Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

Jigoku Shoujo – 57

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A teacher is bugged by an overprotective guardian.
Highlights: You have to love the messages of this series.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh, how I love this series, although for a completely different reason when compared to the other seasons. The first season had some really nice stories in its repertoire about people who were pushed to the limits. The second season then started to move to lighter reasons to want to send someone to hell, and here the third season comes and it instead focuses on the darker side of being a teenager. Anime has a real tendency to overglorify teenagers, and I believe that this series has a very strong message against that, with the “Kids these days”-themes.

This episode already started to deviate from the usual formula. What we have here is a teacher, where one of her students has an incredibly overprotective aunt, who makes a fuzz over the slightest thing that happens to her niece, and makes whatever effort she can to make in order to make the teacher’s life miserable. In the end, it turns out that that student had been setting up her aunt against the teacher, just for fun. She figured that her teacher was a grown-up, so she’d just be fine, even though she had to deal with her aunt.

It’s strange. When you look at the themes, it almost seems like this series has been written by a bunch of old guys who downright hate everything about teenagers, and yet they make some very good points. Teenagers these days do cause a lot of unnecessary trouble for others and don’t even seem to understand what they did wrong, and even though the teacher’s method was a bit extreme, it was the perfect one to teach her a lesson she won’t soon forget.

Another point this series is trying to make is about the ease at which people are willing to send others to hell. It’s not just a sign of that people are losing faith in these “fictional” places as heaven or hell, but also at how they fail to look at the distant future (a very recent topic, with the economy, and huge amounts of people who failed to pay their mortgage). It’s a conservative series, and yet it’s also the series that’s got the most actual topics. It’s the first anime I’ve seen that included the Vista-cursor, it’s got IPods, as compared to most other series, which are still stuck in Windows 98.

Mouryou no Hako – 04

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako



Short Synopsis: Not just heads get cut off in this series.
Highlights: Awesome use of different camera-angles.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Those creators really are out to get me with their incredibly complicated dialogue. Heck, the website even refuses to list the name of the different characters in anything else but Kanji, making it even more difficult to try and put combine the names with the different faces, especially since half the cast doesn’t seem to be introduced yet (Yoriko has a sister?).

So, the beginning of this episode shows the main character with glasses, apparently Tatsumi Sekiguchi is his name, as he’s just cut up several bodies, commenting on how he just can’t get them right. Later in the episode, we see him again, showing a novel he’s writing. We don’t know whether his “failure” refers to his novel, where the cut-up body was just a visual metaphor, or whether he really does have a secret. Yoriko’s sister Kimie is apparently much older than she looks on the official website, and my guess is that she works for the ones who plan to publish Sekiguchi’s novel.

And at the same time, we see Kanako in a strange bed as she’s lost all of her limbs. There is someone who watches her, who I suspect to be the guy with glasses who left a bit earlier and whose name was Noritada Amemiya, I think. Later, strange limbs are found all over the country, but the DON’T belong to Kanako. The detective acts shocked, while the chief policeman in charge (at least, that’s what I thought their roles were) doesn’t act surprised. Suzaki (the most important doctor) then gets killed (probably to make sure that he doesn’t find any weird stuff) and the biggest enemy of Yoko is the detective Kiba. Yoko in some way has a very big role in this, but what exactly is it? For some reason, she also completely flipped once she found out that Suzaki was dead.

Then, a random teenaged girl gets kidnapped, cut up and stuffed into a box, I’m not sure who the guy was who did that. What I guess are a few months later, a new detective contacts Kiba, probably to team up with him, and he tells him about the four limbs that were found, and even though htey weren’t Kanako’s, he believes the two cases to be related. He seems to think that Sekiguchi is the victim, and the night he ran into them in the hospital wasn’t a coincidence, it seems. I wish I could remember who those others were who were with him in the car.

He points Kiba to some guy that Yoko got affiliated with when she was still an actress. Minami Kinuko, could that possibly be her stage name? It doesn’t appear anywhere on the list of names for this series. This is where Amemiya pops up again, apparently he was the one who forced Yoko to retire from her job as an actress. The guy also tells him about a certain doctor “Amakasu”, who is trying something like the doctor Frankenstein: he’s trying to create the perfect soldier that won’t die, explaining why in this series bodies have to be cut up.

What really strikes me so far is that this is a 13-episodes, and yet two of the five main characters haven’t felt like main characters at all (they only popped up once or twice) and two haven’t even appeared yet! I’m really curious to see what this series is going to turn into once it hits its second half, but so far I’m already loving every second of this. I’m in for lots of convolution once in a while, and this series is exactly what my inner mystery-fanboy needs.

It’s also interesting that this series shows the power that still frames can have. Especially that sequence in the beginning: it just consisted out of about ten drawings, there was no movement, and yet it perfectly showed what was going on, it looked excellent, and it set the mood. Madhouse really is an excellent studio when it comes to proving that you don’t need the budget of a small country to make a series look beautiful. You can easily try to save budget by simplified drawings (á la Kaiba) with lots of motion, or go Shigurui and have very detailed drawings with hardly any motion, but as long as you put enough thought into the artistic direction, you can make anything look good this way. This is exactly why I’m a big fan of series that experiment a bit with their graphics. It looks much more interesting than the straightforward drawings that just go with predictable poses and camera-angles.

Jigoku Shoujo – 56

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A guy who gets bullied joins a Kendo-club.
Highlights: These cases are getting more and more extreme…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent, although that may not be exactly the right word…)
Okay, new theory: either one of the following two must have happened somewhere between the production of the second and third season:
– The important creators were introduced and got addicted to some strange sort of crack.
– Hiroshi Watanabe (the one who originally proposed the concept for this series) sent the production-staff a long list of his own suggestions for stories.

I mean, it has to be ONE of these two; otherwise this episode just can’t be explained. It was just that weird. Basically, we have a bunch of bullies who are into bsdm, and they strip their victim butt-naked and throw stones at him. The victim then gets saved by a strong upperclassman. The latter then pushes the bullied guy into joining the kendo-club, the two of them develop a crush for each other and then the bullied one sends the upperclassman to hell because he couldn’t save a victim of a bus-jacking because he was too scared. I mean… what the heck?!

Still, I absolutely can’t deny that this episode wasn’t entertaining. Heck, it was awesome to watch, although in a strange way, especially after those two guys started to develop feelings for each other. What I especially loved about this episode (probably due to my inner-sadist, which is probably the most excited about this third series), is that the guy just quits the kendo-club and goes back to being bullied. No moral message, no lesson to be learned, just an angsty teen who can’t seem to forgive others.

I’m really baffled. I shouldn’t be liking this series, and yet at the same time it’s such an awesome third season. If this is only the fourth episode, then what the heck are the creators planning for those other 22 episodes? And here I thought that Shigofumi was the extreme one, but Mitsuganae proved me more than wrong within just four episodes.

Mouryou no Hako – 03

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako



Short Synopsis: Yoriko calms down a bit and contacts the detective again.
Highlights: Too many to just list here.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (excellent)
With this episode I’m convinced: Mouryou no Hako is going to be THE hit of the Autumn 2008-season. It’s already a very good season, but none of the new shows matches up to it, and in three episodes it accomplished what usually takes three times that length. I’m already engrossed with the characters so far. At first, I was a bit worried about the short airtime, but this series has definitely shown that it knows how to tell a story. The director hasn’t directed a series before, but he’s definitely shown so far that he knows what he’s talking about.

As usual, my Japanese isn’t perfect so I might have missed certain parts (especially that letter that was sent to Yoko. But it seems that the episode starts with Kanako, being brought to a strange hospital that might be able to save her. The detective, Yoko and the guy with glasses whose name I can’t seem to find accompany her. Meanwhile, we get some flashbacks about Shuutarou’s past, when he was still involved with that war that’s still giving him nightmares.

What caught my attention is that there’s a surprising amount of police guards around the place when Shuutarou comes back a few days later. It seems that the explanation for that is that strange letter that Yoko received, though unfortunately my Kanji’s pretty much crappy. What I understood was that someone’s after Kanako. The entire hospital is pretty much strange and unconventional, looking more like some sort of military base. Joshino Suzaki seems to be the most talented doctor around the place.

Yoriko meanwhile has her own problems after wishing her mother do die, while caught up in her emotions. After that, her mother started seeing spirits (Mouryou), and even hires a priest to get rid of them. After that part has calmed down a bit, she remembers how Kanako had some sort of boyfriend. She contacts Shuutarou (who right before that moment sees Kanako’s acquaintance with glasses, who disappears right afterwards). This boyfriend could quite possibly be the one who sent the threat letter.

Yoriko is then brought to see Kanako, who seems to have regained consciousness. It’s faint, but she can recognize her (although the room in which she’s stored is really creepy. What kind of hospital is that anyway?), and she tries to talk to her, but sound doesn’t come out. Yoriko is removed to give Kanako some more rest, but apparently, one of the main detectives in the hospital can lip-read, and it seems that Kanako said something pretty disturbing. When two doctors come to examine her afterwards, Kanako somehow disappears and turns to stone, with two butterflies flying above her bed.

So, there are three people in here that definitely have something to hide: Kanako, her boyfriend and the guy with glasses. I think the latter is merely obsessed and confused with everything that happened, but that boyfriend could possibly form the key to a lot of the mysteries that happened. Although there’s also the matter of Kanako’s body simply disappearing. I think that her boyfriend was the one who introduced Kanako to these strange beliefs, of wanting to ascend to heaven.

I just want to ask one thing: whose idea was it to do with CG? The art in this series is absolutely amazing, and yet there ugly CG-trucks ruin the entire mood. Can’t these people just stick to ordinary drawings or something? CG-trucks are something you’d expect from Gonzo, not from Madhouse.

What also seems strange for this series is that the manga has only been running since past December, and there are only two volumes complete at this point. Will there be enough material to fill this series, and will there be a second season once the manga gets ahead enough? But then again, this is Madhouse, not Studio Deen, and they very rarely go for sequels if they can also go for new concepts. In a way, that’s also admirable, to see that the studio continues to seek out new and fresh concepts instead of milking its own cash-cows, but in this case it remains a pity to see this series end so soon.

Jigoku Shoujo – 55

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A famous idol has a past she’d like to not think back to.
Highlights: The theme of growing up versus staying the same.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Good)
Okay, so in my next attempt to make the episode-rating a bit less confusing and more expressive, I’m trying to associate a word-rating with each number. It’s obviously incredibly inaccurate, but I hope it helps both the reader and me a little. Basically, the rule of thumb is that if the episode rating is six or higher, it means that I liked it.

In any case, in this episode a famous idol becomes the victim of Jigoku Shoujo. When she was a middle schooler, she was pretty much your typical teenager, and she grew up together with her best friend, as they both aspired to become idols. At one point, she ditched her best friend and went on to become a famous idol. Over the years, she grew up and realized what an idiot she’s been, though her best friend still can’t forgive her, and she also longs to be a famous idol as well, even though she can’t sing to save her life. Since she never grew up, she acts like the teenager she is and sends her former friend to hell.

In the meantime, it seems like the new boy on Ai’s party comes from Kikuri’s side, and is something like a servant to her (calling her “Hime”). One thing that felt a bit off in this episode was how Mikage just keeps running into potential Jigoku Shoujo-victims. I mean, I can understand how the Ai inside of her is directing her towards these cases or something, but I’d like to have that actually confirmed WITHIN the show.

In essence, the general formula of this episode was pretty much the same as in the previous two episodes, but that’s of course something to be expected, since the first and second season did this too. Right now, this series is busy creating a solid base, and of course the real fun is only going to begin when the stories start diverging from this base, and it’s always going to be a mystery as to when that’s going to happen. The base for this season seems to be a bit different from the previous seasons. Even though there were quite a few exceptions, the general formula was basically Ai and her minions handing out a strange sort of justice. In the third season though, Ai has only been carrying out the wishes of whiny and spoiled teenagers, with the great thing being that the creators seem to be having lots of fun to make all sorts of teenagers suffer as much as possible. I sense a strange sort of sadism in this season, which gives off a pretty nice effect.

I’m also glad to finally see another series that shows that recycled scenes aren’t necessarily a bad thing: you just have to know how to use them. Obviously, if they’re used as an impulsive way to save a bit of budget, it’s a bad thing, and at the same time the technique has been made infamous by various mahou shoujo. However, when they’re used for creating a sort of ritualistic feeling, they can actually contribute to the series they’re in. It doesn’t happen often, I only noticed this effect in Jigoku Shoujo and Revolutionary Girl Utena so far, but repetitive shows like these are excellent at creating a ritual that appears in every other episode. The fun then comes from everything that plays around it.

Oh, and one final comment: three episodes in, and I obviously can’t say yet whether this is going to be the best season of Jigoku Shoujo, but I can say one thing: it’s definitely going to be the season with the best visuals. It’s incredible: the graphics for this series already looked great, and the creators managed to succeed in making things look even better.

Mouryou no Hako – 02

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako



Short Synopsis: Kanako’s family and relatives rush over to check whether she’s okay.
Highlights: I really hope that rumour of 13 episodes is wrong.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so it was pretty obvious that I was going to blog this series. As for the ones I’m not going to blog:
– Vampire Knight Guilty: no way.
– Ga-Rei Zero has been very good so far, but the schoolgirls who are all awesome at handling swords still give me a few doubts here and there.
– Skip Beat is awesome. If some of the shows I’m planning to blog turn out to be disappointing, I’m probably going to pick that one up.
– Macademi Wasshoi at least didn’t lose as much inspiration as the rest of the shounen-comedies did in their second episodes, but I still don’t see much future for those perverted teachers.
– Oh, and I think that this is also a good point to note that I’ve finally managed to use this season as an excuse to stop watching Soul Eater. I don’t want to continue wasting my time on it if there are so many better series this season. I really think that it would have been better as a 39-episode series, because it’s taking way too long. Instead of filling up its extra time with cute slice-of-life moments, the creators decided to go with pointless exposition and dragged-on fight scenes to fill up their extra time.

There’s a LOT to like about Mouryou no Hako, and it’s at least my favourite new series of the season. It’s one of these very rare series that only pop up about half a year, that try to beyond the usual genres (Real Drive was this in the previous half year). While it’s technically a mystery-horror, it doesn’t feel anything like the other mystery-horror series I’ve seen so far. It’s got a bit of Shoujo-ai here and a bit of humour there. It’s got a story that saves its cards and doesn’t play all of its trumps at the first episode, and STILL it had one of the best starts of the season.

The second episode was much less dramatic than the first, probably because the focus shifted from teenagers to adults. It starts out as a basic aftermath, but soon continues to progress the overall plot like crazy, introducing important relative after the other that seem to suggest that there’s more to Kanako’s suicide attempt than we might think. Especially since a famous actress ran all the way from her busy schedule.

Another thing is this series’ subtle characterization. This series uses a lot of subtle non-verbal communication to flesh out its characters, like the incompetent policeman that worked on the lead policeman’s nerves, or his fascination with that lead actress. The subtle hints that suggested that the actress is hiding something.

And then there are those heads in boxes. I finally read the premise of this series, and it turns out that it’s all one big murder mystery around a bizarre serial murderer, and here this series starts with a seemingly unrelated suicide attempt. What’s the link between these two, and why did the creators decide to open the series with this?

The characters also look great. This is what happens if you combine Madhouse, Clamp and the character-designer of Simoun. They all seem to fit. I’m not sure what went wrong with Clamp when they designed the characters from Code Geass, but this series shows that they can also go for a much more down-to-earth style. They’re very versatile indeed.

(oh, and *note to self: Mouryou no Hako + Horrible Raws = bad idea. It’s not the lower quality, but those overly sugary Japanese commercials that keep interrupting it DO NOT FIT the overall mode of this series AT ALL*).

Jigoku Shoujo – 54

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo



Short Synopsis: A boy who has a crush on a female store owner calls Jigoku Shoujo.
Highlights: Nice ending.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Am I glad to see this series back or what? In any case, as for the series I’m not going to blog this season:
– Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka… err… no.
– Every single new character of Kuroshitsuji’s second episode was dull and uninspired, the servants I liked so much in the first episode are turning into one character and the two main characters are also getting pretty dull. That shouldn’t be happening after just two episodes!
– I like Clannad, but I’m a fan of the climaxes. I don’t feel like writing about the lesser comedy-bits.
– I already had trouble following Noramimi during a light season, let alone a heavy season as this one.
– The drama in Yozakura Quartet’s second episode felt shallow and uninspired.
– Tentai Senshi Sunred already turned from hilarious to dull within two episodes. I knew that this was going to happen, but not THIS fast.

In any case, I’m getting really excited about this third season. I would already have been happy if this season would be more of the same, but the creators are really showing that they’re evolving this show. It now makes perfect sense that the second season was less extreme than the first season: it was basically one big season, meant to flesh out Ai’s three dolls, and flesh out the show’s premise by showing how people are getting more and more easily able to send someone to hell.

Now in this season, people are suddenly beginning to see themselves that sending someone to hell might not have been the best thing after all. The previous episode showed a high-school girl who banished her teacher (really, that’s something I can imagine that would happen a LOT if Jigoku Shoujo would exist for real), and this episode features an abused woman who doesn’t want to be rescued. It’s about a boy who tries to help her from her incredibly abusive boyfriend. It’s interesting how the first two seasons started with straightforward cases, but here in the third season, the creators have already started with a thought-provoking case, which goes beyond the usual good and bad.

The strange thing about this third season is… there doesn’t seem to be a director for the thing. According to ANN at least. Apart from that, there’s absolutely no change in staff, which really makes me wonder: was the missing director just a simple mistake, or did he really leave the project, so that the ones who are left opted to do the series with a more chaotic style of “direction”? I really expected when I first saw this episode that huge staff changes were made, but instead it’s the same animation directors who went with the new visual style, and both punishments in this and the previous episode were much more extreme than what we’ve seen in the previous seasons.

I also wonder what the exact role of the girl is going to be, but it’s still going to take 20 more episodes before we get to find that out. It makes sense to start her off with such an extreme case, so that we now get to see her initial stance on revenge (as in, she hates it). I think that she’s going to become the new Tsugumi: because Ai uses her to get back to her original job (the question of course is: why?), she can see exactly what’s going on. I think that she’s going to go against Ai, to try and stop the revenges.

Red Garden – Dead Girls

by psgels, posted in Red Garden



Short Synopsis: About 200 years after Red Garden, we return to the girls of Red Garden, who still turn out to be alive.
Highlights: It’s about bloody time!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
So, finally the final OVA has gotten subbed, more than a year after the original airdate. Indeed, it’s about bloody time. To clarify: I’m not going to write a review about this series, simply because my memory is just too fuzzy about the majority of the series, and I can’t recall exactly what I liked so much about the original series. Let’s just leave it at that Red Garden was my second-favourite in the season it aired in, after Asatte no Houkou.

In any case, it was pretty much clear from the start that Dead Girls would be a disaster, but I do have a lot of positive things to say about it. First of all, I really admire the GUTS of the creators: go for a conclusion that’s completely different from the TV-series. Seriously, more series should attempt that. As it turns out, the lead characters indeed revived, though without any memories. After that, they’ve been living for 200 years, working as bounty-hunters and travelling the world. What I really liked about these two episodes was the chemistry between them, especially in the quiet moments. The characters underwent massive changes, and the way the creators explored these changes were really enjoyable.

But really, what the heck happened to the production-values of this series? This is supposed to be an OVA: the creators got extra time to get the graphics right, and yet the animation was just plain and the CG was downright horrible. What have the creators been doing in that half a year? Then there’s also the fact that Dead Girls answers no questions at all that Red Garden left hanging, and introduced a huge amount of new ones: why have all the side-characters reincarnated at the same time? Why did Lise turn into an android? Where did the giant robots come from? Why is the Red Garden still in its same state, 200 years later? What the heck was up with that climax?

Really, I feel that Gonzo would have done better if it went with the route of Clannad, xxxHolic and Nodame Cantabile: just go for a short second season. Dead Girls actually had a lot of potential, but there’s no way that you’re going to fit that in just two episodes. These two episodes did well in fleshing the characters out, but the thing is just too damn short. I also liked the girls’ theme song. It sounded pretty silly at the beginning, but once you start thinking about it, it does fit.

Some quick first impressions: ef – a tale of melodies, One Outs and Mouryou no Hako

by psgels, posted in Mouryou no Hako, Some Quick First Impressions

ef – a tale of melodies

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are the side-characters from ef.
Highlights: Perhaps the foreshadowing was a bit too shallow, but gorgeous visuals and solid storytelling.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I liked ef, but I agree with the big criticism against it: its “I love you-now let’s have sex”-mentality. It’s a bit unrealistic, considering how well-written the rest of the series was. This episode too had such a moment, where a girl drew herself in the nude, in the middle of an empty classroom. I mean, perhaps she could do that because ef’s world is totally empty apart from its important characters, but it does take away a bit of the believability. Nevertheless, this episode was very solid, and a good contender for the best teenaged romance this season, along with Clannad. It’s very good to see that the creators spent a lot of time on their dialogue and visuals, and it’s good to see another Shaft-series without Shinbo behind the director’s seat. No offence, but I’m beginning to get a bit tired of his style.

One Outs

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters lives on the bad side of humanity.
Highlights: Whoa, intense.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
I haven’t looked at the staff list for this show or anything, but something really tells me that the staff of Akagi and Kaiji is behind this one, or at least it’s a bunch of people who are trying to go for the same style: the character-designs are kept ugly for a reason, a lot of emphasis is put on gambling, (this is not, I repeat NOT a regular baseball-series), there are mind games a plenty, there are a few guys who stand miles above the others in terms of skills, and the pacing is sloooooooooooooooow. This series could go down the same path as Kaiji, so there’s no way I’m going to blog this, but nevertheless this episode was very intense. And: it’s a story about adults. Always good in this season of teenagers.
Edit: well, what do you know, I was right. The entire staff of Akagi and Kaiji seems to be behind this. Prepare for lots of adrenaline and dragged on dialogues!

Mouryou no Hako

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters gets befriended with a mysterious girl.
Highlights: Shoujo ai and Horror. What could possibly get better than that?
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Omg! Omg! What an awesome first episode! After Jigoku Shoujo, this ranks as the best of the past season, and I’m really glad to see some more good horror back this season. This episode was in itself a standalone story, and it really showed that the people behind this series know what it takes to come with a good short story: the characters are fleshed out first, there’s a bit of very tense drama here and there, and the end ends with hitting character-development. There also were a number of artistic moments here and there, for example when the girls danced around in the field of flowers, but I found that it contributed really well to the overall atmosphere. Obviously, this is not a series for everyone: if you need overly cute girls, fanservice or comedy in your anime, you’ll be disappointed here. But personally, I LOVE this series so far!

Some quick first impressions: Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae, Shugo Chara Doki and Kannagi

by psgels, posted in Jigoku Shoujo, Shugo Chara, Some Quick First Impressions

Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae

Short Synopsis: Our lead character returns for a third season.
Highlights: You can count on Jigoku Shoujo to make a bunch of angsty teenagers work
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,75/10
Time for some very biased fanboyism! I am SO glad to see more of this, and Mitsuganae promises to be the best season of Jigoku Shoujo yet. This episode wasn’t just an episode that would fit into Futakomori: it would have felt so out of place at that time. The creators are really planning to evolve the show with this season, most importantly in its style of direction. While Futakomori was very solid, the direction of this episode was all over the place. The visual effects were awesome (especially Ai in a Bee-suit immediately beat the teethed toilet). The only sacrifice that had to be made was that the stellar character-designer seems to have left the series, but if the creators were going for a chaotic third season, then I can understand how such a solid character-designer wouldn’t fit the mood. I honestly feel that this episode was just an awesome first episode, and it ranks after Hakaba Kitarou as the best first episode of 2008. Ack, I want more!!!

Shugo Chara Doki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character… doesn’t do anything.
Highlights: Bloody recaps.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 4/10
After this episode, I just have to wonder yet again: is there really no way to transfer some of Shugo Chara’s episodes over to Zombie-Loan? Really, it’s a win-win situation: Zombie Loan gets continued just as its plot and characters really get interesting, and Shugo Chara is relieved from its enormous amounts of fillers. Overall, I think that blogging Shugo Chara was one of the biggest mistakes I made with this blog after blogging Bleach, and this episode, instead of trying to win back my interest ends up recapping the things that MADE ME DROP THIS SERIES IN THE FIRST PLACE. And really, from the few original scenes that were in this episode, it seemed that the only thing the past fifty-two episodes have been doing is introducing new characters. The characters that I knew were exactly the same as when I dropped this series (at about episode 15). Okay, apart from that Nadeshiko finally decided to give in to his real gender. And I do admit, it was nice to see a bit of a kaleidoscope of what I missed in that final quarter, but none of that really impressed me.

Kannagi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is supposed to be a crazy shrine maiden.
Highlights: Sometimes funny, sometimes dull.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6/10
Here’s my dilemma: based on my own experiences, 90% of the comedies abide by the following rule: all mediocre comedies start with hilarious first episodes (example: Potemayo), all good comedies start with dull first episodes (example: Gintama) and all bad comedies start with dull first episodes (example: too many to list). Kannagi’s first episode was dull, so it’s going to be either good or bad. I just have no idea which one it’s going to be. This episode showed a few small hints of potential and chemistry, and some jokes were quite funny, although it pretty much went south as soon as it tried to make fanservice-jokes. Based on the OP, this will also turn into a cute idol-show, which also doesn’t seem like the most interesting and original premise. And really, I don’t feel like sitting through a 26-episode bore-fest.