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Ashita no Nadja Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



“Nadja Applefield grows up in an orphanage, but on her thirteenth birthday she finds out that her mother is still alive, and possibly even a noble. Thus she joins a band of travelling performers and travels all across Europe to find her.” That doesn’t exactly sound like a top-tier shoujo series, now does it? Ashita no Nadja indeed takes the format of a classic shoujo adventure, and makes it downright awesome. I am really surprised with how actually GOOD this series turned out to be.

I originally decided to check out this series on recommendations of Wyrdwad, but I put it on hold around episode 23, discouraged by how the final 13 episodes haven’t been subbed yet. My impression of this series at that point was a fun adventure series across Europe. It’s a fun watch, in which Nadja meets all sorts of interesting people who get the chance to tell their story. Most episodes are light in nature and a lot of fun to watch. It wasn’t anything special at that point, it was episodic, but the individual stories all have their individual charms.

Anyway, eventually I got too impatient and just finished the rest of the series raw (so yeah, don’t bother asking for subs of the final 13 episodes: they’re unfortunately not there yet, but they SO deserve to be!), and with that I was blown away completely by the strength, GUTS and charms of the main storyline of this series. I was so expecting your average cheesy shoujo storyline with stereotypically incompetent villains and a lot of time spent on the lead characters being incredibly indecisive. None of that returns here: instead we get a story where always something interesting is going on and where characters manage to show their utter best in terms of character-development.

And the villains! This series really has some of the best villains out there, who are nothing like your average bunch of incompetent idiots who can never get anything right. The main villains for this series all are a bunch of excellent actors: they’ve created a scenario in their head and stick to it, and time and time again they manage to foil the lead characters’ plans and happiness (which usually is the other way around!). Eventually, this series evolves into a battle of wits and emotions between Nadja and the main villains, which involves an intricate plan that looks simple (and isn’t of the ridiculously complicated variant like you see in shows as Death Note), yet incredibly hard to find any holes in it.

This series seriously has a bunch of incredible script-writers, who have the talent to make a solid and engaging story of just about everything. As an episodic series, I often found myself doubting whether an episode was going to turn out all-right based on its premise, especially around the middle parts of the series. However, nearly every single episode delivered with solid build-up, excellent characterization and a conclusion that felt intelligent, believable and yet pushed the characters further in terms of character-development. Even the small side-characters who only appear in one episode have multiple sides to them and feel fresh.

With all these praises I’m singing for this series, I unfortunately also have to admit that it has a flaw, and a really big one at that. Wherever Nadja travels in Europe, wherever she goes, she always meets up with the right people. Even though European cities are incredibly big, she always meets up with recurring characters if they happen to be in the neighbourhood, she also conveniently runs into a bunch of nobles that she immediately befriends, (including one of them that becomes her love interest).

This really happens a lot, throughout the entire series. Still, I guess that the creators had good intentions when they used them: they don’t use these plot-holes just for cheap laughs, but instead to allow characters to tell their story, to allow for more and better character-development so that we as an audience get to know more about the cast. There only was one plot twist in the series that really felt cheap and rushed. Apart from that they can all be forgiven. Still, they can become a major reason for some people to get turned off by the rest of the storyline. It all depends on your suspense of disbelief. For me, I indeed acknowledge that these sorts of coincidences are a bit lazy and convenient, but the rest of the series is just so damn good that I really stopped caring about them at one point.

Overall, this series was in a way just like Glass Mask 2005 and Kaleido Star for me: all three are 50 episoded Shoujo Series of Awesomeness. They all stand out in their amazing characterization and rivalry that goes waaaay beyond what you normally expect from anime. All of them are very well paced and truly excellent in the thing they do, with a storyline that just keeps evolving and time and time again they come with unexpected situations. They all involve performing (Maya acts, Sora does acrobatics, Nadja dances) and all three of them try to reach the hearts of their audience by performing, all in their own way. All three series are highly underrated (with two of them not even fully subbed, for God’s sake), but perhaps the most important thing: all three of them have the power to reach an audience beyond the usual shoujo fans, and are a true example of the great things that the genre is capable of. Of the three, Ashita no Nadja is the most light-hearted one, but make no mistake that the story cannot get really dark at times, and the light and dark parts combine wonderfully.

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

Genius Party – 03 – Deathtic 4 Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Most of Genius Party’s animation is hand drawn or animated with cells. Deathtic 4 instead is nearly entirely CG, and feels the most like a platform to try out new CGI techniques. On top of that, the characters are all zombies and talk in some strange kind of Scandinavian-ish language that nobody can understand. The director is Shinji Kimura, a guy who mostly is involved with background art for big hitting movies as Akira, Angel’s Egg, My Neighbor Totoro, Steam Boy, Tekkkon Kinkreet and Prime Rose, and he also took care of the art of the first short of the Gotham Knight movie.

So as expected, the background art is very good. I didn’t notice it at first, but the he designed a very original city that at the same time doesn’t distract from the real art in the foreground. You can see that a lot of time went in designing every single building. On the opposite side though, the story and characters feel among the dullest of what Genius Party has to offer. It’s straightforward, there’s no real symbolism or depth to the story. It just feels flat.

But this is really the power of Genius Party: because it has directors with so many different backgrounds, there’s lots of stuff that you can see. Baby Blue had a director who is excellent at characterization, and so that short had the best characters. Instead shorts like this one, Toujin Kit and Wanwa the Doggy that are directed by animators and background artists have a very distinctive visual style instead. This is why I’m a fan of these compilation movies, and I can only hope that in the future, more of them are going to be released.

On a side-note, anyone know what happened to Le Manchot melomane?

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

Genius Party – 10 – Wanwa the Doggy Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Well… what can I say…?

Wanwa the Doggy is… different. It’s… I’m still not sure what it is; all I know that it was really, really weird. The one who brought us this abomination was Shinwa Ohira, an animator. He worked on the animation of various big-hitting movies, but also on stuff like FLCL, Gosenzosama Banbanzai, Gundam and a few television series here and there. But none of it really matches up in terms of weirdness to… whatever the hell it was that I just watched.

The best way to describe these thirteen minutes are as a very bad acid trip. Shinwa Ohira just continues to throw weird stuff at the screen throughout the entire 13 minutes of this short, one scene more nonsensical than the other. I guess that it was about a kid’s worries as his mother is having a baby, but even children don’t have that kind of imagination.

The animation was as good as usual : there was a lot of movement, and you can see that the creators used lots of imagination for nearly all of the visuals here. Just don’t ask where the hell this inspiration came from…

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

Genius Party – 11 – Toujin Kit Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



While there are other quiet shorts in Genius Party, Toujin Kit definitely feels to be the most down-to-earth no-nonsense movie of the bunch. At the end of the thirteen minutes, there is no doubt what the story is about: there’s hardly any deep symbolism, there is no over top action, and instead Toujin Kit is what it is, and because of this it definitely has its merits.

The director for this one is Tatsuyuki Tanaka, who is one of the lesser known names to participate in Genius Party. He’s one of Studio 4C’s key animators, and also worked on a few random other series. In Toujin Kit however, he definitely demonstrates that he belongs among the big guys. I remember Anonymous’s comments on the animation of Eden of the East versus Dimension Bomb, and after Toujin Kit I’m really starting to understand what he meant. Because of the attention to detail in today’s animation, animators are forced to cut a lot of corners in animation.

Toujin Kit has none of this: here characters are animated: they move realistically, and hardly ever stand completely still. The frame-rate is incredibly smooth, and the rest of this short is on purpose kept very simple and down to earth, in order to not have any cheap distractions from the animation. In fact, there isn’t even a soundtrack: just some background noises.

The characters and story however aren’t dull in any way either. Because they’re so well animated, they’re easy to connect to and well likable, despite the fact that none of them are really nice people. Some of their motivations are well explained, the others are easy to guess or imagine and together they form a very complete little story.

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

Anime nowadays is at a standstill. True or not?

by psgels, posted in Shoutbox Topics

Okay, so the discussion has been going on in a number of posts and shoutboxes, but the subject is interesting so I decided to make one post about it. Blogsome unfortunately doesn’t support the option to move comments, so I’ll instead quote what the different people have said about it. It first appeared in the shoutbox. Unfortunately the shoutbox stores everything in reverse order and the beginning of the discussion has already been eaten, but I’m too lazy to fix it.

Tracer: overlooked.
8 Jul 09, 22:33
Tracer: Also, PaTRiX’s point on not knowing a lot of the animes from the 80s and 90s is very true. Back then, fansubbing wasn’t as easy as prominent as it is now so the bad shows weren’t subbed and they were
8 Jul 09, 22:28
Tracer: Though regardless, like tealovertoma said, regardless of the low sales, someone will always make some creative and original series.
8 Jul 09, 22:27
Tracer: I’m not trying to say that all good anime sell well (for example, every anime by Yuasa is a failure in terms of DVD sales) but a lot more are successful than what people might think.
8 Jul 09, 22:25
Tracer: Baccano! sold on average about 2000 units per volume (decent numbers). Terra e was selling around 10k per volume. GiTS: SAC was selling near the 20k range. Mononoke was also about 8k-10k per volume.
8 Jul 09, 22:23
Tracer: I don’t think we have to worry about there being less innovative anime because they don’t sell. Believe it or not, some good anime actually sell quite a bit.
8 Jul 09, 21:13
PaTRiX: The thing about the ratio is probably true, but in the late 80’s and the 90’s we didn’t know about the crappy anime. So that makes it feel like there was more good anime.
8 Jul 09, 21:11
PaTRiX: and the animation style. That’s the main “problem” people complaining about “new anime” have even if they don’t even know it themselves. But the same is true form almost anything.
8 Jul 09, 21:11
tealovertoma: There will always be a market for creative and original ideas. Be it in anime, tv shows, movies or music. It’s not like it’ll die out, and I agree with Tracer, the ratio is higher. Great list btw.
8 Jul 09, 21:10
PaTRiX: But I’m going to repeat this, if you have watched anime for 10 – 20 years you have seen allmost all the stories that could possibly happen. The only thing that changes is how they are told …
8 Jul 09, 21:07
PaTRiX: And what people like reverse probably want to say is that some over the top 80’s or 90’s anime is still better than some generic harem anime. It’s a matter of taste probably, but I’m with them.
8 Jul 09, 21:04
PaTRiX: The last thing reverse said is true, the different and more interesting things sell less. So they are produced in lower quantity because they are harder to produce than say a generic harem anime.
8 Jul 09, 20:47
reverse: those innovative idea don’t sell well . so it not surprise, we will see less of them
8 Jul 09, 20:29
reverse: who you referring to tracer. yes we got innovative anime every year, i only disappointed that the anime consumer
8 Jul 09, 20:22
Tracer: It’s not like the ratio of good-to-bad shows is any less lower than befre.
8 Jul 09, 20:21
Tracer: We still get some very interesting and innovative anime every year like Kaiba, Kino’s Journey, Terra e, Nodame Cantabile, Samurai Champloo, GiTS: SAC, Dennou Coil, Baccano!, Mononoke, Gankutsuou etc.
8 Jul 09, 20:16
Tracer: I really don’t see some drop in quality in recent anime. It’s just that instead of the over the top anime of the 80’s and 90s, now it’s a lot of “moe” shows.
8 Jul 09, 20:14
Tracer: For every anime like LoGH, Rose of Versailles, Akira, Touch, you had some equally ****ty fanservice show or some horribly cliche super robot crap.
8 Jul 09, 20:08
Tracer: You’re simply being ignorant if you think the “good, old times” were full with masterpieces or some other ridiculous nonsense.
8 Jul 09, 19:15
tealovertoma: …companies. We still get the character development that old shows focus on, but more experimentation. But yes, there’s also a lot of bad shows.
8 Jul 09, 19:14
tealovertoma: … about old anime better than new anime; we’ve had loads of masterpieces in the past decade. Moreso than any decade before as far as I’m concerned. Plenty of creativity and freedom for production…
8 Jul 09, 19:13
tealovertoma: It sounds like you’ve just been disappointed by 2 (maybe a few more?) anime that seemed promising. Is that all? Cause we get several masterpieces every year. In that case you’re not really talking…
8 Jul 09, 19:11
Howling-kun: Hm, I gotta disagree with you reverse. Specially shows directed by Shinbo Akiyuki tend to have very weak first episodes.
8 Jul 09, 18:58
reverse: Howling-kun every anime nowadays have awesome first episode ( xamdd, eden ) just name it, the problem is their don’t deliver. anyway i will check Bakemonogatari
8 Jul 09, 18:44
PaTRiX: This happens with every kind of hobby you could have, the fact is that people complaining are probably people who have seen too much anime.
8 Jul 09, 18:42
PaTRiX: It’s not that anime nowadays is bad. In fact it’s probably better than before, but if you have seen, for example, 5 animes about football (soccer) how many new different ways can the story go after?
8 Jul 09, 18:39
PaTRiX: … That’s what I feel now. I need something that I really like (or that I am a fanboy of) or something that is really different to be excited about an anime.
8 Jul 09, 18:38
PaTRiX: … because the stories have not evolved that much. I say this because it happens to me. And even if I’m not searching anything fancy, just want some cool mindless violence I’ve kind of “seen it alll”
8 Jul 09, 18:35
Howling-kun: Bakemonogatari is out subbed. Excellent first episode.
8 Jul 09, 18:34
PaTRiX: I think that the fact is not that anime was better before but that the kind of people who watched akira on the big screen and dragon ball and dr slump on tv when they first aired are becoming bored ..
8 Jul 09, 17:59
PL: whereas, if the industry wasnt profitable, there wouldnt be any anime
8 Jul 09, 17:58
PL: but that leaves plenty of room for more artistic and intelligent shows
8 Jul 09, 17:58
PL: the best way to ensure an artform endures is to make it profitable, which unfortunately means you will have anime which appeals to the masses
8 Jul 09, 17:43
reverse: not to mention most anime fan don’t know what is a good animation even it hit them on the face. example anime fan are happy staring at unmoving pic for 5 second. none complain at that stuff in anime.
8 Jul 09, 17:28
tealovertoma: …anime try out some from the more experimental side. Yes, it’s true that a lot of masterpieces are overlooked and ****ty shows are popular, but it’s like that every where.
8 Jul 09, 17:27
tealovertoma: Easier to be pessimistic than optimistic, right? Stop being nostalgic about a time you weren’t even alive. We get more intelligent anime than ever before — if you’re tired of conventional harem….
8 Jul 09, 17:17
reverse: show like Sengoku BASARA sale like 10000+ dvd in a week. untalented people get pay more. anime industry is doomed i would say.
8 Jul 09, 14:13
Solaris: I also think nowadays anime are nice and flashing but are lacking of contents.
8 Jul 09, 08:54
psgels: I think the “empty of contents and spirit” is a bit vague. What does it mean for a series to have spirit? And isn’t this different for everyone?

The discussion basically began when Solaris claimed that anime nowadays is “empty of contents and spirit”, and reverse claimed that “now almost everything get animated. the standard sure is low.”, from which the above discussion erupted. It then continued in the Aoi Hana post:

“Bakemonogatari: Once you remove all of the fancy filters and confusion that the first episode threw at us, you remain with a story that lacks depth and characters that are just the average stereotypes”
Maybe it was this i sensed when i watched Bakemonogatari’s first episode. It’s a fancy colored box with nohing inside.
Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 12:02
#

“Pity it happens more and more often nowadays. Anime’s graphics continues improving but contenents keep decreasig”

Lol @ this being applied to Bakemonogatari, NisiOisin isn’t considered the god of light novels for nothing.

Comment by Westlo — July 11, 2009 @ 12:25
#

@westlo.
I judge for what i watch to. Anime and novel are related only by topic. One could be utter crap while the other could be plain art.
My first impression on Bakemonogatari anime was negative, as they wanted to keep our interest with that flashing graphics, but that there wasn’t that much of a story to begin with.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 12:38
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Solaris: nah. Bakemonogatari may be one example of a soulless series (which if we were to believe Westlo, doesn’t even seem to be true), but there are plenty of series with a soul this season (Aoi Hana, GA, Umineko, Tokyo Magnitude, Spice and Wolf and Umi Monogatari, not to mention the series from previous seasons).

I agree that the seventies and eighties had some wonderful series, but even those days had their share of disasters, which in most cases were even worse than the crap we see today. Glass Mask, for example, was a really bad series, and there are probably plenty more of those series back then.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 12:47
#

Well, anime has always been a media for the crowd. Anime production surely grew up since 60’s both in graphic quality and in number of products. It eventually became well known worldwide too. Now after 50 years of anime we are reaching saturation. Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately? Maybe is just a matter of quantity. We have little formats for anime and a huge amount of products now. We have too many products that resemble each other. We’re loosing originality. Soeone just told this before: now it’s no more a matter of creating new stories, but how well you can manage to tell them and how good you let them appear. So, focus is being biased from contenent to appearance. So it’s no more the matter of telling a story that it looks so generic, like in bakemonogatari. The matter is to capture the audience with good graphics, or moe char or whatever mean, but good storytelling. That’s the real issue.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 13:43
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With “the amount of bad series has increased”, do you mean the total amount of bad series produced each year, or the amount of bad series in relation to the amount of good series? There are of course more bad series out there than twenty years ago, simply because much more anime are produced these days. Today however, there are still plenty of series with good storytelling IMO, also with a bigger quantity.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 14:00
#

The main appeal of Bakemonogatari is the dialogue and conversations between characters which is never wasted… which is what you expect from light novels.. Hardly something I would classify as a pretty anime with no substance.

“Crap haw always existed, but why now it looks like we have too much of it lately?”

I’ll tell you why, can you name another show that aired in the same season as Evangelion did? You’ve had the best titles cherry picked from the 80-90’s without seeing the amount of crap that aired during the same time.

It’s pointless to say “Anime was consistently better back in the day” when you don’t even know the majority of shit that aired back than.

Here’s a list of what aired in 95

http://www.animenfo.com/animebyyear.php?pagenumber=1&action=Go&perpage=30&year=1995

Don’t tell me that’s better than 2006 or 2007 or you’re overdosing on nostaglia. Eva and GITS Movie are the only real notable shows from that year. Majority of 95 ranges from mediocre to crap if you look at it without rose tinted glasses.

Comment by Westlo — July 11, 2009 @ 14:04
#

I’m not saying that I like the old show better. but i do agree with solaris to some extent, almost everything get animeted now, the standard sure is low.

Comment by reverse — July 11, 2009 @ 14:29
#

Psgels i didn’t say that. I just say the amount of series overall increased, thus implied the bad series also increased. The question is, did the proportion between good and bad remained stable or not? I think it decreased a lot. That is to say you will find more bad series nowadays with respect to the good ones.

Westlo, if we take that is the real amount of anime produced in that whole year 1995, then notice that that’s average the number of series nowadays produced in a single season.
The question is, are there many more good series now with respect to back then? I think we have less, but luckily that’s my IMHO ;).

Of course whan we speak of good and bad we should make clear what we intend for. “good” is such a subjective matter. But this would generate another full thread, so let us it be by now.

I watched anime since 70’s. I could tell you a lot of what happened back then. The situation of 80’s was very interesting, as it resembled what it’s happening today. Back then the most popular format were Big Robots anime stile (not mecha) and magical girls show. After 10 years they exploited such genres there were a big lack of new ideas. So with the start of the new decade they searched new ideas and format to make anime. The market succeeded in renewing itself back them. New genres were made and the anime “maturity” also evolved. As anime public grew, there was the need of much mature series. It wasn’t anymore just a matter of kids show. Series like Sailor Moon or Evangelion also renewed the old magical girl and robot formats. Lodoss introduced western fantasy style and Tenchi Muyo invented the new harem genre. Now also these formats are coming to exaustion. Will the anime market be able to create new contents genres and stories in the future? From what i see now, the market is closing itself to those genres that are still popular and they know it will sell. There isn’t search for newa, just to wrap up something with a good container and sell that.

Comment by Solaris — July 11, 2009 @ 14:57
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That last paragraph is interesting, but at the time of the invention of these new genres, there also was a lot of bad stuff going on. Based on my impressions, if you look at 1995 the ratio of good to bad shows is about 11:27. Based on the same standard, the ratio of good to bad shows of the past spring season is for me 19:17, which is much higher. So I don’t agree that today’s anime lacks sould.

However, if you meant to say that today’s anime lacks originality, then okay, I can see more in that. The only series that really attempted to go beyond genres of the past spring season was Marie&Gali (Eden of the East, though impressive, was just another mystery-series in the end, although it did try). 1995 had Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, the beginning of CG, Memories and in a way also the Ping Pong Club (raunchiest fanservice ever in a TV-series at least) and Romeo’s Blue Skies (combining WMT with action). I agree that today’s anime should be more experimental, and daring to try out new stuff, but that’s not the same as today’s anime having lost its soul.

Comment by psgels — July 11, 2009 @ 15:35

I personally believe that anime could be more experimental and ambitious nowadays, but it has nothing to do with the quality: there are plenty of anime series with soul, and the ratio of good compared to bad series is much higher than it was twenty years ago. Still, I’d love to see what anime can evolve into.

So, what are your opinions on the matter? Are there too many harems and lazy adaptations of bishoujo games; is there an overload of moe in today’s anime market, or is it all just overly exaggerated and is moe underrated?

Genius Party – 09 – Moondrive Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Moondrive is the oddball of Genius Party. It’s a full fledged comedy, much more than Shanghai Dragon was. It is really silly, and I got a great laugh out of it. The director of this one is a genius of aesthetics: Kazuto Nakazawa, who people may remember as the director of Comedy, one of the biggest visual masterpieces of the past decade. He also did the key animation for the OP of Ergo Proxy and the second OP of Blood+, the character-designs for Ashita no Nadja and was the animation director of Samurai Champloo. This is one guy who knows how to make things look good.

And it shows in Moondrive as well. The visuals in these fifteen minutes were absolutely fantastic. Don’t expect anything like what you saw in Comedy, but instead this time he went for a dark and gritty setting set on top of the moon. The character-designs are full of style and incredibly imaginative, and the animation is incredibly quirky: it knows exactly how to capture the comedic tone of this series, it’s quirkish and made to make you laugh at the black humour of this short movie.

So yeah, in terms of story and symbolism this short doesn’t match up to the other parts in Genius Party and a few of the jokes are rather predictable or repetitive, but the rest of the jokes and quirky characters really make up for it. This is another reason why I’m such a big fan of these collection of short stories: you’ll never know what’s going to turn up next, and you’ll never know when a short is going to make you roll on the floor laughing.

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

Genius Party – 08 – Gala Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Yeah, don’t mind about the order of these posts. I found out a bit too late about the real order of the shorts, so I’ll just label them accordingly and review the individual movies alphabetically… for as far as it’s possible. Gala was done by Mahiro Maida, the guy who founded Gonzo. This guy is basically a jack of all trades in the anime business: he animates, directs, designs, produces, draws mecha, writes screenplay, he’s tried out all sorts of stuff. The series he directed are also have no similarities at all, and range from incredibly bad (Final Fantasy Unlimited) to incredibly good (Gankutsuou, The Second Renaissance).

Yeah, that’s pretty much Studio Gonzo in a nutshell. ^^;

Anyway, Gala again is a great little movie of fifteen minutes long. It’s about a strange village with all kinds of weird and uniquely designed people living in it, where suddenly a giant seed drops from nowhere. First they want to destroy it, but gradually their attempts to destroy it turn into something completely different. For what happens next is something that you’re going to have to find out by watching it, but I’ll just say that there is a lot of symbolism in it, and leads up to a very good conclusion.

Music also plays a very big part in these fifteen minutes, but my one complaint is that the soundtrack nearly totally overshadows the music that’s played by the characters themselves. And don’t get me wrong, it really is a wonderful soundtrack, but this is a pitfall very common for anime, as it simply isn’t able to properly synchronize such complex moves as playing an instrument. Even a movie budget doesn’t turn out to be enough to get it right.

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

Genius Party – 12 – Dimension Bomb Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Genius Party



Sorry for the lateness, but I’m finally ready to review the second batch of Genius Party shorts. Dimension Bomb features an all-star cast: it’s directed by Koji Morimoto, animated by Jamie Vickers and voiced by Yoko Kanno. Now, if this isn’t a recipe for success, then I don’t know anymore. And indeed, Dimension Bomb is by far the best short of Genius Party I’ve seen so far. And also the weirdest one.

Dimension Bomb is a visual masterpiece. Not in the way that there’s an extreme amount of detail in everything like in Eden of the East, but instead it’s like every single shot kicks ass: every single scene speaks to your imagination and is visually stunning and creative. The character-designs are amazing, and just about everything is a gorgeous visual feast. The characters are incredibly expressive and just about everything in the art is made to provoke a reaction from the audience.

Don’t expect the story to make a lot of sense, though. There is a general storyline, but without looking it up you’re going to have no idea what the heck is going on in this short, and instead the stuff that happens is open to all sorts of interpretations, depending on whoever watches it. Dimension bomb makes excellent use of its limited time by not just showing a story from A to B, but instead it tells a vague story with lots of symbolism. In order to like this one, you’re obviously going to have to like experimental animation and storytelling, otherwise you’ll feel incredibly lost.

It’s because of things like this that I keep saying that Studio 4C should make another full-length television series (one that takes itself seriously, not a silly one like DMC). If they do, it’s going to be an incredible amount of kickassness. I’m not sure if that’s a word, but it should be.

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

Kawa no Hikari Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



Here’s a new TV-special that aired recently: Kawa no Hikari, or the light of the river. It’s not your average anime, because it tells the story about a bunch of rats who have to leave their old home because it’s destroyed by construction workers. With series as this, a major pitfall is to become all preachy and simply let it boil down to “save these poor rats from evil humans”, but thankfully this anime manages to avoid it. Instead, it’s here to bring awareness and break stereotypes. It’s still a shallow series, but it could have become much worse.

This definitely is a series for kids. If you show this to some young children of around six years old, they’re going to love it; it makes them aware of the environment without becoming all preachy, and also teaches them to think before placing judgement on someone. That part is very nicely done, but in the end it still just provides an overly simplistic view of the matter; the series is simply too short for any real depth and the themes just aren’t fleshed out well enough. The result is that another way this show can be interpreted as the following: all sewer rats are evil. Except for one perhaps who happens to be nice. All cats are evil. Oh, but there happens to be one who doesn’t like to eat mice and therefore treats the characters nicely. Oh, and all field rats are bastards too, but the lead characters happen to be nice ones. Feels kind-of elitist, don’t you think?

Aside from the environmentalist parts, Kawa no Hikari is also an adventure story. This part of the series is flawed, but engaging. The way the creators keep toying with these fragile lives of the three lead characters as they battle sewers, floods, angry sewer rats, cars and a lot more is bound to catch your attention. Despite this TV-special’s flaws, the lead characters are engaging and sympathetic, and they make you want to see the endings. Unfortunately, some of the action scenes are completely unnecessary: they’re just there for the sake of including some excitement. Near the ending the action also gets harder and harder to buy (especially that bus scene) and the ending itself really feels like a total cop-out and in no way satisfying. Overall though, this TV-special is nothing to write home about, but still nice enough if you need something simple and innocent.

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

Some quick first Impressions: Sora no Manimani, Spice and Wolf II and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Sora no Manimani

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins the local astronomy club and falls in love.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nope)
Ah, dammit. Just when I thought that this Summer Season did so well in avoiding the biggest cliché in the book (the childhood friend), Sora no Manimani comes around, in which the lead character moves to his new high school and runs into the girl he hung out with when he was six, and the two of them nearly instantly fall in love again. So this episode definitely had its boring moments since I’ve seen so many first episodes with the EXACT SAME premise, but thankfully there are a bunch of twists here: for once the male is the tsundere, instead of the female, while the female has ADHD and feels a lot like Haruhi Suzumiya without the tsundere part. This episode had its amusing parts, but it lacked proper build-up: the crying scenes really came from out of nowhere and felt forced and with such an excellent season, I really doubt that I’m going to continue with this one.

Spice and Wolf II

Short Synopsis: Our lead character looks for his next dal to make him some money.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Too many great shows this season!)
Ah, it’s nice to see this one back. Spice and Wolf was the big surprise in the season in which it originally aired, because it came from absolutely nowhere, it had the most incompetent staff imaginable and yet it turned out to be such a solid series. What I’m expecting from the second season is much of the same subtle charms that made the first season so enjoyable. My big fear is that it’s going to let its success go too much to its head, go too much in the mainstream direction and become an unsubtle romantic comedy and moe fest. Ah well, we’ll see in which direction it’s going to go, and this episode was enjoyable as one that set up the upcoming arc. It was nothing special, but the first season also started out rather underwhelming, so it’s nothing to be surprised of. My one complaint of this episode is that even though it’s got a much more superior animation company (Brains Base, of all things), the animation cut a lot more corners: there were lots of pointless flashbacks just to recycle some of the used animation of the first season, so I do hope that the creators have saved the rest of the budget for later episodes.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Short Synopsis: Our lead character ends up in the middle of an earthquake.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Sounds very promising)
And so the next Noitamina series appears. It’s pretty similar to Eden of the East, actually: it’s set in the current day, it’s very realistic, it too criticizes Japanese society subtly and it too has high production-values. Both series have something that’s very rare in anime nowadays: a storyline that’s based on actual topics of today’s society. Production IG already did such a series with Real Drive, but for Bones it’s something totally new. Or should I say, for Studio Kinema Citrus, as they seem to be the main ones responsible for this series, much like Trans-Arts who like to slap the Production IG label on their work. In any case, this first episode was very promising. It’s easy to think that you’re never going to get hit by such a disaster, but what if it does happen? It doesn’t just go for Tokyo, but what if New York was suddenly flooded (which did happen in the past), or what if the oceans continue to rise, and half of The Netherlands ends up drowning? Great food for thought, and the creators chose a likable lead female to center this story around. Usually Noitamina is about adults, but in these days in which teenagers are growing up more and more spoiled by technology and conveniences, she is indeed more suited. I’ll stop rambling now, otherwise this entry is going to get too big.