To hijack this post for a bit, after a few days of using my new star-rating system, and quite a few problems have arisen (with many thanks to the commenters left their opinions):
– It’s too fuzzy
– It’s hard to relate the meaning of the scores, it’s unclear what the maximum number of stars is
– Some PCs can’t support unicode and instead only see a bunch of question-marks.
To conclude, it was a nice experiment, but the star-system sucks, and I’m going back to numbers out of 100 again. I’m going to keep rating, based on Storytelling, Characters, Production-Values and Setting. My biggest beef with my original rating system was indeed how it was inaccurate as hell. In the original system, I had basically ten categories for which I’d give out a rating, where the eventual rating would be their average. These categories always ended up overlapping each other.
With only four categories, this’ll mean that not every number will be utilized (the ratings will quite probably be 8o, 82,5, 85, 87,5, 90, etc. out of 100) but I hope it will make my reviews a bit clearer.
To continue hijacking this post, another thing that caught my attention about the reader survey was the relatively large amount of people who’d like to see the little summaries that I had a year ago back. Are there more who’re interested to see this return? Like, for example:
Short Synopsis: We learn a bit more about Haruka, and last week’s enemy continues to target Chiko
Good: Excellent change from light-hearted to dark throughout the episode
Bad: I’ve never been that big of a fan of brainwashing, and this is no exception. Auntie’s murder attempts keep getting more ridiculous.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Very interesting, the way this episode started promised to be a strange beach-episode, but this series managed to add so much more that I’m surprised that it all fit into just 20 minutes. First of all, it is revealed that Haruka had a twin sister. She reveals this as her dead image keeps haunting her since the beach in this episode is the place where she died, and apparently Haruka blames herself for her death.
In the second half of the episode, our long-haired enemy returns again, and his/her weapon this time is brainwashing all those important to Chiko. Like mentioned above: I’m not too big of a fan of brainwashing, mostly those kinds that can be resisted easily. I mean, if you were a villain, using this technique, wouldn’t you make sure that the people you brainwash never get near the conditions to break out of this mind control? Here too: I’m still not sure why exactly Tome was the only one who broke free…
Still, apart from that, I was surprised at the sudden dark tone. When it wants to, this series takes no prisoners, and it immediately throws every one of Chiko’s friends against her. What were those pills supposed to do? I failed to pick that up. Were they just poison, or did they have another effect? Speaking of poison, I’m really not sure what Chiko’s aunt is thinking… before, she came with intricate plans to kill Chiko through poison, and now she has turned to throwing flower-pots at her head. Can’t she just hire a professional killer or something?
hmm i cnat wait to see this episode, on a side note, i think i like the summaries ur doing rite now but those little summaries ur mentioning seems like a nice plan o.o
LOL the simple way is too hard. I sort of agree; stars suck once you go to more than 1 set of them.
Tome broke free because she cut her finger. Did you miss that part?
“Can’t she just hire a professional killer or something?”
I guess not. She has to do it her style.
Yeah… this whole brainwashing thing was a joke. Once a serious series starts to sidetrack by going into grey-fantasy areas, my interest level starts to drop dramatically.
Here you have the explanation about the pills. It’s at 19.39
奥様の部屋にあったものだ, このまま食べ続ければいずれ死の毒。
It also goes on to explain that the maid had actually been putting those pills in chiko’s food every now and then, since she had been told that they were vitamin pills.
It’s probably the same poison that she’s been trying to slip Chiki since the start of the series.
Tome broke free of the mind-control because she accidentally cut herself while trying to pick up the pills and the sight of blood broke the effect of the brainwashing for some reason.
To answer your questions psgels, Tome really broke out of her brainwashing cause she cut herself with the broken glass ( from the bottle) and the aunt of Chico just can’t hire a professional killer because that would be too obvious that she’s the one who planned Chico’s death. She really wants her death to seem like an accident, that’s why she’s been acting so nice up till then so as nobody could be suspicious about her true intentions. I really believed she cared about her niece in the very first episode, she just seemed too nice and the girl seemed to act like an ingrateful brat. But then, in the second one, we see her true nature. But she has no chance to kill Chico cause she’s been under intensive training for two years with “Twenty – faces” and his friends so if she easily faces all kind of evil people and thiefs and heartless murderers , her aunt looks like a fool while trying to kill that girl. Really she’s no match for her!