Category: Finished Series: Mystery/Suspense

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 18

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: This case is divided over two episodes, and it’s about a serial murderer who has been killing people near train tracks.
Highlights: A new interesting character from Maki’s past.
Overall Enjoyment Value:8/10
Hmm, let’s see what this two-episode arc can deliver for this series. It’s been a strange episode so far, and I’m having a bit of trouble understanding it. At first sight, it seems like a simple case: a guy kills someone on the train and then kills all eye-witnesses. But then the episode pulls out all sorts of weird stuff like the culprit looking at fingernails and an old acquaintance of Maki. Seriously, this episode kept changing focus: you first thing it’s about a high school getting murdered, then it’s about Aoki’s wedding, then it’s about the serial murderer, then the stabbing on the train… Plus… there were much more people on that train who watched it, and the killer suddenly disappears and a bald young man with a hat shows up.

This episode was surprisingly more complex than it appeared at first… if I understood correctly, Miyoshi (Maki’s old friend) is the head of the autopsy department and she often sleeps right next to the corpses. Somehow, her fingers are related to the case… At one point, she also mistook Aoki for the real culprit of the case, but why would she think that the culprit would visit her at the police, of all places? Does that mean that she’s related to the case or something?

Especially the last of the episode has me puzzled… her fingers seem to be the same as the ones, seen from the brains of one of the victims, but what would that have to do with anything? Then at the same time, the guy who committed the first murder shows up dead in a train cabin, having killed himself.

Argh, I need to watch that next episode in order to get what the heck is going on here… my money right now is on the bald guy with the hat being the culprit, but don’t ask me why.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 17

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: Two policemen end up murdered.
Highlights: Solid episode, and a bit more background on the MRI-team.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Christ, this episode took bloody ages to come out. I finally managed to locate a version of this episode on Share (Perfect Dark didn’t help much either). And if this was the only series, then okay, but the same thing happened for Porfy no Nagai Tabi and Ultraviolet as well. A raw for Porfy appeared with a delay of more than four days, and Ultraviolet’s fifth episode still hasn’t shown up. What happened?

In any case, it again took me a while to figure out what really went on in this episode, but it turns out that this was about a group of three policemen, of which one accidentally shot an innocent criminal. He convinced the two others to keep everything a secret, and he kills the wife of the policeman who was beginning to suspect what he had done, making it seem like an accident. This policeman then out of revenge for his wife starts killing off the three policemen.

It’s ironic, how out of all four policemen, the only one who was really evil and started everything was the only one who lives. He’s going to jail, indeed, but the bastard did drag three others into the own problems he created, in an attempt to get away from his responsibilities.

There was a bit of experimental animation here and there, when a scene changed from one location to the other, there was this neat transition-effect. IT worked pretty well to give a bit of energy to the whole episode. Mahou Shoujotai used a similar technique once, where it also put emphasis on these transitions on purpose, in order to keep the viewer on its toes. The effects are quite interesting.

Kaiba Review – 95/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kaiba


Welcome and say hello to one of the best anime of 2008, and along with Haibane Renmei and Hi no Tori, my favourite anime of only 12 or 13 episodes long. Kaiba is the product of director Masaaki Yuasa, who was the one behind Kemonozume, Cat Soup and Mind Game and it shows the result of when an already excellent director learns from his mistakes.

Kaiba is very much an experimental anime, which tries to be different from the stuff you usually see. The character-designs may look childish and simple, but make no mistake: this storyline isn’t afraid to show adult themes at all, and the perfect example of why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. It’s about a futuristic world with the fascinating concept in which people’s memories can be stored in chips and placed from one body to the other. The series smartly spends its first half fleshing out and playing with this concept, so that the viewer feels at home inside the setting, only for the second half to kick in with the real meat of the series, where the storyline keeps spiralling to the point of going out of control. The final episode is indeed one of chaos.

The setting may be already an incredibly imaginative one, what really won me over for this series is its sense of storytelling. It’s hard to explain, but if there ever was some kind of x-factor for anime, then Kaiba would have it. This is one series that knows exactly how to progress a mystery-storyline: lots of random flashbacks, in order to flesh out both the storyline and characters, a back-story that goes way beyond the “person x killed person y in the past” and lots of different hints to keep you guessing.

This also really helps fleshing out the characters, and the interesting twist that they keep changing bodies (made possible because of the setting) puts them in interesting different spotlights. The romance can be incredibly sweet when it’s in its element and even the villains get their own piece of development.

Overall, Kaiba is definitely recommended if you’re into experimental, mystery or science fiction anime. The only bad thing about it is that the plot isn’t the most solid one, so don’t expect everything about the setting to be fully explained by the end. Nevertheless, Kaiba is an masterpiece that makes excellent use of its limited time of only twelve episodes, and it has been my top pick of the past spring season ever since it started.

Storytelling: 10/10
Characters: 9/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 10/10

Kaiba – 12

by psgels, posted in Kaiba



Short Synopsis: Neiro tries to tell Kaiba his secret as Kaiba and Warp go out of control.
Highlights: Not all questions answered, but this series somehow gets away with it…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
And so it’s unfortunately over. It was to be expected that not every question would be answered (like, what’s up with the planet that Kaiba lives on? It turns out, only the memory of Popo got killed, but how did that happen? and in this episode Kaiba also pulls out a number of random powers that would have been better if they were introduced earlier, so I think that one extra episode would have been sufficient to answer these questions, but still this was a pretty awesome episode.

Masaaki Yuasa clearly intended this episode to go out of control and become something surreal, in a way, it’s in the same style of the ending of Kemonozume, which also came from out of nowhere. It was obviously not the best episode of Kaiba, but at the same time it was very much fun to watch. The surreal parts in this episode were definitely worth watching.

So, in the end, the thing that Neiro discovered about Kaiba was that his mother’s memory was stuffed in the ostrich, as a punishment. At the same time, probably the cutest thing about this episode was this unexpected romance between Hyohyo and the memory-guy. ^^;

At this point, I’m not sure which series to call better: this one or Shion no Ou. They were both absolutely fantastic in their own ways, and without a doubt the best series of 2008. They both had fantastic storytelling, while Shion no Ou had incredible characters, while Kaiba had an incredibly imaginative setting.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 16

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: A blind director gets murdered by a strange figure with a kabuki-mask on.
Highlights: Finally! Some quality characterizations!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Blegh. Here I am, criticizing this series for failing at characterization, and then it comes and puts down a cast of great characters for this episode to work with. This episode was much, much better than the previous one, simply because of its endearing and well-defined characters. I may not have understood everything of it, and yet I loved this episode, and it finally reminded me why I originally fell in love with this series.

This episode was probably the best in terms of random chatter between the members of the MRI-team. The guy with glasses should speak more often, because his chemistry between the rest of the members is really interesting. But then again, this was really an episode where he could get into his element, with the victim being a movie director, and this episode revealed that he’s a fan of movies.

This episode also had an interesting parallel with a certain episode of Real Drive: the one with the blind artist. Both episodes show the imagination of someone who has lost his or her sight. Himitsu shows literally what it is that he sees. It’s mostly darkness, but I can imagine how he would sometimes get visions like that.

Kaiba – 11

by psgels, posted in Kaiba



Short Synopsis: Popo continues his plans to overthrow the heavens.
Highlights: This is what you get if you build up properly…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9,5/10
Holy crap! This episode was utterly utterly incredible. The best episode of Kaiba yet, and with an already incredible series, that HAS TO SAY SOMETHING. I’m still baffled at all the plot-twists that bombarded the screen for the past twenty minutes. Obviously MAJOR spoilers follow. DO NOT read this entry if you haven’t watched this episode yet.

Oh my god, I’m still pretty speechless about this episode. The entire first half of the episode develops Popo further into insanity: the strange purple mist first caused Cheki to lose most of her memories, and he then lost his mother’s memory-chip. He already thinks that he defeated Warp, so he didn’t even bother to confirm whether or not Kaiba was really dead. He first claims to love Sate, but then betrays her by showing his affections for Cheki, and with the prospect of soon ruling the entire universe, his personality keeps moving out of control.

This guy was an excellent example of a great villain. He clearly is the villain in this series, but at the same time his desires kept spiralling out of control.

But the craziest thing about this episode was definitely the domino-effect-killing scene. I repeat: MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH:

Inside the main control room of Popo’s ship, Sate kills Popo. Then the body-collector kills Sate, who turns out to be a cyborg. The three older Kaibas then gloat over their victories. Fake Warp (who turns out to be alive) then kills the body-collector and the three older Warps. As an added bonus, we also learn that the memory-guy and Sate were sisters, and they grew up watching Neiro, Popo and Cheki play together.

There were a few things I didn’t understand, though. What was up with the fans, wiping out the purple fog? Who activated them? Why did fake Warp erase the collection of all the memories, which basically meant the entire history of the world?

In any case, it’s amazing to see how much Masaaki Yuasa has learned from his mistakes. I remember how the pre-ending episodes of Kemonozume were a big mistake because the huge contrast between the light and extremely serious final episodes was way too big. For Kaiba, he made sure to build up as much as he can, he kept throwing in flashbacks, foreshadowing and different hints that all came together in this episode. This episode was dramatic, sure. But it WAS SO WORTH THE WAIT. It’s a definite candidate of the best episode of the year for me, along with episode 21 of Shion no Ou. I’m really curious as to how he plans to end this series. Kemonozume’s final episode was absolutely nothing like its other episodes, but on the other hand, Kaiba is absolutely nothing like Kemonozome, so I’m very interested, and at the same time very sad that the goodness will only last one more episode.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 15

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



Short Synopsis: The criminal of this episode takes an innocent woman and her baby hostage to demand an investigation by the MRI-department.
Highlights: Rather formulaic conclusion.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 6,5/10
Hmm, this was one of the (if not the) weakest episodes of Himitsu. I can understand the point it was trying to make: the people from MRI are very privileged, at how they’re able to look into the minds of the dead, so outsiders would go very far in order to know thins that otherwise would remain a secret forever. The guy who was taking the hostages has had to live his entire life with the thought that his mother committed suicide, but this didn’t feel right. When the person he suspected to be the biggest suspect for coming up with this lie died, he forced with his little hijacking the MRI to take action.

And indeed, his mother was murdered by this guy. They find out the truth, then return to the place of the hostage (at the last possible second… I hate it when they use that plot-device) and tell him what happened, after which the criminal breaks down in tears, just because of the words of Amachi. It was rather forced, to say the least.

I guess that this is indeed the big disadvantage of this series: it’s excellent at storytelling, but it rather falls when it tries to get too close to characterizations. We just knew too little about the kidnapper to really care about the guy.

Kaiba – 10

by psgels, posted in Kaiba



Short Synopsis: Thankfully, the hiatus “only” took two weeks. This week: Neiro’s background.
Highlights: Kaiba’s back! Kaiba’s back! Kaiba’s back!
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Okay, this time I didn’t care about the raws. I just wanted to watch Kaiba again as soon as possible, so I just settled for a horrible one. For this episode, we were promised Neiro’s background, and it doesn’t disappoint at all. This anime very cleverly wraps up about 50% of the questions that the previous episodes left hanging, while keeping the vital questions still a mystery, for the final two episodes to answer.

As it turns out, my theories were wrong. Kaiba is the real Warp, and he got the name Kaiba for no particularly important reason: Neiro gave it to him, because when the two met, he again had lost his memory when he met Neiro for the first time. Therefore, he didn’t know his name, so Neiro named him after the legendary plant, and only later he started to remember again. How this exactly works is unknown, but Kaiba possesses some sort of power that unconsciously erases and recovers his memory, which gets activated with either a huge mental of physical shock. Every time this power gets activated, the hole in his body increases in size.

Also, the fake Warp didn’t shoot Neiro at all, it was the real Kaiba, in order to protect her from that AI-manager who we’ve seen bothering the fake Warp a few episodes back. He properly revived her and brought her back afterwards. And as it turns out, Warp never killed Neiro’s parents in the first place. That too was just some alteration by Popo (or the memory guy, on request by Popo). That AI-manager also turned out to be one of the villains in this series. It used the fake warp to prevent Kaiba from finding out information about his parents, whom he thought he killed himself. Kaiba turns out to never have been evil, but this image was just spread by this AI-manager.

We now also know why Popo didn’t kill Kaiba when he had the hance. I can imagine how the guy needed to get a weapon strong enough to destroy Kaiba’s indestructible body, and failed to get there on time before Kaiba woke up. The shot he fired was indeed aimed at Kaiba, and not at the enemy. This gave the memory-guy the chance to escape with Kaiba, and with the help of that girl in dress (forgot her name), they managed to smuggle Kaiba away from Popo.

Now, the question remains: how did Kaiba get his first hole. Before he crashed in front of Neiro, he already had a hole inside of him, which suggests that he lost his memory due to some sort of shock before that. Also, what role is the plant Kaiba going to play in the end? And why did the memory-guy alter Neiro’s memory, if he was on her side? Was it to fool Popo?

Aagh, only two more episodes to go. I demand a second season. Or at least a series in the same style that goes on for longer than just 12 episodes! This series is too good for the treatment it’s getting.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 14

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~



On a completely unrelated side-note: consider Soul Eater dropped at this point. I’ll still continue to watch it, but I just don’t feel like blogging it anymore.

Short Synopsis: A woman with red high heels commits this week’s murder. The question: who do they belong to?
Highlights: Interesting twist to the love-triangle.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Interesting how this episode didn’t feature Aoki or Maki as the main character, but instead it showed how Okabe stood in the centre of attention. We’re back to regular stories, and the victim this episode turns out to be a rich businessman who was fooling around with a few too many women. The twist, though is that two of these women used to be each other’s lovers as well. Really, women can be scary when they’re serious…

In other news, this post by Usagijen got me thinking. And now that my initial fanboyism over the premise seems over and I look back at the past episodes of the series, then I do agree that it hasn’t been perfect. I agree with Usagijen at how this series lacks subtlety in its messages. The messages are definitely there, but they feel much more like a list of taboos than that they’ve really provoked any real thoughts. I once mentioned how Himitsu was the smartest series of the spring-season, and with this I take that back. That honour falls much more to series as Amatsuki and Real Drive.

Another big minus for this series is also that it’s not that good at characterization. To compare it with Jigoku Shoujo (now that I think about it, a rather similar series), that series knew perfectly to first establish its characters and then to start toying with them, and it did so for fifty episodes with excellent results. It feels that the characters in Himitsu lack a bit in personality.

And then there are the abundances of male fanservice. As the same with a female’s clothes getting ripped apart á la Sekirei: it’s annoying, and this episode has a good example of it when Okabe and Aoki have to pretend to be a gay couple (pelvic thrusts included) in order to find out information. (is it me, or are people quicker to whine about fanservice for fangirls than the fanservice for fanboys?).

So, why do I still love this series? Well, for one thing it does have a great sense of storytelling: it knows when to reveal what and how much, and how to keep the viewer interested, but that isn’t the most important thing. It’s the way it plays around with irony, and that’s something that it does perfectly. I first noticed this with the infamous episode eight. The murder itself already was disturbing, but what made that episode so incredibly awesome was that it took an innocent girl who even could spark some romance, and at the end of the episode showed that she was the entire opposite of that. After that, this series has continued to play these games, for example in episode 11, where the real culprit got revealed, or episode 13, where Maki basically could have saved the lives of 30 people. This episode has it too: it continously refers to women with high heels being murderes, and at the end of the episode we see Okabe, having a date with his wife who wears red high heels. That’s what makes this series so great.

Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 13

by psgels, posted in Himitsu ~The Revelation~


Short Synopsis: The second episode of Maki’s background. We get more insight into why Suzuki went crazy.
Highlights: I’ve spent a few minutes, figuring what to write here without spoiling everything… but failed to come up with anything sensible…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10

Holy crap… it’s episodes like these where Himitsu’s strength really shines. While watching an episode, it may seem like an average, though rather paranoid episode, but then the episode ends and everything comes together, and everything suddenly becomes 10 times more awesome. I still have no idea how the bloody hell the creators manage to pull this off, but this episode remains absolutely amazing.

The big revelation in this episode (which came quite fast, actually) was the fact that Maki had met this crazy mass murderer before he died. The guy tried to shoplift, but was caught easily by the shop owner. The guy looked miserable, so Maki decided to let the guy go with a warning. He even gave him some groceries, because he felt pity for the guy. After that, the guy started brutally murdering 28 people and caused Maki to kill Suzuki, which is the big reason why Maki is still being haunted by this event: there’s no way not to feel responsible for it. Suzuki also wanted to protect Maki from the truth, because as it turns out, the fact that Maki spared the guy had a major influence on the killer, up to the point where he fell in love with him.

However, after he just watched 28 bodies being mutilated beyond belief, there’s no wonder that his mind became unclear as hell. All he could think off was to not let Maki see what he just saw, though he failed to shoot his own brains. This is why his mind got preserved, and in this episode, Aoki finally got the courage to watch it.

On a side-note, I can’t wait for the eighth episode to get subbed and see the reaction of those who watched it.