Sakamichi no Apollon – Vol.09

by psgels, posted in Sakamichi no Apollon

Reading this volume of the manga makes me appreciate the ending of the anime even more: they actually successfully stuffed one entire volume of 180 pages in just one 20-minute episode and cut things out brilliantly. More on that below though, because first I wanted to talk about the rest of Kaoru’s years.

What I loved was how Kaoru returned to his mother, and how the two developed a healthy relationship. Beyond that, we’ve seen Kaoru grow up very well through college, and him seeing his family back was also very memorable. The manga had a lot more room to fill in a lot more details, and show how Kaoru subtly changes. Instead of randomly running into Yurika by accident, these events were all set up by Kaoru first running into Jun (that was another part that I loved here, as they showed two different versions of musicians growing up into normal jobs; his change was one that I really missed in the anime version). But as for the question which version I prefer, I’d have to say that I consider the anime ending to be better.

The way in which the love triangle was solved didn’t really work for me . It was all just too concrete: instead of everyone going their own ways, there is this random twist pulled with Ritsuko’s boyfriend turning out to be just some random dude she invited, and at the end Kaoru goes back to where everyone was and the love triangle moves from “resolved” to the eternal “will they won’t they” again.

What I loved about the anime ending was how much it focused on leaving things to the imagination, and how much effort it put in saying as much as possible with as little as possible. The entire college years were cut, but that doesn’t matter when you see the grown up Kaoru: him choosing to be a doctor was also cut, but when you see him it all makes sense. He must have built up a new life in Tokyo with his own friends and when he finally hears of Sentarou again, he can’t resist the urge to see him again ad telling Ritsuko all about it (there only was one shot of a letter, but that was enough to show that they had been keeping up correspondence), cutting out that pointless twist with he boyfriend completely. What happens after they see each other again? Who knows? There were no romantic hints whatsoever unlike with the manga ending, so things really could go anywhere: they will probably remain in contact with each other while living their own lives.

Another thing that the anime changed was how we were introduced to Sentarou. In the manga, the chapter starts and we see him again. In the anime however, we’re slowly introduced to him through the story of the people that he has been living with for the past eight years. We never see him cause trouble, but with his character we can imagine what he has been up to. And yeah, with music the church scene works so much better. He hears the organs playing, and knows immediately what’s going on. That was a perfect example of how to condense an entire volume into just one final episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Sakamichi no Apollon Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Sakamichi no Apollon



Last year Kunihiko Ikuhara of Utena fame made a surprise comeback after many years of absence. This year, it’s the turn for Shinichiro Watanabe to direct his first full series again after Samurai Champloo. Sakamichi no Apollon is a full drama. He already experimented a bit with this with the surprisingly good Baby Blue of Genius Party (much like how Masaaki Yuasa’s entry there became the prototype for Kaiba), but here he could go all out with a 12-episode Noitamina series.

Now, this series is a teenaged romance, which unfortunately is a very, very over-saturated genre, so the creators really had to do something in order to stand out. They found several ways. The first way is bringing in music. Playing instruments is a huge theme for many characters in this series, and it deserves to be praised how well the musical performances in this series look. the creators made use of Rotoscoping in order to make the animation of every single musical performance play synchronous with the actual music. This is something i have never seen before in a Television-series, especially with so much detail. Because of this, the creators are able to say so many things throughout these performances alone, and they often are the stand-out moments for every episode.

Second of all, there is the way in which this series portrays its characters, which is a huge level above what you normally see. At first sight they look like the ordinary stereotypes, but they immediately set themselves apart through their acting and by how self-aware they are. The series very subtly shows many different sides of them. On top of that, the series is chock full of events that force them to change and adapt. These are by far the most well-rounded, dynamic and fleshed out characters out of any other series this season. Probably of the entire year.

This season of Noitamina was definitely what the time-slot needed after the disaster that was Guilty Crown. There is jut one downside to it, and that is the huge amounts of angst that the creators use to keep the story going. Kaoru in particular is a character who is hard to like due to his social anxieties, and there is this constant tension between the characters that depends a lot on this angst and social phobia. Unlike other series though, the characters are fully aware of this and it gets used brilliantly for their development, rather than stalling for time.

Storytelling: 8.5/10 – Keeps the twists coming, very well paced for a Noitamina-series. A bit too much angst though.
Characters: 9/10 – Really well rounded characters in the end. Their acting is definitely a step above the norm.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Amidst all of the series with great visuals, Apollon stood out with its amazing rotoscoped musical performances. Plus, Yoko Kanno is awesome.
Setting: 8.5/10 – The setting isn’t the main focus of this series, but really allows the creators to do stuff with the characters that would not have been possible if the time period was any different.

Suggestions:
– Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai
– Nodame Cantabile
– True Tears

Sakamichi no Apollon – 12

by psgels, posted in Sakamichi no Apollon

So, while Tsuritama may have edged Apollon in terms of the pre-finale episodes, in terms of the ending Apollon is far superior. In fact, this was by far the best ending of the season, and the type of ending that I’ve been waiting for a long time. The episodes leading up to this indeed were a bit soap-opera-ish, but this episode turns all of that around and completely makes up for them.

This was one of the best epilogues I’ve seen in a long while, and it made brilliant use f how Noitamina is aimed at an older audience. Because of this, it was able to give a great characterization to the characters in their versions of eight years later, in which they all went their own ways. In Tsuritama, the epilogue just showed random couples forming, or people chasing their dreams, but this was so much better, as it showed of nearly everyone how they ended up groing up and the people that they turned into.

I have been especially waiting for a romantic ending like this. I mean, romance endings are usually of two types: the characters finally confess to each other and live happily ever after, or nothing happens and they remain in a state of “will they won’t they”. Then this episode came along with Kaoru finally making his moves… only to screw up completely.

I love how that one played out: romance in anime is always made out to be this absolute factor. Here however, things just didn’t work out. Ritsuko had her moments where she really disliked what Kaoru did, but in the end she still likes him, just not enough to get into a relationship with him. Too bad. And after that everyone just goes on with their own lives. Thank you for this ending, Apollon. Your characterization was always a step above the rest, and this episode cemented that.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Tsuritama Review – 84/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Tsuritama



Back in 2006, Kenji Nakamura surprised probably everyone with his three episode masterpiece that was Bake Neko, part of the Ayakashi-television series. It was trippy intense and brilliaantly written and built up, Together with Kenichi Kasai’s adaptations, it defined and popularized Noitamina and brought it to a mainstream audience. Ever since, Kenji Nakamura has been releasing a new series every now and then, with 2012’s installment being Tsuritama, at which he completely diverges from the types of shows he normally does.

I loved all of his previous works, but they collectively all had one downside: the characters. Relatively little time was spent on fleshing them out, and most of them were pretty one-sided and didn’t really come to life. Tsuritama is entirely dedicated to attempt to do this correctly, and it works. The plot is simple on purpose exactly to allow the characters to play themselves out naturally. There are relatively few action-packed climaxes in this series, but all of them have clear meaning and kick ass and ultimately make it a really fun show to watch.

And even though this series takes it easy in terms of pacing, it definitely doesn’t take it easy in terms of the ideas it has. This series really thrives on originality: it may have a teenaged cast, but within that it has many fresh ideas, like an alien with a watergun, a duck named Tapioca, or how about an entire series dedicated to fishing? Especially in the second half of the series the scenarios get particularly creative.

A downside is that this series does take a while to get going. The first half of this series contains a lot of build-up and is pretty much fishing 101 as it drills the necessary fishing skills into the main charachter in order for him to function properly in the second half of the series. While this can get a bit boring at times, I can’t deny that this series has a really well written structure: it knows exactly how much story it should have to not get rushed, it knows how much time to spend building up an make its characters feel alive, while stil having enough time to actually deliver on the fun and action-packed bits. Noitamina-series are infamous for their pacing issues, but Tsuritama is a series that gets the balance and format just right.

Storytelling: 8.5/10 – Fun to watch and a greatly paced out structure and a creative scenario.
Characters: 8.5/10 – The series is fun because the characters are fleshed out well and get to play themselves out naturally.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not as trippy as you’d expect from Kenji Nakamura, but still has a unique and colourful look and wild animation where it matters.
Setting: 8.5/10 – Really tries to be original amidst all of the teenaged series that try to see who can rip each other off the most.

Suggestions:
–

Tsuritama – 12

by psgels, posted in Tsuritama

The animation of this episode was slightly rushed, towards the end some distorted faces popped up. But still, this really was fun. Perhaps not as fun as the build-up that preceded it, but this definitely was a worthy way to end this series.

Really, this season is full of interesting endings (not counting the ones that cut off for another season). There is a lot of refreshing stuff amongst them that tries to do things differently from the norm. The best examples of this were Fate/Zero and Lupin, but Tsuritama also had a great climax that was full of emotion, yet avoided hammy drama completely. The big bad guy turned out to be completely different from the evil overlords you usually see. We already knew that he was of Haru’s kind, but for it to be such a fidgety guy is completely different from what I expected.

The epilogue was great too, but I have one problem with that one. This is a series that thrived on originality, and yet one cliche slipped through: the one where a lot of drama is created around the characters saying goodbye to each other. The characters had a great time together, but now it’s time for everyone to move on and go their own ways and… wait never mind! They just return as random transfer students!

Overall, Tsuritama was Kenji Nakamura doing something completely different, and succeeding at it. I wouldn’t sy that it was his best work: Bake Neko still stands out as his masterpiece, and I’d also consider Mononoke to be more interesting. And ultimately C’s ending was more interesting because of how well things came together. Despite all that though, it definitely trumped all of those series in terms of characterization and fun: the character in Tsuritama really felt alive and the plot feels complete and not rushed at all.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna Review – 86/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna



As the spring season approached, it seemed clear what would be the series with the most interesting staff working behind it: Sakamichi no Apollon, the director of Cowboy Bebop coming back after many years of absence to work with some of Madhouse’s top animators and the always lovely music from Yoko Kanno. And then a new Lupin series got announced.

Seriously, the people involved in this project: it’s directed by Sayo Yamamoto, who directed Michiko e Hatchin, the scriptwriting powerhouse of the recent years Mari Okada wrote the series composition, Shinichiro Watanabe (the same director of Cowboy Bebop) did the music production, Takeshi Koike is behind the character-designs, and on top of them there are some episodes written by Dai Sato (the guy who wrote Ergo Proxy and Eureka Seven) and Junji Nishimura, the director of Simoun. All of these people are responsible for masterpieces, and here they were stuffed into one single project. The result is a breath of fresh air.

Now, I do have to admit one thing:: the influence of all of them is clearly visible, but don’t expect any of them to surpass themselves here. Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna is far from as good as the series that these people became known for. When you set the standard lower and compare it to the series that have come out in the recent years though, it really stands out as something unique that anime definitely needed.

This series just oozes style from beginning to end. The character-designs are just gorgeous and every episode is just chock full of inspired images and artwork that go completely against the trend of current anime. There is a TON of nudity in this series, but the fanservice is completely different from the juvenile fanservice you see in all the other shows these days.

This series is really focused on adventures, just like the Lupin series it’s based on. This time though, the one who stands in the center is Mine Fujiko. The episodes are all varied and very different from each other, and they all are chock full of references and homages to other works of fiction that use often-used female character tropes, which it then proceeds to subvert completely. Seriously, the huge amounts of boob in this series may not make it so apparent, but Mine Fujiko is a very strong and independent character.

Beyond this, this series is also a whole lot of fun to watch: there are some episodes that have great chase scenes, others have great action scenes, yet others are much more focused on well written dialogues and yet again others thrive on using weird plot twists. It’s a really well made series.

There are a few things that do hold this series back though. First of all there are the character-designs in this series: they look gorgeous and really detailed. But they also are really hard to animate consistently, and yet, the creators definitely try to animate as much as they can. The result is unfortunately a lot of jerky movements and facial movements that just look off or strange.

The second is that this series has little character-development, but that’s just a minor issue. The creativity that went into the characters and their re-imaginations, complete with how they play off each other more than makes up for this. This is why I love remakes for anime: a lot of them are really made by fans of the franchise who don’t care about trying to recreate them as accurately as possible, but want to give their own spin to them, and Mine Fujiko to u Onna is no different. the more I write about this series, the more complete it starts to feel, and that’s a sign of a really good series.

Storytelling: 8.5/10 – Loads of variety and a bunch of great scripts that come together really well.
Characters: 8.5/10 – The characters are used really well and play off each other wonderfully. This excuses the sometimes jerky acting more than enough.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Very artistic and unique. The art is where this series set itself apart among the many shows with gorgeous graphics this season.
Setting: 8.5/10 – Where this series rocks is how there is so much to be read in between the lines. It’s a homage and a parody at the same time, and it references a wide variety of different works and uses this really well.

Suggestions:
– Michiko e Hatchin
– Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin
– Ultraviolet: Code 044

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 13

by psgels, posted in Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

So, what did Lupin decide to end with? With an exposition episode. I really expected an epic action-packed episode instead, but this works too, even though it’s a kind of ending that’s very easy to screw up by rushing through things way too much, or turning the story into something completely different.

This episode was slightly rushed, and it actually was completely different from the rest of the series, but it worked. I like the balls of the creators to go with an anti-climax like this: throughout the enitre series we’ve seen it established over and over again that Mine Fujiko was abused and raped as a childBut no, she was just brainwashed at some point and she had always been a thief like she is now. It’s awesome to see that the creators had the balls to go with such a creative ending, rather than going with the most obvious type of ending and I really appreciate this creativity.

So in the end, we still know very little about who Mine Fujiko really is, but she doesn’t have a ham-handed backstory that screams “pity me!”, and instead we’ve got a main villain with one heck of a messed up backstory. The ending was pretty much a “life goes on”-ending with Mine Fujiko getting revenge on the girl that kept her brainwashed for years, her mother is left behind in her own castle without her daughter, Oscar disappeared, and everyone else pretty much ends up doing what they’ve been doing all along. Normally I’m not too fond of these types of endings, but here they strangely fit: Lupin is a series about adventures, and this series was just a small sample of the places that these people go to. Best ending of the season so far? I’d say so.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouka – 10

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

What I find to be strange is that the creators go out of their way to mention the 20 rules of mystery, only to ignore a few of them, most notably the rules that state that there should be one and only one detective. For the finished product, one of the characters had to step up and take the role as detective, or perhaps the seventh person that the writer was looking for was supposed to have been that person.

Apart from that I guess Oreki’s theory fits most of the rules if you very broadly interpret them. In particular there is Knox’s first rule which says that the culprit should be mentioned in an early part of the story. Yeah, I guess that he was “mentioned” by being there through the entire course of the movie: it’s a different medium than what these rules were intended for after all. Or take the rule that says that the culprit must have played a more or less prominent part in the story: again, he has, you just didn’t realize it. There is one rule I’m a bit iffy about though: the one that says that no willful tricks may be played upon the reader. Did Oreki assume that the usage of a cameraman as an actual character wasn’t so much a trick, as it was something that is just a part of the movie?

Still, it’s pretty interesting to think that he did get things wrong. With the Hyouka mystery he only missed a few parts, but this rope is a pretty big thing to miss out on. The acting was also really well done at that moment where Mayaka called Hotarou out on this, and we definitely got to see some new sides of the characters.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Uchuu Kyoudai – 13

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

I really appreciate that there are still series out there that are able to devote an episode to a single thought experiment. This episode may not have been the most eventful, but it was clever. Really clever. It took the issue of a famous TV-anchor complaining about the tax that space flight has on the economy, and created a different response for like what? 6 different characters? All of those were insightful in their own way, apart from the theory from the nervous guy perhaps. This series keeps finding new brilliant ways to use its newly huge cast.

This show doesn’t just have one smart character, it really has a bunch of them and I really like how this series is able to show the talents of all of them, especially in Mutta’s group. Mutta is the oddball who is able to think outside of the box, Serika and Nitta are the best performers in concrete tests, while the other two whose names I’ve forgotten play as the voice of reason… in completely different ways. I do wonder why the nervous guy made it all the way through the selection process: what made the quirky director take interest in him?

A few weeks ago I mentioned that this series was like a shounen series without the shounen with it having the characters carry out various assignments. This episode pushed that even further and the creators found far more interesting things for the characters to do. For that Rubix guy’s response they even did research for English philosophers on the matter.
Rating: ** (Excellent)