Chihayafuru – 18

by psgels, posted in Chihayafuru

So, this was meant to be about the introduction episodes, in order to build up for the big matches as we reach the end of the series. And even there this show found a very good scenario: Chihaya’s loss against an opponent unimportant to the plot, and having the finale be amongst the rest of the main cast.

Also, this show really has the tendency to not show Taichi play. This episode really was apparent in that: for Chihaya it fully details how the match progresses. This episode also took a good look at how Tsutomu and Kanade played, but with Taichi we just got the description of “it’s fierce”. The episode ended with a cliff-hanger, so I wonder whether they’re going to keep this up.

One thing that is also apparent here is that the matches are kindof predictable. I’m not yet sure whether that’s an actual flaw here, because this show does not have any miracle comebacks or anything. While it’s of course natural for those to happen, I’ve seen so many sports series by now that those twists start to stand out as a bit convenient. To make up for it, this show plays around with its interesting match set-ups. Like, having the most important match right at the beginning at times.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ano Natsu de Matteru – 05

by psgels, posted in Winter 2012 Kaleidoscope

Okay, my entries on Inu X Boku have now been turned into a Winter 2012 Kaleidoscope. That means that I’m pretty much going to blog either this, Inu X Boku, Black Rock Shooter, and Smile Precure, depending on what interests me the most. This week’s episode of Ano Natsu raised the bar a lot for the bunch, though.

The reason I’m not just going to blog this fully is because of the annoying romance cliches. I can fully understand it if this series decided to take it slow for its first half and let the cast play out. It dropped enough hints that it knows what it’s doing. However, I’ve gotten really annoyed with the romantic misunderstandings, not to mention how the male lead was very annoying to watch.

This time though, things just worked.There were some lesser parts. I’ve gotten a bit tired of school film projects in anime that just have to mirror the plot exactly. That’s all way too obvious, and I’m still not sure why nobody finds it strange that Ichika has this weird pet mascot thing that keeps following her around. At the moment, this feels like Birdy the Mighty Light, without the action, variety or intrigue. Yes, Senkawa was actually more annoying than Kaitou at the beginning, but he had 26 episodes and he used that to develop really well. This show doesn’t have that luxury.

And so there came this episode, where it finally really moves away from theusual cliches. In particular the second half of this episode was great, when Kaitou started filming Ichika for natural scenes of her. It’s there where he set himself apart from his cliche. Tetsurou made it even better afterwards, when this show seemed to go down the road of being yet another “just confess already!”-series, to actually telling Kaitou about the love triangle he’s in. That was great.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 45

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou

And so, this was the comedic episode of Natsume Yuujinchou. Nyanko-sensei was completely hilarious here, but it’s yet again a wonderful story about Natsume himself as well. This one really takes the themes of him not wanting to involve others, and builds further upon it, putting him in a situation where he’s just completely powerless and in the mercy of them.

It’s another two-episode arc here, and I am particularly curious to see how the aftermath will end up. Nyanko-sensei didn’t bother to stay in character at all, which was especially bad with Sasada this was particularly bad. You can really see that Natsume usually does his best to stay polite, and this was about the complete opposite of that.

The best part of this episode though, was how it combined the comedy so well with the drama. I mean, usually with these kinds of episodes characters start overacting a bit too much. Everyone here stayed in character, yet showed something new here. Especially the final parts of this episode, as Natsume watched Tanuma get involved into something that might seriously harm him.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Another – 05

by psgels, posted in Another

I didn’t expect the answers for everything to come up this early in the series. This episode was where this show said “okay, that’s enough building up, time to explain why everyone is acting so weird”. And I must say, I like the story that’s behind this a lot here.

This puts the first episodes in an interesting perspective: we were lead, along with the main character, to believe that Mei was some sort of ghost. Instead, she was only treated as a ghost by the students of class 3. On top of that, the real ghost is one of the other students of the class, just nobody knows who.

That also has a very interesting effect that I applauded this series for: there are no copy-paste students in that class. Everyone here feels like a proper classmate, there just are a bunch of them who don’t talk to the main character. This doesn’t have the usual anime syndrome where some characters have obviously better character designs or something. The only exception of this being Mei, who just looks too moe compared to the rest of them (I was quite surprised when I saw how much she changed compared to her designs of the original source material).

What’s also surprising is that my criticism of the first two episodes (it’s trying too hard!) are much less noticeable right now. I mean, during art class, episode 2 had people draw things like the scream, and the random doll shots that appeared for no reason whatsoever. In this episode, everyone was acting very naturally. It’s like the creators were afraid that these first two episodes weren’t interesting enough to hold people’s attention, so they threw those random things in there or something. Personally, I use completely different criteria to determine if something is worth my time. In particular I look at the execution and acting, which were perfectly fine and would have been even better with those obnoxious distractions.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Aquarion Evol – 06

by psgels, posted in Aquarion Evol

This episode returned to the action.And well… it was just over the top, like everything else in this series. In particular the focus on Shrade was just meant to kick ass and be as grand as possible. Now, I know Shoji Kawamori, so I’m not going to be trolled by one of those twists again, but his entire performance in this episode was just wonderful. The soundtrack in this series is great, but it’s at its best when he is involved.

In comparison, that dog bad guy still needs a bit of work. He has potential as Mikono’s future groom, but right now his characters still isn’t interesting enough, not to mention that he pulled a very cliched retreat at the end of this episode. Again though: this episode promised some interesting connections; now live up to those!

Going back to that soundtrack… how big is it anyway? I mean, there are series that have two or three good tracks and keep repeating them, but this episode came yet again with more tracks I hadn’t heard before, and they just all kick ass. 2012 is definitely going to be an interesting year, with two Yoko Kanno series. Although I did hear that a lot of this soundtrack was composed for the first season already. My guess is (considering Yoko Kanno’s inactivity for the past years) that the rest of the soundtrack was composed by the composer of Zegapain’s soundtrack. Seriously. She should do more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mirai Nikki – 17

by psgels, posted in Mirai Nikki

Overall, Seventh were by far the most interesting opponents that Yukiteru and Yuno faced so far. It’s probably because of this that this arc has been my favorite so far. This episode also delved a bit in their past and gave them a pretty nice closure. The creators made good use of how they as a couple are similar, yet completely different from Yukiteru and Yuno.

Oh yeah, and then there was that thing with Yukiteru’s parents. Now that was just done for the shock factor, I believe. Of course I went ‘wtf’ when he stabbed her, but that’s the kind of twist that Guilty Crown would pull if it had the chance, and it doesn’t really fit Mirai Nikki’s thriller atmosphere of putting crazy people in a death match. I’d understand it if he was under the influence of drugs or something, but to be completely sober and pull something so random…

As for the leaps in logic, this episode was fairly light on them. There was just one point where the Seventh guy yet again got hold of Yuno’s diary. And he yet again didn’t think about destroying it. Sure it was a fake and he could have used it to get more information and all, but by now he should have known that Yukiteru is completely useless, and Yuno the biggest threat, and that getting rid of her would make things so much easier.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Rinne no Lagrange – 05

by psgels, posted in Rinne no Lagrange

Holy crap.

I mean it’s easy to just dismiss this show based on first looks. A bunch of girls piloting mechas to save aliens? That sounds completely generic. And yet the execution and direction are just so damn good here. I mean, this is the Fafner team of Xebec, working together with Tatsuo Sato, written by the guy who wrote the second half of Darker than Black. And it’s true that the biggest sin of this series is being so generic: with an execution and staff like this, just imagine what it could have been if it had an actually good premise here.

Nevertheless, the characters in this episode were awesome. The chemistry between these guys is really fun to watch. This episode introduced the main bad guy, and this completely sets Muginami apart from the stereotypical ditzy girl she was at first. This episode first starts with revealing that she indeed is a villain, making use of some great tension between her and Lan, only to reveal afterwards that she has just been acting on her own, and instead is being seen as a parasite by her comrades.

These kinds of episodes really allow the sharp direction here to shine. The main villain is also very interesting at this point (the coat thing was very funny), and the sharpness and timing of the dialogue here is subtle, yet witty. On top of that, this show has a second season confirmed in the summer season, so there will be enough time to really flesh these characters out.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Hunter X Hunter – 18

by psgels, posted in Hunter X Hunter

Okay, I know what I’m going to do this season. The thing is that Ano Natsu, Black Rock Shooter, Inu Boku and Smile Precure are all series that are interesting, yet not interesting enough to be blogged weekly. So instead I’m going to do another Kaleidoscope and blog one of these four shows each week. Hunter X Hunter however has nothing to do with that. This show is great, period. And I’m going to bring it back from hiatus now that Hyouge Mono has finished.

I do want to say though, that it will probably be impossible for me to not blog this as a fan of the ’99 series. I will try to also write some impressions about actual episodes, but blogging this series for the past months, I really realized that I just have to draw comparisons between the two, so I really apologize for being a bit inaccessible to the people who are only now being introduced to the franchise. These comparisons will mostly be in the ’99 series’ favor for the current arc, while the next arc they will be very likely in the 2011-version. And after that, anything can happen.

Gon really impressed me in this episode. For me, the really big difference of the past few episodes between the two adaptations is that Gon immediately recovered from his poison in the new adaptation. Because of that, the moment where he stood out in this arc has shifted. This version doesn’t have the agonizing time that Gon spent, trying to recover from the poison. Instead, he had to wait all alone with his pride hurt and do nothing but wait for his friends. That gave this episode a slightly different meaning here, and instead made this episode really stand out for him. I really loved how he forced himself to help Leorio and the others.

Now, the next episode in the ’99 series was like, my absolute favorite Hunter X Hunter episode outside of the Yorkshin arc. That’s another reason why I really had to pick this show back up, because even though I’ve already seen it again, and the impact probably won’t be near what it was when I first watched it, I really want to see how the creators handle it this time. The ’99 series had a lot more time to devote on fleshing out the side characters. It even treated the characters who were just destined to die or drop off seriously here and this lead to a wonderful side-cast. This new series doesn’t have a lot of that, but I’m still impressed with how they made Ponzu in an interesting character despite only know learning what her personality was.

With this episode however, I can also see that the 2011 series put a lot of time into fleshing out the nine remaining contestants. The questionnaire from the chief was still really great to watch. I also really liked Hanzo here, even though he only appeared for like… 30 seconds; it took me a while to realize, but that guy actually had three tags worth of one point with him. That actually means that he couldn’t find the tag that Killua threw away, and I can only imagine how he desperately had to try and find two other tag holders in order to get the right points. I managed to track one down to being that one guy with long black hair, but I just can’t find out who the other was.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Phi Brain – 18

by psgels, posted in Phi Brain

They’re actualyl going to go much further with Gammon than I thought here. At first I thought that this episode would be the regular “let’s fight and be friends afterwards again like nothing happened”. Instead, the opposite happened and Gammon got even more pissed off at Kaitou. I like this twist a lot: he’s currently hating what Kaitou has turned into, and is tired of constantly being looked down upon. Now, I really hope that the creators don’t back down and have him return to being Kaitou’s lapdog near the end of this first season, because he would the perfect spice for the second season.

The one thing I think that the creators should have spent a bit more attention at is how Gammon feels about the fact that his puzzles can kill people. This is the thing that needs a bit more work to really flesh out. Especially after what he said to Nonoha: that Kaitou could very well end up killing her (a very good point, by the way). However, this episode revealing that he has a sister was a very nice touch here, because his dislike with Kaitou is also large enough to abandon her.

Oh, and the puzzle in this episode was actually very creative here. This also was the first time where the puzzle was more like a game between two players, rather than something that had to be solved (not counting the makers trying to cheat their asses off, of course).
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mouretsu Pirates – 05

by psgels, posted in Mouretsu Pirates

These past two episodes are a really big surprise. At first I thought that this would be like Stellvia of the Universe, a series that Tatsuo Sato previously worked on. And here, this show suddenly makes a trip to Starship Operators, which was one of the most believable science fiction series involving small scale spaceship battles in terms of science fiction. And the thing is that we still haven’t reached the meat of this series: only at the end of this episode did the main character decide to become a pirate. Seriously, if the rets of this series is going to be as varied as these first five episodes, then we’re in for a treat here.

As for this episode, I really liked it. It really managed to make these science fiction concepts exciting, and the hacking sequence was done very believably. I really liked how the characters made use of their status as a bunch of high school girls to fool the enemy with “Dammy” systems and other diversions. The enemy on the other hand also wasn’t stupid here, and actually used the interesting tactic of just switching off their computers and resort to manually operating their guns.

This show also really shows that technology has its limitations. A lot here has been automized, but it’s like one of the characters says: when something goes wrong, it’s up to the humans behind it to tell it where to go next. Computers are very stupid things: they do exactly what you tell them to, but nothing more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)