Category: Anime Reviews

The thing with Bones is that their works are either excellent or complete flops. The Mars Daybreak is a flop; probably the biggest flop they’ve produced. Still, at least it’s a fun flop… sometimes.

In any case, it takes an entire washing-list to fully summarize all that’s wrong with this series, so here we go:
– It’s got a bad main character-syndrome (without any prior experience whatsoever, the guy only needs ten seconds to fully master the complex machinery of his personal super-mecha, for goodness’ sake!)
– There’s hardly any character-background whatsoever (we never know how the crew of the Aurora joined the ship in the first place)
– The background that’s there doesn’t make any sense (if Gram, said lead-character, grew up in the slums, then where did he learn to cook so well?)
– Junior will make people punch their screen out of annoyance.
– Vess will make people toss their screen out of the window and burn the remains out of annoyance.
– It fails to flesh out the setting well enough (why are people living underwater if they can also do that above? Where do these people get their food? How come it never rains?)
– It fails at properly introducing its characters (one particular crewmembers of the ship that most of the series takes place on take twelve episodes to get mentioned)
– It’s got a “screw the plans I’m impulsive/horny/whatever”-mindset.
– There’s an incredible amount of plot-holes through the entire series.
– Trivial plot-points are never explained (how did Gram get his necklace? Where did his super-mecha come from? Especially that last one is just jarring. It’s just… there.)
– Characters behave inconsistently (I’m looking at you, Kubernes; we also never learn exactly why Yagami got his nickname. He’s freaking useless throughout the largest part of the series)
– The overall storyline is shallow at best, and the end reward is uninspired.
– There’s a pointless love triangle in which Gram managed to conquer the two daughters of the most influential men you can imagine.
– The show thinks it’s good at drama while in fact the drama sucks with the power of one thousand vacuum cleaners.
– The setting has so much potential and yet the series never uses it.

So, with all these flaws, is there really anything left on this series that’s good? Well somehow through some kind of magic, the light-hearted chemistry between the characters ended up pretty nicely. It’s not always the case, but if the stars are aligned in a particular way, the scriptwriters feel inspired and they’ve gotten their coffee, then this show might actually be able to deliver an enjoyable and fun episode to watch. Especially the cat and the dolphin are great side-characters. In fact, this series would have been much more enjoyable if the focus fell on the side-characters a bit more, but instead someone on the production-team found it a good idea to turn this series into “The Adventures of the Almighty Gram (and his Crew)”. Gram’s just too perfect, for goodness’ sake.

Through all the flaws, the biggest one is that this series doesn’t know what it’s good at. At heart, this is a fun-filled adventure to search for treasure on a fantasy-version of Mars. Unfortunately, it too often lapses into pointless drama, gets way too serious or puts too much attention on Gram, rather than letting the entire crew get involved into some exciting chase-sequence or something. The episode where the crew meets Enora is a good example: it was light-hearted, fun and creative. If only the rest of the episodes was like that… In the end, this series biggest strength now is that it doesn’t ask anything from the viewer. You can just watch it and turn your brain off, without being forced to sit through anything difficult. That’s nice and all, but you can achieve the same effect by watching paint dry.

Well, when I first started watching Starship Operators, I wasn’t exactly positive: the premise told about a spaceship, piloted by unqualified teenagers with extravagant hairstyles. My first thought was something along the lines of “oh, here we go again, with the subplot of having teenagers save the world because of some convenient superpower they receive”. Afterwards, Starship Operators continued to violently mutilate any sort of stereotype I could have had about the premise and threw them unceremoniously in the garbage bin.

Really, this is something I never suspected, but the focus on politics and realistic space-battles is huge. In fact, the creators actually succeeded in making a spaceship that’s piloted by teenagers plausible, by resorting to legal actions, and letting them buy their own spaceship with the help of a sponsor (a media-broadcasting network, which also makes sure for a number of subtle jabs against the modern media-culture). The rest of the series also continues to be moved very heavily through complex politics. It happens often when an entire episode is spent, just trying to sink one ship, because of all the preparation and planning that goes into trying to defeat the enemy.

Also, make no mistake: this is a series where people die when they’re killed, and the creators have made sure to let this sink in with both the viewers and the cast. None of the characters individually are particularly well-developed, but as a group, they absolutely shine. There are so many different characters with all their own roles. There’s a bit of angst here and there, but it never distracts from what’s important (which is exactly how you should handle angst: it can really make you care about a character, but if it’s overused it becomes disastrous and just plain annoying, which is something this series manages to avoid excellently).

Also, if you want to watch this series, you obviously have to like politics, because the production-values aren’t going to make up for it, save for a few very powerful songs (the ED, for example). Some of the CG doesn’t blend in well when it’s used alongside regular drawings, and there really isn’t any budget wasted on making the fight scenes flashier and more sensational. In this series, you have to be captured by the characters and politics, otherwise it’ll become a bore-fest.

Still, the power of politics is especially apparent in the excellent final episode, which definitely is the best one of the entire series, which is something nearly every series should aspire; everything the series has built up comes together like a charm, leaving no bad taste whatsoever. Overall, what we have here is a short but very powerful space-opera with an incredible focus on planning, rather than brainless action. It’s something you have to like, but if you do, then it’s going to be an excellent watch.

Yeah, yeah. I’ve been blogging for nearly three years, I’ve written more than 300 reviews so far, and I still haven’t checked out the “big three” of anime: Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell SAC and Full Metal Alchemist. Well, at least I’ve got one of them down now. I finally managed to complete what could possibly be the most popular anime of the past decade.

Of course, I did try to watch this series at one time; twice, actually. But I kept getting stuck on that surprisingly boring first part. It didn’t make any sense. People were praising this series to heavens, and at the same time it was a pain to get through that first quarter of the series. It basically consists out of either flashbacks or a number of random stories, with the biggest problem being that the flashbacks were just boring, and the random stories never really worked. The creators just weren’t good at writing them.

The thing is, that this series played way too much with coincidences. Wherever Ed and Al came, there was some kind of Timmy who fell in some kind of Well, at exactly the right time for Ed to demonstrate his awesome child-prodigy powers. In whichever town they came, the creators would make sure that they’d coincidentally meet people who were related to some sort of gruesome secret behind this town. This especially returns ad nauseam in the first quarter, but the entire series is also plagued by this.

Thankfully, after that very dodgy start, the series picks back up when the big storyline starts for this series. Thankfully the creators prove that they’re good at writing a continuous storyline, and they slowly develop the story into a multi-layered mystery intrigue. You can see that a lot of thought was put behind it, and the series’ final quarter especially shines in the story-department. Much like Full Moon wo Sagashite, actually.

The characters are a very mixed bag, actually. Characters like Rose and Archer are incredibly shallow, and feel a bit too much like underdeveloped plot-devices. Other side-characters, however, absolutely shine when they’re standing in the spotlight. People like Scar, Sensei, Armstrong and the Humonculi really made this series for me, and showed that behind their simple look, they’ve got a complex and interesting story lying. Unfortunately, Hughes was overrated. Based on the things I’ve heard about his… spoiler, I expected something much grander, which he never really delivered.

That’s not the biggest problem here, though. Unfortunately, I never really could care about the main characters in this series: Ed and Al. Every time this series was exploring an interesting side-character, they’d take over again. In a way, this series suffers from the “bad main character”-syndrome. The two of them are developed, they’ve got more back-story than any other character in this series, but they’re just nowhere near as interesting as some of the other characters in this series, and their teenaged whining can become annoying at times.

Overall, Full Metal Alchemist shines through some of its side-characters and the messages it tries to convey. While the series is without a doubt very much a Christian series, it asks some interesting questions from its viewers, and shows various different beliefs on these questions. That’s why I handed this series a 10 in the setting-department: despite the flaws of the series, it’s an excellent and complex world for this series to play in that also makes you think. And I agree, it’s a very good series because of these things. However, it just isn’t the best thing since sliced bread. I just can’t call this series as superior to for example Gilgamesh, Rescue Wings or Ooedo Rocket. I liked it overall, but at the same time I do consider this one to be overrated, and it had some major problem that held back its potential.

I’m not really sure what the creators really intended by airing both an OVA and a TV-series for Yume de Aetara at the same time. Furthermore, while Hiroshi Watanabe merely supervised the TV-series, he took it upon himself to direct the OVA. The series already was a string of ridiculously overblown deus ex machina, so with the king of cheese now behind the director’s seat, my expectations definitely weren’t high.

But what a surprise: the OVA turns out to be much better than the TV-series; it’s a really sweet romance story, and it’s actually really well written. It’s basically an alternative retelling of the series: the basic set-up is still there, but the storyline’s entirely different. It both fills in the holes of the series’ background, and it also advances its own storyline.

Nearly all of the deus ex machina of the series don’t return in the OVA. You can still spot a few here and there, but it all falls within the limits. In exchange, it really feels like the creators know their characters. They’re able to create subtle nuances in their behaviour, and also succeed in creating an effective atmosphere for the story to work with.

But the best part: Hamaoka plays a much smaller role here. She’s still there as a potential love-rival, but her number of appearances has been greatly reduced. In the OVA, she really feels like a side-character, in comparison to the TV-series where she actually got more screentime than the girl who was SUPPOSED TO BE the lead female for the story. For the OVA, you can really feel that it’s a story about Fuguno and Nagisa, as it explores both of their doubts about going into a relationship.

So overall, I’ve been pleasantly surprised here. Nearly the entire OVA basically had the same feel as the final episode of the TV-series (as, the only part of that series that was really good). The romance worked really well, and it’s one of the few times where a series has a loser protagonist, and the creators can admit that he’s a loser, and use that in their storytelling, rather than using a loser to appeal to the otaku-crowd. It’s one of these stories where you’ll really want the main couple to come together (or that was the case with me, anyway). It’s a very subtle series. Yes, subtle; a word I thought I’d never mention when talking about a Hiroshi Watanabe-anime.

“A small kitten moves in to a random family”. That doesn’t seem like the most original or exciting premise, now does it? Still, we’re looking here at the best comedy to have started airing in the past half year. You can count on MadHouse to make such a questionable premise work.

Basically, this series is spread over 104 episodes of 3 minutes, each of which explores the daily life of Chi and the family that adopts her. Especially Chi, but also the rest of the cast develop through the course of the series into downright adorable characters. The creators really succeeded into portraying the characters, just like regular people with their own problems, like making deadlines for work, properly raising kids and of course taking care of your cat, while it remains light-hearted through the entire process.

But the thing that really sells this series is Chi’s antics. I’m allergic to cats myself, but after watching this series, I can fully understand why people would take one in their home. It’s just so much fun to see the little Chi play around in the world, where everything is big and new and a whole new experience. Especially seeing her clashing with the family’s life-style results into a bunch of awesome episodes.

What’s the most peculiar about this series, though, is that it’s directed by the guy you’d least likely assume to be able to pull off such a cute series: Mitsuyuki Masuhara, the episode director of manly series as Death Note and Gungrave and the assistant director of Shigurui and Tokyo Tribe. I’m not sure what really made him decide to go for such a different series, but he really pulled it off here and he developed the characters into an excellent cast. The episodes are varied, some of them build up for each other, and you’ll never really know when one of them will just be entertaining or downright awesome. If you’re looking for a feel-good series that you can laugh with, then Chi’s Sweet Home is a very nice recommendation.

Next up in the category “so bad that it’s good”: if I see you in my dreams. Another very short series, with only 16 episodes of 7 minutes long, it tells about a love triangle between three people in their early twenties. Basically, it’s a kaleidoscope of what not to do when you’re dating someone. Both if you’re the one dating, and also if you’re writing such a character.

In a strange way, it’s pretty amazing: the episodes are only 7 minutes long, and yet the creators always managed to find some sort of excuse to stuff in some sort of Deus ex Machina and some sort of opportunity to show fanservice in nearly every single one of them. It’s pretty hilarious, how you can pretty much predict what’s going to happen in the big plot twist, and the series makes no attempt whatsoever to hide it.

But the strange thing is that the characters are all pretty enjoyable to watch. For such a love triangle, they’re all surprisingly genuine. Their reactions to the above-mentioned Deus ex Machina are also really cute at times, even though we’re dealing with fully grown adults. It still doesn’t excuse the very badly written plot, but it’s good to see that not everything about this series is terrible.

But what actually baffled me in this series was that final episode: Yume de Aetara actually closes off with a really sweet ending. This ending was really well written, and actually made the character-development come together in the end. For such a mediocre series to end on such a good note. It doesn’t happen often. But then again… I guess that that’s going to happen if you’re crazy enough to put Hiroshi Watanabe behind the series supervision.

When Blassreiter first started, it was met with a lot of doubts, which is of course natural after Gonzo’s escapades with the infamous Dragonaut. Blassreiter looked like it would be the same bloody thing again. But as it turns out, the creators pretty much managed to nail down a very entertaining action-series. I am very picky when it comes to action-scenes, but the ones from Blassreiter left me very impressed.

You do need to get used to the fact that the fights are entirely done in 3D CG. If you’re one of those people that hate CG with passion, then you’re not going to like this series. However, because the fights make optimal use of this CG, the creators are able to do things that would never be possible with just 2D animation. CG means that there are no still frames, constant and smooth movement, and complex camera movement. Blassreiter takes this, and produces some of the best 3D fight scenes of the entire year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up labelling it as the best action-series of 2008. The camera-movements, combined with the character-movements result into a number of absolutely beautiful fight scenes.

Action-scenes are one thing, but I personally can’t enjoy a good action scene unless I care about the characters. That’s where Gonzo screwed up with Afro Samurai, because the characters and plot were utterly retarded. Thankfully, they avoid the same mistake here. The first half of the series has a very creative storyline, which goes away from the tried and true formula. The second half is more straightforward, but to make up for it the characters develop, and you’ll end up caring about them in a strange manly genuine fashion. The two complement each other pretty interestingly.

Blassreiter is not without its major flaws, though. Especially in the first half, it tends to be a bit too melodramatic for its own good, to the point of a few scenes that are just way too emo. Especially bullying subplot is just too extreme to be taken serious. This series is just too emo while trying to build up. The results are pretty awesome, but I can imagine how you’d not want to watch an angsting teen over and over.

There’s also the fact that the 3D-scenes don’t try at all to blend in with the 2D art, which will take some time to get used to. Overall, it’s been an interesting series, despite its questionable start. I recommend it if you’re looking for an action-series. This series has the three ingredients for awesome fight scenes: excellent choreography, sympathetic characters and a great soundtrack. I can’t recall having seen any series that made as much of an optimal use of the capabilities of 3D animation.