Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 11

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume


To hijack this post for a bit, after a few days of using my new star-rating system, and quite a few problems have arisen (with many thanks to the commenters left their opinions):
– It’s too fuzzy
– It’s hard to relate the meaning of the scores, it’s unclear what the maximum number of stars is
– Some PCs can’t support unicode and instead only see a bunch of question-marks.

To conclude, it was a nice experiment, but the star-system sucks, and I’m going back to numbers out of 100 again. I’m going to keep rating, based on Storytelling, Characters, Production-Values and Setting. My biggest beef with my original rating system was indeed how it was inaccurate as hell. In the original system, I had basically ten categories for which I’d give out a rating, where the eventual rating would be their average. These categories always ended up overlapping each other.

With only four categories, this’ll mean that not every number will be utilized (the ratings will quite probably be 8o, 82,5, 85, 87,5, 90, etc. out of 100) but I hope it will make my reviews a bit clearer.

To continue hijacking this post, another thing that caught my attention about the reader survey was the relatively large amount of people who’d like to see the little summaries that I had a year ago back. Are there more who’re interested to see this return? Like, for example:

Short Synopsis: We learn a bit more about Haruka, and last week’s enemy continues to target Chiko
Good: Excellent change from light-hearted to dark throughout the episode
Bad: I’ve never been that big of a fan of brainwashing, and this is no exception. Auntie’s murder attempts keep getting more ridiculous.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10

Very interesting, the way this episode started promised to be a strange beach-episode, but this series managed to add so much more that I’m surprised that it all fit into just 20 minutes. First of all, it is revealed that Haruka had a twin sister. She reveals this as her dead image keeps haunting her since the beach in this episode is the place where she died, and apparently Haruka blames herself for her death.

In the second half of the episode, our long-haired enemy returns again, and his/her weapon this time is brainwashing all those important to Chiko. Like mentioned above: I’m not too big of a fan of brainwashing, mostly those kinds that can be resisted easily. I mean, if you were a villain, using this technique, wouldn’t you make sure that the people you brainwash never get near the conditions to break out of this mind control? Here too: I’m still not sure why exactly Tome was the only one who broke free…

Still, apart from that, I was surprised at the sudden dark tone. When it wants to, this series takes no prisoners, and it immediately throws every one of Chiko’s friends against her. What were those pills supposed to do? I failed to pick that up. Were they just poison, or did they have another effect? Speaking of poison, I’m really not sure what Chiko’s aunt is thinking… before, she came with intricate plans to kill Chiko through poison, and now she has turned to throwing flower-pots at her head. Can’t she just hire a professional killer or something?

Amatsuki Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki, Anime Reviews


I really like Studio Deen. Sure, they may screw up their series very often, but when they hit a classic, they really deliver an amazing series. Their newest series to add to that list is Amatsuki, with the interesting thing being that even after watching it I’m still not 100% sure why I liked it so much.

For starters, Amatsuki combines history, science fiction and fantasy with each other when the main character (Tokidoki) gets sucked into a virtual world, which ends up being the ayakashi-infested feudal Japan. At first sight, it’s not the most original premise, but it’s the execution that makes this series unique.

The dialogue in this anime is absolutely amazing. They’re really deep and detailed, and you can see that a lot of time has been put into them. It’s no wonder that this series shares a director with Le Chevalier d’Eon. These characters could start talking about watching paint dry and still make it come across as interesting.

On top of that, this series also has an excellent sense of storytelling. It carefully builds up everything that you need to know for this series (again with that excellent dialogue), and there have been so many subtle details added that makes this series come alive.

Then there’s also a very complex storyline. This series really likes to make the boundaries between good and evil as fuzzy and complex as possible: every character has some kind of secret agenda or own goal. Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy, and vice versa. Because of this, this series is especially in its element when many characters are together at the sane place: there’s so much going on at the same time.

Obviously, this series’ main selling point is talking, so don’t even dare to come near this series if you’re expecting Naruto and Bleach-esque fights. Sure, there is some action in this series, but it often gets overshadowed by said dialogue. That’s not to say that the fights are bad, though. It’s quite the contrary: fights are brutal, they come out of nowhere in a light-hearted mood and progress to mercilessly beat down the characters, with large amount of blood.

This also isn’t a series that you can watch to relax. You need to constantly pay attention in order to catch all the subtle details and nuances to get the most out of this series, even though the overall pacing in this series is similar to that of .Hack//Sign (in other words: sloooow).

Whether or not you’ll like the graphics is a very personal thing. Studio Deen has always been a fan of brightly coloured and frilly character-designs. The same goes in Amatsuki: everything looks very stylish, but it’s just a matter of personal preferences. The soundtrack is an excellent one, though, although a few tracks may have been played a bit too much.

Overall, I recommend Amatsuki to those with patience. It’s a wonderfully written first half of a series that’ll be continued… some day. It’s very stylish, with a unique sense of storytelling and a complex storyline. Another outstanding series by Studio Deen.

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

Amatsuki – 13

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki


Haha! Now I know for sure that the second season is only a matter of time. There is NO way that the creators planned this to be the final episodes. There were TONS of hints for a continuation.

The fox-story could have just been resolved and everyone could have just happily returned home. Instead, the fox-thing was resolved within five minutes, and in the rest of the episode we saw Princess Summoning Teiten, challenging it and getting killed by it, causing Amatsuki to go haywire. The ending credits showed a bunch of characters who haven’t even been introduced yet. If I had to guess, then the second season will arrive around spring 2009, just like the continuation of Druaga no Tou, I suppose.

On top of that, this episode also was as good as ever: it was both hilarious at one time and tense at the next. It really seems like Bonten isn’t the main villain here, and I still like how, despite his tough-look, he was trying to get his subordinate back all this time. I love how he just laughed at Tsuyukusa’s actions as if they were some kind of usual antics of the guy. There were lots of different nuances in this episode that are hard to describe, but make this series stand above most other anime.

This episode also showed how easily enemies can turn into friends and especially the other way around: Tokidoki is still affiliated with the princess, and the princess has a lot of enemies, as shown in this episode. A lot of allies may have been formed when trying to stop the fox, but now that she’s gone, I really wonder what will happen?

In any case, I am really looking forward to that second season. Especially since Gon is going to play a bigger role again. He’s been awfully absent here, being unconscious for three entire episodes and all…

Crystal Blaze Review – 89/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Crystal Blaze


Some great anime have a very detailed art-style with absolutely gorgeous animation. Others have a smashing soundtrack, performed by a famous composer. Others hired a cast of well-known voice-actors to perform on their characters. Again others put a lot of attention to their dialogue to make this as deep and thought provoking as possible. And more others don’t have any of this and just want to tell a good story. And that’s where Crystal Blaze belongs: an excellent anime on a low budget and the dark horse of the past spring-season.

The production-values are nothing to write home about. The animation is simple, the CG is obvious and not integrated and it doesn’t have a big animation-company working behind it (after all, Studio Fantasia’s reputation is rather questionable). And still, it makes up for everything through its amazing storytelling. The story itself is not very complex, but the way it’s told makes it something special. Throughout 12 episodes, not even one scene was wasted. Every episode continues to develop both the characters and the plot, ending in a very satisfying climax. There are no plot-holes whatsoever, everything gets closed off nicely, there are no stereotypes. For a fan of storytelling such as myself, this series was pure gold.

You should be aware of one thing if you want to watch this series, though. This series became the dark horse of this season for a reason. There’s one particular character which will turn off a lot of viewers: Manami. This is supposed to be a tale about adults, but she’s one of the very few teenagers in it, and she very easily gets on your nerves. She’s not a bad character by any means, and her weaknesses are used well, but the fact remains that the combination of an annoying voice and her continuous whining make her a very hard to like character. Thankfully, she gets less annoying as the series goes on.

Speaking of voice-acting, this is the second series along with Kurenai that did something interesting with its voice-actors. I can’t exactly pinpoint to what it was that the creators did, but conversations end up sounding much more like ordinary conversations instead of coming from a recording-studio.

All in all, Crystal Blaze turned out to be among my favourites this season, due to its great cast and awesome storytelling. This is exactly what a twelve-episode series needs to be, and I hope to see more non-fanservice series from Studio Fantasia in the future!

Crystal Blaze – 12

by psgels, posted in Crystal Blaze


Oh god, the creators actually did it! They actually pulled off a great ending as well. This episode was really good, and amongst the best of the entire series. One thing I’ve noticed with endings that they often feel rather lukewarm. I think that my opinion of this seems to change with every season, but right now, I believe that a good ending comes from an episode that uses the building-up of the rest of the series. Too often I’ve seen endings that never use anything that’s been built up for apart from that bad guy that’s dead now, or something similar.

[SPOILERS sort-of follow for the endings of Ghost Hound, Kurenai, Bokura no and Seirei no Moribito] As much as I hate to admit it, thinking back, Ghost Hound’s ending wasn’t that good. It looked like a series that kept building up, but it never really built up for the stuff that actually happened in the climax. In the same way, Kurenai’s ending where Murasaki proposed to stay also came from nowhere, which is probably why that ending felt rather weird. An example of a good ending is Seirei no Moribito: it was very straightforward, but it kept the same pacing and mood as in the rest of the series. The ending for Bokura no is such an example as well: it remained within the flow of the original series, while also providing a lot of new things that fitted within the series.

Crystal Blaze in the same way stays within the same mood in its final episode, and doesn’t become anything completely different. There’s still its great sense of storytelling present, and it still had a lot going on. There were a few clichés here and there (the self-destruct-button that needed to be stopped, the finish with a big explosion), but the execution was done well enough to make these twists acceptable.

I have to especially give this series credit for the way this episode started. I mean, how many times have we already seen an important character, about to be shot, followed by a fade-out and a cliff-hanger? I nearly forgot that people can actually get shot in these kinds of things. Seeing Sara getting shot in the back was a real way to catch my attention, as ironically, I never saw that one coming, even though she’s got the powers to regenerate and all.

This was also really an episode where the characters really come together. Everyone apart from perhaps Manami (who only played a really small part anyway) was really awesome to watch. The humour was better than ever, and you’ve got to love the return of JJ. As it turns out, the poor guy was never caught, and instead he had been hiding inside the building’s air shafts for all this time.

Now that everything is over, I’m still of the opinion that Crystal Blaze is among the best series this season, and it really knew how to use its limited time of 12 episodes. Especially since the production-values are nothing to write home about, this really surprised me. For those who quit this series due to Manami: don’t worry. Once this series hits its second half, she becomes a regular side-character and the focus shifts to the other ones.

To close off, this series has one of the funniest aftermaths. Even when compared to pure comedies (who never seem to be that good with their aftermaths anyway, for some strange reason). Doc, dressed up as Kitoh was awesome. Although I didn’t wish to have seen that “particular” shot of Porilyn…

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 10

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume


Now this is more like it. I’m not a big fan of the new and angsty Ken, but he does spice up things a bit if he continues to develop like that (which is very likely, considering the nature of this series). This episode pushes the plot forward again, and I’m glad to see that some actual meaningful villains appear, rather than those goons of the previous episode.

It also seems that the supernatural research for the past world war is going to play a big theme in the rest of this series. In this episode, a doll, carrying Nijuu Mensou’s pendant appears in front of Chiko. In the meantime, Chiko’s aunt is still trying to poison and kill her (if I understood correctly, Chiko faints in this episode due to the poison that she was fed). Tome and Chiko also get a lot closer together in this episode.

The next episode is going to be the halfway-point of this series, so I hope that that one will give a few more hints as to where this series seems to be going. There are a lot of storylines going on, but no goals, apart from finding Nijuu Mensou. I want to know why the creators bothered to forcefully introduce such a supernatural element in this series, and what difference it would have made if they were just excluded.

Amatsuki – 12

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki


In true Amatsuki-fashion, the big climax of this series (or at least the first half… I’m still waiting for that second season announcement…) is not about action at all, but instead about dialogue. And of course, it wasn’t just a matter of the tree being cut down by evil people, there seems to be a huge backstory behind even that, and that’s where Heihachi fits into things, as he was there when the decision was made to cut it down. If I understood things correctly, it was also used to smuggle dangerous stuff, though I didn’t pick up exactly what that was.

It’s interesting how Bonten didn’t turn out to be the bad guy, even though everything about his appearance screams “typical bad guy” at first. He too just wanted to get his idiot companion Tsuyukusa back. What’s also interesting is how the fourth heavenly being (or however these guys are called) decides to show himself.

At the moment, I’m SO hoping for a second season, especially after learning that Druaga no Tou also gets to have a continuation. Amatsuki already is amazing, so I’m really interested in seeing what it can do once the characters start developing. I know the other works of the director, and seeing how awesome Chevalier became in its second half, I’m really curious to see how a second season of Amatsuki will turn out.

Crystal Blaze – 11

by psgels, posted in Crystal Blaze


Talk about an excellent first half of a finale! 12-episode series shouldn’t have “calm before the storm”-episodes. It wastes a precious episode that could have been used so much better, and all these episodes to fill time until the next episode, when the big climax is going to happen. Granted, this way you end up with a great climax, but at the same time there’s a dull build-up that breaks flow a bit.

This is why I really like Crystal Blaze’s style of storytelling: first it spends five minutes as an aftermath of the previous episode, sets a few pieces of the puzzle right and prepares a bit, and very soon it heads into a new direction with an action-packed climax. This keeps the series exciting and the flow of storytelling remains roughly consistent. Perhaps I’ve become bored by series who abuse “calm before the storms” and aftermaths too much, who know.

So basically what happens in this episode: Kitoh has to leave his base (obviously because it’s been discovered), so he kills off his entire staff apart from his research subjects, Kirie and Doc. Doc indeed was just faking to have switched sides in order to get a close look at Kitoh’s research, and because of his obsession to finally find a scientist who is interested in his work, Kitoh never doubts this. BW-alpha also turns out to be able to transform into a huge monster, but as expected she’s still imperfect and rather weak to the blood of a humanoid weapon. The episode ends as Sara is about to turn into crystal and Shu is about to shoot her, which will make her blood come into contact with BW-alpha and kill it off.

What surprises me is that in this series, no attempts have been made to make the viewer care about BW-alpha. Even though she’s a little girl, she’s portrayed at nothing but a monster. Usually in anime that don’t focus on children, young girls like that have the “she’s little! care for her!”-mentality (see the Kohane-arc in xxxHolic). Quite refreshing that this is indeed a story about “adults”.

I’m really interested to see where this series will end. There’s one episode left, and we know that Sara is going to die, though considering the rest of this series, it seems unlikely that the creators don’t have a few juicy twists left in store. I must say that Crystal Blaze has been the big surprise this season, along with Kaiba. I admit that I was really looking forward to it when I saw the promo-image, though when I looked at the character-designs, this enthusiasm faded a bit. “Everything looks generic, so it’s probably going to be generic”. Hah, the creators sure managed to deliver an awesome series with these generic ingredients.

Nijuu Mensou no Musume – 09

by psgels, posted in Nijuu Mensou no Musume


Aah! And things went so well for this series! What the heck were the creators thinking at that fight-scene?! Suspense of disbelief is very important for this series, because it’s dealing with the topic of a child prodigy, which is very easy to overglorify in anime. In this episode, Chiko and her new friend have to fight against two grunts that are after Nijuu Mensou’s treasure map for God knows what reason. The way the first one goes down is already hard to believe: one judo-throw by someone who has just been practicing Judo for a year (which reminds me, has Chiko been continuing her judo-training ever since she got back?) will not knock out someone for hours. It’ll startle them a bit at most, especially considering how he was a full grown guy.

Still, that could have all been ignored if not for the blatantly insulting way that the second one went down: he takes Chiko’s friend hostage, so Chiko uses a hand mirror to blind his eyes. If that wasn’t enough, Chiko suddenly is also able to deal out powerful kicks from nowhere. Still, that also would have been sort-of acceptable, if the guy wasn’t stopped in his tracks by some toys that Chiko’s friend threw at him. He even got knocked unconscious because he simply slipped. No amount of explanation is going to set that one right…

I’m going to see this one as a bad day for the creators. Possibly a bad writer was in charge of this one and not the amazing previous three episodes. Thankfully, the parts about Ken made this episode at least a bit worthwhile: we actually see confirmation that Nijuu Mensou is still alive (dressed up as a police-guy), and that he never attempted to contact Chiko. It also took me quite a while to find out that half a year has already passed. I originally thought that Chiko would grew up to like fifteen years old, but it turns out that the major part of her story will take place at the age of only thirteen. I hope that her hormones won’t get in the way of good storytelling.

Amatsuki – 11

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki


For the past few years, I’ve been using AniDB to keep track of the anime I’ve watched. It’s got a clean look with a lot of options for statistics, and I especially like how you can assign priorities to the entries in your wishlist, which helps to give a clear overview over my huge to-watch list. Unfortunately, there are enough reasons to dislike AniDB, and recently another one of them got introduced: the tag-system.

The tag-system basically enables visitors to add their own tags to different anime. I’m not complaining about the ones as “action”, “lost technology” or “randomness” (although I do wonder what makes these so different from AniDB’s category-system). My problem is mainly with the more subjective categories as “Boring”, “Utter Crap” and “Emo Fag”.

So yes, I’m indeed mentioning this in this particular post because Amatsuki has been labelled as “Utter Crap” by god knows who. Other entries I majorly disagree with are Wellber no Monogatari, Mai Hime and Crystal Blaze (under that same tag), and Ergo Proxy, Flag, Higurashi, Jigoku Shoujo, Voices of a Distant Star, Seirei no Moribito, Evangelion, Trinity Blood and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, which have been labelled as “Boring”. I also wonder what the category “Emo Fag” really contributes…

My problem with these categories, other than that some of my own favourites are amongst them, is that they do absolutely the opposite of promoting anime. If someone was looking for a show to watch, stumbled upon Crystal blaze, only to find it amongst the utter-crap tag, there’d obviously be a small percentage of him, actually checking it out. I’m perfectly fine if you want to say bad things about a series; heck, that’s what stating your opinion is for, but the tag-system is such a ridiculous 4chan-way to do it. It never allows you to state the reasons for having that opinion. Besides, AniDB also has comments, tags and reviews for stating opinions. Heck, I’m still not sure about the difference between all these.

I’m really feeling that AniDB is about to drown into its own features. What’s the purpose of the mylist and why isn’t it integrated with the vote-system? And there are more of these details that gradually make you unable to see the forest because of all the trees that are in the way. So yeah, if any of you knows a better site to keep track of the anime you watch (besides the obvious myanimelist.net), would you care to share it?

Okay, I’ve gone off-topic for a bit too long now… Back to this week’s episode of Amatsuki. This finally sheds a bit of light on Heihachi’s fate. AS it turns out, Tsuyukusa never abandoned him, but instead he saved the guy from being killed by the fox demon. In exchange, he became some sort of servant (?) to the fox-demon. The thing that Bonten did to him in the previous episode was just to read his mind to find out what happened.

I also now finally know the mission that Toki and Kuchiha were going to do: they were going to check up on the guy who cut down the tree that housed the spirit that the fox demon grew up with. It now all makes sense: she was trying to get it back, and because of that rumours of Ayakashi probably started floating around. Now all that’s left is to figure out where the heck Tsuruune and Benitobi have gone to.

And oh my god, Toki and Kuchiha are really cute together as a couple. I’m surprised to see that even the romance in this series went well: it’s there, but it knows exactly when to appear and disappear.

In any case, yet another great episode. Let’s hope that it won’t be over in just two episodes.