Category: Anime Reviews

Around four years ago, I watched the first three episodes of Scrapped Princess, but I dropped it soon afterwards because it didn’t interest me enough. Based on some recommendations from several people I decided to watch the entire series and I must say that Scrapped Princess definitely has its merits.

This really is a typical Bones series. For nearly every single one of their anime, you can be sure to expect a very imaginative setting, and Scrapped Princess is no different. While it starts with a story about a princess that the entire country wants dead, it soon develops into an interesting mix between fantasy and science fiction. It’s a thought-provoking series that questions whether or not one should allow the deaths of thousands, simply to protect one insignificant life. This really was my highlight for this series.

This series’ flaws lie in the cast of characters: they really are a mixed bag. Some are interesting (Fulle, Yuhma, Senes), but a lot of them are insufficiently developed or just plain dull. Pacifica really starts out as an interesting character, but around the middle of the story she suddenly gets amnesia out of nowhere, which doesn’t really contribute or influence anything in the story except for slowing it down. Winia and Leopold never really were interesting characters, but this series just keeps coming back to them in favour of the more interesting characters. Christopher is a walking mystery: we never get to see any of his background or development, and yet his change of character and motivation are really hard to buy.

The same goes for the series’ antagonists: they start off really good and this series really manages to show us that these people are dangerous and are not to be fooled around with. This sense of despair is another one of the true highlights of this series when you realize all the horrible things that the lead characters are put against. It really helps to sympathize with not just the main characters of Pacifica, Shannon and Raquel, but also the villains themselves. Unfortunately, in the final third of this series this is abandoned completely, and they turn into your average bunch of incompetent fools who keep changing sides and never seem to get anything right.

And yeah, this series is typical Bones, and that also means that it has a typical Bones ending. In the end, everything is just solved too easily (as in, “why the hell didn’t you just do that in the first episode?!”), characters are randomly brought back from the dead and everyone just lives happily ever after in the now ideal world. It’s a real shame: I would really have been much more positive about this series if only that ending didn’t leave such a bad taste in my mouth. This really is my big problem with Bones: I really want to like them. I really appreciate how much time and effort they put in their series to make them look unique. But why the heck do they keep screwing up with their endings over and over?!

Nevertheless, this series does make some good points; especially in its first two thirds, it really is a nice look at humanity. It’s not a perfect series, and Bones has made much better series as well, but nevertheless it makes for a nice watch.

Storytelling:	7/10
Characters:	7/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	9/10

For this review, I want you to try something. First, visit Yoiko’s MAL page and read the description. Then, take a look at the OP:

While this is also a good opportunity for me to test whether or not embedded Youtube videos work on this site, I now want you to imagine what kind of series this is going to be. It sounds like a heart-warming slice of life series in the same veins of Mokke, doesn’t it? A nice and quiet series about a small child who lives in a grown-up body; an innocent tale of growing up. That’s what I thought, at least.

So yeah… where to start?

Yoiko is a series with twenty episodes of 10 minutes. Every single episode starts with a nude shower scene and a full close-up of Fuuka’s boobs. Every single episode ends with Fuuka’s brother making a masturbation joke. The rest of the series isn’t any different: chockful of fanservice jokes, boob-shots, masturbation jokes and arousal jokes. This series has no sense of shame, and the worst thing is that this is supposed to be a series about elementary schoolers. Time and time again you see grown adults of all sorts of ages getting horny over a 9-year-old who happens to have the body of an 19-year-old.

However, this isn’t the case with most fanservice shows, where I can just label it as crap and get it over with, like To Love-Ru and Kanokon. Yoiko definitely has its merits. For one, I laughed like crazy during a fair number of the episodes. A lot of the series’ humour comes from seeing what borderline of taste the creators are going to break this time, and that results into a number of absolutely hilarious situations and a fair number of actually good sex-jokes.

The other source of humour in this series comes simply from watching elementary schoolers and their usual antics. Despite the huge amounts of fanservice and the creators who keep dancing on your grave because you became aroused by a 9-year-old, this series can boast a charming cast of typical kids and their simple minds. While there are a few stereotypes here and there (like the horny teacher, et cetera), the cast somehow works.

Part of the reason of why the characters are enjoyable is the cast of voice-actors, who do a terrific job of bringing the cast alive. Especially the above-mentioned horny teacher is greatly voiced, but the rest of the cast also sounds awesome, and really like their age.

Granted, this isn’t the best comedy out there; there are a number of dull episodes in which the humour doesn’t work as well as it should have, especially in the second half of the series. Still, this series never gets too dull to just start dropping. There also isn’t really an ending. The show just stops after 20 episodes, without really concluding anything (not that there was anything that needs conclusion, though; this series did avoid going down the emo road in its final few episodes). This series does well in its characterization, but in terms of character-development it doesn’t go much beyond the introductions of the different characters.

What baffles me the most though is that this series was directed by Omori Takahiro, a powerhouse of a director who also was behind awesome series as Baccano, Jigoku Shoujo, Natsume Yuujinchou and Fancy Lala. I guess the best thing this series can be compared with is if you take Fancy Lala, remove the idol bit and any sort of serious storyline and symbolism, let the lead female in her adult body 100% of the time, remove every single border of taste and add in lots and lots of boobs. And then some more.

Storytelling:	8/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	7/10

Argento Soma is one of the post-Evangelion series. Like series as Betterman, Reideen and Dai Guard, and even awesome series as Figure 17 and Bokura no, it features a series of smart and very hard to destroy monsters that need to be destroyed, and the lead characters have some sort of huge mecha that can do the job. There’s a lot of potential for this kind of formula and granted, Argento Soma isn’t the best of the bunch, but it’s a fine attempt nonetheless.

Argento Soma chooses for a slow-paced approach with some subtle angst, and I must say that it works quite nicely. For once we don’t have any teenagers piloting the giant mechas, but instead we have a team of people well in their twenties. In fact, there is only one child in the story, and with her it’s made clear over and over that she actually doesn’t belong in the military. Central to the story, and the definite highlight, is the relationship between the two lead characters: the young girl and one of the main pilots that is to fight the evil “aliens”, as they’re called in this series. They’re both heavily traumatized and scarred by things that happened in the past and through the series they help each other growing over their troubles.

A major theme in this series is also symbolism. There are two particular characters who have a habit of comparing the situation they’re in to either random anecdotes or figures of speeches. This show also has a nice little pattern with its episode titles, which are all emphasized at the end of each episodes. In some cases the symbolism is a bit silly, but most of the times it works pretty nicely.

You don’t want to watch this series for the battles, which more often than not take just a back-seat to other things. Central to this series is its cast of characters, which develops nicely throughout the series. There are a lot of episodes that don’t have anything to do with fighting, but instead focus on other things, like one episode is fully dedicated to politics (a very well done episode, by the way), and there are quite a few episodes dedicated to character-development. The battles themselves quickly turn repetitive though. There are also a few random plot-holes that pop up near the ending, and I also think that Soma’s voice actor isn’t fully able to make his character believable once he starts angsting. The villains in this series are also very stereotypical and really lack any sort of impact.

This series does stand out in its soundtrack and character-designs: both give this show a unique feeling. Overall though, this series could have done with a bit more ambition. It never really reaches any heights: the story is very simple if you start to see the bigger picture, and the characters themselves do feel like they could have been fleshed out a bit more, but that too has its charms: it’s not trying to become the best thing since sliced bread, but instead just puts down an enjoyable little series with a bit of depth, yet doesn’t hit heights and at that, it succeeds.

Storytelling:	8/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	8/10

“Nadja Applefield grows up in an orphanage, but on her thirteenth birthday she finds out that her mother is still alive, and possibly even a noble. Thus she joins a band of travelling performers and travels all across Europe to find her.” That doesn’t exactly sound like a top-tier shoujo series, now does it? Ashita no Nadja indeed takes the format of a classic shoujo adventure, and makes it downright awesome. I am really surprised with how actually GOOD this series turned out to be.

I originally decided to check out this series on recommendations of Wyrdwad, but I put it on hold around episode 23, discouraged by how the final 13 episodes haven’t been subbed yet. My impression of this series at that point was a fun adventure series across Europe. It’s a fun watch, in which Nadja meets all sorts of interesting people who get the chance to tell their story. Most episodes are light in nature and a lot of fun to watch. It wasn’t anything special at that point, it was episodic, but the individual stories all have their individual charms.

Anyway, eventually I got too impatient and just finished the rest of the series raw (so yeah, don’t bother asking for subs of the final 13 episodes: they’re unfortunately not there yet, but they SO deserve to be!), and with that I was blown away completely by the strength, GUTS and charms of the main storyline of this series. I was so expecting your average cheesy shoujo storyline with stereotypically incompetent villains and a lot of time spent on the lead characters being incredibly indecisive. None of that returns here: instead we get a story where always something interesting is going on and where characters manage to show their utter best in terms of character-development.

And the villains! This series really has some of the best villains out there, who are nothing like your average bunch of incompetent idiots who can never get anything right. The main villains for this series all are a bunch of excellent actors: they’ve created a scenario in their head and stick to it, and time and time again they manage to foil the lead characters’ plans and happiness (which usually is the other way around!). Eventually, this series evolves into a battle of wits and emotions between Nadja and the main villains, which involves an intricate plan that looks simple (and isn’t of the ridiculously complicated variant like you see in shows as Death Note), yet incredibly hard to find any holes in it.

This series seriously has a bunch of incredible script-writers, who have the talent to make a solid and engaging story of just about everything. As an episodic series, I often found myself doubting whether an episode was going to turn out all-right based on its premise, especially around the middle parts of the series. However, nearly every single episode delivered with solid build-up, excellent characterization and a conclusion that felt intelligent, believable and yet pushed the characters further in terms of character-development. Even the small side-characters who only appear in one episode have multiple sides to them and feel fresh.

With all these praises I’m singing for this series, I unfortunately also have to admit that it has a flaw, and a really big one at that. Wherever Nadja travels in Europe, wherever she goes, she always meets up with the right people. Even though European cities are incredibly big, she always meets up with recurring characters if they happen to be in the neighbourhood, she also conveniently runs into a bunch of nobles that she immediately befriends, (including one of them that becomes her love interest).

This really happens a lot, throughout the entire series. Still, I guess that the creators had good intentions when they used them: they don’t use these plot-holes just for cheap laughs, but instead to allow characters to tell their story, to allow for more and better character-development so that we as an audience get to know more about the cast. There only was one plot twist in the series that really felt cheap and rushed. Apart from that they can all be forgiven. Still, they can become a major reason for some people to get turned off by the rest of the storyline. It all depends on your suspense of disbelief. For me, I indeed acknowledge that these sorts of coincidences are a bit lazy and convenient, but the rest of the series is just so damn good that I really stopped caring about them at one point.

Overall, this series was in a way just like Glass Mask 2005 and Kaleido Star for me: all three are 50 episoded Shoujo Series of Awesomeness. They all stand out in their amazing characterization and rivalry that goes waaaay beyond what you normally expect from anime. All of them are very well paced and truly excellent in the thing they do, with a storyline that just keeps evolving and time and time again they come with unexpected situations. They all involve performing (Maya acts, Sora does acrobatics, Nadja dances) and all three of them try to reach the hearts of their audience by performing, all in their own way. All three series are highly underrated (with two of them not even fully subbed, for God’s sake), but perhaps the most important thing: all three of them have the power to reach an audience beyond the usual shoujo fans, and are a true example of the great things that the genre is capable of. Of the three, Ashita no Nadja is the most light-hearted one, but make no mistake that the story cannot get really dark at times, and the light and dark parts combine wonderfully.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	10/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	9/10