Category: Anime Reviews

Well, time for me to pimp another very unknown series. This one comes completely subbed, courtesy of a one-man fansub group (who did a very admirable job, by the way), and it tells about Tetsuya, a legendary gambler and Mah-jong player. For the past few years, Akagi has turned into the symbol of Mah-Jong anime, but this series shows that it wasn’t the pioneer of the genre.

When I first started to watch this series, and realized that this series plays a lot of emphasis on cheating, I expected some sort of combination between Akagi and Kaiji, but that comparison turned to be a bit off, as there are some subtle differences. Tetsuya doesn’t really try to get very deep into the heads of the different players, but it’s much more about different cheating-techniques and its characters. In Kaiji, all the gamblers are referred to as human trash, while Tetsuya shows a more human side of them.

Tetsuya doesn’t try to go as deep as Akagi and Kaiji, but it did avoid these two series’s biggest weakness: their horribly slow pacing. Tetsuya’s pacing is quick and to the point that it never really drags, so that we can get to see a wide variety of players through the limited time of only 20 episode. There’s never really a moment to get bored. Even the final arc only takes up two episodes, instead of dragging things out in an attempt to create tension.

And the characters really shine. A lot of them are very interesting to watch, as they either team up with or play against Tetsuya, considering their limited screen-time. My favourite was the match against Innami, the walking corpse. He’s an excellent example of a character that shatters the boundaries of good and evil.

One complaint is that at times, it becomes clear that this series was based on a much larger manga. Thankfully, each arc is a standalone story, but there are a few story-threads that get introduced, and yet never answered. Boshu’s wife never makes an appearance, even though including her would have greatly fleshed out Boshu’s character. There’s also one character in the OP that never appears in the actual series. You can’t help but wonder what’s up with that.

Overall, I don’t think that this series is going to be better than Akagi (I’ll get back to that statement once I get the chance to finish that series), but nevertheless Tetsuya is a simple but effective series with a cast of great characters. It in any case deserves to get more attention than what it’s getting right now.

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

Beck is a lot like the younger rebellious brother of Nodame Cantabile. While the latter is about students, classical music and orchestras, the former is about a bunch of middle and high-school kids who try to start a rock band. Nodame Cantabile was very much up-beat and a positive series, while Beck is much darker, more down-to-earth and loved playing with the darker sides of humanity. Still, both series are about a passion for music and the chemistry between the people you play with.

In terms of music, Beck draws on the shorter end, though. Don’t get me wrong, the rock-music that the creators selected for this series is excellent, but it doesn’t feel as part of the series in the way that Nodame Cantabile did. There seems to be no difference in a song when one of the band-members is missing, and that’s a bit sloppy. Koyuki, the lead character in this series was supposed to be an awesome singer, but I could never really see why. Sure, he was good at singing, but his singing was full of Engrish, which hardly anybody (even the Americans) seemed to notice. Okay, perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to watch Beck right after Nodame Cantabile (which paid attention to even the slightest mistakes), but this was a rather annoying flaw.

Thankfully, there’s more than enough to make up for that. Beck has a cast of downright excellent characters, with an almost haunting chemistry between them, due to the realistic approach it chooses to portray the Japanese Indie band scene. There are so many good amateur rock bands out there, that it’s going to be very hard to stand apart from them, and even as this series nears its end, it’s still a huge mystery whether the guys from Beck are actually going to get famous or not.

Koyuki may not have had the best voice-actor, but apart from that, he’s an excellent character, who grows a lot through the series. He starts out as an insecure little kid, and he gradually loses his insecurities, to become more outspoken. Nearly the entire cast is also well-defined and has its clear purpose in the series.

Then there’s the romance, which was actually pretty good. There was this strange sort of realism that actually made the bits of romance in this series engaging, rather than annoying, which is where most teenaged romances seem to head for, especially when they’re not the main focus of a series. There’s something memorable in the bond that develops between Koyuki and Maho, in the way that the creators keep teasing the viewer, although the creators may have spent a bit too little time on it in the series’ second half. They could have played with it a bit more, I feel.

Certain parts of the series are a bit unbelievable, though. Ryuusuke’s age of sixteen years old feels a bit unbelievable, considering the things he’s already done, or certain plot-twists seem to come from nowhere, which will raise some eyebrows at the realistic nature of this series. Nevertheless, though, Beck is a very memorable series that combines slice of life and the struggles to form a successful rock band excellently.

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

Ah, I managed to finish this one just in time for the second season that starts in October. Nodame Cantabile is a series about classical music: it follows the rise of a brilliant conductor named Chiaki, and how he spends his college years. If for some reason, you needed any more reasons as to why noitaminA rocks, then go and watch this series, because it’s among the best series that came from an already excellent timeslot.

Finally, an anime comes and pulls off an accurate portrayal of a genius. After all, it’s easier to write a stupid character than to write a smart one, let alone a brilliant one. You really need to be well-versed in the classical music-business to pull that one off, and the creators actually did it. Okay, I know hardly anything about good music, but I still could see that this “Chiaki”-guy was going to make it big someday. Through the series, you’ll get to see exactly what this guy’s thinking, and what’s pushing him forward, what he finds important and why he became so good with music in the first place. It’s for this reason that Nodame Cantabile is an incredibly inspirational anime that can motivate you in a slightly different way than most other motivational series (which are often about an underdog, rather than an already established genius).

The rest of the cast also shines in this series. Every major side-character (which are quite a few, actually) gets his or her time to shine. With the exceptions of the characters that only appear in one or two episodes or random orchestra-members, every character is interesting, and has a bit of depth. This really is a series that shines because of its characters.

The only oddball is the female lead: Nodame. She’s just about the polar opposite of Chiaki, and for the major part of this series, you’ll be wondering what she’s actually doing in this series. She feels like this series’ Yuki Cross (from Vampire Knight): she’s there, she gets admired, but she doesn’t do anything important for the story. Thankfully, as the series goes on, her purpose in this series becomes very clear. I’m not going to spoil anything but let’s just say that her character-growth is very admirable and the highlight of this series’ finale.

There’s also plenty to laugh at in this series. It’s not strictly a comedy, but that doesn’t stop the characters from having fun and providing laughs from the beginning to the end of this series. The creators know exactly when they need to be funny and when they need to be serious.

There’s a slight downside with the use of CG, though. Since this is a series about classical music, there are obviously lots of instruments being played, and the creators used a motion-capturing technique in order to show characters playing the piano/violin/oboe/whatever. This makes sure for lots of movement that would never have been possible with traditional animation techniques, but it also looks fake. The 3D hands and instruments just don’t mesh well with the 2D characters, which makes the visuals in this series rather sloppy. Thankfully, it’s able to make up for that with a downright excellent soundtrack. Not only were many classical pieces played throughout the series, but these pieces really felt like how the characters would play them, rather than a background piece that would just start on cue and sound the same everywhere.

Overall, noitaminA is a timeslot with two faces: post high-school antics and horror, all with some kind of experimental touch (save from Honey and Clover perhaps, but I haven’t seen that one yet). noitaminA is a very charming series about a bunch of conservatory-students. On paper, it’s one of the duller concepts that came from the timeslot, but it makes up for that with a number of downright awesome characters. I can understand why this series happily sat on top of AniDB’s ranking for more than half a year.

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

Ugh… what a mess. Before watching, I already had a hunch that watching Tsukuyomi Moon Phase wouldn’t be easy, but I decided to have faith in Akiyuki Shinbo, its director. I’ve loved most of his other works so far: Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Pani Poni Dash and Soul Taker were excellent, so there would be a good chance for Tsukuyomi Moon Phase to be good as well, right?

Well, I’d like to thank this series for destroying my faith in Shinbo. While it’s not utter crap, Tsukuyomi Moon Phase is dull, annoying and just not worth it.

Let me start with the good part: character-development. Surprisingly, the part where Shinbo screwed up at Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is one of the better points in this series. The cast of Tsukuyomi Moon Phase isn’t static, and it changes notably as the show goes on. Unfortunately, all the character-development in the world isn’t going to help if you can’t care about these characters, and that’s the big problem with this series.

Bluntly said, just about half of the cast of this series is incredibly annoying. Hazuki is a whiny brat, Koukei is a lacklustre male lead, Kaoru has the depth of a paper bag, Art is a shallow, dull and predictable main villain, and so on. The interesting characters do try to brighten up the mood a bit, but they’re almost always overshadowed by the dull ones. The central theme in this series, the chemistry between Kouhei and Hazuki (the two main characters) also feels fake. It felt to me like they were arguing for the sake of arguing, rather than that their personalities were clashing.

If that wasn’t enough, I also have my issues with the storytelling. The entire story is full of plot holes – both large and small. According to this series, the best way to clean out an oil-stain in your clothes is to enter a hot spring for a while. The ending also leaves too many things unanswered. Apparently the manga went on after that point, but Shinbo could at least have tried to wrap them up a bit.

Then there are the fights, probably the most blatant part of this series. On paper, it looked good: the combat system combines vampires with Shinto-styled spells and magical seals. The different characters receive a number of interesting powers that are perfect for forming intricate strategies against the enemies. The problem, however, is that for nearly every major fight, these strategies fail and eventually either Hazuki or Kouhei ends up saving the day with some hastily explained convenient godmode-power that basically renders all of these carefully thought-out plans useless. I can understand how a series would want to make its main characters a bit stronger than usual, but the powers that our main couple receives borders the ridiculous and they feel just downright lazy.

But well, at least since this is a Shinbo-series, the art and animation-style at least look great, right? Well, even with that I’ve got problems. The animation style indeed is typical Shinbo, with nice poses and camera-angles, but at the same time it pales in comparison to the visuals of both his previous and his later works: Petit Cosette, Soul Taker, Pani Poni Dash and Zetsubou-Sensei all looked ten times better than what was shown here. The animation for Moon Phase is inconsistent and all over the place: sometimes it’s normal, at other times it’s Shinbo’s typical style and yet at other times it looks like a desperate attempt to save budget. It can’t seem to choose for one proper style.

At least I can be positive about the music: while nothing special, there are a number of very sweet tracks that especially pop up during the climaxes. Overall, though, I just can’t recommend Moon Phase. It has its decent moments, but it never really stands out at anything. It went too far at trying to be “moe” that it rather lost sight of what was really important for this series, so much that I even couldn’t understand what it was trying to achieve in the first place.

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

Okay, to be honest I decided to watch the first OVA of Tenchi Muyo!, the mother of all harem-anime, more as a fan of Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, rather than expecting anything worthwhile to come out of it. Still, I guess there had to be a reason why this caught on so much in the first place. This six-episoded OVA isn’t perfect, but it does have its enjoyable moments.

Obviously, it remains rather questionable for so many cute girls to move in at the house of the male lead, but at least the creators made sure to create an alien subplot in order to explain where these girls came from, and it’s at least plausible why the most important characters fell in love with this male lead. At the same time, the story about the aliens is also interesting enough to keep the viewer busy, I guess, and at least some effort has been put into it to make it a bit coherent and original (for its time, anyway).

The characters are a mixed bag: like expected, Sasami and Washuu (the short part we see of her anyway) were awesome. Ayeka and Ryo-Ouki were also pretty interesting. Ryoko (the main female lead) is hilarious when she doesn’t take herself serious, though gets rather dull when the comedy’s gone. Mihoshi, however, was just too annoying that what was good for her (how did she become a genius detective with that attitude anyway?) and the main villain Kagato is your stereotypical Norio Wakamoto-voiced bad guy without much depth to him, and his only purpose is to explain where Ryoko came from.

The result is also a rather mixed bag of a series. The first half is really enjoyable, where especially the chemistry between the different characters stands out. Mihoshi, Kagato and Ryoko’s serious side do rather ruin the second half, though. I think the biggest mistake that this series made is the ridiculously stretched out final battle against Kagato. It takes 1,5 episodes (that means 45 minutes) before the bugger finally dies. Especially for an OVA, that’s precious time that could have been so much better spent to develop and flesh out the characters.

Okay, I should be cursing this OVA for spawning and popularizing a genre that lives on seeing who can rip off each other the most, but nonetheless Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ouki is a nicely written story (for the most part at least). It’s got a bunch of well-defined characters (and also a few annoying ones) and there are a few interesting ideas included for the OVa. I’m not sure whether there really is enough material for 78 television-episodes and a truckload of more OVAs and movies, though…

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

I first became interested in Wind – A Breath of Heart after this guy gave it a surprisingly positive review. After watching it, I can understand why. Wind is a typical series that’s short (it’s only got 13 episodes of fifteen minutes), simple, but effective.

It doesn’t start out that way, though. Especially the first few episodes are an exercise in “spot the overdone cliché”. I spotted the annoying spunky sister, the childhood sweetheart, stupid and energetic best friend, girl who keeps abusing this best friend, classmates with a part-time job in a café, there’s a priestess, a girl with heart problems, parents gone, the terrible cook, school sports festival, shrine festival (complete with yukatas) and of course the beach episode. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a sakura tree.

And yet, this series works. The biggest reason is a great cast of scriptwriters that manages to keep the story going and the dialogues meaningful. The airtime is short, but every character gets at least a bit of depth and goes beyond the usual stereotype. The cast feels fresh, and the main storyline is also a pretty good one. Don’t expect anything amazing, but it’s well told and surprisingly dark. My only complaint is that its conclusion may have come a bit too easy, in the way of “why didn’t you do this in the beginning?”

This series is also interesting in terms of graphics. At first sight, the CG and sloppy animation may seem like a turnoff, but it’s got a sort of “I don’t care whether I’m ugly but I want movement”-feeling, which I appreciate a lot. It’s so much better than nearly ninety percent of all other bishoujo-series, which are way too obsessed with creating the perfect female body.

Overal, this isn’t the most complete series but what it does feel is a whole (if that makes any sense). The different storylines are carefully woven into each other and not a second is really wasted. The scriptwriters know exactly how to use their time, and pleasantly surprised me.

Storytelling:	9/10
Characters:	8/10
Production-Values:	8/10
Setting:	6/10

Gems often pop up at strange places, and Solty Rei is a great example of this. I’m not sure why exactly I dropped it when it first aired, but it probably was something along the lines of “too dull” and “gonzo”. As it turns out, Solty Rei is a very capable anime and just as underrated.

Solty Rei does start out rather underwhelming, though. The cute characters and the dark-ish setting don’t mesh well together, nothing much really happens and the main character Solty is overly moralistic, with a typical storyline of “save the oppressed”. There’s also not much eye-candy for the viewer (none of the character-designs are really appealing and the animation has a lot of bugs). There’s honestly nothing much to get excited about, but thankfully a lot changes once this series hits its second half.

It’s rather hard to properly talk about this, since the entire second half is basically one big spoiler, but let’s just say that the first half knew exactly what it was doing, and merely was building up and fleshing characters out properly for a much, much darker second half. What shines the most is the character-development, where themes as family and loss play a central role central. The entire cast develops into something worthwhile, and not a character seems wasted.

But also the setting turns out to be much deeper than you’d originally expect. It starts out as your typical uninspired dystopia, but the series slowly develops this setting into something much more complex. The ending, at first sight may seem like another one of those overly ambitious endings, but it somehow works out and gives a great closure to the series.

Solty Rei is obviously a cheap-looking series, where Gonzo’s CG and the 2D animation just don’t mesh well together. The soundtrack is nothing special (apart from a small amount of excellent tracks that pop up once or twice), but what lies behind it is a charming series. It’s well-told (although it lies a bit too much on coincidences at times), it’s got a great setting and great character-development. It just needs to take a while to get fired up.

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

Seto no Hanayome: Gonzo’s attempt at comedy, and what a fine attempt it is. It’s very much the spiritual successor of Magikano: both series share directors, both feature cute girls and both managed to take an incredibly clichéd premise and turned it into something worthwhile. Seto no Hanayome is a bit tamer than Magikano was, and it’s also not the best comedy out there, but if you’re looking for something to laugh at, then it’s a great recommendation.

The key to the success here is the combination between the incredibly distorted faces that were also prevalent in Magikano, combined with a frantic pacing that hardly ever takes a break. Especially during the first half, this series makes sure to keep the laughs coming and coming, and it never seems to run out of inspiration for its next jokes. The characters are smartly not introduced all at once, so that each of them gets enough time to introduce his quirks to the audience.

Then, as the series entered its second half, the humour thank goodness didn’t get dull, and there still was plenty to laugh at. The characters thankfully receive enough depth to prevent them from getting dull after two or three episodes, which is very much appreciated, but this series does have some other problems, which pop up as it hits its second half, and the drama starts kicking in.

Don’t get me wrong, I usually love touching characters, but this is one of these series where drama just doesn’t belong. It gets in the way of the comedy and it’s also not that good anyway. Every time the characters started acting all serious, I kept longing back to the first half, where episodes just kept the jokes coming and coming. Thankfully, at least the series goes quickly back to comedy after these serious moments, but there’s one big exception to this: the bloody ending.

Oh, how deep does this series fall in its final two episodes. I guess it was to be expected with the director of Magikano behind it, but let’s just say that the climax of the story removes all traces of comedy whatsoever and goes down a predictable road with a story about a generic bad guy who tests the strength of the relationship of the two main characters. It’s predictable, dull and pretty much pointless.

It’s a pity when you watch a comedy with an identity crisis: no matter how hilarious the characters are, for some strange reason the creators find that they always need to close off their series with a big, epic and serious climax. The thing is though, that if I wanted to watch a good drama, I wouldn’t go for this series at all. Seto no Hanayome is all about comedy, and at least it’s got that part nailed very nicely. I especially wanted to give credit to the female lead: San. When compared to her counterparts in other romantic comedies, she feels really refreshing. She had a mind of her own, and she actually was one of my favourite characters in this series. I’m very easily bored by romantic comedies, but Seto no Hanayome has showed me yet again that the genre also has a fine selection of gems. The flaws remain, but in this case the pros do very much outweigh the cons.

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

Franz Kafka was once a German author, famous for his downright depressing stories. I’ve only read one work of his (about a salaryman, turning into a huge beetle and then dying from loneliness), but I can fully understand why he got that reputation. A Country Doctor is the interpretation of director Koji Yamamura, the director of Atama Yama on one of the guy’s short stories.

I think it’s already apparent through the screenshots, but the director went for a surreal approach with this 20-minute long movie. The character-designs are constantly warping into strange shapes, and the entire movie is chock-full of symbolism about the old country doctor that plays the main character in this story. You might need a second viewing in order to fully understand what’s going on.

Overall, I liked a country doctor. It’s a great short horror-ish story, but I do think that the director went a bit too overboard with his visual effects. The warped character-designs only distract from what’s really important in the movie, and the plot doesn’t flow as smoothly as you’d like at times. It’s just like Shoji Kawamura’s Spring and Chaos: you want to give a classic writer too much credit and go overboard with the style so that the style actually works against it a bit.

Nevertheless, the art style does look great and apart from a few humps and bumps along the way, the story is well-told for such a short time of 20 minutes and it gives a good look inside the mind of the titular country doctor. A country Doctor is obviously not for everyone (stay FAR away if you hate depressing stories), but if you’re looking for something surreal and have half an hour to burn, then why not give it a chance?

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