Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

Steins;Gate – 09

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



This episode was wonderfully atmospheric and paced. I really liked the parts about time travel that go more and more in-depth. There were some things that bugged me about this episode, and it was more than just inaccurate fansubs.

Steins;Gate is a harem, but beyond that it doesn’t suffer from any badly used tropes or one-dimensional characters. Mostly. After nine episodes, there is one harem cliche that gets more and more on my nerves: the best friend, and the lengths that the writers go through in order to make this guy an unlikable asshole, or in other words: someone who has no chance of stealing away all of the females from the main character. Harem cliches on their own aren’t bad, but it really gets to me when creators are sacrificing their characters, just to adhere to these cliches. Daru is a cliche for the sake of a cliche.

My second problem is with the ending of this show, because I couldn’t relate to it in the slightest. Tora no Ana shops (I suspect that those are doujinshi shops) are gone from Akiba. Okay. So what? Are we supposed to feel sad about that? That entire part, including that cat-girl whose name I’ve forgotten at the moment were completely ridiculous in this episode.

Nevertheless, this episode juggled around the butterfly effect brilliantly. Shining Finger also was great: first to have her run off with the IBM 5100, only to take it away from her again through another D-Mail. I also really liked Mayuri’s subtle developments. That really was a hint that the creators are planning to use her for something interesting.
Rating: * (Good)

Steins;Gate – 08

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Oh god. Not the cliff-hangers again?! The end of this episode promises many frustrating weeks of waiting what’s going to happen next. Seriously, the end of this episode made me really hungry to see what happens next.

I loved this episode. It was pretty much nothing but Okarin experimenting with making simple changes to the past, some of which failed and some of which succeeded. The ones that did succeed kept taking things a bit further, though, all in ways that seem pretty strange at first. Why did a simple message to change cell phones prevent that cell phone woman to join Okarin? Or did she change something else and just didn’t show it to people? Also, the idea of using pagers to send messages seventeen years back into the past, on something as vague changing genders.

Also, eight episodes in, and I have to say that I really like the cast. Sure, they have their annoying moments,but they’re very well balanced together, filling in for each others’ flaws. I’m usually not into characters doing random things unless I find the characters interesting, and that’s exactly the case here: even when they’re just shopping for bread, I’m interesting in what these characters are doing. This episode in particular just kept juggling its characters around, showing a bit of all of them.

There’s one thing that just keeps catching my attention though, and that especially stands out while making screenshots: this is one series that doesn’t care about consistency in its drawings. In fact, the entire season is full of distorted faces. Especially in the post-quake era it just shows how difficult it is to consistently make the faces of your characters expressive and believable. The shows that do this the best out of this spring season are Hyouge Mono and Ano Hana, by the way.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 07

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



This episode reminded me of why this show originally caught my attention: the atmosphere. It’s what ties the story, dialogue, characters and visuals all together here. And looking back, it’s this that was missing from the previous episodes. My guess is that it had to do with the silly dialogue not blending in with the story: it was well written, but disrupted the mood. And admittedly, it started to get repetitive.

this episode though knew exactly when it needed to be laid back and when it needed to be serious. The repetition of the dialogue didn’t even matter here: as soon as Rintarou started to send that message about the lottery to the past, this episode had a tight atmosphere that never went away. Beyond that I also liked that this episode cleverly used the time that Rintarou waiting for John Tytor by sending in calls from the other characters, and how that little chat with the part timer downstairs about brainwashing lead to her getting in trouble with her boss. Now those are well timed and very nicely blended into the script, as opposed to the “let’s now devote X minutes to building up and goofing off so that we can focus Y minutes on something serious”.

On top of that, I also really like it when a series only reveals parts of a characters actions, yet leaves enough hints to give us viewers a clue of what he’s been doing. We never got to see Rintarou’s reaction to the message he received about the Lotto, at the same time he probably got pretty excited about it, so much that he delayed his other plans for about half a day.Because of this they were only at the stage of trying to think of what to send back in the new timeline.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 06

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



I like this show a lot, but its characters do take turns in annoying me. Last time it was Mayuri, this episode it was Hashida. I never really liked watching anime about anime otaku, and this series unfortunately did not change that. I don’t mind this guy when he’s useful, but this episode didn’t have any role for him, so he just kept making bad sex jokes and kept reminding me why I’m glad that I am not an otaku myself…

In any case, watching this series shows how different a good visual novel adaptation can be from other anime. The big difference is that Visual novels come out all at once, compared to mangas, light novels and anime, who have to sell themselves with their first installment. The result is that this show can take its time in building up. Of course I’m going to rant if it turns out that the creators took too much time for these first episodes, but that’s something for later.

In any case, the previous episode was meant to leak out what Cern has been doing. This was probably meant to leak out what the lead characters have been doing. It perhaps wasn’t the most interesting episode, though I like Shining finger’s quirks for now, especially in combination with Hououin. This show may not have the best chemistry between character of the season (that award is reserved for Tiger & Bunny), nor the most likable eccentric main character (that one goes to Hyouge Mono), but the dialogue remains well written. Now it’s up to the rest of the series to actually make use of it.

The thing that intrigues me the most about this episode was that dream. Was it simple foreshadowing, or more than that?
Rating: * (Good)

Steins;Gate – 05

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



In this episode: the clear hint that the main characters aren’t what they seem. Makise Kurisu apparently did something to Suzyha Amane but this was somewhere in the future so she didn’t actually do that yet. In other words this episode was foreshadowing things that are about to happen. The interesting thing is that we were promised an dimensional time conspiracy thriller, and here this series is going “screw that for now, first I want to set everything up correctly!”

Now, the people of Cern are a bunch of idiots for storing reports that could cause a public outrage… on an unencrypted mail server. I mean, all you need is one hacker who is crazy enough to try and break into a world famous organization (which, let’s face it, is very likely to happen), and you’re screwed. It’s a good thing that Okarin is such a proud idiot that he refuses to let anyone else in on his discoveries. At the same time though, the way in which this show keeps talking about them but never shows who they actually are is definitely good for the mystery in this show.

Mayuri meanwhile… got on my nerves in this episode. It’s both that her voice actress is very monotonously ditzy, as well as how she hasn’t really been useful, has she? Amongst Makise and Okarin’s banter, and the knowledge of the other characters, she feels out of place. All she has is this sad past and all, but so far the plot would be exactly the same if she was simply removed. I hope that the creators are building her up for something other than just a damsel in distress.
Rating: * (Good)

Supernatural The Animation Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Supernatural was definitely an interesting experiment: produce 22 straight to DVD episodes, based on a popular American TV-series. Supernatural adapts the first two seasons of the Live-Action series, and delivers quite an excellent storyline in the process.

The series is episodic, and follows the “First half Random stories, second half plot”-format. In the first half it takes a look at all sorts of supernatural phenomena, and it always tries to make things more or deeper than what they seem at first. Some stories are better than others, but they always make sure to also build up to an overall storyline in some way, or give mode depth to the main characters. It really gets going however when the second half arrives and the characters and main plot go and stand into the spotlight. There is a ton of character development and every episode just finds some way of making things more interesting.

It’s a series that loves to give its own spin on familiar concepts. At first you might think that this show has a lot of tropes, but it always uses them significantly different from what you’d expect. This series is fresh, and makes use of it.

The big flaw of Supernatural is that at times the acting is a bit stiff, that leads to a number of cheesy scenes at times, especially in the first half of the show. As the series goes on though, the character development more than makes up for it. This series especially rocks in how it shows many different stages of the lead characters’ lives, This show doesn’t just have one flashback that shows about who they were when they were younger: it has a ton of them, and you can really see how the events they went through shaped their characters.

With very stylish visuals, Madhouse surely delivered on this series, after the disappointment that was Iron Man. The show looks gorgeous despite a tight animation budget, and it really has the plot and characters to make for an amazing watch.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Excellent version of the “first half random stories, second half plot”-format. Knows how to tell stories with twists and uses them really well.
Characters: 9/10 – Terrific character development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not consistent and has problems with making characters move believably, but the visual style is definitely impressive.
Setting: 8/10 – Re-imagines folklore in quite an interesting way, and some parts are looked at with a surprising amount of detail.

Suggestions:
– Witch Hunter Robin
– Rainbow
– Night Head Genesis

Supernatural The Animation – 22

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



The lead up to the climax of this episode was utterly amazing. Dean’s character in particular went through a leap of character development. “Getting shot right before the ending”-twists are common, but this show has actually been building up to. Sam actually died back there, and like, immediately, however, the previous episodes made it very clear that it’s possible to revive someone with your own life, and Dean had to beg for it even more than usual. Dean made one heck of a decision to just live one year for the sake of his brother, especially after his father gave his own life so that he could keep living. That really made this episode for me.

As for the actual climax: Jake indeed was a great villain here. After that though… the creators unfortunately did pull a number of Deus ex Machina. Sam now got his powers much more under control, but the most notable was that ghost of their father showing up at exactly the right time to get rid of the yellow eyed demon. It’s a tad too conventient for a) the Yellow Eyed Demon not firing off the final bullet (he only wanted the Colt, not its bullets), b) their father knowing where the gates of hell were, INSIDE of hell, and 3) the yellow eyed demon being scared of ghosts. Sam coming back and his powers: okay. Those were built up. Unfortunately we never really got an in-depth look into the yellow eyed demon himself. We never really learned about the nature of hell. That hurt this episode.

Overall, the thing I hated about this series the most is its release schedule: airing at these batches of six at a time was… a bit too much at times. It is that this was a great series, but the next time such a thing happens I’ll probably write some sort of compilation post. And don’t get me wrong: it’s great to have three series with an irregular schedule in half a year (Mitsudomoe 2, Moshidora and Supernatural): these are the series that need to be successful in order to get rid of that weakness that anime tends to have, when they are too constrained by having a fixed amount of episodes. Just don’t make me blog 22 episodes in three months anymore…
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 21

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Oh, this really was an excellent semi-final episode, which subverted quite a few tropes in the process. This really was fresh and imaginative. It came with great twists and yet it delivered even more in terms of the characters.

I loved how down to earth this episode was. Usually anime use these semi-final episodes to build up for an epic finale, but this episode instead was quiet and slow-paced, even though it did build up for the bad guy trying to take over the world. The atmosphere was excellent because of that, especially because this episode brought back some of the best side characters of the series. It’s just a bloody shame that so many of them died so quickly. Not because it’s bad storytelling, but rather that I’d love to have seen more of them. That’s a compliment here.

I also really like how this episode toyed around with the “chosen one”-tropes: at first it indeed seems that Sam was the chosen one, where his powers would be the strongest of all characters in the series. But here we have a girl who can kill people on touch, and… a guy who is so strong that he just punched a hole in Sam. Sam may have been able to blow up a deer and all, but in terms of actual control he’s pretty much the most useless of the bunch who were transported to that ghost town, destined to fight to the death.

The question for the final episode has suddenly gotten much more interesting. Jake is an excellent villain here to use there, especially because it still remains the question what he’ll end up doing. He only was introduced 2 episodes ago, but his military background actually worked out really well here.

I really love supernatural’s plot. My only criticism for this episode: stop talking triumphantly about your evil plan when there’s still a gorilla of a soldier walking around!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 20

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Ah, the episode where a character gets possessed and is forced to live in a completely different world. I have to say, Supernatural did an amazing job on it. This was definitely among the better episodes of Supernatural.

Throughout the series Dean’s character has always been about how his family changed as he grew up: first he lived happily along with his parents, then Sam was born, then his mother died and he was forced by his father to become a hunter, then Sam grew up and went to College, only for Jessica to die, his father to disappear and him to travel together with Sam, with eventually his father ending up dead. Before he already got a chance to change this fate, but this really takes the cake, showing exactly what would have happened if none of that took place.

It’s got nothing to do with the plot, actually. It’s just there to give more depth to Dean, and it’s definitely an interesting way to spend the episode before the big finale. It’s especially interesting that Supernatural indeed will only have a two-episode climax. That will make it either short, but sweet, or a complete rushed disaster. If the creators can pull it off though, it can get an amazing ending. The big question is whether the creators will find a fitting end for the now God-Moded Yellow Eyed Demon.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Supernatural The Animation – 19

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



There were two types of random episodes in Supernatural: the ones that focus on various kinds of folklore, and the ones that take a look at people who are in the same boat as Sam and Dean. this is both to show that they’re not lone, and also to examine all kinds of possibilities that could happen, or could have happened. It’s a great way to flesh out the story here. Now that we’re near the end, we now get a story that Sam is in no way special: the yellow eyed demon gave powers to a whole group of kids, and the guy here in question is likely to be an even tastier target for the demon now that his powers are awakened.

Beyond that it also was a strong episode about teenaged criminality. It was actually quite refreshing to see young delinquents as something other than random punks, and this episode even stopped by to address the causes of the kid’s stealing spree, and how easy this can happen. The kid didn’t say much, yet he was much better fleshed out than 90% of all other young punks in anime.

Right now, the big challenge for the ending will be the Yellow Eyed Demon. He’s been a good villain: he’s threatening, he really feels compelling and the way he toys around with human lives, just to get more power has been fleshed out really well. The only problem is that he might be a little too strong. The only thing that could kill him is gone now, and this episode was hinting that the only thing that could still beat him was Sam’s fully developed powers.

Those kinds of endings have a tendency to be really cheesy!
Rating: ** (Excellent)