Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Shangri-La – 03

by psgels, posted in Shangri-La



Short Synopsis: Kuniko sneaks into Atlas.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
A solid episode for Shangri-La, and I must say that I’m still intrigued by this show. It may not be the best thing out of all the currently airing shows, but there is potential if the creators manage to push the right buttons. So far, they’ve already done a pretty good job in this, despite the predictability of some points. I mean, in this episode for example we learn that Kuniko’s mother is in Atlas as well…

Gee, I wonder where she could be… [/sarcasm]

What I liked about this episode was the extra bit of depth it gave to the setting. It was a nice touch for that woman of the last episode that yelled at Kuniko to make another appearance in this episode. Atlas was like expected nothing like ‘the promised land’, but looks more like something akin to an anthill.

Right now, Atlas really looks like your average totalitarian empire who oppresses all outsiders, but we’re only three episodes in. I’m interested to see whether the creators can give it a unique touch. Right now the creators seem to be moving in the direction of the huge contrasts between rich and poor, and while this is forming a good base there still seems to be something missing. It also poses an interesting array of questions, though: the Metal-Age are indeed a double-edged sword, but their actions do provide security for the sick and elder who have trouble taking care of themselves. That also begs the question: how are these people coming by in cities that don’t have the Metal-Age?

I also liked the development from Kuniko. This episode establishes her as flawed, rather than the perfect army-commander that the first two episode made her look like. Her big flaw is that she easily gets distracted, even though she probably doesn’t mean any harm. Because she’s lived in the comfort of the detention centre in which she was surrounded by certainty, returning to the uncertain world outside of Atlas has turned her a little insecure.

Guin Saga – 03

by psgels, posted in Guin Saga



Short Synopsis: Guin, Linda and Remus try to escape from the count’s castle.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
In this episode, Guin Saga showed some of its weaknesses, but I’m still a big fan of the show. Sure, it was a bit strange that the count would allow the black-haired guy (I believe his name was Istvan) to keep his sword and whip while in jail, and it was quite convenient for the ape-men to attack the count as well in order to create the diversion that everyone needed to escape, but nothing really got in the way of the really important stuff in this episode. This episode still was as epic as it should be.

And this episode did a nice job of giving a few glimpses on how the rest of the world of Guin Saga looks like. It turns out that Guin isn’t the only were-beast around as this episode shows that the count is some sort of demon, and it introduces a bunch of ape-men who are after revenge because the count killed one of their comrades. Meanwhile, Linda meets another ape-girl from a different tribe and adds her to the main cast of the show. It looks like there are many different countries, counties and all sorts of political fractions, races and parties. As expected from a show with a source material of over 100 volumes. It’s shows like this in which just about everything is big. Well, apart from some of the characters, of course.

I’m also surprised at how I’m not annoyed at all by the antics of Remus. Around the net, the biggest criticism against this show seems to be the annoyingness of the two lead characters, but I find them strangely enjoyable as two small kids dumped into an incredibly big world, totally out of their comfort zone. Sure, it’s not exactly original, but in this show, it works.

Eden of the East – 02

by psgels, posted in Eden of the East



Short Synopsis: Saki and ‘Akira’ arrive in Tokyo.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, thanks for some of the comments. I think with this I established my blogging schedule for this season (do note that the days are in my timezone, not necessarily at the day they air):
Monday: Shangri-La, Konnichiwa Anne
Tuesday: 07-Ghost
Wednesday: Nada
Thursday: Ristorante Paradiso
Friday: Pandora Hearts, Basquash, Phantom, Eden of the East
Saturday: Nope
Sunday: Valkyria Chronicles, Cross Game, Guin Saga, Full Metal Alchemist – Brotherhood

Based on various comments I received, I realized that there are a lot of people who’d like to see me blog both Valkyria Chronicles and FMA, so I’m probably going to drop Natsu no Arashi instead. While that is one definite underrated series, I’m not that sure about the series right now, and whether it’ll be interesting enough to blog (at least, when compared to some other shows I’m blogging this season).

As for the rest of the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Tears to Tiara… I don’t want to go sit through another Utawarerumono.
– Souten Kouro has the bad luck that it’s about the Three Kingdoms Era. I like history, but I never really liked any of the anime that dealt with that period.
– Hatsukoi Limited, while I’m not 100% sure yet, is probably not going to live up to the standard that Sentimental Journey set for this formula it’s trying to use.

Eden of the East is also one really popular series it seems, but for me it’s just too awesome not to blog. I’m an absolute sucker for mystery, and even though it’s only been building up so far, it’s got me intrigued like no other. There seems this whole back-story behind it, and I’m dying to find out what it is.

The style of storytelling is also really addictive, with a lot of focus on the dialogue between the lead characters. What I really liked in this episode was the bit of time the creators set aside for Akira and Saki to get to know each other a bit. It’s great to have another series that’s about adults rather than the teenagers that usually overcrowd the season, and this Spring Season especially seems to have quite a few series that ignore the brats for what they are and just focus on people aged eighteen or above. And I especially like Saki in this series. She’s a young woman that has her own life and an interesting combination between a bit of an airhead and a headstrong woman who likes to take initiatives and try out different things. I also really like her voice actress.

No series is perfect of course, and the flaws with Eden so far are with the CG. It really stands out at times, especially considering how Production IG usually blends it in so well with the rest of the graphics. Here though, people randomly are cell shaded, CG cars and boats look out of place. It’s a bit of a shame considering the rest of the great animation. It’s very strange, because this series features just about the best staff of Production IG, who also worked on Seirei no Moribito.

So yeah, the budget for this series is clearly lower than it was for Seirei no Moribito, that’s the only explanation I can think of. However, the plot is just as intriguing, if not more. In this episode, we learn the meaning behind the “Noblesse Oblige” that was written on Akira’s phone. Noblesse Oblige basically means the obligation of rich people to take care of the poor. The organization Akira belonged to is called the Celecau, who I guess originally was formed by someone with a lot of money in order to help those in need. Somewhere along the way though, something went wrong and the members started up terrorism. I’m interested to find out why the heck the one who organized everything let everything go out of control this way.

In any case, my entries for this series are probably going to be later than usual, since I’m rather busy on Fridays (both with my studies and other shows that need to be blogged) and the raws usually air too late on Thursday for me. It’s interesting how the subs are already fast enough to be released in that kind of period, though, although I kind of get why speedsubbers are often criticized when watching this episode. Especially the translation notes of Ground Zero were pretty pointless.

Pandora Hearts – 03

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



Short Synopsis: Oz ends up at the abyss, otherwise known as a VERY WEIRD PLACE.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Right now, I find it really hard to establish a Top 3 of the season so far: there is no show that stands far above the others yet, but at the same time this season does have a selection of excellent shows, so I’ll just stick with a top 5 shows for now, in random order: Phantom, Eden, Cross Game, Guin Saga and of course Pandora Hearts. The first three episodes so far have been nothing short of excellence.

The whole mindfuck of this series continues even in this episode, in which Oz ends up in the abyss that is filled with disturbing living toys, half-broken houses, doors and things that you usually find inside a doll house, but this time surrounded into a strange black goo and surrounded by strange black clouds. I believe that this is one of the first times I’ve seen horror combined with fantasy in anime, and it works really well, considering all of the weird stuff that this episode threw to the viewer.

And at the same time it doesn’t forget to flesh out the characters. I personally really like the combination of Oz and Alice, and how it’s impossible to know at this point what exactly Alice’s goals are: all that we know is that she needs someone like Oz in order to be able to escape the Abyss (which to be honest is really not an enjoyable place to live), but why she ended up there in the first place, or what she was before she arrived there are still huge mysteries. And at the same time she also could simply have ended up there like Oz: an innocent victim. Although I doubt that she’s going to remain innocent, with the ability to transform into a huge black rabbit and all.

Phantom – 03

by psgels, posted in Phantom



Short Synopsis: Zwei has been trained enough and is about to face his final test.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Why do all the good shows air on the same days?!

In any case, this was a very strong episode for Phantom, and it’s still one of my favourites for this season. While at first sight a standard bee-train series, with very obvious similarities to Noir, there are definitely parts in which it is different. The biggest one is how much attention it spends to the realism of gun combat, and that’s something I can really appreciate. In this show, it’s in no way a matter of just point-shoot-kill, but it’s much more a matter of using your brains, and it also becomes a matter of a battle of wits. In Noir, the action was much more stylized than what we’ve seen in Phantom so far.

Playing in North America, there are also of course references to El Cazador, but again Bee-Train improves on it compared to the previous work. For once, it indeed feels like we’re in a multicultural setting, rather than the Mexicans of El Cazador that may have felt a bit too Japanese. They’re small things, but still appreciated. Phantom of course misses the experimental nature of Bee-Train’s previous work, Blade of the Immortal, but this show doesn’t necessarily need anything over the top, and I really like what it so far has become.

The next question is of course going to be what the rest of the first half of this show is going to look like. With this, the introduction seems over and we’ll probably be switching to random missions and a sloooow pacing while the characters get the chance to be fleshed out (a formula that Bee-Train have really become infamous for, among others), and so I’m interested to see whether these random missions can retain the same atmosphere of these first three episodes until the real meat of the story begins. And when it does, something tells me we’ll be having an excellent cast of characters.

Shangri-La – 02

by psgels, posted in Shangri-La



Short Synopsis: The metal-age and Atlas get attacked by a mysterious party.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so I’m obviously not going to blog the beyond ridiculous Hanasakeru Seishonen, but I’m pretty excited about Gonzo’s new series of Shangri-La.It may not be the most solid series, but it’s got enough of one thing: creativity. It now is the job of the creators to fit this creativity properly into only 24 episodes, but with the guy behind Noein and Birdy the Mighty’s series composition, I think that we can expect some great things from this show. The director himself doesn’t really strike me as anything special or unique, but he has potential, having worked at many different staff position for many different series in the past, and I’m trusting on the experience of these guys to make this series work.

My only complaints about this show so far is just a bit of nit-pickery: in this episode Kuniko and Momoko for example are discovered by the enemy and have to run away for their lives, and while doing so they casually start to talk about golden balls. That doesn’t exactly feel appropriate in that situation, does it?

Nevertheless, there’s lots of nice stuff in this series. I like how when a building gets destroyed, it remains destroyed. The music also rocks, and I also really like the different and varied character-designs. There’s some definite chemistry between the characters, which promises a lot of potential for this series’ second half. All in all, it’s a very fun episode to watch, and yet the darker themes of the show regarding the carbon emissions, military oppression and the dystopian-esque setting don’t lose their impact.

Guin Saga – 02

by psgels, posted in Guin Saga



Short Synopsis: Guin, Rinda and Remus get captured by the enemies.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Epic)
Oh, Guin Saga is promising to be another one of the gems of the current spring season. Perhaps not the best, but I just can’t ignore such an epic series that at the same time favours a very slow pacing and solid storytelling. This really is the kind of series that draws you in so far, and the choice of Satelight as the animation company really fits this sort of story.

Obviously, with the original novels currently at a staggering 124 volumes (?!), there is no way in hell that the creators are going to be able to stuff this into only 26 episodes (or however long this series might end up to be), so I wonder how the creators are going to plan to end this thing, but that shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

The problems with this show of course are of course that when you start objectively looking past the haunting dialogue, great atmosphere, terrific music and solid graphics, there isn’t that much new: the creators specifically chose this slow pacing and simple setting as a base, and from this they’ll probably slowly develop the rest of the setting. I’m interested in what kind of character-development this series seems to be going for as well: here we have Guin and Rinda, who are already very stable characters without much flaws in their personality that they need to overcome. Instead, Guin’s flaw is his amnesia and the fact that nearly everyone sees him as a monster, while Rinda’s problem is that she’s a grown up stuck into a child’s body that nobody’s going to listen to, now that she lost her status as a princess.

And then there is of course the evil overlord that makes his presence in this episode, who probably is my least favourite character of the show. The guy really needs to be fleshed out, get some development, or have something happen to him to make him more than your average sadistic bad guy. But then again, it’s only been two episodes. There’s plenty of time left for that.

Pandora Hearts – 02

by psgels, posted in Pandora Hearts



Short Synopsis: Oz attends his coming-of-age ceremony
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Well, well; it’s been a while since I accidentally deleted my own post before publishing it. At the moment I don’t feel like retyping everything again for a second time, but I do want to say that Pandora Hearts is promising to be good stuff, especially since the second episode was even better than the first. The thing it reminds me of the most is a 20th century fairy tale gone really dark.

It’s good to finally see another potentially great show from Xebec. They’re a strange production company: quite a few of their shows… fail to really impress (Heroic Age never really went anywhere, not to mention last year’s To Love-Ru and Kanokon), but at the same time they really hit the right marks for me with The Third, and some other excellent shows.

Phantom – 02

by psgels, posted in Phantom



Short Synopsis: Eins trains Zwei for his upcoming missions.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Next up: Phantom, the show that turned me into a huge hypocrite (not that I wasn’t already one before, but okay). It was of course obvious that I was going to end up blogging this one, since I really like Bee-Train’s style of storytelling, but yeah: in the end it’s not exactly the most original series out there. Just like Kyoani, Bee-Train sucks because they hardly try to do any series outside of their comfort zone. On the other hand, however, I really like them because of their great sense of characterization and their very slow storytelling, in the same way as how Kyoani rocks because of their huge attention to detail.

This episode like expected was mostly building up. The biggest focus was making Zwei realize in what kind of situation he is: doomed as an assassin who serves to kill people, and a lot of the episode sees him training to make him catch up his skills with Eins (Ein?). I liked how this made the use of a gun difficult, and more than just a point-and-shoot game.

I’m not sure what’s up with all of the different people behind the scenes right now. At the moment they just feel too much like one and the same person, but with a bit of luck they’ll develop through the course of the series, and end up as individuals. But yeah, that’s most likely going to take a long while, considering that this is Bee-Train and all.

In terms of music, this time an interesting composer was chosen: Hikaru Nanase. She has produced a lot of soundtracks, but most of them didn’t really stand out, with two exceptions: she composed Shigofumi and Noein’s OST. The result is quite interesting: for a Bee-Train soundtrack it’s down to earth, and yet still awesome and varied. The ED by the ALI project is a bit disappointing, though. Bee-Train has already shown that they can even get some original music out of a band that just keeps producing the same tune over and over (the soundtrack they produced for .Hack//Roots still remains one of my favourite soundtracks out there, even though the series itself was a disaster), but the ED yet again felt incredibly out of place in this episode. The entire episode built up this somewhat slow and haunting atmosphere, and there the ED blasts out of the screen and nearly ruins this atmosphere.

Some quick first Impressions: Ristorante Paradiso, Higashi no Eden and Hatsukoi Limited

by psgels, posted in Eden of the East, Ristorante Paradiso, Some Quick First Impressions

Ristorante Paradiso

Short Synopsis: Our lead character visits a restaurant managed by lots of bishies
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Obviously, since I’m already blogging it)
This one was surprisingly relaxing, to be honest. while most people are probably going to avoid this one because of all the middle aged bishies, it feels like some cross between Bartender and Antique Bakery. While from the outside it looks like yet another josei series (okay, yet another… there hardly are any of them in the first place, but you get what I mean), this episode was strangely charming and I’m quite fond of the lead female character. I only have one big complaint, though: the overuse of CG. Even the most useless things that would have been much easier to just draw have been CG-ified, with some pretty bad results. Still, I really like what Fuji TV is trying to do right here, in creating yet another time-slot with interesting premises aside Noitamina. Especially after it was followed by Michiko e Hatchin. It’s going to become interesting if they can keep this up.

Higashi no Eden

Short Synopsis: Our lead character visits the white house and runs into a weirdo with amnesia.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Hell Yeah!!)
Okay, so what have we here? Out of all first episodes this season so far, Higashi no Eden has by far the best OP, the most imaginative setting, the most interesting characters, the best mystery, the best use of amnesia, the most natural dialogue, the best combination between quiet scenes in which nothing happens and eventful ones, the best Engrish (the best use of Engrish ever since Beck, actually) the biggest amount of weirdness and it has me more intrigued than any other show. Oh, I love how Production IG manages to come up with these premises that you’d never think of. Here I thought that Eden of the East would be some combination of Shangri-la, and any one of the long line of fantasy shows that this season has already so many of. Guess my surprise when it turns out to be a series about a naked terrorist with amnesia who befriends a twenty year old Japanese girl and goes to Japan with her. I’m really interested in this series, and what the heck the creators are planning to do in only eleven episodes.

Hatsukoi Limited

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets confessed to by a huge streetpunk.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Interesting concept, but I already have enough plans for this season)
My first impression when the OP started rolling was “oh god… generic harem”. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this wasn’t a harem at all, but instead a show about a bunch of school girls experiencing their first loves. It’s going to be interesting to see the modern version of Sentimental Journey here, with each episode focusing on a different girl (don’t ask me what the show plans to be doing in its final episodes, though). I do have some complaints, though: the girls just look like carbon copies of each other. There’s nothing that really sets them apart from each other. While the girls in Sentimental Journey all had their own problems and lives, the girls of Hatsukoi feel more like carbon copies of the same moeblob.