Category: Finished Series: Romance

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 11

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: Genji and Murasaki finally hook up together.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
And so another series has finished. While a straightforward ending (it basically involves Genji being down because of the sin he committed, him being attacked by a bunch of bandits and finally his realization that Murasaki is ‘more’ than a younger sister to him), it was a very effective one, and just like any other episode of this series an emotional ride.

It’s a shame that this one never got subbed, but then again that was to be expected considering how little attention Osamu Dezaki’s previous work (Ultraviolet) received. It’s a real shame, because this guy really knows how to make optimal use of visuals and sound to tell a story. And I really have to say that each episode of this series was effective, and set out exactly what it wanted to do.

In any case, I’m looking forward to the next instalment of Noitamina. I have absolutely no idea what it’s going to be, since I’ve been avoiding all spring previews in order to not get too hyped about it, but it’s probably going to be something completely different again. In any case, thanks for all the tips and corrections from those who read the original novel.

White Album – 12

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: Rina reveals Yuki’s letter to Touya.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Ah, there you have it. The whole reason why Yuki didn’t attempt to contact Touya was because she wanted to show him how much she has changed at her Christmas concert, and forbade herself to talk to him in the meantime. Way to go, girl.

Still, that doesn’t quite explain this series’ very mysterious lack of postmen. Seriously, I may be mistaken in this but it feels like every single letter has to be delivered in person. Because Yuki’s schedule is so hectic, the two of them could easily have decided to exchange letters with each other. Why didn’t they? The whole reason Yuki decided to stop talking to Touya was because she couldn’t contact him when he was on his escapades with Misaki, so why couldn’t she have sent him a bunch of letters instead? It’s very annoying to see that my suspense of disbelief with this series is constantly shaking, especially since there are so many good ideas stuffed into this series. it’d be a shame for them to go to waste like that.

But yeah, the big event of this episode seems to be that we finally know who Touya is going to end up with: Yayoi. In a way, it is a very original approach: you’d never see this coming at the beginning of the series, but it still just feels ludicrous and hard to believe how much the relationship between the two has spiralled out of control that way. I can understand Touya being seduced by her and all, but I still am in no way convinced about Yayoi’s actions. Even the reason she originally gave in order to hook up with the guy just feels weak: to prevent Touya from distracting Yuki. Was that really the best she could think of?

But the most pathetic scene in this episode was seeing Misaki confronted by the head of the drama club. For some reasons his minions are gone, he has gone insane, he stabs her with a knife but she is saved because she conveniently had one of Touya’s books at the place where she was stabbed. I mean, come on, that really was the best they could think of? Has there been any situation in which a conveniently placed body armour really worked at all?

I really don’t know what to think of that second season. The next episode really has a big climax in store, and it actually looks like things could get al resolved in the next episode, even if there wasn’t a second season, which leaves lots of potential for the second season to evolve into a completely different direction. But if it’s just going to have the same soap opera plot as the first season, then I really don’t know whether I’m going to feel like blogging 13 more episodes. I really tried to love this series. There is lots of great stuff in it, but in the end it’s just too much like a soap opera for me to take it seriously….

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 10

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: Genji gets involved in a pretty nasty scandal.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Another difficult to understand chapter, so it took me a while to understand what’s going on, but nevertheless it was another excellent one. Genji continues his string of seductions, but this time he gets caught by his latest victim: Roku no Kimi, who seems to be one of the new emperor’s concubines. At the moment, I know nothing of how the family ties worked back then, but does Roku no Kimi have the same last name as Genji, meaning that she’s some sort of family of his?

In any case, he gets found out and this creates a very big scandal, and especially Roku no Kimi is very upset because of it basically putting him under house arrest by the new emperor (apparently, I was wrong when I claimed Genji’s son to be the future emperor, since the Emperor already had a crown prince selected, it seems).

So at this point there’s just one episode left. It obviously doesn’t look like the series will reach the end of the novels, but I can’t think of any logical situation in which this series could lead to a disappointing ending. If the creators just animate the next chapter, I’ll be happy enough, because unlike shows as Tytania, this isn’t really a story that needs a conclusion. This series is more like, we’re given a glimpse at Genji’s life, and at some point it stops, and it’s not like most series out there, which are really building up to their climaxes.

White Album – 11

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: Preparations for the upcoming concerts commence.
Episode Rating: 7/10 (Enjoyable)
AlexS has a very good point here: the characters here don’t behave like they are in 1986, they behave like modern day characters who have somehow lost their mobile phones and computers. Interestingly enough, answering machines were already invented and on the market in 1986, so why aren’t they used here? Having an huge focus on realism is a double-edged sword: on one side it’s awesome, and really allows the characters to shine, but the flaws become much more noticeable this way, and that’s what currently is happening with White Album.

Because it’s seriously getting harder and harder for me to like this series. I really want to be a fan of this series and its subtle execution, but these melodramatic scenes are getting harder and harder to take seriously. When I started this series, I guess I was hoping for a sort-of more dramatic version of Natsu no Sora, and the drama has really been excellent when it just involved characters talking to each other, but hwen they started crying and whining, I just couldn’t take them seriously.

The one crying in this episode was Touya, and this was really the most pathetic scene of the entire series. Idiot, if you want to see Yuki so badly, then go look her up! You’re daily making out with her manager, for god’s sake. Couldn’t he at least have asked her when she has a small break in her schedule? Besides, after all his flirting with Rina, Yayoi and Misaki, I’m surprised that he’s still genuinely missing Yuki.

But yeah, i guess that these characters are really meant to be hated. I’m going to wait until episode 13 before really labelling this show as overambitious, but that midway climax had better be damn good.

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 09

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: The series skips ahead to the death of the emperor.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I’ve received some comments about how my summaries of this series (and others as well) are always rather ‘inaccurate’ and sometimes even don’t make any sense. I appreciate these comments, because there are enough times when I get a bit too lazy in trying to understand raws. It’s especially bad with this series, since there are no subs whatsoever and more people than usual are going to use these summaries of mine to find out what happened. This series also doesn’t make the job of understanding it any easier due to the large amount of feudal Japanese inserted, not to mention the large amounts of unintroduced flashbacks, dreams and time skips, but I’m going to try to deliver summaries that are at least a bit more accurate than what they used to be.

In any case, the main event in this episode was the death of the emperor, which leaves Lady Fujitsubou and many others as a widow. This means that a lot of things are going to change now. Genji’s kid is probably going to have to take up the throne as soon ass he grows up, and the incident also allowed Genji and Fujitsubou to talk to each other again for a bit (even if it was just during the funeral, and they indeed continue to avoid each other for many years afterwards).

But yeah, especially Fujitsubou has it tough. I really don’t know about the royal system at that time, so this paragraph consists just out of a bunch of guesses that seem the most likely to me (please DO correct me if this is wrong), but it seems that she is mostly caught up with what to do with her son: if she stays quiet, she’s going to be the king’s mother, keep her influence and status, but she will be putting a fake emperor on the throne (which must have been a huge shame at the time). If she does confess, then she’ll immediately lose her status and her child will probably have a really hard time growing up in the least.

In the end of the episode, we see how she cuts off all her hair, and becomes a female monk after saying her goodbye to Genji. In this way, she possibly creates a scandal on herself, but her son will be allowed to stay out of everything and just continue his lifestyle while she can repent for the sin she committed.

With two episodes left, Murasaki now really has to come to the foreground, and she will probably be the one that Genji turns to within his sorrow. I really wonder what kind of climax the creators have prepared for this series. How far are we into the original novels anyway? Has it been consistently one volume per episode, or has the pacing increased over the past few episodes?

White Album – 10

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: Touya gets reassigned as Rina’s manager.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (ZOMG Second Season!)
Aah, this is just too much for me to understand. The most important plot twist of the episode was written down on paper, and I have no bloody idea what it meant. Although Hiragana and Katakana are fairly simple, my Kanji has always sucked because I’ve always been too lazy to really sit down and get these things in my mind…

It went like this: Yuki finally organized her thoughts and wrote a letter to Touya. Of all people, she entrusts Yayoi to deliver it. Yayoi destroys the letter and attempts to substitute her own, while Rina finds the shredded letter and reads it, and to her fears realizes that she’s been too late. My guess was that either in the letter, Yuki wanted to break up with Touya, or she wanted to trust him and give him a final chance. Rina had either been trying very hard to get Yuki and Touya back together, or she assumed that Yuki and Touya indeed had no chance together, and so she took him for herself. Aah, I really need to watch this episode with subs.

In any case, that second season was just what this series needed: now there’s really enough time to really develop the characters and really get to know them. And perhaps for Touya to realize what an incredible idiot he’s been. Thirteen episodes was too small for this series indeed.

But overall though, I hope that the second season is going to inherit the good points and not the lesser points of this series. In the end, this series is at its worst at the times when the very emotional plot twists pop up, like when Haruka broke down in front of Touya’s apartment, Touya professed his love for Misaki and this episode had it too: with Touya’s father suddenly collapsing from out of nowhere. It really doesn’t need those dramatic plot twists, this series already is screwed up enough as it is, but what makes it so much fun to watch is the scenes where people are just sitting or talking. These producers really have a knack in bringing out the characters’ subtle emotions out: they don’t have to say anything about their feelings, their facial expressions speak for themselves, and this series has been really good at throwing these feelings all over the place.

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 08

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: After a six-month period of mourning, Genji returns to the palace for a visit.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so while lots of stuff happened, this mostly was a building up episode. First we get Aoi’s funeral, in which Genji, his father and step-brother say goodbye to her. He gets visited by her in her dreams, and in the meantime we see that Lady Rokujou has found out that she’s been unconsciously killing the women Genji slept with, though it seems that she’s not willing to accept the fact that she created the murderous ghost. Six months after Aoi’s death, Genji returns to the main palace in order to spend some time with the emperor and that’s where he sees Murasaki back, who seems to have grown up from when we last saw her. It really makes it difficult to keep track of all of the different characters when they change faces like that! When I watched this episode for the first time I thought that the little girl that appeared later in this episode was still Murasaki.

But instead it seems that that little girl is a new character that Genji is asked to take care of. If I understood correctly, she seems to be of noble blood, though her mother has died, and Lady Fujitsubo’s brother seems to be her father. Later we see Genji and Murasaki talk for a bit, where it’s interesting to note that Murasaki and the narrator seem to be sharing the same voice actress. Since the original novel was also written by a Murasaki, this seems to be the way of the creators of the anime to give a small tribute to her. The episode ends with Genji making love with Lady Rokujo. I didn’t quite catch the reason why and its implications, but the next episode should shed more light into that.

And since I’ve praised the graphics of this show often enough, I’m going for something different now: the music! It turns out that they also did the soundtrack for xxxHolic, and it’s indeed the same subtle combination between folky songs and modern synthesizers, though the soundtrack of Genji Monogatari is much more dreamy than the one from xxxHolic. Still, it’s a really varied soundtrack: there are so many different songs in here, and yet none of them feels out of place.

White Album – 09

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: It’s the day of the performance of Misaki’s play.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
And it’s finally happened. Finally Touya said something that… you shouldn’t say to another girl when you have a girlfriend. It’s now just going to be a matter of time before he breaks up with Yuki, though the interesting thing is that Misaki is now completely out of the picture and hooked up with Akira. The girl has been just one big red herring, whose part only was to break up the relationship between Touya and Yuki, and increase that gap as it went along. It’s now going to be up to Haruka and Rina to finish things.

It’s going to be very interesting, because I think it’s clear now that Rina doesn’t see anything special in Touya, while Touya seems to fancy her, while Haruka is clearly longing to spend more time with Touya, but Touya doesn’t see anything special in her. Now that the Misaki-arc is over, it’s time for the finale of this series to start, and at this point there are so many interesting possibilities for the ending to develop into.

But PLEASE, was it really necessary for Mana to suddenly kiss Touya from out of nowhere? That really had like… no build-up whatsoever. I’ve praised this show for being realistic, but that was about the complete opposite. In fact, that’s going to be a big potential pitfall for this series if it continues to pull these plot twists like in this episode. It’s not bad for now, but if every single girl is going to end up in the hospital (or something similar) due to a random accident, then it’s going to be a bad thing.

In any case, it’s also interesting how Misaki didn’t just force to characters apart from each other, but at the same time she also brought Touya and his father closer together. I’m not sure whether the creators are going to use him some more in the end, but it would be awesome if he would. At first I thought that they hated each others’ guts, but there seems to be a more subtle reason why he kicked his son out of the house. But then again,

Genji Monogatari Sennenki – 07

by psgels, posted in Genji Monogatari Sennenki



Short Synopsis: Genji’s second child is about to be born.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
I think that one of the hardest parts in trying to understand this series is keeping track of all the different characters, combined with how all the characters like to talk in old Japanese, though this surprisingly isn’t the most difficult series to understand in the end (out of the currently airing series, that honor goes to Munto). while watching, there were a lot of question marks that popped up, and scenes, I couldn’t quite grasp, but at the end of the episode everything came together wonderfully and suddenly made sense.

So in this episode, Genji’s wife gets pregnant, and it takes place during the nine months of her pregnancy. This rumour reaches the ghost woman, who becomes even more struck with grief, and so she attempts to kill Genji’s wife as well. After the second attempt (after the baby is already born), she succeeds. With four episodes left, I believe that the creators are saving her as the main villain of the series, but the little girl still has yet to be important, even though she’s supposed to have a huge role in Genji’s life.

And I also loved how this episode had more visual effects than ever, and as usual, they looked GREAT. Especially during the climaxes, the creators were throwing these effects and filters everywhere.

And here’s something interesting: Genji has currently gotten two women pregnant, and has been flirting with quite a few more. Now compare this to Touya from White Album, who also is surrounded by a lot of females, though less extreme. I’m still surprised at how much hate Touya gets for being unrealistic and a bastard to women, and how Genji doesn’t get any hate at all, while his actions have been much worse. Sure, it’s probably due to the lack of subs for this series, but it’s interesting to see that some series are easier to hate than others.

White Album – 08

by psgels, posted in White Album



Short Synopsis: Yuki and Touya finally get to see each other again.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
Whoa, so many things happened in this episode, and yet it felt like a really quiet and slow-paced one. At this point, it’s pretty certain that this is one of these series that’s continuously building up for one big finale, and it’s also pretty sure that Touya and Yuki are going to break up with each other. The question is just going to be: how? And how are the two of them going to end up afterwards?

So this whole time, Touya has been trying to live his own life, I think also trying to find something to be busy with in order to forget how often he’s apart from Yuki. Most people indeed wouldn’t put that much time into the wishes of someone else like he’s doing with Misaki, but I think that he unintentionally tries to seek distraction, and with that he’s also getting more and more distanced from Yuki. I’m starting to get the points that this series is trying to make like this.

I also loved the very subtle sense of humour in this episode. The jokes around Haruka were fun, but not meant to be laughed at. Still, it was pretty cute when Touya discovered how she broke into his apartment that evening. We do need to see a bit more about Haruka, though. Something’s clearly bugging her: she’s jealous of Yuki, and probably looked up to her, since she apparently spent a lot of time with Touya since her childhood and was never really able to let this go, but I just know that the creators are still hiding something from her. That breakdown of hers isn’t just explained through simple loneliness.

My only problem is that this series the umpth one that is overplaying the “dead parents” trope a bit too much. I know that it’s a good way to evoke sympathy and all, but when it’s becoming an exception for a character’s parents to be both not missing or dead, then you know something’s going in the wrong direction.

And what the heck was up with Yayoi at the end of this episode? This really is the first episode where Touya definitely cheated on Yuki, but why Yayoi of all people?