Well, so that’s it for this season. Anime News Network reports that the second airing of Haruhi is only going to take up 28 episodes. Since there now have been fourteen episodes of the second season aired, a quick bit of math shows that the final episodes are going to be the ones that were left over from the first season.
Anyway, the “Second Season” of Haruhi is a bit of a misleading title. It’s not really a sequel, but rather a collection of episodes that fit in between the episodes of the first season, with the purpose to flesh out the cast a bit more. It consists out of three arcs: the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Endless Eight and the Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya.
The Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody is pretty nice. It’s a bit of backstory for the lead character Haruhi, which is of course always welcome. It just takes up one episode, and is pretty enjoyable. Endless Eight on the contrary takes up a whopping eight episodes, and basically consist out of the same episode repeated again and again and again, just with the animation and voice-work redone. However, these episodes can be easily skipped: only the first and the last matter, while the middle ones are still a nice enough slice of life to watch in those cases when you’re really, really bored.
My main problem with this series came at the start of the Sigh of Haruhi, though. One of my main complaints with the first season already was that Haruhi was incredibly annoying, and she really proves that again in this arc. The arc is also way too long, so her ramblings just go on and on and on. The rest of the cast could have made up for it, but during this arc they acted way too much like the stereotypes they avoided so well throughout the first season: Kyon becomes continuously horny for Mikuru, Mikuru continuously becomes a crybaby, Tsuruya is hyperactive and weird 100% of the time. I mean come on, give us some subtlety here!
Thankfully, the arc closes off with the best two episodes of the second season. The semi-final episode made a very good point, and the final episode finally shows that the scriptwriters put in some effort again, returning the series back to its former subtlety.
Overall though, the first season simply is better than the second. Not only did the second merely function to flesh out the characters, but you can also see that less effort was put into it. A lot of the episodes lack the detailed dialogue of the first season, and the animation, while still rich and detailed, suddenly started looking way too much like K-On and Kyoani’s other moe shows during the climaxes. Seriously, the characters for this series were already moe enough; you really don’t have to add even more to it…
The first season, while it also definitely had its annoying parts in the episodic fillers, did have its excellent first arc. but the second season has a lot less episodes that really deliver. Nevertheless, I really doubt that this is going to be the last of this series, and the second season nevertheless was a pretty decent slice of life series. I still like that Kyoani, during this time of an economic crisis, still is willing to try out daring concepts. At least, in some of their shows… Yes Munto, I’m looking at you.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 |
| Characters: | 7/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
Well, I’ve made up my mind. I just finished episode 150 of Gintama, and it was indeed awesome. The perfect way to close off the series, no matter where you are in the series. Still, with this I’m going to drop this series. It’s the same with Ranma 1/2: I’d rather remember the classic first part, rather than stick with it for a few good episodes in a sea of mediocrity, especially since the good episodes don’t even come close to the standards that the series set in the past. But this review isn’t about the three digit episodes of Gintama, you can read about those 
At the start of this year I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of romance, but damn. 2009 has surely proved to be an excellent year for this genre. The year already started out with gems as Clannad’s After Story and Genji Monogatari, then it continued with the truly excellent Ristorante Paradiso and Cross Game, and if that wasn’t enough the Summer season only continued this trend of awesomeness with Spice and Wolf II and, of course, Aoi Hana.
At first sight, Aoi Hana may seem like your average lesbian series with lots of girls who cheesily fall in love with each other, but this series quickly proves those suspicions wrong when it subverts just about every cliché in the romance genre imaginable. FOR ONCE, romantic relationships are portrayed realistically, rather than those overly romanticized relationship you see in most average romances. For once, you see childhood friends who really behave like childhood friends, rather than the creators using the childhood friendship as a cheap plot device to get the lead couple in love with each other. For once, the two lead characters don’t end up falling in love with each other, and instead the main romance plays out between one of the lead character, and a side-character. And really: for once in a gay show we see actual straight romances. In fact, there’s only one lesbian in the entire series (Fumi, one of the lead characters). The rest is either straight or bi.
On top of that, this series is incredibly well told. there’s a huge amount of subtlety within the relationship of the most important characters in this series: the way they behave, feel and interact with each other is really done with a superb attention to detail. The series is only eleven episodes long, and yet the personality of each character can’t just be explained in one sentence. There’s absolutely nothing that’s shallow in this series.
The animation for this series also really stands out among the best in the romance genre. It’s very subtle, and portrays very accurately how all of the different characters move. But it’s especially the scenes in which people are touching each other, whether holding hands or messing with each other’s hair, in which the animation really makes those movements feel so incredibly real.
I feel hard-pressed to pick up any flaws for this series. Obviously, you don’t want to watch this series if you dislike a slow-paced series, but it really is a must-watch for any fan of the shoujo-ai genre in the way that it so realistically portrays lesbian relationships. There are a few scenes here and there that could have used a bit more build-up (like Kyouko’s fiancee, or the ending), but those moments are few and far in between. Aoi Hana really is one of my top picks of the past Summer Season.
For those who were confused: the Jungle Emperor Leo remake is not a full fledged TV-series of 80 episodes. It’s a TV-special celebrating the 80th birthday of Osamu Tezuka. It’s about one hour and 45 minutes long, and directed by the director of Code Geass of all people. Still, while this show has its flaws it still serves as a very nice family movie that perfectly captures the childish side of Osamu Tezuka, and yet isn’t afraid to become dark and serious.
Jungle Emperor Leo is an environmentalist anime, and with these kinds of stories there always are plenty of obvious pitfalls. A lot of environmentalist stories lack any sort of subtlety, and often contain entire monologues on the creators’ morals. Yes, we get that the earth is in danger. We get that man is evil. Now stop shoving it down our throats!
Typical of Osamu Tezuka, the basic premise of this special is overly idealistic: humans are evil and make animals suffer. However, it brings a lot of twists to the table, and I mean a lot. This isn’t just a matter in which some character you thought to be evil turn out to be good and vice versa, but there’s a very imaginative back-story behind everything that really makes you think about where humanity is going with the pollution of the earth. It criticizes modern technology, but at the same time it also pays homage to it. The main villain, while he’s obviously got a very sick and twisted mind, isn’t pure evil either: if it wasn’t for his actions, the animals would have been even worse off, and his feelings for his son give a surprising human touch to him.
In the lead are two young children: a young lion and a young boy. These two form the back-bone of this special, and while they’re not the most interesting characters, they do their job of keeping the series going without getting boring because the creators put a lot of time in fleshing the two of them out. They’re both charming, yet flawed characters that are nice to watch if you can accept the fact that they’re a couple of little kids and that the boy can talk to animals for no apparent reason. The majority of the rest of the cast also has well backed-up reasons for their actions, which is always a nice thing.
Unfortunately though, the ending is pretty cheesy, and nullifies a lot of development that went into the setting. It’s too idealistic and solves things way too easily. Plus, it’s got this thing in which small animals are able to win fights with fully grown animals… which is pretty lame no matter how you look at it. This special really tries, but in the end it can’t fully shake its stereotypical nature.
This anime reminds me a lot of Miyori no Mori: both involve kids who somehow can talk to beings they’re not supposed to see, and protect them from evil humans. In the end, I like Miyori no Mori better because even though it too was idealistic, it feels more complete and heart-warming, plus it showed a more realistic portrayal of its lead character. Nevertheless, Jungle Emperor Leo really served its job as a homage to Osamu Tezuka, and the creators stuffed a lot of nice elements in it.
Okay, so apparently Urban Legend Story Hikiko was an OVA, released about a year ago. It’s a fully CG-Rendered movie done by some guy who also seems to have worked on Catblue Dynamite. Since I’m always in for a bit of good horror, especially since the past spring and summer season didn’t have any of it, I decided to give it a shot. So, did this movie do its job and give me a good scare?
Well, it did give me a good laugh…
This OVA is THE example of why 3D-rendered movies have a looong way to go at this point. While in theory, it seems like a logical thing to do: you can get smoother animation, there is more detail, you can get a more dynamic background and a more realistic set of character-designs than the drawings of traditional anime. It sounds all nice in theory… but this movie just looked so incredibly fake.
It’s a shame, though: this OVA does have a very neat story: there’s plenty of build-up, a deep main character, a nice set of plot twists. In traditional 2D animation, it would have been a pretty good horror OVA. The big problem however is that the characters’ expressions and motions look incredibly unrealistic. So unrealistic that they’re nearly impossible to take seriously. This may be because I’ve been too much used to anime, but even though there’s plenty of animation in this, but all the animation feels jerky, and especially the facial expressions of the characters look nowhere near accurate and more like a bunch of puppets.
There’s a saying in art that goes as follows: “if you can’t make it, fake it”, and 2D anime has become very good at this. It knows that its artwork is very detailed for animation standards, and that there’s no way to continuously animate everything in drawings, and so over the years they’ve perfected the art in simulating movement even though there isn’t any. As long as it doesn’t stand out as “fake” or “too much” in any way, these cinematic effects really work.
3D animation has yet to discover these techniques, and instead just try to… animate. The thing is, that unless you’ve got the budget of a small country or the imagination of Hayao Miyazaki, there is no way to perfectly emulate every subtle nuance in human movement, and this movie especially fails at it. The few attempts it makes to make up for the lack of movement are some of the most pathetic cinematic techniques all around, like a couple of cheap but loud sound effects during the intense part, and lots of shaking the camera around while looking at the characters with extremely scared faces.
The thing that 3D animation is going to have to learn is the art of cutting corners. American 2D-animation does this by extremely simplified drawings, Japanese animation does this by trying to limit the number of frames that need to be animated. At this moment, there’s nothing wrong with the artwork: show any still frame in this movie, and it looks gorgeous. Combine them… and they don’t.
Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai, or Munto TV, was the biggest disappointment of the past Winter Season. Here the creators had a great chance to take a flawed OVA, and spread it across the airtime of a TV-series so that the setting and the characters could finally get the chance to be developed properly. So, what do they do? A bloody recap. Only the final three and a half episodes featured new material, which was way too little for a story of this caliber. Still, with a movie scheduled, it still could redeem itself. But yeah, I guess that you can all see by the rating for this review that it obviously didn’t.
Oh, the 
Okay, time for me to review another really obscure movie that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. Chocchan’s story is an adaptation of an autobiographical story of a mother during the second World War. Unfortunately, the only version that I could find was a Finnish sub, of all things, so unless you happen to know Finnish or Japanese, don’t bother to ask where to get it. If however, you do get the chance to watch this movie and don’t mind a quiet and slow-paced story, then I really recommend it.
The thing with this movie is that it’s wonderfully down to earth. Even though it plays during the very dark World War II, it never forgets its main focus: the characters. A lot of horrible and depressing things happen throughout the movie, but it never attempts to do things over-theatrical. This is a movie full of subtle details in the characters’ developments.
It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen to pull off some actual credible and believable character-development. It shows the life of the main characters, starting right from the moment she gets engaged until more than ten years later, when she bore her fourth child. there are numerous time-skips throughout the movie that also allow her children to be developed this way. Seriously, in anime it’s very rare to see a mother or parent with this much depth; let alone in a movie.
The downside to this movie is its music. Whereas the storytelling is full of subtlety, the music isn’t. The story is supposed to be subtle, but a lot of the most dramatic moments lose their touch when an incredibly loud set of violins thunder through the speakers, overpowering just about everything else. A soundtrack often does wonders in enriching a story, but this is one of those few anime that would have been better without any music at all.
Nevertheless, this series really succeeds in creating a cast of “real” and likable characters and does a really good job at showing the struggles of a mother during the second World War, not knowing whatever happened to her husband who was recruited by the army. It deals with heavy themes and struggles, and yet it’s well acted without crossing the borders into melodrama. Especially if you’re a fan of the World Masterpiece Theatre, you’re bound to like this little movie.
The sixth Kara no Kyoukai movie is called “Oblivion Recorder”. Unlike the fifth movie, it only takes up an hour of airtime, and tells about another supernatural mystery case in which Shiki becomes involved. While it doesn’t match the standard that was set by the movies 3, 4 and 5, it nevertheless is a nice little movie.
In this movie, we learn that Mikiya has a younger sister. This movie shows her, as she tries to solve a murder mystery that took place in her school, helped by Shiki. The storyline this time is simple but effective, and there’s a nice layered mystery behind a seemingly straight-forward murder. The build-up is pretty well done, and overall this makes for an enjoyable movie.
Where this movie fails to live up to in comparison to its predecessors is that its scenario and execution lack polish. Mikiya’s sister turns out to be yet another girl with a brother complex. I dunno, I think that the creators tried to appeal to taboos, but that doesn’t really work when this trope is already used by tons of other anime. And overall, as much as I appreciate that we got to know more about Mikiya this way, as a main character for a KnK movie, she fails to stand out and is among the least interesting ones.
On top of that, the dialogue also feels rushed and uninspired for a movie. There are a number of conversations that clearly lack a bit of polish here and there, and there are quite a few plot-holes left open at the end of it, most of which I don’t think are going to be answered by the seventh movie. This movie simply doesn’t have the deep characters nor the addictive storytelling of the third, fourth and fifth movie.
What it does have, however, is the best CG during an action scene out of the six movies so far. Mikiya’s sister’s magic is very flashy and the creators make really good use of it during the action scenes. As a standalone movie Oblivion Recorder would have been fine, but the standards of the Kara no Kyoukai movies so far have become higher than average after all.
Okay, so I finally managed to check out this movie. My big fear before I started watching it that, now that he’s almost reached his retirement, Hayao Miyazaki would have lost his touch by now, especially considering how his previous movie (Howl’s Moving Castle) was arguably his least impressive work. Nevertheless, these fears were ungrounded: Ponyo shows that the old master still has plenty of tricks left up his sleeve. And then some.
Miyazaki’s movies that he made for Ghibli can basically be divided into two categories: epic and down-to-earth. With Ponyo, he tries to combine the two by creating a charming little story about a five year old boy who meets a goldfish with magical powers, and yet creates enough opportunities to show off some amazingly creative visuals and animation that you wouldn’t expect in such a down to earth movie. The result really works and it’s become a movie that’s suitable for any age to enjoy.
The animation really shows how much work went into this movie. Even though CG is the norm in today’s anime, Ponyo is entirely drawn by hand, and contains a record number of 170000 hand drawn pictures. This series really shows how much you can do with just animation: in an industry of anime in which the norm is to cut corners, this movie is full of life with an amazing attention to detail in even the slightest moves, and there’s hardly any frame in which something isn’t moving. The amount of eye candy in this movie is also amazing, and even though the art style is simpler than in some of his previous works, the visuals still rank amongst his most impressive.
This movie also excels in its portrayal of five-year-olds. I read somewhere that Hayao Miyazaki lives right next to a kindergarten school or something similar, and so he’s had plenty of opportunities to fully study how little kids behave. Kosuke is a bit timid, but a very likable young lead. This series doesn’t have much character-development and background (only a few side-characters have a serious change of character), but considering the story and situations they were thrown in, they didn’t really need to: it was fun enough to watch them as they were and extra focus to get some character-development or background in would only have gotten in the way of what’s really important.
My problems with this series lies within some of its messages it attempts to teach to kids. With the environmentalist that Hayao Miyazaki is, I expected that he would show the bad implications of major floods. Instead, a flood in this series just appears, puts an entire landscape under water for a few hours and then disappears without ever leaving a trace. Oh, I’d wish that reality were this simple and convenient. Or how about people who’ve lost their ability to walk, and suddenly are rid of their problems due to magic. Yes kids! If you have some sort of incurable ailment, just hope that a person with magic will arrive and wave these problems away!
Anyway, it’s been more than a year now since I watched all of Miyazaki’s major movies. Looking back, his movie that turned out the most memorable for me was Porco Rosso, which probably was his most mature movie. Ponyo, his least mature movie, probably isn’t going to take that place, but yet it is a very charming movie to behold and definitely worth the watch unless you absolutely can’t stand childish stuff.
“David Production may be a new and young animation company, but they’ve really proven themselves so far. They’ve got their own identity already and they’ve produced nothing but well written series. They’re definitely a new company to look out to.”
Yeah, I wish that I could write that right now, but DOGS is so hilariously bad that it’s a miracle that the producers even agreed to release it. It’s basically a 4-episode OVA (based on the DOGS manga apparently), but it’s so badly produced and written that I don’t think that anyone is going to be able to take it seriously.
The biggest of its flaws is its hopeless overacting. Every single character tries to look as cool as possible, but they overdo their coolness way too much. The result is four episodes full of incredibly cheesy and overacted drama whose only merit is that it’s so hilariously bad that you’re bound to have a laugh or two at how ridiculous it is. There are of course also a lot of emo faces that only make things even less believable, considering how little build-up every story has.
Another problem with this show is that it’s based on a much larger manga, and this series does absolutely nothing to hide it. That’s why the four episodes are just a bunch of random chapters animated, without bothering at all to try and fill us in about what’s going on, why things are happening, who the characters are, and they simply cut off when their time is up, leaving a massive amount of plot-holes open.
Of course, it’s not like this series isn’t enjoyable. This OVA is best watched along with a bunch of friends and liquor; it’s a great way to pass an hour. Obviously, that just doesn’t warrant any kind of praise or high review score. The only praise I can give this series is that the art is pretty decent: it looks crisp and clean and while nothing amazing, you can see David Production’s influences. And of course the Engrish curses were awesome.
I know that this series was based on a much larger manga and all, but that’s no excuse. Hitsuji no Uta for example was also based on a large manga, and yet it did succeed in condensing its story into only four episode, with some amazing results. If that series could do it, then why couldn’t DOGS?