Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Seikai no Monshou – 05

by psgels, posted in Seikai no Monshou



One feature of anime that I’m glad has mostly disappeared over the past ten years is the obligatory summary of the previous episode. This episode was one of those examples in which this got taken too far as it spent its first five minutes recapping what happened in the previous episode.

The rest of the episode however more than made up for it. In this episode we get our first taste of the space battles in this series, and the creators have really shown that they know how to write one. It takes the approach of the unidentified enemy: we know that there are a bunch of enemies out there, we just have no idea who they are. If you can make these enemies still behave like real people, even though you never show them, you can get some amazing effects. Later, series as Starship Operators and Bokura no would improve even more on this formula. And in a way, I feel that the former took its inspiration from this series: taking the very technical style of space-battles, and making them even more realistic and believable, rather than just have a bunch of spaceships fire at each other.

The destruction of the Gosroth also is extra bad for Lafiel, since her mother just died. It turns out that one of the reason why the captain was so harsh on Lafiel was because she was partially trying to raise the girl she “provided her genes for”. She tells Jinto this in their escape. Even though they’re travelling together again, just like a few episodes ago, the mood between the two is completely different and gloomy, and yet you can see that they’ve gotten already more used to each other.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Cobra The Animation – 06

by psgels, posted in Cobra The Animation



Yeah, I think that this is my favourite episode of the new Cobra so far. While its premise is… unrealistic to say the least, it lacks the stupidity that plagued the previous number of episodes, and instead aims to deliver a cast of interesting characters. All with their own backgrounds and motives. At this point there still are a few redundant characters (that con man for example didn’t seem to have done anything), but overall it was a pretty enjoyable episode, and for once with this show it’s not for the wrong reasons.

But this episode did not lose the main focus of this series: space adventures. In fact, I would have preferred a bit of less time on the adventures, and more to the background of these characters. Although I do admit that that bodyguard also was very interesting, even though he was just random cannon fodder. The fact that he could not see the mountain, which only appears for those who believe in him says a lot about him, though.

While I like adventure series done right, in the end Cobra isn’t one of them. It suffers in its characterization: aside from Cobra none of the characters are really that interesting. However, the next episode actually might break that trend. Still, I’m somehow enjoying it so far into the series. Plus, shows in which you can punch an angry shark and knock it out and where con men walk around with Mickey Mouse-haircuts deserve points for creativity.
Rating: * (Good)

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 19

by psgels, posted in Armed Librarians - The Book of Bantorra



Holy crap, you people weren’t kidding about this episode! This series just continues to get better and better. What an incredibly creative script, this series really takes no conventions for granted.

Oh, remmember the first few episodes of this series, in which Volken was nothing but an average lead character with a strong sense of justice. Seriously, I never expected that someone as Olivia Litlet would get more screen-time than he did. The way that this series plays around with our expectations and turns them into something unpredictable is just unbelievable.

So yeah: Volken died. The creators actually had the GUTS to kill him off. And yet Olivia still lives at the end of this episode. This episode did such a great job of developing the two of them. Volken on one hand seeing his beliefs destroyed when he found out that his mentor was not the upholder of justice he believed him to be, while Olivia as a strong woman searched for the passion that she once lost. It’s that passion and perseverance of her that really allowed her to live as a meat. Colio had already shown that it was possible, and she just took it a small step further. The whole ritual? She was trying the entire time to get her memories of Vend Ruga back. As someone who took care of her when she was a child and before the church got her.

Also, we’ve been expecting this for quite a while now, but Hamyuts finally confirmed it: the Church and the Armed Librarians aren’t at war at all. They just pretend to be. Heck, the Church was even created by the Armed Librarians. My guess is that they were intended to take care of all of the dirty work, probably for that damn tree or something. My guess is that it feeds on exciting books. That would be quite the irony: that the Armed Librarians and the Church just exist in order to provide nice books.

It’s also interesting: all this time it turned out that Hamyuts Meseta followed after a red herring, and basically sank a ship for nothing, just because Olivia wanted to scrabble her feelings on the wall. However, for her to go through such lengths. I really believe that we’ve found our major villain of this series. Or rather: the major good guy, since we’ve now pretty much confirmed that the Armed Librarians are the bad guys.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Cobra The Animation – 05

by psgels, posted in Cobra The Animation



I have to admit, it’s been a while since I watched a series that I considered a guilty pleasure and actually enjoyed. With series like these, I just have one thing I’m looking for. It’s obvious that the characters in this show are just shallow stereotypes, and there’s no way for the story to make sense, so instead I’m just looking for one thing: creativity. And that’s where this show delivers. I have no idea how faithful this series is to the Cobra manga, and despite the flawed storytelling I’m at least glad that they’re not shying away from strange ideas, and don’t try to play this series as safe as possible, just because of the financial crisis.

The villainness in this episode was just hilariously incompetent. At first it seemed like a nice idea for her to pretend to be nice to Cobra later, but then she actually tried to kill him. By pushing him over the edge of a boat. Despite knowing fully well that Cobra can breathe under water. She never even stops to think, and instead just keeps going on with her imaginary evil laugh, for Cobra to take plenty of time to shoot him. I also loved her reasoning: men are nothing but egoistic pigs. Overgeneralization FTW!

There are so many scientific holes into that story of the frozen women in the underwater current, but I have to admit: it’s a pretty neat idea. It was neatly built up, overall an exciting episode and while the visual direction wasn’t exactly up to Osamu Dezaki’s standards it still was fresh and imaginative, so I’m not complaining.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Seikai no Monshou – 04

by psgels, posted in Seikai no Monshou



I love how this series plays around with morals. In the first episode, it really seemed like the Abh were your stereotypical evil empire full of evil emotionless Nazis that like to conquer people. And yet now that we’ve gotten to see a bit of their side of the story, then we suddenly see that these people are surprisingly human, and despite having power-hungry leaders, it’s not like all of them are heartless monsters. Cultural values and differences also play huge differences on hate and distance between the Abh and other nations. That makes me wonder what the Abh themselves think about their habit of not getting involved with the nations they conquer. Could it be that it’s not like they keep out of the nations they conquer because they believe they’ll be hated and nobody would want to cooperate?

This episode was mostly about these complex kinds of politics, rather than two previous episodes, which were more focused at just Jinto and Lafiel. And it did well in making it sink in that wars can take multiple centuries before being resolved. I hope that one of the future episodes will show the story from the perspective of the opposing alliance of those four countries. That will really allow us as viewers to form a complete picture. That sudden attack of them to the ship came seemingly out of nowhere, so I’m very interested in their exact reason and mindset for initiating that attack.

Overall, we probably won’t see her again after this point, but I liked that captain of the ship a lot. Before she appeared, I had this totally distorted image of the Abh, but she showed that the Abh are a varied race. That’s something that I often miss in stories that make up their own races: sure, the humans are varied, with all sorts of different bastards and nice guys walking around. And yet the elves are tree-loving, intelligent and use bows, dwarfs are small, grumpy and live in caves and the angels are all stuck-up and pretentious. With small tribes, I can understand: the herd instinct will likely develop these people with slightly similar personalities. But entire races? Nah.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 18

by psgels, posted in Armed Librarians - The Book of Bantorra



I’m sorry for the delay of this entry. I’ve got a bit of a cold at this moment, so I’m not at my fastest.

But what a hell of an episode we had this week! Even though it was just a build-up, it was in no way inferior tot he other Armed Librarian episodes. The way in which this episode built up tension, simply by letting Hamy take a “while” to catch up to Volken was brilliantly done, and in the meantime it revealed an increasingly interesting back-story behind this arc.

This episode subtly gave a whole new dimension to a ton of different backgrounds. First of all, take a look at the OP: you can see the young Vend Ruga right next to young Hamy. Therefore, it’s pretty likely that Hamy’s grudge against Vend is something personal. The thing is, however that Vend Ruga was a True Man: one whose book was very interesting to read, and yet she rebelled against the Church, and therefore also against the Armed Librarians. In a way, that makes her one of the good guys. What complicates matters is that somehow she has split her soul across many different bodies. One of the things that makes Hamy so frustrated is that she keeps killing off these bodies, but can never seem to get all of them.

Now, Olivia Litlet. It is very likely that the ship we see in this episode was the same that Hamy blew up in episode one, only Olivia was lucky enough to leave the ship before it happened. On that ship she was desperately deceiving the owner of the boat, using his meats in order to perform a ritual to get something back. However, remember that she has Vend Ruga living inside of her. How much different were the kind of containers that Hamy killed off in this episode’s flashback to the meats we saw in the first arc (the ones who kept going “Kill Hamyuts Meseta”). In fact, I think that that was the revenge ten years later that the Governor of Paradise was talking about.

It might be that Olivia, when she kept using Yucklyuck in order to bring a “certain person” back, she might have been doing it for Vend Ruga instead, which might relate to her past with Hamy. But on the other hand, if that’s the case then Renas’ statement doesn’t really make sense. Another theory on why Hamy was so hellbent on getting rid of Vend is because she was “trying to destroy the heavens”. Now first of all: what are the “heavens” exactly in this series in which everyone turns into a book at death? How does the Governor of Paradise and the tree fit into this, as they both seem to be allies with Hamy for some reason.

we all know that Hamy doesn’t care about dying, but could it actually be that she doesn’t want heaven to be destroyed, whatever it may be? If that’s true, then it would explain why she’s so extreme in trying to get rid of Vend Ruga: she was a true woman, who could have had the power to destroy this heaven. If we link this further to Hamy death wishes: could it be that Hamy isn’t the key to destroy the world, but rather something really really good will happen if she reaches this “heaven”?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Katanagatari – 01

by psgels, posted in Katanagatari



Whoa! I didn’t expect Katanagatari to have episodes of 50 minutes. That seals the deal for me: I’m going to blog it. I very much approve of this longer pause between episodes. Series like Votoms’ Pailsen Files, Figure 17, Blade of the Immortal and Marie & Gali also had this, and they became very entertaining to watch in their own ways, simply because the creators had more time to refine their episodes.

My biggest fear before starting this series was obviously the director of School Days who got appointed behind this, not to mention that the animation company behind it has only done Tears to Tiara, which apparently was mediocre at best (though I dropped it after 1 episode). Still, for now I’ll just see this as another case of Casshern Sins, in which the director of various Dragonball Z movies ended up making such a beautiful series. And yeah, I guess that we should at least be glad that Shinbo didn’t also get this series. This episode wasn’t just “okay”; I very much enjoyed it.

This series is a bit of an homage to the shounen genre, it has many elements of a shounen series, and yet it isn’t exactly a shounen series. It includes fights, it makes fun of the “Hah! I’m about to kill you but let me just stand here and let you finish whatever conversation you’re having!”-trope, it also pokes fun at how fights like these tend to go on for ages just because the characters won’t shut up talking, it features teenagers who fall in love with each other quite quickly, but at the same time there are also tons of quiet scenes, in which people just sit in a room talking for more than ten minutes, straight on; which is something you won’t find in any other shounen-series, and is actually more seinen.

Overall, what I liked most about this first episode was the build-up: I’m really surprised at how well this episode built up its tension through the incredibly long dialogues in the beginning, and the more action-packed yet still dialogue-filled second half. The animation was also simple where it needed to be, and detailed where it needed to be, though aside from its crispness and unique look nothing special. What I did like was the subtle sense of humour oft his episode, in which the creators liked to insert a joke right in the middle of a character’s speech. It keeps you on your toes and it adds an interesting flavor to the whole script.

It was quite a bit of a challenge to follow this episode raw (to all the fansubbers and typesetters planning to go for this series: good luck), but i like challenges like these once in a while. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I seem to have some weird fascination with watching dialogue-filled series in raw, trying to keep up with the Japanese even though my own Japanese is far from perfect.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Cobra the Animation – 04

by psgels, posted in Cobra The Animation



Oh gawd. This show is so ridiculously masculine that I can’t help but enjoy it. Remember last episode, at the end of which Cobra was about to die from poison? My prediction was that Cobra would find some cheap way to escape his certain death. Well, as it turns out he sort-of didn’t. The poison just… disappeared, never to get mentioned again. He just gets his memory back, and for some reason this is so awesome that it automatically neutralizes the poison. Also, what was the point of having this “unique key” around, when people from the underground city could just walk into the control chamber whenever they’d like to?

This turned out to be quite the ludicrous series, but it does have this strange kind of charm that I’m missing with most other series this season. It’s just so unpretentiously enjoyable: it knows what it is and delivers on this. There are also two points at which it deserves genuine praise. The first is the soundtrack. After four episodes of listening to it, I’m sure: Cobra has the best soundtrack of the new season. I’ve always been a big fan of Ike Yoshihiro, and he yet again delivers a great soundtrack for this series.

The second is the creativity. I have to admire the BALLS of this series, to go with such a crazy idea of giving Cobra amnesia so that he leaves his female companion inside a gravity trap for two whole days. The idea of having a woman fall down a cliff, get her head impaled to so become the controller of the planet’s propulsion system also was a pretty nice find.
Rating: * (Good)

Seikai no Monshou – 03

by psgels, posted in Seikai no Monshou



Oh, I love this. I love it when a series can take nearly an entire episode and fill it with nothing but dialogue, especially the meaningful kind. I now understand why people were praising this series for its romance, and this episode really showed what a well written dialogue can do to your characters. I sometimes hear people say that one of the most important rule of storytelling is to “show, not tell”, but I disagree with that: the combination between what you show and what you tell should be important.

Despite being a relatively uneventful episode, the chemistry between Jinto and Lafiel already rocked after only three episodes. It’s also not line one of them is so much smarter or talkative to the other: they basically strengthen each other: whenever Lafiel asks a difficult question, you can see Jinto think hard about it, come with an answer and reply with a question that’s just as hard or confronting.

I think what I liked best was that part in which Jinto discovered that Lafiel used a fake name, and tried to apologize like hell about making her uncomfortable and actually calling her by her real title. He of all people should know how annoying it must be to have everyone regard him as nobility. At this point, I’d now love to see Lafiel together with some of the other crew members. We know how she thinks that they treat her, but I’d love to see their side of the story as well.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra – 17

by psgels, posted in Armed Librarians - The Book of Bantorra



Haha, look who’s back! It’s taken 12 episodes, but finally our little Volken has returned. And he surely brought a whole lot of intrigue to the story.

it’s series like this who are sneaky: they put a lot of hidden meanings into their first episode, stuffing tons of plot twists in it that only make sense a complete season afterwards. I love series like that that play around with their continuity. In this episode, we learn that Hamy does have one fear: Vend Ruga.

The thing is, however: this episode showed the message that Volken ran into again: “Vend Ruga is Alive. He is living inside Olivia Litlet”. Based on that message, Hamyuts destroyed that ship, and made Volken hellbent on stopping her. Olivia Litlet however turns out to be the same person that Winkeny chose to have her memories erased and play the part as Mokkania’s mother. So it wasn’t just coincidence, but rather the church’s way of playing with Hamy. And it’s true: Hamy did not know who Olivia Litlet was, so basically she let Vend Ruga escape many different times.

and again, it just shows how complex the plans of the Church are: they knew Hamy’s weaknesses very well: first it was thunderstorms, now it also turns out that they knew about the person she hated. They then took Volken, who was a man of justice, and got him to rebel against her. In the meantime, they hid Vend Ruga, for whatever reason, inside a body who was then taken over by yet another body (talk about busy) to provide the perfect cover for her. On top of that, Yucklyuck is an artifact which can harness the powers of multiple people. My guess is that the Church is ultimately trying to harness Vend Ruga’s super awesome mega powers, whatever they may be, in order to get in Hamy’s way, whatever that also may be. I believe that that tree plays a major part in it.

Now, what was up with this episode? Did Volken act in the way that the Church hoped he would? I mean, at this point we can be sure that Hamy knows about Olivia Litlet: she’s got her sensory threads for that and I’m pretty sure that she was spying on him. At this point, I have no idea: on one hand we have Hamy the masochist, on the other we have Hamy who for the first time actually does something out of desperation. I know that she likes Volken, but at the same time it’s also a huge mystery of what that Vend Ruga means to her.

Oh, and this episode also showed a new OP and ED. I approve of shows swapping their OPs and EDs, even to worse ones: it signifies change and evolution. Both OP and ED are a bit of a step down, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)