Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

Death Parade – 03

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Death Parade

Well this isn’t quite what I expected. This episode was a much more lighthearted fare with it being about love. It was better than the last episode but still not to the level I expected from this series. The game this time barely factored into the story at all. The twist on it was that they were bowling with each others hearts. It didn’t really factor into anything besides a truly disturbing moment we’re the man was getting turned on from having his fingers inside the area of her heart. Just…seriously what is wrong with you? But things looked up when the arbitrators whispered about a secret the girl was keeping. My mind started spinning tales from her being a serial killer or her being a man. So in truth it was my own fault that the reveal was so lackluster to me. But really it was something so small that I didn’t get why everyone made a big deal out of it. So if you have not watched the episode yet I recommend to stop reading here as I am about to spoil it.

Alright my main problem here is that this girl wanted to catch this guy’s attention so much that she got full plastic surgery in order to look like a girl from his childhood. Small inquiry here. If you were willing to go that far then why was talking to him out of the question? Would that have been too embarrassing? And hey Instead of getting full facial surgery why not just go for a boob job? If anime has taught me anything it’s that is bound to catch his attention and it would have been cheaper too. I can sort of get what the message here. The two just needed to talk to each other and only got the chance when they died. But I just feel the extreme she went to was just too extreme. Well the two got their date and we learned that both people can go to heaven which means of course that both can be damned to hell as well. This is info that will make the next games interesting.

I wouldn’t have minded this episode if it was in the middle of the series. In fact it does feel like a middle episode as Decim and Onna seem oddly used to working together. I found it strange when Decim remarked that Onna was getting used to the game. Especially when to our knowledge this was her first time working as assistant. This is bad as I was looking forward to seeing the two warm up to each other and build chemistry. But the story seems to have skipped that process. In fact this is my main problem with this episode. I wouldn’t have minded a change of pace if this was the seventh or eighth episode. After a few grim episodes having a light hearted game would have been refreshing. But here it’s oddly out of place. We have only started and the characters are treating it as though we have been through a number of games. The two death games so far have kept things on the light side. I hope the next episodes delve more into the dark parts of humanity. Next time we got an arcade game and things look to be more on the side that I like.

Death Parade – 02

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Death Parade

Well this isn’t the best start. I must admit to being disappointed in this weeks Death Parade. Mainly because it was essentially a recap of the first episode. This episode was from the perspective of two characters who were watching the events of the first episode. With a white haired ponytail girl introducing another to how the game works. This bugs me in a number of ways. One for being a complete rehash of the first episode, even using the same animation. Two, for spelling everything out. The first episode needed no explanation. Anything the ponytailed girl mentions could have easily been figured from the first episode with a little thinking. Three, explaining the process. Some things are better left in the dark. When you start uncovering the process to how it works it loses it’s mysticism. And four, removing the ambiguity of the last episode. The last episode allowed you to make your own conclusion to what happened. That was great, as in most situations like this there is no clear answer. But then this episode goes and just gives you the answer on a silver plate. Here you go, no more wondering. It’s aggravating.

However there are good things here as well. I quite like that Decim aknowledged that he may have made a mistake in his judgement. Meaning that an arbitrator can potentially send the wrong person to hell.(or Void…sigh…I prefered Hell. Why can’t we keep that ambiguous?) That opens up great possibilities for later episodes. Onna(The girl that white ponytail was talking to) is going to be Decim’s assistant for future episodes which is perfect as she is showing herself to be the emotional compass to contrast Decim’s detached demeanor. Though that may be incorrect. Decim may not show much on his face but there are things about him that make him not quite indifferent. His reaction to his mistake was certainly telling. Plus I wonder what does he do with his doll hobby? Though while Onna and Decim are interesting I can’t say I am fond of the ponytailed girl, otherwise known as Nona. She mainly played the role of the exposition device in this episode but her overall personality is basically just being the boss of the group. If she’s going to be in future episodes then she will need more characteristics. That interest in the human mentality she briefly mentioned for example. It would be interesting to see her jump into future games and change the rules in order to make things more twisted for her own amusement. Well next week we have another death game and I personally am looking forward to it.

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi – 11 & 12

by psgels, posted in Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

God?! Screw God! We’ve got a timeloop story that we need to wrap up!

But granted, that ending was really quite good. It again made use of this show’s weird talent make random characters sympathetic from out of absolutely nowhere by suddenly blaming the source of the timeloop to be the classmates of Alice (yes, Alice, don’t ask me why he has a girl’s name) and Dee.

Perhaps basing your story on a misunderstanding isn’t the strongest, but for what it did, the series wrapped that subplot up really nicely. It wasn’t about the misunderstanding anyway. The main issue of the arc was escapism: fearing change, people stayed in the timelooped world because it was safe. You could really see that with Scar and Yuri: the environment felt so safe and trusted to them.

What made this ending was the point at which it was time to move on for everyone. The time to head back into the real world again after 14 years. Alice ‘surviving’ was a bit of a cop-out, but yeah: that’s a bit the premise of this series: he’s still dead, he just lives as a ghost and Ai ust doesn’t bury him.

And there the series just ends. I would have preferred some sort of epilogue, but at this point I think that the ending here is that eveyrone just keeps living until they die, and then keep wandering around until all of the gravekeepers have buried everyone. Quite a bleak ending there if you look at it that way.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi – 07 – 10

by psgels, posted in Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

One of the things I love about this series: it’s like this big road trip. People travel togeter and people lack purpose in this world so some of them just go along for the ride. That’s quite rare for travelling series like this. Also, when one of the main character runs off for a few episodes in the spotlights, off screen development happens for the rest of the cast. Also very appreciated in making this cast come alive by showing that they do more than what you see on camera. Episode 9 was a wonderful example of this where the focus of the episode just kept changing. This series perhaps jumps around, but it’s being very creative in doing so.

Yeah, things come out of nowhere. I don’t care. The proposal of episode 9 was awesome. It’s bizarre: whenever this show pulls something out of its ass like that, it feels like it fits. Like, scarily well.

Also, why did the time-loop in episode ten decide to reset everything on my birthday. I’m scared now….

Now, let’s talk about the big picture now. For a long while the show dealt with many different people and their stories relating to the setting. Right now, we’re getting character development. Alltogether, this makes for quite a rounded series. Both the setting and characters are really intriguing, and are well developed; very charming. This series obviously uses the vague type of storytelling: it doesn’t tell everything and you need to read between the lines for a lot of stuff.

But yeah… as for the actual concrete story… I’m not sure whether we’re really getting to the “saving the world”-part. My big fear will be the ending here. Please dont make “god” some kind of evil end boss or something.

The biggest downside of these four episodes? The start of episode 07, which somehow succeeded in bringing in a school and a bath scene again… are we nowhere safe?
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi – 05 & 06

by psgels, posted in Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

It took me a while to realize and all, but Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi actually has a very good soundtrack. Its dreamlike tunes are just the perfect touch that this series needs on top of what it already does right: its thought-provoking themes and charming characters.

This series really does its random stories right: it makes them count, rather than make them just boring filler. In these two episodes, it explored its themes even further, now that the characters are in the city of the dead. At this point the creators have twisted the meaning of “death” so much, that people are seeing it in a completely different way. Especially now that living is so harsh, there are more and more people who willingly choose it, now that it’s not final anymore. Sure, you’re a zombie and all, but actually knowing that you’ll be fully conscious after you die makes a pretty big difference here. It’s different from reincarnation, though: this series really stresses that if you die, you don’t get a second chance at living. You really become a zombie aside from the fact that you don’t need brains or don’t lose your mind.

It uses all of this to be very heart-warming. What’s really weird about this series is how Ai collects her travel companions. Every single time, it’s like out of nowhere: oh hey, we’re travelling together now, without any prior hints whatsoever. The last part is what gets me the most: not even a bit of foreshadowing? It’s also a bit weird that they just “handed” that baby over to this random gravekeeper who didn’t really do anything throughout the entire arc. Still, three characters who vaguely met each other: I can actually see them just end up travelling together in this kind of world. For comfort, at the very least.

I think that loneliness is a big underlying theme in this series. It’s never mentioned fully, but this series is full of characters who are alone: they are fundamentally different from the people around them, living people stuck among the dead, or dead people stuck among the living (nt to mention those gravekeepers who are neither of those). Then there is the way in which no children can be born anymore, destroying the wishes for people to have children. This episode showed the way out for a lot of people: a place in which everyone can just blend in and get rid of loneliness.

When you watch this without paying attention, it will feel like a bad show. But seriously, when I start thinking about it I really realize how solid this storyline is put together!
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi – 03 & 04

by psgels, posted in Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

This series could have gone wrong so easily. Seriously, from the outside it looks like your average show with a bishie and a cute girl, but it’s just consistently interesting. What this show is really good at is playing with the motivations of its characters: everyone here has this interesting backstory. And it just keeps getting better.

What this show is very bad at is making its action scenes believable. I mean I know she got help and all at the end of that third episode, but a 12-year old should not be able to smash through a bunch of well-muscled adults so easily. Even if they are zombies. But yeah, I can’t really stay critical at that scene, because everything else really had me charmed like no other. I did not expect that turn of events, let alone that that guy died!

And then there was episode four. I mean, at first it was a bid dodgy what the creators were trying to do there with the characters traveling around and all, but they really wasted no time to further explore the setting. This episode was most likely unrelated to the plot and all (aside from perhaps the last part), but it continues to use its setting really well, with that huge city full of dead people, showing how the walking corpses try to deal with the fact that they’re not alive anymore.

But yeah, this is a great mystery-series: it makes you hungry, it brings the kinds of twists you don’t expect, and the revelations are predictable, yet they are brought in a fresh way that you still don’t see coming when they do.
Rating: 5,5/8 (Excellent)

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi – 02

by psgels, posted in Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

Okay, at this point I’m pretty sure which series I’m going to blog this season. But first a few short comments about the ones I’m not going to blog:
– Free is well made for a bishie series but I don’t trust the creators to actually use the characters well enough.
– Gifuu Doudou hilariously camp, but ultimately a one-trick pony
– Inu to Hasami is badly produced
– Servant X Service is great, but I already know that I don’t have inspiration to write full entries about it.
– Dagan Ronpa… I’m going to decide whether to blog that one after episode 3 where I can see how the creators handle the detective part, because I don’t trust that yet (this also depends on how fast I can catch up to Uchuu Kyoudai…).
– Fantasista Doll is oddly interesting, but I don’t have enough inspiration to write about its bland parts.
– Stella is just entertainment, not really the right show to blog every week.
– Blood Lad is fun, but I miss substance which will make it a bit hard to write about.
– Gen’Ei is too bland and tries too hard.
– Watamote seems like too much of a one-trick pony, which is not good to write about every week.
– Kimi no Iru Machi is together with Dagan Ronpa the one that I’m the most doubtful about. Both have the potential to become really good, or really, really bad. Do I want to watch enough to find out about that?

In the meantime, this is the third Kamisama-series that I’ve blogged, and the fifth Kamisama-series that I’m going to watch, after Kamisama Dolls, Hajimemashita, Kazoku and no Memo-Chou. And that’s a good way to describe this series: a mix between stuff that has been done before, together with new and fresh stuff.

Let me get back on Gen’Ei wo Kakeru Taiyou in particular, because it does bear some similarities with Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi, in the way that it puts a little girl and forces these very dramatic things upon her. In this show it works, in Gen’Ei, it doesn’t. Why is that, even though both are pretty dramatic and use their protagonist being young as shock factor.

When I looked beyond, I realized the difference is that in comparison, Gen’Ei is bland. On one hand you have a young girl who grew up in the middle of zombies and has taken the task upon herself to become a respectable undertaker. On the other you have a high school girl who finds a bunch of girls who fight for her and that pretty much all look the same. Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi spices up its story: it comes up with creative twists and sides to both the setting and the characters, and that actually makes it very interesting, whereas Gen’Ei to mee seems to rely just too much on its shock factor without making the rest likable. Shock factor is supposed to be used as a condiment, not the main course.

I often go on about series repeating themselves too much, but there is also such a thing as “stealing well”. And to me, that goes to this series. The idea of there not being children? Been done before. Old guy (32!?!) travelling together with young girl? Been done before. Zombies? Been there, done that. However the way in which this show uses these themes is new, and it doesn’t feel like it copied these things out of laziness, but rather because it was a good way to get to the ideas it wanted to explore. I mean the concept of God just saying “screw it” and refusing to kill people. That’s pretty damn interesting!

This show does have flaws so far. The biggest so far is that a lot of the characters seem just devices to tell the story; their acting still feels wooden and they are used A LOT for exposition. That needs to improve, this series needs a bit more of “show, don’t tell”. The big challenge for this series will be to correctly explore its themes throughout its limited airtime. Create interesting stories around this setting, instead of just randomly filling up time.
Rating: 4,5/8 (Good)

Zetsuen no Tempest Review – 87.5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Zetsuen no Tempest



Spiral was a series that was all about mind games. The characters had to battle people who used puzzles and mind games. Zetsuen no Tempest is the next logical step from its original author: a world-shaking plot that can decide the fate of the entire world, but somehow it managed to find a way to make it entirely dependent on the logic of a bunch of teenagers. It was glorious!

This may sound weird, but really: the characters in Zetsuen no Tempest really are excellent. All of them are fresh and witty, and they play off each other really well. I mean, it’s nothing new that series put a lot of consequences on teenaged emotions, but it has never been done with a cast that works so well together, not to mention with a cast that tries so hard to put logic into the plot as well. The two lead males in particular look like your average male hero at first, yet they turn out to be completely different.

I have sometimes called this “mindfuck, the anime”. This series really loves its surprises in its plot. And while it’s not the first series to attempt some mind-screws, it did manage to pull them off in a unique way. The key here was how it played with its own logic. On one hand, it took itself entirely seriously, on the other it deliberately just ignored it and just went wild with emotions. This dual battle is a really big theme in this series. Logic versus emotions, Genesis versus Exodus, Magic versus Technology, Tempest versus Hamlet (this will all make sense when you see the series). My one complaint though is that it takes a while to get going, and the ending is not what it could have been. The goodness in this series really is in the middle.

Also it also helps that this series has an incredibly epic soundtrack. No, seriously. The animation may be normal, but the soundtrack is just amazing. Right from the start, it just bombards you with complex and classically inspired tracks that just keep coming.
One-Sentence Review: If you’re looking for a good mind-screw with a godly soundtrack and fun characters, then this is a series to check out!
Suggestions:
– Death Note
– Un-Go
– Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra

Zetsuen no Tempest – 24

by psgels, posted in Zetsuen no Tempest

From the New World and Psycho Pass had endings that really impressed me. The downside to that is that they did raise the bar on endings quite a bit now. You can’t just defeat the evil monster and do nothing beyond that. You have to do something special now as well. I guess that that’s why I was underwhelmed by the first half of this episode, because that was exactly that. Not to mention: this series prides itself inits logic. A fight scene ending doesn’t have the same impact compared to if they would have based it on logic.

The second half of this episode was much more satisfying as an epilogue, though. This really showed everyone being able to move on, and quite a few characters have changed their ways or beliefs thanks to what happened in the series. Aika also showed again that she was a really compelling character to watch. She was a character who was dead at the start of the series, and yet her impact is all over it. She definitely was my favorite character here.

Tempest was great. It’s a shame that there is not going to be a bones series next season, because they are always interesting, even when they’re weaker. But really, their last weak series was Heroman for me. I eagerly await their next work.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Zetsuen no Tempest – 22 & 23

by psgels, posted in Zetsuen no Tempest

And these are the penultimate episodes for Zetsuen no Tempest, with its finale about to air tomorrow. They weren’t about a mindfuck, but instead about a complete role reversal from what you’d expect: Hanemura gets to play the hero, while everyone else plays backup. It might seem insignificant, but I find this really refreshing to see: it isn’t trying to force its main characters into the spotlights. Instead it’s offering everyone his chance for this.

And I really like Hanemura by the way, for a character who got introduced in the second half of this series. He is a very good example of a wimpy looking character done right. First of all because amongst the cast, he was often the only one stupid enough to state the obvious. Plus, his little outburst in episode 22 was pretty damn cool for him. I really loved the irony there: this series prides itself with its focus on logic. And here Hanemura just coms and kicks some emotions back into the characters.

What also was really refreshing was the way episode 23 ended: when they were all rounding up those crewmembers on the boats, I was really wondering why everyone just complied like sheep. I mean, I know that they put bombs on the ships and all, but the way in which everyone just complied neatly felt a bit like they were all just plot devices. To think that nobody was crazy enough to try something… And they did. It’s not the first time Yoshino has been shot to near-death, but this is slightly different than before, with all of the build-up of “we’re not going to care about you or anything”.

Now, as for the actual ending… Zetsuen no Tempest really was an awesome series, but I do not think that it will have the strongest ending out of the “Big Four” of the Autumn Season (Psycho Pass, Tempest, Jojo, From the New World). Out of all of the penultimate episodes, I’d say that this one has the least hints that it’s going to become something special. But who knows? It might surprise us again. I’d love it if it did that.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)