Category: Rinne no Lagrange

This was a strange turn of events. The first half of this episode was great: I complain about how Lan’s brother needs more attention, and there the creators go: they put him in the spotlights. On top of that, this episode was about a talk between him and Vilagulio: they actually tried to talk things out, and that’s what makes this series so good: the characters don’t immediately turn to the “let’s beat stuff until problems go away”-solution.

And then that mysterious girl who has been showing up here and there arrived, and showed her true colors: amnesia, the mind of a 9-year-old and Vilagulio’s real sister. Will that really work for this series? The one thing I noticed in this episode was that she took away all reason: Vilagulio broke off the talks, and she seems to harbor a different personality that does the necessary magical stuff, because she sure as hell doesn’t remember strangling Madoka anymore.

Madoka and the others didn\t have much to do, but to make up for it they were quite funny, both with their disguises as when they were watching the talk between Lan’s brother and Vilagulio.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Nice)

So, the progress of the second season is again slow but steady. This was the kind of episode that just built up to one climax, and like the first season it put a lot of emphasis on random events (this time the alien trio tried to run a haunted house). The plot is definitely going somewhere though.

So, the Vos, when it tries to enter Rinne, has the power to destroy planets. This is quite a convenient solution to Dizelmine’s problem of the impending two planets that are going to be destroyed, and the main point of this series will be to prevent the war, while also solving the problems of these planets. Because of that, the characters are finally starting to research what the powers of the Vox actually entail to. So yeah, in this episode the characters actually start to experiment with world-destroying powers.

It was all quite intense. The episode started out with finally some good fanservice jokes again (which was definitely needed after those eels of last season), followed by a complete mood-switch when that giant red blob appeared. I liked this a lot, and this also shows that there is some kind of brain in that gate of Rinne, hinting at that it’s much more than just something really powerful.
Rating: (Great)

This episode was really good, although I’m still clueless on what the rest of its plot will be about. I mean there is this obvious war and Ran’s brother who needs to be stopped, on top of those strange Vox powers, but beyond that I have no clue how the creators plan to spice things up. At first I thought that this would be Muginami and Ran who continue to fight over Madoka, but that was solved in this episode by something that a lot of other teenaged pilots should do: by talking things out. So what’s next?

What I mean by this is: Rinne no Lagrange still needs something to make it stand out in its second half. Aquarion had its bizarre fanservice, Mouretsu Pirates had its huge and addictive cast. With Rinne no Lagrange, the ingredients are all there to make an impact. It’s the type of series that puts a lot of emphasis on reaching out and prevention, rather than dumb action. Now, make use of this!

One thing that already changed a lot at this point is the powers of the Vox. I’m not sure what happened at the end of the first season when Midori produced that giant flower, but Madoka can now hear what’s in the minds of the other Vox powers, and that’s likely to only be the beginning.
Rating: Excellent

There have been plenty of series in which five series that I was blogging would air on the same day. I cannot recall any season in which that number reached up to six, though. Seriously, Rinne, Uchuu Kyoudai, Total Eclipse, Jinrui, Hyouka and AKB0048 all air on the same bloody day, talk about overkill. The only explanation I can think of this is that series are trying to group themselves amongst the two most popular time-slots for anime: Noitamina on Thursday and the prime time slot on Sunday. Although that doesn’t make ay sense for Sundays either, because the prime time slot airs in the afternoon. Are they counting on people staying up watching TV until late at night?

In ay case, Rinne no Lagrange’s sequel has now officially started, after last week’s recap. And it does so very solidly with a 1-year time-skip. Most of this episode was meant to highlight the character-development, with in particular focusing on how Madoka has matured up. Those changes were definitely my favorite parts of this series., because they show how the island Madoka live son is alive: things change there too.

Also, there appears to be something that is so bad that it forces Muginami to want to kill Madoka. This will undoubtedly be a major theme for this second season, as it has been hinted that Muginami and Lan both went through a lot during thee time-skip. The biggest challenge for the creators will be to make all of this plausible and relatable.
Rating: *+ (Great)
OP: Same style, catchier song.
ED: The song here is a collection of musical ideas that just don’t work. It’s weird.

You know what? This was my favorite ending of the season so far. Or in any case semi-ending, because we’ve still got the second season upcoming summer, and the big ones (Natsume, Chihayafuru) still haven’t ended yet. This episode featured a great climax, it was a great aftermath, and it included a bunch of very nice hooks for the second season.

Of course a straightforward climax can work really well if executed right, I always appreciate the endings that try something more than that. For this episode to start with the aftermath, right after last week’s cliff-hanger was a very good idea. For a minute I really wasn’t sure what was going on because Rin and Madoka were also acting a very cheesy romance for some of their school mates, but once the actual climax started, everything fell into place. I like that.

As for the hooks for the next season, it was a great idea to break up the group for a bit and have everyone go their own way for a moment. This makes it more than just a “see you in three months”-ending, but it’s a great moment in this show for a pause in the story. Yes, this is the great thing about 2-cour original stories. They really can be tailored to anime format.

Overall, this Winter Season played out very much like I thought it would. What seemed like the biggest problem really turned out to be true: this season had a lot of great staff, but the one thing it lacked was ambitious premises. This resulted in a lot of very solid stories that however could all have been amazing, if only they took more risks and displayed more interesting plots. Rinne was very fun and entertaining, and I really feel that if it had a more ambitious story, that didn’t revolve around yet another high school, it really could have been a classic.

At the moment, what I fear is going to be the biggest problem of the upcoming Spring Season: strange staff choices. Appolon has mediocre scriptwriters (one wrote the Stitch adaptation, the other was responsible for the horrible adaptation of Persona), Tsuritama will be written by the guy who outlined Suite Precure of all things, Uchuu Kyoudai will be adapted by Makoto Uezu (out of the 20 series this guy did the series composition for, I only liked four, two of which are the two Sunred seasons), Zetman will be adapted by a guy who is notorious for taking huge liberties with source material, and often very rushed stories, the guy who wrote Guilty Crown will be doing another series, and out of all things we have Shoji Kawamori and Mari Okada doing an idol show. On top of that Jormundgand also looks very intriguing, but it’s got a really bad director. These are a ton of shows who have a lot of potential, but what I’m most afraid of is that that one person at the wrong place will take away that potential. And that for so many series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Talk about an interesting wake-up call here. For a while this episode played out like you’d think it would, with Madoka eventually heading into the battle again (I like however, how she actually waited until she was given permission to take off, and how she actually received careful instructions of the upgrades in her new machine), but I really like the darker twist at the end of this episode.

Before we’ve seen Madoka try and try to keep the damages that were caused by the fighting to a minimum. I thought that this would be just a good way to keep continuity in the series, but this episode really starts playing with it. The thing is that before, Madoka only had to fight a small amount of enemies. Now that they’re actually bringing in entire armies, it’s much more difficult to prevent stray bullets from hitting anything. The results was that people indeed got hurt as a defeated mecha fell into a field full of people.

The question is why these people weren’t evacuated. This episode showed some huge overconfidence issues in the good guys, as they probably didn’t expect the enemy to bring in an army like this. Either that, or they lack the authority to actually pull out a mass evacuation, these are the only reasons I can think of why they didn’t do that.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Aah, again that bloody school festival episode. It’s a good thing that this episode was good, because it gets harder and harder to do something interesting with them the more they get used. I know that they must be a very large part of Japanese culture and all, but when every show and its dog pulls one it gets a bit annoying.

What saved this episode was that it had a point. At this point, the school festival episodes that immediately bore me are the ones who are just there to fill time. The school festival as climax of the series also is starting to get very repetitive. This episode though pulled an interesting turn when they revealed that Madoka was getting jealous of Ran and Muginami making other friends. And unlike Black Rock Shooter, she knew that these feelings didn’t make any sense, making these feelings very genuine.

Also, this episode convinced me again: the villains of this series are really good. It’s hard to label them as the best of the season because that would mean comparing them to Another’s villain, who is fleshed out in the complete opposite manner, but what I really liked in this episode was that they really had their doubts about fighting. In any case they are the most down to earth villains of the season.

Another criticism I have about this episode is that I wonder what the point was of not having Madoka pilot. It’s indeed as I feared: the enemy arrives and she immediately ignores her resolution for not piloting Midori. Then what was the point of all that? That will be a tough question that the next episode will have to answer.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

And yet again this show is building up. Thankfully the creators did give a reason for it: everyone is pretty much waiting for back-up to arrive. So yeah, in the meantime nothing much is gonna happen. It’s a stark contras with Aquarion, which figures out a big battle in every episode. If this show can pull it off in the end, it will be the better approach, because it can put more focus on the individual battles, rather than them turning into some sort of unity sausage (is that a proverb in English as well? I’m not sure…).

The big pitfall of this approach is that the series isn’t going to pick up enough momentum. In the end, what really happened in this episode? Some of the villains wandered around and met a bunch of people. The direction and timing made for some funny moments and Madoka’s past was nice, but it’s still missing something. If this was just one episode I wouldn’t be worried, but this has been going on for quite a few weeks now. Still, this is a Tatsuo Sato series. In the end, this series too puts emphasis on letting characters play out, it just does this a bit later than Mouretsu Pirates. Because of that, Mouretsu had a dull beginning, while it’s getting really interesting now, whereas Rinne no Lagrange’s start was excellent, only for it to catch up on the build-up right now in order to prevent the characters from turning into underdeveloped stereotypes.
Rating: * (Good)

A building up episode, which was used to expand a bit upon the background of this series (ad it’s good to have a bit more information on what the Vox actually are), and to introduce the probably final major character of this series: the boss of the whole organization returns. So obviously she’s a a young-looking blond girl.

At the very least she’s proactive and gets things done, but we’ll see what the creators have in store for her and for that bizarre cross-dressing maid for the rest of this series. What also was a major point in this series is that Madoka isn’t going to be a pilot anymore. Now, that’s the kind of twist that really has me wonder why the creators pulled it. It’s not really going to make a point if Madoka just ends up ignoring all this, piloting her Vox anyway.

Overall, the direction that made me praise the first episodes of this shows has weakened a bit for the past few weeks. There were still some points where this episode was rather sharp, like with the maid, or the point where Madoka agreed to not pilot anymore (hence my worries for the next battle), but I don’t know… it lacks that energy that made it so addictive. Is this just a matter of building up (this is a Tatsuo Sato series, after all), or is this Xebec being lazy?
Rating: * (Good)