Category: Anime Reviews

Out of all the series this season, MM had by far the most bizarre design decisions. It’s not just one thing about this series that’s weird; it’s got an entire washing-list of points that make me wonder what the hell these creators were thinking when they made this, both in good and bad ways. Allow me to elaborate.

Contrary to everything I expected, this series actually starts out pretty good. The main character is bothered by extreme masochism, but instead of glorifying this like most other moe shows that are based on a fetish, it makes it very clear that the lead character hates his condition and wants to be cured of it, and the people around him have similar problems The first four episodes are actually an interesting look at people with these severe disorders that were created by traumatic events in their pasts. It’s a bit overdramatic at times, but works surprisingly well here.

And then… the show becomes completely different. I mean it, they jump a gigantic shark at episode five, and continue on as a show consisting of nothing more than random fillers based on bizarre situations. These episodes are bad in many ways, including the “so bad that it gets good again”. The only possible explanation I can think of this is that Zexcs executives realized too late in what kind of direction the creators were originally planning to go and forced a complete change in the middle of the production here, in order to make this series more sell-able.

By far the weirdest result of these changes is how ridiculously out of character some of the people start acting here, the two lead females being the biggest example. One is a typical tsundere who at completely random times completely loses her “tsun”-part for no other reason than plot convenience. The other is a shy and humble girl who at random points becomes sincerely energetic and shameless. Both make no sense whatsoever considering the way in which their characters were built up.

Bad Xebec has been overshadowing Good Xebec way too much for the past few years. For every Pandora Hearts and The Third they make, they also come with tons of series that are nothing but harem antics. They’re much, much worse than what Gonzo once was. However, I also have to admit here that for a generic Moe shows, MM was actually one of the few that I enjoyed.

The fillers are stupid, filled with fanservice and filled with moe cliches, however they’re not really generic. They’re so ridiculously over the top that they become fun in this “mindless entertainment” way. There are some repeated jokes here and there, but all of the episodes are based on some neat idea that at least keeps the series fresh. The hypnosis episode in particular made me fall of my chair laughing. The other fillers, while nowhere as funny, still managed to keep my attention.

A big help for this series is that for a generic harem, it does have a very good male lead. Half of the time, his masochism is indeed used as a strange gimmick, but his dynamics do manage to carry the entire series. At heart, MM is a series about perverts, but it keeps a healthy balance between showing their positives and negatives, never overly glorifying them like you see in most other otaku shows. Just don’t expect anything to resolve itself, though.

Storytelling:	7/10 – It’s just bad at times, but never really boring, bringing enough creativity to the table to last 12 episodes.
Characters:	8/10 – Quite engaging at some times, ridiculously moe and out of character at others.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Nothing special, but quite solid.
Setting:	7/10 – Never, ever let the creators attempt to treat deep traumas or masochism. Seriously, don’t. And don’t even think about trying any of the “masochism cures”-in this series seriously!

Suggestions:
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou
– Kenko Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho

Madhouse, they’ve really established themselves as a powerhouse unlike any other animation studio, so when they announced their marvel project, I’m sure many people were looking forward to it: four twelve episode series, focusing on Iron Man, Wolverine, the X-Men and Blade. With two years of hype surrounding it, I was really looking forward to see what they could do with these premises. And then Iron Man finally aired. Oh boy.

Let’s start with the visuals. I usually don’t mind strange character-designs at all. In Iron Man though, people just look silly. The character-designs themselves aren’t particularly the problem, it’s just that all of the characters are drawn off-model 90% of the time. The result isn’t pretty: Tony Stark looks like a goat, one of the reporters looks like a warthog, it just screams uninvolved outsourcing all around. An interview with a Madhouse executive seems to hint at how the highest priority for their staff was spent on finishing the movie Redline, and it really shows that this had its effects on Iron Man.

If the graphics were just the issue then this could have been easily forgiven. But just about everything about Iron Man is just horrible mediocre. Take the plot: the series follows the tried and tested “first half random stories, second half plot”-pattern, and it fails at both of them. The random stories int he first half are just utterly stupid. Things are just there, without ever getting a reason why. They’re a complete mess at stupid decisions made by just about everyone. My favourite was the time in which Tony Stark gets attacked by a hacker, and the hilariously bad way in which he eventually gets defeated. Most of the stories though are so dull that they aren’t even bad enough to be funny.

The main story of this series on the other hand is just so ridiculously corny that it completely saps any kind of creativity that could have been put into it. These are especially the parts that feel like they were written by a twelve year old: it pulls the cheesiest twists in the book, over and over again. The dialogue is full of these cheesy morals without any attempt to give them depth: they’re completely shallow. Especially the final episodes are just one big soap opera that pull the kinds of plot twists that try to be sad but end up horribly corny and predictable.

That kind of a mess of a plot could in theory have been saved by the cast of characters… but no. They suck too. The worst is this reporter girl whose annoying antics have no place in this story, but every single character in this series is bad. Tony Stark has been turned in this moralizing womanizing dork, and the people around them lack any kind of creativity or even characterization.

I’ve been blogging for more than five years now. And seriously: I have never seen a worse season for Madhouse than the current Autumn Season. I wish I could say something positive about this series, and I guess that there is one episode that I actually liked. I mean the one with the psychic girl. It’s still riddled with problems, but at least it tried to be a bit genuine. The rest all is mediocre at best and while it may not be the worst series out there (hey, it’s nowhere as terrible as say KissxSis or Ladies Versus Butlers), this one could have been infinitely better, if it just was handled by a staff that actually cared about it. In the end, I can only say one positive thing about it: the soundtrack rocks. Seriously, go listen to it.

Storytelling:	5/10 – Moderately entertaining at best, cheesy, corny, shallow, superficial and just plain stupid at worst.
Characters:	4/10 – The character development that’s there is terrible, most of the characters are just paper bags.
Production-Values:	7/10 – I very rarely deduct points in this category: I only do that when the graphics actually get in the way of the rest of the series. They do here, making characters who try to be really serious look incredibly silly.
Setting:	5/10 – It’s the kind of setting that tries to be epic but fails horribly.

Suggestions:
– Ultraviolet: Code 044 (This is how superhero anime should be done god dammit!)
– Testujin 28-Go (Yes, Tetsujin roughly translates to Iron Man)
– Mobile Police Patlabor
I mean, there are so many examples this series could have followed. And yet it went with the most generic one.

As a reviewer, I often try to create parts of my reviews for anime in my head as I’m watching them. After 20 episodes of Irresponsible Captain Tylor, I had a fairly good idea of what I was going to say about it: it’s a pretty decent parody of the space genre, poking fun at the incredible luck that protagonists are blessed with, taking that to the absurd while still retaining a serious science fiction story, though it dragged too much at certain parts, had too many generic episodes and cliched characters.

Then I watched the final four episodes, and pretty much had to throw all of my impressions and assumptions overboard and start from scratch.

And I mean, it’s not like Irresponsible Captain Tylor doesn’t have its boring moments. It’s a parody, but sometimes fails in that, for example when it tries to parody the harem genre by having every single female fall in love with Tylor despite an overabundance of other hot guys. That’s not witty; everybody does that. Some of the premises for some of the episodes are also a bit uninspired, where the cliches overshadow the wit of the scenario, not to mention that Tylor himself is annoying beyond belief. And then this show comes and delivers an absolutely fantastic finale that is nothing like the rest of the series, yet ties everything together perfectly, delivers an epic climax and is completely unpredictable in every way.

I mean, it’s Koichi Mashimo here. Especially at the beginning and end of this show, he really shows that before starting Bee-Train, he already was an amazing director. The characters of this series have plenty of annoyances and flaws, and yet they’re far from one dimensional, and grow on you as the series progresses. The best scenes of this series are also amazingly well directed and this show contains some of the best animation I’ve seen from him. To make matters even more interesting, Kenji Kawai did the soundtrack for this one, and yet the music in this series is unlike anything from either him or anything else I’ve heard from Bee-Train. It’s very low-budget and especially excels in how well it’s used with the storytelling.

Whether or not I recommend it to you depends on your patience. I mean, Tylor is specifically designed to annoy both you and the other characters of this series. The middle part is also riddled with cliches that really could have used the parody nature of this series better, so you’re pretty much guaranteed to be annoyed and bored at some part of the series. I too had these points where I just wanted to get over with this series, and yet: most of these flaws are just annoying.

I could hardly spot any bad acting, directing or melodrama in this series and even the generic parts had one or two details that made them fresh and new. The finale of this series however made up for a whole lot for me, leaving behind an excellent aftertaste, compared to all of those series that keep building and building up, without actually knowing what they’re building up for. I would have rated this show much, much lower if it wasn’t for its guts that I wish a lot more of the mainstream series today had. And this isn’t entirely because I’m just a Bee-Train fanboy. I was fully aware that Koichi Mashimo made a really uninspired Sorceror Hunters two years after finishing this series.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Doesn’t aim to be consistently entertaining, is very annoying and cliched at times, yet comes together wonderfully in the end.
Characters:	8/10 – They can and will annoy you. Yet, they’re flawed, dynamic and lovable.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Some of the best episodes have truly excellent animation. The middle episodes are a lot more static, but also stilllook very good for its time.
Setting:	8/10 – 60% of the time it doesn’t make use of its parody status, resulting in a bunch of cliches lumped together. When it does though, it’s awesome.

Suggestions:
– Mobile Police Patlabor
– Kemonozume
– Argento Soma

I’m fan of a lot of different genres, but personally my two favourite genres of anime are science fiction and mystery. Zettai Shounen is a typical example of the latter. Mystery definitely is a tricky genre that’s easy to screw up with, but when done right it can produce some of the most unique series. Zettai Shounen is definitely not for everyone, but at the same time it’s a wonderful example of the mystery genre done right.

First of all though, if you were expecting a fast-paced story, action, or a series that treats its viewers like idiots or people with a short attention span, then go and look somewhere else. A lot of the characters in Zettai Shounen are teenagers, a large theme of this series is adolescence, but at the same time the series treats them with a surprising amount of maturity. Most of the series just consists out of people talking with each other, whether in person or through a phone. These conversations can be short and to the point, but they can also take up half an episode. If you hate series with lots of talking, stay away from this one.

And yet, that’s also the beauty of this series. The thing that makes Zettai Shounen unique is that the mystery is actually fairly simple, yet the conversations that the characters have about it is what makes it deep and complex. Every character in this series has a different way to relate to the mysterious phenomenons that pop up throughout the series and everyone interprets it in a different way.

This is a series by Tomomi Mochizuki, which leads to a wonderfully realistic portrayal and dialogue. The characters all act naturally and far away from stereotypes; there’s nothing overly moe and instead the creators created this wonderful down to earth atmosphere that really draws you in.

This all leads to a truly excellent cast of characters. Aizawa Ayumu is a terrific lead character, unlike just about any other male lead I’ve seen. The relationship he has with his father is especially amazing, but just about half of the cast here in this series sets itself apart and stands as a unique and captivating character. I really loved characters like Miku, Wakkun, Sakakura, Okaka-baba and even the minor side-characters like an old man and his dog with a hat on leave their impression. There is A TON of character development in this series, and the cast gladly makes use of it.

This is a series that’s divided in two halves. The interesting part is that both halves have completely different focuses, and even the lead characters switch (only two regular characters of the first half return as regular characters of the second half). Personally I liked the characters of the first half a little better, but both halves have more than enough to make them worth watching, and the second half especially is where the character development starts shining.

What really sold me over this series however was that it knows exactly how to build up. Instead of wasting time, it’s constantly either trying to develop the characters or flesh out its setting, and it makes everything come together wonderfully during its rare climaxes. Both halves of Zettai Shounen have got some awesome endings that make wonderful use of the build-up that’s been handed to them.

Zettai Shounen is both a very relaxing, and very deep series. It’s skillfully constructed and the dialogue, in what form it may be, is constantly as sharp as a knife. The one thing you shouldn’t do with this series is get impatient, because then you’re missing the entire point of the story, but I really recommend this for any mystery-fan who doesn’t mind quiet stories.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Quiet, yet very sharp. Excellent dialogue, great sense of build-up that it manages to use really well.
Characters:	9/10 – The characters are charming yet flawed, they’re consistently enjoyable to watch and receive a ton of meaningful development throughout the series.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Dreamy soundtrack, undeniable visual style, though the CG can get intrusive at some points.
Setting:	9/10 – Realistic and down to earth, yet deep.

Suggestions:
– Ghost Hound
– Dennou Coil
– .Hack//Sign

So yeah, this turned out to b a recap. Or to be more specific: a retelling of the first season with nearly the exact same plot and scenario (with one major exception, but more on that below), condensed into two hours. The graphics got a major overhaul, and you can pretty much consider this as the cleaned up bite-sized version of Nanoha. It doesn’t take much risks, it does just what it’s supposed to do, but there are much worse recap movies.

Let’s start with the good parts here: the animation. I had to confirm this by rewatching some scenes of the original series (it’s been six years since I watched the first season), but the movie really put in effort to get rid of all of the chunky animation, still frames and deformed faces that riddled its counterparts. The dialogue and scenarios, which were excellent in the TV-series, were simply left alone. It makes flow of the movie a lot more dynamic.

Still, the movie did cut away pretty much four hours of footage, and that does hurt; especially on the titular character Nanoha. It cuts away a lot of the building up to make this movie much more action-packed than the TV-series, but in its turn it also skips much of Nanoha’s characterization: she no longer feels like just an ordinary girl: she just runs into Yuno, he gives her her magical powers and she’s like “okay”, without ever questioning him. These things happen more often in the movie, and that introduces cheese. Because of that, this movie just isn’t as good as the TV-series.

Also, there is one part of the movie that contains actual new footage. I won’t spoil exactly what part that is, but nevertheless I really appreciated that part. It wasn’t exactly vital to the plot, and yet it gave some new depth to one particular in this movie, and it also made the person in question a much more interesting character.

My general stance on recap movies is that I hate them unless they prove me otherwise. I believe that just retelling the same story again is lazy and that they should have come up with something more interesting, yet they can be good movies with the right execution. Nanoha’s movie did convince me, even though it’s not as good as its TV-series, because I can see what the creators wanted to do with it: Nanoha definitely looks better than ever now, and now you can also watch the first season during a random movie night with friends. If you’ve got more time than that though, I still recommend going for the TV-series.

On a side-note: the StrikerS Movie should prove to be very interesting, because of how much time its television series wasted on pointless build-up. The second Nanoha movie, which most likely is going to recap A’s will also fail to really condense the same story into just two hours: it’s just way too complex for that. StrikerS however really could use some overhaul.

Storytelling:	8/10 – Sacrifices build-up for a much better flowing story.
Characters:	7/10 – Skips fleshing the characters out, which ultimately bites the back with cheese, especially Nanoha becomes too static and perfect. Fate’s story still manages to shine, though.
Production-Values:	8/10 – For movie standards it’s perhaps nothing special, but for Nanoha’s standards the graphics really got a massive overhaul.
Setting:	8/10 – Ah, back when Nanoha’s setting still wasn’t so unnecessarily complicated (I’m looking at you, StrikerS).

Suggestions:
– Air The Motion Picture
– Card Captor Sakura
– Blue Drop

It’s strange: you can pretty much predict what’s going to happen in this movie if you watched the TV-series and the OVAs. They just kept building up and up to this bubble, which finally bursts in “I want to return to that day”. But heck, this is one of the closest things you’ll see to a perfect movie: anything more or less and it would only have made the movie less memorable. Kimagure Orange Road already set a number of standards in the romance genre that have not been matched ever since, but this movie really is brilliant: it’s one of the best, if not THE best romance movies I’ve seen.

The TV-series were incredibly annoying: the movie is anything but. Gone are the silly hijinks and the annoying teenaged antics. Instead, this movie fleshes out its cast with some really realistic dialogue. I’m really amazed: I already thought that the TV-series was down to earth when it wasn’t annoying, but the movie just adds in a whole new layer of realism, which really allows the characters to shine.

Most romances tend to get a little cheesy because they want to try to be too dramatic and do too much in too little time, but this movie is completely different from that. The characters act subtly and don’t try to create more drama than what’s necessary. Because of that it has a full hour to develop the relatively simple premise of his movie, and it really results into a wonderful conclusion to the Kimagure Orange Road franchise. It should be noted though that you really need to have watched the TV-series if you want to touch this thing: otherwise you’ll just be left in the dark.

This movie can be compared to Tenchi Muyo In Love 2, but even with that kind of a movie, expect even more realism and less forced drama here. The pacing of this movie is slow, but if you managed to sit through the TV-series, then patience shouldn’t be an issue here. It’s really been a while since I watched a teenaged romance that was this grounded in realism.

Storytelling:	10/10 – Grounded in realism, both the quiet and the dramatic parts. Simple, yet extremely effective, with a wonderful ending.
Characters:	9/10 – Uses the main characters from the tv-series brilliantly, and gives them a very satisfying conclusion that many, many modern romances can learn a lot from.
Production-Values:	8/10 – The best animation from Kimagure Orange Road so far.
Setting:	8/10 – Do note: the telekinesis from the TV-series is completely gone. But then again, it has no point in this movie anyway and would only have ended up as an annoying cock-block.

Suggestions:
– Umi ga Kikoeru
– Anne no Nikki – The Diary of Anne Frank
– Bokura ga Ita

It’s interesting how I decided to watch this right after Aria The Origination: in essence they are very similar series in the way that they both are meant to wrap up and conclude their respective prequels. The big difference is that while Origination had a positive outlook, Honey and Clover II is bleak. Where the first season’s main focus was slice of life and describing its characters, the second season is all about its drama.

And what a great drama it is! It retains the excellent dialogue that flowed through Honey and Clover’s first season and uses that to conclude all of the major plotlines that the first season left hanging. There isn’t really a main character in this season: there are about ten characters who get equal screentime to close off their characters. It’s a bit more rigid than the dynamic first season, but it leaves hardly a moment wasted and even though it only has half of the airtime as its prequel, it still closes off each character satisfyingly.

A lot of people predicted that I’d rate the second season even higher than the first, but in my opinion, I consider the first series to be better. The second season had a lot more drama which really made for strings of powerful episodes (especially the ending), but the first season was also wonderful in how easy it was to relate to it as a slice of life series, along with the way it described its characters.

In the second season, the characters do lose a tad of those charms, mostly because it spends so much time on developing them, rather than fleshing them out. On top of that, I also feel like the second season could have been a bit more dynamic: to me it felt like the creators were running down a bit of a checklist, especially with the big “Hagu twist”. They’re minor details, I know; but for me the way in which the first season both developed and fleshed out its cast at the same time is something for which I just can’t give its sequel the same rating. It remains a brilliant character-study, though.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Trades in the dynamics of the first season to a focused character-study that leaves hardly any scene wasted.
Characters:	9/10 – All of the characters develop here wonderfully, even though they lack a tad of their charms from the first season.
Production-Values:	8/10 – A bit less impressive than the first season, but it still is pretty sweet to look at.
Setting:	9/10 – Still thanks to the first season incredibly solid portrayal of the final years of college.

Suggestions:
– Aria The Origination (after watching the first two seasons of course)
– Asatte no Koukou
– Aoi Hana

The first half of Aria the Origination is pretty much the same as Aria the Natural, perhaps with a bit more focus on the characters and a little less on the setting. It was pretty much as good as it always was, but I still was left wondering why this series was held with such a high regard. Then the second half came, and I understood. Talk about saving the best for last.

The main purpose of Aria the Origination is to take all of the build-up that the previous Aria seasons put into the characters, and make everything come together. It’s here where the character-development really starts to become apparent, and it couldn’t have closed off this franchise in a better way. It’s only thirteen episodes long, and yet it contains some of the best Aria Episodes you’re going to run into.

Oh, and the graphics also got a bit of an upgrade: the animation is quite a bit more detailed and fluid throughout the series and you can easily see that the creators got themselves a bigger budget for this one, although it has to be said that the animators do try a tad too hard during the dramatic scenes. That’s about the only real complaint I have about Aria’s Origination.

Looking back, as a franchise Aria is neither the best slice of life or Sato Junichi series I’ve seen: I still think that I liked Windy Tales (which pretty much did everything Aria did in one fourth of the same time), Kaleido Star and Strange Dawn (both emotional roller-coasters) better. But still it stands out as a really good and charming series with excellent characterization that just gets better as it goes on. Aria the Origination remains a wonderful conclusion that deserves to be watched.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Brings a ton of build-up together wonderfully with morals that tie in really well with the characters.
Characters:	9/10 – Origination is all about the characters, and they give the series a wonderful conclusion.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Even better, though the animators try a tad to hard during a few dramatic scenes.
Setting:	8/10 – Much less of a focus compared to Natural, but still it’s a solid backdrop for the characters.

Suggestions:
– Windy Tales
– Honey and Clover
– Beck – Mongolian Chop Squad