Some Quick First Impressions: Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai, Ace of Diamond and Strike the Blood

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character “wrestles” in public.
What can I say? This show is just outright porn. Karuta gets Chihayafuru, Go gets Hikaru no Go, Football gets Giant Killing, Shougi gets Shion no OU. And then wresling gets to do with this vapid excuse of a show. Har har, it’s funny because it looks like they’re having sex! I mean, what’s there to say about it? I could spare some words about the whole set-up perhaps, because that also is just an incredible sellout. With the premise of this series being hot girls having sex with each other under the pretense of wrestling, the creators had to find some excuse to get enough of them in there. Their solution? Idols, making this even more of an insult to the sport. The female lead is basically incredibly stupid and ignorant which leads her to just have a match with a professional wrestler without knowing anything at all about the sport, in the middle of a huge audience. In a way this is a good symbol at how the idol business has spiralled out of control at this point, and how idols have forced their way into places that they totally don’t belong with their cameos, just because they’re famous and that their loyal fanbase will basically just support them no matter what, to the dismay of people who don’t have anything to do with them. But you know the thing with parodies, right, Sekai? It’s not a parody if you’re just adhering to the things you’re supposed to make fun of.
OP: Bland song, bland visuals that just show a bunch of bad wrestling scenes.
ED: Just reverting back to the idol part isn’t going to save you here, guys.
Potential: 0%

Ace of Diamond

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a pitcher.
So, did this series live up to the incredibly high standards that the baseball genre has set in the past? Nah, it’s just a Major-clone, and not really a good one at that. The creators here need to lookup the meaning of “laying it on too thick”, because that was exactly what they were doing in this episode. There is a ton of overacting, but the biggest problem is that it’s got a Marty Stu as a main character, as much as this show tries to hide it. He may make mistakes, but this series always points at him as being right, despite being a brat and making a ton of mistakes, and you also have the strange paradox in which the guy really values teamwork above anything, yet stands at the center of everything. It’s like “teamwork is awesome! As long as I’m the center”. The only redeeming factor here is how this series showed the difference between small baseball teams and the top tier of teams and it at least slightly tried to stay away from the “underdogs good established players bad” cliche. It nearly failed at even that though, but thankfully that catcher and manager ended up saving it.
OP: Generic cheesy opener
ED: The song is generic, but at least the art style is interesting
Potential: 30%

Strike the Blood

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a vampire who threatens to nknowingly destroy the world.
This turned out to be another one of the bad series this season, unfortunately. At first it looked like it might have potential, but there is one thing that really holds it back: its chronic lack of creativity whatsoever. This entire episode was cobbled up with cliches from other stories without any attempt to turn them into something new. Everything here was done before thousands of times, which made for a really, really boring first episode. And they’re not even the good cliches, but the lazy cliches, varying from the riduclously complicated universe rules in order to give the main character special powers while at the same time making him just a normal guy, the way that a panty shot is the biggest source for interaction between the lead male and female, how an international police organization tasked with saving the earth sends a teenaged girl to do this mission, not to mention the amnesia, the generic setting that throws all sorts of monsters just together without any sort of cohesion, the “not any person could block my uber-attack”-cliche, the “I am so stupid that I have no idea that I suck at tracking people”-cliche, the “random assholes who assault a girl”-cliche, and of course the “really sad flashback in the middle of a fire”-cliche (Miss Monochrome did that too, you know). Add that all together and you have a really boring show.
ED: Generic fight scenes and music that was just copied and pasted.
Potential: 0%

Some Quick First Impressions: Log Horizon, Diabolik Lovers and Yuusha Blahblah

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Log Horizon

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is stuck in an MMORPG.
After .Hack and Sword Art Online, here comes the next series about people stuck in an MMORPG. What sets it aside from these two is that it by far takes itself the least serious. Of course there is a solid storyline behind it and all, but a lot of time in this episode was spent on wise-cracking jokes and characters acting quirky, or looking cool while trying to fight monsters. It is much lighter than Sword Art Online by not making an as big of a deal of what happens when you die, and it’s much less deep in its themes than .Hack//Sign was for example. There are still some issues of charcters taking certain things surprisingly serious, like an assassin who talks and acts like an honorable ninja that makes you wonder how she behaved in normal life…), but yeah if you like the banter between the characters then this can be quite fun. Unfortunately for me, that banter often annoyed me and the only good jokes were the ones it made about its setting, how it deconstructed some overused MMORPG cliches with its tongue in its cheek. Most of the jokes though are characters repeating their quirks over and over, and they’re not even funny quirks.
OP: Hilariously cheesy engrish. I did not expect an OP with this intensity, though.
ED: Aagh, and they still come with an ED that has been copied and pasted from every other generic ED out there.
Potential: 65%

Diabolik Lovers

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is stuck in a house full of vampires.
Ah, nearly forgot to check this one out because it aired a few weeks earlier than the rest of the series. Its episodes are only fifteen minutes long, so why not? Diabolik Lovers turned out to be… a really weird horror series. I’m not kidding, the entire premise of this show is that a girl enters a house full of six vampires who start assaulting her, all while looking incredibly creepy. This goes back to the strange amount of occurrences of rapey fantasies that you see all over anime and manga, which I still don’t quite get. But yeah, the bishies are hot and mysterious. The big problem here is that every character so far is a one-dimensional stereotype without any hints of more, so this one definitely isn’t going to win any awards. Good soundtrack, though.
ED: Actually not a bad ED for a horror series.
Potential: 0%

Yuusha Blahblah

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a hero.
Oh my god. What the hell was that? I originally wasn’t really looking out for this one or anything, but I was not prepared for how phenominally BAD the direction of this series would be. I mean holy crap, the director of htis show did just about everything wrong. You really have to try to be this awful. From the outside it doesn’t look that way, because the series does seem to have quite a big budget, but here is the thing: you do not simply assign all of your inbetweeners to your boob shots. Seriously, the animation in this series is crap, aside from the close up fanservice shots, and it’s so incredibly thickly laid on that it’s not even funny. Either way this is an incredibly sexist series with some of the dumbest female characters out there, but beyond that the acting is incredibly wooden. This show fails to introduce anything, it fails to set any kind of standards for its world, it randomly jumps from one scene to the other without any lead-in and it doesn’t make any attempt at comedic delivery. Add that to the uncanny ability to focus on a girl’s boobs or ass and you’ve got one of the worst directed episodes of the year, especially considering how much budget went into this and was just wasted. The bad thing is that this director is directing TWO series at the same time this season. Who the hell found that a good idea?!
ED: The only way to get any lazier than this ED is to just not record a song for it.
Potential: 0%

Some Quick First Impressions: Kill La Kill, Golden Time and Outbreak Company

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Kill La Kill

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is on a quest for revenge.
This is awesome. In the past half year, it was obvious which was the series with the best animation: Shingeki no Kyojin just beat everything. This time though, there are tons of studios who are competing with each other with their best, all in their own ways. We’ve already had Kyoani, Gohands and Toei, here we have Trigger, and we’re most likely going to see awesome stuff from Tatsunoko, Manglobe, A-1, Mappa and Studio Deen. So much eye candy! Kill La Kill also has awesome graphics: the action is just terrific and it just keeps on coming, and on top of that we have the just bizarre sense of humour that the creators have, featuring tons of senseless violence and nudity (both male and female). The story is simple, but it can still grow over 26 episodes to become more than just a “lots of style, no substance”-series. You need to like lots of action though, otherwise this isn’t a series for you. You can also see that Kill La Kill is a throwback to the eighties and nineties, with the absurdly powerful student council that was very often used, combined with the much more cartoonish character designs.
ED: Just some characters, but I expected some more of the song.
Potential: 85%

Golden Time

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters his first day at college.
Golden Time! Please: keep up the level of this first episode! Don’t be one of those comedies that blow their entire load on their first episode, but keep your wit. Keep your characters at this combination between down to earth and absolutely bonkers! Keep that balance! Keep playing with your mood, the way you did in this episode. Because seriously, if you manage that for your entire run, then we’ve got a comedy classic. If not… then this is just Hataraku Maou-sama with worse animation. This first episode though: really surprised me with how funny it was. The humour was actually quite clever and it *gasp* built up its jokes. It was exceptionally good at delaying its jokes: you knew they were coming, but just delaying it made things even funnier than what they already were. It’s a show with a small budget and not many great animators, but they actually did a pretty good job to make things work. Plus some effective use of the simple soundtrack made the above mentioned mood swings work really well. But yeah: it’s all going to depend on whether they can keep this up or not. There have been plenty and plenty of series that just went downhill after hilarious first episodes. I’d give this show a 50/50 chance of that happening.
OP: Very thickly laid on cheese on the J-Pop.
ED: A bit weird considering the context of the series.
Potential: 80%

Outbreak Company

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the legendary otaku savior who has to cultivate the simple-minded who know nothing about moe.
In all of the years I’ve been watching these first episodes, I can’t recall any other series that was as blatantly kissing the asses of its own audience as this one. They really went out of their way to make this dream as wet as possible without resulting to porn for any otaku watching this series (or at least, what the creators think are otaku…). Escapism at its worst, creating a fantasy world in which the main character’s otaku self is celebrated, all because he once got rejected for being one (though granted, having watched this guy for an episode, that probably wasn’t the only reason she rejected him). The acting may not be the worst or anything, but here is the thing with this series: to someone who isn’t an otaku like myself, all this series does is reafferm, if not worsen, the stereotypes that I have of otakus. The male lead is a really unlikable guy, and if they just keep going on about how he’s living inside his own world, rejecting reality, then this show really is not helping to lessen the biases people have here.
OP: Bland J-pop, nothing outstanding.
ED: Again bland J-pop.
Potential: 0%

Some Quick First Impressions: Nagi no Asakura, Kyousogiga and Coppelion

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Nagi no Asakura

Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives in a house under the sea.
Whoooaaaaaa: the setting for this series is awesome! It’s like this child’s dream come true, in which these people live in the middle of the sea with houses and everything, inbetween all of the fish and other sea creatures, and the creators made this whole culture based on that life, including a whole folklore and magic that’s quite creative and fits in perfectly. At the same time you can really see that this is a Mari Okada series, with already a good focus on drama. It’s not perfect though. I still can’t get over the character designs: the main character looks like a girl! There’s way too much sparkle in his eyes, and PA Works went a little too far in adding the polish to the characters here. Uchoten Kazoku showed that taking away the shine results in much better character designs. Shading is fine, but too much lighting leads to a plastic effect. Also, did you have to make the female lead so incredibly weak and useless? And this is coming from people who previously worked on the Armed Librarians which spawned some of the strongest female characters out there, so I’m not sure where the hell that came from?
OP: A bland pop song, but the backgrounds are great looking.
ED: Bland pop, but it does fit the undersea motive very well.
Potential: 80%

Kyousogiga

Short Synopsis: Our lead character fights with a giant hammer
Wednesday is the day of excellent graphics! Kyousogiga will only have 10 episodes. Aside that we seem to have an episode 0, 5,5 and 10,5. I’m not sure what the latter two are, but episode 0 is basically the first ova. I guess it makes sense from a future perspective: this way you have the entire Kyosogiga in just one series, rather than a confusing bunch of OVAs. If you haven’t seen it yet, then this is the perfect chance: it’s great! And I’ll be waiting for it next week to start for real.
Potential: 90%

Coppelion

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are the only ones who can survive in a post apocalyptic Tokyo
Coppelion… actually turned out to be really good! Beyond just looking amazing, the characters are also really well acted. The whole episode played out in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, and it really brought forth the cold and empty atmosphere amidst the beauty of the ravaged scenery. The characters are teenaged girls, but the creators gave a good reason for them to stand in the spotlight, rather than adults, and more importantly: they were well acted. They had teenaged quirks, but they also had much more sides than that and knew how to balance them around. The narrative also rocks, and it built up to this really good climax there at the end. This could very easily become GoHands’ best work at this rate.
ED: Holy crap! This ED rocks! Angela is really in her element here as a singer.
Potential: 90%

Some Quick First Impressions: Kyoukai no Kanata, Super Seisyun Brothers and Miss Monochrome

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Kyoukai no Kanata

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a girl with superpowers.
The trailer hinted at gorgeous graphics, and this show delivered: the animation here is really good and the fights look wonderful. It however failed to show another aspect of this series: the comedy. Oh boy, it’s mostly bad. A lot of this episode was a ditzy stupid girl bantering with a snarky mellow male lead. Gee, Kyoani, I wonder where you got the inspiration for that one! These characters are like near carbon copies of the stereotypes that they usually go for in their series, only this time it’s heavily inspired by Bakemonogatari. And unlike Hyouka, the chemistry isn’t really good here. On the other hand, there were lots of hints to a more serious future (but then again, Tamako Market did that too…). So yeah, the question is whether the animation, plot and the rest of the characters will be good enough to excuse this banter.
OP: The song is nothing special. The animation is really good though.
ED: Great visual direction for an ED here. Lovely use of colors and shots.
Potential: 75%

Super Seisyun Brothers

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a bunch of twins and best friends who hang out together.
You know what? For a 4-minute episoded series, this wasn’t half bad. Sure, it wasn’t anything amazing, but unlike Miss Monochrome, it actually had characters worth watching. It’s basically about these four characters who all look similar, yet are different when you get to know them. This series seems to be about the differences between these four. And you know, that’s not a bad premise to base your series on if you’re just doing a short one. Sure, they talk in stereotypes and nothing really stood out, but considering the usual quality of these kinds of series:, it’s actually watchable.
ED: Simple, but it works: my eyes aren’t figuratively bleeding for once.
Potential: 40%

Miss Monochrome

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an android who wants to be an idol.
Yeah, moving on. This is another one of those crappy 5-minute series that serve no point. There’s no context, just about this girl with a tragic past who wants to be an idol. Way to cash in on things, eh? It tries to make jokes, but the delivery of them is some of the worst I’ve seen in quite a while.
Potential: 0%

Overview of the past Half Year

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

Inspiration can both be a blessing, and a curse. It’s awesome to have, but often likes to strike at the most inconvenient moments. So hereby I present a list of my impressions of the series of the past half year. I’ve been feeling guilty for a while knowing that I can’t write a full review for all of them, so hereby an overview, in order of how much I like them. With the ones that I finished I included their final rating. Also enjoy the big pictures.

And yes this is about the past half year. As in, the most recent six month, otherwise known as the series that aired in the spring and summer season. Not the winter season. Just the past six months.

Watamote, Blood Lad

These series started out as moderately fun comedies, but I did not expect them to become more than that so I did not watch more than two episodes. I’ve said this before: when I watch a comedy, I really want something with really good jokes and I want to laugh out loud, instead of just having to snicker occasionally.

Fantasista Doll

This one won the award of the OP song with the most chance of annoyingly getting stuck in your head. It had potential, but in he end it was just too childish. Those thingies that the lead character summoned were complete idiots, and I don’t mean in a good way. Anime writers pay attention: there’s a different being simple minded and stupid!

Free

Free was a prime: finally there was a fanservice series for females that didn’t have horrible production values or incredibly cheesy acting and it actually resembled something like an actual drama. It wasn’t interesting enough for me to keep watching though.

Stella Jogakuin Koutouka C3-Bu

The first episode was really fun to watch, I dropped this after episode 2 though. Why? Because I did not think that the creators could match episode 1. I feared that it would be too much of the same thing over and over again with a few coming of age themes here and there. Was I right?

Servant X Service

This series actually did make me laugh out loud… in the first episode. I continued for five more episodes, but the wit of the first episode was just gone, and the characters descended into stereotypes. That otaku girl in particular. Dear god what happened to her? She used to be normal but devolved into this deranged fangirl.

Dagan Ronpa

Excellent premise, but Seiji Kishi. In the first two episodes I already saw hints that this would be a really lackluster adaptation and some stories I heard afterwards seemed to confirm this. Because of this I didn’t watch past episode two.

Aiura

Beautifully made, but in the end it’s just a random show about high school girls. Come on, someone put Ryouske Nakamura on a project that will actually put his talents to good use. I only watched four episodes of this one.

Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge

Crime Edge turned out to be a series that celebrated weird fetishes. Nice for a while, but after a few episodes it just got boring and formulaic, with every arc doing a different genre. It had its charming moments, but not enough and I dropped it after about 5 episodes.

Tamayura – More Aggressive – 75/100

I like series to be concise and to the point. A bit of lingering is okay of course, especially if it has interesting stuff to do, but Tamayura mostly just repeated itself in its second season and gave hardly any attention to the side cast. That’s basically the reason for the low grade here: it was fine with just one season. Don’t go and make it longer and harder to watch.

Hataraku Maou-Sama – 80/100

Oh, the promise that this series gave. For a while, it really was a lot of fun to watch, but alas: it couldn’t keep up. It lost the spark that originally made it really funny, and the episodes, while still well written, started to become a bit of a chore to watch

Majestic Prince

Surprisingly, I didn’t finish this show. I’m only something like five episodes away, but I can’t think of a reason to finish it. I thought that it was good, but in the end none of the cast really made an impression on me, strangely enough. Even though the battles got good, and the characters were slightly fleshed out and developed, not to mention episode 19. I’m not sure what happened here… but I totally have no motivation to continue it.

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet – 81/100

Gargantia had a pretty interesting setting, but its plot had a few humps and bumps along the road, with characters that had strange motivations, or didn’t really become engaging. Still, overall it was Enjoyable, and especially that AI was a great character in how it played off the rest of the cast.

Teekyu – 82,5/100

This show is just heaps of fun to watch with all of its energy and the creativity that the animators throw at the screen.

Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru – 82,5/100

Yahari Blahblah (yeah I’m still calling it that) started off rather mellow, and then something happened. Completely against my expectations, it turned into a very well written high school drama with relatable characters. The cast consists out of characters who look like stereotypes, yet aren’t and the show actually made quite a few good points along its run.

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San – 82,5/100

For me, this was the best comedy of the past half year. Utterly hilarious but also completely shameless. It often had me wondering what the heck the creators were thinking and smoking. Sometimes in bad ways, but when it was funny, it really was funny.

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi – 84/100

This show really had a great premise, and I loved how it showed all of the characters coping with it. It had a strange sense of plot twists when it suddenly pulled random twists out of nowhere at the most random moments, but that did give it a unique spin. It’s a melancholic but very engaging and thought-provoking series.

Gatchaman Crowds – 84/100

Gatchaman Crowds got a lot of flack for not making any sense, but in the end, I loved this series as a quirky action series with an imaginative premise. In fact, the summer season stood out in how its series had some really great ideas for their premises. At its core, this is a series that celebrates social media, and all of the chaos that comes along with it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the original Gatchaman, but if it used this title in order to get funded, then it is a sacrifice that had to be made. It was a bit weird sometimes, but it built up into a very satisfying climax.

Uchuu Kyoudai

I’ve mentioned this before: Uchuu Kyoudai has fallen. It used to be the best, incredibly well written and really engaging characters. It’s still there, putting a lot of detail to its characters, but its sense of pacing is totally gone, and it feels like they’re just randomly adapting the manga now without any soul left. It’s a bloody shame because this show deserves some good treatment here.

Hunter X Hunter

Hunter X Hunter is really difficult to rate because my opinion of it just jumps all over the place. The Chimera Ant arc for a long while just took waaay too much time building up and too much time was spent on training arcs. Now that those are over though, this series has suddenly become amazing lately, with the main storyline and objectives having completely changed. These are the characters at their best for the entire remake’s airtime.

Silver Spoon – 86/100

Silver Spoon, an anime about a farming school. It’s got a lot of similarities to Moyashimon, but the big difference is that it’s meticulously planned: everything is there for a reason, either for a good joke, or some sort of character-development, and that character-development is really good and well thought out. I really was surprised how this series did not shy away from the darker side of farming and it tackled that issue with a lot of respect.

Uchoten Kazoku – 86/100

Uchoten Kazoku for me stood out as the best non-sequel of the past summer season. It was chock full of cultural references, and with most of its characters being either Tanuki or Tengu, they actually acted like that. It’s a fun and whimsical series, that still can be really intelligent when it wants to, and the dialogue in particular switches from really simple-minded to intelligent and well thought-out.

Rozen Maiden 2013 – 86/100

My only gripe with this show is the cliff-hanger at the end. Apart from that, this show gave a terrific new spin to the Rozen Maiden anime, and turned a to of characters completely upside down. I really have to praise the plot for taking risks, and trying out something different, and the themes of the series rock as well: every character here is trapped in some way. The creators also managed to make this a very varying series by cleverly putting characters on a bus in order to focus on others.

Shingeki no Kyojin – 87,5/100

This really was the epic of the past half year. No other series came close to its production values, or its sense of action. The pacing was slow, but it always gave us the impression that humanity is completely screwed, and that the titans are just inches away from wiping out humanity altogether. The creators put so much detail into this series, and it looks gorgeous, and the great thing is that it’s also really quite smart: the battles are full of tactics and people trying their best to think straight. This really is just one of those series that deserves the praise that it gets.

Aku no Hana – 89/100

I spent a long time thinking about my favorite series of the past half year. I mean it was obvious for me that it would be one of these two. Both shows were just fantastic, though unfortunately unfinished. However in the end I gave Aku no Hana the edge. Yes, it’s completely unlike any other series that we’ve seen before, but what really won me over was the sheer atmosphere of this thing. This is filled to the brim with emotions, The rotoscoping will push a lot of people away, but that’s not the only thing about this series that’s controversial. The incredibly slow pacing also was an incredibly risky move, but it works oh so well. The series is so chockfull of details that it allows us to get to know the characters on a deeply personal level.

Rozen Maiden – 12 & 13

by psgels, posted in Rozen Maiden 2013

The best ending of the season? I think that was from Gatchaman Crowds, closely followed by Silver Spoon. Rozen Maiden had the potential to top both of them, but no, they had to come with that damn cliff-hanger!

And that is pretty much the only complaint I have about the final two episodes. The character development really was great, for a lot of the cast. Hina Ichigo, beautifully redeemed herself for a season of absence, Jun grew in both his versions and Suigintou… the reason she did not take Souseiseiki’s Rosa Mystica promises great things for the future.

The same goes for Jun: he always looked up to his younger self, and now it becomes apparent that younger Jun was great because he just never challenged his own weaknesses. Putting him in a coma will have a great effect on the rest of the cast, and put them into the roles that he previously occupied. Which brings me back to how this is the end of the season.

So yeah, whoever is producing this: you had better have planned a second season, instead of using this as a stupid sequel hook, putting off the decision for a sequel based upon whether or not the sales are right. Nothng has been announced yet, and that cliff-hanger could have been completely omitted and we would have had a satisfying finale. A bit of anime original aftermath for Jun, and Voila! That would have worked easily, and Tomomi Mochizuki can write that without a doubt to make it leave a good impression.

It’s not like I can hunt you down or something… but yeah. I’m watching out for that sequel…
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Shingeki no Kyojin – 22 – 25

by psgels, posted in Shingeki no Kyojin(Attack on Titan)

With this I see why people complained that Shingeki no Kyojin went off-track a bit, because the whole cellar has been pushed more and more to the side of things. But in the show’s favor: the characters did have a really good reason to get sidetracked like that, because both the political games and that female Titan put up quite a big wall in front of that cellar. That first needs to be broken down before they can get to it.

But did Shingeki no Kyojin drag on? To answer that question, we need to wonder what makes it worth watching. The fantastic action, excellent acting, really well thought-out scenarios and the setting which really managed to convinced that humanity is on its last edge… The pacing is slow, but I would not say that this was rushed. It always had enough to offer, and the final four episodes were no different. They presented the identity of the female titan so well. It really took me a while before it hit me what was actually going on.

It was a trade-off that the creators made here. The pacing of the manga is ridiculously fast. At a certain point I just flew through each chapter. Instead they opted to pad things, and use the length for extra atmosphere building. And that worked for nearly the entire run. Perhaps only some episodes somewhere in the middle of the series lacked a bit momentum because people were just preparing.

Now, as for the ending: it seems that the producers haven’t greenlighted a second season yet, but really: this is one of those cases where it’s just a matter of time. With the sales of both the manga and the anime, there are plenty of reasons to come out with a sequel. My biggest guess as to why it hasn’t been greenlighted yet probably has to do with financing. I don’t have solid facts, but I would be very surprised if Shingeki no Kyojin wasn’t the most expensive series of the year. With all that stellar animation and with all those action scenes, it requires a much bigger budget than usual, and getting the funding for that takes time.

These final four episodes were amazing as usual, but there was also something very freaky going on that the creators very subtly tried to sneak past: the nature of the walls. Especially the last episodes were full of hints that something was really really wrong with them. First there obviously was that huge wall of text at the eyecatch. It may seem weird, but to me, it also seems really important, and there was no way for the creators to otherwise put that tidbit in. Also, how did Annie just jump back and forth between the forest and the walls in the city? The chance of her getting caught while trying to climb the walls would have been pretty high. And then there were the final words of the episode, hinting that it’s the walls that keep humanity trapped. And what the hell was that titan doing in that wall!?

So yeah, I don’t mind to wait for the creators to get the sequel just right. Just don’t pull a Durarara, okay? (Did they ever explain why THAT series didn’t get a second season).
Rating: 6,5/8 (Amazing)

Uchoten Kazoku – 09 – 13

by psgels, posted in Uchoten Kazoku

The final third of Uchoten Kazoku to me… is probably its worst part. Allow me to elaborate why:

Basically it boils down to that the conclusion was too cliched for its own sake. And I don’t really say that for the sake of it being cliched, but rather the implications that this had on the rest of the series. Two implications really stood out:
– The frog, the second son. I really liked how he actually felt responsible for the death of his father. That was some really good drama, and I loved the episode earlier that was dedicated to his feelings about it. But no, the father was just caught by his brother who turns out to be this stereotypically evil bad guy who just justs after some woman. True, without being drunk there was a chance that the father would have seen through the trick, but nevertheless he doesn’t feel guilty anymore about his actions.
– Wat made Uchoten Kazoku great? Its dialogue and its focus on cultural values, customs and legends. The whole succession story just took too much time away from that, and unlike the first two thirds of the series it brought relatively few new things to the table. You can also see this in the character-development, which while there, could have been much more if the plot was a bit more catered to it. Benten for example: we never really got to see what goes on inside her head.

Does that make these four episodes bad? Nah, just not as good as what they could have been. These episodes still were fun to watch, and at least it did try to stay somewhat true to itself by never forgetting that the simple minds of the characters who on one point can be entirely serious, and then can be goofing off or really stupid again. The chaos in the final episode was a neat anti-climax, and the whole frying tram rocked. Uchoten Kazoku was definitely unique and really refreshing as an anime.

Yojou-han, Uchoten Kazoku. This writer needs to have more of his stories adapted to anime!
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi – 11 & 12

by psgels, posted in Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

God?! Screw God! We’ve got a timeloop story that we need to wrap up!

But granted, that ending was really quite good. It again made use of this show’s weird talent make random characters sympathetic from out of absolutely nowhere by suddenly blaming the source of the timeloop to be the classmates of Alice (yes, Alice, don’t ask me why he has a girl’s name) and Dee.

Perhaps basing your story on a misunderstanding isn’t the strongest, but for what it did, the series wrapped that subplot up really nicely. It wasn’t about the misunderstanding anyway. The main issue of the arc was escapism: fearing change, people stayed in the timelooped world because it was safe. You could really see that with Scar and Yuri: the environment felt so safe and trusted to them.

What made this ending was the point at which it was time to move on for everyone. The time to head back into the real world again after 14 years. Alice ‘surviving’ was a bit of a cop-out, but yeah: that’s a bit the premise of this series: he’s still dead, he just lives as a ghost and Ai ust doesn’t bury him.

And there the series just ends. I would have preferred some sort of epilogue, but at this point I think that the ending here is that eveyrone just keeps living until they die, and then keep wandering around until all of the gravekeepers have buried everyone. Quite a bleak ending there if you look at it that way.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)