Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

I scrapped the Storytelling, Characters, Production-Values and Setting-ratings from my reviews, but I still look upon anime, based on those four criteria. And really, Kyousogiga is one of the very few series that gets all of them right: it delivers everywhere, and this episode was a great example of that.

Storytelling: the second OVA is brilliantly used by changing the context of each episode and making the way all of the small bits fit into the series completely different. Everything now makes much more sense. With this the third sibling has also gotten his development, and the animation brings the characters alive wonderfully. The facial expressions say huge amounts of things about the characters, without putting them in actual words.

It’s also a great example of one of the reasons why I stopped splitting up my ratings: ideally all of these work together with each other, enhancing each other. Isolating one part is just silly, because the standout series like this one stand out because of the sum of their parts. It’s because of how many different ways the creators manage to think of to portray their characters, using meta-fiction like the one with the dog (symbolism!) to illustrate parts of the story from a different perspective, that enhances the characters and allows them to shine. In the meantime the characters develop by growing and thereby they change the story themselves. Plus, how do you rate it when a series has so much heart put into it as this series? These complex rating systems are completely pointless because you can never take everything into account. Therefore these simple ratings based on one scale are the best. What matters is the overall experience, and overall Kyousogiga is pretty damn awesome.

Another example: in this episode I realized how incredible the music here is. Alone it may have just been organ music. But it brought out so much emotions in the characters. I probably would get bored of it pretty quickly without this series.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

This episode, it’s Yase’s turn to get some fleshing out. Also with some material from the second OVA, but again it succeeds to add so many things. Whereas the second OVA was very cryptic, this episode really puts things into perspective, and really explains why Yase acts the way she does.

I’d also like to highlight something else here: a common pitfall for anime is to just take one episode to develop and give backstory, only for the creators to really not know what to to with the character in particular afterwards. That is not the case here. Even the side-characters feel dynamic: we see different sides of them and they all still feel alive, rather than just cardboard cut-outs after they’ve lost their place in the spotlights. That’s another sign of great storytelling.

Oh, and this capital is an awesome place, in which stuff can’t be destroyed other than letting it float away into oblivion. This episode was also about this concept, and how people who value stuff versus the people who don’t value stuff deal with things. This again ties in with the parents disappearing to form one big hole, even though this series at first seems completely random.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

I remember how a few years ago, the Munto OVAs also got a full fledged TV-series in order to flesh out their setting. Well that turned out to be the cheapest way out: they just recapped the OVas 1 on 1 and slapped some flimsy conclusion at the end with some sequel bait, which was removed at the movie of the thing… Kyousogiga however is the complete opposite: with this series, newcomers to the franchise aren’t left out at all, and know right away that they need to go for the TV-series that has everything in it, and they managed to stuff everything in really well.

Also, unlike the previous episodes, this episode tells three stories at once: one third of the episode is about monk guy, one third about the scientist girl (also including episode 2 of the OVA) and the third part is about the present, which also ties the abovementioned two together perfectly so that this episode becomes more than just three mini-episodes packed together.

My favourite part was about the monk, though. I did not expect a character like him, who always was in the background, to gain so much depth. It’s quite astounding to see how much the creators did in so little time with this guy, but I love how this series is really trying to give depth to its entire cast. It really makes the setting also come alive.

Also, here’s another thing: am I the only one who noticed that most anime are quite lazy when it comes to aging characters? I mean, make characters a bit bigger, their hair a bit longer or shorter, and voila. Here, it took me a while to link the two monks to their younger versions: they really grew up and changed significantly, but parts of their childhood remained. A small but very clever detail.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

This show. It does so many things right here. Here, in the beginning, it actually devotes its first real new episodes to the past of its cast, something that most other series just put in as an afterthought.

Here is the thing, comparing this to the other episodes and series that have aired in this season so far: There are a ton of series that are packed with style, and great animation and direction, however there are two series where you really need to pay attention in order to catch all of the tiny details that the creators managed to put in it: Kyousogiga and Galilei Donna; Even Yozakura Quartet can be enjoyed while laid-back. Galilei Donna meanwhile has some pacing issues and strange plot twists carried around. And that’s why this show is my favourite of the season: every frame is deliberate, creative and has a ton of heart behind it.

In this series you’ll never know when a mythological reference will pop up, or heck: even a reference to the other episodes. It may look vague, but everything is really deliberate and the more you puzzle, the more things start to fit together. I especially loved the quiet part in this episode where the bunny returned. The whole part about crying also was masterfully done. This show has found a way to be charming whilst completely avoiding cheese.

You can really see that this is a passion project of Toei, otherwise they can’t keep this kind of consistency. I mean, after two OVAs and two episodes, I sstill haven’t seen any sign of weakness. It has continued to be varied, creative and inspired, while still true to its own style. Usually there would be signs of outsourcing, uninspired parts, cut corners, or some sort of thing that could have been done better. With this, I have no criticism: everything worked. Sure there were a lot of slice of life scenes that could technically have been omitted if you care about story and all, but they together serve to paint the picture of the female lead, and flesh her out. I feel that any part of this episode removed would have taken away from her. On top of that, I can’t see anything that the creators could have added here to improve on her backstory without making things unnecessarily complicated.

On a sidenote: another actually good ED. Nice!
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Finally. After a virtually empty Winter Season, the worst spring season in more than 10 years, and a merely average summer season, we’ve actually got ourselves a really awesome season here in 2013. Lots of series made a really positive and really strong first impression, so let’s hope that they can keep all of that up. One series that didn’t was Kyoukai no Kanata for me. As good as the animation may have been, it was just bland, the characters were annoying, and it lacked anything to keep me engaged.

Out of all these wonderful and creative series though, the best first episode belongs to Kyousogiga, if you ignore episode 00, which was pretty much just the OVA (even though that one was really good too). It may not have the most frames of animation, but out of all the new series this season, it has the most heart put into it. This episode really shined in every single way.

I’ve seen people note how I don’t talk about what Kyousogiga is… but the thing is: I find it really hard to describe that in just a few sentences. I guess it’s about this bunch of people with supernatural powers living in this strange city where stuff happens and things, but that would do it a huge disservice. It’s Toei’s experimental depart just toying around and unleashing their creativity onto this short little series, but even that would be doing the characters a huge disservice. Even after this episode, I still can’t accurately describe ‘what’ this series is.

But considering the OVAs, this pretty much was the perfect episode they could have followed up with: it’s the episode that explains the background of the series: where did all of the characters come from? What is the world the characters live in? This episode shed lights to that, and I love some of the ideas they threw in. The key being this monk who can breathe life to whatever he draws (how’s that for an awesome idea!), creating a family along the years. The series also seems to be based on all these kinds of different worlds that coexist next to each other, with a central world being the main hub, it seems. I first thought that the lead female (who we only see in one minute in this episode by the way) was also the daughter of that rabbit-woman, but it turns out that she came from this central world in order to search for someone.

But how heart-warming was this episode: the whole monk’s family was so endearing, especially since we know how different the three kids ended up growing up. The characters all had wonderful chemistry together. But here is also one thing: the amount of details that the creators managed to stuff into just this episode is astounding. The budget may not have been as big as with the OVA, but every single shot here is creative. The direction is also fantastic: the animators really have this knack of saying a ton fo stuff with just a few images. And they just keep throwing these at the screen over and over, even in a slower pacing.

And the soundtrack. Definitely the best soundtrack of the season!
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)