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Amatsuki Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Amatsuki, Anime Reviews


I really like Studio Deen. Sure, they may screw up their series very often, but when they hit a classic, they really deliver an amazing series. Their newest series to add to that list is Amatsuki, with the interesting thing being that even after watching it I’m still not 100% sure why I liked it so much.

For starters, Amatsuki combines history, science fiction and fantasy with each other when the main character (Tokidoki) gets sucked into a virtual world, which ends up being the ayakashi-infested feudal Japan. At first sight, it’s not the most original premise, but it’s the execution that makes this series unique.

The dialogue in this anime is absolutely amazing. They’re really deep and detailed, and you can see that a lot of time has been put into them. It’s no wonder that this series shares a director with Le Chevalier d’Eon. These characters could start talking about watching paint dry and still make it come across as interesting.

On top of that, this series also has an excellent sense of storytelling. It carefully builds up everything that you need to know for this series (again with that excellent dialogue), and there have been so many subtle details added that makes this series come alive.

Then there’s also a very complex storyline. This series really likes to make the boundaries between good and evil as fuzzy and complex as possible: every character has some kind of secret agenda or own goal. Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy, and vice versa. Because of this, this series is especially in its element when many characters are together at the sane place: there’s so much going on at the same time.

Obviously, this series’ main selling point is talking, so don’t even dare to come near this series if you’re expecting Naruto and Bleach-esque fights. Sure, there is some action in this series, but it often gets overshadowed by said dialogue. That’s not to say that the fights are bad, though. It’s quite the contrary: fights are brutal, they come out of nowhere in a light-hearted mood and progress to mercilessly beat down the characters, with large amount of blood.

This also isn’t a series that you can watch to relax. You need to constantly pay attention in order to catch all the subtle details and nuances to get the most out of this series, even though the overall pacing in this series is similar to that of .Hack//Sign (in other words: sloooow).

Whether or not you’ll like the graphics is a very personal thing. Studio Deen has always been a fan of brightly coloured and frilly character-designs. The same goes in Amatsuki: everything looks very stylish, but it’s just a matter of personal preferences. The soundtrack is an excellent one, though, although a few tracks may have been played a bit too much.

Overall, I recommend Amatsuki to those with patience. It’s a wonderfully written first half of a series that’ll be continued… some day. It’s very stylish, with a unique sense of storytelling and a complex storyline. Another outstanding series by Studio Deen.

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

Toshokan Sensou Review – 72,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Nearly all of the Noitamina-series have been either horror or post high-school slice-of-life dramas. So when I found out that the next instalment planned to focus on politics and action, I was thrilled to see how Production IG would tackle this series. Unfortunately, I got my hopes up too high and Toshokan Sensou ended up being my least favourite Noitamina-series since Jyu Oh Sei. Such a shame.

There was really some potential behind the concept: in the near future, books will become heavily censored by an evil organization, and this series follows a library corps who have been given the authority to use military actions in order to protect the books. It was an interesting opportunity to watch a war-series that was heavily bound by political rules for its battles. You don’t see that often in anime where most wars are just of the nature of “shoot the enemy before they shoot you”.

Unfortunately, the downfall of this series was its short length. In the end, this series feels just like a fired shotgun shell: this series wants to stuff way too much in just twelve episodes: there’s action, there’s drama, there’s comedy, there’s romance, there’s stealth, there’s a coming of age-theme, there are both large and small-scale politics, there is philosophy (the role of books in today’s society), there’s angst, there’s political intrigue, there’s sensation… there is no way to fit that in just one season.

As a result, everything ends up just half-baked, since this series tries to focus on every single one of these themes. Therefore, it has no chance to go in-depth into any of these things. The two elements that ended up best in the end were the action and the romance: whenever the focus is on one of these, this series delivers. However, when things turn to angst, sensation or politics, prepare to roll your eyes: they’re incomplete as hell, pointless and without them, this series would have been so much better.

Thankfully, this remains Production IG, so at least the production-values are pretty good. The art style is pretty interesting, where the line-art differs in thickness whenever a character is featured in a close-up. Everything is bright and colourful, and the soundtrack is pretty solid as well.

It seems that whenever I have major expectations from a Noitamina-series, it ends up disappointing somehow, so for the next instalment (Antique Bakery), I’m not going to expect anything, even though it’s going to be animated by the godly Nippon Animation. It’s going to be a dull yaoi-show aimed at fangirls, period. Toshokan Sensou would have been so much better if the plot actually went anywhere, but in the end it’s just a half-baked series. It’s without a doubt a varied series: if you’re bored during one episode, you don’t need to worry because the next episode will deal with something entirely different, but it never really tries to be anything of substance. This is one of the reasons why I usually prefer 24-episode series over 12-episode ones.

Storytelling: 6/10
Characters: 7/10
Production-Values: 8/10
Setting: 8/10

xxxHolic: Kei Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, xxxHolic


xxxHolic Kei is the second season of the anime-adaptation of Clamp’s manga about modern Japanese folklore. In contrast to its predecessor, there are only 13 episodes, but to make up for it, the creators have put into these episodes the rumoured best chapters in the manga. The result is a second season that surpasses its first season in quite a few areas; not only in terms of manga, but also the anime staff learned some new tricks.

Without a doubt, the highlights of the second season are the first three and the final three episodes. Both contain rock-solid chapters, where the main characters Watanuki, Doumeki and Himawari (who have already been fleshed out really well by the first 24 episodes of the first season) really come together and get some major character development. The final episode is surprisingly light-hearted, but it does provide a perfect closure for the series.

The rest of the series is filled with stories, more reminiscent of the first season. They range from Yuuko, teasing Watanuki for the umpth time to some really effective standalone horror-stories. What’s interesting is how compared to the first season, the creators make use of much, much more foreshadowing. The stories in the first season always didn’t feel like a part of a whole, and this is fixed really nicely by the second season, which constantly drops hints and characters of stories that are still to come, which brings an interesting sort of unity to a series that consists out of random stories.

The animation has also improved a lot. You can see that the creators got a bigger budget for the second season, which makes especially Watanuki’s ramblings into some great visual comedy. Unfortunately, the animation dulls a bit in the less important episodes. The creators made good use of their CG to support the supernatural aspects of this series, and also the sound department is better than ever, although some tracks may have been played a few too many times.

Unfortunately, I can’t call the second season better than the first season. There’s something that holds it back from doing this, and it’s not just the length. In the second half of the series, there’s one particular multi-episode arc that breaks the flow of this series: the Kohane-arc. The only purpose of this arc is to show a mistreated little girl, and nothing else. Nothing really new gets introduced, and the way this girl gets abused despite her awesome powers have a good chance of breaking your suspense of disbelief. Especially for a 13 episode-series, if two episodes disappoint, it will be much more noticeable than if there were 24 episodes.

Still, xxxHolic Kei definitely carries the highlights of xxxHolic. It’s less consistent than the first season, due to the disappointing Kohane-arc, but to make up for that, it features the Spider Queen and Himawari-arc, along with a number of successful standalone episodes. The art has become better, and the characters also make use of the time that was spent on fleshing them out, so this series has been just as enjoyable as the first season for me.

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

Some thoughts about anime rating systems

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

I must thank everyone for replying on the reader survey, because I got a lot of interesting feedback. I’ll try to consider some of the things you suggested, but what caught my attention the most is the criticism for my rating-system. In a way, I agree. Most of the times, I don’t see the difference between 83/100 and 84/100, so it would be near-impossible to try and explain this.

The things these guys have said on the matter got me thinking about the right rating system for Star Crossed. This guy has a point as well: why waste so many different ratings on the bad shows? Why should one have so many room to differentiate all the different kinds of badness?

I don’t think that there’s one universal kind of rating scheme, it all depends on the reviewer. In my case, I’m in my element when I can praise a series to heavens, and while it’s fun once in a while to bash bad shows, I’d much rather spend time on the good stuff. Then I took a look at my list of reviews, and noticed that I already split up the series into basic categories, and wondered if I somehow could combine some sort of ambiguous star-like rating with this:

“100-94: A masterpiece, the best of the best
93-90: Outstanding series, with perhaps one or two small flaws here and there
89-87: Excellent series, definitely worth a watch
86-83: Great series, really enjoyable to watch.
82-77: Good, but could have been better
76-72: Has some great points, but significant flaws are holding this series back
71-65: An average series with one or two great parts
64-56: Mediocre series, not really worth your time
55-40: Bad series, stay away from these
<39: Painful, garbage, crap, etc”

I’ve never been that much of a fan of the 5 star-rating, for some strange reason. I’ve tried a few times, but they never really express what I want to: 5 different kinds of options do feel like to little, and if I include those half-stars, I’m with the problem again that the lowest categories will hardly be used. In fact, why do we always need to use a rating system with a number of options that can be divided through 5 or even 10? Why not something like… seven? So:

✩✩✩✩✩✩✩: A Masterpiece
✩✩✩✩✩✩: Outstanding
✩✩✩✩✩: Excellent
✩✩✩✩: Great
✩✩✩: Good
✩✩: Decent
✩: Mediocre

And the bad series just get a category with no stars at all. I mean, both Lucky Star and Shining Tears were unwatchable, and I can’t see why you’d want to differentiate between the two, if I’m not going to recommend it anyway. I’d much rather have a detailed distinction between the good series. And my current scoring would be relatively easy to change into this system.

The next idea was splitting these ratings up in different parts, to differentiate on what makes a series good. I refrained from doing this, mostly because I don’t agree with the standard system that review-sites as and Myanimelist are having. They make it seem like good animation and music together have just as much weight as a good story and characters, while I’m personally much more interested in storytelling. It’s no use to add in extra categories, because that’ll just end up cluttered. After a bit of thinking, I came up with the following areas that I find important:

– Storytelling (you can have a magnificent story in your head, but if it isn’t told well, it’s worthless)
– Characters (do the characters connect? Are they fleshed out and developed well enough?)
– Production-Values (thanks Autonomous Monster; this is basically a combination between graphics and music. In other words, a series with a high rating in this category is a proverbial feast for the senses)
– Setting (In other words: how much time has been put into designing the setting, and keep it consistent? How complex is the setting, and does the storyline make full use of this?)

I’ll call it the SCPS Rating system for now. For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try and experiment a bit with this system. I’ll still continue to give out numerical ratings, in case this was a bad idea, but for each review I’ll give out a star-rating for each of these four categories, along with an overall one and see how things go. If it works well, I might dish out these star-ratings for individual episodes as well.

Reader Survey

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Now that the summer holidays have begun (well, for me, at least), I found it a good time to start wondering whether Star Crossed can be improved somehow. It’s been ages since I changed something on this blog, and I’ve basically been using the same blogging format for two years now. This is why it seemed an interesting idea to run some sort of reader survey. Perhaps some nice idea will come from it. Let me start with the following question: which part of Star Crossed do you like best?

free polls Which part of Star Crossed do you like best?
Episode Posts
Series Reviews
Quick First Impressions
Monthly Summaries
Season Previews


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I’d also like to ask a number of questions, for which you can leave the answers in the comments:

1). What do you think of the amount of series I’m blogging at the moment? Is it too large, too small, just about right? Are there too many popular series?

2). Those who’ve looked at the archives probably noticed the huge amount of dead or botched-up pictures. Three image-hosts after each other turned against me, causing me to lose more than a year’s worth of screenshots. I’m currently slowly trying to re-upload these pictures, but how important is it to have these pictures back online again?

3). Is there something about Star Crossed that you’re missing? Is there a feature you’d like to request? Is there something about Star Crossed that you don’t like?

4). Regular commenters know that I’m not someone who replies to every single comment that gets posted on this site. I read every single one that gets posted, but I only reply if I feel inspired. Do I need to reply to every single comment? (apart from the ones like “where can I find subs of show X”, perhaps?)

5). Is there something else you’d like to add, but which I forgot to add to this survey?

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to this. 🙂

Crystal Blaze Review – 89/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Crystal Blaze


Some great anime have a very detailed art-style with absolutely gorgeous animation. Others have a smashing soundtrack, performed by a famous composer. Others hired a cast of well-known voice-actors to perform on their characters. Again others put a lot of attention to their dialogue to make this as deep and thought provoking as possible. And more others don’t have any of this and just want to tell a good story. And that’s where Crystal Blaze belongs: an excellent anime on a low budget and the dark horse of the past spring-season.

The production-values are nothing to write home about. The animation is simple, the CG is obvious and not integrated and it doesn’t have a big animation-company working behind it (after all, Studio Fantasia’s reputation is rather questionable). And still, it makes up for everything through its amazing storytelling. The story itself is not very complex, but the way it’s told makes it something special. Throughout 12 episodes, not even one scene was wasted. Every episode continues to develop both the characters and the plot, ending in a very satisfying climax. There are no plot-holes whatsoever, everything gets closed off nicely, there are no stereotypes. For a fan of storytelling such as myself, this series was pure gold.

You should be aware of one thing if you want to watch this series, though. This series became the dark horse of this season for a reason. There’s one particular character which will turn off a lot of viewers: Manami. This is supposed to be a tale about adults, but she’s one of the very few teenagers in it, and she very easily gets on your nerves. She’s not a bad character by any means, and her weaknesses are used well, but the fact remains that the combination of an annoying voice and her continuous whining make her a very hard to like character. Thankfully, she gets less annoying as the series goes on.

Speaking of voice-acting, this is the second series along with Kurenai that did something interesting with its voice-actors. I can’t exactly pinpoint to what it was that the creators did, but conversations end up sounding much more like ordinary conversations instead of coming from a recording-studio.

All in all, Crystal Blaze turned out to be among my favourites this season, due to its great cast and awesome storytelling. This is exactly what a twelve-episode series needs to be, and I hope to see more non-fanservice series from Studio Fantasia in the future!

Kishin Taisen Gigantic Formula – 73/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Spring 2007 was a big year for the epic mecha-series. There were plenty of huge-scale battles between mechas, space-ships and other sorts of futuristic technology, ranging from amazing (Toward the Terra, Bokura no), to the entertaining (Gurren Lagann, Heroic Age) to the downright cheesy (Kiss Dum). Among them was a series with a premise that could give Code Geass a run for its money in terms of political incorrectness:

Far into the future, twelve of the major countries enter a battle royale: every one has one overpowered mecha, and the goal is to be the last one standing, and be the country to rule the world. Whoop-dee-doo… guess which two countries will end up being the only two left? This series is way too full of nationalistic messages like “Japan rocks!”. This of course isn’t really the message that an international medium like anime should have.

Credit has to be given for the creators in their attempt to solve the language barrier in such an international series, but even that turns into a disaster once the characters start talking horrible Engrish. So indeed, in the final episodes, the creators just turn to universal translators in order to solve this problem. Eventually, they give up completely and make supposed English people talk Japanese without any reason whatsoever.

The saving grace for this series, however, is its characterization. Gigantic Formula would have been a total train-wreck if it wasn’t for the characters. Every single pilot of the mecha of each different country gets sufficient attention and development, in a way that surprisingly goes beyond all stereotypes. Every pilot has his or her own problems, and the creators do a really good job of making the viewer empathize with them, despite the ridiculous premise of the story. My personal favourite was the episode about the Venezuelans. At that point, I was actually willing to call this series a success…

Unfortunately, these thoughts got completely bashed into the ground by the ending. To be blunt: the final climax of this series is utter crap. Even compared to other series with disappointing endings, this ending was just bad. It forsakes nearly everything that the series has built up for, it descends into a boring cheese-fest with overmoralistic views that were most likely pasted together at the last minute. I guess I should have known that there was no way to get a satisfying climax out of such a premise as this…

I’m not sure who to recommend this series to. It’s obviously got a number of good points, especially around the middle when the nationalistic messages weren’t so god damn obvious, but at the same time it’s got an equal amount of bad or downright painful points. Even if you want cheese, you can better check out Kiss Dum. I guess that this is one for the mecha-fans, because it does have mecha-designs, coming from 14 different famous mecha-designers.

Some quick first impressions: Hoshi no Umi no Amuri, Candy Boy and Chocolate Underground

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hoshi no Umi no Amuri

Well… it certainly is original. I’m really not sure what to think about this series. It’s definitely better than I expected: I expected another one of those cheap fanservice OVAs like Koharu Biyori or Ryofuko-chan, and what I got was… well… I’m not even sure what I got. The best thing to compare this series with is a very strange acid-trip that’s gotten way out of hand. Throughout the 30 minutes of airtime, the creators toss all kinds of flashy graphics at your face, they literally bounce from one strange thing to another (including what’s probably the most bizarre parody of Dragon Ball Z EVER). I’m still not sure what the point of the plot was supposed to be, but I guess that this is one of those anime as art OVAS. I must say that I admire the creativity, but the huge wtf-factor of Hoshi no Umi no Amuri DOES REMAIN.

Candy Boy

Oh my god, I am SO late with this anime. It’s good to see another yuri-series again, they’ve been painfully absent since El Cazador and Blue Drop. Candy Boy is another one of those very short series (episodes are only 12 minutes long and there seem to be only 7 episodes in total…), but it’s focused and rather charming, especially when the two main characters are together. There’s a very annoying side-character, though. Whenever she pops up, she breaks the flow of this series with her endless rambling. I feel that Candy Boy could have been better if it just left out this character, especially considering the length.

Chocolate Underground

This is one of those “What if”-series. It asks the question: what if the government massively banned all sorts of chocolate. It does make sense in a strange kind of way. Kids these days keep getting fatter due to lazy parents and the overabundance of sweets, so it would be interesting to see what would happen… but that giant robot really came from nowhere. With five minutes per episode, this series also is criminally short, so I wonder whether it’ll really be able to go into the depths of its topic. Still, it’s fun to watch (especially seeing those government people tease the hell out of these children).

Some quick first impressions: Gosenzosama Banbanzai, Ikkitousen – Great Guardians and Telepathy Shoujo Ran

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Telepathy Shoujo Ran

Gosenzosama Banbanzai

Yeah, I know that this ova is already two decades old, but I just had to mention it. Liam recommended it to me, and after watching it, I have to agree that this one’s brilliant! I think the only thing you need to know about it is that it’s basically Mamoru Oshii’s attempt at comedy. Despite its age, this OVA was still a breath of fresh air. If you liked Mamoru’s work on Twilight Q, then you’ll love Gosenzosama. The entire thing feels like it’s being performed inside a theatre, rather than a cinema. Combined with a smashing soundtrack from Kawai Kenji, Gosenzosama is an excellent recommendation if you’re looking for an OVA that’s something different.

Ikkitousen – Great Guardians

There’s a fine line between a bit of innocent fanservice here and there and tasteless fanservice meant to milk money from otaku. Ikkitousen crossed this line and then kept going for forty more miles before it realized the concept of “brakes”. I admit, the soundtrack has some good tracks among it and the story about the Chinese mythology is at least interesting enough, but the characters ruin any trace of potential in this series. Scenarios are written way too obvious, the yuri lacks a lot of subtlety and ends up as just plain old fanboy-bait, and I’ve lost count as to how much time I wanted to punch Hakufu, her mother, the blue-haired girl, etc etc in the face for being so god damn annoying. I’m not a big fan of fanservice, but if it has to be included, it should be inserted into the story, not the other way around. What surprises me the most is the huge amount of fansubs this series is getting: six groups have already released the first episode after it aired. I mean, what?!

Telepathy Shoujo Ran

The first thing that catches attention is the unusual art style: there’s a stark contrast between the very simple character-designs and the rich and colourful background art, and the result works pretty well. Overall, I must say I’m impressed so far. This series is like a cross between Kamichu and Kaze no Shoujo Emily: it’s got the heart-warming slice-of-life feel of the former, and this episode already showed the powerful drama of the latter. Especially the slice-of-life parts in this episode were really nicely done, and they’ll probably form a good base for this series to work with. I did fear a bit when this series suddenly introduced the pretty transfer-student (a way too overused cliché, IMO), but I’m glad to see that this isn’t one of these series where the powers of the main characters are kept secret.

Druaga no Tou ~The Aegis of Uruk~ Review – 86/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Fantasy Game adaptations have always been a rather notorious genre, due to the huge amount of lazy productions. These series seem to think that “fantasy” means “lack of realism”, and where the end result is almost always an uninspired story about a young swordsman travelling from A to B, saving the world and getting the girl. There are two animation-companies who have managed to break this tradition: Bee-train and Gonzo. Even though .Hack//Roots and .Hack//Dusk were rather questionable, Bee-train did produce .Hack//Sign, which looked more at the philosophy-part of gaming, and the charming adventure story Popolocrois. Then Gonzo came and delivered the hilarious MMORPG-parody Master of Epic, and with Druaga no Tou (or the Tower of Druaga) they did it again.

Druaga no Tou is based on an arcade-game from the eighties. It follows a band of questionable heroes as they try to climb a tower to save the world, but that’s where the generic stuff ends. Finally there’s another series that’s put a bit of thought into its setting, and a lot of ideas went into it to keep things interesting. I especially liked the magician who fights with golf-clubs.

The real charm of this series, however, is that it knows exactly how much it should take itself seriously. It’s not entirely silly, because you can never get a good story out of it, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously at times, which helps swallow the fact that this remains a story about a young inexperienced male on his first adventure. There are a few hilarious episode that successfully parody and homage a number of classic games, but there are enough episodes that focus on the more realistic side of the setting, and Jil (the male lead) is constantly reminded that he’s just an inexperienced attention-seeker, both by the other characters and by the story itself.

When compared to other similar series, Druaga no Tou did a pretty good job, but the fact remains that it’s a miracle that the main party survived, considering that they all were just inexperienced, especially considering the huge amount of people who failed to do the things that they did.

Gonzo had been quite pathetic ever since Bokura no ended, with their only contributions to the past Autumn and Winter season being the crappy Dragonaut and Rosario to Vampire. Special A also went nowhere, and Blassreiter still misses something because it keeps focusing too much on emo, but Druaga no Tou really delivered once it caught steam. I’m glad to see that 2009 will see a second season, because there’s enough left for this series to play with, and with a bit of luck the characters will really warm up and develop significantly there.