Summer 2012 Kaleidoscope – Week 38 & 39

by psgels, posted in Summer 2012 Kaleidoscope

Ah screw it, I’ve got so much to catch up to when I get back that I’m just going to combine all episodes that air in the last two weeks of the season into one post. A wrap-up will follow once I finish everything.

#1: Phi Brain – 50: Well, colour me surprised. That was actually really good. Seriously, this was a terrific conclusion that wraps everything up and delivered a really heart-warming conclusion for Freecell. The art was also much better than usual with the cell shaded detail. Congrats Phi Brain, you redeemed yourself there. – 6/8 (Awesome)

#2: Polar Bear Cafe – 26: So this was the episode to close off the first half of Polar Bear Cafe. Since episode 25 dealt with the past of Polar Bear and Grizzly, I was wondering how the creators would follow up with that in orderbring a good end to the past half year. Well, they did so with the best episode since the Penko episode. The second half of the episode in Grizzly’s Cafe had me completely in stitches. This show can really be brilliant when it wants to; I haven’t laughed this hard in months. – 6/8 (Awesome)

#3: Hunter X Hunter – 47: For this episode for the first time in quite a while I checked back on the same episodes in the 1999 series. I shouldn’t do that anymore. The differences again stood out way too much, and unfortunately, the thing is that the voice acting and animation still is better. I also now know why: the 2011 series has a lot of voice actors who keep doing one hammy voice over and over again, while this was more restrained and balanced in the 1999 series: the actors knew when to be subtle and when to raise their voice. Those differences unfortunately undermine the actual story and the fact that what happened in this episode was really awesome. – 5.5/8 (Excellent)

#4: Kokoro Connect – 12: And with this, the third arc already is better than the second one. It’s much more than jsut people yell at each other, and two members of the cast definitely showed some depth to their characters, and were able to overcome some of their weaknesses. Very well delivered, also making this show one of those series in which romance is something that can change. – 5.5/8 (Excellent)

#5: Phi Brain – 49: Finally! One episode before the end we finally get to see the meaning of Nonoha pulling her hair down; it’s about time! And really: this was an excellent episode with its focus on conflicting emotions and Freecell’s character. I’m very glad that he ended up the final villain here, because this would not have worked with that other guy still around. – 5.5/8 (Excellent)

#6: Saint Seiya Omega – 25: Whoa, I thought that this was going to be the climax. Instead this series makes three characters come to terms with their past. A pleasant surprise indeed, especially considering the charms with which it did it. The acting has really improved over the course of the series here and I’m beginning to like the cast more and more. That’s a sign of good character development, although I’d wish that this show cut some of its early episodes to make them not such a pain to sit through… – 5.5/8 (Excellent)

#7: Polar Bear Cafe – 25: We’re near the halfway point of the series (I found out about that very recently), and it shows. This episode shows a lot of new things about the cast. The first half was about the interests of the different characters, most notably Penguin and his painting hobbies (which were quite hilarious), the second pulled the adorable card by showing Polar Bear and Grizzly when they were young. – 5.5/8 (Excellent)

#8: Kokoro Connect – 11: So the third arc has started, and it has been revealed what the characters are going to have to suffer through next. And I have to say that this fits much more than the second arc. The second arc was too direct, and in the end it was hard to really use it well without descending into melodrama. Here however, the way in which everyone gets turned into kids has a much more indirect lead to drama. It brings up some great things about the past of the cast and it also forces the cast to look at what they were, and how they changed. That’s good, now keep it up! – 5/8 (Great)

#9: Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon – 24: The big climax in which the creators just go and throw as much action involving weird powers as possible. It was basically just one whole episode of fighting. It was quite entertaining, albeit that with this the meaning of the individual fights was lost a bit. Still, I have to admit that I enjoyed the baseball team and the chaos during the busiest part of the episode when a ton of different characters were involved. Also: Aoi’s contribution to the episode: threatening to actually do something. There’s your main character. – 4.5/8 (Good)

#10: Phi Brain – 48: L33t h4x0rz episode that made no bloody sense, but was fun. Background was solid, nice plot twists. Looks to be a fun ending, but how on earth did this get a third season? – 4.5/8 (Good)

#11: Saint Seiya Omega – 24: So after all the build-up of needing to find someone who masters the thunder element in order to break the final ruin… someone who has that conveniently shows up right at the exact moment. I mean come on, you could at least have shown the cast search a bit before running into her. It’s not like this show is hard-pressed for time or anything. After that though, some pretty good character development on Eden and Aria made up for this. – 4.5/8 (Good)

#11: Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon – 23: A very, very sentimental episode that was supposed to be the climax for two of the big romances in the series. It was nice I guess, but it could have been more. Overall, I’m not too impressed with how Horizon decided to handle its huge cast. It doesn’t come together quite as well and none of them really has much depth or stands out anymore, and that is quite a shame considering the wide variety in characters. – 4/8 (Nice)

#12: Hunter X Hunter – 48: Back to Gon and Killua again, a fairly dull episode, though it did have interesting information about appraising items… that I already watched before once. I remember again how these things also tended to break up the mood in the 1999 series. – 3.5/8 (Enjoyable)

#13: Tari Tari – 12: One thing that could have improved the past episodes is by having people other than the main characters motivated to keep the school festival going. Like what was stated before: a lot of clubs have passionate people who like what they’re doing. This sudden twist that they’re all too scared or unmotivated to do something… it doesn’t really work and feels rather forced. The stereotypically evil corporate businessman behind the whole plan didn’t really make things better. – 3.5/8 (Enjoyable)

#14: Tari Tari – 13: So it had it coming that the big climax of Tari Tari would be a musical singing number, and with this, we’ve finally gotten to the ending. Unfortunately though, the creators really rushed through that song there. Instead of taking its time and delivering something heartfelt, they turned into a montage! That’s now that I signed up for. It turned this whole ending into a rather cheesy climax, and the epilogue that showed how they all moved on was just too little to make up for that. Tari Tari definitely had potential, but unfortunately it didn’t really realize this. Have more guts dammit. – 3.5/8 (Enjoyable)

The Manga Experiment – Wrap-up

by psgels, posted in Manga Experiment

So, after years and years of people asking, I finally started to read some manga at the start of this summer season. I had the time for it, since it was quite a small season, and it seemed like a good moment to finally check up on the medium and explore my tastes. Thirteen weeks later, and I have to say that the experiment succeeded, and I’ve gotten warmed up to reading manga, and I’ve encountered quite a few gems that I’m really glad to have discovered.

So in this experiment, I found that I was most inclined to short manga that were easy to pick up and didn’t take ages to get somewhere. I most noticed this with the shoujo and josei genre, although there were also a number of gems in the seinen genre. It’s the type of stories that combine showing strong emotions with an intriguing and creative storyline that really did it for me.

Some pet peeves that I also found out is that I just cannot enjoy it when a character starts singing. It just feels awkward, and I can’t hear them at all. It may seem weird, but having watched anime for so long I’m just so used to things moving and there being music and audio to back it up that it just feels weird.

Another thing that rather annoyed me was something that a number of shoujo stories were rather guilty of: vague dialogues. It’s this attempt to be poetic by omitting entire sentences. this all makes the story very hard to follow and hard to reach in an attempt to be a bit poetic.Seinen stories on the other hand tended to suffer from being too dull: yeah they were nicely laid out and all, but the lack of emotions or poorly portrayed feelings didn’t catch my interest either.

Overall I am not completely sold on manga, and this blog won’t suddenly get renamed to Star Crossed Manga Blog, but I am going to keep up with the manga that caught my attention and read a bit here and there, because there are definitely awesome stories to be told there. I’m just a multimedia person who likes both visual animation, sound, music, storytelling and everything to come together. On the other hand though, the manga medium is so much easier to tell creative and unconventional storylines, and it’s also harder to screw up because there are fewer people involved in everything.

And finally, I’d like to rank the manga that caught my attention the most over the past season, based on how much I liked them. Perhaps there’s a good recommendation out there. Anyway, I’ve said this before, but next season will be huge, so I’m going to blog 12 series at once. Looking forward to it!

#9: Coelacanth

This is a very short mystery series with a lot of romance. It’s very shoujo, but at the same time it does have well written dialogue and it has quite a few interesting ideas, like a very cynical imaginary sheep that keeps bothering the lead female. The mystery unfolds slowly , but in the end it’s not really worth it in the end. The dialogue is very vague at times, making it hard to follow and because of that the build-up cannot really deliver what it wants to.

#8: With the Light – The Raising of an Autistic Child

With the Light tells the story of raising an autistic child, through a lot of different stages in the kid’s life. The perspective is really from the mother and the challenges she faces, and how to get her child accepted by the people around her. It takes so much work, and his manga’s strength is showing how she deals with them and conquers all this throughout the years (volume 1 already spans like five years). It’s a struggle, but it also shows that the payoff really is quite wonderful.

#7: The Music of Marie

What the Music of Marie did was quite interesting: from scratch, it created this really imaginative world and setting with its own customs, culture, habits, people, religion and folklore. The role of technology in this series is quite unique to watch, and its storyline is very deeply rooted in its own culture. The least interesting part is probably the romance, but the way in which it’s used allows for a lot of details to be able to fleshed out across the setting. The art is also a bit remarkable here: the characters themselves look quite plain and strangely drawn, but the different props, artifacts and backgrounds really are gorgeous and particularly imaginative.

#6: Wish

Wish is a short manga by Clamp, totalling four volumes and takes place in the same world as Kobato. The way it stands out, is how incredibly adorable it is, yet it’s also more than just that. The cast is very diverse and the slice of life is really well-balanced with the storytelling, leading to actually a very good cast emerging from this. The twist at the end is also really well-built up and really charming to watch, although there are a few too many gimmick characters around as well. It also has that singing bug that I mentioned above here.

#5: Shingeki no Kyojin

Shingeki no Kyojin. Oh boy. This one is a real shocker, and while it takes a few chapters to get going, it is just so consistently intense that it just had me in this intense state all throughout reading it. The way in which it portrays the despair of the characters during its fight scenes is much tenser than I could have imagined. The giant art is also something that you need to see for yourself. And then there are the plot twists. These things really make you think afterwards what the hell just happened.

#4: Hito Hitori Futari

Hito Hitori Futari was the first manga to catch my eye in this experiment, and it kept this all the way. It really drew me in where I found myself absorbed in continuing it for as long as possible, more than the other manga on this list in which I always found myself checking how many pages were still left. This is this really unique story about a guardian spirit being tasked to overlook the actual prime minister. Its mood is both really warm, and really cold at the same time, and I really like the way in which the author achieved this. On one hand the characters really sympathize with each other and the main couple fully accepts each other as they grow close together, and yet on the other hand there is so much darkness in this series and there are so many evil spirits present. The art is also just incredible. The facial expressions in particular are just gorgeously drawn.

#3: Hotel

For Hotel, this guy who names himself Boichi sat down with the intent to draw some standalone stories. At worst, these stories were gorgeous art experiments. At best however, holy crap what the hell did I just read. The tuna chapter was just delightful satire with an unbelievable amount of creativity put into it, on top of being very clever, while the pregnant girl story was just a complete mindfuck that was glorious in every single way. It’s all based on these really interesting thought experiments that do what you expect, only to go light-years further than that.

#2: A Lollipop or a Bullet

A Lollipop or a bullet was the kind of story that I hoped to find when starting this experiments. I managed to only find the first eight chapters of the story, but I was completely amazed at what it did there. In just eight chapters it created an amazing main character. Her inner monologues go deep, both into her own character as the character of the other main character. It’s also incredibly subtle: it nearly always just slightly hints at the really sad and pitiful things that happened, but never directly addresses them. The creators really made me sympathize with the cast and if you’re looking for something genuine, then by all means give this gem a chance. I also have a shout-out to the scanlators who brought this amazing series available for English audiences. Good luck with translating the final chapters, and I’ll definitely check them out as soon as possible.

#1: A Million-Pound Love

I am a huge fan of Himitsu ~ The Revelation and this is a collection of short stories from the same author. And really: they’ve got the same brilliance behind it. I mean, these were written by an incredibly talented writer. In Himitsu, what amazed me was how well it bit by bit revealed what was going on. That same style is present here. Bit by bit it develops its plot and it develops its characters like, majorly. It toys around with time and how characters can change in the span of a few years, and it just keeps building plot twist upon plot twist, yet making sure that everything fits once everything ends. On top of that, the art also rocks in how well it’s able to portray the emotions of the characters. I was really swept along with their emotions that just kept going from one scene to the other. There are times in which the twists themselves get a bit far-fetched (there is a lot of science fiction with creative liberties in this manga), but still: this is really is top-notch storytelling.

The Manga Experiment – Week 39

by psgels, posted in Manga Experiment

Coelacanth – Ch.06-08: This concludes the Coelacanth manga (yes, it’s quite a short mystery story). The culprit is revealed and everything comes to a climax quite nicely. I like how subtle the climax was and the way in which the author did the romance, but it also suffered from that vague dialogue that has been bothering me in a lot of other shoujo manga. Because of that this just jumps from one place to the other without much flow and becomes hard to read and follow.

Hito Hitori Futari – Ch.16-19: The prime minister is such an interesting character: he has this strange glow of ambition around him that the art manages to portray wonderfully. Chapter 19 also was a big surprise in how it brought Rihon back to her old life, leading to a very emotional scene. The art still is top-notch here by the way.

The Music of Marie Ch.07-08: This is where everything really starts going crazy after all of the build-up and world building of the previous chapters, and I must say that with the amount of meaning that was put into chapter 8, it definitely delivered a very intriguing cliff-hanger. It used all of the build-up quite well and took off using it as a jump-start, making great use of the two lead characters.

Shingeki no Kyojin – Ch.09-10: Oh my god, I nearly forgot how intense this series is to read, and this episode went even further. Perhaps the twists it delivered weren’t the most shocking, but the state of mind of the main character, and the despair and utter confusion he was in were incredibly well portrayed. I mean heck, waking up after all THAT. I’d be confused as heck too. Mikasa also rocked.

Phi Brain Season 2 Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Phi Brain



So, Phi Brain. A show that baffled me for the past year more than any other series, and it did so in many ways. It was the source of many frustrations, but also many surprises. When the first season started it seemed like just an ordinary shounen series with very good characters. Then a second season got announced and things started. The thing is that the first season was very conclusive and didn’t really leave many plot threats behind. On top of that, it was all about Kaito and his history, and it really had this storyline that used its main cast at its best. So how on earth were they going to top that?

Well indeed, the second season didn’t turn out to be as good as the first, but it did so for complete different reasons than what I imagined. The creators actually came up with a new set of very good villains here. The charm of the first season, it surprisingly good characterization: it stayed here. There was cheese, Oh GOD, there was cheese, but it used this cheese really well to create memorable villains and actually ended up very heart-warming with a very good chemistry between all of the different members of the cast. The themes were great and it ended with a satisfying climax that really exceeded my expectations. So what went wrong?

Well, the balance is all over the place. The thing is that the stories of the first and second season are about equal in size, but the way in which they spend their time is very different. The first season had random stories: a first half of completely unrelated stories to flesh out the cast. In the second season however, every episode is important to the plot in a direct way. The problem however is that this show doesn’t have the material to fill 25 episodes. The result? Well, four episodes of solving the exact same puzzle over and over again. In a series that prides itself with its creative puzzles, that indeed is as fun as it sounds.

On top of that, the way in which this series manages its cast in this season is really bizarre and questionable. It all works out in the end, but oh boy, it has a lot of hurdles. Most importantly, the central focus of the plot is brainwashing. The entire cast of villains is brainwashed into acting weird and illogical. You do not want to know how long it takes for this to get properly fleshed out and some actual depth, because this series has spent nearly its entire airtime to get to that point. At the start the characters come off as shallow stupid and illogical bastards.

And then there is the great cast of characters of the first season, who honestly have trouble figuring out what to do in the sequel here. In one way it’s good, because the characters who did not have a focus in the first season can now really shine here (with the best example being Ana Gram), but it also is a bit of a shame to see once strong characters wander around slightly aimlessly and looking for things to do. Gammon especially suffered here, but also Nonoha is pretty bad. She keeps wanting to do something, and yet the creators hardly ever let her, despite hinting at how she still is important. Only near the end does that start to matter, and in the meantime she is just there for the token female to cook dinner.

Beyond that, the usual issues with Phi Brain still stand: when you think about it, it just makes no bloody sense. Especially the way in which this series seems to think that you can hack anything and do some mumbo jumbo in order to gather data are really bad if you start thinking about it even once. This show just has a story to tell and doesn’t care how illogical it gets, and yet it does this better than the likes of Horizon, because the story it does end up telling becomes pretty damn good when it wants to and is actually focused. I mean you can say a lot about Phi Brain, but it has a damn good cast of characters.

Storytelling: 7/10 – You call that balance?! Riddled with issues, way too long (we’re at 50 episodes now and a third season has been announced!), yet surprisingly focused and well built up.
Characters: 8.5/10 – The saving grace for this series. Very good and heart-warming all around. A bit too heavy on the cheese though.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Definitely not Sunrise’s dream team here, though it has its moments at the beginning and end where it looks really pretty.
Setting: 8.5/10 – I have to give points for this series: it took a setting that seemed impossible to make believable: people fight using puzzles and brainwash each other in order to evolve human kind. And it pulled it off. Sure it took a lot of trouble, but it did.

Suggestions:
– The Law of Ueki
– Spiral
– Suteki Tantei Labyrinth

Uta Koi Review – 84/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Uta Koi



Anime is a commercial medium. It has to be catered in a way in order to attact sales, so concessions have to be made with the premises that get adapted. With that in mind, there sometimes just appear series that make me really glad that they got made, while avoiding all this. Uta Koi is one of these. It’s based on a manga that wasn’t even officially published at the beginning. It’s about freaking poets in the 10th century. No marketeer in their right mind would usually pick this up immediately, and yet the anime of Uta Koi has been made, showing that yes: we can still get things that aren’t catered in any way.

And really, Uta Koi is such a fascinating series. Very rarely we see series that also end up strengthening other completely unrelated series. This show attempts to show the mindset of famous poets as they wrote the various works that were used to compile the famous collection of 100 poems. Yes, the same poems that were used in Chihayafuru. This series gives such a wonderful background to all of the poems that appear in that series, adding even more depth to them. One episode in this series is also dedicated to the author of Genji Monogatari. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to see something about the people behind the stories for once, making this show without a doubt the most unique series of the entire year.

Now, as for the actual execution, there is also something interesting going on, plus a number of things that take a bit of time getting used to. Most notably the animation is quite bare-bones: the character-designs here are very intricate and detailed, but the downside of this is that they’re very hard to animate, and the budget for this series is not big at all. This leads to great drawings that move around really akwkwardly, and that sometimes don’t move at all. On the flipside, this series is wonderful in the audio department. Voice acting is top notch and the huge cast of characters are all very well delivered. The music also is really good and fits the romantic setting perfectly.

Now, Uta Koi is a collection of stories: every episode tells a different one, sometimes even two, so this show does not have much time to dedicate to each of its characters. Some of the characters end up forgettable this way, and it does have a tendency to get a bit cheesy in its worst stories, but there are also more than enough characters that make an impact. It’s not a series that thrives on hard-hitting storytelling, because the animation simply is not good enough for that, and a lot of the stories are strangely focused on forbidden relationships. It’s biggest strength is definitely how well it provides background.

But it’s nevertheless an excellent view to how life was in the upper classes in those days. Being a woman basically sucked, and this series has many stories dedicated to that, but also focuses on how these women found their inner strengths. Court politics also are very much present in here, not to mention that one episode in which it deliberately takes the piss out of everything it stands for. If you’re looking for something with historical depth and don’t mind a lot of awkwardness, then this is a fine choice.

Storytelling: 8.5/10 – Episodic, but very well laid out, moving though time across various poets.
Characters: 8/10 – Huge cast, so there are a number of forgettable characters, but also a bunch of great ones.
Production-Values: 8/10 – The animation is having a lot of trouble and looks awkward. The music and voice acting are brilliant though.
Setting: 9/10 – An utterly wonderful look at poetics of 1000 years ago and the people behind famous poems and stories.

Suggestions:
– Chihayafuru
– Genji Monogatari Sennenki
– Aoi Bungaku

Uta Koi – 13

by psgels, posted in Uta Koi

Ah, of course. With the series going through time like that, the only logical story to end with would be the one about Fujiwara no Teika, the guy who composed everything. A very fitting end, both in its themes, and execution.

Also, with this the creators found a nice explanation of why al lot of the poems are about forbidden relationships: Fujiwara no Teika was in one himself. It’s of course debatable how true to history this was, but for the series Uta Koi it fits perfectly. It’s great to finally see that annoying guy who kept making the most bizarre cameos in each episode to have a bit of depth, and to show an interpretation of what his life was about.

What’s also interesting is that the animators actually tried to have some good animation, at the point where Teika and his first love have their big moment. It’s interesting to see in an animation that was otherwise filled with jerky animation and still frames to really create a dynamically moving scene like that. Okay so it again had budget issues, but it’s the intent that definitely was appreciated.

Overall: great show. Please make more series like this. And now it’s just a season’s wait for Chihayafuru 2.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Tari Tari Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



So, I like slice of life series with a clear narrative structure: the type that shows every day life, but where there’s also some kind of story going on with clear plot progression. Because of that I was looking forward to Tari Tari… but in the end it seemed to be missing something.

So we’re basically talking about the story of five teenagers. They’re all different, but have one thing in common: they’re the members of the same choir club. The series explores their stories with the main focus being the troubles that the choir club faces. It could have been charming, but I don’t know. It all ended up too dull, took a few too little risks, was a bit too unbalanced.

I mean, it’s not like the characters aren’t well fleshed out. The series definitely tries, and some of the characters have good stories behind them: one of the girls’ issues with her dead mother were well explored, the horse riding girl also was well explored. But that’s just one portion of the story. There also are plenty of portions and characters that just don’t work and take too little risks to really get somewhere.

Talking in terms of balance, there are some characters who are overrepresented, and others who are underrepresented. The choir girl is very annoying, yet she is the main character of the show. It’s nice to watch her actually try to realize her ideals, but she never really has that moment that redeems her; the other characters tend to do that. On the other hand, the male characters actually get very little time to really show themselves compared to the females. There is the badminton guy who gets like… half an episode maybe? And the Austrian guy’s arc gets hi-jacked by the rest of the cast so that he hardly gets to do anything, turning him to a bit of an unsuccessful joke character. It all just never comes together and creatively they could have done so much more with this.

It’s all just too standard, and the few things it does to stand out fall out flat more often than not. The central storyline of the Choir Club tends to be very forced, with characters forcing themselves to be the villains in order to add some tension and the eventual pay-off ends up as just an auto-tuned montage with very little effort put behind it.

So yeah, this definitely was the disappointment of the season for me. I mean, I can see that it has the intention to create likable characters. And indeed, this show fleshes its cast out better than some other shows do, but it’s just isn’t enough for me to really recommend it for anything. It’s got its charms here and there, but there are so many series that do this better and that’s the problem here: it just fails to stand out. It’s a nice series and all if you’re really bored, but it just doesn’t take much risks, and the risks it does take all fall flat. The exception probably is the second episode. That is the only point that genuinely impressed me on hind-sight with tight storytelling and a great concept that involved a lot of different characters coming together. After that it never really gets to that level again unfortunately.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Charming at some points, but is often just a bit too dull, plus the plot it uses is rather forced and predictable.
Characters: 7.5/10 – Some very good characters, but others are rather under-utilized. The Choir girl will also get on a lot of people’s nerves and has no moment to redeem her.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Good animation from PA Works, that has to be said. Although it does sometimes cut a few annoying corners.
Setting: 7.5/10 – A typical school setting, although a bit more forced than usual in order to get its choir plot going anywhere.

Suggestions:
– Hana-Saku Iroha
– Tamayura
– Hyouka

Rinne no Lagrange Season 2 Review – 81/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Rinne no Lagrange



Mecha series today are a bit rarer than what they were in the past, but they definitely still keep getting made. 2012 gave us shows as Eureka Seven Ao, Aquarion Evol and the entirely original Rinne no Lagrange. In the first season we already got to see its rather interesting sense of plot progression, and with this we finally finished its long-awaited conclusion.

Now, let me start by saying that Rinne no Lagrange is very unconventional as a mecha series. It’s usually a series of action and lots of fight and over the top plot twist. Instead the mecha fights only take up a small portion of this series. The first season spent much of that extra time building up and creating characters, whereas the second season is more about developing a plot about two warring planets and the mindsets of the leaders. At the same time it still tries to keep true to its themes of reaching out to others, rather than fighting and the slice of life. It’s a daring combination indeed, and unfortunately it does have a few hiccups, but also interesting results.

The most interesting of the results is that it has quite a good cast of characters. It really devotes time to explore the relationships between the different members of the cast, and this definitely pays off in the second season, whether this is the bond between the three female characters, or between the kinds of the two worlds. Again this uses the theme of reaching out and talking to each other above fighting quite well. It also leads so a number of very enjoyable and whimsical scenes.

The hiccups result from trying to be too epic at the same time as trying to be personal. On one hand it tries to create this huge setting involving three planets, on the other it tries to revolve everything around five characters. It doesn’t combine too well, and especially in the final arc of the story it doesn’t really seem like it really knows how to deliver an action packed climax so it just pulls a berserk button on one of the villains, removing any personal aspect of his character.

At its best though, it is kindof refreshing to see this series deal so lightly with politics that are usually entirely serious, and it still manages to take itself seriously despite of it (compared to series that turn politics into a joke for the sake of moe…). It still didn’t quite exactly strike the right balance, but it’s an interesting attempt nevertheless. However, I do have to say that I expected more of this series. It’s all a bit too careful, especially considering the ingredients it had as a fully original story, not based on anything. Take Madoka’s aunt for example: a wonderful character, who mostly just stands on the sidelines doing nothing. There were points at which it should have taken a few more risks. It’s a tad too mundane to really make an impact, and it definitely had the potential for it.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Gives a different spin to the mecha genre by combining politics with slice of life, but failed to tweak the balance.
Characters: 8.5/10 – Great and enjoyable cast with a good resolution, though had the potential to be more.
Production-Values: 8/10 – There are a few moments of eye candy, but apart from that the animation is pretty average. Soundtrack is as good as ever.
Setting: 8/10 – Could have been great, but is a bit stuck in a limbo between this show’s wishes to be both epic and down to earth.

Suggestions:
– RD Sennou Chousashitsu
– Mouretsu Pirates
– Simoun

Rinne no Lagrange – 24

by psgels, posted in Rinne no Lagrange

Well, there you have it. It’s a surprisingly fitting ending for this series. A bit silly, but I like how it went against conventions.

In a normal episode, this episode would be all like “you think you have beaten me, but I have yet to reveal my FINAL FORM!”. Instead, things looked scary for a while, but most of the action in this episode was the Rinne settling down. It fits this show well: there was no way in which an action-packed finale was going to work for this show. It’s not an action series at all. Instead it’s about its characters and happens to have some action in it.

Instead this episode ended up glorifying the jersey club, making it the most powerufl entity in the entire universe. Oh, and the two planets colliding… they don’t. It’s plausible, but also one heck of an anti-climax. It’s definitely a very strange ending, but also quite a charming and daring one. The atmosphere definitely worked, and this episode took its time wrapping everything up. Though did we learn why Moid disappeared in the end?

Still, I do feel that the final quarter of Rinne no Lagrange was its weakest, simply because it didn’t really have much to do, so it just drove Dizelmine Berserk. It lead to this nice ending, but I do feel that the creators could have used it better, or if they were going for this ending they should have built it up better. Because my main impression with the second season was that it didn’t seem to know that this was going to be the ending. Still, it was definitely fun to watch.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Eureka Seven Ao – 21

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao

This episode. There was someone involved who made the execution slightly different from usual. The way in which the characters interacted with each other was slightly different from usual, but very noticeable. There were these scenes which were a bit deformed, but very well animated in terms of character movements: they moved all over, and the episode had a lot of strange yet dynamic facial expressions. Most notably the animation at times was very smooth and the movement was very elaborate.

A quick look-up of the animators and directors involved with this episode doesn’t really point to one source that caused the change in style. My best guess is that a few people sat together and came up with the idea to try something new this time, because it’s both the storyboard, animation and direction that have changed. I like this a lot by the way, these experiments. Bones is usually a studio that thrives on consistency, especially in the past years, so seeing Eureka animated so whimsically definitely was a surprise here, but I liked how well that scene brought forth her emotions. Now that was some good use of fluidity.

What also caught my attention was the climax of this episode. This whole episode was basically about Elena. We now finally know all that is up with her: she was accidentally brought in from the past, but somewhere along the way she started finding herself special and thought that she came from a different world. That’s also why she probably created all those alternative personas. But anyway, her climax: she starts yelling and after just one love declaration of Ao she completely calms down. That was very unusual, and while it was a bit weird it worked surprisingly well there. Those emotions of hers were quite nicely done there and I really like these kinds of episodes in which the creators try to do things a bit differently.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)