Sword Art Online Review – 72,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Sword Art Online



Um yeah. Sword Art Online. While it doesn’t beat Guilty Crown as “trainwreck of the year” for me, it still is a show I had very mixed feelings about. In order to explain why, I’m going to have to diverge a bit from my normal spoiler policy, though. I won’t outright spoil things, but I do have to say things about the plot progression here and what happens at certain stages. Because Sword Art Online has for me been the prime example of jumping the shark for the past half year.

Like Guilty Crown, SAO is what happens if you focus your series way too much around your male lead. Thankfully, Kirito is an actual character. A bland one, but an actual character, rather than a plot device. It’s nearly everything around him that’s a plot device instead though. The first half of the series however thankfully has enough to make up for it.

I mean the setting behind this show is fascinating: you’ve got an MMORPG that traps its own players. Wonderful! The despair of the people who are trapped inside it for an incredibly long time was great. A unique culture evolved that was really interesting to watch. Add that to great fight animation and a great climax, and you’ve got a very solid story. For the first half.

The show’s problems already shine through in the first half, but not bad enough. By far the worst issue I had was the harem element. Picture this: you’re on an mmorpg server. The females are in a big minority. And yet, nearly all of them end up falling for Kirito, the lead. He’s the first who truly cares about them when he meets them, he’s the first who makes them feel comfortable, even though he’s a completely antisocial guy. Yeah, this is wish fulfillment that is pretty thinly veiled. Kirito’s sole salvation here is that he actually ends up in a very good couple, and that the chemistry between him and the female lead actually works. The lead female is strong, and they complement each other quite well. The combination between action and romance works out quite well as the first half goes on and gets to its climax.

So yeah, the second half… it took about two episodes for me to completely give up hope on this series afterwards. That arc is just so inherently wrong on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to really start.

But imagine this: the bland male lead is happy in a couple. Then the female lead gets kidnapped for an entire season, and he starts flirting with his cousin (who he grew up with believing her to be his sister), leading to a completely pointless romantic quasi-incest subplot that doesn’t really go anywhere. Seriously, nearly the entire second half of this series is dedicated to just that, rather than the much more interesting other things aobut this series.

The second half is also littered with plotholes that this show just pulls right out of its ass, just to be more convenient and make the plot go as intended. It’s just too spoilery to go into details, but items appear from out of nowhere, the games in this series are riddled with design decisions that just boggle my mind, characters act irrational for no reason, and half the time this show doesn’t know whether it’s in a virtual world or not, which gets really annoying. Oh and the villain there. He’s one of the most stereotypical evil villains I’ve seen in a long while.

Thankfully this is an A-1 production, so the graphics look good and the fight animation is very creative. Yuki Kajiura behind the soundtrack is also solid, although with this series she really starts to reveal that she has run out of inspiration and that all of her music is just starting to sound the same.

Sword Art Online gets a lot of love. I don’t think that it deserves that. Sword Art Online also gets a lot of hate. And I also don’t think it deserves that either. Sure, its second half is pretty bad and all, but it does have its things to make up for it. Its setting has its traces of brilliance, and the first half was pretty solid there. Nevertheless. There’s better out there. It’s just too flawed to really recommend. The only thing I’m really angry at this series for is how it disrespects its female lead in its second half. That’s the one thing that I really find unforgivable. Apart from that the second half is just bad storytelling. Nothing more, nothing less.

Storytelling: 6.5/10 – Good build-up, but waaaay too many plot devices.
Characters: 6.5/10 – There are some interesting characters here, and the lead couple is quite good in the first half. This show completely disrespects the female lead in its second half by having her kidnapped, making her do nothing and have the male lead head off to a pointless incest subplot.
Production-Values: 8,5/10 – Great animation. It’s overall a very solid looking show at the very least.
Setting: 7.5/10 – The show gets some points for being interesting and having some really nice ideas. It loses points for not making any sense. Especially in its second half.

Suggestions:
– .Hack//Sign
– .Hack//Roots
– Amatsuki

Btooom! Review – 81/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

So, Btooom. A suspense series that tries to see what you’d get if you turned Bomberman into a real game. With real bombs. Or at least, that was the intention of the original creator.

The show got the suspense part right, but with the action scenes, you do need to turn off your brains, because the bombs in this series seem to favor the lead character: blasts that kill others are ones that only manage to scratch him, he manages to dive away from situations that were seemingly impossible to avoid, and all that is coming from a hikkikomori who never exercises and never leaves his room.

So yeah, the side characters for this series are much more interesting, but here is where this series surprised me, because these guys are actually really good. Like the main character, they too have been thrust into a game in which they’re forced to survive using real bombs, but unlike him they lack the magical main character powers, and really have to fight for their lives there. The way the creators do this is actually quite interesting, and I especially want to tip my hat for Taira, who really stole the show for me as this burdened old guy who you hardly ever see in such an important role as he is here.

They also are something else: varied. There are kids, adults, muscled army officers and weak accountants among them. This has an interesting effect for the action: every battle in this show is different and fought in a different way. It’s not immediately apparent and I only realize this as I’m writing up this review, but they really help to keep this series fresh and new through its 12-episode airtime. The show ends with a lot of things unresolved (hoping for a second season there…), but it does end at a logical point in the story and makes for a short but sweet and intense ride.

Having said that though, the thing remains that some things in this show are very contrived. A lot of them have to do with the lead couple. I won’t reveal the big twist around them, but it’s a really bad one that you could have seen from miles away. The two play of each other nicely, but you do get the feeling that the lead female is just there so that the lead male can have a girlfriend.

There are a few exceptions to that, though. One thing that this show loves to explore is the darker side of human nature, and when it starts playing with that it goes into some pretty interesting directions. All of this isn’t enough to make it stand among the better series of the season, but for what it did it did well.

Storytelling: 8.5/10 – Varied battles using bombs that are all different from each other and make for good suspense.
Characters: 8/10 – Great side-characters, contrived main characters.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Stylish look, solid music, nice animation, though nothing special.
Setting: 8/10 – A potentially very interesting setting, but the show doesn’t really use this much in favor of the characters.

Suggestions:
– Blade
– High School of the Dead
– Shikabane Hime

Uchuu Kyoudai – 38

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

This episode… the creators actually succeeded in making it feel so unreal. The whole point of this episode was to let everything sink in, but really: if you skipped 20 episodes and just went to this episode, the outcome wouldn’t surprise you in the slightest. This show just succeeded in making me incredibly happy that all of them managed to make it. That is SO hard to do.

One thing I do hope is that one of the future episodes will explain why Mutta got hired. I mean, we have enough hints: he’s incredibly perceptive, he holds people together, he’s very social, he’s Hibito’s older brother, but I wonder what sealed the deal. This episode showed that it can answer questions that it asked months ago with Ya-san’s little comment.

And after all this time, the humour of this series still is rock-solid. I loved how the creators used Apo in the middle of that nerve-wrekcing speech that Mutta had to give in front of the press. But also Ya-san’s comments about Serika were hilarious. It has never been explicitly said that other people knew about Mutta’s crush, even though it’s obvious. This just was the perfect time to show this. “Now the entire country knows!”
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Magi – 12

by psgels, posted in Magi

There may not have been any action, but for me this was one of the most solid episodes of Magi so far. I like how a prime time series sets its action apart for one week to focus on its politics, and especially Alibaba’s part in this episode was very interesting to follow: he’s nowhere near ready yet, yet now he’s forced to do something in order to prevent an all-out war that could potentially slaughter hundreds of civillians, making the country even more vulnerable for the Kou empire to pick off.

By the way, I’m also glad that I’m finally noticing some arabic influences in the series’ soundtrack. This is just me and my memory, though. I could have sworn that this had been done earlier, but it’s still good because I remember complaining about how not-arabic the OP and ED for this show are.

I also liked Kassim here, how he forced so much out of Alibaba. He knows what he wants, yet he is so obviously manipulated by the Kou empire. With this I’m also much happier with that idiot king there, who thankfully got more depth than just being evil for the sake of being evil.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Teekyu Review – 77.5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

Here’s a quick one: Studio Mappa are some of the talented people who branched off from Madhouse in order to start their own studio. I was expecting great things from the people who among others were responsible for Casshern Sins, and they definitely delivered that with their debut work of Sakamichi no Apollon. Naturally I was very eager to see their next work, which turned out to be something completely pointless and silly.

Seriously, this is what Teekyu is: two minute episodes of four high school girls who try to be as random as possible. This show is nothing but 24 minutes of moe and juvenile madness that makes no sense. Nothing more. There is no progression, nothing really happens. Just that randomness. Still, I managed to finish this show and I didn’t really have to force myself to it.

The thing with this show is that even though it’s completely stupid, it’s well made. Most shows with 2-minute episodes are cheaply made, and the concept of inbetween animation is nonexistent for this series, however the animators make sure to make every frame unique and you can really see them play around with their camera angles. There is a lot of creativity in the jokes and the randomness as well, and I admit that there were quite a few times that I laughed out loud. You do need to be able to stomach hyperactive humour if you want to watch this series though. That’s the only prerequisite.

But yeah, this just is a show to just shut your brains off and watch, and for that it does its job of keeping you entertained on a superficial level. The creators here just wanted to goof off a bit inbetween their projects with something completely silly. And yeah, silly it was. Also, I’m not going to break down this show’s ratings in four categories, because that would be entirely pointless. I just see it as a show with a rating of 77,5/100, or a show that even though it doesn’t hit any heights and may have some big flaws, it’s still worth watching.
Suggestions:
– Mr.Stain on Junk Alley
– Gag Manga Biyori
– Eternal Family

From the New World – 13

by psgels, posted in From the New World

The first half of this episode had something that you hardly ever get to see in anime: tracking. It was fairly basic: following someone’s sled tracks in the snow, but what made it work was the mystery: Mamoru had some kind of reason to do this, and it wasn’t even sure whether he, with his weak cantus, would have survived.

The revelation of why he ran away… yeah. For some reason the adults found it appropriate to get rid of him. Even though at first sight there might not be something wrong with him. Next episode will probably delve more into that, and why he has to fear for his life and got those copycats after him (which were quite the intense scenes, by the way).

What I’m also quite worried about was that one queerat that this episode showed. This episode avoided the issue, but it WAS walking around in holy territory, which it probably is not supposed to do. I love how gray these guys are on the moral scale: they’re always helpful, and yet there is always something itching about fully trusting them.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 12

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Seriously, this show is awesome!

I mean, it keeps finding new ways to stand out while being over the top. I thought that this was impossible. This one did it with nazis. Last episode kept emphasizing how they are everything that is evil. This episode took the nazi stereotypes so over the top that it became hilarious. The people here really did justice to the evil organization by making one that looked completely unlike the others in over the topness: these guys have an actual personality other than “I listen and do stuff like a mindless robot”.

Also, I did not expect the powers that that stone guy turned out to have: the ability to completely manipulate his body and absorb others. And he really used it in a brilliant way when he traveled through the ventilation shafts. The build-up of it all, especially in the beginning was great.

Oh, and I nearly fell off my chair with Joseph in this episode. That dress.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Psycho Pass – 11

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

Now. This was incredibly intense. This latest installment has really pushed this series to new levels and I really was at the edge of my seat through the entirity of the scene between Akane and Shougo Makishima. And hands off for the creators for actually doing it: killing off the girl. From Urobuchi Gen this was to be expected, but many other writers would have chosen to let her live, which would just not have had the same impact.

Because the end of this episode was just hopeless. Akane really looked completely shocked in this episode. She was slightly different and more competent from the usual rookie you see in these positions, but she still is naive, believing that she can just take care of things herself. This episode was so over her capabilities. The direction of this episode really was amazing in bringing this forth.

I just wonder… what idiot thought that the Sybil System would be a good idea? I mean, what it basically does is sniff out psychopaths. The junks and the mentally instable people whose desires go out of control. There is another group of killers out there though: the ones who simply don’t care about human lives. These guys aren’t necessarily psychopaths, they just have no value for anything and just kill whenever they find someone annoying. Or in Shougo’s case someone who just rationally manages to kill people.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Robotics;Notes – 11

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

How everything is going to tie together, I have no idea. But this episode definitely went into the right direction by providing some great twists for some of the different subplots of this series.

So Kimijima Kou elaborated a bit on how the world would be destroyed, and this episode definitely drove home that Misa now has completely changed, and works for the bad guys now (although I suspect very much that things will get a bit more nuanced in the future). But this episode also laid links between the Kimijima Report and Frau’s mother and subsequently the final episode of Gunbarrel, which ended up being an incredibly pessimistic troll ending.

My guess would be that Frau’s mother knew the same thing that Kimijima Kou knew, and also tried to show this through the Gunvarrel anime, but got found out before the final episode which she used for these hints, came out. That probably explains why Kimijima Kou made the instructions to get to his reports so ridiculously complicated. Why the story is centered on robot building amidst all this… still isn’t clear to me, but who knows?

Also the twist that someone is using the accounts of the top 3 players of Killballad is quite morbid. And surprisingly like that one arc in Psycho Pass, although here the impact is really on the fact that someone is cheating in a completely different way than expected, and using such morbid means in it. The deaths here do make more impact compared to Psycho Pass because the murders there are the orders of the day: it’s a police series about serial killers, while this is a show about building robots.

Also, I was wrong: next week will air another episode. After that we’ll get a one-week hiatus… and then the Noitamina-timeslot will move to Tuesday Evening. Yes, after all those years of Noitamina airing on tuesday, it will finally change its schedule. The question now is: will that retain its viewers. In a way, I can understand it though: over the past years, thursdays got way too crowded: most likely due to its influence, there were way too many shows that aired on the same day and therefore much more competition. In comparison, Tuesday evening has always had much less series. I really hope that the viewers will move along with them and allow the timeslot to be even more successful.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Zetsuen no Tempest – 12

by psgels, posted in Zetsuen no Tempest

Oh no, the world will be destroyed! Just like in 50% of all other action series! Yeah, if you want to do this, then you need to make it count.Just putting the world at stake at this point is adequate, but standalone it just doesn’t make enough impact, to the point where it can even feel shallow. Zetsuen no Tempest is very good at avoiding this.

In this series the world is at stake, and you really feel like the world is at stake. It keeps driving home that this can pretty much happen on a whim: it’s unknown what will happen, and wrong move will just blow everything up. The characters are just thrown between two huge trees, either of which is trying to make this happen. In this episode things started to get really out of control, and even though this series doesn’t show many people gathered at the same place or huge crowds, it did drive home that something really big is so easily about to happen. The shots of the businessmen trying to map everything that the tree was doing was enough for that.

Beyond that, I still love this series’ style of storytelling. It just takes what it has, and then uses one of its characters to completely turn over the logic in this series, again and again and again. I also love the way this series plays with logic: normally this is something that can’t be influenced, but here there are these two giant trees that are playing russian roulette with it. Very good depiction of the utterly hopeless situation that the characters are in.

Also, the soundtrack! The godly soundtrack! Really, I am going to write a post on my favorite soundtracks of the year. I can’t believe how many great soundtracks 2012 had in comparison to previous years. I just need to find a good way to publish it…
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)