Ebiten
Short Synopsis: Our lead character strips innocent girls to their underwear.
So, Ebiten has immediately won the “Worst character-designs of the season”-award (those eyes!), but what about the rest of the episode? Well, I guess it wasn’t that bad. Of course it wasn’t anything amazing, and don’t ask me why that one girl had to be stripped and tied up all the time, but when the characters in this episode started role-playing, things got fairly amusing. Ebiten is a show that thrives on meta-fiction: its set up is similar to the bad parts of Haruhi, and there were a lot of Saint Seiya references in this episode. And not the kind of references that are there for the sake of having references, but they were actively used. I think the best series to compare this with is a Joshiraku minus the wordplay and with a ton of random fanservice added, but unlike Joshiraku the characters were trying to be actual characters, rather than vehicles for the author to show off his sense of wordplay. Does that make up for the fanservice? I dunno? That depends on the next episodes.
ED: Why are you trying to make live-action girls substitute for the characters? It’s not like they look alike or anything; bad use of idols
Potential: 50%
AKB0048 – 12
It still surprises me with how much this series can get away. I mean, this must have been originally intended as some sort of sell-out, and yet: the ED of this episode is purely instrumental. It was a really good ED, but it in no way promotes AKB48 as an idol group. Really: whoever was behind that idea: I really admire the balls it must have taken to go with this.
Add that to the different cast members openly criticizing the system for AKB0048, on top of this episode showing how this business can mentally break down these girls from the stress they face. These are some very surprising liberties, and with this, I really hope for a second season for this series. especially since this episode came with a bunch of twists that can only be good with some extra episodes.
In a 1-cour series, claiming on the 12th episode that you’re going to say goodbye means an aftermath. In a 2-cour series, it means character development end evolution. Same for that new pet thingy that appeared at the end of the episode.
Also, how many “hard work and guts”-tropes is Nagisa going to subvert anyway? I mean, they go on this heroic quest to save her father, but he doesn’t want to be rescued. She gets her chance to perform in the center of the stage, and breaks down. The motivational speech she gets in this episode about not giving up doesn’t change anything: she still lost, but it made her face the fact that she did rather than completely turning the tables. She still had to see everyone work extra hard to make up for her.
Does that make her a bad character? Here’s the thing: I usually hate characters who don’t do anything, because they’re completely pointless. Nagisa is different, though: her uselessness has a point, and she also has a character; I especially liked that she changed after meeting her father and decided to not inconvenience her mother.
Rating: Excellent
Jinrui wa Suita Shimashita – 03
In this episode, our lead female meets a manga author that she went to school with who invents gay romance fiction and creates a legion of fujoshi by doing so. The thing is, and I’m not sure why, but I had trouble keeping my attention on this episode and I kindof wonder why.
Well, there of course is the way that I’m not interested in works that are purely fanservice and the entire culture that surrounds it, but also: how does this world work anyway? They have cars and apparently methods to transport huge amounts of people, but simple fiction and a printing press is something lost to the ages?
If anything, I fail to miss the point that this episode wants to make. Was it all meant to build up to that moment at the end in which they got caught in a manga? In that case, there is something that bothers me: this series will likely be only 12 episodes long. i feel like it’s taking too long to get from A to B. For a series as Uchuu Kyoudai this is fine because it’s both long and consistently interesting, but with this episode, this series is neither…
Rating: Enjoyable
Uchuu Kyoudai – 16
The chemistry between the characters in this episode was just amazing. Even more than usual; the facial expressions said so much about the different cast members, and the stress amongst them was just wonderfully portrayed for every single character, aside from perhaps that woman in team B. I like it when a show withholds the state of mind of some of its characters, but I also just love how this series attempts to dive into the mindsets of multiple characters at the same time, to show how differently they all end up reacting to what’s going on.
As for the reason I dislike slow pacing: that can be attributed to Naruto and Bleach. What I really dislike is the kinds of series that pad out their time, for the sake of padding out time. A recent example of this was Kaiji’s second season, in which everyone started to repeat themselves over and over and over ad nauseum.
With this however, I really want to applaud Uchuu Kyoudai for showing how a slow pacing should be done: every scene adds something. Every characterization improves the characters and makes them more rounded. And the great thing about this is: this series managed to find a way to never be boring; it’s always interesting, due to the fantastic acting here. Because of this, the creators are able to create an engaging story with a lot of twists and turns and really well rounded characters to boot.
Of course, right now it’s pretty clear that Fukuda and that Rubix cube guy are people from JAXA sent in to stir up trouble, but what interests me much more than the mystery around them is the way they’re acting and how they managed to cause the tension around everyone to rise.
Rating: (Awesome)
Total Eclipse – 03
The big downside to having nearly every show air on the same day in a season like this is that if you’re away for the weekend you suddenly have an incredible backlog. It’s gonna take me a while to catch up to everything here.
In any case, Total Eclipse showed its true colours in this episode with what I presume to be the main cast. And if I have to be honest, I’m not that impressed by them. A lot of them feel flat and stereotypical, and in particular that Italian Playboy and that Nepalese tsundere are annoying to watch. Apart from that this episode was chock full of one-liners that had a similar problem as Jormungand, in that everyone was just trying to out-snark each other. . The chemistry between these people seems very forced.
On top of that, what makes me wonder is that all these people lost their homes and their country. How can all of them be so cheerful? How can the big angsty flashback be about something as simple as a minor pilot’s quarrel. I’m thinking about swapping this with Tari Tari or Moyashimon if this is what we’re going to get for the rest of this series.
Rating: (Disappointing)
Summer 2012 Kaleidoscope – Week 28
#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
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
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
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
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%