Category: Anime Reviews

Ah, Bamboo Blade. You had the potential to become interesting when you started, though something went wrong. The flaws for this series are a bit more subtle than usual, and I’m still not 100% sure what it was that really caused the downfall for this series. If I had to guess, then it’s a combination of things. Bamboo Blade in the end had its moments, but remains overall boring.

Let’s take a look at the characters first. At the beginning of this series, they really caught my intention, and I admit having laughed quite a bit at their antics. They get a small share of development during the second half, so what went wrong? Well the characters may have been impressive at first sight, but looking back, the creators just took a bunch of stereotypes and gave them one or two original personality-traits. This leads to a quiet and small but uberpowerful girl who is obsessed with cheesy mecha-shows, a beauty who actually is quite sadistic but has a geek as boyfriend, that geek who has managed to score such a beautiful girl as girlfriend.

This is nice and all, but the characters didn’t feel dynamic at all. The creators were so busy, trying to step away from the stereotypes that they forgot that the silent girl still remained silent, the geek remained a geek, and the sadistic beauty remains a sadistic beauty. In the end, nearly every character couldn’t shake away his or her stereotype. The side-characters are off even worse: there’s the obsessive stalker-girl, the old hag, the rival and several of the opposing kendo-teams who are cookie-cutters at best. Because of this, the characters are funny and enjoyable when first introduced, but they just can’t remain interesting for a full course of 26 episodes.

Then there’s the story. It may be me, but it really felt like the creators were struggling to keep it moving forward. Basically, the show’s about a Kendo-club who fights in a number of tournaments. Every single group of opponents gets progressively duller for some strange reason. Especially the two final opponents feel artificial at best. Seriously, this show takes a real nose-dive as it nears its ending.

I really feel that this is one series that would have been best suited for 13 episodes. At least that way, the characters wouldn’t have had any time to get boring. I’ve praised the past Autumn and Winter-Season for featuring a lot of good shows, centring around high-schools, but this is unfortunately not one of them.

So… I watched it. I originally dropped the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya after four episodes, back when it aired in the spring-season of 2006, simply because I had to drop a few series to prevent myself from watching too many series. The biggest reason why it took me so long to pick it up again is simply because the fanbase back then was incredibly annoying. Everyone seemed to talk about how awesome this series was, but the most praises I read were not about how well it was written, or the amount of creativity that was put into it, but about how moe the different female characters were. It really feels like every single squeal of Mikuru has been intensively discussed. I don’t know about others, but I’m not that keen on watching a series that’s based on a few moe-actions.

After finally watching this series, I must say that this series definitely is more than just moe, moe and moe. It’s been based on a series of light-novels, and it shows in the dialogue. Especially Kyon and Itsuki like to ramble on and with their respective sarcasm and philosophical analysis, and both are really well-written and keep you interested throughout the lesser interesting parts of this series, but I’ll get to that later.

Another flawless area of this series is of course the animation itself. It’s clear that Kyoani had a big budget for this series, and they used it pretty nicely to convey the subtle movements of the characters, the detailed backgrounds to portray the overall lives of the characters and the very impressive CG-scenes that pop up once in a while.

Well, now, regarding the lesser points of this series: there are basically two major flaws in this series. This anime basically consists of two parts. The first seven episodes (if I recall correctly, the original series aired in random order) are basically the story-arc, and show how Kyon gradually gets to know all the mysteries around Haruhi Suzumiya. This part is actually pretty good! The story continues to get pushed forward, and especially the second half of this story-arc delivers with a subtle, yet ominous atmosphere. The characters continuously develop and change, and it doesn’t have any chance to get boring. Heck, it wasn’t even focused on moe at all.

But yeah, the second arc is much less interesting. It’s basically a collection of random fillers that I guess were meant to flesh out the concept, but things rather failed here. It’s here where the character-development grinds to a halt and this series becomes mostly boring. This arc again consists out of seven episodes, and only during one of them I didn’t catch myself edging for ALT-F4, which ironically was the most down-to-earth episode of the bunch.

Which brings me to the second flaw of this series: Haruhi Suzumiya herself. Kyon, Itsuki and Yuki are actually pretty interesting characters, and I guess that Mikuru turned out much better than expected. Haruhi, however, got on my nerves every time she appeared. She also brought out the worst in other characters, because especially Mikuru can’t stop squealing when Haruhi is up to one of her plans again.

I’m not sure whether I’m the only one with this, but the moments I actually enjoyed most were the “quiet moments” of this series. Moments where nothing happened, and the characters were just killing time. I couldn’t care less about all of Haruhi’s adventures, and her need to meet up with strange things, and yet I liked seeing Kyon and Itsuki playing a random board-game; I liked how Yuki was alone in a room, while in the next room the local drama club was practicing. Heck, I even liked Kyon as he kept thinking about how hot Mikuru was. What I didn’t like was when Haruhi would jump into the club-room to announce her umpth idea.

Really, this turned out to be quite a good series, only with the “bad main character”-syndrome. When the second season arrives, I hope that the creators will continue to build upon what they’ve established now, and keep their focus as much away from Haruhi as possible.

For the past few days, I’ve been in the strange mood to compare animation-companies. Don’t ask me why, I’m not sure myself. In any case, Spice and Wolf (or Ookami to Koshinryou) has been produced by Imagin, whose only previous work basically consisted out of a bunch of notoriously bad fanservice-series (Hit wo Nerae, Cosprayers, Love Love?), so no, I can’t really say that I was anticipating this release. Turns out that you can teach an old dog new tricks. Or in this case: an old wolf.

Even though it may not look like it, Spice and Wolf is what you’d call a smart and down-to-earth series. The two main characters are surprisingly deep for only thirteen episodes. Their motivations are well-motivated, much more than what you’d see in usual anime, and they have a lot of different and complex sides. They both start to travel together, in a setting reminiscent of medieval Europe, though this isn’t a story about knights at all, it’s about merchants.

And this series really makes use of this, by showing us the ins and outs of the life of a merchant, while both Lawrence and Horo (the two main characters) provide critical commentary and analysis to the things that they run into. The dialogue is of a really high-quality, and it’s no wonder that the light novel that this series was based on won an award. This becomes especially apparent when the major female side-character gets introduced: I was really convinced that the show would turn into a cheesy love-triangle at one point, but it’s the opposite! Her appearance and use in the story is carefully explained, as well the relation that she has between Lawrence and Horo.

As for the bad points for this series – if you plan to watch this, you really have to be interested in merchants. Otherwise it’ll just bore the heck out of you. Aside from the side-character mentioned above, the other characters in this series also pale in comparison to the main cast. Sure, their motivations are explained well enough, but it feels like they could have been used and fleshed out much better than this series did.

The highlight of this series is definitely the final three episodes, where everything comes together like a charm. In one word, these episodes are fascinating, and close off the series without leaving a bad taste whatsoever, and still leaving space open for a possible continuation. The first arc may feel a bit lacking, but this is still another great series from the past winter-season.

Ah, shounen-fighting series. How many of them have fallen into the pit of mediocrity? Probably too many to count. Still, once in a while a series appears in the genre that actually delivers. The cream of the crop is for me the Law of Ueki, and even though Kekkaishi couldn’t come to that same level, it’s still a good example of a well-developed series in a genre that overall consists out of lazy manga-adaptations and toy-commercials.

For once our lead heroes (Yoshimori and Tokine) don’t have offensive powers. In fact, the entire concept of Kekkaishi is based around defence; all they can do is block, nothing more. The first twenty episodes are basically just reserved for random stories that let the viewer get familiarized with both the characters, and how they make use of their own powers in their own way. The creators manage to keep these episodes more than interesting through lots and lots of quirky characters, who’ll put a smile on your face.

Then when the story comes, this series has the advantage that it can work with characters that are already pretty well fleshed out, and the creators make perfect use for that. Keep a lookout for when Gen appears, because he’s without a doubt the best character of the series. Throughout its run of 52 episodes, Kekkaishi isn’t afraid to do things that usual series of the genre try to avoid.

There are a few problems with this series, though. Fighting-series should NEVER play with hidden powers, and yet every single one seems to have them. Although Kekkaishi uses them in enough moderation, they do pop up at the worst possible moments. This is the cause that the final three episodes will feel rather meh, which is a shame because the episodes that lead up to them are excellent.

It also feels that a part of this series does feel needlessly drawn out, though. I believe that this would have been the perfect series for 39 episodes (my personal favourite series-length). Apparently, this series was dropped by its sponsor and had to be drawn out to a 52-episode format so that it could be sold overseas, though this is why I’m of the opinion that series should just use the amount of episodes that fits for their story, and not make the story fit its amount of episodes.

On a semi-unrelated side-note, I think that this is a good place to voice some complaints about Sunrise that I’ve been having. I personally consider four animation-studios as “the big four” for television-series: Nippon Animation, Production IG, Madhouse and Studio Deen with as runners up Gonzo and Bones. I don’t think of Sunrise at all when I think of my favourite series, and yet they have been behind some interesting series as Freedom, Mai Hime, Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto and Gintama.

I think that I finally know the reason: it’s a bit harder to see, but they’re just like Kyoani and Makoto Shinkai. They may be great in their own way, but they’re too afraid to try out new things. Makoto Shinkai has his male main characters, Kyoani has its high-school settings, and for Sunrise, everything has to be epic and everything has to be a commercial success. Concepts that work get needlessly drawn out, which is probably why Kekkaishi went on for too long.

At the moment, I’m still hoping that Gintama won’t run out of jokes, now that it’s already passed its ninety-episode mark. Sunrise has produced a lot of noteworthy anime, but they’re just not like Gonzo, who can churn out a Master of Epic once in a while from out of nowhere. Come on, why not try a slice-of-life series next time?

There are basically two kinds of Gonzo. The first is Good Gonzo, which searches the borders of anime with new and engaging concepts, and which delivered us series as Bokura no, Master of Epic, Red Garden, Gankutsuou, NHK ni Youkoso and Last Exile. Then there is Bad Gonzo, which consists out of a bunch of lazy writers that are stuck in mediocrity and brought us series as Rosario to Vampire, Gravion, Romeo x Juliet, Glass no Kantai and Giniro no Kami no Agito. Dragonaut, unfortunately, without a doubt is a product of Bad Gonzo.

It’s a shame, because on a second look, the story has a definite epic potential, about Pluto undergoing some kind of metamorphosis and sending dragon-like creatures to earth for some strange unknown purposes. It has the making of a great mystery-series. Unfortunately, any attempt to develop this story is held back by an abysmal cast of characters.

There are just one or two characters that aren’t badly written. Everyone else spends the entire series angsting about nothing, and this series has really weird character-development. One moment characters hate each other from the depths of hell, and the next they’re passionately hugging each other like they’ve been friends for ages. Motivations for each character are badly explained, and they’re lucky if they can have a background. Especially the main couple will get on everyone’s nerves with their endless whining of “Jin?” “Toa?” “Jin!” “TOAAAAAAAA!!!!” Oh, and let’s not forget to mention one particularly bad character: Kazuki. This guy is a true joke and entirely ruins every scene that he appears in.

And of course this series has been dubbed “Boobonaut” for a reason. The character-designs try to be different, and they’re done by the same guy who did them for Witchblade, but something tells me that his hormones were really bugging him when he sat down to draw the different characters. Nearly half the female cast has a ridiculously over-endowed bosom that defies all senses of logic.

The past half year really hasn’t been good for Gonzo, with this… thing and Rosario to Vampire. Thankfully, their next line-up of Druaga no Tou, S.A and Blassreiter look more promising, and let’s hope that the people from Bad Gonzo are taking a very long holiday for the upcoming season. For Dragonaut, I really see no reason to recommend it. Even if you want cheese, Suteki Tantei Labyrinth is a much better choice, because at least that one is well-written.