Hyouge Mono – 39

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono

And so it has ended. I originally thought that Sasuke would arrive to do something crazy, but this also was the perfect way to end this series with: an entire episode dedicated to the ceremony of Sennou Rikyuu, committing harakiri. It gave a beautiful closure to this series and definitely set the standards for the endings of the rest of the year. As usual, Bee-Train definitely did not disappoint.

The build-up in particular was wonderful here, and I especially loved the last moments between Rikyuu and Sasuke, who was the one who ended up killing him. The final scene of the series really made an impact here: it was just Sasuke carrying Rikyuu’s head. No aftermath, nothing. It was entirely about the ending of a visionary.

Overall, the last third of this series turned out to be completely different from what I imagined. The reason for this was that suddenly the main character role shifted to Rikyuu, and this series started to explore exactly why he ended up committing harakiri here. It was completely different from the first third, which was centered around Oda Nobunaga’s conquests, and the second third, which was about Sasuke building up his influence. The fromer were crazy, while this was far more dark and brooding. The picture they all paint together however is wonderful.

I can only hope. Hope that there will be more series like this that don’t care one single bit about being moe or delivering bishies. Series that just have a completely unique vision and aren’t afraid to fully go with it. It perhaps didn’t end up as an utter classic due to a bit of a slow pacing here and there, but it once again reminded me why Koichi Mashimo is one of my favorite directors. I am really, really looking forward to his next work.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Inu X Boku SS – 03

by psgels, posted in Winter 2012 Kaleidoscope

This was the kind of drama that borders on cheese, yet stays away from it. It’s a bit forced at times, but the acting and direction actually managed to save it.

Unlike last week, this episode gets back on track again with the themes that made this show catch my attention: the loneliness of the lead character. This episode delved more into her upbringing, and showed how she turned into the character she is today: she’s got no problem with fancy dress parties or holding speeches in front of a lot of important people (in fact, that was so trivial that it was just skipped over), and the big focus of this was her desire of real emotions, rather than the fake ones. I like that.

On the downside it did get a bit too dramatic at times. Those two guys talking behind her back were a bit too much for example, but I guess that people love to bitch about the rich and famous (although this is rare to see in anime, where the rich are for some reason always celebrated and revered). It’s more that the acting still is rather one-sided, like how just one suspicious romantic mishap immediately causes her to blow a fit and dump the poor butler, and things like that need to change if this show wants to go anywhere. With a little hope that new guy will bring change in that.
Rating: * (Good)

Tantei Opera Milky Holmes – 16

by psgels, posted in Tantei Opera Milky Holmes

The big danger of this second season is the entire premise of it: the way in which the lead characters have completely forgotten how to be detectives. I mean, it’s original, but this also means that they’ll be pretty much goofing off instead of doing detective stuff. That’s what this episode was about.

Just… nothing happened here. This really was the characters goofing off on and on. They were just randomly fighting with each other, and playing Jenga of all things. For most of the first half of this episode, I thought that the creators perhaps finally lost their inspiration. And then everyone started sleeping.

The dream sequences were just hysterical. Dreams intertwining has been done before of course, but this one did it with such energy that it just immediately became funny. It was also completely absurd when people suddenly started using their Toys in order to manipulate these dreams. My favorite was turning that clock into the giant robot.

Also, near the end of the episode it also became clear that the goofing off is intentional and part of the story. It heavily hinted that this won’t be the status quo for much longer. Why they decided to turn Hercule into a closet pervert, I have no idea though.

Also, regarding the animation: I found out that Seiya Numata, on top of designing the characters, has also been promoted to the chief animation direction for this series. For the first season he only did a few episodes (which really showed by the way), but here his influence is in every single episode. It’s really great to see that after Shion no Ou he finally can show his an animation across an entire series again.

I also love how different these two series look. Shion no Ou had a limited budget and some unconventional animators, and it turned into a series that made extremely good use of this limitation by making every shot count. Milky Holmes instead has a much bigger budget, and therefore focuses more in bringing life to all of the scenes. It’s all very addictive.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Chihayafuru – 16

by psgels, posted in Chihayafuru

Okay, so this was the kind of annoying recap episode that you can’t just skip through, but actually had some new content. At the start of the episode, in the middle, at the end and after the ED were some collections of skits between the different characters. Well, I guess that if you want to animate those, then this is the perfect place for it. And as an added bonus, unlike the Mirai Nikki skets, these were actually quite funny.

Do I think that a recap episode fits in a series like this? Nah, not really. This show is simple, yet well executed. That’s not the kind of story that would really benefit from having everything repeated again. Especially considering how the creators could have actually used this episode to at least get some sort of epilogue going at the end of the season. Seriously, out of all the Autum 2011 series that are still airing, this one really is the best. But there is no way in which it’s also going to have the best ending.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Mirai Nikki – 15

by psgels, posted in Mirai Nikki

Okay. Something happened here. I’m not sure what, but this episode was much more fun than usual. The flaws of this series are still there. I mean, there was a point at which Yukiteru’s diary predicted exactly what traps he’d fall in, and yet he didn’t even notice realize this. On top of that, I have no idea why Seventh at the end didn’t just destroy the diaries of two competitors.

I think what really sold me on this episode was Yuno’s mindless enthusiasm. Before, I liked her character, but I couldn’t yet see why everyone was gushing over her. The part at the beginning of the episode, where she just sneaked in and prepared food for Yukiteru: that probably was my favorite moment of her so far. Now that’s a stalker..

Seventh also pretending to be Eighth was a nice twist, including making up these weird powers like being able to see the future of the next person you flirt with (wtf?). They’re still rather big stereotypes at this point, but it does work that they’re complete opposites of Yuno and Yukiteru. I do admit that I found the first half of this show a bit boring at times, but if it has indeed been building up to something bigger, I can still turn into a fan of it.

Also, I like the new OP and ED. In particular the animation, safe for the rather forced bits of the previous OP.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Another – 03

by psgels, posted in Another

Yeah. You can really see that the director of Blood-C is working on this thing.

The animation may not be as good here, and it also doesn’t necessarily have the same style of characterization, but this episode really showed: the horror is uncompromising. Censorship is for wimps and when someone dies, it is in full graphic detail.

The execution in this episode was also quite a bit better here. The thing with this show is that the animation isn’t really impressive. But if the animators need to animate something well, they do it. The dolls completely disappeared after the first half of this episode. And meanwhile, the doll shots in the shop were actually put in context. The rest of the episode made use of a few interesting cuts or camera angles that worked much better. As for the final climax… I’m a bit iffy on the use of music: that could have been better used, but it was such an over the top death that I can’t really think of a track that would have fitted such a scene better.

The classmates in this episode also surprised me by not being annoying. It’s very tempting to just throw in the usual annoying classmates to make the lead character look normal, however this show doesn’t really need to. Things are strange enough for the main character to stand out, so they can actually make for some rather down to earth characters. In particular the dialogue between them was the best so far.

And yeah, the atmosphere in this show works quite well. I really hope that the creators can keep this up for the rest of the series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Aquarion Evol – 04

by psgels, posted in Aquarion Evol

What the hell did I just watch?

In any case, in terms of soundtracks, there are quite a few good ones this season. There is of course the usual Natsume dreamy soundtrack. Rinne no Lagrange is also quite intense and well timed. By far the best though, is Aquarion Evol. This is pretty much the best thing that Yoko Kanno has done in a really long while. I really realized that once that piano guy started playing: that is some really complex music. And on top of that, the soundtrack is just huge.There were so many different epic tracks in just this episode, and it doesn’t look like the creators are running out anytime soon. A lot of effort really has gone into this thing.

Now, going back to the infinity punch: wut?

I must say, I did not expect things like that from this series. I thought it was just a regular mecha series that would show a bunch of normal battles between a bunch of giant robots. The battle in this episode however, really was something else. I mean, a show like Star Driver used the concept of using one’s libito to power a mecha before, but this really took the cake with that punch that circled the earth several times, only to break down the Berlin Wall. that separates the males from the females. Um, symbolism anyone?

I also love that at the end, that infinity punch didn’t disappear or something. So right now the entire world is now polluted by this gigantic arm that is wrapped around it twice. That must be one bitch to clean up in the end. Speaking of the end of the episode, it promised total chaos next week. Knowing the creators, I have no idea what to expect. It’s especially unlike Shoji Kawamori to pull twists like this this early in the game already?

Also, what was up with that flamboyant headmaster? On hindsight it just seems so surreal what he had been doing. He knew about Mikono, so he dressed up like this drifter, and got into the boat she was supposed to take away from the island, only to drive her back again. Again, this feels like some weird satire on Star Driver of all things.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 43

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou

Oh my god, Natsume. Are you really delivering another brilliant episode? Seriously, even the previous seasons had episodes that slightly disappointed or didn’t work out as well as the others. This season has delivered one amazing story after the other.

Interestingly, this wasn’t necessarily about Natsume’s development. Instead, we’ve got a story entirely dedicated to a youkai here. In this episode it still was apparent how much Natsume has grown over the past seasons, but it really was about this quirky youkai that runs into him, along with a story of what happened in the youkai’s past.

For one, the Youkai was delightful to watch. He really nailed being funny, while also not getting lost in his own quirk. This guy is funny, but also surprisingly complex for a youkai. All in all it was a really interesting twist on the usual “youkai versus human romance”. It masterfully stayed away from cheese, despite an arranged marriage being used, along with “we can’t meet because we’re different!”. The ending in particular was delightfully light-hearted, yet incredibly charming. For the girl, it probably was a very nice experience, after which she went on and lived the rest of her life doing who knows what. All we see here is the side of the story of a youkai who is full of guilt for what he did.

I also realize now that the third season had surprisingly little of the book of friends. Because of this it’s also been quite a while since we last saw Reiko. With these opening episodes, you’d think that this season would be more about Matoba and Reiko, but with this series you’ll never know what the next story will focus on.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Phi Brain – 16

by psgels, posted in Phi Brain

So… Phi Brain is getting a second season. I did not see that coming. Despite that though, I’m pretty thrilled for it: Sato Junichi is going to do another 52 episode series. That is a lot to look forward to here. Now all that’s left to hope is that the source material is also up to it.

The most boring course of events will be that Rook will turn into some sort of damsel in distress after Kaitou saves him at the end of this first season. I really hope that there will be more to it than just that. It’s not just the predictability, but what’s more important is that that just throws away a perfectly good villain here. And there is also no way in which the creators will be able to top him. It would really suck if Rook’s role was reduced, because of how much he already did for Kaitou’s character development.

In the meantime we have yet another very good episode here. At this point, I have given up on the believability of this series. Heck, the creators just went ahead and completely rewrote the city map of Venice. Seriously? And that wasn’t even the weirdest part. that came with one of the POG givers coming up with a scenario where that organization was actually able to hijack and crash dozens of planes at the same time. The worst thing… is that I nearly believed him.

As a Gammon-centric episode however, it really rocked. Gammon stands out as a character because he is the only one here who gets more and more pissed off at Kaitou. These past episodes were all about developing the side cast in different ways. Cubic got a kick on the ego (on top of losing his pet robot… sortof…), Ana’s change was more positive as she grew closer to the rest of the cast with her episode. All of it put Kaitou in a good light, though. This episode instead show how he keeps standing in the spotlights of someone with such a huge pride as Gammon. The guy is talented, yet people never take him seriously and every time he has the chance to prove otherwise, Kaitou just bursts in from out of nowhere. I like where this is going here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Rinne no Lagrange – 03

by psgels, posted in Rinne no Lagrange

And this is why you should never leave a teenager in charge of intergalactic negotiations. “Long term? Who the hell cares about long term! You attacked us so I’ll attack back!’. Also, this is something that I’ve been noticing in quite a few other series as well. I mean, I get stylizing things as “there is no sound in space” and stuff. But it’s a bit bizarre to have the dark parts of the moon translucent…

In any case, I like what this series is doing here. Once again this episode placed a lot of focus on continuity. The battles aren’t just destroying random buildings. They’re destroying random buildings that people live in. It shows that everyone is involved.

Also, my fears of Madoka being too perfect also turned out to be ungrounded. Her aforementioned stubbornness is an interesting way to show her flaws. The enemy was willing to actually negotiate, and yet her pride for her hometown was an interesting way for her to ignore that. The big danger for this is taking it too far. Flawed characters are of course great to watch, but when these flaws make them mindlessly stupid then it’s just a sure sign of bad writing. So far though, Madoka isn’t really stupid. Just mindless and really impulsive. On top of having some bad ideas, she also balanced this out with some good ideas. Part of the fun of this show is how she perplexes everyone around her aside from her cousin. That cousin who really needs a bigger role here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)