Category: Special Articles

I just finished watching episode fifteen of this series, and I’ve got too many thoughts about this series and I don’t feel like waiting for this series to end to share them. It’s just too much of a shame to see that a series that I once loved for its witty humour degraded so much in only two months. The first seven episodes of Itazura na Kiss, where Irie and Kotoko were both into high-school. My favourite moment was that kiss in episode 7. Strangely enough, as soon as the two hit university and started to develop, the problems began piling up and this series went South.

It’s a shame, since this series did manage to avoid the standard pitfall for such a series: it’s nice to see the characters develop, and Irie and Kotoko realize what they want to do later. The two of them becoming a couple of a doctor and a nurse may be a bit conservative (that wedding also came way too fast), but then again, this may feel awkward because I’ve watched too much anime, which seems to hate modern conservatism like this.

The smaller problem in this series are of course annoying, like the horrible Engrish (I can understand how Irie’s English is bad, but people who are supposedly English yet again speak with a horrible accent. I really wonder, in these days of outsourcing, why nobody got the idea to hire a bunch of English voice-actors to fill in for the English parts…). The inconsistent animation at times is also rather grating, especially in that new ED. It feels like a bunch of entirely different people made it.

But the biggest problem is that the writers suddenly seem to have given up… it’s strange, but their wit that made me fall in love with the first few episodes is entirely gone now. One thing I liked about these first few episodes is the fast transition from funny to dramatic, when either Kotoko or Irie’s pranks went a bit too far, for example. That’s what made that drama work. Ever since university, the creators seemed to have increased the drama in this series, but the problem is that… they just can’t write decent drama.

For the past eight episodes, the creators just kept throwing love-rivals and random illnesses at our couple, as an attempt to test their relationship. I mean, come on, think of something bloody different! Have a bit of faith in your characters. They’re funny as they are, without these contrived plot-twist. The creators keep hanging at the boring parts and skip the potentially interesting parts. I mean, that sex-scene really came from nowhere. There was no build-up, absolutely nothing, even though it was supposed to be a moment to bring Kotoko and Irie closer together…

I think that indeed the big mistake of the creators, was that during the development of the characters, they never developed their characters, or built up for that matter. There’s hardly any foreshadowing, storylines aren’t wrapped up properly, there is such a thing as getting over your love… why hasn’t that black-haired tennis-woman whose name I forgot found herself a new guy? This series hardly feels connected at all, and it feels like the writers are struggling to find something interesting for their main characters to do.

I’m really trying to like these romantic comedies, but they really make it harder and harder by continuing to disappoint me. I really hope that this series finds its groove back in its final third, because I genuinely liked this series when it first started. It feels like nearly every one of these love comedies I watch gets dull as it goes on and loses inspiration. I believe that the only pure love comedies that I genuinely liked so far are the ones who added something extra, so that they weren’t just about the adventures of a brand new couple. Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge had lots of gothic horror references and bishounen-parodies; Moyashimon had its references to bacteria and in Umisho we got to see the chronicles of a local swimming-club. They may feel like plot-devices, but at least they provide the creators with enough inspiration to keep their series interesting until the end.

Short Synopsis: The students are taught magic through various practical assignments at real clients.
Highlights: Sora may have been a bit too emotionally attached to her assignment.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I’m pretty annoyed by Bonen no Xamdou, for its attempt to mess up my whole blogging schedule this season. Just when the final show this season aired and I decided which shows to blog, this one pops up. I don’t have a Playstation, and I’m not willing to buy one, so I haven’t seen its first episode yet. It’s not certain that I’m going to blog it, but there’s a pretty good chance that if it does pop up somehow, I’ll end up covering it. Especially since there are going to be 26 episodes.

One really annoying trend of 2008 is that, when compared to previous years, there are hardly any shows that go on for longer than 13 episodes. Only a select few went with a series length of 22 or 26 episodes, which is a real shame, in my opinion. In any case, if I do end up blogging Bonen no Xamdou, Natsu no Sora is probably going to be dropped. It’s obviously not a bad series, and I actually really like it, but everyone already seems to cover this series, and I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to say something interesting about each episode, considering the nature of this series. Either that, or Birdy the Mighty’s third episode has to be realy bad, but I doubt that one.

To go back on topic, this episode shows how the school in Natsu no Sora isn’t as Harry Potterish as I originally thought, and Sora is actually going to carry out many jobs as a magician in order to learn and develop her skills. It showed how in this world magicians are quite rare and not always admired. Sora’s also gets accompanied by some sort of manager or something. I’m not quite sure yet how this system works, but my limited Japanese may have been the cause of that. Do these people continue to accompany their magicians, or is it just for the first few months? Are these people magicians themselves? Does the school really have enough manpower to assign one manager to one magician?

Just as with episode 2, this episode again was very solid, with a bunch of forced plot-twists popping up from out of nowhere. Thankfully it wasn’t as blatant as that truck, but Sora suddenly decides to run off with the photo albums that she was supposed to get outside of a locked safe and bring them outdoors. This may have triggered the client to show a more personal side of herself, but I’d prefer it if was less forced, especially considering the nature of this series.

I’m also interested in whether the rest of this series will shed some more light into the world this anime is set in. I mean, in this episode we saw how easily Sora cracked that safe. What if there was a magician who suddenly thought that it’d be a nice idea to start robbing houses. If he’s talented enough, he’d probably get away with it, based on what I’ve seen in this series.

EDIT: aaand just after I make this post a sub of Bonen no Xamdou turns up. Does anyone know whether the .mp4-file is in HD or not?

Short Synopsis: Sora travels to Tokyo, has her first day at school and meets her classmates.
Highlights: Very detailed storytelling, but where did that truck come from?
Overall Enjoyment Value:7,5/10
Okay, so even though everybody and his dog will probably end up blogging this, I’ve decided to cover it. I haven’t seen the first season yet, but apparently you don’t need to have watched it in order to enjoy this one. It’s got a warm slice of life feeling, even though plenty of things are happening. Sora is quite a likable female lead, and I like how the creators gave everyone in Sora’s class his or her own identity. The backgrounds are also awesome: there were plenty of times where I couldn’t tell whether they were live-action or painted. It’s just going to be a bitch, trying to take screenshots of them, since there are hardly any good shots of the characters. The camera is either too far or too close the character’s faces. ^^;

This show does have its flaws, mostly in terms of coincidences. Out of all the houses in Tokyo, Sora ends up in the same as her potential love interest. But the really strange thing that was that accident that happened in front of Sora (where the SAME GUY was also present). First a car crashes, only for a truck to actually fly from a bridge somehow. I guess that the creators were trying to show Sora’s powers a bit, but this could really have been more subtle. Especially considering how solid the rest of the series is.

Sora’s classmates are an interesting bunch. Sora’s obviously talented, but this episode also showed that her magic is rather uncontrolled and not polished yet (especially when she lets her emotions take over, which I guess is a trait that 90% of all mahou shoujo leads have), but her classmates are either much more precise, or still need to learn how to use magic properly. In any case, this episode showed the beginning of good chemistry between them, which is always a plus.

I must thank everyone for replying on the reader survey, because I got a lot of interesting feedback. I’ll try to consider some of the things you suggested, but what caught my attention the most is the criticism for my rating-system. In a way, I agree. Most of the times, I don’t see the difference between 83/100 and 84/100, so it would be near-impossible to try and explain this.

The things these guys have said on the matter got me thinking about the right rating system for Star Crossed. This guy has a point as well: why waste so many different ratings on the bad shows? Why should one have so many room to differentiate all the different kinds of badness?

I don’t think that there’s one universal kind of rating scheme, it all depends on the reviewer. In my case, I’m in my element when I can praise a series to heavens, and while it’s fun once in a while to bash bad shows, I’d much rather spend time on the good stuff. Then I took a look at my list of reviews, and noticed that I already split up the series into basic categories, and wondered if I somehow could combine some sort of ambiguous star-like rating with this:

“100-94: A masterpiece, the best of the best
93-90: Outstanding series, with perhaps one or two small flaws here and there
89-87: Excellent series, definitely worth a watch
86-83: Great series, really enjoyable to watch.
82-77: Good, but could have been better
76-72: Has some great points, but significant flaws are holding this series back
71-65: An average series with one or two great parts
64-56: Mediocre series, not really worth your time
55-40: Bad series, stay away from these
<39: Painful, garbage, crap, etc”

I’ve never been that much of a fan of the 5 star-rating, for some strange reason. I’ve tried a few times, but they never really express what I want to: 5 different kinds of options do feel like to little, and if I include those half-stars, I’m with the problem again that the lowest categories will hardly be used. In fact, why do we always need to use a rating system with a number of options that can be divided through 5 or even 10? Why not something like… seven? So:

✩✩✩✩✩✩✩: A Masterpiece
✩✩✩✩✩✩: Outstanding
✩✩✩✩✩: Excellent
✩✩✩✩: Great
✩✩✩: Good
✩✩: Decent
✩: Mediocre

And the bad series just get a category with no stars at all. I mean, both Lucky Star and Shining Tears were unwatchable, and I can’t see why you’d want to differentiate between the two, if I’m not going to recommend it anyway. I’d much rather have a detailed distinction between the good series. And my current scoring would be relatively easy to change into this system.

The next idea was splitting these ratings up in different parts, to differentiate on what makes a series good. I refrained from doing this, mostly because I don’t agree with the standard system that review-sites as and Myanimelist are having. They make it seem like good animation and music together have just as much weight as a good story and characters, while I’m personally much more interested in storytelling. It’s no use to add in extra categories, because that’ll just end up cluttered. After a bit of thinking, I came up with the following areas that I find important:

– Storytelling (you can have a magnificent story in your head, but if it isn’t told well, it’s worthless)
– Characters (do the characters connect? Are they fleshed out and developed well enough?)
– Production-Values (thanks Autonomous Monster; this is basically a combination between graphics and music. In other words, a series with a high rating in this category is a proverbial feast for the senses)
– Setting (In other words: how much time has been put into designing the setting, and keep it consistent? How complex is the setting, and does the storyline make full use of this?)

I’ll call it the SCPS Rating system for now. For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try and experiment a bit with this system. I’ll still continue to give out numerical ratings, in case this was a bad idea, but for each review I’ll give out a star-rating for each of these four categories, along with an overall one and see how things go. If it works well, I might dish out these star-ratings for individual episodes as well.

Now that the summer holidays have begun (well, for me, at least), I found it a good time to start wondering whether Star Crossed can be improved somehow. It’s been ages since I changed something on this blog, and I’ve basically been using the same blogging format for two years now. This is why it seemed an interesting idea to run some sort of reader survey. Perhaps some nice idea will come from it. Let me start with the following question: which part of Star Crossed do you like best?

	Which part of Star Crossed do you like best?
	Episode Posts
	Series Reviews
	Quick First Impressions
	Monthly Summaries
	Season Previews
21phen.com weight loss

I’d also like to ask a number of questions, for which you can leave the answers in the comments:

1). What do you think of the amount of series I’m blogging at the moment? Is it too large, too small, just about right? Are there too many popular series?

2). Those who’ve looked at the archives probably noticed the huge amount of dead or botched-up pictures. Three image-hosts after each other turned against me, causing me to lose more than a year’s worth of screenshots. I’m currently slowly trying to re-upload these pictures, but how important is it to have these pictures back online again?

3). Is there something about Star Crossed that you’re missing? Is there a feature you’d like to request? Is there something about Star Crossed that you don’t like?

4). Regular commenters know that I’m not someone who replies to every single comment that gets posted on this site. I read every single one that gets posted, but I only reply if I feel inspired. Do I need to reply to every single comment? (apart from the ones like “where can I find subs of show X”, perhaps?)

5). Is there something else you’d like to add, but which I forgot to add to this survey?

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to this. 🙂

So, the nominations are over, and it’s time for the real voting. I’d like to thank everyone who nominated me in te preliminaries, I never thought that this many people consider this blog among the best of the episodic ones.

Apparently, the reader’s choice and blogger’s choice don’t start at the same time. I guess that the polls for the reader’s choice will be set up in a few days or so.

And now for something completely different. It’s taken me nearly two and a half year, but Star Crossed has finally received one million pageviews! To be precise, as of 10:00, GMT, there have been 1884531 pageviews, 1000047 unique visitors, of which 631120 are first-time visitors and 368927 are returning visitors.

Okay, enough self-whoring. I’d like to use this post to thank all my visitors and especially the ones who stuck around, because I wouldn’t have been able to reach this milestone. Heck, I dout that when I started, I ever imagined to get this far.

This is sort-of a compilation-post of all the movies I’ve watched up till now. They’re basically my opinions on the best movies that I’ve checked out. The format is the same as my end-of-the-year summary. I’ve tried to include screenshots, but for a few entries this didn’t work out (tip: never go with an image-host you don’t know). Also, feel free to share your own top-10 of movies and OVAs. 😉

Biggest Disappointment:

Aachi wa Ssipak

One failed comedy, in my opinion. I went in, expecting to see some brilliant jokes, but it went way too far in being absurd, and in the end the most worthwhile aspect of this movie were a couple of very impressive action-scenes.

Most Pleasant Surprise

Blue Submarine No.6

Metropolis too was a gem that I didn’t see coming, but what surprised me even more was that Gonzo’s first real production actually turned out pretty decent. Sure, it may have had its flaws, but I saw no traces at all of the questionable reputation that the studio would build up in the years afterwards.

Funniest Movie

Eternal Family

One thing that surprised me was that there were very few good comedy-movies. Okay, I may not have looked carefully enough, but still. In any case, the biggest sources of laughs for me were Satoshi Kon and Studio 4C, and one particular part of Robot Carnival. Still, I don’t think anything can beat a sadistic baby with a pair of scissors, so Eternal Family wins for this award.

Best Graphics

Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence

Well, I don’t think there’s hardly any contest here. Everything about this movie looks absolutely stunning. An honourable mention goes to Metropolis, though. Yet another visual feast.

Best Action

Adolescence of Utena

Of course, it’s a given that you need to have seen the original series to fully enjoy the movie, but if it’s action you want, then you should give this one a shot. Good action in my eyes isn’t flashy, but creative, and that perfectly describes the scenes you’ll see here.

Best Mystery

Twillight Q

Unfortunately, there aren’t that many mystery-movies and OVAs, though the three movies/OVAs with the best mystery in my eyes are Twillight Q, the xxxHolic-movie and They Were 11. All movies have a great mystery-oriented plot and a definite recommendation for any mystery-fan.

Best Science-Fiction

Jin Roh – The Wolf Brigade

Science Fiction doesn’t need to take place in the future, it can also play in an alternate universe. In addition to Jin Roh, Metropolis, Alien Nine and Hyper Future Vision Gunm also feature some very interesting ideas and settings.

Best Short Movie

Comedy

For those who want to waste ten minutes, Comedy by Studio 4C is my top-recommendation. She and Her Cat was great too.

Best Romance

Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress took romance to a whole new level, with terrific results. Other gems include Jin Roh, Porco Rosso and Mahou Tsukai Tai.

Most Thought-provoking Movie

Patlabor II

Unsurprisingly, a production by Mamoru Oshii. The plot is so complex and the storytelling is so captivating that it’ll definitely keep your mind busy as it goes on. Other and OVAs with interesting themes are Hitsuji no Uta, the second Kino no Tabi-movie, Eternal Family and Tokyo Godfathers.

Best Story

Arete Hime

Arete Hime was very slow, but it also had a memorable story. This was quite hard award to decide, as the stories of Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress and They Were 11 all sparkle with creativity as well.

Best Character-Development

The Dog of Flanders

The characters for the Dog of Flanders were just amazing, and it’s an award well-deserved. I do want to hand out a honorable mention for Oseam and Hitsuji no Uta, though. I’m still impressed at the huge depth of its characters.

Top 10 Movies and OVAs

#10: Hitsuji no Uta

I know that I’ve given it a relatively low rating, when compared to the others on this list. But looking back, I can see what an amazing character-study it has been.

#9: Jin Roh

Mamoru Oshii’s best work. Everything seems to fit in this movie, nothing feels rushed at all.

#8: Arete Hime

It’s a bit strange for a movie about boredom to appear on a top-10 list, but I really enjoyed this little Studio 4C-production. This is everything a fantasy-movie should be.

#7: Rurouni Kenshin – Tsuiokuhen

Of course, this one can’t be omitted in a list like this one. The original series may be to large of a commitment with its 90 episodes, but its four-episode OVA is a must-watch.

#6: Millennium Actress

The movie about movies. Satoshi Kon shows the viewer here an imaginative story with an absolutely lovable cast.

#5: Eternal Family

Eternal Family has a bunch of terrific themes, it’s hilarious and it also has a great cast. With thirty minutes, it also has the perfect length so that its jokes won’t be milked out, and it’s among the best movies that Studio 4C has created.

#4: Metropolis

Osamu Tezuka’s own productions may have been flawed, but when it’s another director who was tasked to bring his old creations back to live, then the results become amazing. Metropolis has really been a terrific movie, despite its standard storyline and concept.

#3: Tokyo Godfathers

In my opinion, Satoshi Kon’s best work. It has managed to mix a great sense of humour with a terrific storyline and quite an original setting.

#2: Tales of Phantasia

What can I say? Tales of Phantasia was one of the reasons why I started blogging in the first place, and although I feel I’m a bit biased, it’s been my most favourite OVA ever since.

#1: The Dog of Flanders

I’m so glad that I gave the Dog of Flanders a chance, as it’s without a doubt the best movie I’ve seen. The story is just so gut-wrenchingly sad, and another example of why Nippon Animation is one of my favourite animation-studios, along with Studio 4C and Production IG.