Category: Anime Reviews

Otome Youkai Zakuro was another one of those series that went under the radar this season. And granted, when looking at its premise it seems like a very simple youkai series. However, it’s a series that really shines through its execution and it does a great job combining the youkai genre with the romance one.

It’s the kind of series that perhaps doesn’t do anything new, but what it does it does really well. The three lead couples are all charming, each in their own way and especially Agemaki and Zakuro are two very good main characters who are both more than just romantic stereotypes. The simplicity of this series also allows the creators to put in a lot of detailed character development, and that especially manifests itself in Zakuro’s background, but the entire main cast emerges from this series with some depth.

the only real flaw of this show is its restriction to some cliches, like Zakuro the Tsundere, or a villain who listens to a few overused archetypes. It’s well told though, so despite these cliches it’s really able to put an emotional charge to just about every episode. It’s very consistently told and at the same time the drama is genuine enough to get nowhere near the levels of cheese, thanks to some subtle characterization.

It’s a great recomendation if you’re looking for some light romance. the story itself is well paced and keeps a great balance between the romantic developments between the characters, and the actual story and the growth of their characters. Autumn 2010 had many sleeper hits. This is one of the biggest ones.

Suggestions:
– Rozen Maiden
– Ga-Rei Zero
– Natsu no Arashi

I never watched more of the first season of Arakawa than an episode and a half, and I originally had no intention to keep up with its sequel. After hearing so many praises and requests though, I eventually decided to check out Arakawa Under the Bridge X Bridge, and surprisingly actually stuck with it for thirteen episodes. Now… was it worth it? No; I still feel like this series was a waste of my time.

I can see the intentions of this series: it’s a series in which a bunch of nutcases gather themselves under a bridge, don’t care about what anyone outside thinks of them and just are having fun with each other, all kept together by a central character Nino. As the show goes on, a potentially interesting subplot of space travel also pops up. There went quite a bit of imagination into the different character designs, from a guy with a star mask on to a washed up samurai and a little girl who can transform into a bodybuilder.

That’s all fine and dandy, but this is supposed to be a comedy. And I didn’t find it funny, at all. It perhaps got a chuckle out of me three or four times over its entire run, which is way too little. The jokes are all just horribly dull and look way too much like each other. It’s typical Shinbo esque humour of a lot of people screaming and yelling, but they fail to deliver anything actually funny. The humour also uses a ton of anti-climaxes, but they’re all so poorly timed that you can see them from miles ahead. The rest of the humour is all based on characters acting weird or acting strange, or some of the minor characters just showing off their stereotype. Everything is told in the same way, so when you’ve heard one joke, you’ve pretty much heard them all.

On top of that, this series is also horribly paced, dragging on jokes beyond belief. Every time when you think that they’ve finished with a joke, they just return to it and milk it out some more. Compare that to Squid Girl: even in its arcs, it always was changing its scenarios and really tried to not stay on the same topic for too long. This series instead has little inspiration and therefore tries to stay at the same spot for way too long. Especially the muscle jokes get over-abused, but the Amazoness also makes way too many appearances for her character to be worth it.

I tried. I really tried giving this show a chance despite my biases for Shinbo at the moment (and I do really like the different OPs and EDs of this series). But in the end, I just couldn’t find anything funny about this series. What kept me watching was the space travel subplot, but in the end this never reaches a conclusion: the characters are just randomly running around, often completely abandoning it and the final episode doesn’t resolve anything, only ending with a last-minute cheesy moral.

I haven’t watched the first season, so I can’t be sure of this, but here is one thing I want to ask of the people who did watch it: was this season really necessary? To me, I completely failed to see the point behind this sequel, like what happens with just about every Shaft Sequel that has appeared. To me, Arakawa’s biggest problem was that it got adapted by Shaft, because I had the same problem with this series that I had with a ton of their other series, simply because of how apparently Shinbo doesn’t allow his directors to have any individual style except for his own.

Suggestions:
– Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru
– Kuchuu Buranko
– Cromartie High School

The first Yumeiro Patissiere series had 50 episodes. Its sequel only has 13, don’t ask me why. Still, it’s the perfect length for those who find the pacing of the original series too intimidating and boring: the Professional-arc of Yumeiro Patissiere is short, compact and diverse, a unique shoujo series and a great example of how you can make a lovable cast even on a really small budget. As long as you’ve seen the first two or three episodes of the original Yumeiro Patisiere, you can easily follow what’s going on in this season and appreciate its character development (that’s what I did, anyway).

The thing with this Professional arc, is that unlike the first season, it’s not really about making sweets: that was already touched upon plenty by the first season. At this point, the characters are all very proficient at creating delicious stuff. Instead, the great thing is that it looks upon the business part of making sweets: actually selling them, attracting customers, getting the right ingredients and creating a good work atmosphere. It’s quite a unique twist for a shoujo series, and while it’s light-years away from a realistic representation (the creators completely ignore logistics for one, and they often prioritize neat ideas over actually making sense), I really loved how the business consultant part of this series turned into a unique shoujo. With the shoujo genre in its current state of seeing who can deliver the most generic storyline, this series is EXACTLY what the genre needed at this time.

What really made this show work was that it had a wonderful sense of chemistry. I mean, the first season of Yumeiro Patissiere was really, really long, but it developed its characters really well over the course of several years. The characters play off each other wonderfully and make this into quite a successful comedy (even though comedy isn’t the main focus of this series).

At the same time though, the flaws in this series stand out like a herd of elephants in a pet shop. Some of the characters in this series have characterization that is just… bizarre. This show strangely enough takes already badly used stereotypes… and somehow makes them even worse. Miya Koshiro takes the “spoiled princess”-archetype to ridiculous new heights, and Johnny…. just… Johnny.

The entire premise of this show makes no sense whatsoever, having a bunch of teenagers travel around the world (and also to another dimension), help all kinds of shops while maintaining a shop of their own at the same time, and the entire series is riddled with those kinds of questionable plot twists (especially the conclusion is just coincidental beyond belief). The animation and character designs are as simple as they can get, but it was a fun and interesting series, great for light entertainment.

Suggestions:
– Skip Beat
– Kodomo no Omocha
– Glass Mask 2005

Panty and Stocking obviously isn’t for everyone. It’s riddled with sex jokes, toilet humour, all kinds of bodily fluids, sex jokes, fowl language and fanservice. It’s going to turn off plenty of people with its unmasked innuendo and mind that has gone far beyond the gutter. At the same time though, it also turned into a pretty interesting experimental seires; in fact, it’s the most experimental ainme of the entire year: it reaks tons of barriers, it tries out tons of new stuff and is filled with neat ideas for both scenarios and animation.

The show consists out of 13 episodes, divided in two stories that often don’t have anything to do with each other: it’s a real episodic series, but it makes well use of this fact with the tons of ideas it’s able to stuff into them. We have homages to Shaun of the Dead, transformers, Invader Zim, High School Musica, all kinds of music videos, and all are done in a unique way. There are also plenty of episodes that are based on some gimmick, or strange idea and also be sure to not miss Osamu Kobayashi‘s unique take on this franchise, which turned out to be a really excellent piece of animation. Whenyou pile everything together, you get a really diverse little series.

But granted, there are also some episodes that just don’t work, and a lot of them are located early on in the series. They’re based either on a premise that just tries being raunchy for the sake of being raunchy, or is just poorly presented. The thing with Panty and Stocking is that it really depends on its execution and energy in order to keep the series going, because Panty and Stocking as a character are a tad one-dimensional. There are episodes in which they really branch out as characters very effectively, but mostly it’s just “Panty likes sex and Stocking likes food”.

In terms of graphics, this show packs a ton of eye candy, but the animation can be surprisingly simple. In order to make up for that though, the creators really try out a ton of different animation techniques that are really interesting to watch, from vector animation to stiff characters to really over the top action scenes (the best action scenes in this show really are a blast to watch). Panty and Stocking is as unsophisticated as you can get, but it’s definitely not uninspired.

Suggestions:
– Dead Leaves (I’d probably rate this one higher if I were to review it now)
– Gag Manga Biyori+
– Genius Party

Fortune Arterial… I’m impressed. Hentai Game Adaptations are… notorious, a lot of them are utterly terrible. This series looked like one of those cheesy harems right from the start, and yet it’s characters are actually pretty good.

The thing I usually notice with these hentai game adaptations is that unless you have an inspired staff behind it, they don’t really know what their stories are and end up wasting most of their time with silly cardboard cut-outs of characters. Fortune Arterial however knows exactly how to use its time, and how to set its characters apart. In the second episode, it promotes the male lead from a boring nobody to a member of the student council, and actually has him perform some duties like organizing the school’s sports festival or cultural festival. It’s been ages since I’ve actually seen a student council DO something other than look important, and therefore I found the episodes that are devoted to properly organizing and these festivals quite enjoyable.

I also applaud this series for the main storyline between the male and female lead: it’s simple but knows exactly what it is, it’s well built up throughout the series and actually centred around some pretty mature issues for a bishoujo show. The ending itself is quite powerful, although things ended a tad too soon: a few key points were left unresolved that will leave you hanging.

However, the next White Album this ain’t. There are a few underdeveloped side characters, and the storytelling gets a tad too simple at times. This series has especially a hard time figuring out what to do during the moments in which nothing happens, and the results are that these scenes become tedious to get through. None of the jokes it uses really work and they only make some of the characters really obnoxious.

The graphics… well, it’s a co-production between Zexcs and Feel. The result is a series with some of the most generic graphics of the entire year. However, as a “screw the graphics, we’re here to tell a story”, it works surprisingly well. It’s a simple vampire romance so don’t expect something epic here here, but it’s quite effective.

Suggestions:
– Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito
– Touka Gettan
– Futakoi Alternative

Ah, such a shame! Loups Garous is a movie with quite a few interesting twists and turns, offering a slight twist to your usual science fiction premise. It’s the kind of children’s adventure that’s not really meant for children: innocent at one side, really heavy and dark at the other. With the right execution, this really could have been a stunning movie. It’s just too bad that the execution sucks.

Loups Garous is the kind of movie where the writing staff either didn’t get enough time, or didn’t want to take enough time: it’s a collection of neat ideas unable to mesh together, tied together very poorly. The directing for example can’t even keep track of which scene it’s in: randomly it just skips time without even an introduction; things just happen because they’re interesting for the plot. There are countless of things that just don’t make any sense (we’re who knows how many years in the future, and yet there isn’t a single gun in the entire series), the hacking in this movie ranges from interesting to ridiculously stupid (especially during the final climax) and the bad guys have the most pathetic security system out there.

The main problem with this movie however is that it doesn’t know the concept of fleshing things out. It spends a lot of its time on mindless drivel, but it makes no attempt at familiarizing the viewers to its setting. The setting of this movie never gets analyzed beyond its premise, and only one of the characters has any depth at all: the rest are just stereotypes. The villains are also utterly terrible: all of them are just one dimensional stereotypes. People try to murder for the stupidest reasons (the pink-haired girl takes the cake: I dare you to find a dumber reason for her to get chased by a bunch of random punks out to kill her), the main villain is just laughably bad, the conclusion is a joke.

I’m getting a bit tired of Trans Arts, to be honest. They continue to abuse Production IG’s name to produce these ambitious titles that they have no idea how to correctly pull off. The only series in which they didn’t fail horribly was with Kemono no Souja Erin. The production of Loups Garous was horribly rushed and it shows through its entire airtime. I admire the spirit of these people, but please: first learn something from the people who actually know what they’re doing.

Suggestions:
– RD Sennou Chousashitsu
– Dennou Coil
– Metropolis

I don’t touch hard yaoi in the same way that I’m not going to talk about those extreme fanservice OVAs, but beyond that I do enjoy a good shounen ai series like Uragiri or Antique Bakery from time to time, despite being a straight guy. The main problem with most of the series of that genre however is that most of them are just so horribly uninspired. That however isn’t the problem with Togainu no Chi: its creativity is in fact the only part of this show with which there’s nothing wrong; it really had the potential to be an interesting and intense story about drugs and violence. If only it were handled by people who actually knew what they were doing.

And I guess that the soundtrack too deserves points for its cheese factor. Everything else however, is just downright poor. The story is incredibly cheesy and ridiculously poorly paced. Nothing really happens for a reason, things just happen for the heck of it and the few reasons that are provided are the corniest in the book. The characters are all flat as a pancake and any attempt made to develop them is just restricted to cheesy plot twists that try to be dark but only end up laughable.

The thing that really sets this show apart is how ridiculously poorly it’s executed, though. The direction is utterly terrible, and none of the voice actors manage to deliver any line correctly. The animation… is even worse than Iron Man. The characters are consistently stiff and feel like cardboard cut-outs. During fights, characters fight like experts one time and like sissies the next. Especially the final two episodes are a complete disaster in which the producers just flat-out give up. The entire final battle is riddled with just pans of random landscapes in the middle of the action scenes. There are animation restrictions due to small budgets, but this was animated by people who put no effort whatsoever in what they were putting out.

Granted, this series is better than Iron Man: its characters are stupid, but not THAT stupid. That however says just about everything positive that can be said, though. It’s just such a shame here that we have two series that do focus on adults, compared to the hordes of teenagers you see nowadays, and yet the characters have the emotional complexity of a bunch of ten year olds.

Suggestions:
– Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru
– Night Head Genesis
– Himitsu ~ The Revelation

At the start of this season, Natsu no Arashi was the last time in which I actually liked a Shaft series, so I guess that it’s no surprise that I wasn’t really looking forward to their two shows: Arakawa Under the Bridge and Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru. Nevertheless, the latter surprised me by being a pretty charming slice of life series. It neither feels like a rehash of one of Shaft’s previous series, nor does it take its style to the point where it gets in the way of the storytelling.

From the outside this seems like another show full of cliches, with the maids and all, and while this show certainly could have done without the maids, it’s the execution that makes this a fresh series. It’s especially good at fleshing out its characters though its dialogue, which is interesting, varied and really brings the characters alive. The entire cast has a good chemistry, and the show continues to juggle them in different situations and combinations in order to keep the series fresh throughout 12 episodes. I especially liked the conflicts between Hotori and her math teacher: they’re pretty much the polar opposites of each other and the tension between them is quite addictive.

There are some annoyances throughout the series, though. First of all is the way in which this series uses these eye catches that already were obnoxious back when Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei used them. Hotori herself also has this really annoying voice actress, who really manages to portray her as this immature teenaged girl. It’s a good characterization, but her yelling will get on your nerves in one way or the other. The most annoying are the scenes that focus on Hotori’s love interest, though. His inner monologues about how he wants to get inside Hotori’s skirt are boring, overdone and go on for way too long, and it never really amounts to anything.

In terms of the graphics, Shaft really put the earnings of the DVD sales of Bakemonogatari too good use, as this series is really well animated, especially the first two episodes. There are few of their usual shortcuts that have gotten old at this point, and instead it’s able to fully animate its characters while still able to experiment a bit. This definitely adds an interesting dynamic to the characters.

An interesting note is that Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru is the first series since the first Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei that Shinbo actually directed himself, rather than acting as some sort of supervisor. The results really show: this series is skillfully directed and balanced instead of just using Shaft’s style for the heck of it. There’s enough to keep you busy and the characterization is surprisingly good when you look past the initial annoying characters.

Suggestions:
– GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class
– Natsu no Arashi
– Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight