Category: OVAs and Movies:

OVA Impressions: Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 03

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



This episode took this OVA in a completely different direction. Seriously, Chirico finally makes his comeback, but the way in which the creators did it. I really have to applaud their guts. There’s no fancy entrance, he’s just there. We still have no bloody idea what he’s doing, other than the fact that he’s running away from what looks like the cult of the Brilliant Heretic, but the scale of this episode was just so small: it was pretty much all about Sophie. Yeah, that woman. I completely forgot about her, but it’s great to see that the creators ended up giving her so much character-development.

I mean, this entire OVA has been chock full of character-development. Especially for anime, how often do you get to see a time-skip of more than thirty years? I really like how Sophie changed over those years: throughout the tv-series, she really seemed possessed by this thirst for revenge, even though she couldn’t do anything about it. Right now she’s just an old woman in her seventies, and apparently, she still remembers the past, but right now she doesn’t really care for this revenge anymore.

Meanwhile, Chirico’s development has been more subtle. He’s still pretty much the same as he’s ever been, though you can really see that he’s grown older. He’s no longer the young boy that he was at the beginning of the TV-series. I think that the biggest difference is that he doesn’t shy away from people anymore: he still doesn’t say much, but he lost the air of “don’t bother me, I want to be alone”.

Overall, when you put everything of Votoms together, you get one heck of a well rounded and varied whole. I mean, no part in this franchise is the same as any of the others, it’s constantly evolving and changing. The Gen-ei hen was again completely different, but at the same time I loved how it also pays homage to the original Votoms series. Heck, this episode even brought back some of the most iconic background tunes that created that bleak atmosphere in the earlier incarnations. I mean, this isn’t even a homage, or a modern version: they took the exact same songs here. That really turned out to be a wonderful way to bring this series back to its roots.

My only complaint about this episode was: how the heck did Vanilla, Goto and the others find Chirico? I mean, they didn’t know about what Chirico did when he was up in that space ship, so in god’s name how did they track this guy down?
OVA Rating: 8,75/10

Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 02

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc



All in all, this turned into quite a unique series. With the second episode, we’re given a new hint to the point of why this series was made, as we continue to revisit some of the locations of the television series. This time: Kummen, the jungle kingdom that was the stage of the second quarter of the series.

Alongside the nostalgia and the decade-spanning developments, this series also puts a lot of focus on the mystery around Chirico: what exactly is he? What has he been doing after the end of the Brilliant Heretic, where that massive spoiler happened? As it turns out, there are more people trying to find him, and the mysterious mecha of the previous episode may also just have been someone who wanted to lure out Chirico (who probably wasn’t even there at the time).

Either way, it’s great to see these kinds of drak and gritty mecha series again, compared to the over the top and colourful ones that we’ve been getting lately. Cocona and Vanilla may be light hearted, but they actually form quite a nice contrast between the otherwise dark fight scenes here that don’t try to be epic with their direction. The politics also were a nice addiction, and it’s quite ironic that with thirty years, nothing much has changed in Kummen, which just devolved into yet another civil war. We can now see that the plan of the prince, who was portrayed as a brilliant stategist at the time, failed to create a new and stable country because people were too quick to grab their firearms at their disagreements.

In any case, I really wonder what’s up for the next episode, because a lot of that arc was spent on a space ship that already crashed by now. For me, it was that arc that really sold me to this series. The loneliness of just being all alone, along with Fyana being really able to show that she’s more than just a damsel in distress. There are quite a bit of open questions left from there, so I’m really looking forward to it.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Armored Trooper Votoms – Phantom Arc – 01

by psgels, posted in Armored Trooper Votoms - Phantom Arc



Well… that turned out to be different than I expected.

In any case, I’m very glad to see another series of Ryousuke Takahashi, but this episode was far more light-hearted than I ever expected. I can fully see the idea behind it, though, and this is a great one. The Phantom Arc is all about nostalgia. It plays twenty five years after the original series played, at a time in which it has been twenty-seven years after the original series ended. This episode was all about the side-characters who have all built up their own lives after Chirico left them, and this series shows them as they decide to go back to some of the locations of the TV-series out of nostalgia.

Like the Pailsen Files, these are very interesting and creative ideas as continuations that were produced decades after their original series. It’s a great way to add to your franchise. The disadvantage of course is that there is no way you can watch this OVA without having watched the TV-series. This one is entirely meant for the fans.

As for the actual content, this episode did well in mimicking the light moments of the TV-series, so there’s not much to say about the serious parts. All we saw of Chirico was a bunch of shady silhouettes, and he ended up stealing a mobile armour in order to fight Shaka in a battle to the death. No reasons were given of why he was there, what he was doing there, and why he picked that day of all possible days to do this, that’s left to the rest of the episodes.

I also wonder how everything is supposed to fall into canon, especially with the Brilliant Heretic. This could become a bit strange for the people who haven’t seen that one, as there is a crucial plot twist at the end of Brilliant Heretic that will cause you to really wonder what’s going on in the next number of episodes as soon as Chirico really shows himself.

On the production side of things, I was a bit surprised: this really goes back to the original series. Most of Ryousuke Takahashi’s series are animated with a great attention to detail, but this brings us back to the inconsistency of the 1980s.

Also, the character-development. I really like how down to earth the creators have portrayed them. Through the past twenty five years, the characters have changed subtly. You can really see that Vanilla and Cocona are a married couple now. In the TV series they insulted each other, but to balance that out they were also nice to each other. Here the insults feel harder, and instead of balancing these out with nice comments, they instead just are themselves without any pretension. I wish I could have seen a bit more about their six children, but on the other hand they were just made to show how the two of them spent their past twenty-five years.

At first I thought that this was a bit cheap compared to Ryousuke Takahashi’s other series, but a surprising amount of attention has gotten into these characters right now.

And really, the entire cast of this series is now in their forties or above. When was the last time we got an anime like that?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tales of Symphonia – 06

by psgels, posted in Tales of Symphonia



Awesome. Nearly an entire episode dedicated to Regal and Presea, my two favourite characters of the game. It was a bit cheesy, sure, but I don’t care! This is the episode I’ve been anticipating ever since the Tales of Symphonia anime got announced. After more than four years of waiting this episode was SO worth it.

It’s awesome to see that in an adaptation of a game that shined because of its side characters, the creators indeed intend to give all of them ample time to show themselves, especially considering the limited time that this OVA has to deal with. The characters didn’t end up travelling to Ozette or Regal’s company, and the point about the rotting corpse of Presea’s father was also omitted, but instead Regal immediately recognized Presea, and didn’t keep his past secret, wanting to settle it immediately. That works too.

A bit surprise was also that Presea’s character is completely different from the game. In the game, when she recovered, she still remained quiet: she only said something when necessary, and she remained introvert. Here however, she’s much more outspoken. Her voice actress also gives a very different dimension to her character compared to her English voice actress from the game. I actually liked this difference quite a bit, to see such a different interpretation of her character like this.

Adapting a game is probably the most difficult kinds of adaptations that you can get. With mangas and light novels, you can pretty much copy and paste the scenario from start to finish. With games however, you can’t just do that: there are so many things that just can’t be translated to the animated medium: random battles, quick-saves, the battle system, having to slowly travel around the world and talk to random people. You really have to think outside the box to make these work. And again, I’ve got to applaud Ufo Table for actually pulling off a pretty good attempt here.

This episode did have its nitpicks again, though. The biggest wut of this episode came at the beginning, when Yggdrasil showed off a skill that not only he never had, but also introduces quite a bit of plotholes. When he has the ability to stop time, then how the heck can it be expected to beat him? In all the battles he can just stop time and kill everyone before they can do anything. In the games, he was just ridiculously strong and used that to beat everyone. He could have easily used that here too.

Also, the flashbacks. In the games, we never saw an actual flashback of the moment at which Lloyd’s father killed his mother, people only talked about it. It’s quite reasonable, since Lloyd shouldn’t remember anything about it. It was pretty much a big question mark at this point. In the anime however… yeah. Is there anyone who hasn’t played the games and does still now know what’s up with Lloyd’s father? Great subtlety, guys.

Overall, Lloyd and Collette were the least interesting characters of the games, and that again pretty much shows here. It’s very refreshing to see an entire episode without Collette, while Lloyd felt like he had a bad case of constipation in this episode. The rest of the cast was wonderful, though. Zelos’ jokes were a lot funnier than in the games, and the chemistry between him and Genius worked surprisingly well.

I expect the next episode to again kick a lot of ass. The final episode… well… in the games it was a standard climax. It definitely wasn’t among the best parts.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

xxxHolic Rou – 01

by psgels, posted in xxxHolic, xxxHolic Rou



Before watching this OVA, I had heard from people that xxxHolic Rou would be very confusing. But Bloody Nora, I never thought that it’d be this extreme! The non-manga readers who have yet to see this episode: STAY AWAY FROM THIS POST! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

Because of xxxHolic Shunmuki, I was expecting something Tsubasa-related as well. Instead, the Tsubasa-cast doesn’t make an appearance at all. Instead, we get a time-skip of who knows how many years, in which A TON has happened: Yuko is dead, and Watanuki has now taken her place. This episode asked a whole tidal wave of new questions: what the heck happened to Yuuko? What caused her to come back? Why did Doumeki’s name change? Why does it seem that Watanuki can’t leave the shop? And taht’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Even for xxxHolic’s standards, this episode was dark. Watanuki has changed a lot. The visual comedy around him and Doumeki is completely gone now. Instead, the jabs he takes to Watanuki are short and subtle. Also, this episode never left the shop: everything we see is from Watanuki’s perspective, who somehow doesn’t leave the shop. Doumeki also lost the wise-cracking part of him: he now really doesn’t fool with Watanuki anymore. He’s actually graduated university at this point.

I guess this episode was all about Yuuko’s… rebirth or something, but what got to me the most was that phone-call at the end of this episode. After all that build-up! After all that time that was spent on the relationship between Watanuki and Himawari to make them like the perfect couple… she actually ended up marrying someone different and the two have grown apart!

I must say, Clamp: you did it again. This episode really was amazing in its character-development. It’s such a stark contrast from what xxxHolic used to be. Including the time-skip was a brilliant idea.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Tales of Symphonia – 05

by psgels, posted in Tales of Symphonia



Hell yeah, finally! Now that Ufo Table finally finished with Kara no Kyoukai, it’s finally time for them to finish off what they started with Tales of Symphonia. And as an added bonus, the episodes are forty minutes long instead!

Again, this episode did not follow the story of the games exactly. Presea is introduced in a different way (it was awesome to finally see her, by the way. She was my favourite character to play as in the game). Yggdrasil’s appearance at the end of this episode was also… random to say the least. In the game we saw that Kratos travelled around in Tethe’Alla as well (for reasons that will probably explained in one of the next episodes), but I can’t recall that Yggdrasil had anything to do with it.

In terms of the focus, it’s clear that the creators have chosen the stories of Collette, Kratos and Zelos to be the major focus of the series. It’s a bit of a shame, though. For me, the backstories of Genius and Raine was the best, followed by Presea’s. Instead, Genius hitting on Presea in this episode was a lot more annoying than that it was in the game.

Zelos in the meantime was a lot more interesting compared to the way he was in the game, and that’s something that the creators really intended to do. I must admit, I never got to play his entire story. It was one of the most difficult to get to, so I didn’t bother. While I’m a bit sad to see that the TV-series will not spend as much time on the issues of discrimination (the thing that I remember the most about this series, after playing it some five years ago), but at the same time, I’m interested in the themes that the creators did choose to focus on.

Like the first season, this TV-series really does certain things worse than the games, and at the same time it also has enough things that it does better than the games. And really, out of all the adaptations, game adaptations are the most difficult to pull off correctly. While with mangas or light novels, at least you have a continuous storyboard that you can be faithful to. Games however have quicksave functions: an easy reset button for if you screw up. There is no way in hell to translate this into animated form. On top of that, it’s also impossible to make animated random battles interesting. If you want to pull off a game adaptation right, you really need to have an inspired storyline and idea to base it around. And really, that’s what happened with this series. Game adaptations are often looked down upon, and I agree that the lesser ones indeed are really terrible, but the inspired ones can be really good.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
OP: Nice, though not as good as the first OP.
ED: The clay figures are back!

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn – 01

by psgels, posted in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn



2010 is going to be a major year for OVAs, so you can expect me to blog a lot of ’em. I’ve mostly been looking forward to Gundam Unicorn because of its director, Kazuhiro Furuhashi of Chevalier, Real Drive and Hunter X Hunter fame, among many others. Overall, I’m impressed: there are a number of cliches in this show, but there’s also a lot of promise. And in this episode, the impressive outweighed the unimpressive parts.

So yeah, I hoped that it wouldn’t be the case, but alas: the lead characters are a bunch of teenagers. But to be honest, teenagers have never been the deciding factor for whether a Gundam Series is going to be good or not. While Zeta Gundam’s latter half indeed derailed because of the constant focus on angsty teenagers, the original Mobile Suit Gundam also had a lot of them and yet I consider that one among the best Gundams I’ve seen. Same for Turn A Gundam, which also had a teenager piloting an overpowered mecha. Gundam 00’s second season on the other hand barely had any teenagers, and yet it did have plenty of emo characters and its plot never really went anywhere for me. I guess that it all depends on the execution, and that’s where Unicorn shined in this episode.

Even for Sunrise, the animation here is great. The motion is incredibly fluid and the soundtrack fits very well. I really liked the action in this episode: it was intense and yet didn’t drag on. On top of that, the dialogue also is detailed. If the creators can keep this up, then I’ll be satisfied.

The lead character is a newtype, but I’ve seen much less likable Gundam leads. This guy is impulsive, but he’s not so ridiculously trying to be cool. He reminds me of a less whiny Kamille. Right now, I do hope that the creators are not going to increase his angst as the episodes go on. In this episode, the teenaged angst was still at a healthy level: they lost a lot of loved ones, so it’s natural for them to freak out, and they didn’t get in the way of the plot as they did so. The “war is bad” messages are again back in full force, but it’s all going to depend on how the creators are going to use the rest of these episodes whether or not this show is going to be a success.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Kara no Kyoukai – The Garden of Sinners – A Study in Murder (Part 2) Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kara no Kyoukai



The seventh and final Kara no Kyoukai Movie is another long one, clocking in at two whole hours. This really gives more than enough time to properly give attention to the story that explains the rest of the mysteries that the previous six movies have left behind. And really, these past seven movies have been a real treat. They’re all different and don’t try to rip off each other, contrary to what you might expect. They’re a great recommendation for any mystery-fan, though do note that the seventh movie isn’t the best.

I’m pretty surprised with some of the flaws that actually managed to slip by in the second part of A Study In Murder. The focus this time is the shock-factor: there is a lot of gore, even more disturbing than in the previous movies, and it also touches upon a big taboo in anime: drugs. While I applaud this series for actually going there, I do think that they could have spent a bit more time making them work out right. Bluntly said: this is the most unrealistic of all the Kara no Kyoukai movies.

The gore really is gruesome, but there are times when it’s overdone a bit too much. Characters who are badly wounded (even those without any sort of supernatural powers) just walk away without even flinching (or bleeding, for that matter), and not to mention Shiki’s ingenious “handcuff-escape-trick”. hello? You have a mechanical arm! What was the point of giving her that anyway? The effects of drugs on people also didn’t seem too well portrayed. Especially for a movie of this caliber, I expected a lot more detail. This also was the only movie in which the CG didn’t blend in well with the other graphics. While most of the movie looks as gorgeous as ever, the CG saliva just looked way off, and some of the goreish flesh-wounds had this as well. Really, what happened?

But despite these, does it have enough to make up for it? Plenty. The interplay between Shiki and Mikiya in this movie adds a lot of depth to their characters and it provides a satisfying closure to the questions that were asked throughout this series of movies, mainly in the second one. It’s pretty unpredictable as well: before starting this movie, I had a completely different image of the true culprit.

The direction is also as solid as ever, and the double length really allows the story to play out like it should have. It’s just a shame of the above-mentioned flaws though. In the end, my favourite movie of the seven remains the fifth one, closely followed by the fourth. This one hovers somewhere in the middle: still very good, but hampered by strange flaws and a story that just isn’t as strong as some of the others.

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

Eve no Jikan Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Eve no Jikan

Science fiction, androids and artificial intelligence are a popular theme in anime, but Eve no Jikan shows that you can still come with new ideas. It’s an OVA series of five episodes of 15 minutes, and 1 of half an hour, and it shows a possible future in which androids have just become able to look and act like regular human beings. It explores the boundaries of intelligence, what it means to be self-conscious and in what aspect androids differ from humans, as well as human relationships with those androids. throughout its six episodes, it shows a variety of cases of how people chose to deal with it, through the eyes of the lead character Rikuo. Overall, it’s a very well made series, and worth the watch just for the setting. However, it’s also just way too short: it has enough potential to fill up a regular 13-episoded tv-series, and it could quite possibly even run for 26 episodes. right now, the characters are just too underdeveloped, there’s too little time to get to know the fairly large cast in this series, there are so many interesting questions that are still left hanging, and there’s still a lot of potential left in the concept that the creators weren’t able to touch. Still, there always is the chance for a continuation: Studio Rikka is a rare example of a successful independent animation studio, and considering the success of this series, they’re probably aiming for more. There is a flaw that can’t be excused with this, however: the characters tend to put an overemphasis on their acting. Especially Masaki’s character feels way too dramatic, and feels unnatural because of this. Nevertheless, I definitely support these short OVAs that try to do something fresh and different. The OVA-format is really one in which you can take a lot more risks than with your regular TV-series, and yet hardly any series take advantage of this. Eve no Jikan’s problem is that it’s just way too ambitious for this format: it tried to too too much in too little time, which prevents it from being a classic, but on the other hand its short length turns it into a very accessible nice and light watch.

Storytelling: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Production-Values: 9/10
Setting: 9/10
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Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 55

by psgels, posted in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei

Well, I guess that with this, Higurashi finally comes to an end, and I have to say that the creators couldn’t have chosen a better way to close it off than with Rei. It really made excellent use of the OVA format to surpass itself, in terms of comedy and silliness in regards to episodes 1 and 5, and in terms of solid scriptwriting for episodes 2, 3 and 4. I’m really going to miss this series. Anyway, I’m not going to write a review for this OVA, because I know from experience that I’m terrible at those kinds of reviews, especially if I don’t marathon them. What I do want to say though, is that everyone who finished the TV-series should really also give the OVA a chance. It’s one of the very few cases in which the OVA is as good as the series it’s based on. Anyway, this episode closes off Higurashi with another silly chapter, in which Rena swallows a “Magatama” which makes her fall in love with whoever holds an identical “Magatama” in a different colour, which shows Rena spooning up to Tomitake, Takano, Oshii and eventually Keiichi through a hilarious episode. I liked it better than the first episode of Higurashi Rei, because even though it was very silly, it also showed a new side of Rena: the side of her that wants to be close to others, and so is very easy to adapt her hobbies to others. This also leads to an awesome Mah-Jong match, and at that point you could really see that it was a wise decision to put the director of Shion no Ou on the director’s position, rather than Chiaki Kon. The Mah-jong match in this episode which probably only took up 5 minutes was more exciting and creative than anything I’ve seen in Saki for the past half five months. It really reminded me that there can be game-based series that don’t have to rely on god-mode powers and Deus ex Machina. Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>