Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 15

by psgels, posted in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru



So, this mostly was a build-up episode in which Yuki travels to the main Giou mansion. We get to see some new characters who live there and a lot of hints at the long-awaited background of Yuki and Takashiro. This series often puts a lot of emphasis on travelling to build up its tension: first Yuki’s journey to the Twilight Mansion and now again.

The light hearted moments still are… awkward though. I understand what the creators are trying to do, but most of the attempts to create laughs worked mostly unintentional because of how stupid they were.

Despite that, this wasn’t a wasted episode at all, and thankfully we got a number of scenes that showed a bit of the depth of the characters. Takashiro’s worries were addressed here, plus one of the new characters (a genius professional shougi player) sent out a strong hint to Yuki at how serious the fight against the dumas should be taken.

Also, there’s a new OP and ED this week. The OP is fine, interestingly it’s Takashiro again who steals the show. But the ED… oh, god. Talk about an anti-climax. Who found it a good idea to end such a gloomy series with silly upbeat j-rock?
Rating: * (Good)

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – 03

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu



Wait… what the hell? How did this series suddenly become so awesome? I mean… just… wow. This episode was unbelievable. It was so completely different from the previous two episodes, it stopped with playing these silly games and actually put forth a genuinely good and emotional episode. I don’t get it! The staff for this series is crap; how… why… when?

I don’t know what’s going on anymore. This… just is one of those episode you have to see to believe. The previous two episodes were all pretty light-hearted in their build-up. This episode promised to be exactly the same as the previous one: we go on some small adventure along with the lead character and his side character friends, while we get to know the setting a bit more. Seriously, I really believed that those guys would be major unimportant side characters throughout this series.

But what took the cake was how the creators portrayed Raina, unleashing his inner powers. I mean… wow. They did just about everything right there. The budget here may not be the best of the season, but damn, was it well used! It really was an excellent portrayal of his inner struggles of keeping such a power locked inside of him, and yet it didn’t drag on like you see with most other people who unleash their hidden powers.

And holy crap, this episode also turned the romance into something good. In the previous episode it was a bit forced, but damn, that romantic tension here really added even more to this episode. With a series that started off so silly, the creators surely squeezed a heap of drama out of its premise in this episode.

When I started blogging this show, I wasn’t expecting anything. You know, perhaps in its second half it could turn into a nice action series of some sort. This episode however… that was about the last thing I could have expected. And it’s not like this can just be attributed to the fact that the creators finally have some good source material: it really was the direction here that gave the scenario its extra edge. This really came from people who spent a lot of time thinking of making this episode as awesome as possible.

I’m definitely extremely interested in this series right now. This could just have been a one-shot episode of awesomeness. It could still derail in the rest of its airtime, but damn, this was just unbelievable. I’m seriously interested about the rest of this series now. But still, it’s episodes like these why I love anime: those series that you have no expectations of that suddenly turn out to deliver so well.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin – 02

by psgels, posted in Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin




Occult Academy for me had the best first episode of the season. Of course I’m going to blog it! It’s great to see that all of the Anime no Chikara projects get progressively more interesting. Occult Academy once again is an ambitious series that really wastes no time with its limited format of only 13 episodes. A great mentality!

But there’s more. Take a look at Anime News Network, and the staff of the third episode: Osamu Kobayashi will be its episode director. You know, the director of Beck, Natsu no Sora, Paradise Kiss and his unique style. To make things even better, none other than Mitsuo Iso (Dennou Coil!) will finally make his reappearance to be the animation director. And to make things even better, if this guy is correct, the sixth episode will have Ryousuke Nakamura as its episode director. You know, from Mouryou no Hako and Hashire! Melos. Can anyone confirm somewhere whether this is true?

Either way, I’m already a fan of this show. This episode may not be as good as the first, but it still was witty, interesting and the chemistry between the two lead characters turned out to be really good. This series does really well in combining the occult from east (youkai, demons, etc) with that of the west (Nostradamus, the doom scenarios). When I first saw the lead male in the promo art, he really looked like one of those stereotypical scapegoats: you know, those who exist just to get stepped on by the lead character who is eccentric. It turned out to be a bit more nuanced than that, though: the guy is actually fairly normal, though a bit eccentric. It’s only the lead female who he can’t handle. Because he popped up naked in front of her and all. The lead female on her turn isn’t your typical tsundere in the way that she has very strong ideas and beliefs, and really likes to act when she puts her mind on something.

The thing I also really like about this series is its witty direction. I mean, take a look at that flashback at which Abe tells about why he travelled through time, and how he appeared with sunglasses and a holiday suit. Do you really think that that’s how he looked back then? I really think that he was trying to make himself look bigger in his own narration. The episodes so far are full of these nice details. This series also continues to go back to the backgrounds of its characters, rather than saving that for later. Again, a great mentality.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 14

by psgels, posted in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru



This series has this really strange tendency to introduce all kinds of powers from out of nowhere, and then acting like it’s the most normal thing in the world. I mean, hello?! A rabbit just turned into a catgirl here! Couldn’t at least act a bit surprised?

Either way though, as an aftermath this episode was pretty damn good. It was all about solidifying the characters’ relationships against each other: everyone talked about their issues to each other, and quite a few disagreements were either settled, or accepted. After watching quite a few series in which people just refuse to talk to each other, seeing how honest this episode was was quite a refreshment.

Especially Luka surprised me, and the way with which he has accepted the current situation. He’s had plenty of time to sort out his own feelings, and ended up deciding to support Yuki, whatever she ends up with. The episode ended with the promise of back-story, so I’m actually quite interested in this show at this point.

The angst in this series feels like it’s done right for once, compared to, say, Vampire Knight angst. While angsting, the characters really are thinking about themselves and the influence they have on others, compared to, say, how much they hate or love a certain character. I have to give the manga author that: these characters are well thought out, and the anime staff did quite a good job at bringing this to life.
Rating: * (Good)

Katanagatari – 07

by psgels, posted in Katanagatari



Well, the graphics really were all over the place in this episode. It’s a shame to see that the budget for this series is starting to run out, because this episode was full off models, the characters were suddenly drawn with incredibly thick lines, and a lot of the fights boiled down to people moving so conveniently fast that all the animators had to do was to draw a bunch of curved lines.

It’s a shame, for a series with so many still frames, you’d expect the art at least to be crisp. I think the worst part of the graphics in this episode was how ridiculously small Nanami’s feet were drawn. Normally I like it when artists take an interesting graphical approach to an episode… but this was just the sign of either a very low budget… or a really bad outsourcing decision.

It’s a shame, because this episode was was all about Nanami again. I still find the concept of her powers a bit hard to grasp. Unable to die? Well, why don’t you commit suicide then? Still, the relationship between these two siblings, the extra info about their parents. It was well worth it. The graphics may have cut corners, but the series still is as good as it has ever been with its dialogue and build-up.

In any case, this also destroys the theories of “Nanami as the end boss”. With this episode, this series seemingly closed off Nanami’s story here, but I wonder whether we get to know more about their parents. Either way, the time has really come for this series to actually start some kind of finale now. We’ve gotten a few hints as to what it might be about, but something tells me that the creators still have a number of tricks on their sleeve. The cutting of hair always seems to be a solid symbol of change, after all.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – 02

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu



As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Ookami has some nice ideas. Just too bad that it doesn’t know how to use them, is pretty bad at building up and has a terrible narrator.
– Amagami may have a pretty good staff, but even they couldn’t do something about the utterly dull scenario and lead character.

As for Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu… yeah. It’s definitely a wild-card for my blogging schedule this season, and if it would have aired in any other season, I would never have considered to cover it. This summer season however… I wouldn’t call it dry, like with the previous Winter Season. There are quite a few excellent titles with Shiki, Nurarihyon no Mago, High School of the Dead and Occult Gakuin, along with promising sequels as Kuroshitsuji II and Sengoku Basara II. Apart from that though… there really isn’t anything else. The rest, while having charms here and there, is just doomed for mediocrity.

Out of that ‘rest’, the one that stands out the most is Denyuuden. As much as I fear the staff (it has the director of the first season of Sengoku Basara, Regios, Rental Magica, Mamoru-ku n ni Megami ni Shukufuku wo, Yume da Maya Kidan and the Chrono Trigger OVA, while the series composition guy only worked on Chocolate Underground, Dogs, Bullets and Carnage, Final Fantasy Unlimited and Kurogane no Linebarrels… what kind of a resume is that?!), I’m willing to offer them a chance to impress me.

Denyuuden (as I’ll call this thing for now) stands out with its tongue-in-cheek lead characters, and this episode showed that it’s also interested in building towards a serious story. I’m interested in how the two are going to mesh. This show sucks for having such a focus on teenagers in such a fantasy setting (with the strongest magician like what? sixteen years old?), but this episode spent a lot of time on what it should have been doing: building up, introducing the setting, showing a bit of back-story, things like that. The characters are quite likable due to this tongue-in-cheek execution, and they’ve got enough chemistry. That should be alright for now, though do note that I WILL DROP THIS SERIES as soon as it starts dragging or falling apart.

The worst part of this episode was that it tended to try a little too hard with the dramatic scenes. The part in which that girl whose name I can’t remember cry up to Raina could have been done more subtle, while the bullies in that flashback scene… were just too much.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

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%

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 13

by psgels, posted in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru




This was the climax of the first half of this series, and you know what? It was the best episode of this show yet. There was of course Yuki’s angst over Kanata and all, but seriously, this was a very exciting episode that also pushed these characters a bit further. And surprisingly, it was Takashiro of all people that stole this episode for me.

This episode also showed how good the soundtrack of this series can be, and the entire episode really looked gorgeous with all of the visuals that JC Staff were experimenting with. Seriously, I prefer the way they render blood far above the ketchup you usually see in anime. On top of that, we got plenty of hints of background for Reiga (plus Takashiro, which explains pretty much why the Giou clan is used to hunt for these things).

Overall, I’m happy now, and with all of the mid-bosses dead at this point, I’m very interested in the second half of this series. It’s here where the creators really are going to have to use the development of these characters, in order to develop them even more. They’re going to have to spent a number of episodes fully detailing how the characters were in their past lives, and how they changed, ESPECIALLY Reiga and Takashiro. The prospect of that alone is bound to make the second half more interesting than the first.

By the way, does anyone know how far we’re into the manga?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu, Amagami SS and Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi

by psgels, posted in Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu, Some Quick First Impressions

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is looking for some legendary hero or something.
Aagh! Dilemma! I’m well aware that this is from the creators of Koukaku no Regios. That series also had a first episode that had quite a bit of potential… only to never realize any of it. This first episode of Legend of Legendary Heroes used a ton of tricks that other series like to use in order to impress wit their first episode. The action-scenes here were the best looking scenes that Zecxs has ever animated, the background art in this series is just gorgeous, but it just screamed “yeah, we blew our budget on this thing”. The comedy was the best I have seen this season so far, but that doesn’t mean that it’s also good. The comedy in this series is of the shotgun type: it tries to deliver as many jokes as possible, of which some of them end up actually funny. Let me put things this way: if this series can fulfill the potential it showed in this episode in its upcoming 25 episodes, then it will be quite entertaining. It’s a tongue in the cheek fantasy series that doesn’t take itself seriously, and the way that the deadpan female lead and expressive male lead keep snarking to each other had both its annoying and amusing moments. The side-characters… they’re varied and can become interesting with a little depth and development. I’d love to be able to give a favourable review for this one, but I know the director and his tendency to not use any sort of potential that’s handed to him. I’ll get back on this one in a few more episodes.
OP: Well, decent I guess.
ED: Again, decent.
Potential: 35%

Amagami SS

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is bland, shy but very kind, so he’ll probably date a bunch of cute girls throughout the series.
Here we have the first of the onslaught of AIC Moe series this season, but at least this one looked to be the most solid. And indeed, whether this series is going to work out right is a little more complex than with Ookami, but this series has a number of huge flaws against it. First of all it’s a harem based on a dating sim, and the creators really spent no effort to defy from the cliches that this series usually suffers from: annoying sister (who he’ll probably get to date eventually as well), the spunky best friend girl, the incredibly popular girl, the weak girl, and of course the male best friend of the lead character. The premise is utterly terrible, but there were a few hints at at least a bit of substantial drama. For one, the lead character isn’t entirely bland, but had his crushes in the past. That’s like an entire novel worth of background for your average harem lead! He also got rejected when he tried to confess to a girl he only got to know on that day, so at least the characters and females aren’t morons here, but in the end, the series is just too constrained by its premise. This episode showed the lead characters hop back and forth between all of the girls that he’s supposed to be dating in the future, making for an incredibly forced first episode. I know that this is by the creators of Solty Rei, which also had a very unimpressive first episode. But really, you can do a lot more neat stuff with science fiction than another one of those shows set just in high school.
OP: A tip for whoever sung this: stay away from English lyrics. You’re not good at them.
ED: Boring j-rock
Potential: 35%

Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is socially awkward, completely bland, but actually a pretty nice guy so of course he gets a cute girl as a semi-girlfriend.
Well, so the first real premiere of the summer season… turns out to be a disappointment. I was actually looking forward to how the creators would interpret the fairy tale premise that they had to work with. And somehow… they chose one of the blandest ways to do it. In the end, this is just another one of those series about a weird club in high school, with a tsundere, maid, typical lose lead guy, sarcastic boss, and really annoying best friend. There also is a narrator, and while she sometimes tries to actually say something witty, she loses herself way too often in small boob jokes. The fanservice here is just utterly pointless, bland and uninspired, which makes it even worse. The production values are nice, I grant it that, but this is exactly the kind of moe high school show that I’ve gotten more than tired of by now. If it had something interesting about this episode, it might have been serviceable, but this had just nothing. It was all just bland. No hints at potential whatsoever. This is only for the people who like moe humor.
ED: Annoying j-pop
Potential: 20%

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – 12

by psgels, posted in Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru



Luka. He is so badass that even rose petals instantly want to commit suicide by his sword.

Seriously though, I know I often criticise this anime, but episodes like this one really show that it knows how to build up an atmosphere. I really have no complaints whatsoever about that, because this really was an engaging episode to watch. The creators made well use of the background music, characters and visuals to create a bit of a creepy atmosphere that I was able to take seriously, despite the angst and large amount of suicidal themes of this series.

As for the graphics… this episode pretty much showed that we shouldn’t expect too much of the animation itself. The action scenes just consisted out of a bunch of still frames of wounds, and cut a lot of corners. The eye candy here really was in the visual effects, as the creators of this series may not be good animators, but they’re pretty good at CG and blending it in with the rest of the drawings.

Without the CG, this really feels like this kind of retro series that could have just as easily aired fifteen years ago. It’s definitely got its charms because of this.

But really… regarding Shuusei… how? Do we really not get any kind of explanation, other than that Yuki zapped him? I mean, what did the manga artist have in mind when he created him? Having an all powerful character with Yuki, who can apparently heal any kind of wound, while also being able to stop all kinds of powerful magic with his crosses. That’s really hard to balance out! At a certain point the tension will just completely vanish because there’s no reason to fear for any of the characters to die here. Luka with his extreme powers is one thing that still is within bounds, due to his flaws, but Yuki is about to go too far in this.
Rating: ** (Excellent)