of attention, and we learned a lot more about her. And to be honest, I actually liked the way that Takeshi developed his crush for Saeko a lot more than his angsty side who can’t get over a childhood crush who dumped him years ago.

That’s not to say that it was actually good romance of course, as according to anime logic it seems that whenever a guy and a girl are together in a tight situation they are 100% sure to fall in love. But still, I never started to watch this series for its realism. One thing that I am very glad of is that this series doesn’t try to be funny. The creators could have easily turned Takeshi into a horny peeping pervert in this episode with a stupid grin on his face, but they didn’t. The creators could easily have made the most horrible puns and fanservice jokes throughout the series, but instead they knew that those jokes suck in 99% of the cases. Instead, the jokes they do make either work decently, or are harmless enough to ignore.
Rating: * (Good)

Sengoku Basara – 20

by psgels, posted in Sengoku Basara



As much as I like the soundtrack of Shiki, I do not consider it to be the best of the Summer Season. The soundtrack for Sengoku Basara is just epic, especially after this episode showed that it can also hold its ground in the quiet and subtle scenes. I’m also not sure who that singer was who popped up in the middle, but she has a great voice.

Also, colour me surprised here. At the start of this series, I really thought that this was going to be an action series. As in: we get a bunch of exciting battles every episodes. As it turns out though, I was wrong: this series tries to be much more than just brainless action. This was the second episode in a row that didn’t spend any attention on any kind of action scenes, and instead it again focused on its character background and building up. The side characters may not have developed much, but there is actually quite a bit of character development amongst the main ones, especially Date Masamune and Yukimura, but also Toyotomi changed compared to the flashbacks we see him in in this episode.

The first season tried this too, but the key mistake it made was that it didn’t feel like it was building up to anything. The arcs were all seemingly unrelated, and not really that interesting. But yeah, at the same time I do have to agree: it did lay out the foundation for this second season to work with. Without that first season, this second season would not be as solid as it is now. I still blame it for being boring, though.

In any case, with so much build up, that final quarter had better be awesome. This series may not be the next Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto, but I’m still enjoying it a lot. I expected to get bored when I realized that this episode again wouldn’t involve fighting, but this didn’t turn out to be the case.
Rating: * (Good)

Durarara – 12,5

by psgels, posted in Durarara



Most DVD-specials are simple side-stories. This one is too, but in this case I really recommend it because it was everything that made the first half of Durarara so addictive. It doesn’t have anything to do with the main storyline, but it’s a really fun ride from beginning to end.

I’m not sure whether this is an anime original chapter or a side-story taken from the light novels, but whoever it came from, they really went all out here. The time line was more screwed than ever. Because of that, the first scenes of the episodes are completely random and nonsensical, but as the episode goes on they all fall wonderfully into place. There are some great plot twists too, I especially had to laugh when the creators explained the source behind those sparkly ufos. The only thing I didn’t get was that really weird Daffy Duck laugh at the five minute mark…

Central to the plot were a number of mysterious red bags that kept travelling from one place to the other in this episode, and even though they mostly served to confuse the viewer rather than the characters apart from the Americans, it worked really well, considering how different their contents were. I also loved how ridiculously cheesy those American thugs were: their accent was horrible, and yet they had no problem pronouncing Japanese names. Ah heck, for all we know they could all be Japanese people who are forced to talk in English for their jobs. Oh, and Isaac and Miria made their comeback again!

Mikado and the others had no purpose whatsoever in the story, but I still like how the creators found something interesting for them to do, just portraying them hanging out and doing nothing with strange ears on. The TV-series should have had more scenes like those.

Speaking of which, yeah. I now fully understand why I didn’t like the second half as much as I would have liked: it had none of this addictive pacing, and instead went for a very straightforward style of storytelling without pretty much any kind of warning. It tried to make up for this with its character-development, but that just wasn’t enough. A second season would completely fix the problems I have with it, though at this point this seems unlikely, considering how the director has already moved on to a new series Kuragehime. I’m really looking forward to what he can do with a josei-series, though at the same time it looks to be one of the weakest premises he worked on for a long while. I don’t really like the thought of yet another one of those otaku-aimed shows. On the brighter side though, I just discovered that the Series Composition Guy has this habit of completely disregarding his original source material, so we might be in for something completely different from the original manga it’s based on. That provides opportunities, both good and bad.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

High School of the Dead – 08

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead



I still believe that these are some really strange zombies. I mean, usually from zombies you’d expect the mindset of “humans tasty. rawr”. The zombies here however… they only respond to certain sounds, and even then they just have this tendency to not move for any period of time. I guess that this is a bit of a problem that came from adapting this thing from manga to anime: I imagine that it may have been plausible in the manga, but in anime form it’s getting a bit ludicrous.

The climax of this episode was a bit weird in more ways than just that. I mean, beyond the zombies: the characters could easily have jumped over the fence and run away. Sure, they would have lost the car, but at least they would still be alive. What kept them from doing that? Sheer fear? And yet… the soundtrack in this episode and especially in the final quarter of this episode was the best of this series so far. What this episode lacked in sense it actually made up with its tension.

This episode also put a lot of attention on the guns this time, especially with the way in which Hirono had to explain the workings and details of all of them. The fanservice… was just crazy. Ah well, at least it was creative. My main problem with fanservice is that it often is cheap, completely pointless and annoying, but that was nowhere near the case here.
Rating: * (Good)

Sengoku Basara – 19

by psgels, posted in Sengoku Basara



Well, I think that this is the curse of this series: build up. This was another episode with just four minute of fighting, with the rest of the airtime devoted to building up. We know at this point that this has awesome results: just look at the previous episode. Unlike the first season, the build up here actually gets realized, and is more than worth it. But yeah, this episode wasn’t much special.

I mean, seriously: it’s obvious right now that the creators are preparing themselves for the showdown between Toyotomi, Masamune and Yukimura. At this point it’s really making sure that these guys have enough to show in that final episodes. Those are two episodes that I’m really looking forward to. At the same time, what could have made this series even better was if the creators would have found a way to make these kinds of episodes exciting as well. That is what really would have made this into an awesome action series.

I’m not sure what to think of that guy with the really weird haircut. At this point, I’ve seen too little of him, though the fight against him was a bit disappointing. As an ally against Toyotomi though, he might prove to be interesting.

Oh, and there’s a new ED. It’s a shame that the singer has this really cheesy voice because I like the visuals. They fit the series well, and it captures the different subplots of the second season very nicely.
Rating: * (Good)

High School of the Dead – 07

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead



… they really are going to remain in those outfits for the rest of the series, right? Ah well, I guess it’s nowhere as bad as in the previous episode, and this is something that should have been expected from this series from the start. What matters is the atmosphere: as long as that one’s good, I’ll be happy with this series. When the fanservice gets in the way of this atmosphere, that’s when I’m going to start whining.

This episode did its job well: the city is in a complete chaos and people are continuing to kill each other. People who once were kind now are just looking out for each other. The lead characters are one of the very few who are in the position in which they can really use their heads and start saving people, because they ran into a house with enough supplies and guns to take care of themselves. And I really liked the part in which the characters decided to save that little girl. The CG-zombies were one thing, but the atmosphere and music was very good there. The insert songs also worked surprisingly well. I’d only wish that the creators would have been more subtle with that peeing scene, but why am I expecting subtlety from this series?

This is pretty much wishful thinking on my part, but I’d love to see an epilogue of this series, after everything is over. Like, at the end of the final episode of this series we get a quick view of what the world is going to look like, one year from now. Whether humanity survived, or that there were still no organized actions taken against the zombies. I’d love to see the creators’ take on that, even though I know that that’s far from the focus of this series.
Rating: * (Good)