Level E – 13



That was an awesome end to an awesome series. The twist had it coming, but it was perfect to close off this show.

This episode did a great job of making the princess more than just about any other romantic interest. I mean, the basis premise for this episode may have been an arranged marriage, but that’s about the only stock plot device that appeared in this past arc. It’s a great idea to have the princess be as cunning as the prince himself, and still make her innocent at the same time. Somewhat.

I also love how in the end, the prince was fooled by bland acting from the two thieves who pretended to be the very helpless-looking brother and princess. That’s the point where he really got caught off-guard.

Overall, If I wasn’t one already, I’m now a really big fan of David Production. Only Dogs was bad, but apart from that, Ristorante Paradiso, Armed Librarians and Level E were all wonderfully creative and enjoyable series. I really like the ambition that these people have to time and time again come with something interesting. Combined with Studio Pierrot they really made for one heck of an interesting comedy.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Review – 70/100




That’s it. With this I’m done giving these generic looking moe shows a benefit of doubt. Kore wa Zombie Desu ka is not as bad as Dragon Crisis. In fact, it has a few parts that are actually good, especially in its first half. It lead me to believe that, in fact, we might get a very enjoyable fanservice show here. Unfortunately though, this show then proceeded to run all of my hopes into the ground.

Let me start with the good stuff: this show is quite creative when it wants to be. When it wants to, it can use its cliched ingredients, insert some good chemistry between the characters, throw in some crazy plot twists and create an excellent tension. There really are a few excellent episodes in this series, especially the first and the one about the slasher. It’s just that there’s just so much crap in the rest of this show.

Zombie is at its best when the chemistry around its characters is dynamic. It’s got well written banter that works well with its nonchalant zombie main character. It’s quite enjoyable when it doesn’t take its own cliches seriously and instead tries to put them into a creative scenario. Most of the time though, it just forgets this and devolves into dull moe hi-jinks. Eventually, it just gives up trying to be interesting and just opts for lazy slice of life that’s just there to fill up time. The characters in this show are nowhere near well written enough to remain enjoyable when they’re not funny.

The big nail in this one’s coffin though is that it has no bloody clue how to tell a good story. The drama in the first half can actually get quite good when the show still is a collection of random episodes about the important characters, but it completely falls apart when it tries to build up for some overall storyline. The drama gets incredibly cheesy, and the worst part is that the creators don’t even realize this, so they just keep stretching the cheese ad nauseum.

The entire second half of this series is based around complete stupidity from one character that ends with one heck of a Deus ex Machina (several of them, actually). And then, when the climax is over and you thought that things couldn’t get any worse… episode 12 will destroy any good memories that were still left with one giant middle finger to both its audience and cast of characters.

Studio Deen. Please put some people who can actually tell a story on your next series. I mean, you’ve showed in the past that you can make genuinely good moe shows with Touka Gettan and YamiBoushi. Why so much laziness?

Storytelling: 7/10 – When it wants to, it can be very enjoyable and dynamic, but this doesn’t happen often enough and gets ruined by some terrible episodes and drama.
Characters: 6/10 – Try to be serious, but fail. Try to be enjoyable, but fail as well. Only when they try to be themselves they work well.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Pretty decent animation. Certainly not the worst.
Setting: 7/10 – Has nice ideas, but doesn’t use them often enough.

Suggestions:
Touka Gettan
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

Level E – 12



Awesome to see the entire main cast together again for the finale of this series. I mean, these are the kinds of characters who are awesome to watch, no matter what they do. Having an entire arc focus on them was exactly what this show needed to close off well.

Also, I finally spotted an overused cliche in this series: the seemingly helpless girl who manages to hit a home-run against all expectations. But then again, as an alien it makes perfect sense, and this episode even poked fun at the “walking into the shower”-scene that baffles me of why it was the first one to do that.

Overall, it’s true that the first arc of Level E was without a doubt its best: it had the element of surprise and used it utterly brilliantly. What happened after that is very interesting, though. Instead of joining the bandwagon of trying to make more episodes in the same vein, the rest of the episodes continued to experiment with all kinds of different stories and characters surrounding aliens on earth. Standalone it’s indeed easy to just compare the to the first three episodes and label this as a show that goes downhill, but nevertheless I find the way in which this series paints together a complete picture, making use of its momentum and constantly changing its focus and characters, to be quite brilliant and the single most enjoyable show of this season.

The thing is that I rarely give very high ratings to comedies, even though it’s a huge genre in anime. Level E has opened my eyes on how good the genre can be when it has some actually interesting stories to tell. This way, it can also be good whenever it’s not funny. Call it the X-Factor of comedies. With most comedies I’m just disappointed when they’re not funny, because besides being funny they fall apart without their humour. For Level E though, I think that it also would have worked as a series if it didn’t have its humour. It’d obviously be less awesome, but I can imagine that it would still keep my attention.

What’s more: a lot of comedies seem to be trying to solve this by going all serious in the final two episodes. I’ve only seen very few of them that actually pulled off such a good climax, though (Hyakko being one of those rare examples). This series however showed that you can just as easily tell serious stories that fit in 1 to 3 episodes that can work just as well as long arcs if they all succeed in coming together and form a whole and creating its own universe.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Level E – 11




So, after the slight disappointment of last week, this episode hits back in full force with just a completely bizarre premise. And even there, the episode plays out completely unlike I expected. This episode was just… surreal.

This episode toyed with mystery like no other. It was both an excellent mystery story, but it also brilliantly poked fun at the genre with the way in which it suddenly put the local baseball team into the middle of Koushien. The balance between the silly and serious parts was excellent and I loved the original twists it gave to the whole premise. The characters all just calmly analyzed what was going on, with a few goofballs being entertaining (most notably, the Prince and the Captain of the team).

It related back to an event in the past that was surprisingly intense, and created a really great mystery atmosphere. Because of that I also loved the way this episode played out, because in the end we never really were told who exactly caused things, and things were just solved by having fun and playing baseball. It fitted perfectly and yet subverted a ton of mystery cliches.

And really, this is what I have been missing so dearly in Gosick: none of the characters were idiots. They all shared their own take on things, but aside from the obviously moronic captain (who really had his own charms and purpose), they all looked around and used common sense. That’s how you write good mystery. Not by relying on artificial stupidity.

Overall I think that 13 episodes (yes this series will be 13 episodes long) is the perfect length for this series. It’s short, but really sweet in this way, making no scene wasted whatsoever. Even the previous episode served its purpose of breaking up the pacing, and I love how the creators managed to do that in just one episodes. Compare that to so many other 13-episode series that put in intermezzo after intermezzo after intermezzo. So far, every episode has stood out. This is really what these short series should strive for.

There is just one reason why it’s a shame that this isn’t a long series: the characters. With that, I don’t mean that they should be more developed; they already have a ton of charms. Instead though, it’s a shame to see so much potential go away. The characterization in this series is absolutely amazing: none of the characters feels like a stereotype, aside from perhaps Ouji. The people that this series shows feel so fresh and interesting: even though we only see most of them for a few episodes, they feel and act like real people. Their acting is just wonderfully down to earth. If anything, I just hope that future series will take them as their inspiration because characters this fresh really don’t appear often. The best example of this is of course the couple from the first arc.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Level E – 10



So, this episode was something else. It had no Ouji whatsoever. In fact, none of the recurring characters aside from the color rangers even made an appearance. There also was hardly any comedy and it actually was really focused at telling a serious story here. It’s an excellent change of pace for just one episode, especially considering how next episode the hilarity is surely promising to return with the reappearance of Baseball Guy.

Now, something obviously was missing in this episode, but even so the story it told was quite good. It was a bit simple, but it fitted quite nicely within just twenty minutes, and it made good use of the Color Rangers in a setting completely different from an RPG parody (plus it actually fitted in some development for the spiked hair guy). It had very typical bad guys, but even they were just more than evil for the sake of being evil, and were quite successful at creating some tension.

Also, I’m surprised to see some actual karate used in the action scenes. You could actually see that that the two kids practice the basics a lot, and they really got the basics down. At the same time though, you could see that they didn’t have much experience in actual fighting against a partner: their movements were a tad too neat and slow; in a real fight while using karate, you’ll always see people sacrificing clean techniques in favour of being able to move fast enough to actually be able to hit your opponent. This time the kids were lucky that they were helped by their powered suits.

In any case, this episode was the weakest of Level E so far, and yet I still really liked it. This show has always had the problem that it was nearly impossible to live up to the absolutely fantastic first arc, but even considering how the subsequent arcs were a step back it still had plenty of stuff to like.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Level E – 09



I love how despite there being multi-episode arcs in this series, every episode still feels different, and this arc in particular was an excellent example of this. The romance gets dropped, and instead this turns into a bit of a thriller, and as for the lead characters… Ouji returns and the episode is chock full of the addictive chemistry between Kraft and Ouji, making this episode even better than it already was.

I also loved that for once, an arc with a gimmicky premise like this doesn’t end with a cop-out. I mean, usually when the creators put the stake of the entire earth on something silly like this, they end up writing themselves into a corner and end up with a very cheesy and rushed ending. Here however, Ouji actually comes up with a plan to save the entire earth using clones and a whole lot of breaches of intergalactic treaties.

This episode also contained a few nice jabs at alien abductions, in quite a few different ways, from abductions while asleep, those classic light beams and suddenly feeling like 30 minutes disappeared. I also keep getting amazed at Ouji. His trick is that he’s either completely honest, or not honest at all, and his lies sound so sincere. When he said that he used to be a woman… oh lord.

The reason why I consider Level E to be one of the best comedies I’ve seen though, is really because of the big picture. I mean, standalone comedies that are funny are nice, but this series adds in so much more. The standalone stories that it tells are actually very good ones that could have worked well even without the humour, it has consistently created down to earth characters that are believable and relatable, and its backdrop of 90s alien fiction continues to create interesting backstories and fits really well in terms of the big picture. It’s just everything that this series does that still makes me consider this to be an amazing comedy, even though I do admit that the funniest arc was the first one.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu! Review – 80/100



It’s rare for a comedy sequel to be better than the original. Here is one, though. The original Mitsudomoe had its moments of hilarity, but it also had many problems: milked out jokes, trying to be way more disgusting than what was tolerable, and the endlessly repeated forced misunderstandings between the characters. Those problems are actually fixed in the sequel, Mitsudomoe Zoryouchuu.

The keyword here is balance. In the sequel, the creators make sure that no character is overexposed or milked out. Everyone gets some decent time to show off his collection of quirks and jokes. Most episodes are separated into five sketches, and those sketches either centre around one theme or are completely random, but they continue to be different and dynamic. Even the final episode still is hilarious.

The humour in this series works especially well because of how it uses its characters: in the first season it relied a lot on innuendo humour, but this too is much more varied here. The series is at its best when there are a lot of different characters involved who all play off each other, where their emotions quickly change from one to the other. At these points it becomes incredibly dynamic and fun to watch.

The more solid execution also makes the characters a lot more down to earth and likable. The first season was way too full of toilet humour for this. The second season still has that, but it’s much more restrained. The result is that now, the characters in this show are much like your typical children with their childish antics and sometimes perverted minds. Most series about children in elementary school age try to portray them innocently, but Mitsudomoe goes out of its way to show their bratty and naive sides. The second season makes it surprisingly easy to relate to.

In Mitsudomoe 1, the ratio of sketches that worked versus the ones that didn’t work was about 50:50. In Mitsudomoe 2, this is around 75:25. Most episodes have one sketch that is absolutely hilarious, and several others that are quite funny. As for the bad ones though, those are the ones in which either the creators don’t try hard enough, the joke they use just falls flat, or the creators just fall back into the flaws of the first season by repeating jokes for too long. or just being disgusting for the sake of disgusting.

I wouldn’t recommend checking out Mitsudomoe 2 without having seen the first season, as it relies on running gags that were started in the first season. However, if you’ve seen the first season, then watching Mitsudomoe 2 will only make this show better. It has a number of bad sketches, but those are vastly outweighed by the good ones. It’s a much more solid and enjoyable comedy.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Hilarious, solid and varied comedy, knows most of the time that it shouldn’t milk its jokes.
Characters: 8/10 – Some characters are just bad. Most of them are pretty good though, especially their chemistry is on fire in this season.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Bridge’s debut could have been much worse.
Setting: 8/10 – It’s an elementary school. Yet much more believably presented than in the first season.

Suggestions:
Muteki Kanban Musume
Ga Geijutsuka Art Design Class
Hanamaru Youchien

Mitsudomoe Special Episode



Yeah, this one is part of the first season. The sexual innuendo is less subtle than ever, jokes get repeated and the misunderstanding jokes are back again. It still had its funny moments, but overall it was also a bit forced, and nowhere as hilarious as most of the episodes of the second season.

By far the worst part of this episode was the “Hitoha’s cheeks are like boobs” joke that just got repeated ad nauseum. It was a bad joke to begin with, but it was dragged out horribly and gave Yabecchi eventually an excuse to bring the misunderstandings back again when. The two parts about Mitsuba’s weight loss also had some of the same repeated jokes, but it had some good laughs. The sushi bit was pretty hilarious though.

One thing that I especially noticed in this episode was that it went a bit overboard with the facial reactions of everyone. Especially Mitsuba was yelling for the largest part, and there were a tad more overacted gasps than were comfortable. To close off this series, the previous episode really was a better choice.

Overall the past year has been interesting in the way that much less series were released than usual, and they were also much smaller than usual, the majority not even going beyond thirteen episodes. This allowed me to blog much more different series than usual, and also series that I normally never would have considered blogging: this series, Gosick and Zombie. It was an interesting year, but in the end I really do prefer the large seasons like the upcoming spring. Sure, there may be more crap, but there are also more interesting series. Blogging these pure comedies was fun, but I’m probably not going to weekly blog any of them for a while unless a comedy that is as good as Level E or Geijutsuka Art Design Class pops up.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Level E – 08



Aah, finally! Finally we have an actually good parody of the romantic comedy. Even without the awesome twist at the end, I just loved what this episode did and how it poked fun at the genre and how it made everything look ridiculous with its ever-sharp wit. There also was a lot of building up in this episode, but in the end, it was totally worth it. This is really what an awesome comedy should be: don’t just show a bunch of random jokes, but have everything build up for each other and create a whole picture that’s larger than the sum of its parts.

The interesting thing is how this was written more than a decade ago, and the things it parodies still are incredibly overused, and it just showed how timeless this episode was. I also love how there finally is a series that acknowledges that love at first sight is pretty implausible, and how it takes this to the absurd by putting the fate of the world hanging on it. The inclusion of Kraft only made this better: his energy and sarcasm were awesome to watch during the building-up parts.

Not to mention the awesome excuse that the creators found in order to leave Ouji uninvolved in this episode. The different combinations of characters for each arc are really dynamic here and instead of overexposing the same characters, the creators really try to give all kinds of characters their own time to shine, going both for the main characters as the new ones that it introduces. And again, the characters in this arc are fairly simple, and make writing good characters look so easy.

The revelation that the lead guy was basically a lesbian was the highlight of this episode. It gave a completely different meaning to the episode, plus it also left a very interesting cliff-hanger for the next episode, which just has to be different from the previous. But then again, this series has shown before that it loves to toy with expectations.

Also, this all took place at a Ski Resort. Take that, hot spring beach school festival pool episodes!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? – 08



oh boy, this was a disaster. It was an episode that was doomed to fail, simply because of the decision of the creators to include the new girl into the cast of major characters. I mean… what exactly do they hope to get out of someone with such a terrible backstory? This episode could at least have been enjoyable if it wasn’t for her utterly contrived reason to fall in love with the lead character. I mean, is she supposed to be another parody or something?

This pretty much was an episode that contained nothig but character building, oly to come with some drama at the final minute. So, after having to sit through some completely generic dating scenes, what do we get? The lead female gets kidnapped. Ooh, we’re original now. Seriously, what happened? The drama in this show used to be so good. Cliches like these could be excused in the introduction of a series, to get the plot started. Not when you’re nearly done!

The only enjoyment in this episode was in the small details, like surprisingly smooth animation, the hilariously named “Mask Donalds”, good poses and facil expressions and the surprisingly good food jokes ehre, even though cooking girls usually are beating the same dead horse over and over again. Like I said: it could have been an interesting episode, but when the creators have such a terrible premise for an episode, what can really be done with it?
Rating: – (Disappointing)