Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Shangri-La – 15

by psgels, posted in Shangri-La



Okay, you know that a series is is badly received when even the raws of the local World Masterpiece Theatre series get released faster. It’s really such a shame to see that Gonzo is going through such bad times right now. In July 30th, they’re going to be delisted from the the stock exchange, and a large part of their staff has left by now. We can only hope that they’ll end up well in other places, like for example David Productions. It’s going to be such an incredible shame to see all of their talents to waste like this.

In any case about the episode: for each season I obviously have my favourite series, and damn, this time my favourite show of the season really is the most controversial one I’ve had so far. With these kinds of episodes, even I have trouble to suspend my disbelief: where did the poisonous gas come from, and why did it disappear so conveniently? Why, after the cease-fire, did Takehito suddenly appear somewhere completely different? Why, after the cease-fire, did Kuniko and Momoko decide to wander off to Atlas’ residential area?

Agh, this is really driving me crazy! These flaws are definitely there: the plot is really stupid at times. And yet I still love this series, and not in the way of a guilty pleasure like I do with 07-Ghost. Even though there are series that are much more solid this season, like Pandora Hearts and Phantom, Shangri la still stands out the most for me. I’m still surprised myself, but aside from the really sloppy scriptwriting, this series does have everything that I’m looking for in anime: a grand and evolving storyline in which there’s always something going on, a diverse, well developed and fleshed out cast of characters, an imaginative setting with a lot of different settings and layers, an excellent sense of mystery that slowly but surely reveals itself to the viewer, and making the story more intriguing with every revelation, a terrific sense of eye candy. It’s ambitious, experimental and always offers something interesting.

My guess would be that Gonzo indeed is in a lot of trouble, and so they simply lack the resources at this time to properly pace and plan out the storyline in the finest detail, and so instead they’re trying to end this series with the biggest bang possible. And seriously, that’s something I appreciate a lot. Nevertheless, we can only imagine how incredibly awesome this series could have been if it was animated during the height of Gonzo’s quality.

This series is also making me question what it means to be a good series. For example, Code Geass also had a lot of flaws, yet was very ambitious, but it really didn’t work with me. I think that the reason why I wasn’t able to stomach Code Geass at all, while I continue to sing praises for Shangri-La that for the latter, I’m able to give an entire washing-list of things that it does right and which I love about it, while Code Geass… never really impressed me anyway. Characters felt flat, the plot tended to repeat itself, there wasn’t much variation and the plot was mostly dull and incredibly politically incorrect.

Okay so yes, this series isn’t going down history as the best series ever, but I’m definitely going to remember it, because this is one series that made me really question what it means to be a good anime. You of course have the powerhouses that are Kaiba and Birdy the Mighty Decode 2, which are awesome in every single way, but the reason why they were awesome was because they took risks: they looked outside of the box and came with a story that rocked in nearly every single way. However at the same time, it’s incredibly hard to come up with such a storyline. It’s not a matter of “is this flawed or not”, but “is this good enough”, and I admit that in my recent reviews and summaries, I’ve been focusing a bit too much on pointing out random flaws instead of looking at what’s really important. We all know that plotholes are a bad thing, but in what way and how much do they bring down an otherwise awesome story?
Rating: ** (Excellent)
MAJOR plotholes, and yet the setting and characters thicken even more. This is a really weird series to be a fan of.

Guin Saga – 15

by psgels, posted in Guin Saga



Haha! To think that some of the best romance of the season (only surpassed by Phantom) comes from not a slice-of-life series, not a full fledged romance show, nor a drama, but instead a series that advertises itself as an epic fantasy series. I did not see that coming, but what makes the romance in this episode stand out is the fact that it’s completely void of any wimpy characters and for once kissing becomes something normal, rather than something sacred that should only happen once or twice.

My biggest surprise here is that Istvan and Linda have become a couple now. I especially loved the look on Remus while they were making out: for once it’s not the look of some siscon (which seems to be really common in just about every anime that has siblings of different sexes and similar ages!), but rather it’s the look of someone who dislikes inefficiency, and would wish that the two of them started to think about things that mattered.

And of course, Guin turns out to be fine, but what interests me is that even he didn’t remember what the heck it was that happened to him: he just… woke up at that island, nothing more. It probably has to do with where he came from, but apart from that I have no clue of what went on.

There was also plenty of eye candy in this episode. The island had some wonderful designs, and the newly introduced characters (are they? or did I forget about their introduction) all look great, with even the unimportant side characters having distinctive designs. The fight scene this episode also rocked, and for once it didn’t look rushed, which also was a plus. I’m really excited about this series right now.

So, how about a second season?
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Lots of romance, plot development and eye candy. Exactly what this show is good at!

Canaan – 02

by psgels, posted in Canaan



Okay, so this season I’m going to be blogging Canaan. It’s supposed to be a short series, and I’m not going to be expecting the most amazing things from it, but instead what I want from this series is the things it did well in its first episode: fun and well directed action scenes. For that, it’s going to have to correctly develop and characterize the cast, have a storyline that provides interesting and creative situations and a setting that’s dynamic enough to prevent from all those scenes from looking the same.

Canaan doesn’t seem to be a true adaptation, but rather a sequel. This is a plus, since the creators now aren’t bound by the length of the original source material, and instead can go in their own way and plan the story over 13 episodes accordingly. With this, they should be able to wrap up everything properly.

I haven’t read the original source material, and I don’t really think that I’m going to do so in the future. I’m not sure for how many others this goes, but I do hope that the creators take account of the ones who are unfamiliar with 428, rather than assuming that everyone already knows everyone’s back-story. And at the same time they’re obviously going to have to include this back-story, without boring the ones who did bother to read through 428.

I’m interested in the director, because this guy did Sword of the Stranger, which was a great movie in terms of action. If he can apply the same thing here for Canaan, it’s going to be a pretty enjoyable series while it lasts. The guy behind the seres composition wrote scripts for Simoun, has written the progress of series as True Tears, Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, but unfortunately also a bunch of mediocre series, most notably Vampire Knight… I hope that with Canaan, we get to see his good side. And hey, the music is done by the composer of Noein and Phantom. That’s a plus too.

In this episode, we learn that for some reason, Maria and Minoru are now targeted, because they photographed something they shouldn’t have. Probably those strange infected people back then. The nature of the disease still is a bit of a mystery, because this episode shows an old guy with that strange mark on his face who can safely move in the open air.

My biggest fear right now with this series is that the creators are overplaying the chemistry between Maria and Minoru a bit. I can see them getting annoying quite fast if something doesn’t happen.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
Nice enough action sequence, but nothing special yet.

Phantom – 15

by psgels, posted in Phantom



The character-designs in this show kept bugging me. For some reason they looked different from usual anime, but I can’t exactly put my finger on why. It’s definitely something with the line art, though. In a lot of series, they’re shaded and coloured along with the colours around them, but in this series they’re all the same dark colour, and this series does nothing to mask or hide it. But then again, there are plenty of other series with the same, so that can’t be it. This effect especially stands out at some of the far away shots, where the line thickness is exactly the same as with the close-ups. The effect gives off something very old school, which combined with the modern CG shading and background art gives off a very down to earth feel for this series. It’s a very nice style for this series, although it is a bit of a pity that the animation budget isn’t as good as it used to be. The creators thankfully haven’t resorted to an increase of still frames, but the amount of distorted faces has increased drastically.

Anyway, about the rest of the episode: you can see that this series has changed A LOT since the Ein arc. While this of course is nothing new, it really doesn’t happen often for a series to have a really, really dark start, and then become much lighter in their atmosphere. There’s this warmth between Reiji and Cal that wasn’t there when Helen was still involved. Even when the characters are feeling down, it feels nothing like the tension between Ein and Zwei when they still were a team.

This episode was mostly light and quiet, but well worth that awesome climax of this episode, where the character-development really came together, and Reiji couldn’t shoot directly because he suspected the sniper to be Helen. He was about to both take revenge on the guys who killed Rose, complete a mission that would cause a lot of benefits for Inferno, but after being shaken up by Cal, the news that Helen might still be alive has really struck him. And ZOMG: Ein indeed is alive! I’m interested in how she survived: I could buy Reiji, but she was shot through the heart. That’s not something you can survive easily, can you?

Anyway, Cal obviously has the downside that she’s only been introduced a few episodes ago, and the majority of this episode therefore felt surprisingly light, but DAMN: seeing her crying when Reiji nearly got shot really was adorable. It was an excellent performance from her voice actress.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
A surprisingly light episode with some lacking animation, but chockful of character-development.

Pandora Hearts – 15

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



This series just continues its string of downright excellent episodes. This episode was much more about the characters than the mystery, but that’s also one thing that this series stands out at. The reunion between Oz and Alice was nothing short of adorable, and made the rather annoying cheese of a few months ago well worth it.

Alice, Gilbert and Oz work really well as a lead trio. All three of them try to fill in, for better or for worse, to fill in for each other’s flaws and weaknesses, and when you have such a setting as with this series to play with, it works really well.

We also learned something new about Break and his chain: it’s a chain, made to negate any influences from the Abyss, and so a chain made to hunt other chains, and for some reason this power is similar to that of Oz and B-Rabbit. This episode also reveals that Vincent is indeed trying to make Break do something: bring Alice’s memories to the real world. Since Break’s powers are very hard to beat in a fight, he indeed seems to have resorted to just manipulating the guy. This episode also showed that Break isn’t perfect, and flawed just like all the others. Now we just need to see some flaws of Vincent, but there’s no doubt that those are going to appear when we get a bit of a bigger look into his mind.

The end of this episode also had a nice little twist: why did the horse just take Alice and Oz with it, and leave Break and Gil behind in that collapsing dimension. Break was smiling, so there obviously had to be something else that saved them, but why was this so important for Sharon, and why the heck did she teleport them in the middle of a big meeting involving Oscar?

Also, I’ve stopped caring about the bad animation by now. This series just looks so damn good that I don’t mind the cut corners in the animation.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
An excellent character-based episode, after last week’s major plot twists.

Shangri-La – 14

by psgels, posted in Shangri-La



What an incredibly awesome cliff-hanger in this episode. Absolutely fantastic how I never saw this coming. It has been a long while since I’ve been this impressed and shocked by a sudden plot twist. Obviously, MAJOR SPOILERS coming up. This sentence is there to prevent those spoilers from showing up in the blog aggregators.

Because holy hell! Kuniko’s grandmother was the first CEO of Atlas?! Now that gives a totally different meaning to the entire story. I just kept thinking that she in her early days worked as some sort of idol or something, and while I did suspect that there was more going on with her, I never expected this. That figurine turns out to have a completely different meaning now. It wasn’t just one of grandmother’s escapades when she was younger, instead she had quite a following in those days because she was similar to Kuniko, and hence why her loyal fans started to make figurines of her (something which I suspect is going to happen with Kuniko as well at this rate).

This now also explains why she has one of the daggers, and this makes it a bit more plausible as to why Kuniko of all people turned into a Digma. Something must have happened, involving her decision to step down and leave Atlas. Now we also know why Kuniko’s mother is in Atlas: for some reason she decided to stay, while Kuniko’s grandmother took Kuniko along with her for some reason. But really, it still baffles me that her initial ideas were so much different from Kuniko’s.

But the rest of this episode also kicked ass. The whole mind games that involved the strange machines that can fully alter their environments (to a certain limit of course: sand remains solid floor) gave a really nice effect to the infiltration scene this episode. Because the metal-age has broken up into three different groups, this sense of Kuniko not exactly knowing what’s going on and still having to hand out orders worked really well.

And then to think that Sayoko was released by some mysterious member of Ryouko’s assistants. Who exactly was behind it, and why? And what’s in the future for Shion? His lifetime as Ryouko’s personal toy really seems about finished. And Ryouko too is starting to become really interesting now that she can’t move freely anymore.

For me, I think that the reason why I’m enjoying this series so much despite its flaws is that I tend to overlook flaws in series, as long as it has enough to make up for it. Personally, I’d rather watch something with a lot of flaws, but very ambitious, creative and daring, rather than something flawless without ambitions. Although flawless series are definitely worth the watch, they really need to do something extra for me to consider them a classic. For that, it becomes much easier to make mistakes, but that’s exactly where anime needs to go.

So what if this series has its flaws? It’s imaginative, ambitious and it attempts to be ground-breaking despite Gonzo’s financial issues. Is it really that much worse than those solidly produced series that don’t take any risk and just repeat a tried and true formula? Heck, this episode reinforced even more that this is my favourite show this season. Phantom is going to have to try hard to be able to beat it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Great cat and mouse game, followed by an awesome cliff-hanger at the end. The setting just keeps getting more intriguing by the minute.

Guin Saga – 14

by psgels, posted in Guin Saga



Remus… what a change of character. He went from a complete and incompetent imbecile to a smart and composed stoic. His change of character is indeed a bit sudden if you just attribute it to character-development, so I have some real suspicions that that skull-guy has something to do with it. He probably either zapped, possessed, took control, brainwashed or did something else with the guy that made him change so much, probably taking advantage of how useless the guy found himself. I mean, those fancy magic flashes had to be there for some reason, right?

This episode mostly deals with the ship that Guin and the others decided to board: it’s a pirate ship. In a way it makes sense, since any other ship would probably recognize Linda and Remus, or ask too many questions, but in return they did get attacked by the pirates in the middle of the night for bringing a woman on board. But then again, with Istvan’s and Guin’s strength they do have the advantage.

Something really weird happens in the middle of the episode, though. A ship of light appears right from out of bloody nowhere, takes Guin away without any hint of what happened to him (we really don’t see him for the entire rest of the episode). And when you thought that that wasn’t sudden enough: a minute later the ship gets hit by lightning…

So yeah, the pirates were a bunch of stereotypes and acted like a herd of potatoes, but it still was a very enjoyable episode. Istvan too is starting to notice that something really weird is going on with Remus, which could prove to be very interesting for the future of this series. Especially since Remus isn’t stupid anymore, so he might have some tricks up his sleeve to avoid suspicion.

Linda on the other hand is now starting to look like the useless one here, as she keeps getting captured and complaining, but you can still see the strong side of her personality throughout the episode. It’s just that she’s never really been in real danger before the attack of the Mongols, so she’s never learned to defend herself or pay attention to her surroundings. Also, is it me or is Istvan developing a crush on Linda? Perhaps not a romantic one, but she’s definitely on his mind: he wants to be the one to protect her and starts to dislike Guin because he’s the one on her mind right now.
Rating: * (Good)
There seems to be no end to the character-development. Yay!

Some quick first Impressions: Element Hunters, Canaan and Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

by psgels, posted in Canaan, Some Quick First Impressions

Element Hunters

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters travel to another world and hunt monsters.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nope)
Well, so finally we have a bad series again. Element Hunters is an attempt to bring back the parallel world children’s adventures genre (like Digimon, Flint the Time Detective and others), but in the end it’s just lazy and uninspired. Basically we have a bunch of kids who travel to some parallel world with chemical element themes, but the reason why they end up there is virtually non-existent: from out of nowhere, they just run into a gate that transports them, and from out of nowhere they just start fighting some weird monsters like they’ve been doing since they were three. While I admit that the characters have their charms and nice voice actors, but that’s also the only thing that’s inspired about this episode. Also, for a series about chemistry this episode also showed that the creators know absolutely nothing of their subject: this episode was about nitrogen, and instead of discussing its practical uses, or the fact that 80% of the air we breathe consists of it, the only thing it can think of is some weird nitroglycerin flowers. I mean, seriously? This series is in every single way inferior to that other science show that’s currently airing (Marie & Gali).

Canaan

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters kills a bunch of people during a big festival
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (Choosing the shows to blog this season is going to be HELL)
As if this season didn’t already have enough awesome shows: here’s the next one. It’s awesome to see P.A. Works back with their next series, and it shows. This episode had by far the best animation of the season so far. But that’s not what I’m excited about. What really set this series apart was how well it portrayed such a big festival, in which so many things were happening at the same time. The creators didn’t just tell a story, but they also brought the entire festival alive during this episode. Everything and everyone was moving and there was always something going on, from random people having fun to people shooting each other and others going insane and poking their own eyes out. There were so many details stuffed into just this episode, it’s really amazing and it’s going to be awesome if the rest of the climaxes of this series are going to be the same thing. This series has now already shown that it can deliver a great action scene. Now all that’s left is to develop the plot and characters.

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in despair.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (haven’t blogged the first two seasons, ain’t gonna blog it this time either)
And so, the third installment of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei has started. I do have to say that the creators are going to have to put in some real effort to prevent this from turning into one of those franchises that refuses to bloody DIE. The original premise went past its expiration date halfway through the second season, and with this season the creators are really going to have to do more than just repeat the same formula over and over yet again. This episode was… decent. It wasn’t good nor bad, it had some amusing moments, but I really fear that I’m going to get tired of the series in no time if it doesn’t get more interesting.

Phantom – 14

by psgels, posted in Phantom



Whoa, it’s really her!? Or does this episode show the mysterious “Drei” that the fans of the original game have been talking about? Anyway, this was another excellent episode from this series, even ignoring that final plot twist in the end. It was all about seeing the relationship between Reiji and Cal, and just watching the two of them grow closer together is worth the watch.

It’s interesting how episodes like these show how much the creators know about marksmanship, and the correct way of using a gun, even though in El Cazador they simply glossed over it. In any case, it’s really charming that Reiji recognizes Cal’s talents, and is planning her to get as far away from Inferno as possible when everything is over, so that she isn’t going to end up the same as him. You can really see in this episode that Cal is opening up his shell, even though she was completely different from Ein.

I also liked the references to well known actors (deNiro, etc). I guess that the creators can’t use titles of movies due to copyright, but this works as well, especially since action movies are a major part of the American culture. It would have been weirder for these movie references to not pop up.

It’s just a shame that this episode again got the shorter end of the budget. There again were lots of far away shots that makes the characters easier to animate. Ah well, at least it’s better than showing lots and lots of still frames. Overall I do think that the graphics budget is handled pretty nicely: there’s no money wasted on “cool” shots like hair and clothes moving in the wind, and instead the animation is focused to making the characters come alive.

One thing I noticed is that this series has gotten quite a bit lighter since Cal arrived, but that of course can also be attributed to the very cold relationship between Ein and Zwei: they hardly talked, and were constantly trying to figure out each other. Reiji and Cal are much more open to each other, but their excellent characterization still remains.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Cal + Reiji = awesome. Very nice build-up episode.

Pandora Hearts – 14

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



What an amazing episode. It may have had a bad episode director, but even he couldn’t stop the awesomeness of this episode. The build-up in this episode was just perfect, and the revelations that were pulled were stunning. This series has a bit of a lull after Oz came back from the Abyss, but it’s really been getting better and better ever since!

So the Jack Bezarius of the previous episode was just a fragment of Alice’s memories; we have yet to find out what happened to the real bugger. I really thought that he was going to be one of the major bad guys in this series, but the complete opposite seems to be true, and he seemed pretty genuine in this episode.

But damn… to think that the tragedy at … was caused by Break, of all people. And Gil was there too?! For some reason, that tragedy caused them to plunge into the abyss, and return 100 years later (if I assume correctly, Break appeared 10 years before Gilbert; at the moment I can’t remember whether we saw him along with Sharon in episode 1). To make things even worse, one of them killed Alice, when she still was A NORMAL PERSON. Something then happened that not only turned Alice into B-Rabbit, but also created white Alice, and possibly even that Dark Alice that we saw in one of these shots… Alice then got plunged into the Abyss and remained there until Oz came along for who knows how many years.

Damn, I have to say that I’m impressed. Pandora Hearts is turning into a really well-crafted mystery-series. I really hope that Xebec is going to be smart enough to make a second season of this one, because it truly deserves it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
An awesome string of new developments and revelations.