Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Psycho Pass – 11

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

Now. This was incredibly intense. This latest installment has really pushed this series to new levels and I really was at the edge of my seat through the entirity of the scene between Akane and Shougo Makishima. And hands off for the creators for actually doing it: killing off the girl. From Urobuchi Gen this was to be expected, but many other writers would have chosen to let her live, which would just not have had the same impact.

Because the end of this episode was just hopeless. Akane really looked completely shocked in this episode. She was slightly different and more competent from the usual rookie you see in these positions, but she still is naive, believing that she can just take care of things herself. This episode was so over her capabilities. The direction of this episode really was amazing in bringing this forth.

I just wonder… what idiot thought that the Sybil System would be a good idea? I mean, what it basically does is sniff out psychopaths. The junks and the mentally instable people whose desires go out of control. There is another group of killers out there though: the ones who simply don’t care about human lives. These guys aren’t necessarily psychopaths, they just have no value for anything and just kill whenever they find someone annoying. Or in Shougo’s case someone who just rationally manages to kill people.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Robotics;Notes – 11

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

How everything is going to tie together, I have no idea. But this episode definitely went into the right direction by providing some great twists for some of the different subplots of this series.

So Kimijima Kou elaborated a bit on how the world would be destroyed, and this episode definitely drove home that Misa now has completely changed, and works for the bad guys now (although I suspect very much that things will get a bit more nuanced in the future). But this episode also laid links between the Kimijima Report and Frau’s mother and subsequently the final episode of Gunbarrel, which ended up being an incredibly pessimistic troll ending.

My guess would be that Frau’s mother knew the same thing that Kimijima Kou knew, and also tried to show this through the Gunvarrel anime, but got found out before the final episode which she used for these hints, came out. That probably explains why Kimijima Kou made the instructions to get to his reports so ridiculously complicated. Why the story is centered on robot building amidst all this… still isn’t clear to me, but who knows?

Also the twist that someone is using the accounts of the top 3 players of Killballad is quite morbid. And surprisingly like that one arc in Psycho Pass, although here the impact is really on the fact that someone is cheating in a completely different way than expected, and using such morbid means in it. The deaths here do make more impact compared to Psycho Pass because the murders there are the orders of the day: it’s a police series about serial killers, while this is a show about building robots.

Also, I was wrong: next week will air another episode. After that we’ll get a one-week hiatus… and then the Noitamina-timeslot will move to Tuesday Evening. Yes, after all those years of Noitamina airing on tuesday, it will finally change its schedule. The question now is: will that retain its viewers. In a way, I can understand it though: over the past years, thursdays got way too crowded: most likely due to its influence, there were way too many shows that aired on the same day and therefore much more competition. In comparison, Tuesday evening has always had much less series. I really hope that the viewers will move along with them and allow the timeslot to be even more successful.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

From the New World – 12

by psgels, posted in From the New World

Holy crap… a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. This show definitely put that saying into a different perspective. I mean heck, this is just a horror series in disguise. The whole story about that one kid who went crazy actually nearly freaked me out, that’s how good it was. Very, very dark psychological horror.

But with this I also feel so sorry for the people who all had to solve this and clean up, being forced to put so many constraining rules on the village. This was the first time the series showed the story from their perspective. And also their fear of some other kid freaking out. And the thing is that this series has been slowly building up someone for that role: Mamoru.

What’s more, Saki is being forced in the role of a leader now. I can only imagine how different the second half of this series will be, when she is actually put into that position, and forced to make the same incredibly difficult decisions. This show is cruel. Very cruel.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Psycho Pass – 10

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

This really is an episode that I easily see Urobuchi Gen write. It may have lacked any gore or something, but it was nevertheless quite sadistic, using an innocent friend as a hostage for a simple game.

This episode worked in two ways, first fleshing out Akane and Shinya (having this girl tell about how Akane always solved problems is much more effective than just showing it), and then by pulling a very good cat and mouse game by the previously established android. Again a psychopath who was given the means in order to become a murderer, but this time it’s made very obvious that he also is being tested, and will just be disposed of when he fails.

One strange details is how Shinya suddenly got the idea of a radio antenna being hidden in a bra of all things. You have to have a specific mind to really realize that. I guess that that also was the point of that scene: the white-haired guy knew Shinya so well, that he’d know that he’d come up with such a far-fetched theory.

I also liked how this episode toyed with responsibility. I mean, Ginoza definitely went out of the line, but he’s right: Akane pretty much is responsible for human lives now, which is such a big change from her education. If Ginoza’s theory were true then she could have easily killed him off indirectly due to the system that they live in.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Robotics;Notes – 10

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

It’s a bit of a strange twist: the previous episode left off with a disaster of a robot that refuses to move because it lacks power, and in this episode some kind of awesome light ending literally drops out of the sky in order to help the cast.

But I guess that that’s one of the charms of Robotics;Notes: on one hand it is deconstructing the giant robot genre by showing what it would really take to make such a thing even remotely usable, and examinig what a challenge it would be to even build one. On the other hand it has mysterious AI girls and sparkly things that fall from the sky. It’s definitely using the former to build up for the latter, and that build-up is LOOONG. This really needed to be a 2-cour series, otherwise this entire effect would have been lost.

Regarding build-up though: the key is also being able to use it. We’re now nearly at this series’ halfway point (after next week there will probably be a big hiatus), and the characters so far are down to earth, realistic and believable. That’s good, however the pay-off of all this is also something that the creators really need to pay attention to. If it works, then it will be awesome. If not… then I get the feeling that I’ve wasted my time a bit.

Still, the series continues to drop good hints. The end of this episode where Mizuka with her defunct leg asked Airi to go away made a good impact: finally this show starts to delve a bit into the links between all of the subplots it has been creating.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

From the New World – 11

by psgels, posted in From the New World

This was a bit of a build-up episode for From The New World. Nothing too shocking like last episode happened, but nevertheless it’s the kind of episode that takes a step back for us viewers to get to know the characters a bit better. For fleshing the cast out, this was a really good episode because we finally got to see some of the sides of the minor characters who haven’t been in the spotlights like what Saki has been.

Ryou also was this interesting addition to the cast, in which an entire person has been replaced in everyone’s memory. Where did that guy come from, I wonder? It in any case was a very nice way to make the characters paranoid, and I like how difficult tampering with your memory is in this series: the adults did their best to cover up the memories, but some things just can’t fit. It’s now also clear that certain key parts have been erased from their memories and this goes as far as being able to cover up an entire romance, but it’s very difficult to hide an entire freaking crater appearing from nowhere.

Also this episode used lots of flashbacks and dream sequences, which of course is pretty obvious when the main character is trying to recall things. It actually worked quite well to tie up the past ten episodes together.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Psycho Pass – 09

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

Psycho Pass is a technically well written series, and what I mean by that is that it’s getting more and more eloquent: the things it has to say in its dialogue are getting more interesting and creative with every episode. It’s perhaps not on Ghost in the Shell levels, but still quite impressive compared to the other series that are currently airing.

The dialogue also really made this episode. It was both very good at describing its characters, and very interesting to hear what the different characters had to say. In particular the cyborg villain caught my attention, and the animators also seem to like this guy. Nobuchika had a major shock when it turned out that his father’s hue got clouded, and this episode really took its time in explaining not only what this meant for him, but also how the other characters related to it. Because of that this series feels more and more solid with every episode.

And yeah, speaking of Ghost in the Shell, this series definitely takes some cues from it, especially now that the talks are starting about androids. The focus of both series is completely different: Ghost in the Shell was a political thriller with a lot of focus on the mass media, while Psycho Pass looks into psychology and the minds of psychopaths, but there are definitely overlapping themes, like questioning the conveniences of having an automatic body, and how we get used to it and depend on them. Having said that, Ghost in the Shell still has much better writing and direction than Psycho Pass at the moment, but nevertheless I hope that this series will open up the door again to more intelligent science fiction thrillers, that will go even further away from your average series in anime, and that dare to take even more risks. Production IG in any case definitely made up for Guilty Crown with this: this is really the kind of daring that I expect them to do. Not that generic mess of plot twists.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Robotics;Notes – 09

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

This was a major episode for Robotics;Notes: the big guy finally moves… a bit. Before coming to an abrupt stop. Yes, giant robots like that have actual problems moving right. They’re giant heavy objects that need a huge amount of power to be even able to lift one leg. I’m surprised that it didn’t even tumble over.

But yeah, talk about a different portrayal of mecha in this series. This episode also contained this interesting bit about hyping these kinds of things: I mean these are high school kids who built this giant robot, but with that marketing campaign of that guy people were expecting way too much out of it and with these kinds of things, when just one thing goes wrong it already feels like a major setback, instead of the huge improvement that it actually was.

The thing is also that I still have no bloody clue how all of this is going to play out, and how all these different plot threads are connected: on one hand you have Airi and that evil Jaxa, then there is Airi’s quest to build the giant robot, Kaito with Frau about Killbala are also trying to get somewhere, and with this episode Airi’s sister also turned out to be completely different from what I imagined and that also is related to everything… somehow. She’s probably working for Jaxa, but even then I have no clue what the point of it all is. I mean that in a good way by the way, because I’m quite interested in finding out.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

From the New World – 10

by psgels, posted in From the New World

Another Shigeyasu Yamauchi episode. The animation was less messy, but still: you could really see his influence. And holy hell what an episode it was!

Shigeyasu Yamauchi’s style loves the use of close-ups, and weird camera angles on small details and objects to create its atmosphere. On top of that, he often works together with Kenji Matsumoto for the background art, making this episode look utterly GORGEOUS and unique. In this episode his style worked particularly well because of its build-up: the climax of this episode came together wonderfully, and with such talented directors and artists working on it it only got even better.

I also believe that the use of CG in this episode was really good. You could see that it was used, but rather of it looking out of place, it was very creatively used: it either looked totally in place, or totally not (those pills). Either way this episode looked really experimental, and I love it when a TV-series does that. Experimental animation for the win!

So my theory of Shun was a bit wrong. However, the way in which he explained what happened to him was incredibly tense, and it showed how serious of a deal Cantis is. It’s so easy to go out of control, and that’s exactly what happened to Shun. The way in which those rat people believed that humans were their gods suddenly gets a totally different dimension when they were mostly likely created by them. The whole human society is tightly controlled, yet everyone is incredibly paranoid for the case that someone goes out of control again.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Robotics;Notes – 08

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

Okay, so this show likes its anti-climaxes. In this episode we saw two examples of the creators toying with this: first of all, the lady of last week’s cliff-hanger is not a threat at all, and instead wants to help the lead characters build their robot, not to mention that she’s working for Akiho’s father. Then the end of this episode comes, and casually mentions that there is an evil organization about to kill 6/7th of the world population.

Instead there was this big typhoon acting as the red herring in this episode: totally unrelated to the plot, but it kept the characters busy, and Akiho now knows about Airi (which I believe should have happened earlier by the way), and I admit that the way in which they used Kaito’s time issues during the typhoon. It looked much more painful than the other times so far, good job from the creators.

It’s also quite a strange way for a guy to hide his reports, using some of the strangest requirements that could break down making some of the clues potentially unsolvable. I really wonder why. I mean, I get that he was a playful guy and all, but would even such a person want to joke about something so serious? Was there a reason why he had to keep things so secret to keep them from finding out?
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)