Summer 2012 Kaleidoscope – Week 27

by psgels, posted in Summer 2012 Kaleidoscope

So yeah, this season I’m going to continue ranking the shows that I’m not blogging from best to worst. The format will be pretty much the same, although I’m not going to include Poyopoyo anymore. In terms of writing about 2-minute episodes, my inspiration has run out for that. However, if I haven’t made this clear by now: check this series out, because in terms of relatable slice of life you really can’t get any better than this.

#1: Shirokuma Cafe – 14: The premise of this episode was crazy. Both halves were; a polar bear and a penguin visiting the bech is already surreal enough on its own, but the first half of this episode really tole the show. It’s based on an idea so stupid that nobody tries it anymore. And here this show comes and goes with it. – **+ (Excellent+)

#2: Alice in the Country of Hearts: I’m not going to make an entry out of this, but I do want to say that against my expectations after finding out that this was yet another reverse harem with a ton of bishies, I really enjoyed this one. It has made not making any sense into an art form. Characters really appear from out of bloody nowhere and things jump from one place to the other without any explanation whatsoever, even for the standards of something based on Alice in Wonderland. But the charactrs are fun an interesting, the dialogue was surprisingly good, the music was used really well. This really had the charms that originally made me a fan of the shoujo genre. *+ (Great)

3#: Hunter X Hunter – 37: This was the first time in which I’ll admit: this episode was significantly better than its counterpart in the 1999 series. the 1999 version at this point was t its dullest point: so much build-up had passed, and things still didn’t look like they were picking up. this version though, is different. Ging’s background was done much better, and the whole lay-out of this story flowed much more. Also, what do you mean that this story is 13 years old? I’m curious to my younger readers: did you actually recognize those cassette tapes? – *+ (Great)

#4: Saint Seiya Omega – 14: This week’s episode was actually very good, the way in which it used someone from Saori’s past and delved more into it. The plot is also finally moving, but do you really meant to say that they still need to collect four more of those goddamn crystals before they can face the big boss? – *+ (Great)

#5: Phi Brain – 38: Jikugawa was one of the few characters who wasn’t affected by the past degeneration arc so his part in this episode was very god. However, now that my suspense of disbelief has been broken I’m starting to notice other thing. For example how empty the school is: Ana and Nonoha were supposed to evacuate the entire building, and yet we only saw one other person. It’s important to populate your world, people. – *+ (Great)

#6: Kokoro Connect – 01 – Part B: So I was surprised over all of teh feedback that I judged this series too early, so I at least figured to check out the second half of this episode… and right after the point where the first half left ff a crazy lesbian appeared from out of nowhere and started groping the girlIs this really common behavior? In any case, afterwards things got better and I may have been a bit too harsh rating this with 0% potential, but I still don’t really like how the dialogue is too tatic, or how random this show is: there is no point to these gender changes: theey’re just there for no reason whatsoever and unlike Natsuiro Kiseki there is no context behind it. What this show was very good at was describing the slice of life situations for the cast after they left school, but I really don’t want to see more of this show if it’s just going to base itself of unfunny perverted jokes. – — (Lacking)

Eureka Seven Ao – 12

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao

I already saw some reactions on the shoutbox about this episode, but as I started watching the episode I started wondering what was up. Sure, it brought in some nice plot twists and all, especially with the way in which Ao has been piloting the Nirvash, and how well it relates back to the first season of Eureka Seven. It was all interesting, but nothing like what the previous episodes have shown us. And then the Scab Coral crashed into the earth.

HOLY CRAP! Oh my GOD, my mind has been completely blown here. That was absolutely amazing! Christ, the reappearance of the Gekko-Gou already made me yelp out loud, but the actual cliff-hanger of this episode was the real shocker. I’m a bit speechless by this.

But yeah, with this it’s now pretty clear that this series was made for the fans of Eureka Seven. If anyone plans to check this series out: watch Eureka Seven first. This is pretty much what Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam should have been doing: involve its older cast more: as side-characters who do have a significant meaning to the story, rather than being random cameos. With this, Eureka Seven Ao just became the best teenaged-focused sci-fi series of the year.

On a random note: why are people surprised with blue hair when there are purple-haired people walking around the world?!
Rating: **** (Fantastic)

HagaSome Quick First Impressions: Hagare Yuusha no Estetica and Natsuyuki Rendezvous

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Dakara Boku wa H ga Dekinai

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to have sex.
So, the second of the shows with a really bad premise this season. I can be pretty quick about this: unlike that incest show, this as least does have some impressive production-values to back it up, but that’s all pretty much nullified by this show being a poor excuse for action and porn, and any charm left in this series is completely sapped away by its characters. The male lead is this new type who popped up recently: the pervert who constantly thinks of sex and boobs whenever he’s with a female character and keeps raving on about how he wants to get into a girl’s pants. The lead female is a typical tsundere and the side character is a typical childhood friend. There’s nothing creative or interesting about this show whatsoever on top of all these problems. Yeah this one’s bad.
ED: Bad recap ED with a bland song.
Potential: 0%

Hagare Yuusha no Estetica

Short Synopsis: Our lead character steals the underwear from teenaged girls.
Wll, this is really a series that could have been good, if it weren’t produced by the single worst production company out there: ARMS. Its concept of a world in which it’s normal for people to travel back and forth does have potential, but that’s not really going to work when you throw in some really bad fanservice jokes around, and where every single female is just complete fodder for the male lead. Even the almighty daughter of the demon king needs to be protected by this guy. Granted, this episode was better paced than the usual stuff of ARMS, but that’s like comparing an Uwe Boll flick with an Adam Sandler flick: they’re both still bad.
OP: Unimpressive J-rock with random fantasy images.
ED: Really uninspired images of the lead female. And her boobs.
Potential: 0%

Natsuyuki Rendezvous

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in love.
With these first impressions, it’s obvious that some episodes make a bigger impresion on me than others. However, it seriously has been a while since an opening episode completely dwarfed all of the other series, especially for a non-sequel. This first episode of Natsuyuki Rendezvous and in particular its acing completely flew out all othe shows so far out of the water. The hints are definitely there that the voices are recorded before the animation, and this gives the voice actors so much more freedom. The voice acting in this episode was incredible and the actors have a huge range, varying between very subtle and restrained to strong voices perfectly. The parts in which two characters were talking to each other also had that flow unique to Matsuo Kou’s series as Kurenai and Red Garden. These characters feel more real than any other characters this season, this show knows when to be funny and how to be funny, and on top of that the animation also really succeeds in bringing the characters to life. Now please: keep this up, because this series can become an incredible romance if every single episode is of this standard.
OP: Gorgeous images.
ED: Wonderful song, and again gorgeous art. Dogakobo, where did you suddenly get all these amazing artists from?
Potential: 100%

Some Quick First Impressions: Joshiraku and Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru!

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Joshiraku

Short Synopsis: Our lead character talks a lot.
Joshiraku: put a bunch of girls into a room and have them talk to each other non-stop about random stuff. I can be very quick about these types of series: I don’t like them. This episode could not hold my attention at all, and this episode just didn’t go anywhere. It was all too static compared to the slice of life series that I do like, like Moyashimon and Poyopoyo in which everyone’s moving around. I will have to give it to this series though: the actual dialogue wasn’t the worst. Compared to your average Shaft or Silver-Link series it was focused and it actually did bother to throw in some characterization and interesting traits of the lead females and as expected from the original writer of Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei, it did play cleverly with language. If you enjoy this genre then Johiraku is something you should check out. If not though, then stay far away, because this isn’t going to make you see the light.
OP: The random images work, but the song itself is boring.
ED: Obviously is trying really hard to be catchy
Potential: 40%

Kono Naka ni Hitori, Imouto ga Iru!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a sister.
The three worst things to base your anime on: porn, incest and turning famous historical figures into girls. This season has managed to produce a series for each of those. “There is a sister among us” is the first of this bunch, and like expected, it is insultingly bad, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this would end up as the single worst series of the entire season. This wasn’t necessarily because of the incest though: that part of the series is so bad it becomes funny, because it attempts to create some bizarre horror show and makes the sister seem like this creepy delusional stalker. No, the problem with this show is just about everything else. It tries to take itself so seriously, with really cheesy romantic music, and yet every characters acts incredibly stupid. This series is an incredibly forced harem, and this episode was filled with the most boring dialogue that according to the hints in the OP and ED only seem to want to lead to getting the female in this show naked. Also, this has the single worst use of a truck I have ever seen. Seriously, it comes speeding right out of bloody nowhere, hits the lead female full frontal without even any signs of slowing down, completely disappears again… and she stands up like nothing happened. GIRL, YOU WERE HIT BY A SPEEDING TRUCK! YOU SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO STAND LIKE THAT!
OP: Cheesy harem OP = blegh
ED: Okay… if there was any doubt on where the mind of the creators resides… this one cleared that up once and for good…
Potential: 0%

Some Quick First Impressions: Moyashimon Returns, Binbou-Gami ga! and Chouyaku Hyakunin Isshu – Uta Koi

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Moyashimon Returns

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a college student.
When the second season of Moyashimon was first introduced, I was glad (obviously, after Guilty Crown), but I couldn’t for the love of me remember why I liked the original series so much. Yeah sure it had a very creative premise and all, but was it really that good? The only thing I could recall was that a cross-dresser appeared halfway through. After watching this episode however, I remember again: this show is fun. This probably sounds really vague, but that’s really the thing: this how is just a bunch of oddballs at college doing various experiments, nothing more. But here is the thing: these creators captured college students. This was hectic, fun and surprisingly educative, and all of the characters are just a whole lot of fun to watch. Noitamina definitely is on a nature streak this half year: first there were fish, now there are germs and flowers, but the series that I see as the biggest parallel is Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita. Overall, Moyashimon has by far better characters, they’re about equal in terms of creativity, but Jinrui gives it the extra edge with its storyline and sense of adventure, and it’ll probably be much more versatile than this series.
OP: Not as memorable when there are humans put in.
ED: This is more like it: if you’ve got a unique gimmick, then make use of it. Good song as well.
Potential: 85%

Binbou-Gami ga!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is very popular and has big boobs.
So this is the big comedy of the season, made by the Sunrise Comedy team, and I must say: I’m very impressed by this episode. This episode had a very good combination between jokes and sad drama, and the jokes themselves were also pretty varied, ranging from slapstick to parodies to references to tsukkomi-boke (someone jokes and someone else yells at him) jokes to hyperactive jokes. This may just have been the first episode, but this was actually really well balanced together. It also helps that the jokes were quite funny, and that the drama focused immediately on the lead female character, so we actually really got to know her in just one episode. My question right now is: how on earth are the creators going to top this? The OP is hinting that it’s going to introduce a large cast of wacky characters, with probably eve3ry episode focusing on one of them. The trick will be to remain fresh on all of them, while still making this about the two lead characters, who both pretty much already played their big trumps into just this first episode. How will the creators solve this?
OP: Generic J-Rock that didn’t impress me.
ED: Lots of random character art.
Potential: 80%

Chouyaku Hyakunin Isshu – Uta Koi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character compiled a bunch of poems together for a children’s card game. And no, he’s not Pegasus.
Okay. This wasn’t what I expected this series to be. I mean, the concept is about the poems of the Karuta game all-right; but before now, all of the historical series based on mature themes all lacked one thing: forced and out of place comedy. And here this episode came with a narrator who talks to the audience as if they are stupid children, and the episode itself threw in these incredibly out of place facial distortions that completely destroyed the mood. On one hand this series tries to be beautiful and artsy, but the facial distortions are completely ugly and badly drawn. So yeah, despite being a romance, this series is not going to end up relying on its characters. Nevertheless, it still has the single best premise of the entire season, and the background behind this series still stands rock-solid: covering the small stories behind the poems of Karuta. This episode covered a whopping two of them, so the success of this series is definitely going to depend on its total picture. And in the meantime, the atmosphere was good. The soundtrack also is the bet of the season so far, so that helps too.
OP: This singer needs a bit more experience; try not singing through your nose. She has potential though.
ED: Why??! OH DEAR GOD WHY!?!?!
Potential: 75%

The Manga Experiment – Week 27

by psgels, posted in Manga Experiment

One of the difficulties with this blog is trying to please everyone. When I released the poll I secretly hoped that there would be one item that stood out in terms of amount of votes, but right now there seem to be a lot of people who want me to blog two extra series, cover manga and write recommendation posts. I can’t do all of those at the same time.

Okay, so I think I know what I’m going to do now: cover manga and whenever I feel like it and have enough time write some sort of Studio spotlight. The focus will remain on the manga though. this season is relatively small, so good enough for such an experiment. I am really new to manga though, so I still have no idea what my taste is in terms of mangas. I’m also not going to burn myself out by trying to tackle complete series that take forever to finish. I want first want to experiment a bit, as accessible as possible.

So for now, I’m going to pick a bunch of first chapters of manga that seem interesting and are fairly recent so that they don’t have many chapters yet, and I’ll continue covering them if they catch my attention enough. I guess that for the format, I’ll use the same short blurbs I use for last season’s Kaleidoscope.

Hito Hitori Futari – ch.01: This was the first manga that caught my attention and so far I like this first chapter a lot. It’s got this interesting take on reincarnation, and the lead character is this spirit who is waiting to be reincarnated. It has created this world in which these spirits are actually educated while they wait for sometimes even years in order to be born again. And even then this manga goes into a different direction by punishing the lead character for her behavior by making her a guardian spirit who does nothing but sit around a person from start to finish. There are a lot of neat ideas into just this one chapter here.

Phantom Syndrome (Oneshot): This is a manhua one-shot I randomly checked out. It seemed to have won an award, and the scanlator really seemed to like it so I gave it a try. Focusing around a girl who misses a finger, it’s the kind of story that feels really vague and confusing when you start it, but at the end things come together. It’s a cute little romance, and the twist at the end was well done, but there were a few things that didn’t fit well. The actions of the guy in the story in particular could have been better explained. Also I feel that this was a victim of a bad translation. No offense to the scanlator, but the story is already hard enough to follow without those stiff and half-broken sentences.

Mix – ch.01: Mix is Mitsuru Adachi’s next work, meant as a spiritual successor to Touch, taking place 26 years after that series. I can see that he shuffled around the different character roles in order to make this similar, yet still different from his other works, with this time there being a lot of twins, and no hints of romance yet. I’m not going to keep up with this, for a few simple reasons though: first of all, this is bound to get an anime anyway; second of all, Touch took bloody ages to get going, and for this experiment I want to follow series that immediately catch my attention, and this episode just didn’t catch my attention enough, plus the baseball throwing scenes just miss something when they’re not animated. I only want to know why the two main characters are brothers and yet not twins. Very subtle there, Adachi.

Inherit the Stars – ch.01: This is hard sci-fi, but what caught my attention about it is how it intends to combine the first ventures of humans into space, together with the human race of 50 thousand years ago, and I’m interested in how they’re going to do it. This first chapter was mostly set-up and introduction to a number characters, some of which are very easily ticked off. If anything the characterization seems to be the weakest part of this manga so far, as very little time was spent on it and the characters are rather one-sided.

A Million Pound Love- ch.01: When I started this experiment, I figured that people would start to recommend me things. I never expected that there would be so many though. With this I’m going to especially take care to not get overwhelmed by them, so I’m not going to touch upon them just yet, and at least for this first week trust my own judgment in finding stuff. The above manga I all found thanks to Mangahelpers, with the exception of Mix of which I knew it just recently started. However, I also got thinking started thinking:out of all the anime series adapted from manga that I have watched the past years, which manga author and concept impressed me the most? And with that, two names stood out: Mohiro Kitoh (Bokura no, Narutaru) and Shimizu Reiko (Himitsu). My attempt to check out Bokura no completely failed a few years ago, as I got stuck at chapter 33 or something, but I did want to try this out once more, in a bit more accessible way. Luckily, Shimizu Reiko wrote a collection of one-shots with A Million Pound Love that are very easy to get into. So what if it’s from 1984?

After checking out the first chapter (which also seems to be the most noteworthy of the anthology it’s compiled in), I must say: this really was the first time in this experiment that I really was drawn in. The four manga above were nice and interesting, but I always felt like I was looking at a bunch of pictures with a bit of text here and there. Here I was really swayed along with the story, which is a really strange romance with a lot of heart put into it, containing some great twists. The panels were drawn beautifully, and the way the text boxes were lined out was much more dynamic than the four other manga listed above. Like Himitsu, this was just chock full of creativity and it subverted a ton of cliches. It did adhere to a few jarring cliches as well though, so it’s not entirely perfect, but if this is what manga can do, then I’m definitely going to continue this experiment.

NB. Dear god, how many romance manga are there anyway? While I was browsing through the different manga, I was really surprised how many shows there were that seemed like carbon copies of each other. Not to mention the bizarre fanservice titles. The worst I found beyond the incest ones is a show about keeping a young vampire girl as a pet…

The Semi-final against Metanorn

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Hey everyone, there are just four blogs left in the Aniblog Tourney. This match is going to be special, because for the first time in all of the matches that Star Crossed has participated in, things actually might become a close call. Metanorn has been sweeping away all of its opponents, and it’s definitely a force to be reckoned with. Be sure to check it out, before voting, here:

http://aniblogtourney.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/semi-finals-2/

AKB0048 – 10

by psgels, posted in AKB0048

Around ten years ago, beach episodes and hot spring bath episodes were already a staple. Somewhere along the way though, creators got clever. Why not combine them into one? Granted, this is more bearable, but it still is a really dead horse that gets used way too much. Mari Okada, you should know this.

Still, underneath all of the boob jokes was the same kind of cynicism of the other episodes, with the extreme focus on looking “sexy”, being forced upon teenaged girls like that. This did give the beach part of the episode a point. As for the bath scene though… that was pointless like a broken pencil.

Also, while it was previously hinted that “graduation” could possibly mean death, that rumour turned out to be false. It seems like you simply get kicked out because you’ve gotten too old. Instead the big fear is never being able to achieve your dream of making it into the spotlights, which I guess does fit quite nicely into this series’ themes. Instead, there were members who lost their lives, and that mostly had to do with that mysterious front line position.

I’m a bit puzzled right now about the structure of this series. I mean, from my experience, one of the earliest ways to determine how many episodes a series will b is to search for DVD releases on the Japanese Amazon. If six or seven are scheduled, the you can bet your hat that there will only be 13 episodes. AKB however is a bit of an oddball in this, because I can only see 5 dvds listed. That fifth DVD will carry up to episode 13, but it seems a bit of a weird number for a series that just is scheduled for 1 cour, especially since this is a type of series that people want to cash in on: there is no reason to have less merchandise than usual.
Rating: * (Good)

Hyouka – 11

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

Before when Oreki made up a theory that was wrong, he’d simply have missed a few details. This was really well used in this episode, in which it turns out that the solution he provided was wrong in every way and instead the theory by the props guy seems to have been the closest. Instead, his story completely failed to take into account the mindset of the scriptwriter.

I really like how this episode actually filled in some of plotholes that were introduced in the previous episode. I remember noting why nobody just directly asked Hongou what kind of ending she intended, and I really thought that that would be just glossed over. Instead that turned out to be the key to this mystery: the ending she intended was inconsistent with what everyone filmed and the movie club was just in need of a new ending. It completely falls in line with how Hongou was unfamiliar with writing mystery is: she’s not going to think of elaborate schemes.

The arc did withhold one vital piece of information though: the story poll that showed how the class thought about the murder. That really was the big clue about this mystery, and I am a bit dissatisfied with how it was glossed over how Oreki got his hands on it.

Also, it’s ironic how there are series with episodes that aired on the same day (I’m late, I know) that feature Tarot cards. The interesting part is that Hyouka did do its research and actually looked into the symbolism behind each card. Arcana Famiglia? Let’s have the guy with Strength become really strong, and make “The Fool” an idiot. I can already see them surround the guy with the “Death”-card with lots of death symbolism. The background on Hyouka overall is really solid. I first thought than the creators would disprove Oreki’s theory of the audience trick with the 20 commandments and the 10 rules for mystery, but instead they went even further and analyzed the works of Arthur Conan Doyle for all this.

Finally: who was the person that Irisu was chatting with? At first I thought that this was Hongou, but that didn’t turn out to be true when she suddenly revealed that she was on the other side of the world and started insulting Hongou. Irisu overall was a great character here: she just appeared in one arc, but there are a ton of details about her character that set her apart, and how she manipulated everyone in order to get the movie project done right.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Yuruyuri 2, Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita and Chitose Get You!

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Yuruyuri 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a bunch of high school girls.
My biggest beef with the first season of Yuruyuri was its bad lesbian jokes, so my biggest concern for this episode was seeing whether those had improved. Having said that, I was not prepared for what this episode threw at me; at all. Here it came out of nowhere and took the lesbian jokes to the absolute absurd by creating a giant harem in which every single is in love with the lead female. It was so obviously a dream, but it did this with such energy that it was consistently funny and enjoyable. In the second half, this episode dropped that whole bit, and showed the cast going to a hot spring resort. Yeah, it suddenly got a lot less funny. My impression of this series is that it wants to be a slice of life series, but just isn’t good at slice of life. The hot spring resort was full of the usual cliches and not interesting at all, and rather than just going full comedy, the pacing just fell apart and the comedy also became completely random unrelated gags that were… nice I guess, but not exactly funny. I chuckled perhaps once or twice during that part, which is way too little for a comedy.
OP: Nice animation, obnoxious J-pop
ED: Bad animation, obnoxious J-pop
Potential: 40%

Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a teacher.
It’s like I feared: Seiji Kishi is a bit of a mis-cast for the director of this series. For a premise like this, you need subtlety. He doesn’t have that. The comedy in this episode just didn’t work because of that: there only was one very funny scene, apart from that it all tried too hard and missed the mark. Having said that though, Jinrui is still very likely going to be the most creative series of the season. This episode was hock full of neat ideas and interesting concepts that went way further than its initial concept of having fairies roam around the world. The lead female also works well as a narrator, ad she’s well written. I just feel like the delivery of all of the voice actors could have been a bit more restrained. Again, learn some subtlety Seiji Kishi, darnit.
OP: That dance…
ED: Best ED of the season so far; nice song plus neat visuals.
Potential: 80%

Chitose Get You!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character likes her big brother.
Urgh, this was bad. These episodes are only 3 minutes long, but here that was enough for this series to get completely on my nerves. The incest jokes are of course one thing, but on top of that this episode was horribly dull, and the female lead has an incredibly annoying voice actress. This perhaps wasn’t as bad as the crappy flash series (of which there actually are none this season!), but this still was completely obnoxious.
ED: Annoying squeaky j-pop.
Potential: 0%