Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou – 02

by psgels, posted in Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou



Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou will be the fourth series I’m going to blog this series. After Penguin Drum, it had the best first episode of the new season, but then again it did get extra time to prove itself. I was a bit worried about it because the episodes afterwards were slated for just 25 minutes, but there is no need to worry: this episode ended with a cliff-hanger, so episode length isn’t going to be the issue.

In any case, the reason I chose this over some of the other new series this season: the dialogue. The script of this is huge, and is amongst the best of the season. JC Staff are really a studio with their ups and downs, and especially Hidan no Aria and Twin Angel were worse than I ever could have imagined, but in comparison, Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou was really surprisingly solid. I’m not sure whether it’s ever going to go to a continuous story, but that doesn’t matter, really: it’s good enough with its individual stories.

I was really looking forward to this one because it pretty much reunites the anime creators of Asatte no Houkou, a wonderful coming of age drama, but even considering that this is completely different in style. The acting is very good, and especially Alice when she’s on a roll is very interesting to watch. The cat is full of colourful characters, and each episode has plenty of interesting and imaginative twists. It focuses just as much on its story as its characters, and that works out really well so far.

The worst part of this show is that it’s giving me Index II flashbacks, because it has the exact same fanservice scenes (only not as numerous): completely out of nowhere the main character is put into a situation where he sees one of the girls naked, it completely breaks the flow and afterwards it’s never mentioned again aside for one snide remark. That’s really the type of fanservice that I hate, because it serves no point or purpose other than being annoying. It feels slapped onto the series at the last minute by some higher-ups. It got really bad in Index II, but that was because it was only magnifying a lot of other issues I had with it. With Memo-Chou so far, it’s just the only flaw so far. If it can keep up this pace, it’ll only end up as a mild annoyance, I hope.

Whether this arc was as good as the first though, we’re going to have to wait until the next episode for that. This again was all of the necessary build-up, but the previous episode also only really fired off with its second half. It was pretty interesting though, and the yakuza have promise as long as they’re not portrayed too stereotypical too often. That big Yakuza was a nice start, though.
Rating: * (Good)

Mawaru Penguin Drum – 02

by psgels, posted in Mawaru Penguin Drum



The second series I’m blogging this season is another obvious one. Even during this season full of excellent series, this one stands at the top with its imagination, execution, style, elegance, characters and delivery. Again, it may not have the most realistic acting (that award is undoubtedly going to Usagi Drop), but the dialogue, the pacing, the writing: just about everything here hits the spot.

Now in a way it is awesome to have one series by Utena’s writer, and another by Utena’s director within the same year. Star Driver was already excellent as a fun action mecha series, based on weird concepts and all, but when just looking at the first two episodes, Penguin Drum really has it beaten. Whereas Star Driver was less serious than it actually seemed at first, Penguin Drum is more serious than it actually seems. On one hand you have these crazy and fun antics between the brothers and the penguins, and on the other hand this does deal about death quite easily, it features a stalker who somehow is related to everything, and even beyond that everything seems to be connected somehow.

There are a ton of hints and counter-references that I’m only noticing now on this second playthrough, like the girl losing her shoe, the train groper warnings, the hints at underwear. As for the latter, it also has the good kind of fanservice: it makes sense within the story, it’s whimsical and doesn’t bog the rest of the episode down. And it’s actually quite hilarious. The penguin’s quirks in this episode really were… unashamed.

Then there is the symbolism, with the huge amount of train references (I can already see numerous other railways coming up on that eye catch map as well), the penguin signs that are actually everywhere on the street (part of the story, or just a nice quirk?). Oh, and yeah: when Heartcatch Precure aired, I mentioned how it had the best transformation scenes since Utena. So yeah: the penguin transformation scene was awesome. Finally like Utena, we have another series that turns them into more than just the main character powering up.It’s still not as good as Utena of course, which had repetitions like, everywhere (it really was one of the select series out there who actually knew how to use repetition correctly), but it’s actually good that this series has similarities, but not too many. This will allow this series to stand on its own, and not in Utena’s shadow. Now all that’s left is to wait and enjoy whether or not this series lived up to the hype it built up.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Steins;Gate – 15

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



I wonder how the nature of time travel works in this series, especially with Okabe’s mysterious ability. Is this series like Noein, where all kinds of parallel dimensions exist right next to each other between those lines every time he (note: he, he’s not aware of anything Cern has been doing) interferes with the past, or is there just one true time-line that can be manipulated, and where Okabe is the only one aware of these changes? Is Okabe desperately searching for a time-line in which Mayuri doesn’t die, or is he desperately trying to bend that time-line into a direction where she doesn’t die?

In any case, mostly whenever fiction uses real world examples for bad guys, they’re always these terrorists, evil armies, villains, those kinds of things. Here though, the world is going to be taken over by an organization that is at the edge of modern science. It both makes sense and is very creative for Cern of all things to be involved (after all, the person who is the first to get his hands on the technology to time travel can pretty much doom the entire world, no matter what kind of position he/she’s in.

This episode was really dedicated to Suzuha and building her into the team. We’re now at the point where she doesn’t have any secrets from the main characters anymore. After the last episode I wondered why she was wary of Makise Kurisu, and not of the obvious villain of Shining Finger, but of course it makes sense: in her time, Makise Kurisu is famous, while shining Finger was just some goon who works in the background. With the past episodes though, a lot of history has already been changed, in the way that Makise Kurisu really isn’t likely to end up working at Cern right now, which means that Cern would need to find a different way or person to create their time machine. It’s probably not impossible for them at this point, though.

It’s also interesting that Suzuha’s plan was pretty much bogged down by her own flaws: the fact that she knew hardly anything about what really went on in 2010 and her shyness. It’s a shame that she didn’t know about the Cern hacking, otherwise she just could have screamed to Okabe to just stop hacking Cern. If she was less shy, she would have found a way to explain that she’s from the future, like what Okabe did in this episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Mawaru Penguin Drum, The Idolm@ster and Usagi Drop

by psgels, posted in Mawaru Penguin Drum, Some Quick First Impressions

Mawaru Penguin Drum

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a sister with poor health.
And in the end, this was a wonderful first episode. There was a ton of different stuff that stood out here, but the most important part is that on top of having a ton of neat ideas, this also has an incredibly charming cast of characters. The acting isn’t as subtle as with Kami-sama no Memo-Chou or Usagi Drop, but the characterization is so well directed and colourful that these still are some of the best characters of the season. The different characters play off each other wonderfully, making actual good use that they’re siblings and know each other for their entire lives. Now, on top of that it has a smashing soundtrack, the best background art of the season (and it knows this), it has very strong direction, makes excellent use of repetition, it’s actually got a number of new visual ideas, the transformation sequences kick a ludicrous amount of ass, the plot twist in this episode was an awesome and unexpectedly delivered way to start the story off and the final second… just the final second. This series really knows how to combine its mostly light-hearted and enjoyable mood with dark plot twists. This. Has style. And what’s better is that there are still 23 episodes left.
OP: Perhaps a bit too mellow, but greatly stylish.
ED: Weird visuals and a great song
Potential: 95%

The Idolm@ster

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a cyborg Frenchman wearing a frog suit and riding a unicycle for all we know.
Unlike Uta Prince, The Idolm@ster actually tries out something new. The problem is that I have no idea whether that new idea it’s trying out is actually any good or well executed. Here’s the thing: this series takes the format of an interview: we have a guy with a camera running around, asking questions of all of the idols in this series in order to establish everyone. The guy with the camera is completely bland and doesn’t even speak (seriously: all his lines are just subtitles), and in this manner this series tries to show its huge cast of characters. Now, there are several problems with that. First of all: this series isn’t really clear what shots are shot by an in-story camera and which ones are out-of story shots: the guy walks around, you can see the girls talk to him and answer his questions, but the view jumps around so much, even to shots that are just completely impossible to film with an actual camera. This series doesn’t establish which ones belong to the camera guy and which ones don, unless the lead character also possesses magical teleport powers or something. Second of all: this show has a huge cast. There are like, 20 different characters. This show tries to give character to all of them, AT THE SAME TIME. This first episode is obviously nowhere near enough to make them anything more than blatant stereotypes, and the voice actors didn’t really make things better, as they pretty much acted out the exact stereotype that their character was meant to represent. And yes, there are quite a number of annoying characters here. Still: this is something new and I at least appreciate this series for going in a bit of a different direction, and the chaos of this episode did have its charms beyond the annoying bits. I’m a fan of series with large casts when done well, but the IdolM@ster is really going to have to put in effort to make everyone step away from their stereotype. It isn’t impossible though: there is still hope.
ED: Unfortunately, this one turned out to be nothing more than generic J-pop.
Potential: 50%

Usagi Drop

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is forced to live together with his aunt.
Usually introduction episodes are meant to give a taste of what’s to come. With Usagi Drop though, things are very different from usual: it starts off with a funeral. It shows people together who normally would never be together, it shows them in mindsets they usually would never be in, and most of the people we saw here in this episode are likely to never appear again. It’s definitely an interesting way to open up a story, and this episode really showed some nice things you can do with that format. There already was a lot of implied character development, plus the characters played really well off each other. This was realistic. The drama was really subtle: there was none of the overacting you usually see in anime. This episode especially rocked in how it let everything play off naturally: it didn’t force anything: it just established its characters and gave them the opportunity to let things play out themselves. In the next episode we should really see the direction where this series wants to head for, but this episode sold me already. This is solid like Noitamina should be. Now all that’s left is to actually create a full story for 11 episodes. Plus, this series does deserve plus points for again including a main character who isn’t in his teens or twenties.
OP: Finally another series that goes back to Noitamina’s tradition of weird OPs. It’s quite a charming one.
ED: Relaxing song with pretty neat images
Potential: 85%

Steins;Gate – 14

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Okay, so I do think that Okabe was overacting a tad too much in the first half of this episode. This stands out more than usual because the acting in this series was always so great, but that’s where the melodrama got a bit too much, especially because it caused him to not think of the obvious solution of using the time machine to travel further back in time. I also think it was a bit cheap for this episode to just “announce” that Okabe tried every possible way to save Mayuri: I understand that it was for time issues, but I would have liked to have seen Okabe to try some more and exploit other possibilities.

On the other hand though, this episode got right back on track when Christina returned to the main picture. Her level-headedness was exactly what Rintarou needed, and the plot turned really interesting with the actual introduction of leaping beyond the 2,5 hours of the previous episode. The big twist at the end that Suzuha turned out to be John Titor makes perfect sense. The prospect of severely altering time in the next episode also makes yet again for one hell of a cliff-hanger.

I do have to wonder what Suzuha meant with that the Y2K problem was one of the moments where world lines greatly converged based upon the choices made. Of course I was only 12 when it happened, but was it really as important as the Gulf War? I rather would have guessed that 9/11, the invention of the internet or the birth of social media would have counted as that.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Nurarihyon no Mago – Sennen Makyou, Sacred Seven and Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou

by psgels, posted in Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou, Some Quick First Impressions

Nurarihyon no Mago – Sennen Makyou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character leads the youkai.
Okay, this season is definitely being adapted by different people. This episode fitted this series much, much better. It’s like, an improvement in every way. You can really see that the director of Hyakko worked on this: it has the same timing, the same camera angles, and there are actually jokes put in the lighter moments that are really similar to Hyakko’s delivery (oh and for the record: I really liked Hyakko and consider it among the better high school comedies out there). What’s more though, the animation also really got an upgrade, and actually looks really good. Characters look less like cardboard boxes, and the creators even found a way to get Rikuo’s hair to move. Finally after Giant Killing we get to see again that Studio Deen DOES know to create some eye candy. As for the story: I have no idea whether or not it’ll be better, because this episode animated a chapter that the first season forgot to animate and inserted at the weirdest point in the final episode. Peoeple kept promising that Rikuo’s friends would play a much lesser roles in the later arcs, but this episode still was all about them, so I’m not sure where they think they’re going with this.
ED: Neat visuals, catchy instruments, though cheesy vocals.
Potential: 75%

Sacred Seven

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the legendary hero who will defeat evil.
Here’s the thing with this first episode: this series needs 24 episodes. With that, it can make a great plot and cast of characters. Without it, it’ll probably have a difficult time. With this series, I really would have liked it if the creators put a big more imagination into the setting. I know who wrote this and the creators could certainly have been able to do something more than just another high school mecha show. But the thing remains that this episode was quite solid. The action is good, the characters are a bit emo, but with the right development they can really work (hence the 24 episodes) and it will probably make an entertaining, yet unremarkable series. The big problem is that it has very little that makes it stand out aside from small things like the OP and the fact that the main character is riding around on a very tiny motorbike. Those were really cool, but they also were just gimmicks. This show takes too many elements from other mecha series, and doesn’t even go with the most interesting ones. It lacks a signature, and will the creators be able to create this during the rest of the series?
OP: Yuki Kajiura delivers again.
ED: Yuki Kajiura delivers again.
Potential: 70%

Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a girl who is Not in Employment, Education or Training and who works as a detective.
Holy crap. This was well written. I mean, heck: this was incredibly well produced. Rock solid in every single way. The premise of this series of yet another guy who finds yet another genius detective does far from justice to this episode. The cases and especially the dialogues are intelligent, the side-characters all are portrayed with exceptional detail and are miles away from the usual stereotypes. The story in this episode was great and really well built-up as well, but in particular it was the voice acting that really made this episode shine and bring the characters alive. This is a series which has episodes of 45 minutes, and it really makes use of that to make everything play out slowly. This was creative and the few jokes it put into this episode really worked. My only complaint is JC Staff forcing in their usual incredibly out of place fanservice shots at the end of the episode. They really need to stop doing that, because that was the only blemish on an otherwise consistently excellent first episode.
OP: Unremarkable music, but inspired visuals.
ED: Hell yeah, rock and roll really well done. Great visual direction as well.
Potential: 95%

Steins;Gate – 13

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Okay, so I’ve complained that the characters in this series are too one-sided. Okay, I take that back. With such brilliant acting as in this episode, Okabe and Mayuri have more than shown that they are awesome characters. This episode was just amazing.

Let alone the plot twist at the end of this episode, it rocked because of Okabe and Mayuri’s rock-solid performance. The trust between everyone also was incredibly well detailed, and I especially liked Mayuri as she got dragged around without knowing what’s going on, and how Okabe traced back what she had been doing in the past episode. With this episode the relationship between the two of them really shined.

The biggest questions were asked at the beginning of the episode, and most of them revolve around the part-timer: why didn’t she warn about the obvious villain of Shining Finger, but instead was so hung up over Makise Kurisu? She seemed to know her when she talked to her with those cryptic lines. Also, “42”? Was that really meant to reference the answer to life, the universe and everything or is it just technobabble that we’re only supposed to understand over a few months?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Steins;Gate – 12

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



And wit this, the second half of Steins;Gate has begun. That twist at the end is bound to change everything for this series. I also love how well animated that final part was. This series is a pretty neat example of delivering great graphics with a limited budget.

Now, it’s still the question as to whether Mayuri is really gone or not (Makise also revived once and we still don’t know why), but I’m really interested in what that scene was between her and Okabe where they were 70 million years in the past, or how Mayuri seemed to know that something was going to happen to her. This episode really was building her up to be some very interesting character for the future.

Beyond that: Okabe actually suggested to publish the results of the time machine. That also would have been quite an interesting concept: how would it get used? How do you prevent it from falling into the wrong hands? And how would people notice that something has actually changed? Are there more people like Okabe around who retain their consciousnesses throughout different timezones? The only one who has been hinted to be the same is Shining Finger, and perhaps Suzuha.

Overall I like the balls that this series has to keep its cards to itself for so long. This show actually did a great job of building up with its first half. Sure, it was annoying at times and the characters could have been more versatile, but it built up its setting really well, the slice of life moments were good and it managed to put a lot of meaning into it plot twists of changing time. Now, for the second half, I do hope that the creators don’t end up fully abandoning those small things like the shopping scenes. That had something really down to earth that I really liked so far.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 11

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Looking back on this season, I really have to say that its big strength is storytelling: showing interesting stories, and deliver them well, ranging from the wonderful pacing of Ano Hana, the impeccable timing and dialogue of Hyouge Mono, the great ideas of Tiger & Bunny and C, the outrageous Deadman Wonderland and Kaiji, the action-packed X-Men, the really well detailed Hana-Saku Iroha, and of course Stein’s Gate with its excellent delivery of its plot twists and atmosphere.

This episode took a step away from this focus in order to focus on one of the main characters, Christina, and show her background. At least, or so I thought until Okabe got that phone message out of nowhere, followed by a very artistic and stunning piece of animation about him running back. Seriously. That was good. That’s how these artistic animation bits should be used: instead of random clutter they bring out even more out of the characters than what conventional animation would be able to do.

Really, the ideas of this series rock. It’s also the way it gradually became clear at the end that Cern (I still refuse to call it Sern) pretty much let themselves get hacked (probably using its data as bait in order to find out about the microwave). I also like how this show is being really vague on who exactly is from Cern, and whether or not that mysterious message sent to Okabe was from one of them. Also, did Okabe check the number where it came from? It didn’t look like it came from anyone he knew, or there must be characters in this show using multiple cell phones.

As for the annoying parts in this episode, I’m not going to list the “accidentally walking in the shower”-scene because it was well built up for once. It’s just about the most terrible twist you can pull right now, but at the very least I am glad that at least the creators put some meaning behind it as an anti-climax. Seriously, this is more than just about any other show that pulled this crap during the past number of years. Instead, what annoyed me about this episode was the point where the characters started talking in various internet memes I didn’t understand up to the pint where the dialogue became hard to follow due to all of the random rambling.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 10

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Okay, so my post about Stein’s Gate 09 was a complete disaster. I had problems with the episode but blamed them on something completely stupid and irrelevant. I still hold that Daru needs to shut up, though, but more on that below.

First of all I want to say that before watching this episode, I got intrigued by a message of PL on the shoutbox, where he (she?) claimed that “Suspension of belief cracked”. With that, I assume that that referred to the scene in which Okarin assaulted Rukako. And yeah… that was out of place. If everything around Okabe changed, wouldn’t it at least have crossed his mind that the thing they tried to change in the first place? I mean, it’s a ridiculous scenario, but when the entire area I lived in changed dramatically, I’d at least consider buying flying pigs.

In a way, the more realistic a show is, the more these small inconsistencies tend to stand out. That’s what makes these kinds of series tricky to do, but that does make them really interesting. This episode may indeed not have been the best of the series so far, but I still really liked the turns that the plot took in the end.

In any case, let me try to actually explain exactly what has been bugging me about this series. It’s got nothing to do with plotholes or cliches that may or may not be there; that kind of suspense of disbelief is just the effect it has. Instead this is about storytelling versus characters. Steins;Gate is brilliantly told. It’s a pity that it chose the same season to air in as Hyouge Mono so that it can’t exactly boast the best dialogue of the season, but the camera work, pacing and atmosphere: I’ve said plenty of times that they’re amazing.

When looking at the characters though, I’m missing something. I keep praising other shows this season for adding to their cast, and giving their characters more depth by developing them, but I can’t really do that with this series. In fact, this episode finally took an in-depth look at one of the characters: SuzUha. With this episode her character finally changed, or at least our perception of this. In the meantime: all we know about Okabe is that he once got sick in the past. Mayuri meanwhile has a sad past that caused her to remain with Okabe, Daru meanwhile is a typical Otaku and it feels like all Christina has been doing is either be quiet or act tsundere.

Instead this show has been fleshing out its characters, and that’s another thing that it can be really good at. As much as I dislike Daru, I really like how he in this episode went out to a meeting of various members of a forum. The times that the characters spend shopping and doing the laundry are also quite cute. But at the same time they feel repetitive. Especially Okarin, Daru and Christina are guilty of this. Okabe’s monologues were once fresh, but after ten episodes they sound too much like each other. Daru was better in this episode, but generally he feels very repetitive whenever he’s not involved in the plot (I also realized that he’s voiced by Tomokazu Seki, and oh my god: he’s really forcing his voice here, making the acting of this guy just bad).

In short: too many characters are just repeating themselves too much. They mostly tend to shine whenever the plot is involved, but that’s because the plot is so incredibly good, not because the characters themselves are enjoyable to watch (or not as much as I’d like anyway).

The big question is of course: is this intentional? With 24 episodes, this could just be a form of build-up. The characters right now are slightly annoying because the creators are building them up, to give them some good depth in the second half. This has been done quite a few times, but there also have been plenty of shows who didn’t. The repetition in the banter right now however is something that’s irking me.

And why did I get a deja vu when I just wrote that?
Rating: ** (Excellent)