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Oh boy. I got impatient with the slow subs, so I decided to just check out the raws for this series, just to get things over with. Believe me; it really deserves to remain unsubbed. If you were already turned off by the first half, just be happy you didn’t get to see the second half…

In any case, for those of you who don’t know: Chocolate Underground is Production IG’s latest work, which tells in 13 five-minute episodes the story where an evil party has taken over the government and banned all sorts of chocolate. At first sight, it promised to be an interesting and short look at fascism and communism. Eventually, it turned into an abomination with the “we rock they suck”-mentality.

The first half at least knows how to build up, and it introduces the potentially interesting characters of Huntley and Smudger. It successfully portrayed how the people feel oppressed, and try to do something against the government by holding secret chocolate parties. It’s all fine when these events remain on a small scale, even though the evil chocolate-banning party is obviously a reference to China, and something tells me that it’s not just a coincidence that this series aired right before the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Unfortunately, as this series enters its second half, it becomes clear that the creators didn’t even know what they were building up for and the entire series gets resolved into one of the worst conclusions I’ve ever seen. In the end, a bunch of very blatant Deus ex Machina help the oppressed children overthrow the government in a boring cheese-fest that’s downright insulting to intelligence. The adults don’t even struggle back, they just magically “see the light” and give up their life ambitions like a bit of cheesecake.

Overall, this is the piece of junk you show children to make themselves feel special and more important than adults. I wasn’t expecting much, but the climax of this series was downright insulting. It’s not like short series with only 5-minute episodes are doomed to fail. Hanoka for example was a very cute series, despite its short length, but Chocolate Underground looks like it was directed by a bunch of 12-year olds, not the director of Wellber and Library Wars.

In the realm of strange series, Battle Programmer Shirase obviously can’t be missing. It’s a very short series with only fifteen episodes of ten minutes each, and it tells about the adventures of a legendary hacker. Those who are expecting a series that explores the ins and outs of the hacking-business can just shut down this window and look elsewhere, because at heart, BPS is just another romantic comedy.

The realism in this series is like some distant legend. We’re talking here about hackers who can crash satellites into earth’s atmosphere and little girls who can single-handedly take care of the security of the ministry for defence, and that’s just the tip of the ice berg. Everything computer-related is over the top on purpose, and that makes for a fun watch, especially if you’ve got something with computers (which I guess is the case with most of the people who visit this site). But oh boy, this series does have its issues.

Its biggest problem is that it doesn’t seem to really know what it wants. The result is comedy that feels like a shot of a shotgun shell: it shattered all over the place. There’s no real central theme or message that keeps the series together and each arc feels more ad hoc than that some real thoughts were put behind them. It makes you wonder why the creators went with such a bizarre series length of fifteen episodes to begin with, because the series also ends when the overall storyline is about to get started. Why couldn’t the creators just have gone with a regular airing of 13 or 26 episodes?

Then there’s the romance, with is just like the rest of this series: weird and hit or miss. We here have a couple that consists out of a ten year old girl and her twenty-five year old great uncle. Obviously, the fanservice jokes that result from that are rather predictable, but admittedly, their relationship, how weird it may be, does remain fresh through the series.

There’s also a lot of repetition in this series, even though it already was incredibly small. Each episode has at least a minute of recap about what happened in the previous episode, and there’s one particular minute-long sequence that gets repeated for FIVE TIMES through the series. What went on in the creators’ minds to approve of that, I don’t know…

Still, despite all this, the creators actually know that this series is rubbish, and just try to make the best of it. You can really see that the creators are critical of their own anime. This is one series that makes fun of itself, and actually succeeds, which I guess is where the short airtime comes in: it’s a short and fun series to watch if you’re stuck at home on a rainy day and need something light to watch. This is a series with style, no matter how strange it may be.

Well, time for me to pimp another very unknown series. This one comes completely subbed, courtesy of a one-man fansub group (who did a very admirable job, by the way), and it tells about Tetsuya, a legendary gambler and Mah-jong player. For the past few years, Akagi has turned into the symbol of Mah-Jong anime, but this series shows that it wasn’t the pioneer of the genre.

When I first started to watch this series, and realized that this series plays a lot of emphasis on cheating, I expected some sort of combination between Akagi and Kaiji, but that comparison turned to be a bit off, as there are some subtle differences. Tetsuya doesn’t really try to get very deep into the heads of the different players, but it’s much more about different cheating-techniques and its characters. In Kaiji, all the gamblers are referred to as human trash, while Tetsuya shows a more human side of them.

Tetsuya doesn’t try to go as deep as Akagi and Kaiji, but it did avoid these two series’s biggest weakness: their horribly slow pacing. Tetsuya’s pacing is quick and to the point that it never really drags, so that we can get to see a wide variety of players through the limited time of only 20 episode. There’s never really a moment to get bored. Even the final arc only takes up two episodes, instead of dragging things out in an attempt to create tension.

And the characters really shine. A lot of them are very interesting to watch, as they either team up with or play against Tetsuya, considering their limited screen-time. My favourite was the match against Innami, the walking corpse. He’s an excellent example of a character that shatters the boundaries of good and evil.

One complaint is that at times, it becomes clear that this series was based on a much larger manga. Thankfully, each arc is a standalone story, but there are a few story-threads that get introduced, and yet never answered. Boshu’s wife never makes an appearance, even though including her would have greatly fleshed out Boshu’s character. There’s also one character in the OP that never appears in the actual series. You can’t help but wonder what’s up with that.

Overall, I don’t think that this series is going to be better than Akagi (I’ll get back to that statement once I get the chance to finish that series), but nevertheless Tetsuya is a simple but effective series with a cast of great characters. It in any case deserves to get more attention than what it’s getting right now.

Beck is a lot like the younger rebellious brother of Nodame Cantabile. While the latter is about students, classical music and orchestras, the former is about a bunch of middle and high-school kids who try to start a rock band. Nodame Cantabile was very much up-beat and a positive series, while Beck is much darker, more down-to-earth and loved playing with the darker sides of humanity. Still, both series are about a passion for music and the chemistry between the people you play with.

In terms of music, Beck draws on the shorter end, though. Don’t get me wrong, the rock-music that the creators selected for this series is excellent, but it doesn’t feel as part of the series in the way that Nodame Cantabile did. There seems to be no difference in a song when one of the band-members is missing, and that’s a bit sloppy. Koyuki, the lead character in this series was supposed to be an awesome singer, but I could never really see why. Sure, he was good at singing, but his singing was full of Engrish, which hardly anybody (even the Americans) seemed to notice. Okay, perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to watch Beck right after Nodame Cantabile (which paid attention to even the slightest mistakes), but this was a rather annoying flaw.

Thankfully, there’s more than enough to make up for that. Beck has a cast of downright excellent characters, with an almost haunting chemistry between them, due to the realistic approach it chooses to portray the Japanese Indie band scene. There are so many good amateur rock bands out there, that it’s going to be very hard to stand apart from them, and even as this series nears its end, it’s still a huge mystery whether the guys from Beck are actually going to get famous or not.

Koyuki may not have had the best voice-actor, but apart from that, he’s an excellent character, who grows a lot through the series. He starts out as an insecure little kid, and he gradually loses his insecurities, to become more outspoken. Nearly the entire cast is also well-defined and has its clear purpose in the series.

Then there’s the romance, which was actually pretty good. There was this strange sort of realism that actually made the bits of romance in this series engaging, rather than annoying, which is where most teenaged romances seem to head for, especially when they’re not the main focus of a series. There’s something memorable in the bond that develops between Koyuki and Maho, in the way that the creators keep teasing the viewer, although the creators may have spent a bit too little time on it in the series’ second half. They could have played with it a bit more, I feel.

Certain parts of the series are a bit unbelievable, though. Ryuusuke’s age of sixteen years old feels a bit unbelievable, considering the things he’s already done, or certain plot-twists seem to come from nowhere, which will raise some eyebrows at the realistic nature of this series. Nevertheless, though, Beck is a very memorable series that combines slice of life and the struggles to form a successful rock band excellently.

Ah, I managed to finish this one just in time for the second season that starts in October. Nodame Cantabile is a series about classical music: it follows the rise of a brilliant conductor named Chiaki, and how he spends his college years. If for some reason, you needed any more reasons as to why noitaminA rocks, then go and watch this series, because it’s among the best series that came from an already excellent timeslot.

Finally, an anime comes and pulls off an accurate portrayal of a genius. After all, it’s easier to write a stupid character than to write a smart one, let alone a brilliant one. You really need to be well-versed in the classical music-business to pull that one off, and the creators actually did it. Okay, I know hardly anything about good music, but I still could see that this “Chiaki”-guy was going to make it big someday. Through the series, you’ll get to see exactly what this guy’s thinking, and what’s pushing him forward, what he finds important and why he became so good with music in the first place. It’s for this reason that Nodame Cantabile is an incredibly inspirational anime that can motivate you in a slightly different way than most other motivational series (which are often about an underdog, rather than an already established genius).

The rest of the cast also shines in this series. Every major side-character (which are quite a few, actually) gets his or her time to shine. With the exceptions of the characters that only appear in one or two episodes or random orchestra-members, every character is interesting, and has a bit of depth. This really is a series that shines because of its characters.

The only oddball is the female lead: Nodame. She’s just about the polar opposite of Chiaki, and for the major part of this series, you’ll be wondering what she’s actually doing in this series. She feels like this series’ Yuki Cross (from Vampire Knight): she’s there, she gets admired, but she doesn’t do anything important for the story. Thankfully, as the series goes on, her purpose in this series becomes very clear. I’m not going to spoil anything but let’s just say that her character-growth is very admirable and the highlight of this series’ finale.

There’s also plenty to laugh at in this series. It’s not strictly a comedy, but that doesn’t stop the characters from having fun and providing laughs from the beginning to the end of this series. The creators know exactly when they need to be funny and when they need to be serious.

There’s a slight downside with the use of CG, though. Since this is a series about classical music, there are obviously lots of instruments being played, and the creators used a motion-capturing technique in order to show characters playing the piano/violin/oboe/whatever. This makes sure for lots of movement that would never have been possible with traditional animation techniques, but it also looks fake. The 3D hands and instruments just don’t mesh well with the 2D characters, which makes the visuals in this series rather sloppy. Thankfully, it’s able to make up for that with a downright excellent soundtrack. Not only were many classical pieces played throughout the series, but these pieces really felt like how the characters would play them, rather than a background piece that would just start on cue and sound the same everywhere.

Overall, noitaminA is a timeslot with two faces: post high-school antics and horror, all with some kind of experimental touch (save from Honey and Clover perhaps, but I haven’t seen that one yet). noitaminA is a very charming series about a bunch of conservatory-students. On paper, it’s one of the duller concepts that came from the timeslot, but it makes up for that with a number of downright awesome characters. I can understand why this series happily sat on top of AniDB’s ranking for more than half a year.

Ugh… what a mess. Before watching, I already had a hunch that watching Tsukuyomi Moon Phase wouldn’t be easy, but I decided to have faith in Akiyuki Shinbo, its director. I’ve loved most of his other works so far: Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Pani Poni Dash and Soul Taker were excellent, so there would be a good chance for Tsukuyomi Moon Phase to be good as well, right?

Well, I’d like to thank this series for destroying my faith in Shinbo. While it’s not utter crap, Tsukuyomi Moon Phase is dull, annoying and just not worth it.

Let me start with the good part: character-development. Surprisingly, the part where Shinbo screwed up at Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei is one of the better points in this series. The cast of Tsukuyomi Moon Phase isn’t static, and it changes notably as the show goes on. Unfortunately, all the character-development in the world isn’t going to help if you can’t care about these characters, and that’s the big problem with this series.

Bluntly said, just about half of the cast of this series is incredibly annoying. Hazuki is a whiny brat, Koukei is a lacklustre male lead, Kaoru has the depth of a paper bag, Art is a shallow, dull and predictable main villain, and so on. The interesting characters do try to brighten up the mood a bit, but they’re almost always overshadowed by the dull ones. The central theme in this series, the chemistry between Kouhei and Hazuki (the two main characters) also feels fake. It felt to me like they were arguing for the sake of arguing, rather than that their personalities were clashing.

If that wasn’t enough, I also have my issues with the storytelling. The entire story is full of plot holes – both large and small. According to this series, the best way to clean out an oil-stain in your clothes is to enter a hot spring for a while. The ending also leaves too many things unanswered. Apparently the manga went on after that point, but Shinbo could at least have tried to wrap them up a bit.

Then there are the fights, probably the most blatant part of this series. On paper, it looked good: the combat system combines vampires with Shinto-styled spells and magical seals. The different characters receive a number of interesting powers that are perfect for forming intricate strategies against the enemies. The problem, however, is that for nearly every major fight, these strategies fail and eventually either Hazuki or Kouhei ends up saving the day with some hastily explained convenient godmode-power that basically renders all of these carefully thought-out plans useless. I can understand how a series would want to make its main characters a bit stronger than usual, but the powers that our main couple receives borders the ridiculous and they feel just downright lazy.

But well, at least since this is a Shinbo-series, the art and animation-style at least look great, right? Well, even with that I’ve got problems. The animation style indeed is typical Shinbo, with nice poses and camera-angles, but at the same time it pales in comparison to the visuals of both his previous and his later works: Petit Cosette, Soul Taker, Pani Poni Dash and Zetsubou-Sensei all looked ten times better than what was shown here. The animation for Moon Phase is inconsistent and all over the place: sometimes it’s normal, at other times it’s Shinbo’s typical style and yet at other times it looks like a desperate attempt to save budget. It can’t seem to choose for one proper style.

At least I can be positive about the music: while nothing special, there are a number of very sweet tracks that especially pop up during the climaxes. Overall, though, I just can’t recommend Moon Phase. It has its decent moments, but it never really stands out at anything. It went too far at trying to be “moe” that it rather lost sight of what was really important for this series, so much that I even couldn’t understand what it was trying to achieve in the first place.

Okay, to be honest I decided to watch the first OVA of Tenchi Muyo!, the mother of all harem-anime, more as a fan of Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, rather than expecting anything worthwhile to come out of it. Still, I guess there had to be a reason why this caught on so much in the first place. This six-episoded OVA isn’t perfect, but it does have its enjoyable moments.

Obviously, it remains rather questionable for so many cute girls to move in at the house of the male lead, but at least the creators made sure to create an alien subplot in order to explain where these girls came from, and it’s at least plausible why the most important characters fell in love with this male lead. At the same time, the story about the aliens is also interesting enough to keep the viewer busy, I guess, and at least some effort has been put into it to make it a bit coherent and original (for its time, anyway).

The characters are a mixed bag: like expected, Sasami and Washuu (the short part we see of her anyway) were awesome. Ayeka and Ryo-Ouki were also pretty interesting. Ryoko (the main female lead) is hilarious when she doesn’t take herself serious, though gets rather dull when the comedy’s gone. Mihoshi, however, was just too annoying that what was good for her (how did she become a genius detective with that attitude anyway?) and the main villain Kagato is your stereotypical Norio Wakamoto-voiced bad guy without much depth to him, and his only purpose is to explain where Ryoko came from.

The result is also a rather mixed bag of a series. The first half is really enjoyable, where especially the chemistry between the different characters stands out. Mihoshi, Kagato and Ryoko’s serious side do rather ruin the second half, though. I think the biggest mistake that this series made is the ridiculously stretched out final battle against Kagato. It takes 1,5 episodes (that means 45 minutes) before the bugger finally dies. Especially for an OVA, that’s precious time that could have been so much better spent to develop and flesh out the characters.

Okay, I should be cursing this OVA for spawning and popularizing a genre that lives on seeing who can rip off each other the most, but nonetheless Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ouki is a nicely written story (for the most part at least). It’s got a bunch of well-defined characters (and also a few annoying ones) and there are a few interesting ideas included for the OVa. I’m not sure whether there really is enough material for 78 television-episodes and a truckload of more OVAs and movies, though…