Category: Anime Reviews

Well, so it’s finally time for me to review this thing. Since I didn’t get the chance to review the first season, this review is about both seasons together. Code Geass is your typical Sunrise Mecha Trainwreck. It can be compared to the bastard child of Death Note and Gundam 00 gone horribly wrong, and the typical case of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. I personally consider it the most overrated series of both 2007 and 2008, but admittedly, it’s not an entirely bad series.

The big problem with this series is that it wants to create a sensation a little too badly, up to the point where it uses bad writing, just to create an as big shock as possible. The series starts out nicely enough, though. It builds up properly, but very quickly, the plotholes start popping up, one after the other. Too often to characters just “run into each other”, or happen to be at the wrong place and wrong time. A few instances of these plotholes would of course be okay, but this series just keeps using them, over and over.

The series could have made up for it in terms of characters, but even there things went wrong once they started “developing”, or at least, when they’re supposed to. More often than not, the characters suddenly start acting completely out of character, whatever happens to be convenient for the story, rather then what would be the most natural thing to do. People don’t switch sides because of complex political reasons, but more because the creators want them to.

To add to that, the creators also have a very nasty habit with killing off their characters. If you see an important character kicking the bucket, you can be 75% sure that he or she is somehow going to magically reappear again, later in the series. It becomes rather anticlimactic, when you just know that a character that dies is going to come back anyway (pretty much the dragonball-syndrome).

Then there’s an issue with the setting of this series, which mostly pops up in the first half of this series, in the form of its incredibly nationalistic messages: Japan is being oppressed by the evil Brits and Americans, and it’s up to the main character to vanquish the oppression. The second season also happily continues this tradition by portraying the Chinese as a bunch of fascistic pigs. It’s full of unnecessary stereotypes that make no sense.

So, with all of this criticism, why do you want to watch this series in the first place? Simple: the entertainment factor. The climaxes, badly written as they may be, do try their best to make a huge spectacle with what they can do. This is a typical series that you want to watch if you want some brainless action, and nothing deep or well written. You can mock the ridiculous plotholes and cheese and at the same time enjoy the action scenes for what they are.

But yeah, that doesn’t excuse the fact that Code Geass is a whole mess in terms of storytelling, and wants too much too fast. The character-development is ridiculous, it’s full of plotholes and unable to really create something memorable (not in a good way, at least). I’ve read somewhere that even the director thought that this series has turned crappy, so I hope that he learned from his mistakes and that his next series will be a “bit” more solid.

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

It’s quite ironic: Itazura na Kiss is based on a manga that started its serialization in 1990, and was probably one of the pioneers in the shoujo romantic comedy-genre, and its premise still stands out as an original one: never have we travelled this much into the life of the lead couple. Where most stories just follow half a year or in the extreme cases go on until the wedding, Itazura na Kiss goes even further, and it ends when the main couple is happily married, and between the 25 and 28 years old. It’s such a shame that the creators of the anime just couldn’t handle such an awesome premise.

The series starts out hilarious, though. Both Kotoko and Irie (the series’ main couple) have a great sense of humour and love to tease each other when they can, making for a few priceless situations. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that the creators just want to do too much with this series, but have no idea how to fill up its time. As soon as the characters enter college, this series descends into a bit of a mess: the creators keep throwing random love rivals at the main couple, in order to supposedly test the strength of their relationship, but none of the love-rivals make ANY impact, and are just carbon copies of their previous version.

The big problem is that the creators are just terrible at creating dramatic climaxes. They try over and over, but with one or two exceptions, they all fall flat, are too rushed, forced, superficial and cheesy and make the majority of this series (from episode eight to around episode 20) a pain to sit through, especially since the humour also becomes really dull and repetitive around that same time. The characters also hardly develop, due to this shallow drama, and there’s very little that’s actually worth watching.

But thankfully, this series changes entirely once the characters finish university, and get a job. It’s here where this series finds its former magic back, and drops its superficial climaxes. The humour comes back, and the time that Kotoko and Irie spend at work is really entertaining and heart-warming. It’s here where the characters finally develop and grow up, and this series closes off with a really enjoyable finale.

Overall, I wouldn’t exactly recommend you to sit through the really dull middle part, but it does reward you in the end when everything comes together. It’s the perfect example of why extra drama isn’t necessarily good for a series, and for Itazura na Kiss, it’s mostly the light moments where the creators aren’t obsessively trying to strengthen Irie and Kotoko’s relationship. Subtlety is definitely not this series’ greatest point, and it should have focused its time at the slice of life moments, and making the viewer laugh instead of these shallow love triangles. I really liked this series when it first started, but unfortunately, the creators just couldn’t live up to this series’ potential.

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

When I first learned about the second season of Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto, I really didn’t know what to expect, having never seen the first season. Especially because the stories you heard about said first season ranged from “dull” to “awesome”. What I got was a wonderful short slice of life series that sparkles with originality.

I love it when the creators of an anime go “screw conventions, I want to do things my way!”. Natsu no Sora immediately sets itself apart from nearly all other anime with its visuals. The very simplistic character-designs form a stark contrast with the realistic backgrounds, even though most of them are simply photos with a small filter run over them. It’s a neat way to save budget, and when put into practice, it really works.

But what really stands out (or doesn’t, if you want to be literal) in this series is its specific style of storytelling. Think of Beck, but going even further. The creators have put a lot of subtlety in the storytelling. This series doesn’t care about overblown climaxes, and instead continues to keep a quiet mood, even when the characters themselves are going through some pretty difficult times. In some cases, you really need to be paying attention, because the big moments will be over before you know it. Because of this, the characters have no trouble connecting to the viewer at all. Every single one of them is just charming in his or her own way, and a lot of fun to watch.

My only point of criticism is the way this series starts. The first few episodes feature a few plot twists that make you wonder what the heck the creators were doing back then. The entire series is so subtle and realistic, so what are these Deus ex Machina doing there?

Thankfully, Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu Na Koto – Natsu no Sora is the perfect example of a series that gets better as it progresses. Especially the final bunch of episodes are wonderfully written and convey the characters’ feelings perfectly. Natsu no Sora is an excellent series for those who want something to relax to, and yet characters that they can care about, and those who want something different and are tired of anime’s nasty tendency to be a bit too overdramatic than what’s good for it at times.

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

I’m what you’d call a “Slayers-noob”. Before the summer season started, I hadn’t seen anything of the franchise so far, so this series seemed like a good opportunity to check out what the hype was all about. As it turns out, Slayers Revolution definitely wasn’t the best place to start, and I’m still wondering where I found the patience to continue watching this series.

My big problem with Slayers Revolution is that there’s absolutely nothing that stands out: the characters are decent, but none of them is memorable or well developed, even the ones who are supposed to be new. The storyline also keeps the series going, but never did it really catch my interest. In terms of episodic stories, the best this series could come up with is rolling a bunch of giant balls up a hill. The comedy made me chuckle occasionally, but nothing more. The only battle that was even remotely interesting was the one at the final episode. Other than that, they’re just a bunch of people throwing spells at each other until one party dies.

Sure, Slayers may have been revolutionary when it first aired, but I’m judging this series, not the original one, and I’m doing it on today’s standards. In that case, there just isn’t anything remarkable about this series. The thing I like about fantasy is the interesting ideas that can be put in it, which only can be limited by the creator’s imagination. Not even once did this series try to be original. And okay, I can understand that the series couldn’t be original with its main characters, but even the storyline for this series, which could have been anything the creators would have liked, just feels uninspired and done before.

So overall, if you’re a slayers fan, you can just ignore this review and enjoy the series for what it is, because it seems to be much of the same and many of the characters that were fun to watch and fleshed out in the first seasons will return for more fun. However, if you aren’t a Slayers fan like me, then Slayers Revolution isn’t going to make you one. It’s a moderately entertaining fantasy-series in a genre that has much better to offer, and I can only hope that the next season is going to be a bit more exciting.

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

While the eighties were the golden decade for the mecha-shows, the nineties were so for the fantasy-genre. While it’s technically no Bee-Train series, you can pretty much label Bakuretsu Hunters as one, because it’s another one of Koichi Masahino’s works, before he founded his now infamous animation studio. In Bakuretsu Hunters, you can see the beginnings of what made him an excellent director, but ironically, he also made a lot of mistakes at areas he’d excel at only years later.

Basically, Bakuretsu Hunters follows the pattern of random episodic stories with a major storyline that pops up once in a while. In these stories, our lead characters need to take out evil sorcerers who abuse their powers upon the less fortunate. A solid premise, if it weren’t for the fact that the main character is a horrible womanizer, and he really takes that to the extreme. For every single episode, you can find him running after cute girls like an idiot, and while it’s fun for the first and second time, it does get old after twenty times.

In fact, a lot more members of the cast have their own problems. Hardly anyone develops beyond their original character. The two lead females and their crush on the lead character can and will get on your nerves. It was a nice idea, to try and create a sympathetic pervert, but after Golden Boy, I’ve seen enough of these guys. The biggest offender, however, is a character called Big Momma (no, really; that’s her name), who drove me to the point of actually hating her. Her character isn’t fleshed out at all, she acts incredibly stupid in the series’ second half and never seems to learn from her mistakes. Her wishy-washy personality gets absolutely nowhere, her character makes no sense and she lacks way too much in background (I kept wondering what she was doing while she wasn’t ordering the Bakuretsu Hunters around…).

The only really satisfying character is the main villain. He’s nothing too deep, but he has a presence. You know he’s the antagonist of this series from the first moment you see him, and his character is fascinating enough to last through the entire series. Apart from that, this series really lives on its individual stories, which often toy around with irony and are admittedly entertaining. I also liked how this series plays around with names, often giving very strange Engrish names to its characters, with the result being a guy called Mr. Wacky, among others.

The production-values are also pretty nice. The character-designs may be a bit too much, but the animation certainly isn’t bad, and knowing Koichi Masahiro, the soundtrack is bound to be excellent.

But here’s my real beef with this series: less than five years after creating Bakuretsu Hunters, Koichi Masahino would create a series that would surpass it in every single way: Wild Arms, which had more interesting characters, setting, story, character-designs, individual episodic stories, was even more fun to watch and had a womanizing main character who actually worked. I just don’t see any reason why you would want to watch Bakuretsu Hunters if you can just watch Wild Arms instead. Bakuretsu Hunters just has way too buggy characters and too many plot-holes to really make an impact, even though its episodic stories are entertaining enough. Not to mention that Deus ex Machina ending…

Storytelling:	8/10
Characters:	6/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	7/10

Bishounen-series are in a way much like bishoujo-series. It’s just too easy to just treat the fanboys or fangirls to a lot of fanservice and get things over with, but of course the real challenge is to put them in interesting situations, develop them properly and flesh them out like real characters, otherwise you could just as well start selling paper bags. Antique Bakery is an example of how to do this right, although it’s rather unconventional.

I’ve said this before, but the series of the past spring- and summer season often had theme of fooling the viewer. Quite a few series defied expectations by focusing on something different from what you’d expect them to. Antique Bakery for example, looks all the way like a yaoi-series. Instead, it’s just an iyashi-kei series with a bit of mystery, where one of the characters just happens to be gay.

It really knows how to handle its cast of characters. At first, it starts out like a rather cheesy series, but very soon the cheese turns into genuine drama. Every character gets enough attention to show what he’s got. Because the series deals with such an original setting of a cake-store, the characters really have the ability to move away fro the stereotypes, and develop in the way they want. There’s this strange bond that develops between them as the series goes on, and it just seems to fit perfectly.

The mystery-part of the series is also delightfully unpredictable. How often do you see a guy with a trauma, because he had once been kidnapped in his past by someone who forced to make him eat cakes all the time? At first, it might seem like a bit of good cheese, but interestingly enough as the show goes on, this develops into genuine drama, with an actually very nice ending that prefers logical progression over a sensational ending, and yet puts a satisfying conclusion to everything.

There’s one character who feels a bit out of place in this series. This series is mostly about adults, but there’s one teenager amongst them, but he just doesn’t feel as part of the cast as the others. All attempts to flesh him out feel a bit shallow, and the moments that focus on him are mostly the less exciting of the series. An ex-boxer who loves cakes may sound good on paper, but the creators just didn’t use his character well enough.

This also isn’t a series for everyone. The fact remains that one of the characters is gay, so if you hate gay people with the intensity of one thousand suns, then you’re not going to like this series, even though the fact that the guy’s gay is used very nicely to symbolize the anxieties of gay people in the modern society. There’s also one particularly wrong scene where the guy carries his fantasies a bit too far, but apart from that the creators nicely balanced his feelings, to prevent the shounen-ai tones from getting too big of a focus.

Overall, though, Antique Bakery is another example of why Noitamina rocks. It comes with the most unconventional premises that actually work out somehow. It’s an inspired series that’s sometimes relaxing, and sometimes it shines with powerful drama, and the creators showed that they knew exactly how to use their limited time of 12 episodes. While it’s not going to break any records, it’s another good example of a nice quick watch.

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