Category: Finished Series: Comedy

I guess that this was one of those episodes that had a bit of everyone. Heck, half of the huge cast got a bit of development. The blue monster from the sky, Genzo, Seikichi, Sora, Kagiya, Shunpei, Tenhou, Tenten, a few of the hunters, Akai, Anui, the townsfolk, O-Ise and Genzo’s mother all play some kind of important role in this episode. To start with O-Ise, in this episode she keeps bugging the townsfolk about a luxurious vacation she’s selling. Judging by the reaction of the townsfolk, they have experienced her vacations before, and left there with some baaaad memories. ^^; Oh, and she gets robbed afterwars, by the blue monster from the sky. And poor Genzo! He’s now also been degraded to mere pigeon in the OP. And only now I realize that he was responsible for most of the calculations that Seiichi needed. It also took me till this episode to realize that he’s got a mother! It’s so cute of her to worry about him, and yet she thinks he’s on some sort of journey. And boy, does the blue monster from the sky show a different side of her during this episode! The past few episodes portrayed her as an evil bitch, but she actually showed pity in this episode. The events of the previous episode really made her think, because I’m sure that she wants to return to the moon as well. It’s ironic that she of all people starts needing Genzo, since all of the townsfolk just took his existence for granted. I also finally realized why I can’t remember her name: she doesn’t have one! Akai meanwhile, tries to use Kagiya’s daughter to try and get Seikichi, but it fails. Basically, he arranges it so that she gets assigned with the task f repairing the space-ship, with which he hopes she’ll go to Seikichi for advice. He didn’t take her “I don’t want to lose from that guy”-attitude. ^^; In any case, with this she finally got an important role, instead of being a side-character who shows up once every five episodes. This episode also was a great one for the different couples on the show. Shunpei gets a bit closer to Anui, due to his frustrations with his brother. Seikichi and Sora keep doing random things in order to tweak the rocket (I’m actually not sure what the poles they made were for, but I guess we’ll see that in the next episode), and Tenhou gets a bit closer with her stalker. ^^; I’m also glad to see that after Bokura no, other shows are coming with their new EDs to. I still liked the first one better, though, but this one also is quite fun to watch.]]>

The focus of this episode? The six “knights” that work under Ginjiro. Right now, it’s their turn to get a bit of development, as they start to critically analyze the things that Ginjiro said to them. After all, he seems to be defending the white beast from the sky a bit too much, and he suddenly came with the idea that there’s another blue one. The right word to describe almost half of this episode: Chaos. The townsfolk, in my opinion, are the best group of pure supporting characters that came with the series of the spring-season. Why? Because they make things happen. Because of them, you feel that the people that live near Seikichi have real personalities, and aren’t just caricatures, just because they need to exist. They provide energy to this series, and for a change, they are actually useful in an indirect way. They make sure that the main characters develop well, and they also help with the muscle-work for Seikichi’s rockets. Even Seirei no Moribito spends less attention to these kinds of people, and that has to say something. I also must say, that Seikichi’s development of the rocket has been really enjoyable to see so far. Even though he only appears briefly in most of the episodes, this development does show that he’s the main character of this show. I love main characters like these, that don’t take up the majority of the screen-time. This episode also shows a major progression, as he manages to get his clock out of sight with a new revolutionary idea: use four engines instead of one. Anyway, this episode was loads of fun. It was hilarious to see Ginjiro trying to find excuses to protect Sora’s and Seikichis secrets. Oh, and Tenhou has a new fan. ^^; Like mentioned above, the result was chaos. Akai’s storyline also progressed a bit forward when the blue monster from the sky (what was her name again?) discovers Seikichi’s rocket. I didn’t quite understand what she was after, but if I had to guess, it’d be the special gunpowder that Sora got out of her spaceship a few episodes ago, before it blew up. Since Seikichi was the one to blow her chance of obtaining it (she stole his rocket, and he managed to blow it up before it fell in the wrong hands), it seems that the next few episodes will feature some antagonistic feelings between Akai and Seikichi, something which the first episode of the series indeed seemed to foreshadow. Overall, I’ve only found one strange thing of Ooedo Rocket: where the heck does Seikichi get so many supplies, gunpowder and clocks? You’d suspect that these things are quite hard to obtain in the Tenpou Era. Anyway, apart from that Ooedo Rocket turned out really good. It’s great to see that another group has started to sub the series. Keep an eye out for episodes three and five to get out, as they show how this series excels in both drama as comedy.]]>

I have reason to believe the creators were on crack for this episode. Seriously, though, it’d be the only explanation for such a weird yet utterly brilliant episode. This episode also convinced me. Most anime feature battles, but for great battles, something needs to be added. The two anime with the best battles that aired in the spring-season are: Seirei no Moribito Ooedo Rocket Seirei no Moribito belongs in this list because of the incredible amount of detail that’s been thrown into them. Ooedo Rocket got in because of the sheer creativity of some of the attacks. This was already showed a few episodes back, where the group of hunters unleashed their skills on the unfortunate alien, but the fight in this episode, between Ginjiro and Akai just made me cry from laughter due to its awesomeness, even though the scene was just too wrong. xD Anyway, the rest of the episode focused on another side-character: Junpei. It’s a bit different from your usual Ooedo Rocket-episode, though, as the amount of puns, references to modern times, parodies and symbols has been increased tenfold. I’m not going to list all of them, but there are parodies on dating-sims, RPGs, Maid Cafes, porn, manga, tv-bloopers and many more. Basically, it features Anui helping Junpei to find his “Najenaje”, or the reason for his worries. Through the course of the episode, they visit various characters who can’t help them. In the end, though, Junpei realizes that his “najenaje” is “nazenaze”, as he likes to ask questions. Near the end of the episode, we also see another romance starting. It starts when Junpei starts telling a story about when he was young, about how he used to play with a puppy who talked at one point. If you watch the episode, you just can’t deny that this dog was Anui, since this isn’t the first time this anime went and changed people from animals and vice versa. I’ve also got reason to believe that she was born as a dog, since her human form has so many similarities to that of a dog, instead of the opposite. Seriously, I’m rooting for Shinsen-subs to continue subbing this series. Ooedo rocket DESERVES to be watched, and it’s definitely the funniest series that arrived in the spring-season. It’s such a huge shame that comedies like Hayate the Combat Butler, Seto no Hanayome and Nagasarete Airantou get so much attention while this gem passes by completely unnoticed!]]>

The scenes involving Genzo were truly epic! During the previous episode, I never even wondered why he suddenly became a bird, but now everything becomes clear. Remember the machines that turn people to cats? Well, there are other machines as well. xD I laughed so hard when I finally realized this. Genzo probably is one of the most pitiful characters in the current spring-season. A neglected character in a neglected anime, how much worse can it get? ^^; Anyway, it seems that Ooedo Rocket isn’t going to be 13 episodes long after all, and we’re in for at least 24 of them. This episode shows this as well when it again continues to develop its characters. This time, the focus lies on Seikichi’s relationship with Sora, and Ginjiro who realizes that he wants to protect Sora. Oh, and Tetsuju returns! It first looks like we’re dealing with another love-triangle, but I don’t think that Ginjiro is after Sora in that way. He just wants to protect her because he knows her secret. Seikichi, however, thinks that Ginjiro is acting way too suspicious, and during this episode Sora shows him that she does have interest in him when she saves him after Kagiya blows up his boat (long story, let’s just say that Tetsuju had something to do with it ^^;). The rocket-development also progresses in this episode when Seikichi manages to find a new ingredient for his fuel: poo, as disgusting as it sounds. It works quite well, actually. In this episode, we get to see him do a test-run and the firepower greatly increased. Unfortunately though, Tetsuju was still able to catch up to them. Seikichi indeed needs these extra thirteen episodes if he wants to have a chance to send Sora to the moon. Overall, I loved the episodes. Episodes 6-8 had a few lesser moments, so I began to fear, but it seems that these fears were unnecessary.]]>

Seriously, the episodes for Ooedo Rocket keep getting weirder and weirder. Unfortunately, this also means harder to understand. The current episode focuses on Tenhou and Tenten (finally I know their names), when they search in Hezo’s house (that was his name, wasn’t it?) after Seikichi and Sora have been missing. It seems that at one time, they were street-performers, and quite good ones. Then, however, the law started to forbid them to carry out their practices. When they wondered what to do next, they got picked up by an official named Toyama Kinshiro (not to be confused with Ginjiro). They then started to work for him, to defeat criminals. Then they met Seikichi, and got inspired by his innocence, so they decided to watch over him. That’s why we’ve been seeing the two of them talking whenever Seikichi was in trouble. That was about the part that made the most sense. For a majority of the episode, we follow them spying on Hezo because of what he did in the previous episode, commanding cats and all to take back the flyers revealing the location where Seikichi always carries out his fireworks-tests. Furthermore, Seikichi and Sora have been missing, and they suspect the guy behind this as well. So, what’s his secret? Well, he’s got a machine that changes people into cats. The cats from the previous episode probably all were his servants who went into these machines. Seikichi and Sora went to his house for some Ohagi, got lost and accidentally ended up in these machines as well (by the way, seeing Tenhou, Tenten, Seikichi and Sora in cat-form were SO cute. Tenten with nekomimi also was just awesome ^^;). This episode also introduced yet another new character: Mizuno. So far, he’s unimportant, though he could play a considerable role in the next episodes. He seems to be Kinshiro and Torii’s superior. We see the three talk with each other for a bit, and that part was just impossible to understand, since they toss all kinds of big words at each other (most of which I couldn’t even find in the dictionary), not to mention that Mizuno explores new depths of the word “Giddy”. In any case, judging by the reaction of Kinshiro and Torii afterwards, though, he probably meant to tell them not to go after Hezo. Torii sends Ginjiro to go after Akai, who’s searching the guy’s house as well, while Kinshiro tries to find Tenten and Tenhou, but gets into trouble with the locals. This does result, however, in Tenhou and Tenten finding out about what Ginjiro has been up to and vice versa when the two parties notice each other. One thing that still puzzles me was what happened when the townsfolk found out about Kinshiro’s identity. It was probably filled with bad puns and references. Still, now that I wrote things down a bit, the episode makes much more sense. It really was a fun one, despite its strangeness. Now all that’s left to hope is that Shinsen will continue to sub this series for more than just one episode. Anyway, to close off this post, I got an interesting comment on the last entry I wrote for this series, by Bomber D Rufi, who claims that this series might actually take up 26 episodes. While the series looks like it’ll just finish in two or three episodes, things could get very interesting if this rumour turned out to be true. After all, the OP-single gets released on July 4th, which is after the anime finished.]]>

I have no idea what happened during the majority of the episode, but I liked it! Lots of things happened, and the climax was one of the most enjoyable climaxes in this series yet, but I definitely missed a few details. Below follows an attempt to understand it. The townsfolk with funny faces prove themselves useful when the episode starts with a variation on a catapult that they managed to build, launching a barrel high in the air. Another step in the direction to get Sora to the moon (was I the only one who found it funny that Sora excused herself afterwards by looking on her watch? ^^;). Remember the woman from the third episode? Well, she gets another major role in this one. It seems that she actually runs an important store, and has quite an amount of money, judged by the way she is transported. She first runs into Ginjiro, then into Seikishi. Apparently, they know each other, as she forces the latter in her carriage and offers him some dumplings. Next, Sora and Ginjiro talk about what happened last episode. If I’m not mistaken, Sora explains why she came to earth: exterminate the blue monsters and then return to the moon. Then, Seikichi and the woman (what was her name again?) notice the two of them talking, and take the wrong conclusions. Seikichi then spends a lot of the episode looking stupid in front of Sora, whom he thinks has an affair with Ginjiro. The really incomprehensible part started when the strange notes appeared. Apparently, the woman spread them as part of a plan to get revenge on Ginjiro. Akai seems to be after them as well, and to make things even stranger, we later see every cat in the neighbourhood collect these pieces, bring them to the rich and popular old man, after which he burns them… what? Anyway, the climax was lots of fun. The bickering between the woman and Ginjiro also was quite touching. The wooden barrel proved to be too much for the gunpowder to handle, so Sora went and got herself a rather large metal bell. When combined with the wooden structure, mentioned above, and it does reach a considerable height without breaking. But then a problem arises: the gunpowder inside the bell makes so much noise when it’s in the air that everyone in Edo can hear it. All kinds of methods are tried to get it down as fast as possible, as its parachute is going way too slow. Shinzo fires a missile, it hits the bell and bounces off again, people scream, Sora cheers and the episode ends. I have no idea what went on, but it was definitely fun to watch. 😛 Just as Wellber no Monogatari, Ooedo Rocket is going to build towards its ending in the next month. I really wonder if they’ll be able to get Sora to the moon in the end. Let’s see whether the final parts of these two series manage to become even better than their first parts. June is promising to become especially interesting for these two series, as they don’t have the luxury of thirteen more episodes, and they have to prove what they build up to now.]]>

Heh, for the first time, I actually managed to pick up a word pun in anime while watching raw, At the beginning of the episode. It’s indeed the best if you’re able to pick them up yourself, instead of having fansubbers do this for you. ^^; Anyway, the current episode was more of a serious one, and unlike the disappointing episode 7, this one was well worth the watch! Akai turns into an even more pitiful character than he already was. He really is a loswer with just a high position, and I still like him, despite the things he’s done. I mean, he’s killed a bunch of females so that he can please the human form of the blue monster, he indeed nearly drools over her when she gives him attention, but at the same time, she just loathes him, unlike any other tsundere I’ve seen so far. She just knows that he’ll collect women’s blood for him, and that’s all. Heck, Akai even realizes this, and he still continues the killing. Ginjiro and Sora also get quite a bit of development this time, especially Sora. She must probably be struggling with her feelings and all, since she’s asking such a request from Seikichi, because of this, she tries to help in some interesting ways, to provide the parts of her spaceship. The best part, though, was Ginjiro finding out that Sora is the white monster. Sora, meanwhile, manages to kill off the second blue monster, who’s been residing in the first one since a few episodes. Overall, the episode was quite good. Not the best yet, but definitely one of the better episodes of the series. It’s quite obvious now that the series will consist out of twelve or thirteen episodes, and I’m interested to see how this anime plans to end its story. Especially Akai should prove to get even more interesting in the future episodes. PS. These black knights, or however they may be called, have got some awesome fighting-moves. ^^;]]>

Okay… whoa at the cliff-hanger of this episode. I never imagined Akai to be the person behind the serial murders, but it makes perfect sense now. The other beast from the sky was the one who killed the first ones, though when she was hurt and unable to, she made Akai take over her role. This is pretty easy to do, especially with a person like Akai. The real meat of the episode was a bit disappointing though. I especially expected something better, seeing as it’s focused on Shinza, who was really funny in the first episode. Even though there was one hilarious scene in the episode, where everyone considers him dead, while he’s actually right in front of them and Ginjiro freaks out. In the rest of the episode, though, he went berserk in some kind of predecessor of modern mechas, which wasn’t very funny or deep, unfortunately. There’s a bit of development on Sora’s and Seikichi’s side as well, when Seikichi finally understands that Sora really is from the sky after she saves Shinza from the berserking mecha. This wasn’t anything special, though. I do hope that the next couple of episodes introduce some fresh meat in this series, because I do feel that the formula is getting old, unfortunately.]]>

Holy god, this anime just keeps introducing more and more characters, and they still manage to make each of them unique. I really wonder whether we get to see Tetsuju again. At the beginning we see him flying off again, but this time he actually doesn’t come down. I do hope we do, actually, he was hilarious in the time he was featured. The current episode was focused on the daughter of the famous fireworks craftsman Kagiya. I also just realized: Sekichi’s family name is Tamaya. Is he actually THE Tamaya, or one of his relatives? Come to think of it, we’ve never seen his father, have we? I suspect that that’s the real one. After he got exiled, Seikichi and his brother remained in Edo, which does explain why they live without any parents now. Anyway, it seems that Kagiya’s daughter has some kind of crush on Seikichi, which in a way is obvious, since she too has a passion for fireworks. She’s just a bit less “subtle” about it, and because of this she just had to get jealous of Sora, who then confirms to her that she thinks that Seikichi is just a good friend of her. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be so willing to send her to the moon. ^^; Also, this episode was the perfect example of what happens when too many anime centre around the same time-period: shows start to use the same events and people. We already knew this through Hijikata Toshizo, who probably holds the record of most appearances in different anime ever, but those who saw Ayakashi Ayashi probably noticed a lot of similarities with Ooedo Rocket as well. First of all, this episode briefly mentions the Ayagami, while Ayakashi Ayashi had an episode to mention the firework craftsmen of Tamaya and Kagiya. Both anime featured the serial murderers of women, in which one of them was killed on the harbour, and not to mention Torii, who makes an appearance in both anime as well. It’s a good thing that both anime are excellent, otherwise it would have gotten repetitive fast. ^^; My favourite character of this episode was Akai, though, even though this may have been a bit too much on the wrong side when he thinks of naughty thinks in front of a corpse, and then actually wets himself when the blue monster from heaven appears. Later, though, we see this monster actually reveal that she too, has a human form. That’s promising to become interesting for the future episodes. Also, I just loved the military helicopters which suddenly appeared. Especially because of the reason they appeared there in the first place, when we see the characters actually look at some drawn cells, used in anime. Finally, it took me a while to notice that the tall guy’s hair changes, depending on his mood.]]>

Seriously. That was AWESOME! The first half probably has to contain the funniest scenes I’ve seen for a while. At times, I nearly fell off my chair from laughter, this episode definitely proved that it was a good idea to keep watching and blogging this, as this episode was just HILARIOUS. Someone really needs to sub this, as it definitely is one of the best series to come this season. 🙂 There were only two things that needed to be added: a new character who looks more ridiculous than all the other characters combined and acts like an oversexed macho, and sake. Seriously, Sora actually gets drunk at one point in the episode, with hilarious results. It all starts when Sekichi and Sora are in the forest, trying to find a place where they can just quietly experiment with fireworks, without destroying nearby objects. Sekichi, though, has been really demotivated after the previous episode. After all, when fireworks explode in the middle of the air, they don’t make the safest forms of travelling. Sora then mentions Kaguya-hime. I looked things up a bit in Wikipedia, and it seems that Kaguya-hime is a fictional character in a 10th century Japanese folk tale. This particular folk-tale is considered the oldest Japanese narrative. The tale goes as follows: Kaguya-hime is a mysterious girl, discovered inside the stalk of a great bamboo plant by a bamboo-cutter named Taketori-no Okina when she was a tiny baby, and she’s said to have come from the capital of the moon. Kaguya-hime then grows up in the care of Taketori-no Okina, and she grew into a beautiful girl. Then, five princes went to her to ask for her hand in marriage. Kaguya-hime didn’t want to marry, though, so she thought up impossible tasks for these men, that they had to accomplish in order to be able to marry her. This works, but after a while, even the emperor went to her, and fell in love with her. Kaguya-hime rejected as well, but the two of them did keep in contact. At one time, though, Kaguya-hime had to return to the moon. When that day came, a bright light took her away from the earth, leaving her foster-parents and the emperor in tears. Ooedo Rocket made a few changes to this story, when Sora claims herself to be Kaguya-hime. Apparently, she never went to the moon and she also wasn’t found in a bamboo-plant, but she just came with a space-ship. Obviously, Sekichi doesn’t believe a word of this. ^^; Then the craziness begins when the strange oversexed macho appears and has the strangest conversation with Sora ever. He then introduces himself as “Hinanawo Tetsuju” (not sure about the first part). What follows is the guy setting up a bar with some strange raccoons that appeared, with Sora and him both enjoying some alcohol. Sora is so funny when she’s drunk. XD Lots of hilarious scenes later, and it’s time for a bit of plot development when it seems that Tetsuju also makes fireworks. It seems that he did find a way to keep fireworks from exploding, and demonstrates this by sending himself off into the air. I think it’s now up to Sekishi to go into the height, it seems as Tetsuju only managed to disappear out of sight, only to come down in a sort-of frozen state. I wonder how he found out about this, though. I couldn’t really pick that up. And surprise, surprise, finally a romance between two characters is actually developed properly! A drunk Sora first has to puke and leave the room (hilarious scene, by the way), and Tetsuju uses this moment to convince Sekichi that he won’t be able to send Sora off to the moon. Sekichi never really made any progress, while Tetsuju’s rockets are already able to achieve quite a height. Because of this and Sora’s absence, Sekichi tells his feelings a bit too honest, and while Sora comes in again and hears everything about his confession. He was so cute when he got embarrassed like that. 🙂 Really, I do hope that all the other episodes in Ooedo Rocket are going to be like this one. It was hilarious, though a bit too much on the wrong side at times. ^^;]]>