Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

Hyouka – 22

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

So Hyouka’s finale isn’t a big arc, but instead a collection of small stories. There’s a lot of character development in them, but nothing is definitively resolved. Pretty much a life goes on ending due to there still being a novel left unanimated, which I suspect will be saved for a movie if the sales go well enough. Kyoani has the tendency to announce those much later after finishing the series, so who knows when that will come, if it’ll come at all, so right now, I’ll just conisder this as the ending of Hyouka.

And while it wasn’t the best episode, both in terms of content of how far it pushed the relationship between Oreki and Chitanda, I still quite liked it. The parade was a very nice way for the animators to show some of their skills, and it was very well directed there, and it does serve as an interesting closure. The mystery itself was probably one of the simplest yet, and I feel like the creators could have done more during the cherry blossom scene at the end. I like how the creators toyed with the cherry blossom tropes by using Oreki’s imagination there… but it’s not quite there yet.

The one thing I also liked a lot about this episode is the detail it put in local customs, and the things it takes to organize them, the people who are all involved with them and the effort it takes to make everything go without a hitch. I didn’t care much about the mystery of who was behind the bridge, but the stress that this created was very well portrayed.

So yeah, Kyoani really need to so a non- moe slice of life series, however Hyouka was a very good compromise. Next season they’ll have Chuuninbyou, which unfortunately looks much more generic in terms of formula. But it has a great director, so who knows what’ll happen?
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Moyashimon Returns Review – 81/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Moyashimon



The Noitamina timeslot and sequels don’t go well together. For a long while there were only three series that got a continuation: Bake Neko, Honey and Clover and Nodame Cantabile, the series that made the timeslot as popular as it is today. And then a Moyashimon sequel got announced. Yes: more antics with the guy who can see germs. But did they make a good use of this?

Well, here is the thing: this sequel is fun, it’s nice to watch, and it definitely has its merits. But it does have its flaws as a second season. The big reason is that it doesn’t really seem to know what it wants to do, and therefore rather forces in a story about arranged marriage and Paris. A transition that doesn’t happen smooth at all and makes this season feel more like a random side story than a proper sequel here. The germs are pretty much side-lined through the entire story, even though they were the main selling point of this series. I really feel like Noitamina could have spent its time better than on a sequel for this series.

But on the flipside, this still is a very enjoyable series. Apart from the germs, there is another thing that this series has that sets it apart, and that’s its chemistry, and this sequel has plenty of that. Caracters always have something interesting to talk about, whether it’s about fermenting, wine or relationships, and this show is at its best whenever a lot of characters are together doing all kinds of stuff at the same time. It brims with life when it does that so even when the story gets distracted on the unimpressive arranged marriage, the characters manage to retain your interst with their quirks and goofs. This season does a very good job of fleshing them out.

So if you’re a fan of Moyashimon and want to see more of the characters, then go for it because this show definitely delivers on that. However, this second season is no reason to pick the series up anyway if you haven’t seen it before. It’s definitely got some nice storylines, and the newly introduced characters have some good stories. The trip to paris was nice and fun, but ultimately this is just a glorified side-story. It’s nice that it’s there and all and definitely not boring… but did they really need to spend an entire slot on Noitamina for that?

Storytelling: 7/10 – Despite the many criticsms above, all of Moyashimon’s problems can be boiled down to just one big issue: Haruka’s arranged marriage is not fit to dedicate an entire season to, and yet that’s what they did. The side stories are very well told and do make this series worth watching, but the main thread throughout the entire series is dull.
Characters: 8.5/10 – This series understands character chemistry and brings a lot of it here. Characters are well acted and voice acted making them fun and interesting to watch.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Still has the same visual style as the first season. Meaning that at first the visuals may not seem like much, but when you start thinking about it the shots become surprisingly well drawn and creative. Yes, I just edited this in at the last moment.
Setting: 9/10 – Lots of interesting trivia about fermenting and wine brewing. The bacteria may be reduced to mere narrators, but this show hasn’t lost its educational value.

Suggestions:
– Honey and Clover
– Nodame Cantabile
– Spice and Wolf

Moyashimon – 22

by psgels, posted in Moyashimon

Hey, currently posting from an outskirt town in Cornwall, England and resting a bit from my trip to Napels, it sounded like a good idea to check out Moyashimon’s conclusion. In the end, it turned out that the climax of the series was last week. This instead was an aftermath. Everyone returned to Paris and all issues got settled. Haruka blew off the marriage and is back again like nothing happened.

Now, this episode did have what made me originally like the series: a lot of good chemistry between the different characters. Everybody got the chance to talk to each other and sort things out and the way in which it happened was quite down to earth. I just dislike a bit that some things about Haruka were a bit side-lined. Most notably, her future. This episode did bring up that she now lost any reason to stay at the school. That’s fine, but it made it seem like she was going to stay there forever. There was no mention of her future plans, or any kind of ambition. I think that’s a missed opportunity, and it’s what makes this series inferior to Nodame Cantabile and Honey and Clover, the only other two Noitamina-series to have gotten sequels.

Ultimately, this was fun, and Moyashimon’s sequel did get the Noitamina spirit, but in terms of structure it’s not a Noitamina-series. This second season feels more like a random side-story that got stretched into an entire season. To me, it doesn’t really feel like this was a necessary sequel, and while it was fun to watch, I would rather have seen a new series instead. I mean, the first season was inconclusive as hell, but it had its charms that way. The way in which they tried to stretch it out by moving Haruka to Paris feels… forced and not in the spirit of Noitamina by having series that are short but sweet.

There actually are only a few Noitamina-series that would benefit from a second season, I think. Hourou Musuko would be one to pull it off, because there still is a ton of potential left in that series, both if they went for the prequel and sequel route. That’s also the beauty of that series, because it still works as a series without that sequel. Apart from that, Toshokan Sensou with its movie will also benefit quite a bit, and I can also see Kuragehime 2 work when done well. Apart from that the only other kind of sequel that I want to see is a series set in the same universe as Fractale, but actually makes use of its setting.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Hyouka – 21

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

This was an interesting episode. I mean, movie or no movie: the series is ending next week, so Kyoani can pour even more budget than usual into it. The result is a really well animated episodic story with weird build-up.

I mean weird build-up in the way that this episode on one hand develops Satoshi, it explains his actions of some of the previous arcs, and on the other hand it suddenly turns Mayaka and Satoshi into a couple. Now, I know that my memory isn’t the greatest with these kinds of things… but have we ever seen hints to that twist before? I mean, it’s not something that blossomed overnight: they’ve apparently been going on for more than a year now. And with the incredible attention to detail that this series has, I find it hard to believe that they’d never hint at this. So did I miss something?

But whatever faults Hyouka may have had there, it made up for it by giving a very different meaning to his part in the school festival arc. What he did there wasn’t jealousy, it was a battle of him trying to win from his obsession. He allowed himself to dabble a bit with trying to solve things, but he never went far into it like Oreki did. It makes much more sense: if he’s such a large sherlock-fan, then why doesn’t he try to formulate theories or brainstorm? Well, that’s why. And that’s also why Oreki’s plan last week went wrong.

Also weird was Chitanda. I mean, the usual progression for a character like her is to done down: as she grows up she becomes more mature in the process. She however is completely different and after the school festival arc, she suddenly got more extreme, acting more and more on her feelings than she already did before. The animators really liked to exemplify that with a particular few scenes.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Moyashimon – 21

by psgels, posted in Moyashimon

For as much as I’ve ranted about this sequel, I do have to say that this was one of the best episodes of Moyashimon here. Finally this series gets down to business and the drama that results from it is actually pretty good here. With this I also realize the main problem of Moyashimon’s sequel: it took too much time building up.

That thing with Hasegawa has been going on for the entire season now, and aside from perhaps the things around Hazuki, everything was vaguely leading up to her talk with her fiancée in this episode. The thing however is that that story isn’t really that complex so it feels like in terms of storytelling, it could have been done much more concise, save from the fact that we’re now in france and that they needed an excuse for that. The conversation she had with her fiance in this episode standalone was very good, but I can’t help but feel like it is a bit of an anti-climax in the grand scheme of things and how the build-up doesn’t really come together here.

On the other hand, I really, really liked Marie’s story with her father. It already was an interesting spin on the story about succeeding your family’s business, but this episode threw in a very nice bit of irony about her father not liking alcohol and basically devoting his life to something he doesn’t enjoy due to the pressure from his father. The relationship between the two really got its time to shine here.

Oh, and I also quite liked how easily Takuma and Kaoru made friends with the bodyguards.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Hyouka – 20

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

You know what? There is one volume of the light novels left, right? And it’s one continuous story, right? With this episode something dawned to me: Kyoani could be toying with the idea of making a movie for this show, couldn’t they? I mean, I’m not sure how their policy with movies is after they made one for Haruhi, K-On and… Munto, but Hyouka would actually work perfectly in movie-format with its slow pacing. I mean, I’d love to see it, but they’re not going to do a climax of only two episodes.

As for this episode, the mystery in it was completely different from any other episode so far. Oreki didn’t have to solve something weird that was going on, but rather he had to find something to get the attention of a specific person. His final solution was quite creative. It was also a realistic look at symbolism: what kind of symbols would someone understand if one spotted this randomly, and which symbols would just be too obscure?

But this episode was really there to flesh out the cast some more. Oreki and Chitanda got to spend a lot of time together, and Satoshi finally was useful for something. The whole set-up of this episode was also great and down to earth, in the way that everyone had different agendas throughout the whole episode beyond just the main plot. Touches like this show once more that the rest of the cast also have lives and things to do.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Moyashimon – 20

by psgels, posted in Moyashimon

This episode had something: chemistry. It’s the kind of chemistry that drew me into the second season of Moyashimon in the first place, and that had been unfortunately absent for a string of three or four episodes. I’m glad to see it back again.

It’s hard to describe what made this episode work, but the variety had a lot to do with it, how everyone split up in three groups that all did their own stuff, and how whimsical this all happened. There was one part romance, one part comedy and one part character-study and they went togehter really well. The animators also were quite good with their camera angles this week, which also really helped in bringing the cast alive.

I feel that this episode was really needed to keep this show from getting stale. The story from the blond girl about inheriting her family’s business: it was different from the usual things. You know, parents pushing their businesses down onto their children without much more detail. The story of her father and how her entire family is involved: I like that. Especially after watching so many episodes in which Haruka’s story was nothing really more than “girl gets forced to marry against her will”. That also got a bit more detail. It still is a bit stale compared to the wine girl, but at the very least it isn’t so damn cliched anymore.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Hyouka – 19

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

Once again a really nice standalone episode for Hyouka, so close to the end. I have to say: I’m really enjoying these episodes more compared to the individual episodes of the first half of the series. It’s not just because we now know the characters and that this show is now able to use this in its storytelling (most notably the interplay between Oreki and Chitanda), but the mysteries themselves also have gotten more interesting. I relaly liked the idea of piecing a story together from a random strange announcement over the school intercom.

This was just two people sitting in a room, trying to piece together something that happened, and I like episodes like this, especially considering how much detail the writers managed to put into it and how everything just started with one simple sentence: Oreki picked apart every single detail of it in order to get to his conclusion. Satoshi and Ibara were completely absent, so this was just about Oreki and Chitanda.

Now, I wouldn’t actually mind if the show ended on random episodes like these, or even a short arc of three episodes. In fact, it’s great for the variety in this series to play with the set-up like this, especially after the long school festival arc. Having a series in which the arcs are all the same length does get a bit boring, but here they are able to switch things up, and especially this episode was significantly different from the others. That’s great! Yay for variety!
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Moyashimon – 19

by psgels, posted in Moyashimon

I liked this episode. This really had the creativity I had been looking for, and the creators actually found a way to tie in the bacteries with its focus on the wineyard that most of this episode took place in. The new girl that the characters ran into started off a bit generic, with how she has been forced to take over the family wine business despite her will, but as the episode went on her reasons for this were quite refreshing: instead of having no interest in wine making, she had a lot of interests, enough to know that her work was not going to become appreciated by the right people. That’s quite neat.

Another big thing of the past episodes wsa that the chemistry between the different characters didn’t really work. Last week was the best example with just the three guys together causing trouble… and not much else. This introduced a new haracter who may whine a bit, but does get some interesting reactions out of them, not to mention bringing Haruka back in a coincidence that I actually enjoyed a lot.

A few nit-picks: I’m not sure whether some of the antics of the bacteria when they start to play narrator actually work. I mean, most of the times they’re just stating the obvious or stalling for time. Just get on with it, or add some more detail to your explanation of where wine is made: the part you’re actually good at. Also the fanservice in this series remains a bit weird. I don’t know many French girls, but do they often run around in strange clothing and strip in front of people they only met a day before?
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Hyouka – 18

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

We’re back to episodic stories again for a while, though this episode was slightly different from these kinds of episodes that we saw in the first half of this series. Instead of some small incident happening with Oreki having to solve it, it turned into a bit of a character-study for one of the teachers that the characters had when they were in middle school.

On top of that, this was a really interesting episode for Oreki and Chitanda. The two got to spend a lot of time together, and on top of that they both showed different sides of them in this episode: Oreki for finally being a bit mildly curious on his own accord, and Chitanda for sacrificing a lot of her time to just be with him in this. The end of the episode, in which Oreki explained why he went to the library to check things up really brought out something good out of both of them.

On a side-note: this has piqued my interest after that really long school festival arc: it looks like next episode will be a standalone story as well. That means that the conclusion arc for this series will just be three episodes long (Hyouka only has 22 episodes). So yeah, it’ll be short and sweet for this series’ standards, but I wonder: is it just going to be another arc like the previous ones, or one that actually feels like a really good conclusion?
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)