Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 17

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: Okay, so last week’s preview was lying: this episode wasn’t about Souta and Holon at all. Instead, it’s about Minamo’s family.
Highlights: What could not be awesome about Minamo’s divided family coming back together?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
What a charming episode! Minamo and Souta’s parents and grandparents have always been vaguely mentioned here and there, but they never really took the central focus in this series, apart from perhaps that one episode that was dedicated to Souta’s father. In this episode, Minamo’s grandmother AND mother come to visit their offspring for one night, and enjoy a rare family reunion where all five members of the family are together.

I guess that this too is a commentary to today’s Japanese society, which through its workaholic attitude has many families that are separated from each other, and I can imagine that sixty years into the future, where transport has evolved even more, this wouldn’t be any different, and like Minamo’s parents, couples often live apart from each other because of their jobs.

And at the same time, this episode fleshed out Miamo and Souta even more, by showing what their parents look like. And damn, Minamo’s grandmother looks so different from what I expected. I can’t remember whether we actually saw a shot of her in the second episode, but I was really expecting some thin old lady with grey hair and all, and instead she turns out to be a much more similar to Minamo, and much younger-looking than I imagined her to be. At the same time, the creators also manage to sneak in a reference about Kushima having a sister. Am I the only one curious about her, and what she’d look like?

And damn, the preview for the next episode intrigues me. There’s some kind of deserted ruins in some jungle that suddenly started operating again. Could this go further on the Eliza-subplot of a few episodes back?

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 04

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: A haunted building-episode.
Highlights: Natsume’s relation to his classmates continues to develop.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Seriously, this series gets better and better with every episode, and I already considered it as one of the highlights of the summer-season. I’m really not sure how the creators did it, but their sense of characterization is amazing. But then again, this was to be expected, considering the director: both Baccano and Jigoku Shoujo had a huge cast of characters, with nearly every one of them having its own identity and likable from the start. So, what happens when you assign a director who is excellent at characterizations on a story that lives because of its characters?

This episode shows the most hostile Ayakashi so far, who kidnaps every one of Natsume’s classmates when they go and explore a strange abandoned building. He doesn’t even care about getting his name back, and is acting all out of some sort of grudge (if I understood correctly, it’s some kind of hate for people). But what caught my attention the most is another one of Natsume’s classmates. We don’t see the black-haired guy in this episode, but there’s a girl who has discovered that he can see spirits, because she noticed how he keeps talking to people from out of nowhere

On a side-note: this series is without a doubt the hardest to understand from the new season, simply because those Ayakashi keep speaking in some strange ancient dialect that doesn’t show up in the dictionary that I’m using. Japanese already is hard enough to understand without some random dialect thrown into it.

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 16

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: It’s back to action and fanservice as this episode focuses at Souta.
Highlights: But what great action it is.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
The next episode previews are getting less and less helpful… they still give an indication of what’s to expect in the next episode, but they’re getting more and more cryptic with every episode. Still, that’s what I like about them. The reason why I don’t often look at these previews is that you’ll never know when they’re too spoilery for their own good. The worst offender that I ran into was Naruto, which once revealed the plot of an entire spoilerific episode in its preview. Still, RD knows exactly what it should give away, to keep its viewer wondering and not reveal any obvious spoilers. The preview for this episode, for example, considered of Souta and Holon fighting. And it was indeed an episode about Souta and Holon, but at the same time it also symbolized the romantic tension between the two, which was the main point about this episode. At the same time, the preview for the next episode features the entire same scene, with just Souta realizing why he keeps losing to Holon in training fights. It should be in the same vein as the current one, but we can only guess what it’ll really be about.

In any case, the current episode rocked. Souta, the guy who sleeps with the boss of his boss is actually secretly in love with Holon. This episode addresses the fact of falling in love with an android a bit differently than Chobits, though. This episode didn’t necessarily end with a happy ending, but rather with all the characters (except Minamo, perhaps) understanding what’s going on. There’s no cheesy confession scene, but instead a much more subtle approach was chosen.

There was one particular scene that caught my attention in this episode: it was where the evil android in this episode had just beaten Holon “unconscious” and threw her body away. That was the only time so far where Holon looked (and sounded) like an object, rather than a human being.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 03

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: Ayakashi can be… quite obnoxious at times.
Highlights: The extra depth given to Natsume’s desire to find someone like him.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, so for those who were wondering: there’s no Blade of the Immortal this week. The second episode of it airs next week, after which it’ll go into yet another hiatus. Ah well, I’m glad that these hiatuses are around the beginning of the series, and not the end.

In any case, without Blade of the Immortal, there’s no doubt that Natsume Yuujin-chou is my favourite series this season. It knows how to tell an excellent story and the cast of characters is also absolutely lovable. From the outside, it just looks like “Ayakashi of the week” (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but such a formula can get stale very easily), but every episode so far has added so much more than that. Since giving the name back to an Ayakashi is nothing special and just takes a few minutes, the creators can really start to colour outside of the lines.

This episode added quite some funny comedy to the mix. A couple of gods come and bug Natsume in order to get rid of some nasty Ayakashi that were bugging their shrine, and even though he refuses, they keep harassing and annoying him. What caught my attention the most, though, was the focus of Natsume, trying to find someone like him. And this is where this series sets itself apart from Mokke and xxxHolic: Watanuki had Yuuko, and Shizuru had her grandfather, but Natsume is all alone in his ability to see and sense spirits. At one time, he thought he had found a woman who could also see them, but she too turned out to be an Ayakashi. The only support he’s had so far is from other Ayakashi.

This episode changes this, by introducing two characters who finally understand him a bit. One monk who is looking for his daughter if I understood correctly, and one high-school student who can also see spirits, just like him.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 29

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Recap
Highlights: Strangely enough, this was EXACTLY what this series needed…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so I’m obviously not going to summarize this recap-episode in detail. What I do want to talk about is everything else that happened here. I rated this episode high for a very good reason, because this episode may very well put itself on the short list of great recap episodes. The thing is that Porfy no Nagai Tabi has obviously turned a bit stale for the past two arcs. Porfy didn’t really grow, how he ran into the right people felt a bit awkward, and the drama nor the slice-of-life matched up to what we saw in the earlier parts of the series. The creators have shown that they can write great travel arcs (the abandoned city-arc was just amazing), but for the past months, Porfy lost a bit of its spark.

And that’s why it’s so great to look back at the amazing earlier parts of the series, when all of the characters still were alive/not missing. Porfy also had a very good reason to be nostalgic: at the airport of Rome, he ran into none other than Barnes, who had picked up rumours about a Greek boy that was lost in Italy. He then delivers him a letter from Zaimis, so this indeed was the perfect place to put such a recap. And of course, that little teaser at the end of the episode, that showed that MINA IS STILL IN ROME was just icing on the cake.

This really reminds me of the third arc of Les Miserables (about the first similarity that I spotted between the two series after their introduction-arcs): I remember clearly that very annoying episode where everyone in Paris kept nearly running into each other. And at the same time, it was such a great way of building up, for when the characters finally met with each other. Overall, this episode formed a pretty nice conclusion to the first half of Porfy no Nagai Tabi, and although we may have a few more boring travel arcs in store, the fact does remain that it’s still building up for the moments in this series that really matter: the reunion with Mina and Alecia. Porfy no Nagai Tabi doesn’t have the grand story of Les Miserables, but at the same time it’s much more personal, and I love how the two series are so different from each other, despite being both World Masterpiece Theatres.

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 15

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: This episode is about food (no, really).
Highlights: Surprisingly dark, and at the same time Minamo’s antics were hilarious.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
This episode returns to the essence of RD Sennou Chousashitsu: Minamo and how the Metal affects people’s consciousness. Now I also understand why the previous of the previous episode was nothing but food, because this time Haru was set out to rescue a number of food lovers who were lost in their own desires.

I must say that this series has such a fascinating understanding of human nature. These people basically were on the metal, 24/7, enjoying all kinds of delicious foods. Because their consciousnesses were uploaded to the metal, all the virtual food felt surprisingly real, but at the same time this was ruining their real bodies. They would become so used to the uber-delicious food that no food in real life would taste good anymore, and this episode, they became crazy over the taste of just ordinary water, simply because they hadn’t tasted it in so long.

This episode also showed cases where Souta had to take care of cases where people tried to stimulate their own senses so much that they simply died, which also nearly happened with the gentlemen (or at least, that’s what their avatars were at the time) in this episode. It’s a pretty freaky idea. Overall, the messages of this series have been light and optimistic, about a future where the limit to express your creativity knows no bounds, and at the same time it makes it seem so easy to lose yourself in this virtual world.

And Minamo was so adorable in this episode, with her fear of bell peppers (or at least, that’s what I think she meant). These characters can literally talk about food and still remain utterly enjoyable. Especially considering the entire first half of this episode was nothing other than Minamo, sulking over her fear of bell peppers, and the only thing that distracted me was a rather bad video file that kept glitching.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi – 28

by psgels, posted in Porfy no Nagai Tabi



Short Synopsis: Jack, André and their families help Porfy in his search for Mina.
Highlights: The themes of saying goodbye pop up again.
Overall Enjoyment Value:7,5/10
Really, it seems like for every season, half of the good shows seem to concentrate themselves on the same day. This time it’s… Tuesday. Especially since Mission-E, Natsume Yuujin-Chou and Porfy’s raws will always show up too late for Monday, and in the evening there’s Ultraviolet, RD and Himitsu for me to blog… and here I wondered why the rest of the week was so quiet. ^^;

In any case, my usual summary for this show may get shorter, because there are so many other series to blog today. This episode starts as Jack, Michael and Porfy search the different coastal cities for any trace of Mina. A big person in Palermo shows up, who turns out to be acquainted with Jack’s father, and who’ll promise to search for Mina as well. He doesn’t seem to like André and his hate for Americans.

The next day, it’s time to go to the church again, though the focus falls at Jacks father and André’s father. I couldn’t fully understand it, but they took a note-book and crossed a few names out. At the end of the church session, the pastor took a moment to ask those who were present whether they’ve seen anything about Mina, but nobody turned up. When Porfy, Michael and Jack return back home, their father suddenly appears in an apron (it seems that he felt like cooking a bit) and Bobby (Jack and Michael’s older brother) has gone to America. André meanwhile makes his people search Sicily for Mina. It’s his father who finds the clue they need.

When Michael learns about it, he quickly wakes Porfy and André tells him the things he knows: apparently, she was in the company of a woman and two gamblers, and she went from Palermo to Rome. Porfy then immediately prepares to got o Rome, but Jack has a little surprise left, as it seems that jack’s father has his own private plane, which makes Porfy able to catch up a lot of lost time if Mina went to Rome, just by boat. Jack checks what the plane’s code-name is (“Heart Thief” :P) as the plane takes off, Porfy says goodbye to Sicily and the episode ends.

I’m not quite sure what was up with Jack’s father, but I do have a hunch. This episode showed how Bobby left to America, and in the near future, Jack and Michael too will depart to the United States, leaving their father behind. This seems to suggest that their father has problems of his own, and the list of names probably is the list of his subordinates, who were probably all sent away, so that he’d be the only one to take the blame of whatever trouble he’s in.

Overall, the big theme of this arc was the concepts of family. Now that this arc has finished, it does make sense, and I now understand how this arc and the previous arc are linked to each other: they both showed Porfy a different concept of a “family”, something that he lost entirely. The current arc showed how important the bonds are to the big families that live in Sicily, and how one would go through fire for the sake of his own family, while the previous arc was about having the warmth of a place to return to.

My interest in Porfy has been rather low for the past months, because I feared that the rest of the series would just be a string of random arcs, but thankfully they all turn out to have their own meaning to develop Porfy. And of course, this series is at its best after countless episodes of building-up, so I’m wondering where the Rome-arc will take this series.

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 02

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



Short Synopsis: This episode shows how Ayakashi also can friendly ask their names back from Natsume’s Book of Friends.
Highlights: Storytelling at its finest.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
As for the shows I’m not going to blog:
– Hidamari Sketch is nice, but I’m getting a bit bored of Shinbou’s style ever since Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei.
– Strike Witches has an interesting view at modern Japanese folklore with its kemonomimi-ish mecha musume, but I wonder whether it can live up to its sister-series, Sky Girls.
– Ryouko’s case files has “I have no life so I’ll just tell my evil plans to any random Joe who happens to be passing by”-villains. It lacks subtlety, that snake came from nowhere, and it’s the big disappointment this season for me.

Natsume Yuujin-chou, however, is well on its way to becoming one of my favourite series this season, along with Blade of the Immortal. I really liked this episode. Like expected, the creators have a great way of characterization, and the entire episode is a bit unconventional, but it works perfectly. This episode’s message was also a pretty interesting one.

This series follows in the same veins as Mokke, where Youkai and gods have entire personalities, and only a select amount of people can see it. It’s a bit more mature, but that’s to be expected with the lack of ten-year old children. This episode sees how a small local god wants to get its name back, though when Reiko collected his name, she stuck it along with the name of another Ayakashi, who needs to be found first if he wants to get his name back.

Along with that, this episode addresses how people nowadays visit their local gods less and less. Our god in this episode only has one person who regularly visits him, and this is an old woman. At the end of the episode, she ends up at a hospital, making her unable to visit the shrine of said god anymore. Because of that, this god disappears in the end, despite having finally gotten his name back.

It’s interesting how important names are for these Youkai, and this isn’t the first series to address this fact. Tenpou Ibun Ayakashi Ayashi and Mononoke also played around with words like this, though Natsume Yuujin-chou is the most personal of the bunch.

Some quick first impressions: World Destruction, Natsume Yuujin-Chou and Mission-E

by psgels, posted in Mission-E, Natsume Yuujin-Chou, Some Quick First Impressions

World Destruction

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters form an organization to destroy the world.
Highlights: Nice ideas, but flawed (see below)
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
This series has a lot to like, and at the same time a lot to hate. It’s probably the first time where humans are actually the oppressed race in a fantasy-series, especially if they’re oppressed by a bunch of cats. The different races that walk around the world are full of imagination, and the idea of a bunch of humans (and a bear, okay), joining together to destroy the world has some definite potential for the second half of this short series. The animation is really messy at times, but it looks excellent. Yoshihiro Ike, one of my favourite composers is behind the background music, and he delivers as usual, though perhaps it’s not his best work. Agh, if only the messages of this series weren’t so blatantly obvious! The lead characters themselves are fine, but it’s the way how they’re presented that gets me. This is one of those nationalistic anime that tries to shoves the message “humans rock, the rest sucks” down your throat, and the rest of the episode really need to work to develop the other races in this series. It would be interesting if through this series, the lead characters will actually be portrayed as the bad guys who will in fact destroy the world, but for that to happen, the cats need to stay away from stereotypes. Right now they’re funny, but I can already see this series go south in a couple of episodes if it doesn’t try to develop them.

Natsume Yuujin-chou

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters can see spirits and has a book of names of these spirits.
Highlights: Low budget, but very solid scriptwriting.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
The first thing that came to my mind when I started watching this is: is this really Brains Base? This really has to be their series with the lowest production-values to date, and things actually look pretty normal, and really different from their usual vivid animation style. Still, their sense of storytelling didn’t degrade one bit, and the director of Baccano and Jigoku Shoujo shows that he still knows how to tell a great story. This episode was nothing sensational or spectacular, but it was a very solid introduction for a series about spirits and ayakashi. This first episode already shows what the ayakashi in this series are made off, and like most of them, they act because of their grudge that was caused by something, and aren’t purely evil for the sake of being evil. I guess that that’s why I like stories about ayakashi so much.

Mission-E

Short Synopsis: Our lead character… has changed a lot since the first season.
Highlights: The huge character-development….; same fun climaxes as in the first season.
Overall Enjoyment Value:8/10
Holy crap! This actually takes place years after the first season! The lead characters have set up an organization to deal with the Type-E users, in order to protect them from the guys we saw in episode 11 and 12. Now here’s a twist you don’t usually see, and I’m really enthusiastic about how it was carried out. The interesting thing is that there seemed to have been no adult to guide them when they set up that organization, and it seems that they had to figure out everything by themselves. They also found a new girl to work with them in the meantime. In any case, before I start rambling, it was awesome to see how every character has changed during the absence of this series. The action-scenes were exaggerated, but they were fun and I can’t wait to see the rest of this series!

RD Sennou Chousashitsu – 14

by psgels, posted in RD Sennou Chousashitsu



Short Synopsis: First half recap, second half the return of the scuba-diving brothers.
Highlights: Interesting art direction, but a recap remains a recap.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
So… yeah. Don’t look too much forward to this week’s episode of Real Drive, because the first half is basically Minamo, making a phone call with her grandmother and telling her about the things she did throughout the series. The second half features original content, but that neither is the most exciting, as the scuba diving brothers go scuba diving with Minamo, and teach her the basic principles. It was charming how Minamo now realized the world that captivated Haru, but throughout the episode, you could see that tons of cost-saving animation techniques were used: live action images, still shots, cameras away from faces, etc. It gives an interesting effect, but exciting is different. Although I do admit that Minamo looked surprisingly good in scuba-suit…

Also… what the heck was up with the next episode preview? All it showed was the different kinds of food that we’ve seen throughout the series…