Summer 2012 Kaleidoscope – Week 28

by psgels, posted in Summer 2012 Kaleidoscope

#1: Polar Bar Cafe – 15: This show… is brilliant. Oh my god, I’m nearly dying from laughing here. This show managed to surpass itself yet again. – ***+ (Amazing)

#2: Tamayura Hitotose – 05,5: One issue that i still can’t find a good solution for is how to cover OVAs. The thing is, that I want to cover these things because I’ve often noticed that they suffer from a lack of buzz and people don’t often know about them, even though there is some very good stuff amongst them. The problem though is that in my experience, it’s too much of a chore to devote a single post to all of them. What I’m still searching for is some sort of catalog or easily accessible post or page that would briefly highlight the noteworthy OVAs out there. But for now I’ll just include them in these ratings. This episode was awesome and I nearly dozed off due to how relaxing it was. This is what I mean by using ovas well: this episode showed so much about Potte and her father. Awesome. – *** (Awesome)

#3: Computer Kakumei OVA: Computar Kakumei and the below listed Marimo no Hana are two OVAs of only 10 minutes long that have a surprising amount of talent within them (heck, both directors worked on multiple episodes of the Tatami Galaxy and Kaiba among others). While this didn’t come together for Marimo no Hana, Computer Kakumei is actually quite interesting. At first it seemed a bit of a sell-out with the lead’s female’s father suddenly getting hospitalized, but there was a surprising amount of heart to it. The visuals also look very pretty, but what caught my attention the most was how good the soundtrack was.In fact, for such a short OVA… I can hardly recall any OVA of that length that had a better soundtrack other than Comedy. – ** (Excellent)

#4: Tari Tari – 02: I’m not going to blog this series for the fear that it’ll be too short to make any real impact. But still this episode impressed me with how much went on there. I thought that the entire series would revolve around getting the choir club going, but with this episode this entire subplot has been resolved already. This definitely was a significant difference from the first episode and I quite like how the creators juggled around the roles for everyone and made everyone important in trying to make the joint recital. – ** (Excellent)

#5: Hyouka – 11,5: Again, I’ve gotten a bit tired about devoting full entries to OVA episodes like this, so I’ll just list this one here. It’s a pool episode, and while it’s not a very good pool episode (remove the pool part and this episode still would have been able to make the points it wanted to make), it is quite worth watching, if only for what they did to Oreki’s character and his boredom here. – *+ (Great)

#6: Binbou-Gami ga! – 02 – Unfortunately, this is as I expected: this episode was not as good as the first, by far. The new character introduced is just an overblown unfunny stereotype and this episode flowed far from as smoothly. On top of that, a majority of the jokes was very forced and fell rather flat. This is a bad sign. – (Enjoyable)

#7: Hunter X Hunter – 38: This episode only featured the same exposition I’ve already seen before. So yeah, I found this really boring, but it’s good to have all this set-up over with now; this part was even longer and more annoying back in the 1999 series. – – (Disappointing)

#8: Marimo no Hana – OVA: So, AKB0048 is currently very good. Interestingly, this 10-minute OVA is an example of how not to use them. Two of its members basically voice the main male and female. And the male one sounds like a girl. I mean, totally, without any question. And really, I’m not blaming the girls here, the producer here should have known that you can’t just throw idols everywhere and expect this to work out, and this really was a cheap cash-in with no thought put into it whatsover. Which is a darn shame, because this OVA has a bunch of really good animators working on it. – – (Disappointing)

#9: Yuruyuri 02 – 02: When I watch a comedy, I want to watch something that makes me laugh. Not something that dabbles on randomly while trying to annoy me. Dropped. – — (Lacking)

#10: La Storia della Arcana Famiglia – 02: I checked Amazon. And I could only find 6 DVD volumes listed, meaning that it’ll be highly likely that this show will only have 12 episodes. For that, it’s goofing off way too much, there is too little happening: go back to fun action scenes instead of having bishies talk to each other trying to act quirky while saving kittens. Dropped. – — (Lacking)

#11: Phi Brain – 39: Why, Phi Brain? Why!? There was so much wrong with this episode it’s not even funny. Why did you decide to bring back the single most pathetic villain of the first season? Why did you find it a good idea to bring back such a comically evil bad guy? Why did you kidnap Elena without involving Gammon in this at all? Did you entirely forget the romantic hints that the first season was building up to? Why did you take Nonoha instead? Why did she end up partaking into part of the puzzle now of all times, in which she was absolutely useless? Why didn’t you give her something to redeem herself with? Why did you make Rook appear from out of nowhere? Why did Rook’s helper arrive just at the right time? Why did they know about a kidnapping that even Cubic wasn’t aware of? Why did you suddenly introduce two game players, even though the Orpheus Order people have up till now always battled the main cast directly? There are just so many things about this series now that make no sense whatsoever from a storytelling perspective. It’s like this series WANTS to ruin itself or something. — (Bad)

#12: Campione- 02: I dropped this about 4 minutes into the episode, in which this show revealed itself as a harem, the lead female completely changed character and the male lead’s sister got jealous at her. —- (Terrible)

Eureka Seven Ao – 13

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao

This episode disappointing? Hah, Ao finally had the time to see his mother again and answer some of the big questions of the plot, and this worked out really well.

As expected, this is a time travel plot; everyone just labeled Eureka as an alien. Apparently Eureka traveled through time twice, this being the first one. Also, Renton got mentioned! This episode was all about relating back the things that Eureka did 10 years ago, which made for some very good character development for the ones involved. Also, why was Elena so upset?

Also, this episode showed even more that this is Eureka Seven with an Evangelion inspiration. First of all there was this one facial expression from Truth (who really kicked ass in this episode by the way), and then there was this remarkable Secret-design from Eureka’s past. Coincidence?
Rating: **+ (Excellent)

Natsuyuki Rendezvous – 02

by psgels, posted in Natsuyuki Rendezvous

This! This is everything that rocks about Noitamina: a focus on adults, a great director who is able to show off his skills, terrific production-values, excellent acting and a focus on a much different target audience than usual. Plus, an amazing cast of characters and a delivery full of emotion.

Seriously, this series blows away all other anime this season, this second episode only continues this even more; yes, this episode was even better than last week’s installment. The acting still is completely amazing, for all three main characters. I like how we’re also given an in-depth look into the mind of the main female character, because this episode showed really well how she dealt with the loss of her husband.

With this episode, the creators also showed how well they are able to use the main gimmick of this series. Over the top facial expressions are often used as fourth wall jokes (nobody seems particularly bothered by them. Here though, they were used in a different way: in order to make the male lead feel uncomfortable. It just adds wonderfully to the fantastic chemistry in this show. Seriously, these characters make the cast of Sakamichi no Apollon look like simple romantic cliches.

My only gripe: the sudden forced sickness; either build this up or just allow the characters to play out naturally.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Kokuriko Zaka Kara Review – 81/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

Agh! Stupid laptop! I was nearly done typing up the review for this movie, and then it crashed, taking forever to start up again. I don’t feel like writing it up entirely again, so here is a crash review on Goro Miyazaki’s Kokuriko zaka Kara. There also isn’t going to be a rating table this time, because if that’s longer than the actual review it would defeat its entire purpose.

This felt real! I mean, for a long time I wasn’t sure where this movie was going, but at the ending everything fell on its place and this was a huge improvement over Tales of the Earthsea’s Deus ex Machina ending. The creators created a very interesting movie here with very restrained drama. No overacting whatsoever, even for movie standards. Goro Miyazaki is completely different from his father and he definitely fits quiet drama better, which is probably why he put so much of that into Tales of the Earthsea.
Suggestions:
– Mai Mai Miracle
– Whisper of the Heart
– Chocchan’s Story

Some Quick First Impressions: Hakuouki – Seimei-Roku, Oda Nobuna no Yabou and Sword Art Online

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hakuouki – Seimei-Roku

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a cute guy.
You know, after watching hordes of bishies in Brave 10, Hiiro no Kakera and Arcana Famiglia, it’s at least good to see some of them with actual emotions, rather than one-dimensional stereotypes who keep repeating their own gimmicks. As much as I dislike Hakuouki, I have to admit that out of the bishie series to come out in the recent year,s, it is the most solid. And I have to admit: in terms of storylines this episode had the best plot of the episodes I’ve seen of it so far. It’s a simple but effective story about being indebted to a bad person and the politics around this were solid enough. And what’s more: the single most annoying character, the female lead, was actually nowhere to be found here, which definitely made things more bearable. Yet, Hakuouki, I miss energy. Try to have some passion, because you’re still really boring to follow: put some effort in your delivery and your atmosphere. Make things seem interesting. There are enough tricks for that, but you hardly use any of them. Is this really going to be the future of the shoujo series? In which the best selling entry isn’t really trying?
OP: A decent singer, albeit still a bit dull.
Potential: 50%

Oda Nobuna no Yabou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has been sucked into his favorite game world. Please… allow me to believe that…
You know Fate/Zero, in which the creators actually turned the famous King Arthur into a female? That was good! The creators made great use of the mysteries behind King Arthur and they made us believe that this was actually pretty plausible. So seriously, what is up with all these incredibly stupid historic gender reversals? In other words: Odu Nobuna no Yabou is the worst TV-series I have seen from Madhouse in the seven years I have done this blog. Yes, even worse that Kamen no Maid Guy, Stitch and Iron Man. Even these series at least had a premise. Even these works had more dignity than this thing in which it makes a complete mockery of history and keeps throwing in the most useless and annoying jokes and moe cliches. I’m not really sure who it was who got the idea to turn Oda Nobunaga into a typical tsundere, nor the guy who found it a good idea to greenlight this. And the bad thing is that the production values are pretty good. they wasted a wonderful soundtrack from Yasuharu Takanashi and the camera work also is pretty good here.
OP: Another OP that is exactly like all other OPs out there.
ED: FANSERVICE
Potential: 0%

Sword Art Online

Short Synopsis: Our lead character plays games.
At the start, I just couldn’t help but compare this to .Hack//Sign (one of my favorite series ever) but already quickly into the episode it turned out that the focus of Sword Art Online would be entirely different. Where .Hack focuses on social interactions, this series is more of a thriller, with its emphasis on the combat aspects of an MMORPG. And yeah, this episode was well made: the characters were well acted and this episode did a good job in outlining the overall concept of this series, without playing all of it trumps right at the start (I like how we’re only introduced to two members of the main cast here). The creators also got some really good background artists for this series, so that also definitely is a plus. Perhaps it’s not .Hack//Sign levels and Yuki Kajiura doesn’t really feel like she’s at her best with this series, but as for this being the most solid fantasy of the season? Yeah, pretty much.
ED: Nice animation, but it misses something, plus the song is bland.
Potential: 85%

Uta Koi – 02

by psgels, posted in Uta Koi

Before I start with this entry, there is one question that I just have to ask first: WHY, for the love of god, would you want to censor snakes!??

In any case, Uta Koi surprised me with its atmosphere that was completely different from what I expected. This is Josei, right? Then why was the narrator talking to us as if we were children? Why does the ED feel so ridiculously out of place? Why the need for such out of place comedy?

Despite all that though: TYO, THANK YOU for making this series. This is by far the most interesting series of the season, and that’s saying something in a season that has series about germs, the boundaries between virtual reality and real life and pitch-black food jokes. I only rezlize this right now, but I’m learning a ton of new things watching this series: out of the series that aired during the past years, I think only Hyouge Mono had a deeper historical context.

Last episode had two stories, but this one just focused on one, and this allowed the characters much more time to play out, including intertwining this with one of the stories from last week. This was a great portrayal to two victims of court politics, being forced to live together as husband and wife and both dealing with this in their own ways, and yet at the end of this episode the creators stressed that this is just an interpretation of what things must have been like for the two of them, based on the very little information we have. Heck,if this series is aimed at children, it really takes them seriously; this series really wants to teach something, rather than treating children like dumb sheep who will whine to their parents for toys.

But why the snakes?!
Rating: ** (Excellent)

AKB0048 – 11

by psgels, posted in AKB0048

This episode made me realize: this series has a really passive main character, hasn’t it? I mean, so far Nagisa has just been… there. Most of the best moments in this series focused on the side-cast, and during the building up parts, it’s often the side characters who are much more talkative who take the center stage.

In this show, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. The problem with most passive leads is how annoying they are and how they’re forced in their roles of main characters, where they don’t belong at all. This episode however actually used that cliche in order to build further upon the show’s themes.

I mean, anime in general is so focused on celebrating hard work and talent. Nagisa has neither, or should I say: she doesn’t stand out at either. She can sing decently, and she does practice, but there are many more talented characters, and there are many characters who work harder than she does. In a weird change of fate, the word of God for the AKB group randomly picks her to play the center of a new song they composed for the first time in years, completely ignoring the experience, hard work and talent of all of the other members to go for one who hasn’t really stood out or proved herself in any way, without having any need to justify themselves. We’re all just supposed to “accept” that they had a good reason for it.

I think that the creators knew very well what they were doing here. I mean, even her attitude doesn’t stand out compared to how badly the others want a spot on the performing list. Nagisa on the other hand… doesn’t seem to know what she really wants.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouka – 12

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

The school festival arc, in which there actually are no mysteries. The problem with such an arc is that it has been done to death: you’re really going to have to bring something new to the table if you want to stand out. And yeah, I guess Hyouka did that with its trademark solid acting.

The thing with this episode was that it was full of life. This wasn’t just about the Classics club, but the entire school here was doing activities, and this episode was a great opportunity to show what the rest of the school looks like and who attend it. It’s a great way of world building. It’s a bit disappointing that there was no mystery to solve, but the problem of this episode was quite creative and realistic so that makes up for that.

Oreki in this episode was great: his portrayal of just doing nothing for the entire episode and liking it really fit his character. Ibara also showed a new side of herself. The pressures from the rest of her club members were really well portrayed here. Satoshi meanwhile was surprisingly more annoying than usual, and Chintanda was a bit of a sell-out in which the creator s were obviously trying to stuff her in as many outfits as possible here.

As for the new ED, couldn’t you really have been a bit more subtle Kyoani?
Rating: *+ (Great)

Rinne no Lagrange – 14

by psgels, posted in Rinne no Lagrange

There have been plenty of series in which five series that I was blogging would air on the same day. I cannot recall any season in which that number reached up to six, though. Seriously, Rinne, Uchuu Kyoudai, Total Eclipse, Jinrui, Hyouka and AKB0048 all air on the same bloody day, talk about overkill. The only explanation I can think of this is that series are trying to group themselves amongst the two most popular time-slots for anime: Noitamina on Thursday and the prime time slot on Sunday. Although that doesn’t make ay sense for Sundays either, because the prime time slot airs in the afternoon. Are they counting on people staying up watching TV until late at night?

In ay case, Rinne no Lagrange’s sequel has now officially started, after last week’s recap. And it does so very solidly with a 1-year time-skip. Most of this episode was meant to highlight the character-development, with in particular focusing on how Madoka has matured up. Those changes were definitely my favorite parts of this series., because they show how the island Madoka live son is alive: things change there too.

Also, there appears to be something that is so bad that it forces Muginami to want to kill Madoka. This will undoubtedly be a major theme for this second season, as it has been hinted that Muginami and Lan both went through a lot during thee time-skip. The biggest challenge for the creators will be to make all of this plausible and relatable.
Rating: *+ (Great)
OP: Same style, catchier song.
ED: The song here is a collection of musical ideas that just don’t work. It’s weird.

Total Eclipse – 02

by psgels, posted in Total Eclipse

I think that the four other shows that I’m going to blog this season are pretty obvious now, but as for why I chose Total Eclipse over the others:

– Tari Tari will only be 1 cour long. there is no way it’s going to live up to Hana-Saku Iroha with that.
– Moyashimon is just a series that you should watch, instead of talk about. Short blurbs each week are enough for that.
– In the same vein, I don’t really feel like blogging a comedy a la Binbou-gami ga.
– Kyoukai Senjo no Horizon is very creative, but it’s also completely forced and nonsensical.
– This episode was just that good.

I mean, I don’t care that this show is based on one of the best visual novels out there. It has the director of Rosario to Vampire assigned. After Persona 4 I really wasn’t looking forward to another butchered work, especially since Rosario to Vampire had absolutely terrible pacings and camera work, that were bad, far beyond their premises.

This episode however, was really intense. I did spot hints of this in the first episode in how uneventful it was by allowing the female lead to play out her character, but with this, they followed that up wonderfully with one heck of a horror episode, and even before that, this series took its characters seriously. this episode showed that this series can deliver good horror, even when censored and that in this series, people die when they’re killed.

Some criticisms though: why do all these monsters look the same? With that, it’s hard to keep track of whether you’re actually making progress or not. Also, there is supposed to be a real lead character? I like how he didn’t appear so far: screw those conventions. However, do expect me to drop this show when he turns out to be a generic harem lead…

Also, if this is supposed to be the cutting edge of mecha that are being deployed, then why are they used in hand to hand combat? Wouldn’t long range weapons make more sense, since these monsters can only fire along a limited distance? Overall, this show reminds me the most of Blue Gender, but where that series took place at the stage where the earth has been completely conquered, this series looks more into the conquering process. The question is, will the creators be able to make the plot as interesting?
Rating: ** (Excellent)