Some Quick First Impressions: Symphokyushinken Prismonogatari DXD, Dagan Ronpa The Animation and Love Lab

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Symphokyushinken Prismonogatari DXD

Short Synopsis: Our lead character goes to school and does stuff.
You know? I’m just lumping all sequels that I don’t care about together for the sake of efficiency. Because really: I tried watching them, but just didn’t have the patience for any of them. Yes, this entry is shallow, but the main factor here is my own patience! My impressions: that Fate Spin-off was chock full of really boring banter and annoying characters. Symphogear wasn’t as stupid as I remember the first season to be, but that left something that just didn’t stand out in any single way, which is still bad. Monogatari started off good by how it described Hanekawa, but then that Mayoi turned up and they started talking about how Araragi molested her and I tuned out. Ro Kyu Bu highlighted progress and was much better than the first episode, but it still was too boring in the end and not my type of series. High School DXD was the worst of the bunch with its boobs and Genshinken was probably the best of the bunch, but I only really liked two characters (Oguie and one of those new girls), while finding the rest (especially that one male) to be too annoying. That’s not enough to make me continue watching something that I haven’t seen the prequel of.
OP: They’re all bad! Even Monogatari’s isn’t up to Shaft’s usual standards with just a collection of random memes.
ED: With none of them I actually got to this point…
Potential: 0%

Dagan Ronpa The Animation

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are imprisoned by a bear.
Persona 4 made a big impression on me. Thanks to it, I now hate Seiji Kishi with passion, even though he does have some good series behind his name (though a fair amount of those are the types of series that are very hard to really screw up). I say this, because Dagan Ronpa has a bear in it. Now, instead of Persona 4 where this was just supposed to be this random side-character, here he is the main villain. And he just doesn’t work in the slightest! Every point at which he appeared and tried to look scary, it just ended up silly and my entire attention was gone again. About the rest of the episode… the thing is that Dagan Ronpa has a really good premise. The way they introduced it here though, could have been much better. For one thing, it just makes no sense whatsoever. Seriously, turn off your suspense of disbelief completely. Deadman Wonderland sounds like the most reasonable thing in the world next to this thing. Second of all: it relies very heavily on stereotypes in this first episode. Now I understand that with a cast of fifteen people, you need to start with caricatures in order to be able to get everyone in and all, but this episode took it too far: the vast majority of the characters just repeat their quirks over and over (fat guy (har har, he likes to eat), scared girl, sceptic guy, muscle guy, aggressive guy, bossy girl, spoiled girl, it’s just too much!). Also, Dagan Ronpa. Are you serious to say that you aim to create this cast of colourful and widely different characters… and yet you pick the main character to be Average McNormalpants? And you aim the female lead to be an idol? Oh come on.
OP: A slide-show that really says nothing about the characters beyond the stereotypes that we’ve seen already.
ED: Just a song with credits, and it’s decent I guess.
Potential: 60%

Love Lab

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins a club in high school.
Really, don’t be fooled by the seemingly misleading title: this is just another “bunch of girl sit in a club and do nothing”-series, only this time it does sortof have a theme: love. The characters talk about it a lot, despite the fact that there are no males or lesbians in the entire series. And the random club happens to be the student council (not like we haven’t had enough of THOSE series…). Most of the series really is the banter between the two main characters, so yeah; its success depends entirely on whether that is good or not. And it isn’t. It’s too often random, and they just try too hard to be funny. It plays with tropes, but it’s the kind of series that just adheres to the things it parodies, rather than just making fun of them. The animation is good. Much better than this show has any business being. Skip this one, unless you like the genre.
OP: Hey look, it’s the 2518th series that grabbed a copy of Generic Openings 101
ED: “Hey, you know what’s a good idea? Let’s make that one really lame joke even more!”
Potential: 10%

Some Quick First Impressions: Rozen Maiden, Servant X Service and Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Rozen Maiden

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to be the servant of a doll.
The big question for Rozen Maiden was how on earth it was supposed to fix the way that the original series left it behind, seeing as how that seemd to go into complete anime original material. Well, don’t ask me how, but they somehow nailed it with this first episode: for people new to Rozen Maiden it provided a good overview of everything important that happened in the first few volumes of the manga, thus making it accessible for people who haven’t seen it. On the other hand it is worth watching for the people who already watched the first anime because the events are totally in different order, a new character suddenly shows up and while some things are similar to how they happened, others are completely different. Seriously, the creators managed to do A LOT in just one episode, and while it was obviously rushed, it was coherent, it was engaging and you can follow what was going on. It’s great for giving a taste of what Rozen Maiden is about. Also, Suiseiseiki made her annoying “desu”-trademark far more bearable, and the animation is really good, and actually quite experimental with how it combines CG with its regular animation. And the music is awesome as well.
OP: ALI-Project again, but there was no way for them not to do something here. And this OP does look really nice.
ED: The art here is amazing. Great direction.
Potential: 95%

Servant X Service

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a civil servant.
Colour me surprised: Servant X Service is actually good. I really was expecting this to be just another Working, or another show with bad jokes that really wasn’t about anything. Guess what? The comedy is actually good. What we have here is finally another slice of life series that doesn’t take place in high school, doesn’t have terrible jokes, isn’t completely pointless, doesn’t have characters that are just copied and pasted from other series and that doesn’t just desperately try to fill its time. This was actually a very charming look at the other side of the desks of the civil service that we usually just take for granted as this annoying bureaucratic institute. This show deals with the ups and downs, and the weird people that undoubtedly show up once in a while. What I especially liked was how this show portrayed all of the different people that came by. That rang home so much, and that was done so believably. The big problem with the cast is that every character just is one-dimensional and depends a bit too much on a collection of two or three quirks (that has the potential to be really annoying fast when handled poorly) and the biggest challenge for this series will be to remain interesting for an entire season. But this was good!
OP: This is actually a very good opening. I really like how it combines live action with drawings and how it explodes everything
ED: By all means not a meaningless opening. Also candy!
Potential: 80%

Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins a club at schol.
Kitakubu is a show that has a lot of stuff that just ticks me off. It’s not like there is incest or fanservice or anything. Instead, all my prolems here can be summarized by one word: laziness. The setting? A bunch of girls in a club that doesn’t really do anything. The characters? Various stereotypes from other shows. The humour? Either really lame jokes, parodies that don’t really parody anything and jokes that were copied from other series. The content of this episode? Completely random and pointless. Voice acting? Lame. Animation? Nothing special. The only good thing I have to say about this series is that for some reason or the other the creators here really like animals. The best animation here is that of a pigeon walking around. Heck, the animals in this series looked much more interesting than the actual characters. Why don’t you make a show with THEM in the lead?
OP: Badly sung and lame.
ED: Breaking the fourth wall is so funny, har har.
Potential: 0%

Aku no Hana – 13

by psgels, posted in Aku no Hana

ZEXCS: this show cost little to make: rotoscoping is relatively cheap and good for a low-budget series. Please some one in there: see beyong all of the negative publicity that this series has gotten. Look past the bile, and see some potential for a second season! Otherwise this was one heck of an annoying ending to pull. Basically all it did was tease us for a sequel.

I really liked that Kasuga could finally see a bit into Nakamura’s mind. That was great. Then there followed this chase, followed by a lot of atmosphere building, to a lot of teasing scenes for events that are yet to happen, like what the OPs have been doing. That was one heck of an evil cliff-hanger. The atmosphere still was really good during all that, and I find it a bit strange that they put so much work into rotoscoping all these random scenes for nothing, but still the chance of this getting a second season are unfortunately really low.

And for me that’s pretty much the only big blemish on an amazing series here. I mean complain about the rotoscoping; if you ignore that than the creators excuted this story basically perfectly with some fantastic atmosphere.

Aku no Hana took risks. Oh dear god, it took risks! More series with the same mentality would definitely be appreciated! I can’t promise to have the actual review of this one out today. There are a number of first episodes that I first want to check out.
Rating: 4,5/8 (Good)

Some Quick First Impressions: Free! and Brothers Conflict

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Tamayura More Aggressive

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is entering her second year of high school.
Well, there was no way for this not to, but Tamayura just delivered my favorite first episode of the new season so far. But yeah, we’re barely in it yet, and this show does have the advantage of an entire season plus OVAs of build-up so it did cheat. But nevertheless: that was so adorable. I really missed this, and throughout this episode I nearly dreamt away at its leisurely pace and soothing soundtrack (the music also is the best of the season so far). There really were a lot of flashbacks in this episode, so this probably is not the best episode for if you decide to marathon the entire season, but I have to admit: I got so nostalgic that I got a bit teary-eyed from how incredibly genuine this episode felt. Now, I expect this season to do more than the first season. Being such a relaxing series has its limit, so Sato Junichi, you’ve got your work cut out for you: develop these characters! Do something interesting with them! You’ve got the right ingredients, so don’t be lazy and take the easy way out!
OP: The music of the actual series was better.
ED: D’awwwwwww~~
Potential: 90%

Free!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character likes to swim.
Seriouly, my first impression when I started up this episode: “These guys all sound like girls!” – Thankfully this just seemed to be about their child-versions and Kyoani just couldn’t be arsed to get convincing actors for children for just two measly minutes, but the fact the entire cast has girly names doesn’t make things any less obvious. Now, on a more serious note: this was decent slice of life, with its positives and negatives. The bad points are two of the main characters, who are nothing but annoying straight men offering pointless commentary and still acting way too muh like girls. Tis show is also really weird in showing the obsession that the characters have with swimming. Being passionate, okay, but putting on a semi-naked apron while cooking is just ridiculous. What I liked was the chemistry between the two lead characters. It brought up interesting points about how people change significantly as they grow up as adolescents, and if this series can actually focus on this then it will become quite good (but do note that this IS Kyoani, whose slice of life shows are pretty infamous for NOT doing that…). And yeah, the animation is really good, and the soundtrack has some pretty catchy tunes, like expected. Also, why the dubstep?
OP: A standard J-Rock opening where the singers try a bit better than usual.
ED: Silly dancing!
Potential: 60%

Brothers Conflict

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live in a house full of hot guys, eh brothers.
This show… it’s shows like this that make me ashamed of being an anime fan. If this was a standalone incident, then I’d just write this off as one of those silly gimmick series. But I’m sick of all these goddamn incest shows! They just keep making them! Why is there SO MUCH demand for them? You really want to turn this into a genre? I mean, the girl arrives at her new house full of brothers and immediately this show keeps throwing around romantic hints. If you want to make a harem that badly, then go for a harem! Also, if things couldn’t be any worse, the creators also for some inexplicable reason threw in this animal mascot who is supposed to protect the (incredibly bland) female lead from all of the advances that her brothers make on her. WHAT!?
OP: Again, why the romantic hints? WHY!?
ED: Dear god… those vocalists are terrible
Potential: 0%

Yondemasuyo, Azazel-San Z Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


Reviewing a comedy sequel usually is quite simple: in most cases it just drops the bomb and runs out of inspiration, and in rare cases it actually manages to stay hilarious. The tricky thing with these kinds of series is that you need to remain funny, and you need to have the inspiration for that. The usual two methods are 1) doing the same thing over and over again or 2) take the prequel and make it more over the top at the areas that it excelled in. Azazel-san chose option 2, but it became both much better and much worse than the first season.

What I mean by that is that is that on one hand, I laughed much more and harder at its jokes. Seriously, the first arc is the best out of the entire series, including all of the OVAs that were made. Moloch has always been a fantastic character, but Azazel-san also grows into this character who just continues to bring me to stitches. And this show knows how to use the two of them. It loves to just kick them into situations that show their funniest sides. And at their best, the banter between the characters is just hilarious and the funniest thing I’ve seen all season.

At its worst though… dear god, this show descends into some depths here. The first season was incredibly vulgar, but the show did manage to make it interesting and varied. It was admirable how much bile it threw at the viewer and how unapologetic it was. So what was the answer of the second season to this? Sex jokes. Lots and lots of bad sex jokes, ranging from bleeding asses to bsdm and lots of willies.

This show doesn’t know what it’s good at. At one moment I’m nearly falling off my chair laughing, at others I’m yelling at the screen for the umpteenth penis that the creators wanted to shove in, and this is especially prevalent in the middle arcs of this series. Still, unlike the first season, I can’t find any arc that was completely boring: every arc, no matter which depths it descended into, made me laugh.
One-Sentence Review: This show’s pitch-black humour is second to none, Azazel and Moloch are awesome, but prepare for a slew of really bad sex jokes.
Suggestions:
– Hen Zemi
– Detroit Metal City
– Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu

Some Quick First Impressions: Gifuu Doudou!! Kanetsugu to Keiji, Kamisami no Inai Nichiyoubi and Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Gifuu Doudou!! Kanetsugu to Keiji

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a famous hero from the Sengoku Era.
Okay. Hands down, bar none. This was the biggest WTF of the season, and I don’t think that any other series will be able to top this. And I already KNEW that this series would be weird. For those of you who don’t know the bizarre background for this series: it’s based on a manga written by the guy who wrote Fist of the North Star (the incredibly muscly over the top action story that basically created the Shounen Genre). The story was adapted by Yasuhiro Imagawa, the guy who directed the New Mazinger, the first Giant Robo, and some more really epic mecha series. It’s direted by the director of Hetalia. Yeah. In my mind I was already imagining these incredibly muscly guys yelling and fighting non-stop in an incredibly over the top way while at the same time having gay romantic antics. Um yeah, about that fighting. Let me tell you exactly how much fighting there is in this series: two people slash a sword, and a guy fires an arrow. Beyond that, this show is all about TALKING about fighting. And that with the gay romantic undertones. I know this is hard to believe, but this show is even camper than Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Everything is so incredibly sentimental that this episode became completely hilarious. And don’t get me wrong, the animation is crap, and it hardly ever tries to make actual jokes. It’s all about the atmosphere in this show. The camp, camp, camp atmosphere.
OP: Samurai baby, yeah baby
ED: The art is nice and all, but those facial expressions are unsettling…
Potential: 80% (hey it made me laugh, okay?)

Kamisami no Inai Nichiyoubi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a gravekeeper
So yeah, lots of series tend to follow a tried and true format in one way or the other. For this, it’s the one about the guy who ends up together with a young girl who has special powers, only where most of these series make the girl really talented or smart in one way or the other, the girl here is weak; much like your average young girl, except that it this show doesn’t treat her like that and throws all sorts of horrible things at her. For a moment I was afraid that this series just went with a young girl for the cuteness factor, but I have to say: I’m impressed. It actually uses the girl’s age really well. She’s meant to be young and naive. The setting has a lot of potential as well: a world in which people ust become zombies when they die. It’s up to the rest of the series to explore exactly what that means: what are the pros and cons? How much of their humanity do these zombies regain? This first episode had some great ideas. The big danger is that it used all of its ideas right at the start. If it didn’t, then this can become quite the interesting series.
Potential: 80%

Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a deranged bibliophile who reincarnates into a dachshund.
It’s not like Gonzo’s animation during their prime days was always good. In fact, they were infamous for having really rushed production schedules, but they had the directors to make up for it. They had the ambition and the writers to make sure that that didn’t matter for their best series. I say this because of one reason: Dog and Scissors was their big chance at a comeback, but it has one major flaw: the comedy sucks! Most of the jokes depend on the banter between the male and female lead, and the delivery is just almost always off: characters just ramble their lines in one-dimensional ways, rather than thinking about things like tonation or delivery. That’s bad for a show that’s supposed to be a comedy. But you know what? I actually liked this episode when it didn’t try to be funny. I’m baffled a bit myself, but seriously this show has some creativity, and I knidof felt sorry for the male lead and the whole set-up of the story is much bigger than what you would usually suspect in a series like this. So please, GONZO: focus on the story. Just drop the comedy!
OP: Creative, but again the attempts to be funny failed horribly.
ED: Okay I have to admit the dancing security guards were pretty funny.
Potential: 70%

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Review – 81/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet



Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet tells the storyline of a planet that is completely submerged, with only giant ships residing on the surface, while one of those ships gets visited by this guy and his AI-mecha from this very technologically advanced civilization. Yes, this show is about world building.

What this show managed to do really well is create a culture for the people who live on these ships, complete with customs, a new religion, a clothe style, a way of behavior. They use the technologically advanced culture well to explore this culture by clashing it, and show the differences. The show can keep this up, and it definitely has some interesting ideas to explore.

The shame is that this is a 13-episoded series that really just needed 26 episodes. It’s not rushed because of that, but it does have pacing issues, and glosses over a lot, and doesn’t really get to explore this setting to its fullest.Same goes for the characters: there are some good ones here: Ledo and his AI have this really good chemistry, and the acting in general is also quite good and down to earth… with some notable exceptions though. There are a number of annoying characters, and really weird character character-decisions that don’t make much sense. The storyline has nice ideas on one hand, but it does get a bit boring and redundant at others. Especially the beginning is good, and the conclusion also has its moments, but in the middle there are a few episodes that could have been better used; they waste too much time.

It’s a solidly produced series, and the creators managed to make this show stand out with tis visuals that manage to remain expressive. Gargantia is a show with issues, but I personally think that the pros weigh over the cons and it’s worth a watch. Just don’t go out of your way to watch it though, because there just are better series.
One-Sentence Review: Good world-building and characterization versus some big pacing issues causing this show to not get the full potential out of its ingredients, by far.
Suggestions:
– Blue Submarine No.06
– Heat Guy J
– Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet – 11 – 13

by psgels, posted in Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet

So here we have the conclusion of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. Overall I’d have to say that it’s a solid ending, but nothing special. The animation in the final episode was very well done, and the whole bond between Ledo and Chamber really stood out as the best (even though it’s kindof weird that Chamber died… seeing as how he’s an AI and could easily have survived if he just copied his personality to that escape pod or something).

The evil robot who took control over humanity was definitely a more solid final conflict than “the Hideazu are human”, It was very sudden though, and acted like how everything was just wrapped up neatly… even though a ton of people died. Seriously, this show was more dramatic about the Hideazu being human (even though they were more than guilty of their own things) than the murder of tons of innocent people.

But yeah, as the final conflict… it does feel like we just skimmed the surface here. Gargantia should have been 24 episodes long, because the creators can actually do very nice things if they continue to build up from here. With this though, it just feels like too much is missing, and none of the characters really got their chance to show their growth, apart from Ledo perhaps, but even he feels like he can become better with another season. He may have changed, but he doesn’t really feel rounded still. This is why I feel like the perfect length for a series is 26 episodes: it’s neither too short nor too long; it has enough time to develop its characters really well, and it also needs to pace itself properly so there is little chance of dragging on. But yeah, that does require budget, and the producers probably didn’t manage to gather enough for 2 cours.

As for the overall writing itself… I’d say that this story is Urobuchi Gen’s worst written story, save for perhaps Blassreiter. It was definitely lighter than what he wrote before, but what I missed here was the character-development, going back to what I said before. All of his other adaptations so far had development that made some sort of impact, even on a shorter story. This one mostly had its world building, and while it was well-done, the setting wasn’t THAT special.
Rating: 4,5/8 (Good)

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

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews


I like surprises, like when a series comes that just turns out to be good against my expectations. Yahari Blahblah from the outside had all the signs to turn into yet another one of those high school comedies: snarky male lead, pointlessly long title that fails at being witty, various other cliched side-characters. And they made something good out of it!

The credit here goes to the original light novels this was based on, because for once, this show aims to stray away from mindless fluff, even though it may not seem like that at first. The lead character at first seems like the umpth snarky male lead, but eventually he sets himself apart to be different by actually using the weaknesses in his own personality as a weapon. This gives him wit that leads to some very insightful character-development, and the great thing is that this series never claims that he is just right, but instead it provides multiple viewpoints at the same issue. The original source material was very well written, and thankfully the creators of the anime managed to carry that over in their adaptation.

The side characters also surprised me. They range from intelligent to… not so intelligent, but I was quite impressed with how so few actually try to play up their own stereotypes. For example, you have the typical blond girl who is the most popular girl in the school, and while she acts cocky, she actually has more to her character than that, and she never really just starts acing like a complete spoiled princess. The lead female at first seems like a Senjogahara-clone, but quickly develops her own traits that make her far less one-dimensional than what you’d expect.

There is a lot of standard high school fare, and this show does linger along at places, not to mention that I feel like its ending is quite rushed and inconclusive. The visuals also aren’t anything special: they are adequate, but the animation never stands out nor falters. Still, for a high school “romantic comedy”, this was pretty damn good.
One-Sentence Review: Takes the generic high-school love-comedy set-up, and makes it good with some deep characters.
Suggestions:
– Umi ga Kikoeru
– Hana-Saku Iroha
– His and Her Circumstances

Chihayafuru Second Season Review – 89/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Chihayafuru



Let’s put this into a bit of perspective: generally to warrant a second season a series needs to sell well in one way or the other. Chihayafuru’s DVD sales were abysmal: it sold like, 500 copies in its first week or so. Despite being a really excellent and well-made series, people just didn’t want to bite, and I had given up on any hope for a continuation. Imagine my surprise when the manga suddenly gets really popular and a second season has been highlighted!

And guess what? The production-values still are completely top-notch. There only are a few episodes with some bad and jerky animations. Otherwise: everything is perfectly crisp, the animation manages to make every single karuta match stand out and sparkle. There still is a ton of eye candy here. Any idea how hard it is to keep up this consistency for like fifty episodes?!

I mean, Chihayafuru’s sequel is just amazing. It continues the trend that the first season set, and just continues on with it, doing so many things right. Every single episode, it doesn’t just push one character forward; it tries to do this with as many characters as possible. No episode is wasted like this, and every episode brings something new to the table. It really is amazing how the creators continue to be able to do this. They introduce quite a few new characters that have a great impact on the storylines, and nearly all of them have some sort of gimmick, yet they feel real, and very relatable. The acting was fantastic in the first season, and that didn’t let up in the second, and the second now has so much build-up and development behind it!

It’s really clear that the creators here have a very good understanding of the game of Karuta: they really manage to flesh out the game even more in this season, and show many different sides of it. A downside is that if you just look at the matches objectively, then this series is a bit predictable in the big picture, but in the small picture, it’s everything but: the creators try their hardest to make the individual karuta-matches as exciting as possible.

This season does have a bit of a downside that it’s the middle arc, so there is no beginning, nor an ending, and because of that the juiciest developments are reserved for the other parts (if they’ll ever get there), and as a result this series does have less subject material, so it can move a bit slow at times. But still this show had some of the best characters of the year.
One-Sentence Review: If this series can’t get you fired up on Karuta, then nothing will; fantastic characterization.
Suggestions:
– Hikaru no Go
– Nodame Cantabile
– Shion no Ou