Sword Art Online – 16

by psgels, posted in Sword Art Online

Before I start, I want to say the following: I’ve gotten tired of assholes right now. If you want to criticize the series, then be my guest. I’m doing that too. But from now on I reserve the right to delete any comment that insults people for liking or hating this series, and depending on my mood I’m going to ban the posters of those comments from this site. I want this site to be a place in which we can just peacefully discuss these anime. Not hate on each other for having different tastes.

Anyway, Sword Art Online: the new arc has really started now, and my suspense of disbelief is being tested like no other. I’ve got a background in computer science, and I just cannot believe some of the things that the programmers included here. Why on earth was half the game of Sword Art Online copied to that elf game? Who on earth bothered to transfer all that data. That doesn’t just happen by accident, you know? The most baffling thing is that Yui is suddenly back though. Not with her admin powers, but instead as a random program. She was supposed to be there for maintaining player’s mental health. She’s useless here because people can log out now. The image of what she’d be like in real life is just bizarre. Can you imagine being in a marathon-session of World of Warcraft with suddenly a cute little AI-programmed girl approaching you and comforting you?

The episode ended with that elf girl appearing, and Kirito kicking everyone’s ass now that his character still is the same. My impression of her is… “meh”, but that could be because we hardly got to see anything of her. This was all about Kirito getting the chance to impress another girl again by being at the right time at the right place again.

There is one good thing about this arc: it’s different. I like variety, but it’s a double edged sword. If you want to be different you of course need to also be good, otherwise this misses the whole point of variety. This arc furthermore has another big disadvantage: there is very little tension in the fights now that death has become a momentarily annoyance. The end of this episode for example: it made such a big deal of what? Losing a bit of experience?
Rating: 3.5/8 (Enjoyable)

Hunter X Hunter – 52

by psgels, posted in Hunter X Hunter

The second half of this episode had a fight that I have been looking forward to for so long now. It’s another one of the stand-out moments in which this series really sets itself apart from other shounen series.

I mean, up till now, Chrollo has been a very mysterious main villain: he’s the head of the spider, but we never actually saw him fight someone aside from the previous episode, which wasn’t even a fight anyway. So here this episode comes and immediately throws the two single most powerful characters in the entire series at him. No tricks, no padding. They’re just there, and they immediately do their job right. It’s a level of professionalism that you hardly ever see in shounen series.

Kurapika is skillfully kept out of the spotlights due to his job of looking over Neon, and instead, even though there are still many side-villains left alive, the creators show the fight between the three most powerful characters in the series (I doubt that even Hisoka would win from Chrollo).

The one scene outside of this that also really made an impact was where Gon and Killua called Kurapika with their information. THAT was actually very important. It may seem like they were meddling, but after seeing Kurapika in control for so many episodes now, this episode is where he’s left at the mercy of others, plus, he actually gets offered help.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

From the New World – 04

by psgels, posted in From the New World

Well, so this was the best episode of the new season yet if we ignore the first episodes.

This episode consisted out of two halves. By far the biggest part was, like Zetsuen no Tempest’s latest episode, exposition. I remember how I found that rather boring, however, here I really liked it. The creators didn’t just have someone talk for 10 minutes without doing anything else, and they made great use of flashbacks, reaction shots and visual images of what was going on. Not to mention ho well written that exposition was.

I did not expect that the story behind the prologue in the first episode would be told so fast. That strange slug-like creature basically tells what happened to the world, and these scenes turned out to be the start of a conflict between people who have the Force and those who don’t. In the ages after that, this culture evolved that was meant to safeguard the force, and prevent people from going on a rampage like what was shown there. Heck, these really were just children who were testing out the limits of their powers!

What’s also great is that there is no real right or wrong here. Sure, the kids may have the right to know what’s going on and all, but the danger of them abusing their powers remains. When they’re so easily able to kill others, something has to be done to restrain them. In the meantime, what is the role of the different creatures in this series, like those rat monsters? They appeared in the final half of the episode, and here again, it’s pretty much established that they’re at the mercy of the Force. Sure they’re aggressive, but they’re pretty much slaughtered in an instant.

In any case, I hope that there will be more episodes like this that place so much focus on dialogue. It’s going to have to be tough to keep track of everything, but that’s really good: we have a series here that isn’t planning to hold your hand along the ride.
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – 03

by psgels, posted in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

I’m still completely baffled by how over the top this show is, but here is the thing: if the pacing was any slower, this series would have been incredibly cheesy. There is so much over the top yelling going on. If this had the pacing of its contemporary Dragonball Z, it would have been an incredible flop. I cringe at the thought of what would hvave happened if this would had the pacing of a regular shounen series.

Instead though, the creators went for this really fast pacing, and they went for it all the way. It does have a few quiet moments that prevent it from being too fast-paced, but the action scenes are a complete delight, exactly because it jumps from one scene to the other without the endless padding. Because of that, the scene above the inferno worked, even though it took ages for two people to just fall. The characters yelling now fits perfectly here and it just continues to build up adrenaline. It’s also not like the voice actors do nothing but scream the same over and over. They simply talk with a lot of power and passion behind their voices.

Dio especially was brilliant in this episode in this. This is the point where he completely loses his humanity, and during his many rants he was just so enjoyable to watch. There is just something funny about how he goes “JOOOOJOOOOO!!!!”, or how he uses his fingers and toes to climb walls but he just keeps going! Once the action scene in this episode starts, there is just hardly any chance to catch a breather.

On a side-note: do you see the top-left image? I now know where some of Hunter X Hunter’s character designs came from.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

K – 03

by psgels, posted in K

K has a lot of characters. I like that, and in fact I’m a big fan of those kinds of series. They are however, a double edged sword: try getting some good development out of all of them, especially with only 13 episodes. The trick will be balancing the development for all of them: focus on a bunch of them and flesh them out really well, and give the guys who aren’t in the foreground presence, rather than making them into characters for the sake of having more characters.

K is trying to achieve that balance, definitely. There are a few key characters here in this story: Suoh and Reishi with his powers on one side and Kurou and Yashiro on the other side. Suoh and Reishi are fleshed out by all the people around them, their subordinates et cetera, while Kurou and Yashiro are fleshed out through their own actions and their chemistry.

Beyond that we have the side characters, most of them are pretty one-dimensional at this point. Think of the cat girl who is always cheerful, or the punk who is always snarky and stuff. For these guys it’s going to be impossible to make all of them three-dimensional, so the trick will be to give all of them presence and make all of them different, and still create impact with all of them. Ideally, at the end of this series I want to have one stand-out moment for all of them. Episode 1 already had that moment for the skating punk guy with its animation. This episode instead made Shirou stand out. I quite liked the climax of this series. Instead of ending with a cliff-hanger or a tense battle, they just end with a silly joke that shows more about his character. Very nice.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Robotics;Notes – 02

by psgels, posted in Robotics;Notes

Hell yeah! This is what I’ve been waiting for for years now: two Noitamina series, airing at the same time, taking up 22 episodes. Especially after the kick in the balls that was Guilty Crown, it’s great to see Production IG actually making up for that with two actually good series now.

Robotics;Notes and Psycho Pass are both science fiction series, but their execution is completely different. The former focuses more on suspense, the latter on slice of life. The former is about adults, the latter about teenagers. The former will be more tense and more exciting to watch, the latter will have better fleshed out characters. It’s a matter of time to see which one fares better.

The one thing I like about the semicolon series is that they’re all different. Instead of trying to make a Steins;Gate 2 with an Okabe ripoff, the characters aim to be completely different characters here, not to mention that the themes, while still science fiction, are completely different, and there is much more slice of life here, even compared to the already slow-paced Steins;Gate. The results are mixed.

The thing with Steins;Gate was that it had its complete own style that set itself miles apart from all other series. Robotics;Notes doesn’t have that and just looks like a teenaged high school series. On the other hand, this also leads it to try less hard: none of the characters are as out there as with the cast of Steins;Gate. The result is that the characters aren’t as enjoyable to watch, but also they’re far from as annoying as some of the characters in Steins;Gate were.

I still like the characters of Robotics;Notes, especially the lead female as she actually gets things done and has a goal to work for. The male lead still needs to crawl out of his shell and get away from gaming. By far the most dubious point in this episode was where he agreed in front of an exhausted female lead to pilot, only if she changed the controls to be more like his favorite game. I mean this guy just totally is not flexible. Why does he stand in the foreground of the promo art, hinting that he will be the central character? Let the girl be the one to stand in the spotlights! Oh wait, they did; never mind.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Zetsuen no Tempest – 03

by psgels, posted in Zetsuen no Tempest

This was the weakest episode of Zetsuen no Tempest so far, mostly because it was nearly entirely about a big action scene with little else happening, other than getting the two lead characters to stay permanently together and solidifying their goal with the revelation that the killer of the girlfriend/sister is somewhere in the Kusaribe clan.

The reason why the action scenes in the first episodes rocked so much was that there was a lot of stuff happening at the same time. When nearly an entire episode is dedicated to one, there just seems to be something missing. The action itself was pretty nice, albeit a bit dragged out. The one flaw of it was that it tried to be smart, while using coincidences. Yoshino coming up with the idea of tracking someone using blood and healing magic is smart, but afterwards he comes with this crazy plan of hoping for helicopters to attack at the exact right moment. Or take the scenes where they’re running away: they don’t use magic there. It’s all a bit too scripted, unlike the dynamic first two episodes.

But still, the concept of magic in this series has some definite potential. The restrictions this series puts on its characters are great because they put limits on the powers of the characters. This may seem weak at first, but it puts much more complexity at their actions, rather than just having people spam beams over and over until one side goes down.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Psycho Pass – 02

by psgels, posted in Psycho Pass

Here is a note to you fansubbers out there. Or anyone else who writes, basically: when using abbreviations, it’s very important to make sure that everyone knows what these abbreviations mean. Explaining them once won’t suffice: people will forget that, and your text will just look like gibberish. “Yes, the ADX needs to use XAW in order to XET so that the PSE can LRX”. That just isn’t nice to read, and even if you happen to know the abbreviations, if you don’t know them by heart you’ll end up spending a few seconds trying to think of it. Precious attention that you should be focusing on other things. That’s why I try to avoid abbreviations as much as possible, unless I know that everyone fully knows what I’m talking about. Sword Art Online’s SAO is a good example of this, though let me know if you were unfamiliar with that one.

Anyway, Psycho Pass: I was looking forward to this one thanks to a very clever marketing campaign: they didn’t announce what this show was about at all, until about a month before it was set to air, really piquing my interest since it’s especially rare for a Noitamina series to do that. It kept delivering cryptic hints, bit by bit, until it was revealed that Urobuchi Gen would write it, the director of Tokyo Marble Chocolate would direct it, and that it would be about a dystopia in which people are judged by computers.

Now, about the actual show: this second episode was definitely not the best second episode of the season, but it has got a really solid first episode as a base. You can pretty much see this second episoe as the proper start of this series, where it’s carefully explained what this show is about, and we can get a bit of a feeling of the characters. There is definitely something deep going on here and this episode was definitely just about the surface.

One word about the animation: I do have a bit of a problem with the late trend of hiring really famous character designers to do your characters, and nothing else. The problem with that is that the character designers don’t really think in terms of practical designs: they just do their job of showing some eye-catching designs, without really thinking about how well they can be animated. Psycho Pass has some clear troubles with htis, and the character designs aren’t even that good. You can see that the creators here have trouble animating them. Jojo’s Bizarre adventure has this problem as well this season, but that managed to solve itself with its direction, though Psycho Pass doesn’t have that. The award for best character designs of the season… I’d give that one to Kamisama Hajimemashita: creative and detailed yet simple and easy to keep consistent, yet dynamic.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Kamisama Hajimemashita – 03

by psgels, posted in Kamisama Hajimemashita

It is great to finally see such a likable shoujo lead female again. Don’t get me wrong: the leads in Tonari no Kaibatsu-kun and Sukitte Ii na yo are good too with the focus on their flaws, but the energy and optimism that she has finally are done right again. After watching so many dull and bland female leads, this is so refreshing! For once we have a lead again who isn’t bound by angst, but rather by optimism.

Her flaw, her naivety is also used quite well. Rather than using it for her to run into all sorts of trouble, the creators use it to get her try try out things, even though they might not be the smartest. She actually does things herself, rather than wanting to be protected all the time or having males fight all over her.

The humour in this episode was different from the previous episodes. Strangely enough, it lacked the hyperactivity and instead was more conventionally paced, or a bit more conventional than usual for this series’ standards. It still was full of well-timed jokes though, and the way in which it portrays the emotions of its characters still rocked and was hilarious to watch.

The story of this episode seemed nothing special, just a random love story. There are a few interesting things to say about it though. First of all it used its own simplicity quite well. It’s not as good as in the first episode, but the way in which it combined humour and drama together still was excellent. It’s to the point where you don’t know what to expect and where it’ll move to, wihch is the sign of a great direction. Also the ending of the episode worked really well. Instead of the usual cheesy aftermath, the creators decided to end with just a push in the right direction. Nothing really got resolved, but we could all see where it was going and there was no need to show more of it. Plus, the ED works brilliant for these conclusions.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Uchuu Kyoudai – 28

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

Damn you, Space Brothers! It’s finally time for Hibito to go up to space, and you stretch for time again using a flashback episode. Remember when last week Mutta gave Hibito a tape to deliver to the lunar base? Well, this episode tells the story about that.

I think that this was an episode in which the major flaw of this series stood out a lot: the way in which it takes ages to go somewhere. Usually I don’t mind this because it’s being completely awesome in the process, but this is an episode that I feel like it could have been done in half an episode for the stuff it had to add. We’ve already seen plenty about Mutta and Hibito as kids, and compared to the other flashbacks, this one didn’t deserve an entire episode dedicated to it.

The delightful character interactions that this show usually has suffered a bit from it. It’s great to see a bit more of Hibito’s flawed side, but their chemistry just wasn’t as enjoyable because it focused too much on the bullying.

So yes, as an episode, this left some things to be desired. As build-up though, I can definitely see where the creators are coming from. From the outside this was about explaining what that video was about, but when you go deeper, then this episode was there to relate the past and present together, using some of the themes early on in the series, like the birthdays of the two brothers. The ufo in particular has been absent for quite a bit in the first half of the series, so it’s definitely weird to see so much focus on it now.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)