Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Some Quick First Impressions: Shining Hearts – Shiawase no Pan, Eureka Seven Ao and Tsuritama

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao, Some Quick First Impressions, Tsuritama

Shining Hearts – Shiawase no Pan

Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives together with three cute girls.
This episode threw me off. With a title like “Shiawase no Pan”, I thought that there was a character named “Pan” or something. Not that the main characters would actually be bakers. Beyond that, this episode… it felt like playing an actual RPG: the characters went from one place to the other, talked to a few people and then went home again. That is not the way you should adapt something like this. RPG adaptations are meant to take liberties in order to weave their storylines because RPGs have things that just cannot be translated to anime format, more than any other kind of source material. So yeah, this was a bit of a boring way to close off such a streak of excellent first episodes. All the characters do is walk around and sell bread. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There were some intriguing parts that will probably be explored later, the characters were all moeblobs with really bad character designs, but they weren’t forced into stereotypes, and this show had a relaxing atmosphere that would have worked… if it wasn’t for one thing: throughout this episode I really got the impression that the creators have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m referring to the bread: it just assumes that the characters can make great bread, but it doesn’t even put an ounce of thought into why this bread is great, or how it’s made, or where they get their ingredients from. It’s just “Okay, we have bread! Let’s give it to people and make everyone happy!” I mean, if you’re going to bother making a show about bread, you should at least do your homework, right?
OP: Granted, this does have that RPG-feel, despite the annoying vocals.
ED: I… just… what did I just watch? Who found this a good idea?
Potential: 30%

Eureka Seven Ao

Short Synopsis: Our lead character will supposedly pilot the strongest mecha in existence.
With Eureka Seven it is of course a bit difficult to really judge its first episode. I remember how I actually dropped it for a while, until I saw how good it got after a while. This epiode of Eureka Seven Ao definitely made a better first impression than the first episode of Eureka Seven did. For starters its lead character isn’t as annoying as Renton, and the creators immediately start by showing some good drama around him, and his feelings towards his parents. His girlfriend still fits the bill of “female lead”, but there are small parts where she sets herself apart from her counterparts. The action and soundtrack also sound very promising based on the small tastes they gave us here. I do have to say though, that this episode also had a lot of parallels with Bounen no Xamdou’s opening episode, and compared to that series’ opening episode, this unfortunately lost out, especially in its characterization. Still, the potential is definitely there for this series to both deliver engaging action and characters. It’s now up to the rest of this series to develop the rest, and it definitely has some good papers for that. It’s a shame that this couldn’t get 50 episodes, but 25 works too.
ED: Not the most memorable ED, but also definitely not the worst. Also who’s the kid?
Potential: 85%

Tsuritama

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a cute boy.
Above all, this was really refreshing. In a world in which most of the teenaged series try to see who can rip each other off the most, here we have a show who really makes a point in being original. It’s not just the theme of fishing, but the characters and their antics are all delightfully fresh and the cliches that are there are executed different from usual. For example: for as many transfer students that we see in anime, we actually rarely see people move. the lead characters’ grandmother also feels refreshing in her light-heartedness: she was old, yet not the same kind helpless old woman you see everywhere. And yeah, in a season with Shinichiro Watanabe and Sayo Yamamoto, you’d almost forget that Kenji Nakamura also is an incredibly good director. This episode was fun and whimsical, and A-1 at the helm combined with a number of very interesting animation techniques. The end of this episode also hinted that there will be much more than meets the eye at first sight, and I feel like this time, Kenji Nakamura went with a series that DOES fit perfectly in just 11 episodes. After sitting though Guilty Crown, I am really glad to see that Noitamina is back again.
OP: Some actually decent J-Rock. Finally.
ED: Dreamy song, and surprisingly catchy.
Potential: 90%

Mouretsu Pirates – 14

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

An episode about insurance and recruitment. That is actually quite interesting. Ideally I would have liked to see Marika actually try and hire new crew-members, but the end of the episode gave a good reason of why this isn’t going to happen: Marika is looking for people she can trust. And for that, the Yacht club fits perfectly, despite their lack of experience. With such a huge cast, I kept wondering how the creators would bring all of them together. Well, I suppose that this is a way.

But things like insurance are also pretty interesting to watch. With all of the destruction you usually see in anime, you’d have to wonder how much restoring everything costs, and especially for someone like Marika, who has to maintain not just a ship, but just an entire crew, it’s very logical for them to be insured in the case of something happening.

I’m also surprised that someone who is supposed to be the second-most important character (if you look at the promo art and all), Chiaki has surprisingly little airtime. She was completely gone in the Serenity arc, and here too it looks like she’ll be away from Marika again, filling in for the jobs that Marika couldn’t take. I like how this show handles its cast, however with such a huge cast also come challenges: the development. Now that we’ve arrived in the second half of this series, we need to see these guys grow. Up till now, Mouretsu just did this for Marika and perhaps Gruier, while the rest of the cast remained fairly static. This needs to change.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Some Quick First Impressions: Kuroko no Basuke, Upotte and Fate/Zero 2

by psgels, posted in Fate/Zero, Some Quick First Impressions

Kuroko no Basuke

Short Synopsis: Our lead character plays basketball.
Well, they did it again. After the disappointing Prince of Tennis, Knight in the Area and Ginga he Kickoff, there again comes a sports series that really caught my interest, even though I don’t care about sports shows. This episode was fun, and the soundtrack also was great (I like how the guys from RON kept a bit of their influence from when they were working with Bee-Train). The cast of characters is nicely balanced together, and there are a lot of interesting characters in this first episode. It’s not the best, though. The fact that it’s a shounen jump series did come through, in the way that it gives everyone gimmicky powers rather than playing with a more realistic depiction of skills, but at the least they kept these powers subtle instead of over the top. And yeah, by far the big problem with this series will be length. Ideally this should just take 26 episodes. If the creators start dragging on the different matches, it’ll probably lose its appeal quite fast.
OP: Nice inbetween animation.
ED: Guys. If you can’t sing very fast… then don’t try it.
Potential: 80%

Upotte

Short Synopsis: Our lead character teaches cute girls.
I tend to like bizarre stuff. Upotte is bizarre: rather than with Strike Witches, the girls here really act like guns and go to school to learn how to be guns. It had the potential to be this surreal comedy, but instead most of this episode used its premise… for innuendo. Yes guys! Whenever you can’t remember the name of a girl you met, just refer to her by her underwear. You’ll be beaten up, but the girl will take the blame for it! Apart from that, a lot of this episode was about comparing underwear to the handle of a gun, and firing it to an orgasm. Yes, like all other Xebec shows this has its mind in the gutter. The girls also all have one defining personality trait, and it’s pretty much exactly like their other dull, uninspired and completely stupid comedies. The only positive thing I have to say about this series is that at least one of the writers did some research on guns. Also, I get that the main character is offensively dull and all, but why did you censor his face?
OP: Copy&Paste OP with the same dull J-rock you hear everywhere else.
ED: FANSERVICE
Potential: 5%

Fate/Zero 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character fights giant monsters.
Most series that consist out of two seasons have a clear separation between the two. Not this one: it continues immediately where the first season left off, in the middle of a huge climactic battle. So no, this is not a good point to enter for those who haven’t seen the first season. My impression of this episode was that it was pretty interesting. There also was this particularly interesting dogfight, and especially Archer caught my eye. There were some moments that were a bit silly, like when two random fighter jets randomly popped up. Also, Ufo-Table need to work on how they animate monsters. The whole caster thing didn’t really feel threatening, more like very annoying and hard to get rid off. The CG for this thing just wasn’t used well.
OP: A Yuki Kajiura OP! Not her best work, but still very nice to listen to.
ED: A bit cheesy, but it’s an ED that actually tells a story rather than showing a bunch of random pictures.
Potential: 85%

Mouretsu Pirates – 13

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

Okay, so the princesses are now recurring characters. Yeah, Gruier found it so much fun as a regular student that she decided to stay a while longer on Marika’s school, taking her little sister along with her. It’s a bit forced, but I get what the creators were gong for: they’re princesses, so they should be allowed to be children for a while.

The rest of this episode was a quiet aftermath, mostly dedicated to the everyone passing a year. The captain of the yacht club is gone now, and there are a few new characters introduced. Nothing special, but it did give a good feel of its characters. The downside is that we’re probably going to have to wait a while until things get interesting again. I was hoping that this series would be more like Stellvia, having just one build-up arc at the beginning, but it seems that this is much more arc-based.

My favorite part of this was probably Ririka. She’s a really interesting mother for an anime: she stays in the background, as it’s obviously not her story, but she is not a mother who is there for the sake of having a mother here. In this episode she actually thought to change jobs, in order to find something to do that she really enjoyed. It’s also interesting how Marika addresses her by her first name, rather than the usual “okaa-san” or “mama”.Rating: * (Good)

Mouretsu Pirates – 12

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

The direction of this episode was superb. I mean, Mouretsu Pirates never really stood out through its animation, but the designs of the ship was really creative, and the camera work was really solid. I really liked this episode and it was a great conclusion to the Gruier arc.

So if I understand things correctly, Gruier was actually in the wrong here. What she wanted to prevent is the monarchy from increasing its influence. Her sister kept using the ghost ship, or rather the device that was used to create the royal bloodline of Serenity, to cling to it, and she wanted to end that once and for all, in order to move on. Interestingly, she seemed to assume that members of the family were still being produced, so she actually was ready to at least prevent these births. I guess that this is why she enlisted the help of pirates.

I really like how this show weaved actual complex politics into its story beyond the “let’s wage wars in order to end all wars”, or stuff like that. Again this show takes its audience seriously and I really appreciate that. On top of that, this episode had the best characterization, and I loved how the characters subtly played off each other. With this, I really have to say that overall, Mouretsu Pirates ended up as my favorite of the three big sci-fi shows of Winter 2012.
Rating: **+ (Excellent+)

Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Last Exile - Ginyoku no Fam




It’s a bit hard to recommend Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam, because it had to live up to the expectations of the original Last Exile… and it didn’t. Still, I still consider it a series worth watching, and it is the proof that Gonzo isn’t dead yet.

But yeah, go into this expecting a war story that just happens to take place in the same universe as Last Exile. The mood and tone of this series have some signfiicant differences, and mots of all this series lacks the refinement that its predecessor has. The character animation often is sloppy, there is much less time spent at believable acting and realism, and the charactes too are a lot closer to caricatures.

The big difference is in the plot, though. It’s here where Ginyoku no Fam lacks creativity. It’s all just too average and straight-forward, and it tries too much to center aruond cute girls… in the middle of a war. Too many episodes are just dedicated to “war is bad”, without much refinement to it. To me, the creators seemed very conflicted on what they wanted to do with their main character, Fam. First they establish her character as a delivery girl, and there are times where she really does well to keep true to that role, in particular the ending. At other times though, they want her to be more involved in the actual war, and that’s where this show leaves the most to be desired, as we’re treated to a very whiny teenager who keeps preaching peace over and over again, and who gets shoehorned into politics that she doesn’t belong in.

So yes, be warned. Those who give it a chance however, will be rewarded by some absolutely gorgeous aerial battles, an excellent sense of world building and a pretty engaging atmosphere here. It’s especially the setting int his series that stands out, because the creators created a ton of interesting locations, with some of the most gorgeous background art and architectures. They dabble a bit in different cultures, and the creators really managed to bring the overall world to life, especially in the first half of this series.

The characters are a bit of a mixed bag, but there also is enough good stuff among them. Fam has her moments where she gets really annoying, but she also has a vew moments where she redeems herself, and the cast of side-characters has a number of interesting people walking around who do manage to spice up the story. It remains an unbalanced production though, but I do think that it gets too much flak. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s got enough reasons to make it worth watching.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Could have used a bit more ambition and gets distracted often, though its atmosphere is good.
Characters: 7/10 – The creators were conflicted in how to use their main character, and thefore she tends to get in the way of everything. It’s got some good moments of characterization, though.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Amazing background art, the action scenes in this show look gorgeous. The 2D animation… not so much.
Setting: 9/10 – Excellent and intriguing setting. This series has a lot of fun with its world building.

Suggestions:
– Shantri-La
– Guin Saga
– Simoun

Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam – 23

by psgels, posted in Last Exile - Ginyoku no Fam

You know what? I liked this.

Really, as an ending, you could do much worse. My big fear of Fam magically pushing the “solve” button here was averted. Instead, she ended up playing out her role in this series: that of a delivery girl. She also failed to really pull through with her ideals, and she also failed to prevent many people from dying. I really did not expect the creators to make her stay true to this, and that’s what really saved the final third of this series for me. I mean, I do’t really need all my protagonists to be hero or leader material. It makes them all too similar. It also pays off to show the glory of someone who isn’t the central focus, while this series also made sure to show off the actual scale of the war by using Milia. In fact, the parts of this series thta were the most grating were when Fam stepped beyond her role, and tried to involve herself with politics and large-scale decisions. She just isn’t fit for that.

I also like the way the Grand Race was used. My big fear was that with all that build-up they’d find a way to use it in a Deus ex Machina or something. Intead, they realyl turned out to be just the hopes of a young girl, which eventually didn’t really mean anything in the context of a war. As soon as the peace arrived though, Fam got her wish. I can live with that.

Instead, the doomsday weapon destroyed itself by being just so damn inpractical and unfinished. It’s hinted that Luscinia knew that this would happen all along, but something tells me that he also just realized that his plan wasn’t going to work when he saw the actual thing in motion. I liked how he actually took his loss like a man. Yes, I liked this ending better than Shangri-La’s ending. Also, Claus and Lavie return in the epilogue! Awesome aftermath here!

In the end, the biggest mistakes of this series were made when the plot was outlined. In the end, the creators could have tried better, the show needed more variety and less inconsistencies. A touch of realism would also have helped this show a lot here, and the creators also should have spent time to ask the question of how to make Fam more likable. I like how she was used in the finale, but in the end she did whine way too much throughout the series. She has strong ideals. Her portrayal should have made us sympathize with these ideals. Fam I think repeated them too often, and that made her whiny. Overall I like this show, but the original Last Exile it ain’t.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mouretsu Pirates – 11

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

The Bentenmaru has an actual crew? I mean beyond the people usually sitting in the bridge? That’s kindof like Seikai no Senki, isn’t it? The focus is entirely on the main bridge, while it’s assumed that the people who are working to keep the ship running are doing their jobs.

In any case, with this episode we’re introduced to the ghost ship. And so far, this has been some excellent mystery and the creators are very skillfully building up its secrets as the characters get closer and closer to it. It really piqued my interest of what the heck is up with that ship.

I also liked the process of getting there. this series was really in danger of turning into a lot of techno-babble, but they did q pretty good job here in explaining what went on and making things believable. The programmer in me also rejoiced when they suddenly showed the Serendipity’s identification code. I’ve had to struggle with these quite a few times myself.

There is one thing I missed. I might have looked over this in a few previous episodes, though, but why was Gruier trying to reach the ghost ship outside of her family’s influence again? There is so much going on in each episode that it’s easy to miss stuff and in my case I probably missed something very important.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam – 22

by psgels, posted in Last Exile - Ginyoku no Fam

That was actually much better than what I expected it to be. As the penultimate episode (not counting that epilogue that seems to be scheduled for this series in two weeks), this episode was meant to take down the giant doomsday machine. This machine is this giant flying monster with impossible fire-power, being controlled by just two people who are hiding in the center of it. The episode finally ends up boiling down to trying to get inside, reach those two and stopping them. And yeah, that’s something that Fam is really good at. I really feared that when they pulled the princess card a few episodes ago, they would do something similar here, but really: it’s been established that she is a very good vanship pilot. It makes sense for her to be the first to reach Luscinia when you take this build-up into account.

Also, Koichi Chigira really did it: he really made the battle against this giant flying monster work. The Grand Exile really feels HUGE. Even when Fam gets inside, it takes ages for them to get from one side to the other, while in a flying plane, of all things. The build-up to this also was great. They made the Grand Exile a really formidable foe, while also giving it its weaknesses that come with being so big.

When looking at the big picture though, Ginyoku no Fam in the end did not live up to the original Last Exile. I still like it, but nowhere near as much as with its predecessors. Let’s take Luscinia, the main villain. In the end, he is pretty poor, and I can only hope that the final episode at least redeems him. There’s very little to set him apart, and as for being a threat… he seems more like this angsty guy who can’t get over one death and therefore upholds a plan that just can’t be sustained in the long run, and he just pales in comparison to the villains of Shangri-La and the first Last Exile, who had much more confident and smug personalities that actually made them feel a threat.

Also, I do think that the first half of Ginyoku no Fam is better than the second half. It’s because there, it was doing something that it was actually really good at: world building. The second half put much more focus on the war and politics, and to be honest it doesn’t really stand out. It’s solid, don’t get me wrong, but beyond the gorgeous graphics I’m missing something to set itself apart. The Gracies idea was nice and probably the part that stands out the most, but the grand scheme of things still seems a bit… simple.

I mean, it’s essential for a show to change over the course of its time, but the change itself needs to be good. The second half of a series, especially of the 2-cour format, is something where the creators can really go all out, but Ginoku no Fam missed the mark a bit in trying to be too epic, while ignoring the parts that they also should have paid attention to: the characters and setting. things were added to them, but I feel that this was not enough.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Yeah, this is a new rating, between 8 (Good) and ** (Excellent). I found myself more and more in the need of one. While running this blog I got to spend a lot on various kinds of ratings. Tkae my reviews for example: I started out with using numbers as 82/100, 74/100, etc. At one point I simplified those ratings to 80/100, 82,5/100, 85/100, etc because I found myself unable to explain the difference between a show that I’d rank 85/100 and 86/100. Afterwards I started to use the same kind of philosophy for rating episodes.

I’ve often been criticized for not having an evenly distributed rating scale, but honestly, I don’t care about that at all. I just want something that I’m comfortable with, and the current rating scale mostly evolved from rating countless of series and episodes. However, now that I’ve used this system for a few years, I’ve noticed that I run into more and more episodes or series that belong inbetween two ratings (like this episode for example: it was better than the episodes that I usually label as “Good”, but at the same time I didn’t consider it to be “Excellent”). I’m going to try and refine these ratings at the points where they need to now.

Mouretsu Pirates – 10

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

And again this show has gotten better. This was the most dangerous episode of this series so far, and it really shows how much time this series spent on build-up now. This episode showed just one simple encounter between a small unnamed fleet, but the build-up, the tactics and the way in which everyone had a different different reaction to everything that went on: it all rocked.

Marika really is the best lead character of the Winter Season, perhaps with the exception of Natsume (who did already have 3 seasons of build-up). When I first saw the promo image for this series, I really feared that she’d be another moe blob, but the contrary has really happened. In this episode she again showed that she’s intelligent and level headed and I really liked how she considered that the fact that they had a princess on board was a great trump in terms of negotiations which should be saved for later. I like how this is one of those shows who doesn’t treat its audience like idiots, yet still remains it light-heartedness and innocence.

Also, for the people complaining that this show isn’t really about pirates: isn’t that the entire point of fiction? To give different interpretations of known facts? I mean, it’s in the same way that people complain about Naruto not being a ninja: the classic image most people have about ninjas (wearing all black with a face-mask on) are also completely different from the real ninjas. You can criticize Naruto for a lot (dragging on, having a really annoying set of main characters), but it did create its own universe based on the ninjas. Same as with this series: it ignores image of the “RRR”-pirate, and instead takes another part of pirates (them being used as mercenaries) and creates a setting around it with the premise of putting this into science fiction. I love it so far.
Rating: ** (Excellent)