Shion no Ou
Okay, so here’s one that’ll never get licensed: the creators assumed that the viewers know the basic rules of Shougi, which isn’t really the case for most western viewers, now is it? Still, this series rocks, despite this, and it actually motivated me enough to learn more about the game in order to understand it better. I’ve said this before, but I really like Studio Deen, in the way that they’ve got an eye for great concepts, and there is a chance they’ve struck gold here. The murders only turned out to be a very small part of all the mysteries surrounding this series, and I’m so going to watch this.
Koharu Biyori
The OVA-format can be great for those stories that are too short for their own series, yet have the potential to turn into excellent stories. And then came Koharu Biyori where a perverted teenager buys himself a maid-robot and puts her in different dresses. Seriously, this is just one big excuse for fanservice; it’s especially obvious when a big octopus appears from out of nowhere. I admit, there were some funny moments here and there, like the selfish-joke, but that’s nowhere near enough to make up for the shallow plot, bad writing and nature to milk money out of the perverted otaku.
Ghost Hound
For me, this was the big title for the fall-season for me, and so far it doesn’t disappoint. It’s nothing amazing yet, though, but that’s because this clearly was an introduction-episode, with the purpose of giving the viewer a small taste of the different characters and the setting. One of the interesting things about this episode is how the creators managed to make a male main character of about fourteen years old who actually doesn’t feel annoying. I also like how his sister died, when both of them were kidnapped when they were young: it shows great promise for the future episodes. The graphics also look awesome, but what else do you expect when the character-designer of Jigoku Shoujo and Production-IG team up together? The voice-acting is also quite good and realistic; this is going to be a major series once the plot really gets fired off.]]>
Category: Other:
Umi ga Kikoeru Review – 83/100
And I’m finally back with my movie reviews, and next up are going to be the Ghibli-movies. I’m not sure whether they’re going to be as frequent as before, due to my studies and all, but I’ll try to do one whenever I have a quiet day. Anyway, the first on the list is Umi ga Kikoeru, or better known to the English community as Ocean Waves. It’s a high-school romance, and while it may not be the most original genre, it does show that with quality-writing, any concept can turn out worthwhile.
With the start of the new season, I’ve been thrown to death by all the new high-school romances that came out, but still Ocean Waves turned into an enjoyable and relaxing anime for me. The degree of realism really helps: yes, it is a love-triangle, but the events flow well and don’t feel forced. The characters are developed well, they’ve all got sufficient background and make perfect use of the couple-of-years-long time-skip that takes place near the end of the movie (the latter was the real highlight for the movie for me). In the end, I found myself really caring about the three main characters, and I doubt to be the only one who did.
Still, don’t go for this movie if you want an exciting storyline. The pacing for Ocean Waves is really slow, and it should be used to relax, not to be blown away by. It’s not the best movie ever because of it, but it’s good at what it does.
I’ve also noticed that I tend to spend very little attention to production-values in my latest reviews, so I’m going to force myself here to write a whole paragraph about them. For a movie dating from 1993, the art looks really crisp and clean. The character-designs are simple, but they look very pleasing to the eye, with a degree of realism that all harems nowadays don’t even care about. It gives the movie a nice, down-to-earth feeling. The animation is detailed, but it’s a bit too simple and static for a Ghibli-movie. The background music is also well-chosen, albeit unspectacular.]]>
Some quick first impressions: Hero Tales, Maple Story and Moyashimon
Hero Tales
Oh god… so much wasted potential. I actually liked some parts of the episode: the setting is developed well enough, there’s a fair amount of interesting characters, the tone of the series is quite dark and the storytelling was quite decent. And then it had to ruin everything at the end when the main character powered up in order to protect his love one. All the testostherone-filled pubescent males will love this, it could even be the next Bleach if it goes on for long enough, though I really don’t like how the main character is the “legendary strong guy who is destined to wield the supersword of awesomeness”. It’s a shame, though: the potential’s there, but the main character looks like he’s going to ruin everything in this series.
Maple Story
Okay, so this turned into a show, aimed at children. Still, it’s not that bad. The character-designs are simple and even the different monsters are drawn rather cute, instead of scary. I like the style of things so far, and it’s fun enough to keep watching. The male main character is also enjoyable to watch, even though his ideals are a bit cheesy. Still, it’s obvious that not many people are going to give this series a chance. I’ve already seen people label this one as the worst show of the series, though I’ve really seen much worse shows this season. I think it’s the lack of any sexy females in skimpy clothing, if this series had female fanservice people would probably check it out… ironically enough.
Moyashimon
I mean, was there any way for this series not to turn out worthwhile? ^^; There’s a very good chance we’ve got ourselves the funniest series of the season here. For Moyashimon, I actually have some faith that it’ll have enough material to remain funny for a full series, not to mention that the premise of a university-student who can see bacteria has so much potential. I also love how we sometimes get to see the reactions of random bystanders to the things that happen. There are a few flaws here and there (the outfit of the only female member of the cast is one of the biggest examples of this), but I have no idea why nobody in the blogging-community has said anything about this series so far. Is the concept of talking bacteria that outrageous?]]>
Oh god…
Some quick first impressions: Rental Magica, Minami-ke and Prism Ark
Rental Magica
Okay, so this one turned into the shounen-version of Ghost Hunt, with slightly less-impressive production-values. Unfortunately, this one screwed up in a lot of areas, and the characters are nowhere as interesting as with Ghost Hunt. For starters, the director likes action way too much, and the action-scenes themselves aren’t impressive at all: it’s just the characters who launch their powers at the enemy until it goes down. Second of all, this series takes up too little time to build up. It’s like, five minutes of backstory until the action starts again, and the case for this episode was resolved a tad too easy for my tastes. To continue, this may not be a harem, but it’s got way too many harem-elements, and the main character does get surrounded by a bunch of cute and strong girls, among which are a few stereotypes like the energetic sister and the blonde American (seriously, since when are all Americans blond?). He himself takes up all the glory during the fights, and ends up fainting afterwards like the hero he is. I mean, I like the premise, but the execution feels rather meh to me. I doubt whether I’ll continue watching this one.
Minami-ke
After Mokke, this is the second slice-of-life series that focuses on sisters living together this season. So far, I’m more impressed at the former, but that doesn’t mean that Minami-ke is bad. This episode started out with a nice enough first episode, with some interesting banter between the different characters, even though you can probably guess their personalities by just looking at them on the promo-art. The animation is quite good for this series, and there are some interesting camera-angles used in this episode. I think that the success of this series will depend on whether it can remain fresh for thirteen episodes (I assume that that’s going to be the length, don’t take my word on it), and the characters will grow a bit instead of repeating their quirks infinitely.
Prism Arc
I’m a fan of fantasy-series, and Seirei no Moribito showed me that the more one of these series makes its setting believable, the better of a chance it has to become really good. While this is rather subjective for everyone, I do have to say that magic SHOULD NOT BE used to give a bunch of teenagers a cheap excuse to become stronger than any other adult with years more of experience. Seriously, this flaw can’t become more apparent in Prism Ark: the entire cast of strongest fighters in the country consists out of sexy females with a few males here and there, all around the ages of twelve to fifteen. Also, when the map of the world this show is set in is show: pay attention: it’s basically a very screwed up map of Europe, with the names of a few countries altered. This leads to hilarious names as the “Untied Kingdom”, “Russiasn”, “Speen” and “Poleland”. I have no idea whether this was intentional or not, but the fact remains that it’s not looking good for this series. ^^;]]>
Nanatsuiro Drops Review – 71/100
The past Spring- and Summer-season came with many unique and original series. Okay, so this wasn’t one of them, but at least it’s worth watching, as it’s one of the very few dating-series that I’ve actually found watchable. It’s nothing special, but it’s a great choice if you need something to relax to. The entire series consists out of bright colours with lots of sparkles and it’s combined with quiet tunes, to create an almost modern fairy-tale like mood.
Seriously, I didn’t really expect anything when I started this, but I had some extra time so I stuck with it. To my surprise, the thing that really made this anime watchable was the love-relationship between the two main characters. It’s cheesy, it’s not exactly original, though it is very sweet and cute. The side-characters also avoid introducing useless love-triangles, and actually end up supporting the couple, which turns out very nicely after a few episodes.
But yeah, any attempt on a serious storyline backfires horribly for this series. I know it’s a nice attempt and all, but the plot twists are just so incredibly shallow, convenient and predictable that it becomes annoying. One example is how the main female character can cast spells nobody in ten years managed to conjure, just because her mother was talented, and there are more of these kinds of jarring plot-twists. You also need to watch out for the female lead for another reason: she’s either incredibly cute, or incredibly whiny and obnoxious, which is exceptionally jarring in the first half of this series.
So, yeah, this is nowhere near an excellent series that’ll blow you away. Dating-sim and hentai-game-adaptations have never really been known for their depth. It is, however, not the failure I originally thought this would be, and a nice enough relaxing series.]]>
Some quick first impressions: ef – a tale of memories, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 and Kimikiss Pure Rouge
ef – a tale of memories
The characters are a major flaw in this series: they all belong in random harems and every one of them has a personality that’s been done to death by now: Wimpy male, cold male, optimistic male, fragile female, clumsy and impulsive female, annoying sister female and of course the tsundere-female. Thankfully, the story and especially storytelling make up for this. The director clearly borrows influences from Shinbo (Soultaker, Pani Poni Dash, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei), there are actually multiple couples, and this series has got an excellent narrative structure, probably because Makoto Shinkai had some influence in this series. The different people may have fallen in love a bit too easily, though if you ignore this, the dialogue was pretty nice and works pretty nicely with the Shinbo-influences. While the characters are most definitely clichéd, the storyline isn’t. I’m just a bit disappointed that the excellent music you can hear on the main website didn’t come back in this episode.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00
This series probably got the most hate-reactions prior to its release, due to it being part of Sunrise’s plot of milking out franchises. While I admit that milking out the Mai Hime-franchise was a really bad idea, I don’t have the same opinion of Gundam yet, but that may be because the only Gundam-series I’ve seen so far is Gundam Wing. In any case, the first episode was pretty decent. I like the background music, and the story is full of potential. Still, this series made one classic mistake: placing teenagers in the centre of adult struggles. While it’s not as extreme as in other series, it can form a potential hazard for this series. It’s generally lacking in realism in more areas than this: the weightlessness was a nice idea, but if humans stay in weightless space for too long, their bones and bodies will suffer from the lack of pressure. I wish some explanation went to that area. Also, I expected the animation-department to have gotten a rather big budget, but yet all the important characters in their series can be recognized because their hairstyles stand apart when compared to the random generics. Ah well, what this series needs to focus on is not to fall down the same path of Code Geass, which was way too much aimed at fanboys and fangirls in my opinion.
Kimikiss Pure Rouge
I expected nothing of this series with such a title and premise. And fair enough, the very first scene starts with the umpth transfer-student of the season. Imagine my surprise when I actually ended up chuckling as the episode went on, even though it was for the wrong reasons. The plot-twists are so obvious that they become laughable: subtlety is so not this series’s strongest point, but at least it’s not the bore-fest I expected it to be. I wonder how long it will remain funny though, and I’ll probably end up dropping this when I need to lose a few series, simply because the amount of high-school series this season is huge enough already, and I’ve seen so many better series in this season. The character-designs also have a few issues here and there: they look well enough for a hentai-game adaptation, though the eyes of the characters are a bit too far apart. It makes the characters of this series look rather dumb (just take a look at the screenshot).]]>
Some quick first impressions: Clannad, Shakugan no Shana II and Shugo Chara
Clannad
Wow, never thought that I’d see a major anime air at a 4:3-resolution these days. Ah well, it’s not like it’s bad: it worked great in xxxHolic. Anyway, about Clannad: it turned out better than expected. There are a number of flaws, but it’s also got a few enjoyable points. The cast of characters is quite huge. I’ve heard that the storyline for Clannad is more twice the length of Kanon, so I can imagine that this series could go on for 39 or perhaps even 52 episodes. About half of the cast is original, with the other half being stereotypes. I especially disliked the uber-strong girl who somehow beat tons of punks at the same time, the rugby-team, the clumsy class-president and her sister. I especially liked the male lead: my major problem with the male lead of Kanon was the fact that he was just too bipolar, and luckily Kyoani realized this and fixed it Clannad. There was quite a bit of foreshadowing in this episode, and it sounds interesting enough so far. The animation is quite good, though the character-designs still look unappealing. Ah well, at least they’re an improvement when compared to Kanon. I’m not getting optimistic about this series yet, though. Two of Kyoani’s previous series also had some great first episodes (Lucky Star, Haruhi), but turned into disappointments quite fast.
Shakugan no Shana II
Yup, the characters are as annoying as I remember them to be. Their intelligence also didn’t really progress much since the first season. They never even question why the antagonist laughed as she went down, and Yuuji doesn’t even notice how Shana tries to avoid answering an embarrassing question. Not such a good start, isn’t it? The music did change, though, I especially like that eye-catch in a comical way. I really doubt whether this season will avoid the pitfalls of the previous one, I mean what the heck happened to the plan of Yuuji, moving away from the city? He’s still being targeted, so that would indeed be the best course of action. I really want to believe that he’s actually going to travel along with Shana at one point, but something tells me that that plan was just a temporarily plot-device to give Yuuji a bit of background.
Shugo Chara
Ah, thank goodness. I’m a big fan of Mahou Shoujo, but ever since the Winter-Season, they’ve been really meager: Precure5 was too full of clichés, Kamichama Karin had production-issues and Nanatsuiro Drops ruined itself with its dramatic storyline. Shugo Chara doesn’t disappoint at all, and I’m glad to finally see another good series of this genre. The setting is overly elegant, with a castle-like school, and let’s not forget the guy with cat-ears, but it gives off a nice style. I especially like the main character, who is already shaping up to becoming a growing and versatile character. The art and music also are pretty charming. There’s only one bad point: the horrible Engrish. I’m not sure why anime try to use Engrish to sound cool, because it doesn’t work at all. Still, this is a series to keep an eye out for. :)]]>
Heroic Age Review – 73/100
Heroic Age has definitely been the show with one of the most ambitious premises of the past season. While other series have dealt with the fate of the universe before, no other series does it with such a massive scale, no other series has armies as massive as with Heroic Age, and no other series has characters as powerful as some of the ones we see in here. This truly is a space-epic. The story tells of a Golden Tribe which once existed in this universe. They had the power to foresee the past and the future, they could create planets and stars, and sent out a message to the different tribes and races that populated the galaxy. Three races responded: the Silver Tribe, the Bronze Tribe and the Heroic Tribe. Then, as the Golden Tribe was about to leave the galaxy, a fourth tribe responded: humans, or the Iron Tribe.
Well, it was a nice idea. The creators got a bit too enthusiastic, and shot themselves in the foot. The major part of the plot doesn’t go anywhere, and consists out of overblown fights that take up several episodes at the time, yet resolve nothing and end up with all parties retreating with no major casualties.
This would have been okay if the characters were interesting to watch, but alas: they’re just too focused on the story. They either spend all of their time worrying or fighting, and the illusion of “depth” quickly vanishes from this series after a bunch of episodes. To add salt to the wound, nearly every member of the main cast is a teenager, eliminating any sense of realism this series already had, but worst of all, the male and female main characters have some major annoyances: they’re too perfect. The only flaw of the main female is that she’s too angsty and the main male just doesn’t have any flaws at all. This quickly becomes rather one-sided. The side-characters could have saved them, but a lot of them just lack development. Especially the Silver Tribe: they hardly get fleshed out at all as a race, we never learn their customs, heck all we get to see is their three most important leaders. That’s all.
But lo and behold: this is one of those flawed series that manages to redeem itself in the end! Around episode seventeen or eighteen, the writers turn up the pacing three gears, and the plot finally starts getting interesting as it develops in the right way, into a finale that doesn’t disappoint and turns out quite touching, even if it may have been a bit too much focused on a happy ending.
Sure, the first half is boring, but it does build up for the much better second half. While the last part was nowhere near the best part of the season, at least it managed to redeem the lacklustre first part. At least it’s not the opposite way. The soundtrack for this series is also epic, and the use of CG is excellent, even though the character-designs look very sloppy and uninspired. I guess you’ll like this one if you like epic science-fiction stories, because things can’t get more epic than this series, not necessarily in the good ways, but neither in the bad ways.]]>
Some quick first impressions: Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, Dragonaut the Resonance and Goshushou-sama Ninomiya-kun
Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji
The first episodes of the series I’ve seen thus far in this season haven’t been exactly intelligent, the closest would probably be Suteki Tantei Labyrinth, but both series don’t really have a plot that requires you to think. Because of this, I was pleasantly surprised by this series, when the young adult Kaiji gets mixed up in a huge plot of the Yakuza. Even though I didn’t understand the rules perfectly, this series does have some definite potential, and even though we’ve yet to see the characters actually gamble, this episode felt very tense. I also really like the character-designs: they may look unorthodox, but they fit the series perfectly, along with a pretty nice soundtrack. I’m going to hope that this series gets subbed soon, as following this series raw with my skills of Japanese is probably going to be impossible.
Dragonaut The Resonance
Oh boy, this series sure has its work cut out. There were so many annoyances in this episode, it’s going to take a lot of effort to make everything believable again. Our main character is in a spacecraft which just took off from the surface, it gets hit by a blazing fireball, explodes but it doesn’t even burn one bit. The main character just flies out of the blast without any scratches whatsoever. Also, where did the fireballs come from? The guy also has a best friend at that point, who actually witnessed the crime but we never see the guy again for the rest of the episode. Furthermore, every single female with a huge bosom (and believe me, there are quite a few of them) has the need to show it off to everyone in a quite revealing outfit. The creators also seemed to have introduced monsters and people who can survive an exploding truck, thrown on top of them without even getting one scratch. I dislike these kinds of things. Sure, they can be explained and all, but if an exploding truck can’t hurt them, the only thing that probably will is overblown and overpowered energy-waves. It’s hard to really come up with a good strategy for these. The plot has potential, but if this series wants to succeed, it needs to put a LOT of work into its setting to fill up the plot-holes.
Goshushou-sama Ninomiya-kun
Ooh… the pain… the horrible, horrible pain! If you thought Myself; Yourself was bad: it’s NOTHING when compared to this… “thing”. Not only is the entire plot basically one huge excuse for fanservice, the main character is loved by all females AND males in his school, he ends up in all kinds of fanservicy-situations with a girl who despite being awfully shy and afraid of men dresses like a girl from the red-light district. I think we’ve found our worst series of the season with this one. At least, I hope so, because I don’t want to watch anything that’s even worse than this piece of garbage…]]>