Category: Finished Series: Action

Some Quick First Impressions: Sengoku Basara Two, Asobu ni Iku Yo! and Boku Otaryman

by psgels, posted in Sengoku Basara, Some Quick First Impressions

Sengoku Basara Two

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is very loosely based on a famous historical figure.
Hell yeah! Best soundtrack of the season! A series that once was a dull samurai adventure has now become an epic hot blooded action series. The original Sengoku Basara had great ideas and intentions, but also a very soul-less direction that succumbed under its own expectations, so I wasn’t that fond of the announcement of a sequel. But heck, the new director really turned this kitty into a tiger. The creators got rid of a lot of the CG, which also really helps. The clashes between guys with superpowers for once is done justice, with over the top speeches and a snappy direction that for once makes the over the top powers of these people awesome, rather than just over the top. As for the story, the original series had a lot of intrigue, but it was all just so boring because it was so bad at building up tension. That’s not going to be a problem with the sequel though, based on this episode, so I see no way in which it won’t be able to beat its predecessor.
OP…um…ED…um…Insert Song in the Middle: Definitely fun, energetic and epic.
Potential: 85%

Asobu ni Iku Yo!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character’s harem include a best friend, rich silent girl, alien.
You know what? The plot of this thing wasn’t half bad. This episode focused a lot on the build-up of a campy action series, full of evil organizations with weird chat-rooms, high school girls who look dumb and cute, but are actually what seems like terrorists, an alien landing on earth. This wouldn’t be half bad as an entertaining action series if it can deliver the things that it promised in this episode. But yeah, who am I kidding? Every single part of this episode that involved the lead character was utterly terrible. His acting, the way that girls flock to his side for no particular reason (he already has a harem of three girls here, none of which are given any attempts at explanation), his character is horrendously dull. It’s basically AIC and its harems again. As for the lead female… imagine having a cat grow boobs. That’s pretty much her.
ED: Dull ballad.
Potential: 20%

Boku Otaryman

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an otaku and salaryman. Hence, otaryman.
So, this OVA got released back in January, but I figured that it’s not too late to take a look at it now that it’s finally gotten subbed. Otaryman is another one of those unfunny comedies, aimed at otaku, but with a slight twist: for once it isn’t wish fulfillment. Instead, it’s a “this could be you” type of series. Its lead character is a complete loser, and this series knows it. It raises some nice points, but most of the time it drags on. If you’re not an otaku, then I don’t see any reason why you should check this one out.
OP: Catchy soundtrack, uninspired plot.
ED: Attempts at being funny that just aren’t.
Potential: 10%

Some Quick First Impressions: Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, High School of the Dead and Seitokai Yakuindomo

by psgels, posted in High School of the Dead, Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, Some Quick First Impressions

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the daughter of the head of some supernatural high school.
How awesome. This was everything a first episode should be! Funny, entertaining, tense, mysterious, intriguing, engaging, this episode was all of it. I was really afraid of the way that the promo material portrayed the lead characters, but there turned out to be no need to worry. The female lead at least is a very colourful character, and most importantly: this episode really wasted no time to delve into her background. It just went “screw carefully introducing characters and waiting with their background until the last minute. We’ve got only thirteen episodes here, you know!” This episode was full of weird and entertaining plot twists that had a ton of charms. The jokes were quite creative, and most importantly: while it definitely made its characters out to be a bunch of oddballs, it never turned them into idiots. Especially the part in which that ghost pretended to be the lead character’s dead father, she really saw through such a shallow trap immediately, instead of getting all sentimental about it. However, I do have one thing to say about this episode, and this is a pretty big issue: this clearly was a “let’s go all out with our first episode”-first episode. That is NO EXCUSE for the show to dull in after this. This has the potential to become a classic if all the episodes are of this caliber. However, will the creators really have enough material to make every single episode entertaining, or will they just descend into random fluff after this?
OP: Very neat art there.
ED: A decent ballad
Potential: 95%

High School of the Dead

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in a school full of ZOMBIES
Yeah, it’s pretty much like expected. The story itself has the depth of a paper bucket, we have a school zombie invasion and your average teen-aged lead happens to be one of the few who manages to escape, along with his love interest. There’s a ton of fanservice as well. Does that matter, though? Of course not! This is just one of those shows that knows exactly what it is: adrenaline. This episode was a great taste in what is about to come, with a tight and over the top atmosphere, with a lot of passion and overacting. Right from the start, this would be a series that’s going to sell itself with its action, and well, in this episode it accomplished its mission! On the cliche side of things, though: while there are definitely cliches here and there (the childhood promise being the worst of them), the lead characters for once aren’t actually useless or weak. the lead female practices martial arts, while the lead male has also showed that he can kick zombie ass.
OP: Decent J-rock, though nothing special.
ED: Again, decent j-rock.
Potential: 75%

Seitokai Yakuindomo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to be in the student council in a school with 90% females…. they’re not even trying anymore, are they?
Oh boy, oh boy! I hope that you’re a big fan of short-jokes, because this series surely has enough of them in its endless attempts to remind us that one of the characters is short. Seriously, the people from GoHands are terrific animators. So why the heck do they keep spending their time with these incredibly stupid premises? While not as bad as Princess Lover, Seitokai Yakuindomo is yet another one of those series in which we get to see cute girls with the depth of a paper bag parade around the screen, all around one male character who gets his usual harem. The jokes here… were terrible. They’re not funny, and some of them get repeated endlessly. I doubt that many people who visit this blog were planning to check this one out, but still: there are so many better shows of this kind. I don’t see anything that sets this series apart from its ilk.
OP: Glad to see that the jokes that the series plans to drag out in the rest of the series are even more terrible than what they showed in this episode.
ED: Obnoxious.
Potential: 0%

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood Review – 92,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood




Because the first season of Full Metal Alchemist went with its own story, it turned out to be one of the most famous anime of the decade, and the manga was finally about to finish, it maybe wasn’t much of a surprise that Bones ended up animating the story of the manga. And they really made sure to give it a top notch treatment here!

Especially in the past few years, the trend has grown in which series should consider themselves lucky if they can get 26 episodes, or even enough time to animate the entire story on which they’re based. Full Metal Alchemist is different, however: with 64 episodes, it received just the right length in order to tell the full story of the Full Metal Alchemist manga, and boy is it an awesome one!

The story here is completely different from the first season, but I ended up liking it a lot better with the different focus. It’s still focused on a ton of action-scenes, but the story around it is deep, well fleshed out and mature, especially for a series with many shounen elements. The world that the series is set in is well fleshed out, multi-layered and quite detailed.

Another huge focus of this series is the time it spent on characters preparing. With the epic nature of this series, a lot of time is actually spent on the lead characters, finding allies to help them. The cast of this series is huge, but everyone in this series has his or her own part to play in the large scheme of things. The length also allows the creators to really look at all of them and their motivations, backgrounds and purposes, in order to make all of them unique, with excellent results.

What you get is an epic action series with plenty of depth to come by, carefully paced and wrapped up in the end with a finale that’s full of adrenaline. However, you should note that the first fifteen episodes or so follow pretty much the same story as the first Full Metal Alchemist TV-series, and it’s clear that at that point, the creators try to get through these parts as fast as possible in order to get to the new material, compared to the very slowly paced first season.

It of course depends on how keen you’re into seeing the same things again, but there are some notable differences between the two. Brotherhood cuts some of the useless fluff of the first season away, like the moments that were just there to show contrived situations for the lead character to save the day, though it also cuts away a lot of the minor character-building scenes. Don’t worry though, because after 16 episodes, the series continues with a completely different story that in my eyes completely surpasses the original Full Metal Alchemist.

It’s a definite recommendation if you’re looking for something epic. Despite being 64 episodes, Bones keep a surprisingly good animation quality throughout the series, especially the action-scenes themselves look gorgeous for such a long series. The soundtrack also fully captures the grant atmosphere of the story, and will make sure for a show that will keep you entertained.

We here have a series that really made excellent use of its opportunity to finally show an epic story that goes beyond even 52 episodes, while always keeping on track and not losing itself somewhere in the middle. The creators had a really excellent manga to base themselves on, and even though they did not keep to the manga for 100%, the way they brought it to animation still deserves to be applauded.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Well paced and varied in the long run, exciting and engaging in the short run.
Characters: 9/10 – A ton of different characters, most of them get their chance to show off themselves and get some depth. Plenty of character-development as well.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Great animation from Bones, plus an excellent soundtrack.
Setting: 10/10 – Excellent in its depth and multiple layers, focusing both on the big picture as the individual details. Successfully brings many different stories together.

Suggestions:
– Bounen no Xamdou
– Vision of Escaflowne
– Nadia – The Secret of Blue Water

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 64

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



And so, this series is finally over. What a ride it’s been!

As an epilogue, this episode managed to wrap everything up pretty neatly. The future of some characters are very neatly detailed, while for the others it’s left to our imagination. It’s great to see that both Ed and Al have gone their own ways, where Ed chose to take it easy in order to be able to raise his family, while Al took more ambitious plans. Roy meanwhile grew a moustache and got a step closer to beconing the next fuhrer, while getting his sight back with the help of a philosopher’s stone provided by Marcoh.

I admit, at the beginning of this series I tended to complain a lot about Winry, but looking back, this mostly was due to the way that the first season treated her, than her role here. She was a fine love interest in this series, and the creators didn’t try to shoehorn her into the main plot at the last minute. Instead, they used Al and Mai (and Izumi and her husband too, I guess) for the bit of romantic tension, which strangely seemed to fit a whole lot more.

Anyway, I was quite surprised at the reactions I got last eek, when I said that I’d pretty much label this series in my top 5 of 2010, so let me elaborate a bit further on that. At this point, I still can’t decide what my favourite show of the past half year has been, and I’m very much doubting between the Armed Librarians, Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei and this series. Assuming that two more series of that same caliber appear in the upcoming half year (which is reasonable, I suppose), that’s how I came to make that statement about this series being top 5 worthy.

Full Metal Alchemist was indeed freaking epic, but the thing is: the Armed Librarians were also really epic in their own way. Yojou-han on the other hand may not have been epic, but it was a masterpiece nonetheless. These three all had their own points at which they stood out as memorable. Full Metal Alchemist did this with its length, detailed setting, cast of characters, and the way its action scenes had been written. In comparison though, if for example Bounen no Xamdou would have been 39 or 52 episodes long, I would not have rated it inferior to this series.

And don’t get me wrong, this isn’t one of those series like Gurren Lagann, Kanon or Haruhi in which I, while enjoying the series, do not agree that their popularity is deserved. Brotherhood realyl deserves all the popularity it’s getting, but granted, I have seen quite a number of series that made more of an impact on me.

I don’t think that this has to do with being shounen or seinen or what. I mean, with series like Les Miserables being labelled as kids’ series, and series as Koihime Musou labelled as seinen… do we really have to hold it against them when a series has shounen elements? Besides, if this really is a shounen series, it really was one of the damn best of its genre.

The fantasy action genre, along with science fiction, is very much my favourite genre out there, so my standards are really high for it. What this series didn’t have, which I did experience with other series of its genre, was this addictive style of storytelling that keeps you at the edge of your seat. The kind that keeps juggling all kinds of emotion at once. Full Metal Alchemist instead was like a bulldozer, especially near the end. Is that bad? Of course not! it’s still a freaking awesome series.
Rating: * (Good)

Kurenai OVA

by psgels, posted in Kurenai



Well… yeah. As it turns out, this is aimed entirely at the fans of the manga. None of the things that made the anime so memorable return, and instead we’re stuck with an episode of random hi-jinks and fanservice. Blegh.

In the end, this OVA turned out to consist out of three random, unrelated stories. In the first, everyone is at a pool in which some sort of terrorist fails with a very flimsy plan. The second story is entirely focused on a broken laptop and the third forces the characters to go exercising. It’s all way too forced, especially that third part, and all of the dialogue feels incredibly shallow and pointless.

I love the way how the original series really tried to improve on the manga and made it much more mature, especially with its excellent voice acting. But yeah, with this OVA that actually tries to be faithful to the manga… everyone feels completely out of character. Shinkurou gets reduced to an obnoxious teenager, Yuuno has transformed into a walking boob-joke, Murasaki’s bodyguard has turned into an obsessed caretaker and Murasaki herself changed from a kid who was way too mature for her age into something that more resembles a cute mascot character. Overall, it makes me even more glad to see the huge changes that the anime made.

And it’s not like this OVA was funny either. And to think that the anime featured one of the best filler episodes out there.
Rating: — (Lacking)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 63

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



Aha, so the creators really reserved the 64th episode for the aftermath of the series. This really was meant to be the climax of Full Metal Alchemist. Interestingly,t he creators chose not to end it with a bang, but rather tone down the action in order to focus on the main characters. Father really was already defeated at the end of the previous episode. This episode was really meant to wrap everything up: show the end of Father, and resolve the plot thread of Ed and Al getting their body back.

As expected, the characters found some sort of loophole in order to get Al’s body back. This time, the loophole was the door. We learn that every character has a door of alchemy, and apparently Ed knew that he could trade that in, instead of offering another of his limbs to get back to Al.

As for the budget, well, the creators were lucky that a lot of this episode was about a bunch of simple shapes (Greed, Flask (as I’ll call him for now, as “The inhabitant of the Flask” is a bit too long), God), so they could really plan the best of their budget to the previous action-packed view. The final confrontation between Flask was a worthy climax for the series, even though he already had been defeated.

One thing I did not understand was Hohenheim, though. Why did he end up dying? Was it because Father sucked all of the philosopher’s stones out of him or something?

Overall though, this has been an awesome series. It’s not among my favourites, but it still was a wonderful ride. I really hope that Bones is going to adapt more manga in the same way in the future.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Black Lagoon – Roberta’s Blood Trail – 01

by psgels, posted in Black Lagoon




And so, after more than three years we finally get to see the continuation of Black Lagoon, and the creators decided to put the focus back on fan favourite Roberta. Personally, I loved that first season. The second season was a bit less, since I found that it lost sight of its big picture, but to be honest, I did have some strange biases back then. As an action-series, it still delivered like hell.

In any case, the third season starts off really well with a clear attempt to give more depth to Roberta, while also going for the most action-packed scenario possible. The real challenge for the creators is to balance them out well: deliver the solid action while at the same time not forgetting that they’re supposed to tell a story and fleshing out a character.

You can see that this really is an OVA for the fans. While this definitely had its own story, it also contains a ton of homages to the first seasons. There’s the obvious as Roberta, but here the creators introduced another maid with awesome fighting skills. And seriously: how many times has that pub been destroyed by now? It’s like there’s some sort of curse on it. And I wonder how the owner manages to fix it up every time again.

What impressed me a lot here was the animation. You can really see that Madhouse paid a lot of attention to it. The character-models may not be the most crisp here, but I hardly spotted any still frames. There really is a ton of movement, along with a large number of creative poses and camera angles that at the same time don’t try to overdo it. The action itself was also really well animated and coordinated.

overall though, an excellent start. I’m not yet sure whether the story will work out, but at least we’re certain of one hell of an action-packed OVA. This episode provided enough hints for that. But hey, there actually was quite a bit of build-up in this episode, so we might indeed be in for something awesome here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
OP: A remix of the first OP. Again, part of playing to the fans of the series.
ED: Clever. You start with the first notes of the first ED, only to turn to something completely different. works really well.

Oh, and on a side-note: I’m glad that Dutch and Bennie seem to be playing a bigger role again

Durarara Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Durarara




I personally like those series who manage to make their setting come alive, and Durarara turned out to be quite a fine attempt in this. In the middle of Ikeburkuro, it intertwines the stories of all kinds of interesting people as they live their daily lives. From seemingly average teenagers to invincible fighting machines to Russian waiters at a sushi restaurant.

It’s at its best when it can really intertwine these stories with its a-linear pacing. Especially the first half of the series manages to bring a lot of colour to the combination of different characters that parade the screen. It’s fairly episodic, but that format really allows the creators to show a lot of different things about its setting.

A lot of character-development can be found in the second half, which for better and for worse, is completely different to these colourful first parts. The story becomes a lot more linear, it becomes a lot darker and a lot more straightforward. Personally I’m a big fan of character-development when used right, but it felt to me that in this part, the creators sacrificed a bit too much for the sake of this character-development. Be prepared for a number of characters who tend to act rather illogical, refusing to solve problems that can simply be solved by talking to each other. Personally, for me it just wasn’t as good as this first half: it lacked energy, and it tried to look a bit too much like Baccano, which it most definitely wasn’t.

The animation varies throughout the series. It really starts off excellent, and especially the background art is gorgeous, though you can see that the budget becomes a little tighter as the series goes on, and more shortcuts show up. The music is also pretty good, and it has some excellent tracks for both the lighter parts and the darker ones.

Overall, this series has been created by the creators of Baccano, and the director had done a ton of other stuff including Jigoku Shoujo, Fancy Lala, Natsume Yuujinchou and Koi Kaze. Durarara isn’t among the best of them, and in that way it turned into a bit of a disappointment. From most other directors however, this series would have been gold. It suffers a bit with its characters (quite a few of them have their unlikable moments), it has a bit of a wonky pacing in the second half, but it has a pretty inventive plot, a ton of nice ideas and while not the best, it’s definitely worth your time.

Storytelling: 8/10 – The disjointed format in the first half has a great effect, so much that it feels empty when it’s not there in the second half. Tries to give too much pointless hints to Baccano.
Characters: 8/10 – Some characters are well developed, but the show ends too fast to actually use this, and others remain rather stereotypes. The teenagers aren’t really that likable throughout large parts of the series.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Some great stuff, some standard stuff.
Setting: 9/10 – Ikebukuro (a neighbourhood in Tokyo) is well fleshed out and especially comes to life in the first half, but also gets well fleshed out in the second half with a number of pretty interesting ideas and concepts.

Suggestions:
– Birdy the Mighty Decode
– Kaze no Youjinbo
– Mobile Police Patlabor

Durarara – 24

by psgels, posted in Durarara



This episode did exactly what the past arc should have been doing for bloody ages now: having people actually talk to each other. So yeah, I liked this ending quite a bit.

I expected something epic or over the top, but this works too. The conflict between the yellow scarves was actually solved quite quickly. There were a couple of bugs here and there, like how Shizuo knew where those punks would flee to, but overall I liked how the Dollars were indeed still acting on their own even though the website had shut down, and that under the lead of Kyohei they organized a mob to get back at the yellow scarves. It’s interesting to see that in the end, they did go to the path of violence.

But I liked what happened afterwards best. It allowed everything to wrap up for the series’ conclusion, so that it could leave an as good impression behind as possible. That particular background tune with the flutes also finally returned, as if to suggest: everything is back and peaceful like it used to be, yet characters have visibly matured and moved on. The past arc would have been perfect as a middle arc to flesh out characters, though not so much as a conclusion. It just lacked the energy and variety of the first half for that for me. I really appreciate that Brains Base is finally getting to work on 24 episoded series instead of just single season series, but it still isn’t enough I’m afraid. I’ve said this plenty of times by now, but there really need to be more series that go beyond 26 episodes.

Overall, Durarara certainly isn’t my favourite series from the director Takahiro Omori, but nevertheless it was pretty good. My main problem was that it just failed to live up to my own expectations, for which I only have myself to blame. Oh, reviewing the entire series is going to be quite difficult.
Rating: * (Good)

Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood – 62

by psgels, posted in Full Metal Alchemist - Brotherhood



So this is it: the big battle against the final villain. The key is of course to get the plot to come together at the same time, rather than just showing a bunch of yelling and flashy beams for episodes after each other. This episode passed with flying colours. It yet again had my attention from beginning to end.

Interestingly enough, this has a ton of parallels to the ending of the first Full Metal Alchemist. I’m going to discuss those now, so those who have yet to see it: SPOILER ALERT.

In the first season, Al TOO sacrificed himself for Ed, also with a bit of help from a small plot-hole. In this episode: how did Al know exactly how to go to the gate all of a sudden? In the first season meanwhile, the concepts of the Philosopher’s stone was a lot more vague than in brotherhood. It was much more mythical and mysterious, rather than the strictly defined powers it gives you in the Brotherhood series. As a result, the circumstances here are much more detailed than the ending of the first season, in which Ed dies then Al offers his life to save Ed who then offers his life again for Al. Here, Al acts out of desperation, as a way to prevent Ed from getting killed by offering him his arm back now that Ed no longer has a reason to not have his arm (I guess that that means that it immediately returns the arm to the original owner).

You can also see this contrast between the two series in the portrayal of “God”: in the first series it was all powerful, it was always there to punish those who messed around with human transmutation but nobody actually knew who he was or where he came from. In Brotherhood however, he’s a gigantic eyeball in an eclipse who designed a totally logical world in which people get to travel to a gate dimension when they attempt to transmute humans. Ed’s arm is more like a sacrifice to get to somewhere (the truth), rather than just a punishment.

Aside from that, a lot of this episode was just about everyone, who could fight from long range, whether main characters, side characters or even nameless soldiers, hacking away at Father to try and break that guy’s barrier. I loved how this episode gradually played out and broke this barrier of his to the point where he eventually snapped.

I think that the one character with the surprising amount of airtime that I totally did not expect was Mai Chang. I mean, she has been a vital side-character for the past episode ever since they started fighting Father, even more important than Roy Mustang. I think that part of the reason why the creators made her decide to go back with Envy was a way to develop her for later, on top of getting her involved back with the plot and story. You can certainly see that she’s very alert right now, much more than she was at the beginning of the series. Still, I would have liked to see at least a bit more of her backstory in the earlier episodes.
Rating: *** (Awesome)