Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

“Muaha, I am the bad guy of this series. I currently dislike this group of people with annoying powers who have been killing off all of my comrades and subordinates one by one, so they need to be taught a lesson. So what do I do? I shoot one of them with an energy ball. Hah, now that should keep their healers busy for a couple of hours! I am a genius!”

… I mean… I think we’ve found ourselves the most pathetic bad guy of the season here. Even considering that he did intend to kill Tsukumo and did not know about the crosses that Yuki made, isn’t it just common sense to just… you know… check whether the body really is dead? There’s a ton of magic in this series here that has unexpected effects, that energy ball could easily not have been fatal. So far, that girl at least has come up with a pretty solid plan to take care of the good guys. All he has been doing is trying to look cool, poking people and dropping wine glasses.

This series really has parts at which it’s very good, but others at which it leaves so much to be desired. I mean, the lead cast still is excellent: every episode so far has continued to add more to these people, and this episode was no exception in the way that it pushed Zess and Hotsuma to new levels. The soundtrack is still really good, and this episode added even more great tracks for this series, and it also knows how to create an atmosphere.

The bad guys however… nah. There’s also no originality here whatsoever (I mean, you can compare this show to a ton of other series and concepts and it only stands out in the way that it used the things it stole from all sorts of other stories.

But yeah, I have to give credit where credit’s due: I’m beginning to like Zess more and more. I first didn’t really like him, but the way this episode showed him all eager to get some action made up for a lot. He had this smug air of “I’m gonna kick ass and there’s nothing you can do about it, bitches”. In the quiet moments around Yuki he also was much calmer, compared to the obsessive stalker he was in the first few episodes.
Rating: * (Good)

Costumes in anime have generally always been rather questionable. The mature series are often fine, but there are also tons of costumes in anime that make you ask “…why”. Seriously, most of the good guys of Uraboku wear normal clothes, even the red-haired guy’s outfit can be attributed to some fashion statement. But Zess, where the heck do you get the inspiration for your clothes from?

Seriously, most of the comedy in this series just doesn’t work, but this guy is comedy gold. His shirt in this episode looked like he violently ripped off the sleeves or something. It’s just hilarious how this guy just acts all cool with a continuous serious and deadpan expression, yet goes overkill at such weird times. My personal favourite scene of him so far was when he summoned that gigantic dragon to just take care of a bunch of weak bad guy underlings.

In any case, a big weak point of this series is definitely the cast of villains. This episode showed a bit more of them, and yet we hardly got to know more about them aside from what kinds of powers they have (oh, and that one of them likes hot guys). Who are they? Why do they do the things they do? There hasn’t even been a hint of this so far, and their characterization just feels bland. These people seriously need more work.

The good guys however are the ones who make me keep watching this series. This series continues to explore them, and build further on their stories. This especially was a good episode for the side-cast, and even though a terrifyingly large amount of people here have suicidal tendencies, the creators did a decent job in making it believable. It’s nowhere near amazing yet, but at least it’s still going into the right direction. It’s going to be interesting to see whether this show can pull off a strong second half.

Also, the golden rule of anime: characters don’t die unless we see this confirmed. The next episode is going to be the first test for this show how annoyingly it will try to hold on to this rule. The problem is especially with Tsukumo: if this guy lives, then the main bad guy will be absolutely pathetic in his job. On the other hand, it will be very cool if those guys actually died, and I admire the balls of the creators if they go there.
Rating: * (Good)

Ooh, what a surprise: this episode was actually quite good again. I didn’t expect this show to pick itself back up after those… rather lackluster previous two episodes, but this episode returned to the parts that made this series good. It was very angsty, but at the same time it allowed Hotsuma to develop quite a bit. We finally get to know him, which is a very good thing to see.

Before this series started I was hoping for it to be something like the next Night Head Genesis. Okay, so in the end it didn’t. It’s got far less interesting ideas, while Uragiri doesn’t really offer anything in terms of its plot. Nevertheless though, the characters do have their charms. The creators know how to develop their characters and they do that very nicely, being just subtle enough to prevent the angst from going out of control *(especially the end of this episode was quite emotionally gripping), plus the pretty good soundtrack are enough to keep me interested for now.

The only thing of note here is how the creators decided to show Hotsuma’s and Shusei’s background. It’s in the same way as Yuki’s background. We don’t get an entire background arc that outlines the lives that the characters used to live. Instead, it’s brought in a bit of a memory-fashion: we get to see the key points in their past, without really learning what kind of children they were. Doing such a thing is risky, but it works surprisingly well for them.
Rating: * (Good)

Yeah… tons of fanservice in this episode. It’s annoying when moe shows do this, but with the bishies it’s just as bad. Especially during that bathing scene I’m surprised that sparkles didn’t start flying off the characters. You could also really see that Yuki used to be a girl when he started making necklaces for everyone.

So yeah, this was another laid back episode meant to flesh out the characters. It did its job well, we got to know a bit more about zess (he finally doesn’t feel like a one-dimensional paper bag anymore, though he still looked like an idiot when he brought Yuki to school). It’s nice and all, but this episode did remain boring. It’s not a chore sitting through it, but that also pretty much everything positive you can say about it.

The first and foremost priority of the creators is avoiding to pull another 07-Ghost here. These past two episodes are one thing, but the show shouldn’t stick too much inside its own fillers. Whether these came from the manga or not shouldn’t matter. The manga should also have tried to make these chapters more interesting.

Having said that though, the background art in this episode was quite good.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

“Muahahaha, I am the bad guy of this series, and I shall demonstrate this by dropping random glasses full of wine on the ground. Now that should keep those cleaners busy for a couple of minutes!”

It’s things like this that make it hard again for me to take this series seriously.

This series overall is a very mixed bag, and especially this episode showed it. I like some things about it quite a bit, while others still need a lot of work. Yuki? I like the kid, he’s interesting and compelling to watch. I also like Takashiro, Touko and Tsukumo, they’re interesting side-characters and I like how they show that they care about Yuki and feel guilty about the things they’re going to do to him, yet remain down to earth about it. Zess on the other hand… nah. This guy should get a life.

And then this episode comes and introduces a whole bunch of new characters, nearly all of them stereotypes. The worst of them was of course that bad guy (seriously, wtf), but the others also felt like cheap cliches. Here’s a washing-list of all the newly introduced characters:
– Twin bad guy henchmen who are eager to do bad stuff.
– Bad guy henchgirl who is also eager to do bad stuff.
– Zess’ freaking animal mascot (or ‘familiar’ as he calls it).
– The shy maid.
– The eccentric doctor.
– The energetic and harassing old guy (read: between 25 and 30 years old) with a hat that I reckon was meant to be stylish.

I mean, come on! Can you introduce any more cliches in just one episode? The worst thing here is that just none of them tried to set itself apart from its stereotypes, this was just overkill. A bit of development is probably able to save a few of them, but the cast of this show is already getting alarmingly huge. I’m especially worried about that bad guy.

I guess that the creators wanted to have a cast of interesting characters besides the lead ones. The problem is that they really should have spent more time into that. I’m not sure whether this comes from the anime or manga staff, but my guess is that most of the blame falls to the latter. This clearly was meant to be an arc to introduce the side-cast, but these are way too many cliches to just screw up. The anime staff is of course at fault too: they could have easily brought a bit of character into these guys.

A good example of this is Zombie Loan: it’s basically built around the same premise: a lead character meets a group of interesting zombie-hunters. While Zombie Loan was way too goddamn short, it did one thing right: the characterization. All of the side-characters were interesting to watch, and they all had interesting and charismatic personalities that kept you interested. Here, these side-characters couldn’t even charisma themselves out of a paper bucket.
Rating: – (Disappointing)

Whoa, I admire the balls that the creators have with this series. This episode was really heavy, and pretty much showed that this isn’t going to be a happy adventure. They really went as far as actually having the bad guys possess little girls in order to deceive Yuki? I give my thumbs up for that.

There were a few things about this episode that were kind of cheesy, like the point in which Yuki claimed that Hotsuma saved him because he cared about him. Hello, you know him for what? Twenty minutes? Hotsuma’s motivation also is a bit weird. I mean, if I were to run into a guy who would be able to heal any wound, I’d be pretty happy with it. The only thing that I can think of here is that he had some kind of really big grudge against Yuki when he still was a girl. This episode actually hinted at how the current Yuki is completely different from how he used to be, which… does pique my interest seeing of how a goodness-loving flower-child he is right now. But yeah, I can imagine that the person that Zess fell in love with to be as socially inept as he is.

In any case I wasn’t sure about the orphanage to start this series off with, however the emphasis on little children in this series has been surprising, to say the least. Most shows of this kind usually have the protagonist wandering stupidly into dangerous situations to get some action going on, but these girls give this a completely different dimension here.

And as for the action… it again was surprisingly good. This show isn’t particularly well animated, but the art itself and the CG around it are really good. It’s also interesting that Zess doesn’t know the meaning of “overkill”, especially when summoning that enormous dragon (or… um… salamander…) of his. It looked awesome in any case.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hmm, I’m actually liking the quieter episodes more than the climaxes with this series. The previous episode might have been a tad cheesy, but this episode was actually quite charming. I liked the balance, and the new characters have potential.

The children in this episode are quite an interesting addition. They prevent Yuki from turning into a damsel in distress, and I’m glad that after he left the orphanage, the creators didn’t intend to drop this plot thread. I also liked how the creators used such a long car drive to flesh out the characters: with so many hours being together, the characters all showed a bit of a different side of theirs. I’m also glad to see that the police have also become involved with this series. With so many monsters roaming around, there’s bound to be a few unsovlvable incidents that the police have no idea how to handle. It’s the simple things like this that manage to retain my interest in this series.

The length of this series is going to be a bit of a problem, with just 12 episodes. I hope that the creators are going to either announce a second season at the end of its run, or create something of their own ending to at least close it off a bit without falling into the pit that trapped many series before it by slapping an ending that’s too shallow onto it.
Rating: * (Good)

Well, that’s it for the introduction, after this the show will start for real. We can only hope that it’s going to be as good as these first four episodes. Episode four wasn’t the best, and it pretty much concluded the introduction like we thought it would, but the atmosphere still was more than good enough to watch.

It was a bit of a stretch that Yuki didn’t bother to clean his face of all the blood on it, before going to the children though. Heck, I’d be freaked out as a kid when seeing such a thing, but it was a nice twist though. The acting was a bit too over the top here, but it’s nothing major yet. There’s also that part in which the characters were bickering and the lead character suddenly stared a weird laugh (seriously, characters in anime laugh really weird…), which gave me serious deja vus. How many times has that exact same scenario been used in anime by now?

But I digress, with this episode the lead character showed that he’s no wimp at all. He knows what he wants and stands for his own choices and morals. The big difference between him and your average shounen lead who jumps into everything is that he knows what’s best for a situation. He strikes me as open-minded, rather than the simple minded idiots that you see in those tons of generic shounen anime. So far, he could have been more balanced between his angsty phases and his more mature side, but it shouldn’t be a problem if the rest of the series makes up for it.

My big concern now is the villains. Please let us get to know these people, and don’t make them into these average incompetent idiots who take bloody ages in getting their job done.
Rating: (Enjoyable)