Uchuu Kyoudai – 03

by psgels, posted in Uchuu Kyoudai

Okay, with this this show also has the best romance of the season. The one thing that I hardly ever buy from anime is the moment in which the couple actually falls in love. They either do so for no reason, they pull the childhood friend trick, or pull one superficial reason, or they just stuff the main couple together for a while and they automatically start to develop feelings for each other. This episode was the first time since ages since this actually caught my attention.

The build-up was perfect:there were a few scenes here and there of Serika catching Mutta’s eye, and at the end of this episode the creators threw in something quite funny that both had in common. Both Mutta’s characterization as hers was great in this. Overall though, I really think that Mutta’s voice actor is giving off a wonderful performance in this series.

This episode was mostly focused on the physical exams. Though it also raised an interesting question: how on earth is Mutta going to make it? I mean, Serika excelled everywhere, while Kenji is a great example of someone who is very solid at everything he does, yet doesn’t excel at any specific point. Mutta however… there doesn’t seem to be a reason for him to stand out, both in his average performance as in his physical abilities, mental abilities or knowledge. The only mystery is how on earth he managed to design such a hot selling car. The creators are probably going to use that somewhere later in order to make him pass.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Fate/Zero – 15

by psgels, posted in Fate/Zero

Overall, the competition that Fate/Zero faces this season is larger than what it faced for its first season. But really; the great thing about this season is that every series has its own point at which it really stands out. There really are a lot of well produced shows, but each stands out in its own way: Zetman through its expressive drawings, Lupin with its experimental and artistic style, Apollon through its fluidity and accuracy, Tsuritama with its whimsicality, Eureka Seven with its epic action, and Fate/Zero has the incredible polish that has become even better from what I remember of the first season. Seriously, this was probably the best episode of the series so far.

With this I can understand the need to take a 13 episode break, because the creators really used it. The CG in this episode was amazing, ranging from the dogfights in the air to Saber regaining her noble phantasm. Caster was also used much better than in the last episode, as the focus was much more on the characters fighting out a way to stop it, rather than blindly attacking it. The monster appeared in fewer scenes, which definitely made it more menacing. It’s also good that my least favorite character of the series is gone now, because that now makes way for the rest of the cast to shine.

This episode did particularly interesting things around Saber. With this episode she felt more like the main character of this series, with her Excalibur that allows her to cleave an entire fortress in one blow, but Archer and Rider made it look more like a curse than a blessing at the end of the episode. This will definitely return later.

The best looking scene of this episode was when that bug guy was burning. The animators really went for something different there, but there was a ton of raw emotion in that scene, and I loved what the creators did to him.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Mouretsu Pirates – 15

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

Generic mecha protagonist who can instantly understand mechas as soon as he touches it: eat your heart out. This episode went pretty much as you thought it’d go when a group of teenaged pilots are forced to operate a ship they don’t know: with problems. You can see that they know a fair bit about operating space ships, probably both due to school and their work at the yacht club, but if they don’t know the quirks of a particular vehicle it’s going to be very hard to actually get it to work.

It probably still is a bit simplified (one look at the manual was enough for everyone to understand everything about a heavily customized vehicle), but I’m still really glad that this series addressed this. What’s also is interesting is that we got to see an interesting flaw of Marika here: her self confidence. In this episode she really underestimated what it would take to pilot the Bentenmaru and didn’t tell its crew about what she was going to do, and it’s a nice touch to have the crew rush out a bunch of manuals to guide them along the way. I also loved their reactions when they found out what Marika was up to.

And then there is the subplot of Marika’s mother going for a career switch. With this series finding very erm… “creative” ways to get its characters at the right place, I’m wondering what they’re going to do to her. Is she going to return to the Bentenmaru as well or something?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Shining Hearts – Shiawase no Pan, Eureka Seven Ao and Tsuritama

by psgels, posted in Eureka Seven Ao, Some Quick First Impressions, Tsuritama

Shining Hearts – Shiawase no Pan

Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives together with three cute girls.
This episode threw me off. With a title like “Shiawase no Pan”, I thought that there was a character named “Pan” or something. Not that the main characters would actually be bakers. Beyond that, this episode… it felt like playing an actual RPG: the characters went from one place to the other, talked to a few people and then went home again. That is not the way you should adapt something like this. RPG adaptations are meant to take liberties in order to weave their storylines because RPGs have things that just cannot be translated to anime format, more than any other kind of source material. So yeah, this was a bit of a boring way to close off such a streak of excellent first episodes. All the characters do is walk around and sell bread. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There were some intriguing parts that will probably be explored later, the characters were all moeblobs with really bad character designs, but they weren’t forced into stereotypes, and this show had a relaxing atmosphere that would have worked… if it wasn’t for one thing: throughout this episode I really got the impression that the creators have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m referring to the bread: it just assumes that the characters can make great bread, but it doesn’t even put an ounce of thought into why this bread is great, or how it’s made, or where they get their ingredients from. It’s just “Okay, we have bread! Let’s give it to people and make everyone happy!” I mean, if you’re going to bother making a show about bread, you should at least do your homework, right?
OP: Granted, this does have that RPG-feel, despite the annoying vocals.
ED: I… just… what did I just watch? Who found this a good idea?
Potential: 30%

Eureka Seven Ao

Short Synopsis: Our lead character will supposedly pilot the strongest mecha in existence.
With Eureka Seven it is of course a bit difficult to really judge its first episode. I remember how I actually dropped it for a while, until I saw how good it got after a while. This epiode of Eureka Seven Ao definitely made a better first impression than the first episode of Eureka Seven did. For starters its lead character isn’t as annoying as Renton, and the creators immediately start by showing some good drama around him, and his feelings towards his parents. His girlfriend still fits the bill of “female lead”, but there are small parts where she sets herself apart from her counterparts. The action and soundtrack also sound very promising based on the small tastes they gave us here. I do have to say though, that this episode also had a lot of parallels with Bounen no Xamdou’s opening episode, and compared to that series’ opening episode, this unfortunately lost out, especially in its characterization. Still, the potential is definitely there for this series to both deliver engaging action and characters. It’s now up to the rest of this series to develop the rest, and it definitely has some good papers for that. It’s a shame that this couldn’t get 50 episodes, but 25 works too.
ED: Not the most memorable ED, but also definitely not the worst. Also who’s the kid?
Potential: 85%

Tsuritama

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a cute boy.
Above all, this was really refreshing. In a world in which most of the teenaged series try to see who can rip each other off the most, here we have a show who really makes a point in being original. It’s not just the theme of fishing, but the characters and their antics are all delightfully fresh and the cliches that are there are executed different from usual. For example: for as many transfer students that we see in anime, we actually rarely see people move. the lead characters’ grandmother also feels refreshing in her light-heartedness: she was old, yet not the same kind helpless old woman you see everywhere. And yeah, in a season with Shinichiro Watanabe and Sayo Yamamoto, you’d almost forget that Kenji Nakamura also is an incredibly good director. This episode was fun and whimsical, and A-1 at the helm combined with a number of very interesting animation techniques. The end of this episode also hinted that there will be much more than meets the eye at first sight, and I feel like this time, Kenji Nakamura went with a series that DOES fit perfectly in just 11 episodes. After sitting though Guilty Crown, I am really glad to see that Noitamina is back again.
OP: Some actually decent J-Rock. Finally.
ED: Dreamy song, and surprisingly catchy.
Potential: 90%

Some Quick First Impressions: Sakamichi no Apollon, Jormungand and Haiyore! Nyaruko-san

by psgels, posted in Sakamichi no Apollon, Some Quick First Impressions

Sakamichi no Apollon

Short Synopsis: Our lead character befriends a cute girl on his first day of school transfer.
Yes, this is clearly influenced by Madhouse. their subtle touch is all over this series, and combined that with Shinichiro Watanabe’s excellent sense of style and Yoko Kanno’s music, this was a wonderful watch. Out of all the series that aired this season, this series had the best acting: characters are portrayed wonderfully subtle, and this episode was really restrained. There was a ton of emotion in this episode, yet most of it was hidden between the lines. The point where this series really caught me however, was when one of the characters started to play the drums. That was a piece of incredible animation. Playing musical instruments in anime is something incredibly hard to do, but the creators here did it perfectly. The movements synchronize perfectly with the actual soundtrack, and something like that is incredibly rare in anime.
OP: This definitely is an OP from the guys from Mappa: the visuals really remind of OPs like Mouryou no Hako’s. Again restrained, but very well done.
ED: Simple yet effective.
Potential: 95%

Jormungand

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a giant sea serpent who surrounds the entire earth and… wait, wrong story.
So, this turned out to be quite a slick action-series with a heavy emphasis on gunplay. It’s got a neat soundtrack and the action scenes are well polished, with quirky humour on top of it. It had charismatic characters, especially the lead female, and quite a few characters were already likable in just this episode. I twas pretty much a textbook delivery. Now, textbooks are boring, so what does this show plan to add in order to really stand out? How do you plan to keep your 26 episodes interesting? Will your plot be varied or will most episodes be like this? Is 26 episodes the right amount for this series, or is the manga this is based on still on-going?
OP: Good visuals, but too much autotune on the vocals.
ED: Prertty picture… and that’s all this ED is.
Potential: 80%

Haiyore Nyaruko-san

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a cute girl.
Surprisingly, this didn’t turn out to be the worst of the season. The reason? This turned out to be a self-aware parody of the moe genre. It actually poked fun at the overused tropes you see in this genre, and Nyaruko’s energy was surprisingly addictive, rather than annoying. It’s strange to admit, but I actually laughed during some of the jokes it made. Unfortunately it also has the elements of a bad parody. You know, the shows that try to parody by just adhering to the tropes they’re making fun of while trying to look tongue-in-cheek. Another problem that this series has is that the moe genre is overcrowded: a lot of the jokes this series made were just copied from other bad shows, perhaps only done slightly better. If this series wants to be a good comedy, it really needs more material and it needs to keep the jokes coming. Since comedy is the only thing that this series has, it needs to be consistently funny, but for that, it still falls short: it had a few good jokes, but not enough of them to warrant 20 minutes.
OP: Terrible song.
ED: Parody 101: an ED is also a very good thing to make fun of. This instead was completely generic
Potential: 40%

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 02

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

So when I made my preview for this season, I was convinced that in terms of promising staff, nothing could beat Sakamichi no Apollon, which would reunite Shinichiro Watanabe with Yoko Kanno alongside Madhouse’s top department going solo. And then this got announced: Sayo Yamamoto of Michiko e Hatchin fame, Takeshi Koike directing the animation, Mari Okada writing the series, Dai Sato doing some of the scripts, and Shinichiro Watanabe producing the music. I think that it’s fair to say that we’ve got ourselves the biggest dream-team of the year here. And it shows, with what is by far the most artistic series of the year.

This show just oozes retro, and it’s great to finally see another series that has its own visual direction. This is really common amongst remakes for some reason beyond me: these kinds of series are often made by big fans, who don’t just try to remake their series, but also try to make them better by putting a lot of their own influences into them. The result is often glorious, just look at Hi no Tori, Metropolis, Casshern Sins, Dororon Enma-kun Meera Meera, Tetsujin 28-Go, the new Mazinger, et cetera.

And to be honest, I’m not even a fan of Lupin III. the only thing I watched of it is the Castle of Cagliostro. The reason why there isn’t a review of it on this site is because I only had one thought on my mind after completing it: “that’s it?” Granted, that was because of Hayao Miyazaki’s influence and how there were a lot of people claiming that it was amongst his best works; it probably would have been at least a decent movie if that didn’t cloud my expectations, but because of that I never really had anything with this franchise. However, this series really caught my eye, and these two episodes were made with the intention of reaching new audiences.

With this episode, it’s also clear that this will be an episodic series, which means that the creators can get much more variety in than if this were a continuous story. This episode already demonstrates this by being very different from the first episode. Lupin is nowhere to be seen, and instead this focuses on the bearded bodyguard. The film noir style remains, but instead of a fun adventure it’s much more sober, and tries to tell a serious story. Overall, it works well together. The soundtrack also looks to be huge, and it felt completely different from what I heard last week. That’s Shinichiro Watanabe’s influence for you. He may not have composed the soundtrack, but like with Bee-Train you can really hear that he knows how to guide his composers to what he wants.

The one disadvantage of this series is that with such graphics, it becomes hard to properly animate everything. I think that it’s here where TMS’s inexperience seeps through: they really tried something different this season, and pretty much are the boldest studio of the year for me at this point, combining this with what they’ve done with Zetman. However, this episode again was not animated as well as its predecessor, and some movements were rather jerky at times. The show still looked gorgeous, but the difference remains. What I really hope is that they will take chances, and really push their animation despite their graphical limitations. They really have it in them: both Zetman and this series’ first episodes didn’t just look great because they had a slightly higher budget: they also were stunning because of how expressive they were. You can get that too with a talented animator on a short budget.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Zetman – 02

by psgels, posted in Zetman

From the start I was a bit apprehensive about blogging Zetman, because I knew right away that it would be rushed. Why? Because of the guy behind the series composition: Atsuhiro Tomioka. It’s not like he is bad or anything: I really liked his adaptation of Samurai 7, and all of his other adaptations do have a number of really good parts. However, he always takes huge liberties when it comes to source material and he always rushes through with incomplete stories. And then you give him a huge manga to adapt with only 13 episodes. Yeah.

So Zetman will be incomplete. I don’t really care about whether it’s faithful to the manga or not, but it is not fun to start watching a series knowing that that it’s not going to end well. But really: after that first episode I just have to cover this. It had so much detail there, and the creators put so much emotion in this episode. the graphics were also amazing. In fact, out of all the first episodes to have premiered this season, I liked the graphics of Zetman and Lupin the most. Yes, both are TMS Entertainment series. I really like how they went for something completely different from their usual series, and it works.

Now, the looks of this episode were decidedly less impressive and the animation was much more static, but it still had its parts that looked great. The characters’ faces in this series have depth. they’re not some cardboard-cutouts but they feel like movable objects. It’s not like the animation is perfect, and there were plenty of rushed shots in this episode, but even considering that the amount of the shots with depth was remarkably high. On top of that, I also love the amount of emotion that the characters’ faces portray.

Now, this wasn’t perfect though. I can only imagine that the manga had a better solution for saving the family trapped in the burning building. A bunch of pillows are nowhere enough to break the fall of several stories. Some of the old guys in this series also lack the energy that the young ones have, especially the corporate bastards: they feel like the same corporate bastards you see everywhere.
Rating: *+ (Great)

OVA Impressions: Buta

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Young Animator Training Project

This year we too get an installment of the Young Animator Training Project. Again, four studios have been granted a decent budget with the assignment to create a TV-special. Buta is Telecom Animation Film’s entry. They were the ones who last year delivered the best short for the Young Animator Training Project with Ojiisan no Lap. Buta is clearly inferior, and mostly suited for children, however. Kids will be kept busy for these 20 minutes, though.

This episode is a traditional ronin story, only really childish. The characters here are all animals, and aside from the titular pig, every single character is an idiot, the same type as the standard generic Saturday morning cartoon. The story also isn’t anything noteworthy either, and the only drama revolves around “stealing is bad”.

But what about the animation, the thing that this entire project was about? Well, the simple character designs allows for easier animation, and the characters indeed move around a bit. In that way it’s a good way to get rookies to actually animate things. The art looks pretty good and crisp as well, but there are some shortcuts taken compared to the fighting episode of last year’s Young Animator Training Project (Kizuna Ichigeki). I wouldn’t recommend this episode overall: none of its areas are the worst, but it also doesn’t stand out in any way compared to the other YATP-series.
OVA Episode Rating: 7.5/10

Mouretsu Pirates – 14

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

An episode about insurance and recruitment. That is actually quite interesting. Ideally I would have liked to see Marika actually try and hire new crew-members, but the end of the episode gave a good reason of why this isn’t going to happen: Marika is looking for people she can trust. And for that, the Yacht club fits perfectly, despite their lack of experience. With such a huge cast, I kept wondering how the creators would bring all of them together. Well, I suppose that this is a way.

But things like insurance are also pretty interesting to watch. With all of the destruction you usually see in anime, you’d have to wonder how much restoring everything costs, and especially for someone like Marika, who has to maintain not just a ship, but just an entire crew, it’s very logical for them to be insured in the case of something happening.

I’m also surprised that someone who is supposed to be the second-most important character (if you look at the promo art and all), Chiaki has surprisingly little airtime. She was completely gone in the Serenity arc, and here too it looks like she’ll be away from Marika again, filling in for the jobs that Marika couldn’t take. I like how this show handles its cast, however with such a huge cast also come challenges: the development. Now that we’ve arrived in the second half of this series, we need to see these guys grow. Up till now, Mouretsu just did this for Marika and perhaps Gruier, while the rest of the cast remained fairly static. This needs to change.
Rating: *+ (Great)

Some Quick First Impressions: Saki Episode of Side A and Tasogare Otome x Amnesia

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a giant battleship sunk in WWII.
For the record: the actual Yamato TV-series only airs in 2013, this was just a preview episode. The first movie however, premiered a few days ago, which means that we probably also have to wait around 9 months for more of this, so this really was just a very early appetizer. Based on just this episode though, things are looking very promising. This episode covered about the same as the first episode of the 1974 Yamato series, but the creators added a lot of things to it as well, and they really succeeded in turning this into a modern version of the story. You can especially see the influence of Xebec’s science fiction department department. The creators managed to put a lot of their own influences in, yet they also captured the epic spirit of Matsumoto Leiji’s stories. I also love the soundtrack, which is new, yet is sprinkled with the influences from the original Yamato’s soundtrack. I do wonder though if the rest of the series will be as accurate as here, and I’m especially curious how this series plans to handle the infamous plotholes that pop up at the end of the series.
OP: No OP, unfortunately. I’m dying for the rendition of Yamato’s classic OP for this series.
ED: Quite sentimental. A bit too restrained, but I can see this growing on me.
Potential: 80%

Saki Episode of Side A

Short Synopsis: Our lead character isn’t even in this series…
If I had to name one theme that keeps recurring through this season, it is annoying characters. There are much, much more of them than usual, making checking out every show get a bit more on my nerves than usual. Saki though… fortunately doesn’t have that. Okay, so it’s cheating a bit by being a sequel and all, but it feels good finally watching another moe show without getting the urge to strangle the characters. In fact, I’d say that this was one of the best episodes of Saki overall. It was a nice look into Nodoka’s past, the characters were overall much less obnoxious than the main cast of Saki, and it was even slightly heart-warming. That’s all I ask of just a first episode: convince me that I can enjoy watching this. The development and the good stuff can come later. This episode did have a number of flaws, though. For example this episode tried to make cliched boob jokes whenever Nodoka was around, and one of the reasons why this episode also was pretty nice was because there was no mahjong in it. That’s not very reassuring for a series where that is its selling point, but what series reduces these games to a mahou shoujo context in which the winner is the one who manages to manipulate luck the most?
ED: Dull J-Pop.
Potential: 50%

Tasogare Otome x Amnesia

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a peudo-harem containing a ghost.
I’ve got quite a few problems with Silver Link, but by far the biggest of them is the reason why I never finished more than one episode of any of their series: their unwatchable characters. Tasogare Otome x Amnesia… unfortunately has this too, which is a shame, because if you strip away that and all of the cliches, then you’d have an interesting series. This episode played around with its narrative by making the titular character invisible to one of the cast members, and it did a number of interesting things with its visual direction throughout this episode. But yeah, I already know that I’m not going to continue this much longer because for most of the episode I was too busy wanting to punch the characters in the face. The girl who can’t see ghosts was particularly obnoxious, and she just wouldn’t shut up. The male lead was also incredibly dull due and nothing more than your average harem lead. The titular maiden Amnesia could have had potential as this playful ghost, but unfortunately she too just got reduced to a member of the lead guy’s harem. There is not much fanservice in this episode, but the fanservice that was there was dumb, forced and shameless. Seriously though, it’s getting very annoying that Silver Link’s series still are plagued by bad acting. Where Shaft has actually moved on and changed, they still seem the same as they ever were, save perhaps for prettier visuals.
ED: A good vocalist, wasted on a cliched and cheesy song.
Potential: 20%