Category: Other:

Anyamaru Tantei Kiruminzoo Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I don’t always like Shoji Kawamori’s series. My impressions of the series and concepts he comes up with range from preachy (Arjuna), disappointing (Macross Frontier), absolutely fantastic (Excaflowne), solid (Macross), gorgeous (the Macross OVAs and Movies) to ridiculously unbalanced but fun (Basquash). Still, I have to admit: this guy is creative, and to this day he is consistently coming up with original premises, rather than series based off of some manga, light novel or game. My personal guess as to why all those series are so completely different from each other is the rest of the staff behind it, who seem to get quite a bit of freedom (something a certain Shaft director could learn from). His next concept is Kiruminzoo, a series again completely different from anything that he tied his name to so far.

Now, I like kids’ shows. The good ones, in any case. There are unfortunately still too many badly produced ones that make cheaply made harem shows look like the combined works of Shakespeare. Kiruminzoo impressed me in this, though. It’s perhaps not as good as Heartcatch Precure, but it really has its heart at the right place. If I had kids and this show somehow made it over to the Netherlands, I really wouldn’t mind showing it to them.

Kiruminzoo isn’t simply trying to entertain, it’s also trying to teach its audience something. It’s all based on a bunch of kids who become able to transform into animals throughout some sort of mahou shoujo devices. The entire reason why they get to be able to do this is to improve understanding of all kinds of animals. This series teaches children about morals, how it’s often more important to understand rather than to fight, and how to treat animals with respect. It’s a great series for people who love animals.

This series also manages to avoid the “adults are useless”-trope that often plagues the kids’ shows. Most of the adults are nowhere near useless in this series, and most of the problems in this series revolve around issues that children can actually deal with, and it forces them to think. Only with the climax of the series does this show start to become a little epic, and even then it’s handled well. Well, for the most part…

This is a bit of a “love it or hate it”-thing, but this show is full of morons. And with that, I don’t just mean one character, but half the cast seems to only have half a braincell. Granted, the series provides an explanation for this, and on one hand, it’s part of the charms of this series to see the beyond stupid antics of certain characters, without that stupidity taking over the show, but on the other hand the stupidity does get taken a bit too far at times.

The main flaw of this series is that it’s too long, though. It’s an episodic series through which the characters gradually discover and explore their powers to transform to other creators, but the creators could have done this in 39 episodes as well. Right now, there are a number of points in which this series drags on, and there are a number of repetitive episodes that could easily have been cut in order to make it a bit more of a snappy series.

On the technical side, this show is very solid. The animation is very consistent, leading to very little distorted faces, and just about everything in this series is as bright, colourful and cute as possible; it just looks really pretty. The voice acting also is very good, and I especially loved Riko’s voice actress.

Overall, if you don’t like kids’ shows, then this series isn’t going to make you see the light. If you do, though, then this is quite an enjoyable series to watch with a charming cast and premise. Perhaps it’s a bit long, but it certainly doesn’t deserve to remain unsubbed.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Enjoyable, educative, and does justice to the animal kingdom.
Characters: 8/10 – A varied and charming cast.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Solid animation and music, very cute art.
Setting: 8/10 – Teaches kids understanding towards animals. Nothing wrong with that.

Suggestions:
– Otogi Juushi Akazukin
– Telepathy Shoujo Ran
– Aoi Blink

High School of the Dead Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, High School of the Dead




With High School of the Dead, you have to know and realize what it is before you start watching it. It’s a series that knows its priorities well: fanservice and zombie-bashing. You shouldn’t expect an innovative story here: it pretty much plays out like your regular zombie story. The characters are high schoolers, so expect a lot of whining. If you hate fanservice with passion, then don’t even bother with this show.

Beyond that, though, it really is quite good.

High School of the Dead doesn’t try to pretend to be anything more than what it is, but what it does, it does well. The production values are solid throughout the entire series, the action is solid (and quite creative at times) and especially the background art for this series is gorgeous. The characters in this series may start out a bit annoying, all of the lead characters have their flaws flaws that are explored throughout the series. There even is quite a bit of character development that, while nothing deep, does show the cast growing amidst the total zombie chaos that they’re in.

The biggest reason why I’m praising this series however is its atmosphere. Usually, fanservice series don’t really care about such a thing and are too busy with their uninspired antics, but High School of the Dead is different. Its atmosphere really draws you in, both during the action-packed parts and the quiet scenes in which the characters are simply waiting for the inevitable moment in which the zombies find them. The atmosphere is over the top when it needs to, but most importantly: it is also restrained when it needs to. This allows the characters, who may be quite simple, to show their best sides. It’s the atmosphere that really makes this series into more than just another action flick.

Don’t think that the execution is perfect, though. There still are the times here and there in which the fanservice takes over. There also are a few side characters who are trying way too hard to be evil or controversial, most notable that evil nazi teacher. He adds nothing to this series and only ends up being silly with how ridiculously over the top he tries to be. The zombies themselves also are really basic villains: they have no motivations, no origins, nothing. The only thing that is on their mind is “humans tasty; rawr”. Having said that, they are some very selective zombies. The creators tend to slow down time or make them oblivious, just for the sake of the plot. That’s a case of lazy scriptwriting!

Overall, High School of the Dead seems to be one of the most popular series of the past summer season, but don’t go in expecting a masterpiece. It’s simply a show to sit back with and enjoy the atmosphere and the zombie-bashing, and that is something that this series does really well, and you can see that the creators are having fun with this unpretentious horror-fest.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Solid action, very good atmosphere, tons of fanservice.
Characters: 8/10 – Annoying, but the main characters are well portrayed and have well balanced flaws. The antagonists don’t, though.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Very solid, excellent background art, great animation during the fight scenes, solid soundtrack. Great EDs.
Setting: 7/10 – It’s zombies, and it’s pretty much your standard zombie storyline with some strange holes in the zombie-logic.

Suggestions:
– Kurozuka
– Ga-Rei Zero
– Shikabane Hime

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru




Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru (henceforth abbreviated as Uragiri) is a series that doesn’t start out as anything special. Its first ten episodes don’t really stand out aside from a few well written action scenes and overly campy dialogues. Still, it managed to pull itself together as a solid character-study in the end.

Uragiri is restrained, but it knows what it’s doing in terms of characters. Their development throughout the second half is well worth the wait, especially because the creators know how to use it in its action and exposition scenes. This goes for both the main and side characters, who manage to grow together into a neatly packaged whole.

There really is hardly a boring moment in the second half because of this. The entire series has this slow atmosphere, but the series never drags on: it is always exploring its characters, showing new things about them and fully detailing their worries, motivations, and the bonds they have with each other.

The action scenes get surprisingly badass as time goes on thanks to their excellent scenario, the unique visuals for this series (this show is especially good at blending in CG effects with 2D animation in order to give the whole series a very gothy feeling) and a soundtrack that on top of being excellently used, also only continues to get better and better as the series goes on.

Now, this series is technically based on a shounen ai story. To the people who are scared of gays: don’t worry, this show is nowhere near yaoi, and the gay undertones never end up taking over the show. Having said that, though, this series does have an array of very campy characters, ranging from the very eccentric dress sense that the demons in this series have, how underdeveloped the villains are compared to the lead characters and there is matter that the lead character Yuki may be a tad too much of a heaven-descended flower-child at times. There is of course being nice, but there are points in which the creators play a bit too much on his good-natured character.

This series however still has an excellent sense of build up (except for the ending; don’t ask me why, but somehow this show ends with a Deus ex Machina without resolving anything while preparing for a second season that is never going to come) and it skillfully builds its characters throughout its 24-episode run. It’s a very nice example of those series that start off without much of a fuss, but actually get pretty damn awesome near the end (emphasis on near!).

Storytelling: 8/10 – Starts off unimpressive, but gets much better as time goes on. Well balanced, a solid script and knows how to build up save for the ending.
Characters: 8/10 – A solid cast: well analyzed and developed. The bonds between them are very important in this series, and quite a bit of meaning has been put into them.
Production-Values: 9/10 – The character animation may not be much special and the characters-designs may be a bit too bishiefied, but the background art and CG are utterly gorgeous, and the soundtrack is really excellent.
Setting: 8/10 – Does what it needs to do, there are interesting concepts behind the setting and it forms a solid base for the characters to work with.

Suggestions:
– Shingetsutan Tsukihime
– Night Head Genesis
– Kobato

Kuroshitsuji II Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kuroshitsuji II




Okay, you can say a lot about Kuroshitsuji II as a sequel to Kuroshitsuji. But at least it has BALLS.

In today’s anime, in which it’s very difficult to come up with really interesting plots and storylines, and people rather try to stay at the tried and true, Kuroshitsuji came, made optimal use of its creative freedom, discarded the manga it’s based on completely, trolled just about everyone who watched it and came up with quite an interesting concept for its sequel. This lead to many good things, but also many bad things.

But still, out of all of the series that premiered during the past summer season, I really can’t deny that Kuroshitsuji II had the best plot out of all of them: it made the best use of its episodes, it was the least afraid to include some caring yet thought out plot twists, it was very good at building up its own storyline and actually using this and overall I have to say that I enjoyed most of it.

But the biggest selling point of this series is without a doubt the new cast of villains, especially Alois and Claude. The two of them are like a trainwreck: completely derailed but yet so interesting to watch. Especially the antics of Alois are consistently captivating, and you can see that the creators had a lot of fun portraying him as this insane teenaged noble. The creators realized this very well, and so they prepared a number of plot twists that really attempt to bring the best out of these two characters.

On the flip-side, this is a series that likes trolling its viewers. This is especially noticeable in the way that it follows a very awesome first episode with a completely disappointing and badly executed second episode. And in fact, the first third of this series has just about everything that made the fillers of the first season so tedious to get through. Episodes 2 to four are a bit of a test of patience, they’re necessary for the plot and all, but this series makes no attempt at hiding its vast array of annoying characters.

After that though, this series really gets better than ever. Its humour gets snappier, the way the series uses its unique selling point of god-mode butlers gets used better than ever, both for the serious purposes and the over the top silly ones (which work more and more as the series goes on).

This series also has the weirdest allocation of animation budget I’ve seen in a long while. The animation in this series ranges between average to very smooth,like what most series do. However, the creators have this very interesting tendency to spend the most frames on the most random scenes, especially on hands or lip-syncing, while the action-scenes usually have average animation. And don’t get me wrong here: it actually works pretty well. Those detailed scenes add an interesting amount of life to the characters, and the action scenes are kept interesting by the plot twists anyway, so they don’t really need any stellar animation.

I have ranted about Kuroshitsuji, I have ranted about the fillers, and I have ranted about the ending of this sequel (which, the more I think about it, was actually pretty good), but really: we need more series like this. Series in which the creators disregard any conventions and just go with a bunch of interesting ideas that actually lead to some unique stories.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Well paced, fun, tense and exciting and manages to get the best out of the plot and characters. At times it might not seem like it knows what it’s doing but in 50% of the cases it’s just trolling.
Characters: 9/10 – Alois and Claude may not be the deepest characters, but they’re delightful to watch. This sequel also gives an interesting new dimension to Ciel and Sebastian.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Strange uses of budget that somehow work. Oh, and Yuki Kajiura has an insert song somewhere.
Setting: 8/10 – Makes optimal use of its creative liberties with a seemingly endless supply of interesting ideas for the plot to work with.

Suggestions:
– Touka Gettan
– Futakoi Alternative
– Ga-Rei Zero

Ookami -San to Shichinin no Nakama-Tachi Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



For the series that had the most hard to remember title of the past summer season, I was expecting something like a fairy tale story with some moe elements. Instead, we got a moe story with some fairy tale elements. Obviously that was a bit of a disappointment, but it’s still a pretty decent series.

I think the best way to describe this series is that it’s generally well executed, but it has a number of things that ended up holding it down. JC Staff really put some of their best animators on this series, which really results in a show that is chock full of interesting animation, with rich and detailed movements. It’s well directed, the dialogue is also pretty well written and presented. The characters are lively and are portrayed as such. At these aspects, it’s a very charming series.

Unfortunately, this is one of those series where it’s really the plot and content that hurts it the most, in which your mileage may vary depending on how much you can stand moe and harem stereotypes, because this show is chock full of it. Maids, tsunderes, boob jokes, punks, magicians, popularity contests, fireworks, pool episodes, you name it and this show probably has it. This is great for if you love these kinds of things, but personally I was rather annoyed with all of the stock situations that this series came up with, even though it often provided some sort of twist or creative twist to their cases. You can see that this series likes to be tongue in cheek about its subject material, and it’s very much a homage to various moe stereotypes, but for my tastes it wasn’t tongue in cheek enough.

The presentation is, like mentioned above, pretty solid, though there are some strange and notable exceptions. You know the good comedies, who even when a joke falls flat remain fun and interesting to watch. Ookami doesn’t have that: when a joke falls flat, it really falls flat, and this show often has a tendency to repeat those jokes over and over again. The most notable here are the boob jokes (there are way too many of those here, and they just refuse to leave), but the narrator also has some moments in which she thinks she’s funny while she actually isn’t.

This is also one of those series that doesn’t try to hide the fact that it’s based on a still on-going series of light novels. It just ends. There is no real conclusion, and the final episodes fail miserably in their attempts to at least have some sort of climax by introducing way too many new side-plots and turning the big bad guy of the series into an evil genius with huge holes in his plans. And to the rest of the villains of this series, the creators aren’t really kind either: most of them just end up as one-dimensional punching bags for the lead characters, so they fail to introduce any kind of tension.

And yet… despite all that I said here… I do kindof like this show. The lead characters are pretty charming and nicely characterized, and all of the protagonists have their own backstory and personality. The episodic nature of this series prevents it from dragging on and the fairy tale roots of the series aren’t really a core of the series, but they do provide the series with a nice amount of symbolism which really helped this series. It is indeed a show focused heavily on moe stereotypes, but I have watched tons of blander moe shows.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Solid, though a bit too reliant on stereotypes at times.
Characters: 8/10 – The good guys are interesting to watch, the bad guys not so much.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Excellent animation, I have to admit.
Setting: 7/10 – Too many moe stereotypes that will turn off those who aren’t interested in them.

Suggestions:
– GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class
– Kannagi
– 7 Comments

Kuroshitsuji Episodes 05-08 and 17-24 Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kuroshitsuji II




So, yes…. I caved in.

Here’s the thing: for the past summer season, there have been three series that stood out to me: Shiki, because it had the best atmosphere, Occult Academy, because it had the best execution, and Kuroshitsuji II, because it had the best plot (a possible fourth on this list would be Sengoku Basara Two because it had the best action, but that entirely depends on its final three episodes). Because Kuroshitsuji II did what many other series failed at, and became more interesting to watch than I could have hoped for, I guess that I just was obliged to check out that first season now – not all of it, mind you. This is one of those series that at times seems to be actively trying to be bad with its random stories and insert-episodes, so this is a review of just the episodes 5-8 and 17-24. If you want an impression of the entire series, just note that I couldn’t make it even past the second episode. Twice.

Without the random annoying side-story, Kuroshitsuji becomes quite a snappy and diverse series about the occult in England around 150 years ago. There are a few holes in the plot here and there, but they’re all simple enough that they can be just guessed, so I can recommend this method of watching for the people who are interested in Kuroshitsuji’s darker parts, but have no indention of sitting through hordes of uninspired light-hearted moments that only take ten seconds to become annoying.

Because I must say, those darker parts were quite worth it. This series sells itself with bishies doing the most impossible stunts, but behind it is an interesting and quite often disturbing world with quite a bit of intrigue. The lead character Ciel starts out as a bit of a questionable lead character, but he turns out to be quite an interesting anti-hero who has given up on life, just for the sake of his revenge. The darker parts of this series is where the unique selling point of Kuroshitsuji also really shines: Sebastian fits right in with this dark atmosphere, and even the few anticlimactic uses for his powers turn out to be hilarious, like they should be.

Having said that, though, I do want to say that I still like the second season of Kuroshitsuji better. Alois and Claude (and Johanna possibly too) are by far the most interesting characters in the entire franchise, and these two really made a huge spectacle of the second season. The first season tries, and it has some neat villains too by the way, but none of them really get close to how fun it was to just see those two flamboyant characters parade across the screen. Sebastian and Ciel are interesting, but in the end they aren’t really the most complex characters and there is no development between them either. Especially Ciel makes a number of rather strange and stupid decisions throughout the series.

Still, I liked the plot here, the creators put in some very interesting ideas for Ciel to tackle, and overall I had no problems getting though this series and I quite enjoyed it. Kuroshitsuji is a strange series though. I can easily have seen the first season as 13 episodes, and my guess would be that it would have been much more accessible and balanced than that it is now. And yet for some reason this show paraded all over with its bishies and shallow side-stories, even though beneath it is actually pretty good. This isn’t another case of Kobato, whose first half was simply inoffensive before it could get to its good part. Kuroshitsuji’s random stories are annoying beyond belief; they are completely different from that it really is about, and I really don’t want to watch anything more of that.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Good atmosphere, well told, a pretty good sense of build up.
Characters: 8/10 – Nothing special or well developed, but an interesting cast nonetheless with a nice chemistry to watch.
Production-Values: 8/10 – To me, the second season was also better in this aspect, but the art looks consistently solid and the soundtrack is also pretty adequate.
Setting: 8/10 – Okay, it’s England with a lot of liberties taken, but this series makes very good use of these liberties to show a very interesting setting here.

Suggestions:
– Suteki Tantei Labyrinth
– Trinity Blood
– 7 Comments

Honey and Clover Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Through the life time of this blog, I don’t think that there has been a series that you guys have requested more than Honey and Clover, especially in the early years. And really, when this was the series that opened up the door for the slice of life series featuring adult characters in the 21st century, it was the series that started the Noitamina timeslot, which has been running successfully for more than five years now, and the series that popularized the josei genre, I could only imagine how incredibly good this series must be.

I am usually someone who likes to save the best for last, but since I’m going to be graduating university in less than a week from now (upcoming Wednesday to be exact), I figured that this couldn’t be a better time to sit down and watch this series. In the end, I didn’t get the best thing since sliced bread, but that doesn’t mean that Honey and Clover isn’t an all around top-notch and well written college series.

This series may not be the holy grail of character-development: characters in this series do change subtly, but this is nowhere near the main focus of the series. Honey and Clover instead has a completely different area at which it really shines: in the way it describes its characters. At heart this is a slice of life series with a healthy dose of drama, but the creators also love to analyze their own characters, pick them apart and take each of those bits under the loop, so that we as an audience could understand them as much as possible.

The way it describes its characters is just fantastically done, and it’s that part what I loved the most about this series, and it really has a rock-solid cast because of this. On top of that, this series is also excellent at fleshing its characters out: it puts them in many different situations that are wacky, yet typical of college students. This show also likes to have characters go on month-long journeys, just to show how different the characters act when said person is not around. It’s well balanced between its drama, slice of life and comedy, and the plot itself is skillfully written in a non-episodic pace.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t go for the entire cast. I’m not sure whether this is due to the second season that will elaborate further on them, but there are a few characters who aren’t as interesting as the others, and hold this series down a bit. With this I mean characters like the people from Fujiwara Design like Miwako, her dog and its presidents. I also kept hoping for the creators to delve into Hagu’s mind and show us what she’s thinking, just like what they were doing with the rest of the cast, but unfortunately she remains a bit of an enigma until the end of the series, despite being really interesting.

Either way though, Honey and Clover is a very worthy series about young adults, and can stand with its head held high amongst Nodame Cantabile, Maison Ikkoku and Nana. They’re all unique, have their own points in which they make their cast shine beyond belief. It’s not the best among them, but as a slice of life series it really shines with a top notch script that really captures the years of college life.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Wonderful script, well balanced, constantly evolving as a series.
Characters: 10/10 – An absolutely lovable cast that is wacky and down to earth at the same time, and gets analyzed through and through throughout the series.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Pretty character-designs with pretty good animation.
Setting: 9/10 – Captures college life, and the things that surround it.

Suggestions:
– Nodame Cantabile
– Ristorante Paradiso
– GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class

Some Quick First Impressions: Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a real samurai and fights a bunch of cute girls who are also samurai.
Oh… the pain. Granted: this show looks cool. It’s got this neat filter and background art style that give it a bit of a unique retro feel. The opening of this episode in which those airplanes were sliced down for no possible reason had a great atmosphere. So, what did the creators chose as the first scene to introduce the lead characters with? By having the male lead walking into the female leads as they are changing their clothes. I mean, come on. It’s 2010. Are we ever going to abandon that horrible cliche? Apart from that, there are a number of other things about this series that I just hate. There’s first of all the present: after Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Arms has moved on from that now and chosen Japanese history to randomly rip off without giving its teenaged characters any link or similarity to their respective counterpart, making it rip off one of the parts I hated from Ikkitousen and Koihime Musou. The delivery also leaves a lot to be desired here: when this show focuses on action, and nothing but action, it’s actually pretty good. Anything that involves actual acting though… not so much. The voice acting and the facial animation of the characters are just terrible, especially when this show tries to be funny. I mean, you actually have to try to make jokes that bad.
OP: Aside from the fanservice, I have nothing against this OP. A solid introduction compared to how badly acted this show turned out.
ED: The ED in contrast is pointless fanservice and annoying J-pop
Potential: 5%

August Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

To be honest, I’m about to consider 2010 as the worst anime year since I started blogging. The summer season overall was held back by its quantity problem, which results in only a few series that I really consider memorable. Does that mean that I consider that anime is dying, though? Absolutely not. I’m very curious to see how it’s going to evolve in the future and in the upcoming years.

In this month, the surprises mostly came from the series that have been carried over from previous season, with a few notable exceptions. Overall it’s a better month than the previous one, and even the series that aren’t going to turn into anything memorable have their share of very enjoyable episodes.

#19 (20) – Amagami SS – (6,25/10) – I’m still watching this show, but it’s still just plain boring. The second arc was simply decent, it at least had some dynamic characters, but apart from that nothing stood out, and the conclusion yet again was too fast and rushed. The third arc however… by god. The portrayal of that shy girl was just abysmal.
#18 (19) – Asobi ni Iku Yo – (7,5/10) – Out of the huge onslaught of moe shows by AIC this season, this one turned out to be the best one. It’s self-conscious and knows that it’s just harmless fun, and the gunfights are enjoyable enough. The characters themselves are really cliched, but they could have been much more annoying. There’s good chemistry between them, which sortof makes up for the huge amount of flaws that this show has in its premise.
#17 (16) – Sekirei – (7,75/10) – The weak point of this series remains the scenes without drama: the voice actors just try too hard to sound cute, and those scenes are just annoying to watch. Still, the main story has been getting better now that the creators revealed the major background behind everything. The characters are definitely coming together now, despite the silly and fanservicey premise
#16 (18) – Ookami-san to Shichinin no Nakama-tachi – (7,75/10) – This one has gotten better. The animation still is consistently good, and it really has been thinking about arcs that give the main characters some depth, rather than the more silly adventures of the first few episodes. My problem with it still is the huge amount of references to otaku pop culture and overused anime cliches that just don’t interest me. Especially the boob jokes have to stop because this show has been overusing those beyond belief.
#15 (6) – Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu – (7,75/10) – This month for me wasn’t as good as the previous one, but that mostly had to do with expectations. It’s mostly been a building-up moth for Denyuuden, and nothing really special happened here.
#14 (10) – High School of the Dead – (7,75/10) – What sets High School of the Dead apart from all other fanservice shows this season is its atmosphere, which is really genuinely good. The action itself is also very entertaining. Beyond that it’s just gore an fanservice, but I’m enjoying it so far.
#13 (12) – Katanagatari – (8/10) – This is a bit of a strange series, but even though its episodes are twice as long as usual, I just don’t have a lot to say about it. Nothing really stands out, good or bad. I hope that the final episodes indeed are going to get more interesting so that I’ll at least have something to say about it.
#12 (15) – Heroman – (8/10) – This show is weird. I thought it was predictable, but in this month it made a bunch of really strange choices. That island arc was a completely pointless filler. I have no idea what it did in this series, it had no relation to the plot whatsoever, and overall was boring to get through. On top of that, ONLY now, after more than twenty episodes, did it suddenly decide to reveal the most crucial background information. I mean, especially the explanation of Psy’s leg should have been given right at the beginning. But yeah: the upside of this is that the past few episodes have been really character-centric, and actually did a lot of good stuff with them.
#11 (14) – Mitsudomoe – (8/10) – You know? Of all the moe shows this season, I’m enjoying this one the most. Sure, it has its mind in way, way deep into the gutter, and most of the series consists just out of utterly wrong toilet jokes, but the delivery is top-notch and actually gets better as the series goes on. I don’t want to laugh, yet I can’t help it here.
#10 (11) – Anymaru Tantei Kiruminzoo – (8/10)

Now that the climax has started this show has definitely been delivering, and everything seems to be coming together now. I still believe that this could just as easily have been a 39 episoded series, but it’s been an entertaining month for Anymal Tantei Kiruminzoo.

#9 (7) – Nurarihyon no Mago – (8/10)

Gyuki’s arc was quite good, even though it spent most of its time just building up for the rest of the series. Now that we finally got the introduction arcs done though, we should get to the interesting parts of the story, to which I’m looking forward to a lot. It’s perhaps not the most exciting series, but still a very solid one.

#8 (17) – Kuroshitsuji – (8,25/10)

Now that Alois is in the picture again this show has become a whole lot more interesting. His insanity is just so interesting to watch, and I love all of the interesting plot twists the creators try to put into this. However, it would suck if the sole purpose of this series was just going to be a plot device to get Ciel and Sebastian to happily coexist together.

#7 (8) – Sengoku Basara – (8,25/10)

Building up, building up, building up. Really, this month has been either building up to the finale (which had better be damn awesome with all this hyping) and one particularly crazy action episode that blew all my expectations. I expected this to be just one string of action-scenes, but instead this series went for just a couple of them, while trying to make THOSE as epic as possible. Well, I must say that so far they’re doing a good job because episode 18 (or 6) had without a doubt the best action I have seen this month, but this is all going to depend on these final episodes.

#6 (4) – Rainbow – (8,5/10)

This month we got various mini-arcs that were meant to develop and explore the characters as they move on with their lives, and I’m really liking this show more and more. Some characters can be a bi stereotypical at times(specially the thugs), but it’s still both fun and exciting.

#5 (2) – Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin – (8,5/10)

Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin took on a completely different direction from expected this month, by taking on a much quieter and controlled pacing. I still consider it to be the series with the most solid execution of the Summer Season, though. The episodes ranged from really well executed (episode 06) to a bit disappointing (episode 08), but overall they were all focused on developing the lead character Maya. Whether it’s going to work depends on the final third of this series.

#4 (5) – Shiki – (8,75/10)

An excellent atmosphere that just continues to get better. This show is very good at building up, and that really starts to show at this point, not to mention that the soundtrack also just gets better with every episode.

#3 (9) – Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru – (8,75/10)

I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere the creators suddenly decided to flick the awesome-switch here. This series improved beyond belief during the past month, with a number of awesome episodes in which all of the build-up of earlier on in the series is coming together. The music especially has exceeded all my expectations here.

#2 (2) – Heartcatch Precure – (8,75/10)

You can really see the show evolving now that Cure Sunshine has appeared, and it has possibly made this show even better. Some of the fights have become a bit beam-spamming, but the individual stories for each episode have been incredibly charming.

#1 (1) – Giant Killing – (9/10)

I love this show! Especially now near the end now that everything is coming together, the entire cast is just one chunk of personality. The opposing team is just awesome, not to mention the huge amounts of Dutch that the creators managed to insert. Every single character still stands apart as individual despite the huge cast, and not to mention how great the creators are with the build-up of the past arc.

Symphony in August Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I was really starting to fear that Symphony in August would meet the same fate as Furusato, Japan (as in, arriving to the west three years late and flying completely by people’s attention even though it’s really good), but thank god this didn’t turn out to be true. I really urge someone who likes the realistic kind of movie to somehow sub this thing, because it really doesn’t deserve to fade into obscurity.

Symphony in August turned out to be an incredibly uplifting movie, but the interesting thing is that it’s completely non-fiction: it’s based on the autobiography of the singer and songwriter Ai Kawashima, and takes place seven and eight years ago as she tried to find the recognition for her singing skills. She she even voiced the songs throughout the movie.

After watching,I can really understand why people wanted to make a movie about her life, since it is a very inspiring and slightly unusual road through which Ai worked herself up, and eventually ended up singing the theme song of the Place Promised in Our Early Days (that part isn’t shown in this movie though, it’s solely about her rise to fame), starting out as a street performer. The creators did a wonderful job of portraying her as a character. She grows like a real character, acts very genuinely on the hardest moments of her life, and the people around her who support her are also portrayed as wonderfully restrained.

The director, Akio Nishizawa really has a knack for these kinds of movies: realistic, down to earth and honouring the Japanese cultural heritage of music. In this movie though, I did notice one of the very few points at which he missed the mark: the ending. For who knows what kind of reason, the producers just couldn’t get the right funding to fully animate it, so parts are shown in CG. To make matters worse, at this point the movie abuses its sentimentalism a bit too much and shows a few too many people with tears in their eyes, and this goes on for too long. Apart from that I consider Symphony in August to be just as good as Furusato Japan, but the ending is where the latter is just much better.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Realistic, down to earth and well paced. Only the ending could have used more subtlety.
Characters: 9/10 – Non-fiction, and it shows. A very realistic portrayal of the characters, and they’re charming as hell.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Detailed and well drawn movements, with some unfortunate CG abuse at the end.
Setting: 8/10 – Good portrayal of the modern singing business.

Suggestions:
– Furusato, Japan
– Fancy Lala
– Piano no Mori