Category: Finished Series: Action

Shikabane Hime – 17

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: Sougi and Itsuki tell about their background.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Now this is more like it! This is exactly the reason why I came to like the first season so much, and I’m glad to see that the second season is going to be more than a weak sequel of the first. Sure, this episode was much about a side-plot of this series, but a bit of background never hurts, and this episode definitely shows that the creators haven’t lost their touch, after the rather disastrous fanservice-problem of the previous three episodes.

This episode was all about Sougi and Itsuki, who in their early days looked suspiciously like your average shounen-lead-pair: a dorky male lead gets contacted by a female with power, in this case because Itsuki hit a truck and happened to form a contract with Sougi before she turned into a berserking Shikabane, complete with the introduction-scene at school (again…).

But thankfully there was much more to that episode than just that. While Itsuki wasn’t as tormented as Makina by revenge, the two of them had their own problem. Itsuki was practically a corpse, and yet Sougi saw her as a regular girl, without any special powers. This caused him the huge scars that he has on his body, simply because he wanted to protect Itsuki from getting hurt, even though she could simply regenerate her wounds, while he couldn’t.

So, yes. The fanservice was definitely a problem, but this series does know what it is: entertainment. As much as I’ve ranted on these past three episodes, they never failed to entertain me, and especially this episode was full of adrenaline, even though there were plenty of quiet parts. If the creators can keep the same mood for the rest of the series, with Makina’s storyline and all, then I’ll call this second season a success.

The next episode should be either fun or a complete disaster: Makina is being transported by a group of monks, without Ouri, and suddenly one of the seven stars attacks, impersonating Keisei. Let’s see where that one goes.

Bonen no Xamdou – 24

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: This episode is all about Midori
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
This episode was quite an interesting take on the “calm before the storm”-trope. The big climax of this series has definitely still to happen: the Zanbani and Kujireika have yet to even arrive at the village of the Quickening Chamber, and yet this episode formed an excellent conclusion for the Midori-storyline. We’ve already seen that Xam’ds can be pulled out of despair with the right catalysts, so of course the same would happen with Midori. The past few episodes have been a bit too generous on the death count, so it’s good to see that people actually survive, despite the predictability.

It really seemed that Midori never really got to say a proper goodbye with her mother, and it also seems that the communication between the two wasn’t going well. Because of that, Midori always felt a big gap between the two of them, since she didn’t know what to say at the right time and her mother was an impatient person.

I´m really curious as to whether this series can pull off a worthy finale. It might seem obvious that series that are slow and focus a lot on build-up will automatically feature excellent climaxes, but as series as Ghost Hound showed, this isn’t always trivial. It’s all going to depend on how the creators are going to interpret the fight between Akiyuki and the Hiruken Emperor, and whether they can throw in some juicy plot twist that fit within the series and make the ending rushed.

In any case, the animation in this episode was so awesome. I’m not sure where Bones got the budget for this series, but it’s one heck of a budget well spent.

Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai – 02

by psgels, posted in Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai



Short Synopsis: Munto continues to try and get Yumemi over to his world, while Yumemi has her own problems to take care of.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Hehe, you were expecting Ride Back at this spot, no? To be honest, so did I before I watched Ride Back’s second episode, but then I started thinking: the show has 12 episodes, of which the first two were slow introductions that hardly did anything besides setting up the premise. It’s going to be a show about some teenagers riding motorbikes who somehow become involved in a huge war. How the heck are the creators going to get some good development in only 12 episodes? This is Madhouse we’re talking about: compared to some of its previous series Ride Back just isn’t as interesting.

Besides, the lack of realism really became jarring in that second episode: nobody finds it strange that these Ride Back things simply drive around INSIDE BUILDINGS? Nobody tries to complain about the noise that these machines cause? Nobody finds it strange that these machines tend to break down and crash a lot? Nah, I’d rather see a bunch of elves beating the hell out of each other.

So I’ve yet to see the Munto OVAs, but apparently I don’t need to do that anymore since the first episode copied about 80% of its content. That episode reminded me a lot of a poorer version of Noein’s first episode, with the big difference being that Noein spent lots of time in its first episode to flesh out the cast before diving into the action, while Munto dived straight into the action without letting the viewer get to know the characters.

Well, that problem was partially solved by this episode, which was very un-typical of your average second episode. Most of the second episodes after a huge eventful first episode are deliberately slow, in order to explain what the heck went on in the show’s start. Munto instead deliberately chooses to slow down the pacing, but doesn’t attempt to explain much. Instead, it starts fleshing out the lead characters. I especially was surprised that they immediately showed the story for one of Yumemi’s friends.

I also like that the creators are using the Noein approach. With most series where the lead character is transported into some sort of other world, the connection between these is really something sacred: it can only be crossed once, and the conditions for someone to cross are very vague and only serve as a plot device to get the lead character involved with the plot. In Munto instead that link is fleshed out a bit more, and it looks like it can be breached more often. Seeing as how Yumemi’s friends are going to be important characters in this series too, I expect that either the series will take place mostly in the real world with your occasional trips to the elf world, or Munto is somehow going to kidnap the three of them at the same time.

Now, about the lesser parts of this series… we have a delinquent who gets saved by a cute girl and they end up marrying. Am I the only one who was reminded of a certain other Kyoani series? I also fear that most of the elves are going to lack in personality: this episode hardly focused any attention on them.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 40

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: The Ptolemy is tracked down and the innovators again continue their attack, while Setsuna is away and injured.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Haha! Finally the thing that I’ve been anticipating the most in this series happened: the coup d’etat. Now the fun is really going to start. Let’s see whether that was something that the innovators took into account. My guess is that they too never saw it coming, otherwise they wouldn’t be unleashing an attack at the last possible minute. This coup is definitely going to take care of the one-sidedness of the politics so far in the second season so far (with A-Laws being the equivalent of an evil empire and all).

I’m also glad that in this episode, Saji and Louise finally knew their place: simply as side characters. The battle in this episode put them against each other again, but instead of completely claiming all of the focus their scenes were short and to the point. That’s definitely making their appearance a whole lot more bearable.

The big focus of this episode instead was on Setsuna and Marina, who got to spend some quality time together. Let’s hope that this is going to inspire her to actually DO something relevant to the plot (in fact, it’s going to be interesting to see how Kataron is going to evolve after the coup).

And it has also finally happened: Celestial Beings aren’t the only ones with a Trans-am anymore, and I can already see the system being mass produced before the end of the series, degrading Lockon and Allelujah’s mobile suits to your average custom suits. Tieria’s special powers also have been pretty much useless throughout the series, so the only advantage that the celestial beings have right now is 00-Riser’s mysterious communication powers. Unlike the first season, there’s really not much room anymore for the creators to give any upgrades to the Gundams, so right now it’s going to be a matter of seeing how long they can survive.

Unlike certain other Sunrise series, this show has already shown that this is a series where people die when they’re killed, so the corpses should start falling pretty soon. After all, Gundam 00 has been a show with many references to past Gundam series (and at the same time it managed to keep its own identity, unlike Gundam Seed which if I understood correctly simply completely copied the UC timeline), so I doubt that the creators aren’t going to ignore Tomino’s “nickname”.

Birdy the Mighty Decode – 15

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode



Short Synopsis: Birdy meets her childhood friend again.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Whoa!

I somewhat expected that the second season would be better than the first, but such a huge difference in quality, I never saw coming. The first two episodes were quiet and set up the basic premise for this series, with lots of Senkawa behind his teen-aged self. The second season however, immediately jumps into the action, the animation is consistently awesome, rather than usually average with awesome animation for the big action-scenes. Seriously, it looks like the second season is going to top the first season in just about every aspect, and with a bit of luck it’s going to be the best of the sequels that started airing in this Winter-season.

But my favourite change: Senkawa. The past two episodes showed no intention whatsoever to drag on his romantic relationship. In fact, it’s time for Birdy to have her romance, and that one’s also looking much more interesting than the romance of the first season. On top of that, Senkawa is now more experienced in love matters, so he can actually give Birdy a bit of advice here and there.

This episode also showed: the director of this series definitely also did Noein. The animation was fantastic, even during the quiet parts the characters are drawn in a very messy style, but this way they gestures and motions have extra expressivity, and they really make the cast come alive this time. It doesn’t make for the best screenshots, though. ^^;

I also love it when the writers go creative with ring-tones. It may be something small, but it’s fun to see what kind of tune the character in question has chosen, and it’s even small things like these that add to the fleshing out the character. It’s amazing how Natoru has only appeared for 2 episodes, and he already feels like a regular member of the cast. Especially during the big fight scene at the end of this episode. That was seriously brutal! Seriously, this second season has buckets of potential.

Some quick first Impressions: Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai, Catman and Genji Monogatari Sennenki

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki, Some Quick First Impressions, Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai

Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has the power to save a strange country of elf-people.
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (If the shows I’m planning to blog turn out bad, I’m going for this one)
Ooh, very nice! Kyoani is finally getting a bit out of its comfort zone. Sure, this series is just a rehash of one of their earliest franchises, but it’s at least a step along the way to get them to adapt something actually other than high school series (with the first step obviously being Clannad’s After Story). Overall I’d love to have seen the studio going for something completely new, but there’s no doubt about the potential of the Munto remake. This episode set the foundations of an epic storyline in a pretty interesting parallel world, with pretty nice animated effects that know when to be subtle and when to be over the top. What this series needs to do now is make its cast of characters a bit more interesting. All I saw in this episode was a bunch of people that are fighting a bunch of other people, and those other people are about to find a girl who can help them fight against those people. They lack an identity so far, despite their distinctive character-designs: give them more sides, life goals, motivations, weaknesses, whatever. Make them interesting!

Catman

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a solitary humanoid cat.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (But an interesting short nonetheless)
So, inspired by Touhou’s animation project (and trying to find something to cover so that I wouldn’t have to wait until the 24th before being able to post this entry…) I started looking for other short and experimental animation works. Eventually I fond this nice series of flash animations, called Catman. They’re basically a series of short videos without spoken dialogue, about a city of cat-people, following the titular Catman as he lives his life and gets himself into trouble. It’s nice and down to earth, but what especially caught my attention was the soundtrack that fully consists out of catchy ska-songs, which really works and creates a very nice mood for this series. Apparently, it also won some awards, so if you ever have the chance to watch something of this, then it’s a nice way to spend 3 minutes.

Genji Monogatari Sennenki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character grows up as the daughter of a prestigious household.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Noitamina + Feudal Japan + Osamu Dezaki? Hell yeah!)
Oh boy, this one’s going to get popular. When Ultraviolet already received so much hate, I don’t want to know how badly the character-designs of Genji Monogatari will be received. Still, I don’t care! This episode had by far the best visuals of the Winter season. Uniting Noitamina with Osamu Dezaki was a large gamble, but it really worked out so far. The pacing in this episode is slow, and yet lots of stuff has already happened and already two characters have received quite a bit of depth. With only 11 episodes, this series really wasts no scene, and I’m predicting lots of great stuff for the rest of this series.

Shikabane Hime – 16

by psgels, posted in Shikabane Hime



Short Synopsis: Ouri continues with his training to not die.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
The fanservice…. wtf… This series was supposed to be subtle. What the heck is up with the new ED? Why does the first scene of this episode start with a naked Makina? Seriously, I don’t mind a bit of fanservice here and there (the first season was pretty much fine here), but this is really becoming too much…

Nevertheless, this episode did well in exploring one of the main themes of the second season (besides the fanservice, that is): the relationship between a Shikabane Hime and her contractor. That’s another advantage of having so many Shikabane pairs as in this series: they all have a different relationship between themselves. They’re also equally important, and it’s not like the lead combo of Ouri and Makina gobbles up all of the attention in this series. The first season also had a number of annoying parts, so there’s still plenty of potential left for this series to work with. It’s a good thing that it’s still continuing to develop its characters, and that’s the most important part here.

I must say that Makina turned out to be completely different in the second season from what I imagined of her. Now that she lost the one she could depend on, she’s really totally lost it. Her quest to avenge her own death gets mixed up with a quest to avenge Keisei, up to the point where she loses sight of what’s best for herself. It’s going to be easy whether the creators can pull the scene between her and Ouri, where she finally accepts him as her contractor, off without any cheese.

Bonen no Xamdou – 23

by psgels, posted in Bonen no Xamdou



Short Synopsis: The Southern Government launches its attack on the village where the Xam’ds are gathering.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (It’s finally beginning!)
Woo! It’s finally time for this series’ finale to start, and amazingly, every single plot and character is starting to come together again. The only one we’re still missing here is Furuichi, and I wonder whether the guy is going to show up in the end, or whether the creators really killed him off. Still, this series is definitely something else, when it’s been so well planned.

So, the Zanbani is finally airborne again, Nakiami and Yango finally arrived at the battlefield, the Hiruken emperor finally awakened due to a screw up from Benikawa, and Midori also was released on the battlefield at the end of the episode. All that’s left to wonder is what Akiyuki and Haru are going to do there. Something really tells me that the creators have saved their biggest parts for the end of the series, and smartly kept them away from most of the action, in order to prevent them from becoming clichéd lead characters, which always have to be at the centre of everything. And I must say, that it works really well. What I love of the two of them is that they complement each other’s weaknesses: Haru has received military training, so she’s more capable of handling the flying bikes and all, while Akiyuki is more mature and mentally stable, so he can give her support on that area.

But the big event of this episode was of course Raigyo’s death, and again I really liked the subtlety of that scene. It was just of the right length, and while emotionally powerful it didn’t go through huge lengths to squeeze some extra tears out of it, or making Raigyo into one of these characters who takes forever to die. That scene was of just the right length, and on top of that it also showed a bit of Benikawa’s background.

With three episodes left, the finale is one that promises to go all out. I really wonder how that one’s going to work out, when everything that this series has built up is finally coming together.

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – 39

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam 00



Short Synopsis: Gundam goes Macross as the Ptolemy needs to escape last episode’s battlefield.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Haha! I knew it! Sunrise is really planning to make this the next Gundam Wing: a coup d’etat is brewing inside A-Laws, and the way it looks like it’s actually going to be well executed. I remember how the rebel forces in Gundam Wing came from bloody nowhere, but in this series it’s instead carefully introduced, before it finally can hit its climax. At this point, I can only wonder how the creators can bring back Marina Ismael to the Relena-clone that she once was…

This episode was also great in terms of original content. I like the added bit of irony that Ribbons was the one who scouted Setsuna in the first place, and made him a Gundam Pilot. That also just show that innovators age a bit different from normal human beings. Either that or Rivonze was a very gifted child…

Then there’s of course the Macross-ish singing, which for once didn’t save a good guy, but rather kept a villain alive. I’m really not a fan of the invisible speakers that Marina somehow managed to conjure out of nowhere, but he idea is nice and I wonder how far the creators can bring it. At the moment, the Gundams are at the top of their abilities, and I don’t think that they’re going to get much stronger than they are now, so it’s now up to A-Laws (and the future rebels who plan the coup d’etat) to catch up with them in terms of technology again, and this episode showed the first steps to it, in terms of Mister Bushido’s new mobile suit. I have a strong suspicion that he’s one of the people planning the Coup d’etat, especially because of his connections with Zechs.

Also, there seems to be indeed a spy on board of the Ptolemy, but it doesn’t seem to be Anew Returner. It’s probably someone who’s been in the shadows for a while… how about the new girl who replaced Lichty in the second season?

As expected, this episode showed the new OP, while we have to wait an episode for the new ED. And as expected, it’s a nice song with nice visuals, but nothing really special. It’s a pity, since Gundam Wing was the one with the best OPs of any Gundam I’ve seen so far.

Some quick first Impressions: Birdy The Mighty Decode 2, Major 5th Season and Kemono no Souja Erin

by psgels, posted in Birdy the Mighty Decode, Some Quick First Impressions

Birdy the Mighty Decode 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets assigned to track down a bunch of escaped convicts.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Hell yeah!)
Whoa, a bit theme of the sequels this season seems to be angsting over what happened at the end of its previous season: first Shikabane Hime, then Druaga no Tou, and now this one. Still, Birdy the Mighty did this the best of the three, simply because it had so many other things to do in this episode so that Senkawa didn’t have too much time to remember Nakasugi. And unlike the previous two, this series has yet to show what it can really do with its potential. This episode promised a grand story, lots of new characters were introduced and some characters who seemed as mere fillers in the first season show up again as well. The new OP and ED are also much better, there’s a brand new OST, so overall all signs point in the direction that the second season is going to be much better than the first. Just, what was up with that strange insert song at the end?

Major 5th Season

Short Synopsis: Our lead character spent the fourth season in a foreign country and finally arrived back home, it seems.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Yet to see the first four seasons…)
Seriously, is there no end to the sequels this Winter-season? In any case, I watched this episode in an attempt to get motivated to watch the first season. So, it’s a bit unfortunate that there was hardly any baseball whatsoever in this episode, but nevertheless I enjoyed the quiet mood of the episode. The characters were nostalgic about things that I obviously never saw, but it nevertheless was an enjoyable episode. I might try to follow this fifth season, depending on how long it remains interesting to me and whether it can prove to be significantly different from One Outs (since two baseball shows airing at the same time may be a bit too much).

Kemono no Souja Erin

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets is the daughter of a famous dragon caller
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (It would be 100% if it wasn’t for the producers)
Now this is what I’m talking about! This series is definitely the most creative and original out of the new shows that aired this season. I love the stylized look of the main character, or the very stylish animation when the dragons attacked. The slice of life moments in this series were also wonderful, though there’s one big problem with this series: its creators. I took a small look at the different staff members that are working on this series and it looks like we’ve got the worst people on the Production IG-arsenal working on it: Trans Arts. While I liked Wellber when it aired, I now see that it was way too cheesy, Toshokan Sensou was unbalanced and Chocolate Underground was just plain bad, and they still get to produce series? Why hasn’t Production IG simply fired them, and more importantly: what happened to their good people? Did they all quit at the same time to join Madhouse, or something? I loved this episode, but I can already see it going downhill: the series composition was done by the guy who did the series composition of Real Drive and Blood, and the production coordination was done by the guy who did the production coordination of Saiunkoku Monogatari and The Twelve Kingdoms: all excellent stories on themselves, but the former two were really unbalanced, and the latter two had no conclusion, and I have enough reasons to believe that these people were directly responsible for their series’ respective flaws. Just think what might happen once you combine them all into one series!