Kaleidoscope Archives - Star Crossed Anime

First 3-Week Impression Guide (part 2)

April 25, 2016 by SuperMario, posted in Kaleidoscope, Spring 2016 Kaleidoscope

This is the latter part of my guide, which consists of 6 (and a half) more shows:

Bungou Stray Dogs

The Verdict: The show picks up itself beautifully in its 3^rd episode. Now the main story kicks in we have a reason to care for those characters, just as long as they don’t spend time for those characters’ chit chat nonsense. The visual is one of the strongest of the season though, while the action scenes where they happen, are thrilling and exciting. I have a strong hope that it will get better from now on.

Keep Following: Yes. Not because I’m covering it, but because I see this one have a lot of potential to be memorable.

Recommended: I’ll say give the third episode a try and if you like it, then yes.

12-sai

The Verdict: This is sadly the most underseen titles on my list and I certainly can see why. But the show actually portrays quite sensitively and dare I say, maturely on what it means to be 12-years old, to find who they really are, to have a first crush, and to grow up. This is a shoujo adaptation so it means the growing process will lean more towards romance and friendship, but it’s not often we have a show that treats young kids as they are here. This is a nice little gem.

Keep Following: At least for now, yes. I will give it 3 more episodes.

Recommended: If this post by any mean a recommendation (it is), I would urge you to give it a watch. At least its 1^st episode, because simple the show deserved more attention than it currently had.

Kuromukuro

The Verdict: Also known as “that Netflix anime”, this story about a samurai who wakes up few hundred years later, and finds the world starts to become a battlefield as well. I actually enjoyed the first half’s slice of life section before it all turns into battle here. Having a huge fight between two sides of which we have no idea of is not a great strategy. The main protagonist has a unique quirk and by the end of third episode, has grown into a likeable character, but very few information has been explained about the attacking side, and the main girl is just plain. The fight, by the way, is good to look at, but I don’t see it as a standout, either.

Keep Following: No. This is an easy skip.

Recommended: No. The story is still not enough for us to care, and if you want a truly epic action show, look no further than:

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

The Verdict: Just 2 episodes were aired so far (because of the earthquake), but it’s seems Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress is the show that most likely becomes a big hit. The animation and background art are stunning. The production as a whole is awesome. The pacing keeps you on edge all the time and even the character designs are gorgeous. But don’t expect a subtle moment because mostly they keep putting everything into MAX. The story and the character development, on the other hand, are shaky and not consistent. But this is to be expected from an action show so I have no complain.

Keep Following: Yes. I admit this show is not my cup of tea. But even me sometimes want to watch a pure action show where my heart races and my fist bumps.

Recommended: Yes. THE-MOST-ENTERTAINING-SHOW-THERE-IS this season.

Kiznaiver

The Verdict: While I said earlier that I think Joker Game is the show I’m most certain to solid, Kiznaiver is the show that have a potential to become a standout show of the season, since this show is the most creative show (at least for me) of this season. There’s a lot to like here, when forced the characters to be honest to themselves and confess their secrets to each other, there’s a sense of real emotional bonds and we, the audience feel it as well. While the “missions” are sometimes feel forced and ridiculous, the emotional strengths overcome most of it. The style here in Kiznaiver is excellent and unique (kudos to Trigger), the characters are great so far. Well I do hope that the second half of the shows can deliver the strengths that Kiznaiver had been established so far

Keep Following: Yes! Yes! Yes!

Recommended: Yes. As I said, the most inventive show of this season.

Flying witch

The Verdict: Flying witch has all the elements good slice-of-life shows have. The pacing is slow but steady the cast is endearing, the atmosphere is inviting. To mix some of the magic ingredients on top, and you have a show that both celebrate the everyday life and the magical life, making it a consistent magical realism show. The background and music both complement the atmosphere without being too stand out.

Keep Following: Yeah! The execution is strong enough that I don’t mind if story is about nothing.

Recommended: This is for me the most consistent of all shows. This is a nice contrast to Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress as well. (while Kabaneri tends to go bigger and bigger, this shows really like to show little details and very light on story). I’d recommend watching this after Kabaneri to balance it out)

Uchuu Patrol Luluco

The Verdict: This is the only short series (hence a half) that I watched and I absolutely adored it. Trigger has a very unique style, and this series would go as wild and as wacky as ever. The short running time also mean that it won’t wear out its welcome. This runs for 4 episodes (20 minutes so far) and I loved every moment of it

Keep Following: Yes. Too good to turn down

Recommended: Yes. Common guys! This just take like 5 minutes of your time every week. I would say this is a more unique looking anime of this season.

This concludes pretty much my guide. After the first 3 weeks I would say Joker Game, Kiznaiver and Flying witch are the top tiers (which we all covered here). I hope they remains consistent throughout the rest of the season. Okay, time to watch this new week’s episodes for me and I hope you guys enjoy my reviews here. Care to tell us which shows you are enjoying or is there any note-worthy shows that we’ve missed? Tell us more in the comments.

~SuperMario~

First 3-Week Impression Guide (part 1)

April 25, 2016 by SuperMario, posted in Kaleidoscope, Spring 2016 Kaleidoscope

A quarter of the Spring season have passed, and it’s time for our 3-episode round up reviews. Usually by that time the shows have established all their ingredients and now start to kick off to their premises. The 3-week rule is a good barometer to determine whether the series can turn out to be good or not. The main purpose of this post, as a result, is to make it as a guide for you readers, now we have a better idea about those shows. My experience with anime would say sometimes it’s not the case at all (like recently Everything Becomes F started of strong and then ended completely ridiculous), but most the time this proved to be a good exercise. Even the wicked Puella Magi Madoka Magica shows its true color in its 3^rd episode,

This season so far are quite solid in terms of amount of good shows, and a range of variety as well, though no shows is truly stand above the rest. we have good action/mecha shows (Kabaneri of Iron Fortress, Kuromukuro), comedy/slice-of-life shows (KumaMiko, Flying witch), shounen (Diamonds Are Unbreakable, My Hero Academia) and many usual light novel adaptation and cute girls doing cute things shows. The most impressive thing here, as I mentioned in earlier post, is the great showing of 12 year old-characters girls. Usually those girls in anime was treated more like a supporting character with no depth at all, so this is a great sign and I hope there’ll be more like this in the future.

So without further ado, here is the list of the first batch that I have watched so far in the airing order, along with my impressions on how they doing so far, LET RUN THEM DOWN!

Mayoiga

The Verdict: One of the strength in Mari Okada’s scripts is her ability to write characters that are so different from each other. They have a distinctive feature, gestures, personality that it’s a joy to see them playing off against each other. Mayoiga put it up to the MAX by introducing 30 of them, and quite frankly, having interesting traits’ characters and promising premise ain’t enough to have a good show. The story, judging from mystery aspects, is way too slow. After 3 episodes, all we get are 1) Those people arrived to the Lost village. 2) 2 of them have disappeared and 3) A body has been found floating on a river. And they are all 5 seconds before the end of each episode. The rest of the time Mayoiga stumbles around with many ideas and not that good execution.

Keep Following: Since I’m covering this one, that’s a Yes

Recommended: Sadly, no. It’s still the more ambitious show of the season so it’s still interesting just to see how it all plays out. Will it be great? I don’t think so.

My Hero Academia

The Verdict: For me, My Hero Academia mostly succeed on what it sets out to be: what it means to be a hero. While shows like One Punch Man shows the other side of the spectrum: what it means to fight and save people (being in hero association is a mean to achieve this), My Hero Academia looks up on being a hero, and how it inspires others to be like him. In that sense this is more like an idol/ sports shows than its shounen origin. Anyways, the reason this shows works so far is because its heart is on the right place, it feels the pain and struggles our protagonist Izuku has, at the same time still bright and optimistic to suggest that it you really strive for it, your wish will come true.

Keep Following: Sorry but No, My Hero Academia sadly just isn’t my type of show. Being an idol/hero who inspires others is not my interest. Considering we have quite many fine shows to watch here, I will leave it aside for now.

Recommended: By all mean, yes. While the third episode slows the shows a bit, I’d consider it the calm before the storm. Next week when we reach the test, there will be much more fun to see.

KumaMiko

The Verdict: Here come a sleeper hit of the season. I enjoyed the first episode of KumaMiko, but I could never anticipate that the next episodes would be that solid. They are more focus than the first one and the communication between the two leads, in particular; is very nice to watch; they bounce off each other well and the comic timing is mostly consistent. I loved the humor of the show, from its pop culture reference (most notably Uniqlo), its sometimes crude humors, to its irrelevant randomness (like when Natsu recalled when Machi got tranced when she was young, I laughed my heart out), it just all clicked.

Keep Following: Yes. This is a better comedy show than most this season, and completely took me by surprise by how consistent it is. I originally thought this is a nice little show to watch between other big shows, but now I actively look forward to watch it.

Recommended: I would say Yes, but with reservation. Humors depends on each people and some of the jokes might be too left-field for some.

Re:Zero- Starting Life in Another World

The Verdict: After 3 episodes (oh, actually it’s 4), we have a nice closure to the first part of the series. The cast, due to the repeating, have to deal with the same day in different situations. That way it gives different perspective to the characters, which is a plus for me. The story is just engaging enough to make use of the hook. The cast so far is pleasurable as well, albeit not that deep yet.

Keep Following: I’m really in between whether I would continue watching it or not. Everything so far just fall right in the middle: the story is decent is enough, the cast just decent enough, the hook is decent enough… that nothing really stands out. I will give it another episode to decide.

Recommended: It would turn out to be a solid show, so if you are in favors for the first few episodes here, then YES.

Joker Game

The Verdict: The third episode so far the weakest of the bunch, and it seems like the show will continue in that direction, that means each episode a new spy guy takes a spotlight. Each episode is very solid and I really hope those spies can show much of their humane side, while still follow the instinct of the spy. Joker Game is still one of the most solid show of this season.

Keep Following: Certainly. If you ask me right now which shows I’m most certain to become solid. It’s this show.

Recommended: A big YES

Twin Stars Exorcists

The Verdict: Twin Star Exorcist manage both to embrace many of the cliché of the genre (the boy with potential talent, his tragic past, the girl literally falls into his arms, that girl ends up living on the same house with him, they fated to become together, other girl who liked him, too many to even list them all here), while at the same time being very entertaining and hits all the right notes. I have an easy watch every time, which indicates that it has good pacing and the lead actually have great chemistry.

Keep Following: No. Spending 3 episodes is quite enough. I don’t see anything truly stands out from the show.

Recommended: Although this is an entertaining piece, I would say NO since there is many more entertaining or simply better shows out there.

~SuperMario~

White Album 2 – 09

December 1, 2013 by psgels, posted in Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope

For a lot of series this season I lost the motivation to keep up, even Yozakura Quartet, but with White Album I really wanted to catch up due to the potential I still saw in it. I just finished episode nine, and yeah. The creators pretty much did it: they created a love triangle, and they did it well. They did exactly what they needed to do, nothing more and nothing less.

I mean, this just works, and it’s the first love triangle in quite a while that is so well done. There are no annoying side-characters who try to steal the spotlights: the side cast knows exactly their place: this is the story of the three main characters, and nothing else. Every episode also progressed smoothly into the other: We first had the set-up, then a few episodes of developing the romance between the male lead and both girls, then there was the climax with the school performance that lead to two of them coming together, and now the finale of the series is focused on graduation and the actual love triangle.

On top of that, this series is so mature about it. It just presents the romance as it is, and the drama here is actual drama that develops naturally, not through forced cliched events. The whole premise of this series is deceptively simple, and this series knows it. When I compare this for example to a series like Sakurasou, the latter just feels so contrived with all of the forced drama that just kept going on and on. Not to mention the stupid characters. The characters in this series aren’t stupid. They’re teenagers. This show is actually blurring the lines between friendship and romance, rather than making it incredibly obvious who fancies who.

Also, a freaking couple forms before the end of the series! Yay for another series that actually wants to do that.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Noucome – 05

November 12, 2013 by psgels, posted in Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope

I’m not blogging this series, but this episode was too interesting to pass up. I’m quite behind on a lot of series, so unfortunately it might take a while before I’m caught up with everything again, so I’m just going to continue the Kaleidoscope in whichever way is the most handy.

Noucome is definitely my guilty pleasure of the season. There is a lot wrong with it. For starters: remove the dog girl and this series would already be lots and lots better. Every major character in this series is a clever play on stereotypes, but she’s just there for dumb moron-jokes and fanservice that we’ve seen way too many times before. This series also has some moments at which it’s just random for the sake of being random. That also could have been toned down.

But yeah, this episode in particular had some pretty sharp parodies. It was actually a breath of fresh air to finally have a series address the stupidity of some overused cliches and bad plot devices that plague the romance and harem scene. I mean, I’ve said before that a good parody is one that really pokes fun at its subject material, instead of just copying things.

The Shaft and the Sister parodies worked surprisingly well. This probably is the first time that I’ve seen a Shaft parody work so well, pointing out how silly it is to just watch a bunch of dialogue while the camera focuses on random details in the background that make no sense. Very clever. And on the other side of the coin, it was so satisfying to finally have someone call out on the bloody sister-cliche! I cringed when the sister first appeared, but the entire character is a very successful parody who just calls everyone her sibling. The best part was that one member of the student council who finally showed a bit of a realistic reaction of having younger siblings as a teenager.

Beyond that, there actually is a romance series that distinguishes between liking someone and loving someone. Yukihira meanwhile continues to take the piss out of the typical character who has a crush on the male lead by getting into his way in quite some creative ways.

Overall this was a very inspired episode. It’s not perfect obviously, for example that Maria-Sama ga Miteru bit was just a random reference that had no purpose of being there, and the rich posh girl with huge boobs was just another rich posh girl with huge boobs, but for a comedy to be consistently funny for five episodes, with such a questionable subject material. I consider that quite a job well done.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope – October 28th

October 28, 2013 by psgels, posted in Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope

Gingitsune – 03: Not blogging this episode because nothing much really happened, but still an adorable little episode to dream away to. I stand by my case that that fox is adorable. The turtle was a one-off character, but he did illustrate the concept of time really well, which is quite important for our white friend’s development.

Golden Time – 03: I was surprised by the weird cult that appeared out of nowhere, but I guess that weird obsessions are a theme of this series. However, what happened afterwards was quite interesting: two characters just sat down and had quite a long talk for anime standards, in which they got to know each other much better. Lots of interesting stuff happened there.

Noucome – 03: I just realized how hard it is to animate characters laughing. Most of the time you get these awkward squeals with blushes that feel incredibly forced. But yeah, another hilarious episode. Everything about this episode was just so wrong, but for once the show actually acknowledges this, which is something you don’t often see. Of course it then goes and pulls in some twists that are as bad as the things it’s parodying, but still, even the drama here is done tongue in cheek.

Yowamushi Pedal – 02 & 03: Okay, my verdict after the first real cycling match is that I’m not going to continue watching. The reason for this is that the creators are rather dragging them out, resulting in a lot of repeating lines that don’t really add anything other than padding things out. For cycling anime, the two Nasu OVAs do a much better job at portraying the sport than this.

Golden Time – 04: This episode. Did it really only take up 20 minutes? I mean how much can you stuff in one episode, especially for a regular drama series. Talk about things escalating quickly here. The good news is that there is great character development. The bad news is that we seem to be heading into a generic love triangle, so try to stay away from that, okay?

Hajime no Ippo – Rising – 04: Aoki’s fight actually got more episodes than Ippo’s. Perhaps a few too many penis jokes, but still this was a really enjoyable build-up and thankfully it set up the stage a bit better than with the first arc here that just boiled down to how deep the sea was. I like how this episode really shows Aoki in a serious light, yet didn’t shed away his goofiness. Lots of other anime have failed pretty badly in the past attempting this

Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope – October 20th

October 20, 2013 by psgels, posted in Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope

Phi Brain 03 – 02: Kaito, Rook: if you were in a giant room that was turning and moving around… you should have noticed that. I see that this series starts off well by pushing your suspense of disbelief to its limits. Everyone’s taking puzzles even more seriously here. The villains are basically “must… destroy… all puzzlers in the world!! All Puzzlers must die, so let’s beat them by using puzzles!” – I’m not kidding! But yeah, for the things that really mattered, this episode delivered. The characters were as fun as ever.

Ore no Nounai Blahblah – 02: Unfortunately a lot worse due to some bad direction and animation issues, but there still were plenty of good jokes in this episode.

White Album 2 – 02: Okay with this it’s definitely not like the first two White Albums. The whole belt thing was a bit weird, but you can see clearly what the creators are doing right now: setting up the love triangle. The attention to build-up is admirable, now the question is whether this show can make use of it, or whether it’ll just play the ‘boring’-card.

Little Busters – Refrain – 02: Okay, Little Busters, I have to hand it to you: this episode was amazing. I would not have minded at all if this were the ending of the series. This is wonderful as a conclusion. You can still ruin this by throwing in some harem-nonsense, but standalone this episode was the single best episode we’ve seen from Little Busters, BY FAR. Well, done!

Hajime no Ippo – Rising – 03: Awesome: Aoki has always been an incredibly likable side-character, so I’m trhilled to see that he got an actual arc dedicated to him here. That’s how I believe that the sequels are better than the original Hajime no Ippo series: it’s not just about Ippo. But yeah, tons of hilarity this episode on top of Aoki being really charming, and getting to fight the perfect opponent for him.

Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope – October 14th

October 14, 2013 by psgels, posted in Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope

I’ll try to post these entries on Sunday Evening. They’re just a collection of impressions about the series I watched that I didn’t blog. No rankings, no systems, just raw impressions and opinions. Enjoy.

Hunter X Hunter 96 – 99: Hunter X Hunter reached another one of its annoying phases again. The context of these four episodes was wonderful. I love what the creators are trying to do here in the big picture. The inrigues that come from all kinds of sides, some characters being really careful in their approaches in order to win. Great. But what happened in these four episodes was completely inconsequential in which the named cast just one-sidedly takes down a bunch of ants with weird powers. The part with the spiders was fine: it actually showed lots of new things about them, and gave them much appreciated depth, and the ants they took down were ants we know. However, Gon’s battle against that snake, bat and was really annoying to sit through and just served to kill some time. Not to mention that that fight just made no sense and it was way too overcomplicated for its own good.

Golden Time – 02: The comedy was less there, but I like what this show is trying to do: Kaga is an obsessive stalker and goes way too far and totally deserves a restraining order and yet this show is trying to make us sympathize with her. also pulling the “she’s pretty”-card for that.

Hajime no Ippo Rising – 02: A request to the creators: would you please try not to spoil what happens in your episode titles. I know that this episode was a bit more complex than just that, but it’s the same as hearing “character x does y”: it takes away a bit of the suspense. A suspense that by the way was utterly excellent aside from that tiny detail in this episode by the way. Oh how I missed these intense matches. It was a great way to get back into this series. Just let the next arcs take a little more time, okay?

Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope – June 18th

June 18, 2013 by psgels, posted in Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope

#1: Yahari Blahblah – 09: The main character’s pessimism: I’m really surprised at how well that has been done in this series. It really has depth: he’s not just wise-cracking his way through the series, nor is he wallowing in self-pity. He is who he is, and he is happy that way, even though his life could be so much more fun if he didn’t think the way he did and he wasn’t so cautious in avoiding disappointments. And even that part gets developed in this episode. This is the first light-novel adaptation with a stupidly long title that I actually liked, but even then this has exceeded my expectations.

#2: Majestic Prince – 09: The plot in this series is nothing special. The characters still show off their clichés. The villains are boring, the setting is standard. Yet why do I like this? Why do I find the characters so enjoyable to watch? Why do I find their quirks funny? What’s going on here?

#3: Hunter X Hunter – 83: What I really like about the Chimera Ant Arc is how well it explores the ants themselves, and how they gradually learn from their mistakes. They’re smart… for ants. That unfortunately is also why I don’t yet consider this to be the best arc of the series so far. At this point the ants have nothing on the Spider Troupe yet and the fights still are boring. Will that change or not?

Wtf of the week:

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San Z – 09 & 10: What on earth did I just watch? What was that? Why, Japan? Why!?!

Worst episode

Valvrave the Liberator 10: Oh boy. I’d like to talk a bit about the series from the “Code Geass”-school, or to be more accurate: the products of Ichiro Okouchi and Hiroyuki Yoshino, because I’m deeply concerned with what these two are doing. Hiroyuki Yoshino may not be involved in Valvrave, but the general trend is definitely visible. The two of them are prolific writers who get assigned to do the series composition of a lot of high-profile original anime, yet their philosophy favors sensationalism over everything else: they write series with shock value in mind, while at the same time having storylines that don’t even bother hiding that they’re ridiculous.

I say that it comes from the Code Geass-school, but I believe that this started with Mai Hime and Mai Otome. Mai Hime was actually a very good series that actually did a very good job at shock twists, but something happened in the transition to Mai Otome, which started to sacrifice good storytelling and likable characters for said shock twists (really, what happened there just did not make any sense!). Ever since that point, our lovely duo proceeded to write original scripts that just threw in shocks for the sake of having shocks, even though they are either really convenient, or just didn’t make any sense at all (and before this point they didn’t do that: these are the guys who wrote Planetes, Overman King Gainer, the adaptation for Angelic Layer) and indeed Mai Hime. A downside is that they use that to also drag down some really good directors in the process: Tetsurou Araki, Goro Taniguchi, Matsuou Kou, even Shoji Kawamori (in a less noticeable way though, probably thanks to Shoji’s ego). They’re all brilliant directors, but none of that brilliance shined through when they had to work with these guys.

So yeah, the rape. Let’s just say that I disagree with how it was used here. Valvrave is supposed to be this fun over the top and crazy series. With this, you just made it way too serious. I understand that they wanted to show that Valvrave can turn people into monsters. But don’t try to combine that with a student council election. That’s very bad use of irony, not to mention that I find that it looks very much down on rape and rape victims. With this episode this series also really started to take itself seriously. Why? Also, I glimpsed at a few of the reactions people had after this episode. And god. It’s times like these where I want to disassociate myself from the anime fandom…

Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope: May 30th

May 30, 2013 by psgels, posted in Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope

#1: Hunter X Hunter – 80: Once in a while Hunter X Hunter comes with an episode that just stands out. This was one of them. The first half just oozed style and really was a big change from the usual atmosphere and I found it really well done with how it was just in black and white, and how it didn’t show the guy’s face at all. The second half of the episode… let’s just say that it’s the first time in 80 whopping episodes that this series managed to shock me.

#2: Yahari Blahblah – 05: The end of this episode. That’s where I understood the appeal of this series and where it really became better than its contemporaries, rather than just a series with potential. The first parts of the episode were a bit iffy, but at the end it really became apparent that the creators spent time on it: the male lead’s loneliness is actually well.

#3: Yondemasuyu, Azazel-San – 07: This was actually quite hilarious. Yondemasuyo Azazel-san is at it’s greatest when it’s just banter. The characters have a really good chemistry together, and I especially love the creative use of facial expressions as this show tries to parody the murder mystery genre. Of course, they then proceed to ruin it in episode 8 while trying too hard on being weird and gross again. Enough with the jokes about people’s nether regions already!

WTF of the past Weeks:

Saint Seiya Omega – 56: So. We have this ninja, who has been raised in an incredibly conservative ninja village. This ninja then hears rock music, it changes his soul and now he suddenly is performing J-rock in a band of power-ranger impersonators. Okay.

Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope – May 12th

May 12, 2013 by psgels, posted in Spring 2013 Kaleidoscope

#1: Valvrave The Liberator – 04: Just… wow. Don’t get me wrong, this episode was incredibly cheesy. But at the same time it was just florious with how much confidence it brought that plot twist of its. I guess this is what I meant by this series just going over the top: screw logic, and just focus on creating as much fun as possible. So far, this is what Guilty Crown should have been: the male lead is the only one with special powers, and he just uses them to screw everyone who is against him over. The big potential pitfall right now is the characters. These types of series also seem to think that you don’t need characters to remain entertaining, but the whole trick of making these series last is by keeping them interesting. Otherwise it’ll just get boring!

#2: Hunter X Hunter – 77: I still find the ant designs to look a bit silly (a minor detail perhaps, but it does screw a bit with your first impressions), but I like the idea behind the Chimera ants a lot. The way in which they continue to evolve. And again, it’s completely different from any other arc in Hunter X Hunter before and I really admire that for a shounen series. But do the villains have actual emotional depth? There’s one way to find out!

#3: Yahari Blahblah (I still refuse to use the whole title of this show until it gets actually really good) – 04: What I liked about this episode was the use of that one really popular guy. It was a bit of a narrow-minded episode, but it raised some good points for the characters. At the very least, I’m really glad to see that this didn’t turn out to be yet another one of those brainless school series, but that it actually tries to bring some substance in, even though it’s got a bunch of cliched and annoying characters.

Other Notes:

Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge – 04: Now I see! The thing with this series is that the story is crap, yet the characters and the atmosphere are charming. This may seem negative, but it is what keeps me watching. I couldn’t care less about those killing thingies or whatever plot there is supposed to be, but the creators gathered together an interesting cast that stands out. There are some weird things though. Like that girl who got stranded in this episode. I’m not sure what to think of her.