Kill la Kill – 07

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

Okay, so I guess everyone is waiting for what that infamous episode 8 is going to do. Anyone who has seen Gurren Lagann knows what I’m talking about. However, I think that the twist isn’t the most important, and only a means to an end. I’m one of the people who wasn’t a big fan of that “twist” (not that the twist wasn’t good, but it didn’t improve things in the long run to me).

But yeah, this episode: I have no idea why but it worked. Again on paper it sucks: poor people taste the life of high standards and learn to appreciate being poor with drama, and at the end of the episode they revert again like nothing happened. If there ever was a whiplash episode, it’d be this one.

And yet, I liked this. Perhaps it was a combination between the premise being so ridiculous that it worked (which fits perfectly with the rest of this series of taking just about everything over the top), along with the actual context of this episode: the entire school is going to change and be rebuilt. I’m actually pretty excited for what they’re planning to turn it into. And at the same time they ended up giving a very good solution for the fears that everyone had been having of this series devolving into a formulaic monster of the week.

Knowing Hiroyuki Imaishi, there are two things that he’s probably going to turn up to eleven: the school and the clothing. On one hand this school will either drill into heaven, or will become the visual embodyment of hell times the power of infinity, and in terms of clothing everyone will end up either running around naked or with some of the most ridiculous costumes imaginable. I’m currently putting my money on 1 and 2 respectively.

Oh yeah, and am I the only one who thinks that the setting here is a big wink to Revolutionary Girl Utena?
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Samurai Flamenco – 06

by psgels, posted in Samurai Flamenco

Samurai Flamenco is a series that very cleverly keeps escalating. And this episode was a good example of this: the reward on Samurai Flamenco’s identity got bigger, he got more famous, the force used against him becomes more lethal, his gadgets get upgraded, people gang up on him more, more other superheroes enter the picture with the arrival of the other two flamenco girls. The only thing that doesn’t escalate is goto’s relationship with his girlfriend, which seems to have gone back to normal after their difficult time earlier. That’s an interesting development: a stable relationship. or at least one that looks like it so far.

At this point in the series it’s a bit too early whether this approach really works in the long run. For that we need a bit more time to see what it’s building up for. This episode’s main purpose was escalating and building up, even though a lot seemed to happen into it. Masayoshi in any case continues to stay true to himself with how he doesn’t doubt anyone on purpose, but the question is how long he can keep this up.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 05 & 06

by psgels, posted in Yozakura Quartet

You can really see that Yozakura Quartet is based on a manga that is quite old already: when people think of a high spot in the center of Tokyo, the thing that immediately comes to their mind is Tokyo Tower. Not the Tokyo Skytree. This also is a bit of an example of creators adhering a little too much to their source material. What difference would it have made to the story to update to the new highest building in Tokyo? And yet it would have added quite a bit to the immersion as a nice detail.

Also, you don’t need to foreshadow everything. If your character is like “Ha! I took your course of action into account and therefore I took the necessary precautions for it!”, then that’s awesome. When an old couple suddenly reveals that they’ve been holding onto this really incredible power for years that’s given to her just as she’s going to be beaten, then you really have to build that up well. You can’t just show a bunch of shots of that couple here and there. It indeed signifies that they were planning on something, but not that they were going to pull something so convenient for the plot out of their asses.

Now, this is nit-picking, so let me get to the point: I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a series great, and I’m pretty sure that the answer is balance: a harmony between every single part. And that’s not there for this series. On one hand you can see lots of attention spent on the animation, but not a lot on the script. The characters all have tragic backstories, but there’s not much variety in it. Everyone’s sortof vaguely bothered by “being a demon is annoying”, and lots of characters blend together because of weak characterization. The OVA was short, dynamic and to the point and therefore didn’t have that problem.

But I think a better comparison is with the second season of Birdy the Mighty Decode (not the first, because it didn’t have the incredible animation). Both series have a true master behind the action scenes, however Birdy uses this as a means, while Yozakura Quartet makes it an end. With Birdy the Mighty, you can mention a ton of other reasons to make it worth watching: the character-development, the incredibly dark turns, the way it brought its setting alive, the chemistry and much more. Yozakura quartet… eh… I mean the OVA is awesome due to the characters and the chemistry of the characters, but the TV-series doesn’t have that as much.

Sure, stuff happened in these two episodes, but I’m not really impressed to be honest. There was fighting… and more fighting, but I found the context of it to be rather weak. And it’s not like the conflict is too simple: Kill la Kill has that too. The difference, I think is that that series knows what it wants. It’s also deliberately paced, and knows where to add symbolism where it needs to. The episodes flow right and they know when to show action and when to show building up, instead of showing flashbacks right in the middle of a huge fight, or finding some weird excuse to have a pause in the middle of action (gee, it’s a good thing those monsters don’t attack us while we’re talking, being sentimental, and not keeping our eyes on them). I know, a lot of this is nitpicking, and alone these issues wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s the big picture I’m trying to sketch here.

Another interesting comparison with this series would be to White Album 2. Why? Because both series feature a director who previously was one of the best animation directors for TV-series out there. The big difference is that White Album specifically does not focus on its animation, but more on making the different parts work together. I haven’t completely caught up, but it seems to do a better job. Let me put it this way: if I had to pick one element of these two series that stands out the most, then it’s the animation of Yozakura Quartet. However in terms of the big picture, White Album has it beaten at this point.
Rating: 3,5/8 (Enjoyable)

Noucome – 05

by psgels, posted in Autumn 2013 Kaleidoscope

I’m not blogging this series, but this episode was too interesting to pass up. I’m quite behind on a lot of series, so unfortunately it might take a while before I’m caught up with everything again, so I’m just going to continue the Kaleidoscope in whichever way is the most handy.

Noucome is definitely my guilty pleasure of the season. There is a lot wrong with it. For starters: remove the dog girl and this series would already be lots and lots better. Every major character in this series is a clever play on stereotypes, but she’s just there for dumb moron-jokes and fanservice that we’ve seen way too many times before. This series also has some moments at which it’s just random for the sake of being random. That also could have been toned down.

But yeah, this episode in particular had some pretty sharp parodies. It was actually a breath of fresh air to finally have a series address the stupidity of some overused cliches and bad plot devices that plague the romance and harem scene. I mean, I’ve said before that a good parody is one that really pokes fun at its subject material, instead of just copying things.

The Shaft and the Sister parodies worked surprisingly well. This probably is the first time that I’ve seen a Shaft parody work so well, pointing out how silly it is to just watch a bunch of dialogue while the camera focuses on random details in the background that make no sense. Very clever. And on the other side of the coin, it was so satisfying to finally have someone call out on the bloody sister-cliche! I cringed when the sister first appeared, but the entire character is a very successful parody who just calls everyone her sibling. The best part was that one member of the student council who finally showed a bit of a realistic reaction of having younger siblings as a teenager.

Beyond that, there actually is a romance series that distinguishes between liking someone and loving someone. Yukihira meanwhile continues to take the piss out of the typical character who has a crush on the male lead by getting into his way in quite some creative ways.

Overall this was a very inspired episode. It’s not perfect obviously, for example that Maria-Sama ga Miteru bit was just a random reference that had no purpose of being there, and the rich posh girl with huge boobs was just another rich posh girl with huge boobs, but for a comedy to be consistently funny for five episodes, with such a questionable subject material. I consider that quite a job well done.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Kill La Kill – 06

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

Apologies for the few posts lately, with rather weird content. I’m currently in a big introspective period. I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am, and why I watch anime. And I’ve also discovered one of the many evil websites on the web: Reddit. Right now I finally managed to be able to block this time eating thing that at the same time made me learn a lot about myself, so I should be sortof back now, though I’m still trying to figure out the best schedule that will also allow me to cover movies again.

In any case, why do I watch anime? Because of series like Kyousogiga, Samurai Flamenco and Kill la Kill. This episode was really good, despite being really boring on paper. I mean, how often have we seen an episode with this premise: “the protagonist and some mid-boss fight with each other but right before resolving anything something conveniently breaks down allowing both parties to escape unscathed”. This is of course boring, but this episode showed how far the right execution can get you.

This also showed that this show is currently developing characters for the long run. Even when ‘defeated’, this guy without eyes will continue to play a big role, probably. Ryuko meanwhile really got lucky with this, but this episode just showed how outclassed she gets when the enemies start getting cornered.

And the music! Holy crap, it got even better than what it was before. I mean, that’s what I at least assume: it wasn’t this good in the past, was it? And heck, it worked wonders: it brought out even more emotions than usual.

And with that I mean how everything comes together: characters, animation, music, symbolism, style, development, acting, personality. The creators were having a lot of fun making this, and that’s what shows. That’s what currently energizing me to watch more anime. Six episodes in and despite the simple storyline here, it remained varied and fun without any signs of slowing down.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Galilei Donna – 05

by psgels, posted in Galilei Donna

Oh… the fail. The huge, incredible fail. I was already flexing my muscles when I found out that this episode would be set in the Netherlands… but I didn’t expect that the creators got almost nothing right.

The only thing the creators got right was the names, and they spelled “voor” right.

Questionable but correct was the fact that it snowed. Heck, apparently it’s around January or February when the series takes place. We have periods in which the entire country is covered in snow. Way to go against the stereotypes, I like that. Although I do find it a bit weird that it suddenly out of nowhere started snowing. We’re not particularly colder than the rest of the world here and usually the snow just lasts two months, and even then it’s only a few days at a time. There’s also the way in which everyone just understood each other, but that’s something that all international fiction suffers from. Let’s just assume that everyone’s talking English.

And now for the gross inaccuracies. Let’s start with the architecutre: in the Netherlands, houses can basically be divided into two kinds: old and new. Old is basically the traditional style of housing, while the new is the calculated and well planned home, often built with reddish brick. None of the buildings shown in this episode fall anywhere close to that. I guess they were going for the old look, but they made one crucial mistake here:

Let me tell you, most cities in the Netherlands were built on swamp lands. When homes needed to be built, people would drive huge wooden pillars into the ground for the houses to rest on, because otherwise everything would just collapse on itself. This also meant that most homes couldn’t be built very large unless they have some very solid foundation, wihch is what most people couldn’t afford. Especially combined with the fact that it’s a country with a really high population density: especially in the cities there is not much room. Houses as huge as what we saw there: we only have that in the suburbs, and almost always they are built in a modern architectural style, not some oldish one that you see here. Even the largest houses in the old style are large because they are long. Not wide. When I go on a holiday to a foreign country, I’m always stunned by how big every building is.

Also, the church:churches in the Netherlands are mostly built in an old gothic style. All very old-fashioned, and a typical element of them is that the windows are slightly small. Not huge, like that giant stained glass window we saw here, nor do we have much churches in which the iron beams are plainly visible. Having huge open doors is also just a big no.

Then, the street view: our lanterns nowadays are much more modern: the old style you only see in historical centers like Amsterdam. Also, the creators cleverly managed to mask this with the snow and all, but Dutch streets are nearly always designed to be save: lots of traffic lights, very well defined pavements, lots of opportunities for bikes. I saw no hints of that whatsoever.

And here’s the big one: WHERE THE HECK DID THESE MOUNTAINS COME FROM!? Seriously? We don’t have those in the Netherlands. The single biggest hill we have is about 300 meters above sea level, and that’s in the southernmost part of the country. The other 11 provinces are pretty damn flat here. ESPECIALLY near the sea, which apparently this episode takes place in. Those fancy rocks you see at that beach? Yeah, the rocks we do have are really tiny. Nearly all of our beaches are sandy beaches, follwed by a few sand dunes.

All of this really made me wonder: why am I still watching this? Why am I still going for these kinds of series, when they’re so stupid that they can’t even manage the most basic of research. I mean, Kyousogiga and Samurai Flamenco: I can think of plenty of reasons to watch them. But this…. everything is just average. The drama is all pretty stupid. And I don’t just mean this series, but I’m starting to wonder this about every slightly “good” series. What makes them worth watching if the writers always put so little effort and thought into them?

I want to watch things that can challenge me, however I’m getting more and more the feeling that a lot of the writers are just idiots. Anime has over the past number of years made great strides in terms of animation, but in terms of writing… I’m afraid to say it but things have gotten downhill. There are only a few writers now who can deliver original screenplays, most adaptations are just done lazily. What really is good enough to really be worth your time and attention?
Rating: 2/8 (Awful)

Samurai Flamenco – 05

by psgels, posted in Samurai Flamenco

This episode was a bit awkward to sit through, because it was focused a lot on the characters having doubts about what they should do. An introspection episode in which most of the main cast had an off period and didn’t feel too good: Hidenori’s relationship issues, Masayoshi realizing that what he saw as heroes is just a produced TV-show, and Mari also feeling… something that isn’t exactly explained yet.

It’s all about expectations that aren’t met up, and especially Masayoshi starts acting a bit immature, not realizing that some things just don’t work when shooting a movie, like lots of rain, or the risks that come with using someone unqualified for stunts. Everyone’s sense of justice is different, and this lead to qite an early break-up between Samurai Flamenco and Flamenco Girl.

Nitpick time: when Masayoshi returns to Flamenco Girl when she’s in trouble: how did he find her? Did they agree to wear trackers or something in order to be able to find each other?
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Kyousogiga – 05

by psgels, posted in Kyousogiga

I scrapped the Storytelling, Characters, Production-Values and Setting-ratings from my reviews, but I still look upon anime, based on those four criteria. And really, Kyousogiga is one of the very few series that gets all of them right: it delivers everywhere, and this episode was a great example of that.

Storytelling: the second OVA is brilliantly used by changing the context of each episode and making the way all of the small bits fit into the series completely different. Everything now makes much more sense. With this the third sibling has also gotten his development, and the animation brings the characters alive wonderfully. The facial expressions say huge amounts of things about the characters, without putting them in actual words.

It’s also a great example of one of the reasons why I stopped splitting up my ratings: ideally all of these work together with each other, enhancing each other. Isolating one part is just silly, because the standout series like this one stand out because of the sum of their parts. It’s because of how many different ways the creators manage to think of to portray their characters, using meta-fiction like the one with the dog (symbolism!) to illustrate parts of the story from a different perspective, that enhances the characters and allows them to shine. In the meantime the characters develop by growing and thereby they change the story themselves. Plus, how do you rate it when a series has so much heart put into it as this series? These complex rating systems are completely pointless because you can never take everything into account. Therefore these simple ratings based on one scale are the best. What matters is the overall experience, and overall Kyousogiga is pretty damn awesome.

Another example: in this episode I realized how incredible the music here is. Alone it may have just been organ music. But it brought out so much emotions in the characters. I probably would get bored of it pretty quickly without this series.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Kyousogiga – 04

by psgels, posted in Kyousogiga

This episode, it’s Yase’s turn to get some fleshing out. Also with some material from the second OVA, but again it succeeds to add so many things. Whereas the second OVA was very cryptic, this episode really puts things into perspective, and really explains why Yase acts the way she does.

I’d also like to highlight something else here: a common pitfall for anime is to just take one episode to develop and give backstory, only for the creators to really not know what to to with the character in particular afterwards. That is not the case here. Even the side-characters feel dynamic: we see different sides of them and they all still feel alive, rather than just cardboard cut-outs after they’ve lost their place in the spotlights. That’s another sign of great storytelling.

Oh, and this capital is an awesome place, in which stuff can’t be destroyed other than letting it float away into oblivion. This episode was also about this concept, and how people who value stuff versus the people who don’t value stuff deal with things. This again ties in with the parents disappearing to form one big hole, even though this series at first seems completely random.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Kill La Kill – 05

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

The recent discussion on fanservice has gotten me thinking a bit, especially after I found this infographic about Kill la Kill. It’s true that the fanservice in Yozakura Quartet is just bad and distracts from what makes the show good or interesting, and the fanservice in Kill la Kill is much better because it objectifies everyone, and it has a reason behind it, and the argument you often hear is “it’s awesome so who cares?” – but still I see no reason to bring some more nuance in the discussion.

I mean, reason or not: Kill la Kill cashes in on the popular female empowerment trope. A woman kicks ass while dressed in skimpy clothing. Alone, this would be fine, but with how often this is done, it’s hinted that it’s almost a requirement that if you want to kick ass, you need to show some too. The good shows indeed build all sorts of symbolism around it, but does that make it right? Personally, I still prefer watching strong female characters who can just be empowered because of who they are, and don’t follow the cosmetic trends. Does having fanservice alone ruin a character? Nah. It’s just one part of a show. But the problem is that everyone reacts to it in a different way: for some people it weighs more heavily than others. And in my personal experience, the best shows are the ones that don’t care about the shounen or shoujo label, but are just catered to create a good story for everyone.

But I do think that Kill la Kill is among Hiroyuki Imaishi’s best attempts at this kind of nuance. I mean, Gurren Lagann was basically a sausage fest (the most badass woman: Yoko, who both fits the badass female character to a T and pretty much got a short end of the character development stick), and Panty and Stocking WAS a series that was partially based on making fun of female stereotypes. This show finally feels balanced, and it’s really enjoyable because of it. This episode was no exception by the way.

The same goes for the other way around, of course. I mean I’m also tired of the series that objectify men. Hajime no Ippo currently is a good example of taking that a bit far, with all of the current penis jokes and all. But also the series that go out of their way to make their characters bishies hereby alienate most of the male population just because they have nothing to watch it for. The truly good shoujo series have guys who are good looking, but who can appeal to everyone.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Great)