Mouretsu Pirates – 19

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

Yeah, this was without a doubt the best episode inbetween the major arcs for Mouretsu Pirates yet. I’m not sure why, but there is something inherently enjoyable about just watching Marika do random but necessary chores like cleaning, moving stuff and simple maintenance while the rest of the crew still is locked away in that bloody hospital. This is the kind of slice of life that I really enjoy. Mariko being tired also was really well acted.

And yet at the same time this show uses these really weird coincidences to keep its cat together. This time the plot device it used was Marika’s ring, of all things. Marika lost it, Gruiviere picked it up and that gave the members of the yacht club an excuse to meet the crew of the Bentenmaru. At first this seemed really weird, but then again we know this series by now. There is no way that the creators are not going to use that in the final arc. The final arc will really be a smörgåsbord of different characters.

Overall, I am very happy with how Mouretsu Pirates ended up handling its huge cast. I personally really like series where the amount of important characters can’t be counted on all your hands and toes, provided that it’s well done. With this series, the only characters who I just get mixed up are some of the members of the yacht club, and even they get more defined as individual characters with every episode since we headed into the second half of this series. The key here is good acting. It’s not like all of these people are well developed, but it still feels you know these people. Well done, Mouretsu.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Fate/Zero – 19

by psgels, posted in Fate/Zero

A message to the commenters who have already read the Fate/Zero light novels: please do care to avoid spoilers here. This is not a blog about the Fate franchise, but rather this a place to discuss the Fate/Zero anime. If you’re going to spoil that Natalia dies it rather diminishes the impact of that twist, especially since that was the entire thing that this episode was leading up to. This is the one thing I dislike about adaptations of very popular works: it’s really hard not to get spoiled about things.

In any case though, the way in which Natalia did die… was pretty creative. It also tied in very much with Kiritsugu killing a few in order to save a lot, and the plane being taken over by an extreme version of killer bees: it showed another layer of what can be done with the magic in this series. It’s also interesting how professional the characters operated. It’s not often that you see professionalism to such a degree in anime. Although I do wonder who Natalia was able to smuggle guns on a plane. Is that something that magic can do as well?

Overall, I’m surprised that we get two whole episodes of Kiritsugu’s background so relatively late in the series. With this though we can understand his actions in trying to eliminate Lancer, and how his views are the total opposite of Saber’s Chivalry. And I guess that some sort of intermission was needed before the showdown between the four remaining pairs.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Spring 2012 Kaleidoscope – Week 19

by psgels, posted in Spring 2012 Kaleidoscope

#1: Natsuiro Kiseki – 06: Brilliant characterization! Developing the same character in two different ways, based on a simple whim. This show just keeps getting better! – *** (Awesome)
#2: AKB0048 – 02: I have been asked very persistently by a certain someone whether or not I’m going to blog this series. I’m going to withhold that answer for next week, though. Why? Because I want to know what happens next. The intro is done, and what now? Will this turn into yet another boring school series like so many series with promising first episodes have done (lookin’ at you, Saint Seiya…), or will it evolve with the promise of these first two episodes? So far it’s good stuff, though. – ** (Excellent)
#3: Nazo no Kanojo X – 05: This episode again contained that mysterious charm that this sereis has with its bizarre fanservice, even though it was a beach episode. It was restrained, and very nicely played with that. Now if only the male lead were a bit less bland. – ** (Excellent)
#4: Jormungand – 05: Interesting back-story arc with the addition of Koko’s brother here. Good to see Jonah’s backstory earlier. – ** (Excellent)
#5: Kimi to Boku – 18: Aw, what a cute little romance. Naturally this only blossomed after one of the two had to move away, so that’s a bummer, though. – *+ (Great)
#6: Poyopoyo Kansatsu Nikki – 18: This has to be the most tsundere cat I have ever seen. This episode really shined in how it managed to emote the different cats here. – *+ (Great)
#7: Hunter X Hunter – 30: The fight was boring with again unimpressive animation, attack names and weird musical choices. The aftermath however was surprisingly dark, and actually done better than the first season. Also YES! Kurapika’s arc has started! One detail that I think the 1999 series did better there is that we saw things from Kurapica’s perspective there: when Nen was used, we didn’t see anything. – *+ (Great)
#8: Shirokuma Cafe – 06: This episode had too much panda. the charm of this series is that all of the other characters are hilarious too. Although the punchline at the end of the episode was as hilarious as usual. Why the village people of all things? – *+ (Great)
#9: Medaka Box – 06: Well, this episode did stand out by subverting its own cliches a bit, but I don’t know… it still feels so forced for some reason. – * (Good)
#10: The Legend of Korra – 05: So the only way they decided to spice up the tournament arc was with having a very menacing and egotistical end boss and a lot of yelling for romantic reasons. Not the most interesting episode. – * (Good)
#11: Sankarea – 06: Agh, this show is frustrating! On one hand it’s well acted and written. But the attempts at comedy are so cringe-worthy. It’s also that grandfather who tries way too hard at being funny, resulting in especially the first half of this episode to turn into a chore to sit through bad jokes. – (Enjoyable)
#12: Saint Seiya Omega – 06: You know, the more I’m watching this series, the more I’m convinced that it doesn’t really look all that good. You can have a great character-designer, but even those designs look rather ugly if you don’t use it. – (Enjoyable)

Eureka Seven Ao – 05

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao

Now this is where this series set itself apart for me. There was no action in this episode, but instead it focused on Ao making himself at home at the base of the Pied Piper. Usually it’s the kind of build-up episode where nothing much of importance happens and instead a bunch of characters are introduced. This episode really impressed me though.

And there is one reason for that: Ao’s portrayal. The way in which he feels so awkward and out of place, not knowing what to do here. It’s just showing the consequence of his decision, and how not everything is going to go smooth for him. My favorite parts were where he stood so helplessly, not knowing what to do. There is a huge difference between the teenagers and the adults in this series. The adults really sympathize with having to make children fight. The kids though: are completely different. They are not going to guide newcomers along every step of the way. They offer their support here and there at crucial points, but everything inbetween will be for Ao himself to solve.

Meanwhile this episode kept the nice ideas coming. The whole base being built out of things gathered from the Scab Coral is a very interesting idea, and I also like the idea of having Ao be able to see light frequencies beyond what normal humans can see (again this isn’t revealed to him)I do wonder though: why is every pilot there aside from Ao a girl?
Rating: **+ (Excellent+)

Tsuritama – 05

by psgels, posted in Tsuritama

I still have no bloody clue about what exactly this series is building up for, but I did enjoy this episode strangely enough. The series is still in its “crash cource fishing”-stage, and this time we head into the ocean in order to show the next step in fishing. On paper it again was a very standard episode with not much happening.

Still, the character development is starting to kick in now. Whereas the character development in Apollon is very forceful, Tsuritama is the complete opposite and the characters evolve more gradually. With this episode, the characters again have warmed up to each other more and they’re a lot warmer towards each other, and the chemistry between them has also increased. This kind of praise is about the complete opposite that I imagined I’d give for a Kenji Nakamura-series, though.

The one thing that really caught my attention is how absent his typical style of direction is in this series. The only part of this series that really reminds me of him is the dreams that Yuki has, and that film roll flashes across the screen. That is something that’s typical of his style, with that heavy emphasis on sound effects.

In any case, it’s great to see how well the characters in this series are fleshed out, but this show isn’t there yet. Something memorable has to happen now. It’s a waste to have good characters, and yet not use them well beyond that. This is something that Kenji Nakamura is particularly good at, and I’m really wondering what he has in store for the second half of this series. But at the same time at this pacing it’s also entirely possible that this series will keep its unambitious tone for the entire rest of the series.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Sakamichi no Apollon – 05

by psgels, posted in Sakamichi no Apollon

Watching someone with a broken heart… isn’t the most interesting thing out there. That’s what most of this episode was though: Kaoru formally got rejected, and recovers at the end of the episode. Because of that I wouldn’t really say that this episode was among the highlights of this series. But the creators tried to make up for it in quite an interesting way.

This definitely was an interesting place to put Kaoru’s parents. First of all his father came back (something he longed for for quite a while now), and he also ended up meeting his mother for the first time since he was a little kid. This episode was necessary for Kaoru’s development so that he can finally move on as a character, and because of that mother the creators definitely didn’t waste a moment to do some quality character-building.

This episode also added to the rest of the cast. Ritsuko recovered visibly from the shock of last episode (she was particularly good at the point where she rejected Kaoru). It’s revealed that Jun has some serious issues and Mariko also visibly changed now that she’s in love with him. I do wonder where the creators plan to take things from now though: like I said before: Kaoru’s confession to Ritsuko happened bafflingly early. Did he really get over his crush in this episode and will the real meat of this series be something completely different, or will this show turn into some “will they won’t they” soap-opera?
Rating: *+ (Great)

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 06

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

Yeah. This was awesome. Lupin III just got better again.

This looked like your average Lupin episode, this time paying a homage to the catholic school genre. I was really reminded of Oniisama he for some reason. In any case things looked to be a fairly standard heist episode that had Mine Fujiko pretend to be a female teacher, while we follow some students around her, in particular one girl with braids who I remember noting had a really out of place voice actress. And then he took his wig off.

What followed was a wonderful battle of wits between Mine Fujiko and that one cop assistant with a little assistance of Lupin, and it was really well done. The acting was awesome, the camera work really managed to capture the characters this time, and I also love how well this episode made use of the tiny details that the previous episodes built up on. I loved how Mine Fujiko completely pwned that cop assistant and the wit with which she did it. And the guy had some nice tricks up his sleeve as well. I did not expect the gun-wielding schoolgirls.

Those bits around Fujiko’s past are also pretty surreal and very artistic. This episode indeed revealed that she had to endure a lot of abuse when she was a kid, which pretty much shaped her to what she is now. I like how subtle the portrayal of how she remembers those times is: it’s obviously a trauma, but we never see heavy emotions from her around thsoe flashbacks, unlike how she usually behaves.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Zetman – 06

by psgels, posted in Zetman

Holy crap, this episode was intense. This show actually got even better with this episode. I don’t care how butchered the last episode was with the three murdered high school girls. This episode made some awesome use of it by continuing that path of sacrifices and toying with how hard it is to save everyone. There was a lot of stuff going on at the same time here, combined with some awesome action scenes.

And yeah, I just can’t help but praise the visuals of this\ series. This animation is just so incredibly expressive. This is an effect that you can’t get no matter how big of a budget you have, how well it plays together with the music and the storytelling. Really, TMS Entertainment has shown some wonderful stuff this season.

There are only two really bad decisions that they made. By far the worst was the decision for this series to only have 13 episodes this show really deserves more. The problem probably is that they couldn’t get enough sponsors to really get to 26 episodes, hoping for good DVD sales. Now this was a very big production error that unfortunately happens way too often. The second big mistake was hiring Atsuhiro Tomioka to compile the scripts. This wasn’t all bad: like with his other series, he really managed to add that something extra and succeeded in making this a standalone series. But someone needed to oversee the content that he cut away to do it because he really tends to do that. Then again though, I haven’t read the manga, but having the restriction of only 13 episodes to work with, I can also very much understand to skip certain parts in order to get further into the manga at the end.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

For the people living in and around Paris

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

I apologize for being late on this, because I just finished booking this myself, but after all the talk about a week ago in the shoutbox I do at least want to try and get some sort of meet going.

Upcoming Sunday and Monday, 13th and 14th of May, I’ll be in Paris for a short holiday. It will be my first time there, so are there any places that I just have to go to visit? Also, if any of you happen to be in the neighborhood, I’d love to meet up somehow.

Hyouka – 03

by psgels, posted in Hyouka

I personally love mystery stories, but since they require much more build-up than usual, it’s always a question whether or not they will succeed in the end. Hyouka has some very good papers, though. The detail with which it portrays its characters is more than enough to keep my interest, especially since none of them try to be too annoying/stupid etc.

There are multiple ways in which this can be classified as a mystery-series. The least interesting is the detective story format of each episode. They are very impressive of the characters… until you realize that everything is written by just one guy who can plan out everything, leading to the “detective”‘s observations to just turn superhuman, turning him into something like a narrator instead.

The other type of mystery was done really well in this episode, and really convinced me to sit this series out. It’s the kind that builds up to an overall story by revealing a tiny bit each episode about the overall mystery. The previous episode started with the revival of the Literary club, they hinted at the Anthologies. This episode reveals the anthologies, along with the whole reason for reviving the literary club along with the mystery that happened so many years in the past. This episode was really good at that, ending with a great little cliff-hanger.

And I also think that this series is really good at fleshing out its characters. Their dialogue between them is inspired, but take for example at the beginning of this episode, and they touch things like the edge of teacups, or the girl adjusts her hair. Seriously, Kyoani uses its budget well here. Does that make the animation perfect… nah. There are times when the animation is a bit too bouncy, which goes against this attempt at realism. Fate/Zero meanwhile has better CG, Lupin III has more artistic artwork and camera angles, Apollon’s animation is smoother and Zetman’s is more expressive. And so we’re in a season with a ton of series with awesome animation that all stand out in their own way.

Oh, and a question to the people living in Japan: do people really make such a big deal over smoking there? I mean, it’s not unheard of for teenagers to smoke, and while it’s frowned upon, it doesn’t really seem scandalous. Also, I was wondering why that guy chose a classroom of all places to start smoking things up, since he was using a classroom and all. If he went through so much trouble to set up infrared sensors, couldn’t he have searched for a better place to do it?
Rating: ** (Excellent)