Category: Mission-E

Mission-E – 03

by psgels, posted in Mission-E



Short Synopsis: The target of this week: a girl with her pet bat.
Highlights: Enemies get stronger and smarter as the series goes on.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I’m not sure who on Anime News Network found it a good idea to lump all of the staff of Mission-E all together as directors, but that information is obviously wrong. It takes some credibility away from the site, doesn’t it? In any case, it’s very interesting to see a series with so many high-profile people working on it (the original creator of Scrapped Princess and the directors of Simoun, True Tears, Niea, Shion no Ou and Full Moon wo Sagashite are all working on this thing), that doesn’t aim to be the best in any field, and instead just wants to put down a fun series.

In any case, this episode was clearly one of building up, especially meant to develop the bad guys a bit. They were faceless goons up till now, but this episode added a bit of personality to them, which is always nice. The main guy in charge of capturing the people with Type-E also seems to have a personal history with Chinami, as we see through a flashback in the beginning of the episode, where he got some sort of scar on his back from amongst the rubble. My guess is that this happened when that resort exploded, back at the end of Code-E.

Maori is also getting more used to her job, and isn’t afraid to talk to random people anymore. She’s still pretty much the outcast of her class, though, but that’s obvious, because she still hasn’t stopped distancing herself from everyone. The type-e case was rather mundane (I mean, a bat with type-E isn’t what you’d call exciting), but it did serve the purpose of showing that animals also can get type-E.

Mission-E – 02

by psgels, posted in Mission-E



Short Synopsis: Chinami and Maori investigate some rumours of Type-E being located in a random school in Hokkaido
Highlights: Interesting how Maori took over the role of “shy one”.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I didn’t blog the first season because at the time of airing, there were too many other good shows. But this time, since I can blog so many different shows this season, I’m not going to pass up this chance. The thing I liked about Code-E was the sharp contrast between the light moments and the climaxes, so I’m really wondering what this series can do now that it moved out of high-school and moved on to some sort of serious plot.

This episode was less impressive than the first one, but that’s to be expected. We do get plenty of new information, though. One of Chinami’s former classmates in the first season has now become a teacher at Maori’s school, and we now know that Sonomi is responsible for finding reports for people with type-E. Ever since the previous episode, I kept wondering how Chinami and Maori would find these people with type-E, and I hope that the future episodes shed some light into how Sonomi actually does her job, but it seems that Koutaro also plays a role in this.

One point of criticism is that the characters may have changed, but their voices have hardly matured. The voice-actors should have put a bit more effort in making their characters sound a bit older, because they still sound like the high-school girls of the first season, though this shouldn’t be a problem to get used to in a few episodes. This series probably isn’t going to make it to Studio Deen’s list of masterpieces, but it’s fun to watch nonetheless.

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!