Category: Other:

For the past few months, I’ve watched a lot of shows that I originally dropped which turned out to be surprisingly engaging. It can also go the other way of course: some shows are better off just being dropped. Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou Tou is such an example. It starts of with a really exciting episode with excellent fights, really neat animation and characters with potential. Unfortunately, that first episode is the only thing that stands out about that series.

What we have here is a typical series that blew away all its budget in its first episode, and then doesn’t have anything left to fill the rest of its airtime with. The overall animation is still pretty above average, but never does it meet the huge expectations it created with that first episode. The real problem is the plot, though. It follows the pattern of first half demon-of-the-week second half prevent Tokyo’s destruction. It’s a solid set-up, but for that to work you need to provide interesting demons-of-the-week to keep the viewer busy, and an interesting threat that can destroy Tokyo. And this series fails at both.

The thing is that the viewer is never given the chance to get accustomed to the characters, and never gets a reason to care about the main characters. Half of the characters lack a proper introduction, and never get the chance to establish their character, while members of the other half take turns into angsting about how cruel the bad guys of this series are and how they need to protect their loved ones. Obviously, this is mostly all talk and in 75% of the cases, they fail to protect, leading to only more angst. Especially that Aoi is guilty of this. She keeps on whining about saving others through the entire series, and eventually ends up as a brainwashed damsel in distress.

Because of that, the major climax ends just in one big disappointment. And yeah, I know that this series has a second season and all, but that’s no excuse to just go lazy and let the power of love solve everything. Overall, there are one or two subplots that do deliver some genuine scenes, but apart from that we just have a series that’s too caught up in its own angst and cruelty so that it never lives up to the interesting character-dynamics and action that the first episode promised. If you’re intrigued by the premise, just watch the first episode as a standalone story and then just drop the thing.

Next-up in the category of underrated gems: Fancy Lala, a charming mahou shoujo from the late nineties. It’s understandable why not many people are interested in it: the premise advertises a girl who coincidentally meets up with two miniature dinosaurs, who give her the power to grow up and become an idol so that she can meet up with the guy she admires. It’s not exactly a premise that screams “Watch me!!”, and you really need to watch this series in order to understand its strengths. Fancy Lala is a definite recommendation for those who like slice-of-life dramas; it feels like a cross between Kamichu and Full Moon wo Sagashite, grabbing the best from both.

And really, this isn’t necessarily a series about idols; the premise would also have worked with construction-workers (although the end-result would probably end up a lot more GAR that way). In contrast to a series like Full Moon wo Sagashite, where the growing up was just a tool to get to the idol-part of the premise, Fancy Lala uses being an idol just as a tool to get to the growing up-part. The essence of this series is that it’s a look at adult problems through the eyes of a child, and there is so much potential for such a premise.

Basically, all of the good things in this series can be traced back to one thing: the awesome character of Miho. I gave the characters a rating of 10 for a good reason: she is an incredibly strong lead character for a girl of only ten years old. She’s able to carry both the weight of being an idol and the weight of the series and yet she remains an innocent child. We get to know her through and through, and it’s because of her that the major theme of adult problems works out so well.

The creators also make use of a lot of subtle drama, where nothing important is said, but you can see from the characters’ expressions that a lot is going on inside their mind. It’s because of this that this series never vetures into the world of cheese and melodrama, an oh so common pitfall of shoujo-series (and any other genre for that matter, I guess). This is such a genuine series, and you can feel that the characters are feeling down because of the problems they face, instead of acting down because of the creators’ wishes. Miho’s voice-actress also does a very admirable job: children in this series really do sound like children, rather than squeaky 30-year old voice-actresses.

And also let me say this specifically: Fancy Lala has the downright best ending of any mahou shoujo I’ve ever seen, and perhaps it’s also got my favourite ending of any shoujo-series for that matter. It’s a true example where realism works so much better than cheesy Deus ex Machina because creators are too afraid to kill off characters in the fear to upset said characters’ fans. Fancy Lala’s final two episodes are something that should happen in nearly every single mahou shoujo-series, and yet none I’ve seen so far even dared to address its topics.

But yeah, this really is a series about Miho. Apart from that, it doesn’t have much else to sell, as shown by the premise: the reason why Miho got her magical powers is just pure coincidence, we never get any concrete explanation of where those dinosaurs came from. In addition to growing up, Miho also somehow becomes incredibly proficient in singing, posing and acting, without any practice whatsoever. These things are going to make it a bit difficult to care about the characters in the beginning, though at least the series makes up for it with quite an accurate portrayal of the local idol-scene once it gets going.

Obviously, if you’re not into slice of life, you’re not going to like this series, but nonetheless it’s an incredibly genuine shoujo series with some adult themes. It’s got a wonderful lead character. And sure, the animation looks a bit outdated for those of you who are only used to series from the last four years, but nonetheless the character-art is very expressive, and tries to convey even the smallest of emotions, and it looks great in my opinion. Simply said: Miho Rocks.

One thing I love about watching anime is that you never know when you’ll run into a masterpiece. Taiyou no Ko Esteban, or The Mysterious Cities of Gold tells the story about three 12-year-old kids who travel from Spain to South America, as they face off against the Spanish soldiers in order to find the titular mysterious cities of gold. While it sounds cliché, I was hooked after only two episodes. This is EVERYTHING an adventure-series should be!

There are many good points of this series; I think it could be best described as a strange crossing between Mahou Shoujotai and Mobile Suit Gundam: the series is the antithesis of episodic: every single episode pushes the story forward, every single episode is fast-paced without any sign of a break and every single episode delivers. (Okay, apart from the one with the submarine I guess, but that still means 38 episodes of epic adventures). While at first this may seem a simple historical series about the Incas and the Mayas, as the series goes on a whole multi-layered science-fiction setting starts to surface. The show is more than 25 years old, and its setting can still be considered as truly original.

The “adventure”-part of this series is also rock-solid. Again, it’s an old series, and yet it can outclass so many modern adventure series. The key is that this series makes optimal use of its environment, whether this concerns large-scale battles between small armies, or just one-on-one fights, strategies take an important role. Think of destroying suspended bridges in order to stop the enemy from advancing, or going against a small army by destroying an artificial dam. One thing I also loved about this series is how it keeps track of its characters: when some of the important characters leave the screen for a while (because Esteban and the others are focusing on something else, for example), you can bet your hat that said characters aren’t going to sit still until the camera focuses on them again, and they’ll be carrying out their own agendas again

The characters are also a lot of fun to watch in this series, and especially Mendoza is an awesome character: he’s continuously scheming and using his head, instead of his muscles; he’s an excellent combination between a father-figure and a greedy and cunning Spaniard. The rest of the characters all have their own identities, roles and purposes. Esteban himself may not be the most memorable of them, but nonetheless he can carry the weight of this series as its main character, and he grows into a brave young boy, who is forced to make huge decisions, despite his very young age.

Regarding the production-values, the only really negative thing I can say about it is that the encoding-quality of the videos I watched was pretty bad. I also encourage people to view the English dubs, instead of the Japanese ones. The English sound-director was a very ambitious one, who didn’t just literally translate the lines from Japanese to English, but instead tried to add as much expressivity as possible. The result is that people speak very fast, but at the same time lots of subtle details are added to the dialogue, giving the characters a very genuine touch. The animation-quality adds to that, with a lot of expressivity in the drawings.

And of course, no review of The Mysterious Cities of Gold can be complete without a mention of the downright astounding soundtrack. Let me say here that I’m going to be very surprised if I were to run into a different soundtrack from the seventies, eighties and even the early nineties that’s able to outclass the different background tunes of this series. You need to listen to it to understand, but the synthesizers and futuristic sounds give this series a unique atmosphere.

In terms of flaws: you do need to suspend your disbelief once in a while. This mostly involves a few coincidences that sit a bit weird, like a building randomly getting destroyed, with the worst being the introduction of Tau. It’s nothing major, though, if you’re not the most critical viewer. While some scenes are a bit dodgy, others are surprisingly clever for a series that’s meant to be for children.

Overall, this series is an excellent watch for every age. Children will love the huge amounts of adventures and wonderful places that this series visits, it also teaches them a bit about making important decisions, and at the same time it’s never too childish for adults to feel ashamed of watching it. This series set the standard of what an adventure-series should be, and unfortunately there were only very few series (if any at all) that followed its example.

I really liked the original Area 88-OVA, so when I learned that there also was a 2004-remake of the anime, I just had to add that one to my to-watch-list. Unfortunately, I should have known: the OVA already was amazing, so what could an extra TV-series possibly add? Instead, it just went into its own direction. While it’s a capable series on its own, you don’t want to be watching this as a fan of the OVA.

With most of the background of Shin, Kanzaki and McCoy was gobbled up by a female pilot, a pilot who can’t seem to decide whether he’s male or female and a nosy photographer, you really can’t call this a realistic series about manly men who do the duty that’s being asked of them in a setting where only the strongest ones survive. Instead, what we have here is a compassionate war-drama in a setting where only the unimportant side-characters have a chance of dying.

The result is more of a heart-warming series. I can’t say that I’m exceptionally happy about the woman and the gender-confused pilot, but at least the two of them are well-fleshed out. The two of them are nice and like to socialize, and so the whole series gets a different tone from the very dark OVA. There’s also one thing I can be very positive of about the TV-series: the soundtrack. It was quite daring to come up with a selection of techno-songs for the fight scenes, and it really works along with the lighter tone of the rest of the series.

However, this series isn’t without its problems. As a fan of the original OVA, I was a bit disappointed that the series would turn out to be really different, but on the other hand, it would be quite boring to watch the same thing all over again. However, if you indeed diverge from your original source-material, do so consistently, and don’t chicken out at the last moment, like this series did. Through the entire series, Shin’s background was only a mere side-plot, which only popped up twice or trice, and instead the majority of the series focused on the bond between the major characters. In the final two episodes, however, Shin’s story suddenly became the main focus of the series. There’s just no way to get some proper development out of that, and it leaves the series with an overly cheesy ending that will leave a bad taste in your mouth. Because of that, the series completely ruined Ryoko’s character: she went from a headstrong woman to someone who’d just wait and do nothing. It’s good for a side-character, but you don’t want to turn her into a main character right at the last episode!

Along with that, I also have one big complaint against this series, as a fan of the original Area 88-OVA: Makoto, the photographer, was ruined even more by the series than Ryoko was. The guy was a really memorable character in the OVA, simply because he knew how to keep his distance, and yet wanted to get involved. The Makoto in the TV-series keeps sticking his nose into everything, annoys everyone with his overly cheesy morals, and his added background is downright ridiculous.

Overall, the TV-series just doesn’t have the potential to live up to the OVA, even when I remove my bias as a fan, there is just too little to impress. However, if you see it as a standard, unrelated series, then you’ve got yourself a decent war-drama that for once doesn’t have any mecha in it, but instead focuses on fighter-planes. Still, I’m going to keep recommending the OVA. So what if the drawings look old, it’s got an amazing and thought-provoking story.

Houlgrave recommended this series to me, which really intrigued me. A few years ago, I watched its first episode, and at that time it seemed like nothing more than standard “boy meets mecha”-fare. After watching the entire series, though, I’m glad to see that this series is much more than that, and definitely a product of Good Gonzo.

The series starts out as something that Mars Daybreak should have been: a fun adventure series, in this case following a delivery-boy who doesn’t mind dangerous jobs that involve a few mecha-fights here and there. The interesting part about the mechas in this series is that you can’t ride them, and instead you have to control them from outside. The cast of characters is varied and interesting: there basically are more children who found themselves such a mecha, and the series explores them as each of them is trying to act out his/her own sense of judgement.

A huge theme in this series is taking responsibility, and it goes further than you might expect at first sight. This series doesn’t merely preach “thou shalt take responsibility for thy actions”, it also critically asks when and why one should do that, and whether it wouldn’t be better to just go into your own way. This is where the diversity in characters comes in again, because of so many different viewpoints at this issue, it’s really able to explore these topics.

The big criticism against this series is of course that the plot doesn’t always flow as smoothly as you’d like. If during a big action-scene you suddenly see two characters pop up from out of nowhere, you’re going to have to assume that they were worried about some other character, and came to check it out, even though this is never directly said. This can also be a good thing, depending on the way you look at it. On one way, it’s indeed a bit lazy, but on the other hand it’s a series that doesn’t assume its viewers to be stupid, and the creators assume that their viewers are able to conclude that two plus two equals four, without having to spoon-feed it to them. Unfortunately, this mindset does not always work: there are a few very rather jarring convenient coincidences, which just serve to push the story into the direction the creators want it to. That’s indeed a bit lazy, but at least the results of these plot-twists make up for it.

Because what especially impressed me in this series was the completely different way that the plot evolves into during its second half. For a while, it really seems like it’s building up for a straightforward climax, but instead the mood of this series completely shifts and instead of focusing the climax of this series on lots of action and drama, the series finale instead aims to give a lot of depth to the series’ setting.

Overall, this is a series with a lot of diversity: not just in the characters, but especially the mood of the series can take on lots of different colours: from calm slice-of-life to a number of solid action- and comedy-episodes, to powerful drama, heart-warming character-development and mystery in the second half of the series. I think that that’s something typical of Good Gonzo, as you see that effect in a lot of their better series. The plot’s a bit jiggy, but because of that sacrifice Gonzo managed to put down a very nice series. Not to mention that this really is the first series I’ve run into that correctly understands the principles of Karate. Take that you generic shounen-series!

Wagaya no Oinari-sama: a fox-spirit and a shrine maiden move into the family of our lead character and hi-jinks begin. It’s a premise that shouldn’t be good. It’s been done so many times in so many variations. Still, somewhere along the line the producers must have done something right, because it’s been a very enjoyable series from start to finish.

Everything seems to fit somehow, both the main- and side-characters are well-fleshed out and developed and very enjoyable to watch, the story is divided into a number of arcs, ranging from one to four episodes, and the creators make sure to keep every one of them interesting, with a story that’s complex enough to keep the viewer’s attention, yet remains simple and far away from convolution. The background music is very subtle, but also very effective. The only bad part I can think of is the lead character’s character-designs, but even that annoyance disappears once you get used to it.

…and that’s pretty much it. This isn’t a series you need to analyze from top to bottom, it’s a series where you just need to shut up and watch. All you need to know is that if you’re looking for a series that combines slice of life with supernatural stories, then you’ll like Wagaya no Oinarisama. It’s an enjoyable series, in both the light-hearted as the serious aspects. What else is there to say, really?

The thing with Bones is that their works are either excellent or complete flops. The Mars Daybreak is a flop; probably the biggest flop they’ve produced. Still, at least it’s a fun flop… sometimes.

In any case, it takes an entire washing-list to fully summarize all that’s wrong with this series, so here we go:
– It’s got a bad main character-syndrome (without any prior experience whatsoever, the guy only needs ten seconds to fully master the complex machinery of his personal super-mecha, for goodness’ sake!)
– There’s hardly any character-background whatsoever (we never know how the crew of the Aurora joined the ship in the first place)
– The background that’s there doesn’t make any sense (if Gram, said lead-character, grew up in the slums, then where did he learn to cook so well?)
– Junior will make people punch their screen out of annoyance.
– Vess will make people toss their screen out of the window and burn the remains out of annoyance.
– It fails to flesh out the setting well enough (why are people living underwater if they can also do that above? Where do these people get their food? How come it never rains?)
– It fails at properly introducing its characters (one particular crewmembers of the ship that most of the series takes place on take twelve episodes to get mentioned)
– It’s got a “screw the plans I’m impulsive/horny/whatever”-mindset.
– There’s an incredible amount of plot-holes through the entire series.
– Trivial plot-points are never explained (how did Gram get his necklace? Where did his super-mecha come from? Especially that last one is just jarring. It’s just… there.)
– Characters behave inconsistently (I’m looking at you, Kubernes; we also never learn exactly why Yagami got his nickname. He’s freaking useless throughout the largest part of the series)
– The overall storyline is shallow at best, and the end reward is uninspired.
– There’s a pointless love triangle in which Gram managed to conquer the two daughters of the most influential men you can imagine.
– The show thinks it’s good at drama while in fact the drama sucks with the power of one thousand vacuum cleaners.
– The setting has so much potential and yet the series never uses it.

So, with all these flaws, is there really anything left on this series that’s good? Well somehow through some kind of magic, the light-hearted chemistry between the characters ended up pretty nicely. It’s not always the case, but if the stars are aligned in a particular way, the scriptwriters feel inspired and they’ve gotten their coffee, then this show might actually be able to deliver an enjoyable and fun episode to watch. Especially the cat and the dolphin are great side-characters. In fact, this series would have been much more enjoyable if the focus fell on the side-characters a bit more, but instead someone on the production-team found it a good idea to turn this series into “The Adventures of the Almighty Gram (and his Crew)”. Gram’s just too perfect, for goodness’ sake.

Through all the flaws, the biggest one is that this series doesn’t know what it’s good at. At heart, this is a fun-filled adventure to search for treasure on a fantasy-version of Mars. Unfortunately, it too often lapses into pointless drama, gets way too serious or puts too much attention on Gram, rather than letting the entire crew get involved into some exciting chase-sequence or something. The episode where the crew meets Enora is a good example: it was light-hearted, fun and creative. If only the rest of the episodes was like that… In the end, this series biggest strength now is that it doesn’t ask anything from the viewer. You can just watch it and turn your brain off, without being forced to sit through anything difficult. That’s nice and all, but you can achieve the same effect by watching paint dry.

Well, when I first started watching Starship Operators, I wasn’t exactly positive: the premise told about a spaceship, piloted by unqualified teenagers with extravagant hairstyles. My first thought was something along the lines of “oh, here we go again, with the subplot of having teenagers save the world because of some convenient superpower they receive”. Afterwards, Starship Operators continued to violently mutilate any sort of stereotype I could have had about the premise and threw them unceremoniously in the garbage bin.

Really, this is something I never suspected, but the focus on politics and realistic space-battles is huge. In fact, the creators actually succeeded in making a spaceship that’s piloted by teenagers plausible, by resorting to legal actions, and letting them buy their own spaceship with the help of a sponsor (a media-broadcasting network, which also makes sure for a number of subtle jabs against the modern media-culture). The rest of the series also continues to be moved very heavily through complex politics. It happens often when an entire episode is spent, just trying to sink one ship, because of all the preparation and planning that goes into trying to defeat the enemy.

Also, make no mistake: this is a series where people die when they’re killed, and the creators have made sure to let this sink in with both the viewers and the cast. None of the characters individually are particularly well-developed, but as a group, they absolutely shine. There are so many different characters with all their own roles. There’s a bit of angst here and there, but it never distracts from what’s important (which is exactly how you should handle angst: it can really make you care about a character, but if it’s overused it becomes disastrous and just plain annoying, which is something this series manages to avoid excellently).

Also, if you want to watch this series, you obviously have to like politics, because the production-values aren’t going to make up for it, save for a few very powerful songs (the ED, for example). Some of the CG doesn’t blend in well when it’s used alongside regular drawings, and there really isn’t any budget wasted on making the fight scenes flashier and more sensational. In this series, you have to be captured by the characters and politics, otherwise it’ll become a bore-fest.

Still, the power of politics is especially apparent in the excellent final episode, which definitely is the best one of the entire series, which is something nearly every series should aspire; everything the series has built up comes together like a charm, leaving no bad taste whatsoever. Overall, what we have here is a short but very powerful space-opera with an incredible focus on planning, rather than brainless action. It’s something you have to like, but if you do, then it’s going to be an excellent watch.