Category: Hanamaru Youchien

Hanamaru Youchien – 03

by psgels, posted in Hanamaru Youchien



So overall this show turned out enjoyable enough, though not anything special. There’s one thing I don’t like, though: Yamamoto. Seriously, I’m surprised that she hasn’t sprouted wings and flown to heavens yet. I know that there’s purity and all, but that woman really takes the cake. It would have been nice if her total cluelessness was some sort of a novelty, but just about every love triangle in anime has it. What does this show hope to achieve by following this completely pointless bandwagon?

This episode featured a bunch more cliches that you’d usually see in high school romances, but I guess that that was necessary to flesh out the characters. As long as the future episodes aren’t going to repeat it, I don’t see much of a problem.

One thing that I’ve noticed from this series is that it likes to put tropes of other kinds of series into its setting of a kindergarten. I also recognize some parts of Great Teacher Onizuka in Tsuchida: he too makes friends with his students by placing himself on their equal level. At least, with everyone aside from Anzu.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Hanamaru Youchien – 02

by psgels, posted in Hanamaru Youchien



Oh, screw it. I know I said that I was going to blog Nodame Cantabile’s Finale, but I really fail to see why that would be interesting. I know myself by now. I’m going to spend every episode complaining at how it doesn’t live up to the spectacular first season, and continue to talk down to a series that would otherwise have been at least a bit of a decent romantic comedy. In the end, the first episode of the new season showed enough to me, in the way that it overplayed Nodame’s antics too much. To me, it feels like this season’s Noitamina is wasted.

So yeah. I can try to sugarcoat it, but why bother. At this point, I’ve covered eighteen seasons of anime at this blog, and I consider this one to be the worst out of all of them. I very often disagree with those “worst season ever”-comments, and with a good reason: usually there are all sorts of underrated gems that are being ignored. But this season… I just can’t make any cheese out of it. Not only is the season itself incredibly small, there also are so few series that carried over from previous seasons.

At this point, there are only five series that I’d consider truly excellent: Armed Librarians, Durarara, Cross Game, Full Metal Alchemist and Marie & Gali. Depending on how they turn out, I can only see Sora no Oto if its uses its characters right and Ookami Kakushi if it gets its pacing right joining this list. That’s a definitive low in all of the eighteen seasons I’ve covered so far. So yeah, with that I’m stuck with really old series (Seikai no Monshou), guilty pleasures (Cobra), shows that are never meant for greatness but have one or two nice things (Kobato and Letter Bee), shows and OVas that only air once a month (Katanagatari and there are a number of OVAs that air in a few months that I want to cover) and… this.

Again, I’m not expecting the next GA or Ooedo Rocket here. All I want from this series is entertainment until this season is over, and at that area it pretty much delivers. It’s obvious problem is that the moeblobs here don’t really feel like actual kids, especially Anzu and Hiiragi are way overdone, and that story that the headmistress told, about how all kids would magically adapt the personality of their teacher was just stupid. Though Tsuchida himself and the other teachers are pretty nice to watch, and the chemistry between the characters is also pretty nice.

What I also want from this show is creativity. At this point, I don’t really care whether or not the characters in this series are stereotypes. I’m happy enough about the lack of teenagers (just about the only thing at which this season DOESN’T disappoint: the teenagers for once aren’t dominating the different series). What I want from this show is creative situations that the characters were put in. And the ED was actually pretty much what I meant. I never saw it coming that the creators would pull a space opera parody with these kinds of characters.

I’m not sure whether I’m going to have enough to say about every single episode, but ah well. For now, who cares?
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Some Quick First Impressions: Hanamaru Yochien, Seikon no Qwaser and Kaito Reinya

by psgels, posted in Hanamaru Youchien, Some Quick First Impressions

Haramaru Yochien

Short Synopsis: Our lead character starts his new job at a kindergarten for moeblobs.
First, let me say this: this show rocks for having absolutely no teenagers in them! It only focuses on young adults and 4-year-old kids, while teenagers only appear in a few flashbacks. Aside from that, it was a bit of a strange series; the best way to describe it would be a cross between Potemayo and Kodomo no Jikan. It has the moeblobs from Potemayo if they were to 3 years older, and it has a similar teacher to Kodomo no Jikan, even including a similar love-interest of his. The biggest problem with this sereis is obviously that most of the characters are too one-sided or stereotypical, but it does work. This episode was enjoyable slice of life. I especially enjoyed those small scenes after school. What this series needs to do is to somehow remain as light-hearted and enjoyable as it was here, not repeat itself too much, and flesh out the cast beyond the stereotypes that we’ve seen so far. If it’s going to focus on the romance, then I hope for something similar to Yume de Aetara (the OVA, not the TV-series. By GOD, not the TV-series).
ED: This is why voice actresses that pretend to be little kids should never sing.
Potential: 50%

Seikon no Qwaser

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to protect her seemingly retarded sister as much as possible.
Ugh… that sister. What a horrible voice actress she received. Just about everything about her is annoying. Apart from that, this episode was decent. There’s potential for a decent action-series, although the direction was flawed at times (one moment the camera pans across a classroom, and the next shot from out of nowhere a girl with a ridiculous pink hairstyle just appears). About half the cast is interesting, while the rest of the cast are just dull stereotypes with a one-sided personality. The lead character herself is decent, but has a nasty tendency to overact. For this series to work, it’s really going to have to put in effort to correctly pace its storyline, and not waste time on pointless beach, hot spring and pool episodes.
OP:
ED: What was the mindset the creators were in when they came up with these visuals?
Potential: 30%

Kaito Reinya

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a phantom thief in the city with the most incompetent police.
There’s an art to making a good comedy: actually making it FUNNY. That’s something that Kaito Reinya completely fails at. It’s full of corny and overused jokes, the slapstick with the mouse is so bad that it becomes horrible, and the constant references to phantom thieves are uninspired at best. I guess that this series’ selling poing is that it’s fully animated in flash, but even that looks lazy: Hanoka, which was produced three years earlier, looked much better than this uninspired… thing.
OP: Obnoxious explanation of the premise of the show.
ED: Not really an ED, more like just a credit role.
Potential: 0%