Category: Finished Series: Adventure/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 10

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



Holy crap, what an episode. We’ve finally gotten to Homura’s past and BY GOD is is awesome.

This may be because I really like the kinds of series that deal with alternative dimensions, but the reason I love the stories like this is because they really allow creators to show different ways for characters to develop when done right (do note that it can be done poorly just as easily, though. Yes, I’m looking at you Yosuga no Amagami). The creators really put a ton of meaning in this episode

With this, I also understand why the creators said, prior to this series, that it would be the type of show that you need to watch two times in order to fully get it. I remember that first episode and how at first it seemed very much like Nanoha. The biggest reason for that was that scene in which Madoka saves Kyuubei from being attacked. Yeah, that suddenly gets put into a completely different perspective, doesn’t it?

One thing that was amusing during the past few weeks was seeing all of the crazy theories from everyone, ranging from speculating that Homura was Madoka to Homura being Madoka’s cat. In the end though, she just turned out to be a normal girl who just matured much more mentally due to the way that she always kept travelling back in time. Plot twists like “character x is secretly related to character Y in some bizarre way” are good, but they shouldn’t be used for the sake of just using them, otherwise they’ll just become forced.

This episode only left one major question: why wasn’t Madoka this awesome mahou shoujo when Homura first met her? This episode strongly hinted at Madoka getting more talent as Homura kept travelling back in time.

Oh, and the release dates for the final episodes are finally out: Madoka will only have 12 episodes. We’re actually ending this thing in two weeks!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

EDIT: holy crap, I knew by now that I needed to avoid that shoutbox before watching this week’s episode, but this is getting a bit out of hand here. Unfortunately due to my schedule I’m unfortunately not able to watch this series as fast as usual (combined with the fact that four of the shows I’m blogging air on thursday evening).

Next week, I’ll create a topic for discussions before the episode airs.

OVA Impressions: Seikai no Danshou

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Seikai no Monshou



The Seikai franchise has two OVAs, one that takes place after the three TV-series, and one prequel. While the former felt like the creators were stuffing an entire novel into just fifty minutes, the latter is an interesting little side-story. Like the title suggests, this isn’t about Lafiel, but instead about her parents.

This OVA works as a background OVA, telling a bit more about who Lafiel’s parents were (about which we were mostly left in the dark throughout the TV-series), but as a standalone short story it also works pretty well. It’s got a good atmosphere, and although it’s simple it’s well told and paced.

And of course, as expected from this series the dialogue is excellent. The characters are once again very eloquent and a lot of this OVA just consists out of Lafiel’s parents talking to each other. The script continues to be interesting and blend in well with the story that’s going on.

If you’re planning to watch this OVA, I’d recommend to at least watch it after watching the first half of the first season, otherwise it will lose some of its meaning. It’s a nice watch for any fan of the franchise, though.
OVA Episode Rating: 8,25/10

Gosick – 09

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Dear police inspector. When someone comes across something he should not have seen, the bad guys will no doubt try their hardest to cover their mistakes up as thorough as possible by denying any sort of involvement. When examining testimonials like that, you should take every statement with a grain of salt. Not just the ones from the obnoxious kid you dislike.

Dear bad guys. When a random guy happens to stumble upon a priceless artifact that you have stolen, you really should get better security and you had better make damn sure that this guy does not have the chance to report EVERYTHING HE SAW to the police. I mean, you’re lucky that the inspector was a moron and all, so that these two stupid acts cancelled each other out.

I’m still not sure what’s up with these two, to be honest. I mean, I guess that the dumber the cast is, the smarter Victorique seems in comparison and all, but she doesn’t really need that. She’s a great character even without some morons around her, and I’d actually argue that if she were surrounded by other characters who at least had some common sense, she’d end up shining even brighter. I at first feared that she was too much of a tsundere, but the past few episodes have made her a very strange tsundere with some… interesting quirks. The previous arc also really did its job and gave her some depth and this episode too was pretty charming due to her catching a cold. Neat way to flesh her out some more.
Rating: * (Good)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 09

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



A very, very macabre build-up here. On one side, the deaths in this series don’t have as much of a shock value compared to what happened to Mami. On the other hand though, the creators just did decimate the cast here. At this point there are only five named characters alive, and two of those have stopped being relevant to the plot.

In about a week the definitive lengths of the series of the current season should get announced, but it looks like there are three episodes left at this point. These should be enough for this series to change its direction, now that it lost some very important side-characters, and use these changes for its ending. The pieces are now all correctly set: Walpurgis Night is coming, and Madoka pretty much is going to have to choose between either becoming a mahou shoujo or having this Walpurgis thingy feasting on the city they’re in.

A lot of the finale is going to depend on Madoka’s development. I mean, she’s probably the most typical character of the entire cast, and spends a lot of time angsting, but a character was really needed for this show to be able to do what it wanted to do. As a deconstruction, this series would not have worked as well if Madoka was more mature. A part of the charm of this series is seeing Madoka nearly giving into Incubator again and again, continually building the tension between them. Because Madoka is indecisive it allows this series to flesh out all possible options for her to a great detail. Sure, weak characters like her can get very annoying when used poorly, but this show shows how to do them right, by having the entire plot revolve around this weakness of hers.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gosick – 08

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Oh, I have to admit that this show is shrewd. In the previous episode they introduced the most stereotypically evil characters for the story centred around Victorique’s background. Their personalities were so obviously out there , with a group of three random respect-less guys on one hand and this completely deranged maid on the others. I’ve been watching detective stories for so long that it totally didn’t occur to me that they could also be the culprits and that this was just a story in which everything was just as it seems. Har, har, very clever for this show to use an overused trope to its advantage. For once I can’t blame Victorique for refusing to explain how she found out about their identities.

This episode was well told, though. For once the two different murder mysteries in this arc proved to be quite effective red herrings for each other, and the atmosphere was actually quite excellent. Especially that bridge scene was well directed and shot and surprised me how I actually ended up caring for Kujou, of all people.

I also like how the creators wrote their stories into the European history. I mean, it’s not like Seyrun ever existed (or nothing with the same name at least), but this episode came with an entire background of how the village came to exist in the first place and where their ascendants came from. That actually worked very well here.

Oh, and the revelation that Cordellia was still alive only spiced things up even more at the end. This definitely was the best arc of Gosick so far. If it can keep this up, it’s actually going to become a pretty good series here. If not then it still has enough ways to become a total chore to sit through, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 08

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



And here this show comes with an episode that to be honest… I only expected to arrive around the penultimate episode or something. Now, that means that if this show knows what it’s doing, it can get an amazing climax out of that, when awesome episodes like this are used as build-up episodes.

The creators really didn’t try to drag out Sayaka’s descend into madness. It’s just been an episode and a half, and she already exhausted her soul gem. So yeah, she’s probably going to remain as a witch starting from the next episode. My guess would be that that’s the point where the creators are really going to go all out on Madoka and Homura. The part in which Madoka nearly gave in to QB (or should I say InQBtor) was really powerful. Now it’s up to the creators to build further upon that.

One point of criticism: here we have the childhood friends that you forgot about cliche again. Very weird place to show such a cliche, but it should be fine if it is indeed central to Homura’s character and her motivation.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Gosick – 07

by psgels, posted in Gosick



This is why this series originally caught my attention: its creativity. This episode was full of it. It successfully created an entire small culture, with its own rituals, traits and habits. It created a wide variety of characters and a very imaginative back-story that for once actually kept me guessing, instead of just waiting for Victorique to grab the script again. Finally there’s some actual build-up in the way she comes to the answer!

It’s a shame that this series leaves so much to be desired in the character department. If it had compelling and deep characters it really would have been an interesting series here. Instead, the only interesting character in this series at this point is Victorique: the past two episodes gave a lot of depth to her with her background and her antics are also starting to get quite colorful. The rest of the cast though… they’re not portrayed well.

Most of the characters here suffered from bad acting and strange behaviors. Especially those three male guests suffered from this: they were stereotypical assholes. I know that this series is deliberately withholding their backgrounds, but in doing so it also forgets to flesh them out and give them decent personalities. We never even get to know who they are. The maid in this episode as well: I’m sure that she’s a nice girl and all, but this episode portrayed her as totally deranged. Oh, and we also have Kujou. I still can’t get over the fact that the lead character of a detective series has such a poor sense of observation. First there is a box with a piece of paper in it, and he says that nothing is in it. Then he promises to protect Victorique, only for her to run off while he’s dozing off. Or take the scene in which we get a surprisingly cheerful Victorique singing from out of nowhere… and he just remarks that she’s back to her usual self. When did we ever hear her sing so cheerfully like that!? (No offence to Victorique about that, by the way. It’s really good to see more sides of her).

And don’t get me wrong, though: this episode was wonderfully told. The atmosphere it built up was excellent and the dialogue blended in really well with the music. It was well paced and packed a number of great and hard hitting plot twists. It’s because of that that it’s such a shame that this show is a waste of this potential due to the really poor attention to detail. I’ve said this before: this show is great in the big picture, but not so great in the small picture.
Rating: * (Good)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 07

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



Ah, the wonderful character development! This episode added a ton of new things to the characters, especially Sayaka and Kyouko. This is really what these short 13 episoded series need to do: instead of wasting time like what Fractale is currently doing, they constantly need to focus and build up their characters and if character development fits in the story, then all the better.

Kyouko revealed her past and became a completely different character from who she was at her introduction. She’s still the experienced Mahou Shoujo, but the way she became a mahou shoujo is a really tragic one (which looked awesome, by the way). Sayaka meanwhile takes an entire episode to let the revelation of the previous episode sink in, to the point where she believes that she can’t even have a proper romance anymore. I wonder why, because even though she’s a bit of a zombie, she still can feel emotions like any other. Her fears here are entirely irrational, but this episode really hinted at her getting screwed over by those feelings at the end.

Overall, Shaft. I have to congratulate you. This has by far been my favourite Shaft series in years. For once, they did everything right again, and their decision to bring in Urobuchi Gen was an excellent one.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gosick – 06

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Best episode yet! Seriously, this episode was significantly better than anything we’ve seen of Gosick so far. The biggest reason was that second half, which finally took an in-depth look into Victorique’s character and her past. It’s an interesting backstory and it was well told, so let’s hope that it can keep this up.

Having said that, though, the quick mystery of this episode again was flawed. I mean, Kujo first doesn’t notice anything after a magician steals his textbooks (why would a magician want to steal some kid’s textbook, by the way; Ah well, he has fancy character designs, so we’re bound to see him back later as a major character), and yet when he tells his stories to Victorique he never fails to mention that one detail that can solve the crime. I mean, for a guy of his wit, I really doubt that he would have noticed the strange way in which the nun was sitting. Speaking of wit… you don’t need to dumb hair guy down even more. There were a ton of other ways he could have reacted for the creators to show that Victorique looks like her mother.

But after Victorique and Kujou started bickering with each other and got into a fight, this episode turned much better. It’s good to see that the creators are delving this early into the backgrounds of its main character, because she definitely needed that. We finally get an explanation of why she ended up in that tower. My one problem wit it is that… did we ever hear where Victorique’s mother is currently at? I mean, after the previous arc I’m a bit wary about this series not returning to fill up its missing plot holes…

Oh, and I looked up some of the episode staff for the upcoming episodes. Episode 07 and 08 are going to have two interesting storyboarders: episode 07 will have Matsuou Kou (the director of Kurenai and Red Garden), while episode 08 will have the storyboard done by the director of Eureka7. This can prove to be interesting.
Rating: * (Good)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 06

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



That was a great subversion of one of the most overused mahou shoujo tropes: the magical object that somehow allows the girls to transform themselves. Now that this show mentions it, I’ve seen very few series that actually put in a deeper meaning to these items. The only other I can think of right now is Fancy Lala.

The idea that your soul gets separated from your body when you become a mahou shoujo is a great one. It offers a very interesting explanation to all the healing and invincibility powers that you often see in these series. What’s even more interesting is that most of the mahou shoujo don’t know about that, and maintaining your soul gem suddenly gets a whole new meaning here.

Aah, and Kyuubei. Seriously, that animal was being evil in this episode: it specifically called Madoka when Sayaka was about to be attacked and it just keeps referring to Madoka’s latent powers. In this episode we also learn that it eats grief seeds. That really can’t be a good thing.

That mysterious “Walpurgis Night” will probably the climax of this series. With this episode we pretty much learn what Homura’s goal is, though it’s still unclear what she was planning to do while fighting Sayaka in this episode. She obviously was trying to do something to her without killing her, but that as all I could gather.
Rating: ** (Excellent)