Category: Finished Series: Horror

Kurozuka – 08

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: Kuro suddenly finds himself approached by a strange old man.
Highlights: Now this is psychological horror!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Best episode of the show so far since the first episode. It’s taken a while for this series to arrive at its real meat, but now it’s finally about time to work towards the series’ finale and this episode really showed the building up come together.

What especially made this episode work well were the bad guys. They were no longer strange caped dudes who kill lots of people, but instead had real personalities. I felt like they were people, rather than a bunch of literal killing machines, and it’s good to see this series spend some effort in its weakest area: the characterization.

I especially like that lizard man, who uses illusions to get rid of his enemies. This episode starts out at a point that doesn’t make any sense at all, where Kuro suddenly finds himself in the middle of a huge city, while in fact it turns out to be one huge illusion by this guy. It really increases the subtle paranoid level of this series: as long as the lizardman is around, you won’t know what’s real or not.

Ooh, and Kuromitsu showed herself, but she immediately leaves again after she saves Kuro. Her own agenda still remains a huge mystery at this point, but I think Kuro is somehow very much needed in it, so she wanted to make sure that he’d survive. How she knew where he was… the only explanation for that is that she’s been monitoring him from the beginning with the strange time stopping power of hers. It also turns out that she knows Sanniwa, suggesting that either Sanniwa was very old, or she and Kuro split ways more than just that time.

It’s also interesting that the story of the anime seems to diverge from the manga. I have no idea by how much this has happened since I’ve not read the manga, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem as long as the creators know what they’re doing. This will of course only become clear in the final episodes, when everything in this series is supposed to come together. What the creators must make sure of is that they need to shed light on every mystery in that episode, and at the same time pull off a satisfying climax. Bringing back the godly animation of the first episode helps too.

Casshern Sins – 08

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Casshern meets a female singer.
Highlights: Beautiful climax.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Oh, this was such an sweet episode. It again classifies as “filler”, but I don’t care! Hah! Casshern this time meets a singer, whose songs have an interesting effect on robots: they annoy the hell out of the berserked ones (by lack of a better term for it), but they the ones who aren’t interested in fighting forget about their despair about the destruction. I believe that the berserked ones actually felt the same power of her songs, although they refuse to accept it, which is why they want to destroy her. The irony in this episode was of course that the symbol of hope and destruction end up travelling together for a short while.

And I must say that those songs were really well done: not just in terms of audio, but the visuals also matched the songs perfectly. The engrish was surprisingly well done, and especially the song at the climax of the episode was just wonderful. This episode also showed that Casshern is most definitely made out of metal, so there has to be something inside him that makes him able to shed tears and heal his “wounds”.

My guess is that this show is going to go for the “Bee-Train”-pattern, meaning a first half of mostly unrelated stories and a few hints at an overall story, with a second half where the story takes over the main focus. I must say that I’m a big fan of this approach, because it really allows the viewer to get accustomed to the different characters and the setting before the big stuff starts to happen. And of course, the fact that the creators have made every random episode an excellent showcase in terms of writing, visuals and audio only contributes to that.

Kurozuka – 07

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: Kuro is brought to a cave where Kuromitsu is kept.
Highlights: Nice little bit of depth for Kuromitsu.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
If I had to pick one show out of the series that I’m blogging this season, where the decision to cover it on a weekly basis may not have been such a good idea, then it’d be this one. I’m happy that out of the shows I’m watching this season, none of them is mediocre or disappoints. The previous Spring- and Summer season really showed me that I’m not someone who enjoys blogging a bad or a dull show, and I think that if I didn’t decide on blogging stuff as Macross Frontier, Soul Eater, Allison to Lillia and Nijuu Mensou no Musume (God, I really picked the wrong series to blog back at the past spring-season), I’d think back to them with a lot less annoyance.

But anyway, I’m getting off-topic a bit with that. The thing with Kurozuka is that it exactly knows what it is and does: action, horror and eye-candy, and it does do that so well. The story isn’t anything special, but it knows exactly that it’s only second fodder in this series: it’s there to support the action, to prevent it from getting boring, to add a bit of intrigue and to provide enough settings where the animators can show off their talents. It’s nice and all, and I really like the end result, but really… there’s not much you can write about it on a weekly basis. ^^;

So yeah, this episode again was exactly what this series was about, and I like the little twist that it added, where Kuromitsu once cut off Kuro’s head. There’s this whole mystery around that woman that really keeps the story of this series flowing smoothly. Sanniwa (at least, that’s what I assume her name is) really is screwed by now, with nearly all of her subordinates killed off (at least, with so many dead bodies, I don’t think there are much more people left apart from Kuro&co). I liked that part that showed her, because it really adds to the characterization of this series, something that it had ignored a bit so far. ^^;

Casshern Sins – 07

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Casshern meets a woman who wants to create a bell for her church.
Highlights: Interesting twist on religious themes.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
The thing I like best about this series is not the main storyline, of how Casshern has supposedly killed the unkillable Luna, but rather the random stories that shape the world around it. At this point, I really don’t care how Casshern killed that Luna, all I want to see is those excellent stories, where Casshern walks around and meets random people, who each have found their own way of living after the apocalypse he caused. The fact that it happened is at this point just necessary backstory.

This episode is about a robot-woman, who wants to be create a bell in order to proof that she can bring something new to the world. I personally loved the architecture of the factory that she planned to put it on, and the one who came up with it deserves a lot of credit. She actually tries to turn Casshern into that bell, but that one obviously fails.

In any case, I really love what the creators tried to tell with this episode, how the girl tried to create faith by sounding the bell to lonesome travellers in the area, and how the robots alongside her just want to play games and not care about anything.

And well, I guess that Ringo and Ouji are this series’ Ricardo and Lilio (from El Cazador). There’s no reason for them to go the same path as the lead characters, but they just do. Just like El Cazador: it was annoying at first, but after a while it just became part of the series’ premise, and I got bothered by it less and less, and the same thing applies to Casshern Sins. In fact, I found it a nice touch to see them meet up with the woman after Casshern left her, so that we could exactly see how she developed.

Kurozuka – 06

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: Kuro and the others attempt to vend off the attack from the bad guys.
Highlights: Very nice mid-boss fight.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Whoa, talk about the huge contrast with the relatively quiet previous episode. This episode just had one purpose: action, action and more action, and it did a really good job at that. So yeah, there isn’t much to say about this episode so this post is probably going to be rather short. I’m just a bit disappointed at the animation. Don’t get me wrong: it was of a very high quality in this episode, but I really hope that at least one episode in this series will return to the huge animation-quality of the first episode. Come on, Madhouse: you’ve made us hungry with that first episode, now provide something that at least comes close to it in terms of animation.

In any case, I must say that Kurozuka has become a pretty similar series to Ultraviolet: both are action-series with a plot that doesn’t try to be anything special, yet is fun to watch, both rely heavily on their style in their storytelling, both have similar character-designs in Kuromitsu and 044, and both make a lot of use of CG-overlays. I think the biggest difference between the two is that Kurozuka has a large animation-budget, while Ultraviolet had Osamu Dezaki.

Casshern Sins – 06

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Dio is also out to kill Casshern, but it turns out that he knows quite a bit about him.
Highlights: The strange sort of sympathy from Casshern.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This episode gives a proper introduction to what are probably going to be the main antagonists of this series. Dio claims that Cashern was actually made by someone, in order to destroy all life within the world. There seems to be a guy named Briking Boss, who once saved the world as well, and Dio hopes to follow that guy’s footsteps.

The interesting part of this episode was how everyone around Casshern seems to view him in a different way: Lyuze bears a grudge against him, and yet this episode showed how she doesn’t want other to kill him, Dio wants to be the one to save the world, so he wants to kill him, the weaker robots want to be saved, so they beg for his death, the big robots simply accepted that they’re going to die anyway, so why not die with a small percentage of living, Ringo, even though Casshern scared the heck out of her in episode one, starts feeling a variation of the Stockholm-syndrome for him, and Ringo’s caretaker seems to not care, or he knows that it’s impossible to defeat Casshern no matter how he tries. So many different ways to look at Casshern, and that’s what makes this series so interesting.

What’s also interesting is that even though Dio claims to know all about Casshern, he doesn’t seem to know that he’s impossible to kill. Ringo’s caretaker (god, I need to know the name of that guy) claims that Luna was the same as he was once: she too didn’t die, and yet Casshern killed her, so he probably inherited whatever powers she had.

Kurozuka – 05

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: Kuro gets brought to the place where Kuromitsu is.
Highlights: Calm mood for a Kurozuka-episode, but still powerful.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Ah, a build-up episode. The series takes a bit of time to catch a breath, and uses the time to give the viewer a few more glimpses of the major bad guys. The pacing in this episode was very slow, but like mentioned above, I really liked how it slowly progressed, while providing a bit more background on what happened between episode 2 and 3, and making the viewer anticipate when Kuromitsu might turn up again.

And of course, the visuals were better than ever in this episode. This also really was an episode in which the art director could go all out, and the number of beautiful and diverse sceneries he created is astounding. It’s interesting: while Porfy no Nagai Tabi still stands as the currently-airing series with the best outdoor background-art, Kurozuka definitely wins the fight in terms of indoor-background art. The use of CG really works, and it actually made a CG-car not look out of place somehow.

Anyway, about the plot, I think the first part of the episode showed the boss of the bad guys. I’m not exactly sure what he was doing, killing all these random people, and why he’s still doing that after centuries, but he seems to be after Kuromitsu, explaining the attack that started at the end of this episode. It looks like Kuro’s new allies allowed him to meet Kuromitsu again, and although I didn’t pick up the exact reason either, she seems to be vital for their survival as well. My guess is that it has something to do with how she turned Kuro into an immortal being.

For the next episode, I want to see the gorgeous animation from the first episode back. The animators have already shown that they don’t lack any sort of inspiration, but what really would make this series is the combination between the awesome art that this episode had, along with the detailed animation of the first episode. Now that would seriously rock.

Casshern Sins – 05

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Lyuze and Ringo return.
Highlights: How come Ringo and Casshern went to exactly the same place?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
This episode returns us to the main storyline, when first Lyuze finally decides to show up and kill Casshern (she’s been following him everywhere, it seems). Even though Casshern still doesn’t remember what he did, he knows that he committed a horrible sin. As it turns out, Lyuze’s sister was the first he killed, and infected with that robot-breaking-down disease.

At the moment, Casshern is some sort of combination between human, robot and immortal being; there are so many facets to this guy: he doesn’t need any food, yet he can shed tears, he’s incredibly powerful, he can heal any sort of wound, and yet he suffers from memory loss and he’s got an alter ego that appears once he’s angry. I suppose that this alter-ego here is the key to everything. My guess is that Luna did something before she was killed, which tried to suppress Casshern’s violent personality, though only succeeded in this partially.

I was a bit disappointed when Casshern suddenly was able to save Ringo from out of nowhere, though. Has it been clearly mentioned that the two had the same destination, which I missed somewhere? Otherwise, it’s a pretty jarring coincidence on an otherwise excellent series. I already really like this series, but it’s just too early for my suspense of disbelief to just ignore these sorts of things. The point the creators tried to make with it was clear, though: up till now, Casshern’s violent side only disappeared when said side calmed down, but this time Ringo was able to call the guy out of it.

It’s very strange; this series is really well-written: the single dialogues are really detailed, and bring out the best of the different characters, and then there are a few things in the set-up that just don’t sit right. This episode too portrayed the ugly robots as much more evil than the human-like robots. It feels as if this series has a crappy guy behind the series composition, and yet the most amazing scriptwriters and art directors. Especially considering the former, this does make sense when you look at the staff-list, since the guy behind the series composition also did those of Claymore, Yume Tsukai and Shakugan no Shana. The chief animation-director also did the same for Mushishi, which could explain the amazing visuals, but I still have no bloody clue where that amazing dialogue comes from. Could it really be, that after directing countless of Dragonball Z-movies, the director suddenly saw the big bright light at the end of the tunnel or something?

Kurozuka – 04

by psgels, posted in Kurozuka



Short Synopsis: Kurou remembers what happened to Kuromitsu, and the story takes an interesting turn.
Highlights: Matrix, anyone?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I remember that during the winter-season, I was very annoyed with Madhouse for some strange reason. If I recall correctly, then apart from Mokke and Ooedo Rocket, every of their recent series at that time had some sort of annoyance that brought it down: Dennou Coil and especially Saiunkoku Monogatari had their endless amounts of hiatuses, Shigurui and especially Claymore had their disappointing endings, Death Note was unbalanced, Kaiji dragged on and Devil May Cry, Maple Story, Nougami Neuro, Kaibutsu Ojou were just badly written.

And here I am right now, seeing them continue to churn out hit after hit, for three consecutive seasons. Is this really the same Madhouse we’re talking about? I’m not sure what happened, perhaps some high-ranked official found it a good idea to put more emphasis on quality and originality, perhaps it’s just chance, and they’ve chosen a string of excellent series to animate (in a way, it’s like Gonzo’s string of excellent series from 2006 till Summer 2007). In any case, whatever it is, I really appreciate it, and I hope that this string of excellent series will last as long as possible.

This episode of Kurozuka again adds a whole new dimension to the series. We learn that when the screen turns funky, it’s not simply because of the visual effects, but at that time Kurou can also slow down time significantly. We also learn that Kuromitsu has been kidnapped by the strange enemies, but the end of the episode reveals that it was Karuta’s allies that took her away, making this not just a story of good vs evil anymore. It does make me wonder why they were walking around in enemy-suits, though. And why the heck the enemy’s after them, and why they needed Kuromitsu in the first place.

One problem that I have with the series is that it’s aired a bit too soon after Ultraviolet. I just can’t help but think that Kuromitsu and 044 are alike: their character-designs are so similar, and Paku Romi uses nearly the exact same voice for them. She’s going to have to be fleshed out a bit more if she really wants to stand apart from her Ultraviolet-counterpart, especially since their roles seem to be completely different. Ultraviolet was a strong-minded killer on the run, while Kuromitsu feels more like a damsel in distress (please don’t let her end up captured for the rest of the series).

Cashern Sins – 04

by psgels, posted in Casshern Sins



Short Synopsis: Casshern meets a girl who loves fighting.
Highlights: Subtle emotions rock.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
You know, back when that first episode ended I remember noting how Casshern Sins was too one-sided and how Casshern was too angsty, but I’m right at the point where I’m going to take that one back. Casshern Sins has been getting better and better with every episode, and at this point it’s my favourite of the new Fall-series after Mouryou no Hako (but then again, this one does have a few episodes of advantage against series as Tytania and Michiko to Hatchin, so who knows?).

The stories of the people that Casshern has been running into have all been excellent so far. This one explores a girl who through the chaos has come to love fighting. nd if she’s going to be destroyed, she might as well be destroyed being happy, and doing the thing she loved. That’s the basic set-up, but the really memorable part is the subtle character-development, with which she and Casshern come to understand each other through the course of the episoe. The pacing is very slow, but the subtlety makes excellent use of it.

I think that having a slow pacing like this series has, can either make or break your series, depending on how well you know to use it. The danger is of course boring your viewer to death without anything happening soon. The world Masterpiece Theatre solved this problem by adding lots of realism to keep the viewer busy, and with Casshern, it’s very subtle dialogue. A lot was said in this episode, and even though I didn’t understand everything, it felt that every line of dialogue contributed to the end result. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you have of course series like Naruto and Soul Eater, who try to lengthen their airtime by adding pointless exposition that everyone already could have guessed and doesn’t develop anything.

There’s just one thing that I want to see more in this series: an in-depth look at one of the robots who didn’t decide to look like a human. The ogre in this episode was a good start, but I’d like to see an even more in-depth look. As beautiful as the human designs in this series are, I think it’d really benefit the stories if we also get to see a bit more of their side, and why they’re letting themselves get killed off so easily.

Also… what happened to the dog?