Category: Other:

Hiroshi Watanabe intrigues me. No matter what kind of utter crap he produces, he intrigues me like no other. The guy is a brilliant writer, he has a bizarre sense of humour, and at the same time he can come up with the most terrible and cheesy storylines ever. The guy has also been around for a decade now, and made a wide variety of series, so there has to be someone who sees something in the guy. Call it a guilty pleasure, but there has to be something wrong when I have no problems remembering his name, and yet I can’t recall the name of the director of Noein and Escaflowne at all. As much as I hate to admit it, the big “twists” in Suteki Tantei Labyrinth and Shining Tears x Wind have made a lasting impression on me.

In any case, King of Bandits Jing is typical Hiroshi Watanabe: incredibly cheesy and incredibly creative. You can see it as a canvas for creative ideas, in the sense of “I have an idea and I don’t care how stupid it sounds”. Seriously, you’ll have trouble to find a series with more creativity and originality than this one. Swords that turn out to be keys? Musical train tracks? Grapes of time? Delicious! On top of that, this series can also boast one of the best character-designers out there: Mariko Oka, who also did the character-designs on Jigoku Shoujo and Ghost Hound. The result is a bunch of absolutely beautiful female character-designs.

But yeah, Hiroshi Watanabe’s series have always been a very strange combination of awesomeness and utter crap, and King of Bandits Jing is no exception. The amount of Deus ex Machina that bombard the screen is only surpassed by the second half of Star Ocean Ex (which, you guessed it, was also directed by Hiroshi Watanabe). The series is incredibly formulaic: King of Bandits Jing and his partner Kir (a horny crow) enter a city in order to steal something, meet a cute girl whose name is a reference to heavy liquor, Gir flirts with her, and at the end of the story Jing has saved the day and defeated the villain in the form of an ugly man. In the final arc, Jing and Kir still enter a city in order to steal something, meet a cute girl whose name is a reference to liquor, flirt with her and end up saving the day by defeating the villain in the form of an ugly man (okay, one of these villains is an ugly woman, but she doesn’t count as she looks way too much like a man!!). Gir gets one episode of development, but this development is never used, and Jing never develops at all. No background whatsoever!

The different stories have a huge difference in overall quality. Some are utter crap, others are average, others are entertaining and one or two episodes are utterly amazing. The one thing I love about Hiroshi Watanabe’s works is that you’ll never know when he shows his best side, and King of Bandits Jing is no different. I want to give especially credit to the artist-episode. It stands miles above the other shorts in terms of storytelling, and it was without a doubt the highlight of this series. The ending of the series shows why Hiroshi Watanabe is the absolute king of cheesy plot-twists, but I don’t care, I love this guy’s works, despite the very obvious flaws.

Storytelling:	7/10
Characters:	6/10
Production-Values:	9/10
Setting:	9/10

Next up in the category of “very obscure OVAs from the 80s and 90s” is Karura Mau (or as its full title reads: “Hengeitaimayakou Karuramau! Sendaikokeshienka”, which I’d rather keep abbreviated for rather obvious reasons). It aired back in 1990 as a six-part OVA (there was a movie too, I believe), but my guess is that it never really caught on. Which is a shame, because it’s really good. If you’re looking for horror and know a bit of Japanese (yes, I watched this in raw, so don’t bother asking me where to find subs) then you should check this out.

Before I start this review, I’d like to note one thing about the OVA’s rather questionable promo-art that you can find on sites as AniDB and MyAnimelist, because for the love of god… it’s got absolutely nothing to do with what actually happens here. Where the heck did that overly BL-picture come from anyway, because this is a story about two sisters who work for a shrine. These two guys who appear in the promo-art never appear in this story at all.

Anyway, Karura Mau is a pure, unadulterated horror thriller. At first sight, it may seem that it’ll be a collection of 6 random horror stories, in which our lovely leads exorcise one ghost every episode, but instead this turns out to be a continuous storyline. It’s easy to just stab someone in the hand, or draw some random corpse or goon, but horror really tries to make these scenes have impact, and Karura Mau succeeds really well in this department. It knows exactly that good horrors comes with good characters, and so it makes sure that throughout only 6 episodes, the antagonists are fleshed out and developed really well into sympathetic characters. The result is that this anime gets better and better with every single episode.

Another major plus for Karura Mau is its terrific soundtrack, full of influences from the eighties that manages to create a perfect scary mood. The graphics also look really good for something that’s nearly twenty years old, but I want to give especially credit to the gory scenes and blood. Because this OVA comes from the time of hand-painted cells, the bloody limbs and corpses are drawn in such a way that can’t possibly be mimicked by today’s computerized animation techniques. The budget for this series isn’t stellar, but nevertheless it shows the beauty of hand-painted cells.

Unfortunately, this is yet another one of these anime with the “the manga is so much larger”-syndrome. In Karura Mau, this doesn’t show through the story (it’s pretty standalone and wraps itself up nicely), but through the main characters. It’s obvious that they were developed in another arc than the one of the OVA, and so they pale in comparison to the well-fleshed out antagonists. Especially the two main characters are guilty of this, and the OVA partly assumes the viewer to be familiar with the manga (which, considering the popularity of this OVA, must be even more obscure)

It’s really a pure coincidence that I managed to discover Karura Mau, but as a fan of horror, I’m really glad that I did. It’s another one of those ancient gems that nobody knows about, and it deserves to be subbed or licensed. Its protagonists may feel a bit weird at times, but the antagonists really make up for it.

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

I’ve got to stop dropping these boring-looking series without giving them a chance… looking back at what I wrote on my first impression on this series, I realize what an idiot I’ve been, dropping this series in favour of… Binbou Shimai Monogatari. In any case, if you’re looking for good romance, then look no further, because Bokura ga Ita has lots of it, and then some more.

And what romance it is. The beauty of this series is that it just feels like it’s about a real couple, and throughout the series, they explore all of the common aspects of being a couple: rivalry, understanding and compromising for each other, truthfulness, breaking up and saying goodbye, but the common theme for this series is the fact that love can turn sane people into a bunch of inconsistent idiots; the contrast between common sense and your own feelings, and the 24 episodes do an excellent job of exploring said themes in-depth.

Obviously, the characters in this series are deep. About 50% of this series’ dialogue happens inside the characters’ heads, so at the end of the series, you’ll know exactly what went on in those multi-layered minds of them. They way they evolve throughout the series is also pretty amazing, and you can see the subtle changes that occur in just about everything in this series. The pacing is slow, but every single episode hardly ever loses focus on what’s really important in this series.

Let me place a warning, though, and a very important one. The pacing is incredibly slow, so you obviously don’t want to watch it if you generally like fast-paced series, but there’s one more thing to be aware of: the female lead Nanami Takahashi. She’s by no means a bad character, but the creators made no attempts to make her into something like “the perfect girlfriend”, or something similar. She’s weak, incredibly wishy-washy and hardly ever gets to the point she wants to make. I realize that this is exactly the creators’ intentions, but you do NOT want to watch this series when you’re frustrated, because she’ll just make these frustrations worse.

In terms of the production-values, this is a typical Artland series. The character-designs are very stylish, and the animation is consistent, yet you’ll hardly ever notice it. There are so many EDs that they make any Shaft-productions pale in comparison. I now also understand why Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino’s action-sequences felt so low-budget, because it’s just not something they’re good at, and instead they excel in style and subtlety (something that was plenty available in Il Teatrino as well).

This pretty much is exactly what a pure shoujo romance should be. My only real complaint is the ending, as it’s a bit too open-ended for such a series, but mostly because the manga at that point featured a very interesting plot-twist that was omitted in the anime, and which would have had so much potential if the creators included it in a second season somehow. But then again, then it would look a bit too much like a Makoto Shinkai rip-off, and this way Bokura ga Ita really has its own identity as a series.

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

Watching Persona – Trinity Soul is like walking through a desert, complete with mirages and all, only to end up at an oasis. It’s a supernatural mystery-series, based on the persona-games, and its favourite habit was teasing the heck out of its viewers.

And I’m not kidding when I say that. Despite the fact that this series is full of mecha-like personas, the pacing is sloooooooow. It takes ages for something to actually happen, and when something interesting does happen, a cliff-hanger follows and the next episode acts like nothing happens and starts building up again.

Even after the first half ends, there’s still no sign of a speed-up in the plot, and the pacing even becomes even slower than it already was, as it reveals more and more of the mysteries that lie behind this series. And I must say that the overall plot is definitely interesting; you can see that a lot of imagination went into it. If only the pacing wasn’t so god damn slow.

Another flaw that pops up after the second half is the obligatory background for the main characters. A major problem with them is that these play around with coincidences a bit too much. Seriously, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a character that grew up normally, and didn’t lose his/her parents in some sort of gruesome way.

In other words, as the series went on, my interest in it became pretty low, and I had almost given up hope on it, and then those final five episodes arrived. And it’s exactly here where the quality of this series increases dramatically: the pacing finally kicks in, and everything that the entire series had been building up for finally comes together and delivers a very enjoyable finale that changed my entire opinion of this series.

Overall, I’m not going to recommend this series, but if you’ve started it, then you might as well finish it because of the excellent finale. I think that this series suffered from two major problems: it’s too long and it could have fleshed out its characters a bit more. If this series was just one season long, it would be a total roller-coaster ride, and even if there were only 22 episodes, this series would already have been much more enjoyable due to the lack of quiet parts. The characters can be blamed for these lacklustre quiet parts as well. I don’t mind a slow pacing at all, but if that’s the case, then the creators do need to keep the viewer interested during these quiet parts. I just didn’t feel like I could care about these characters. Persona is a good anime, but it could have been so much better if it weren’t for these small annoying flaws.

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

This review is about the first season of Rozen Maiden. I first came into contact with this franchise through a bit of a strange way: I never watched the first season, but when the second season (Rozen Maiden Traumend) aired, I decided to give it a whirl and watch it. If I recall correctly, I lasted five episode before dropping it, because it just didn’t seem to go anywhere, and the annoying characters weren’t helping much either. To give a small indication of the annoyingness of one of the characters… I think that this video says it all…

In any case, Solaris managed to talk me into giving the series a second chance, and I’m really glad that I did, because the first season made an entirely different impression on me. What I saw of the second season goofed off way too much, but the first season is actually a very focused character-study of a bunch of dolls that came to life, and the humans that they made contact with.

Right from the start, this series knows exactly how to use its limited time of 12 episodes. The story continues to develop, and there’s always something interesting going on. The different subplots flow very smoothly into each other and never feel rushed, and the series ends with good conclusion.

The results of this excellent storytelling can be seen in the characters. Characters that got incredibly on my nerves in Traumend turn into likable and adorable characters, right from the start. The Alice-games, which play a central role in this series, which cause the different dolls to fight each other are interpreted differently by each of the characters. Some become obsessed over perfection, others want to break out of that tradition, others want to win, no matter what and others don’t care about these games at all, and just want to play like a little kid. In the same way, each of the dolls has a different understanding of what the word “doll” means to them. My biggest surprise was that Hina-Ichigo turned out to be more than just an annoying little brat, and how she had a very clear purpose in this series.

Peach-Pit’s adaptations have often been plagued by strange production-decisions (Zombie Loan was good, but way too short, Shugo Chara had the potential, but turned out way too bloody long), but this first season of Rozen Maiden is pretty much without any major flaws. The graphics also look pleasing, and although I fully agree that the ALI project should stop making all these OPs and EDs that sound way too much like each other, I do admit that their work on Rozen Maiden’s OP is their best one. The rest of the soundtrack is also pretty much awesome, which all results in a really worthwhile series. Now, I hope that the second season is going to turn out better than what I remember of it.

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