Category: Finished Series: Horror

Aoi Bungaku – 03

by psgels, posted in Aoi Bungaku



Oh my god, No Longer Human just keeps getting better and better. This isn’t just a great adaptation, but also an adaptation that makes optimal use of the fact that it’s adapted in a media that also uses music and graphics. From the perspective of someone who hasn’t read the novel, setting aside some of the scenes that were cut, I think that this really was the best possible adaptation that it could have hoped for.

It’s also amazing how much stuff the creators managed to squeeze just into one episode. It feels like the creators got two episodes’ worth of content in just twenty minutes. This series just hopped from one tense situation to the next, with an eerie silence in between. This episode really was a roller-coaster ride.

The plot of this episode was also far more subtle than I imagined. I originally thought that this episode would see the beginning of a mass murderer, but instead it’s about someone who’s struggling with his own sense of humanity: he still blames himself for having survived that double suicide back then, and because of that he never really allows himself to bond with his new wife and daughter that he found, who were really nice enough to take him in.

While he’s got a great daughter, and a girlfriend who supports him all the way (she even managed to find him a job as a manga author), he instead hangs around in bars, visits prostitutes and gets drunk. Especially after the rumours start floating around that he’s a killer he starts to get out to drink even more. On top of that, his old friend keeps returning to remind him of the past he’s trying to leave behind.

And then comes that saleswoman, who meets him as he lies in the snow after a particular rough night. Here I thought that the entire setting was trying to be as dark and gritty as possible, and then she comes. She refuses to believe the words of a hopelessly drunk guy, and instead fully trusts in his kind nature. That his story about having failed a double suicide was just a story he made up because of his talents as a storyteller as a manga author. While on one hand, she;s obviously wrong, but what counts is that trust she has in him, at a time and place you’d normally suspect people to just turn a blind eye and walk away…

Anyway, long story short: awesome series; watch it. Especially now that subs are actually coming out fairly steadily, against all my expectations.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Aoi Bungaku – 02

by psgels, posted in Aoi Bungaku



Yes, with this episode I’m sure of my Top 3 of the autumn season: 1) Aoi Bungaku, 2) Armed Librarians and 3) Darker than Black. Kuchuu Buranko is indeed awesome, but it’s only awesome for its style, not its substance. Aoi Bunagku is awesome for both its style AND substance. This episode really was the best I have seen during this season so far.

The previous episode was meant to be confusing, it seems. This seems to be a pretty big story in this series, and this episode really started to explore his youth. My assumption is that the childhood friend of his later grew up to be that cartoonist, with whom he remained friends. We still don’t know exactly what drove him to commit suicide in the first place, though. That’s probably going to be saved for the next episode. All we just know is that he was bullied a lot during his youth, and something has been bugging him, ever since he survived that suicide attempt.

With a title as “no longer human”, I thought that this was going to be a supernatural horror story. Instead, it seems to be a story about a man losing his humanity. The way in which he survived the suicide attempt seems to have just been the final straw. After that, he starts to have visions of some sort of drawing he made when he was a kid (that was that strange black figure that showed up in the previous episode, signifying that it’s been there, even before the suicide attempt).

This episode introduces a woman who I think works at the local newspaper, however the way she collects bread crusts for her only daughter (her husband seems to have died) seems to show that she’s not paid well. On top of that, what was she thinking, trying to commit suicide? In the next episode, we’ll probably see how she’s going to fit inside the story. That cliff-hanger didn’t promise anything good: the lead character has accepted his hallucinations for what they are, and stopped paying attention to them, and yet he walked towards this woman in the end.

I also love the use of background music in this episode. It’s really simple, but compared with the awesome visuals it really manages to create one of the best atmospheres this season.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Fairy Tail, Aoi Bungaku and Table Cat

by psgels, posted in Aoi Bungaku, Some Quick First Impressions

Fairy Tail

Short Synopsis: Our lead character destroys entire cities and ruin thousands of people’s lives with his powers. And is supposed to be the good guy…
Well, so here we have another one of those shounen fighting series. And to be honest, it feels like a rather half-assed attempt. You can really see that the creators are trying too hard for this one: at every single opportunity they get they try to be funny by an incredibly exaggerated facial expression. Some of those attempts are indeed funny, but in most of the cases they just lack comedic timing, feel lazy or just aren’t funny. The lead character also feels like any other 14-year-old shounen lead out there, without hardly anything that sets him apart. As for the fights, they mostly consist out of people throwing flashy beams and punches at each other until one party goes down. I’ve gotten bored of those ever since Bleach abused them. Right now, I’m a bit done with those shallow shounen series.
OP: Decent J-rock, but nothing special.
ED: Bad j-pop song.
Potential: 20%

Aoi Bungaku

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets the love of his life as he runs away from the police.
Ah, yes. It’s obvious that this is going to be the least popular series of the season. I suspect that this series mostly going to be ignored, if Mouryou no Hako’s reception last year is any indication. It’s going to surprise me if there are actually subbers going to be interested in this series. Nevertheless, this series has the best character-designs of the new season, it has the best atmosphere of the new season, it has the best graphical direction, the most complex and difficult to understand script, and very much my favourite first episode of the Autumn Season. I love the way how it slowly plays out, with the atmosphere only getting bigger and bigger as it goes on. It’s about adults, rather than a bunch of teenagers, and the fanservice for once feels mature, rather than stupid like most other series this season. I really like the concept of animating six short stories inside one series: it’s going to provide variety, and make sure that the series is never going to drag. If I had to describe this episode, it’d be Kurozuka minus all of the freakish action and plus some actually good characterization. It’s taken a while, but I’m really glad to see another interesting concept from Madhouse!
ED: Nice ballad.
Potential: 90%

Table Cat

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a bunch of talking cats and dogs.
Okay… this is the perfect example of “so annoying it becomes funny”. I think that anyone who watched this episode wanted to kill that freaking poodle. Her voice actress just would not shut up. In fact, this entire episode (three minutes, okay) was full of the most hyperactive dialogue since the Excel Saga, combined with some really weird and spastic animation techniques. However, I can’t deny that I laughed. 😛
OP: Very cheesy and pointless for an anime with only three-minute episodes.
ED: Again, just a cheesy song that takes fifteen seconds…
Potential: 20%

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 55

by psgels, posted in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei

Well, I guess that with this, Higurashi finally comes to an end, and I have to say that the creators couldn’t have chosen a better way to close it off than with Rei. It really made excellent use of the OVA format to surpass itself, in terms of comedy and silliness in regards to episodes 1 and 5, and in terms of solid scriptwriting for episodes 2, 3 and 4. I’m really going to miss this series. Anyway, I’m not going to write a review for this OVA, because I know from experience that I’m terrible at those kinds of reviews, especially if I don’t marathon them. What I do want to say though, is that everyone who finished the TV-series should really also give the OVA a chance. It’s one of the very few cases in which the OVA is as good as the series it’s based on. Anyway, this episode closes off Higurashi with another silly chapter, in which Rena swallows a “Magatama” which makes her fall in love with whoever holds an identical “Magatama” in a different colour, which shows Rena spooning up to Tomitake, Takano, Oshii and eventually Keiichi through a hilarious episode. I liked it better than the first episode of Higurashi Rei, because even though it was very silly, it also showed a new side of Rena: the side of her that wants to be close to others, and so is very easy to adapt her hobbies to others. This also leads to an awesome Mah-Jong match, and at that point you could really see that it was a wise decision to put the director of Shion no Ou on the director’s position, rather than Chiaki Kon. The Mah-jong match in this episode which probably only took up 5 minutes was more exciting and creative than anything I’ve seen in Saki for the past half five months. It really reminded me that there can be game-based series that don’t have to rely on god-mode powers and Deus ex Machina. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 54

by psgels, posted in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei


Pure awesomeness. I really have to say, that this OVA couldn’t have been done better. These past three episodes were right up there with the most memorable moments from the Higurashi series. I’d definitely rank this among the best OVAs I have ever seen, along with Rurouni Kenshin Tsuioku-hen and Hunter X Hunter’s OVA. All of them were just incredible: intelligent, inspired and focused.

Most of this episode was just lots of dialogue, but that’s exactly what I liked about it. Rika, who was tortured with the choice whether or not to kill her mother, and abandon the world in which nobody was plagued by sin. This exactly showed the irony of good endings: sure, you may have everything happening perfectly; you may have nobody suffering from the past, and deeply haunted by some of the wrong decisions they made, and that were made for them. But does that make them better persons?

It may all have just been a dream by Hanyuu, but who cares? Thinking back it made sense: how else would Hanyuu have known about the fate of everyone who wasn’t there? The way Rika let herself go and get caught up in the accident really showed her how she has unconsciously taken her own death and rebirth for granted, and how she began to forget how important her mother was.

If I had to mention a down-side, then it was the continuity error of Keiichi’s sin. In the original series, Keiichi’s sin was left out, and I had to read about it in the Higurashi TIPS, about how he ran around with the plastic gun. Those who haven’t read the TIPS will probably feel left out a bit, because that event was crucial to why this episode was so incredibly powerful. It’s still a shame that we never got to see that scene animated, by the way. It would have been damn intense.

In any case, Umineko no Naku Koro ni is about to begin now, and even though I’ve heard that it’s going to be completely different from Higurashi, I’m really looking forward to it, because 07th Expansion has shown himself to be an incredible writer. My only concern is going to be Chiaki Kon; I’m not sure whether she is the right person for this series. Especially considering how she’s also currently working on Hanasakeru Seishounen, and considering the mess that that turned into. On the other hand, Toshifumi Kawase is returning for the series composition. I absolutely love what this guy has been doing for the past few years (he was the one who directed the Higurashi Rei OVA), so perhaps he was the biggest reason why Higurashi was the only thing that didn’t disappoint out of Chiaki Kon’s work.

Rating: *** (Awesome)
Amazing conclusion to an already amazing OVA.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 53

by psgels, posted in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei



Apologies for the lateness, but I’ve been quite buy for the past week.

Still… wow. Just wow. I don’t think that I’ve ever watched an OVA that contributed as much to its original series as Higurashi Rei (the only one that comes close is the Rurouni Kenshin OVA). This is really why I like Studio Deen so much: at first sight they seem like your average overly cute production company, but SO many of their stories are just SO DEEP and meaningful. Now that the director has become the director of Shion no Ou, this series can really show its true potential now.

What a bunch of awesomeness this episode was. Rika once again demonstrates that she is a truly unique character and really, the way the events unfold in this episode is just amazing, even though this really was a very quiet episode. Again the themes of friendship are explored: it turns out that Rika was very much acting like a princess before she ended up in this world, and this caused the mysterious distance between her and her other classmates: she used to have so many friends, and when they disappeared she always felt alone.

And it makes SO MUCH damned sense. The original Rika was cursed from the point where her mother died, and there was no way that she would have grown up to be a normal girl if she knew about her identity, not to mention that Oyashiro-Rika would never start acting like a stuck up princess, but now that she had nothing to fear, nor wasn’t involved with the whole Oyashiro-sama, she’d indeed grow up to be a very normal girl, and since she was a member of one of the three great families, she probably was quite spoiled as well.

There are two episodes left, and in these two episodes Rika is going to have to kill her mother. When the episode started, she very nonchalantly said that she’d have to kill her own mother if she had to (and I really could see her commit a murder easily, considering all of the things she has been through, which is just shown by the downright brutal way she attacked Satoko), but later this episode, she finally after centuries learns of the feeling of having a caring mother. I believe that in the earlier arcs when Rika’s mother was still alive, she was too busy with the dam and started losing interest (judging by the way how Rika says that her mother never believed her stories).

I’m really not sure what happened to Toshifumi Kawase. He directed some really crappy series in the past, like Beyblade, Dragon Drive and Tenjou Tenge… but then at one point he suddently became incredibly good, churning out Shion no Ou, writing the series composition for Higurashi, the Law of Ueki, and now successfully directs this Higurashi Rei OVA. I don’t know what made him see the light, but I really hope that he can keep this up for the future. At the same time, I’m getting more and more worried about Chiaki Kon. When Higurashi aired, I used to think that he was a great director, but his following series have gotten progressively worse: Junjo Romantica went nowhere in the end, Nodame Cantabile Paris, while good, raped the original series, and Hanasakeru was a complete and utter cheese and emo-fest. Is he really going to be the right guy to direct Umineko no Naku Koro ni?

Rating: *** (Awesome)
A quiet episode, but the sheer depth of it still amazes me.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 52

by psgels, posted in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei



Short Synopsis: Rika dies again…
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Now THIS is more like it! This episode forms such an incredible contrast to that very silly first episode. This was exactly that paranoid atmosphere that that first series was so incredibly good at. Ah, the idea has so much potential, I’m really glad that it got the chance to be animated into an OVA.

So, what basically happens: Rika gets into an accident, and dies, reincarnating herself again into a different dimension. This dimension lacks Irie, Takano and Keiichi, leaving her as just about the only main actor left. There is no Oyashiro-Sama, no string of deaths or the plan to kill Rina, no Hanyuu, even. Instead, many characters once dead are now alive, Satoko hates Rika now because the two of them grew up much less together and the construction of the dam hasn’t been stopped. Oh, the potential!

I absolutely loved this episode, especially considering how that pool episode pretty much made me lose my faith in this OVA. Still, in the end it proved to be just another light-hearted intro before the real meat of the story begins. I really liked how we, along with Rika, were basically thrown into the complete dark of what was going on. I’m especially looking forward to Rika, meeting her mother again. I’m not sure whether she actually realized that her parents are still alive (she probably had enough on her mind to care about the parents she hardly even knew). Suddenly, I’m a whole lot more positive to seeing Shion no Ou’s director taking charge of this. 🙂

Casshern Sins Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Casshern Sins


One of the most unique series to start airing in the past Fall Season was Casshern Sins: a remake of a super robot series that aired in the seventies, but one that went into a completely different direction with just about everything. The result is a highly stylish series with lots and lots of things to like about it.

If there ever was an award for “Best Character-Designs”, then this series would be one of the top contenders. The art style in this series is really unique, and in fact it’s one of the most outstanding ones I’ve seen in the past few years. Just about everything in this series is a visual feast, ranging from the wonderfully drawn characters to the astonishingly beautiful background art. The animation quality itself isn’t anything special for most of the time, but it doesn’t need to be: this series is beautiful enough, even without a huge budget.

This series also stands out in its style of storytelling. The dialogue flows very naturally, and yet it’s deep, meaningful and very inspired without trying to sound pretentious. The pacing is deliberately kept slow in order to squeeze all of the potential out of the characters. It really was my favourite part of this series, because the dialogue flows in this series unlike any other series I’ve seen.

Casshern sins is a series about destruction and immortality, and a quite thought-provoking one as well. while mystery isn’t its main focus, it asks lots of interesting questions throughout its airtime that keep the viewer busy. As the lot unravels more and more, it really is the type of plot that requires the user to think in order to understand it all, because not everything is spoon-fed on a silver platter.

However, do note that this isn’t a series that only gets better and better. It’s divided into two halves: the first half is basically a travelling series, where the main character meets lots of different people. The quality is pretty inconsistent: some of the best and worst episodes of the series can be found here. In the second half, the main story kicks in, and the series becomes much more consistent: it pretty much continues at a steady pace, it never hits any lows, but also any heights are absent. This can become disappointing if you were hyped by some of the truly outstanding episodes in the first half. It’s the sign that the charcter-development never really came together in the end, although it definitely tried.

The only other flaw of this series is a rushed ending, though. The creators just didn’t take enough time for that final episodes, and the twists just come too fast to make the impact they could have had. But still we have ourselves an excellent series here. It’s fresh, original and imaginative despite based on a 1970s series. It doesn’t quite have the material to become an outstanding series, but it nevertheless has been a delightful watch for me for the past six months.

Storytelling: 9/10
Characters: 8/10
Production-Values: 10/10
Setting: 9/10

Casshern Sins – 24

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: The finale of Casshern Sins.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Yeah, like expected: the creators tried to stuff too much into this episode and therefore it lacked the impact it could have had, but let me tell you this: if the right time was reserved to make everything in this episode give enough time to naturally unfold, this ending would have rocked beyond belief, and it would have been a great candidate for the best ending of the year. There were so many nice ideas in this episode, so it’s a bloody shame that the creators couldn’t have gotten their hands on one extra episode.

the big problem here that Casshern Sins has always been at its best in slow pacings: letting the dialogue slowly and fluently carry what’s happening. In this episode Lyuze and Ouji die within five minutes. That’s way too little. I could fully imagine that the material in this episode would have been more than enough to make four episodes of awesomeness: one about Lyuze and Ouji’s death, one about Casshern vs. Braiking Boss, one about Casshern vs. Luna and one aftermath in which we see Ringo grow up. The creators would have been easily able to fill that time within the episode.

But still I loved this episode, even though it could have been so much better. The thing I loved most about this episode was the final scene, in which we see Ringo grow up alone along with Friender. We never get confirmed whether she really is Leda’s child, but things are pretty certain here. Normally robots don’t grow, but she did, and she’s a teen-aged girl at the end of the episode. The only reason she could have grown into that was because she’s like Casshern, Dio and Leda. I appreciate it though, that the creators didn’t hang a sign over her with “look at me, I’m Leda’s daughter!!!”.

But yeah, what ever happened to that coloured rock?

In any case, it’s definitely been interesting to blog this series. In the end, it’s never really been my favourite series, but it sure as hell came close. My top 3 of the shows that started airing in the past fall season at the moment is the following:
#3: Clannad
#1/2: Mouryou no Hako, Michiko e Hatchin
I’m still not sure about the exact order between number 1 and 2, but I don’t think that I can include Casshern in it. It just… missed that extra something that would make it truly outstanding, and that I did experience in Clannad, Michiko e Hatchin and Mouryou no Hako. Nevertheless, it’s been an excellent series, with some of the most beautiful visuals out there.

Casshern Sins – 23

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Casshern vs. Luna
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Before I start with the episode, I’m going to have to say some negative things about this series. It’s one of my favourites of the currently airing series, so I’m not happy with it either, but I do want to say a few things about it. If the series had the luck to air half a year earlier, I probably wouldn’t have noticed this, but the past weeks some of the other currently airing shows have reminded me of the difference between an excellent series and a truly outstanding series. Ever since it aired, this series has been on this list of favourites. That creates some expectations, and in the past weeks I realized that in the end the series didn’t live up to it.

In the second half of this series, the show has become much more consistent and predictable when compared to the first half. It merely founds its pace, and consistently went along with it. It never hit any lows, nor did it hit any heights, and that’s the problem I’m getting to. In the end, my favourite episode of this series remains episode seven. In comparison, some of the other shows airing this season have truly surpassed themselves in the past month. For me, Michiko e Hatchin, Shikabane Hime, Clannad After Story, Jigoku Shoujo, Birdy The Mighty Decode, Druaga no Tou and Ride Back have been consistently getting better and better for their own standards, while Casshern’s level of quality has pretty much stayed the same, with the result that quite a few series have already caught up with it. At the end of February, I was fairly certain that my Top 3 of series that started airing in the past Fall Season would contain Casshern Sins, but at this point I’m not so sure anymore. For any regular series, it’s a real achievement to be able to produce an episode that is as good as your average Casshern episode, but this series already showed that it was excellent in its first quarter. For me, it did sort-of fail in meeting the stellar expectations it set in its beginning. I remember Himitsu faced the same problem, but at least that series turned significantly better in its final quarter, and it’s a shame that Casshern couldn’t follow.

But yeah, that doesn’t mean that this series isn’t getting any worse. This episode was yet again really good for a semi-final episode. What I especially liked was how Luna doesn’t have any combat abilities at all. That really prevents the ending from turning into a boring overblown fight between the main character and villain until one of them goes down. I also liked how many story threads were solved in this episode: Luna and Casshern both quit trying to make the other understand and went their own ways, Dio finally considered Leda, which is something which Leda really appreciated and saved her from her own darkness.

And finally we learn the cause of the ruin: when Casshern impaled her, her blood flowed throughout all the oceans of the earth. This transformed Luna from a goddess of destruction into a goddess of life. And indeed it sort-of makes sense that her new blood can be used to heal the effects of her old blood. Casshern then became the first one to experience the effects of her new blood, but as a side-effect he lost his memory.

The next episode is going to be a very interesting one, as it seems to be more centred around Braiking Boss and Luna than Casshern. The potential for an original ending is very good, so let’s hope that it’s not going to screw up. I remember how someone noted that there could be a second season, but I wouldn’t count on it: this is Madhouse, after all. They only very rarely make sequels (the perfect way to prevent you from milking out your own franchises). However, there is no way that that ending is going to wrap every single open thread in the storyline:
– What the heck was the point of the coloured rock anyway?
– What was the point of making Dio, Leda AND Casshern robots who could potentially reproduce? It feels a bit and unimportant to just include it for a small piece of Leda’s background. Apart from that it’s never really been used.

what I want at least in the next episode is the background of Braiking Boss. It would be a darn shame if he’d just impale Luna to make her blood flow across the rivers of the earth again and disappear. In this episode it became clear that he isn’t a bad guy after all, but he had just been searching for Luna as well, and making the right preparations to save the world. The question is however: what caused this change of heart? Wasn’t he the one who ordered to kill Luna? Of course he may have realized the mistakes of his actions, but I’d really like to see that confirmed.