Category: Other:

My one big fear for the second season of Emma is that it would be too ambitious. You know, when a formula works in one series, the creators try to do the same, only bigger in the sequel, ruining the subtlety that made the original so wonderful. And indeed: Victorian Romance Emma’s second season is a lot more emotional than the first. But it still works wonderfully. What a great romance series!

And granted, while this season isn’t as subtle as the first, it packs a punch with powerful character-development. It’s all about making difficult and life-changing decision that all have their consequences, inside the uptight English noble culture of a few centuries ago. Emma herself still is a wonderful character, with an excellent combination of strengths and weaknesses. William, the male lead also grows tremendously throughout this season.

The animation quality is also surprisingly good for a slice of life series. The poses are creative and consistently detailed with a great sense of aesthetics. The soundtrack is also even better than the first, with a lot of simple but powerful piano tunes, and other kinds of classical instruments.

In order to tell its story however, this series does pull a few coincidences that might not fall well. The way that the story is continued is a bit questionable, and the climax as well, while closing off the characters wonderfully, does include a few strange accidents, that curiously all happen at the same time.

Nevertheless if you ignore that, then this is a series that’s very well built up. Like the first season, it’s a series in which not a lot happens, but that allows the creators to really explore whatever does happen in great depths. I’ve never really understood the appeal of the maid fetish, or why so many series need to have one for God’s sake, but this is a worthy exception: mature, engaging and heart-warming. A recommendation for everyone who likes history and romance.

Storytelling:	9/10 – A few coincidences don’t stop it from being very well built up and giving everything ample time to develop.
Characters:	9/10 – Wonderful characters with great development.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Very solid.
Setting:	9/10 – Excellent depiction of Victorian England’s upper classes.

The Stardust Memory Gundam caught my attention mainly because one of its directors: Mitsuko Kase. While I’m also a bit of a fan of her, her directional style is completely different to the stuff we usually see in Gundam: both the early Tomino Series and the later incarnations.

And seriously, the work that she pulls off here belongs to her best. The animation is beyond incredible, and the battles all know how to not go over the top. The weaknesses of the different pilots in combat play a huge role here, and this makes the battles much more intense than your usual Gundam battles. The tension between the different characters is great, and the characterization, despite throwing in lots of Gundam archetypes (most notably, ignoring orders) gives an entirely new dimension to the Gundam formula.

Oh, how I would have wished to sing these kinds of praises for the entire 13 episodes of this OVa. Unfortunately, Mitsuko Kase only directed the first five of them. Derailing is a big word… but that’s exactly what this show does after that point.

And I’m not kidding here. Few series I’ve seen have transgressed from so good, to so utterly bad in such a short amount of time. I really wish I could, but aside from the animation I just can’t say anything positive about the mess that this show eventually devolves into. As the characters move into space, the show loses all of its subtlety and battles simply turn into the endless repetitions that we’re known of Gundam. The characters all lose their charms and devolve into generic archetypes. The male lead once was an interesting new version of Amuro Ray due to his rookie status, but he soon develops a bad case of constipation, somehow gets to be the only one who can pilot the Uber Gundam of this series and has as much personality as a brick wall.

There is a plot, and it would have been a fairly good one if only the execution wasn’t so ridiculously stupid. Plot twists are pretty much pulled out of the creators’ asses. Is your Gundam destroyed? Well, conveniently people have been developing a brand new one behind the scenes. Need some extra drama? Well, you wouldn’t believe the stuff that this show pulls in order to get there. Not to mention the godawful ‘foreshadowing episode’ (you’ll know which episode I’m referring to, right when you see it due to its elephant-like subtlety). Even for Gundam’s standards, the plot twists are just BAD beyond belief.

I often see people praise the UC Gundam timeline, and how it’s so much better and superior than the other Gundams and stuff, but I disagree. For me, Gundam has been a string of series that actually disappointed in their second halves more often than that they didn’t, often derailing the plot completely into pointless angst or stupid plot twists like this one. Oh, let’s hope that the currently airing Gundam Unicorn can avoid this because for me, it’s likely to be the most overrated franchise in anime at this point.

Storytelling:	6/10 – Starts off tense and realistic. Ends incredibly unbalanced, wastes too much time, and pulls random plot twists from out of nowhere.
Characters:	5/10 – Start off full of promise, ends with a ton of archetypes and caricatures, a ton of emo and pathetic romance.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Starts off amazingly fluid with an excellent soundtrack. The animation dulls in but it’s still very good, aside from a cop-out at the climax. Oh, and the good music somehow disappears.
Setting:	6/10 – You’ve got to love, how at the end some disclaimers and Deus ex Machina are pulled to fix the continuity errors that this show created…

Those who have been reading this blog for a while now probably know that I’m a big fan of those compilation-movies: the ones that challenge all kinds of different artists and storytellers to produce a short animation film of 10 to 20 minutes, and combine them all together into one. The fact that Halo Legends is based upon an American franchise makes it even better, giving these films an international flavour, combining east and west.

Overall, even though I’ve played none of the games, I was very pleasantly surprised by Halo Legends, there are some true gems among these stories. Here are some individual comments on all of them:

Origins – I – Just a background story of the world the games are set in. It’s a standard post-apocalyptic story, but well paced. It’s got a great soundtrack all-round, and the art looks pretty nice. The animation however… not so much.

Prototype – I went into this without any background story whatsoever, so I did miss who these characters were, but that was the beauty of this episode: it possesses enough characterization and background to make them stand apart anyway, and the holes in their background added to their mysterious characters. This one produced a great feel of the battlefields that the Hal-games envisioned.

The Babysitter – This one starts out mundane and boring, but ends as the best one yet. Despite the weak set-up it continues to push the right buttons and even gets some development into the short time-frame. The graphics also move from rather ugly to utterly gorgeous, and you can really see that the guys from Studio 4C are trying out a ton of different animation techniques.

The Package – Entirely rendered in CG – yes, even the characters’ faces. It looks great, but this episode tries to be a bit too much like a game, and the formula hurts a lot. Game adaptations are great, just because out of all possible adaptations they require the most input from the creators of the adaptations, in order to really work (there’s no way to animate game-over screens, after all), and this one took too little liberties, and just went for the eye-candy. I like eye-candy, but not when I don’t care about the rest of the story.

Homecoming – Whoa! Another excellent example of how much you can do in just fifteen minutes. Instead of showing a random story, the creators succeeded in showing a character here, one with actual depth that gets explored perfectly in such a short time-frame. Oh, and best soundtrack yet, and the backgrounds are also gorgeously detailed. The characters’ faces were a bit too much of plastic, though.

Odd One Out – And now for something completely different. Odd one out has no depth, it’s got a basic story, premise and lacks any sort of intelligence. What it is, however is a fun ten-minute shounen episode with lots of loud people fighting. Nothing special, but the characters all have their charms, and that’s what I think the creators of this one tried to achieve.

Origins – II – Oh, the graphics in this short kick so much ass! No frame feels the same, every frame is full of imagination and incredibly varied. This one is again back-story, and the slide-show it presents while the central character has her story does wonders to illustrate her narration. This drew me in far more than the first Origins, and smartly uses the build-up provided by the former.

The Duel – This one also is done entirely in CG, but with a really weird filter put on top of it. It’s… intrusive to say the least. In any case, what sets this one apart is the classic Japanese style of storytelling: here the creators took an evil alien race, and turned it into a Japanese-esque tribe of pride and stubbornness. The characters are pretty static, though, and the scenario was a bit too predictable at times.

If I’d have to rank these eight from least favourite to most, it’d be the following:
8. The Package
7. Odd One Out
6. Origins – I
5. The Duel
4. Prototype
3. Origins – II
2. Homecoming
1. The Babysitter

The top four were a bit of a weird experiment. For those who were looking forward to Mamoru Oshii’s involvement: don’t. He only worked on The Duel, and while it was an interesting attempt to show that animation is more than just 2D and 3D CG and Japanese or American, it was 1) too Japanese for that to really work, and 2) you could clearly see that it was just 3D CG with a random filter. Anyone with a video editing tool could do that.

The bottom four however, were definitely worth it, and Bones, Bee-Train and Studio 4C did an amazing job bringing these short stories to life. I especially loved Homecoming and the Babysitter: even though the characters looked a bit weird in the beginning, they made up with it with some amazing eye candy and a ton of personality. It’s very difficult to get sympathetic characters out of just 15 minutes, but these two more than did it.

The best in terms of graphics came from Studio 4C; while just about every episode aside from the Duel looked great, Origins and The Babysitter push good looking even further by not focusing on extreme detail, but instead on creativity. Their shorts are a visual feast, mostly because they throw in so many different artworks that are varied, bold and all kick ass. The music… hell, do I need to even say it? While the music was excellent for every short, Homecoming had by far the best soundtrack.

All I can say is: Studio 4C, Production IG, Bones, Bee Train, and just about every other anime studio who’s ever participated in these kinds of projects: please keep doing them! The beauty of these projects is that with so much diversity, there are so many interesting and different stories to tell. Sure, there will be some disappointing episodes, but even then the nice ones are bound to make up for them.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Prototype, Origins II, Homecoming and The Babysitter make excellent use of their short time-frame and put forth a truly engaging story.
Characters:	8/10 – A bit held back by the cardboard characters of Odd One Out and The Package.
Production-Values:	9/10 – Gorgeous and varied graphics, though at times the animation itself could be better.
Setting:	8/10 – I’ve never seen Halo, and I’m impressed at how they portrayed such a seemingly cliched back-story.

With this third season, I’m completely sold on the Maria-Sama ga Miteru franchise. The first season took a while to get going, while the second dragged on a bit too much in its second half, but this series of OVAs is perfectly paced, making for five excellent double-length episodes.

This season is all about character-development. It’s always been a big part of the Maria-Sama ga Miteru series, and it’s something that just gets better and better here in this season. It advances the characters, and also does wonders in fleshing out how exactly the characters have changed from the beginning of the first season.

While at first sight yet another high school drama, Maria-Sama ga Miteru sets itself apart in so many different ways. The unique drama that results from the fact that it’s a very neat school, so much that even the tiniest misunderstanding can create genuine and powerful drama. The way in which each student chooses her own younger sister gives a unique twist to these characters, and really allows them to get the best character-development possible in such a setting. It’s a series that’s elegant and innocent, and this shines through the third season more than ever. Even though some of the most interesting characters of the first two seasons have left now, the remaining characters picked up the pace perfectly and created their own story. Yumi, while I once criticised her for sticking her nose into everything, has developed into a wonderful character at this point.

The OVA-format also means that there was no budget wasted on broadcasting costs, so the graphics also look better and more consistent than ever. This third season is well paced, with just the right balance between drama, slice of life and character-development. Overall, I’m very impressed.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Excellent balance and pacing that gets the best out of the characters.
Characters:	9/10 – At this point the characters all have some sort of interesting development behind them.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Very solid, as expected of the OVA-format.
Setting:	8/10 – Is set in a high school, yet feels unique.

At first sight, baseball series must all look the same. I too had that same prejudice about the genre before I started watching them. However, what I like about them is that they all have their own things that they’re good at: Touch has its character-development, One Outs has its mind games, Cross Game has its slice of life and Princess Nine has its bombastic and bold execution. Ookiku Furikabutte is the proverbial page-turner: I found myself marathoning through this series, just to see what would happen next.

I’ve often criticized baseball matches for dragging on for too long, but here it’s different: the first season of Ookiku Furikabutte only has two matches, one of which takes up a whopping eleven episodes. Miraculously though, the creators somehow managed to keep it engaging from beginning to end. Out of all the baseball series I’ve seen, this is the one that put the most emphasis on teamwork. It does not have a god-moded pitcher or batter who can single-handedly save games: every single pitch, every single throw or swing is important and could have a major impact on the match.

Because the pitcher inthis series isn’t able to take care of the entire defense by himself, we for once get to see every member of the team in the spotlight, and with his own chances to shine, even the team of the opponent is fleshed out in this way. The baseball matches here are full of tactics that often need to be re-adjusted for every different player, and the creators have really shown that they have a deep knowledge about their subject.

Despite this, I still have a few problems withthe main pitcher, though. It seems to me that the creators tried a bit too hard to make him step away from your average lead character-pitcher that they completely dived into the opposite side of the spectrum. Mihashi is such a loser and socially inept kid that he’s more like some sort of a plot device, rather than an actual character, and I feel that the creators overplayed his strange quirks a bit too much, and that’s a shame because he does get the most ttention in this series. This takes precious time away from the side-characters, that could have been used to develop them.

Overall, A-1 Pictures animated this series also very skillfully: all of the character-designs are distinct and not just carbon copies with just different hair slapped on top of them. Their animation knows when to be smooth and when to cut corners in order to give a good feel of the ongoing baseball match, with the only notable annoyance being the constant facial distortions of Mihashi that get old after a while.

Overall, while I’ve seen more interesting characters in baseball series, I have not seen baseball matches as detailed as outlined here. This is really a series for the baseball fans out there, because this series perfectly captures the essence of how gruelingly long and intense such a match can be. That second season is looking very promising now.

Storytelling:	9/10 – Very well written baseball: every pitch, hit, throw and catch counts.
Characters:	8/10 – Good characterization, but simple characters and an overly quirky lead character.
Production-Values:	8/10 – Solid.
Setting:	9/10 – Very knowledgeable about all sorts of baseball techniques and concepts.