Category: Another

Another – 03

by psgels, posted in Another

Yeah. You can really see that the director of Blood-C is working on this thing.

The animation may not be as good here, and it also doesn’t necessarily have the same style of characterization, but this episode really showed: the horror is uncompromising. Censorship is for wimps and when someone dies, it is in full graphic detail.

The execution in this episode was also quite a bit better here. The thing with this show is that the animation isn’t really impressive. But if the animators need to animate something well, they do it. The dolls completely disappeared after the first half of this episode. And meanwhile, the doll shots in the shop were actually put in context. The rest of the episode made use of a few interesting cuts or camera angles that worked much better. As for the final climax… I’m a bit iffy on the use of music: that could have been better used, but it was such an over the top death that I can’t really think of a track that would have fitted such a scene better.

The classmates in this episode also surprised me by not being annoying. It’s very tempting to just throw in the usual annoying classmates to make the lead character look normal, however this show doesn’t really need to. Things are strange enough for the main character to stand out, so they can actually make for some rather down to earth characters. In particular the dialogue between them was the best so far.

And yeah, the atmosphere in this show works quite well. I really hope that the creators can keep this up for the rest of the series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Another – 02

by psgels, posted in Another

As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Brave10 is too much stupid action without a good storyline. I mean, I understand that it takes on its own version on history, but even then I at least expect to be convinced that these are the guys who helped to create an empire. Not random bishies who try to look cool. Oh, and I take it back what I said about the female lead. She really is annoying.

Another perhaps isn’t the best horror series out there. Its big flaw is that it tries too hard at times. Get rid of those random doll shots. Get rid of those scenes that just scream”find this scary!”. Trust your atmosphere; trust your pacing, and let things evolve naturally. That alone is good enough for this show, and it’ll lead to a much more natural pacing.

A good example for this is the beginning of this episode, in which that classmates drew The Scream of all things. The symbolism is a little too obvious here. The doll shots are also like the cats in Kimi to Boku: completely pointless, and a waste of a good budget that could have been used to animate the characters more fluidly, which is a bit of a problem with this show. The doll shop in this episode was plenty to create a creepy atmosphere.

Don’t get me wrong though, I like this show a lot. However, I’m a big horror fan, and I’ve been really spoiled with a ton of great horror series, so my standards for it are quite high, especially for the type of atmospheric horror that this series is trying to go for I really love it if a show can really build up an increasingly tight atmosphere using its own mystery and intrigue, combined with either a little gore, or some psychological games. Another probably won’t bring anything new to the table, but so far it has been quite solid. The atmosphere worked, and in particular the use of music is done well.

I unfortunately also have to give this show the “worst animated television series of PA works”-award, though. They usually are very careful with their cleanup and inbetween animation, but here they seem to go for the money shots, and don’t bother to fix awkward movement. Granted though: these dolls really look great.

Also, there was this one scene in this episode, in which the lead character suddenly broke off a conversation with his classmates, closing a door right in front of their faces, acting like they weren’t even there (also, main character can walk through chairs!?). I really wonder how those classmates felt after realizing that he wasn’t coming back out.
Rating: * (Good)

Some Quick First Impressions: Another, Ano Natsu de Matteru and Aquarion Evol

by psgels, posted in Another, Aquarion Evol, Some Quick First Impressions

Another

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a transfer student.
To the people who claimed that the season sucks after only half of the shows had aired: perhaps a bit of patience would have been in order, because this season also has a very good horror series. Another again doesn’t have the best premise. Heck, it yet again takes place at a high school. If there’s one flaw of this season, it’s that everything is centered around bloody schools. In any case though, this show understands horror. This episode built up this wonderful horror atmosphere with a good script, neat camera work and some subtle mystery that combined all really drew me in. This was the kind of horror series that combined the ordinary life with a lot of creepy hints. This episode was very uneventful, but it slowly revealed more about what was going on, which will very likely get continued into the next episodes. The ordinary parts about this episode in any case were a neat way to flesh out the cast, and in particular the script gave them some character that made them interesting to watch. They all had something interesting to say here.
OP: Ah, the ALI Project. That’s long ago. Their style still doesn’t really match here though…
ED: Dull ballad with dull images.
Potential: 85%

Ano Natsu de Matteru

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets killed and then revived again.
Here is the thing with this season: its premises are crap. In fact, it’s been years since we had a season with less interesting original series. And yet, it’s got so many big names, there are so many talented people working on all kinds of different series this season. The best example of this is Ano Natsu de Matteru. Here we have a show which follows all of the romance cliches… only it actually is well executed. What does this mean? The characters act and feel real. The animation and acting is realistic and believable, rather than the overacting moe stereotypes that you usually see in those types of series. On top of that, this doesn’t feel disjointed, but introduced a few different subplots that should keep the show interesting, rather than having it hang apart from random incidents. This show has a degree of believability that a ton of other shows of the genre lack. And yet the lead character is wimpy, there were quite a few romance cliches, there is the ditzy blond girl. And yet it feels strangely interesting when it’s delivered so much better than usual.
OP: Finally some J-pop I like this season. The really good use of instruments did it.
ED: Simple yet interesting graphics. The j-pop was a bit dull, though.
Potential: 75%

Aquarion Evol

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can pilot a mecha.
There is one way in which this season stands out: the amount of teenaged sci-fi mecha epics in it. Rinne no Lagrange, Mouretsu Pirates and Aquarion Evol are all ambitious action/adventures, while they still all pursue a different direction with a different kind of execution. Rinne no Lagrange focuses a lot on its direction and script, Mouretsu Pirates placed emphasis on its characters, and Aquarion meanwhile has gorgeous action and a ton of eye candy. I mean, this is the kind of big budgeted flick you’d expect in the big seasons, not the small ones. Besides that, Aquarion has the least interesting characters of the three, yet they’re still an interesting bunch. Their biggest problem is that most of them blend into each other due to the cast being huge. A long show can fix that nicely (and it’s Mari Okada behind the script. She has shown often enough that she’s able to do this). The plot had these interesting elements of males versus females. I haven’t seen the first season, but heck, I’m curious where this will go.
ED: A well produced song that fits the epic nature of this series really well.
Potential: 80%