Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Blood-C – 09

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



Once again Blood-C delivers an absolutely stunning episode. As if the previous episode wasn’t bad enough already, this episode goes even further.

Usually when a large amount of people need to die, you often just see one big explosion or otherwise very destructive thing, followed by a heap of dead bodies. That latest episode of Number 6 is a good example of that. This however was much, much more nerve wrecking as an entire classroom gets murdered out, and we actually see the monster maul each of his victims separately. This creature just kept chipping away everyone until there were just two people left. Now that was incredibly intense. With this I’m also sure: this series has the best fight choreography of the entire season. It’s a shame that the animation couldn’t remain as good as the first episode, but each action scene still is incredibly well crafted.

The thing with Blood-C is indeed that its cast lacks complexity. But dear god, for me it throws around more and more things that just completely make up for that lack. I mean, i like character development and all, but it’s not as black and white that I only like characters with character-development, and hate the ones who don’t. I’m growing more and more fond of Saya, and the biggest reason for that is how the mystery uses her. This really is one of the few series of the Summer Season that isn’t rushed, aside from Penguin Drum and Natsume Yuujinchou, and BY GOD it shows. Heck, I’d even argue that out of all of the series that are going to end this month, this one is the one I’m looking forward to the most aside from Steins;Gate.

The second half of the episode again had me on the edge of my seat because of this. The horror here too was very effective in just building up tension, and using the build-up of the entire season. Bit by bit throughout the series, Saya remembered a bit more and we’ve now reached the point where the inconsistencies really start to show, and she’s finally starting to think for herself.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

No.6 – 10

by psgels, posted in No.6



Seriously, ignore the huge holes that will be left in the plot next week, and this was another amazing penultimate episode. Heck, even though it in no way closes off the series, this looks to be an amazing climax. This episode was chock full of strong emotions and bold revelations.

The best of which was the thing that Nezumi warned about, at the end of the previous episode. I mean, we knew by now that Number Six had to be kidnap a huge amount of people: you have doubts and are of a lower class, then you’re out. That had to happen often. Instead of taking the time of burning these dead bodies, they just dump everyone on one huge pile and stop worrying about them. It was disturbing to see to say the least, but what really made that scene was that it indeed changed Shion’s character significantly. It was really well portrayed, and happened before he knew it.

This lead to a really emotional climax at the end when Shion actually kills another human, while Nezumi stands by with shock of how he lost his innocence. Oh, and some excellent animation also helped here. And that wasn’t even the only character development in this episode. Inukashi also got quite an interesting role when that baby suddenly got dumped on her. I think the reason why nobody doubted her gender had a lot to do with that flashback they showed of Nezumi when his tribe got murdered: there he also looked like a girl and nobody found it strange.It probably has a lot to do with cultural values and how women usually dress in these slums.

As for the next episode, I wonder how big of a disaster it’ll be. Knowing Seishi Minakami, it’ll probably just end. We get a nice climax between Safu and learn how overly powerful she has become, combined with a huge hook to a second season that will never arrive. This unfortunately had it coming ever since this show got announced.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

No.6 – 09

by psgels, posted in No.6



Oh, that’s very cruel. That cliff-hanger I mean. They were about to dive into the core of the correctional facility, and Nezumi said to Shion that he’s very likely going to change after what he sees there. So yeah, we only have two episodes left for that. Don’t promise awesome character development when you know that you’re going to end in less than one hour!

Yeah, I may sound like a broken record and all, but that’s the thing with this series: it just is THAT solid. For the past nine episodes there have been no weaknesses whatsoever aside from the “big one”. Seriously, it’s been a while since I watched a series that was this solid, and whose only single problem was the fact that it was based on a much longer source material that it would never be able to complete. And to be honest, this had it coming right from the beginning with Seishi Minakami: he’s basically pulling another Shigurui here, which also was a rock-solid adaptation from beginning aside from the fact that it just refuses to answer one of the biggest questions of the plot.

What caught my attention the most was the near rape of the dog keeper. Holy crap, that was well portrayed. The acting was excellent throughout this entire episode, but she really stole the show there. How different is that side we got to see of her!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Blood-C – 08

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



You know how often action series like to set themselves at high schools? You know how often the bad guys just ignore the most perfect targets of high school students? Yeah. This show realized that too. Holy crap that was intense! This is horror! The pacing still was excellent and the portrayal of the cast as ordinary high school students is really paying off now!

I’d also like to direct you to this interview, of the director of Blood-C and the director of Blood+ (and who has been pretty much writing every installment of the franchise). That, combined with this episode took away all of my doubts for this series: this is gonna be awesome.

The interesting thing is that the Junichi Fujisaku fully intended this Saya to be different from the Saya of Blood+ and really intended this series to make use of its creative freedom. And I have to agree that this so far has been an awesome way to expand upon the Blood Franchise. Heck, the director was intentionally planning to make the series END, while still leaving open room for the movie which will be completely different, which is EXACTLY what I’ve been hoping!

As for why I didn’t mind this series in the beginning, even though I have given up on series who started with very bland characters. For one, the execution really helped: for me, Blood-C immediately had a really tight atmosphere, and used its flashbacks combined with its battles really well to build up a sense of urgency for the cast. It puts them in a context and made me interested in what this series would look like when it really fired off. Compare that to R-15 or Baka To Test to Shoukanjuu Ni, which were just slurs of bad acting and jokes that didn’t work, with nothing that really caught my attention.

All in all, I do not think that the characters in this series are badly acted or portrayed, like for example what happened with Uta Prince and Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel, which both did try to tell some overall story, but completely lost me on how completely stupid they were. Saya herself may not be smart, but this is on a different league compared to the stupidity of the shows mentioned above. The acting here is restrained, instead of characters trying to act all over the place in the hopes of catching attention. Those are the characters that I find to be the most obnoxious the most often.

Overall I like the way this show did its cross-overs. Interestingly, it’s not the only series to have done that this season, with Blade and all. The best cross-overs can really enhance both shows and add some new things and introspectives, while being excellent stories that are still watchable on their own, no matter whether we’re talking about in-universe cameos or alternative universes. That’s why I’m not a big a fan of the Votoms alternative movies: they felt rather random and didn’t seem to add much depth to the Votoms franchise and they weren’t really interesting to watch. Same for the Precure All-Stars movies: I found them to be rather boring and they didn’t really add anything significant to Heartcatch Precure.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Blood-C – 07

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



At first sight it may seem that Clamp are just reusing the same things, though they’ve actually succeeded quite well by now in building their own universe. The wish in this episode was the best example of that so far for this series: it’s of the same type of wish as with xxxHolic, Tsubasa Chronicle and Kobato, but instead of just being the same, they strengthen each other and are all different ways to look at the same concept. This episode is all about the nature of wishes: is this one going to be a good or a bad one?

This again was a very powerful episode, as it revealed that Saya’s father had pretty much been deceiving her. It’s also where the build-up of the earlier episodes comes into play again, and nothing really turn out what they seemed to be. If the earlier episodes would have immediately stated this, this revelation would not have been as powerful.

On the animation front, it is a bit of a shame that the creators couldn’t hold on to the amazingly fluent animation of the first few episodes; probably due to budget issues, but I’m glad to see that they’re still trying. Especially when that giant swordsman attacked: you could actually see him put his weight into his blows (Saya really needed her supernatural strength in order to be able to defend from forces like that!), and he really felt like he made an impact on the scenery whenever he went, destroying just about everything he stepped on, rather than just leaving giant foot-prints like a lot of other shows like to do. The attention to detail still is abundant.

Also, and this is something I just realized while up this entry… we have a dog who is the owner of a shop who sells wishes… voiced by Jun Fukuyama. Could it be? I’m getting some serious Kobato flashbacks here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

No.6 – 08

by psgels, posted in No.6



Well, so I did not expect No.6 to be this… young. True, everything looks futuristic and there aren’t any real old buildings aside from the slums and all (which probably were built on top of some scrap and ruins), but for this series to be around twenty years old at most They really put in effort to mind-screw everyone within that amount of time. I don’t understand one thing about the background exposition of this episode though: it was mentioned that the six numbers were the only six spots of fertile lands left. So what about Nezumi’s birthplace? That had all kinds of trees growing there and didn’t seem to be a number.

What’s also quite strange: Nezumi wore girls’ clothes even in his flashback. I guess it makes sense for him to pursue his acting career after that and all, but I still find it intriguing that this series acts like it’s the most normal thing in the world. This really is the age where his parents really had to consciously dress him up like that.

In any case, this episode was a great one for the plot. When the show will close off in three weeks with a ton of loose threads, we’ll at least know how No.6 originated and how it so rapidly grew to be such a totalitarian distopia. This really answered the biggest lingering questions, which is good for now. At this point it’s also obvious what the creators are going to intend to end this thing with: Safu’s rescue. That’s the problem with kidnapping, really: the character in question is rendered useless through the entire process. It’s aggravating when said character is such a good one and you don’t have many episodes to really show her off otherwise.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Blood-C – 06

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



Holy crap! When was the last time we saw such uncompromising villains? I mean, being monsters is one thing, but this was just something of a completely different level: once they determined Saya to be a threat, they actually wasted no minutes in not just going after her friends, but also outright murdering them, and actually succeeding. These guys are definitely something else. Saya may succeed every time in killing them and all, but every time they manage to take people with them. They’re terrific in actually posing a threat, rather than the usual villains we always see who are either morons, or fail to kill off the important characters due to them being important characters.

With this, I also understand the reasoning of the creators to make Saya’s friends this bland. They could have pulled extra background, like dead parents, or complex back-stories, but the whole point of the slice of life series was for Saya to live a normal life with the only thing special about it the small details, like happening to live next to a baker who sells exotic sweets. It indeed was all for build-up, because that same tension could now be cut by a knife during the aftermath of Nono’s death. The atmosphere during this was just terrific, as it progressed with the same slow pacing as it has ever had.

It’s definitely a different way of building up the cast compared to the other end of the extreme: No.6, which tries to stuff as much details into its characters as possible. Blood-C instead depends a lot on the things that aren’t said. They’re both very tricky to really do well. At the moment I’m convinced that No.6 is going to nail its attempt. As for Blood-C, I don’t want to say that yet, but that’s only because I remember what happened to Sengoku Basara. The thing however, is that Blood-C is so far much, much better in keeping up and building its atmosphere, compared to Sengoku Basara who just kept on building up and building up, only for a few really good episodes and an ending that disappointed.

For a long time, this is also why I don’t minded Nurarihyon no Mago’s strange turn in focusing more on Rikuo’s friends: they were just spending time together, having fun and nicely fleshing out their characters without actually developing. The big problem with that show however is that all this build-up never really paid off. It was just… there, getting in the way of just about everything else.

I don’t mind a really slow pacing, as long as it’s used consciously. Blood-C has kept showing that it is one of those series, albeit in an unorthodox way that definitely isn’t for everyone. Only now it has been hinting at background, which really shows that it’s planning to reveal its background at a very late stage. That can work too! There have been tons of great series that build up a ton of intrigue and ended up closing off wonderfully by wrapping everything up. This isn’t a manga adaptation, so the creators know full well how much time they have. The big question right now is who they’re going to use the movie in this. The point is that it will take a long time for that movie to arrive. It’s therefore crucial for this series to really have a good and satisfying climax at episode 13, or otherwise the wait will just be too long (like what happened with Eden of the East, for example).
Rating: *** (Awesome)

No.6 – 07

by psgels, posted in No.6



This episode was great, even for this series’ standards. The script, it left no minute wasted. The dialogue was incredibly meaningful here, but the most amazing thing is that it just kept going: it just kept pushing its characters forward, it just kept developing them, it just kept showing them pour their heart out. Okay, so Safu had to get kidnapped for it to happen. The results were amazing.

I really wish that Fractale would have had the chance to take a look at this series, and take its example, because it does just about everything right where that show went wrong. It’s got a ridiculously strong bond between the characters, a strong story and instead of wanting to goof off or ignore the interesting parts of its story, it fully focuses on them. The drama in this episode was heavy, but it was entirely based on the choices that the characters made for themselves. Instead of dragging this out, the creators analyzed it, and instead made it so that it would also get resolved quickly. Sure, a strange coincidence was needed for that, but within that series it’s just a small detail.

Speaking of small details, there’s something about the animation that I also really appreciate in this series, even though it’s just a small detail: the characters’s faces, and especially their mouths. Nowadays, in just about any anime, mouths are just a bunch of lines pasted on top of a characters’ face that move up and down. Here though, there are these scenes that actually try to animate the fact that the characters have lips, and they actually try to make the characters’ faces stand out. In the past there were quite a few anime who did that too, but lately this has died out nearly completely in anime. It’s a shame to lose such a kind of a detail that can normally do wonders in making your cast come alive.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

No.6 – 06

by psgels, posted in No.6



Penguin Drum and Blood-C may be on a hiatus, but there still is the sixth episode of Number six that airs regularly. Again, we have an episode with a completely different tone as the previous ones. This time it was all about the friction between Shion and Nezumi. The acting between them was great, and they played wonderfully off each other, making the cliff-hanger about Safu’s capture all the more satisfying.

Kidnappings re of course a dime a dozen, but this episode made it into much more than that when Nezumi is seriously considering not to tell Shion about it. Furthermore, there was no way in which Safu wouldn’t be captured. It wasn’t the villains just going “ah, let’s kidap someone for a change”; instead they have been monitoring Shion’s house and now that Safu came back to him and is starting to search for him, they immediately made use of that. They don’t intend to use her as bait, otherwise they would have kidnapped Shion’s mother already, but it seems that the intention of trying to find Shion was what triggered them. For what reasons? Let’s hope that the part that explains that can still fit in the anime.

Meanwhile, Safu is sharp! She’s not the type of airhead who needs tons of clues to realize what’s going on. She isn’t afraid to show her feelings, and she’s not dodging around the subject of love. A breath of fresh air here!

At the moment, N0.6 is currently contenting with Penguin Drum for my favourite soundtrack of the season. While Penguin Drum probably wins in the use of its soundtrack, I also want to praise No.6 for its sheer versatility. In general I do favor the bombastic soundtracks over the mellow ones, but the soundtrack uses a lot of different instruments to create a very interesting effect. And the interesting thing is that it’s completely different from Dororon Enma-Kun, which also had the same composer. To be honest though, I do consider Enma-kun’s soundtrack to be better than this one, but that show did have one of the best soundtracks of the year, due to the immense amount of references, variety and flavours it put in.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Blood-C – 05

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



Yeah, this is horror, a genre that I’m a big fan of because of how well you can build up in this genre. It’s not just the fights that are amazing, but all of the quiet moments together quietly build up a very tight atmosphere. The more I watch this series, the more I’m beginning to think that Clamp intentionally made the slice of life scenes as empty as possible.

This episode, things are a bit different, though. For once the formula is broken up by having a fight in the first half, and second of all the second half starts as quiet and random as ever, but then slowly builds up a ghost story about the background of the village. Again, it’s not just a matter of randomly yelling “the village has monsters who eat people!” -it’s all about storytelling and that same atmosphere.

The big question for this series is really whether it was properly balanced. All this build-up is wonderful, but a bit pointless if there is to little time for the actual climax, which is by far the biggest pitfall of shows who take too much time building up. With this kind of story though, this series can really pull things off if it just keeps building up its atmosphere. The ending here is going to be a crucial one: last year I expected similar things out of Sengoku Basara II, but unfortunately the ending there was ultimately disappointing. The big difference for me at the moment however, is that Blood-C has made every episode worth watching so far. At this point I’m not watching the quiet scenes just to get through them and get to the action scenes, but instead they’re part of the overall atmosphere now. Without them the action scenes wouldn’t nearly have as much impact.
Rating: ** (Excellent)