Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Tytania – 05

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: A planet-nation called Turandia just lost its king, and Tytania immediately plans to re-establish diplomatic relationships.
Highlights: Finally some politics again.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
You know, it’s taken me five whole episodes to realize the whole hidden meaning behind the OP and ED: The OP shows just shots of the Tytanians, while the ED is about Fan Hulic, Lyra and Miranda. It’s a very nice use of symbolism, although the dramatic visuals in the ED worry me a bit. I really hope that the creators aren’t going to focus too much on the romantic relationship between Lyra and Fan Hulic, because so far it’s been the least interesting aspect of this series. Especially those thorns bug me.

In any case, this episode went back to the politics again, which was very much welcome after the previous episode. It was an interesting idea that Turandia, after the loss of its ruler needed to re-establish its political structure. Juslan was sent to that planet to help that (apparently, he’s the half-brother of one of the dearest friends of the princess of the country), but unfortunately most of the Turandia-officials decided to turn themselves against Tytania. I didn’t expect these two to die so suddenly either. The coup d’etat was one thing, but instead of just capturing the princess, they just shot her.

This episode also showed the large implications that Ariabart’s loss had to the image of Tytania. They’re no longer the invincible force that needs to be reckoned with, which inspired the Turandia-officials to grab the courage to turn themselves against the nation. I’m not sure yet how the rebels and Fan Hulic are going to form the centre of this opposition, but I guess that that’ll be clear in the next episodes.

Blade of the Immortal – 09

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: The re-match between Manji and Makie.
Highlights: The huge psychological warfare that went on during the battle.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
With episodes like this, where one fight basically takes up the entire episode, I just can’t help but wonder why it felt so awesome here, and yet when series as Soul Eater stretch a fight-scene, with their far-superior animation, it feels like a chore to get through (for me, at least). I think the big difference is that the talking in Blade of the Immortal has a very important meaning to the fight, and this episode also shows that the psychological aspect is very important, while Soul Eater instead try to increase their length with an explanation that’s just good for a bit of background, and never adds anything to the characterization.

In any case, this episode was probably the best one of the series so far, mostly thanks to Makie and her fascinating character, who’s standing between her own values and her love with Kagehisa. This episode really showed me why she’s this series’ strongest warrior: not only is she very proficient with her weapon, but she also makes optimal use of the environment she’s in, compared to Manji, who’s just good at hacking and slashing his victims until they go down, and uses his persistence as his main weapon.

I also really like what Rin did, at the end of the episode. She’s very mature for her age: she realized that for her revenge, she killed many people, she acknowledges it, and yet she stands firm to her decision to avenge her parents and go through with the decision she made. This episode showed that she had a lot of doubts when confronted with it, but I really like that she was able to use this as another look at the spectrum, and went on to help Manji.

Tytania – 04

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Alses continues his manhunt for Fan Hulic
Highlights: Talk about a complete change of mood.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
Okay, so this is something I didn’t really see coming. This episode, instead of focusing on the usual politics instead tried to lighten the mood by focusing on first romance and then comedy. I’m not too much of a fan of Lira yet. I can understand how she would be desperate to keep Van Hulic as her ally, but nonetheless she annoyed me half of the time.

Miranda, however, rocks. She’s the perfect example that women too can be GAR, and the soldier she captured (who seems to be an old acquaintance of her who joined the army) works really well with her in terms of banter. I never thought that I would praise this series for being funny, but there you have it, the second half of this episode was really fun to watch. ^^;

Meanwhile at the Tytania-department, it becomes clear that Alses and Salisch aren’t exactly on one line, and even though Salisch has a higher position, his mother seems to be more attached to Alses. Lydia is still far removed from the plot, and the rest of the family also doesn’t seem to do much in this episode. I think that the introduction is going to take a while longer, since the next episode is probably going to focus on Fan, getting accustomed to the rebels’ hideout. Still, it’s good that the creators are taking their time and not keeping to the same mood, but it indeed takes a bit of patience to sit through it. ^^;

Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino OVA

by psgels, posted in Gunslinger Girl - Il Teatrino, OVAs and Movies:



Short Synopsis: First Rico and Jan travel to Venezia, then Jan, Jose, Henrietta and Rico visit Jan and Jose’s hometown.
Highlights: Haunting as ever.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Am I glad to see more of this or what? The OVA cleverly chose to focus on character-development, rather than action, and it was SO WORTH the fifty minutes of airtime. It would be such a shame if this series was the end of this franchise, because those final volumes of the manga really deserve to be animated. This OVA really reminded me why I labelled this series as the best one to start airing in the past Winter-Season after with Porfy no Nagai Tabi

The first half was basically about Rico, and how she’s probably the most haunting member of this cast. It’s still awkward to see such a killing-machine like her transform to such an innocent girl so easily, and especially that nightmare she had made a lot of impact: to suddenly wake up without having any limbs. During that moment, the creators and especially her voice-actress did a wonderful job at conveying her emotions at that time.

Il Teatrino concludes with the background story of the subplot that had been looming over the entire series: the death of Jan and Jose’s sister, and it’s interesting how both of them decided to live with it in a same way. Jan tried forget her, while Jose tried to not forget her. As a result, Jan has a strange illusion of her when he visits his old house back (and after seeing Henrietta wear some of his sister’s old clothes). At the same time, he also seems to be mourning over the death of a certain “Sophia”, though I didn’t pick up exactly who she was.

I’m also becoming an increasingly bigger fan of Kou Otani as a musical composer. So far, I’m loving the soundtracks he’s produced so far. They’ve all got a folky feel, but all of them are distinctive and different.

One thing that would be an interesting idea for of the third season ever gets highlighted, is for the series to switch production-companies again. In this way, we’ve got a series with three different, yet consistent parts that form a bit story as a while.

Tytania – 03

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Everyone and his dog is now trying to recruit Fan Hulic.
Highlights: This definitely is the series with the most focus on build-up of the entire season.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
In a way, I’m glad that I haven’t seen Legend of Galactic Heroes at this point. The thing is that when compared to Tytania, it has two major disadvantages: it’s likely not going to have the same huge episode length, and neither does it have the month-long gap between episodes that allowed the creators to put so much time and effort into the former, so that they could get every bit of development right. This way, right now I can enjoy Tytania to the fullest, only to be blown away by LoGH afterwards, which is probably going to be ten times better or so, instead of the other way around.

In any case, the past two episodes have made it very clear now what this series is going to be: this episode didn’t feature any space battles yet again, and the creators kept emphasizing that this is a political thriller, and the space-battles just come in at second place. I have no idea what this series is going to be like once it arrives at the real meat of the story, but for now I’m glad to see that it’s putting so much effort into setting everything up right.

This episode basically meant to show that Fan Hulic wasn’t just going to go with Tytania without a fight. Tytania is a force more fearsome than I originally believed, and the fact alone that he won a battle from them has labelled him as the hero of the many people who oppose the Tytania-family. Some of those people can be seen in this episode as they managed to recruit Fan for their own goals, rather than letting Tytania snatch him away.

I keep wondering what’s up with that girl… I think her name was Lydia (it’s amusing how even the characters in this series aren’t able to keep track of all the names of the different characters ^^;), but she feels entirely out of place in this series. Especially considering how she’s featured in just about every promo-material. I hope that the next few episodes will shed light on this, and make her more into just an ordinary girl who likes flowers.

Blade of the Immortal – 08

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: The Ittou-Ryuu now starts sending women after Manji.
Highlights: This show can both be funny and romantic if it wants to.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Quite a unique episode for Blade of the Immortal. Manji and Rin are purposefully kept in the background, in order to focus on some of the other characters: Kagehisa Anotsu and a new one: Makie Otono-Tachibana. There was a lot of dialogue between them, but if I picked up things correctly, the two of them have a crush on each other, but aren’t in an official relationship. Makie is a Geisha who seems to work for the Ittou-Ryuu in order to make money, but I’m not sure about her exact role yet, or who it was that ordered her to go and take care of Manji. In any case, it seems that in this episode, Makie finally managed to cut whatever ties she had with the Ittou-Ryuu, or vice versa. I think that Kagehisa just tried to love her because of her combat skills.

The fact that this episode focused on different characters also had another very nice result: there was a bit of time left to flesh out Manji and Rin. Really, Manji is getting ruder with every episode, and especially their banter about Manji’s sexual escapades was pretty funny, and how Rin tried to take that too seriously. It was a bit awkward to see that from a fourteen year-old girl, but then again: Rin didn’t exactly grow up normally, having witnessed her mother being raped and all.

I also loved the directing-style of this episode. the animation is still not really impressive, but especially in this episode, the creators really made u for it with some very nice poses and visual imagery. It works especially well with the already excellent sound of this series.

Tytania – 02

by psgels, posted in Tytania



Short Synopsis: Ariabart screwed up, so he now has to face the consequences.
Highlights: No battles this time.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
Okay, first of all, about the rating. After dunno’s comments I got thinking a bit, and I’m experimenting right now with a different rating-scale for episodes, that uses a bit more of the available numbers. I still need to tweak this a bit, but in a nutshell:
5 – lacking
6 – solid, good, but nothing special
8 – excellent

So yes, this episode was pretty much a good one, and I liked it, although it mostly was an episode of building up without any real battles. Over the next few episodes, I’m going to tweak that rating a bit.

In any case, for those who remember my little contest: this series ended up winning it, so it’s going to be blogged Tytania is most likely going to be my “why the heck am I watching this raw”-series of the season, with the huge amount of political dialogue and all.

In a way, I was pretty surprised when I found out that Artland is handling the animation for this series. Still, it might actually be the perfect company for this series: we’ve already seen in Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino that they pretty much suck at fluid and high-budget action-scenes, but these guys really try to make up for it with some excellent fight coordination, which is EXACTLY what this series needs. With this, we’re assured that this series isn’t going to feature some impossibly moving spacecrafts, but instead a very large focus on tactics. I mean, the animation of To Aru Majutsu no Index was nice and all, but in essence it’s just about a bunch of people who throw a bunch of photoshop-filters at each other until one of them goes down, which isn’t really my idea of an excellent action-series.

And there’s also that strange talent of Artland to choose the exact soundtrack that fits their series the best. Apart from perhaps Happiness or Hakushaku to Yousei, each of their soundtracks has fit the mood of their series perfectly: the very subtle natural sounds in Mushishi, the dreamy music of Bokura ga Ita, the folky music for Il Teatrino. And Tytania really has a soundtrack that screams “build-up” and “epic”, which basically is the essence of this series.

In any case, about this episode. I managed to pick up that Fan Hulic was supposed to lose his battle of the previous episode, because of some deal that his superior had made with the Tytania-family, which brings even more shame to Ariabart. If I understood correctly, this means that Ariabart will be degraded in ranks, and he’s going to have to keep an eye on Fan Hulic. The question is of course: if any other member of the Tytania-family would have commanded that ship, would he have lost as well?

Some quick first impressions: Nodame Cantabile – Paris Chapter, Chaos;Head and Tytania

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Tytania

Nodame Cantabile – Paris Chapter

Short Synopsis: Our lead character moves into his new apartment in Paris.
Highlights: Just as awesome as the first season!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Well, there you have it, just like expected from Noitamina and Nodame Cantabile: this season aired a LOT of romantic comedies, and this one definitely stood above all the others as the one with the best first episode. And okay, it benefits from being a sequel, unlike the others, but even then this episode brought a lot of new stuff to the table now that Chiaki and Nodame moved to Paris. Their quirks were just as awesome as they were in the first season, and even the new characters already show promise after only three quarters of an episode. The OP is a bit less than the original one, but it’s nonetheless a very good one, and exactly what you’d expect from the Noitamina-timeslot (which is really infamous for its strange, unconventional and incidentally awesome OPs). My French is just as good as my Japanese, but with the added Japanese accents, I may need to wait for the subs, as long as they’re not too slow. In either way, Nodame at the restaurant was probably the funniest thing about this episode.

Chaos;Head

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a figure-collecting otaku who manages to score a date with a pretty girl.
Highlights: A LOT to like, a LOT to dislike, but in such a different way from Kurozuka.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Really, after this episode, I’ve got absolutely no idea what to think of this series. It’s like what happens if you cross a generic harem with a gory horror-mystery. Some parts of this series screamed potential, while others were incredibly clichéd. The mysterious internet-guy was awesome. The corpse in this episode was also awesome. the inner-monologues also were nicely written, and the homeless guy also has nice potential for the future. So, why the heck centre this series around a bunch of pubescent males? Why make this into a potential harem? Why make all the females transform into cute battle outfits as the OP suggests? Why these uber-generic character-designs? The romance in this episode also felt a bit forced, but the most annoying character was definitely the guy’s sister. Really, this is one series that can go anywhere.

Tytania

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters… who were they again?
Highlights: Starts dull, but gets progressively better.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Really, when this episode started, I kept wondering what all the buzz was about. The OP is underwhelming to say the least, the characters all looked like each other, it was too caught up in its own gloriousness, much in the way of Glass no Kantai. But as the episode went on, more and more hints of potential kept showing up. Of course, a series like this one needs some time to really catch some steam. So far, I really like that this is a show about adults, and not a bunch of teenagers who somehow have high positions. The battles are also going to focus on strategy and politics, and these things promise to be very refreshing after Macross Frontier and Code Geass. This episode wasn’t as good as some of the other new shows this season, but it did show that the creators know exactly how to build up tension. It’s going to be interesting to blog this.

Blade of the Immortal – 07

by psgels, posted in Blade of the Immortal



Short Synopsis: Shizuma asks the help of a familiar character to get rid of Manji.
Highlights: Rin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Ah, I’m really beginning to see where Bee-Train plans to go with the first 13 episodes of this series (who knows how long it will be in the end?). Its general rule of thumb is “don’t introduce any complex or complicated plot-twists or character-development unless the characters are developed”. And indeed, this series so far has been mostly action-scenes, and fleshing out Rin and Manji. At the same time, we also already get a bit of a taste of the major characters of the later arcs. I don’t know exactly how much of the manga Bee-Train changed, but this does explain why the plot has felt relatively simple so far.

And albeit slowly, the plot is definitely moving. Shizuma doesn’t turn out to be a major character at all, because in this episode he dies. Same as the old grandmother who delivered Manji and Shizuma their worms. That by the way was about as untypical as a major death in anime as you can get. There was no blown-up drama. Shizuma just stepped outside of his cottage, and when he stepped back in, he already killed her with his poison. I was surprised to find out about her grandchild, by the way. At the end of the episode, it still lives, so I’m curious whether it’s going to appear again.

In any case, I keep getting more impressed by Rin, who’s turning into much more than just a damsel in distress. Even though she’s nowhere as strong as the other guys in this series, she does what she can in order to help Manji. And even when she does get captured, these raw emotions of fear are very nicely portrayed. And at the end, she’s able to set herself past these traumatic experiences. You can really see her mature.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Nijuu Mensou no Musume


A major theme of the past half year was fooling the viewer, and the uncrowned king (or queen in this case) of this theme definitely is Nijuu Mensou no Musume. In this series, Studio Bones tells about a twelve-year old girl, who gets adopted by a glamorous and world-famous thief, in the period of right after the second world war. That leads you to expect that this is going to be some sort of thief-series, where Chiko and Nijuu Mensou (the girl and the thief) spend most of its time to steal a number of precious artefacts. Well, no.

I refuse to spoil what’s exactly going to happen, but expect a lot of points where the storyline in this series will just take 180 degree turns as the series progresses. This is really one series that keeps you guessing, and wondering where the characters will go next. And that’s the charm of this series for me.

To accompany the storyline, the series also has a number of very solid characters. Chiko works really well as a female lead: she’s smart and composed, although in the first few episodes, she does lean awfully close to a Mary-Sue. Thankfully, as the series progresses, she develops away from that trope. The side-characters are also excellent, though there are a few oddballs among them. Characters as Ken and Haruka never really can seem to find their place in this series.

Unfortunately, as this series enters its final third, its quality decreases dramatically. Up till that point, the series had been wonderfully unpredictable, and then it decides to close off with a drawn-out rip off of one of its earlier arcs, and a final antagonist who just lacks development for the big role he’s supposed to have, turning him into another one of those villains that are evil because they’re evil. The development in this arc pretty much stagnates, a few deus ex machina pop up here and there, it takes several episodes to do something that could just have been done in one, the final climax is a string of clichés, and overall it just took the potential this series had and threw it away.

Because of that, I just can’t label this as a great series, since it could have been so much better if a bit more time was spent to tweak that final arc. What could have been a masterpiece went rather downhill during its finale. Because of that, Nijuu Mensou no Musume still is a good series, but nowhere near the best of the season.

Storytelling: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 8/10