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Some Quick First Impressions: Noragami, Tonari no Seki-kun and Space Dandy

January 5, 2014 by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Noragami

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a god.
Okay, so I mistakenly got the director of this series wrong. Apologies, my bad. Still, this episode had its problems: it looked stylish, but ultimately it just got a bit too generic. Characters had basically two modes and nothing more: snarky and serious, and that got old a bit too quicky. The monster design is quite nice, but this series isn’t really impressing anyone in that department after Space Dandy. From this first episode it rather looked like a standard shounen supernatural series to me, with perhaps better animation than usual.
OP: Nod bad. The style works here.
ED: I’m not a fan of this song, it’s very generic.
Potential: 40%

Tonari no Seki-kun

Short Synopsis: Our lead character sits right next to someone with an overactive imagination.
Tonari no Seki-kun is a weird series. It’s only 5 minutes per episode, and it’s based on just one and only one gimmick: during class, the titular Seki-kun does the weirdest things as a means to alleviate his boredom and the teacher doesn’t notice a thing of it. Remember doodling like crazy during classes? This series takes that to an art-form. Here is the thing though: if it’s just got one gimmick, then why would I want to watch more than one episode? The next episodes are just going to be exactly the same, only with other hobbies that the main character ends up doing on his desk. The female lead also is a very stiffly acted for a straight man. That also breaks the flow of each episode a bit.
OP: Yay for spoiling what the future episodes will be about…
ED: Again, there’s no nead to make even more clear what the gimmick of this show is going to be.
Potential: 40%

Space Dandy

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is dandy and in space.
This was an incredibly silly episode. It didn’t take itself seriously at all. But oh my god, the creativity! At heart this is an adventure series in which we follow the characters to all sorts of fantastical worlds with all kinds of weird and crazy creatures. It makes no sense whatsoever in the process, and the obsession with boobs probably wasn’t the best way to start with, but this episode was a lot of fun to watch. The animation in the second half in particular deserves to be watched. Bones really put their top people on that sequences; the movements were amazing! I do have some complaints though: some jokes were really corny (and I mean 1980s corny), plus the animation is quite inconsistent: the animation in the first half of the episode strangely cut all sorts of corners. Given that usually, series splurge the most of their budget in the first episode, Bones does need to have the resources to make this consistently good.
OP: Dandy.
ED: A great ED. It flows really well from the ending of the episode rather than starting abruptly.
Potential: 85%

Some Quick First Impressions: Buddy Complex and Witch Craft Works

January 5, 2014 by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Saikin Imouto Blahblahblah

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to have is own little sister.
Japan…. whyyyyy? Why do you keep making these utterly horrid imouto-series? What is people’s fascination with having their own little sister that they can have sex with, which is something that they always end up implying? This one is especially bad, by the way. Where it’s normally just the sister who for some inexplicable reason fancies her brother, this time it’s going to be worse: the sister is actively forced, against her will, in order to have sex with her brother due to some incredibly stupid chastity belt. It’s the single worst premise for an sister-series that I’ve ever seen! And I guess that this episode did tell a bit about the etymology beind the word “sister”, and why it’s so ingraved in Japanese culture, but that still doesn’t really justify the incredible slew of these series that go to so many lengths for some hot brother-on-sister action. Oh yeah, they’re not REALLY siblings: we all know what’s being implied here. There is also no single excuse to why I had to watch this sister go to the toilet for SIX. FLIPPIN’ MINUTES!
OP: Lazy. Badly sung,
ED: Again really bad J-Pop, plus the chibi character is just not funny.
Potential: 0%

Buddy Complex

Short Synopsis: Our lead character’s future self sends a cute girl to him to date and fight robots and stuff.
Here’s a surprise. Buddy Complex looks like this incredibly cheesy robot-series, and I already started to cringe when the creators somehow managed to wedge a school in there. However, as the episode went on, I noticed that on quite a few occasions the creators were actually using logic in order to advance their plots. You want to escape from this giant robot that’s attacking you? Just grab a bicycle and hide in narrow streets: that makes sense if you’re just a normal high school boy who can’t do anything else. Now, don’t get me wrong, the series remains really cheesy and it’s got no excuse of putting teenagers in the middle of armed conflict as the pilots of robots, however it is refreshing to see that it takes itself completely seriously: it’s got a story that it wants to tell. The cheese will be its biggest potential pitfall, because most of the characters are really hamming it up here.
OP: Very, very cheesy again. I know that a basketball has to do with the story, but you should not look at it like that.
ED: A decent song for once. Nothing special though. Again cheesy.
Potential: 70%

Witch Craft Works

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is protected by a hot girl.
Well, so the first new series of the year… is completely vapid, shallow and boring. Everything about this episode was just taken from the hundreds of other school magic series that exist with nothing new whatsoever, and everything about this show just screamed that the creators were just bored when they made it. It’s another one of those fantasy series in which the completely useless male lead gets protected by the single most popular girl in school, who this time has her own fanclub of crazily obsessed people who use weird catchphrases. It’s another glaring example of how badly a big part of the anime industry is stuck in its own rut by completely retreading the same thing over and over and over again.
OP: Even the vocalist sounds completely bored!
ED: Trying way too hard to be cute.
Potential: 0%

2013 Summary

December 31, 2013 by psgels, posted in Yearly Summaries

And so, 2013 has nearly ended. It was an interesting year, in which a lot changed. The way I look at this blog has changed, and at the same time I have been making less posts. I just couldn’t keep up with 12 posts a week anymore, however I still have my passion for anime, especially the good ones.

Having said that though, 2013 is the worst year for anime since the past decade, and I’m afraid that I need to say this. The big problem lied in the amount of series that aired. Every season had its gems, however when you look beyond these gems, that’s where the problems lied: everything just looked the same, and there were lots of series that had potential, only to get bogged down by bad writing. This is the year I really realized that the way in which most anime are written is inherently flawed, with too few writers working on too many projects and people not really thinking about making anime whole conclusive stories that stay consistent. I’ve seen so many promising series this year that only ended up meh, when they could have been so much better, so it’s really a shame to see this.

As for the good stuff though, there thankfully were quite a few series that did catch my attention. Here are my highlights. Unfortunately Hajime no Ippo and White Album are not included because I’m really behind with them at this point.

Worst Series

Amnesia

There really were some stinkers this year that at first sight looked like they had potential. As much as I’d like to hand this award to Valvrave for pulling the rape-card from out of bloody nowhere, it had nothing on Amnesia. At first sight this looked to be an interesting mystery-series, however every single character save for one in the series was a total prick. The worst was the stalker one with the cage. I mean, did nobody on the production team stop to think “wait, this is completely stupid”?

Worst First Episode

Walkure Romanze

Oh god, there really was a lot of bad stuff this year, though most of the ones fell into the category of “so generic that they’re bad”. On top of that there also was the usual terrible incest, as well as the many, many shows that were simply thinly veiled fanservice. It was hard to just pick one that stood out, however I have to go with Wankure Romanze. It’s really here where the creators just gave up completely trying, treating their audience like a herd of lobotomised sheep. This episode really screamed “just whatever, I dunno. Have a horse that eats panties or something so we’ll at least get some viewership. I don’t care”.

Biggest disappointment

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta

Despite being a big fan of the director and the OVA, I really don’t think that I’m going to be able to finish this series. Why? Because the story is just random fluff. Okay, I guess stuff happens aside from its horrible fourth episode and all, but when I really ask myself whether that’s interesting to watch for a full season… I have to answer no. Even though the animation is just completely fantastic… the rest just wasn’t.

Most Pleasant Surprise

Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Lovecome o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru

I was ready to immediately write this series off as the umpth light novel adaptation with a ridiculously long title and having it be nothing more than a glorified boob parade. And then the first episode aired, and it was actually the best thing that the creators could have done with such a horrible premise. The creators made this actually a really funny parody, and they kept it up for about seven episodes. I really did not expect that.

Funniest series

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San

Oh, Azazel-san. You sure gave me quite some headaches this year. On one hand, you made me laugh harder than any other series this season, but on the other you had these completely tasteless episodes that tried way too hard to go for laughs with their shock value. Every episode we would hope that we’d strike gold, instead of literally poop. However, when you hit, you hit hard. The characters at their best are absolutely hysterical with their brand of sadistic humour and energy that very, very few series can match, and you had me nearly fall of my chair on multiple occasions.

Best Animation Studio

Production IG

This year, I was torn between Madhouse and Production IG. They really rose to high standards this year with many great series. The reason why I handed it to Production IG though, was because Madhouse has been too much into its own franchises: as amazing as Chihayafuru’s second season was, it was a sequel. Hajime no Ippo is great, however, it already has so many episodes. Hunter X Hunter too has been going on for ages: they played it way too safe. Production IG meanwhile went all out with Psycho Pass and Shingeki no Kyojin, they did something really bold with Kick Heart. Sure, they had their sequels, but they had a balance between old stuff and new stuff, which I didn’t notice that well in Madhouse’s case.

Most Promising Studio

Wit Studio

Every year I also hand out an award to a studio that’s either really new, or made a huge improvement over the past. With this year, it’s obvious that it would be Wit Studio, the subsidiary of Production IG. Next season they’re out on their own, and if Shingeki no Kyojin is any indication, then there is a lot of talent hiding amongst them, and I hope that they can follow Bee-Train’s example and become a good standalone studio in the future!

Best Action

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

It took the award last year, it also takes it this year. Jojo is just so wonderfully over the top and every episode was just loads of fun to watch. It really was everything that the shounen genre should be, and I can understand why it got so popular. However, it did have much more competition this year. Kill La Kill is a huge contender for next year’s award with the way that it’s going, and Shingeki no Kyojin also was really exciting to watch, from start to finish. I really had trouble with the award this year, as opposed to last year.

Best Horror

Aku no Hana

Pure psychological horror, but oh my god, this show was so effective in drawing me into its atmosphere. There was hardly any point at which I wasn’t at the edge of my seat, and that’s what I consider an amazing horror-series.

Best Background Art

Shingeki no Kyojin

This year, I want to give props to the incredible amount of polish that the creators put into the backgrounds of Attack on Titan. They really created a medieval-ish city and the amount of detail that went into it is astounding, and it looks consistently crisp. The creators obviously spent a lot of money on it, and it did pay off.

Best Animation

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta

There were lots of really well animated series this season, a few too many, if you ask me personally, however Yozakura Quartet to me was the best, because of its focus on kinetic energy that was very visible in its movements. Its animation wasn’t just a bunch of money shots, the creators really cared about natural movements and interesting poses, they really wanted to create movement, and they did that better than any other series this season. It’s just a shame that the animation was the only thing noteworthy about this show.

Best-Looking Series

Kyousogiga

This award goes to the series that just looks incredibly good, regardless of animation. The artistic direction here is important, and Kyousogiga had that, and much, much more. For 10 episodes there were hardly any weak moments in the animation, and everything just looked gorgeous. Close seconds are Chihayafuru and From the New World, not to mention the trippy Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and the gritty Aku no Hana (I don’t care: I loved how Aku no Hana looked, with its own unique and distinct style; so what if it wasn’t crisp).

Top 20 of 2013

#20: Teekyu

Wildcard: Teekyu is just something to sit behind, turn your brain off and enjoy the spectacle. Nothing special, but damn entertaining to see all of the things that the creators can throw to the screen in the span of only two minutes per episode.

#19: Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru

Light novel adaptations with really long titles had previously been notorious for being bad, lazy and incredibly contrived for fanservice. This year, there were two series that broke that trend. Noucome (resting at place 21 due to its rather bad ending), and Yahari Blahblah. This series starts off with the generic ingredients, but I don’t know. Along the way something happened that set itself apart from its contemporaries. The dialogue, it was actually cleverly written. It actually takes a deep look at its characters, and creates some thought-provoking drama out of that, rather than going with the usual cheese. The characters in this series all look like completely generic stereotypes, and yet they aren’t. This series could have tried even more though, and there are some stories that are a bit lacklustre compared to the others, placing this relatively low at this list.

#18: Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San’s sequel contained both the best, and the worst episodes of the season so far. The Moloch-episodes were obviously awesome, but a few other arcs were also comedic gold. And then there was the haemorrhoid arc. What on earth were the creators thinking? It’s a series with huge ups and downs, but its own brand of incredibly vile and sadistic comedy somehow worked for me.

#17: Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi is nothing really fancy, however it did create its own fascinating setting that it rolled with for thirteen episodes,. It did have a tendency to suddenly pull twists from out of absolutely nowhere, but it barely avoided those becoming Deus ex Machina, and it consistently asks questions about life and death with its strange portrayal of the undead. It could have been much more because the series just ends after a random arc has been resolved, however, the characters all made it very worth watching.

#16: Uchuu Kyoudai

Last year, I made the prediction that for 2013, this series again would have been a great contender for the number one spot, however, something happened along the way. The series remained a wonderful look at what it means to become an astronaut, it still was fascinating. The problem however, was the pacing. Things started to take forever to get going, and every episode on top of that started with like two minutes of recap. The creators were simply coasting on the manga to carry them through, and you couldn’t see the passion of the first fifty episodes any more. The creators made the mistake of going on for way too long, lessening the experience. It’s such a pity, because this series really stood out: it had characters in their thirties for once, and the synergy between them is just amazing. However you also need to learn to not overstay your welcome.

#15: Gatchaman Crowds

Anime is a great storytelling medium, but usually they really aren’t up to date with current events. Some shows nowadays still feature the Tokyo Tower as the highest building in Tokyo, for example. Gatchaman Crowds however, is about social media. It’s very clunky, but it portrays a setting in which saving the world is crowd-sourced: through the internet everyone contributes with stuff like saving the day and protecting the earth from aliens, and from that base setting it creates its storyline. The characters aren’t the most relatable, however they serve the purpose of exploring this setting. The pacing is ridiculously fast, but in the end they pulled it off with also quite a great ending to close off with.

#14: Samurai Flamenco

Samurai Flamenco, I’ll put you at number 14 for now. This can become much higher, or much lower next year. The series started off really well with a sortof realistic view on this idiot who wanted to play a superhero. And then episode seven happened, and it was awesome, but afterwards it just kept getting more and more ridiculous, to the point where we are now just watching a completely different series. It’s really a bizarre series and at this point it really could go anywhere. I do have to give props for having the balls to actually try what it did though.

#13: Silver Spoon

Silver Spoon: a meticulously planned out look at what farming life is. It has lovable characters, it’s fun to watch, but at the same time it also doesn’t shy away from the realities of farming: that animals are killed in the process, in order to make a living. It shows both sides of the picture, and never really leaves a moment or episode wasted, and it’s filled with interesting trivia. Not to mention that it made me hungry on a regular basis.

#12: Uchoten Kazoku

Uchoten Kazoku is a look at Japanese folklore,in a modern coat. It tells about tanuki and crows, and how they can transform into stuff, and it contains all sorts of obscure cultural references surrounding their legends. It really taught me quite a few new things through its airtime, and that’s always a plus. The best thing about this series is its dialogue: cleverly written and it manages to develop the characters in a unique and engaging way. It does lose a bit of steam near the end, but it remains witty and unpredictable.

#11: Kill La Kill

Kill La Kill’s storyline is nothing special, however it manages to present itself in such a way that it doesn’t become boring. Its formulaic, but never formulaic enough to get tedious, the characters are simple, but not one-dimensional enough to get boring. It’s all carefully planned out for the action to just keep you entertained from beginning to end. Hiroyuki Imaishi is a great director, and you can see Studio Trigger having a ton of fun making the most over the top action sequences that are all still very varied and interesting to watch. Not to mention that soundtrack. That really makes the series even more exciting.

#10: Hunter X Hunter

My stance on the series remains: I did not like sitting through a year and a half of material that I had already seen. I’m sorry, but that was really tedious, even though the Greed Island was much better than the Nippon Animation version. Finally though, the Chimera Ant arc stepped into new material. At this point I’m really behind, however even though the arc took incredibly long to build up, I just reached the point at which it really started to deliver. Finally I can appreciate this series for the very intelligent shounen series that it was meant to be, and it indeed blows generic stuff like Naruto and Bleach completely out of the water.

#9: Rozen Maiden

The third season of Rozen Maiden, but really: this new instalment is completely different from the previous two TV-series. It’s written perfectly over its airtime, starting off small and ending big. The first half really mostly just takes place in one room, with most of the characters absent, being dedicated to some really personal character-development for the ones who did get the focus. It pushed all of its characters to a different direction, and definitely was a worthy addition to the Rozen Maiden franchise.

#8: Zetsuen no Tempest

Tempest’s second half perhaps was a bit less sharp than its first half, but it still was just complete gold in terms of its script, and how it played with its storyline to throw all kinds of logic-based holes and loops. This really was a great example of a world-shattering conflict being solved by logic, with force playing just the role of assistant. The characters also got through their own share of development that this series also cleverly made use of and all of that resulted into an incredibly fun watch. The biggest reason why this one ended up slightly behind the others is its slightly lackluster ending.

#7: Shingeki no Kyojin

All series from #8 are incredibly close to each other. They all were amazing to watch. The reason why Shingeki no Kyojin lost out was because of its inconclusive ending: no resolution whatsoever, leading to one heck of a cliff-hanger. Up to that point we got to witness an amazingly tense action-series that really managed to convince that yes, humanity is completely screwed. This series is incredibly good at putting humanity at the brink of destruction, and keeping the stakes just inches away from everything going to hell. This is fantastic for its atmosphere, and on top of that, it was easily the series with the best production values of the entire year: everything looked incredibly polished, and where these series usually skimp on the substance, this series had plenty of it. This is an action-series with brains.

#6: Psycho Pass

Psycho Pass, intelligent science fiction from Urobuchi Gen, and the second half really delivered, whereas the series that aired alongside it, Robotics;Notes, pretty much crashed and burned. What managed to keep it afloat was that it always knew where it was going, and it kept asking poignant questions about its setting and it actually continued to push its storyline forward in creative ways. The characters came to their rights, the animation was still solid, and everything concluded really well, so I was really pleased with this series.

#5: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

This series became something really amazing, putting most other shounen completely to shame with how much manly action the creators managed to put on the screen. It’s definitely not for everyone, and the excessive use of colours will disturb some, however I loved just how over the top this show got. There were so many moments that were just pure gold, and the creators really knew how to capture the essence of the manga, which delivered its action with completely ridiculous poses and massive amounts of manliness, while still keeping a straight face. The training arcs were really kept to a minimum, and the fights themselves all tried to be as creative as possible, both by making great use of the environment every fight was in, and some very creative powers. This really was my weekly fix of adrenaline, done incredibly well.

#4: Chihayafuru

After Shingeki no Kyojin, the second most polished series of the year. A show about Karuta, every single match looked crisp. Every single swipe made impact. The creators still managed to keep this up for in total 52 episodes. The most amazing thing about this series however, was its character development. Most series just pick one character to develop per episode. Oh no, not this series.. Every single episode developed as many characters as it possibly could a little. This means that hard-hitting development could really come out of absolutely nowhere. It’s only a shame that we still haven’t reached the ending, and we need to wait for a potential third season for everything to be resolved. And it already was a miracle that we got a second season.

#3: Aku no Hana

Aku no Hana is unlike any other anime ever made. The animation is completely rotoscoped, leading to continuous movements, that all are jerky, and amazing characters that say “screw it!” to every single convention. The pacing is incredibly slow, but it’s deliberately so: it’s entirely made to draw its audience into its atmosphere, and some of the best moments of the series are actually when little happens and you only can watch the eerie moments happening. It’s an amazing look at the darker sides of being a teenager, and the creators did an absolutely fantastic job of capturing the paranoia inside the main character. But yeah, they did choose to do it in a style that will turn off plenty of people. But that makes it even better: a series actually had the balls to be completely different in every single way from all other anime. That deserves to be commended.

#2: Kyousogiga

Kyousogiga is just a series that did everything right for me. It’s a whimsical story, inside its complete own world with its own set of rules, heavily infused in Buddhist and Shinto themes, and it got itself some consistently incredible animation with hardly any weak points. There is always something interesting going on on the screen and the characters are more expressive than any other series this year. Its storytelling is meant to be vague: you can see lots of unsaid stuff inbetween the lines and every single episode is different. It’s incredibly fun for all ages, and the conflict and resolution are finally something different than what we’re used to, due to the lack of villains. It’s one of those series in which all of its different parts come together wonderfully in every single episode: the animation, the music, the story, the characters, the themes. Everything fits perfectly.

#1: From the New World

For 2013, it was really difficult to choose my number one pick. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 were all incredible series that I enjoyed immensely, despite the lacklustre nature of the rest of the year. The reason Shin Sekai Yori, or From the New World, is my number one pick though, is because it had one of the best endings I have ever seen. I’m not sure if it’s in my top 5 favorite endings, but definitely my in my top 10. The series already was really good, with how it portrayed its characters its incredibly mature style of storytelling, and how it just did not shy away from anything (there really was some shocking material here that nearly broke my heart). It was incredibly intelligent in how it presented itself, even though some of its characters were quite naïve, and it used its animation brilliantly to create a consistently creepy atmosphere. It’s hard to watch because it’s completely different from traditional animation, and the camera often made things difficult to make out, but to people whose alley it was up at, it rewarded with an incredible finale. 2013 may have been the worst year in terms of anime in more than a decade, however these series still showed me that there are some very passionate, inspired and special people working in the industry. And ehre is to hoping that they will show more of themselves in 2014 and the years to come. I wish all of you a very happy new year, and I’ll see you in 2014.

Kick Heart

December 30, 2013 by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

Okay, so I didn’t want to exit 2013 without having seen Masaaki Yuasa’s Kick Heart. It’s only twelve minutes anyway, and I consider him to be one of the best anime directors out there.

The story here is pretty silly and mostly serves as a backdrop, so I mostly want to talk about the nature of this little short: how it was crowd-funded and they actually got Masaaki Yuasa to direct it, Mamoru Oshii served as the consultant to make it happen, and They got a lot of talented animators involved. Because of this I love it. The creative team here attempted something really ambitious, and they actually succeeded in it.

Because of that, it’s also not surprising that Masaaki Yuasa got full creative control over the animation, and this probably is his most personal work since Mind Game. Especially with Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei you could see that it wasn’t just his work, albeit it still was really well executed, Kaiba was probably also forced into at least a normal storyline (for very good reasons by the way, because it turned out amazing), and even Kemonozume looked like some compromises had to be made. Here, the only compromise was the short length of only 12 minutes. He could really goof off as much as he wanted here, and the result is incredibly trippy. The animation is utterly gorgeous because of it.

This short made me learn a lot about Yuasa’s style, and I’m even more amazed at how well he works together with other people. This guy, when he is on his own, he can create completely unique stuff like Mind Game, but when he’s more under control he actually manages to get the best out of everyone, leading to the masterpieces that were Kaiba and Yojou-han Shinwa Taikei. He really is one of the most talented directors out there.

Kick Heart was incredibly silly, so don’t expect the same emotional intensity of is other works, but still his talents really show here and it was a great watch, and it serves as an example of how to do anime right.

Kyousogiga Review – 90/100

December 30, 2013 by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kyousogiga

Everyone’s taste is different, and that’s a wonderful thing because that allows us to have so many different forms of media that all aim toward their own niche. My blog is obviously written from the perspective of my own taste, and even when a show doesn’t cater to it (which is nearly always), I love getting worked up a bit about what if the show did get everything right. That’s why there is no one “best series” out there.

A show that I really didn’t have anything to say against, that really seemed to cater exactly to someone with my tastes, is Kyousogiga. Seriously, to me, that show was perfect and it hit every right note.

This series is really well made: the animation is consistently good, with very few moments of weaknesses. The series looks really good, but that can be said for a lot of series this season. What the animators also did however, was that they made the faces of the characters incredibly expressive, more than any other show that aired alongside it. The variety is great, and the camera always knows how to capture them in the most genuine ways. The way in which they’re able to keep this up for more than 10 episodes shows that this was a series made with a lot of passion.

This is a series that’s deeply rooted in Buddhist themes: not only are there many monks in the series, but also many characters from Buddhist folklore make cameos, the whole world this is based on has many winks here and there to the religion (although Shinto also has its noticeable roots here), combined with plenty of ideas of its own. This all combined leads to a very detailed and imaginative setting that is perfect for a short and whimsical series that can be enjoyed by all ages.

One complaint I’ve hear a lot is that the big conflict of the series isn’t really that big, but that’s something I actually liked a lot. To be vague for the sake of spoilers, Kyousogiga is about the inner turmoil of a family of characters with world-changing powers. The latter may seem serious, but the end resolution is much less dramatic than what you might expect. And I loved that! It’s got plenty of conflict, but for once it isn’t all gloomy. There is really no villain whatsoever, nor anyone who even remotely looks like the stereotypical evil villain who is out there to destroy the world for some superficial reason, even though this might appear to be the case at times. The entire series however is focused on the characters: them coming to terms with their identities and the ones around them. It’s one of the few series that in the end, manages to be epic while keeping the focus on the characters and their issues, without taking any cheap writing-tricks to simplify things near the end. It’s got plenty of touching moment, its just not as grand as what it was made out to be.

I was a long-time fan of this series, so obviously I’m biased. The creators actually managed to incorporate the OVAs into the series and integrated them seamlessly, so you do not need to watch anything before starting the TV-series, aside from episode 05 of the second OVA, and even that isn’t really necessary. This series makes use of vague storytelling: not everything is told or stated explicitly, but you’re also expected to think a bit for yourself and piece things together, and it does that in an intelligent way, rather than what you usually see where the creators obviously ran out of time (this series is also perfectly paced, not too slow nor too fast).

If you want to know whether this series is for you or not, ask yourself the question of what you want to watch. If the answer comes close to a series which excels at bringing animation, music, story, characters, setting, and all together flawlessly, then by all means give this a chance. If you’re looking for complexity or grandeur, or something mundane though, then there are better choices.
One-Sentence Review: Lots of love and passion
Suggestions:
– Mahou Shoujotai
– Strange Dawn
– Ooedo Rocket

Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Lovecome o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru Review – 80/100

December 13, 2013 by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

Noucome! You do not want to know how long I have been waiting for a series like this. More than half a decade, at the very least. Finally a series comes along and puts the incredibly overused harem genre in its place. And it actually does it well. Thank you!

So to elaborate: the harem genre is one of the worst genres in anime, and it has been so for about a decade now. The worst part is the sheer amount of series that have been made of it. They give anime a bad name and the vast majority of them just completely sucks. Over the years of course, enough attempts at parodies have appeared.

The problem with these parodies was that they weren’t really parodies. They’re just harem shows with their tongue in their cheek. When you have this mentality though, you only make things worse: you’re not funny, and the tongue in the cheek is just an excuse to put in even less effort into your writing because any flaws can be overlooked this way. A lot of parodies make this mistake and just adhere to the things they’re trying to make fun of, and with the harem genre this resulted into one giant mess. The only successful series so far probably was Ben-To, but that was just a really well executed series first and foremost.

Noucome though, goes all the way. This series finally aims to highlight the stupidity in the harem genre, and it finally aims to really make everything about it look ridiculous to show what so many series nowadays are getting away with. It finally takes the usual tropes like the quiet girl, the ditzy girl, the energetic girl, the student council, and with some great jokes and its premise shows how bad these things are. The protagonist is wonderful in fully acknowledging what a horrible person he is while this show keeps finding ways for him to enact generic harem scenes, and take them to the ridiculous. For that effort alone, I applaud this series. Because it has a lot of flaws, unfortunately.

Like most series, this series does lack an editor. The writers have great ideas, but other ideas are just plain bad. For example, everything about the main female lead (the one who falls from the sky) just doesn’t work: where all other characters are meant to highlight the flaws of their stereotypes, she’s just the generic dog-like girl with no brains and a huge appetite that we’ve seen millions of times before. She gets old really fast.

Second, it’s unfortunate to see that the writers can’t keep up their wit for the entire run of the series. With only 10 episodes, this is delightfully short (a comedy really does not need to be long!), but even then the second half has a few bad episodes, and especially the last arc is a pool episode that, while still containing some good jokes, is also full of pointless repeated boob-jokes that don’t go anywhere and an incredibly rushed and hacked ending that doesn’t really resolve anything. It’s a really clear example of the creators not knowing whether there is going to be a sequel, and therefore they try to include a bit of both, resulting in a really big mess of a final episode. It’s a shame, because there really is comedic gold in good endings, yet the amount of comedies that actually go for this can be counted on two hands. Another problem this series has is that everyone and his dog conveniently gets anmnesia when the writers need it the most. It’s passable when done once, but the writers just keep relying on it.

Nevertheless, Noucome first looked to be a series with the worst premise you could imagine. It turned out to be the biggest surprise of the year for me, and especially the first half was pretty much the best way in which such a bad-sounding storyline could ever have been animated. Can we now kill the harem genre. Please?
One-Sentence Review: The first harem parody that actually is a parody. Terrible ending though.
Suggestions:
– Ben-To
– Touka Gettan (Also not really a parody, but another great example of how to spice up the harem genre)
– Aquarion Evol

Winter Season Preview

November 25, 2013 by psgels, posted in Seasonal Previews

This season. It feels like a spring or autumn season is coming. Perhaps not a big one, but I’m surprised by the amount of solid titles that are coming out. There are quite a number of series I’m looking out for, plus also a few that already have the potential to become the best of the year unless the competition really ramps it up. We’re in for an interesting season, that’s the least. Unfortunately, there also are a lot of really bland series coming up. It’s a season of extremes.

Wake Up Girls

Impressions: Here is one to probably steer away from: Yutaka Yamamoto, a guy who basically is just one big troll, is going to direct a movie. It’s about seven high school girls. Who become idols in order to save a production company. Yes, he actually came up with this. It’s not an adaptation. Out of all the possible plots that he could have picked, he picked one of the most generic ones. Heck, with Fractale he actually tried to show that he had some ambition.

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate

Impressions: This is going to be Gonzo’s new project, and it’s helmed by the director of Afro Samurai and the X-Men. What this basically means is that Bayonetta will be a movie about eye candy: throwing as much visual stuff at the screen and hope that the audience won’t be bored enough to realize that the storyline is pretty rubbish. It’s also got the screenplay from the guy who wrote the X-Men anime, which only reaffirms this.

Hunter X Hunter: Last Mission

Impressions: Here is the interesting thing about this movie: it’s going to be adapted by the guy who also adapted the 1999 version. Including the OVA, the part of the franchise that managed to receive the best and most heartful adaptation so far. That is very promising, because even though this guy isn’t perfect (he also was behind the much more lackluster Greed Island Arc that just felt lazily adapted), he knows how to do it, and how to bring the best out of the characters. Here’s to hoping that he can do it again. The director will be completely different though, so who knows where that’ll end up?

Amazing Twins

Impressions: Sato Junichi and Mari Okada. A combination between these two prolific creators was bound to happen someday, and it comes in the form of this quirky-looking OVA about some girls with superpowers. It looks out of the league for both of them, as this seems to be a pure action series, but that does provide opportunities. Both of them are ridiculously talented when they get something right, now the thing will be whether they can make this happen for this set of short OVAs as well.

Majocco Shimai no Yoyo to Nene

Impressions: Here is another one to look out for. Not just because of Ufo Table, but also because they put their best director on it: Takayuki Hirao. This guy screams alternative and he has guts to go where nobody else dares to go. He directed the fifth and best of the Kara no Kyoukai Movies, and was the only one who was deranged enough to try and animate a story by Junji Ito. His storytelling skills are sometimes a bit wonky and for that he will need good source material. But it looks like a nice and ambitious family movie.

Mouretsu Pirates

Impressions: Mouretsu Pirates was a bit of a weird series that got progressively better with every single arc thanks to some very good build-up. Tatsuo Sato is a great director and he will be both writing and directing this movie, which means that he has a lot of control about its content, and that’s very promising for a movie.

Buddha 2

Impressions: Buddha 1 was amazing. A brilliant adaptation of Osamu Tezuka‘s classic. So of course I’m looking forward to the continuation! The director is going to be different for this one, though: Toshiaki Komura, someone with less experience than the first one and who is mostly known for directing Precure series and awful fighting stuff like Kinnukuman and Ring ni Kakero. I hope that he has a good team to back him up, because a story like this deserves people who handle it with care.

Tiger & Bunny The Rising

Impressions: So yeah, a lot of people probably noticed that I’m not posting movie reviews anymore. I really want to pick up movies again, however I need to find a way to actually sit down and watch long stuff again. I’m currently battling my own laziness and concentration for it, because I still need to watch the first movie before checking this one out. And the second movie too has the brilliant director of Yoshitomo Yonetani behind it, who is a master of chaos.

Kaguya Hime Monogatari

Impressions: This is one of my top movies to watch out for this winter. It’s probably going to be Isao Takahata‘s last full movie ever. And for those who don’t know him: he’s the one who co-founded Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki. Out of all of the directors I have ever witnessed in anime, he is by far the most realistic one. Nobody has ever been able to top his feeling of characters since the late sixties when he got his first directing jobs. It causes his movies to be very slow, but I’d still like to see his talents one more time.

Mushishi

Impressions: Talk has been going on for quite a while now that there would be more Mushishi, and with this it has finally be announced: a one-hour special on January 4th. Reuniting all of the past staff that gave us one of the most memorable series out there. However, I am disappointed a bit: I had secretly hoped an entire new television series: there seems to be enough manga material left for that. However, I guess that you can’t have everything. A one-hour special is awesome enough.

Upcoming TV-Series:

Saikin, Imouto no Yousu ga Chotto Okaishiin Da Ga.

Summary: ” In the romance comedy, a girl named Mitsuki Kanzaki lives with her step-brother Yuya after her mother remarries. One day, Mitsuki is possessed by the self-proclaimed spirit of a young girl, Hiyori Kotobuki. Hiyori (in Mitsuki’s body) must fall in love with Yuya to move towards the “Gates of Heaven.”” – (Taken from ANN)
Produced by: ?
Original creator: Mari Matsuzawa

Impressions: This has to be one of the most ridiculously stupid, insulting and contrived premises to try and make incest acceptable.