Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

From the New World – 06

by psgels, posted in From the New World

Another great thing from From the new World is that it’s different with every episode. This was quite an eerie episode, in which Satoru fights off small armies of those Ground Spiders after getting his powers back.

I’m not quite sure how he got his powers back. I mean, I get that Saki used Satoru’s mantra to get his Cantis back, but I’m curious why Satoru didn’t do the same for Saki. After all, they were in a situation of life and death, which meant that even there, the thought of crossing this taboo didn’t occur to them.

This episode worked really well despite its problems though, in particular the change within Satoru was great as he plowed through these groups of Ground Spiders, actually enjoying himself. Only to run into this actual army at the end of the episode. Although I have to say that some of the 3D animation could have been blended a bit better. In particular the flying rocks and trees.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Robotics;Notes – 04

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

This episode was mostly basic fodder for competition-based series: the part where the rivals end up working together after having shown off once, while other build-up stuff happens at the same time and new characterts get properly introduced. These were the most unremarkable parts of this episode: Fraukojiro turned out to be this shut-in who talks with internet speak, who really needs some time to warm up, and to be honest the world championships felt rather boring to me.

But then there were some parts in this episode that really impressed me: the background for the characters and the mystery. In particular the latter, as it’s finally revealed what some of the strange moments of the previous episodes were about, and it’s this strange phenomenon that occurred putting everyone to sleep. I really like the idea of one person experiencing time really fast, and the other really slow.

I like how they establish that this is a realistic setting, with supernatural events, right at the beginning, rather than pulling the magic card somewhere in the middle. This was a problem I had with Steins;Gate and Chaos;Head, so what I like about Robotics;Notes, even though Steins;Gate’s first four episodes still were much better, is that it does attempt to fix some of the issues that I had with its predecessors.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Psycho Pass – 04

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

This episode was… odd. Very odd. I liked it and all, but it shows this future rendition of online communities that just made no sense. Or rather: things have to move in a very strange direction in the future for it to make any sense.

THe thing with this episode was that it had some nice ideas, but it combined them in a really weird way. Central was a new way for people to interact online with each other: using Virtual Reality that allows them to create their own persona. Logically there are pepole who stand out as celebrities in this setting. And after that it gets weird.

These celebrities have much more elaborate designs than the others. Why would that be? Computing power or something? What also akes them famous is that instead of creating content, like what a lot of today’s famous people on the internet do, they create personalities that people want to be with. Okay. Later on in the episode, a character calls this a “forum”. Okay. And for some reason, even though a computer monitors the entire cities, it cannot keep track of all the proxies it inhabits. Did the privacy laws on the internet survive this well, even though the rest of the setting is so well managed?

The question here: would the internet really evolve in such a way if virtual reality were introduced? I mean, that community definitely wasn’t mormal and all, with tons of shady guys hanging around it (so how on earth did Akane end up there), but this feels like a bizarre way for things to evolve.

What I did like was that there was one thing that this episode did show offline meetings, to show that not everything is virtual. Oh, and this episode was worth it to see Shinya float around as a talking coin. And I admit that I am intrigued as to what on earth the motives of the villain of this arc are.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Psycho Pass – 03

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

Now this was an excellent episode here from Psycho Pass. At this point I really like what this show is doing: create thought-provoking cases of morders in which no side really is right. It aims to show these moral dilemmas.

It’s not exactly a murder mystery: in this episode it quite quickly became clear that the bullied worker was the one who murdered the three people, but instead what stood out was how it was delivered. The portrayal of this facility was great, and the creators got a particularly good voice actor for the boss of this facility.

The main character also stood out here: the previous two episodes showed him as this level-headed guy, but this episode portrayed a very dangerous side of him that enjoys the thrill and action of crime fighting. It also showed that the female lead is going to have to keep every single one of the characters in check, because all of them have their issues, mixed in with their good points.

Also, the opening for this series is really good. A quick look at the staff for this series reveals why: Sayo Yamamoto, the director of Michiko e Hatchin and Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna. She often gets jobs to do OPs, and they always really shine with their style and execution, and this is no different. She really should do another series again.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

From the New World – 05

by psgels, posted in From the New World

I love these kinds of episodes: the episodes that just say “screw it” to consistency, and instead go on with their own style based on the vision of someone on the episode staff. It may look weird, but I find that it gives each episode so much personality. I really encourage creators to put i their own styles to spice up the story they’re animating. It’s so much more interesting than the same thing over and over again.

This episode’s animation may not have been as crisp as usual, and there were a lot of distorted faces, but yet the animation was really good. It was full of creativity: the camera angles brought out so much in the characters, and there were plenty of scenes that had movements and actions that are very uncommon in conventional animation. It’s not just the scene at the beginning of that Queerat blowing up, but also where Satoru gets cut on his forhead, the scene at the end of the episode with the slime. The backgrounds looked utterly gorgeous inthsi episode as well, and what also caught my eye were the scenes that focused on touching. They had a strange focus in this episode (not to mention the near-sex scene was stunning).

So let me check for a moment who was behind this episode… and everything suddenly becomes clear: Shigeyasu Yamauchi was behind this episode. Holy crap, this guy is just amazing. I’m not sure whether I want him to do another series, or to keep doing episodes like this, because he is both incredible as an episode director and a series director, bringing out the best in the characters and not caring for conventions at all. This is the first time since Casshern however, that I’ve seen him on an episode that was intended for a more mature audience. Seriously, this is where this guy belongs. His work on shounen shows and romance series is nice and all, but this episode was just incredible, and this is where his style shines like no other.
Rating: 6,5/8 (Amazing)

Robotics;Notes – 03

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

This is a question to the people who pilot real robots: is it really comparable to video games?

You know, I have never controlled robots other than your occasional radio-controlled car as a kid, but it seems to me that there is much more involved than just learning the controls. Most notably: keeping the balance. As a video game programmer, I’d want to make controlling a character as simple and easy as possible, but is that really viable with a robot that is bound by real physical rules, and who tumbles over if the balance is even a slight bit off?

This is criticism, but I don’t think that it’ll hurt this series that much. I personally think that Btooom’s lack of realism in its bombs is a bigger flaws. Still, I think it’s worth to think about how robots would really move in order to better understand this series, compared to doing this when the plot twists really start coming and all hell breaks loose, based on these flaws. I remember having trouble to accept some of Steins;Gate’s biggest plot points (which I won’t mention here due to spoilers).

In any case, this episode was surprisingly witty. I liked how the characters already went to a local robot tournament and had a bit of fun in the matches, but especially that Pleiades guy was a very nice twist. It’s a very creative way to introduce a new character. This episode also introduced the actual character of Frau, and her character too seemed pretty interesting based on her off-screen actions and that single smirk of her.

What I also like is how this show also has exciting music in quiet scenes, most notably the build-up scene right before the match.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

From the New World – 04

by psgels, posted in From the New World

Well, so this was the best episode of the new season yet if we ignore the first episodes.

This episode consisted out of two halves. By far the biggest part was, like Zetsuen no Tempest’s latest episode, exposition. I remember how I found that rather boring, however, here I really liked it. The creators didn’t just have someone talk for 10 minutes without doing anything else, and they made great use of flashbacks, reaction shots and visual images of what was going on. Not to mention ho well written that exposition was.

I did not expect that the story behind the prologue in the first episode would be told so fast. That strange slug-like creature basically tells what happened to the world, and these scenes turned out to be the start of a conflict between people who have the Force and those who don’t. In the ages after that, this culture evolved that was meant to safeguard the force, and prevent people from going on a rampage like what was shown there. Heck, these really were just children who were testing out the limits of their powers!

What’s also great is that there is no real right or wrong here. Sure, the kids may have the right to know what’s going on and all, but the danger of them abusing their powers remains. When they’re so easily able to kill others, something has to be done to restrain them. In the meantime, what is the role of the different creatures in this series, like those rat monsters? They appeared in the final half of the episode, and here again, it’s pretty much established that they’re at the mercy of the Force. Sure they’re aggressive, but they’re pretty much slaughtered in an instant.

In any case, I hope that there will be more episodes like this that place so much focus on dialogue. It’s going to have to be tough to keep track of everything, but that’s really good: we have a series here that isn’t planning to hold your hand along the ride.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Robotics;Notes – 02

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

Hell yeah! This is what I’ve been waiting for for years now: two Noitamina series, airing at the same time, taking up 22 episodes. Especially after the kick in the balls that was Guilty Crown, it’s great to see Production IG actually making up for that with two actually good series now.

Robotics;Notes and Psycho Pass are both science fiction series, but their execution is completely different. The former focuses more on suspense, the latter on slice of life. The former is about adults, the latter about teenagers. The former will be more tense and more exciting to watch, the latter will have better fleshed out characters. It’s a matter of time to see which one fares better.

The one thing I like about the semicolon series is that they’re all different. Instead of trying to make a Steins;Gate 2 with an Okabe ripoff, the characters aim to be completely different characters here, not to mention that the themes, while still science fiction, are completely different, and there is much more slice of life here, even compared to the already slow-paced Steins;Gate. The results are mixed.

The thing with Steins;Gate was that it had its complete own style that set itself miles apart from all other series. Robotics;Notes doesn’t have that and just looks like a teenaged high school series. On the other hand, this also leads it to try less hard: none of the characters are as out there as with the cast of Steins;Gate. The result is that the characters aren’t as enjoyable to watch, but also they’re far from as annoying as some of the characters in Steins;Gate were.

I still like the characters of Robotics;Notes, especially the lead female as she actually gets things done and has a goal to work for. The male lead still needs to crawl out of his shell and get away from gaming. By far the most dubious point in this episode was where he agreed in front of an exhausted female lead to pilot, only if she changed the controls to be more like his favorite game. I mean this guy just totally is not flexible. Why does he stand in the foreground of the promo art, hinting that he will be the central character? Let the girl be the one to stand in the spotlights! Oh wait, they did; never mind.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Psycho Pass – 02

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

Here is a note to you fansubbers out there. Or anyone else who writes, basically: when using abbreviations, it’s very important to make sure that everyone knows what these abbreviations mean. Explaining them once won’t suffice: people will forget that, and your text will just look like gibberish. “Yes, the ADX needs to use XAW in order to XET so that the PSE can LRX”. That just isn’t nice to read, and even if you happen to know the abbreviations, if you don’t know them by heart you’ll end up spending a few seconds trying to think of it. Precious attention that you should be focusing on other things. That’s why I try to avoid abbreviations as much as possible, unless I know that everyone fully knows what I’m talking about. Sword Art Online’s SAO is a good example of this, though let me know if you were unfamiliar with that one.

Anyway, Psycho Pass: I was looking forward to this one thanks to a very clever marketing campaign: they didn’t announce what this show was about at all, until about a month before it was set to air, really piquing my interest since it’s especially rare for a Noitamina series to do that. It kept delivering cryptic hints, bit by bit, until it was revealed that Urobuchi Gen would write it, the director of Tokyo Marble Chocolate would direct it, and that it would be about a dystopia in which people are judged by computers.

Now, about the actual show: this second episode was definitely not the best second episode of the season, but it has got a really solid first episode as a base. You can pretty much see this second episoe as the proper start of this series, where it’s carefully explained what this show is about, and we can get a bit of a feeling of the characters. There is definitely something deep going on here and this episode was definitely just about the surface.

One word about the animation: I do have a bit of a problem with the late trend of hiring really famous character designers to do your characters, and nothing else. The problem with that is that the character designers don’t really think in terms of practical designs: they just do their job of showing some eye-catching designs, without really thinking about how well they can be animated. Psycho Pass has some clear troubles with htis, and the character designs aren’t even that good. You can see that the creators here have trouble animating them. Jojo’s Bizarre adventure has this problem as well this season, but that managed to solve itself with its direction, though Psycho Pass doesn’t have that. The award for best character designs of the season… I’d give that one to Kamisama Hajimemashita: creative and detailed yet simple and easy to keep consistent, yet dynamic.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

From the New World – 03

by psgels, posted in From the New World

Something very interesting is going on with the animation of this series: its style keeps changing. The special scenes in this episode again looked entirely different from what they looked like in the previous two episodes. This episode also showed the actual animation for the ED for this series, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. What this shows is that the producers are putting a tight leash on the normal scenes, yet they’re giving the animators a lot of freedom to do what they like for the special scenes. Now that everything finished airing, I really can say for certain that this is the show with the best visual direction of the season.

What also makes this show stand out really much is its creature design. It’s been ages since I encountered something like that as good as how it’s done here. They’re deeply rooted in the folklore of this series, and they’re also really creative, yet believable, and really varied. They range from small bees to giant tentacled slugs that speak about technology, and these dogs with tiny heads. Usually when a show does this, it’s based on some sort of existing religion or background. This show just went and created its own.

That slug by the way gave a very surprising twist to this plot. So far technology has seemed to be quite absent, and yet it talked as if it was the most normal thing in the world. This show asked a ton of questions, like what was it doing there and why was it concerned with environmentalist issues?
Rating: 5/8 (Great)