Some quick first Impressions: Koukaku no Regios, Slayers Evolution-R and Ride Back

Koukaku no Regios

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters a school in a world where people have strange powers.
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (Might be interesting)
You know, this may not be the best series, but this was exactly what I’ve been looking for this season: originality. Sure, this episode was full of clichés, but for every bad idea, the creators seem to have included a good idea, and I’m interested to see where the creators can take this. This episode took place on two different places: a desert city that’s attacked by a huge monster and a strange kind of high school, and I especially liked the former, and I wonder how it’s going to tie in with the high school setting. The high school itself had all the necessary archetypes present, but that female lead felt refreshing and much less one-sided than I suspected. It’s also a nice touch: if you live in a world where everyone has powers, then there are of course people going to abuse them, especially if they’re bratty high school kids, and you need a bit of extra effort to keep these guys in check. So overall, I like this: there are lots of different characters despite the clichés and a lot of potential. The soundtrack is pumping, though the OP is going to suck.

Slayers Evolution-R

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters meet a strange talking armour.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Not after that first season)
I really wasn’t looking forward to watching this series. I planned to just watch it and drop it to get it over with. And then this series came and delivered the best episode of the new Slayers so far. Okay, so that may not say much, but for once I wasn’t bored out of my skull, the talking armour was actually quite funny and I laughed more in this episode than during the entire first season. I really don’t want to go through the same pain as the first season, but if it’s true that all Slayers get better in their second halves, it might be interesting to stick with it.

Ride Back

Short Synopsis: Our lead character accidentally gets to try a motorbike-mecha-thingie.
Chance of me Blogging: 90% (Madhouse Rocks!)
Well, that’s Madhouse: here it comes and delivered the without a doubt best first episode of all the new shows this season. Sure, the lead character is yet another one of those teenagers who accidentally gets to possess a super-weapon, but apart from that everything about this episode was superbly done. The art looks excellent and yet down to earth, the soundtrack fits the series exactly and the series has a number of very likable lead characters. I was immediately a fan of the female lead character, but the rest of the support cast are also defined and varied. This is promising to be one of the highlights of the Winter-season if the creators can keep this up.

Mushrambo The Movie – 1 Review – 15/100



Note: this is a rant, and a pretty big one. Mushrambo, or Shinzo as it’s also been called, is one of the guilty pleasures that I watched when I was still in my early teens, back when Dutch children’s television had yet to descend into utter crap. My taste was pretty bad at the time, but I loved catching the latest episode on television despite the series’ very obvious flaws (the two biggest fights took up 6 and 10 (!) episodes respectively and the plot suffered from some pretty bad inconsistencies (what can I say, my taste was pretty bad at the time; I was fourteen…)). So when I learned about a remake of this series on movie, by none other than the director of Mononoke, I obviously got excited to relive my teenage memories.

Well, I’d like to thank this series for completely destroying them. The movie became nothing but a freaking recap. And a very bad one as well. It’s clear that there went absolutely no budget whatsoever in this thing, and I have no idea what the director of Mononoke was thinking here.

The problem with recap movies like this one is that they take series that have a slow pacing which they use to build up their characters for A REASON. Ultimately we now have a cut-and-paste job of the best scenes of the series that move way too bloody fast to prove any sort of credibility. It’s here where a capable writer manages to condense the story so that it can create a proper story within ninety minutes, but either the director had a really bad day when he wrote this series, or the producers were sleeping through the production process and only realized that nothing had been done a day before the deadline (because really, this is the kind of movie that you can easily make within a day, and I’m really not exaggerating here).

Nothing is explained whatsoever for the ones who are new to the premise. In fact, at one point it’s so bad that the characters look back at events that NEVER EVEN HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE. At one point in the series, for example, the lead characters get an upgrade in power. This upgrade is completely skipped in the movie, and yet the characters costumes magically changed themselves.

One of the things I hoped for in this movie is an number of very sweet graphics (because despite the clichés, I remember how a lot of very nice ideas were put into the setting and it would be awesome to see what they’d look like with a movie budget), but to my despair, the graphics look even more horrible than I remembered them. It’s one thing for a movie to simply look the same, but this movie actually looks and sounds WORSE than the TV-series. WHAT!?

If I had to mention the worst part of this movie, then it’d be the voice acting. If there’s anything that comes close to downright abysmal, then it’s the voice actors of the lead characters. These guys did the impossible: they made Dutch voice-actors sound awesome. I never knew that depths like these existed.

Overall, I watched this for the sake of nostalgia. There’s no possible reason why you should torture yourself with an hour and a half of this thing. I can’t believe that Toei put Mononoke’s director on such a large piece of crap when there’s so much potential left in the guy. I know that the original series wasn’t exactly good, but it was still pretty successful in terms of its entertainment value and it had some really neat ideas for a shounen series; it was nowhere near the levels of crap that the movie explores. I’d almost say that this is some kind of rickroll, but why would someone go through the trouble for such an unknown series, let alone find its raws?

Storytelling: 1/10
Characters: 1/10
Production-Values: 1/10
Setting: 3/10

Some quick first Impressions: Birdy The Mighty Decode 2, Major 5th Season and Kemono no Souja Erin

Birdy the Mighty Decode 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets assigned to track down a bunch of escaped convicts.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Hell yeah!)
Whoa, a bit theme of the sequels this season seems to be angsting over what happened at the end of its previous season: first Shikabane Hime, then Druaga no Tou, and now this one. Still, Birdy the Mighty did this the best of the three, simply because it had so many other things to do in this episode so that Senkawa didn’t have too much time to remember Nakasugi. And unlike the previous two, this series has yet to show what it can really do with its potential. This episode promised a grand story, lots of new characters were introduced and some characters who seemed as mere fillers in the first season show up again as well. The new OP and ED are also much better, there’s a brand new OST, so overall all signs point in the direction that the second season is going to be much better than the first. Just, what was up with that strange insert song at the end?

Major 5th Season

Short Synopsis: Our lead character spent the fourth season in a foreign country and finally arrived back home, it seems.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Yet to see the first four seasons…)
Seriously, is there no end to the sequels this Winter-season? In any case, I watched this episode in an attempt to get motivated to watch the first season. So, it’s a bit unfortunate that there was hardly any baseball whatsoever in this episode, but nevertheless I enjoyed the quiet mood of the episode. The characters were nostalgic about things that I obviously never saw, but it nevertheless was an enjoyable episode. I might try to follow this fifth season, depending on how long it remains interesting to me and whether it can prove to be significantly different from One Outs (since two baseball shows airing at the same time may be a bit too much).

Kemono no Souja Erin

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets is the daughter of a famous dragon caller
Chance of me Blogging: 50% (It would be 100% if it wasn’t for the producers)
Now this is what I’m talking about! This series is definitely the most creative and original out of the new shows that aired this season. I love the stylized look of the main character, or the very stylish animation when the dragons attacked. The slice of life moments in this series were also wonderful, though there’s one big problem with this series: its creators. I took a small look at the different staff members that are working on this series and it looks like we’ve got the worst people on the Production IG-arsenal working on it: Trans Arts. While I liked Wellber when it aired, I now see that it was way too cheesy, Toshokan Sensou was unbalanced and Chocolate Underground was just plain bad, and they still get to produce series? Why hasn’t Production IG simply fired them, and more importantly: what happened to their good people? Did they all quit at the same time to join Madhouse, or something? I loved this episode, but I can already see it going downhill: the series composition was done by the guy who did the series composition of Real Drive and Blood, and the production coordination was done by the guy who did the production coordination of Saiunkoku Monogatari and The Twelve Kingdoms: all excellent stories on themselves, but the former two were really unbalanced, and the latter two had no conclusion, and I have enough reasons to believe that these people were directly responsible for their series’ respective flaws. Just think what might happen once you combine them all into one series!

Some quick first Impressions: Abunai Sisters, Druaga no Tou – The Sword of Uruk and Asu no Yoichi!

Abunai Sisters

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a couple of “sexy spies”.
Chance of me Blogging: -50% (…)
Here’s an interesting one: I’ve actually been contacted by the company that produced this series, asking for me to review the first episode of this 3-minute 10-episoded OVA, animated by Production IG. While I’m excited to actually have been contacted by professional companies like this, it doesn’t stop me from being perfectly honest with this series: Abunai Sisters is bad. In fact, it’s the worst series I’ve seen in years; even Musashi Gun Doh features better writing than this thing. These three minutes were full of the most obvious sex jokes you can imagine. It’s nothing more than a bunch of air-headed celebrities (the Kano Sisters, in this case) who want to insert themselves into an animated adventure. Still, at least it’s got a bit of entertainment value: it really is one of these series that’s so bad so that it becomes somewhat strangely enjoyable again. Something tells me that the writers also had no intention whatsoever to take this series seriously, and they did everything they could to make the Kano Sisters look as stupid as possible.

Druaga no Tou – The Sword of Uruk

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters has been angsting about the ending of the first season for… six months?!
Chance of me Blogging: 30% (I didn’t blog the first season, but who knows with such a lacklustre season so far?)
Aaand yet another sequel. It’s a good thing that most of these sequels are from good shows, but the lack of new series really bugs me. In any case, I was a bit surprised that Jill has been doing nothing but angsting for six months after what happened at the ending of the first season, but it’s a pretty nice twist to see him suddenly hooked up to Fatina, who went through pretty much the same as him. The series also hasn’t lost its sense of humour, so there is a lot of potential for this series to be just as good, if not better than the first season. I’m just worried about one thing: please let Jill and Fatina be a real couple, and don’t turn this series into a sort of indecisive harem once Kaaya gets back.

Asu no Yoichi!

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters gets to live in a house with cute girls.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No)
AIC sure is lazy this season: first they try to rip off Gonzo, and now they continue to rip off every harem imaginable. This really is the wrong season to look for originality. In any case, the only thing I can be positive about is this series is the characters: they were likable enough for me not to get bored, and I guess that the main character who has lived in a forest for his entire life, getting accustomed to the modern world had a number of amusing moments, but the rest of the series was either mediocre or simply bad. The character-designs are unimaginative, what kind of pickpocket flees away upstairs, characters are stereotypes, and it’s never afraid to use the biggest clichés in the book. Still, the fanservice jokes were so incredibly bad that they became strangely amusing again, so it’s not entirely a dull series.

Some quick first Impressions: Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo, Hajime no Ippo New Challenger and Viper’s Creed

Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is best friends with a flying potato with a train fetish…
Chance of me Blogging: 30% (Nice ideas, but…. what?!)
In my previous entry, I remember noting how this season lacked originality. I never thought that this series would listen to me, although it definitely has its own share of problems. Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo is weird. In fact, nothing of this series made any bloody sense whatsoever… the lead character moves from an innocent schoolgirl with an annoying sister to the henchmen of a weird mechanical space eye-ball… The character-designs are also way too moe. Still, I do have to appreciate the huge mount of ideas that was stuffed into this series, even though most of the times this is for the wrong reasons. This series is so incredibly stupid that it actually becomes enjoyable. The bad thing about this series is that it’s Sunrise again: the title is meant to cash in on Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo’s popularity, and the Lelouch-eyeball at the same time tries to squeeze more money out of the Code Geass-franchise.

Hajime no Ippo New Challenge

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a very good boxer.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Have yet to see the first season)
In this season, I’m looking for new and fresh content. I’m not sure where I got that idea, but this clearly was the worst possible season for it: yet another sequel! The only original and imaginative premises I’ve seen so far are from Akikan and Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo, which… definitely were in the complete opposite direction of what I was looking for… Nevertheless, laying this aside I pretty much liked this episode. The characters were immediately likable, even though I missed around seventy episodes of the first season. My biggest concern with this series is: what’s its point? The lead character has worked very hard through the first season to become world champion (or similar), so: what’s next? There are so many Madhouse series that are in dire need of a sequel, so why did they pick this one?

Viper’s Creed

Short Synopsis: Our lead character fights berserked robots on a motorbike.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (Only if the rest of the season is baaaaad)
Well, so it’s yet again a series that isn’t strong on the originality-department, but nevertheless it does have some good and exciting action-scenes. I didn’t notice anything familiar on the opening credits, but could this perhaps be the next Gonzo-series? It fits their style perfectly anyway: motorbikes, an all-female back-up team, lots of CG and camera-work, rock soundtrack. Still, this doesn’t look like Bad Gonzo; there was a delightful absence of stupidity that plagues these series oh so often. And this series has one big advantage: it doesn’t revolve around teenagers! The lead characters are trained professional adults who have been specifically prepared to fight crime. There were no angsty teenagers whatsoever. If only because of that, I’m going to keep watching this series. This is no Blassreiter, but still pretty entertaining.
Edit: ah, so it’s not Gonzo after all, but AIC Spirits that tries to look like Gonzo. Let’s see how long these guys can keep this series interesting (hint: plot!).

Some quick first impressions: White Album, Minami-ke Okaeri and Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou

White Album

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has an idol as girlfriend.
Chance of me Blogging: 60% (It’s actually good… wut?)
Saying that shounen romance isn’t my favourite genre is an understatement, so when I learned that this series would revolve around a guy whose girlfriend was an idol, I definitely didn’t expect much from it. And yet at the end of the episode, I was convinced that this show has easily the best first episode of the new season so far. This show isn’t as much a romantic comedy, but rather as how you deal with being away from your girlfriend. What I especially liked was, however, the male lead: he has a personality, he works part time at a local cafe: the guy actually has a life! That’s something that’s really rare in this genre, and this show reminds me a lot of True Tears. Despite the whole idol-bit, this series feels refreshingly down to earth and true to life.

Minami-ke Okaeri

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters… do various things.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (What is there to write about this series for every consecutive episode… seriously?)
Okay, so this is my third attempt at following a Minami-ke series, after having failed both previous ones. It’s not like this is a bad series, but more like other series were more interesting at the time (but then again, if I dropped Dragonaut back then I could have easily kept watching this series…). In any case, this season actually looks like I might last until the end. It felt quick and fresh, and the fast pacing never gave me the chance of getting bored. For once Haruka also felt like more than just a clone of your typical elder sister that you see IN 100 OTHER SERIES ALREADY. The good thing about this series is that you can just join in at any episode you’d like without missing much, and this episode proofs that.

Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets one of Nyanko’s old friends
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Hell yeah!)
This season lacks originality! More than half of the new shows so far have been sequels… what happened to original content? Nevertheless, I’m really glad to see this series back, and it already starts off with a very strong episode. Nyanko-sensei especially was a delight to watch, and the chemistry between him and Natsume gets better and better. Now all that’s left is to see whether the second season can surpass the hotaru-episode of the first season, and perhaps bring a bit of continuity to the entire story.

Porfy no Nagai Tabi Review – 90/100


Porfy no Nagai Tabi is the second series of the revival of the famous World Masterpiece Theatre franchise, a long-running collection of series based on popular children’s novels, made accessible for every age. The franchise is typically very slow paced, combined with genuine, true to life and realistic characters, and it’s a formula that’s proven itself over and over again; though it’s definitely not a series for everyone.

Like the title does suspect, this instalment is a travelling series. It consists out of roughly five arcs, each of them being completely different from the others in tone, mood, pacing and execution. It starts out as a gentle and calm slice of life series, then it turns into a dark tear-jerker, then it becomes a slow laid-back travelling-series, then a haunting fast-paced one, and the final arc yet again goes into a completely different path, making sure that the 52 episodes of this series don’t drag on.

One of this series’ strengths is that it’s absolutely masterful at building up. Every single episode is chockfull of cross-references to either past or future events, the amount of foreshadowing is huge, and yet in half of the cases you won’t recognize the foreshadowing until what they wanted to hint at has already happened. When you see something randomly happen, especially in the first quarter of the series, you can be sure that one of the later episodes uses or builds further on this.

The same goes with the characters. The amount of development that goes into Porfy and Mina is immense. The show may not have as huge or complex of a regular cast as Les Miserables, but in order to make up for that it does what it can to make the lead cast as true to life and realistic as possible, and they really succeed at that. Porfy and Mina aren’t exactly immediately likable, but as the series progresses they and the other characters become very easy to relate to, simply due to their different sides and many subtle quirks that shaped their characters.

Another strength of Porfy no Nagai Tabi is the travelling-part of the series. Especially the second half really managed to catch the essence of travelling: meeting many different people, and not knowing beforehand whether they have ill intentions or are cooperative. Everyone that Porfy runs into is different, and the contrast between the loneliness of travelling alone without knowing anybody, and talking to random people you meet on the way really works.

The weakest part of this series is around the middle, where the travel arcs are long and a bit too tedious to get through. Porfy meets the right people a bit too conveniently, and overall there are times when it just feels a bit unrealistic when Porfy gets involved in large dramas, and in the end manages to make people who originally hate each other make up again like nothing happened. Thankfully the later travel arcs fix this wonderfully, and provide a more realistic view to this.

And yes, this definitely isn’t a show for the impatient. Especially since hardly anything happens aside from building up in the first twelve episodes, you need to be able to enjoy slice of life moments if you want to enjoy this series, but that’s the case with nearly every other WMT-series: the characters are amazing, but there’s an amazing amount of time needed to flesh them all out.

Since the character-designs look fairly simple and childish, do not make the mistake to think that the graphics are all very dull and simple. Sure, the character-designs aren’t complex, but to make up for it this series has some of the most beautiful background art in all anime. For 52 episodes, the creators consistently deliver the most gorgeous landscapes full of life and detail, perfectly representing the area that Porfy finds himself in at the time: you can really see the changes as Porfy moves through Europe.

Overall, Porfy no Nagai Tabi isn’t as incredible as Les Miserables, yet it’s a wonderful series nonetheless. I really hope that these guys succeed in fansubbing this series, because it’s definitely been one of the most under-looked series of 2008. You obviously don’t want to watch this, expecting nothing but juicy plot twists, but for those who can appreciate a bit of slice of life here and there, it really is an excellent recommendation.

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

Kaleido Star Review – 90/100


Kaleido Star is yet another example of why Gonzo can produce really outstanding series when they really want to. It first starts out as your average shoujo series about gymnastics and acrobatics, complete with ultra-talented female rival, a just as talented male potential love interest and another love male interest. And yet, with these ingredients it grew into everything a good shoujo series should be.

What made this series work so well is its excellent use of its 52 episodes. The first 26 episodes are already a very capable series by themselves. They show perfectly how Sora (the lead character) rises as a capable rival for Layla, emphasizing guts and hard work, never giving up, and including a number of plot twists that make sure to emphasize that not everything always happens in the lead character’s favour. Overall it’s a very satisfying story by itself, and then the second half of the series comes and pushes this development even further. The new characters of Leon and May really manage to get the best out of Sora in terms of development and make her into a really memorable character by the end of the series, and both of them also pretty impressive by themselves.

Since this is a series about acrobatics, performances also play a huge part in it. And while the creators didn’t have an unlimited budget, the animation does look really nice nonetheless. Especially the costume design for the different parts that are played throughout the series are top-notch, and the creators know exactly how to use their camera-angles and lighting effects to create a great show, based on still shots and close-ups.

If I had to mention a flaw in this series… then it lacks realism. Some of the moves that are performed by the characters are near-impossible, while at other times they master top-notch moves with only a week of training, not to mention that this is a series where seals turn into dogs. But really, the characters shine enough to make up for this flaw, and it never really gets in the way of what really is important for this series. Neither is the romance, by the way. When I first started watching this series, I was afraid that typical silly love triangles would develop over time, but the romance only appeared once in a while, and knew exactly that it shouldn’t get in the way of the characters.

So yes, this series deserves all of the praise it gets. Even though it’s got 52 episodes, every single one of them is dedicated somehow to pushing one of the characters forward, and I especially liked how much of an in-depth look it gave into the themes of working to your dreams and never giving up. It’s a wonderful series, definitely the product of Good Gonzo.

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

Space Pirate Captain Harlock Review – 80/100


Matsumoto Leiji: the founder of the space opera genre. While his first work, Space Battleship Yamato, lacked a lot of polish, his next work, Captain Harlock, would feature an improvement in just about every aspect. This is the series that would define epic, and would provide inspiration for the many other space opera anime that would follow. Thank you Live-eviL, for having the patience to fully sub it.

While the set-up of the series is again simple (evil aliens known as the Mazone are attacking the earth, and Captain Harlock is the only one who can stop them with his battleship the Arcadia), this series knows how to use its 40 episodes very well. This isn’t a simple series where the Mazones just keep throwing monster after monster until they eventually die, but every episode serves to flesh out and develop the members of its cast, so that the end of the series closes off with both the good guys and the bad guys feeling complete.

Especially the Mazones and Captain Harlock provide to be more than capable of being the respective villains and hero of this series. While the Mazones are most definitely evil, this series makes them more than villains who are just evil for the sake of being evil. Harlock on the other hand stands far apart from your typical lead character. He’s a character who knows what his duty is, no matter what gets in his way, and after watching, I can really understand why Harlock managed to capture the hearts of many when it first aired.

But yeah, you really need patience in order to watch this. The best parts of this series only really start to shine in the final quarter of this series, and the building-up parts can be really nerve-wrecking at times. Especially the middle part of the series can be tedious to get through, in its attempt to give every major character a sufficient amount of background.

Nevertheless, the result of this build-up is an epic series with a rock-solid final quarter, even though it’s already more than thirty years old at this time. While this is definitely not a series you want to marathon in the beginning, it’s nevertheless a series that has a clear purpose and has found a good use for its forty-two episodes. So it’s nowhere near Tomino or World Masterpiece Theatre levels, but nevertheless it’s among the better series to have aired in the seventies.

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

Some quick first Impressions: Touhou – A Summer’s Day Dream, Shikabane Hime Kuro and Maria-Sama ga Mitaru Fourth Season

Touhou – A Summer Day’s Dream

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets targeted by a mysterious thief.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Very slim)
First of all, since this is a series that’s purely created by amateurs, I must praise the creators for doing an actually pretty good job at it. The character art is a bit crude here and there, but nevertheless the music is excellent and the background look pretty nice, and there’s actual CG in here. You can really see that a lot of time was put into this to make it look good, and it definitely beats the to be honest rather half-assed Animax Grand Prix series. I’m also glad that they went for a slice-of-life setting, rather than going to try and recreate the game’s virtually non-existent plot. But yeah, the entire story is about a mysterious thief who keeps stealing stuff. It’s just one big excuse to show as many of the game’s characters as possible and giving them some reason to fight, but nevertheless it’s an interesting way to spend 20 minutes.

Shikabane Hime Kuro

Short Synopsis: Our lead character trains hard to accept his mission.
Chance of me Blogging: 90% (I blogged the first season, so why not?)
Overall a decent start to the second season, but I have my worries here and there. The episode felt a bit dry with Makina being chained up for the largest part, but let’s hope that she snaps out of angsting over what happened at the first season soon. The side-characters also were mostly in the spotlights, and they did a good job of driving the episode forward… but what was up with those boob-jokes? Seriously, this episode had more fanservice than the entire first season together, and that has me slightly worried. Especially that new character… talk about out of place-looking characters. This is a horror-series, not a magical girl show.

Maria-sama ga Miteru Fourth Season

Short Synopsis: Our lead character participates in a school play.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Have yet to watch the first seasons)
well, so this is the fourth season of the much-loved Maria-sama ga Miteru franchise, but I’m not yet convinced. Based on the title and promo-art, I expected this to be some sort of combination between big brother and yuri, but in the end this is just another slice of life series on an elite school. Ultimately, this episode was simply dull; there was nothing that really made me watch the rest of this series, nor the first two seasons. What it did well was the bit of development for that one classmate, but nothing else even caught my attention. The lead character is annoying, in the way that she keeps poking her nose into everything. What made the previous seasons so good anyway?