I like the ED, how it shows the lives of the servants before they became… servants. I do have one major problem with them though: why did they find it a good idea to spoil the looks of the servants before they appear in the story? The OP is like that too. I mean, the whole point of not showing certain characters, while introducing them, especially in such a series where the amount of characters is fixed from the start, is to build up suspense. What will these servants look like? Just showing them takes away part of the suspense.
Aaand that’s about the only negative thing I have to say about this episode. The major theme of this Fall Season is taking time to build up your story and characters, with Un-Go and Ben-To being some of the major exceptions. In that area, Fate/Zero is among the best in the building up department. While other series might have more lively characters, a more imaginative setting or a more exciting opening, the dialogue is very well written and presents its exposition in an interesting way, the acting is rock-solid and the build-up is slowly but very solidly creating its atmosphere, helped a lot by Yuki Kajiura (that’s why I’m so disappointed at the OP and ED for trying to go against that).
It’s a bit of a shame that there’ll be a 3-month pause in the middle, but at least that will ensure that those episodes too will receive the attention they deserve, rather than rushing through the ending. This episode was solid and promised a lot for the next episode. I hope that like last week, the battles in this series instead of dragging on, they are to the point. Those fit this kind of series much better, when it’s expected of everyone to think smart. Everyone is actually very busy keeping surveillance on each other with the use of familiars (I also like that we don’t exactly see who the four people who watched on last episode’s battle were; again, suspense). My prediction on the first one to fall is Rider. His master so far has been the most naive of the bunch.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction
Some Quick First Impressions: Last Exile – Ginkyou no Fam, Guilty Crown and Un-Go
Last Exile – Ginkyou no Fam
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a young genius pilot.
Well, first things first: it’s awesome to see Gonzo back. It’s not just the series they make. It’s because of their balls: they like to take risks like no other studio out there, and that’s why I became a fan of them, even though they did release their fair share of crap. Now, as for this series: it looks just gorgeous. The CG is still up to Gonzo’s high standards and the creators didn’t just copy designs from the first season, but came up with a whole new set of eye candy that certainly does not stand out as inferior to its predecessor. As for the story of this episode: it’s definitely more childish than the first season, and shows a bunch of teenagers being able to disrupt an entire fleet. The first season had this too, but was a lot more subtle about it, especially with the enemy fleet having very stuck-up commanders and deploying no vanships whatsoever to intercept the main cast. There’s also fanservice, though thankfully not as much as was feared. The acting is overall very good, though it does have a number of weak points. The direction is also quite solid, despite the lighter tone. This is a typical example of a first episode with a lot of potential to become amazing, but also with quite a number of things that can hold it back and didn’t work out as well as you’d hope. Yup, that’s Gonzo alright.
OP: The OP of the first season was much better.
ED: A familiar voice. The song is a bit redundant after hearing it in other EDs, but the picture slideshow looks nice.
Potential: 80%
Guilty Crown
Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a half-naked girl.
That was absolutely gorgeous. The first episode of Guilty crown is a visual feast, in the way that just about every frame is meticulously detailed and well drawn, in the way that only Production IG can do for a television series. If they keep this up, then this will very likely be the prettiest Noitamina series of the year. As for the rest of the episode though: there were a number of issues I had with it. The biggest is that outside of the visuals, I miss creativity: the scenario of this episode had a been there, done that”-feeling, and the main characters are a bunch of walking cliches. On one hand you have the really bland male main character, and on the other hand we have this female who has special powers, is his childhood friend, and gives the male lead a special weapon that he can use to kick ass. There have been way too many shows already with that premise, and the only thing that this show really added to that was its gorgeous visuals. This is a show that needs to grow significantly. But heck: at least the characters are far from as stupid or annoying as they were in Fractale.
OP: Good idea to combine it with the content of the episode.
ED: A bit of a dull ballad with nice art from the promo images.
Potential: 75%
Un-Go
Short Synopsis: Our lead character solves mysteries.
Here is a very interesting one, and I don’t mean that in the way you might expect. At first this episode started off like your average murder mystery series: the protagonists happened to be stuck in a room full of people where someone conveniently got murdered. It was well built up, but strangely mundane. Then however the second half came around and this episode just kept switching moods, themes and atmospheres. This series is attempting to breathe a new wind into the episodic murder mystery genre. This episode had science fiction, horror, and the post-apocalypse all stuffed together. This was the strange case of not the culprit getting some surprise added depth, but the setting itself became a lot more intriguing once this episode started putting the pieces of its puzzle together. On top of that, this episode was well produced and well directed with very natural camera work. The creators definitely took creative liberties on the original work it’s based on, and the episodic set-up really allows them to try a wide variety of different stuff. Oh, and as an added bonus this episode had the best use of music and sounds of the entire season so far. My only warning for when you plan to check it out: the characters. They are not on the list of priorities for this series.
OP: A bit of a dull song, but lots of neat eye candy.
ED: By far the best ED of the seasons. Heck, even the OPs get nowhere as close to the imaginative visuals and music that was displayed here.
Potential: 90%]]>
Fate/Zero – 02
I didn’t continue with the Fate/Stay Night anime after its fourth episode or so, and the most annoying parts of these past two episodes were definitely the younger versions of the harem members of that show (with the possible exception of Saber), but apart from that Fate/Zero really is a step above it. This second episode was even better than the first.
I like how much dialogue there is in this show, and yet this episode brought in the first action of the series, and the animation really scaled up a notch there. Especially the Assassin part looked really good, but even the quiet scenes were interesting to watch thanks to good acting. Berserker in particular is fun to watch, but I also really like that this series doesn’t really seem to have a main character. There are several villains, but nobody really seems to have enough screen-time to be really called the central character.
One complaint I do have is that the gore felt rather unsubstantial. It was a bit… too much here, and not really well built up, especially with the Caster slaughter. I mean, the thing that makes gore effective is not just showing a bunch of people getting murdered in the most brutal ways imaginable. It’s about giving it a solid context in the series and building it up well. This episode also established that for the servants, death is something like a temporary annoyance, rather than actually a big deal (there is no way for Assassin to be really dead at this point), which does take away a bit of the sense of urgency.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Some Quick First Impressions: Digimon Xros Wars – Toki wo Kakeru Shounen Hunter, Fate/Zero and Hunter X Hunter
Digimon Xros Wars – Toki wo Kakeru Shounen Hunter
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets a digimon for himself.
I keep hoping for the good kiddie shows to come back, but after Nippon Animation’s demise and how bad the sales were on the WMT revival series, I’ve pretty much given up. This episodes introduces a new low for the digimon franchise. Before, you could still give it credit for originality. With this though, it has given up all pretense and just flat out stated that it aims to be a pokemon rip-off. I could still get behind the first Xros Wars as an experiment, but with this, the creators came with an even more blatant premise, an even dumber male lead and no semblance of progress whatsoever. The worst part of this episode was where the male lead saw a random digimon walking around, and killed it. Yes, kids: randomly attacking strangers is good! The sole salvation of this is that the animators had their moments. Just too bad that they have to work with bland and uninspired character designs.
OP: Bland pop tune, but at least the visuals aren’t bad.
Potential: 0%
Fate/Zero – Again
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is still going to fight in a war for the holy grail.
Erm. Okay. So yesterday when I watched Fate/Zero, I forgot that it was supposed to start with a double episode, and I accidentally ended up watching a version of this episode that just contained the first half. That was a headdesk moment. In any case, now that I watched the second half of this episode, things fall even more into place, because the end of this episode had an actual climax that fitted well: the summoning of the servants. In any case, the second half of this episode pretty much continued in the same style of first wanting to set everything up correctly, rather than start with a huge climax immediately to draw in viewers. I haven’t watched Fate/Stay Night beyond a few episodes, so the only character I recognized was the younger version of a very annoying tsundere, but apart from that the main cast has a lot of potential, and they’re in no way as annoying as from the Fate/Stay Night anime.
ED: Bland J-rock. The visuals are actually well animated, but seem a bit undirected and chaotic. Also, why did you spoil the identity of the seventh magus when the episode tried to be all mysterious about it?
ED2: Just a black screen with credits. The lack of vocals makes it better than the first ED, but still unimpressive.
Potential: 85%
Hunter X Hunter
Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to become a hunter
I may have been bitching about this series, but don’t get me wrong: if this gets done right, it can easily be the best shounen of the past years. The problem is that we won’t know about the intentions of the people who are tasked with adapting this thing until the Yorkshin arc arrives, especially because this series will be aimed at a younger audience. The big question is: do these creators believe that kids are idiots, or will they actually put in effort just like what studios as Nippon Animation do? Now, this episode was definitely faster-paced than the first season, and because of that it didn’t have as much detail in it as well. The hunter that Gon runs into, who tells him about his father? Completely gone, which is a bit of a pity because it gave the first season a unique start. Still, the creators put in effort here. The characters are true to themselves, and especially the captain, who was definitely made to appeal more to kids, actually worked well as this old sea captain. The voice actors do have their issues: Gon yells a bit too much, while Leorio’s voice actor didn’t know whether he should use Leorio’s voice of the first season, or just stick to his own. It definitely was a fun episode. The big challenge for this series seems to be its pacing: this series wants to go fast, which inevitably will lead to some things getting cut. Do not cut the best parts!
OP: Cheesy J-pop and running.
ED: Hisako?!
Potential: 75%]]>
Blood-C Review – 85/100
Blood-C is a very difficult series to recommend. The thing is that this is one series where if you like it, you’ll like it a lot. However, if you dislike it, you’ll grow a deep seated hate against the main cast of this show. I belong in the camp of the former (hence the high rating for this review), but I do want to give out a warning, because this is a rather hard series to get into.
For starters, at heart Blood-C is a mystery horror series, with a high emphasis on building up and atmosphere. It has the building up pacing of a Bee-Train series, but differs completely in the characterization department. What this means in practice is that the entire first half will be spent on nothing but very mundane daily life, intermixed with various battles and action scenes, with very few hints towards the overall storyline. The characters all are very mundane and by far the weirdest part is that this show for a long period of time hardly ever tries to give them some depth. Instead, they’re just like the random people you might run into in a class room or on the street. Oh, and the characters have strange tendencies to make weird decisions at times.
Now, I refuse to spoil the exact how and why of things, but the second half is where this series really shines, and slowly begins to uncover its mysteries. Its plot is so constructed that as a viewer, you can be able to figure out what’s going on by yourself, but even then the final episodes in which everything is revealed pack a great punch and justify a lot of the weird things that happened throughout the series. If, at least, they didn’t get on your nerves too much. The thing is, that that is very easy, and as soon as this series loses your suspense of disbelief with it (which is rather easy with annoying characters), the atmosphere also stops being captivating, and you’ll be even more bored.
It does remain a wonderful atmosphere though. The creators make excellent use of the soundtrack handed to them, and the storytelling combines gory horror together with classical Japanese horror, which tries to capture its viewer through its slow storytelling. Especially the juxtaposition between the very mundane slice of life and the intense fights creates a wonderful tension that can be cut with a knife as the series goes on.
Also, the action scenes. Blood-C really sets itself apart through these things, and they are absolutely brutal and really well choreographed. Instead of the usual shortcuts, Saya is fully animated as she struggles with all sorts of blood thirsty monsters who make it a huge challenge to be actually beaten. The animation in the first number of episodes in particular is just absolutely wonderful, but even in the latter episodes as the budget dies down, the creators still aim to tell as much as possible through the action scenes with as much life-like animation as possible. The gore also is gore on a completely different level in this scene. It absolutely spares nobody. Usually when people die, the camera conveniently focuses on a different shot. Not here: here we can see all of details. Or at least, in the DVD versions we will.
There are a few acting problems here and there, and in particular the characterization has some major flaws in not trying hard enough to flesh out the cast, but overall I really liked this show for what it accomplished, and for the huge risks it took. This really isn’t for everyone. If you find yourself not able to get into the atmosphere because of the characters, then it’s very likely that you’re not going to enjoy this series. If you do however, you’re in for one heck of an intense ride.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – Hard to get into, but excellent atmosphere, excellent sense of mystery and build-up and great plot twists. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Leaves things to be desired in the characterization department, but nevertheless an enjoyable cast that especially gets interesting near the end. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – Absolutely wonderful animation and action scenes. Production IG really are un-matched when it comes to hand to hand combat. |
| Setting: | 9/10 – A great concept, great ideas behind the whole story, and it’s great to see how many risks this show takes for the sake of its plot. |
Blood-C – 12
So that was both an excellent ending an an excellent hook for the upcoming movie. The whole story of the village is wrapped up nicely, while the main villain is still alive and proving to be an awesome foe for a movie storyline.
And heck, I’ll say it: for me this was the most emotionally intense ending of the season. I mean, gore is one thing. Gore animated by Production IG is of a whole different level. This episode was incredibly disturbing in how this episode surpassed the previous episodes. Even when censored it was hard to watch, so imagine what the DVD version must look like. The animation and especially the choreography made it one heck of an intense ride.
My one complaint of this episode was that I still don’t get why the extras never suspected anything. I mean, I can understand that they all used this as a last resort: we’ve seen what the main bad guy can do: grant certain kinds of wishes. The main cast was lured in with their magical bells, but how were the extras prevented from just running away? Were they just not informed that their counterparts died by clever logistics?
Overall, I have a message for the ones who hate this show, and yet decided to keep watching it: this is a series that heavily relies on its atmosphere and suspense of disbelief. If this series manages to successfully suspend your disbelief, it will be able to build up an awesome horror atmosphere that never lets up. If this series doesn’t manage to suspend your disbelief though, you’re not going to get anything out of this series. It’s flawed storytelling in the sense that the creators made no back-up plan in the case that your suspense of disbelief was broken (which granted was rather easy), but bad storytelling? Nah, I disagree with that.
Especially after this episode explained the entire series. I love the ideas that the creators put into the overall plot. It had some often used Clamp tropes, but there was more than enough to set itself apart. The whole idea that the happy and simple minded Saya was just a creation of the main villain, and was what he wanted her to be is especially an idea that worked really well with me. Especially now that we got to see the real Saya. The entire series was an attempt to get her away from that persona of her.
I wouldn’t call it character development, but what I really like about this episode is how it gave the main side characters a totally different meaning. Saya’s “father” suddenly became someone who is the closest to who she really is, and Yuuka was a nice subversion of the high school girls you usually see in fiction who look way too old for their age.
There are also still plenty of mysteries left for the movie to solve, but what I’m particularly intrigued about is Saya’s background: this entire series teased us with such a false persona, and the movie will be a great chance to really get to know her, and find out why she can’t kill humans, or what makes her want to kill humans so badly.
There were things that this show did wrong, but here is the thing: this show took risks. Huge ones. And for that, I really appreciate it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Blood-C – 11
It’s not like I can’t understand the hate behind this series. I myself am incredibly biased against overacting moe stereotypes. so any build-up of atmosphere or character gets lost on me for those shows (that’s also why I am not going to bother with The Idolmaster no matter how good people say it ends up to be). But found this episode to be amazing.
I’m really glad to see that this series knew how to build up. A major problem of mystery series is that they are excellent in asking questions, but rather straight-forward in answering them. This episode revealed the nature behind this world, and it did a wonderful job at it. The backstory of this show is very imaginative. The previous episodes hinted enough to it, but this show really has a unique role for its main character, and in particular the side characters, even though they took a huge risk with it.
I mean, the drag turned out to be a major part of the plot: Saya herself just wouldn’t remember, and so the side characters all got sick of waiting and pretending to be stock characters. Saya staying the same: also part of the plot: the whole point of it was to see whether she could do that. I especially love how just about every character has been putting up a huge act in front of Saya. I mean, I saw that coming, but not in this magnitude. Seriously, in terms of overall plot, I’d say that the balls of this series this season are second to only Penguin Drum. I love the shows like these that take risks like this.
With this, I can really forgive the wait. I mean, I dislike series that focus too much on building up, but I absolutely love the kinds of series that just build up to one climax, and make that count. This all came together wonderfully. My one complaint is that at times the acting was a bit awkward. Mostly when characters started yelling, it wasn’t the most believably drawn.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
Blood-C – 10
Here is the thing, I have to confess something about this series. I can understand some of its flaws. The characterization does leave a lot to be desired.
And yet, I find myself invested more emotionally than any other summer show aside from perhaps Penguin Drum. And it’s like that for nearly every episode. Because of that I just keep trying to describe why I’m exactly like this. But the thing just is: this show is simple, flawed, but I love every minute of it. And on top of that, unlike most of the other shows this season, it actually looks to head into an excellent conclusion. It’s been promising this from day one.
This episode, well it had it coming that some of the things happened the way they did. However, what I consider to be bad predictability is not when you can tell what is going to happen, but rather how and when it will (after all, a good story foreshadows or builds up its plot twist). The way in which the teacher broke the illusion was a gripping way to do it, especially with the use of the books. The whole scene in the cafeteria also had something really surreal about it. After all that carnage, Saya just sits happily in the cafeteria like nothing happened. It all fits into all of the other moments where she just felt… distant.
Call me a horror fan, but I again loved the fights and the atmosphere here. It’s not even the gore that gets to me the most, but rather the build-up and the constant tension, the slightly surreal setting and the brutal gore strengthen it even more for me.
And of course, I agree that simply being different does not necessarily make you good. A leap-frog getting drunk in a graveyard is different, but also terrible. However, it definitely does help!
Rating: *** (Awesome)
No.6 Review – 82,5/100
For me, the current Summer Season had two series that stood above the others: Penguin Drum and Natsume Yuujinchou. The interesting part was that under that, there were all kinds of awesome series fighting for third place: all shows with amazing concepts, but each of this series has their own HUGE flaw. Number six is one of them, and despite its flaw which I’ll get to below it is worth it for most of its run.
For ten episodes, this is excellent science fiction. It’s set in a dystopian future, but what sets it apart is its cast of characters: the creators try to put as much character development in this series as possible. It’s a bit rushed because of this, but this is one of the rare series that’s just constantly changing and evolving. It’s always interesting to watch and always unpredictable of the direction it sends its characters, and especially the main cast in. The drama and chemistry around them is always delightful to watch with hardly any dull moments.
In terms of production values this series also delivers. Bones do an excellent job on the animation, where it especially excels on the expressiveness of the characters, but also the soundtrack is excellent, and pretty much the best of the season aside from Penguin Drum. The production values perhaps aren’t the best, but they still are very impressive.
But yeah, the big flaw. The thing with this season is that it had so many series that actually could have become classics if these were avoided. Blood-C has its characterization, Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou has the way it acts like it has more episodes than it actually has, and No.6…. has its ending. Oh, the ending.
Oh, with enough suspense of disbelief you might actually not be bothered by what happens, unfortunately for me that did not work. Right from the beginning it was clear that there was no way that No.6’s story would fit into 11 episodes. The ending was bound to be rushed and inconclusive. I did however not expect the amount of stuff that this show pulled out of its ass during the final episode to be as big as it was. The finale of this series is completely inconsequential: its deus ex machina make no sense, are incredibly forced, negate some of the build-up it carefully constructed in the earlier episodes and leave with one hell of a bad taste and even more question marks.
If however you watch until episode 10 you’ll be rewarded with an excellent albeit very inconclusive dystopian adventure series. I really do hope that this was a lesson for future Noitamina series, though: you can’t just pick a story and hope that it’ll work well in Noitamina format!
| Storytelling: | 7/10 – Excellent build-up, the pacing is rushed, because of that it can stuff a ton of developments in a short time. That ending, though… |
| Characters: | 9/10 – The best part of the series. It’s a bit forced, but nevertheless very interesting with a cast that is constantly changing. |
| Production-Values: | 9/10 – Detailed animation, particularly excellent background art, excellent soundtrack. |
| Setting: | 8/10 – Fairly typical dystopia, but used very well and it forms a good backdrop. |
Suggestions:
– Ultraviolet: Code 044
– Amatsuki
– Ergo Proxy
No.6 – 11
Wut?
Okay, that was the complete opposite of what I expected.
Let’s start with the good parts: this show actually delivered quite an emotional finale, much more than I expected and I don’t just mean in the way I’m going to rant below. Safu’s death, the gunfires, plus the huge explosions. Everything was very well delivered at least. Plus, some of the best background tracks that the series had showed yet popped up.
But seriously. I’m stunned at just how much crap the creators pulled out of their ass! I mean, what the hell? So many bloody things were introduced from out of nowhere it’s not even funny:
– Safu magically controls the bees to first attack everyone and then form giant twisters that bring down the walls of No.6… where the hell did that come from? I mean, I understand the super powers and all, but super powers should not be an excuse to just pull whatever the hell happens to be the most convenient for the script.
– The entire building blows itself up as soon as the main computer gets destroyed? That’s one pretty big design flaw, isn’t it?
– Why didn’t they take Safu with them before blowing the thing up in the first place? There was no guarantee that she had been changed forever.
And BY FAR the worst of all:
– That was one of the most blatant revival scenes I have seen in a long while. Holy crap, the point where Shion revived was utterly terrible. The creators completely used Safu’s powers to pull whatever they want out of their ass. Nothing was built up or prepared for it. Also, Safu: why the hell did you turn into a giant bee? You seriously wasted the best parts of the soundtrack on THAT!? What a waste!
Seriously, at the start of this week, I was pretty much convinced that No.6, Kamisama Dolls and Kamisama no Memo-Chou would end up fighting for the spot of my third favourite series this season. The only one still standing straight after this is KamiMemo. KamiDolls looks to head into an utterly generic conclusion, while No.6 ended up at the complete other side of the spectrum where it tried to do way too much and therefore negated a ton of what it had been building up to. Heck, Blood-C may even enter my top 5 of the series that debuted during the Summer Season because of this.
So yeah, this season of Noitamina was definitely weaker than during the spring season: I do consider both Usagi Drop and No.6 to be worse than Anohana and C. Especially where C surprised me by having an awesome conclusion, this one surprised me by how utterly forced it was. The difference was that with C, everything was wrapped up, it got to make the points it wanted to make, and it had its awesome action. The reset it pulled made actual sense and delivered a wonderful sense of irony. No.6 meanwhile came completely out of nowhere.
Rating: — (Lacking)