Category: OVAs and Movies:

OVA Impressions: Kizuna Ichigeki

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Young Animator Training Project




Kizuna Ichigeki is… weird. I mean, on one hand it is a martial arts OVA with strange character designs (designed by the guy who also designed the characters of Mind Game, by the way), but on the other hand the context in which it happens is just so bizarre and random that I’m not even sure whether the creators knew what they were doing.

This short shows the debut of Ascension, a completely new animation company. Overall, this short mostly impressed me because of its visuals: those were really good. The big problem here is that they didn’t get themselves a good scriptwriter.

In between the fights are these silly dialogues between the characters that are what I suspect supposed to be funny and charming, but mostly just end up random blabbering. Especially the grandfather is annoying: he’s the kind of guy who keeps making jokes because he thinks he’s funny, while he’s actually really obnoxious. The bad guys also have the flimsiest reasons to actually try to fight the lead character and serve no purpose whatsoever beyond being meat for fanservice. Just about the only thing that the scriptwriter did right was portraying the themes of family: together the cast does form quite a happy and sincere family.

Also, the cat. That freaking cat. That was by far the biggest “what the hell” of this short.

The actual animation however is excellent. The fight scenes in particular are fun and exciting, and a lot of care has gotten into the choreography. The way in which people move around and react to each other, it’s all been done very intricately and the animation really brings the characters to life. I see a good future for Ascension. They just need to find a bunch of good writers.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,5/10

OVA Impressions: Ojii-San no Lamp

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Young Animator Training Project




The Young Animator Training Program is an initiative to create four standalone OVAs with the purpose of training new animators. Each short would be handled by a different studio, and each would get a certain budget for it. An excellent idea. Ojii-san no Lamp is Telecom Animation Film’s result. You know, the people from Secret of the Cerulean Sand, Uninhabited Planet Survive and Moyashimon.

For this OVA I was expecting this short slice of life story of Japan around 100 years ago, in which we would see a young boy and his grandfather’s lamp. You know, the kind of children’s slice of life that you see more often. As it turns out, I totally wrong about this. Instead, it paints a picture of the life of an oil lamp salesman. Only the first half of this OVA is about his childhood, the meat of this OVA is about him as an adult.

It turned out to be a poignant story, about the use of light in pre-world war Japan and the technological advancements. It’s not something you usually see, and this OVA actually has this great balance between its focus on lamps and the titular grandfather, with a strongly written ending. It may be a bit too dramatic at times, but this is nothing major.

As for the animation, we can expect nice things from the people who animated this in the future: the inbetween animation here is quite good and life-like. It’s perhaps nothing special for a seasoned veteran, but this definitely was a great start for inexperienced animators.
OVA Episode Rating: 8/10

OVA Impressions: xxxHolic Rou – Adayume

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, xxxHolic, xxxHolic Rou



For the fans of Gundam Unicorn who are complaining about slow release dates: the intervals between new xxxHolic episodes is a whole whopping year!

But dear god, was it worth the wait. Unlike what I previously expected, this episode doesn’t really aim to answer any question whatsoever. In fact, it doesn’t even address the cliff-hanger that the previous episode left us with, and no new news about Yuuko appears anywhere. The length of this OVA was about half an hour, and its purpose was completely different from the first xxxHolic Rou.

What this movie did do was incredibly heart-warming, though. It’s an entire episode full of subtle character-building on Watanuki and Doumeki. I mean, the changes that the first xxxHolic Rou episode brought forth were immense. This episode fleshes this out brilliantly by somehow doing the impossible and giving the characters even more depth than they already had. Yeah.

I mean seriously, xxxHolic already was by far my favourite Clamp series, and this episode only made it better. This episode was full of quiet discussions between Watanuki and other side-characters like Mokona, Doumeki and his grandfather. Doumeki’s grandfather is just about the only one who didn’t change significantly, and even he had a wonderful portrayal in this episode, worried about his grandson.

This episode also showed a few flashbacks to Watanuki’s past. And seriously, if there was any series in which such a small recap like that would would, it’s this one. For one thing, it was great to see Watanuki sigh at what a moron he used to be, but it also really reminded how it’s already been five years since I first started watching this series, and it reminded what kind of huge changes the characters went through. If you add all of the pieces of development together here, you really get an amazing cast of characters. And I really don’t hope that this was the last of the xxxHolic OVAs.
OVA Episode Rating: 8.75/10

OVA Impressions: Kara no Kyoukai Epilogue

by psgels, posted in Kara no Kyoukai, OVA Impressions



Oooh! It’s really been a long while ago since we’ve seen such an episode, I was afraid that anime creators had given up on them and were too afraid to put them in. This was certainly a pleasant surprise here, because simply labelling this as an “epilogue” doesn’t do justice to what it actually is.

So basically, this episode was nothing but Shiki and Mikiya talking, nothing more. It was entirely set in one place: a lone road with in the background the people of Ufo Table having a contest to see how many snowflakes they could put on one single screen at the same time. Now imagine that for half an hour.

It’s here where you can really see Kinoko Nasu’s unique writing style. Many of you probably know that I love these kinds of “lots of talking” stories, and the excellent writing of this one, plus the extremely calm atmosphere make this epilogue definitely worth watching if you’re into that stuff. If you watched Kara no Kyoukai for the actions and graphics though, then you can give it a pass.

I really liked how this gave a complete new insight into Shiki, and this OVA is pretty much entirely dedicated to this. Because the creators let Shiki (or whatever you’d like to call the entity that was there) talk so uninterruptedly, it gave a lot of depth to her character and that made this episode so much more than just someone reading a boring essay.

Overall, at first I wasn’t too fond of Kara no Kyoukai when it first started. Looking back now though, I really love what it did. Not only did it create a full story, nicely closed off with this epilogue. That’s of course great, but what’s also great to see is the influence it had: it came with a really bold idea: to create a series of movies of which pretty much nobody knew whether it would work well or not. It worked really well, and the result? It opened up a whole new market for for example the Mardock Scramble, Votoms and Berserk movies. Kara no Kyoukai has some excellent writing, but even without that: if this series was never made, those three also probably would not have gotten green-lighted.
OVA Episode Rating: 8,5/10

OVA Impressions: Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 06

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc, OVA Impressions



And with this, we’ve reached the end of Gen-ei Hen. And I have to say that it left with one heck of a cliff-hanger. It’s not like this episode didn’t provide closure to the whole OVA: it was a great ending. But I’m just so curious as to what’s going to happen next. Before that will happen though, there still are two spin-off movies in the way.

Beyond progressing the story, the entire Gen-Ei hen was meant to bring all of major Votoms installments together, so it’s very fitting for this final episode to bring Wiseman back. It’s interesting how he had this kind of back-up server ready, that may not have been able to rule the world like he did for the past 3000 years, but was enough in order to prepare a proper successor for his legacy, one who could even surpass Chirico in terms of intrigue.

The politics were also a bit interesting this episode: Gilgamesh and Balalant were too scared and didn’t do anything, while the Church did send the pope to Wiseman, yet in the end he just got killed as a bit of an aftermath to the Brilliant Heretic. It’s still very good to see what happened to him in the years that followed that OVA though.

Now, all that’s left is the three movies. What I’m hoping for the first two movies is that they’ll be good standalone stories, that at the same time flesh out the universe of Votoms. The third one however is by far the movie I’m looking forward to the most: Chirico and the Child of God have been picked up from outer space by what I guess to be Balalant forces. What is the point of the Child of God for Chirico? That’s going to be the central question to that movie, but beyond that I’m also clueless.

This episode also partially explains the promo art for the upcoming movie, and what Vanilla and Cocona’s children are doing there. It’s clear that they had no part in the Gen-Ei Hen, and yet they’re supposed to play such a big part during the “Alone Again” movie. Speaking of which: how does that title make sense? Chirico was alone anyway after what happened at the end of the Brilliant Heretic. At the moment he finally has company again that could replace Fyana (the Child of God), he’s about to meet those six children (who I’m also pretty interested in, by the way), so how is that title going to relate to what’s going to happen?

Still, the biggest mystery of the Alone Again Promo Art isn’t answered yet: what’s someone who’s supposed to be dead doing there?
OVA Episode Rating: 8,5/10

OVA Impressions: Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 05

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc, OVA Impressions



That was just absolutely amazing. Both this franchise and this OVA keep just heading in new and different directions, and yet at the same time this OVA is also bringing together the different parts of the series. This episode really embodied the things that made the mystery-parts of the Votoms-franchise so awesome: it just keeps throwing you in new settings and situations that are completely original.

It was a building-up episode, but it did that extremely well with its atmosphere. This child of god gets even more intriguing than it already was now that it got abducted by those strange huge bugs, who seem to know exactly what to do with it, along with that girl who turned out to be a previous Child of God, who managed to survive for god knows how many places, suggesting that these children of god are some sort of immortal, which is pretty believable considering how Wiseman lived for 3000 years.

And yet that makes Chirico even more intriguing, as he’s supposed to be even above these deities. I also loved all of the religious subtext that this episode again brought to the table. Religion in Votoms was always something vague, yet very much real. It never really was explained what exactly Chirico’s powers are, and yet his destiny plays a key part here: wherever he goes, something really important happens and everyone wants to be a part of it. At first sight Chirico seems to be nothing more than yet another variation on the Gundam-esque Newtypes, but his nature lies far deeper than that.

Oh, and what I also really liked was that the creators finally showed a bit more depth to the scene in which Pailsen tried to burn Chirico. It’s now revealed that he burned the entire research institute in which he was gathering potential Abnormal Survivors, and I think that that’s the point in which Pailsen really found out about Chirico. I’m especially intrigued by that boy and girl who ran towards each other, and what their relationship with Chirico was. And again, I loved how mature Chirico reacted to it.

We really need more series like this in the future. Heck, the Gen-ei hen has pretty much become my favourite OVA of 2010, and to think that there still are one episode, one movie and two side-story movies left. the entire Votoms franchise really is something unique. The animation could have been better, but ah, who cares? It’s nowhere near bad enough to ruin the rest of this experience.
OVA Episode Rating: 8,75/10

OVA Impressions: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn – 02

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, OVA Impressions



Now that we’re two hours in, it’s gotten time to start asking in what way Gundam Unicorn sets itself apart from the other Gundam series. Unfortunately, I’m hard-pressed to find that answer…

I guess that the closest that this episode came to standing on its own was the point at which it showed that random Zeon family. It of course already was established that the Zeon aren’t completely evil by the very first Gundam series thirty years ago, but this episode did give a bit more depth to that by showing the people that the Zeon are trying to protect.

But apart from that though… the main problem with Unicorn really is its completely generic story, setting and characters: it’s all just “been there, done that”. There’s yet another boy who through some loophole in the rules gets his hand on the most powerful mobile suit known to man, there is yet another romance with a girl from the enemy (and hey! she’s even a princess this time), there again are strings of mecha battles. It’s all just too safe.

This all could have been forgiven with the right characterization, but… the lead character. I mean, most Gundam leads do fairly well to stand as solid characters, but this guy is completely generic. It’s not really the fact that he’s able to pilot a really powerful mecha: there are tons of other anime who do that. Instead, he just feels so out of place. Here we have a serious story about the war between two big fractions, and right there in the middle there’s this brat who keeps whining because he just discovered that people die in a war. Because of him we had to listen to strings of cheesy morals, instead of focusing on the story.

The same happened to Char here: in Zeta Gundam he was pretty interesting, in the first Gundam he was an excellent villain, but here, he looks like he lost all his charms, relying just on his cool-factor. The action also was something I got bored with. It’s the exact same type of action that we’ve been seeing over and over again. It was indeed solid, but the only thing that set it apart from all of the other Gundams was its airbags and the way in which the lead character vomited in his suit. okay, that’s admirable, but that’s not something you want to advertise yourself with.

Gundam Unicorn is solid, I’m not going to deny that. I did like the parts that didn’t feature the male lead. Minerva thank god shows how to not be annoying as a teenager, and also all of the adults knew exactly in what kind of situation they’re in, and they stand behind their choices. There was this interesting bit of intrigue going on, and at least most of the adults here felt very natural.

But that’s the thing: it’s got such a solid base here, and it doesn’t use it. This is Gundam: it’s got a huge graphics budget here; its direction is very solid and thought out; it’s got all of the ingredients for at least a solid story, grounded in realism. It just feels like it put its ambition in the wrong places.

Of course, it wasn’t bad either. I really hope that this episode was simply building up, so that we can at least get to see something interesting in the final episodes. I first want to see that before I’ll buy that, though. My biggest hope right now resides on that box. If that gets to be more than just another McGuyver, then this could still get interesting.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,75/10

OVA Impressions: Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 04

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc, OVA Impressions



I must say, that I’m really impressed with how this OVA turned out. This isn’t just there for its storytelling or action. Instead, it’s all about its plot. It’s very unlike what we’re expected from Ryousuke Takahashi at this point, yet it has the elements that are so typically his style, like the large focus on religious mumbo jumbo.

As expected, this episode went to Quent, or at least Quent’s twin planet. And finally we get a bit more of an idea what this OVA was meant to be about: the so-called Child of God. A kid who is supposed to be Wiseman’s successor. It’s interesting that it’s going to take the place of Chirico, who somehow was chosen by Wiseman himself as the new ruler. Could it be that Wiseman knew about his demise and the new birth of the child of god, so he at least tried to pick his own successor?

In any case, with this I can really see enough material for the upcoming three Votoms Movies. The Gen-ei arc and the Pailsen files were really meant to tie everything together: the Pailsen files filled in the missing details of Chirico’s past, while Gen-ei hen prepared for the real conclusions of the franchise: the three upcoming movies. On top of that, it really feels like an omnibus, which contains a bit of everything that we’ve seen so far: mecha action, the comic relief, the religious focus, the politics and of course the way that each of the episodes revisited the four arcs of the TV-series.

Either way, it’s great to see so many great series-based OVAs this year: we’ve had Darker than Black, xxxHolic Rou, Black Lagoon, Yozakura Quartet and all of them really had the guts to be different and go with their own direction and focus.
OVA Episode Rating: 8,5/10

OVA Impressions: Tales of Symphonia – 07

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Tales of Symphonia



As someone who played the original game, I am really happy with this episode: the creators did a wonderful job on it. Yeah, sure, it wasn’t 100% faithful, and a lot of the minor parts were cut away, but who cares! This episode really delivered where it should have, and it did especially Sheena justice.

Sheena’s story really took up the main focus of this episode, and I’m really glad to see that the creators of the anime realized that it’s indeed the characters who made the original game so good, rather than its typical story. I also love how much of a bigger role Corrine had here: it even appeared in front of Lloyd, to make him trust Sheena: he never did that in the game. The anime also put a lot more focus on the parallel between Sheena’s two attempts to summon a pact with Volt. The actual fight with Volt was done better in the game, but everything around it was actually way superior in the anime in my opinion.

It’s also interesting to see that the anime creators decided to reveal Lloyd’s father this early here. To come with a bit of a comparison: in the game we’re still on the first disk. Yuan only exposes Kratos, halfway through the second disk. Still, they really didn’t have any choice here, with the really shallow way that they’ve been foreshadowing it. That really was something at which the game was better. But at the same time, the revelation in the anime also really packed a punch: it was well timed and worked really well as a cliff-hanger at the end of this episode.

This is something subtle, but I also love what the creators did with Raine’s powers: in the games she already was one of the best characters in terms of combat, but they really made her kick ass beyond belief here: able to block Volt’s rays for several minutes, and while some of the other characters struggle to just slay one dragon, she blasts an entire army away. On top of that, I also really love the way that the creators found in order to reveal that she’s actually a half-elf: it both showed Regal’s intelligence, and also pretty much enabled that Pope to remain out of the storyline here. It’s much more subtle here, and I like it a lot more than in the games.

There is one part about this episode that I didn’t like, though: it’s the portrayal of Lloyd: he just doesn’t feel like a worthy main character here. In the game, he also had his flaws, but at the same time he was the one who pulled the rest of the characters along with him: he was impulsive, but resolute and that allowed everyone to move forward. The others in the meantime were the ones who provided him with advice when he was having a hard time. That latter is too much overstated in the anime: he just gets pulled around, he is a bit of a whiny brat, especially at the time when Yuan proposed an alliance. He just isn’t the leader here, which on the other hand isn’t so bad, because the rest of the cast is that awesome.
OVA Episode Rating: 8.75/10

OVA Impressions: Yozakura Quartet – Hoshi no Umi – 01

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Yozakura Quartet - Hoshi no Umi




Please, someone. Confirm that Yozakura Quartet’s OVA is going to be a long one. I mean, seriously: this is way too awesome to just end in three episodes. This was meant to be the real adaptation, faithful to the manga. There is no way that the manga is this small, right? I mean, that Supernatural OVA of Madhouse also has 22 episodes. There is no reason why this shouldn’t be possible for Yozakura Quartet as well, and it’s not like this episode felt rushed in any way. Right?

Let’s start with the animation, which is absolutely fantastic: there are no still frames whatsoever. Most of this episode was build up and slice of life, but even there the animation was consistently fluid and expressive. And then the action-scenes came, at the second half of the episode, and they were even better. If only because of those scenes, this OVA NEEDS to be watched.

As for the story… I really don’t know how the TV-series managed to screw things up this badly. I mean, it’s not like they had a bad director here: it was the director of Red Garden, Kurenai and Rozen Maiden: he really could have pulled this off. Instead, we got a generic shounen series that become boring after just one episode. This episode was much, much better. It knows that its premise around superpowerful teenagers is a bit bland, so it spends most of its time fleshing these people out.

They’re really helped by the animation here, but even there I feel like I’ve gotten a much better picture of the characters than with the TV-series, and in any case they’re a lot more likable now, despite the fact that it introduced another love triangle. It is a bit boring at times, especially when you don’t like teenagers, but it formed a very good base for the final parts of the episode, and the rest of the OVA.

The action was both fun, exciting and brutal. I love how the creators weren’t afraid to insert some humour, turning a bunch of stereotypical bank robbers into a bunch of hilarious scapegoats (something I’ve noticed with very few other anime), and the strong art and animation really did a great job to swap the mood into a much darker atmosphere.
OVA Episode Rating: 8,75/10